Handbook of Medieval Studies

Volume 1
Handbook of Medieval Studies
Terms - Methods - Trends
Edited by
Albrecht Classen

Volume 1

De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-018409-9
e-ISBN 978-3-11-021558-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handbook of medieval studies : terms, methods, trends / edited by

Albrecht Classen.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-3-11-018409-9 (alk. paper)
1. Middle Ages - Historiography. 2. Middle Ages - Study and
teaching. 3. Literature, Medieval - History and criticism.
4. Middle Ages - Bibliography. 5. Medievalists - Biography.
I. Classen, Albrecht.
D116.H37 2010
940.1072-dc22
2010040766

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

쑔 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York

Typesetting: Dörlemann-Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde
Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
⬁ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
V Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Volume 1:
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV

Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval

Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXV

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LXVII

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LXXVII

Main Topics and Debates of the Last Decades

and their Terminology and Results
Arabic and Islamic Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Arab West (Thomas F. Glick) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Arab East (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Arabic Literature (Mark Pettigrew) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran
and Central Asia (Matteo Compareti) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Classical Persian Literature (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Islamic Philosophy (Alessandro Cancian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Islamic Theology (Livnat Holtzman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context (Glen M. Cooper) . . . . . 69
Qur’anic Studies (Erik S. Ohlander) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Shi’ism (Alessandro Cancian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Archaeology in Medieval Studies (Christopher Landon) . . . . . . 104
Art History (Elina Gertsman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Astronomical Instruments (David A. King) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Bakhthinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia
(Stephen M. Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Biblical Exegesis (Frans van Liere) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Botany (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Byzantine Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Byzantine Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Byzantine Art and Architecture (Sophia Germanidou) . . . . . . . 181
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises (Georgi Kapriev) . . . . . . . . 185
Table of Contents VI

Byzantine Sciences (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Byzantine Theology (George Arabatzis). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Classics and Mythography (Gregory Heyworth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Codicology and Paleography (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Communication (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Computer-Based Medieval Research
(with an Emphasis on Middle High German) (Ulrich Müller) . . 343
Conversion (Matthew J. dal Santo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Cornish Literature (Brian Murdoch). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Crusades Historiography (Andrew Holt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . 393
Diplomatics (Theo Kölzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Disability Studies (Julie Singer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Editing of Medieval Texts (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
English Studies (Robin Gilbank) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages (Reinhold Münster) 468
Epigraphy (Walter Koch) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
Eschatology (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . . . . . . 525
Feminism (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Folklore in Medieval Studies (Salvatore Calomino) . . . . . . . . . . . 550
Formalism (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
French Studies (Wendy Pfeffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
Friendship and Networks (Walter Ysebaert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Gender Studies (Hiram Kümper). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
German Studies (Francis G. Gentry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Heraldry (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism (Raymond J. Cormier) . . . . . . 624
Historical Studies (Andrew Holt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Historiography of Medieval Medicine (Carrie Griffin). . . . . . . . . 651
Historiography of Medieval Science (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . 666
Iberian Studies (James A. Grabowska) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . 685
Inter-/Crosscultural Studies (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies (Gerhard Jaritz). . . . . . . . 711
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches
in Medieval Literature (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716
Irish Studies (William Sayers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727
Italian Studies (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738
Japan, Medieval (Barbara Stevenson). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749
VII Table of Contents

Jewish Studies (Jean Baumgarten) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756

Law in the Middle Ages (Scott Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771
Legal Historiography (German) (Gerald Kohl) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches (Susan Noakes) . . . . . 807
Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . 822
Masculinity Studies (Daniel F. Pigg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 829
Material Culture (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 836
Medievalism (Ulrich Müller). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850
Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature (Siegrid Schmidt) . . . 866
Mentalities in Medieval Studies (David F. Tinsley) . . . . . . . . . . . 874
Metrology (Moritz Wedell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
Museums and Exhibitions (Siegrid Schmidt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 919
Music in Medieval Studies (James Zychowicz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
Mysticism (Debra Stoudt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 939

Volume 2:
Narratives of Technological Revolution (Adam Lucas) . . . . . . . . 967
Narratology and Literary Theory
in Medieval Studies (Jonathan M. Newman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990
New Philology (Susan Yager) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999
Numismatics (Rory Naismith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1007
Occitan Studies (Michelle Bolduc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1023
Performance of Medieval Texts (Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039
Pharmacy (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1056
Philosophy in Medieval Studies (Stephen Penn) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1090
Political Theory in Medieval Studies (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . 1111
Popes and Papacy (Frances Parton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1122
Popular Religion / Spirituality
in Medieval Studies (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1129
Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies (James Tindal Acken). . . . . . 1137
Queer Studies (Forrest C. Helvie). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1142
Race and Ethnicity (Diane Auslander) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages
(Late 18th Century / Turn of the Century) (Berta Raposo) . . . . . 1171
Religious Studies (The Latin West) (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . . . . . . 1184
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries
for the Middle Ages (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1201
Scripts (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1217
Semiotics of Culture (Sarah-Grace Heller) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1233
Table of Contents VIII

Slavic Studies (Marta Deyrup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1253

Social Constructionism (Daniel F. Pigg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1264
Social and Economic Theory in
Medieval Studies (Harry Kitsikopoulos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1270
Social History and Medieval Studies (Harry Kitsikopoulos). . . . . . . 1292
Technology in the Middle Ages (Thomas F. Glick) . . . . . . . . . . . 1305
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1310
Text and Image in the Middle Ages (James Rushing) . . . . . . . . . . 1319
Theology (Christian) (Leo D. Lefebure) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1339
Time Measurement and Chronology in
Medieval Studies (Camarin M. Porter) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1350
Transfer of Knowledge (Alain Touwaide). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1368
Utopias / Utopian Thought (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1400
Welsh Studies (Andrew Breeze) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1409

Important Terms in Today’s Medieval Studies

Aesthetics (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1421

Allegory (Bettina Full) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1430
Author (Michelle Bolduc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1440
Body (Scott Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1450
Chivalry (John A. Geck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1459
Comic (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1468
Contrafacture (Daniel E. O’Sullivan). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1478
Curialitas (Courtliness) (Gregory Heyworth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1482
Discourse (Karen K. Jambeck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1488
Fictionality (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1500
Frontier, Transgression, Liminality (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler). . . . . 1504
Game (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1508
Gestures (Klaus Oschema). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513
Images (Gerhard Jaritz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1520
Laughter (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1524
Memory (Paula Leverage) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1530
Mouvance (Roy Rosenstein) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1538
Parody (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1548
Prosopography (Christian) (K.S.B. Keats-Rohan) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1552
Ritual and Performance (Gerhard Jaritz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1559
Space and Nature (Christopher Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1563
Text (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1576
The Transcendental (George Arabatzis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1582
IX Table of Contents

Typology (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589

Violence (Scott Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593

Textual Genres in the Middle Ages

Adversus-Iudaeos Literature (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605

Art Manuals (Flavio Boggi). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607
Autobiography and Biography (Julie Singer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1614
Ballads, Songs, and Libels (Christian Kuhn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1618
Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus (Renee Ward) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1634
Bibles (Popular) (Brian Murdoch) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1642
Books of Hours (Elina Gertsman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1647
Calendars, Islamic (Simone Cristoforetti) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1652
Cantigas de amigos (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1657
Ceremonial Texts (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1660
Chansons de geste (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1683
Charms and Incantations (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1700
Charters (Philip Slavin). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1706
Chronicles (Graeme Dunphy). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1714
Cookbooks (Timothy J. Tomasik) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1722
Courtesy Books (Klaus Oschema) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1728
Debate Poetry (Patricia E. Black). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1735
Dictionaries / Glossaries (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1742
Didactic and Gnomic Literature (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1750
Dits (Steven Millen Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1755
Drama (John A. Geck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1760
Encyclopedias (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1767
Financial and Tax Reports (Georg Vogeler). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1775
Glosses (Frans van Liere) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1785
Gospel Harmonies (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1791
Hagiographical Texts (Michelle M. Sauer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1798
Heroic Epics and Sagas (Hermann Reichert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1807
Historical Romances (Jaime Leaños) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1831
Kharjas (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1840

Volume 3:
Lapidaries (Rosmarie Thee Morewedge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1845
Last Wills (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1862
Latin Comedies (Gretchen Mieszkowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872
Table of Contents X

Legal Texts (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1878

Letters (Christian Kuhn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1881
Letter Collections (Latin West and Byzantium)
(Walter Ysebaert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1898
Minnereden (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1905
Miracle Narratives (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1911
Mirrors for Princes
Islamic (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1916
Western (Cristian Bratu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1921
Notarial Literature (Edward D. English). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1950
Numismatic Literature (Rory Naismith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1956
Papal Bulls (Herwig Weigl) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1963
Penitentials and Confessionals (Michelle M. Sauer) . . . . . . . . . . . 1968
Pharmaceutical Literature (Alan Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1979
Political Treatises (Vasileios Syros) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2000
Prayer Books (Elina Gertsman). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2021
Proverbs (Rosmarie Thee Morewedge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2026
Religious Lyrics (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2056
Schoolbooks (Michael Baldzuhn). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2061
Scientific Texts: Artes Liberales and Artes Mechanicae
(with Emphasis on Anglophone Research) (Carrie Griffin) . . . . 2069
Sermons (Robert W. Zajkowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2077
Short Verse Narratives (Norris J. Lacy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2086
Sisterbooks (David F. Tinsley) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2093
Travelogues (Maria E. Dorninger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2102
Trobadors, Trouvères, Minnesinger (Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . . . . . 2118
Villancicos (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2128
Visionary Texts (Elizabeth Boyle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
World Maps ( Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2136

Key Figures in Medieval Studies

from ca. 1650 to 1950 (selection)
Adler, Guido (Pieter Mannaerts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2145
Árni Magnússon (Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2150
Auerbach, Erich (Bettina Full). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2153
Baer, Yitzhak (Philip Slavin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2160
Barbi, Michele (Beatrice Arduini). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2165
Bédier, Joseph (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2170
Benecke, Georg Friedrich (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2176
XI Table of Contents

Besseler, Heinrich (Pieter Mannaerts). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2180

Bezzola, Reto Raduolf (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2186
Billanovich, Giuseppe (David Lummus) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2190
Bischoff, Bernhard (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2193
Bloch, Marc (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2195
Bodmer, Johann Jakob (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2199
Borst, Arno (Judith Benz). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2204
Bosl, Karl (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2208
Boyle, Leonard Eugene (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . 2212
Branca, Vittore (Federica Anichini) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2215
Braune, Wilhelm (Joshua M. H. Davis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2219
Brunner, Otto (Judith Benz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2223
Burdach, Konrad (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2226
Cappelli, Adriano (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2230
Cardini, Franco (Daniel Rötzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2231
Castro (y Quesada), Américo (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . . 2236
Chenu, Marie-Dominique (Leo D. Lefebure) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2240
Cleasby, Richard (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2242
Cohen, Gustave (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2245
Contini, Gianfranco (Beatrice Arduini) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2249
Curtius, Ernst Robert (Alexander Sager) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2253
D’Ancona, Alessandro (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2258
Docen, Bernhard Joseph (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2260
Donaldson, E. Talbot (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2263
Dopsch, Alfons (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2267
Duby, Georges Michel Claude (Carol R. Dover) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2271
Duhem, Pierre (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2276
Ehrismann, Gustav Adolph (Alexander Sager). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2280
Ewert, Alfred (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2283
Faral, Edmond (Anne Latowsky). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2289
Frappier, Jean (Raymond J. Cormier). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2292
Fuhrmann, Horst (Karina Marie Ash). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2294
Funkenstein, Amos (Yossef Schwartz). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2297
Furnivall, Frederick James (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2300
Ganshof, François-Louis (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2304
Gerbert, Martin (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2309
Gilson, Etienne (Daniel Rötzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2311
Gollancz, Sir Israel (Stephen Penn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2315
Grabar, André (Linda Marie Rouillard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2320
Grabmann, Martin (Yossef Schwartz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2323
Table of Contents XII

Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl,

and Grimm, Wilhelm Karl (Scott E. Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . . 2329
Gurevich, Aron Iakovlevich (Elena Lemeneva) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2333
Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich August
Wilhelm von der (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2338
Haupt, Moriz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2341
Heer, Friedrich (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2345
Hibbard, Laura Alandis (Linda M. Rouillard). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2348
Hilka, Alfons (Wendy Pfeffer and Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2350
Hilton, Rodney Howard (Candace Barrington) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2353
Holmes, Urban Tigner, Jr. (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2357
Holthausen, Ferdinand (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2362
Huizinga, Johan (Tracy Adams) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2364
James, Montague Rhodes (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2368
Jeanroy, Alfred-Marie-Henri-Gustave (Beverly J. Evans) . . . . . . . . 2372
Jónsson, Finnur (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2376
Junius F. F., Franciscus (Jens Eike Schnall and Robert K. Paulsen) . . . . . 2380
Kane, George J. (Marilyn Sandidge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2386
Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig (Roberto Delle Donne) . . . . . . . . . . . 2388
Katz, Jacob (David Graizbord) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2394
Ker, Neil Ripley (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2398
Ker, W. P. (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2402
Kibre, Pearl (Carrie Griffin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2406
Kittredge, George Lyman (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2410
Klaeber, Friedrich (Helen Damico) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2413
Klibansky, Raymond (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2418
Kuhn, Hugo Bernhard (Markus Stock) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2422
Kuhn, Sherman M. (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2426
Kurath, Hans (Marc Pierce). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2428
Kuttner, Stephan (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2431
Lachmann, Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm (Stephen Mark Carey) . . 2434
Ladner, Gerhard B. (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2440
Lagarde, Georges de (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2444
Lamprecht, Karl Gotthard (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . 2447
Lassberg, Joseph Maria Christoph, Freiherr von (Maurice Sprague) . 2450
Leclerq, Jean (Daniel J. Watkins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2454
Le Goff, Jacques Louis (Carol R. Dover) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2457
Lehmann, Paul (Alison Beringer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2462
Lejeune, Rita (Kevin B. Reynolds). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2465
Lewis, C. S. (Jason Herman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2468
XIII Table of Contents

Lexer, Matthias von (Graeme Dunphy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2471

Liepe, Wolfgang (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2473
Loomis, R. S. (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2478
Lot, Ferdinand (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2481
Lowe, Elias Avery (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2484
Lubac, Henri de (Michael Johnson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2487
Luick, Karl (Jerzy Wełna) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2491
Maier, Anneliese (Sarah Powrie). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2494
Maitland, Frederic William (Janice M. Bogstad) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2497
Malkiel, Yakov (Samuel G. Amistead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2502
Mallet, Paul-Henri (Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2506
Manitius, Max (Alison Beringer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2509
Manly, John Matthews (Anita Obermeier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2511
Massmann, Hans Ferdinand (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . 2515
Maurer, Friedrich (Brian Murdoch) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2520
Menéndez-Pidal, Ramón (Kimberlee Campbell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2523
Meyer, Marie-Paul-Hyacinthe (Anne Latowsky). . . . . . . . . . . . . 2527
Mitteis, Heinrich (Albrecht Classen). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2531
Mohr, Hans Wolfgang Julius (Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2536
Müllenhoff, Karl Victor (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2541
Murray, J. A. H. (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2545
Mustanoja, T. (Kirsti Peitsara) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2548
Nardi, Bruno (David Lummus). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2553
Noreen, Adolf Gotthard (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2556
Ohly, Ernst Friedrich (Graeme Dunphy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2560
Paris, Gaston Bruno Paulin (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . 2563
Paul, Hermann (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2566
Pfeiffer, Franz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2569
Prawer, Joshua (Philip Slavin). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2573
Rajna, Pio (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2578
Reese, Gustave (Beverly J. Evans) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2581
Rico Manrique, Francisco (Enrico Santangelo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2585
Riquer Morera, Martín de (Kimberlee Campbell). . . . . . . . . . . . . 2588
Robertson, D. W. (Jason Herman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2592
Robinson, Fred Norris (Anita Obermeier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2594
Rougemont, Denis de (Linda Marie Rouillard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2599
Ruh, Kurt (Freimut Löser and Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2602
Runciman, Sir Steven (Robert W. Zajkowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2607
Sapegno, Natalino (Enrico Santangelo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2611
Sapori, Armando (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2616
Table of Contents XIV

Scherer, Wilhelm (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2619

Schlegel, August Wilhelm (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . 2623
Schlegel, Friedrich (Berta Raposo). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2626
Schoepperle Loomis, Gertrude (Karina Marie Ash) . . . . . . . . . . . 2630
Schramm, Percy Ernst (Janos M. Bak) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2633
Schultz, Alwin (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2636
Schwietering, Julius (Heiko Hartmann). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2639
Sievers, Georg Eduard (Russell Poole). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2642
Simrock, Karl Joseph (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2646
Skeat, Walter William (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2649
Southern, R. W. (Amy Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2653
Spitzer, Leo (Bettina Full) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2655
Stengel, Edmund Ernst (Andreas Meyer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2662
Strauch, Philipp (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2671
Tellenbach, Gerd (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2676
Tolkien, John Ronald Ruel (Katharina Baier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2679
Traube, Ludwig (Francesco Roberg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2684
Vilmar, August Friedrich Christian (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . 2692
Vinaver, Eugène (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2694
Wackernagel, Karl Heinrich Wilhelm (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . 2698
Waddell, Helen (Robin Gilbank) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2702
Weber, Gottfried (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2705
Wehrli, Max (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2709
White, Lynn Townsend, Jr. (Candace Barrington) . . . . . . . . . . . . 2711
Whitelock, Dorothy (Ben Snook) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2716
Wright, Joseph (Marc Pierce). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2720
Young, Karl (Regula Meyer Evitt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2724
Zingerle, Ignaz Vinzenz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2730
Zumthor, Paul (Tracy Adams) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2733
XV Introduction

Introduction

The present reference work aims to fill a significant lacuna in scholarship that
I will address throughout this introductory article, and subsequently in a
critical survey of the relevant resources in our field. As a Handbook, it wants to
make available detailed and meticulous surveys of the state of art in Medieval
Studies and to reflect upon the historical development of our field in its myr-
iad manifestations (research areas, terms, topics, figures, methods, theories,
etc.). After all, the Middle Ages continue to create a lot of excitement both
within the academy and outside, and we are, it seems, on a positive growth
curve, particularly now in the early 21st century, considering the astounding
proliferation of critical editions, translations, and interpretations that flood
the book market.
The history of research in all kinds of areas in Medieval Studies consti-
tutes an essential component in our understanding of where we have come
from and where we will probably turn to in the near future. More precisely,
any of our comments on and interpretations of any phenomenon in the
Middle Ages depends considerably on the scholarly context past and present.
Evaluations change, the foci on specific periods, genres, figures, themes, etc.
vary, and new theoretical concepts have considerable influence on how we
view the medieval past. Much fundamental work was produced already in
the 19th century, whether we think of critical editions, individual studies,
bibliographies, and other kinds of databases. But each discipline or subject
matter has been examined from many different perspectives since then, both
in light of various theoretical models and through the kaleidoscopic lens of a
multitude of methodologies.
Some of these approaches have maintained their validity until today,
others have been dismissed, and the intense debate continues until today
how best to examine the Middle Ages critically. It is not uncommon to realize
that older scholarship still has to tell us a lot even now, or once again, if care-
fully viewed in light of what medieval voices revealed in reality.1 The rel-
evance and meaning of specific statements in medieval documents and our

1 See the entry on “Religious Studies” by Peter Dinzelbacher for excellent in-
sights in this regard. Another illuminating example proves to be the discussion
of Lynn Townsend White Jr.’s contribution to the history of technology (see Can-
dace Barrington’s article on White).
Introduction XVI

reading of medieval art objects, architectural designs, and musical composi-

tions, to mention just a few areas of scholarly investigations in Medieval
Studies, have changed and continue to be in flux even today, depending on
new approaches, readings, interpretations, perspectives, critical lenses, and
methodologies. In other words, as in most other academic fields, the process
of learning, criticizing, re-evaluating, re-assessing, canonizing, and decon-
structing the very canon proves to be endlessly ongoing because we are all
part of the same large scholarly discourse, or rather, we create this discourse
and determine its continuous development.2 But this process requires regu-
lar review and substantive analysis, which the present Handbook hopes to pro-
vide both for the present and future generations of scholars in Medieval
Studies.
Total completion cannot be achieved, and comprehensive coverage of all
aspects would be elusive, but the present Handbook covers a considerable
breadth of a multitude of research fields. As my own criticism of previous ef-
forts in this field will indicate (see the following survey article on the relevant
reference works in Medieval Studies), the very ideal that carries such efforts
seems to be almost elusive and deceptive because we can only hope to capture
a faint sense of what life in the Middle Ages was really like. We can read what
some philosophers had to say, and we can ponder the meaning of specific
statements by poets, artists, composers, and preachers, but how easily do we
fall prey to a myopic perspective, either because of our lack of comprehensive
approaches, or because the texts and works by their contemporaries have not
survived. A full understanding seems impossible however, wherefore the
concept of discourse, as developed by Michel Foucault,3 promises a good al-
ternative since it does not require a complete coverage of what people
thought, said, and argued about at a specific time, yet takes into account the
widest array of statements and reflections that constituted that discourse. In
this sense, we always need to probe what the dominant discussion at a spe-
cific time can reveal about specific topics, ideas, and concerns. The entries in
our Handbook do not focus primarily on the medieval discourse, but on the
scholarly discourse since the late 18th century, tracing the growth of the im-
portant disciplines particularly over the last hundred years, outlining what
we know, what is being discussed, and how we have approached the critical
issues at stake.

2 I examine the larger implications at much greater length in my introductory ar-

ticle.
3 Michel Foucault, L’ordre de discourse: Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France prononcée
le 2 décembre 1970 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).
XVII Introduction

The goal pursued in this Handbook does not consist in an attempt to com-
pete with such seminal reference works as the Lexikon des Mittelalters or the
Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. Instead, the question pursued here focuses on how
individual subject matters have developed in historical-scholarly terms over
time. What were the various methodological approaches to specific themes,
and what source materials were regarded as most relevant? What primary
documents have been seen as truly relevant at what time and by whom for
what purposes? In fact, all these questions allow us to probe not only further
into the history of the Middle Ages at large, they also facilitate a much better
understanding of how we have learned to understand the medieval world
from our modern perspectives, if not how we have misunderstood it.
The term ‘history’ in our context only means the specific time frame, not
the narrow discipline of Historical Studies. Medieval Studies embrace vir-
tually each and every field of human activities and ideas, whether literature,
fashion, the arts, religion, technology, agriculture, banking, or architecture.
But this amazing spectrum also proves to be a remarkable challenge, hence,
after all, the need for encyclopedic treatments of that period.
There are four different categories of entries that make up this Handbook
of Medieval Studies. First the major topics of disciplinary nature come into
play, such as Feminism, German Studies, English Studies, Art History, Cru-
sade Studies, Queer Studies, and Islamic Art. Next contributors examine spe-
cific terms that have influenced Medieval Studies deeply, such as curialitas,
frontier, game, rhetorics, satire, irony, and violence.4 The third group con-
sists of articles covering the wide range of textual genres prevalent in the
Middle Ages, though even here I had to make compromises and leave lacunae
for a number of reasons, though I would have preferred a comprehensive
coverage. However, to aim for totality would have been hubris, and no en-
cyclopedia or lexicon has ever achieved such a goal. The truly critical ap-

4 There are, of course, numerous reference works on critical and literary terms rel-
evant for all of world literature, see, for instance, Henri Morier, Dictionnaire de
poétique et de rhétorique, 2nd augmented and rev. ed. (1961; Paris: Presses Universi-
taires de France, 1998); The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex
Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1993); Wendell V. Harris, Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory, Ref-
erence Sources for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 12 (New York, Westport,
CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992); Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, The
Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 3rd ed. (1997; Boston and New York:
Bedford/St. Martin, 2009); Metzler Literatur Lexikon: Begriffe und Definitionen, orig.
ed. by Günther and Irmgard Schweikle, ed. Dieter Burdorf, 3rd completely
rev. ed. (1984; Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007).
Introduction XVIII

proach requires selection, discrimination, prioritization, and categoriz-

ation, and this is the case in our Handbook as well.
Finally, the fourth group deals with some of the key figures in Medieval
Studies, that is, both the grandfathers and founders in our field, and major
scholars who deeply influenced their academic discipline at least until 1950,
and in a number of cases even beyond that.5 There was no way to draw an ar-
tificial line of separation a few years after the end of the Second World War, so I
chose a flexible approach in this regard. Some scholars enjoyed a very long ca-
reer, others only a short one, but those who became active really only after ca.
1960 are not considered here (here disregarding one or two where the circum-
stances justified it). After all, it was not possible, with very few exceptions, to
take into consideration the last thirty and forty years of research in terms of in-
dividual participants because it would have inundated all reasonable limits
for such a reference work. The emphasis hence rests on those figures who laid
the foundations and have continued to be deeply influential in their specific
areas of investigations until today because of their seminal work.6
The overall purpose of our reference work consists of an effort to outline
the major steps in the history of research since the 19th century (in some cases
since the 18th century). The articles covering the scholarly disciplines, techni-
cal terms, and textual genres are supposed to trace in a concise, yet not too
skeletal fashion, who the major players were, what significant positions and
schools dominated the respective field, who published the most seminal
studies, who provoked major debates and influenced the discourse, and then
to determine what the most critical issues have been in the evolution of each
discipline.
Readers should not expect to be presented with a comprehensive bibli-
ography; instead the entries address a more substantive need, that is, to learn
quickly how research on, say, the history of astronomy, medicine, German
Studies, Gender Studies, Arabic literature, Biblical exegesis, Crusade Studies,

5 For an impressive and comprehensive overview of the major historians in our

field, now see John Burrow, A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and In-
quiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (New York: A. A. Knopf,
2007); Rüdiger vom Bruch and Rainer A. Müller, Historikerlexikon: von der
Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (1991; Munich: Beck, 2002). Cf.
also Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages: the Lives, Works, and Ideas of the
Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century (New York: W. Morrow, 1991).
6 Rewriting the Middle Ages in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jaume Aurell and Francisco
Crosas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), contains biographies of some of the most
important medievalists from England, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the
United States, and Italy.
XIX Introduction

hermeneutics, etc., has developed over time. Likewise, in the next category,
the entries cover critical terms that have been highly influential in Medieval
Studies, and again the intent was to provide an overview of how each term
underwent crucial transformation and how it has been used in Medieval
Studies over the last hundred to two hundred years or so. Similarly, the cat-
egories of ‘genres’ and of ‘figures’ pursue the same concept.
I had hoped to incorporate as much non-European research and research
topics as possible, and I am rather pleased with the present result, despite all
kinds of shortcomings. Particularly the research on the worlds and cultures
of Asian, African, and Arabic societies in the Middle Ages could not be dealt
with as exhaustively as I would have liked, either because the task itself – and
this actually applies to all aspects covered or, alas, left out – was too challen-
ging, or because of certain natural limits that we all have in reaching out to
the wide world of scholarship in those, at least for scholars in the Western
world, somewhat remote areas and far beyond the scope of our traditional
area of expertise. The reality of academic and other professional demands
made it impossible for a number of contributors to submit their promised
work either in time or at all. So, horribile dictu, ‘Religion’, for example, is not
as extensively covered by itself as I would have wished, but there is an entry
on ‘Theology in Medieval Studies.’7 Overall, there are certain problems that
cast this matter in a different light. The history of Christianity represents a
huge field for which many different lexica and encyclopedias have already
been published (see the following survey article). To do justice to the many
branches of research on medieval religion would require a separate Handbook,
for which there is no space here. Admittedly, there is a separate entry on Jew-
ish religion, and even here severe challenges surface immediately. But de-
spite the erroneous assumption of a monolithic medieval Christianity, the
number of individual groups, orientations, interpretations, institutions, or-
ganizations, and even whole churches is legion.

7 I am particularly grateful to Peter Dinzelbacher for accepting this entry at the

last minute, so to speak, after a previous author had suddenly withdrawn. See also
Dinzelbacher’s excellent book series “Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte im
deutschsprachigen Raum in 6 Bänden.” The individual volumes have not ap-
peared in a chronologically linear progression; instead vol. 1 appeared in 2008,
vol. 2, by contrast, already in 2000: Peter Dinzelbacher, Hoch- und Spätmittelalter.
Mit einem Beitrag von Daniel Krochmalnik (Paderborn etc.: Ferdinand Schön-
ingh, 2000). Apart from the historical overview, he discusses the media of how
faith was conveyed, the world of imagination, spiritualization of concrete, earthly
space, spiritualization of time, sacred performance, sacred words, and spirituality
of human beings. Krochmalnik examines Jewish spirituality at the same time.
Introduction XX

All articles were written independently, and ultimately the quality of the
content was the authors’ individual responsibility. Of course, as the editor I
have made my utmost effort to guide, to probe, to correct, to suggest, and to
add information as much as possible, but overall I had to trust the contribu-
tors in having made their own best judgment in selecting the most import-
ant publications, editions, and reference works in their specific areas. For-
mally, I have tried to streamline every entry as much as possible, but absolute
conformity could not be achieved because of the vast differences in individ-
ual contributors’ approaches, styles, and methods, and also because of the
differences of the various disciplines. For instance, scholarly literature on the
history of medieval law or on prosopography had to be dealt with in struc-
tural terms that are different than in the research fields of medieval Occitan
or German Studies, for instance.

In general, and it is worth repeating this to make it absolutely clear what the
objectives were and what was realistic altogether, comprehensiveness or an
exhaustive treatment of every aspect in the medieval world, has not been
possible right from the start. Nevertheless, I hope that the present result
offers at least an approximation of the overarching goal. Above all, we are
providing important overviews of the history of research in a wide array of
fields, stretching, for instance, from Byzantine architecture to German legal
historiography, and beyond.
Some disciplines proved to be just too demanding and too extensive, or no
contributor could be found to meet the challenge, who had the time, or who
was willing to volunteer for this massive enterprise. The field of medieval law
would have required a whole cohort of experts, but I am pleased that at least
one contributor deals with a broad overview of legal historiography, whereas
another focuses on the history of German medieval law. The same can be stated
for almost all other areas, so I must beg indulgence from the future readers of
this Handbook. It can provide guidance only so far, yet the current result prom-
ises to establish a solid groundwork for the wide discipline of Medieval
Studies. After all, whenever we begin to investigate any aspect of the Middle
Ages, irrespective of the specific angle we might pursue, immediately a pleth-
ora of new perspectives, topics, texts, works, etc. opens up almost limitlessly.
In a way I also beg the reader for his/her indulgence if a specific entry is missing
because circumstances beyond my control made it impossible to cover every-
thing to the extent desirable. Perhaps some of the shortcomings can be ad-
dressed and dealt with in a second edition or in a future volume with addenda.
The deeper we analyze a topic, the more sub-genres, sub-fields, sub-cat-
egories etc. tend to emerge, and then require careful and detailed critical
XXI Introduction

treatment. That is, however, exactly one of the critical limits that could not
be breached without excessive, highly time-consuming efforts to the detri-
ment of all other contributions. I prefer to have at least published a fragmen-
tary Handbook of Medieval Studies that covers the majority of fields, terms,
genres, and key figures than none.
The bibliographical information in the main body of the text in each
entry is mostly provided in a truncated manner, though this should still
allow the user to trace and find each individual reference in the library with
ease. By contrast, the last section then offers the full information. The titles
of book series and the volume numbers, however, have always been left out.
For the large topics, it was not practical to force the contributors to fol-
low a very stringent model, so there is a certain variety of structures applied.
By contrast, the entries of figures follow by and large the same pattern. After
a general introduction about the person’s significance comes his or her bi-
ography. The next section deals with the scholar’s publications, and the sub-
sequent one focuses on the impact the scholar has had on his or her field. The
entry concludes with a list of the scholar’s major publications, and with a
short bibliography of the relevant reference works. There are mostly six cat-
egories for these biographical entries, but some authors have collapsed one
or two for practical reasons.
The entries on genres and terms pursue more of a chronological perspec-
tive, but the emphasis here rests, just as in the category of topics, on the inter-
nationality of research. Contributors were strongly encouraged to consider
not only secondary literature published in English, but to take into account
all (!) relevant material, whether in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch,
Swedish, etc. Everyone has linguistic limitations, of course, but I believe that
the contributors have made good to excellent attempts to be as inclusive as
possible. After all, Medieval Studies are an interdisciplinary discipline by de-
fault, and there is truly an international community of Medievalists, many of
whom I have had the pleasure of getting involved in this Handbook.
Having said all that, I have only left the pleasant task of expressing my
great gratitude to many different individuals involved in this massive pro-
ject. Without the numerous contributors this project would never have been
possible, of course, but I am particularly thankful for the consistently high
caliber of their work. I am very thankful to the University of Arizona Alumni
Foundation for giving me a small grant to support me in my endeavors. I am
grateful to my research assistant, Courtney Johnson, University of Arizona, for
her help in the last stages, and I must also extend my thanks to the editorial
staff at Walter de Gruyter in Berlin, especially Christine Henschel and Markus
Polzer. Johanna Kershaw, Oriel College, Oxford University, provided excellent
Introduction XXII

translations of some of the articles. My greatest gratitude, however, goes to

Heiko Hartmann, erstwhile editorial director at de Gruyter, who had first con-
ceived of this plan and approached me several years ago, proposing that I as-
sume this daunting task. I hope that the present result will meet at least most
of the expectations and more or less serve the needs of our discipline outlined
above. Despite all my trepidations regarding the feasibility of editing such a
massive reference work, I am firmly convinced of its usefulness and of the im-
portance in charting a field that has grown so vigorously from the late 18th
century to the early 21st century, that is, today.
The fact that such a reference work still can be published by a major aca-
demic press indicates clearly what I indicated at the beginning and what I
will continue to examine in the introductory survey article. Despite many
challenges of linguistic, institutional, administrative, financial, and even
political nature, Medieval Studies are doing very well both in the academy
and outside, and they continue to provide a major framework of learning and
a source of inspiration for anyone interested in Western civilization and the
related cultures. Of course, we would not be what we are today without the
Middle Ages, and any modern university that claims to live up to minimal
standards of current academics, especially in the Humanities, will have to ac-
knowledge first and above all the fundamental significance of Medieval
Studies both for teaching and research. Hence I would like to salute my own
academic home, The University of Arizona, for providing me with some fi-
nancial support and free time, including a one-semester sabbatical, to accom-
plish the goal of preparing such an extensive reference work. However, I
need to emphasize as well that I basically worked without any staff and only
very little supplemental financial support. Fortunately, many colleagues
who contributed to this project were so gracious to alert me to problems or to
provide additional information, but the ultimate responsibility for the en-
tire Handbook rests on me, of course.
If the long-term editing process has taught me anything, it is the abso-
lute need to work in an interdisciplinary fashion in Medieval Studies. In this
sense, as I believe, this field sets a standard for many other disciplines. Al-
most ironically, Medieval Studies have much to offer for the future of the
academy.8 Presentism, as Kathleen Biddick called this phenomenon, deeply

8 I would like to express my gratitude to Pieters Maennerts (Research Foun-

dation–Flanders / Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), for valuable last minute
input. My thanks also go out to many other colleagues whose names are men-
tioned in the final footnote to my “Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in
Medieval Studies” article.
XXIII Introduction

impacts all our research of the Middle Ages. Jaume Aurell and Francisco
Crosas offer the following observation: “Presentism dominates over preter-
ism, its opposite, in our relations with the medieval period, because we are
capable of identifying the Middle Ages more as a mirror than as a mirage.
Presentism brings us closer to the period studied, no matter how distant it
may be, but it undoubtedly also has the possibly perverse effect of anachron-
istically applying the parameters of present culture in analysing it.”9
Of course, we have all vested interests, and our modern concerns in a way
always direct and influence our investigation of the past. Nevertheless,
Medieval Studies represent truly interdisciplinary approaches and have
demonstrated over decades and centuries the degree to which sound philo-
logical, historical, art-historical, socio-economic and other research methods
can yield highly significant and trustworthy results. The present Handbook
strives to provide a comprehensive overview of this long-term struggle, and
as much as we are dwarfs standing on the shoulder of giants, we hope one day
to offer the necessary support for future generations to look further and
deeper than we have been able to do today.
Finally, I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in covering all the
major topics, terms, genres, and figures relevant for our field. But the reader
will certainly notice some lacunae, basically unavoidable and painful in the
case of an encyclopedic reference work like this Handbook. But overall, I be-
lieve, most important topics are represented here, and if not, then there were
painstaking and also difficult circumstances beyond my control.

9 Rewriting the Middle Ages, 11. See also Katheleen Biddick, The Shock of Medievalism
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 83; William H. Dray, “Some Var-
ieties of Presentism,” id., On History and Philosophers of History, Philosophy of His-
tory and Culture, 2 (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1989), 164–89; Matthew David-
son, “Presentism and the Non-Present,” Philosophical Studies 113.1 (2003): 77–92;
Craig Bourne, A Future for Presentism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
Introduction XXIV
XXV Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

Survey of Fundamental
Reference Works
in Medieval Studies
Albrecht Classen1

We can only concur with Joseph R. Strayer’s assessment from 1982

that “Interest in the Middle Ages has grown tremendously in the last half-
century” (ix), and we would have to add nothing but that this growth has
amazingly proliferated since then, now more than a quarter of a century
later. This growth has occurred both in quantitative and also in qualitative
terms, considering the impressive extent of topics covered by medievalists
today, as richly documented by major and minor conferences, symposia,
and workshops all over the world, such as at the Medieval Institute of Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo, or at the University of Leeds, the University of
Cologne, the Centro di Studi sull’alto medioevo of Spoleto, etc. The sheer output
of academic and non-academic books on the Middle Ages is truly staggering,
and the range of topics dealt with seems almost endless, whether we think
of political history, literary history, history of fashion, architecture, music,
history of technology, everyday life, religion, philosophy, the relationship
between man and animals or man and nature, travel, transportation, com-
munication, the experience of death, sickness, birth, love, marriage, money,
spirituality, or heresy. Whereas, in previous decades, scholarship tended
to focus on Western Europe primarily, today we have learned to recognize
the tremendous influence from many different cultures and the impact of
the contacts between the Christian and the Muslim world, not to forget
the vast and deeply learned Jewish culture within the heartland of medieval
Europe. As Strayer emphasizes, “it has become impossible to ignore
the Byzantine, Jewish, and Muslim contributions. They were the sources
from which Western Europe drew its material and intellectual luxuries –
silks and spices, algebra and astronomy – and even an undergraduate finds

1 In deliberate contrast to all the entries in this Handbook of Medieval Studies, this
introduction always provides the full bibliographical information, which
explains the appearance of a regular apparatus with footnotes in the traditional
format.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXVI

himself confronted by references to the scholars and techniques of these

civilizations.”2
Whether the chronological demarcation of the Middle Ages still should
be, for its beginning phase, at ca. 500 and, for its waning, or autumn, to bor-
row Johan Huizinga’s term, around 1500 C.E., respectively, might be ques-
tioned today. After all, we have learned even more than had former gener-
ations of scholars to recognize the important continuation of countless
traditions from the world of antiquity to the early Middle Ages, and also
from the 15th century to the world of the Reformation and the Renaissance, if
not beyond. But this is a matter of recent explorations once again and should
not necessarily concern a Handbook of Medieval Studies that is trying to take
stock of what we know about that period today from various perspectives.
Nevertheless, this should be kept in mind for many of the entries in this
Handbook because literary, philosophical, economic, artistic, and religious
traditions continued certainly far beyond the somewhat artificial milestone
of 1500, and indeed throughout the entire Ancien Régime until 1789 (in
France) or 1917 (in Russia), such as in the case of the Mirror of Princes, a highly
popular didactic genre instructing rulers about how to govern and how to
live an honorable, virtuous life that continued to be written and to be pub-
lished far into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The enormous quantity of facts and data determining that past world is
so huge, indeed, that only an encyclopedia might really accomplish the task
of summarizing all relevant information, for individual scholars can no
longer hope to deal with the entire universe of the medieval world all by
themselves. But facts alone do not tell the whole story, and they can be rather
deceiving in that we have learned just too many times how much so-called
“facts” were primarily the product of imagination, wishful thinking, or
simply of an ideological program. Moreover, scholars have always been vic-
tim to the selective nature of the surviving evidence, regularly produced by
the winners of history, the dominant class or social group, and many times by
male scribes and artists to the disadvantage of their female counterparts or
minority groups within their society. The number of pertinent chronicles is
legion, and they are what they are, that is, attempts by individuals to come to
terms with their own past as they perceived it, some injecting a strong dose of
subjectivity, others striving for as much objectivity as possible. Chronicles

2 Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer, vol. 1 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1982), ix. It consists of 13 vols., the last vol. and the index having
appeared in 1989. An important supplement volume followed in 2004, see below.
XXVII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

are texts in the first case, and hence subject to some of the same limitations as
many literary texts.3
The only reasonable approach to Medieval Studies can be, to state the ob-
vious, a critical one, informed both by traditional and contemporary theo-
retical concepts, methodologies, and interpretive tools. We have to be critical
with regard to the sources, to the proper evaluation, and to our full under-
standing of their meaning, an approach that already characterized the high
point of the Middle Ages when rationality entered the philosophical dis-
course during the 12th century.4 This critical approach, however, has ever
been subject to ideological influences, interpretations, and even subjective
interests/agendas. Schools of thought have regularly formed and dominated
intellectual life. Academia is not an institution free of value systems and pro-
grammatic principles. Of course, here I am preaching to the converted, but
all this still needs to be observed and reviewed, nevertheless. Medieval
libraries are filled with falsifications, and individuals and political parties
even then tried their hardest to undermine their opponents’ position,
esteem, authority, and power, or simply to hold on to their own property,
whether properly acquired or ill secured.5 Poets competed against each
other, and so did artists and composers. Scholars, theologians, medical
doctors, teachers, and architects argued and polemicized hard and bitterly,
which also determined the sources we have left about and from them. Our
modern attempts to gain some kind of understanding requires a careful bal-
ancing of how we evaluate the documents, always keeping in mind that they
represent subjective perspectives.6

3 Graeme Dunphy is currently editing a comprehensive encyclopedia on this

genre, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
4 Edward Grant, Good and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2001).
5 Robert F. Berkhofer III, Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval
France. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2004); Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, München, 16.–19. September 1986, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, 33 (Hanover: Hahn’sche Buchhandlung, 1988–1990).
6 A great example for the excellent results that we can achieve if we consider as
many different voices within one discourse, especially in the field of religious
competitions since late antiquity when the bitter conflicts among Christians,
Jews, and Muslims really began, now proves to be Alexandra Cuffel’s superior
and well researched Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), see my review in Mediaevistik, forthcom-
ing.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXVIII

Again, all that would not need to be stated here once again, yet it sheds
important light on the ever-present necessity to evaluate where we stand
today vis-à-vis the sources and the various interpretations. Neither a lexicon
nor a dictionary, let alone an encyclopedia with its much more ambitious
scope, normally reflects such problems. Only occasionally do we observe
more specific attempts to outline the history of research, although that his-
tory informs us as much about the past as the actual sources and documents.
Considering the absolutely overwhelming amount of information available
today about almost any aspect of medieval life in material and intellectual/
spiritual terms, we need both an encyclopedic approach and a critical ap-
proach.
The primary purpose of this Handbook of Medieval Studies, which I will il-
luminate in greater detail below, consists of offering such critical overviews,
which will lay the foundations for future research considering that the
readers will be able to learn of the major stepping stones in each respective
field, avoiding the often observable dilemma of reinventing the wheel when
we investigate specific aspects in medieval history, language, culture, litera-
ture, technology, economics, and agriculture.
To aim for the goal of grasping the whole medieval universe, that is, to
try to be a ‘Renaissance man,’ an ‘uomo universale,’ with regard to the
Middle Ages, would amount to hubris in light of some 1000 years of medi-
eval history, more than three dozen of distinctly spoken languages, and a
huge geographical expanse and cultural and ethnic diversity determining
medieval Europe. Just as in so many other fields of academic investigations,
the more we know today about the medieval world, the more we have also to
realize how limited this very knowledge truly is because it has grown almost
exponentially, both horizontally and vertically over the last two hundred
years.7 Interdisciplinarity proves to be a conditio sine qua non for modern Medi-
eval Studies, whether we deal with the experience of love, death, friendship,
fear, God, or natural disasters and catastrophes. Violence, hatred, contempt
or fear of the other, persecutions of minorities, or wars against enemies often
find their explanations in fundamental concepts common among all people.

7 Surprisingly, just such an attempt was made by Karl Bertau, Schrift–Macht–Hei-

ligkeit in den Literaturen des jüdisch-christlich-muslimischen Mittelalters, ed. Sonja
Glauch (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2005); for some critical comments, see
my review in Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 42, 1 (2007): 155–59. Basically, Bertau
draws most of his information from the Lexikon des Mittelalters and tries to estab-
lish global intercultural links without a thorough grounding in most of the cul-
tures, languages, and documents dealt with. Hence, the number of problems of
his approach is legion, unfortunately.
XXIX Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

Since the early Middle Ages, for instance, if not considerably earlier, the rep-
resentatives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam fought against each other
drawing from deep-seated and commonly shared feelings of disgust of
bodily effluents, especially blood and the excrements. The polemics launched
against each other were surprisingly similar and indicate that Christians
knew fairly well what Jewish thinkers argued, and vice versa, and the same
applies to the Muslims and their religious counterparts.8
Simply put, the more complex the image that we can sketch of the medi-
eval world or parts of it becomes, the more accurate it actually emerges, even
though the vast diversity of aspects pertaining to any of those huge topics
threatens to make us not to see the forest for just too many trees.
Strayer and his colleagues aimed at North American high school and
college students, and scholars, which represents a considerable challenge
concerning how to design the individual articles, offering solid and in-depth
information, yet without overpowering the individual readers who ob-
viously would have very different backgrounds, interests, and abilities.
Strayer noted, however, that the Dictionary would provide “definitions and
explanations of medieval terms and ideas that arise in their reading. Those at
the university level will find further information on the people, events, and
concepts of the Middle Ages. Finally, there is the specialist, and every medi-
evalist is a student throughout his career, for the deeper digs, the wider the
gaps. By combining previously fragmented areas of Medieval Studies, the
Dictionary enables the scholars and others to survey the field quickly, offering
them a singular means of coordinating the various branches of medieval
scholarship into an accessible and coherent whole” (x).
The problems with this three-pronged approach are self-evident and
have often been pointed out by critics who find this Dictionary at times too
superficial and simplistic, and particularly too much focused on the English
Midlands, Normandy, or the Île de France, neglecting, above all, social-his-
torical, mental-historical, and spiritual-religious aspects, as William Chester
Jordan commented in the “Preface” to a supplement volume from 2004
edited by himself.9 This additional volume laudably tries to address many of

8 See the excellent study by Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Relig-
ious Polemic. The author impressively commands all the relevant languages and
displays an amazing knowledge of the specific sources in Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
and Arabic, not to mention various medieval vernacular languages. Cf. now John
Sewell, ‘The Son Rebelled’, Laughter in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen,
forthcoming.
9 Dictionary of the Middle Ages: Supplement, 1, ed. William Chester Jordan (New York,
Detroit, San Diego, et al.: Thomson Gale, 2004), vii.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXX

the concerns that had been voiced regarding the original conceptual design
of the Dictionary, adding many new perspectives, themes, topics, and subject
matters relevant for the Middle Ages that have surfaced in the scholarly
investigations during the last decades and continued to evolve in the inter-
national academic discourse as significant for our full comprehension of that
past world. Most noteworthy might be the articles on “Medievalism” and on
“race,” which suggest some new approaches scholarship has pursued in the
recent decades.
After all, our field is in constant flux, reflecting new methodologies,
concepts, theoretical approaches, and perceptions. In fact, this supplement
volume impressively indicates the vibrancy and innovative character of
Medieval Studies at large, whether we think of minority groups, poverty,
intra-religious exchanges, the history of mentality, the history of everyday
life, or the history of emotions. But despite all those attempts to inter-
nationalize and to open up our field to the widest possible range of research
topics, we continue to be severely hampered by linguistic challenges, a lack of
communication, and access to the primary sources, not to mention the disci-
plinary boundaries that limit us excessively to very narrow and specific
research agendas, as if medieval poets or chroniclers, for instance, had pur-
sued a similarly narrow viewpoint as we do today. To put it bluntly, taking
into account an extreme situation, medieval scholarship published in the Far
East, whether China, Japan, or Korea, normally remains inaccessible to Euro-
pean scholars, and vice versa.
But we do not have to go so far as to realize how limited we all are because
most medievalists outside of the following areas are not particularly, or not
at all, versed in Scandinavian, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, or Gaelic, to men-
tion just a few languages. Major contributions to Medieval Studies have been
produced by Russian or Polish colleagues, but there does not seem to be a
good linguistic bridge to Western languages, unless we can rely on a trans-
lation into any of the major languages spoken in the West (and always the
other way around as well). Sadly, this linguistic limitation also emerges even
within Western Europe, if we think of the many Anglophone, Francophone,
or Iberophone scholars who cannot read German, Danish, Flemish, Czech, or
even Italian, and vice versa. And there are many more languages that we
ought to understand in order to do justice to the actual needs and demands of
our academic discipline.
I like to think that Latin continues to be a lingua franca, at least among
the experts, though we do not speak it anymore, except, perhaps, in the Vati-
can, among Latin teachers, and Neo-Latin scholars. At least a certain degree
of reading ability common among us all still might be the norm, irrespective
XXXI Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

of the specialized field within Medieval Studies. By the same token, what
languages were known among medieval and early-modern poets? Most
of them could probably not understand more than one or two languages
other than their mother tongue, although exceptions must also have
existed, particularly among poets, travelers, and artists. After all, as we
increasingly begin to fathom, there was, for example, a steady stream of In-
dian, Persian, and Arabic literature into medieval Europe, as a considerable
corpus of late-medieval verse or prose narratives indicates (e.g., Barlaam and
Josaphat).10
Many translators were involved, however, even then, which ultimately
made the international transfer of literary themes and motifs possible, and
this probably on a much broader basis than has been previously assumed,
though many details still escape us because Western medievalists do not
know the complimentary material produced in the east, and vice versa. How
could we expect, for instance, a 15th-century scholar working on Dutch or
Slavic literature to know anything about Persian or Indian literature trans-
mitted through many different channels and languages? In other words,
there remains much work to be done, though on a more comparative and in-
terdisciplinary level than ever before. And, to return to the issue of Latin, we
must strive to reinvigorate the modern study of this lingua franca commonly
used in the Middle Ages by the political elite, the Church, and the adminis-
tration. Otherwise, despite the best efforts at making medieval texts avail-
able to modern readers through translations, the access to the vast depository
of medieval documents will be in danger.11
The editors of the famous German Lexikon des Mittelalters, with the first
fascicle of the first volume having appeared in 1977, the ninth, and last vol-
ume in 1998, aimed specifically at the scholar and intend to provide detailed
and in-depth information about history, culture, and everyday life (‘life-
styles’ in their words) of the entire medieval world on the basis of written

10 Albrecht Classen, “Kulturelle und religiöse Kontakte zwischen dem christ-

lichen Europa und dem buddhistischen Indien während des Mittelalters: Rudolfs
von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat im europäischen Kontext,” Fabula 41, 3/4 (2000):
203–28. See also Sabine Obermaier, Das Fabelbuch als Rahmenerzählung: Intertex-
tualität und Intratextualität als Wege zur Interpretation des Buchs der Beispiele der alten
Weisen Antons von Pforr, Beihefte zum Euphorion, 48 (Heidelberg: Universitätsver-
lag Winter, 2004).
11 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1, ed.
William Chester Jordan (New York, Detroit, et al.: Thomson Learning, 2004),
383–89; especially 388.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXXII

documents and visual objects.12 They realized, of course, as many other edi-
tors before them, that the spectrum of our current understanding of the
Middle Ages has expanded so much that no individual scholar would be in a
position any longer to gain a more or less complete overview and under-
standing of that world and culture.
Most impressively, the Lexikon offers erudite articles about a seemingly
inexhaustible range of topics, themes, ideas, people, works, and objects from
the Middle Ages.13 But this Lexikon also intends to reach out to a general
readership, which necessarily forced a (too) clean separation of the actual
presentation of the topic covered in each entry and the relevant research lit-
erature (X).14 Moreover, the editors were faced with the difficult decision:
how to limit the range of aspects because there might not be an end in sight.
Consequently, they decided not to exclude any particular area, “da das der
Überzeugung, ein Gesamtbild der mittelalterlichen Epoche könne nur unter
Einschluß aller uns überlieferten Erscheinungsformen mittelalterlichen
Lebens vermittelt werden, widersprochen hätte” (XI; because this would
have contradicted the conviction that a comprehensive picture of the medi-
eval period could be conveyed only if all forms of medieval life that have sur-
vived until today would be included). This challenge, however, could not be
met for the countless numbers of medieval art works, which are therefore
dealt with more collectively in a type of topography of art (“Kunsttopogra-
phie”).
Mindful of these complex parameters, the Lexikon deliberately takes into
account also those worlds and cultures located at the margin of the European
Latin world, including the Byzantine Empire, the Arabic-Islamic kingdoms,
and the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the editors underscore that the history
of medieval Jewry represents an integral aspect of medieval European history
at large, irrespective of, or rather also because of, countless pogroms, perse-
cutions, and expulsions (XI), that sometimes blind us to the intensive cohabi-
tation and collaboration of both religious groups in everyday-life situations,

12 Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. (Munich and Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1980–1998), a
separate volume with the index appeared in 1999. By now it already seems high
time to produce an updated, revised, and expanded edition because Medieval
Studies make such rapid progress.
13 However, there are inexplicable gaps, such as the absence of a lemma on the In-
quisition or on chess.
14 When one resorts to the digital version of the Lexikon, available on a CD-ROM, the
bibliography appears in a separate window only after one has clicked on the re-
spective button, which visually distances the text even further from the critical
apparatus.
XXXIII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

in scholarship, and medicine. Insofar as many medieval Europeans sought

contacts with distant lands, including Mongolia, China, the Philippines, and
India, relevant entries have been added to this Lexikon. As to the chronologi-
cal framework, the editors defined as their historical period the time be-
tween 300 and 1500 C.E., meaning that late antiquity and then also the
period until the end of the 15th century are considered here as well. The edi-
tors do not deny that the Middle Ages continued to hold sway well after
1500, actually extending even to the 18th century in some specific areas, but
the turn from the 15th to the 16th century actually represents a decisive turn-
ing point in history that would allow us to determine the end of the Middle
Ages from many viewpoints (XII).
The cultural-historical lexicon for the Nordic Middle Ages, Kulturhisto-
risk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid (Cultural-
Historical Lexicon for the Nordic Middle Ages, from the Time of the Vikings
to the Age of the Protestant Reformation), first published between 1956 and
1978, with a second (identical) edition in 1980, also needs to be considered
here as a major reference work.15 Each article provides in-depth information
about a wide range of topics, including religion, law, agriculture, crafts, lit-
erature, social conditions, architecture, painting, sculpture, nutrition, cook-
ing, etc., accompanied by excellent bibliographies. The editors have made
every effort to meet their own theoretical goal of truly addressing cultural
history in the Middle Ages, whether the respective articles deal with “Ar-
beidsfest” (workers’ holidays), “Bergsprivilegier” (mining privileges), “Bis-
kop” (Bishop), or “Vindue” (window), “Vinhandel” (wine trade), or literary
topics such as Volsunga saga. There are no lemmata on historical persons/char-
acters, however. Appropriate for the targeted audiences, the articles are
written in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. It would have been helpful,
however, if at least the entry titles had been translated into English or Ger-
man. Those unfamiliar with any of the Scandinavian languages, can now
turn to a newer one-volume encyclopedia dealing with that world, Medieval
Scandinavia, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano, who extended the time frame a bit
further into the past, beginning roughly with the Migration Period, but end-
ing likewise with the time of the Protestant Reformation. The range of
themes is considerably broader, at least far beyond ‘cultural history’ per se,
and includes such aspects as “Cosmography,” “Eddic Poetry,” “Graves,”

15 Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for nordisk Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, ed. by
a whole gremium of scholars from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and
Sweden. 2nd ed. 20 vols., with one supplement vol. and one vol. for the register
(1956–1978; Viborg, Denmark: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1980–1982).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXXIV

“Homilies,” “Land Tenure and Inheritance,” “Outlawry,” “Reliquaries,”

and “Saints’ Lives.” Although addressing a wider audience, each article is ap-
propriately accompanied by a solid bibliography, avoiding the usual short-
coming of Anglophone publications to include only English titles for an
English-reading group of users of this type of reference work.16
Slavic scholarship has also produced an excellent reference work for the
Middle Ages, particularly the comprehensive Lexicon Antiquitatum Slavicarum:
Summarium Historiae Cultus Humanitatis Slavorum, published in Polish.17
Scholars in neighboring countries have, of course, made many attempts to
come to terms with the Middle Ages in their own areas, see, for example,
A Handbook for Slavic Studies, ed. by Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), which is, however, not at all limited
to the Middle Ages.18 See also Slovar’ srednevekovoi kul’tury, ed. Aron Akovlevich
Gurevich; M. Andreev, Summa culturologiae. 2nd ed. (2003; Moscow:
Rosspen, 2007); and Derzhava Riurikovichei: slaviane, Rus, Rossiia: entsiklopedi-
cheskii slovar’ v shesti tomakh, ed. V(ladimir). V(olfovich). Boguslavskii,
6 vols. (Tula: Russkii leksikon, 1994–).19
Similarly as the Nordic cultural history, Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk
Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, especially in the Lexicon Antiquita-
tum Slavicarum the following topics are covered: culture, social and economic
conditions, literature, linguistics, archeology, anthropology, art, religion,
politics, and historical events of the Slavic peoples from their origin to the
end of the 12th century. The contributors do not only deal with the cultures

16 Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano, co-ed. Kirsten Wolf

(New York and London: Garland, 1993).
17 Słownik starorytności słowiańskich: Encyklopedyczny zarys kultury Słowian od czasów
najdawniejszych, ed. Władysław Kowalenko, Gerard Labuda, and Tadeusz
Lehr-Spławi ński (with changing editors), 8 vols. (vol. 8 ed. by Antoni G‰sio-
rowski, Gerard Labuda, and Andrzej We˛ dzki), Institutum Scientiae Rerum
Slavicarum Academiae Scientiarum Polonae (Wrocław, Warsaw, and Cracow:
Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolińskich-Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk,
1961–1996).
18 See also Georgij Petrovic Fedotov, The Middle Ages: The 13th to the 15th Centuries,
ed. John Meyendorff, The Russian Religious Mind, 2 (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1966).
19 Cf. Kirilo-metodievska entsiklopediia v tri toma, ed. Boniu Angelov, Petur Nikolov
Dinekov, Dimitur Simeonov Angelov, and Liliana Grasheva, 4. vols. (Sofiia:
Izd-vo na Bulgarska akademiia na naukite, 1985–2003); Sima M Cirkovic,
Leksikon srpskog srednjeg veka = The Lexicon of Serbian Middle Ages (Beograd: Knowl-
edge, 1999). I have not been able to examine all these reference works through
autopsy.
XXXV Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

and histories of the Slavs, but also with those of peoples in contact or in
neighborhood with them. Moreover, we find countless entries on locations,
figures, objects, rituals, performances, texts, art works, music instruments,
epitaphs and inscriptions, foodstuff, countries, tribes, territories, and
archeological finds. Occasionally there are also larger topics covered, such as
monastic movements, charters, the church, feudalism, trade (including with
slaves), and many others. The initial goal had been to publish two volumes
only, which determined the usual length of entries, but since the Lexicon then
grew to eight volumes, the articles accordingly increasingly gained in length
and depth. They are accompanied by most useful bibliographies. There are
numerous illustrations, tables, and maps.
Other attempts to update this Slavic Lexicon and to produce an equivalent
in German, for instance, failed, see, for example, Enzyklopädie zur Früh-
geschichte Europas, ed. Joachim Herrmann and Gerard Labuda (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1980), of which only a sample fascicle appeared. See also
Enzyklopädie zur Geschichte des östlichen Europas (6.–13. Jahrhundert), ed. Christian
Lübke and Andrzej Wêdzki (Greifswald: n.p., 1998; only the letter ‘A’ was
covered).20 But we have now Siegfried Tornow’s Was ist Osteuropa? Handbuch
der osteuropäischen Text- und Sozialgeschichte von der Spätantike bis zum National-
staat. Slavistische Studienbücher, Neue Folge, 16 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2005). The author deals with the Slavic world from prehistory to the present,
focuses on the languages in Eastern Europe, the expanding influence of
Christian missionaries, the emergence of sacred languages and scripts, edu-
cation and culture, and the various text genres used in Eastern Europe.
Above all, he covers the history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, in
the age of Humanism, and the Protestant Reformation, in the Baroque,
Enlightenment, the 19th, and in the 20th century. The extensive and inter-
national bibliography provides an excellent research tool.
A most important reference work of recent date proves to be Wieser
Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens, ed. Günther Hödl and Lojze Wieser,
together with Feliks J. Bister et al. (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 1999–); vol. 18:
Selbstbild und Fremdbilder der Völker des europäischen Ostens (Image of Self and
Images of Foreigners by the Peoples in the European East), ed. Karl Kaser
and Martin Prochazka, section 3: Dokumente-Abteilung (Klagenfurt:
Wieser, 2006). See also vol. 10: Lexikon der Sprachen des europäischen Ostens,
ed. Miloš Okuka with Gerald Krenn (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2002). I have not
been able to autopsy this new reference work, but it promises to emerge as a

20 See also Maciej Gotwski, Komizm w polskiej sztuce gotyckiej (Warsaw: Państwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXXVI

most significant data base for all studies focused on Eastern Europe in many
different fields, from the Middle Ages until today.21
Although the major historical lexicon Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe does not
limit itself at all to the Middle Ages, it still contains a wealth of relevant ar-
ticles, whether we turn to the topic “Bauer” (farmer), “Bildung” (education),
“Christentum” (Christianity), “Monarchie” (monarchy), “Natur” (Natur), or
“Politik” (politics).22 If we use the entry for “Zivilisation, Kultur” (civili-
zation, culture) as an example, we can quickly gain an idea how this monu-
mental reference work is structured and where its true value lies, and this
also for Medieval Studies. The author of this article, Jörg Fisch, begins with
a global discussion of culture, then turns to ancient Greece, Rome, and the
Middle Ages, whereas the term ‘civilization’ was unknown in those times.
Instead, it emerged, first exclusively in its Latin form, only in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, that is, in the wake of Humanism, and then was
translated into the various vernaculars. Subsequently, Fisch takes his
readers to the history of culture in the following centuries.23 Although the
subtitle of this huge lexicon focuses on “political-social” language in Ger-
many, the contributors regularly take all of European intellectual history
into view, which is particularly prevalent in the period of the Middle Ages,
and so is regularly covered here as well.
In this context we need to refer to another fundamental reference work
that is unfortunately much too little known outside of the Germanophone
world despite its extraordinary scholarly value: the Handwörterbuch zur deut-
schen Rechtsgeschichte (Handbook of the German Legal History). Initiated by
the famous Germanist Wolfgang Stammler in 1960, this Handbook was
edited by him and the legal historians Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kauf-
mann until Stammler’s death in 1965. Vol. 5, edited by Erler (deceased),
Kaufmann, Dieter Werkmüller, and Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ap-
peared in 1998. Although the emphasis rests on the Germanic aspects of legal
history, particularly Roman Law and most neighboring laws have also been
consulted. The historical time frame is not at all limited to the Middle Ages,
in fact it extends down to the late 20th century, but medievalists will still be

21 I would like to thank Jerzy Strzelczyk, Instytut Historii, Uniwersytet im.

Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań, Poland, for his help in identifying and understand-
ing these important publications.
22 Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutsch-
land, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, 8 vols. (Stutt-
gart: E. Klett, 1972–1999).
23 Jörg Fisch, “Zivilisation, Kultur,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 7, 1992,
679–774.
XXXVII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

exceedingly well served by this reference work. Each article is composed by

an individual contributor, each followed by a solid bibliography.24 A second,
completely revised edition is currently in progress, ed. by Albrecht Cordes,
Heiner Lück, and Dieter Werkmüller (2004–).
The most erudite and comprehensive reference work for medieval Ger-
man literature proves to be the famous Verfasserlexikon, also founded and
published by Wolfgang Stammler,25 and completely revised and expanded
in the second edition under the leadership of Kurt Ruh, together with Gun-
dolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, and Franz Josef
Worstbrock. Here the complete corpus of texts written by authors in the
German Middle Ages, along with a considerable selection of authors writing
in Latin, is dealt with most comprehensively. Stammler had already set the
tone when he insisted on incorporating also authors of historical, philo-
sophical, theological, legal, medical, and scientific texts and treatises.26
The editors additionally included writers from antiquity and the Middle
Ages who exerted considerable influence on German literature, such as Aris-
totle, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Boethius, Bonaventura, etc. Simi-
larly, Middle Dutch authors, insofar as their impact was noticeable in me-
dieval German literature, were also included. The editors, closely following
Stammler’s guidelines, tentatively drew a line at ca. 1480 for Latin litera-
ture when humanism developed more strongly, but the major historical date
really serving as a milepost was the government of Emperor Maximilian I
(1493–1519). Many text traditions, such as the late-medieval drama, con-
tinued well into the 16th century.
The most important editorial decision for this Verfasserlexikon consists in
the inclusion of the manuscript tradition with exact call numbers and refer-
ences to the locations where the manuscripts are housed. Furthermore, we
are informed about critical editions, interpretations, and bibliographical
and historical studies pertinent for each topic, author, genre, text, etc. As in
the case of virtually all encyclopedic enterprises, once a dictionary or lexicon
has been completed, supplemented volumes become necessary, and this was
the case with the Verfasserlexikon as well.27 There is no doubt that future ex-

24 Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard

Kaufmann, co-founded by Wolfgang Stammler. Vol. 5 ed. Adalbert Erler (†),
Ekkehard Kaufmann, and Dieter Werkmüller, with the philological assistance
of Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, 5 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1971–1998).
25 Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Wolfgang Stammler,
5 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933–1955).
26 Vol. 1, “Vorrede,” V–VII; here V.
27 See also the supplement to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, cf. above.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XXXVIII

pansions of the general scope of texts to be covered here, new discoveries,

new critical editions, and interpretations, hence new perspectives and realiz-
ations will one day require a third edition.28
Medieval French literature is also treated rather comprehensively in the
Dizionario critico della letteratura francese, ed. by Franco Simone, but this work
comprises the entire history of French literature.29 Of more interest to the
medievalist is the excellent volume on Le Moyen Age, edited by Robert Bos-
suat, Louis Pichard, and Guy Raynaud de Lage, in the Dictionnaire des
lettres françaises/Le Moyen Age, substantially updated since the 1960s under the
editorship of Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink.30 It mirrors, in many
ways, though still limited by size, the Verfasserlexikon; it also offers qualified
articles on related subjects, such as “Courtoisie,” “Musique au Moyen Âge,”
or “Troubadours,” and many more. See also Dictionnaire des littératures de
langue française, ed. Jean-Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty, and Alain
Rey, 3 vols. (Paris: Bordas, 1984). The same constraints apply to the Dizion-
ario enciclopedico della letteratura italiana,31 containing, overall, good entries,
along with bibliographies. In fact, there is a plethora of similar dictionaries
for Spanish, English, or Portuguese, for instance, but I believe that in terms
of scholarly breadth, depth, and fundamental research presented, not to for-

28 Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd, completely new ed. by Kurt
Ruh, together with Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger,
and Franz Josef Worstbrock, 10 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
1977–1996; supplement fascicles 1–5 as vol. 11: 2000–2004; Handschriftenregister
(Register of Manuscripts), ed. Christine Stöllinger-Löser, vol. 12: 2006; Regi-
ster der Drucke. Sonstige Textzeugen, Initien: vol. 13: 2007).
29 Dizionario critico della letteratura francese, ed. Franco Simone, 2 vols. (Turin: Unione
Tipografico-Editrice, 1972); see also The New Oxford Companion to Literature in
French, ed. Peter France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
30 Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, ed. Georges Grente. Ed. entièrement rev. et mise
à jour sous la direction de Geneviève Hasenohr et Michel Zink (1951; Paris:
Fayard 1992). The volume on Le Moyen Age appeared in 1964. See also the useful
Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera, and Michel
Zink, Série “Quadrige” 386 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002).
It contains 1790 truly relevant entries on concepts and practices/customs such
as “intuition,” “cénobitisme,” “courtoisie,” “cuisine,” “dot,” “encyclopédisme,”
“lois somptuaires,” “pauvreté,” “peinture,” “regalia”, etc., as well as on people,
places, movements, and events in Europe and the Middle East in the fields of
history, literature, art history, law, philosophy, etc. I would like to express my
gratitude to Nadia Margolis, Mount Holyoke, for pointing out this dictionary
to me.
31 Dizionario enciclopedico della letteratura italiana, ed. Giuseppe Petronio, 6 vols.
(Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli; Rome: Unione Editoriale, 1966–1970).
XXXIX Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

get the clarity of presentation, the Verfasserlexikon certainly serves as an ideal

model for the study of any other language and culture in medieval Europe.32
A major attempt to address this desideratum was made by Hans Robert
Jauss and Erich Köhler when they launched the book series “Grundriss
der romanischen Literatur des Mittelalters” in 1972, which is incomplete
until today. It was supposed to replace the book series “Grundriss der roman-
ischen Literatur des Mittelalters,” ed. by Gustav Gröber (Berlin and Leip-
zig: Walter de Gruyter, 1897–1906), and has, indeed, accomplished much,
though the project has been riddled by many technical problems that make it
rather cumbersome and difficult to utilize it easily and efficiently. Vol. 1,
Généralités, ed. by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Uni-
versitätsverlag, 1972), outlines the overarching plan. Following this over-
view, vol. 2 covers lyrical genres; vol. 3: the epic romances; vol. 4: courtly ro-
mances; vol. 5: short verse narratives; vol. 6: didactic, allegorical, and satirical
literature; vol. 7: the age of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch; vol. 8: 14th- and
15th-century French literature; vol. 9: 14th- and 15th-century Spanish litera-
ture; vol. 10: 14th- and 15th-century Italian literature; vol. 11: historiographi-
cal literature from the origin to 1500; vol. 12: medieval theater; and vol. 13: a
synthesis, chronology, and index. Each volume consists of individual articles
composed by experts in the specific fields, writing in the various Romance
languages.
One of the most comprehensive reference works for the history of litera-
ture both on a global level, but then also, specifically, focusing on the Middle
Ages, was the “Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft,” ed. Oskar Walzel,
the first volume of which focused on Die altgermanische Dichtung, by Andreas
Heusler (Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion,
1926). Of course, the passing of time required the publication of a completely
new handbook, which was edited by Klaus von See, beginning with a vol-
ume on Altorientalische Literatur by Wolfgang Röllig (Wiesbaden: Akade-
mische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1978). Von See edited the volume on Euro-
päisches Frühmittelalter. Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, 6 (1985),
followed by Henning Krauss, who edited Europäisches Hochmittelalter (vol. 7,
1981), and by Willi Erzgräber, who edited Europäisches Spätmittelalter

32 There are, of course, massive biographical dictionaries for almost all European
countries, see, for instance, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto M. Ghis-
alberti, 70 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–2004), but
they are not specifically geared for medievalists, though they are often also most
helpful for them. For space limitations, I abstain from listing some of the major
reference works; by the same token, I will not examine the many excellent diction-
aries for medieval languages here.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XL

(vol. 8, 1978). The highly interdisciplinary character of these volumes de-

serves to be praised, and to elucidate it following I will outline briefly the
topics covered in the last volume as an example: European literature in
its political, social, and religious context (Willi Erzgräber); Dante and
the Italian literature of his time (August Buck); late-medieval German epic
narratives (Kurt Ruh); short verse narratives (Oskar Roth); English secular
romances (Dieter Mehl); Langland, Gower, and Chaucer (Erzgräber); lit-
erature composed by representatives of the Teutonic Knights (Hans-Georg
Richert); English saints’ legends (Theodor Wolpers); German lyric poetry
(Alfred Karnein); medieval popular ballads in the Germanic context (Ernst
Erich Metzner), French lyric poetry from Gauillaume de Machaut to Jean
Marot (Klaus Heitmann); Middle English secular poetry (Wolpers); etc.33
But one of the most comprehensive, and still ongoing project focusing
on world literature, including the European Middle Ages and Renaissance,
must be mentioned as well, the “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” which
began with a volume on The American Renaissance in New England, ed. Joel
Myerson (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1978), and most recently is-
sued a volume on Castilian Writers, 1200–1400, ed. George D. Greenia and
Frank A. Domínguez (2008). Here each author and/or text finds philologi-
cally and critically sound treatment, beginning with a survey of the manu-
script tradition, followed by a bibliography of the translation/s and edi-
tion/s, then by a full discussion of the content and/or significance of the
author, and concluding with a list of references of secondary studies. Numer-
ous illustrations of manuscripts, statues, paintings, etc. accompany the indi-
vidual articles.34
Certainly a huge field of research, medieval Latin literature and its dis-
semination and reception throughout the subsequent centuries until today
are remarkably well covered by Spazio letterario del medioevo.35 But the reader

33 There are, of course, many multi-volume literary histories in other languages, see,
for a rather obscure example, Otto Maria Carpeaux, História da literatura ocidental,
8 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: O Cruzeiro, 1959–1966).
34 Another example would be: German Writers and Works of the High Middle Ages:
1170–1280, ed. James Hardin and Will Hasty, Dictionary of Literary Biography,
138 (Detroit, Washington, DC, and London: Gale Research, 1994).
35 Spazio letterario del medioevo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Claudio Leonardi, Enrico
Menestò, Piero Boitani, Mario Mancini, and Alberto Vàrvaro, 5 vols.
(Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1992–1998). Vol. I covers the broad topic of text produc-
tion; vol. II focuses on the dissemination of texts; vol. III deals with the reception
of texts (history of reception); vol. IV is concerned with the modern perception
of the Middle Ages from Humanism to Romanticism, Realism, and the modern
XLI Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

faces the problem of little transparency insofar as s/he has to plough through
a massive amount of information displayed in lengthy narratives that do not
necessarily make it easy to identify and comprehend the crucial information.
Nevertheless, the critical discussion of the specific authors, texts, and aspects
in general is soundly based on the relevant research literature, coupled with
solid references to the important manuscripts.
Some of the major medieval authors have also been dealt with in encyclo-
pedic fashion, such as Dante, see the Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard H. Lans-
ing and Teodolinda Barolini (New York and London: Garland, 2000),
or Geoffrey Chaucer (see All Things Chaucer: An Encyclopedia of Chaucer’s Works,
ed. Shannon L. Rogers [Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press,
2007]). The world of King Arthur in its countless literary, artistic, and also
cinematographic manifestations is impressively covered by The New Arthurian
Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Garland Reference Library of the Hu-
manities, 931 (1986; New York and London: Garland, 1996). Francis G. Gen-
try, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich
edited a comparable reference work for the most important Middle High
German epic poem, the Nibelungenlied, The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclo-
pedia (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Similar publications exist
also for many other genres, topics, and writers, but for our purpose suffice
this short list.
The enormous interest in the Middle Ages among the academic and non-
academic audience in the modern world also finds expression in smaller,
more pragmatic reference works, such as Joseph Dahmus’s Dictionary of

time, including film, theater, television, opera, and the arts. Vol. V contains an
extensive chronological overview (with specific data), and a bibliography of medi-
eval Latin literature using a chronological system, concluding with Pietro
d’Abana (1250/57–1315/18). In many respects, most of the above mentioned ref-
erence works, such as the Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, provide
an important basis, combined with more recent primary and secondary literature.
The bibliography is followed by an alphabetical index, an index of names and
noteworthy topics, and index with passages cited, an index of manuscripts cited
in the previous volumes, an index of the studies cited in the bibliographies follow-
ing each entry, and an index of the bibliography itself. Overall, these 5 volumes
(actually 6 because vol. 1 is divided into two) represent most important critical
surveys and analyses. Unfortunately, because published in Italian, many inter-
national medievalists do not seem to be familiar with it, and many non-Italian
libraries do not own a copy. World-wide only sixty-six research libraries currently
hold a copy. I would like to thank Peter Dinzelbacher for pointing out this
major reference work to me.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XLII

Medieval Civilization,36 which contents itself with offering only short expla-
nations of terms, names, places, concepts, objects, and texts. There is no bib-
liography anywhere, not even in a cumulative list that might have been in-
cluded at the end of the volume. But Dahmus intended his work really as a
dictionary, hence there would be no need for a scholarly apparatus because of
the pragmatic purpose of this reference work.
The two-volume Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, edited by André Vauchez
in conjunction with Barrie Dobson and Michael Lapidge (2000),37 represents
a considerable improvement, both in scope and depth, particularly with re-
gard to the brief bibliographies that are added to each entry. These are limited
to about five to eight titles, though they often also contain only one to two ref-
erences. The editors are fully aware of the tremendous progress Medieval
Studies have witnessed, as illustrated by the outstanding International Medieval
Bibliography and Medioevo Latino. Moreover, as they hasten to add, “This rapid
growth is accompanied by a renewal of methods and approaches that has af-
fected every medieval discipline, from history and art history to archaeology,
philosophy and musicology” (vii). Their purpose, therefore, was “to harvest
and publish the fruits of this rich growth, to which most of the contributors to
the Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages have themselves contributed” (ibid.).
True to the ideals of good encyclopedists, André Vauchez and his col-
leagues made every possible effort to address also the culture and history of
those people who did not subscribe to Christianity, that is, Jews, Muslims,
and “pagan” people, including Lithuanians, Lapps, Cumans, and Mongols
(ibid.). Nevertheless, the focus still rests on the Christian world of medieval
Europe, though this extends for them from Iceland and Vinland in modern-
day Canada to Ethiopia and Central Asia. This encyclopedia is primarily
driven by the goal “to help Europeans of the third millennium identify with
an inheritance that still marks their way of life and some of whose aspects
still charm them, but whose meaning escapes them. With this intention, we
have deliberately given a privileged place to philosophy, theology, spiritual-
ity, liturgy and iconography” (ibid.).
Encyclopedias focused on the Middle Ages, but considerably smaller
in scope include, for instance, the Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, ed. by

36 Joseph Dahmus, Dictionary of Medieval Civilization (New York: Macmillan Publish-

ing Company; London: Collier Macmillan Publisher, 1984). See also the quite use-
ful publication by Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Medieval Wordbook (New York:
Facts On File, 1996).
37 Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, edited by André Vauchez in conjunction with Barrie
Dobson and Michael Lapidge (Paris: Editions du Cerf; Cambridge: James Clarke
& Co.; Rome: Città Nuova, 2000).
XLIII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

Edward D. English (2005),38 which also offers some further readings for
each article, but again severely limits the number of titles and focuses, in-
stead, simply on the factual information without problematizing anything.
A special perspective finds most welcome consideration in the encyclopedia
on women in the Middle Ages, attempting to encompass non-Western cul-
tures (China, Japan, India, even some Aztec) in addition to the more familiar
Western European topics – these too with some new approaches – edited by
Katharina M. Wilson and Nadia Margolis, and also, though narrower in
scope, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Marga-
ret Schaus (New York and London: Routledge, 2006).39
The series “Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages” concentrates
on a variety of specific cultural aspects, or groups of people, in the Middle
Ages, such as Medieval Jewish Civilization and Medieval Islamic Civilization, and
treating many other ‘national’ entities or identities from an encyclopedic
perspective.40

38 Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, ed. Edward D. English (New York: Facts On
File, 2005).
39 Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Katharina M. Wilson and Nadia
Margolis, 2 vols. (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 2004).
Schaus’s encyclopedia also appeared in the series “The Routledge Encyclopedias
of the Middle Ages” as no. 14.
40 Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (New York and Lon-
don: Routledge, 2003); Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Josef W.
Meri, 2 vols. (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). As Meri emphasizes in
the introduction, “Such fundamental questions as to what Islamic civilization is
and what Muslims did to contribute to European understanding of the sciences,
mathematics, arts, literature, philosophy, and government remain largely un-
answered. What was the nature of ‘interfaith’ relations in the Islamic world, and
what roles did Jews and Christians play in medieval Islamic societies?” xi). Clearly,
despite its enormous progress, Medieval Studies continue to open up many un-
chartered areas and there is no end in sight as to what we still need to learn about
that world. For other relevant encyclopedias, see also Medieval Italy: An Encyclo-
pedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz, 2 vols. (New York and London: Routledge,
2004); earlier volumes include Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip
Pulsiano (New York and London: Garland, 1993); Medieval France: An Encyclo-
pedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn (New York and London: Gar-
land, 1995); Medieval England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina, and
Joel T. Rosenthal (New York and London: Garland, 1998); Medieval Germany: An
Encyclopedia, ed. John M. Jeep (New York and London: Garland, 2001); and Medi-
eval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, ed. E. Michael Gerli (New York and London: Rout-
ledge, 2003). See also The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, ed. Nigel
Saul (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XLIV

Though of an older vintage, and primarily focused on a summary of fac-

tual knowledge, Aryeh Grabois’s Medieval Civilization (1980) still seems to
serve its purpose very well even today,41 especially because of its unique em-
phasis on civilization on a broad scale, extending considerably beyond the
medieval European latinitas. As Grabois notes, “the fact remains that most
of mankind did not inhabit Western Europe, nor was civilization by any
means confined to this part of the world. The Islamic culture, for example,
reached a higher level of achievement than that of Western Europe before the
13th century, and cannot be ignored in an encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.
Nor is it possible to leave out the great Oriental civilizations – those of India,
China and Japan – which, isolated from the Western and Middle Eastern
world, achieved great heights. While a similar compendium on the classical
world can concentrate on the Mediterranean region, an encyclopedia of
medieval civilization must be almost universal in scope” (7).
Grabois’s scholarly position still can be fully approved today and
demands our respect: “Perhaps there is no better way of demonstrating the
universality of the medieval world than by studying the continuous inter-
relationships in the intellectual and scientific fields, wherein, on the foun-
dations of the classical heritage, Christians, Jews, Moslems and Orientals
taught and learned from each other, despite their political and religious ani-
mosities” (8). In this regard, the Encyclopaedia Judaica proves to be an invalu-
able resource, at least as far as Jewish culture and history are concerned.42
The contributors to The Medieval World, edited by Peter Linehan and
Janet L. Nelson, took upon themselves the task of expanding on that notion
of universality and interdisciplinarity and to deepen the encyclopedic ap-

41 Aryeh Grabois, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Medieval Civilization (Jerusalem: The

Jerusalem Publishing House, 1980); trans. as Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters. Deut-
sche Übersetzung von Michael Toch. Wissenschaftliche Redaktion der deut-
schen Ausgabe von Peter Dinzelbacher (1981; Zurich: Atlantis, 1988). See also
Die visuelle Weltgeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Edmund Jacoby (Hildesheim: Ger-
stenberg, 2005); Medieval Panorama, ed. Robert Bartlett (Los Angeles: J. Paul
Getty Museum, 2001; trans. into various languages).
42 See the very impressive, broadly designed, yet detail-oriented Encyclopaedia Ju-
daica, 2nd ed., Fred Skolnik, Editor in Chief, Michael Berenbaum, Executive
Editor, 22 vols. (1972; Detroit, New York, et al.: Thomson Gale, 2007). One of its
worthy predecessors was the English-language Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols. (New
York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1901–1906). Berenbaum ident-
ifies also successful Hebrew and Russian efforts to publish comparable, though al-
ways much smaller publications, vol. 1, 15. All these reference works, however,
are not specifically geared toward the Middle Ages, yet also include them in multi-
farious ways.
XLV Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

proach considerably, focusing on (I) identities: selves and others, (II) beliefs,
social values, and symbolic order, (III) power and power structures, and (IV)
on elites, organizations, and groups.43 The problem here rests in the highly
selective treatment of specialized topics in the form of lengthy articles, which
cumulatively might achieve the desired goal, but still fall short of the ideal to
examine that period comprehensively. Again, however, such a lofty goal
seems to elude all of us too easily, yet the critical issue affecting most such
scholarly enterprises needs to be addressed.
Smaller dictionaries of the Middle Ages have appeared in most European
languages, such as the linguistic Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas
Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, ed. Martín Alonso, 2 vols. (Salam-
anca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1986) and the more specialized
Diccionario español de textos médicos antiguos [Spanish Dictionary of Ancient
Medical Texts], bajo la dirección de María Teresa Herrera, 2 vols. (Madrid:
Arco Libros, 1996), which clearly signals how much that cultural-historical
period is regarded as a cornerstone of Western civilization in every country.
And recently there are serious attempts (once again) to provide encyclopedic
overviews for individual regions and countries in Europe, including the
Middle Ages, such as The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales, ed. John
Davies, Jigel Jenkins, Menna Baines, and Peredur I. Lynch (Cardiff: Uni-
versity of Wales Press, 2008). Although the Middle Ages constitute only one
relatively small aspect among many pertinent to the entire history, culture,
politics, and religion of Wales, the information offered spans many different
themes, objects, works, monuments, texts, and figures from that period, ac-
companied by good maps, illustrations, photos. Shockingly, however, there
is no bibliography, neither for the individual entries nor cumulatively be-
cause such matters have been “deemed impractical” (xxv).
A unique perspective on the world of the Middle Ages is pursued in the
encyclopedia dedicated to Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages,
edited by John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, who ap-
proach their task from a global perspective, defining their task as providing
an “introduction to the history of travel, exploration, discovery, and mercan-
tile activity in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World.” Moreover, consider-
ing the specific nature of their reference work, they also underscore the inno-
vative and interdisciplinary nature of their enterprise which comes as by
default because of their topic: “The encyclopedia has a cross-disciplinary
focus that promotes the integration of historical, scientific, and literary per-

43 The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London and New
York: Routledge, 2001).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XLVI

spectives, provides a synthetic view of parallel developments in East and

West, and encourages immediate connections …”44
Medieval literature on a very broad scale is covered by the Encyclopedia of
Medieval Literature, ed. by Jay Ruud (2006). This scale extends well into the
Asian realm, including India, China, Japan, and Korea, whereas Africa and
the Americas have been excluded because the medieval texts from those
worlds have mostly survived only in oral traditions. And the written sources
are modern renditions of the ancient material. Although each entry is accom-
panied by a short bibliography (with varying length), the editor really aims at
English-speaking students, which also explains the greater emphasis on Old
and Middle English literature. Unfortunately, instead of providing a solid
overview as to which literary texts might really be the truly centrally import-
ant ones from the point of view of most recent research, Ruud has used as his
guidelines “popular anthologies of world literature, of Western literature,
and of English literature.” Consequently, he has “included entries from texts
that are often used in introductory college or advanced high school classes,
since the primary intended reading audience for this book comprises begin-
ning students in these kinds of classes and their instructors who seek some
background information.”45 Of course, this fully legitimizes his approach,
and we should not look for higher, more scholarly goals, when they were not
pursued in the first place. In fact, Ruud’s encyclopedia serves an excellent
purpose and will provide a solid springboard for a possible cohort of future
medievalists because these articles offer concisely written introductions,
clear definitions, and all the necessary background information for readers
of that age level.46

44 Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. John Block
Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York and London: Garland, 2000),
vii.
45 Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature, ed. Jay Ruud (New York: Facts on File, 2006), v.
46 There are actually many similar encyclopedic enterprises for the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance, see, for example, Lexikon der Renaissance, ed. Günter Gurst, Sieg-
fried Hoyer, Ernst Ullmann, and Christa Zimmermann (Leipzig: VEB Biblio-
graphisches Institut, 1989); A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance, ed.
J. R. Hale (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981). Similar publications can cer-
tainly also be found in Italian, Spanish, French, and other languages, but they do
not need to be cited all. The four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed.
Hans J. Hillerbrand, 4 vols. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), however, is a must to all interested in late-medieval and early-modern re-
ligious history.
XLVII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

Most recently Gert Melville and Martial Staub tried their hands once
again at this enormous and difficult task, editing a two-volume Enzyklopädie
des Mittelalters, downloadable also as an e-book one time upon purchase of the
print copy, addressing a German-speaking audience in which they asked
their contributors to examine aspects far beyond the traditional concept of
history and literary history.47 Other reference works are also being made
available in electronic form, and we might soon witness a revolution in pub-
lishing of reference works in the near future deeply affecting Medieval
Studies at large.
In contrast to common approaches to the medieval world, the editors
have not simply listed all kinds of topics as possibly relevant for medieval so-
ciety from a historical perspective. Instead, along with a cohort of outstand-
ing European medievalists, they collectively examine the world of the
Middle Ages in a systematic fashion, above all, and thereby as comprehen-
sively as possible. They discuss, at first, the structure of medieval society,
then turn to social formations, kinship organizations, interaction and com-
munication, faith and knowledge, finally, in the second volume, to litera-
ture, the visual arts and music, economy, technology, living spaces and con-
ditions, and conclude with a section on the complex of events and regional
history. Impressively, here the world of technology and production (agricul-
ture and industry/craftsmanship) enjoys just as much attention as literature,
the arts, and religion.
But despite all the depth and detail provided in the individual contribu-
tions, this encyclopedia basically reiterates and summarizes our current
knowledge and deliberately refrains from engaging in a more critical exam-
ination of the issues at stake although this was its explicit goal. Of course, in
this sense Melville’s and Staub’s approach does not differ much, if any at
all, from all previous efforts to create an encyclopedia covering that time and
culture. Frankly, not much more can or should be expected from them as edi-
tors of an encyclopedia, though the question always looms large – what jus-
tifies the publication of yet another reference work, if the previous ones still
meet all the demands and summarize appropriately and fully the current
level of knowledge about the past? Most cumbersome, here the entire bibli-
ography is placed at the very end of the second volume, without any possibil-
ity for the reader to grasp where the individual authors stand with regard to
specific issues or positions in current scholarship, as if positivism still were

47 Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, ed. Gert Melville and Martial Staub, 2 vols. (Darm-
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), see my review, forthcoming in
Mediaevistik.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies XLVIII

en vogue. Somewhat simplistically, the editors emphasize that they hope to

appeal to the curiosity of an interested reading public, without defining at all
what that means at large and what the implications might be as to the
scholarly approaches for the composition of the individual entries.
After all, Medieval Studies have grown so much over the last century that
we have reached today a level of complexity and controversy in the interpre-
tation of virtually every aspect in the Middle Ages that it almost seems im-
possible to make any simple and straightforward claims or to argue naively
regarding the proper interpretation of a poem or a romance. In fact, I would
almost submit that we might be beyond the point at which the publication
of encyclopedias was still possible and feasible in practical terms, unless we
re-conceptualize the genre altogether, refraining from plainly stating what
the basic facts might have been. Actually, do we even believe that the Middle
Ages, or any other culture and world, can be defined and described in
straightforward terms? Do we not have to accept the fundamental discursive
nature of virtually all manifestations of human life, and this also then, per-
haps only five hundred years ago? And did not those who dominated that dis-
course determine what documents were created, what art works were com-
missioned, and what chronicles were written?
The problem with this and all other encyclopedias rests in the assump-
tion that the knowledge about the Middle Ages can be easily and factually
summarized, which also applies to any other period in human history. We
know, perhaps more than we would like to, how much our perception and
understanding of that past age is significantly constructed by modern inter-
ests, or dominant viewpoints in the past, and at any rate today often deter-
mined by mythical thinking, as best represented, for instance, by the modern
notion of the medieval chastity belt – both a satirical object and topic devel-
oped in the late Middle Ages and a mythical concept about the medieval past
created in the modern world.48 And there are countless other examples of
mythical thinking concerning the Middle Ages, as the volumes published by
Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich forcefully indicate, which in a way

48 For a typical example of how the myth has become ingrained in modern thinking,
without any solid historical foundation or textual evidence, reflecting almost no-
thing but contemporary, basically uninformed and unreflected assumptions
about the ‘dark’ Middle Ages, and this even among serious and highly respected
scholars, see Vern L. Bullough, “Chastity Girdles,” Human Sexuality: An Encyclo-
pedia, ed. id. and Bonnie Bullough (New York and London: Garland, 1994), 107.
By contrast, see now Albrecht Classen, The Medieval Chastity Belt: A The Myth-Mak-
ing Process, The New Middle Ages (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Eng-
land, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
XLIX Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

also pursue encyclopedic goals.49 Whether we think of some of the major

rulers, such as Charlemagne, the Crusades, then of specific locations, places,
mountains, rivers, islands, poets, composers, magicians and sorcerers, we
have always to realize how much modern notions have infused all those icons
from the past, in a way colonizing them in order to gain a grasp on their
meaning for us today.
Most importantly, the myth of the ‘dark ages’ needs to be dispelled over
and over again, especially because popular publishers like to perpetuate this
notion because it appeals, in an intricate yet foolish fashion, to base instincts
among modern audiences that prefer gruesome but fictional stories about a
barbaric past over complex, sophisticated, yet scholarly accounts that seri-
ously try to gain a full and critical understanding of events, people, texts, art
works, and developments in the Middle Ages.50 Certainly, many aspects of
the medieval world would have to be identified as barbaric, as primitive, as
lacking in sophistication, culture, hygiene, etc. in comparison with those
standards we are used to today. But any critic could raise similar charges even
against the Western world in the 21st century resorting to different sets of
criteria, such as the number of civilian casualties in modern wars, or ‘collat-
eral damage’ in military parlance, the rate at which prisoners have been and
continue to be tortured (see Guantanamo Bay), and the enormous contradic-
tion between amazing and rapid advances in modern science and technology
and the wide-ranging and extensive belief in superstition, magic, including
religious explanations of the origin of our world, such as ‘Intelligent De-
sign.’
At any rate, the term ‘Dark Ages’ does not help in any constructive
fashion to comprehend the Middle Ages and only evokes Romantic, fanciful,
titillating, horrifying, and deliberately shocking notions about a world that
has been very little understood and continues to challenge us in our episte-

49 Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, ed., Mittelalter-Mythen, vol. 1 (St.

Gallen: UVK Fachverlag für Wissenschaft und Studium, 1996), with a focus on:
Herrscher, Helden, Heilige (Rulers, Heroes, Saints). Vol. 5, focusing on Burgen, Länder,
Orte (Castles, Countries, Places), which seems to have concluded the series, ap-
peared in 2008.
50 See the excellent contributions to Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen
J. Harris and Bryon Lee Grigsby, Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and
Culture, 7 (New York and London: Routledge, 2008). Unfortunately, in many
cases when the arguments reach a critical point, the authors tend to break off and
wrap up their discussion too quickly. And the bibliographical references, though
certainly not brief, often lack some of the most important studies, particularly
those not published in English.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies L

mological quest, constantly requiring further investigations. In this sense,

our Handbook of Medieval Studies hopes to provide important stepping stones
in this global endeavor by looking backwards, taking stock of where we are
today and what might be, though this is not specifically the intent pursued
here, the new directions of research in Medieval Studies. I strongly concur in
this regard with Graeme Dunphy’s lucid and critical analysis of the term
‘Dark Ages’ as an ideological construct that could be applied to any period in
the past depending on the particular interests pursued by those who either
denigrate a special time or culture, or simply ignore it as not worthy their at-
tention – a strategy that had already begun in the Italian Renaissance, if we
think of Petrarch’s contemptuous comments about the literature composed
prior to his own time.51
All this is not to say that there are no real facts available about the medi-
eval world, but all those that we tend to rely on have been viewed through
myriad lenses both in the past and in the present, hence the constant growth
of new interpretations, approaches, methodologies, and perceptions. After
all, throughout the entire Middle Ages, as in other periods, people, institu-
tions, social groups, alliances, federations, and factions have made great ef-
fort to gain power and influence, to hold on to their authority and wealth,
and to protect their property. Falsification was the name of the game, as his-
torians have recognized for a long time, which means that we have to regard

51 Graeme Dunphy, “Literary Transitions, 1300–1500: From Late Medieval to

Early Modern,” Early Modern German Literature: 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart,
The Camden House History of German Literature, 4 (Rochester, NY, and Wood-
bridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 43–87; 43–87, here 43: “If we compare
the high medieval writings of Walther von der Vogelweide or Wolfram von
Eschenbach with the Reformation writings of Martin Luther or Ulrich von
Hutten, the cultural gulf that opens up before us seems enormous, leaving the im-
pression that the intervening years were ones of rapid transition. But when we ac-
knowledge that a full three centuries lie between these two familiar landmarks,
we realize that the rate of change was doubtless no faster than in any other literary
epoch. If the period from the mid-thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth
may be called a transition, it is because the early thirteenth and early sixteenth
centuries are established coordinates in the discipline of literary history.” See also
Lucie Varga, Das Schlagwort vom Finsteren Mittelalter, Universität Wien, Seminar
für Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte. Veröffentlichungen, 8 (1983; Aalen:
Scientia Verlag, 1978). I particularly like Richard Raiswell’s wonderful article
“The Age Before Reason,” Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, 124–34. Reinhold
Münster illustrates convincingly in his contribution to this Handbook (“En-
lightenment Perspectives of the Middle Ages”) how much the 18th-century dis-
course on the meaning and relevance of medieval texts and art works shaped and
determined modern perceptions of the Middle Ages.
LI Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

any statement from that time, whether in a chronicle or in a letter, in a poem

or in a liturgical drama, with great care, and we really need to read between
the lines. Simply put, we need to interpret them critically. Often it seems that
we know considerably less about the real world in the Middle Ages than all
the encyclopedias, dictionaries, and lexicons pretend to convey.
Ironically, however, Melville and Staub claim to have published an
encyclopedia based on a critical concept, which essentially only means that
they have subdivided the major topics and specified in greater detail the in-
dividual subject matters for a more detailed examination. For them, the
‘critical approach’ finds its expression in the fact that they have granted each
author considerable freedom in developing his/her topic according to their
own orientation. Ultimately, then, there is no specific or noticeable attempt
to examine their subject matter from a truly critical perspective. The history
of research, as they perceive it, remains hidden in a rather selective, hardly in-
ternational, and certainly not comprehensive bibliography. This is not to say
that the authors would have ignored to cite some of the most seminal studies,
but even here, in the bibliographies, the dominant emphasis on scholarly
publications in German is evident because of the narrow target of this two-
volume encyclopedia, a relatively sophisticated German reading audience
outside of academia. Ultimately, the allegedly critical approach is actually
missing because the editors cannot decide – which also might be the virtue
and pragmatic strength of their publication – whom their reference work
should serve above all. Can an encyclopedia actually aim for a critical treat-
ment of its topics, or should it not rather try to digest, synthesize, summar-
ize, and analyze the current level of knowledge and present it in a compre-
hensive manner?
Intriguingly, the history of Medieval Studies as an academic field of re-
search, particularly during the formative years in the late 19th century,
proves to be almost as interesting as the study of the Middle Ages itself es-
pecially because here we observe how much our discipline – in its widest
ramifications, whether we think of the history of fashion, of architecture, lit-
erature, foodstuff, arms, social history, or history of music52 – has been and

52 Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume, 17 vols. (Kassel: Bären-
reiter-Verlag, 1949–1986; 2nd ed. by Ludwig Finscher, 10 vols. [Sachteil] and 17
vols. [Personenteil], Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter; Stuttgart: Metzler,
1994–2007); the Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and
Hermann Danuser, 13 vols. (Wiesbaden: Athenaion; Laaber: Laaber Verlag
Müller-Buscher, 1980–1995; The New Grove of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley
Sadie and John Tyrell, 20 vols. (London: Macmillan; Washington, DC: Grove’s
Dictionary of Music, 1980); 2nd ed., 29 vols. (New York: Grove, 2001); the Dizion-
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LII

will be truly determined by outstanding scholarly individuals, by multi-

national approaches, by a noteworthy gender balance (even in the older
days), and by interdisciplinarity.53

ario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, ed. Alberto Basso, 4 vols.
(Turin: UTET, 1983–1984): le biografie, 8 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1985–1988); i titoli e i
personaggi, 3 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1999). See also Diccionario de la música española e his-
panoamericana, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, 10 vols. (Madrid: Sociedad General
de Autores y Editores, 1999–2002).
53 Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 1: History,
ed. Helen Damico and Joseph B. Zavadil (New York and London: Garland,
1995); vol. 2: Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline:
Literature and Philology, ed. Helen Damico, with Donald Fennema and Karmen
Lenz (New York and London: Garland, 1998); vol. 3: Philosophy and the Arts (New
York and London: Garland, 2000). See also the Encyclopedia of Historians and Histori-
cal Writing, ed. Kelly Boyd, 2 vols. (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Pub-
lishers, 1999). Further, see Harry Ritter, Dictionary of Concepts in History. Refer-
ence Sources for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 3 (New York, Westport, CT,
and London: Greenwood Press, 1986); Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Fifty Key
Thinkers on History. Routledge Key Guides (London and New York: Routledge,
2000). For the history of German philology, see Klaus Weimar, Geschichte der deut-
schen Literaturwissenschaft bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Fink, 1989); Lo-
thar Bluhm, Die Brüder Grimm und der Beginn der Deutschen Philologie: Eine Studie zu
Kommunikation und Wissenschaftsbildung im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, Spolia Berolinen-
sia, 11 (Hildesheim: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1997); Rewriting the
Middle Ages in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jaume Aurell and Francisco Crosas
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). See also the contribution to this Handbook by Berta
Raposo (“Rediscovery of the Middle Ages”), and A History of Arthurian Scholarship,
ed. Norris J. Lacy, Arthurian Studies (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006). Andrew E.
Mathis, The King Arthur Myth in Modern American Literature (Jefferson, NC, and Lon-
don: McFarland, 2002), also offers fascinating perspectives regarding the great
popularity of medieval literature in the United States. One remarkable case of a
medieval myth that still holds sway over modern fantasies and continues to in-
fluence modern media, politics, and quasi-religious groups concerns the Hohen-
staufen Emperor Frederick II. Friedrich Nietzsche, just to mention one example,
went so far as to identify him as a medieval superman who provided a role model
for modern people. Stefan George adored Frederick as a global ruler who had been
the only one capable of bridging the perennial divides between Orient and Occi-
dent; hence also between the various religions and cultures. Personalities such as
Berthold von Stauffenberg (brother of Claus von Stauffenberg who attempted to
assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944) and Ernst Kantorowicz adulated this medieval
emperor as a mythical figure that could heal and overcome all conflicts in the pres-
ent time. David Abulafia tried to deconstruct this myth with his biography from
1988 (Frederick II: a Medieval Eemperor, London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press,
1988), but the Frederick myth has even grown ever since, particularly in Apulia
and Sicily; see now Hubert Houben, Kaiser Friedrich II. (1194–1250): Herrscher,
Mensch und Mythos (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 176–228.
LIII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

Recently, Jane Chance published a most welcome biographical diction-

ary of women medievalists from Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) to Caroline
Walker Bynum (1941–), which promises to inject the long-needed ‘feminiz-
ation’ of Medieval Studies.54 But encyclopedias are not always the best
medium through which to observe this intensive and complex development
in the academic field of Medieval Studies from the late 18th century until
today. Nevertheless, and this was the purpose of the investigation until here,
the history of a specific type of encyclopedias also sheds important light on
the general position of the subject matter both within the framework of
scholarship and in light of public responses to it. In this sense, Strayer’s
efforts more than 25 years ago were most remarkable, both for the specific
accomplishments then and for the inspiration until today to produce and
publish new encyclopedias, perhaps with a more narrow focus, or with a spe-
cific readership in mind. And they have spawned many comparable scholarly
enterprises, though then always in much slimmer proportions.
Henry Loyn, for instance, to parallel Grabois’s project, attempted
to create an encyclopedic overview of a Middle Ages as “an age of real advance
in every field, of political and social evolution, of intellectual and artistic
creativity, and of commercial and scientific progress.”55 Without going into
further details, we can be certain that similar publications focusing on the
Middle Ages have appeared in many other languages as well.

54 Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 2005), xxvii.
55 H. R. Loyn, The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopædia (London: Thames and Hudson,
1989); Sachwörterbuch der Mediävistik, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher (Stuttgart: Kröner,
1992); see also Deno J. Geanakoplos, Medieval Western Civilization and the Byzan-
tine and Islamic Worlds: Interaction of Three Cultures (1968; Lexington, MA, and
Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1979). There are, of course countless other
books that outline the history of the Middle Ages in brief sketches, but in this
reference work we find at least the refreshing emphasis on the intercultural con-
nectivity of Western with Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The various com-
pendia, such as the Cambridge Medieval History, do not need to be mentioned here
separately. For smaller, encyclopedic volumes, see The Cambridge Illustrated History
of the Middle Ages, vol. II: 950–1250, ed. Robert Fossier. Trans. Stuart Airlie and
Robyn Marsack (1982; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997); Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. and introd. Lester K. Little
and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publisher,
1998); Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning, ed. Robert M.
Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2005).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LIV

Other scholars editing encyclopedias have turned their attention to

those periods that are intimately connected with the Middle Ages, but repre-
sent, in one way or the other, transitional phases, such as the time between
the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of early-medieval Europe,
most noteworthy here the Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde,
founded by Johannes Hoops,56 or the early-modern world from 1450 to
1789, commonly identified as the Renaissance and the Baroque.57 In other
words, there is always a need for a critical review of the state of art of a study
area in specific intervals so as to perceive more clearly the rungs in the ladder
of research over decades, if not centuries. Otherwise we might no longer be
able to see the forest for all the trees, and could run the risk of ignoring some
of the most seminal studies, editions, concepts, and ideas developed by our
predecessors. We do not want to reinvent the wheel, but it seems that every
new generation turns its attention away from the accomplishments of pre-
vious ones and tries to chart its own map as if the beacons had not be estab-
lished already a long time ago. No self-respecting medievalist, for instance,
would admit his or her ignorance of Ernst Robert Curtius’s European Litera-
ture and the Latin Middle Ages, first published in 1948, but there is little engage-
ment with his profound insights in current scholarship, and those who
acknowledge his ‘classical’ contributions to comparative literature, both

56 Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 2. völlig neu bearbeitete und stark

erweiterte Auflage unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Fachgelehrter, ed. Heinrich
Beck, Herbert Jankuhn, et al., 33 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
1973–2007). Not comparable at all, but for specific purposes certainly useful
is Michael Frassetto, Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation
(Santa Barbara, CA, Denver, CO, and Oxford: ABC Clio, 2001). It seems rather
problematic to approach such a huge task all by oneself, as in this case.
The number of lacunae and desiderata is considerable, but each entry is accompa-
nied by a short bibliography of English-language studies only, including trans-
lations. Frassetto does not indicate what kind of audience he intends to ad-
dress, but it certainly seems to be specifically Anglophone, and mostly the general
readership.
57 Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, ed. Jonathan Dewald,
6 vols. (New York, Detroit, et al.: Thomson Learning, 2004), which contains
solidly researched and extensive articles accompanied by mostly good bibli-
ographies. See also Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Thomas G. Bergin and
Jennifer Speake (New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1987); Gordon Campbell,
The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003), which is also single-authored, with the accompanying problems, as
in the case of Frassetto’s encyclopedia. Much more impressive proves to be the
Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, 6 vols. (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1999).
LV Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

ancient and medieval, early-modern and modern, are mostly unaware of its
original date of publication.58
Moreover, we also have to pay attention to major encyclopedias and ref-
erence works in such fields as anthropology, sociology, musicology, art his-
tory, medicine, religion, philosophy, etc., insofar as they concern the Middle
Ages.59 In particular, I would like to point out the famous Dictionnaire de spiri-
tualité, along with related encyclopedias.60 Particular mention deserves the

58 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. from the
German by Willard R. Trask. With a New Afterword by Peter Godman. Bollingen
Series, XXXVI (1948; trans. 1953; 1983; Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990); see also Albrecht Classen, “Ernst Robert Curtius and the Topos of the
Book. The Impact of an Idea on Modern Philological Research,” Leuvense
Bijdragen 87, 1–2 (1998): 59–78.
59 See Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Reli-
gionswissenschaft, dritte, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, ed. Kurt Galling, to-
gether with Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen, Erich Dinkler, et al., 6 vols.,
1 vol. for the index (1909–1913; 2nd ed. 1927–1932; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1957–1965); vierte, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al., 9
vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007); The Encyclopedia of Christianity,
ed. Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Mili č Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan,
and Lukas Vischer. Currently vol. 1–4; vol. 5 forthcoming (Grand Rapids,
MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans; Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill,
1999–2005); based on the German Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, ed. Heinz Bru-
notte and Otto Weber, 3rd ed. Erwin Fahlbusch (orig. Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956–1961; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1986–1997); cf. also Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Karl
Rahner SJ, and Juan Alfaro, SJ, Alberto Bellini, et al., 6 vols. (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1968–1970; orig. in German). Invaluable also proves to be the
Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Krause and many collaborators, 36
vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977–2004). It is accompanied by
two vols. of a Gesamtregister (2006–2007), one vol. with abbreviations and acro-
nyms (1994), and one vol. with an index of the complete work (1998).
60 Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, publié sous la direc-
tion de Marcel Viller, S.J., assisté de F. Cavallera, et J. de Guibert, S.J., avec le
concours d’un grand nombre de collaborateurs, 17 vols. (Paris: G. Beauchesne et
ses fils, 1937–1995). Vol. 17 (1995) consists of the “Tables Générales.” This dic-
tionary proves to be so important because of its comprehensive coverage and the
bibliographies attached to each article, many of which consist of older research
that still holds great value but is often ignored today. See also the valuable Diction-
naire de Théologie Catholique, contenant l’exposé des doctrines de la théologie catholique,
leurs preuves et leur histoire, commencé sous la direction de A. Vacant et E. Mange-
not, continué sous celle de É. Amann. 3rd ed., 15 vols. (1902; Paris: Librairie
Letouzey et Ané, 1930–1950, with three volumes for the Tables Générales,
1951–1972). A major research tool also proves to be the Enciclopedia Cattolica,
12 vols. (Vatican City: L’Enciclopedia Cattolica e Il Libro Cattolico, 1948–1954);
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LVI

Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. by Alfred Baudril-

lart, Albert Vogt, and Urbain Rouziès, with the first volume having
appeared in 1912 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané), which is still in the process of
being completed, having currently reached the letter ‘k’ (ed. R. Aubert,
Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 2004), and which is by now also available online for
a charge. It provides highly detailed information about significant personal-
ities, locations, and historical events relevant for the history of the Christian
Church. See also the excellent Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter
Kasper with Konrad Baumgartner, Horst Bürkle, et al., 11 vols. (Frei-
burg, Basel, Rome, and Vienna: Herder, 1993–2001). Though the individual
entries are considerably shorter, they cover a much broader thematic spec-
trum and offer more bibliographical references of more recent date.61 The
history of the early Christian Church from the time of Jesus to ca. 600 C.E.
is well served by the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson,
together with Michael P. McHugh, Frederick W. Norris, and David M.
Scholer (New York and London: Garland, 1990). Here we find detailed
information about doctrines, practices, liturgy, heresies, locations, persons,
countries, concepts, texts, terms, and art work, and each entry is most pleas-
antly accompanied by a detailed bibliography.62
Most useful and highly insightful prove to be the handbook of (in fact
not only) German superstition, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, and
the encyclopedia of the fairy tale, Enzyklopädie des Märchens. The fact that they
have been published in German has unfortunately meant that many inter-

see also the English version, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14 vols. (New York, St. Louis,
San Francisco, et al.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967; Index: vol. XV, 1967;
Supplement: 1967–1974: vol. XVI, 1974; Supplement: Change in the Church:
vol. XVII, 1979). In all these encyclopedias, the articles regularly conclude with
helpful bibliographies. Most recently, the publishing house Brill has launched a
huge new Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique on its website, in 2008,
consisting of 30 volumes and 70,000 entries. I have not yet been able to autopsy
this dictionary.
61 See also The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, based on the third
ed. of the Realencyklopädie founded by J. J. Herzog, and ed. by Albert Hauck, pre-
pared by Samuel Macauley Jackson with Charles Colebrook Sherman and
George William Gilmore, 12 vols. (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls
Company, 1908–1912). Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche,
ed. Albert Hauck, 21 vols., 3rd and expanded ed. (1896–1913; Graz: Akademische
Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1969); see also The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, ed. F. L. Cross. Sec. ed. id. and E. A. Livingstone (1958; London, New
York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974).
62 The editors also include a general bibliography for topics such as patrology, the
rise of Christianity, the popes, and archeology (viii).
LVII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

national scholars are either not familiar with them or cannot utilize the
treasure trove of specific information contained in them.63 Certainly, both
deal with the global world of superstition and fairy tales throughout times,
but a vast percentage of the material in both areas is anchored in the Middle
Ages.
Art historians are exceedingly well served, here disregarding numerous
other encyclopedias for the entire history of art world-wide throughout
time, with the Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie64 and with the encyclopedia
for the Iconography of Christian Art, originally edited in German, and translated
into English, to name just two major reference works.65 Then there are also
the useful lexica on animal symbolism in the Middle Ages, which involves
iconography, religion, mentality, art history, and other disciplines.66 From
here we also need to consider quickly the world of architecture, so magis-
terially represented by Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, 19th
ed. John Musgrove, with John Tarn and Peter Willis (London: The Royal

63 Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, ed. Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli,

together with E. Hoffmann-Krayer. Handwörterbücher zur deutschen Volks-
kunde. Abteilung I: Aberglaube, 9 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter,
1927–1938/1941; vol. X: Register: 1942); Enzyklopädie des Märchens, ed. Kurt
Ranke, together with Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, et al. Since
Vol. 5 (1987): ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1977–; vol. 12, fascicle 3 (up to the letters Su …) appeared in 2007).
64 Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum, 8 vols. (Rome,
Freiburg, et al.: Herder, 1968–1976).
65 Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 5 vols. 3rd ed. (1966; Güters-
loh: Gerd Mohn, 1966–1991); Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman,
2 vols. (Greenwich, CT, and New York: Graphic Society, 1971). See also Louis
Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1955–1959). But there are many other similar reference works for art history, such
as Erhard Aeschlimann and Paolo D’Ancona, Dictionnaire des miniaturistes
du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance dans les différentes contrées de l’Europe, 2nd rev. and
expanded ed. (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1949); Michèle Beaulieu and Victor Beyer,
Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du moyen âge (Paris: Picard, 1992); see also the use-
ful encyclopedia for French castles, Charles Laurent Salch and Dominique Mar-
tinez, Dictionnaire des châteaux et des fortifications du Moyen Age en France (Strasbourg:
Éditions Publitotal, 1979), and Edward G. Tasker, Encyclopedia of Medieval Church
Art, ed. John Beaumont (London: B. T. Batsford, 1993).
66 Sigrid and Lothar Dittrich, Lexikon der Tiersymbole: Tiere als Sinnbilder in der Male-
rei des 14.–17. Jahrhunderts. Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunst-
geschichte, 22 (Petersberg: Imhof, 2004); see also Clemens Zerlin, Lexikon der
Tiersymbolik: Mythologie, Religion, Psychologie, ed. Wolfgang Bauer (Munich: Kösel,
2003). There are many other reference works for symbols that are, however, too
general to be cited here.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LVIII

Institute of British Architects and The University of Architecture, 1987; the

20th ed. was edited by Dan Cruickshank, together with Andrew Saint,
Peter Blundell Jones, Kenneth Frampton; assistant editor Fleur Ri-
chards; Oxford and Boston: Architectural Press, 1996; the latest ed., 20a,
appeared in 1998).67 Reflecting its more pragmatic approach in the first
place, in its original 1896 edition, this monograph carried the subtitle: for the
student, craftsman and amateur, being a comparative guide of the historical styles from
the earliest period. Fletcher’s extraordinary reference work proves to be in-
valuable until today, excelling through its wealth of illustrative material
(photos and drawings, including blueprints, detailed information about in-
dividual buildings, designs, architects, styles, and history of architecture).68
The long list of re-editions and lately also of translations into other lan-
guages has proven the enormous durability and foundational value of this
magisterial reference work.
What, then, by contrast, is the purpose of the present Handbook of Medi-
eval Studies with its own claim on a certain encyclopedic approach? I have
begun discussing this question in the introduction to this Handbook, but we
need to pursue this topic further in the present context. Are there not already
enough reference works available (see above)?69 Would there not be the great

67 Now see also Günther Binding and Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, together

with Julia Wippermann Planen und Bauen im frühen und hohen Mittelalter nach den
Schriftquellen bis 1250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002).
68 See also, though a bit dated, Russell Sturgis, A History of Architecture, 4 vols.
Vol. 3–4 by A. L. Frothingham (New York: The Baker & Taylor Company, vol. 1:
1906; vol. 2: 1909; vol. 3–4: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1915);
David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture (New York: Thames and Hudson,
1986). There is, of course, a legion of similar studies of older and more recent vin-
tage, both in English and in many European languages; see, for instance, Barbara
Borngässer Klein and Rolf Toman, Geschichte der Architektur: von der Antike bis in
die Gegenwart; photographs by Achim Bednorz (Bath: Parragon, 2008).
69 The subsequent cultural periods are also gaining in interest both among the aca-
demic and the lay audience, see, for instance, Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul
F. Grendler, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999). Looking back,
we also discover massive efforts to cover specific events in the past through quasi
encyclopedic writing, see, for example, Kenneth M. Setton, A History of the Cru-
sades, 2 vols. (Madison, Milwaukee, and London: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1969). The volume on The Middle Ages in the series obviously for younger
readers: The History of the Ancient & Medieval World, ed. Henk Dijkstra. Vol. 9
(New York, Toronto, and Sydney: Marshall Cavendish, 1969), proves to be beauti-
fully illustrated. Many publications focus on world history, including the Middle
Ages, and march through thousands of years, claiming to cover a solid stretch of
human history from the stone age to the present, such as Chronology of European His-
LIX Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

danger of repeating what others have done already, if not to perfection, but at
least highly comprehensively and in depth? All the criticism raised against
some of the earlier publications would sound hollow, if not hypocritical, if
the present publication did not try to set new standards and pursue inno-
vative goals. In fact, the simple answer to the questions raised at first would
have to be an unconditional ‘yes,’ but even if the goal would be to produce
another encyclopedia focusing on the Middle Ages, we could at least point
out huge differences between older and newer works, and since scholarship
is continuously advancing, there is no doubt that we are in need of new broad
surveys and summaries of our current knowledge perhaps every ten or
twenty years.
Nevertheless, the primary purpose of this new Handbook of Medieval
Studies does not follow this path. Instead, the overarching and principle goal
consists of examining the history of scholarship and of our understanding of
how we have reached the current level of our knowledge about all kinds of
subject matters, people, topics, texts, works, etc.
We are, after all, as Bernard of Chartres pointed out in the 12th century, as
John of Salisbury had summarized in his Metalogicon, and as this survey illus-
trates, nothing but dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants.70 Yet, despite
our small size, we are still positioned high up and can today see further than
those giants, or than cohorts of previous generations of medievalists upon
whose findings we base our own research and thus reach our own goals.71
This is not meant to belittle our predecessors; on the contrary, we pay tribute

tory 15,000 B.C. to 1997, ed. John Powell, 2 vols. (Chicago and London: Fitzroy
Dearborn Publishers, 1998). There are countless other encyclopedias for ancient
history, the world of Islam, the Near and Far East, and so forth. Actually, in the
last decade or so publishers all over the world have produced so many encyclo-
pedias and similar reference works about premodern history, culture, and litera-
ture that one wonders who still might be able to gain a critical perspective faced
with such a flood of factual, or rather almost no longer so factual, literature,
written very much in the vein of late 19th-century positivist Leopold von Ranke
(1795–1886).
70 R[ichard] W[illiam] Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1953), 203. For the actual quote, see John of Salisbury, Metalogi-
con, ed. J. B. Hall and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Corpus Christianorum. Continu-
atio mediaevalis, 98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 116.
71 Regarding this topic and its implications for us, see Walter Haug, “Die Zwerge
auf den Schultern der Riesen: Epochales und typologisches Geschichtsdenken
und das Problem der Interferenzen,” id., Strukturen als Schlüssel zur Welt: Kleine
Schriften zur Erzählliteratur des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989), 86–109,
esp. 89–92 (orig. 1987).
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LX

to their great accomplishments and build on their knowledge to further our

own understanding. The field of research in the Middle Ages is still fairly
young, barely two hundred years old, including some philologists who had
begun to explore the history of medieval literature, religion, and philosophy
already in the late 18th century, if not before.
The 19th century witnessed an incredible surge in scholarship, and today
Medieval Studies, a term originally coined by David Knowles for an inaug-
ural lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1947,72 are practiced all over
the world, focusing on virtually every aspect of human life and the human
mind. We might scoff at some of the older text editions or histories of litera-
ture, but we would not be where we are today without them. This also applies
to the history of art, history of technology, history of architecture, and other
fields. As Paul Freedman has already observed:

Although the nature of what is called medieval studies thus depends to some ex-
tent on academic organization and other external influences, some degree of in-
terdisciplinary collaboration is essential to comprehending the medieval period.
From the seventeenth century onward such great undertakings as the medieval
Latin dictionary of Charles du Cange, the Bollandist project of describing the lives
of the saints, or Jean Mabillon’s De re diplomatica have required an immense range
of sources. The importance of literary, numismatic, and philological evidence was
recognized early on, as was the peculiar way in which the Middle Ages has left
more written records than the classical era but in a more disorganized fashion.
The significance of religious controversy in forwarding pursuit of medieval texts
and interpretations also meant that, from the beginning, fields, methods, and the
use of sources could not be narrowly limited.73

Medieval Studies in a way have also witnessed, and responded to, all those
ideological shifts and changes that have determined modern humanistic
scholarship at large, whether we think of positivism, Geistesgeschichte (intel-
lectual history), explication de texte, immanent, or close, reading, Marxism,
structuralism, deconstructionism, feminism, Gender Studies, postcolonial-
ism, Queer Studies, etc.74 Some of those have left a deep impact also on the

72 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” 383. Knowles specifically evoked a simi-

lar inaugural lecture given in 1944 by his predecessor, Z. N. Brooke, “The Pros-
pects of Medieval History,” but by widening his own perspective, Knowles laid
the theoretical foundation for the highly interdisciplinary nature of Medieval
Studies today.
73 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” 383.
74 Some of the best reflections on the impact of theory on Medieval Studies can be
found in Paul Strohm’s Theory and the Premodern Text, Medieval Cultures, 26
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). See also the con-
tributions to The Future of the Middle Ages: Medieval Literature in the 1990s, ed. William
LXI Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

way how we view and approach the Middle Ages, others less so, but all of
them have affected our field as well which seems to grow in leaps and bounds
at least in terms of scholarship.
The same observation might not hold true for teaching the Middle Ages,
and in fact there are many warning signs because basic knowledge necessary
for the study of that past world (medieval Latin, paleography, manuscript
studies, liturgy) is taught to smaller and smaller groups of students wherever
we look all over the world, even if the popular interest in the Middle Ages,
also expressed in growing general education classes, not to speak of countless
medieval fairs, festivals, concerts, costumes, games, etc., is steadily growing.
The introduction to Medieval Studies, edited by James M. Powell first in
1976, and in a second edition in 1992, clearly signals how much we have to
realize the necessity to have a solid command of many different disciplines in
order to carry out comprehensive and well-grounded research in our field,
especially when the focus rests on history and manuscript studies. The con-
tributors to Powell’s volume deal with Latin paleography (James J. John),
diplomatics (Leonard E. Boyle), numismatics (Philip Grierson), archeol-
ogy (David Whitehouse), prosopography (George Beech), computer-as-
sisted analysis of the statistical documents of medieval society (David Her-
lihy), medieval chronology R. Dean Ware), medieval English literature
(Paul Theiner),75 Latin philosophy (Edward A. Synan), medieval law (Ken-
neth Pennington), medieval science and natural philosophy (Edward
Grant), tradition and innovation in medieval art (Wayne Dynes), and

D. Paden (Gainesville, Tallahassee, et al.: University Press of Florida, 1994); Mod-

ernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt
a. M.: Insel Verlag, 1994); The Future of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Problems,
Trends, and Opportunities for Research, ed. Roger Dahood, Arizona Studies in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Medieval German
Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function of Medieval German Studies for Ger-
man Studies. A Collection of Essays, ed. Albrecht Classen, Internationale For-
schungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 46 (Am-
sterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 2000). See now Postcolonial Approaches to the
European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne
Williams, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
75 It remains entirely elusive once again why, in this context, medieval literature is
exclusively identified with English literature. For another rather disappointing
example, see Theodore L. Steinberg , Reading the Middle Ages: An Introduction to
Medieval Literature (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2003), who in-
cludes The Tale of Genji and Jewish literature, but entirely ignores Iberian, Latin, or
German medieval literature, not to mention mystical literature at large.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LXII

medieval music (Theodore Karp).76 Of course, here as well numerous lacu-

nae mar the overall picture, such as the absence of liturgical studies,77 of the
investigation of foodstuff,78 of weapons and armies, fortifications, and
castles,79 and of Byzantine Studies, including respective prosopography of
the various areas.80 This list could be easily expanded, but it would be ulti-
mately futile because the history of people in the Middle Ages, their culture,
mentality, private and public life, etc. found expression in a myriad of ma-
terial and spiritual manifestations that no one can cover in totality. Can the
teaching of the Middle Ages ever live up even only to a small portion of the
global expectations?
But let us not sink into a jeremiad over daily woes here and there in aca-
demia, since they are often quite the same that can be heard in other fields of
the Humanities generally, and have been voiced for a long time (if not for
ever). Concerns about the survival of Medieval Studies within the university
are legitimate because we do not directly produce money when teaching the
Middle Ages; instead we seem only to create costs for the institutions of
higher learning. This also applies to all other fields under this vast umbrella,
and 18th-century Spanish literature is not necessarily faring considerably
better than 16th-century French literature, 3rd-century Roman architecture,
ancient Greek philosophy, etc. I hasten to add, however, that this might ea-

76 Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James M. Powell, 2nd ed. (1976; Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1992).
77 See, for instance, Cyrill Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, re-
vised and trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen, with the assist-
ance of John K. Brooks-Leonard, NPM Studies in Church Music and Liturgy
(1966; Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1986).
78 Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times. Food through History (West-
port, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 2004); Ernst Schubert, Essen und
Trinken im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006).
79 Jean-Denis G. G. Lepage, Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated
History (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2002); id., Medieval
Armies and Weapons in Western Europe: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC, and Lon-
don: McFarland & Company, 2005); id., The Fortifications of Paris: An Illustrated His-
tory (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2006).
80 Robert Browning, The Byzantine Empire (New York: Scribner, 1980); Cyril A.
Mango, Byzantium and Its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and Its
Heritage, Varirorum Reprints, CS 191 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984); The Ox-
ford History of Byzantium, ed. id. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2002); see also the multi-volume Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and
Civilization, ed. Alexes G. C. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx, Alicia J. Simpson,
Thekla Sansaridou-Hendrickx (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007 [1st vol.], 2008
[2nd vol.]–).
LXIII Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

sily constitute a fallacious conclusion depending on the criteria we use to de-

termine the true cost effectiveness of individual subject matters or research
areas (faculties) at any given university over a long period and considering
the wider social implications and the value of educating our younger gener-
ations at large. There are no valid arguments – and here I am, unavoidably,
preaching to the converted – to downplay the significance of the Middle Ages
for a solid education in the Humanities, both today and in the future. In fact,
as Bruce Holsinger has discovered, the medieval intellectual world con-
tinues to hold sway over the postmodern world insofar as most of the leading
theoreticians of our time, whether Barthes, Foucault, or Derrida, but
so also Panofsky, Habermas, and others, apparently received their funda-
mental philological training through an in-depth exposure to that world.81
Leaving aside common laments (justified or not), we witness a growing
number of excellent critical investigations done in Medieval Studies, with-
out facing any neglect in the traditional and still fundamental areas of phil-
ology and editorial work. Depending on one’s viewpoint, we are also fortu-
nate in gaining access to more and more medieval texts from all kinds of
languages and cultures through translations, which has a tremendous im-
pact on the way how we can teach the Middle Ages. Further, there are efforts
all over the world to make medieval manuscripts available in digital form,
which provides us with unheard of new possibilities to carry out detailed and
comparative research based on the original documents. Moreover, we also
realize a slow but steady rapprochement of the various disciplines, considering
the important, though still somewhat tentative collaboration of historians,
art historians, musicologists, and literary historians, to mention just a few
subject areas.
Synergies are of greatest importance if they can be created meaningfully
and effectively.82 Of course, there needs to be some common ground, shared
interest, significant parallels and similarities, which are not hard to come by
if we look carefully. But we do not know enough of each other, and are mostly
ignorant regarding how each individual field has evolved over decades, if not
centuries. Collaboration and interdisciplinary activities require shared

81 Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); see also Michael
Johnson’s entry on Henri de Lubac in the present volume.
82 In fact, there exists a new review journal titled just that: Synergies Inde, ed. Vidya
Vencatesan, whose special issue (no. 2 [2007]), honoring renowned French
medievalist Jean Dufournet, devotes itself “Aux sources du dialogue des cultures:
Regards croisés sur le Moyen Age en France et en Inde” (Mumbai: Revue du Ger-
flint, 2007). I appreciate Nadia Margolis’s pointing out this review to me.
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LXIV

ground, and this ground can be established by looking at the foundational

work that has been done in each area of research from the earliest days until
the present. Of course, this would not be the conditio sine qua non for efforts to
bring together colleagues from different disciplines to investigate topics of
broader, hence shared, nature, yet each from his or her individual perspec-
tive. For instance, in order to understand how medieval people viewed
children or old people we need to consult both chronicles and art objects, lit-
erary texts and musical pieces.83 After all, the history of mentalities, one of
the most probing and innovative fields of research in Medieval Studies,
requires a most comprehensive investigation of medieval culture, drawing
all available information from a wide gamut of perspectives for the under-
standing of people’s mentality, that is, psychological conditions and moti-
vations, desires, fears, and hopes.84 The same now also applies to cultural and
anthropological approaches to Medieval Studies (Culture Studies), to Gender
Studies, and also, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Queer Studies
and psychological approaches. We would also have to consider the latest me-
thodological and theoretical approach determined by the interest in the
human senses and the ability to perceive external signals via the various sen-
sory organs, as reflected by medieval writers and artists.85
Albeit not encyclopedic in its format, the journal Annales: Economies, So-
ciétés, Civilisations, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch (1929, orig-
inally as Annales d’histoire économique et sociale), deserves mention here. Ferdi-

83 Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990); Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm
Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York: de
Gruyter, 2005); Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Ap-
proaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval and
Early Modern Culture, 2 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2007).
84 Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte: Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. Peter Din-
zelbacher, Kröners Taschenausgabe, 469, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (1993;
Stuttgart: Kröner, 2008). See also Hans-Werner Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik: Stand
und Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1999).
85 Again, see Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik; and C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late
Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Cf. also
Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid
Kasten, Trends in Medieval Philology, 1 (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 2003); Lachgemeinschaften: kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen
von Gelächter im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner Röcke and Hans
Rudolf Velten, Trends in Medieval Philology, 5 (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 2005); Elke Koch, Trauer und Identität: Inszenierungen von Emotionen in der
deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Trends in Medieval Philology, 8 (Berlin and New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006).
LXV Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies

nand Braudel (Mediterranean World and Philip II [1949; New York: Harper
and Row, 1962) was another important member. Although they cover all
centuries, this school’s adherents have added much to multidisciplinary
Medieval Studies, perhaps best known through the work of Emmanuel Le
Roy Ladurie.86 More modern descendants are Pierre Nora, whose monu-
mental Lieux de Mémoire (Realms of Memory) volumes contain valuable in-
formation on medieval myths carrying over into post 18th-century French
culture (7 vols., Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992) and have been translated into
several languages, as was the case with the studies published by the founders
and leading members of the Annales.
Legal and religious documents can essentially contribute to our global
understanding of such issues that are indeed most important for medieval
society at large, even though they seem to fall, at first sight, into the category
of private life, or everyday history.87 Sexuality, one of the most pervasive is-
sues that have troubled and excited people throughout the ages, cannot be
adequately studied through the narrow lens of the historian alone, for in-
stance, not to speak of the medievalist working in the area of religion and the
arts.88 But the collective of medievalists in the widest possible range of disci-
plines promise to meet some of the challenges to build on past accomplish-
ments and to forge a path toward future Medieval Studies.89 So, we are taking

86 Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). Now see Autour de
Montaillou, un village occitan: histoire et religiosité d’une communauté villageoise au Moyen
Age: actes du colloque de Montaillou, 25–26–27 août 2000, ed. Anne Brenon et Chris-
tine Dieulafait; sous la direction de Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Castelnaud-
la-Chapelle: L’Hydre éditions, 2001).
87 Brilliant in the broad approach, opening up a new window into a specific, hereto-
fore mostly ignored aspect of medieval society, but astonishingly naive and un-
critical, prove to be the contributions to A History of Private Life, ed. Philippe Ariès
and Georges Duby, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1987–1991).
88 Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: New Approaches to a Fundamental
Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, ed. Albrecht Classen, Funda-
mentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 3 (Berlin and New York: de
Gruyter, 2008).
89 I would like to thank the following colleagues for their critical comments, sugges-
tions, and corrections: Peter Dinzelbacher (Werfen/Salzburg), Heiko Hart-
mann (Berlin), Herwig Weigl (Vienna), Graeme Dunphy (Regensburg), Nadia
Margolis (Mount Holyoke College, MA), Wendy E. Pfeffer (University of
Louisville, KY), Raymond Cormier (Longwood University, Farmville, VA), Klaus
Oschema (Heidelberg), Ulrich Müller (Salzburg), and Pieter Mannerts (Re-
search Foundation–Flanders/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). I am very grateful
for all their observations, corrections, additional information, and above all for
Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies LXVI

stock here, as comprehensively as possible, but in this process we also hope to

lay the foundation for much more interdisciplinary research, traditionally a
hallmark of Medieval Studies, and this also in the coming decades and cen-
turies. With the help of this Handbook we can expect to meet the challenges of
critical approaches to medieval research in the widest context. Knowing fully
where we have come from and what the current state of research proves to be,
we will be empowered to pursue our studies further on a more advanced
level. More boldly, we might even claim that such a Handbook can be the
springboard for all future Medieval Studies insofar as the past has always in-
formed the present, and our knowledge of this process translates into the
catalyst for future efforts, investigations, and interpretations.

their encouragement and support. Their help also strongly indicates the way how
Medieval Studies will probably proceed in the future, relying much more on inter-
disciplinary, collaborative, and comparative research and approaches.
LXVII Abbreviations

Abbreviations

ABäG Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik

ABD The Anchor Bible Dictionary
ABGB Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch
ABMHRA Annual Bulletin of the Modern Humanities
Research Association
ACIMP Atti del convegno internazionale su Marsilio da
Padova (Padova,18–20 settembre 1980)
[Medioevo 5 (1979]
ACPQ American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
ADB Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie
AdM Annales du Midi
AE American Ethnologist
AEM Anuario de estudios medievales
AfD Archiv für Diplomatik
AfdA Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum und deutsche
Literatur
AfMw Archiv für Musikwissenschaft
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen
âge
AHR American Historical Review
AHVKB Archi des historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern
AJ The Archaeological Journal
AJS Review Association for Jewish Studies Review
AK M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
(London: Tavistock, 1972)
AKAWB Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Berlin
Al-Qantara Revista de estudios árabes
ALR Allgemeines Landrecht
Annales.HSS Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales
APSR American Political Science Review
AS American Speech
ASNSL Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und
Literaturen
ASNSP (CLF) Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Abbreviations LXVIII

ASP Arabic Sciences and Philosophy

ASQ Arab Studies Quarterly
AUU Språkvetenskapliga sällskapets i Uppsala förhand-
lingar. Acta Societatis Linguisticae Upsaliensis
B.C.E. Before Common Era
BBAL Biografie e bibliografie degli accademici lincei
BCLSMP Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences
morales et politiques (Académie royale de Belgique)
BEC Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes
BEO Bulletin d’Études Orientales
BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research
BIRHT Bulletin de l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des
Textes
BISI Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il
Medioevo e Archivio Muratoriano
BJHP British Journal for the History of Philosophy
BJMES British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
BMGS Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
BMHG Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch
Genootschap
BPM Bulletin de philosophie médiévale
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London
ByzZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
C.E. Common Era
CCCM Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaeualis
CCM Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
CEHE The Cambridge Economic History of Europe
CFMA Classiques français du Moyen Age
CHJ Cambridge Historical Journal
ChR Chaucer Review
CL Comparative Literature
CMA Concilium Medii Aevi
CN Cultura Neolatina
CNRS Centre National de Recherche Scientifique
cols. columns
CPh Classical Philology
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CT Canterbury Tales
LXIX Abbreviations

CUP Cambridge University Press

D. Hist. Deutsche Historiker
DA Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters
DBE Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie
DDJb Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch
DFS Dalhousie French Studies
DMA Dictionary of the Middle Ages
DP M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977).
DR Duquesne Review
DSAM Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique:
Doctrine et histoire
DTÖ Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich
durchges. durchgesehen
DVE De Vulgari Eloquentia
DVG De Vlaamse Gids
DVjs Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissen-
schaft und Geistesgeschichte
E&S Essays and Studies
ed. edited or editor
EdM Paul Lehmann, Erforschung des Mittelalters, vols.
I–V (Stuttgart: Anton Hirsemann, 1959–1962).
EETS Early English Text Society
EH Encyclopedia of Historians
EHR The English Historical Review
EI.2 The Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition
(Brill: Leiden 1960–2004)
EJ (1) Encyclopaedia Judaica, first edition,
(Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971–1972)
EJ (2) English Journal
ELLMA European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages
ELP Einleitung in die lateinische Philologie, ed. Fritz
Graf (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1997).
ENC École nationale des chartes
EQ Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
erg. ergänzt
erw. erweitert
Est English Studies
ÉT École de théologie
fasc. fascicle
Abbreviations LXX

FFC Folklore Fellows’ Communications

FMSt Frühmittelalterliche Studien
FSt French Studies (Oxford)
GALex A Greek and Arabic Lexicon
GCFI Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana
GLLM Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittel-
alters. Vols. 1–3 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1911–1931).
GLQ Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
GQ Theodor Nöldeke et al., Geschichte des Qorans,
(1860–1938, rpt. 3 vols. in 1, Hildesheim: Olms,
1961)
GRLMA Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittel-
alters, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Erich Köhler
(Heidelberg: Winter, 1968–)
GRM Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift
Habil.schr. Habilitationsschrift
HAD The Handbook of Discourse Analysis,
ed. D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, D. and H. Hamilton
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)
HEI History of European Ideas
History History. The Journal of the Historical Association
HJb Historisches Jahrbuch
HLF Histoire littéraire de France
HPS Hebraic Political Studies
HPT History of Political Thought
HRG Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte,
ed. Adalbert Erler, Ekkehard Kaufmann and Dieter
Werkmüller, 5 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt,
1971–1998)
HS M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: Intro-
duction (New York: Vintage, 1990).
HSMS Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
HVjS Historische Vierteljahrsschrift
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
IASL Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der
deutschen Literatur
IC Islamic Culture
id. idem
IGL Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950
IJCT International Journal of the Classical Tradition
LXXI Abbreviations

IJMES International Journal of Middle East Studies

IMB International Medieval Bibliography
IOS Israel Oriental Studies
IRMAE Ius Romanum Medii Aevi, auspice Collegio
antiqui iuris studiis provehendis (Milano: Giuffrè,
1961ff.)
ITS Irish Texts Society
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
Jb. d. BAdW Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften
Jb. Jahrbuch
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
JKAWLSK Jaarboek/Koninklijke Academie voor Weten-
schappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van
België
JMEMS Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
JMH Journal of Medieval History
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JÖBG Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen
Gesellschaft
JPSR Jewish Political Studies Review
JQS Journal of Qur’anic Studies
JR Journal of Religion
JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
JSJT Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought
LA L’Alighieri
LCI Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie
LexMA Lexikon des Mittelalters, vols. I–VI (Munich and
Zürich: Artemis, 1980–1993); vols. VII–IX
(Munich: LexMA Verlag, 1995–1998); Registerband
(Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 1999)
LGB2 Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens, 2nd ed. Severin
Corsten, Günther Pflug, and Friedrich Adolf
Schmidt Künsemüller (Stuttgart: Anton Hierse-
mann, 1995).
Liber Floridus Bernhard Bischoff and Suso Brechter, ed., Liber
Floridus. Mittellateinische Studien Paul Lehmann
zum 65. Geburtstag (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag der
Erzabtei, 1950).
Abbreviations LXXII

LiLi Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik

LM Karl Langosch, Lateinisches Mittelalter. Einleitung
in Sprache und Literatur (1963; Darmstadt, Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983).
loc. cit. loco citato
LSE Leeds Studies in English
LThK Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter
Kasper, 3rd revised ed., 11 vols. (Freiburg i. Br.:
Herder, 1993–2001).
MA Le Moyen Âge
MA&R Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance
MAevum Medium Ævum
Marsilio da Padova (Padova, 18–20 settembre 1980)
[Medioevo 5 (1979]
MCDA Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Ruth Wodak
and Michael Meyer (London: Sage, 2001).
MED Middle English Dictionary
Medieval Latin Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographi-
cal Guide, ed. F. A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 1996).
Medioevo Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale
MedPers Medieval Perspectives
MET Medieval English Theatre
MF Die Musikforschung
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MGWJ Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des
Judentums
MGWJ Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des
Judentums
MHG Middle High German
MHJ The Medieval History Journal
MiB Musikgeschichte in Bildern
Milde and Schuder Wolfgang Milde and Werner Schuder, ed., De captu
MIÖG Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische
Geschichtsforschung
Misc. Med. Miscellanea Medievalia
MKVA Mededelingen Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van
België, Klasse der Letteren
MlatJb Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch
LXXIII Abbreviations

MLN Modern Language Notes

MLR Modern Language Review
MMIS Medieval and Modern Irish Series
MP Modern Philology
MR Medioevo Romanzo
MRS Medieval and Renaissance Studies
ms/mss. manuscript/manuscripts
MTSC Medieval Technology and Social Change
MTSR Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
MW Muslim World
N. F. Neue Folge
NCMH New Cambridge Medieval History
NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie
NH Nederlandsche Historiebladen
NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen
NOHM New Oxford History of Music
NRCF Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux, ed. Willem
Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard, 10 vols.
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983–2001)
OEN Old English Newsletter
OUP Oxford University Press
PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish
Research
PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish
Research
PBB Paul und Braune Beiträge = Beiträge zur Geschichte
der deutschen Sprache und Literatur
PG Patrologia Graeca
PIASH Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and
Humanities
PIASH Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and
Humanities
PL Patrologia Latina
PM Patristica et Medievalia
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association
Poetics Today Poetics Today. A Journal for Analysis of Literature
and Communication
Poetics Today Poetics Today: A Journal for Analysis of Literature
and Communication
PPM Pensiero Politico Medievale
Abbreviations LXXIV

PPTSL Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society Library

PQ Philological Quarterly
PT Political Theory
PUF Presses Universitaires de France
QFIAB Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen
Archiven und Bibliotheken
QS Quaderni storici
R Romania
RAN Rendiconti dell’Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e
Belle Arti di Napoli
RB Revue bénédictine
RBA Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art
RBPh Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire
RC Revue Celtique
RCPR Revue Critique de Philologie Romane
RDM Revue des Deux Mondes
REB Revue des Études Byzantines
RÉJ Revue des Études Juives
RES Review of English Studies
rev. revised
RF Romanische Forschungen
RHC Recueil des Historiens des Croisades
RHD Revue d’histoire du droit
RHDF Revue historique de droit français et étranger
Rhetorica Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric
RhM Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Theologie und
Philosophie
RHPR Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuse
RIDC Rivista Internazionale di Diritto Comune
RLA Romance Languages Annual
RMS Reading Medieval Studies
RORD Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama
RP Review of Politics
RPA Revue de philosophie ancienne
RPh Romance Philology
RR Romanic Review
RSF Rivista di Storia della Filosofia
RSO Revista degli Studi Orientali
RSPT Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques
RTh Revue Thomiste
LXXV Abbreviations

RUB Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles

SAC Studies in the Age of Chaucer
SATF Société des anciens textes français
Scand. Econ. Hist. Rev. Scandinavian Economic History Review
SD Studi Danteschi
SF Studi francesi
SFI Studi di filologia italiana
SH Scripta Hierosolymitana
SI Studia Islamica
SMC Studies in Medieval Culture
SNPL Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature
SO Symbolae Osloenses
SP Studies in Philology
sqq. sequentes
SSD Sign, Sentence and Discourse: Language in Medieval
Thought and Literature, ed. Julian Wasserman and
Lois Roney (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
1989).
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological
Association
TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
TS Theological Studies
überarb. überarbeitet
UNC University of North Carolina
unveränd. unverändert
Viator Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Vivarium Vivarium. A Journal for Mediaeval Philosophy and
the Intellectual Life of the Middle Ages
VL Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasser-
lexikon
vol. volume
VSWG Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschafts-
geschichte
WW Wirkendes Wort
YWES The Year’s Work in English Studies
ZCPh Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie
ZfdA Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche
Literatur
ZfdPh Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
Abbreviations LXXVI

ZfrP Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie

ZNR Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte
ZP Zeitschrift für Politik
ZRG, Germ. Abt. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechts-
geschichte/Germanistische Abteilung
ZRG, Kan. Abt. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechts-
geschichte/Kanonistische Abteilung
LXXVII List of Contributors

List of Contributors

Acken, James Baldzuhn, Michael

Centre for Medieval Studies, Canada Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster, Germany
Adams, Tracey
University of Auckland, New Barrington, Candace
Zealand Central Connecticut State
University, New Britain, CT
Anichini, Federica
The College of New Jersey, Ewing Bashir, Hassan
Texas A&M University at Qatar,
Arabatzis, George Qatar
Academy of Athens, Greece
Bashir, Shahzad
Armistead, Samuel G. Stanford University, CA
University of California, Davis, CA
Baumgarten, Jean
Ash, Karine Marie Centre National de la Recherche
Los Angeles, CA Scientifique (CNRS);
École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Auslander, Diane P. Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France
Graduate Center, City University of
New York Berindeanu, Florin
Case Western Reserve University,
Baier, Katharina Cleveland, OH
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
Freiburg, Germany Benz, Judith
Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
Bak, Janos
Central European University, Beringer, Alison
Budapest, Hungary Colgate University, Hamilton, NY

Baker, Craig Black, Patricia

Laval Université, Quebec, Canada California State University, Chico,
CA
List of Contributors LXXVIII

Blaschitz, Gertrud Cawsey, Kathey

Institut für Realienkunde des Dalhousie University
Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit Halifax, Canada
der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Krems, Austria Clason, Christopher
Rochester Hills, MI
Boggi, Flavio
University College Cork, Ireland Classen, Albrecht
The University of Arizona, Tucson,
Bogstad, Janice M. AZ
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,
WI Clivio, Gianrenzo
Toronto, Canada
Bolduc, Michelle
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Compareti, Matteo
WI Stra (Venezia), Italy

Boscolo, Claudia Cooper, Glen M.

Royal Holloway University of Brigham Young University, Provo,
London, UK UT

Boyle, Elizabeth Cormier, Raymond

University of Cambridge, UK Longwood University, VA

Bratu, Cristian Cruse, Mark

Baylor University, Waco, TX Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

Calomino, Salvatore D’Alessio, Nuncio

Madison, WI The University of Texas, Austin, TX

Campbell, Kimberlee Dal Santo, Matthew

Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA
Cancian, Alessandro
Foundation for Dialogue Among
Civilizations, Geneva, Switzerland
Carey, Stephen Mark
Oakland University, Rochester, MI
University of Cambridge, UK
Damico, Helen
University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM
Dangler, Jean
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
LXXIX
Davis, Joshua
University of Central Missouri,
Warrensburg, MO
Delle Donne, Roberto
Università degli Studi di Napoli
Federico II, Italy
De Ventura, Paolo
The University of Birmingham, UK
Deyrup, Marta
Seton Hall University, South
Orange, NJ
Dines, Ilya
Jerusalem, Israel
Dinzelbacher, Peter
Werfen/Salzburg, Austria
Dorninger, Maria E.
Universität Salzburg, Austria
Dover, Carol
Georgetown University,
Washington D.C.
Dunphy, Graeme
Universität Regensburg, Germany
Egger, Christoph
Universität Wien, Austria
English, Edward D.
University of California, Santa
Barbara, CA
List of Contributors
Evans, Beverly
State University of New
York-College at Geneseo, Geneseo,
NY
Evitt, Regula Meyer
Colorado College, Colorado Springs,
CO
Fritsch-Rößler, Waltraud
Universität Innsbruck, Austria
Full, Bettina
Otto-Friedrich-Universität
Bamberg, Germany
Fynn, Jeffrey Paul
Tolland, CT
Garver, Valerie L.
Northern Illinois University,
Dekalb, IL
Geck, John A.
Centre for Medieval Studies,
University of Toronto, Canada
Gentry, Francis G.
Spring Mills, PA
Germanidou, Sophia
Kalamata, Greece
Gertsman, Elina
Southern Illinois University School
of Art and Design, Carbondale, IL
Gilbank, Robin
University of Wales, UK
List of Contributors LXXX

Glick, Thomas F. Herman, Jason

Boston University, Boston, MA
Gordon, Sarah
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Graizbord, David
The University of Arizona, Tucson,
AZ
The University of Arizona, Tucson,
AZ
Heyworth, Gregory
University of Mississippi, MS
Hollengreen, H. Laura
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Grabowska, Jim Holt, Andrew

Minnesota State University, Starke, FL
Mankato, MN
Holtzman, Livnat
Grafinger, Christine Maria Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Biblioteca Vaticana, Città del
Vaticano Horowitz, Jeannine
University of Haifa, Greece
Griffin, Carrie
University College Cork, Ireland Huda, Qamar-ul
Washington D.C.
Grosse, Max
Universität Tübingen, Germany Ingram, Amy
Northern Illinois University,
Grove, Jonathan Dekalb, IL
University of Cambridge, UK
Jaques, R. Kevin
Harbison, Robert Indiana University, Bloomington,
Western Kentucky University, IL
Bowling Green, KY
Jambeck, Karen K.
Hartmann, Heiko Western Connecticut State
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany University, Danbury, CT

Haywood, Louise Jaritz, Gerhard

University of Cambridge, UK
Heller, Sarah-Grace
Ohio State University, Columbus,
OH
Central European University,
Hungary
Johnson, Michael A.
University of Texas at Austin, TX
LXXXI List of Contributors

Kapriev, Georgi Leanos, Jaime

St. Kliment Ochridski University,
Bulgaria
Keats-Rohan, K.S.B.
Oxford University, UK
King, David
Universität Frankfurt, Germany
University of Nevada, Reno
Lefebure, Leo D.
Georgetown University, DC
Lemeneva, Elena
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, Toronto, Canada

Kitsikopoulos, Harry Leverage, Paula

New York University, New York, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
NY
Löser, Freimut
Koch, Walter Universität Augsburg, Germany
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Munich, Germany Lucas, Adam
Department of Aboriginal Affairs,
Kölzer, Theo Surrey Hills, NSW, Australia
Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Luce, Mark David
Bonn, Germany University of Chicago, IL

Kohl, Gerald Lummus, David

Universität Wien, Austria Stanford University, CA

Kümper, Hiram Macierowski, Edward M.

Universität Vechta, Germany Benedictine College, Atchison, KS

Kuhn, Christian Mack, Gregory

Otto-Friedrich-Universität
Bamberg, Germany
Lacy, Norris J.
Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA
McGill University, Canada
Mannaerts, Pieter
Research Foundation – Flanders,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium

Latowsky, Anne Margolis, Nadia

University of South Florida, Tampa Mount Holyoke College, South
Hadley, MA
List of Contributors
Marner, Dominic
University of Guelph, Ontario,
Canada
Meyer, Andreas
Philipps-Universität Marburg,
Germany
Meyer Evitt, Regula
Colorado Springs, CO
Mieszkowski, Gretchen
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
Houston, TX
Morewedge, Rosmarie
Binghamton University, NY
Müller, Ulrich
Universität Salzburg, Austria
Münster, Reinhold
Universität Bamberg, Germany
Munson, Marcella
Atlantic University, Boca Raton,
FL
Murdoch, Brian
University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
Murray, K. Sarah-Jane
Baylor University, Waco, TX
Nagi, Joseph
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Naismith, Rory
Cambridge University, UK
LXXXII
Niederkorn-Bruck, Meta
Universität Wien, Austria
Nijhuis, Letty
University College Cork, Ireland
Noakes, Susan
University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN
Obermeier, Anita
University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM
O’Brien, Juliet
Princeton University, NJ
O’Sullivan, Daniel E.
The University of Mississippi, MS
Ohlander, Erik S.
Indiana University, Purdue
University, Fort Wayne
Oschema, Klaus
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität
Heidelberg, Germany
Paddock, Mary
Virginia Polytechnic Institute &
State University, Blacksburg, VA
Parra Membrives, Eva
Universidad de Salamanca, Spain
Parton, Frances
Cambridge University, UK
Paulsen, Robert
Universität Freiburg i.Br., Germany
LXXXIII List of Contributors

Peitsara, Kirsti Reichert, Hermann

University of Helsinki, Finland Universität Wien, Austria

Penn, Stephen Reinhart, Max

University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
Pettigrew, Mark
Queens College, City University of
New York
University of Georgia, Athens,
GA
Reynolds, Kevin
York University, Toronto, Canada

Pfeffer, Wendy Rezakhani, Khodadad

University of Louisville, Louisville, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
KY
Rider, Jeff
Pierce, Marc Wesleyan University, Middletown,
University of Texas, Austin, TX CT

Pigg, Daniel Roberg, Francesco

The University of Tennessee at Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg,
Martin, Martin, TN Germany

Pincikowski, Scott E. Rodíguez-Velasco, Jesús

Hood College, Frederick, MD University of California, Berkeley,
CA
Poole, Russell
University of Western Ontario, Rötzer, Daniel
Canada Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg,
Austria
Porter, Camarin
University of Wisconsin at Madison, Rosenstein, Roy
Madison, WI The American University of Paris,
France
Powrie, Sarah
St. Thomas More College, Rouillard, Linda Marie
Saskatchewan, Canada The University of Toledo, Toledo,
OH
Raposo Fernández, Berta
Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Rushing, James
Spain Rutgers University, Camden, NJ
List of Contributors LXXXIV

Sager, Alex Stevenson, Barbara

University of Georgia, Athens, GA Kennesaw State University,
Kennesaw, GA
Sandidge, Marilyn
Westfield State University, MA Stock, Marcus
University of Toronto, Canada
Santangelo, Enrico
Università di Torino, Italy Stokes, Peter
University of Cambridge, UK
Sauer, Michelle M.
University of North Dakota, Grand Storey, Wayne
Forks, ND Indiana University, Bloomington,
IN
Sayers, William
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Stoudt, Debra
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
Schmidt, Siegrid State University, Blacksburg, VA
Universität Salzburg, Austria
Syros, Vasileios
Schnall, Jens Eike University of Chicago, IL
Universität Freiburg i.Br.,
Germany Taylor, Scott L.
Pima Community College, Tucson,
Schwartz, Yossef AZ
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Taylor, Steven Millem
Singer, Julie Marquette University, Milwaukee,
Washington University, St. Louis, WI
MO
Tinsley, David
Slavin, Philip University of Puget Sound, Tacoma,
Yale University, New Haven, CT WA

Snook, Ben Tomasik, Timothy

Selwyn College, London, UK Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN

Sprague, Maurice Touwaide, Alain

Universität Salzburg, Austria National Museum of Natural
History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington D.C.
LXXXV List of Contributors

Vallerani, Massimo Wełna, Jerzy

Università degli Studi di Torino, Warsaw University, Poland
Italy
Whitford, David
Van Liere, Frans Victoria, Canada
Calvin College, Grand Rapids,
MI Yager, Susan
Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Vogeler, Georg
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Ysebaert, Walter
Munich, Germany Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Research Foundation-Flanders,
Vogtherr, Thomas Belgium
Universität Osnabrück, Germany
Zajkowski, Robert
Ward, Renée Center for Medieval and Early
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Renaissance Studies, Binghamton
Canada University, NY; Hudson Valley
Community College, NY
Wedell, Moritz
Universität Zürich, Switzerland Zychowicz, James
Madison, WI
Weigl, Herwig
Universität Wien, Austria
List of Contributors LXXXVI
1

Main Topics
and Debates of the Last Decades
and their Terminology and Results
2
3 The Arab West

The Arab West

A. Introduction
The Arab West is a cultural area that conventionally includes the Maghrib
(Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, but usually not Libya), Sicily and al-Andalus
(Islamic Spain and Portugal). The three Maghrib countries then acquired in
the course of the 19th century a distinctive historiographical overlay due to
French colonization that imparted idiosyncratic views of social organization
(the importance of autonomous Berber “cantons”) and political organization
(opposition of territory controlled by the state – bled al-makhzen – versus
that under tribal control (land of dissidence, bled al-siba).

B. History of Research. North Africa

A series of important monographs in French formed the basis of modern
North African historiography: Robert Montagne, Les Berbères et le Makhzen
dans le sud du Maroc, 1930; Emile Félix Gautier, Le passé de l’Afrique du nord: Les
siècles obscurs (1937); Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides
(1940); Hady R. Idris, La Berbérie orientale sous les Zirides (1962). Gautier and
Montagne argued similar points, that Morocco had never been unified be-
cause of the prevalence of free Berber “cantons” (Montagne), or that unifi-
cation never happened because of a millennial struggle between sedentary
peoples (Berbers) and nomads (Arabs and Arabized Berbers) (Gautier).
Gautier’s argument, fascinating but hyperbolic, is based to an extent on
the hypothesis of the 14th-century polymath, Ibn Khaldun, on the role of
sedentary – nomad conflict in the rise and falls of dynastic states (in his Muq-
addimah and Kitab al-‘Ibar). Reevaluation of the nature of Berber society was
largely the work of anthropologists, especially Jacques Berque (Structures
sociales du Haut-Atlas, 1955); and Ernest Gellner (Saints of the Atlas, 1969),
both of whom had immense influence on historians. A landmark in urban
history was Roger Le Tourneau’s Fès avant le protectorat (1949), which how-
ever perpetuated the notion of a city-based society dating back to the early
Middle Ages.
The Arab West 4

C. al-Andalus
The 19th-century Spanish historiography of Islamic Spain was vitiated by an
inability to distinguish between race and culture and therefore to assume
that indigenous Hispano-Romans converted to Islam somehow remained
“Spanish” in culture. This essentialist approach was first attacked by
Américo Castro (The Structure of Spanish History, 1954; revised as The Span-
iards, 1971), who first made the case that the culture of al-Andalus was a nor-
mative Arabo-Islamic one; and then definitively by Pierre Guichard (Al-An-
dalus: Estructura antropológica de una sociedad islámica en Occidente, 1976), who
provided the social mechanism by which indigenous peoples were assimi-
lated into Arabo-Muslim culture, and, at the same time, demonstrated (most
importantly through a study of tribal toponyms) the tribe-based nature of
settlement.
The first comprehensive narrative history of al-Andalus was written
by the Dutch Arabist Reinhart Dozy (Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne: jusqu’à
la conquête de l’Andalousie par les Almoravides, 1861), a political history that
extended only through the Almoravid period. The next was by Evariste
Lévi-Provencal, in the form of an updated version of Dozy’s Histoire, with
the same title (1932). However this political narrative was accompanied by
an influential volume on the social and economic history of al-Andalus
(L’Espagne musulmane au XIème siècle: Institutions et vie sociale, 1932). Because the
kingdom of Granada lasted 250 years longer than the heartland of Islamic
Spain, it has a distinctive historiography. The standard histories are Rachel
Arie, L’Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides (1973); and L. P. Harvey,
Islamic Spain, 1250–1500 (1990).
The notion of social organization underlying much of this literature was
a tacit adaptation of the bled al-makhzen/bled al-siba model to al-Andalus,
under the assumption that the polity of the emirate, caliphate and indepen-
dent kings alike was one of centralized control, punctuated by tribal rebel-
lions.
One of the problems of western Islamic historiography – especially that
of al-Andalus – is the lack of Arabic documentation. As a result there has been
methodologically interesting work, using Christian archival documentation
for the reconstruction of aspects of Islamic history: Olivia R. Constable,
who made use of Genoese notarial archives to document Italian trade with
al-Andalus (Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of
the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500, 1994), Charles Du Fourcq (L’Espagne catalane
et le Magrib au XIIIe et XVe siècles, 1965), using documents from the Archives of
the Crown of Aragon to reconstruct relations between the Catalonia and the
Magrib; and the entire literature of the Christian resettlement of al-Andalus,
5 The Arab West

using land partition documents (Libros de repartimiento) to reconstruct the so-

cial and agricultural organization of Islamic Spain (see Glick, From Muslim
Fortress to Christian Conquest, 1996, ch. 6).

D. Medieval Archeology
In the 1980s, a new approach to Andalusi society was adumbrated by a new
wave of medieval archeologists who reexamined the social structure of al-An-
dalus from the perspective of Guichard who in an important study of for-
tifications together with André Bazzana and Patrice Cressier (Les chateaux
ruraux d’Al-Andalus, 1990), replaced the older tacit paradigm of rural social
organization with a new one, based on free tribal settlements under the pro-
tective wing of “castle-refuges” (husun) that were inhabited only in times
of unrest. A huge investment of energy was spent over the next ten to fifteen
years on identifying castle/village complexes. The paradigm was sub-
sequently somewhat modified by Miquel Barceló and his students at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona, who demonstrated convincingly that
water systems, not castles, were the central organizing feature of such settle-
ment complexes. A model study is given by Helena Kirchner (La construcció
d’un espai pagès a Mayurqa (1997), who demonstrates the relationship between
systems of irrigation canals and tribal settlements.

E. Current Trends
The wave of enthusiasm that carried the new medieval archeology for twenty
years seemingly dissipated around 2000, or rather, its energies were devoted
to regional syntheses. Representative works are Guichard’s on Valencia (Les
Musulmans de Valence et le reconquete, 1990); Rafael Azuar on Alicante and the
Islamic kingdom of Denia (Denia islámica: arqueología y poblamiento, 1989), and
Virgilio Martínez Enamorado on Málaga (Al-Andalus desde la periferia: la
formación de una sociedad musulmana en tierras malagueñas, 2003). Methodologi-
cally what is notable about these syntheses is that their sources are both
documentary and archeological. There has also appeared a kind of revanchist
retrieval, although also regionally delimited and with an archeological basis,
of the older line of “continuism” that stressed continuity of culture and
social organization from Roman through early Islamic times (see Sonia
Gutiérrez, La cora de Tudmir, de la antigüedad tardía al mundo islámica: pobla-
miento y cultura material, 1996).
The Arab East 6

Select Bibliography
Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, ed. Ernest Gellner (Lexington:
Heath, 1972); Pierre Guichard, Al-Andalus, 711–1492 (Paris: Hachette, 2000); Thomas
F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1995; revised as Paisajes de conquista, Valencia: University of Valencia Press, 2006);
Abdelmajid Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina
(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001); Michel Terrasse, Islam et Occident méditerra-
néen: de la conquête aux Ottomans (Paris: CTHS, 2001).

Thomas F. Glick

The Arab East

A. General Introduction
The Arab East can be defined as the regions including modern day Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the eastern portion of
Turkmenistan. The Arab conquests of these regions began in the third dec-
ade of the 7th century and continued through the middle of the 8th century. In
the 7th century, these lands were under the influence of three major powers:
the Sasanian Empire in Persia, the T’ang dynasty in China and the Gupta
dynasty in India.
The Sasanian Empire encompassed Iraq, Iran, southwestern and north-
ern Afghanistan and parts of Turkmenistan. On its western and northern
frontiers, it bordered the Byzantine Empire, which controlled the Levant,
the Caucasus and Asia Minor. Its northeastern boundaries were roughly de-
fined as south of the Oxus River and the western bank of the Murghab River
and the great Ghuzz Desert.
Its easternmost province, Khurasan was less settled and expanded and
contracted with the times. It comprised four main administrative centers
in Marw, Abrashahr (Nishapur, modern day Mashhad), Herat and Balkh.
The military command for the region was based in Marw, in present day
Turkmenistan. Sijistan (Sistan), the region presently comprising portions of
southeast Iran, northwestern Pakistan and southwestern Afghanistan had
been nominally under Sasanian rule. Its easternmost boundary was Bust,
situated at the confluence of the Helmand and Arghandab rivers. Further to
the east the local rulers were aligned with the Indian Empire.
North of the Oxus River (Transoxiana) were Khwarazm, which bordered
the southern shore of the Aral Sea and Sogdia, which occupied the Oxus –
7 The Arab East

Jaxartes Basin. Sogdia was a federation of loosely allied Iranian city-states

that were nominally under Chinese suzerainty. The major city-states of Sog-
dia were Paykand, Bukhara and Samarqand. Further north in Ushrusana was
Shash, near present day Tashkent. The peoples of this region were primarily
of Iranian stock with a mixture of Turkic speaking peoples.

B. The Righteous Caliphs (632–661 C.E.)

The Arabs quickly colonized Iraq during this period. The two garrison towns
of Basra and Kufa were established and soon became cities that experienced
massive Arab emigrations. They were the main bases of operation from which
campaigns to the east were launched. Under the caliph Umar (r. 634–644
C.E.), raids were launched into Persia. Persian resistance against the Arabs
continued through the caliphate of Uthman (r. 644–656 C.E.). The Arabs es-
tablished garrisons and appointed governors in the major cities and relative
calm prevailed.
The Arab governors of Iraq administered the eastern lands from Basra
and reported to the caliph in Damascus. They were largely responsible for ap-
pointing governors in the east. The furthest frontier on the eastern border of
the newly emerged Arab Empire was called Khurasan. This region comprised
the former Sasanian province of Khurasan as well as Sijistan (Sistan) and
Transoxiana beyond the Oxus. These three regions known as “Greater Khu-
rasan” are the main focus of this article. The Makran and Sind were con-
quered by the Arabs in the early 8th century, but they remained backwaters
during the period which concerns us.
The Arabs quickly subdued Sasanian Khurasan and Sijistan. They raided
as far east as Kabul and the Sind. Treaties were negotiated with the individ-
ual rulers of the major towns and cities of Khurasan and annual tributes were
agreed upon. The local rulers were responsible for the collection and pay-
ment of this tribute. The Arabs did not maintain a large physical presence
there during this period. Initially, after campaigning, they typically returned
to Basra in Iraq. Due to this and internal Arab upheavals, such as the assassin-
ations of the caliphs Umar, Uthman and Ali, the Khurasanis frequently used
these periods of Arab unrest to rebel. This resulted in additional Arab cam-
paigns, which necessitated the renegotiation of treaties.

C. Umayyad Period (661–750 C.E.)

Under the Umayyad caliph Muawiya (r. 661–680 C.E.), 50,000 soldiers and
their dependents were sent to colonize Khurasan in 671 C.E. The majority
of this group settled in the administrative capital of Khurasan, Marw. In
673 C.E., the Arabs mounted campaigns, which crossed the Oxus into Trans-
The Arab East 8

oxiana (Ar. Ma wara al-nahr), where they attacked the Sogdian city-states.
These campaigns resulted in an enormous amount of booty, but the treaties
established there were short-lived. Rebellions continued until the governor-
ship of Qutayba b. Muslim (705–714 C.E.). Qutayba launched a sustained
campaign against the Sogdians with the military support of local levies. Pay-
kand was completely destroyed and Bukhara and Samarqand were subju-
gated and Arab garrisons were stationed in these cities. Qutayba’s campaigns
extended as far east as Kashgar.
Qutayba’s conquests proved to be superficial. The Sogdians allied them-
selves with the western Turks, whose power had surged and during the last
portion of Umayyad rule, Transoxiana was nearly lost to the Arabs. Sijistan
was plagued with rebellion and Umayyad control was effectively restricted to
the two major cities of Zaranj and Bust. In 736 C.E., in an effort to hold
Greater Khurasan together, the Umayyad governor, Asad b. Khalid moved
the administrative capital from Marw to Balkh.
The majority of the population of Greater Khurasan did not convert to
Islam. Religiously, the area was extremely diverse with a Zoroastrian major-
ity and Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Manichaean and pagan minorities.
Among the Arabs and new converts, tribal, political and sectarian differences
were rife. These divisions among the Muslims coupled with continued rebel-
lion weakened Umayyad authority.
An anti-Umayyad movement had begun around 720 C.E. Its propaganda
concentrated on the populations of Khurasan and finally in 746 C.E., the Ab-
basid Revolution under the leadership of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani began
there. It quickly gained success in Khurasan and toppled Umayyad authority
there and spread westward into Persia and Iraq. Continued victories pro-
pelled the movement into Syria and in 750 A. D. the Umayyads were defeated
and the Abbasid dynasty was established. Abu Muslim al-Khurasani retained
control of Khurasan and reestablished Muslim control over Transoxiana.
However, in 755 C.E., he was assassinated by the Abbasid caliph, al-Manur,
who appointed his own governor to Khurasan.

D. The Abba¯ sid High Caliphate (750–833 C.E.)

The establishment of the Abbasid dynasty was a turning point in the history
of the Arabs and Islam. Previously, Arab Umayyad rule had dominated.
Non-Arabs converting to Islam became clients (mawali), which made them
“honorary Arabs.” However, their status was not equal to that of the Arabs.
After the Abbasid revolution, things began to change. The capital of the em-
pire was moved from Damascus to Baghdad and the victorious Khurasanis,
who were a mixture of Arabs and Persians obtained a special status in the
9 The Arab East

government. Non-Arabs increasingly attained high offices and positions of

authority.
The Umayyads heavily exploited Greater Khurasan. The Arab governors
had amassed great wealth and did little to improve the infrastructure or
public services. With the establishment of a new “Muslim dynamic,” trade
increased and cities along the trade routes grew and prospered. While the
majority of the population remained non-Muslim until the late 10th century,
the number of new converts to Islam grew, as did the number of religious
scholars. Arab religious scholars were no longer an overwhelming majority
and a growing class of non-Arab scholars writing in Arabic flourished.
The second half of the 8th century was a period of cultural and religious
synthesis. The Arabs in the east became more assimilated into the overall
society while for a period of three hundred years the Persians abandoned
Middle Persian and adopted Arabic as their administrative, liturgical and lit-
erary language. The Arab conquests set into motion the conditions that led
to the emergence of New Persian after this period. New Persian was written
in a modified form of the Arabic script and included a large number of Arabic
loan words. It developed an Islamic literature and gradually became the
dominant Iranian language replacing Sogdian as the lingua franca of Central
Asia. As the Arabs became more Persianized, the Persians became more Arab-
ized. Additionally, the Turks, who had traditionally adopted Sogdian as
their written language, replaced it with new Persian (Dari). However, Dari
did not begin to emerge as a literary language until the 10th century.
The Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad experienced a major schism in the be-
ginning of the 9th century, which ultimately resulted in the loss of the east to
Arab authority. Upon his death in 809 C.E., Harun al-Rashid’s son, al-Amin,
became caliph and his son, Mamun, became the governor of Khurasan. A rift
developed between the two brothers and a civil war ensued. Mamun, who
governed from Marw, eventually triumphed. Born of a Persian mother, he
was at home in the east and had seriously pondered moving the capital of the
empire from Baghdad to Marw. However, rebellions in the western portions
of the empire forced him to decide whether he wanted to be the governor of
Khurasan or the caliph of the Arab Empire. In 819 C.E., he moved to Bagh-
dad. The Abbasid reign from its beginnings in 750 C.E. through the caliph-
ate of Mamun is generally known as the period of the High Caliphate. After
this time, Arab authority in the east rapidly declined.
Mamun appointed governors to Khurasan but none were able to govern
it well or keep the peace. Finally, in 821 C.E., Tahir b. al-Husayn, a trusted
general of Mamun of Persian origin was appointed to Khurasan. He reestab-
lished order and soon became a patron of Arab learning. Politically, he estab-
The Arab East 10

lished his autonomy from Baghdad and Arab rule and founded his own dyn-
asty, the Tahirids (821–873 C.E.). TheTahirids were the last rulers in the east
to make a pretense of being Arab. The successors of the Tahirids in the east, in
the late 9th century and the early 10th century, the Saffarids from Sijistan and
the Samanids in Transoxiana and Khurasan were ethnically Persian and ac-
tively patronized things Persian while promoting Islam. Arab control over
the east ended. Subsequent dynasties of the Ghaznavids and Saljuqs were
ethnically Turkish but culturally Persian.
The Arab caliphs ruling from Baghdad gradually lost control of their
once large empire that fragmented into a number of different states. The
caliphs were unable to reclaim their past political power and eventually
became only figureheads. The institution of the caliphate continued in Bagh-
dad until 1258, when the Mongols invaded and killed the last Arab caliph.

E. History of Research
Scholarship on the Arabs in the East has primarily concentrated on the
Umayyad dynasty and specifically the causes of the Abbasid revolution.
Gerlof Van Vloten and Julius Wellhausen led this research in the late
19th and early 20th centuries in Europe. Van Vloten’s Recherches sur la
domination arabe, le chi’isme et les croyances messianiques sous les Omayyades (1894)
perceived the Abbasid revolution as a Persian nationalist movement, which
struggled against repressive taxes and social inequality in order to overthrow
the Arab oppressors. He believed the revolution was energized by the rise
of Shi’ism and the expectation of a liberator or messiah. Wellhausen sup-
ported Van Vloten’s views; however, in opposition to Van Vloten, he saw
the revolution as having its roots in Islam rather than Persian nationalism.
Julius Wellhausen’s The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall appeared in 1902. It
was the first critical work to use Tabari’s History of the Prophets and the Kings and
the first presentation of an Islamic subject using modern historical method.
Wellhausen, as a product of his age, was concerned with nations, states and
persons and the struggle between them for power. This preoccupation with
politics and nationality completely disregarded economics. Wellhausen
saw the Umayyad dynasty as essentially an Arab kingdom. He further for-
warded the belief that the empire had become factionalized along north/south
(Qays/Yaman) Arab tribal lines during the Islamic era. His views established
the paradigm that remained virtually unassailed, for more than 70 years.
Wellhausen closely and critically examined his and their sources.
He favored the earliest ones. He strongly believed that the literary tradition
should be subjected to intense criticism and analyzed for contradictions
and biases. Wellhausen’s works were followed by a number of modern
11 The Arab East

scholars, who advanced scholarship in the field by collating and editing criti-
cal editions of important manuscripts. European institutions had continued
to collect Arabic manuscripts from the Middle East, Central Asia and India.
As these works were described and catalogued a major effort began to pro-
duce critical editions of them. In these pursuits, Vasily Barthold, Hamil-
ton A. R. Gibb and Richard N. Frye figured prominently.
Vasily Barthold was a polymath. He was one of the first scholars
to critically use both Arabic and Persian sources in his research. He saw the
Umayyad period as one of exploitation. He believed that the Arabs had no
real administrative aims and that they were content to maintain control over
the Khurasani Arab population while extracting taxes and tribute from all.
The rapid succession of Umayyad governors and their acquisition of vast
fortunes proved this point to him. Barthold’s major contribution to this
early phase of Islamic history was his groundbreaking work on the history
and geography of Central Asia. He was meticulous and systematically ident-
ified cities, towns and landmarks throughout Central Asia, utilizing a var-
iety of scientific methods and incorporating archaeological and numismatic
findings. He was a prolific writer, who wrote primarily in Russian and Ger-
man. His works were considered so important that his major work, Turkestan
Down to the Mongol Invasion (1900) was translated into English from the Rus-
sian with Barthold’s collaboration by Hamilton A. R. Gibb in 1928.
Hamilton A. R. Gibb continually added to the prior studies of his col-
leagues. In examining Greater Khurasan, he contrasted a highly decentra-
lized Transoxiana with the centralized former Sasanian realm of Khurasan
proper and he stressed that their social and political systems had developed
independently. He viewed Qutayba b. Muslim’s conquests in Transoxiana as
superficial and held that Sogdian resistance to the Arabs was based on com-
mercial interests and their tradition of regional independence. He high-
lighted the roles of Asad b. Abdullah and Nasr b. Sayyar at the end of the
Umayyad period in trying to right injustices and unify the frontier by bring-
ing the Arabs and mawali closer together. He tried to demonstrate that once
the Arabs began to focus on trade that resistance decreased dramatically.
Gibb was one of the first to utilize Chinese sources. His major work on this
subject is The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (1923). Gibbs other works focus on
Islam, literature and the interaction of Islamic societies with other cultures.
Richard N. Frye concentrated on examining all facets of ancient Persia.
While others had primarily focused on changes that were ushered in with the
Arabs and Islam, Frye maintained the point of view, that the Persians were
a dominant and changing force. Some of his major works are The Golden Age
of Persia: the Arabs in the East (1975), Islamic Iran and Central Asia (1979) and The
The Arab East 12

History of Bukhara (1954). Frye took special effort to inform us as to what

sources on the subject have apparently been lost to time.
C. E. Bosworth’s contribution to the study of the Arabs in the East
must also be mentioned. Wellhausen and Gibb examined the East as
a whole. Barthold had concentrated on Central Asia and Frye on Iran.
Bosworth’s contributions are in geography and particularly on Sijistan
(Sïstan). His Sïstan Under the Arabs, (1968) greatly complements the study of
the Arabs and the East.
These six scholars comprise what has been termed as the classical school
of thought. Our understanding of Umayyad Khurasan has been shaped by
their seminal works. Together they have provided a firm historiographical
and geographical knowledge of this period, while advancing textual criti-
cism and exploring all available sources.

F. The Revisionists
In the absence of an abundance of detailed information on the causes and fac-
tors leading up to the Abbasid revolution (747–750 C.E.), a new school grew
up. The common thread linking the two schools has been an emphasis on the
discontent in Khurasan caused by oppressive taxes for all, the assimilation of
the Arabs into Khurasani society and their subsequent loss of political status,
coupled with constant ongoing inter-tribal rivalries. The ruling dynasty was
viewed as mostly impious and wrongly guided. The chronicles of Tabari,
Ibn al-Athir, al-Baladhuri, Ibn A’tham and Ya’qubi provided the foundation
for these ideas. The discovery of new sources such as the anonymous Akhbar
dawlat al-Abbasiya and Tarikh al-Khulafa, and other works have helped to feed
the fire of an ongoing classical versus revisionist battle.
M. A. Shaban’s radical interpretation of the character of the Abbasid
revolution in his Islamic History, C.E. 600–750 (A.H. 132): A New Interpretation
(1971) attacked the classical school and claimed that the Arabs had no inter-
est in war, opposed taxes, resented the Persian elite in charge of collecting
taxes and were fully assimilated with the local population and were sym-
pathetic to conversion. He saw the Abbasid revolution as primarily Arab,
emerging out of Marw, as a result of lost status and privilege. He viewed
the revolution as a three-way struggle between old military, new military
and settlers. He dismissed the existence of tribal rivalries and transformed
the north/south (Qays/Yaman) rivalries into ideological parties with com-
mon political, social and economic interests. He claimed the northern Arabs
(Qays) were advocates of expansionist policies, while the southerners
(Yaman) were proponents of assimilationist ones. He further claimed that
there were few converts to Islam at this time.
13 The Arab East

Shaban’s theories caused quite a stir when they were published. They
challenged Wellhausen’s paradigm. However, Shaban’s work has not
withstood the critical scrutiny of scholarship. His theories were more inter-
pretation than fact, and his use of the sources was fairly loose. However,
while he is faulted for a lack of good scholarly practices, his fresh approach to
the subject was much needed. His revisionist school grew to include Daniel
Dennett (Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam, 1950), Farouk Omar (The
Abbassid Caliphate: 132/750–170/786, 1969), Moshe Sharon (Black Banners from
the East: the Establishment of the Abbasid State: Incubation of a Revolt; and Revolt:
the Social and Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution, 1983), and Jacob Lassner
(Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory: an Inquiry into the Art of Abbasid Apolo-
getics, 1986). All of them asserted the Arabness of the Abbasid revolution and
minimalized the role of the Persians.

G. Recent Scholarship
In the wake of the classical and revisionist schools, there has been a search for
new sources that could shed more light on our rudimentary understanding
of this period. Again, the main interest for this period has been the Abbasid
revolution and the proving or disproving of the various theories of Well-
hausen and Shaban.
Two others scholars, Saleh Said Agha (The Revolution which Toppled the
Umayyads: neither Arab nor Abbasid, 2003) and Fukuzo Amabe (The Emergence
of the Abbasid Autocracy: the Abbasid Army, Khurasan and Adharbayjan, 1995) have
introduced studies, which systematically examined the ethnic character
of the Abbasid revolution and questioned the Abbasid dynasty claim. Agha
focused on demographics and convincingly established the varied ethnic
composition of the Abbasid revolution, deconstructing Shaban. Amabe in
his collection of essays examines the Qays-Yaman dispute and agrees with
Shaban as to its political nature in Syria but finds that the tensions in Khu-
rasan had nothing to do with the Syrian ones. Additionally, he has convin-
cingly disputed Shaban’s claim of the limited numbers of troops enrolled
in the payrolls and that the old military (muqatila) were all dismissed from
the rolls and replaced by Syrians and new troops. Finally, both Agha and
Amabe have shattered Shaban’s theory that the majority of revolutionaries
came from Marw and that no propagandists (da’is) operated outside of it.
The debates, rebuttals and different interpretations of the events culmi-
nating in the Abbasid revolution have provided an abundance of opinions
and used a variety of approaches. Both the classical and revisionist schools
have fueled a continual series of studies, but none of them have approached
the subject by examining Khurasan as a whole, from the advent of Islam until
Arabic Literature 14

the Abbasid revolution. Scholars will continue to search for new sources on
this subject. As more and more manuscripts are described and catalogued
each year, it is possible that more pieces of this puzzle will be found.

Select Bibliography
Salih Sa’id Agha, The Revolution which Toppled the Umayyads: Neither Arab nor Abbasid
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003); Fukuzo Amabe, The Emergence of the Abbasid Autocracy:
The Abbasid Army, Khurasan and Adharbayjan (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1995);
Vasily V. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London: Luzac & Co., 1928);
Clifford E. Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs: From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the
Saffarids, 30–250/651–864 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente,
1968); Richard N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East (New York: Barnes &
Noble Books, 1975); Hamilton A. R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia. (London:
Royal Asiatic Society, 1923); M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A new Interpretation (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Gerlof van Vloten, Recherches sur la domi-
nation arabe, le chi’isme et les croyances messianiques sous les khalifat Omayyades (Amsterdam:
J. Muller, 1894); Julius Wellhausen, Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1902).

Mark David Luce

Arabic Literature

A. Introduction
Throughout the Middle Ages, Arabic was employed by millions of Arabs and
Muslims, not only as a scriptural language, but also as a shared medium of
scholarly and literary communication. Accordingly, medieval Arabic litera-
ture was a rich and diverse tradition. This article provides an overview of the
formation of the medieval literary canon and a survey of major trends in the
study of Arabic literature from the 19th century to the present.
The modern Arabic term adab signifies both “good manners” and “litera-
ture” in its specialized sense (poetry, drama, and artistic prose). In the
Middle Ages, however, adab had a broader semantic range, conveying con-
duct and manners, knowledge and refinement, and, especially, the kind of
socialization expected of secretaries, courtiers, and intellectuals. Adab writ-
ings, by extension, were those that contributed to this socialization, works
that were both aesthetically pleasing and instructive. (For a full discussion of
this term, see Seeger Bonnebakker, “Adab and the concept of belles-lettres,”
The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ^Abbasid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ash-
15 Arabic Literature

tiany et al., 1990, 16–30.) The focus of this article is the study of secular
belles-lettres, but it is important to remember that in the Middle Ages, prac-
tically all non-technical writings were expected to be composed according to
contemporary standards of adab.

B. The Legacy of Medieval Literary Scholarship

Modern scholarship on medieval Arabic literature has adopted much of the
conceptual framework of literary categorization formulated in the Middle
Ages. In particular, the medieval canon, with its attendant aesthetic judg-
ments and assumptions, has had a lasting influence. Until relatively re-
cently, modern scholars have devoted little attention to those texts regarded
as inferior or marginal in the Middle Ages.
The first and most fundamental criterion for determining the “literari-
ness” of a text was its linguistic register. Early in the Islamic era, Arab
linguists became concerned with the question of diglossia, the perceived
corruption of formal, fully inflected Arabic into various uninflected regional
dialects. With a few notable exceptions, sub-literary status was assigned to
compositions in colloquial dialects.
Poetry was the premier literary genre in the Middle Ages. Despite its
pagan religious milieu, the orally transmitted poetic tradition of the pre-
Islamic era (al-jahiliyya, literally, “the age of ignorance”) was especially ad-
mired and regarded as a rich repository of linguistic and cultural in-
formation. The most famous canonical collection, the mu^allaqat (“the pen-
dants” or “hanging odes”), consists of exemplars of the qasida, a formal,
polythematic, monorhymed ode, by the most highly esteemed pre-Islamic
poets. Much medieval criticism was prescriptive, dwelling on ideals and
models for imitation and codified norms (^umud al-shi^r, “the pillars of
poetry”). Pre-Islamic poetry, the mu^allaqat especially, provided such models.
The traditional periodization of Arabic literature after the coming of
Islam is loosely based on dynastic shifts and perceived changes in poetic style.
The early Islamic period (622–660) and the reign of the Umayyad caliphs
(660–750) is generally viewed as a transitional phase. The rise of the ^Abbasid
caliphate (750–1258), signaled a definitive break with the tribal, nomadic
past. The panegyrical ode (madih) had served a tribal function in pre-Islamic
Arabia, but became an important medium of state propaganda in the calip-
hal era. Its most celebrated proponents were Abu Tammam (d. 846), al-
Buhturi (d. 897), and al-Mutanabbi (d. 965). Shorter forms, notably the gha-
zaliyya (love poem) and khamriyya (wine-song), both frequently set to music,
became popular in less formal court contexts. Medieval critics perceived
marked differences in style and tone between pre-Islamic poetry and that of
Arabic Literature 16

the ^Abbasid period. Badi^ (“innovative new style”), a trend towards complex
rhetorical embellishment that came into fashion in the early 9th century, be-
came a key means of distinguishing the ‘modern poets’ (al-muhdathun) from
the ‘ancients’ (al-qudama#). In the later Middle Ages, poetry became increas-
ingly imitative, hence the modern distinction between the ‘classical’ period
(the ^Abbaasid caliphate) and the ‘post-classical’ period (beginning after the
Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258).
Artistic prose was largely an innovation of the caliphal era, although
brief narratives in the form of first-person reports (akhbar) recording import-
ant tribal events had been transmitted since pre-Islamic times. Reports
of this sort, considered nonfictional, became the basis of historiography and
biography. Of special significance were the hadith reports that inscribed
the deeds and utterances of the prophet Muhammad. In the ^Abaasid period,
reports were sometimes embedded in essays, such as those of al-Jahiz (d.
869?), and included in large compilations of short narratives on a variety of
subjects. The most famous were literary anthologies: Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 889)
^Uyun al-akhbar (“Choice Anecdotes”), Ibn ^Abd Rabbihi’s (d. 940) Al-^Iqd al-
farid (“The Precious Necklace”), and Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s (d. 967) Kitab
al-aghani (“Book of Songs”). Other compilations of this sort fell into an end-
less variety of sub-genres: histories, biographical dictionaries, manuals of
etiquette, Fürstenspiegels, accounts of wonders and marvels, and so on.
For the most part, prose narratives were expected to have a reliable chain
of transmission and to deal with (plausibly) real events. Those fictional nar-
ratives that were tolerated were instructive allegories or sophisticated (there-
fore edifying) satires. An early experiment in this area was Ibn al-Muqaffa^’s
(d. 757) Kalila wa-Dimna (“Kalila and Dimna”), a translation of animal fables
from Pahlavi. The most popular fictional form of the Middle Ages was the
maqama, a picaresque genre in rhymed prose developed by al-Hamadhani (d.
1008) and al-Hariri (d. 1122) and imitated up until the early 20th century.
Medieval literary scholarship was prolific and remarkably introspective.
The study of Arabic literary history depends on vast Medieval anthologies,
commentaries, biographical and bibliographical compendia, and other re-
sources. Medieval terms and conceptual categories – genres, modes, rhetori-
cal terms, and so on – have, by and large, been adopted by modern scholars.
Modern scholarship has also inherited a certain geographic bias (focusing
particularly on the urban centers of the Fertile Crescent), and the traditional
primitivist aesthetic that favored early ‘classic’ texts over later innovations.
Naturally, issues that were of particular interest to medieval commentators
and critics have continued to play a prominent role in the study of Arabic lit-
erature.
17 Arabic Literature

C. The 19th Century: Discovery and Rediscovery

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 is often cited as the first significant cul-
tural encounter between modern Europe and the Arab world, and an import-
ant catalyst for scholarly activity on both sides of the Mediterranean. Not
incidentally, it was also the first significant military encounter, marking the
beginning of European imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. Through-
out most of the 19th century, scholarship on Arabic literature, both among
Arab intellectuals and Orientalists, consisted mainly of collecting, catalo-
guing, editing, and publishing texts.
In the early 19th century, modernization programs in the Arabic-speak-
ing Middle East coincided with a new interest in classical literature. By mid-
century, this interest had grown into a broad literary and cultural movement,
al-Nahda (the “Revival” or “Renaissance”), which represented, among other
things, a growing awareness among Arabs of their shared cultural heritage
(al-turath). Al-Nahda was contrasted with ^Asr al-inhittat, a perceived “Period of
Stagnation” or ‘Dark Ages’ (from the late Middle Ages through the Napo-
leonic invasion), characterized, politically, by the rule of non-Arab dynasties,
and artistically, by an ostensible decline in originality. As Ottoman authority
waned and European colonial activity intensified, al-Nahda became identified
with both a revival of interest in medieval culture on the one hand, and rapid
westernization on the other. Al-Nahda is chiefly associated with Egypt and the
Levant, where the principle encounters with Europe took place.
While the translation, imitation, and assimilation of European literary
genres in the Arab world has been widely studied, far less attention has been
devoted to the process by which classical Arabic literature became an object
of study in the modern Arab world. (See, however, Albert Hourani, Arabic
Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939, 1962; and Jack A. Crabbs, The Writing of
History in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 1984).The degree to which classical Arabic
literature was ‘rediscovered’ in the 19th century is open to debate. Certainly
some classical genres and authors had never ceased to be widely appreciated
and studied in both the eighteenth and 19th centuries. The most dramatic
development was not ‘rediscovery’ but wide distribution brought about as
printing supplanted manuscript culture. In 1822, the Khedive Muhammad
^Ali established the Bulaq Press in Cairo as part of his modernization project.
Although the Bulaq Press specialized in technical manuals and translations
of European textbooks, it published editions of Alf Layla wa-layla (“The Thou-
sand and One Nights”) and Ibn al-Muqaffa^’s Kalila wa-Dimna in 1822, soon
followed by other medieval literary works. Protestant missionaries and the
Jesuits set up presses in the Levant, and by the end of the century, most major
Arab cities had presses. Newspapers and journals also published classical as
Arabic Literature 18

well as contemporary literature, and soon became important fora for cultural
dialogue.
Some early contributors to al-Nahda include the Egyptian educator and
translator Rifa^a al-Tahtawi (1801–1871), who advocated and supervised the
publication of heritage texts at Bulaq, the Egyptian poet Ibrahim al-Dasuqi
(1811–1883), an editor at the same press, and the Lebanese Christian poet Faris
al-Shidyaq (1804–1887), an editor at the British Arabic press in Malta who
later established an Arabic press in Istanbul. Butrus al-Bustani (1819–1883),
a Lebanese Christian journalist and linguist, compiled the first modern Arabic
dictionary (Muhit al-muhit, 1867–1870) and contributed to the first modern
Arabic encyclopedia (Da#irat al-ma^arif, 1876–1882). The study of the Arabic
heritage, including classical literature, became increasingly institutionalized
with the foundation of national libraries and colleges, such as the Egyptian
Dar al-kutub and Cairo Teacher’s College (both established in 1870).
Efforts to preserve and disseminate the great works of the past involved
constant negotiation with contemporary issues. It was chiefly modernists
and reformers who guided the revival. Muhammad ^Abduh (1849–1905),
the celebrated Islamic modernist, religious scholar, and educational re-
former, introduced the study of classical Arabic literature at al-Azhar (Cairo’s
medieval college of Islamic studies). This radical attempt to inject a ‘liberal
arts’ program into al-Azhar’s hidebound religious curriculum scandalized
^Abduh’s colleagues, but inspired a new generation of Egyptian intellec-
tuals (including Taha Husayn, on whom see below). Another prominent
Arab academic, Luwis Shaykhu (Le Père Louis Cheikho, 1859–1927),
a Lebanese Jesuit and professor at the University of Saint-Joseph, Beirut,
played a greater role in preserving the classical canon than any other figure of
al-Nahda. Shaykhu collected manuscripts and published critical editions of
an amazing range of medieval texts, many of which are still used today. His
Kitab shu^ara al-Nasraniyya (“Anthology of Christian Poets,” 1890) was an
early (and contentious) study of Christian ‘identity literature.’
In Europe, Arabic studies were overshadowed by biblical and classical
studies. The limited number of orientalists who did research in Arabic were
rarely specialists, and many were adventurous amateurs rather than aca-
demics. Arabic was generally taught as if it were a dead language. Arabic
studies did not coalesce into an institutionalized field of study until the end
of the century (see Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 1955; and
Victor Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes et relatifs aux Arabes publiées
dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1883, 4 vols., 1892–1909.)
Only a handful of medieval Arabic texts had been adequately edited and
published before the 19th century, and few linguistic resources were available
19 Arabic Literature

in Europe. Orientalists of the first half of the century laid much of the
groundwork for further study, including a series of reliable grammars and
various dictionaries and lexica. Gustav Flügel (1802–1870) edited a
number of valuable sources for literary history, including Hajji Khalifa’s
massive 17th-century bibliography of oriental manuscripts, Kashf al-zunun
(in Latin translation as Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum, 1835–1858), an edi-
tion of Ibn al-Nadim’s 10th-century bibliography Kitab al-Fihrist (1871–1872)
and a concordance to the Qur#an (Concordantiae Corani arabicae, 1842). One
of the towering figures of late 19th- and early 20th-century orientalism was
Ignaz (Ignác) Goldziher (1850–1921), best known for his groundbreaking
work in Islamic studies (Muhammedanische Studien, 2 vols., 1888–1890, rpt.
1961), but also a pioneer in the study of Arabic literature (Abhandlungen zur
arabischen Philologie, 2 vols., 1896–1899).
Although an ever increasing number of literary texts were available to
orientalists by the end of the century, aesthetic appreciation of medieval
Arabic literature was often subordinated to philological interests and broad
ethnographic generalizations. On one extreme, literary works were viewed
as little more than sources of raw linguistic data, or, at best, as pedagogical
aids (e.g. de Sacy’s Chrestomathie arabe, 1806; and two editions of Alf layla
wa-layla, “The Thousand and One Nights” [designated Calcutta I (1814–1818)
and Calcutta II (1839–1842)], both intended for linguistic study). On the
other extreme, the idea that the study of Arabic literature represented a means
of understanding ‘Oriental’ manners and customs exercised great appeal
in the 19th century. This ethnographic approach had been introduced by
Barthélémy d’Herbolet in his Bibliothéque orientale (1697), an early and
largely anecdotal encyclopedia of Middle Eastern culture and history that
was widely read in the 18th century. In the 19th century, this approach was
adopted in such works as Edward Lane’s detailed study of culture and every-
day life in Egypt, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), and the
notes to his translation of Alf layla wa-layla (later published separately under
the title Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, ed. Stanley Lane-Poole, 1883).
For the most part, both Arab and Orientalist scholars of the 19th century
were guided by the tastes of medieval critics and anthologists, and evinced
a similar reverence for the medieval canon. One interesting case of divergent
evaluation deserves special notice. The variable assortment of Märchen col-
lected under the title of Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights,”
often translated as “The Arabian Nights”) had been regarded as an entertain-
ing but ultimately frivolous and sub-literary work in the Arab world. In Eu-
rope, a French translation by Antoine Galland was published between
1704 and 1717 (Les Mille et une nuits), and immediately captured the public
Arabic Literature 20

imagination. What began as exoticist curiosity in the 18th century turned

into a mania in the 19th. Several editions were published (including the Bulaq
edition, 1822), along with numerous translations (the best known are
Edward Lane’s bowdlerized and compulsively annotated translation, The
Thousand and One Nights, 3 vols., 1838–1841; and Richard Burton’s eccentric
and bawdy translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 10 vols.,
1885). As a result of all of this attention, “The Arabian Nights” remains the
most famous work of medieval Arabic literature in the West. (On its history
and reception, see Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, 1995;
and The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, ed. Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van
Leeuwen, 2 vols., 2004.)

D. The 20th Century: Revolution and Re-evaluation

19th-century scholarship produced a sizable body of linguistic reference
works and reliably edited literary texts. By the turn of the 20th century,
Arabic literature had come to be recognized as an isolated object of study.
Two watershed events of the 20th century, Taha Husayn’s challenge to the
traditional canon and Edward Said’s postcolonial critique of Orientalism,
helped to define the field and open the way for a variety of critical perspec-
tives and methodologies.
Both in Europe and the Arab world, literary history dominated the early
part of the century. Notable surveys include Reynold Alleyne Nicholson,
A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907; Jurji Zaydan, Tarikh adab al-lugha al-^ara-
biyya (“The History of Arabic-language Literatures”), 4 vols., 1911; Ignaz
(Ignác) Goldziher, Arab irodalom rövid történte, 1912 (translated as A Short
History of Classical Arabic Literature, 1966); Clément Huart, Histoire de la litera-
ture arabe (1923); Sir Hamilton Gibb, Arabic Literature, An Introduction, 1926;
Carlo Nallino, La littérature arabe des origines à l’époque de la dynastie umayyade,
1950; Régis Blanchère, Histoire de la littérature arabe des origines à la fin du
XVe siècle de J-C, 3 vols., 1952–1966). Two especially ambitious projects of this
sort are Shawqi DAYF’s, Ta#rikh al-adab al-^Arabi (“The History of Arabic
Literature,” 10 vols., 1960–1995); and the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature
(commonly abbreviated CHAL), consisting of six volumes, each composed of
articles by experts in particular subjects and sub-disciplines: Arabic Literature
to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., 1983; ^Abbasid Belles-
Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al., 1990; Religion, Learning and Science in the
^Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young et al., 1990; Modern Arabic Literature, ed.
M. M. Badawi, 1992; The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. Maria Rosa et al., 2000;
and Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Roger Allen, 2006. Other
relatively recent contributions are Wolfhart Heinrichs, ed., Neues Handbuch
21 Arabic Literature

der Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 5: Orientalisches Mittelalter, 1990; and Roger

Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, 1998.
In Europe, this interest in literary history coincided with a broader
Orientalist project, the compilation of The Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by
Martin Theodor Houtsma and Arent Jan Wensinck, 4 vols., 1913–1938,
printed in English, French, and German (now abbreviated EI1). This became
a landmark reference work for Orientalists in a variety of fields, though it
placed greater emphasis on Islamic history and civilization than on litera-
ture. The Encyclopaedia of Islam represented a major international effort, but
Arab and Muslim contributors were largely excluded. The project was later
repeated on an even grander scale with The New Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI2),
1954–, which remains one of the central reference texts for Arabists. Another
important reference project was Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der ara-
bischen Literatur (GAL) (2 vols., 1898–1902, 3 supplementary vols. 1937–1942,
rev. ed. 1943–1949), a master catalog of books and manuscripts in Arabic,
mostly culled from European manuscript catalogs, with brief biographical
entries. Brockelmann’s work has since been supplemented by Fuat Sez-
gin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (GAS), 12 vols., 1967–2000.
Along with surveys of Arabic literature came specialized studies of par-
ticular periods, authors, and genres. Most of these were still fairly descriptive
and conventional, with a strong philological emphasis. In Europe, one area
that received special attention was Sufi mystical poetry (e.g., Reynold Alleyne
Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 1921; and Louis Massignon’s
highly eccentric and largely discredited study La passion d’al-Hallaj martyr mys-
tique de l’Islam, 1925).
In 1925, the British Arabist D. Samuel Margoliouth disputed the
authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry, the cornerstone of the traditional canon
of Arabic literature (“Origins of Arabic Poetry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society [1925]: 417–49). The next year, the Egyptian academic, critic, and
author Taha Husayn published his controversial work Fi al-shi^r al-jahili
(“On Pre-Islamic Poetry,” 1926), a far more elaborate study that not only con-
tested the origins of pre-Islamic poetry but also questioned the integrity
of the Qur#an. The reliability of 8th-century transmitters and collectors of
pre-Islamic poetry had long been held suspect, even in the Middle Ages, but
no one had suggested that the entire pre-Islamic corpus needed to be reevalu-
ated. Because of the book’s religious implications, it was immediately
banned (later to be republished with considerable revisions). Husayn was
tried, though not convicted, on charges of apostasy.
Husayn approached every topic with gusto and bombast. Few current
scholars of Arabic poetry now agree with Husayn’s absolutist iconoclasm,
Arabic Literature 22

although most would admit that it is impossible to determine how much of

the pre-Islamic corpus is genuine. Rather than the specific thesis of Fi al-shi^r
al-jahili, it was Husayn’s willingness to question received wisdom that had
lasting impact, particularly on Arab critics.
Taha Husayn was not alone in being both a critic and a litterateur:
interpretation and reinterpretation of the classical Arab-Islamic heritage was
a cultural project in which artists, poets, academics, and professionals all
participated (see David Semah, Four Egyptian Literary Critics, 1974). Some
prominent contributors included the Egyptian cultural historian Ahmad
AMIN, the Egyptian critic Shawqi Dayf, and the Palestinian critic Ihsan
^ABBAS. By mid-century, Arab critics had begun to experiment in surprising
ways. The Egyptian academic and feminist author Suhayr al-Qalamawi
wrote one of the first serious Arabic studies of “The Thousand and One
Nights” (Alf layla wa-layla, 1943). The Egyptian critic Muhammad al-Nu-
wayhi applied psychological criticism to the works of one of the most fa-
mous ^Abbasid poets in Nafsiyyat Abi Nuwas (“The Psychology of Abu Nuwas,”
1953). Muhammad Ghunaymi Hilal, another prominent Egyptian critic of
the 1950’s, introduced comparative literature as an approach to classical
Arabic literature, in particular, in comparison with Persian literature.
The Egyptian intellectual and chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-
Sayyid Qutb, in his 30-volume exegesis of the Qur^an (Fi zilal al-Qur#an, “In
the Shade of the Qur^an” [1966, numerous reprints]), offered sophisticated
literary insights in the context of a traditional genre of Islamic scholarship.
After World War II, Western scholarship changed in two major ways.
First, a significant number of European scholars immigrated to the United
States, where Middle Eastern studies began to flourish. Second, interpretive
studies of specific aspects of Arabic literature began to replace general,
descriptive surveys. Examples include Charles Pellat’s seminal study of
the 9th-century essayist al-Jahiz, Le milieu basrien et la formation de Yâhiz,1953;
and, a bit later, Andras Hamori’s formalist study, On the Art of Medieval Arabic
Literature, 1974; and generic surveys, such as Lois Giffen, Theory of Profane
Love Among the Arabs, 1971; and Gregor Schoeler, Arabische Naturdichtung,
1974. The literature of al-Andalus, often considered derivative by Arab
critics, received much attention from Western Arabists, who were especially
interested in possible Arab-Islamic influence on medieval European concep-
tions of ‘courtly love’ and the troubadour tradition (Angel González
Palencia, Historia de la literatura arábigo-española, 1945; Alois R. Nykl, His-
pano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with the Old Provençal Troubadors, 1946).
The publication of the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said’s
unabashedly polemical and provocative Orientalism (1978) proved to be an-
23 Arabic Literature

other pivotal moment in the development of Arabic studies in the 20th cen-
tury. The thesis of Orientalism is that European scholarly, literary, and artistic
representations of the ‘orient’ (the Arab world especially) came to constitute
a hegemonic discourse that both legitimized and participated in European
imperialist projects in the Middle East. It should be noted that Orientalism
touches only tangentially on studies of Arabic literature, but as a general
indictment of Western scholarship on the Middle East, it prompted much
soul-searching and questioning of assumptions. Now considered a founda-
tional text of post-colonialist criticism, Orientalism still inspires bitter con-
troversy (see Maxime Rodinson, La fascination de l’Islam, 1980, a critical re-
view of orientalist scholarship from a Marxist perspective; and a recent,
caustic critique of Said: Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 2006).

E. Recent Trends
The influence of Orientalism has been felt in several ways in Arabic studies.
Not only has it forced scholars in a variety of fields, including Arabic litera-
ture, to re-evaluate the history of European scholarship on the Middle East
and Islam, but it has also raised the question of intellectual agency: how can
Western scholars free themselves from the established Orientalist discourse
and its Eurocentric premises?
One response to this question has been to create a shared scholarly space
in an attempt to integrate more Arab scholars into Western academic institu-
tions. Taha Husayn and many of his contemporaries were also ‘cross-over’
scholars in a sense, forming bridges between European and Arabic intel-
lectual communities, but the bulk of their publications were in Arabic,
composed for an Arab readership. Now, in Western Europe and especially in
the United States, Arabic literature is increasingly interpreted and taught by
Arab scholars who publish in both Arabic and European languages. It could
be argued that this solution does not fully address the problem of Eurocen-
trism, in that Arab scholars are still required to relate to the West on its own
terms. Be that as it may, ‘cross-over’ scholars have played a key role in facili-
tating dialogue.
With the influx of Arab scholars in the West, Arabic literary studies have
experienced a shift in emphasis from the medieval heritage to modern litera-
ture. More often than not, early 20th-century literary histories treated Arabic
literature as a fixed medieval corpus. The widespread study of modern
Arabic literature has led to a breakdown in the perceived barrier between
medieval and modern traditions. Many scholars work in both fields. One re-
cent and innovative survey, Roger Allen’s The Arabic Literary Heritage (1998),
begins with a polemical challenge to traditional periodization, and is organ-
Arabic Literature 24

ized according to a generic scheme that explores continuities between medi-

eval and modern Arabic literature. Similarly, the new Encyclopedia of Arabic
Literature (ed. Julie Meisami and Paul Starkey, 1998) includes entries on
both medieval and modern Arabic literature. The latest volume of The Cam-
bridge History of Arabic Literature (Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period,
ed. Roger Allen, 2006) examines literary production during ^Asr al-inhiittat,
the supposed ‘Dark Age’ that has, in the past, been understudied.
Arabic Studies in the West have been slow to incorporate contemporary
literary theory. Philological, historical-biographical, and belletrist studies
still abound, but since the 1980’s, formalist approaches have prevailed.
The profound influence of structuralism, especially, is evident in the fre-
quency of such terms as ‘poetics’ and ‘structural analysis’ in the titles of mod-
ern studies. In many cases, structuralist (and post-structuralist) analyses
have contributed new perspectives on old topics and debates (prominent
examples include Ferial Ghazoul, The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis,
1980 [later revised and expanded as Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights
in Comparative Context, 1996]; Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Structures of Avarice:
The Bukhala’ in Medieval Arabic Literature, 1985; Abdelfattah Kilito, L’auteur et
ses doubles: essai sur la culture arabe classique, 1985; and Stefan Sperl, Mannerism
in Arabic Poetry, 1989). Western literary theory has had significant impact on
scholarship in the Arab world, predominantly through the influence of
Western-educated Arab scholars, but it is also from the Arab world that some
radical revisions and re-interpretations of Western theory have emerged. In
this respect, the avant-garde Syrian poet and critic Adunis (also: Adonis,
the pen-name of ^Ali Ahmad Sa^id) has proven to be one of the most original
and challenging modern critics of the Arabic poetic tradition (works include
Al-Thabit wa-al-mutahawwil [“The Static and the Dynamic”], 3 vols., 1974; and
Muqaddima li-al-shi^r al-^arabi, 1986 [translated as An Introduction to Arab Poetics,
trans. by Catherine Cobham, 1990]).
Medieval literary criticism and rhetorical theory have long been of inter-
est to Arab scholars (e.g. Muhammad Mandur, al-Naqd al-manhaji ^ind al-
Arab [“Systematic Criticism among the Arabs, 1948]; Ihsan ^Abbas, Tarikh al-
naqd al-adabi ^ind al-^Arab [“The History of Literary Criticism among the
Arabs,” 1971]; and Kamal Abu Deeb, Al-Jurjani’s Theory of Poetic Imagery,
1976). Although Vincente Cantarino’s Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age, 1975,
and Wolfhart Heinrich’s “Literary Theory: The Problem of Its Efficiency”
(in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum, 1973,
19–69) represent two fairly early European studies, Western interest in
medieval poetics largely coincided with the rising theoretical awareness of
the 1980’s and 1990s (e.g., G. J. H. van Gelder, Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic
25 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem, 1982; Suzanne P. Stet-
kevych, Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the ^Abbasid Age, 1991; and Margaret
Larkin, The Theology of Meaning: ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani’s Theory of Discourse,
1995).

Select Bibliography
Among the most important developments in the study of medieval Arabic literature
is a new disruption of traditional assumptions regarding canon. Classical prose, tradi-
tionally overshadowed by poetry, has received more notice (see Stefan Leder and
Hilary Kilpatrick, “Classical Arabic Prose Literature: a Researchers’ Sketch Map,”
Journal of Arabic Literature 23 [1992]: 2–26), as have formerly taboo subjects, such as
homoerotic literature (Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. Jerry W. Wright
and Everett K. Rowson, 1997). Contemporary scholars have begun to explore areas
almost wholly ignored by medieval critics and anthologists, such as popular drama
and theater (Shmuel Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arabic
World, 1992) and folk-epics (see Dwight Reynolds’s study of the modern epic tradi-
tion, Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradi-
tion, 1995; and M. C. Lyons, The Arabian Epic, 3 vols., 1995). Alf layla wa-layla, the object
of so much European fascination, now enjoys serious study from Arab scholars as well
(in addition to works mentioned above: Muhsin MAHDI’s critical edition, The Thou-
sand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla) from the Earliest Known Sources, 2 vols., 1984; and
Muhsin Jasim MUSAWI, Mujtama^ Alf layla wa-layla [“The Society of the Thousand and
One Nights”], 2000). Compositions in colloquial dialects have also received more at-
tention, especially the zajal, a form of popular strophic poetry that developed in al-An-
dalus that has become the center of a modern debate over Arabic and European cul-
tural influences in Muslim Spain (see Samuel Stern, Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry,
1974; Federico Corriente, El Cancionero hispanoárabe, 1984; and James T. Monroe,
“Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššaha?” Oral Tradition 4 [1989]: 38–64).

Mark Pettigrew

Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran

and Central Asia

A. Historical Introduction
During late antiquity, the vast area corresponding to Iran and Central Asia
was very different from its present composition not only from the political
point of view but also ethnically and culturally. In fact, before the coming of
Islam, the territory from Mesopotamia to the border with China was inhab-
ited by Iranian-speaking peoples who professed local forms of a religion
commonly known as Zoroastrianism (or Mazdeism) and whose holy scripts
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 26

are collected in the Avesta. In modern political terms, that area covered the
territories of Iran (or Persia), Afghanistan, the ex-Soviet republics of Turk-
menistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizistan and southern Kazakhstan and
also some parts of the Uighur Autonomous Province of Xinjiang (China) cor-
responding to the Tarim Basin (the “Western Regions” of Chinese authors).
The Tarim Basin was inhabited by Iranians in Khotan and Tumshuk, and
also by Tokharians (a population related to Indo-European peoples): they all
adopted Buddhism and left important artistic and literary traces before the
coming of the Uighur Turks and islamization. The Amu Darja (or Oxus for
the Greeks) always constituted a natural border between the area tradition-
ally controlled by Persia and Transoxiana, that is to say, the land beyond the
Oxus or, for the Arab authors, Ma Wara al-Nahr (“what is beyond the river”).
Persia constituted certainly the main state entity ruled by the powerful Sas-
anian Dynasty (226–642) that was continuously at war with the Roman-
Byzantine Empire on the western border and the nomads along its oriental
fringes (Touraj Daryaee, “Sasanian Persia (ca. 224–651 C.E.),” Iranian
Studies 31, 3–4 (1998): 431–61; Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Iran (224–651 CE):
Portrait of a Late Antique Empire, 2008; Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia:
The Rise and Fall of an Empire, 2009; Richard Nelson Frye, “The Political His-
tory of Iran under the Sasanians,” The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 (1): The
Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. Eshan Yarshater, 1986, 116–80;
Michael Moroni, “Sasanians,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. IX, ed. Clifford
Edmund Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, and G. Lecomte,
1997, 70–83; Klaus Schippmann, Grundzüge der Geschichte des Sasanidischen
Reiches, 1990; Joseph Wiesenhöfer, La Persia antica, 2003; Beate Dignas
and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals,
2007).
The Central Asian regions mentioned above represent historico-geo-
graphical terms rather than political ones and, in fact, they have never been
unified as it happened for Persia. For some time the Sasanians controlled
part of Central Asian such as Margiana (in modern Turkmenistan), Bactria-
na-Tokharestan (between southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and northern
Afghanistan) and Sogdiana (between southern Uzbekistan and western Ta-
jikistan), but, apparently, not Chorasmia (corresponding to the Autonomous
Region of Karakalapkistan, in northern Uzbekistan) although they were con-
tinuously open to the invasions of the nomads coming from the steppe. Arch-
eological investigations in the first two regions have revealed a strong pres-
ence of Buddhism, too, while Chorasmia and Sogdiana mainly followed the
local form of Zoroastrianism (exactly like in Persia). The invasions of the
mysterious Kidarites and Hephtalites from the steppes from the 4th to the 6th
27 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

centuries caused great loss to the Sasanian Empire which managed to re-con-
quer those oriental territories only during the reign of Khosrow I Anoshir-
wan (531–579) (Frantz Grenet, “Regional Interaction in Central Asia and
Northwest India in the Kidarite and Hephtalite Periods,” Indo-Iranian Lan-
guages and People, ed. Nicholas Sims-Williams, 2002, 203–24). This Sasanian
sovereign was Justinian’s main antagonist and also the initiator of a sort of
“Persian Renaissance.” He not only started a series of fiscal and monetary re-
forms in order to give stability to the kingdom but also secured the frontiers
by continuously fighting the Sasanians’ main enemies along the western and
the eastern borders (Andrea Gariboldi, Il regno di Xusraw dall’anima immor-
tale: Riforme economiche e rivolte sociali nell’Iran sasanide del VI secolo, 2006).
His apogee was reached with the victory over the Hepthalites, achieved
together with his new allies, the Western Turks, who soon turned into yet an-
other menace for Persia. The Turks controlled most of Central Asia and, in
the end, conquered also Bactriana-Tokharestan. The hegemony over Sog-
diana allowed the Turks to control the so-called “Silk Road” since the Sog-
dian merchants were the main traders active on the caravan routes between
Persia and China (Étienne De La Vaissière, Histoire des merchands sogdiens,
2002). During the war with Byzantium for the control of the caravan and
maritime trade routes, Khosrow I even extended a Sasanian protectorate over
Yemen (Janos Harmatta, “The Struggle for the ‘Silk Route’ Between Iran,
Byzantium and the Türk Empire from 560 to 630 A.D,” Kontakte zwischen
Iran, Byzanz und der Steppe im 6.–7. Jahrhundert, ed. Csanád Bálint, 2000,
249–52; Paul Yule, Himyar: Late Antique Yemen, 2007, 45–55) while most of
the eastern Arabian Peninsula was already under his jurisdiction (Derek
Kennet, “The Decline of Eastern Arabia in the Sasanian Period,” Arabian
Archaeology and Epigraphy, 18.1 [2007]: 86–122). With the coming of the Tang
Dynasty (618–906), the whole of the Turkish domain soon fell into Chinese
hands while Khosrow II Parvez (590–628) could extend the Sasanian Empire
at the maximum of its length invading Byzantine and Turkish territories on
both western and eastern fronts. Initially his relationships with the Byzan-
tines were good since Emperor Maurice (582–602) had helped him against
the rebel general Bahram Chobin between 590–91.
After the assassination of Maurice and his family by the rebel Phocas
(602–610), Khosrow II invaded the Byzantine Empire with two armies led
by the Sasanian generals Shahvaraz and Shahin who directed themselves
towards Egypt and Anatolia respectively, although the sources are very
enigmatic on this point (Matteo Compareti, “Presenza sasanide in Africa,”
Intorno all’iranica fenice/samand: un progetto di sintesi per il volo del Pegaso iranico
tra Ponto, Alessandretta e Insulindia, ed. Gianroberto Scarcia and Matteo
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 28

Compareti, 2003, 39–51, for an electronic version in English see http://

www.transoxiana.com.ar/0104/sasanians.html). He also sought to annex
to Persia the Lakhmid kingdom (southern Iraq), after the imprisonment and
execution of its last king: al-Numan III (Daniel T. Potts, The Arabian Gulf
in Antiquity, vol. II, 1990, 252–53). In the meantime, the Sasanian general of
Armenian origins Sambat defeated the enemies of Persia in the east incorpo-
rating into the Sasanian Empire the regions which had once belonged to the
Hephtalites and Turks (called in Armenian sources indistinctively Kushans).
The enthronement of Heraclius (610–641) at Byzantium produced some
changes in the conduction of the war against the Sasanians and, in fact, peace
was declared after the assassination of Khosrow II by one of his sons in 628.
In that period, the borderline between the two empires was established more
or less as it was before the long war which had exhausted both antagonists.
After the death of Khosrow II no other Sasanian Emperor could rule on a uni-
fied territory until the enthronement of Yazdigard III (632–651) who, how-
ever, was defeated by the Arabs and forced to abandon Persia.
The last representatives of the Sasanians lived exiled at the Tang court
where they were received friendly by the Chinese Emperor (Matteo Compa-
reti, “The Last Sasanians in China,” Eurasian Studies, II/2 [2003]: 197–213).
The relatively quick invasion of the Arabs in Persia and Transoxiana between
the 7th and 8th centuries radically changed the cultures of those regions which
slowly started to be converted to Islam and became almost completely tur-
cized (Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The
Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, 2007). Such histori-
cal facts are now well-known especially regarding Sogdiana (Yuri Karev,
Samarcande et le Sughd au début de l’Islam (VIIe–IXe siècle): histoire politique et trans-
formations sociales, forthcoming). With the islamization of Iranian lands local
authors also started to write about their ancient history which could be re-
constructed mainly through external sources, the archeological investi-
gation and the study of numismatics (Carlo G. Cereti, “Primary Sources for
the History of Inner and Outer Iran in the Sasanian Period,” Archivum Eurasiae
Medii Aevi 9 [1995–1997]: 17–71).

B. Art History and Archeological Investigation

Despite the scarcity of direct written sources, the artistic production of Iran
under the Sasanians and pre-Islamic Central Asia is quite well-known for dif-
ferent reasons. The history of research has been magisterially presented by
L. Vanden Berghe, regarding Sasanian monuments, and by S. Gorshenina
and C. Rapin for Central Asia (Luis Vanden Berghe, “Historique de la
découverte et de la recherche,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 13–18; Svetlana
29 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

Gorshenina and Claude Rapin, De Kaboul à Samarcande: Les arquélogues

en Asie centrale, 2001). Monumental rock reliefs and architectural remains
particularly concentrated in the region of Fars (south-western Iran) consti-
tute undeniable evidence of the grandeur of Iran under the Sasanians (Remy
Boucharlat, “L’architecture sassanide,” Catalogue Paris, 2006, 47–50;
Luis Vanden Berghe, “La sculpture,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 71–88;
E. Haerinck, “Les reliefs rupestres,” Catalogue Paris, 2006, 35–8; Dietrich
Huff, “Architecture sassanide,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 45–61). Unfortu-
nately, most of the relics newly found in Iran come from fortuitous recoveries
or from the antiquary market and not from scientific excavations which have
come to a stop after the Revolution of 1979 and have only very recently
started to be reconsidered by local archeologists. On the other hand, the
remarkable pieces of information about Central Asia in Late Antiquity are
mostly due to archeological activity which continued practically uninter-
rupted from the Soviet period to present days. An enormous amount of pub-
lications on such topics has already been presented and this is not the place to
reconsider them in detail. Here, all we can do is mention some important
titles. Furthermore, two great European exhibitions in 1993 (Catalogue
Bruxelles, 1993: Splendeur des Sassanides. L’empire perse entre Rome at la Chine
[224–642], curator Bruno Overlaet) and 2006 (Catalogue Paris, 2006:
Les Perses sassanides. Fastes d’un empire oublié [224–642], curator Françoise
Demange) have been entirely dedicated to the Sasanians and, especially, to
their artistic production. The bibliography given in those two catalogues
should be integrated with excellent entries published in the Encyclopaedia
Iranica by Dietrich Huff (“Archaeology. iv. Sasanian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica,
vol. II, 1987, 302–8; Dietrich Huff, “Architecture. iii. Sasanian,” Encyclo-
paedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 329–34) and Prudence Oliver Harper (“Art in
Iran. v. Sasanian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 585–94), although
something more can now be added both from the point of view of monumen-
tal and minor arts. In fact, a new Sasanian rock relief attributed to Shapur I
(241–72), has recently been discovered at Rag-e Bibi, in western Afghanistan
(Frantz Grenet, “Nouvelles découvertes sur la période sassanide en Af-
ghanistan,” L’art d’Afghanistan de la préhistoire à nos jours. Nouvelles donnais, 2007
85–94) and also some new pieces of Sasanian stone statues and figurative
capitals have been found in Iran (Matteo Compareti, “Iconographical
Notes on Some Recent Studies on Sasanian Religious Art (with an Additional
Note on an Ilkhanid Monument by Rudy Favaro),” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, XLV, 3
(2006) 163–200; Matteo Compareti, “Fragmentary Sasanian Sculptures
Recently Found in Iran,” Papers in Honour of Professor Biancamaria Amoretti Scar-
cia’s 65th Birthday, ed. Daniela Bredi and Leonardo Capezzone, 2008, 9–19).
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 30

Monumental art of the Sasanian period received particular attention by Iran-

ian scholars who published remarkable studies, such as the book on ancient
Iranian bridges (also those traditionally attributed to Roman prisoners) by
Muhammad-Ali Mokhlessi, written in Persian (Pol-ha-ye Qadimi-e Iran
[Ancient Bridges of Iran], 1998). Massoud Azarnoush managed to publish the
results of several studies which had been initiated before the Revolution in
Iran. Two of the most interesting publications are dedicated to the exca-
vations of Hajiabad (The Sasanian Manor House at Hajiabad, Iran, 1994) and the
monumental temple of Kangavar (Massoud Azarnoush, “Kangavar: Un
temple séleucide d’Anahita deviant un monument sassanide,” Dossiers d’arch-
éologie. Empires perses: d’Alexandre aux Sassanides, 243 (1999), 52–53). An im-
portant volume which comprises a list of the caravanserais in Iran, in some
cases, also dated to the Sasanian period, has been compiled by Muhammad
Y. Kyani and Wolfgang Kleiss (Iranian Caravanserais, 1994). A Polish archeo-
logical team led by Barbara Kaim recovered a sacral building which could
be attributed to the Sasanian period at Mele Hayram, in the southern part
of today’s Turkmenistan (“Un temple du feu sassanide découvert à Mele
Hairam (Turkménistan Méridional),” Studia Iranica, 31, II, 2002, 215–30).
These temples belong to the “fire temple” typology which is not yet very
well-known from the archeological point of view, even though numerous
hints can be found in Classical literature on Persia. Strangely enough, wall-
paintings did not receive the deserved consideration in the above-mentioned
catalogues although – at least according to some Classical authors – they
should have had a relevant role in Sasanian art. Probably, this attitude was
due to the extremely fragmentary state of all those paintings which could be
attributed to the Sasanian period. The recent discovery of Sasanian wall
paintings at Gor (Fars) and their first analysis by the well-known archeol-
ogist D. Huff will probably change such an attitude after their publication
(Dietrich Huff, “Formation and Ideology of the Sasanian State in the Con-
text of Archaeological Evidence,” The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, ed.
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 48–49). In any case, an
excellent article by A. de Waele now provides all information on this aspect
of Persian art already considered by experts like Boris Marshak (Boris I.
Marshak, “Pre-Islamic Painting of the Iranian Peoples and Its Sources
in Sculpture and the Decorative Arts,” Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its
Sources, ed. Eleanor Sims, with Boris I. Marshak and Ernst J. Grube, 2002,
7–19; An de Waele, “The Figurative Wall-Painting of the Sasanian Period
from Iran, Iraq and Syria,” Iranica Antiqua XXXIX [2004]: 339–81). In-
formation about Sasanian mosaics (displaying strong Hellenistic elements)
can also be found in the two catalogues already mentioned. Beautiful figu-
31 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

rative stucco panels – possibly dating from the 5th century – have been found
during agricultural works in Bandyan (northern Khorasan). Despite their
fragmentary state, the panels are among the most interesting Sasanian
stucco ever recovered: the scenes represented there have been identified as
hunts and battles against the Hephtalites (Medi Rahbar, “Découvert d’un
monument d’époque sassanide à Bandian, Dargaz (Nord Khorassan). Fouil-
les 1994 et 1995,” Studia Iranica 27.2 [1998]: 213–50). The excavations at
Bandyan have recently shown more interesting results since a fire altar and
graffiti were discovered there. A field which yielded very interesting results
is represented by inscribed seals and sealings (or bullae) belonging to rel-
evant people of Sasanian upper classes although, once more, only few of
them were recovered in Iran in controlled excavations around Shiraz. The
best introduction to Sasanian seals was published by R. Gyselen in the two
catalogues mentioned above. Recently, the same author has presented a col-
lection of seals and sealings embellished with armored cavalrymen very simi-
lar to the one in the great grotto at Taq-e Bostan. The study of their inscrip-
tions revealed that their owners were important military chieftains who
served the Sasanian sovereigns. Written sources of the Islamic period re-
ported about the division of the Persian Empire into four quadrants and the
seals are even more important since they are contemporary to the Sasanians
(R. Gyselen, The Four Generals of the Sasanian Empire: Some Sigillographic Evi-
dence, 2001). Another aspect of Sasanian production which can partly com-
pensate for the lack of direct sources is represented by numismatics. The
investigations by R. Göbl are still valid although the project of publication
of a systematic catalogue will soon give a more detailed idea of Sasanian coin-
age. Up to now, the catalogue focuses on the first sovereigns. M. Alram has
offered a view of the situation on early Sasanians numismatics introducing
also a new type of coin which shows Shapur I receiving the homage of the
defeated Roman Emperor as it can be observed in his rock reliefs (Michael
Alram, Maryse Blet-Lemarquand, and Prods O. Skjærvø, “Shapur,
King of Iranians and Non-Iranians,” Des Indo-Grecs aux Sassanides: Données pour
l’histoire et la géographie historique. Res Orientales, XVII, 2007, 11–40; M. Alram,
“Early Sasanian Coinage,” The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, ed. Vesta
Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 17–30). Several monuments
mentioned above represent the periphery of the Sasanian Empire while, as it
is now clear, the court exerted a monopoly on the production of some luxury
items, exactly as it was the case in Byzantium. Metalwork always constituted
an important good among ancient Iranians who used it for diplomatic ex-
changes, as their recovery together with the rich outfits of those peoples in
contact with the Sasanians, Bactrians and Sogdians, seems to suggest. Once
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 32

more, archeological excavations can rarely give an idea of the Sasanian cen-
tral production. The main collections of Sasanian metalwork and also the list
of those few plates recovered during archeological excavations are collected
now in a richly-illustrated article by Prudence Oliver Harper, certainly the
main scholar in the field of ancient Persian toreutic (“Sasanian Silver Vessels:
The Formation and Study of Early Museum Collection,” Mesopotamia and Iran
in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival c. 238 BC-AD 642: Proceed-
ings of a Seminar in Memory of V. G. Lukonin, ed. John Curtis, 2000, 46–56).
Most likely, textile manufactures were also directly controlled by the court
but we do not yet have a clear idea about Sasanian taste since all the previous
studies were based on the observation of the repertoire at Taq-e Bostan
which, unfortunately, cannot be considered a typical Sasanian monument
(Karel Otavsky, “Zur kunsthistorische Einordnung der Stoffe,” Entlang
der Seidenstraße: Frühmittelalterliche Kunst zwischen Persien und China in der
Abegg Stiftung, ed. Karel Otavsky, 1998, 119–214). From the iconographical
point of view just one linen and wool fragment kept in the Benaki Museum
(Athens) could be considered Sasanian, although, once more, it is a tex-
tile coming from the antiquary market (Matteo Compareti, “A Possible
asanian Textile Fragment in the Benaki Museum (Athens),” Scritti in Onore
di Giovanni M. D’Erme, ed. Michele Bernardini and Natalia Tornesello,
2005 289–302; Matteo Compareti, “Sasanian Textile Art: An Iconographic
Approach,” Studies on Persianate Societies 3 [2005]: 143–63. See also: David
H. Bivar, “Sasanian Iconography on Textiles and Seals,” Central Asian Tex-
tiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Regula Schorta, 2006,
9–21). Unfortunately, the few data about Sasanian potteries which had to
rely on Japanese excavations at Daylaman (Northern Iran, see: Namio
Egami, Shinji Fukai, and Seiichi Masuda, Dailaman, vol. II, 1966; Tos-
hihiko Sono and Shinji Fukai, Dailaman, vol. III, 1968), French ones at Susa
(Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, La poterie islamique, 1974) and Italian ones at Ctesi-
phon (in Iraq, not far from Baghdad, see: Roberta Venco Ricciardi, “Pot-
tery from Choche,” Mesopotamia 2 (1967): 93–104; Roberta Venco Ric-
ciardi, “Sasanian Pottery from Tell Mahuz (North Mesopotamia),”
Mesopotamia 5/6 [1970–1971]: 427–82) did not help much and their analysis
still only shows partial results (Robert Wenke, “Imperial Investments and
Agricultural Developments in Parthian and Sasanian Khuzestan: 150 BC
to AD 640,” Mesopotamia 10/11 [1975/1976]: 31–221; John Alden, “Exca-
vations at Tal-i Malyan. Part I. A Sasanian Kiln,” Iran 16 [1978]: 79–86;
Maurer Trinkaus, “Pottery from the Damghan Plain, Iran: Chronology and
Variability from the Parthian to the Early Islamic Periods,” Studia Iranica 15.1
[1986]: 23–88).
33 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

In conclusion, in accordance with what P. Harper and G. Scarcia have

recently said about Sasanian art, there was never a rupture between the past
and the artistic production of Late Antiquity Iran (Prudence Oliver Harper,
In Search of a Cultural Identity: Monuments and Artifacts of the Sasanian Near East,
3rd to 7th Century AD, 2006; Prudence Oliver Harper, “Image and Identity:
Art of the Early Sasanian Dynasty,” The Sasanian Era. The Idea of Iran, vol. 3,
ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 71–87; Gianro-
berto Scarcia, “La Persia dagli Achemenidi ai Sasanidi 550 a.C.–650 d.C.,”
Gianroberto Scarcia and Giovanni Curatola, Iran: L’arte persiana, 2004,
9–125). On the contrary, monumental art and also minor arts continued and
renewed ancient Iranian traditions already known by the Parthians (and
rooted in the much more ancient culture of Mesopotamia) with the clear bor-
rowings of Roman-Byzantine elements, especially in the last part of the Sas-
anian period. This has been observed by some scholars some of which have
come to very curious conclusions: Philip Lozinsky, for example, even
claimed that Sasanian art did not exist at all (“The Phoenix Mosaic from Anti-
och: a New Interpretation,” Fifth International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics,
1995, 135–42). As it is now well-known, Sasanian culture exerted a deep in-
fluence on the whole artistic production of the Islamic world and had an echo
also in Byzantium, “barbaric” Europe and the Caucasus (Klaus Schipp-
mann, “L’influence de la culture sassanide,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993,
131–41). Among the typical Sasanian elements which received great atten-
tion abroad, one should mention the so-called Senmurv or “winged dog with
peacock tail.” According to most recent investigations such a composite
monster would instead represent the royal glory of the Sasanians bestowed
by Ahura Mazda (Matteo Compareti, “The So-Called Senmurv in Iranian
Art: A Reconsideration of an Old Theory,” Loquentes linguis: Linguistic and
Oriental Studies in Honour of Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti, ed. Pier Giorgio Borbone,
Alessandro Mengozzi, and Mauro Tosco, 2006, 185–200). In fact, as an
expression of a divine concept, it was later largely adopted by Muslims and
Byzantines, too. Another typical Sasanian decorative element mainly used
as a pedestal supporting human busts or other subjects is the beribboned
spread wings. Scholars have concentrated especially on its origins and on the
fact that, most likely, it is a borrowing or a development of something which
pre-dates the Sasanians. On the crowns of Sasanians sovereigns and in some
other places (like on the textile of the Benaki Museum), spread wings are
used to support astronomical elements: this is particularly clear in the coins
(Andrea Gariboldi, “Astral Symbology on Iranian Coinage,” East and
West 54.1–4 (2004): 31–53. Among the Christians of the Sasanian Empire,
especially concentrated in the Caucasus, beribboned spread wings very often
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 34

support the cross. This suggests that, most likely, the astronomical elements
on Sasanian crowns could be associated with the Zoroastrian religion fol-
lowed at court (M. Compareti, “Tra il Palatino e Limburgo: considerazioni
su alcune stele armene di età pre-islamica,” Acculturazione e Disadattamento,
ed. Daniele Guizzo, forthcoming 2009).
Regarding the situation in Central Asia at the dawn of the Arab invasion,
the archeological data mostly relate to Sogdiana while Margiana, Bactria-
Tokharistan, Chorasmia and the Tarim Basin are better known during
earlier periods. Cooperation of local archeological teams with Russian,
French, Italian, German, Japanese and Australian colleagues will certainly
(and hopefully) result in interesting findings which, at least at the moment,
mainly focus on the period between the end of the Parthian and the begin-
ning of Sasanian dominion. In any case, the best publication still remains a
collective study (in Russian) by several scholars who have worked on the field
since the 1950s (Srednjaja Azija i Dal’nij Vostok v epohu Srednevekovyja: Srednjaja
Azija v rannem srednevekov’e, 1999). This volume should be consulted together
with related entries in the Encyclopaedia Iranica (Guitty Azarpay, “Art in Iran.
vi. Pre-Islamic Eastern Iran and Central Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II,
1987, 595–603; Victor M. Masson, “Archaeology. v. Pre-Islamic Central
Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 308–17; Galina A. Pugachenkova,
“Architecture. iv. Central Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 334–39)
and with Boris A. Litvinskij’s most recent book in French (La civilisation
de l’Asie Centrale antique, 1998). The results of French excavations mainly in
Uzbekistan together with papers by Russian authors are now collected in a
great volume (Les arts de l’Asie centrale, gen. ed. Pierre Chuvin, 1999). More
curious readers can find a great selection of Central Asian sites and topics
organized as entries in an excellent Italian publication edited by Ciro Lo
Muzio, the Enciclopedia dell’arte antica classica ed orientale. Secondo supple-
mento 1971–1994. Central Asian paintings have also been carefully studied
in a more recent Italian volume with special focus on the Sogdian production
(Chiara Silvi Antonini, La pittura dell’Asia Centrale da Alessandro Magno
all’Islam, 2003). Bamyan was certainly one of the main Buddhist centers of
today’s Afghanistan, and Sasanian elements can be observed especially in
paintings which were, unfortunately, lost in great number (Deborah Klim-
burg-Salter, The Kingdom of Bamyan, 1989). In the area where the great
Buddhas once stood, very promising archeological excavations have started
under the coordination of Z. Tarzi, Afghanistan’s main archeologist whose
expertise also comprises the study of Chinese sources on Bamyan (Zemarya-
lai Tarzi, “Les résultats des fouilles du ‘monastère oriental’ à la fin de la IIIe
campagne en 2004,” L’art d’Afghanistan de la préhistoire à nos jours: Nouvelles
35 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

donnais, 2007, 98–124). A complete catalogue of items from the National

Museum of Kabul is now available (Francine Tissot, Catalogue of the National
Museum of Afghanistan 1931–1985, 2006). Many old pictures constitute an in-
valuable help to observe even those objects now irreparably destroyed during
the terrible last years in the history of that tormented country. Sogdiana
main sites dating from the 7th and 8th centuries are Penjikent (Western Tajik-
istan), Afrasyab (ancient Samarkand), Varakhsha and Paykand (not far from
Bukhara). Unfortunately, the recent passing away of the two leaders of the
archeological mission at Penjikent and Paykand and distinguished scholars,
B. I. Marshak and G. L. Semenov, caused not only a loss for the whole
scholarly community, but also a stop in the field work, which, as it has re-
cently been announced, will be continued by another team of archeologists.
Penjikent has received the name of “Pompei of Central Asia,” especially for
the numerous wall paintings discovered there whose main scenes represent
Rostam legendary adventures, religious scenes and also tales from Esopos’s
repertoire and the Panchatantra (Boris I. Marshak, Legends, Tales, and Fables
in the Art of Sogdiana, 2002). The site of Paykand, in the western part of histori-
cal Sogdiana, has been studied especially from the urban and architectural
point of view although some paintings belonging to different periods have
been recovered (Gregori L. Semenov, “Dwelling Houses of Bukhara in
the Early Middle Ages,” Eran ud Aneran. Studies presented to Boris I. Marshak
on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Matteo Compareti, Paola Raffetta,
and Gianroberto Scarcia, 2006, 555–69, for the electronic version see
http://www.transoxiana.org/EranArticles/semenov.html). Not far from
Bukhara there is the big site of Varakhsha, possibly a fortified mansion of the
Bukhar Khudat (“Lord of Bukhara”) during the pre-Islamic period. There,
archeological investigations have not been carried out for a long period of
time which is a pity, bearing in mind the remarkable findings of the last cen-
tury. Very recently, A. Naymark wrote a stimulating paper on the site and
suggested a new interpretation of its wall paintings (Aleksandr Naymark,
“Returning to Varakhsha,” The Silk Road Newsletter, 1/2 (2003): 9–22, for the
electronic version see http://silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/december/
varakhsha. htm). Among the sites of that region, Afrasyab has probably re-
ceived the greatest attention by scholars of Sogdian art in the last years since
new studies reopened the problem of the interpretation of the scenes repre-
sented on the walls of the so-called “Hall of the Ambassadors.” As it is now
almost universally accepted, the four walls represent important festivities
connected with calendrical matters of the Sogdians, Chinese, Indians and,
possibly, Turks. The artists who realized those paintings, probably around
660 AD, must clearly have had in mind concepts about calendrical calcu-
Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia 36

lation and the culture of neighboring kingdoms in contact with Sogdiana

just before the coming of the Arabs, when the whole of Transoxiana was
(mainly nominally) under Tang protectorate. Several papers on Afrasyab
“Hall of the Ambassadors” are now collected in the proceedings of a confer-
ence focusing on those paintings (Royal Nauruz in Samarkand: Proceedings of the
Conference Held in Venice on the Pre-Islamic Paintings at Afrasiab, Suppl. 1 to Rivista
degli Studi Orientali LXXVIII, ed. Matteo Compareti and É de La Vaissière,
2006). It is not improbable that the Uzbek-French archeological team work-
ing on the site of Afrasyab will increase our knowledge about the site in the
near future (Paul Bernard, Frantz Grenet, and Massud Isammidinov,
Fouilles de Samarkand et de Sogdiane, vol. I: Travaux de la Mission Archéologique
Franco-Ouzbèke à Afrasiab. 1989–2007, 2009. Other Sogdian sites are at present
investigated thanks to the cooperation of local authorities and experts with
foreign expeditions. A German team under the supervision of M. Mode and
S. Stark is currently investigating another promising site in Ustrushana
(northern Tajikistan), an historical region of Sogdian language and culture.
The main focus of the mission is to come to a better understanding of the pas-
sage from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period with great attention to Chi-
nese sources (Markus Mode, “Archaeological Glympses of Ustrushana,”
electronic version at: http://www.orientarch.uni-halle.de /sfbs86/c5/ustru/
indexe.htm). Also, an Italian mission supervised by M. Tosi is collaborating
with the Uzbeks at the castle of Kafir Kala where numerous Sogdian bullae,
seals and coins have been discovered in the last years. Kafir Kala is a very
promising site since it might have been the residence of the king of Samar-
kand known in Islamic sources as Revdad. Among the numerous findings,
the sealings of Kafir Kala represent a unique corpus within Central Asian
archeology but, unfortunately, a complete publication is not yet available
(Sara Cazzoli and Carlo G. Cereti, “The Sealings of Kafir Kala: Preliminary
Report,” Ancient Civilizations from Schytia to Siberia 11.1–2 (2005): 133–64).
A presentation of the project and its goals can be found on the following
website: http://www3.unibo.it/archeologia/ricerca/scavi/caauzbekistan/
uzbe.htm. Seals, together with coins, always represent an important source
of direct information. Unfortunately, their study is not as well coordinated
as it is the case for Sasanian numismatics and seals. Among the few sealings
one could mention Kanka, that is to say, the area of ancient Tashkent
(G. I. Bogomolov and J. I. Burjakov, “Sealings from Kanka,” In the Land of
the Gryphons: Papers on Central Asian Archaeology in Antiquity, ed. Antonio
Invernizzi, 1995, 217–37). Studies on Central Asian coins are numerous
and mainly in Russian, although some interesting papers have recently ap-
peared in English (Joe Cribb, “Money as a Maker of Cultural Continuity and
37 Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia

Change in Central Asia,” After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam, ed. Joe Cribb
and Georgina Hermann, 2007, 333–75). Much attention has been devoted
to Central Asian textiles mainly from private collections and antiquary
markets. Many specimens are considered to be Sogdian products since very
similar decorations appear on the robes worn by Sogdian people on mural
paintings from Penjikent. Few fragments have been found during the exca-
vations in Sogdiana itself while other textiles considered to be the product of
Sogdian weavers who lived abroad have been found in great quantity in the
Tarim Basin, in what is now Xinjiang Autonomous Province (China). The
Abegg-Stiftung Textil Museum at Riggisberg (Switzerland) has on display
one of the main collections of Central Asian textiles and has already pub-
lished most of its material on two occasions (Entlang der Seidenstraße: Früh-
mittelalterliche Kunst zwischen Persien und China in der Abegg Stiftung, ed. Karel
Otavsky, 1998; Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages,
ed. Regula Schorta, 2006).
The region of the Tarim Basin has always been a matter of Chinese arch-
eology although in the last years there have been some initiatives by Euro-
pean and Japanese teams. Among the most interesting results there are the
excavations by a Swiss team supervised by Christopher Baumer which led to
the discovery of previously unknown 7th-century Buddhist wall paintings at
Dandan Oylyk, in the area of ancient Khotan. Those paintings are particularly
interesting for the mix of local, Indian, and Iranian (most likely Sogdian) ico-
nographical elements used in the depiction of some problematic divinities
(Christopher Baumer, Southern Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and
Sven Hedin, 2000). Even though the artifacts in the huge area corresponding
to Central Asia mainly come from scientific excavations, there is still a big gap
in the comprehension of that region as a whole unity. Future investigations
might facilitate a different approach to the study of one of the most import-
ant regions of the Eurasian continent for its role as a crossroad of cultures and
civilizations during the very problematic period of late antiquity. In the last
years some publications devoted to Tarim Basin archeological investigations
have appeared, but the presentation of the material is almost entirely in Chi-
nese (A Grand View of Xinjiang’s Cultural Relics and Historical Sites, 1999).
Among the most interesting archeological discoveries of the last years
one must not forget to mention the 6th-century funerary monuments that be-
longed to important Sogdians which have been found in the area around
Xi’an (China). Although they reflect in all probability the production of Chi-
nese artists for rich Sogdian immigrants, their decorative elements include
many Zoroastrian themes extremely useful for the understanding of similar
images found in Central Asia. Further, they present in many cases inscrip-
Classical Persian Literature 38

tions in Chinese and the respective languages of the deceased ones revealing
more interesting information (Les Sogdiens en Chine, ed. Éric Trombert and
É. de La Vaissière, 2005; Boris I. Marshak, “La thématique sogdienne
dans l’art de la Chine de la seconde moitié du VIe siècle,” Comptes rendus de
l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1 (2001): 227–64; Judith A. Lerner,
Aspects of Assimilation: The Funerary Practices and Furnishings of Central Asians in
China, 2005). The site where they were found used to be, most likely, a cem-
etery for foreigners: more than forty graves have been localized, and future
investigations will surely offer fresh material for the study of ancient Central
Asian civilizations in contact with China in late antiquity.

Select Bibliography
Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: The Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art (Berkeley, Los An-
geles, and London: University of California Press, 1981); History of Civilizations of Central
Asia, vol. II: The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 BC to AD 250, ed.
János Harmatta (Paris: Unesco, 1994); History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. III:
The Crossroads of Civilizations: AD 250 to 750, ed. Boris Litvinsky (Paris: Unesco, 1996);
Les Perses sassanides: Fastes d’un empire oublié (224–642), Françoise Demange (curator)
(Paris: Paris Musée: Suilly-la-Tour and Findakly, 2006); Splendeur des Sassanides: L’Em-
pire perse entre Rome at la Chine [224–642], Bruno Overlaet (curator) (Brussels: Musées
Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, 1993); Srednjaja Azija i Dal’nij Vostok v epohu Srednevekovyja:
Srednjaja Azija v rannem srednevekov’e (Moscow: Nauka, 1999); Les arts de l’Asie centrale,
gen. ed. Pierre Chuvin (Paris: Citadelles et Mazenod, 1999); Emires Perses d’Alexandre aux
Sassanides, Dossiers d’Archéologie, 243, may 1999.

Matteo Compareti

Classical Persian Literature

A. General Introduction
Classical Persian literature only developed as a written medium in the 10th
century C.E. Pahlavi or Middle Persian had been the written language of the
Sasanian Empire. However, when the Arabs conquered its territories in the
7th century C.E., written Pahlavi was only maintained by the Zoroastrian
clergy and by clerks and scribes employed by the Arabs to maintain the state
records. For more than two hundred years, the Persian literary tradition
ceased, as Persian writers wrote in Arabic. During this two hundred year
hiatus, numerous Persian works from different genres were translated into
Arabic.
39 Classical Persian Literature

A slow process of Arabization and Islamization took place after the Arab
conquest of Persia. Arabic vocabulary made its way into spoken Persian and
gradually the Arabic script was adopted and adapted to accommodate all
the sounds of Persian. Although this “New Persian” (Dari) emerged as a new
medium of communication, it was not accepted as a serious alternative to
Arabic, which was the lingua franca of the Islamic Empire.
Arabic retained its preeminence as the major written medium. Paradoxi-
cally, the Arab conquests had played a major role in promoting this New Per-
sian, which in the Arab East or Greater Khurasan (eastern Persia, Khurasan
and Transoxiana) became the preferred language, overshadowing Sogdian
and Khwarazmian. This linguistic phenomenon was initially confined to the
east and it only gained currency at a much later date in western Iran. Written
Persian only began to be commonly used in the second half of the 9th century
in Greater Khurasan. Persian prose was deemed suitable only for propaganda
and amusing stories. However, poetry was promoted and patronized at
court.

B. Persian Poetry
The mechanics of Persian poetry strictly conformed to the rules of Arabic
prosody. It can be divided into two forms: narrative and lyrical. Narrative
poetry manifested itself in the form of the mathnavi (rhyming couplet), a
form that was known to the Arabs but little used by them, due to their love of
the monorhyme. The Persians developed this form for a number of purposes
and themes, but utilized it especially for epics, romances and later, for didac-
tic mystical works. Although mathnavis were first written in the 10th century,
the most memorable mathnavis were not written until the 11th century dur-
ing the Ghaznavid dynasty. Firdawsi’s Shahnama, the national epic poem of
Persia, recounts the tales of the kings of Iran from the earliest times. It was
completed in 1010 A.D. This was followed by Asadi Tusi’s Garshasp-Nama
and other epics. The mathnavi popularized many romances such as Warqa
va Gulshah, Wis va Ramin and the famous romances popularized by Niãami
(1140–1209), such as Layli va Majnun, Khusraw va Shirin and Haft Paykar. Sana’i
(d. 1130) was the first to use the mathnavi as a means of mystical teaching.
The use of the mathnavi by the great sufi masters became standard practice as
demonstrated by Farid al-Din ’Attar’s (1140–1230) The Conference of the Birds,
Jalal al-Din Rumi’s (1207–1273) famous Mathnavi, and Jami’s (d. 1492) Haft
Awrang and a multitude of others.
Lyric poetry began by imitating the formal ode or the qaæida of the Arabs.
The qaæida was often a panegyric to a patron but was also used for eulogies,
elegies, satires, and religious instruction. One of the earliest masters of the
Classical Persian Literature 40

qa#ida was Rudaki (d. 941). The 11th century is considered the period for the
perfection of the Persian qa#ida, by the master poets Manuchirhi (d. 1040),
Farrukhi (d. 1038) and ’Unsuri (d. 1050). The Sufi masters Sana’i, ’Attar and
Rumi also used them later for their mystical poetry. The lyric ghazal replaced
the qa#ida in popularity in the 13th century.
The ghazal was a monorhymed shorter ode of between 5 and 15 lines. Its
theme was primarily on earthly or divine love. Sa’di (d. 1292) and Hafiz
(d. 1390) both from Shiraz are considered the masters of this form. The quat-
rain or ruba’i (ruba’iyyat pl.) with the rhyme pattern of AABA is the only true
purely Persian poetic form. It is epigrammatic and lends itself well to politi-
cal satire. This form was popularized by Fitzgerald’s translations of the
ruba’iyyat of ’Umar Khayyam.
A much larger variety of poetic forms exist in Persian poetry but the main
forms are the mathnavi, qa#ida, ghazal and ruba’i. Classical Persian poetry
before the modern era produced three distinctive styles (sabk) in its develop-
ment: Khurasani, ’Iraqi and Hindi. The earliest Khurasani style is distinct
for it use of simple and pure language almost devoid of Arabic loan words.
Cultural and linguistic borders diffused with the advent of the ’Iraqi style.
Poetry acquired a new technical dexterity and artifice that utilized a greatly
expanded vocabulary with many Arabic loan words. By the 15th century, the
Hindi style had evolved into a very aestheticized and highly stylized form.

C. Persian Prose
During the Samanid period (875–999) in Greater Khurasan Persian was
adopted as the official language of government. By the mid-10th century,
a number of Persian translations of Arabic works were commissioned. The
Ghaznavids (977–1186) succeeded the Samanids in the early 11th century. In
the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (998–1030), Persian poetry flour-
ished but Arabic prose dominated. A number of Persian histories were
written during this period, such as the anonymous History of Sistan and the
histories of Bayhaqi and Gardizi. Also for the first time a sufi manual, the
Kashf-i Mahjub was written in Persian by Hujviri. While new Persian was
adequate to tell narrative stories and to relate history, most scholars and the
educated elite still found Persian inadequate to clearly and precisely articu-
late their ideas. Arabic remained supreme. However, early efforts were made
to write scientific and philosophical works in Persian, but one of the major
obstacles to this was the lack of a standardized vocabulary. The great phys-
ician and polymath Ibn Sina [Avicenna] (d. 1037) wrote the majority of his
works in Arabic but he helped further the development of Persian scientific
prose by writing a number of works in Persian.
41 Classical Persian Literature

Under the Saljuq Turks (1038–1194) the Persians of the Iranian plateau,
Khurasan and Transoxiana were reunited for the first time in centuries and
enclaves were established in Anatolia, where Persian culture and poetry
flourished at court. This political union facilitated the standardization of
classical Persian in western Iran at the expense of local dialects. It also co-
incided with the beginnings of a period that fused Khurasani and Iraqi cul-
tures. Persian prose borrowed anything that it could from Arabic and became
very ornate and full of repetitive rhyming.
With the passing of the 12th century, Persian emerged fully developed,
having adopted the stratagem of allowing one hundred percent of the Arabic
language to be used in prose writings. As stated earlier, in the 8th century a
large number of Middle Persian works were translated into Arabic. These
stories were fictional frame stories, written for the elite and were very popu-
lar at court. These stories now re-entered the body of Persian literature,
slightly altered and skewed to Islamic values written in a new Persian. The
most notable of this genre are the animal tales of Kalila va Dimna that were
originally taken from the Sanskrit Panchatantra. Later a number of romances
and heroic tales such as the Sindbad-Nama and Bakhtiyar-Nama emerged,
as did collections of anecdotes such as Muhammad ’Awfi’s Jawami’ al-Hikayat.
Additionally popular stories traditionally told by storytellers orally were pre-
served in prose and often translated into other languages such as Turkish.
This article has limited itself to the classical Persian literary tradition,
primarily in Persia and Central Asia. However, Persian flourished in the early
period of the Ottoman Empire before the emergence of Ottoman Turkish. In
the 16th century, the Mughals established themselves in India, where Persian
was the court language. A very large literary tradition continued on for cen-
turies and produced many famous poets, litterateurs and historians. British
India maintained Persian as the administrative language.

D. History of Research

Western Scholars
Critical modern scientific methodologies for the study of classical Persian lit-
erature first emerged in Europe. Unfortunately space restrictions allow only
a handful of contributors to be mentioned here.
Sir William Jones (1746–1794). Sir William was a brilliant philologist
who studied law and then moved to British India, where he was appointed
to the Supreme Court of Bengal. He is credited with being one of the first in-
fluential pioneers in comparative linguistics and Indo-European Studies.
Based in Calcutta, Jones was instrumental in founding the Asiatic Society of
Classical Persian Literature 42

Bengal in 1784. The Society exists to this day and has published thousands of
articles and monographs on virtually every subject. The Society’s journal and
publications provided a forum for discussion and a place to publish. The
press in Calcutta published a large number of Persian works even before
presses became prevalent in Persia. While Jones translated a number of Per-
sian works into English, his major contribution to the study of Persian was
the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Edward G. Browne (1862–1926) became the first professor of Persian at
Cambridge University. Prior to his appointment, he traveled to Persia to buy
books and manuscripts for the university. Subsequently, he wrote the four
volume Literary History of Persia (1902, 1906, 1920 and 1924), which was the
first modern work of its kind. Browne’s work has remained the definitive
work; however, other surveys such as those published by Jan Rypka, Allesan-
dro Bausani and Zabih Allah. Safa have supplemented it and included new
information. His study was the most comprehensive, but Browne was very
subjective in some of his judgments of Persian literature. For example, later
poetry was judged as being too ornate and/or florid for Western tastes.
Reynold A. Nicholson (1868–1945) was a colleague of Browne at
Cambridge and was noted for his interests in Islamic Studies. He specialized
in Sufism. While he wrote equally on Arabic literature, including a Literary
History of the Arabs (1907), in the field of Persian literature his studies of the
works of Jalal al-Din Rumi are considered to be a major contribution to the
field. He produced the first critical edition of the Mathnavi (1925–1940) and
his eight-volume translation and commentary were the first of their kind in
English.
Gilbert Lazard (1920–) was a professor of Iranian languages at the Sor-
bonne and then the Director of Iranian Studies. He has made many major
contributions to the study of Iranian languages. He has emerged as one of the
world authorities on the “New Persian Renaissance.” His works on the first
Persian poets of the 9th and 10th centuries were groundbreaking and his col-
laborations with major scholars such as Zabih Allah Safa, Henri Massé and
Roger Lescot to create an anthology of Persian poetry from the 11th to the
20th centuries has been of major importance. Additionally he has translated
many Persian works and revised major translations such as J. Mohl’s
Shahnama (1846–1848).

Iranian Scholars
Four Iranian scholars pioneered modern scientific methods and began to
produce critical textual editions for the first time. They were Muhammad
Qazvini, Muhammad ’Ali Furughi, Sayyid Hasan Taqizada and ’Ali
43 Classical Persian Literature

Akbar Dihkhuda. The combined scholarly contributions of these four men

were enormous and built a firm foundation for scholarship. However, Qaz-
vini was one of the prime movers.
Muhammad Qazvini (1877–1949) was a ground breaker in methods of
textual editing and criticism and had a major influence on these distin-
guished scholars: Malik al-Shu’ara’ Bahar, Badi’a al-Zaman Furuzanfar,
Muhammad Taqi Mudarris Razavi, Muhammad Parvin Gunabadi and
Mahmud Farrukh. In 1904, he was invited by his brother to England to
see the great museums and manuscript collections. He stayed in Europe for
36 years. He edited a number of important Persian works that expanded
scholars understanding of Persian poetics and the early classical literary
movement. His collected articles comprised more than ten volumes.
’Abbas Iqbal (1896–1955). He was sent to Paris at the age of 28 where he
studied at the Sorbonne and met Qazvini. When he returned to Iran he
taught at the University of Tehran. He authored more that 200 articles and
45 books on literature, history and geography. He was instrumental in estab-
lishing Yad-i gar (1944–1949) as a serious research journal.
Ibrahim Pur Daud (1886–1968) translated the Avesta (1964) in 9 vol-
umes and researched and taught ancient Iranian customs, languages and his-
tory at the University of Tehran. A large number of outstanding scholars
studied under him.
Muhammad Taqi Bahar (Malik al-Shu’ara Bahar) (1886–1951) sought
to research unknown areas in Persian history and literature. He was one of
the best poets of 20th-century Iran but also became the most outstanding
scholar of Persian literary historiography. His seminal three-volume work
Stylistics (Sabk shinasi [1942]) meticulously traced the development of Persian
prose writing from the earliest times up until the 20th century. Bahar’s
study essentially documents the evolution of the written language from
one that was purely Persian through a process of Arabization. He breaks
this development down into four historical periods and into six distinct
prose styles. Besides this work and his own poetry, his critical edition of the
anonymous History of Sistan (Tarikh-i Sistan [1935]) was one of the first of
a multitude of critical editions of important literary works to be published in
Iran.
Parviz Natal Khanlarli (1913–1990): He wrote numerous works on
Persian literature and language such as Sh’ir va hunar (1967), Tarikh-i Zaban-i
Farsi (1970) and Dastur-i Zaban-i Farsi (1972). He was a poet in his own right.
He served as the Director of the Shahnama Foundation and the Iranian Cul-
tural Foundation and was instrumental in establishing the Iranian Academy
of Arts and Literature of Iran.
Classical Persian Literature 44

Zabih Allah Safa (1911–1999) was an influential professor at Tehran

University and will be remembered for his famous and monumental eight-
volume literary history of Iran (Tarikh-i adabiyat dar Iran [1956–1991]).
Muhammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani (1939–) remains one of the most
outstanding Iranian literary critics, and expert on Sufism whose in-depth
studies in poetics, genres, and imagery continue to inspire aspiring scholars.
A few of his works are Suvar-i khayal dar sh’ir-i Farsi (1971), Guzidah-yi ghaza-
liyat-i Shams (1974), Avaz-i bad va baran (1998) and Chashidan-i ta’m-i vaqt
(2006).

E. Past Trends in Scholarship

In Iran the manuscript tradition had thrived. Large numbers of scribes were
employed to copy texts. Because of the large numbers of people engaged in
this activity and their varied degrees of education and expertise, the quality
of the subsequent copies varied greatly. Similarly, because manuscripts
were largely commissioned, they did not necessarily include a text or work
in its entirety. Additionally, there was nothing that compelled a scribe to
remain totally faithful to the text. For example, a line of poetry might be
omitted or replaced because it was considered too sexually explicit. Textual
changes often occurred for sectarian reasons and differences between Sunni
and Shi’i Muslims. This practice led to adding curses after the names of cer-
tain individuals, who were often reviled by extreme Shi’ites. Specialized
texts presented major difficulties for those unfamiliar with the subject
matter and /or the vocabulary. It has only been one hundred years since criti-
cal textual editing of classical texts began. This movement was at odds with
existing publishing practices that often took inexcusable liberties with the
texts.
The list of scholars and medievalists who have made lasting contribu-
tions to Persian literature is truly too long to list. In the past two centuries,
the prevailing views of both Europeans and Iranians have been that the rise
of Persian literature had its roots in the nationalistic desires of the Persian
peoples to throw off the yoke of their Arab oppressors. This fit well with the
19th-century European understanding of nationalism. In the early 20th cen-
tury, the Iranians experienced the Constitution period, where nationalism,
independence and democratic government were major concerns. Iranians
studied abroad before the establishment of modern universities in Iran and
learned scientific research methods while at the same time studying their
ancient languages and literatures in foreign universities. In the 1930’s after
the establishment of Tehran University, the Faculty of Literature graduated
scores of excellent scholars. Muhammad Reza Shah, the last Shah of Iran
45 Classical Persian Literature

worked diligently to instill a sense of nationalism in the population. Huge

sums of money were invested in projects, which promoted Persian culture
and literature. As a result of this legacy, the predominant view of the devel-
opment of Persian has been one focusing on nationalism and things deemed
Persian.

F. Current Trends
The Iranian revolution in late 1979 has influenced the study of classical Per-
sian literature. A reaction against the former Shah’s policy of secularization
and a reemphasis of Islam, Arabic, and specifically Shi’i Islam has changed
the direction of government funding. While Persian literature remains im-
portant, projects focusing on religious themes receive more funding. Iran’s
political isolation has adversely affected scholarly intellectual exchanges.
Travel and study opportunities have decreased. Because of these situations,
scholarly studies published in Iran are less available than in the past and
some important research has gone unnoticed. However, the political iso-
lation of Iran has had a positive effect on other aspects of the study of classical
Persian literature. It has sparked an increase in the study of the Persian litera-
ture of Mughal India and also in Central Asia. Currently, the study of modern
Persian literature is the fastest growing area. This includes Iranian writers
along with an ever-growing body of authors belonging to the Iranian dias-
pora.
As mentioned earlier, the study of classical Persian literature has and has
had too many outstanding scholars to list separately. Scholarship has con-
centrated on firmly defining the characteristics of both poetry and prose dur-
ing the various historical periods and analyzing the linguistic development
of the literature. A number of surveys of Persian literature have been pub-
lished since Browne’s Literary History. They have tried to update omissions,
mistakes and discoveries made since Browne’s time but have little to offer by
way of interpretation or analysis. Studies on particular poets, litterateurs or
genres have been published, as have many definitive critical editions with in-
sightful analysis. Scholars and bibliographers such as Iraj Afshar have
worked unceasingly to describe and produce catalogues of newly catalogued
manuscripts. Many lesser known periods and poets have come to light in de-
tailed studies in specialized areas, such as in Isma’ili Studies. There is a need
to produce more studies that are interdisciplinary and interpretive but this
appears to be the growing trend. Additionally, there is a great need for better
translations of the classic poets. In this area Dick Davis’s translations of the
Shahnama and other works serve as an inspiration to others.
Islamic Philosophy 46

Select Bibliography
Arthur J. Arberry, Classical Persian Literature (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1958); Malik al-Shu’ara, Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Sabk-Shinasi, ya Tarikh-i Tatavvur-i
Nashr-i Farsi baray-i Tadris dar Danishkadah-i va Dawrah-i Duktur-i Adabiyat, 3 vols.
(Tehran: Chapkhanah-i Khudkar, 1958); Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of
Persia, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902, 1906, 1920, and 1924);
Gilbert Lazard, Les premiers poètes persans (IXe-Xe siècles): Fragments rassemblés, édités et tra-
duits, 2 vols. (Tehran: Institut franco-iranien; Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient,
1964); Gilbert Lazard, Roger Lescot, and Zabih Allah Safa, Anthologie de la poésie per-
sane XIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); Julie Meisami, Structure and Meaning in Medi-
eval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (London and New York: Routledge Curzon,
2003); Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, 8 vols. (Leiden: Brill,
1925); Antonio Pagliaro and Allesandro Bausani, Storia della letteratura persiana
(Milan: Nuova Accademia Editrice, 1960); Jan Rypka, Iranische Literaturgeschichte (Leip-
zig: Otto Harassowitz, 1959); Zabih Allah Safa, Tarikh-i Adabiyat dar Iran, 5 vols.
(Tehran: Kitabfurush-i Ibn Sina, 1954–1984).

Mark David Luce

Islamic Philosophy

A. Introduction
Muslim philosophy has a history that precedes of ten odd centuries the inter-
est devoted to it from Western academic practices. If its very name testifies
the alien origin of the notion, it is nonetheless true that Muslims partially
relinked it to indigenous sources. As a matter of fact, Muslim philosophy,
while sharing a great deal of features with its Greek ancestor, has developed
along specific lines, so that it is easy for Muslim thinkers to watch at their
philosophical tradition as no less than an influential branch of Islamic
religio-intellectual building. As pointed out by Henry Corbin (Histoire de la
philosophie islamique, 1964), the source of Muslim philosophical meditation is
two-fold: Greek and Quranic.
On the one hand, theoretical questions were raised at the beginning
of Islam, when early Muslims and companions used to address the Prophet
asking for explanations on religious and practical matters. On the other
hand, early conquests brought Muslims into contact with alien civilizations,
bearers of different forms of knowledge, of whom ruling classes promptly
became admirers, giving birth to a wide translation movement that repre-
sented one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena of the 9th and
47 Islamic Philosophy

10th centuries (Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic
Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ^Abbasid Society, 1988). This en-
counter exerted an inestimable influence on the developement of Islamic
philosophy, in all its aspects.
If the first philosophers of the Muslim world (albeit not all confessionally
Muslim) were basically Neoplatonicists, endorsing a particular Platonic spiri-
tualism nurtured in Aristotelian logic (although some thinkers were not
devoid of influences arising from Greek scepticism), the contribution of medi-
tation on the fact of divine Revelation added their methodology a specific gist.
Throughout Islamic history, the terms used to define philosophy and
their meaning varied from one period to another, and also depending on the
environment in which the debates occurred. The most common terms, used
with a slight semantic difference, had always been hikma (literally meaning
“wisdom”), and falsafa, a calque from the original Greek. Not strictly rel-
egated in philosophical practice, methodology of philosophy entered other
intellectual areas, such as dialectic theology (kalam), jurisprudence (fiqh),
grammar, historiography and Sufism. Meanwhile, as the term falsafa has al-
ways been quite limited in use, in that it is referred to the practice of dialecti-
cal reasoning, hikma is often related to many kinds of wisdom, be it that of the
Sufis, theologians, or philosophers, etc.
Following Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s classification (The Meaning and Concept
of Philosophy in Islam, 2001), the definitions of Greek origin most common
among Islamic philosophers are:

1) The knowledge of all existing things qua existents (ashya’ al-mawjuda

bi-ma hiya mawjuda);
2) The knowledge of divine and human matters;
3) Taking refuge in death, thus love of death;
4) The arts of arts and science of sciences;
5) Love for wisdom.

But beside these definitions, one should not forget the religious nature of
Muslim philosophy; the neat distinction between philosophy and theology
originated in the West on the grounds of a “secularization” that is largely un-
known to the world of Islam. Thus, searching for a determinate boundary
separating mystical speculation, spiritual experience, and prophetic phi-
losophy, would inevitably result in a frustrating and pointless enterprise.
Classical Western handbooks on Islamic philosophy had long referred to
the matter in terms of Arabic philosophy. Heir to medieval scholastic tradi-
tion, this wording must be definitly rejected, and no serious Islamicist, nor
Islamic Philosophy 48

informed historian of philosophy, uses it any longer. As a matter of fact, not

only early Muslim philosophers were not homogeneously Arabs, but a
number of leading medieval thinkers composed their works completely in
Persian. If one observes that even major philosophers such as Ibn Sina
(Avicenna for the Latin Middle Age) composed many remarkable works in
the language of Iran, the above mentioned inconsistency becomes even more
evident.
Several subdivision patterns have been proposed for Islamic philosophy
that emphasize local priorities, confessional elements, or typological con-
siderations. But all of these tend to focus on particular aspects and, lacking a
whole encompassing view, underplay or don’t consider at all characters and
themes whose importance and centrality cannot be ignored. Subdivisions of
macro-periods seem to be more effective in providing a reliable picture.
The first period extends from the origins to the death of Averroes
(Ibn Rushd, d. 1198). It is, after all, the most studied and best known period
of Muslim philosophy. The death of Averroes seals the era of the classical
philosophy in Islam, marking the decline of philosophical theorization in
the Western lands of Islam, and the subsequent eclipse of the Latin Avicen-
nism in Europe.
Meanwhile, hailing from the Easten lands of the Arab world, having
Syrian cities as main centers, a renaissance of mystical Avicennism was radi-
ating in the direction of non-Arab East. It is the period of the “metaphysics of
Sufism,” i. e., the attempt (that actually represented a great success and a mo-
mentous epistemological turn in the history of Islamic thinking) to express
in a systematic fashion the details of the mystical path toward God, and the
knowledge of self as knowledge of God. It is, this second period, the time of
the diffusion of Akbarian metaphysics in Persia and, therefrom, in the Indian
Subcontinent, by the Persian pupils of its originator, Muhyi al-Din Ibn
‘Arabi (d. 1240).
The third and the fourth perisods overlap, if not in nature of the dis-
course, at least in time. The former coincides with the Safavid philosophical
renaissance. In 1501, a chiliastic military-religious order moving from Azer-
baijan entered Iran and, after conquering the major cities, declared Twelver
Shi’ism to be the official religion of the newly-instituted Safavid reign,
named after Safi al-din Ardabili (d. 1334), the founder of the order. The new
rule attracted scholars and theologians that animated schools and theologi-
cal seminaries, that eventually became major centers of propagation and dis-
cussion of the post-Akbarian mystical philosophy. It is the period of the great
summa of Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1641), whose influence spread to the Qajar
era and up to the last decades of the 20th century.
49 Islamic Philosophy

The last period is that of the modern philosophy, resumed as an intellec-

tual weapon in all the Muslim world against the influence of the West. After
the decolonization and in the midst of the globalization era, Muslim think-
ers partially abandoned third-worldist and nativist rhetoric and began intro-
ducing in their discourse the key-elements of democracy, secularism, post-
modernism, human rights.

B. History
Given the particular position of Muslim philosophy in transmitting Greek
philosophical knowledge to the Latin Middle Ages, modern academic inter-
est in it bears some similarities – and up to quite recent times, even a number
of its flaws – with that of the European first translators and commentators.
In the contest of medieval transmission of Islamic thought, several stages can
be observed. The interest began during the 12th century, as a taste for Islamic
matters was rather common in Europe. It is the time of the translations of
Gerard of Cremona and his colleagues at the cathedral of Toledo. This wave
testifies a marked interest in Neoplatonic cosmology and psychology, with
the translations of works by Al-Farabi, the Brethern of Purity (Ikhwan al-safa’),
and other important Muslim Neoplatonicists. Later, Western scholastics de-
sired to understand Aristotle in the translation by Ibn Rushd.
Translations carried out during the Renaissance, when a fresh interest in
Arabic emerged anew, represent the link between medieval scholastic trans-
lations and the rise of a modern academic scholarship. The first European
chair in Arabic was established in Paris in 1535, and was assumed by Guil-
laume Postel, while in 1584 an Arabic press was set up in Rome and a sec-
ond chair in Arabic appeared at the beginning of the 17th century in Leiden.
By and large, the most important personality in the field of Islamic phil-
osophy was the English Arabist Edward Pocock (1604–1691), who collected
original manuscripts and published, among other noteworthy works (about
which see Hans Daiber, “The Reception of Islamic Philosophy at Oxford in
the 17th Century,” 1994), Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan
(1671). Pocock’s editions remained standards until the 19th century.
The rise of Islamic philosophy as a modern topic of inquiry and teaching
in Western universities at the end of the 18th century also marked the end of a
period in which Muslim thinkers were regarded as central as the Greeks in
the culture of humanity. As a matter of fact, while the Western areas of the
Muslim world were facing the lower point of their decline and, in confront-
ing with colonial enterprises were developing the first embryo of modernist
and reformist religious thinking, contemporary Persian Neoplatonicism was
prospering almost ignored by European acedeme.
Islamic Philosophy 50

While editorial activity grew in quantity and quality, a certain number of

scholars began being known as experts in European, Jewish, and Islamic
medieval philosophy, but by far the most important character was Ernest
Renan (1823–1892), whose ideas about the relative conceptual indepen-
dence of Muslim thinking, although often driven by prejudice, represented a
fresh look. It is also the age of the Orientalist erudition, with the systematic
recording of material for research carried out by, among others, German
Orientalists such as Gustav Flügel and Ferdinand Wüstenfeld.
Illuministic tendencies, with all the implications in terms of ethnocen-
trism and historical evolutionism, came to a more moderate approach by the
end of the 19th century, while the amount of primary sources made available
through critical editions and translations allowed fairly good introductory
texts being written, published, and achieving wide circulation, as in the case
of Ignaz Goldziher’s compendium Die islamische und die jüdische Philosophie
(1909).
From this time on, academic knowledge of Islamic philosophy has found
a remarkable expansion, both in terms of edition of fundamental texts and of
publication of original interpretive and introductory studies. In Daiber’s
phrasing, “European and Arab-Islamic secondary literature […] has now
become too extensive to keep track of” (Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy,
1999, XXV). Most major universities around the world, both in Europe and
in the Americas, has established chairs in History of Islamic or Muslim Phil-
osophy, and the second half of the 20th century witnessed an impressive
increase of excellent works, by then dissociated from the antiquated idea of
the end of philosophy in the Muslim world coinciding with the death of
Averroes.

C. Research
As already stated, Muslim philosophy scholarship didn’t begin in a proper
fashion before the 19th century. The first important work in the field is Am-
able Jourdain’s Recherches critiques sur l’âge et l’origine des traductions d’Aristote
et sur les documents grecs ou arabes employés par les docteures scholastique (1819).
However, scholars usually mention Ernest Rénan’s classic Averroês et l’aver-
roïsme (1852) as the most influent text in the field, at least until Goldziher’s
seminal study, Beitrag zur Geschichte der muhammedanischen Theologie (1884),
which represented – as the rest of his publications – a very competent and in-
sightful research, for that period quite an advanced work. Coeval of Gold-
ziher, another standard compendium of Islamic philosophy is Tjitze J. de
Boer’s Geschichte der Philosophie in Islam (1901), translated into English two
years later.
51 Islamic Philosophy

About two decades later, an ambitious study written by the German

Orientalist Max Horten was published in Munich: Die Philosophie des Islam
in ihren Beziehungen zu den philosophischen Weltanschauungen des westlichen Orients
(1924). Unfortunately, this study is even more dated than its predecessors,
in that Horten’s attempt to render Islamic philosophical notions and
categories with the ideas of late-medieval scholasticism and contemporary
philosophy, results in a distorted picture of its object. The influence of the
late 19th century, expecially of Nietzsche, and of the phenomenalism of
Edmund Husserl, is too evident to prevent Horten’s study from ending up
in obscuring original texts.
However, the overall state of the field was by far more healthy than one
might argue by the dated work of Horten. In fact, the number and quality
of general introductions and learned monographs was flourishing. But it
was not before end of the Second World War that major contributions were
published and knew wide circulation. Miguel Cruz Hernandez’s Historia
de la filosofia española: Filosofia hispano-musulmana appeared in 1957, and
though concerned first of all with Islamic philosophy in Spain, it is nonethe-
less informative in other areas. Another classic and still influential work is
W. Montgomery Watt’s Islamic Philosophy and Theology (1962), but a major
turning point, both in methodology and in scope, was Henry Corbin’s His-
tory of Islamic Philosophy. Written in collaboration with Seyyed Hossein Nasr
and Osman Yahya and published in 1964 by Franch major publisher Gal-
limard, it has been translated into a number of languages (including Arabic
and Persian). The project was completed by Corbin alone in a somewhat
abridged version that gives account of the later Eastern tradition of Islamic
philosophy. The approach is quintessentially phenomenological and reflects
the particular taste for Twelver Shi’ism of the author. Though very popular,
this major work is not void of flaws, specially in the overemphasis of the mys-
tical attitude of Shi’ism. It is anyhow true that the project of the French phil-
osopher was not limited to the narrow universe of Islamologists: his aim was
to put again in a fruitful “operational” communication the two worlds of liv-
ing Islamic Neoplatonicism and Western philosophy. One other unappreci-
able result of Corbin’s effort with Muslim philosophy, carried on also by the
series Bibliotheque Iranien, published in Tehran and Paris by the French Re-
search Institute of Tehran, is that it caused a rebirth of research and academic
study of philosophy in Iran itself, accompained by a flourishing of insightful
and high quality publications.
Meanwhile, general introductions continued to be published (a full list
is provided in Daiber’s 1999 bibliographical study; see below); among
them, possibly the most often cited and used in university classes is Majid
Islamic Philosophy 52

Fakhri’s A History of Islamic Philosophy (1970), also translated into various

languages and republished in a 1983 revised and updated version.
By the 1980s, Islamic philosophy was already an important subject of in-
quiry, whose momentum is testified by chapters devoted to Islamic philoso-
phers in works on medieval thought and in encyclopedias. In spite of this, as
recognized by most scholars, there is still a great deal of work to be done,
especially in editing unpublished works and bringing to light manuscripts
still buried in libraries and private collections, notably those of the Subconti-
nent.
In recent years, following the development of the discipline, important
contributions have been added to the specialist literature. Among them, a
voluminous bibliographical study that is bound to become standard tool for
resaerch in the field is Hans Daiber’s Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (1999).
Its two volumes provide an impressive list of publications (articles, mono-
graphs, translations, critical editions, etc.) both in alphabetical and thematic
order, accompained by insightful remarks.
Another general work that must be mentioned and explained in some
detail is History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr and Oliver
Leaman (1996). It encompasses general introductory essays on the origins,
influences, concepts, and schools of the early Islam, followed by a section on
individual philosophers of the East and the West of Muslim world. The list is
as follows: (Eastern) Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, al-Razi, al-^Amiri, the Ikwan al-Safa’,
Ibn Sina (plus an article by Nasr in his “Oriental philosophy”), Ibn Mishka-
wayh, al-Ghazzali; (Western) Ibn Masarrah, Ibn Bajjah (the Latin Avempace),
Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sab^in, and Ibn Khaldun. The fourth section is de-
voted to the mystical tradition and the reciprocal interplay between Sufism
and philosophy. The section devoted to the later Islamic philosophy presents
contributions on the major philosophers that were ignored in the early
academic literature: Nasir al-din al-Tusi, the “school of Esfahan” (Mir
Damad and Mulla Sadra), and Shah Waliullah of Delhi. The work includes
an important and groundbreaking section on Jewish philosophy, added as a
pivotal interlocutor to medieval Islam. The second part of the work
(pp. 783–1180) enumerates the articulations of Muslim philosophy (meta-
physics, logic, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, etc.), and attempts to present
some later interpretations. A geographical criterion is also adopted in the
chapters (pp. 1037–1142) devoted to Islamic philosophy in the modern Is-
lamic world and to some interpretations in the West.
53 Islamic Philosophy

D. Conclusion
To draw a satisfactory picture of the state of the art in the study of Islamic
philosophy is a difficult, if not simply impossible, task; the variety of ap-
proaches, the multiplicity of schools, methodologies, and interpretations,
and the fluid state of research – all this give an uncomfortable sense of fuzzi-
ness to those who whish to keep track of the lines of the progress.
Nevertheless, some sort of description may be attempted by looking at
the past tendencies and the paths of continuity and change.
During the Middle Ages, Islam in general was referred to as the archen-
emy of Christianity, but the attitude of medieval Europe toward it was
ambivalent. This ambivalence was fostered by the centrality of “the Arabs”
in the transmission of ancient knowledge. As demonstrated by Italian
historian Franco Cardini in his The Invention of the Enemy (L’invenzione del
nemico, 2006), the relation was one of attraction/repulsion: during the 12th
century, in some respects, taste for Arabism was even somewhat fashion-
able, and the “Saracens” were considered as good-hearted fellows deceived
by a false and evil religion. It is difficult to deny that these obscuring and
partial views had influenced most Western modern scholars until recently.
Despite this, the same urgency to understand Muslim thought, along with
the humanist cry ad fontes!, later merged with the Neo-Thomist approach,
fostered the efforts by some excellent scholars, like Louis Massignon
(Opera minora, 1969), Etienne Gilson (Le philosophe et la théologie, 1960),
Louis Gardet (L’islam, religion et communauté, 1967; with Georges An-
awati, Introduction à la theologie musulmane, 1948), Giulio Basetti Sani,
(Per un dialogo cristiano-musulmano, 1969) and others. Spain, dominated for
seven centuries by Muslim rulers, had one more reason to be concerned
with Islam, and in fact the same Catholic inspiration, corroborated by a
sense of “Spanish identity,” is evident in the work of such Spanish scholars
as Miguel Asin Palacios (La escatologia musulmana en la ‘Divina Comedia’,
1919; El Islam cristianizado: Estudio del sufismo a través de las obras de Abenárabi
de Murcia, 1931) Missionary concerns (today milded by a genuine urgency
for religious dialogue) animate on the other hand the Jesuites revolving
around the Pontificia Università Gregoriana and the PISAI (Pontificial In-
stitute for Arabic and Islamic Studies). This shows that a Catholic academic
school is still active, even though not as influential as in the past. The other
relevant and somehow long standing influence, albeit not referable to as a
“school” by its own right, is that played by outstanding scholars of Jewish
origin (Ignaz Goldziher, Saul Horovitz, Georges Vajda, Paul Kraus,
Richard Walzer, and others), as such working indipendently from main-
stream Christian school. The whole of these influences is noticeable along
Islamic Philosophy 54

all academic production on Islamic philosophy, even if not explicitly recog-

nized.
As remarked by Oliver Leaman (“Orientalism and Islamic Philosophy,”
History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman,
1996, 1143–48), one major turning point was the publication of Edward
Said’s seminal study Orientalism (1978). Even if a central stream of scholars
in Islamic philosophy (notably the traditionalists influenced by René Gué-
non and the French school of Corbinian phenomenologists, who sought
to study Islam from within, many also becoming Muslims), had already
rejected Orientalist views and approaches as biased and incoherent, Said’s
argument projected the problematization of the Western discourse about
the Other in a wider arena, working out a critical appoach that exposed
to criticism the whole history of modern Western rationality. By the end of
the 1980s, new epistemologies in approaching Islamic philosophy were not
limited to the somehow elitist (even if quite influential) environment of
traditionalists.
A few words must be said in some detail about the influence of Henry
Corbin’s in the field of Islamic philosophy. It has already been observed
how the editorial and scholarly effort he carried out in Iran contributed to the
reawakening of the study of traditional philosophy in that country. The ac-
tivities of the Imperial Academy of Philosophy (suppressed after the 1979
Revolution and reopened under the name of Institute of Hikma and Philoso-
phy – Anjoman-e hekmat wa falsafe), lead by Corbin’s associate Sayyed Hossein
Nasr – a Muslim philosopher himself – succeded in giving the theories of
the philosophia perennis of the other Nasr’s mentor Fritjhof Schuon a sound
academic standing, thus providing traditionalist epistemology (for many
reasons opposed by Corbin) a more solid ground. But the originality of Cor-
bin’s approach to Islamic philosophy is not limited to the role he played in
connecting different universes. As pinpointed by the chapter devoted to him
by Pierre Lory in Nasr and Leaman’s edited work (“Henry Corbin: His
Work and Influence,” 1996, 1149–55), besides having instituted a new
scholarly paradigm in interpreting Muslim philosophical texts, he proposed
original reflections on themes scarcely focused on by scholars both in Mus-
lim world and in the West. Hermeneutical emphasis on such themes as an-
geology and “imaginal” dimension of existence, prophetology, the “suffer-
ing God,” and the paradox of religious monotheism, figures among his
achievements and provides useful material for further discussion. Although
his influence must not be overemphasized, and the core of his personal pro-
ject (providing Western philosophers with modern philosophy to reflect on
and giving Islamic modern Neoplatonism a protagonist role in the scene of
55 Islamic Philosophy

world philosophy) may be considered partially failed, it is nevertheless true

to say that, through his work, Muslim philosophy has not remained un-
known to many contemporary famed philosophers, notably, for example,
Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. A late rediscovery of Islamic
philosophy occurred also among political philosophers, as is the case with
Leo Strauss’s and his school’s somewhat biased use of Al-Farabi thought
(see his essay “Farabi’s Plato,” Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion of
His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman et al., 1945, 357–93, and Muhsin
Mahdi’s Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 2001).
An idea of the variety of approaches and the range of academic study of
Islamic philosophy might be obtained by looking at Nasr and Leaman’s
edited work: it is easy to notice how this field has grown from the time of the
first general introductions, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Scholars
from all over the world, employing different methodologies and drawing
from various experiences, participate in the discourse, and scholars from
different Muslim countries are represented quite well. To end with, it is not
useless to hint at new media and the coming of the “fast age.” As all fields of
knowledge, Islamic philosophy and its study are not exempted from the
possiblities and the risks implied by the fast growth of the internet and
the increasing availability of specialized literature in the web. Even though
the time when a serious and rigorous research can be carried out by simply
relying on electronic resources is still to come, and web-based knowledge
suffers a dramatic lack of authoritativeness, it is undeniable that the
web is already an indispensable tool of work for most scholars, and not only
of the new generation. Websites containing high-quality information (like
www.muslimphilosophy.com), permanent seminaries or annual conferences (as
www.mullasadra.org), personal pages and blogs of scholars (www.mullasadra.
blogspot.com; www.uga.edu/islam/philosophy/html) and electronic libraries
providing direct access to major works of Muslim philosophers, both in the
original languages and in translations, are quickly and steadily growing. The
importance of these is bound to encounter a rapid and progressive growth in
the next years.

Select Bibliography
Roger Arnaldez, Averroes: A Rationalist Islam (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2000); David B. Burrel, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides,
Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Arabic Philosophy and
the West: Continuity and Interaction, ed. Therese-Anne Druart (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University, 1988); Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian
Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1988); Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philos-
Islamic Theology 56

ophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Oliver Leaman, An Introduction

to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Jules L.
Janssens, An Annotated Bibliogrphy in Ibn Sina (1970–1989) Including Arabic and Persian
Publications and Turkish and Russian References (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991);
Parviz Morewedge, Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1992); Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1993); William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology. An
extended Survey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985); Harry A. Wolfson,
The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).

Alessandro Cancian

Islamic Theology

A. General Definition
Islamic theology, which is one of the branches of Islamic religious sciences,
is mostly referred to as ^ilm al-kalam (the science of kalam), and in short kalam.
Kalam is usually translated as “theology,” although this rendering does not
express well its scholastic methods. The term “speculative theology” conveys
in a better way the nature of the theological discussions of the mutakallimun
(doctors of Kalam), who used logical argumentation in order to prove some
of the principles of religion (Georges C. Anawati, “kalam,” The Encyclopedia
of Religion, XIII [1987], 231–42). Kalam is only one of the two major trends
in Islamic theology. The other trend is that of traditionalist theology
(^ilm al-usul, the science of theological principles). Since the scholastic
methods of kalam had a tremendous impact on medieval thinkers within the
circles of traditionalist Islam, and also on Jewish and Christian thinkers
(Harry Austryn Wolfson, Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy, 1979)
this survey dedicates its lion’s share to kalam. Nevertheless, the difference be-
tween kalam and Islamic traditionalist theology is also addressed here, since
the boundaries between these two trends were never definite, especially after
the emergence of the Ash^ari school in the first half of the 10th century. The
terms kalam and traditionalist Islam refer to Sunni Islam, which is the main
body of opinion in Islamic thought. Unless otherwise stated, the schools of
kalam and the main thinkers mentioned in this survey are Sunnis (Louis
Gardet, “^ilm al-kalam,” EI, 2nd ed., vol. III [1971], 1141–50).
The use of discursive arguments is Kalam’s salient feature, which is
mostly reflected in the discussions on the existence of God and the creation of
57 Islamic Theology

the world. In these questions the kalam uses the proof from accidents, which
is based on the doctrine of atoms (the major works on these questions are
Shlomo Pines, Beiträge zur islamischen Atomenlehre, 1936; id., trans. Michael
Schwarz, Studies in Islamic Atomism, 1997; Herbert A. Davidson, Proofs for
Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy,
1987). Kalam has also a lot to do with apologetics. Influenced by Hellenistic
philosophical and theological thought, it uses various rationalistic tools in
order to defend Islamic doctrines and uproot what it perceives as heretical
concepts, infiltrated Islamic thought (D. D. de Lacy O’Leary, Arabic Thought
and Its Place in History, 1939). Thus, it is tightly connected to the term ^aqida
(pl. ^aqa#id), which stands for belief, creed or article of faith (William Montgo-
mery Watt, Islamic Creeds, 1994).
The goals of kalam, as the mutakallimun themselves define it in a report
given by the Ash^ari theologian Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), are “to grasp the unity
of God, and study the essence of God and His attributes” (Ihya# ^Ulum al-Din
[The Revival of Religious Sciences], I [n.d.], 25). The theologian al-Jurjani
(d. 1413) expands kalam’s definition to dealing with divine justice and escha-
tology (Kitab al-Ta^rifat, [The Book of Definitions], ed. Gustav Flügel, 1969
[photocopy of the Leipzig 1845 ed.], 194). Thus, kalam aims to back up vari-
ous articles of faith, whose origins are to be found in the Qur#an and hadith
(i.e. prophetic traditions), by using analytical methods.

B. The Origins of Kalām

The common use in the Arabic language of the word kalam is word, words,
or speech. How this term came to indicate Islamic speculative theology is
an issue not fully revealed or discovered. There is an almost general agree-
ment within the ranks of modern scholarship, that the dialectical technique
of kalam was borrowed from early Christian theology (Carl Heinrich Becker,
“Christliche Polemik und islamische Dogmenbildung,” Zeitschrift für Assyri-
ologie und verwandte Gebiete 27 [1912]: 175–95; rpt. in: id., Islamstudien,
1924–1932, 432–49, trans. Mark Muelhaeusler, “Christian Polemic and
the Formation of Islamic Dogma,” Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society,
ed. Robert Hoyland, 2004, 241–58; Josef van Ess, Anfänge muslimischer
Theologie: zwei antiqadaritische Traktate aus dem ersten Jahrundert der Hipra, 1977;
id., “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” The Cultural Context of Medieval
Learning, ed. J. E. Murdoch and E. D. Sylla, 1975), while pointing out
Greek (Josef van Ess, “The Logical Structure of Islamic Theology,” Logic in
Classical Islamic Culture, ed. Gustav E. von Grunebaum, 1970; Ibrahim
Madkour, “La Logique d’Aristote chez les mutakallimun,” Islamic Philosophi-
cal Theology, ed. Parviz Morewedge, 1979, 58–70) and Syriac (Michael A.
Islamic Theology 58

Cook, “The Origins of Kalam,” BSOAS 43 [1980]: 32–43) texts as possible

sources of inspiration (Francis Edward Peters, “The Origins of Islamic Pla-
tonism: the School Tradition,” Islamic Philosophical Theology, ed. Parviz More-
wedge, 1979, 14–45; Louis Gardet, “Aux débuts de la réflexion théolo-
gique de l’Islam,” ibid., 46–59). In the same vein, it has been suggested that
kalam was used to translate into Arabic the different meanings of the Greek
terms logos or dialexis (Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam,
1976) or the Syriac memra (Frithiof Rundgren, “Über den griechischen Ein-
fluß auf die arabische Nationalgrammatik,” AUU 2.5 [1976]: 119–44).

C. The Exponents of Kalām

The exponent of kalam was called mutakallim (lit. speaker, pl. mutakallimun).
The mutakallimun are described by both Latin and Hebrew medieval
thinkers. The Hebrew designation ha-medabberim and the Latin loquentes were
derived from the literal meaning of mutakallim (Lawrence V. Berman,
“kalam,” EJ, 1st ed. X [1971]: 701–03). The mutakallimun were engaged not
only in articulating the fundamentals of Islam in an analytic language, but
also in polemics of both political and religious nature (Shlomo Pines,
“A Note on an Early Meaning of the Term Mutakallim” IOS 1 [1971]: 224-40;
rpt. in: id., Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy, 1996). The first mutakalli-
mun did not belong to a specific school. Their teachings, if they had ever been
written, did not survive, and only fragments of their views have been pre-
served, mostly in the rich Arabic heresiographical literature written from the
9th century onward. The early mutakallimun were very cautious in not reveal-
ing the foreign sources of their doctrines. Later mutakallimun, when citing
the views of their predecessors, did not actually know the foreign roots of
their doctrines (Richard M. Frank, “Remarks on the Early Development of
the Kalam,” Atti del terzo congresso di studi arabi e Islamici, Ravello 1–6 settembre
1966 [1967], 315–29).

D. The Schools of Kalām

In the end of the 7th century emerged a group of mutakallimun, who were
adherents of the principle of free will, as opposed to the strict predestinarian
view, which was held by traditionalist theologians. This group, the Qada-
riyya (Carlo Alfonso Nallino, “Sul nome dei Qadariti,” RSO 7 [1918]:
461–66), was the forerunner of the Mu^tazila, which is the most known kalam
school (Joseph van Ess, “Kadariyya,” EI, 2nd ed., IV [1974]: 368–72; Henri
Laoust, Les Schismes dans l’Islam, 1965).
The Mu^tazila (Carlo Alfonso Nallino, “Sull’origine del nome dei
Mu^taziliti,” RSO 7 [1918]: 429–54) flourished as two separate schools in
59 Islamic Theology

Basra and Baghdad from the first half of the 8th century until the middle of
the 11th century (Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théolo-
gie musulmane, 1948). The Mu’tazili theses survived in Zaydi-Shi^i Islam until
the present day, but not in Sunni Islam (Wilferd Madelung, Der Imâm
al-Qâsim ibn Ibrâhim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen, 1965).
The rival school of the Mu^tazila is the Ash^ariyya, founded in Basra in the
first half of the 10th century. The eponym of the Ash^ariyya, Abu al-Hasan al-
Ash^ari (d. 935) was a former Mu’tazili, who used the rationalistic tools of the
Mu^tazila in order to defend the doctrines of traditional Islam and to defeat
the Mu^tazila (Ahmad AmIn, Duha al-Islam [The Forenoon of Islam], I–III,
1952; id., Fajr al-Islam [The Dawn of Islam], 1978; William Montgomery
Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, 1973).
Another important theological school is the Maturidiyya-Hanafiyya,
established as a definite school in central Asia in the 11th century. Its eponym
is Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 944) from Samarqand (Wilferd Madelung,
“al-Maturidi,” EI, 2nd ed., VI [1991]: 846–47).
The heresiographic literature, written from the 11th century mainly by
Ash^ari theologians, mentions a great number of other kalam schools, whose
existence is questionable (Michael Schwarz, “Can We Rely on Later Author-
ities for the Views of Earlier Thinkers?” IOS 1 [1971]: 241–48).

E. Kalām and Traditional Theology

Most of the activity of the mutakallimun was in the inner circles of Islam,
mainly against Sunni traditionalist theologians. Kalam’s dialectical dis-
course, which gives precedence to human reason in the process of perceiving
God and the world, is supposedly antithetical to Islamic traditional theol-
ogy, which declares to draw its authority solely from Divine revelation,
prophetic traditions and the teachings of the ancestors of the Muslim com-
munity. These epistemological questions were discussed by both the mutak-
allimun and the traditionalist theologians. Further points of dispute between
the two trends were the question of God’s unity, the nature of Divine
attributes, anthropomorphism, predestination and free will (William
Montgomery Watt, Predestination and Free Will in Early Islam, 1948; Daniel
Gimaret, Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, 1980), theodicy
(Eric L. Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought, 1984), eschatology, the status
of prophecy and the essence of the Qur#an as God’s uncreated speech (Jan
R. T. M. Peters, God’s Created Speech, 1976).
The division between mutakallimun and traditionalist theologians never
was clear-cut, since kalam’s methods had a huge impact upon traditionalist
theologians. Consequently, the latter embraced rationalistic argumen-
Islamic Theology 60

tations in their works and public debates (Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic

Theology- Traditionalism and Rationalism, 1998). Among traditionalist theolo-
gians, the group called Hanabila after their eponym Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(d. 855) is the most conspicuous (Henri Laoust, “Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” EI,
2nd ed., I [1960]: 272–7; id., “Hanabila,” EI, 2nd ed., III [1971], 158–62).

F. Theology and the Qur#ān

The Qur#anic text inspired the molding and refining of theological notions
and formulae elaborated not only in theological treatises and kalam manuals
but also in Qur#an exegeses (tafsir pl. tafasir), written by prominent theolo-
gians such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210) and Ibn al-^Arabi (d. 1240). The
Qur#an exegete Ibn Kathir (d. 1372) based his tafsir on the theological and
jurisprudential teachings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). The main theological
themes in the Qur#an are surveyed and discussed in research on Qur#anic
studies (Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran, 1980; Tilman Nagel,
“Theology and the Qur#an,” EQ V [2006]: 256–75; Binyamin Abrahamov,
“Theology,” The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an, ed. Andrew Rippin, 2006,
420–33). Among the theological concepts refined from the Qur#anic text are
predestination and free will (Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran-
Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung, 1964), human responsibility (Andrew
Rippin, “Desiring the Face of God,” Literary Structures of Religious Meaning
in the Qur#an, ed. Issa Boullata, 2000), creation (Husam Muhi Eldin al-
Alousi, The Problem of Creation in Islamic Thought – Qur#an, Hadith, Commen-
taries and Kalam, 1968), anthropomorphism (Binyamin Abrahamov, Anthro-
pomorphism and Interpretation of the Qur#an in the Theology of al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim,
Kitab al-Mustashrid, 1996), and ethics (Daud Rahbar, God of Justice: a Study in
the Ethical Doctrine of the Qur#an, 1960).

G. Theology and H. adı̄th

Hadith literature, which is the narrative of the Prophet Muhammad’s life and
practices, contains numerous statements of Muhammad and some of his
Companions (sahaba), serving as a starting point for theological debates.
While traditionalist theologians used hadith literature as a locus of their re-
ligious thought (Livnat Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine Guidance and
the Fitra Tradition – The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Tay-
miyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Yossef
Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed (2010), the credibility of this literature was
questioned by rationally inclined theologians who tended to discredit this
literature (Roger Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue,
1956). Hadith literature covers almost every topic in theological thought,
61 Islamic Theology

such as God’s transcendence and anthropomorphic depictions of God (Da-

niel Gimaret, Dieu à l’image de l’homme: les anthropomorphismes de la sunna et
leur interprétation par les théologiens, 1997), predestination and free will (Joseph
van Ess, Zwischen Hadi© und Theologie: Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianischer
Überlieferung, 1975; Louis Gardet, Dieu et la destinée de l’homme, 1967; Gene-
viève Gobillot, La Fitra – La Conception originelle – ses interprétations et fonctions
chez les penseurs musulmans, 2000; Helmer Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatal-
ism, 1955), ethics (Majid Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam, 1991), creation
(Ernst Behler, Die Ewigkeit der Welt – Problemgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu
den Kontroversen um Weltanfang und Weltunendlichkeit im Mittelalter, 1965; Iysa
Bello, The Medieval Islamic Controversy Between Philosophy and Orthodoxy, 1989),
eschatology (David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apochalyptic, 2002) and the nature
of the Qur#an (Wilfred Madelung, “The Origins of the Controversy Con-
cerning the Creation of the Koran,” Orientalia Hispanica 1 [1974]: 504–25).

H. Kalām and Philosophy

Kalam is not based on philosophical speculation per se, in spite of the resem-
blance of kalam’s set of conceptions and areas of interest to that of Muslim
philosophy (falsafa). It has been claimed, however, that kalam should not
be disregarded as an apologetic discipline, since it shares areas of interest
with Islamic philosophy (Richard M. Frank, “Kalam and Philosophy: A Per-
spective from One Problem,” Islamic Philosophical Theology, ed. Parviz More-
wedge, 1979, 71–95). Kalam accepts the Islamic dogma. Thus, the mutakalli-
mun challenged the philosophers, among other groups within Islam, and
labeled them as heretics. The most famous attempt to attack philosophy
is the Ash^ari theologian al-Ghazali’s (Algazel, d. 1111) Tahafut al-Falasifa (The
Incoherence of the Philosophers, ed., trans. and annot. Michael Marmura, 2000).
A rebuttal of al-Ghazali’s argumentation is Ibn Rushd’s (Averroes, d. 1198)
Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence, ed., trans. and annot.
Simon van den Bergh, 1978).

I. History of Research
The history of research in the field of Islamic theology is in many senses simi-
lar to the history of Islamic studies in general. The study of kalam is a sub-dis-
cipline of the studies of Islamic history and philology. The interest of Euro-
pean scholars in Islamic theology dates as early as the establishing of the
University of Leiden in 1575. The earliest scholarly efforts at studying Islam
were characterized by comparing and judging Islamic doctrines in the light
of Christian doctrines (Robert Caspar, A Historical Introduction to Islamic Theol-
ogy, 1998). In other words, the study of Islam was not perceived as a scholarly
Islamic Theology 62

field in its own right. The change occurred in the early 19th century along
with the scholarly efforts taken by European and Muslim scholars in catalo-
guing, classifying, and publishing Arabic manuscripts in critical and uncriti-
cal editions. As the publication of manuscripts of heresiographical works
and theological treatises advanced, kalam was dealt not only in general sur-
veys on Islam (Ignaz Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, rev. 2nd ed. 1925,
trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law,
1981; Alfred von Kremer, Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams, 1868),
but also in the frame of monographs, thus shaping the study of Islamic theol-
ogy as an independent discipline.
Research on Islamic theology in the late 19th century and the early
20 century is characterized by a reliance on heresiographic literature,
th

whose nature (see “sources”) dictates a descriptive historical approach. The

European researchers, trained for the most part in philology and history and
not in philosophy and theology as such, tended to deal more with the history
of theological trends and less with the teachings of Islamic theologians. The
historical approach is well reflected, for example, in the works of Julius
Wellhausen (Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz, 1902, trans. Margraet Gra-
ham Weir, The Arab Kingdom and its Fall, 1927; Die religiös-politischen Opposi-
tionsparteien im alten Islam, 1901, trans. R. C. Ostle and S. M. Walzer, The
Religio-Political Factions in Early Islam, 1975). All the relevant entries of the first
edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, published between 1913–1936, reflect the
historical approach, which dominated Western research in the field of Is-
lamic theology (Duncan Black Macdonald, “Kadariya”; id., “kalam”; id,
“al-Maturidi”; Arent Jan Wensinck, “al-Ash^ari”; Ignaz Goldizher,
“Ahmad ibn Hanbal”; Henrik Samuel Nyberg, “Mu^tazila” – all available in
the convenient version: Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H. A. R. Gibb and
J. H. Kramers, 1995). The relevance of these early studies is defied time and
again, although their importance as introductory works to the study of the
history of Islamic theology still exists.
Research approaches still relevant today are those focusing on a metho-
dological close reading of theological texts. A representative example is
Harry Austryn Wolfson’s comprehensive work on the origins of kalam
(Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, 1976). Wolfson’s
method of conjecture and verification, which he called “a hypothetico-
deductive method,” paved the way to researches concentrating on the theo-
logical texts, in which references to political developments, if they exist at
all, are provided merely as an aid of understanding the developments in
theology. The definitive study of the early phase of the formation of Islamic
theology is Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert
63 Islamic Theology

Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 1991–1995

(6 vols.). All the relevant entries of the second edition of EI, published be-
tween 1960–2004 (also as an online electronic version), reflect a close reading
of a wider variety of published manuscripts than was available to the con-
tributors of the first version.
It has been claimed that the lion’s share of studies of Islamic theology
from the second half of the 20th century was dedicated to the earliest period
of kalam, while fewer studies were dedicated to theologians of the 11th cen-
tury onward, with the one exception of the thought of the Ash^ari theologian
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (Algazel, d. 1111), whose works have been studied
by Western scholarship for more than a century (Daniel Gimaret, “Pour
un Rééquilibrage des études de la théologie musulmane,” Arabica 38 [1991]:
11–18). Nevertheless, from the 1980s, the tendency in research is to focus on
the thought of theologians of the 11th century onward.
The work of researchers of Islamic theology, although not specifically
subjected to the harsh criticism pointed to Orientalists in general (Edward E.
Said, Orientalism, 1978), should be understood and evaluated within the
frame of European Orientalism with its faults and virtues (Jean Jacques
Waardenburg, “Mustashrikun,” EI, 2nd ed., VII [1993]: 783–93).

J. Sources
The study of Islamic theology, as other branches of the Islamic religious
sciences, depends upon the publication of original manuscripts in critical
and uncritical editions. The two fundamental works in this area (Carl
Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 1902–1942; Fuat Sezgin,
Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1967) list manuscripts of Islamic Arabic
works, theological works included, while providing essential biographical
details on the authors of these works. Even today the task of publishing
manuscripts of theological works is a major feature of research. Every newly
published theological work often incites the interest of scholars to pursue the
investigation in the direction which that work offers, while it sheds light on
unknown aspects, trends, and ideas in Islamic theology. For example, in
1962 William Montgomery Watt wrote: “the earliest extant works of Sun-
nite theology in the strict sense are those of al-Ash^ari (d. 935)” (Islamic Philos-
ophy and Theology, xii). Two years later, in 1964, Morris Seale published the
first translation of Ahmad b. Hanbal’s (d. 855) al-Radd ^ala al-Jahmiyya wa-’l-za-
nadiqa (Responsa to two heretic sects), a theological work which precedes the
works of al-Ash^ari in a century, thus contradicting Watt’s categorical state-
ment quoted above (Morris S. Seale, Muslim Theology, 1964). This example
demonstrates that the field of Islamic theology is far from being exhausted.
Islamic Theology 64

Until the discovery of several original Mu^tazili works, heresiographic

works dated as early as the 10th century were the main source for researchers
in the 19th and 20th centuries to study the earlier trends of kalam and tradi-
tional theology. The major overviews on Islamic theology and particularly
Mu^tazili theology written in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century were based solely on heresiographic literature (for example, Israel
Friedlaender, “The Heterodoxies of the Shi^ites in the presentation of Ibn
Hazm,” JAOS 28 [1907]: 1–80; 29 [1909]: 1–183).
The heresiographers, mostly Mu^tazili and Ash^ari mutakallimun, organ-
ized their works so that they were compatible with a tradition attributed
to the Prophet Muhammad, in which he prophesied that the Muslim com-
munity would be divided into seventy-three sects, seventy-two of them
inheriting Hell, and the surviving group going to Heaven. The heresi-
ographers strove in finding seventy-three Islamic sects, thus counting as
separate sects groups of people whose views differed only slightly from one
another (Hellmut Ritter, “Philologika III: Muhammedanische Häresio-
graphen,” Der Islam 18 [1929]: 34–59).
A recognition of the mishaps of heresiography, a literature which pro-
vides only a partial picture of the teachings of theological trends as well as of
their historical development, led to a pioneering attempt to study the mold-
ing of traditionalist theology based on the first Sunni ^aqa#id (creeds, articles
of faith), dated from the 8th century (Arent Jan Wensinck, The Muslim Creed,
1932, re-ed. 1965). Nevertheless, only the discovery of original theological
works or the reconstruction of such works based on later sources, enabled
Western research to validate the biased descriptions of trends and thinkers as
they appear in heresiographical literature (See the above-mentioned works
of M. Cook and J. van Ess; Richard M. Frank, “The Neoplatonism of
Pahm b. Safwân,” Museon 78 [1965]: 395–424)
While numerous extant texts of the two major kalam trends in Islam, the
Mu^tazila and the Ash^ariyya, enable scholars to depict Islamic scholastic
tradition during the period of the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258 C.E.), the be-
ginnings of that tradition during the Umayyad age (661–750 C.E.) are much
harder to establish. The authenticity of a few epistolary texts and fragments
belonging to the reign of Caliph ^Abd al-Malik (685–705 C.E.) (Joseph van
Ess, “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” J. E. Murdoch and E. D. Sylla,
eds. The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, [1975], 87–111), has been chal-
lenged. It has been argued that these writings were pseudepigrapha from the
late Umayyad times, some fifty years after the reign of ^Abd al-Malik (Michael
Cook, Early Muslim Dogma, 1981).
65 Islamic Theology

K. Mu^tazila
Many researchers were drawn to deal with the Mu^tazila from the second half
of the 19th century, and it is by all means the most studied theological school
in Western research. The attraction to the Mu^tazila can be explained by the
fact that several European scholars favored some of the views of this school.
In 1865, Heinrich Steiner spoke of them as “the free-thinkers of Islam”
(Heinrich Steiner, Die Mu^taziliten oder die Freidenker im Islam, 1865). This
concept, enhanced by the views of prominent scholars like Ignaz Gold-
ziher, and duplicated in dozens of works (for example, Henri Galland,
Essai sur les Mo^tazélites: Les rationalistes de l’Islam, 1906; George Fadlo Hour-
ani, Islamic Rationalism: the Ethics of ^Abd al-Jabbar, 1971), has dominated West-
ern scholarship for decades. The image of Mu^tazilis as free-thinkers was
mainly based on heresiographic literature. Nevertheless, in the late 1920s
Henrik Samuel Nyberg, who discovered and edited Kitab al-Intisar (The
Book of Triumph) by the Mu^tazili al-Khayyat (d. 912) a genuine Mu^tazili
work, which remained the solely-known Mu^tazili work for decades, chal-
lenged this concept (Henrik Samuel Nyberg, “Zum Kampf zwischen Islam
und Manichaismus,” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 32 [1929]: 425–41).
Henceforth, Mu^tazilis were portrayed as theologians and not as philoso-
phers. Furthermore, the discovery of a large quantity of Mu^tazili sources in
the 1960s, contributed to a considerable progress in studies relating the
Mu^tazila. Nevertheless, studies written before that time and previously con-
sidered as corner-stones in the field, are now considered as outdated (for
example, Albert N. Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu^tazila, 1956). The
entry in The Encyclopaedia of Islam indeed provides an excellent overview of
the updated approaches in research (Daniel Gimaret, “Mu^tazila,” EI, 2nd
ed.,VII [1993]: 783–93)

L. Ash^ariyya
Although the Ash^ariyya (or Asha^ira) is the most important orthodox theo-
logical school, its history and origins have been little studied. This lacuna in
research is opposed to the numerous published writings of Ash^ari theolo-
gians and the Ash^ari rich heresiographical literature. Researches based on
Ash^ari material, mainly focus on themes and doctrines rather than on the
history of the school. An indication to the little known on the history of the
Ash^ari school is the very short entry in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (William
Montgomery Watt, “Ash^ariyya,” EI, 2nd ed., I [1960]: 696). In this entry
Watt summarizes the dominating view in Western research, according to
which the Ash^ariyya was the dominant, if not the official, theological school
in the 8th–14th centuries. This view appeared in a number of studies (Duncan
Islamic Theology 66

Black Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitu-

tional Theory, 1903; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947; Louis
Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948;
W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, 1973), and was
contested in the works of George Makdisi (“Muslim Institutions of Learn-
ing in Eleventh-Century Baghdad,” BSOAS 24 [1961]: 1–56; id., “Ash^arî and
the Ash^arites in Islamic Religious History,” SI 17 [1962]: 37–80; 18 [1963]:
19–39; The Rise of Colleges, 1981).

M. Māturı̄diyya- H. anafiyya
Not much was known on the Maturidiyya-Hanafiyya before the discovery of
Abu Mansur al-Maturidi’s Kitab al-Tawhid (The Book of Unity) (by Joseph
Schacht, “New Sources for the History of Muhammadan Theology,” SI 1
[1953]: 23–42; the manuscript was published by Fathallah Kholeif in 1970,
and the authenticity of the manuscript was challenged by Daniel Gimaret,
Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, 1980 and discussed by M. Sait
Özrevali, “The Authenticity of the Manuscript of Maturidi’s Kitab al-Taw-
hid,” Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies 1 [1997]: 19–29). Western research
perceived this school as parallel to the Ash^ariyya (Ignaz Goldziher, Vor-
lesungen über den Islam, 1925; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947;
Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane,
1948), however without sufficient collaborating textual evidences. Different
aspects in al-Maturidi’s thought are discussed in several researches (J. Meric
Pessagno, “Intellect and Religious Assent: the view of Abu Mansur al-Ma-
turidi,” MW 69 [1979]: 18–27; id., “Irada, Ikhtiyar, Qudra, Kasb – The View
of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi,” JAOS 104,1 [1984]: 177–91; id., “The Uses of
Evil in Maturidian Thought,” SI 60 [1984]: 59–82).

N. H. anābila
The traditionalist Hanbali school has been neglected for years by western
research, although the life and personality of its eponym, Ahmad ibn
Hanbal, were discussed in length for more than a century (Walter Melvil
Patton, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the Mihna, 1897; Michael Cooperson, Classi-
cal Arabic biography. The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma#mun, 2000; Nim-
rod Hurvitz, The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power, 2002; Chistopher
Melchert, “The Adversaries of Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” Arabica 44 [1997]:
234–53). The Hanabila who, according to their own avowal in numerous
writings, had given precedence to the Quranic text and the teachings of the
Prophet Muhammad, and rejected the excessive use of rationalistic methods,
were perceived by Western scholarship as ultra-conservative or worse, as a
67 Islamic Theology

mob (Goldziher, op. cit.; Macdonald, op. cit.; Henri Lammens, L’islam:
croyances et institutions, 1926; trans. E. Denison Ross, Islam: Beliefs and Insti-
tutions, 1968). An insufficient treatment of Hanbali manuscripts and an ex-
clusive reliance on Ash^ari heresiography contributed to that unjustified
image. The pioneering work of Henri Laoust (Essai sur les doctrines sociales
et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmad b.Taimiya, 1939) has paved the way for re-
searches on the Hanabila, revealing a theological system combining logical
kalam argumentations with the traditional sources (George Makdisi, “Han-
balite Islam,” Merlin L. Swartz ed., Studies on Islam, 216–274, Daniel Gima-
ret, “Theories de l’acte humain dans l’école Hanbalite,” Bulletin d’Etudes
Orientales 29 [1977]: 157–78; Binyamin Abrahamov, “Ibn Taymiyya on the
Agreement of Reason with Tradition,” MW 82.3–4 [1992]: 256–73; Wesley
Williams, “Aspects of the Creed of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal: A Study of
Anthropomorphism in Early Islamic Discourse,” IJMES 34 [2002]: 441–63;
Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism, 2007).

O. The Thought of Prominent Thinkers

The most conspicuous developments in the field of Islamic theology are in
reevaluation and reassessment of the thought of prominent theologians. It is
far beyond the scope of this entry to introduce the entire research done on
dozens of medieval Islamic theologians, and we shall have to do with three
examples demonstrating the progress made in research with regard to the
thought of prominent thinkers.
Research on the Ash^ari theologian Abu al-Ma^ali al-Juwayni (d. 1085),
known primarily as the teacher of Abu Hamid al-GhazalI (d. 1111), has
progressed immensely with the publication of critical editions of his works
(Abu al-Ma^ali al-JuwaynI, al-Irshad, trans. Jean-Dominique Luciani,
1938), translations (Léon Bercher, trans., Les Fondements du Fiqh, 1995; Paul
Walker [trans.], A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief, 2000) and
researches (Helmut Klopfer, Das Dogma des Imâm al-Haramain al-Djuwainî
und sein Werk al-Aqîda al-nizâmîya, 1958; Tilman Nagel, Die Festung des
Glaubens, 1988; Mohammed Moslem Adel Saflo, Al-Juwayni’s Thought and
Methodology, 2000). These and other works established al-Juwayni’s unique
contribution to the field of rational argumentations.
In the case of Abu Hasan al-Ash^ari (d. 935), the eponym of the Ash^ari
school of theology, whose works have been studied for more than a century
(Wilhelm Spitta, Zur Geschichte Abu’l Hasan al-Aš^ari’s, 1876; Duncan Black
Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional
Theory, 1903; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947; Louis
Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948),
Islamic Theology 68

the whole scope of his thought and its repercussions is far from being fully
revealed (Binyamin Abrahamov, “A Re-examination of al-Ash^ari’s Theory
of Kasb according to Kitab al-Luma^,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1–2
[1989]: 210–21; Daniel Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash^ari, 1990; Richard M.
Frank, “Bodies and Atoms: the Ash^arite Analysis,” Islamic Theology and Phi-
losophy, ed. Michael E. Marmura, 1984, 39–53, 287–293, just to mention a
few.
Al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), an ascetic whose views on free will were
investigated at length (Hans Heinrich Schäder, “Hasan al-Basri- Studien
zur Frühgeschichte des Islam,” Der Islam 14 [1925]: 1–75; Hellmut Ritter,
“Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frömmigkeit: I. Hasan el-Basri,”
Der Islam 21 [1933]: 1–83; Julian Obermann, “Political Theology in Early
Islam: Hasan al-Basri’s Treatise on Qadar,” JAOS 55 [1935]: 138–62; Michael
Schwarz, “The Letter of al-Hasan al-Basri,” Oriens 22 [1967]: 15–30), is con-
sidered to be a mile stone in Islamic theology, although the authenticity
of teachings attributed to him has been questioned recently (Suleiman
Ali Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: al-Hasan al-Basri and the
Formation of his Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship, 2006).

Select Bibliography
Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1998); Robert Caspar, Traité de théologie musulmane
(Rome: PISAI, 1987), trans. Penelope Johnstone, A Historical Introduction to Islamic
Theology (Rome: PISAI, 1998); Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahr-
hundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1991–1995); Livnat Holtzman, “kalam,” EJ, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred
Skolnik, 2nd ed., XI (2006), 729–31; Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology:
From Muhammad to the Present [Geschichte der islamischen Theologie von Mohammed bis zur
Gegenwart], trans. from German by Thomas Thornton, (Princeton: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2000 [Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994]); Gustav Pfannmüller, Handbuch der
Islam-Literatur (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923); William Montgomery
Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1973); Id., Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1962); Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1976).

Livnat Holtzman
69 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

A. Introduction and Terminology

Islamic civilization provides a rich field for the historian of science. History
of Islamic science is a relatively young field, having developed only since
World War II, with new discoveries being made regularly. Discussions of
science in Islam in the past, and still to a certain extent within the generalist
literature, have suffered from the shortcomings of the Orientalist paradigm,
which holds as axiomatic the following: Islam is an inferior religion and cul-
ture to that of the Judaeo-Christian, and now secular West; and Islamic civili-
zation was merely an intermediary between the classical Greeks and the Re-
naissance, then Enlightenment West. The consequences of this paradigm for
scholarship are exemplified by the following untenable assertion that still
appears, in one form or another, in the literature: science in Islam declined
beginning in the 11th century and eventually died out, either due to the
forces of religious conservatism, or to Mongol invasions, or both. The pres-
ent historical outline, which re-addresses these and other conclusions, owes
much to George Saliba (Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renais-
sance, 2007), the most recent overall re-assessment of the subject.
How to designate the science of Islamic civilization in English is a prob-
lem. The Arabic word for “science” ‘ilm means an intellectual discipline gen-
erally, much like German Wissenschaft. Several terms have been employed by
scholars to designate the scientific tradition of Islamic civilization, among
them: “Arabic science” and “Islamic science.” The former has the advantage
of referring to the linguistic tradition, but which ignores important works
written in Persian; the latter, preferred by the present author, emphasizes
the dominant culture and civilization within which these scientific activities
took place.

B. Historical Outline
An Islamic scientific tradition began during the period of the 7th-century
conquests, as Muslims came into closer contact with Byzantium and Iran.
The translation of the administrative apparatus from Greek and Persian into
Arabic and the displacement of the former bureaucratic class, which began
during the reign of caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), precipitated social fac-
tors that drove the pursuit of science for centuries, and led to the epochal
Graeco-Arabic translation movement of the early Abbasid period (Dimitri
Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998; George Saliba, Islamic Science,
2007).
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 70

The early Abbasid period (mid-8th to 10th c.) presented increased oppor-
tunities for scientists to be useful to the needs of society. The presence of
three astrologers assisting in the founding of Baghdad (762 C.E.) attests to
the existence of an established astronomical tradition by that time, as astrol-
ogy required advanced technical ability in applied mathematical astronomy.
Progress in the sciences was motivated by competition for positions at court.
A climate of scrutiny was fostered, which encouraged scientists to be as pre-
cise as possible, and even affected translations into Arabic. For example, the
translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest involved a critical reading and correction of
the text, updating it to then current observations and methods, such as the
substitution of the newly invented trigonometric functions for Ptolemy’s
chord tables.
The concentration of wealth in Baghdad and the motivation of the re-
gime to possess the fruits of science and technology ensured the presence of
the best scientists at the capital. Among them were the Banu Musa, three
brothers (“Sons of Musa”), who used their positions and fortunes to advance
the sciences, both through patronizing translations from accomplished
translators such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), who commanded large fees,
and through original research.
By the mid-9th-century, Islamic scientists had attained a level of compet-
ence that enabled them to devise wholly new disciplines and sub-disciplines.
Astronomers distanced themselves from the astrological aspects of their
field, redefining the discipline as a purely descriptive science (‘ilm al-hay’a
“the science of the configuration [of the heavenly bodies]”). Focusing on
physical structure alone made the physical inconsistencies of the Ptolemaic
system obvious, the solution of which became a major concern of Islamic as-
tronomers for several centuries, described below. In mathematics, Muham-
mad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (d. ca. 850) devised the science of algebra, which
was advanced much farther by Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid ibn Mas’ud al-Kashi
(d. 1429) and Omar Khayyam (d. 1131). The practical needs of navigation and
religion, in determining prayer times and the direction of Mecca, led to the
invention of spherical trigonometry. Astronomical instruments, such as the
astrolabe, were developed. A portable analog computer containing a model
of the heavens, the astrolabe was used for a variety of calculations, including
timekeeping, astrological horoscopes, and the sighting of stars.
Following a long period of critique, Islamic astronomy began to reach
maturity in the late 13th century at the Maragha observatory in northwestern
Iran. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), Mu’ayyad al-Din al-‘Urdi (d.1266) and
several other scientists revised planetary models in the course of their obser-
vations. The tradition of reform continued down well past the 15th century,
71 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

and some of the mathematical models developed in this tradition by Ibn al-
Shatir (d. 1375) and others found their way into the work of Nicholas Coper-
nicus (d. 1543).
Islamic physicians, though based in Greek medicine, made original
contributions to medical thought, and exerted a formative influence on the
European medical tradition. Greek humoral pathology in the Hippocratic
and Galenic traditions became dominant, reaching its fullest expression in
the Canon of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (d. 1037). The Canon was attractive both to Is-
lamic and Western medical scholars, because it presented essentially Galenic
medicine in an easier to use format than that of the ancient Master.
Although originating in Christendom, under Islam the hospital became
a more sophisticated institution, a place of treatment of the sick and
wounded, an asylum for the mentally ill, a hospice for the dying, and a facil-
ity for medical instruction. One of the most enduring examples was the Man-
suri hospital of Cairo, established in 1284 and which functioned through the
19th century.
The translations from Arabic to Latin were especially important for the
creation of a medical curriculum in late medieval and Renaissance Europe.
The major translation centers were in Salerno and Toledo. The Canon
eventually became central to medical instruction in the Italian universities.
Nancy Siraisi has shown that the Canon continued to be used in the Italian
universities well after Greek medical texts had become available, and after
the new medical discoveries as part of the scientific revolution (Avicenna in
Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities After 1500,
1987).
In the earlier period of the Arabo-Latin translations (11th–12th c.), the
Latin West benefited not only from Arabic versions of ancient Greek scien-
tists and philosophers, but also directly from the translated contributions of
scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) and Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
and philosophers such as al-Ghazali (Algazel) (d. 1111) and Ibn Rushd (Aver-
roës) (d. 1198).

C. History of the Discipline

The discipline of history was important to Muslim scholars from the early
period of Islam, since they understood their civilization to be the heir to the
empires of the ancient world and to their intellectual legacies, especially that
of the Greeks. They further understood the Christian Greeks to be special riv-
als of Islam, since the still powerful Byzantine Empire was the greatest politi-
cal and ideological obstacle for Islam. Therefore, the appropriation of Greek
science was seen as a kind of victory for Islam, in particular since the Byzan-
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 72

tines – then wracked by theological controversy and economic upheaval –

had little interest in it (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998). Although
credit for the invention of history of science as a discipline is given to the
modern West, scholars within Islam from early times recognized the epochal
significance of their science, and attempted to account for it historically. The
Islamic tradition of scholarship about its own science is rich and sophisti-
cated, but has remained largely unknown to non-specialists.
Beginning toward the end of the Graeco-Arabic translation period, when
a scientific culture was already flourishing in Islam, works of intellectual
biographies of prominent scientists and thinkers began to appear in Arabic.
The development of this genre is related to that of the biographies used by
the Traditionist scholars to verify reports about the Prophet for the use of ju-
rists in applying Islamic Law. The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995) toward the
end of the translation era, and the ‘Uyun al-anba’ fi tabaqat al-atibba’ of Ibn Abi
‘Usaybi’a (d. 1269), well into the supposed era of decline, for example, were
biographical encyclopedias of the intellectuals active in their eras, which pro-
vide modern scholars with rich insight into the development of scientific ac-
tivity in Islam. The number of lives and works recorded shows that during
the lifetimes of these authors there was already a critical mass of practicing
scientists and physicians that they could write about. This fact is strong evi-
dence in favor of the existence of a true scientific culture in Islamic civili-
zation.
An example of a mature Islamic historical self-consciousness is found in
the works of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406). In the introduction to his History, he out-
lines a sociological and economic approach to historical analysis (The Muqad-
dimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 1958). The work
contains lengthy discussions of the sciences and their place within Islamic
civilization, a fact that reflects the importance he placed on these activities,
which he characterized as the epitome of the activities of civilized man,
whom God has created and endowed with the gift of rational thought. The
pseudo-sciences of astrology and alchemy he refutes, primarily because they
are not open to public scrutiny. He understood that science can exist only in
sedentary cultures, and that it is disrupted when urban centers have been
disturbed by war or famine. Regarding the decline of science in the Islamic
world, Ibn Khaldun observed that science had declined in some regions such
as Baghdad, which he attributed to its destruction by the Mongols (1258).
However, he left open the possibility that decline might occur at different
times and for different reasons, suggesting that there was no uniform de-
cline of science in Islamic civilization.
73 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

D. Criticisms of Greek Science

Scientific research in Islam was driven by a sophisticated historical con-
sciousness, the product of a well-developed scientific tradition. This began as
a critique of the Greek sciences and ultimately led to advances in the sciences
far beyond the Greek legacy. The competitive climate of Baghdad encour-
aged this critical stance, as each scientist sought to outdo his rivals. In time,
the critique became more clarified and precise, resulting in many new dis-
coveries.
In connection with the critique, there arose a genre called shukuk
“doubts” (cf. dubitationes), that first appeared in the treatise Doubts about
Galen, by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes) (d. 925), in
which he attacked Galen’s medical doctrines. The shukuk genre was a reg-
ister of doubts and difficulties with scientific works of the past, which pro-
vided practicing scientists with a place to begin fresh approaches to old prob-
lems, without repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. This genre
implies the existence of a continuous high-level scientific culture and tradi-
tion. In the astronomical tradition, about a century later, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan
ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) wrote his Doubts about
Ptolemy, in which he catalogued all the elements of Ptolemaic astronomy that
were physically inconsistent or impossible, among other aspects of Ptol-
emaic science. Ibn al-Haytham’s work led directly to the greatest reform of
Ptolemaic astronomy, in the Maragha tradition, mentioned earlier.
The tradition of criticism of Greek medicine has been less studied than
astronomy, perhaps because it provides less clear-cut examples than the
exact sciences. Nevertheless, there are scattered examples of observations
by Islamic physicians that disagree with Galen’s doctrines. For example,
‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 1231), observing many human skeletons during
a famine in 1200, failed to find the features of the lower jaw and sacrum
bones that Galen had described. The Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288)
working in Cairo, failed to find the porosity of the cardiac septum described
by Galen, through which the blood was supposed to pass from the venous to
the arterial systems. He proposed instead the “pulmonary transit” whereby
blood passes between systems via the lungs. It is too much to conclude,
as some modern scholars have done, that this discovery is a direct precursor
to William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation (1628) or to Michael Serve-
tus’s earlier theological musings (1553) (Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early
Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990, covers both
Islamic and medieval European medical traditions. Peter E. Pormann and
Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 2007, is the most recent
discussion of the Islamic medical tradition).
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 74

E. Modern Scholarship
Although Western scholars have been interested in Arabic scientific writings
as part of their own research agendas, from the 11th century down through
the Renaissance, a systematic effort to study the history of science in Islam per
se did not begin until the 20th century. The pioneer researcher in the history
of this subject was George Sarton (d. 1956), who was also the founder of the
history of science in general as a modern academic discipline. Sarton made
the scholarly world aware of the work of Arabic scientists, and he provided
an initial rough chronology of the subject. Although Sarton’s monumental
Introduction to the History of Science (1927–1948; 3 vols.) is, on the whole, an out-
dated survey, it facilitated many subsequent discoveries.
History of Islamic science became a respected field in the post-WWII era
through the researches of Edward S. Kennedy (Studies in the Islamic Exact
Sciences, 1983), Abdelhamid I. Sabra (see below), David A. King (see below),
Willy Hartner (Oriens-Occidens: Ausgewählte Schriften zur Wissenschafts- und
Kulturgeschichte, 2 vols., 1968–1984), George Saliba, and others. For a broad-
ranging survey of the various sub-fields of Islamic science, see Roshdi
Rashed (Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 1996). The discipline
began with a surprise: Edward S. Kennedy’s accidental discovery in the
1950’s of the debt of Copernicus to Islamic predecessors, as well as subse-
quent research by Hartner and others, awakened scholars to a wealth of
new material in the period of the supposed “decline” of Islamic science, al-
though their announcement was greeted in the West by some with hostility.
The very idea that Copernicus might have derived a crucial idea from Islamic
thinkers is rejected by many without giving the evidence a hearing. It is very
likely that Byzantine émigré scholars in Italy who contributed to the West-
ern Renaissance brought key ideas of Islamic science with them, including
knowledge of Ibn al-Shatir’s work in astronomy, on which Copernicus’s as-
tronomy is partly based. These Byzantine scholars, products of the Palaeolo-
gan Renaissance that was partly inspired by contacts with the Islamic world,
most likely derived their knowledge of Islamic astronomy from men such
as Gregory Chioniades (d. 1302), who traveled into Muslim lands to study
astronomy, then returned and established an astronomical research center
at Trebizond. David Pingree, Maria Mavroudi, and others have begun to
investigate Islamic-Byzantine connections. (David Pingree, The Astronomi-
cal Works of Gregory Chioniades, 2 vols., 1985, 1986; Maria Mavroudi, A Byzan-
tine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources,
2002).
There are multiple facets to the history of Islamic science, and many of
the founding scholars of the discipline are still living. Those active in the
75 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

study of scientific instruments are mainly David A. King and his students,
including François Charette and Benno van Dalen (François Char-
ette, Mathematical Instrumentation in Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria:
The Illustrated Treatise of Najm al-Din al-Misri, 2003; From China to Paris: 2000
Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas, ed. Benno van Dalen, 2002). David
King’s monumental two volume survey of Islamic scientific instruments has
recently appeared (In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Time-
keeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2005). Abdelhamid
I. Sabra has written extensively about Islamic optics, as well as about science
in Islam generally (The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham: Books i-iii: On Direct Vision.
2 vols., trans. Abdelhamid I. Sabra, 1989). One of his students, F. Jamil
Ragep, published an edition and study of the important Tadhkira of al-Tusi
(Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Memoir on Astronomy (al-tadhkira fi ^ilm al-hay’a), 2 vols.,
1993). Another, Elaheh Kheirandish, has published on the tradition of op-
tics in Islam (The Arabic Version of Euclid’s Optics (Kitab Uqlidis fi Ikhtilaf al-Mana-
zir), 2 vols., 1999).
David Pingree made groundbreaking contributions to the study of Is-
lamic astrology, and has shown important interconnections between Greek,
Sasanian, Indian, Byzantine, and Arabic sources (“Indian Reception of Mus-
lim Versions of Ptolemaic Astronomy,” in Ragep, ed., Tradition, Transmission,
Transformation, 1996, 471–85).
One of the pioneer historians of Islamic astronomy was Aydin Sayili,
whose The Observatory in Islam: And Its Place in the General History of the Observ-
atory (1960, rpt. 1981) is a classic in this field. George Saliba has devoted
his career to the study of planetary theories in Islam, and the transmission of
Islamic science to Europe (A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories
During the Golden Age of Islam, 1994). His students Ahmad Dallal and Robert
G. Morrison have written about Islamic planetary theory, and the latter
has also written about the connection between astronomy and religion
(Ahmad S. Dallal An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy, 1995; Robert G.
Morrison, Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi,
2007). Another student of Saliba’s (and of D. Gutas’s also), the author of
the present article, is a Graeco-Arabist active in the study of the transmission
of medicine and astronomy between the Greek and Arabic traditions (Glen
M. Cooper, Galen’s Critical Days in the Graeco-Arabic Tradition, Ashgate, forth-
coming). George Saliba’s major contribution has been to present a fresh
scenario about the beginnings of science in Islam and its later transmission
to the West, which can explain more than predecessor theories (Saliba, Is-
lamic Science, 2007). One of George Saliba’s key insights is the role of the non-
Arabic-speaking diwan administrators, displaced after ‘Abd al-Malik’s re-
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 76

forms, mentioned earlier, who sought to restore their lost positions by using
their knowledge of the sciences along with their native fluencies in the older
languages (Syriac and Persian) to acquire even greater competence in these
sciences in order to make themselves indispensable to the government. Thus
he has shown that scientific expertise became a means to powerful court
positions, such as personal physician or astrologer to the caliph himself.
Roshdi Rashed, J. Lennart Berggren, and Jan P. Hogendijk have
published extensively and made important discoveries about Islamic mathe-
matics. Sonja Brentjes has written about Euclid’s Elements in Islam (J. Len-
nart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, 1986; Roshdi
Rashed, Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle, vol. V: Ibn al-Hay-
tham: Astronomie, géométrie sphérique et trigonométri, 2006; Jan P. Hogendijk,
Ibn al-Haytham’s Completion of the Conics, 1985. Sonja Brentjes, “An Exciting
New Arabic Version of Euclid’s Elements: MS Mumbai, R.I.6,” Revue d’histoire
des mathématiques 12, fascicule 2 (2006): 169–97).
In Islamic medicine, there are several recent important studies. Nancy
Siraisi has written about the influence of Islamic medicine in Europe in the
late medieval and early Renaissance period (Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early
Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990). A selection
of this scholarship includes: Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, 1970;
Gotthard Strohmaier, Von Demokrit bis Dante: Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in
der arabischen Kultur, 1996; Emilie Savage-Smith, “The Practice of Surgery
in Islamic Lands: Myth and Reality,” The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of
the First Millennium, ed. Peregrine Horden and Emilie Savage-Smith,
2000, 308–21; Michael Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society,
Oxford 1992; Françoise Micheau and Danielle Jacquart, La médecine arabe
et l’Occident médiéval, 1990.
Bernard R. Goldstein and Y. Tzvi Langermann have written about
Islamic science in the Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic tradition. Charles Bur-
nett’s subjects deal with subjects that include astrology and the trans-
mission of Islamic science into Latin. Juan Vernet, Julio Samsó, Merce
Comes, and others have researched science in Islamic Spain. Donald R. Hill
wrote a fundamental text on Islamic technology and engineering. S. No-
manul Haq has studied the alchemical tradition in Islam, especially the fig-
ure of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber). (Bernard R. Goldstein, The Astronomy
of Levi ben Gerson (1288–1344), 1985; Y. Tzvi Langermann, The Jews and the
Sciences in the Middle Ages, 1999; Charles Burnett, Scientific Weather Forecasting
in the Middle Ages: The Writings of Al-Kindi (with Gerrit Bos), 2000; Juan Ver-
net, Historia de la ciencia española, 1975; Julio Samsó, Islamic Astronomy and
Medieval Spain, 1994; Donald R. Hill, Islamic Science and Engineering, 1994;
77 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

S. Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jâbir ibn Hayyân and
His Kitâb al-Ahjâr (Book of Stones), 1994).
The Graeco-Arabic translations are being studied as an historical phe-
nomenon (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998), and in lexical detail
(Gerhard Endress and Dimitri Gutas, A Greek and Arabic Lexicon (GALex):
Materials for a Dictionary of the Mediaeval Translations from Greek into Arabic,
1992–present). One of Dimitri Gutas’s insights in these publications is a re-
assessment of the translation movement. His careful attention to the sources
ruled out the special role that Western scholarship has often attributed to the
caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833 AD) such as single-handedly beginning the
Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement and sponsoring science in response to
a dream about Aristotle, or as part of his rationalist theological pet project,
Mu‘tazilism.
Furthermore, there are journals and a newsletter that publish research.
For example, Michio Yano publishes a journal, SCIAMVS: Sources and Com-
mentaries in Exact Sciences, that includes articles about the exact sciences.
SUHAYL: Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civili-
zation is published by the University of Barcelona. F. Jamil and Sally Ragep
maintain a bulletin (http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/) for the Commission on History
of Science & Technology in Islamic Societies, part of the International Union of the
History and Philosophy of Science, which provides a great service to the field,
keeping scholars informed of conferences and research. Scholars publish in
the following journals, among others: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Early
Science and Medicine, Journal for the History of Arabic Science, and Journal for the His-
tory of Astronomy.

F. Current Issues and Future Trends, Challenges

Once the obstacle of the outmoded paradigm about the rise and decline of
Islamic science has been superseded, the major challenge to scholarship
in this subject is the inaccessibility of source texts. Primary sources were
written in languages, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which, most
still in manuscript form, are scattered in libraries and private collections all
over Europe and the Muslim world. Finding aids, such as Fuat Sezgin (Ge-
schichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1967–1984, 9 vols.), are a great help in locat-
ing extant manuscripts, but occasionally new manuscripts come to light and
mistakes in existing catalogues are discovered, and there does not yet exist an
effective way to share this information between scholars. Furthermore, the
most useful of these, Sezgin’s, is rendered less useful in that it does not ex-
tend past 430 AH (1038–1039 C.E.). The decision to end there was perhaps
influenced at the outset by the former paradigm of decline of Islamic science,
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 78

which seems odd, for even Sarton much earlier was aware of significant
scientific activity in the Islamic world during the period after this cutoff date,
described above. However, by the time volume 6 appeared (1978), Sezgin
had become aware of the creative science in the later period, of Maragha and
the new planetary models.
A new paradigm has appeared, arguing that scholars ought to view the
sciences not by isolated language or culture, but in an entire region of sibling
cultures, as part of an “Islamo-Christian” civilization (Richard W. Bulliet,
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, 2004). The increasingly obsolete des-
ignation “Judaeo-Christian civilization,” although acknowledging the debt
to Jewish civilization, inaccurately excludes Islam from the historical scen-
ario. Bulliet’s useful paradigm enables one to understand the varied trans-
formations of science in the greater Mediterranean region as part of a long
intercultural tradition, with various collateral descendants – language, cul-
tural, religious, and political differences notwithstanding.
Earlier scholars, eager to find connections on the basis of superficial
evidence, were hindered by what is now referred to as the “Myth of Gonde-
shapur” (Arabic: Jundaysabur). The narrative is as follows: Gondeshapur in
southwest Iran had become an outpost of Hellenism, a haven for intellectual
and religious refugees from the persecutions of Emperor Justinian (d. 565)
and other Christian Roman emperors. There these intellectuals – so the nar-
rative proceeds – established an academy of translation, hospitals, libraries,
etc. The Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (d. 833) then engaged the services of one
of the Syrian Bakhtishu^ family of physicians, who brought all of this knowl-
edge and tradition to Baghdad, where the Hellenistic tradition then con-
tinued. This Western scholarly reconstruction was an attempt to account for
the transmission, by providing a ready resource for the Graeco-Arabic trans-
lations. The problem with this account is that it is based on one late source;
there is no other evidence except supposition. Another tendentious anti-
Christian account, by the philosopher al-Farabi (d. 950), tries to show how
the sciences, persecuted by Christian empire, found a home and intellectual
freedom only under Islam. The reality is somewhat more complex, and infi-
nitely more interesting (Saliba, Islamic Science, 2007).

G. Science and Religion

Islamic civilization provides a rich source for the study of the relationship
between science and religion in society. The usual Western view is that
science and religion necessarily are in conflict, for which the notorious “Gali-
leo affair” is cited as an example. Islamic civilization, on the other hand,
offers many examples of non-antagonistic, even constructive relationships
79 Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

between scientists and the religious establishment. The old Western para-
digm of Islamic science suggested that science had lost the battle against
the religious forces, and eventually died out in Islam. While it is true that
religion forced some Greek-derived disciplines such as astronomy to rede-
fine themselves, more often scientists served religion, as for example relig-
ious scholars – many of the scientists were also legal scholars or theologians,
or time-keepers of the mosque, a famous example being Ibn al-Shatir
(d. 1375), of Damascus. And it is also clear that science never completely died
out as claimed, and that there was a continuous, though perhaps uneven,
tradition down well into Ottoman times. There have been a few recent
studies of the connection between knowledge and religion in Islam, such as
Morrison (Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi,
2007).

H. The End of the Sciences in Islam?

A major question that has been asked by some scholars since the study of
Islam began in earnest in the 19th century, and one that continues to be of in-
terest to the public is this: If there were so many leading scientists in Islamic
civilization during the “golden age” of Islamic civilization, and then science
vanished – how and why did it disappear?
The early Western orientalists proposed reasons for the failure of the
Islamic world to sustain its lead in the sciences: Ernest Renan (1823–1892),
Max Weber (1864–1920), Gustave E. von Grunebaum (1909–1972) ad-
vanced essentializing, reductive, or simply racist reasons for the ultimate
failure of Islam to maintain its lead in science. More sophisticated (but still
essentializing and reductive) scenarios have been advanced since, including:
1) the conflict between science and the religious establishment; 2) the
negative influence of al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111) devastating attack on Greek
thought; 3) the inherent inferiority of the Islamic religion; and, 4) the domi-
nance of the non-rational aspects of Islam, etc.
In the West, the trend has been (and still is to some degree) to apply
methods and paradigms derived from the issues and particulars of Western
society and its history to Islam (Michael Mitterauer, Warum Europa? Mittel-
alterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, 2003). The results have often been dis-
tortions, if not caricatures of their subject, for example, in the application
of Weber’s theories to Islam. The Orientalist-inspired paradigm of decline
has implications beyond the Western academy as well: some contemporary
scholars from the Muslim world, having been educated in the West and hav-
ing been imbued with the earlier distorting paradigms about science, have
written about their native scientific traditions in the terms bequeathed them
Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context 80

from the West. Careful attention to the scholarship of George Saliba (Islamic
Science, 2007) and his colleagues can help to reverse this trend.
There were, in fact, major changes in the Islamic world in the several
centuries since the beginning of the supposed decline in the 11th century,
and the period of these Orientalists in the 19th century. It has become increas-
ingly known, beginning in the 1950’s through the pioneering work of
Kennedy (Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences) and others, that original science
continued to be produced well into the 16th century, and probably beyond.
Furthermore, many pre-colonial era Western scholars knew this to have been
the case, since, due to the research of Saliba, it is now understood that sev-
eral European thinkers were reading the works of Arabic scientists and phil-
osophers well into the Renaissance and beyond, searching for useful material
for their own research. They or their agents scoured the Middle East in search
of scientific texts in which they expected to find material to assist them in
their own scientific projects, not unlike the manner in which 9th-century
Arabic translators sought out Greek texts (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Cul-
ture, 1998). No less a figure than John Locke studied the works of Ibn Tufayl
(d. 1185), and early aspects of his own epochal philosophy was formatively
influenced thereby (Gül A. Russell, “The Impact of the Philosophus Auto-
didactus: Pocockes, John Locke and the Society of Friends,” The ‘Arabick’ Interest
of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. G. A. Russell,
1994, 224–65. See also Gül A. Russell, The Mind as a ‘tabula rasa’: John Locke
and the Arabic Philosophus Autodidactus, forthcoming).
Furthermore, it is now better understood how the economics of a society
are interconnected with the extent of scientific practice that a given society
can support. Some reasons for the decline in Islamic science must be sought
outside of that civilization, in the significant economic changes that have oc-
curred in the West after the Renaissance – changes that dramatically altered
the balance of technology, trade and intellectual exchanges between these
societies. Two of the most important of these events – discussed by Saliba –
were, first, the discovery of the New World and, next, the discovery of a direct
water route to the actual Indies. The former produced, through the exploi-
tation of human and natural resources, tremendous wealth in Europe that
was used to drive a scientific and technological revolution. The latter ad-
versely affected the economy of the Middle East, which had long benefited
from overland trade along the Silk Route, and was now mostly cropped out of
the picture.
The history of science in Islam is an exciting young field, attracting tal-
ented scholars. There are formidable challenges as is the case with all new
disciplines, but the field is wide and ripe for the scholarly harvest, provided
81 Qur’anic Studies

one is equipped with the proper tools. This field forces scholars to jettison
old and cherished stereotypes of European cultural (or racial) superiority or
uniqueness. It forces all scholars to confront their own intellectual heritage
in fresh ways that reveal the inter-cultural nature of the great scientific
movements and discoveries of the past.

Select Bibliography
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement
in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998); Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, ed., The Enterprise
of Science in Islam: New Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003); Tradition,
Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at
the University of Oklahoma, ed. F. Jamil Ragep, Sally P. Ragep, and Steven Livesey
(Leiden: Brill, 1996); Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Roshdi Rashed,
3 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); George Saliba, Islamic Science and the
Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2007);
Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1967–1984);
Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, ed. B. Spuler, Handbuch der Orientalistik
(Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1970).

Glen M. Cooper

Qur’anic Studies

A. Introduction
Qur’anic Studies refers to the post-Enlightenment historical-critical study of
the Qur’an qua text as well as, beginning in the mid-20th century, critical re-
flection upon the text’s relationship, meaning and possible significance to
broader issues concerning Islamic history, historiography, the development
of intellectual and religious traditions (especially law) in Islam’s formative
period (7th through 9th centuries) and, with the contemporary postmodern
turn in the humanities, its relevance for larger questions concerning the in-
terpretation of issues related to what might properly be described as socio-
cultural history.
After a brief terminological definition, this entry covers, in a necessarily
broad manner, the history, development and major trends in this field from
its inception in mid-19th-century Germany to the middle of the first decade
of the 21st century, the latter of which has witnessed the publication of a
work of major significance for Qur’anic Studies, the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
Qur’anic Studies 82

(ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 6 vols., 2001–2006; hereafter EQ). Given

both its broad topical range and bibliographical thoroughness, it is with the
EQ that any inquiry into the history of research in Qur’anic Studies should
begin. As such, this entry assumes that it would be superfluous to reference
other sources concerning the development of the field beyond the relevant
entries in the EQ.

B. The Qur’an
The Qur’an, literally ‘recitation’, refers to the fixed, orally preserved, and
written text understood by Muslims to be the ipsissima verba of God revealed
piecemeal to the historical founder of Islam, Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah
(570–632), in and around the cities of Mecca and Medina (Yathrib) in the
northwestern littoral of the Arabian peninsula from around 610 until
shortly before his death in 632. Unarguably the preeminent unifying force
among Muslims across time and space, both historically and phenomeno-
logically speaking, the Qur’an has stood at the center of Islam as a religious
system and, followed by the Hadith and various institutional, textual, and
learned traditions associated with the activities of the corporate body of Mus-
lim religious scholars, has served as the basic source and reference for matters
of law and theology, of state and polity, of ritual, social, and cultural life in
uniquely far-reaching and historically significant ways.
Beyond the well-attested practice of memorization and oral transmis-
sion among Muhammad and his companions, although the Islamic sources
admit traditions concerning the written transcription of portions of the
Qur’anic text via dictation during his lifetime as well as the compilation of
privately circulated codices shortly following his death, generally the Mus-
lim tradition has maintained that the consonantal text of the Qur’an as
known today was codified about two decades following the death of Muham-
mad during the latter half of the reign of the Caliph ‘Uthman (r. 644–56).
Compiled in order to quell disputes over variant readings of the text which
had broken out between various troop contingents stationed outside of the
Arabian peninsula, along with the official promulgation of this new codex
(copies of which were sent to the newly established Iraqi garrisons of Kufa
and Basra as well as to Damascus with one copy being kept in Medina) the
Caliph ordered all competing codices destroyed. While descriptions of com-
peting redactions are preserved in classical Muslim Qur’anic scholarship, by
both fact of history and force of convention any reference to the “Qur’an” is
necessarily a reference to the ‘Uthmanic text, the textus receptus, ne varietur.
Roughly about the length of the Greek New Testament, the Qur’an is
organized into 114 sections or chapters (Ar. sura), each of which is further
83 Qur’anic Studies

subdivided into a varying number of verses (Ar. aya), with the exception of
the opening chapter the suras being arranged in more-or-less decreasing
order of length. Cast in an elevated, rhymed Arabic prose, the Qur’an is not
marked by a straightforward thematic or narrative arrangement, but rather
weaves together eschatological monitions, theological pronouncements,
terse narratives concerning previous prophets, words of consolation to Mu-
hammad and his community, admonitions and polemics directed against
their enemies and prescripts concerning moral, cultic and civil matters. Its
substantive content mirrors themes found in the normative Biblical tradi-
tion and the apocryphal and midrashic writings of Judaism and Christianity
as well as topics associated with the non-scriptural tribal religion(s) of pre-
Islamic Arabia.
Written in a considerably defective orthography, by the first half of the
10th century a standard number (seven, ten, or fourteen) of variant systems
of reading came to be applied to the basic consonantal skeleton of the
‘Uthmanic text, one of which in particular, that of the Kufan scholar ‘Asim
(d. ca. 744) as transmitted by his student Hafs (d. ca. 805–06), came to enjoy
particular prestige (see further, Frederik Leehmuis, “Readings of the
Qur’an,” EQ 4 [2004], 353–63). It is this reading which served as the basis for
the so-called Egyptian Standard edition, or Royal Egyptian edition, of the
Qur’an printed under the patronage of King Fuad I in 1923–1924, the
edition which not only quickly became the standard for the overwhelming
majority of printed Qur’ans in the modern Muslim world (a second, slightly
amended edition appeared in 1952) but also, a few exceptions aside, within
western scholarship where it came to supplant the edition prepared earlier
by the German Arabist Gustav Flügel (Corani textus arabicus, 1834; rev. in
1841 and 1858).
While discussed prior to the outbreak of the Second World War (on
which see, Frederik Leehmuis, “Codices of the Qur’an,” EQ 1 [2001], 350)
a critically edited text of the Qur’an has yet to be prepared, although
scholarly resources exist to do so and steps have recently been taken to realize
such a project (on which see, Andrew Rippen, “Tools for the Scholarly Study
of the Qur’an,” EQ 5 [2005], 294–95). At present, nothing even remotely
approaching a textus criticus of the likes of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
or the Nestle-Alands’ Novum Testamentum Graece has been attempted for the
Qur’an.
Qur’anic Studies 84

C. Qur’anic Studies
The origins of Qur’anic Studies as a distinct area of scholarship in Islamic
studies (in which it has always played a significant role) is directly traceable
to the researches of 19th-century continental Semitic philologists. Although
emerging from the same milieu, however, in comparison to its sister field of
Biblical criticism the disciple of Qur’anic Studies has developed at a consider-
ably slower pace, being comparatively so tardigrade that even a brief account
of developments in the field must take into account scholarship of a vintage
normally baulked at in others. Although there are antecedents connected
with the rise and development of Arabic studies in the major European
universities during the 17th and 18th centuries (on which see Jane Dammen
McAuliffe, “Preface,” EQ 1 [2001], vi–viii; and, Hartmut Bobzin,
“Pre-1800 Preoccupations of Qur’anic Studies,” ibid. 4 [2004], 245–51), in
large part both the methodological framework and much of the topical
agenda of modern Qur’anic Studies were determined by the work of German
scholars such as Abraham Geiger (Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum
aufgenommen, 1833; English trans. as Judaism and Islam, 1898), Gustav Weil
(Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran, 1844; id., Mohammed der Prophet,
1843) and, much more significantly, by the Semiticist Theodor Nöldeke in
his still oft-referenced Geschichte des Qorans (1860), normally cited in its much
belated 2nd edition rewritten and expanded by Freidrich Schwally in two
volumes (1909, 1919), the second of which dealing mainly with questions
concerning the collection of the Qur’an, to which was eventually added a
third by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl (1938) which, among
other things, takes up issues related to known variant readings of the
Qur’anic text (rpt. 3 vols. in 1, 1961; hereafter GQ).
It is in this body of work where many of the major topics of subsequent
scholarship in Qur’anic Studies make their first systematic appearance, three
areas receiving particular attention. First, questions regarding the structure
and arrangement of the text in relation to its Sitz im Leben, meaning attempts
to assign a probable chronology to the individual suras of the Qur’an based,
in broad outline at least, on the biography of the Prophet as found in the
classical Muslim sources. Second, a largely source-critical concern with
the substantive content of the text in terms of its relation to larger religious
patterns, trends, and traditions associated with the eastern Mediterranean
oikumene on the eve of Islam and, more importantly, its position vis-à-vis
the religious milieu of the Arabian peninsula in the late 6th and early 7th cen-
turies. That is to say, an attempt to identify, uncover, or determine the prob-
able sources, especially Jewish and Christian, for the Qur’an’s substantive
content as well as the relationship of such content to the specifically Arabian
85 Qur’anic Studies

milieu from which it emerged. Third, although less so than among future
generations of scholars, there was a concern with questions pertaining to the
redaction history of the text itself, something which was necessarily con-
nected with a wider body of questions of interest to Comparative Semitics. In
a sense, all of these concerns were firmly grounded in the methodological
and interpretive strategies associated with higher criticism as applied to the
Hebrew Bible.
Although not always directly building upon the work of Abraham
Geiger (d. 1874), Gustav Weil (d. 1889), or Theodor Nöldeke (d. 1930),
a major concern in scholarship on the Qur’an in the latter 19th century
concerned the vexed question of the chronology of individual suras. Among
a range of solutions proposed, those of William Muir (The Life of Mahomet,
1858–1861; id., The Coran, its Composition and Teaching, 1878), Hubert
Grimme (Mohammed, 1895) and Hartwig Hirschfeld (New Researches into
the Composition and Exegesis of the Qoran, 1902) figured most prominently.
Whereas Nöldeke, following Weil and in agreement with the traditional
Muslim understanding of recognizing suras as either Meccan (610–622)
or Medinan (622–632), had differentiated between three Meccan periods
and one Medinan based primarily on style and content, Muir proposed a
six-period solution, five Meccan and one Medinan, Grimme two Meccan
and one Medinan based almost solely on doctrinal characteristics, and
Hirschfeld a sequence based on the differences, in individual passages
rather than suras, between what he identified as the six major rhetorical
modes of Qur’anic discourse. Shortly following the initial publication of GQ,
the English churchman J. M. Rodwell published a translation of the text in
which he rearranged the suras largely according to the scheme of Nöldeke,
while also speculating on the possibility of analyzing single passages chro-
nologically over and against entire suras as the Qur’an’s basic chronological
unit (The Koran, 1861; 2nd rev. ed., 1876). In most cases, such chronological
reconstructions were based almost solely on stylistic and linguistic features
while virtually ignoring the vast tradition of Muslim Qur’anic scholarship,
something undoubtedly a result of both a simple lack of access to texts and
the perceived irrelevance of such literature for establishing a fixed chro-
nological order for the suras in any case.
Although issues of chronology and textual integrity continued to be dis-
cussed, Qur’anic Studies in the first few decades of the 20th century was
marked by a shift in focus to the interrelationship between linguistic
and substantive aspects of the Qur’anic text. Here, questions concerning the
specificities of Qur’anic vocabulary or the original language of the ‘Uth-
manic codex were especially prominent. Although still very much rooted in
Qur’anic Studies 86

the atomizing procedures of continental philology, the pioneering study of

Charles C. Torrey on the Qur’anic use of commercial terminology and its
relationship to the mercantile milieu of early 7th-century Mecca (The Commer-
cial-Theological Terms in the Koran, 1892) and that of Arthur Jeffery on the
non-Arabic vocabulary of the Qur’an and the significance of likely routes of
transmission for understanding the text’s original Sitz im Leben (The Foreign
Vocabulary of the Qur’an, 1938; on which in general see, Andrew Rippen,
“Foreign Vocabulary,” EQ 2 [2001], 226–37) are representative of this trend.
As evinced by Martin R. Zammit’s recent work on lexical interrelationships
between Qur’anic vocabulary and a number of geo-historically proximate Se-
mitic languages (A Comparative Lexical Study of Qur’anic Arabic, 2002), however,
many of the conclusions of scholars working at this time do not stand up to
contemporary standards of linguistic theory.
Much the same can be said regarding research on the language of the
Qur’an. From the confessional perspective of classical Muslim exegetes, the
Arabic of the Qur’an was understood to have been that of Muhammad him-
self, meaning the regional dialect of the Hejaz, or more specifically the tribal
dialect of the Quraysh. This description has been challenged by western Ara-
bists in a rather vigorous debate initiated by Karl Vollers in his seminal
Volkssprache und Schriftsprache im alten Arabien (1906) in which he argued that
the Qur’an was initially promulgated, orally, in a non-inflected colloquial
Arabic, whereas the ‘Uthmanic text was the product of the efforts of later
Muslim philologists to make it conform to the language used by the ancient
Arab poets which, quite unlike the common language, was a poetic koinè
distinguished from the vernacular by its use of a full system of grammatical
inflection (Ar. i‘rab). Few exceptions aside, recent research has seemed to
settle upon the idea that the original language of the Qur’an as preserved in
the ‘Uthmanic recension is indeed reflective of an intra-tribal poetic koinè,
although bearing traces of the dialect associated with Mecca, but Vollers’s
model of a diaglossic linguistic situation in pre-Islamic Arabia has largely
been replaced with a polyglossic model based, in part at least, on both the
ever increasing availability of data in Arabic studies as well as substantial the-
oretical advances made in the field of sociolinguistics in general (see further,
Claude Gilliot and Pierre Larcher, “Language and Style of the Qur’an,”
EQ 3 [2003], 109–35).
Alongside this linguistic turn, Qur’anic Studies at this time witnessed
what Marco Schöller rightly characterized as “the true novelty of early
twentieth-century scholarship on the Qur’an … research into the supposed
Jewish or Christian roots of early Islam” (“Post-Enlightenment Academic
Study of the Qur’an,” EQ 4 [2004], 194). Following the lead of earlier works
87 Qur’anic Studies

such as those of Abraham Geiger or Hartwig Hirschfeld (esp. the latter’s

Jüdische Elemente im Korân, 1878) of tracing Biblical, Talmudic, and Midrashic
parallels in the Qur’an, scholars such as Wilhelm Rudolph (Die Abhängigkeit
des Korans von Judentum und Christentum, 1922), the aforementioned Charles C.
Torrey (The Jewish Foundation of Islam, 1933), Heinrich Speyer (Die biblischen
Erzählungen im Qoran, 1931), and Richard Bell (The Origins of Islam in Its Chris-
tian Environment, 1926) framed a field of inquiry which, in its attempt to trace
and situate a larger range of Jewish and Christian elements in the Qur’anic
text, has continued, with different foci, unabated from the post-war era of
the 1950s – in the case of, for example, the work of Denise Masson (Le Coran
et la révélation judéo-chrétienne: études comparées, 2 vols., 1958; 2nd rev. ed. as
Monothéisme coranique et monothéisme biblique: Doctrines comparées, 1975) – up
to present such as in the recent collective volume Bible and Qur’an: Essays in
Scriptural Intertextuality (ed. John Reeves, 2004). While certainly informed by
both theoretical and interpretive shifts characteristic of the post-war western
academic study of religion in general, in large part the difference between
pre- and post-war scholarship in this area of Qur’anic Studies is the general
recognition of the historical complexity of the range of borrowings and
intersections between Jewish, Christian and other socio-religious or sec-
tarian trends and currents converging in, on, or around the immediate his-
torical context of the Arabian peninsula in the late 6th and early 7th century.
The essays in the aforementioned Bible and Qur’an are particularly instructive
in this regard.
At the same time, issues of chronology continued to be treated during
the first part of the 20th century as well, especially in the case of what turned
out to be the most elaborate effort to date in reconstructing the Qur’anic text
on the basis of its chronology, that of the Scottish Arabist Richard Bell in his
The Qur’an, Translated with a Critical Rearrangement of the Surahs (2 vols., 1937,
1939). Based on an elaborate hypothesis which posited that the text was the
result of a complex, and by no means transparent, process of redaction in
which individual suras were collated with one another in such a manner that
the individual leaves or sheets on which they were actually written, in some
cases both recto and verso, came to be confused and intermixed in such a way
that parts of one sura were mistakenly inserted into another, Bell “critically
rearranged” individual suras into short passages, verse groupings, or single
pericopes. Based on an elaborate three-phase hypothesis of the development
of the Qur’an from simple homiletic elocutions to a book proper, the main
novelty was its positing that the final ‘Uthmanic textus receptus was redacted
solely from written documents. Further notes and explanations on Bell’s
work have recently been made available in the posthumously published
Qur’anic Studies 88

A Commentary on the Qur’an culled from materials left in his estate (ed. C. Ed-
mund Bosworth and M.E.J. Richardson, 2 vols., 1991), although
the publication of these notes have garnered little notice because of the gen-
erally dismissive view taken of Bell’s hyper-atomistic theories (on this, see
Andrew Rippen, “Reading the Qur’an with Richard Bell,” JAOS 112.4 [1992]:
639–47). It should be noted that Bell went far beyond the mere chronologi-
cal rearrangement of his predecessors in that his aim was ultimately that of
textual emendation, something which the American Arabist James Bel-
lamy dealt with beginning in the 1970s in a series of seminal studies which
propose emendations to difficult passages in either the ‘Uthmanic text or to
its pointing based on the identification of likely scribal errors (see id., “Tex-
tual Criticism,” EQ 5 [2005], 237–52).
Qur’anic Studies in the latter half of the 20th century was marked by a
number of significant developments which, while never wholly displacing
the basic concerns of the foundational scholarship of the 19th century, wit-
nessed the emergence of new methodologies and areas of inquiry which
would set a much expanded agenda for the discipline over the rest of the cen-
tury. First, it should be noted that the post-war period witnessed a certain
type of stocktaking in the form of the publication of a number of mono-
graphic attempts to synthesize the state of the western academic study of the
Qur’an, in particular Arthur Jeffery’s The Qur’an as Scripture (1952), Richard
Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (1953; rev. William Montgomery Watt,
1970), and, of greater significance, the substantial introduction of Régis
Blachère to his French translation of the Qur’an (Le Coran, 3 vols.,
1947–1949), later published separately in a slightly updated 2nd edition
(Introduction au Coran, 1959). In addition to these works, a synthesis, and vast
contribution to previous scholarship is also to be found in Rudi Paret’s
pioneering German translation of the Qur’an (Der Koran, 1962–1966) which,
when coupled with his extremely valuable addenda parenthetically inserted
into the translation, along with his Kommentar und Konkordanz (1971; 2nd rev.
ed., 1982) is commonly acknowledged to be a major monument of 20th-cen-
tury Western scholarship on the Qur’an. Despite their individual shortcom-
ings, each of these works has typically been considered (alongside Nöl-
deke’s revised and expanded GQ) essential for those working in the field,
and no serious student of the Qur’an is without them. It remains to be seen,
however, how the publication of the EQ might effect scholarly perception
and use of these materials, especially on account of the sheer scope of its col-
lective bibliographical apparatus.
Second, the post-war period witnessed a flurry of activity related to is-
sues and concerns that, either directly or indirectly, resonated with larger
89 Qur’anic Studies

methodological and interpretive trends associated with the burgeoning dis-

cipline of Religionswissenschaft (History of Religions / Comparative Religion).
As a discrete, yet topically diffuse, Euro-American scholarly enterprise which
looked kindly upon the generation of comparative data, it was in such a
context where the mid-20th century interest in the theological and ethical
content of the Qur’anic text is best situated, especially as preserved in the
works of scholars such as Thomas O’Shaughnessy (The Koranic Concept of the
Word of God, 1948), M. A. Draz (La Morale du Koran, 1951), or Daud Rahbar
(God of Justice, 1960). At the same time, this period also witnessed the publi-
cation of the pioneering researches of the Japanese polymath, and scholar of
Comparative Religion, Toshihiko Izutsu on the semantic world of the
Qur’anic text, namely his The Structure of Ethical Terms in the Koran (1959; later
rewritten as Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an, 1966) and God and Man in the
Koran (1964). In treating the Qur’anic text semantically rather than through
the largely non-contextual assumptions framing the traditional historico-
critical philological approach, Izutsu’s work inaugurated a new chapter in
the field, and has influenced the research of no small number of scholars of
Qur’anic Studies in the latter part of the 20th century. Such influence can be
seen, for example, in the equally pioneering work of Angelika Neuwirth
(Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren, 1981; résumé in ead., “Form
and Structure of the Qur’an,” EQ 2 [2002], 245–66) whose careful micro-
structural analysis of relations between elemental verse groups of the Mec-
can suras (following the chronology proposed in GQ) finds the text to be orig-
inally liturgical or oral in nature, or, with a shift in emphasis, in that of Da-
niel Madigan (The Qur’an’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture,
2001) wherein Qur’anic notions of the significance of the “book,” or lack
thereof, and the idea of revelation are explored through a painstaking sem-
antic analysis which in the end argues for a much less significant role given to
writing in the Qur’an than previously thought, something which challenges
the idea of the Qur’an as a text which initially identified itself as a scripture in
the sense of the Torah or the Gospels.
Third, in contradistinction to the penchant of 19th- and early 20th-cen-
tury scholarship in Qur’anic Studies to ignore the vast body of traditional
Muslim exegetical literature, in the early 1970s a number of scholars began
to re-evaluate the relationship between the critical study of the text and the
critical study of its confessional exegesis. In many ways, this linking parallels
scholarship done in Islamic studies concerning the development of Islamic
jurisprudence wherein both text and the dynamics of communal constitu-
tion are seen to exist in an historically complex interrelationship which
inevitably calls into question received notions regarding the historical devel-
Qur’anic Studies 90

opment of basic Islamic institutions during its first two centuries, some-
thing expressed nowadays in the lively debate on “Islamic origins” (on
which, see Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Herbert Berg,
2002). As applied to Qur’anic Studies, two works, both published in 1977
(as was the classic work in the “Islamic origins” debate, Patricia Crone and
Michael Cook’s controversial Hagarism), stand out as seminal: John Wans-
brough’s Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation and
John Burton’s The Collection of the Qur’an, especially since they reach dia-
metrically opposing conclusions. Both, however, do so through questioning
the historicity of traditional accounts largely accepted as accurate since the
time of Nöldeke concerning the origin(s) of the ‘Uthmanic text.
Employing a methodology which in Biblical criticism would be called
form-criticism (Formgeschichte), for Wansbrough the Qur’anic canon
emerged very late (i.e., at the end of the 8th and into the 9th century) simply
because the need for it also emerged late. In essence, he saw the text as the or-
ganic result of a juridical and polemical need for an authoritative scripture
which, in a highly charged sectarian context, was addressed by the produc-
tion of a text collected out of a mass of previously independent Near Eastern
prophetic logia and other materials which had been circulating among vari-
ous proto-Muslim communities for some time later blended together, as was
the “salvation history” (Heilsgeschichte) of the traditional biography (sira)
of the Prophet, in the context of sectarian monotheistic polemic in Iraq so as
to legitimate Arab political domination throughout the region (résumé in
Charles Adams, “Reflections on the Work of John Wansbrough,” MTSR 9.1
[1997]: 75–89). It should be noted that in his work, Wansbrough was
careful to state that his reconstructions were little more than working hypo-
theses, and that he saw many of the same processes at play in the genesis
of both Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. For his part, Burton argued
for the existence of a fixed canon at a much earlier date: at the time of Mu-
hammad’s death, interpreting traditions concerning the production of an
‘Uthmanic recension as a device invented by later Muslim jurists to ground
their own positions, often in variance with the apparent rulings contained
in the ‘Uthmanic text, in the authority of the Qur’an through anachronisti-
cally projecting support for the critical juridical doctrine of abrogation (Ar.
naskh; in this case the doctrine of naskh al-tilawa duna ’l-hukm, “deletion of
a [Qur’anic] verse without the abrogation of its legal status” as related to
both the circulation of varying codices and the prophetic sanction of variant
readings) back into an invented past when, in fact, the Qur’an had already
been codified by the Prophet himself, something which would, of course,
militate against the acceptability of the doctrine of abrogation in the first
91 Qur’anic Studies

place (résumé in John Burton, “The Collection of the Qur’an,” EQ 1 [2001],

351–61).

D. Recent Developments
In addition to the stimulating effect which the revisionist theories of Wans-
brough and Burton have had on the continued development of Qur’anic
Studies from the late 1970s to the present, new questions have also estab-
lished themselves as significant research trajectories in the field at the begin-
ning of the 21st century. Although much of this work has focused on issues
related to the significance of the Qur’an in Muslim life and thought in mod-
ern and contemporary contexts, such as ethnographical studies on the
cultural and religious significance of socially regulated systems of Qur’anic
recitation in modern Muslim societies (e.g., Kristina Nelson, The Art of
Reciting the Qur’an, 1st ed.,1985, 2nd rev. ed., 2002; or, Anna Gade, Perfection
Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qur’an in Indonesia, 2004),
within the ambient of medieval studies a similar shift to what would be
called in the context of Biblical studies reader-response criticism (Rezeptions-
ästhetik) has emerged as a promising area of research. The work of the Ameri-
can scholar of Islam William Graham (Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects
of Scripture in the History of Religion, 1987) and, more forthrightly, that of the
Iranian-German scholar Navid Kermani (Gott ist schön: Das ästhetische Erleben
des Koran, 1999) are excellent examples of what is clearly a reaction against
the traditional historical-philological approach dominant in much previous
scholarship.
Working from the perspective of reception history, Kermani’s research
in particular demonstrates that, historically speaking, the significance of the
Qur’an has been primarily rooted in its status as a pre-eminently oral/aural
phenomenon, its historical import laying not in the midst of its reputed ori-
gins, but rather in the ways in which its origins have been imagined in the
context of the collective Muslim “cultural memory” (das kulturelle Gedächtnis).
He argues that this should be the primary object of scholarly inquiry on the
Qur’an and not, as the late Canadian scholar of Islam Wilfred Cantwell
Smith himself argued nearly twenty years earlier, the scripture’s origins
in the positivistic sense (“The True Meaning of Scripture: An Empirical His-
torian’s Nonreductionist Interpretation of the Qur’an,” IJMES 11.4 [July,
1980]: 487–505). In many ways, this new direction in Qur’anic Studies has
been inspired by a wider postmodern dismissal of the monologic search for
meaning or coherence as a meaningless endeavor in and of itself.
It should be noted, however, that at the same time concerns of earlier
generations of scholars over basic source-critical issues do still make an ap-
Qur’anic Studies 92

pearance in the field, although in no small number of cases such work seems
to be irretrievably situated in an overtly polemical context tied to larger geo-
political dynamics characteristic of the late 20th century. The recent study of a
comparative Semiticist writing under the name of Christoph Luxenberg
(Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koran-
sprache, 2000) is perhaps the best example. While the issue of Syriac borrow-
ings have long been discussed in literature, Luxenberg, following in the
spirit of the earlier polemical work of the German Protestant theologian
Günter Lüling (Über den Ur-Qur’an: Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion vorislamischer
christlicher Strophenlieder im Qur’an, 1974; English trans. A Challenge to Islam for
Reformation, 2003) attempts to emend difficult passages in the ‘Uthmanic
text by positing an original Syro-Aramaic-Arabic “Urtext” which he hypo-
thesizes emerged in the linguistic and religious context of an originally Ara-
maized Christian settlement (Mecca) whose Syro-Aramaic liturgical book
(later the ‘Qur’an’ proper) was at some point recast into a particular form of
the Arabic language so as to be comprehensible to the Arabs who, for reasons
unclear, became heirs to a developing tradition which would eventually con-
figure itself into Islam proper. Among scholars working in the field, Luxen-
berg’s work has met with a mixed reception, from cautious support of
his overall methodology (e.g., Claude Gillot and Pierre Larcher, op.
cit., 130–32) to charges of outright dilettantism (e.g., François de Blois,
“Review of Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran,” JQS 5.1 [2003]: 92–97; cf.
Marco Schöller, op. cit., 201–02).
As the field looks into the future, there is little doubt that the publication
of the EQ, described by its general editor as the result of both “the desire
to take stock of the field of Qur’anic Studies at the turn of the century and an
interest in seeing this field flourish in the new millennium” (Jane Dammen
McAuliffe, op. cit., ix), will serve as a major impetus for continued devel-
opments. In addition, the establishment in 1999 of the first journal dedi-
cated solely to Qur’anic Studies, the Journal of Qur’anic Studies (JQS) will un-
doubtedly contribute to this task as well. With its editorial office housed at
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and under
the general editorship of the Cambridge trained Egyptian scholar of the
Qur’an M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, JQS not only simultaneously publishes aca-
demic research on the Qur’an in English and Arabic by both non-Muslim and
Muslim scholars, but has also been associated with sponsoring a number of
international academic conferences devoted to furthering the field. Taken
together, both the EQ and JQS well capture the emerging dynamics of
Qur’anic Studies as it begins to define, or perhaps redefine, itself at the be-
ginning of the 21st century.
93 Shi ism

Select Bibliography
The bibliographical reach of individual entries of the EQ as a whole both encompasses
and supersedes all previous summaries of the history and development of Qur’anic
Studies. Although the relevant entries have been cited above, special attention should
be given to Marco Schöller, “Post-Enlightenment Academic Study of the Qur’an,”
EQ 4 (2004), 188–208.

Erik S. Ohlander

Shi ism

A. Definition
Shi ^ism represents the numerically most relevant minority of Islam, gen-
erally distinct from Sunni Islam for its stress on the legitimacy of the succes-
sion of the members of the family (ahl al-bayt) of the Prophet Muhammad at
the head of the Muslim state after his death. Presently no precise statistics are
available, but according to most reliable sources Shi^a Muslims should range
from 10 to 15 % of the whole world Muslim population.
While a detailed definition of Shi ^ism through history is above the scope
of the present article, some important points need to be stressed on. The
name is the ellyptical form of shi ^a ^Ali, that is the group of supporters of ^Ali
b. Abi Talib (d. 662), whose claims to the right of being the only legitimate
Caliph after Prophet Muhammad were staunchly opposed by the Meccan
traditional ruling elite. As pointed out by Jafri (Origins and Early Development
of Shi ^ism, 1979), Muhammad was linked to the most prominent sacerdotal
family of Mecca, the clan of the Hashimites, or Banu Hashim, and according
to the pre-Islamic custom in fact of political authority, the leadership had to
remain in that line.
As head of the Hashimites was generally recognized ‘Ali, on the grounds
of his kinship with the Prophet, his marriage to Fatima and his undisputed
religious knowledge and ascetic spirituality. Nonetheless, a (later disputed)
election established Abu Bakr (d. 634) as leader of the newborn community,
and the close associates of ‘Ali followed him in refusing to pledge allegiance
to the first Caliph. ‘Ali was not the only member of the Hashimite family to
be given preference, but his standing as the closest associate of Muhammad
was supported by a number of testimonies and eventually led to a wider rec-
ognition during the first years of Umayyad rule.
Shi ism 94

Soon the majority of the legitimist opposition to the rule of the Banu
Umayya, whose centers were Medina and even more the new city of Kufa,
shifted its stress from the Hashimites to the ‘Alid line of the family, through
Hasan b. ‘Ali and his brother Husyan. The latter, slaughtered along with
some eighty supporters in the plan of Karbala by a vanguard of the army of
Yazid b. Mu‘#awiy ya, second Umayyad ruler then based in Damascus, on 680
a.D. had to become the main charachter in the tragedy that soon turned into
one of the most powerful foundative metaphor of the Shi ^ite ethos.
Messianic and chiliaistic doctrines that had always accompanied ‘Ali’s
feelings passed through the decades on the religious line of the lineage of
Husayn, up to his 9th successor in the time of the early ‘Abbasid rule, Hasan
al-‘Askari, later recognized as the 11th Imam, who gave birth to the 12th and
last Imam recognized by the principal branch of the Shi ^as, later to become
the so called “twelver Shi ^is”. According to their doctrine, the 12th Imam
known as the mahdi (“right guided”) never died and entered a state of occul-
tation in the year 940, to come back only at the end of times to deliver univer-
sal justice to the whole world. Around the theme of the absence of the Imam,
twelver Shi ^as had developed along centuries a rich philosophy, a subtle
theology and a complex, yet not univoque, system of political thought. While
the first culminated in the 17th century with the influential summa of the Per-
sian philosopher Sadr al-Din Shirazi (d. 1640), which synthesized the ishraqi
philosopy of Suhrawardi and the visionary neoplatonism of Ibn Sina
(Avicenna), and the second was a substantial re-arrangement of Mu ^tazilite
rationalist kalam in Imami terms, the latter – after some four centuries of tra-
vail – brought to the endorsement of the theory of the Islamic State, worked
out in practice by Imam Khomeini’s principle of the government of the Is-
lamic jurisprudence scholar (Wilayat al-Faqih).
The elementary articles of faith based upon the belief in five “pillars”
(arkan al-din) – that is oneness of God (tawhid), Justice of god (^adala), prophecy
(nubuwwa), imamate (imama), and judgment (qiyama) –, though not incorrect
in principle, must be considered a later development, stressed on as a conse-
quence of confrontation with the Sunni’s “five pillars.” This codification in
any case does not date back to the time of the Imams.
Shi ^ism itself is divided into branches, following the recognition of the
authority of one or another of the Imam of ^Ali’s lineage, the most importants
of which nowadays are Ismailis, Zaydis, and Alawites (the latters being re-
cently absorbed, at least as to what concerns official juridic recognition, into
the mainstream of Imami twelver Shi ^ism), who maintain the bulk of their
followers respectively in the Indian subcontinent, Yemen, and the costal
areas between Syria and Turkey. Detailed account of history and doctrines of
95 Shi ism

the sects mentioned and of the others either numerically esigue or disap-
peared along centuries, falls beyond the scope of this introductory outlook,
but the interested reader may begin looking the the relevant entries in EI2,
EIr, and the works mentioned above.
Needless to say, Shi ^ites did not escape the broadening of geographical
landscape that interested, at the end of 20th century, all the traditional relig-
ious and cultural groups, this being a major epistemological turn in the defi-
nition of the object of Islamic studies, that today must relocate their focus
both on Muslim countries and diasporic cultures.

B. History of Research
The history of the study of Shi ^ism suffered the fate of being approached as
a matter merely tangential to that of mainstream Sunni Islam. The scarce
accessibility of primary sources that affeced research up to the second half
of the 20th century has certainly contributed to the backwardness of academic
awareness on history and doctrine of Shi ^ism; nevertheless, Sunni prejudice –
vehiculated by eresiographers such as al-Baghdadi, Ibn Hazm, and al-
Shahrastani – by the means of wich most scholars of Islamic studies ap-
proached the theme, had been central to their understanding of that impor-
tant branch of Islam, and must not be downplayed. Accordingly, many early
scholarly overviews have been made either taking into account biased sec-
tarian perspectives or considering Shi ^ism as a minor chapter in the history
of Islam, also given the difficulties faced by scholars wishing to obtain Shi ^i
manuscripts in Sunni countries. Thus the picture of Shi ^ism that has
emerged is one of a political and economic-based movement degenerated
into a religious millenaristic heresy.
In the Middle Ages, scanty information on Shi ^ism, particularly ga-
thered in encounters with Fatimid Ismailis, were provided by Crusader
writers such as William of Tyre and Jaques de Vitry (see Etan Kohlberg,
“Western Studies of Shi#a Islam,” Shi#ism, Resistance and Revolution, ed. Martin
Kramer, 1987, 31–44,), but were marred by prejudice and distortion. After
the Crusades, Shi ^ism remained largely unknown in Western academic
circles. Even after the establishment of the Safavid empire, in the 17th cen-
tury, those European Islamicists who engaged in the study of Arabic as an
extension of the study of Hebrew and theology, paid no or little attention
to the accounts of diplomats, missionaries and merchants based in Imamite
Persia.
An exception can be found in the well-informed and somehow pre-post-
modern writings of the eclectic diplomat Joseph Arthur comte de Gobi-
neau, whose Trois ans en Asie (1859), Religions et philosophies de l’Asie centrale
Shi ism 96

(1865), and Histoire des Perses (1896) proved to be rather impartial accounts
about Iranian Shi ^ism, quite an oddity for his times.
Pioneering academic undertakings and publications devoted to Shi ^ism,
such as Garcin de Tassy’s edition and translation of a “Shi ^i” chapter of the
Qur#an (1842), Ignaz Goldziher’s Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte der Shi#a und
der sunnitischen Polemik (1874), G. Browne’s relevant chapters in A Literary
History of Persia (published in 1969), and Dwight M. Donaldson’s The Shi#te
Religion (1933), must be evaluated considering their over-dependence on po-
lemical works (whose echoes continue affecting scholarship even in later lit-
erature). The only works comparable to that of Goldziher for the brand of
robust scholarship are those authored by the German scholar Rudolph
Strothmann, among whose writings, the book Die Zwölfer-Schi#a (1926),
and several entries for the first edition of the Encyclopédie de l’Islam, provide
excellent samples of early scholarship on Imamism, Zaydism and Ismailism.
One major turning point in the availability of primary sources, both for
Western and native academics of Shi ^ism, has been the publication between
1934 and 1978 of the most comprehensive list of writings by Imami religious
scholars, collected in 25 colossal volumes by Aqa Buzurg Tihrani (Al-dhari ^a
ila tasanif al-shi ^a, 1353–1398).
Anyhow, an even superficial overview of the first volume of Parson’s
Index Islamicus, the main bibliographical index for Islamic studies, covering
the years 1906–1955, can give an idea of the paucity of works dedicated to the
matter.
The key character in the passage from the first Orientalist and Sunni-
oriented scholarship on Shi ^ism to a more aware and informed research has
been the French scholar Louis Massignon. Serving as military officer in
Iraq and thereby providing an unusual and pioneering critique of the then
dominating Orientalist discourse, Massignon contributed to the develop-
ment of the study of Shi ^ism by first outlining important aspects of the mys-
tical-oriented ethos of Shi ^ism (see Opera Minora, vol. 1, articles: “Die Ur-
sprünge und die Bedeutung des Gnostizismus im Islam;” “Der gnostische
Kult der Fatima im Shiitischen Islam;” “La Mubahala de Médine et l’hyper-
dulie de Fatima;” “La notion du voeu et la dévotion musulmane à Fatima,”
1963), and – not less relevant – by tutoring Corbin’s first steps in the world
of ithna ^ashariyya (“Twelver”) mysticism. A pupil of Etienne Gilson and
Jean Baruzi, Heideggerian philosopher Henry Corbin, once having been
in touch with Iranian Shi ^ism at the Sorbonne as a young phenomenologist,
then with first-hand sources in Istanbul while working at the local French
Institute, and finally in Tehran as the director of the French Institute of Iran-
ian Studies and founder of the series Bibliothèque iranienne, never abandoned
97 Shi ism

his spiritual and scholarly attachment to Iran and Shi ^ism, devotedly collect-
ing, editing, and translating some of the most important works of Shi ^ite
theology, philosopy, and gnsosis (^irfan).
By the time Henry Corbin was completing his monumental magnum
opus about Iranian Islam, devoting volumes I and II of En Islam iranien: Aspects
spirituels et philosophiques (1971–1972) respectively to twelver Shi ^ism and to
the Esfahan’s and Shaykhi’s schools of thought, social protest against the
despotic rule of the Shah Reza Pahlavi, led by the clergy of Qom, was erupt-
ing in the streets of Tehran, and eventually ended in the last revolution of the
20th century. The religious nature of the new political order drew inter-
national attention to Shi ^ism, and prompted an unprecedented impetus for
examination of the phenomenon by Western scholars, whose interest in
political science, sociology and anthropology of Iranian Shi ^ism was paral-
leled by a corresponding resurgence in religious studies.

C. Articulation and Main Issues

The history of the study of Shi ^ism might be functionally divided in the two
broad categories of religion and social sciences. The first is referred to the
scholarly tradition that may be considered heir to the lineage of classical
Oriental studies, yet taking into account a great deal of internal differenti-
ation and the introduction of the critique of orientalist discourse, which is
commonplace after the publication of Edward W. Said’s momentous Orien-
talism in 1978. The second, different in scope, methodologies, and foci, en-
compasses those works whose concern have more to do with contemporary
problems enacted in social and cultural practices than with hair-splitting
philological and textual matters. The two approaches are getting more and
more overlapping and interrelated, so that it is not unusual for authors to
shift from one to the other with ease. Therefore, this diadic conceptual struc-
ture has to be considered functional and fuzzy.
The above-mentioned 1874 study of Ignaz Goldziher was not fol-
lowed by a corresponding flow of studies on Shi ^ism, and up to the publi-
cation of En islam iranien, research about Shi ^ism was desultory and inter-
mittent both diachronically and synchronically. Nonetheless, a number of
landmark works were produced in different research centers around the
world, are worth being mentioned. Italian historians Sabino Moscati (“Per
una storia dell’antica Shi#a,” 1955, 251–67) and Laura Veccia Vaglieri
(“Sul ‘Nahj al-balagha’ e il suo compilatore ash-Sharif ar-Radi,” 1958, 1–46)
provided informed contributions on various aspects of early Shi ^ism. Most
studies on Shi ^ism were, however, carried out by mainstream islamologists
working on the history of early Islam, such as in the case of the articles of
Shi ism 98

W. Montgomery Watt (among which “Shi ^ism under the Umayyads,” 1960,
158–62; “The Rafidites: A Preliminary Study,” 1970, 110–21), and world-
acclaimed historian Marshall G. S. Hodgson (“How Did the Early Shi ^a Be-
come Sectarian?,” 1955, 1–13); one exception may perhaps be found in the
seminal works of one of the pupils of the renowned Islamicist Alessandro
Bausani, Gianroberto Scarcia (“A proposito del problema della sovranità
presso gli Imamiti,” 1957, 95–126; “Intorno alla controversia tra Akhbari e
Usuli presso gli Imamiti di Persia,” 211–250 1958; “L’eresia musulmana
nella problematica storico-religiosa,” 1962, 63–97).
Different is the case of the Soviet islamologist W. Ivanow who, begin-
ning from the 3rd decade of the 20th century, had devoted his whole scientific
endeavor to the study of the Ismaili religious phenomena, editing and stu-
dying an impressive amount of first-hand works (Studies in Early Persian Is-
mailism, 1948).
Meanwhile, Corbin was training a generation of scholars that would
eventually vivify international debate on Shi ^ism both in Iran and in Western
academia, and his contribution to the development of studies on Shi ^ism,
though not void of methodological oddities (at least for standard Islamic
studies; after all he was a phenomenologist philosopher by training), can
hardly be overestimated. His intellectual circle, linked to the broader and
prestigious milieu of European phenomenologists meeting on a regular
basis at the Eranos sessions in Ascona, haunted by, among others, Mircea
Eliade, Carl Gustav Jung, and Gershom Scholem.
Famed Iranian intellectual Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a prolific traditional-
ist scholar still active and presently based in North America, besides writing a
number of best selling general surveys about Shi ^ism and Sufism, authored
significant contributions to the knowledge of Imami philosophy (“Le
shi#isme et le soufisme: leur relations principelles et historiques,” 1970,
215–33; Sadr al-Din and His Transcendent Theosophy, 1978; Shi#ism: Doctrines,
Thought, and Spirituality, 1988), but his major achivement was the foundation
of the Imperial Academy of Philosophy in Tehran (after the Revolution re-
named Anjuman-i hikmat wa falsafa, Institute for [the study] of Hikma and
Philosophy), that eventually became, besides the French Institute of Iranian
Studies directed by Henry Corbin, the second research center of attraction
for those academics, Iranian and foreigners alike, interested in the study of
Imami Shi ^ism. Outside of Iran, two major centers were involved in Cor-
bin’s effort to vivify traditional Iranian philosopy. The first was of course the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne, where Corbin used to
teach dense courses related to his pioneering research in Iran (Itineraire d’un
enseignement, 1993); the second was McGill’s University Institute of Islamic
99 Shi ism

Studies, founded in 1954 by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and whose Professor

of Islamic Thought was, from 1964, Corbin’s close associate Hermann
Landolt. Other important public intellectuals and researchers that shared
a common path with Corbin’s pupils play a pivoltal role in Iranian internal
debate today, and their names are well-known: Dariush Shayegan, based in
Paris and Tehran, where he teaches courses on comparative religions, and
author of widely acclaimed and best-selling essays on Iranian religious cul-
ture; Reza Davari Ardakani, a conservative philosopher, famous for his
controversy with the leading progressive intellectual ^Abdolkarim Sorush;
Nasrollah Pourjavady (Kings of Love, 1978, with Peter Lamborn Wilson),
whose books and articles on Imami Sufism are widely read both in Iran and
abroad.
More than tangential to the main characters of this environment were
the contributions of revered Imami clerics, most notably the late ^Allama Ta-
bataba#i, author of the renowned introductory essay Shi ^a dar Islam (1962,
English trans. by Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr, Shi#ite Islam, 1972), and whose im-
portance is testified by his conversations and correspondences with Henry
Corbin (Shi ^a, 1960).
The situation changed for the better at the end of the 1960s, when one
major event occured in marking the passage of the study of Shi ‘ism from a
small circle of practitioners to a broader audience of specialists and readers,
that is the 1968 Colloque de Strasbourg, a round table about Shi ^ism attended by
the then leading specialists of Imamism plus a representation of the old gen-
eration of Islamicists that had done research on this topic. Worth noting is
the participation of Henry Corbin, G. Vajda, Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr, Fran-
cesco Gabrieli, Wilfred Madelung, and the leading Lebanese cleric Musa
Sadr, whose paper never reached the editors and is thus missing from the
proceedings.
Starting from the end of the 1970s, a number of excellent monographs
have appeared, marking the new course of interest that experienced a deter-
minant acceleration due to the imminent revolution. Among these, Seyyed
Husayn M. Jafri’s The Origins and Early Development of Shi#a Islam (1979), pro-
vides an interesting account of the ideological substratum preparing the
ground for the formation of Imami doctrines; Mojan Momen’s An Introduc-
tion to Shi ^i Islam (1985), provides a general and well-informed overview, and
Heinz Halm’s Die Schia (1988) gives a well-grounded solid sample of scholar-
ship on Imamism. Furthermore, Farhad Daftary’s writings on Ismailism
(especially The Isma#ilis: Their History and Doctrine, 1992), represents an indis-
pensable reference for those interested in this branch of Shi ^a Islam.
Shi ism 100

D. After the Revolution in Iran and the Rise of Social Sciences Applied
to Shi ism
Besides those academics investigating Shi ^ism on the religious and historical
level, the revolution fueled another quite fruitful research line, which isthat
of the social sciences, notably anthropology, political science and sociology.
Earlier enterprises, like the fieldwork conducted by Bryan Spooner in
Iran during the 1960s (“The Function of Religion in Persian Society,” 1963,
83–95) proved to be isolated undertakings. It was carried out on the grounds
of a solid training in anthropology but without a deep awareness of the tex-
tual tradition of Shi ^ism. Following the political concerns that arose in the
West due to the revolution, research centers began to produce a generation of
specialists with solid training in Islamic Studies but at the same time more
and more interested in contemporary matters. Modern and contemporary
history (Nikki Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran: Shi ^ism from Quietism and
Revolution, 1983), at times viewed from a rigorous religious historical per-
spective (Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906: The Role of the
Ulama in the Qajar Period, 1969), sociology (Said Amir Arjomand, Farhad
Khosrokhavar), anthropology (Micheal J. Fischer, Mehdi Abedi, Oliver
Beaman), social history (Roy P. Mottahedeh), came to be well represented
as academic disciplines encompassing several sides of the Shi ^ite religious
phenomenon. On the other hand, interest in Iran happened to awake an in-
novative stream of scholarship in contemporary Shi ^ism in other geographi-
cal settings, namely Iraq, Syria, and the Sub-continent. In addition to this,
debate around themes critical to the understanding of Shi ^ism as an au-
tonomous spiritual reality, as sketched out by Corbin and his associates, con-
tinued providing the academe with exceptional scholars, such as Wilfred
Madelung, Ethan Kohlberg, Andrew J. Newman, Todd Lawson, Juan
Cole, Norman Calder, Robert Gleave and others, while a brilliant gener-
ation of native academics based in outstanding Western research centers, like
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Hossein Modarresi Tabatabai, Abdula-
ziz Sachedina, succeeded in animating the landscape by introducing a sig-
nificant deal of fresh ideas and expertises. They represent at present the
backbone of the academic study of Shi ^ism around the world, and their ca-
pacity to share their knowledge through a transnational network makes the
perspectives for further development of the field decidedly stimulating and
multifaceted in approaches, methodologies and views.
In the last years, renewed academic interest of Shi#ites in their own
religion gave birth to the publication of basic research tools like specialistic
encyclopedias. Those who read Arabic or Persian use regularly these often
well-written and peer reviewed (even if not void of bias) works as start up
101 Shi ism

tools for their research. One such work is the Persian Da#irat al-ma^arif-i tas-
hayyu^ (2001).

E. State of Reaserch and Perspectives

Scholars hailing from the two above mentioned offsprings (i.e., those heirs to
Corbin’s experience in Iran and those continuing the “classical” orientalist
positivist approach), together with the well represented new generation
of native scholars endowed with either religious or academic background,
enhanced significantly the quantity and quality of research on Shi ^ism dur-
ing the nineties and up to the first decade of the 21st century. As for Twelver
Shi ^ism, research has achieved relevant goals in better assessing the crucial
terms of the phenomenon as an independent chapter of the spiritual history
of Islam, ponting out the esoterical peculiarities of ‘Alid religion as emerging
from a detailed analysis of the early sources. This is in particular the case with
the work of one of the most influential scholars of Shi ^ism, Mohammad Ali
Amir-Moezzi, who inherited the phenomenological gist of Corbin, merged
with a more rigorous brand for methodological accuracy. His Le guide divin
dans le shi ^isme originel (1992) no doubt represents a milestone in determining
the exact nature of the first historical manifestations of Imamism, presented
as a religion grounded on the initiation into divine secrets and essentially de-
picted as a mystical doctrine. As Amir-Moezzi puts it, critical to the under-
standing of Shi ^ism is the evolution from a non-rational esoterical doctrine
to a rationalist and politically engaged movement, centered on the expan-
sion of the prerogatives of the ulemas during the absence of the Imam. Com-
plementary to Amir-Moezzi’s work, are the studies of Etan Kohlberg on
the historical process that led to the definition of the Twelver orthodoxy (see
Belief and Law in Imami Shi ^ism, 1991). Crucial to all these discourses is in fact
the very theme of the a ^lamiyya (the quality of the “most learned,” a ^lam) and
of its social and political implications, once relegated to the Imams and their
designed representatives, and shifted along history to an organized class of
religious professionals, a theme of momentous importance for the modern
Shi ^ite political thought. Thus, the so called “Imamology,” – so deeply inves-
tigated by Amir-Moezzi in a series of articles, published separately in vari-
ous specialistic journals between 1992 and 2005 and recently collected in one
volume (La religion discrète: Croyances et pratiques spirituelles dans l’Islam shi#ite: As-
pects de l’imamologie duodécimaine, 2006) – devoid of the figure of the legitimate
Imam, becomes the justification for the institution of the rationalist imi-
tation (taqlid) of the “most learned” and the management of political power
by its ultimate theorization, the marja ^al-taqlid (lit. “source of the imi-
tation”), discussed in depth in The Most Learned of the Shi ^a: The Institution of the
Shi ism 102

Marja ^Taqlid, ed. Linda S. Walbridge, 2001. Another well represented area
of scholarship is that of the Esfahan school of philosophy, be it or not con-
nected to jurisprudence theories of any relevance to political actuality (for an
example of both, see respectively A. J. Newman’s “Towards a Reconsider-
ation” (1986, 165–99), and Christian Jambet, Se rendre immortale, 2001), sub-
ject of a scholarly renaissance even in Iran as a consequence of Corbin’s redis-
covery, and its mystical implications. International symposia on Mulla Sadra
and his school are held on a regular basis in Iran. Needless to say, the revo-
lutionary elite’s interest in, and appreciation of, the subject matter is not un-
related to the success of Mulla Sadra and his school of thought in his mother-
land after the revolution. Whatever the political implications of the study of
Mulla Sadra in Iran, outstanding works on him and his school were recently
published (one example is Sajjad Rizvi, Mulla Sadra Shirazi: His Life, Works and
Sources for Safavid Philosophy, 2007).
Closely intertwined with the issue of the authority of the marja ^, one of
the main object of scholarly analysis, is that of the internal intellectual and
juristic debate among Shi ^ite religious scholars. In this sense, the conflict be-
tween the akhbaris (traditionalists) and the usulis (rationalist “fundamental-
ists”) represents one of main lines of research, object of close scrutiny by a
number of scholars (see for instance Andrew J. Newman, “The Nature of the
Akhbari/Usuli Dispute in late Safawid Iran,” 1992, 21–51, and 250–61). Ob-
viously Islamic Republic of Iran, being nominally a Shi ^i theocracy, lies on
the backgronund of most areas of the scholarly discourse on Shi ^ism, and
provides live material (such as the problem of Islam and democracy, Muslim
reformism, relations between religion and politics, and so on) to the special-
ists, even those who are not directly involved in modern political history.
In recent years, some high-quality introductions to Shi ^ism have been
written andpublished, such as Juan Cole’s Sacred Space and Holy War (2002),
Amir-Moezzi and Christian Jambet Qu’est-ce que le shi#isme (2004), and
Marco Salati e Leonardo Capezzone, L’islam sciita: storia di una minoranza
(2006).
Khomeini’s theory of the “guardianship of the jurist” (wilayat-i faqih) is
also a much debated matter and does not cease to be at the center of scholarly
production, having among Muslim scholars few overt supporters (as Hamid
Algar, author of The Roots of Islamic Revolution, 1983 and Christian Bonaud,
author of L’Imam Khomeini, un gnostique méconnu du XXe siècle. Métaphisique et
théologie dans les œuvres philosophiques et spirituelles de l’Imam Khomeyni, 1997) and
many detractors. The abrupt rush of the theme on the international scene had
as a consequence a retroactive inspection of the history of the notion, and re-
cently the vibrant debate on the legitimacy of the theory culminated in West-
103 Shi ism

ern academia reporting the most outstanding and controversial voices and
themes of the dispute, as in Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper, Islam
and Democracy in Iran. Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform, 2006. To grasp an idea
of the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of today’s Shi ‘ite studies, it is use-
ful to refer to Colin Turner and Paul Luft’s Shi ‘ism (2007) which provides a
collection of studies on Shi ‘ism written over the last 50 years.
Indicative of the lively status of the subject at large is the proliferation of
initiatives, research groups, conferences and scholarly publications (one in
particular, the Journal of Shi ^i Islamic Studies, is entirely devoted to the study of
Shi#ism in its full complexity).
At present, even though Iran and Twelver Shi ^ism remain to a great
extent the most crowded topics in academic enquiry on Shi ^ism, the state of
research on either lesser religious sects or ethnic realities is significatively
active, if one notices that one of the most prestigious and qualified institution
of the study of Shi ^ism is the London based Institute for Ismaili Studies, which
is vocated for (even if not only) the academic study of Ismailism, and gives
voices to the views of ethnic minorities. Another quite promising research
subject is the rising theme of the articulate structure of relations and conflict
between tradition/religion, in this case Shi ^ism, and democacy, a debate that
engages at a high degree many high-rank religious intellectuals in Iran and
abroad. Projects, conferences, and centers focusing on Shi ^is in general or on
specific aspects of Shi ^ism are proliferating particularly in the UK. One telling
example is the British Academy-funded project on the “Authority in Shi ^ism”
(www.thehawzaproject.net), which aims to create a broad network of scholars
working on the theme and improve the status of research on Shi ^ism.
The rise of the internet as a research tool has introduced in the arena of
the academic study of Shi ^ism a wave of novelty. Even if authoritative vali-
dation criteria are not yet commonplace in the use of electronic public re-
sources, most present-day scholars non only use the internet as a quick basic
search tool, but also have implemented personal or instuitional web pages –
like the resource list of the University of Georgia (USA), http://www.uga.edu/
islam/shiism.html – (even excellent up-to-date weblogs) that constitutes
valuable databases for students and scholars. One such example is the Insti-
tute of Ismaili Studies website (www.iis.ac.uk), whose Academic Publi-
cations sections provides a useful list of high-quality academic writings.
Another relevant example is the personal page of University of Michigan’s
Professor Juan R. I. Cole (http://www-personal.umich.edu/ jrcole/), also pro-
viding a quite good selection of his academic papers dealing with Shi#ism.
A major epistemological shift has occurred in Religious Studies (and
thus in the Study of Islam and Shi ^ism), with the rise of the internet: old
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 104

encyclopedias, even scholarly and specialistic, usually failed in giving voice

to their “object of inquiry” and resulted in rather monophonic approaches.
Today every student has the possibility to have a glance at a plethora of
resources directly written and published in the net (often in a great varie-
ty of languages) by religious foundations, charities, research institutes
and the like. This kind of resources (such as the good Twelver Shi ^a-run
www.al-islam.org, providing an impressive number of primary sources,
links, scholarly and non-scholarly articles and e-books) offers a stimulating
challenge for traditional academic approaches to Shi#ism, overcoming the
risk of one-way academic interpretations.

Select Bibliography
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, La guide divin dans le shi ^isme originel: au sources de l’ésotér-
isme en Islam (Paris: Veridier, 1992); Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and Christian
Jambet, Qu#est-ce que le shi#isme? (Paris: Fayard, 2004); Henry Corbin, En islam iranien:
Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971–1972); Michael
M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge Ms. & London: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1980); Syed M. Jafri, Origins and Early Development of Shi#ism
(London: Longman, 1978); Farhad Khosrokhavar, Anthropologie de la révolution iran-
ienne. Le rêve impossible (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); Ethan Kohlberg, The Formation of
Classical Islamic World: Shi ^ism (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003); Heinz Halm, Die Schia
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988); Le Shi#isme imamite. Colloque de
Strasbourg (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970); Yitzakh Nakash, The Shi ^is of
Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Mojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi
^I Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi ^ism (Oxford: Geroge Ronald, 1985);
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and Seyyed Reza Vali Nasr, Shi#ism: Doctrines,
Thought, and Spirituality (New York, SUNY Press, 1988); Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Just
Ruler in Shi ^ite Islam: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jusrist in Imamite Jurisprudence (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988); ^Allama Tabataba#i, Shi ^a dar Islam (Tehran:
Nashr-e Sherkat-e Enteshar, 1348); Liyakatali Takim, The Heirs of the Prophet: Charisma
and Religious Authority in Shi ^ite Islam (Albany: State University of New York, 2006).

Alessandro Cancian

Archaeology in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
Medieval archaeology is the study of the material culture of the Middle Ages
in all its forms, but especially as evidenced through the systematic processes
of survey, excavation and interpretation common to the wider archaeologi-
105 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

cal discipline. The study of this archaeological evidence allows researchers to

uncover aspects of medieval culture and history which our written sources
are unable to reveal. Consequently, medieval archaeology can contribute sig-
nificantly to our knowledge and understanding of the Middle Ages and
should hold an important place within the interdisciplinary field of Medi-
eval Studies.
It should be stated at the outset, however, that ‘medieval archaeology’ as
such is something of a false appellation. From a methodological point of
view, there is nothing that separates the study of the archaeology of the
Middle Ages from the study of the archaeology of any other period for which
there survives written as well as material evidence. Medieval archaeology
must therefore be considered to constitute one part of ‘historical archaeol-
ogy’ in general (Anders Andrén, Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archae-
ology in Global Perspective, 1998). The degree to which archaeological research
is united with other avenues of enquiry into the Middle Ages is, however,
largely dependent on the historical development of the discipline within
individual countries and regions and its position within modern university
faculties or departments. Medieval archaeology is, for example, closely con-
nected with classical studies in Italy, with art-history and architecture in
France and with prehistory in Scandinavia, while in North America archaeol-
ogy in general is considered a sub-discipline of anthropology, within which
field the archaeology of the Middle Ages receives limited attention. Fur-
thermore, the periodization and chronological terminology of the ‘Middle
Ages’ differ from country to country, and often between the historical and
archaeological disciplines within countries (for a run-down of some of the
different chronologies used throughout Europe see The Archaeology of Medi-
eval Europe, vol. 1, ed. James Graham-Campbell, 2007, 17–18). Such
regional differences in approaches to and conceptions of archaeology often
affect the degree of contact and discussion between medieval archaeologists
and those scholars who study the Middle Ages from other perspectives. Des-
pite this variation in development and focus, however, medieval archaeology
has nevertheless developed in recent years into a cohesive, independent
branch of the historical sciences, and many universities in Europe now offer
both graduate and undergraduate-level programmes of study in medieval
archaeology (The Study of Medieval Archaeology, ed. Hans Andersson and
Jes Wienberg, 1993). At the same time, the recent rise of Medieval Studies
as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry has resulted in an increased dialogue
between medieval archaeologists and other scholars concerned with the
Middle Ages.
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 106

B. Development of the Discipline

The roots of medieval archaeology can be found in the antiquarian interests
of the early modern period and the Middle Ages themselves. Although cases
like the reputed discovery of King Arthur’s tomb at Glastonbury Abbey in
1191 or the frequent exhumations of saints and their relics throughout the
Middle Ages could be interpreted as some of the earliest archaeological activ-
ity directed at medieval material culture (Christopher Gerrard, Medieval Ar-
chaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches, 2003), it was in
the centuries associated with the European Renaissance that scholars with
a humanistic rather than ecclesiastical bent began to collect books, record
inscriptions and make sketches of ancient art and architecture (A History
of Archaeological Thought, 1989, 2nd ed. 2006, by Bruce Trigger gives a thor-
ough account of the development of archaeology in relation to underlying
intellectual currents). The work of such figures as Ciriaco de’ Pizzicolli
(1391–1452) and Flavio Biondo (1392–1463), whose subjects included
some medieval monuments, are early examples of this new interest in the
material culture of the past. This enthusiasm was, however, for the most part
directed at classical antiquity, and the term ‘media aeva’ itself, first coined
in this period, is indicative of the somewhat dismissive attitude that existed
towards the period ‘in between’ classical civilization and modernity. Never-
theless, this apparent shift in historical consciousness opened the way for the
study of the Middle Ages from both documentary and material perspectives.
A focus on classical culture was especially strong in the south of Europe,
where a strong sense of cultural continuity with ancient Greece and Rome
was felt and actively promoted through a reverence for and imitation of
ancient art and architecture. This fascination with the classical past spread
throughout Europe, but, in the countries of northern Europe, antiquarians
also turned their attention to more local historical traditions, including
those of the prehistoric and medieval periods. In these countries, as in Italy,
interest in the material past was closely aligned with issues of local, national
and religious corporate identity. Antiquarians like John Aubrey (1626–97)
made detailed descriptions of prehistoric monuments described by medieval
chronicles, including Avebury and Stonehenge, which are both included in
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (Christopher Gerrard,
Medieval Archaeology, 2003, 10–15; Bruce Trigger, A History of Archaeological
Thought, 1989; 2nd ed. 2006, 45–48). The Scandinavian countries, meanwhile,
quickly extended an enthusiasm for the medieval records and folklore of
their countries to an interest in their physical monuments, including the
Viking age tombs at Uppsala, Sweden, which were excavated in the 17th cen-
tury by Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702) using what were at the time relatively
107 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

novel archaeological methods. Rudbeck carried out the excavations by

cutting trenches into the tombs and making drawings of the vertical sec-
tions. In this manner he was able to arrive at a relative chronology for the
burials within each tomb, even hypothesizing roughly how much time had
passed since the act of burial based on the relative thickness of the sod on top
(Ole Klint-Jensen, A History of Scandinavian Archaeology, 1975). Most early
excavations were, however, little more than treasure-hunting expeditions,
with enthusiasts removing artefacts from the earth with little in the way
of documentation or regard to their context. Artefacts were valued as objets
d’art or, in some cases, simply for their material value. Many significant arte-
facts from this early stage of archaeology, such as the grave-goods of the
Frankish King Childeric, whose grave was first excavated in Tournai, Bel-
gium, in 1633, have since been stolen and we know about them only from
fortuitously surviving sketches and written descriptions (Stéphane Lebecq,
Les Origines franques, 1990).
In the 18th and 19th centuries, breakthroughs in the natural sciences led
to a newfound awareness of the antiquity of both the earth and humanity,
and to a conviction that these issues could and should be studied scientifi-
cally. At the same time, driven by a pervading atmosphere of Romantic
nationalism, many archaeologists employed these new approaches in their
efforts to anchor burgeoning national identities in past ages (see Nationalism
and Archaeology in Europe, ed. Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy
Champion, 1996; The Myth of Nations, by Patrick Geary, 2003; and Bruce
Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 1989; 2nd ed. 2006). Throughout
the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, high profile discoveries such
as the Gokstad and Oseberg ship burials in Norway (excavated in 1880 and
1904 respectively) and the Sutton Hoo ship burial in England (excavated in
1939) fuelled this Romantic enthusiasm for archaeological exploration by
tracing apparent links with early medieval literature (in the case of Sutton
Hoo, apparent similarities with the Old English poem Beowulf). Archaeology
came to be viewed as a solution to the dearth of written evidence for Europe’s
‘Dark Ages’ and the dim origins of the modern nation-states. This nationally
oriented archaeology was given scientific justification through figures such as
Gustaf Kossinna (1858–1931), a philologist turned prehistorian for whom
prehistory (whether investigated through archaeology or literature) was an
“eminently national discipline” (Díaz-Andreu and Champion, 173). It
was Kossinna who pioneered the culture-historic school of archaeology
which asserted that styles of artefacts (e. g., pottery types or jewellery designs)
could be tied to specific ethnic groups. This approach heavily influenced
archaeologists studying the ‘barbarian migrations’ of late antiquity and the
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 108

early Middle Ages, and some archaeologists continue to uncomplicatedly con-

flate material culture with categories such as ethnicity or language.
It has been in the years since WWII, however, that medieval archaeology
has truly come into its own as a discipline. Excavations of large-scale settle-
ments, most notably Novgorod in Russia and Bergen in Norway, demon-
strated the research potential of carefully planned, thoroughly documented
investigations (Michael Welman Thompson, Novgorod the Great, 1967; and
Helen Clarke, “Asbjørn Herteig: Archaeologist and Pioneer,” Archaeology
and the Urban Economy, ed. S. Myrvoll and A.E. Herteig, 1989, 23–27). De-
velopments in technology, various kinds of cultural heritage legislation, a
greater attention to theory and methodology and an increasing public inter-
est all contributed to the rise of medieval archaeology as an independent dis-
cipline in the second half of the 20th century.

C. Archaeology and Science

Scientific and technological innovations have changed the way that all ar-
chaeological research is conducted. Absolute (as opposed to relative) dating
techniques such as radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology (i. e., tree-ring
dating) now allow researchers to date organic materials and associated non-
organic artefacts and features with relative certainty. Geophysical methods
of subsurface detection allow archaeologists to build maps of subsurface
anomalies such as walls or ditches over large geographical areas. The devel-
opment of the ‘Harris Matrix’ method of excavating and recording distinct
archaeological layers has vastly increased the potential for post-excavation
interpretation as well as the ability to carefully dig complexly layered urban
sites (Edward Harris, Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, 1979; 2nd ed.
1989). Since the 1980s, computers have had an increasingly essential role
to play in the cataloguing and analysis of data, and are now being used for
mapping and reconstructing archaeological sites. Satellite imaging and GPS
systems are increasingly being used and are eliminating the need for costly
aerial survey. Ancillary disciplines such as archaeozoology, archaeobotany,
and biomolecular archaeology are now seen as integral parts of archaeologi-
cal research. Just a few recent examples of the application of new scientific
methods of analysis to medieval archaeology include: the detailed recon-
struction of local medieval diets in Viking age Scotland based on stable-
isotope analysis of human bone; the detection of the rise of hop-gardens in
Denmark through archaeobotanical analysis; and the detection of gender-
variegated degenerative joint disease in Germany based on bone analysis
(James Barrett et al., “Diet and Ethnicity During the Viking Colonization
of Northern Scotland: Evidence from Fish Bones and Stable Carbon Iso-
109 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

topes,” Antiquity 75 [2001]: 145–54; Karl-Ernst Behre, “The History of Beer

Additives in Europe: A Review,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 8 [1999]:
35–48; Wolf-R. Teegen and Michael Schultz, Geschlechtsabhängige Arbeits-
verteilung in slawischen Gräberfelden nach Aussage der Gelenkerkrankungen, 2005).
The Journal of Scientific Archaeology (1974 onwards) focuses on the scientific
aspects of archaeological research.

D. Theory and Archaeology

Against the backdrop of scientific and technological innovation within
the field, a new theoretically oriented approach to archaeology emerged
throughout the 1950s and 60s.
The American archaeologist Lewis Binford became the leading figure
of ‘processual archaeology’, publishing a series of papers advocating a more
scientific approach to the study of the material past (Lewis Binford, An
Archaeological Perspective, 1972). Essentially, Binford felt that archaeology
was capable of more than simply classifying and cataloguing pot shards:
that it could have explanatory power with regards to social and cultural phe-
nomena. The ‘New Archaeology’ as it came to be called, advocated the devel-
opment of ‘Middle Range Theory’ “a distinct body of ideas to bridge the gap
between raw archaeological evidence and the general observations and con-
clusions to be derived from it” (Brian Fagan, Archaeology: Theories, Methods,
and Practice, 2004, 13–16). Processual archaeology exerted its strongest
influence in North America and in the field of prehistoric archaeology, how-
ever, and had little impact on medieval archaeology. For archaeologists
of the Middle Ages, the written record continued to provide a more fruitful
interpretive paradigm than the more generalist theories of the processual
school.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, however, there was a strong reaction to
the processual school, and this movement had a definite impact on medieval
archaeology. The main proponent of this ‘post-processual’ movement was
Ian Hodder, a British prehistorian whose views are summarized in his Read-
ing the Past (1986; 3rd ed. 2003; for a summary of the theoretical debates
within different European countries see also Archaeological Theory in Europe:
The Last Three Decades, ed. Ian Hodder, 1991). Inspired by post-modernism,
Hodder and other post-processualists criticized what they perceived as pro-
cessualism’s positivist approach and advocated a more relativistic and varied
understanding of the archaeological record. Fundamentally, post-proces-
sualists argued that material culture should be ‘read’ as a text, acknowledg-
ing the role of the researcher’s own biases and interpretations in every step
of the archaeological process. The debate has since cooled, but has left an im-
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 110

pression on all areas of archaeological research, including medieval archaeol-

ogy. From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology, ed. David
Austin and Leslie Alcock (1990) was a collection of archaeological research
on various subjects that grappled with many of post-processualism’s con-
cerns about identity and structures of power.
Perhaps the greatest influence of post-processualism on medieval archae-
ology has had to do with the proper relationship between archaeological and
written evidence. In 1935, the famous British archaeologist Sir Mortimer
Wheeler asserted that “the historian and the archaeologist of the Dark Ages
are very like two men clutching each other in mid-air to prevent themselves
from falling” (London and the Saxons, 1935). Recently, however, a number of
archaeologists have made strenuous arguments in favour of detaching ar-
chaeological research from “the tyranny of the historical record,” as Timothy
Champion has put it, in order that archaeologists might act with more
agency in setting a research agenda specifically suited to the archaeological
discipline’s own methods and types of evidence (Timothy Champion, “Ar-
chaeology and the Tyranny of the Historical Record,” From the Baltic to the
Black Sea, 1990; John Moreland, Archaeology and Text, 2001). John More-
land specifically argues that archaeology’s relegation to matters of economy
and subsistence is the result of the privileging of the written word over the
physical object. Others, however, have argued for a rapprochement between
archaeology and history (Martin Carver, “Marriages of True Minds:
Archaeology with Texts,” Archaeology: The Widening Debate, ed. Barry Cun-
liffe, 2002, 465–96). Regardless, the written record will continue to play an
essential role in informing archaeological research, while medieval histo-
rians are making increasing use of the growing body of archaeological evi-
dence for life in the Middle Ages.

E. Current Trends
Medieval archaeology has benefited over the past several decades from its in-
creasing coherence as a scholarly discipline, its employment of new scientific
techniques, and the widening of its geographical focus to include regions
beyond the countries of the traditional medieval Latin West. A number of
recent major works dealing with the Middle Ages have raised the profile
of archaeological evidence, including Michael McCormick’s Origins of the
European Economy (2001), Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome and the End
of Civilization (2005), Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005)
and the series of books published under the aegis of The European Science
Foundation’s project, The Transformation of the Roman World. These
works and others like them are typical of the medieval archaeology of recent
111 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

years, tackling old problems from new perspectives and combining archae-
ological data and interpretive methods with written evidence, all resulting
in more comprehensive and nuanced understandings of the medieval world.
One of the leading figures of recent medieval archaeology has been
Richard Hodges, whose research has focussed primarily on trade and towns
in the early medieval period. Some of Hodges’ important works include:
Dark Age Economics (1982, and revised 1989); Mohammed, Charlemagne and the
Origins of Europe (1983 with David Whitehouse); The Anglo-Saxon Achieve-
ment (1989); Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne (2000); and the essay col-
lection, Goodbye to the Vikings? (2006). Hodges has also worked on the earliest
large-scale monastic complex in western Europe at San Vincenzo al Volturno
in southern Italy (Light in the Dark Ages, 1997). Hodges’s work has been
fundamental in both advocating for the consideration of archaeological evi-
dence within the field of medieval studies and in setting the research agenda
of medieval archaeologists, especially for the early Middle Ages (see, how-
ever, Grenville Astill’s critique of Hodges’ early work, “Archaeology,
Economics and Early Medieval Europe,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 4.2
[1985]: 215–31).

Commerce and Travel: One of the areas which has benefited most from the
recent surge in archaeological investigation has been that of trade and com-
merce. The traditional historical interpretation of the end of the Roman
economy was set out by the famous Belgian Historian Henri Pirenne in his
book Mahomet et Charlemagne (1937). The so-called ‘Pirenne Thesis’ proposed
that the essential structure of the Roman imperial economy survived the col-
lapse of Roman administration and only disappeared in the face of the Arab
conquest, which choked shipping lanes and cut off trade between east and
west. New archaeological evidence and analysis has, however, drastically
changed this picture, giving a far more nuanced impression of late antique
trade in the Mediterranean. Evidence from the distribution of coins (Arab
as well as Byzantine), African Red Slipware (a distinctive ceramic often used
in long distance trade) and ship-wrecks illustrate an economic world already
beginning to stagger in the 5th century and, after a brief recovery, crumbling
entirely by the late 6th. Archaeological evidence has forced scholars to view
the Arab conquest as “the consequence rather than the cause of the catas-
trophe” (Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlem-
agne and the Origins of Europe, 1983; also see Hodges’ other works as well as
McCormick’s Origins of the European Economy, 2005). Continuing research,
meanwhile, is pushing outwards our evidence of long-distance trade net-
works and the Arab role in the medieval economy. New evidence suggests
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 112

that by the 11th century, cane sugar may have been making its way from New
Guinea to Cyprus, Sicily, and beyond (Marie Louise Wartburg, “Produc-
tion du sucre de canne à Cypre: un chapitre de technologie médiévale,” Colon-
iser au moyen âge, 1995, 126–130).
In northern Europe, meanwhile, large-scale excavations carried out over
the last several decades have uncovered trading ports around the North Sea
and Baltic on a scale which had not been previously considered. Regularly
laid out and equipped with numerous docks and jetties, these ‘emporia’
made up a sophisticated northern European trade-network (See Hodges’
Dark Age Economics and most of his other works as well as McCormick’s
Origins of the European Economy, 2005; Søren Sindbæk makes use of cooper-
ative research between physics and archaeology in “Networks and Nodal
Points: the Emergence of Towns in Early Viking Age Scandinavia,” Antiquity
81, [2007]: 119–32; Søren Sindbæk, “The Small World of the Vikings:
Networks in Early Medieval Communication and Exchange,” Norwegian
Archaeological Review 40 [2007]: 59–74). Merchants based out of Dorestad and
Quentovic in the Frankish kingdoms, Hamwic in England, and Birka,
Hedeby and Kaupang in the Scandinavian countries – to name a few
examples – traded in stone, metals, wine and other commodities from north-
west Europe, as well as luxury goods from the Arab and Byzantine worlds
and slaves from eastern Europe. Archaeology has revealed a complex north-
ern economy on a hitherto unthought-of scale These early towns served not
only as trading centres, but also as central places in which religious and royal
influence could be concentrated (Franz Theuws, “Exchange, Religion,
Identity and Central Places in the Early Middle Ages,” Archaeological Dialogues
10.2 [2004]: 121–38).

Settlements, Rural and Urban: There has been a wealth of archaeological

research conducted on settlements, both urban and rural. Helena Hame-
row’s recent book, Early Medieval Settlements (2002), provides an overview
of the subject for the early medieval period, while Chapelot and Fossier’s
Le village et la maison au Moyen Âge (1980), although 30 years old and written
before a huge surge in rural archaeology, provides an overview for the whole
of the Middle Ages.
As discussed above in the section on trade and commerce, the discovery
of the North Sea emporia has forced a rethinking of urban development in
northern Europe (Richard Hodges and Brian Hobley, ed., The Rebirth of
Towns in the West, AD 700–1050, 1988 andWics: The Early Medieval Trading Centres
of Northern Europe, ed. David Hill and Robert Cowie, 2001). Improved
methods of stratigraphic excavation have made possible the effective investi-
113 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

gation of complexly layered urban sites such as those uncovered in Dublin

and York (Patrick F. Wallace, The Viking Age Buildings of Dublin, 1992, and Ri-
chard Hall, Viking Age York, 1994). No urban centers within Western Europe,
however, rivaled the cities of Muslim Spain and recent urban excavations
have confirmed their size and complexity; Cordoba is thought to have had
a population of over 100,000 in the 10th century (John Schofield, “Urban
Settlement, Part 1: Western Europe,” The Archaeology of Medieval Europe, vol. 1,
2007, 111–29). Overall, recent research has focussed on variegated modes of
town development and the role that urban centres played as ‘central places’,
becoming hubs for economic, religious, royal and other social functions. See
also David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the
Fourteenth Century (1997) and Urban Europe, 1100–1700 (2003).
Despite the growing importance of towns in the Middle Ages, however,
the vast majority of the population continued to live in rural, agricultural en-
vironments. Rural archaeology has, nevertheless, been slow to develop and
there are few comprehensive overviews of the topic. The abovementioned
studies by Hamerow and by Chapelot and Fossier offer considerations
of the topic, while results of the Ruralia Association’s biennial conferences
are published as Ruralia (1996 onwards). Much of this recent research has
focussed on the long-term development of settlements and building tradi-
tions, as well as interactions with the surrounding environment. Ancillary
archaeological disciplines, including archaeozoology and archaeobotony,
play important roles in the analysis of ecofacts such as seeds, bones and other
naturally occurring substances that might yield information about human
activity (Archäologische und naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen an ländlichen
und frühstädischen Siedlungen im deutschen Küstengebiet vom 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr.
bis zum II. Jahrhundert n. Chr., ed. Georg Kossack, Karl-Ernst Behre, and
Peter Schmid, 1984). The discovery and excavation of many deserted medi-
eval villages from the later Middle Ages have produced an abundance of evi-
dence concerning architectural traditions, standards of living and changing
patterns of land use (Maurice Beresford and John Hurst, Deserted Medi-
eval Villages, 1971, and Wharram Percy: Deserted Medieval Village, 1990).

Buildings: Buildings archaeology concerns the study of in situ structures

using archaeological methods (Richard Morris, The Archaeology of Buildings,
2000). The construction and development of medieval buildings is of fore-
most importance within this archaeological subfield, but also the role they
fulfilled within social contexts (Jane Grenville, Medieval Housing, 1997;
Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape, 1989; 2nd ed. 1998). Churches and
castles, the largest and most conspicuous buildings surviving from the
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 114

Middle Ages, have long been studied and their various architectural develop-
ments are well-documented (Charles McClendon, The Origins of Medieval
Architecture, 2005; John Thompson, The Decline of the Castle, 1987, and id.,
The Rise of the Castle, 1991). Modern excavations have, however, uncovered
some surprises, such as the huge monastic complex at San Vincenzo al Volt-
urno, Italy. The site is roughly contemporary with the 9th century plan of
St. Gall, an architectural blueprint of the ideal Carolingian monastery which
was formerly thought to be absurdly precocious. The excavation of San Vin-
cenzo has forced a reassessment of the standards of material culture and the
scope of architectural ability in the early medieval period (Richard Hodges,
Light in the Dark Ages, 1997; for the plan of St. Gall, see Walter Horn and
Ernest Born, The Plan of St. Gall, 3 vols., 1979; and Studien zum St. Galler
Klosterplan, ed. Peter Ochsenbein and Karl Schmucki, 2002). The ideologi-
cal meaning of architecture has become an important topic in recent years as
scholars have begun to focus more and more on the role that buildings
played in legitimizing political and religious authority (Jerrilynn D. Dodds,
Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain, 1990; Dale Kinney, “Roman
Architectural spolia,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145 [2001]:
138–50). The archaeology of buildings from before the year 1000 is, however,
extremely limited compared to our knowledge of castles, cathedrals and
churches from the later Middle Ages, a time when large-scale stone architec-
ture flourished. Research on domestic architecture has concentrated on
architectural continuity or lack thereof with the Roman heritage, growing
social differentiation and division of space and the influence of religious and
secular institutions on housing design and construction throughout the
medieval period (The Rural House from Migration Period to the Oldest Still Standing
Buildings, ed. Jan Kláp št ě, 2002; Geoff Egan, The Medieval Household: Daily
Living c.1150–c.1450, 1998; Gwyn Meirion-Jones and Michael Jones,
Manorial Domestic Buildings in England and Northern France, 1993).

Burials: Burials, as cemeteries or individual graves, constitute a vitally im-

portant yet problematic source of archaeological evidence. The excavation
and study of human remains can sometimes offer hints at the population, the
demography and the lives and deaths of medieval people. New techniques in
palaeo-demography and palaeo-pathology are helping medieval archaeol-
ogists investigate questions about population, life-span and disease more ac-
curately than in the past (Reconstructing Past Population Trends in Mediterranean
Europe, ed. John Bintliff and Kostas Sbonias, 1999; Jesper L. Boldsen,
“Analysis of Dental Attrition and Mortality in the Medieval Village of
Tirup, Denmark,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 126 [2005]:
115 Archaeology in Medieval Studies

169–76). Grave goods and burial customs, meanwhile, can offer some kind of
clue as to group and/or individual identity. Throughout antiquity and the
early medieval period, individuals were normally buried with some of their
personal belongings. Such belongings are often indicators of status, gender,
occupation or religion, though their interpretation can be problematic (see
Guy Halsall’s criticisms of using grave-goods to infer ethnicity in Early
Medieval Cemeteries: An Introduction to Burial Archaeology in the Post-Roman West,
1995 and his review article “Movers and Shakers: The Barbarians and the Fall
of Rome,” Early Medieval Europe, 8.1 [1999]: 131–45). In the later Middle Ages,
these grave-goods were generally replaced by more generic symbolic items
such as crosses or vessels (Thomas Meier, “Inschrifttafeln aus mittelalter-
lichen Gräbern: Einige Thesen zu ihrer Aussagekraft,” Papers of the ‘Medieval
Europe Brugge 1997’ Conference 2: Death and Burial in Medieval Europe, ed. Guy de
Boe and Frans Verhaeghe, 1997, 43–53). The careful investigation of cem-
eteries as unified archaeological sites can meanwhile yield valuable in-
formation about social differentiation in the treatment of the dead within
and across time periods. The re-excavation of the English royal cemetery site
of Sutton Hoo in the 1980s and early 90s by Martin Carver, for example,
located a special section for the burial of executed individuals (Martin
Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings?, 1998), while infant burials are
commonly separated from the rest of the dead at cemeteries throughout
medieval Europe.

Climate and Environment: The interaction between humans and their en-
vironment has always been a subject of archaeological investigation. The
growing importance of environmental archaeology as a bona fide sub-disci-
pline as well as the rise of ‘environmental history’ has, however, caused a new
emphasis to be placed on situating the material culture of the Middle Ages
within the context of its natural environment (Glynis Jones, Environmental
Archaeology, 2002). Archaeobotany and archaeozoology have made significant
contributions to our understanding of daily human interaction with the
medieval environment. Human adaptation to and effects on the natural
world are currently studied from ecological, economic and socio-political
perspectives (Lech Leciejewicz, La nuova forma del mondo: La nascita della civil-
ità europa medievale, 2004). The effects of climate and the environment on food
production, disease and demographics have always been acknowledged,
as in the medieval period’s ‘little ice age’. The recent drilling of glacial cores
by palaeoclimatologists have allowed scholars to speculate about the effects
of climate even on the minutiae of socio-political events (Michael McCor-
mick, Paul Edward Dutton and Paul A. Mayewski, “Volcanoes and the
Archaeology in Medieval Studies 116

Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750–950,” Speculum 82 [2007]:

865–95). Further collaborations between archaeologists, historians and
scientists will surely yield new and exciting results in the arena of human in-
teraction with the medieval environment.
Scholars who study the Middle Ages can no longer afford to ignore the
evidence provided by archaeological research. Archaeology’s successes over
the last decades in both corroborating and debunking the historical record
have proven its value, while new kinds of evidence gleaned through archaeo-
zoology, archaeobotany, and meticulous excavation are opening windows
on aspects of medieval life that would otherwise have remained obscure: The
cooperation of historians, archaeologists and scientists will surely yield even
greater returns in the future, while increased international cooperation will
help address questions on a far broader scale than the nationally-focussed
research agendas of the past (The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in
Northern Europe, AD 300–1300, ed. Martin Carver, for example, offers a collec-
tion of interdisciplinary essays concerning the question of conversion in the
North across Celtic, Germanic and Slavic areas by authors from across north-
ern Europe). The fruits of the archaeological research, which has concen-
trated far more on the early Middle Ages, will hopefully be more generally
applied to the later medieval period.

F. Resources
The main journals in the field are: Medieval Archaeology (1957 onwards), Arch-
éologie Médiévale (1971 onwards), Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters (1973
onwards), and Archeologia medievale (1974 onwards). Antiquity (1927 onwards),
a general archaeological journal with a wide-ranging and mainly prehistoric
focus, often carries research which is related to the medieval period as well as
methodological debates which are of significant interest. The huge number
of volumes published under the aegis of British Archaeological Resources (or
BAR) covers an incredible span of time periods, regions and topics, including
many publications on various aspects of the archaeology of medieval Europe.

Select Bibliography
Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia, ed. Pam J. Crabtree (New York: Routledge,
2001); The Archaeology of Medieval Europe, ed. James Graham-Campbell, vol. 1 (Aarhus:
Aarhus University Press, 2007; the second volume of which on the later Middle Ages is
expected shortly). Some more recent region-specific studies can be found in: Neil
Christie, From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy, AD 300–800 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006); Lloyd Laing, The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland 400–1200 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Günter P. Fehring, The Archaeology of
Medieval Germany (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). Christopher Gerrard,
117 Art History

Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches (London and

New York: Routledge, 2003; this volume serves as an excellent introduction to the
archaeological study of the later Middle Ages in Britain). Works of more general archae-
ological interest include: Colin Renfrew, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice
(London: Thames and Hudson, 2004); Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology:
A Brief Introduction (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999); and The Oxford Com-
panion to Archaeology, ed. Brian Fagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Christopher Landon

Art History

A. General Definition
Art history is the scholarly study of visual culture, the intellectual pursuit of
knowledge pertaining to works of art, their creation, their meanings, and
their reception. Historians of medieval art generally focus on western Euro-
pean, Byzantine or Islamic art; their expertise may lie anywhere between the
third and the fifteenth centuries. The first comprehensive work on medieval
art appeared in 1823: Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d’Agincourt’s
six-volume study entitled Histoire de l’art par les monumens, depuis sa décadence au
IVe siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XIVe (see Daniela mondini, Mittelalter im
Bild: Seroux d’Agincourt und die Kunsthistoriographie um 1800, 2005). Two import-
ant things should be noted about d’Agincourt’s work: the title, which, in
the tradition of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s 1764 Geschichte der Kunst
des Alterthums, takes as a given that the quality of art declined in the Middle
Ages; and the structure of the study itself, completed in the tradition of the
Roman school of Christian archaeology (W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “Intro-
duction,” Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Disci-
pline, ed. Helen Damico, 2000, vol. 3, 215–29, at 216).
In Austria, Rudolf von Eitelberger von Edelberg founded the
Vienna School of Art History, which ushered in the reign of positivism in the
history of medieval art; the eighteen-volume publication Quellenschriften
für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, which von
Edelberg co-edited with Albert Ilg, gathered between its covers a selection
of various medieval texts relevant for the study of medieval and Renaissance
art (Kleinbauer, “Introduction,” 2000, 217). It was from this Viennese
school that Franz Wickhoff and Alois Riegl emerged (for an essay on
Riegl’s scholarship as well as for a comprehensive bibliography of his work,
Art History 118

see Margaret Olin, “Alois Riegl (1858–1905),” Medieval Scholarship, 231–44).

Wickhoff’s main contribution lay in his passionate defense of the study of
periods other than the Renaissance; he argued for the continuity between
Roman and (incorrectly dated to the second and third centuries) Christian
painting (see Roman Art: Some of Its Principles and Their Application to Early Chris-
tian Painting, 1900, translation of Wickhoff’s introduction to his com-
mentary written for Die Wiener Genesis, 1895).The importance of riegl’s Die
spätrömische Kunstindustrie, the work that established the term Kunstwollen
(“artistic volition”), lies in the fact that, in dealing both with fine and applied
arts, it traces the development – not the decline – of fine arts from late an-
tiquity to the eighth century (1901).
In Germany, two late nineteenth-century art historians – Wilhelm Vöge
and Adolph Goldschmidt – completed work that was highly influential in
developing various methods of inquiry into medieval art (Kathryn Brush,
The Shaping of Art History: Wilhelm Vöge, Adolph Goldschmidt and the Study of Medi-
eval Art, 1996). Goldschmidt in particular is to be credited for his contribu-
tions to the development of objective formal analysis and his scrupulous
methods of classification of works of art (Kathryn Brush, “Adolph Gold-
schmidt (1863–1944),” Medieval Scholarship, 245–58, at 253); his focus on il-
luminated manuscripts and ivories yielded the four volumes of Die Elfenbein-
skulpturen (1914–1926) and the two-volume Die deutsche Buchmalerei (1928) on
Carolingian and Ottonian book illumination.
In France, scholars formulated the positivist methodology called archaé-
ologie médiévale, which approached medieval churches as written documents
that stood witness to stages of construction and were used to attribute a
given building to a particular “school” from a particular region (Klein-
bauer, “Introduction,” 2000, 221). Arcisse de Caumont proposed seven
such regional schools (further on de Caumont, see Arcisse de Caumont
(1801–1873): érudit normand et fondateur de l’archéologie française, ed. Vincent
Juhel, 2004). On the other hand, de Caumont’s contemporary, Adolphe
Napoléon Didron, and his intellectual successor Émile Mâle, focused on
an iconographic approach to medieval art. Still classic, Mâle’s three vol-
umes (L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Age
et sur ses sources d’inspiration, 1898 [corrected edition 1902]; L’art religieux de la
fin du Moyen Âge en France: étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources
d’inspiration, 1908; and L’art religieux du XIIe siècle en France; étude sur les origines
de l’iconographie du moyen âge, 1922) explore the meaning of medieval objects
through the lens of literary texts. It is important to note that this approach
was influential in the study of Byzantine as well as of western art, seen es-
pecially in the work of André Grabar (on Grabar’s work see, most recently,
119 Art History

Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo: Vizantiia i Drevniaia Rus: k 100-letiiu Andreia Nikolaevicha

Grabara [1896–1990], ed. A.L. Batalov et al., 1999).
If Goldschmidt wrote about Carolingian and Ottonian art, the prolific
Henri Focillon limited his definition of medieval architecture to Roman-
esque and Gothic buildings. Unlike Mâle, Focillon was a formalist, but
his focus lay in the study of monumental edifices and architectural sculpture:
this is evident in Art d’Occident (1938), which has been called “the most com-
prehensive statement of Focillon’s views on the art of the Middle Ages”
(Walter Cahn, “Henri Focillon [1881–1943],” Medieval Scholarship, 259–71,
at 261). Focillon’s student, Louis Grodecki, continued the study of
Gothic architecture, and made a particular contribution to the examination
of stained glass; a number of his studies appeared in the Corpus Vitrearum
Medii Aevi series, among them the monumental Les vitraux de Saint-Denis:
étude sur le vitrail au XIIe siècle, 1976.
American scholarship is immensely indebted to the work of German
ex-patriots, Richard Krautheimer and Erwin Panofsky among them.
Krautheimer, an authority on early Christian and Byzantine art, who
worked in the iconographic tradition, stressed the importance of consider-
ing socio-historical contexts in the study of medieval buildings, and inquir-
ing into the roles of patrons who were directly associated with these build-
ings (“Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Medieval Architecture,’” Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Studies 1942, discussed in Kleinbauer, “Introduc-
tion,” 2000, 223). Panofsky, who wrote on medieval, Renaissance and
Baroque art, drew a sharp distinction between medieval and Renaissance
sensibilities. A brilliant iconographer, he continues to inspire contemporary
scholarship; among his key works on medieval art are Renaissance and Renas-
censes in Western Art (2nd ed. 1965), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis
and Its Art Treasures (1946), and Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951).
Panofsky is also to be credited with the formulation of the iconological
approach, which, much like later work that would involve reception theory,
emphatically separates intent from content: Panofsky urged art historians
to engage with symbolic values of a work of art, which “may even emphat-
ically differ from what [the artist] consciously intended to express” (Studies in
Iconology, 1939, 8).
Two American-born scholars, Charles Rufus Morey and Arthur Kings-
ley Porter, contributed greatly to the enrichment of the discipline.
Morey, the founder of the Index of Christian Art, was a specialist in early
Christian art who was particularly interested in the plasticity of ancient
themes continued and transformed into early Christian motifs (see Early
Christian Art: an Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture
Art History 120

and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century, 1942). Porter specialized
primarily in Romanesque art: his ten-volume study Romanesque Sculpture of the
Pilgrimage Roads (1923) and the four-volume Lombard Architecture (1915–1917)
are still among the classics of the discipline; he is said to have “singlehand-
edly launched the study of medieval architecture and sculpture in the United
States as a serious discipline” (Linda Seidel, “Arthur Kingsley Porter
[1883–1933],” Medieval Scholarship, 2000, 273–86, at 283).
Although formal and iconographic analyses continue to form important
bases for the discipline of art history, and object catalogues (such as those
compiled by Goldschmidt) continue to provide extremely useful infor-
mation, a number of other methods of inquiry emerged in the study of medi-
eval art. For instance, the Lithuanian-born Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996),
a Marxist, ventured to define socio-political contexts for medieval objects
and to explore the interaction between the religious and the secular; in the
preface to the third volume of his selected papers entitled Late Antique, Early
Christian and Medieval Art, Schapiro writes: “I have assumed that religious
art, like religious cult, is not just an expressive representation of sacred texts
and a symbolizing of religious concepts (largely mâle’s thesis – E.G.); it also
projects ideas, attitudes and fantasies shaped in secular life and given con-
crete form by imaginative, I may say, poetic minds” (1980, XV). In shifting
the focus from text to image, Schapiro paved the way for scholars like
Michael Camille who, in his The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medi-
eval Art (1989), argued that images themselves constructed various ideologies
and generated meaning. Close scrutiny of images as generators of meaning,
of course, is impossible without the study of political, social, literary and
religious histories. Hence, semiotics, along with theories of narrative and
reception, form the basis for recent approaches to medieval art: in addition
to Camille’s work, see the writings of Suzanne Lewis (such as Reading Im-
ages: Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apoca-
lypse, 1995) or Kathryn A. Smith’s Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Cen-
tury England: Three Women and their Books of Hours (2003). Smith’s book not
only highlights the importance art historians afford to studying patronage
as an integral part of a work’s creation, but also points to the recent interest
in a feminist approach to the history of medieval art and in a visual history of
medieval women: among the important work published in this field are Jef-
frey Hamburger’s The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in
Late Medieval Germany (1998), as well as Madeline Caviness’s Visualizing
Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle and Scopic Economy (2001).
That Caviness’s book engages with Lacanian theory points to the fact
that psychoanalysis played an important role in the development of art his-
121 Art History

torical scholarship. From early works, such as Ernst Kris’ “A Psychotic Artist
of the Middle Ages” (in Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, 1952, 118–27), grew
the interest in the history and psychology of perception as well as in the
nature of representation (see, e. g., Ernst Gombrich, “Meditations on a
Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form,” Aspects of Form, a Symposium on
Form in Nature and Art, ed. Lancelot Law White, 1951, 209–24). The recently-
published Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw
(ed. Robert Nelson, 2000) examines the idea of visual perception, of the act
of seeing and of its importance to the study of artistic production; especially
useful for the student of medieval art are the contributions by Nelson
(“To Say and to See: Ekphrasis and Vision in Byzantium”), Cynthia Hahn
(“Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality”), and Michael Camille (“Before
the Gaze: the Internal Senses and Late Medieval Visuality”). The connection
between the visual and the cognitive within the contexts of visionary and
contemplative discourses has been recently explored in Mary Carruthers’s
The Book of Memory: a Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (1990) and The Craft of
Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (1999).
In addition to studying the style, the content, and the cultural context of
a work of art, and in addition to scrutinizing the creator of the work and its
patron, art historians are interested in the beholder of the work as well. So,
in “Reception of Images by Medieval Viewers,” Caviness writes about the
need to “contextualize the medieval experience of a work of art by construct-
ing […] a group [of viewers] that might have had a shared experience of the
work” (A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe,
ed. Conrad Rudolph, 2006, 1–43). Such analyses, especially when they
concern visual imagery accompanied by words, often explore the visual and
the textual literacy of the viewer (see Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some
Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Art History 8 [1985]: 26–49).
Recently, the definition of “performative reading,” in which “the mise en im-
ages shaped the reader’s reception and visualization of the […] text,” and
“the images were conceived to facilitate a specific kind of reading of the text,
either by individuals or in small groups,” was put forth by Pamela Shein-
gorn and Robert Clark (“Performative Reading: The Illustrated Manu-
scripts of Arnoul Gréban’s Mystère de la Passion,” European Medieval Drama 6
[2002]: 129–54, esp. 129–30). “Performative reading,” which considers play
manuscripts, signals scholarly interest in exploring the relationship be-
tween medieval performance and visual representation (see Richard K. Em-
merson, “Visualizing Performance: The Miniatures of Besancon MS 579
(Jour de Jugement),” Exemplaria 11 [1990]: 245–72, on manuscript illumi-
nation, and Elina Gertsman, “Pleyinge and Peyntinge: Performing the
Art History 122

Dance of Death,” Studies in Iconography 27 [2006]: 1–43, on murals and large-

scale panels).
The study of the history of medieval art is multifaceted: it is engaged
with the study of forms and symbols, codes and signs, words and images;
it inquires into the history of ideas; it examines social, political and religious
contexts; it comprises gender and cultural studies, feminist and Marxist the-
ories; informed by the work in psychoanalysis, reaching out to the field of
performance studies, it moves beyond the study of the object to inquire into
the histories of patronage and reception, and beyond the confines of the field
in quest of interdisciplinarity.

B. History of Research
The discipline of art history as we understand it now is fairly young, and his-
toriographic studies of medieval art have only recently come to the fore. One
of the key historiographic sources is Eugene Kleinbauer’s introduction
to Part III of Medieval Scholarship (2000, 215–229); although his essay centers
on the six art historians to be discussed in the edited volume, Kleinbauer
also provides a thorough context for the emergence of those scholars. The
choice of the scholars – Alois Riegl (1858–1950), Adolph Goldschmidt
(1863–1944), Henri Focillon (1881–1943), Arthur Kingsley porter
(1883–1933), Louis Grodecki (1910–1982) (discussed by Caviness) and
Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896–1989) (a scholar of Armenian Byzantine art
discussed by Nina G. Garsoian) – was dictated by the fact that their work, in
Kleinbauer’s own words, “typif[ies] a number of truly major develop-
ments in the discipline of medieval art history as it has emerged over the past
one hundred and ten years” (227). These developments receive a clear, brief,
and sophisticated treatment in his introduction, while a fuller narrative that
embraces art history as a discipline in general, but includes generous ma-
terial on the Middle Ages in particular, is fleshed out in Kleinbauer’s intro-
duction to the edited volume entitled Modern Perspectives in Western Art History
(1989; 1971, 1–105); in addition, see Wayne Dynes’ “Tradition and Inno-
vation in Medieval Art,” published in James M. Powell’s Medieval Studies: An
Introduction (1976; 313–2); Paul Frankl’s The Gothic: Literary Sources and Inter-
pretations through Eight Centuries (1960); Panofsky’s Renaissance and Renas-
cences in Western Art (1960); Harry Bober’s introduction to Mâle’s Religious
Art in France: The Twelfth Century, A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography
(1978); and Tina Waldeier Bizzarro’s Romanesque Architectural Criticism:
A Prehistory (1992).
These and other sources are cited in the latest essay to date that provides
an in-depth historiographic overview of the field: Conrad Rudolph’s intro-
123 Art History

duction to his edited volume, A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and

Gothic in Northern Europe (2006), which collects thirty essays that address the
history and theory of medieval art. Rudolph’s essay is a sweeping account of
developments in the study of medieval historiography. He begins his ac-
count with what he terms the “pre-history” of the study of medieval art, and
locates it in “the formation and continuation of the authority of Classical
art” (2). He briefly considers the role of Giorgio Vasari’s Le vite de più eccel-
lenti architetti, pittori, et scultori (1550, revised in 1568) in the formation of the
discipline, noting Vasari’s “naturalistic and biographical paradigms and
cyclical model of stylistic development” (5) and therefore his perception
of the Middle Ages as an epoch of decline. The section entitled “Reforma-
tion and its Aftermath” inquires into the work of John Leland (1506–1552)
and other English antiquarians such as William Camden (1551–1623) and
Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), and discusses the development of the
art market on the Continent and the advent of collecting; it is followed
by the discussion of Enlightenment views on Gothic architecture in Eng-
land, Germany, and France, and the introduction to Winckelmann’s work.
In exploring nineteenth-century developments, Rudolph considers Ro-
mantic reactions to medieval art as well as the then new scholarly focus on
“periodization, dating, regionalism, and the use of exegesis in interpre-
tation” (21). For the rest of his introduction, Rudolph zeroes in on the
work of scholars who are considered to be instrumental in the development
of the study of medieval art (from Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
[1814–1879] to Schapiro [1904–1996]) and describes the establishment of
seminal organizations, journals and indices, encyclopedias, catalogues and
corpora. He concludes with a discussion of the “new art history,” and the
“adoption of interdisciplinary theories and methodologies that have trans-
formed other areas of the humanities and social sciences” (36), from literary
criticism to social art history. Rudolph’s volume contains a number of valu-
able contributions to the historiography of medieval art (for a thorough
evaluation of the book see Smith’s review on the College Art Association
Web site [http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1188; last accessed on Feb. 21,
2009]).
A different approach is taken by Herbert Kessler, who, in his essay “On
the State of Medieval Art History” (Art Bulletin 70, 2 [1988]: 166–87), provides
a survey of the main concerns and themes in medieval art; current – along
with long-established – research on these themes is cited in the footnotes.
The essay, which eventually gave rise to Kessler’s Seeing Medieval Art (2004),
therefore provides less of a historiography of medieval art study per se than a
review of various developments in the art of the Middle Ages, accompanied
Art History 124

by extensive bibliography (subsections of Kessler’s essay are telling:

“Periodization,” “The Medieval Art Object,” “Production,” “The Place of
Art” etc); for a critique of this approach by Lucy Freeman Sandler
(who points out that Kessler’s essay does not specifically address current
research in the field, and characterizes it instead as “a historical survey of the
period from late antiquity to the beginning of the Renaissance” [506]) as well
as Kessler’s rebuttal, see “An Exchange on ‘the State of Medieval Art His-
tory’” (The Art Bulletin 71.3 [1989]: 506–07). In addition, a number of histori-
ographic studies that focus on specific media or particular approaches to and
topics in medieval art, have appeared in the past two decades; two essays in
the JEGP (2006) are particularly useful: Eric Palazzo’s “Art and Liturgy in
the Middle Ages: Survey of Research (1980–2003) and Some Reflections on
Method” (170–84), and Richard K. Emmerson’s extremely useful overview
of recent research on interdisciplinary approaches to illuminated manu-
scripts in “Middle English Literature and Illustrated Manuscripts: New Ap-
proaches to the Disciplinary and the Interdisciplinary” (118–36). For a dis-
cussion of the application of the iconographic method of inquiry to medieval
architecture, see Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning: The
Limits of Iconography” (The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1019, Special Issue
on Gothic Art [1988]: 116–21); for an essay that reviews literature on Roman-
esque studies, see Ilene H. Forsyth, “The Monumental Arts of the Roman-
esque Period: Recent Research” (The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth
Anniversary, ed. Elizabeth C. Parker with Mary B. Shephard, 1992, 3–25).
Finally, “Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North
American Medieval Studies” by Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel
(AHR 103.3 [1998]: 677–704) must be noted: the essay probes into a pecu-
liarly twentieth-century American concept of the Middle Ages – specifically,
what authors see as “the recent revival of interest in strange and extreme
forms of belief and behavior now perceived as characteristic of medieval
civilization” (677).
Two review studies, which appeared in 1996 and 1997, focus on ap-
proaches to medieval art that isolate early medieval and Byzantine art from
the rest of the medieval “canon.” Lawrence Nees’s introduction to the special
issue of Speculum (72. 4 [1997]: 959–69), entitled “Approaches to Early-Medi-
eval Art,” addresses the state of early medieval art history, and discusses
“romanticized historiographical emphasis on the ‘wandering peoples’ in the
discussion of early-medieval culture in general and art in particular” (964).
One of the effects of such an approach, Nees concludes, which implies ethni-
cally-based divisions in the early medieval visual culture, is the emphatic
separation of Byzantine art from the general developments in medieval art
125 Art History

at large (Nees finds particular fault with art history survey texts, such as
Gardner’s Art through the Ages, which was at the time edited by Fred S. Kleiner
and Richard G. Tansey, 1996). Robert S. Nelson’s “Living on the Byzan-
tine Borders of Western Art” (Gesta 35,1 [1996]: 3–11) surveys texts written
between the mid-nineteenth and the end of the twentieth century and con-
cludes that “the alterity of Byzantine art and the denial of its coevalness
with Western medieval art have been features of general histories of art for
150 years” (8). An effective historiographic survey of Byzantine art, Charles
Barber’s “Art History” (ed. Jonathan Harris, 2005, 147–56), canvasses a
variety of developments in and provides a variety of references for the study
of the art of Byzantium. Barber cites both printed and online resources for
research (such as the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, the Reallexikon zur byzantinischen
Kunst, the catalogue of the Dumbarton Oaks Library and the Index of Christian
Art), and outlines the crucial survey texts available to the student of Byzan-
tine culture, from Nikodim Kondakov’s Histoire de l’art byzantin considéré
principalement dans les miniatures (2 vol., 1886–1891) to Robin Cormack’s
Byzantine Art (2000). He proceeds to point out the importance of primary text
collections (such as Cyril Mango’s The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453:
Sources and Documents, 1972), as well as exhibitions and museum and ex-
hibition catalogues (such as Byzantium: Faith and Power [1261–1557], edited
by Helen C. Evans or Nezih Firatli’s La sculpture Byzantine figurée au Musée
Archéologique d’Istanbul, 1990) for the study of Byzantine art. Barber sub-
sequently considers monographs on church architecture and its decoration
(e. g., Robert Ousterhout, The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul,
1987; The Kariye Djami, 4 vol., ed. Paul Underwood, 1966–1975; Otto
Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, 1984), literature on illuminated
manuscripts in general (from the aforementioned study by Kondakov to
Kurt Weitzmann’s Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin and
Method of Text Illustration, 1947 and John Lowden’s The Octateuchs: A Study
in Byzantine Manuscript Illustration, 1992, which questions Weitzmann’s ap-
proach) and select manuscripts in particular (Suzy Dufrenne and Paul
Canart, Die Bibel des Patricius Leo: Codex Reginensis Graecus I B, 1988); on icons
(e. g., Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, 1952,
2nd ed., 1982); and on sculpture (André Grabar, Sculptures byzantines de Con-
stantinople [IVe-Xe siècle], 1963 and Sculptures byzantines du Moyen Age [XIe–XIVe
siècle], 1976). Finally, Barber points out that while extensive work has been
done on early and especially middle Byzantine periods, the late Byzantine
period has not yet generated enough scholarship.
Because of the constraints of space, this entry provides, per force, a li-
mited introduction to the historiography of medieval art. Nonetheless, it is
Astronomical Instruments 126

perhaps prudent to note the obvious: that the concerns, methods, theories,
problems and issues that occupy historians of medieval art are not neces-
sarily unique to their particular field of study. For an excellent series of es-
says that engage topics relevant to medievalists and others, see Critical Terms
in Art History (ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, 1996, 2nd ed., 2003)
and the anthology of critical texts in the history of art from Vasari to
Oguibe entitled Art History and Its Methods: a Critical Anthology, ed. Eric Fer-
nie, 1995). Finally, for a discussion of whether “the academic discipline of
art history no longer disposes of a compelling model of historical treatment,”
see Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? (1987) translated from the sec-
ond edition of Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte? (1984).

Select Bibliography
Charles Barber, “Art History,” Palgrave Advances in Byzantine History, ed. Jonathan
Harris (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 147–156; Medieval Scholarship: Bio-
graphical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 3, ed. Helen Damico (New York:
Garland Publishing, 2000); Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of
20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts, ed. W. Eugene Kleinbauer (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1971, rpt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); A Com-
panion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

Elina Gertsman

Astronomical Instruments

A. Introduction
Over 150 astronomical instruments have survived from the European Middle
Ages (In this article we are dealing with the period from ca. 950 to ca. 1500).
The European tradition is closely related to that of the Islamic Middle Ages
(see David King, In Synchrony with the Heavens, vol. 2, 2005), and, in many
cases, instrument-types and even individual instruments are directly or indi-
rectly inspired by these. For both European and Islamic instrumentation, the
associated textual traditions are important, not least for instrument-types of
which no examples survive. By far the most common medieval instrument is
the astrolabe – a two-dimensional model of the three-dimensional heavens
that one can hold in one’s hand. The celestial part or rete – for the sun and the
stars – can rotate over a terrestrial part, a set of plates for different latitudes –
127 Astronomical Instruments

with markings for the meridian, the horizon, and altitude circles up to the
zenith. The astrolabe was used primarily for timekeeping, and this holds for
the other principal instruments, the horary quadrant and sundial. For com-
puting the positions of the sun, moon and planets, either astronomical tables
or an instrument known as the equatorium could be used. Other less com-
mon instruments intended for observational purposes include the armillary
sphere and the torquetum.

B. Instruments
No comprehensive overview of medieval European instruments exists; in-
deed, there are no published descriptions of the majority of such instru-
ments. Numerous instruments of different kinds preserved in Oxford
have been surveyed by Robert Gunther (Early Science in Oxford, 5 vol., vol. 2,
Astronomy, 1923), and later the same scholar published close to 40 medieval
astrolabes (The Astrolabes of the World, 2 vol., dealing respectively with Eastern
and European pieces [1932, rpt. 1976]). Most of the instruments discussed by
Gunther have not been investigated again since his time, and not because
his descriptions were exhaustive or without fault.
Brief but useful introductions to medieval instrumentation are by Fran-
cis Maddison (“Early Astronomical and Mathematical instruments: A Brief
Survey of Sources and Modern Studies,” History of Sciences 2 [1963]: 17–50)
and Emmanuel Poulle (“Les instruments astronomiques de l’Occident
latin aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” 15 [1972]: 27–40). A more thorough overview of
instrument-types with a survey of makers and their works from Germany
and the Netherlands was presented by Ernst Zinner (Deutsche und nieder-
ländische astronomische Instrumente des 11.–18. Jahrhunderts, 1956, rpt. 1972),
although the descriptions of individual instruments are restricted to a few
lines. The same author published a survey of European fixed sundials (Alte
Sonnenuhren an europäischen Gebäuden (1964), of which only very few are medi-
eval. Zinner’s works are still unsurpassed.
On transmission from the Islamic world to medieval Europe see Astro-
nomical Instruments in Medieval Spain: Their Influence in Europe, ed. Juan Vernet
and Julio Samsó (1985); David King, “Islamic Astronomical Instruments
and some Newly-Discovered Example of Transmission to Europe,” Mediter-
ranean: Splendour of the Medieval Mediterranean: 13th–15th Centuries, ed. Elisenda
Guedea, 2004, 400–23 and 606–07); also various studies on the elusive
Jeber (Jâbir ibn Aflah) by Richard Lorch (Arabic Mathematical Sciences: Instru-
ments, Texts, Transmission [1995]). Certain medieval instrument types have
recently been shown to be Islamic in origin, although no Islamic examples
survive, and we must rely on the textual tradition. Thus, for example, the
Astronomical Instruments 128

popular quadrans vetus, a universal horary quadrant with movable cursor is an

early Islamic invention (King, “A Vetustissimus Arabic Treatise on the Quad-
rans Vetus,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 33 [2002]: 1–19, also King,
In Synchrony, 2005, pt. XIa). No such conclusive evidence is available for the
elusive medieval English navicula de Venetiis, a universal device for timekeep-
ing by the sun, although we have a 9th-century Arabic text on a more compli-
cated universal device for timekeeping by the stars (King, “14th-Century
England or 9th-Century Baghdad? New Insights on the Origins of the Elusive
Astronomical Instrument Called the Navicula de Venetiis,” Centaurus 45 [2003]:
204–26, also King, In Synchrony, 2005, pt. XIb).

C. Texts on Instruments
The texts on different unusual kinds of instruments by a single individual, in
this case, the early 14th-century English scholar Richard of Wallingford, have
been published in an exemplary study by John North (Richard of Wallingford:
An Edition of His Writings with Introductions, English Translation and Commentary,
1976). Likewise exemplary is a detailed account of all medieval equatoria and
related texts by Emmanuel Poulle (Les instruments de la théorie des planètes
selon Ptolemée: Équatoires et horlogerie planétaire du XIIIe au XVIe siècle, 2 vols.,
1980). A new edition of Chaucer’s treatise on the astrolabe is now available in
A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol VI, The Prose Treatises, pt.1,
A Treatise on the Astrolabe, ed. Sigmund Eisner (2002). Yet no survey of all
medieval English astrolabes in the Chaucerian tradition exists because
scholars prefer texts to instruments and think that the former are more im-
portant than the latter. Because of certain features – such as the widespread
quatrefoil decoration on astrolabe retes and the lack of place-names on astro-
labe plates for different latitudes – it is often difficult to attribute a particular
instrument to a specific geographical location; there are, for example, pieces
that could be Spanish or French or Italian. Various centres of instrumen-
tation arose in which the attribution is not problematic; the school of Jean
Fusoris in Paris (ca. 1400) has been studied by Emmanuel Poulle (Un con-
structeur d’instruments astronomiques au 15e siècle: Jean Fusoris, 1963) and some
45 instruments surviving from the school of 15th-century Vienna have been
listed by David King (Astrolabes and Angels, Epigrams and Enigmas: From Regio-
montanus’ Acrostic for Cardinal Bessarion to Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation
of Christ, 2007, 234–58). Reliable catalogues of the major collections with
detailed descriptions of individual instruments are few in number and serve
Greenwich (Koenraad van Cleempoel et al., Astrolabes at Greenwich: A Cata-
logue of the Astrolabes in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 2005); London
British Museum (F. A. B. Ward, A Catalogue of Scientific Instruments in the …
129 Astronomical Instruments

British Museum, 1981; based on information previously recorded by Derek J.

de Solla Price); Munich (Burkhardt Stautz, Die Astrolabiensammlungen
des Deutschen Museums und des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums, 1999); and Nurem-
berg (David A. King, “Die Astrolabiensammlung des Germanischen Natio-
nalmuseums,” Focus Behaim-Globus, ed. Gerhard Bott, 2 vols., 1992, I,
101–14, and II, 568–602). Often only astrolabes are catalogued and other
related instruments, particularly quadrants and pocket sundials, are over-
looked. Numerous other catalogues could be mentioned in which Islamic or
Renaissance European instruments predominate, there being so few surviv-
ing medieval European examples. Thus, for example, of the two dozen astro-
labes discussed in careful detail by Salvador García Franco (Catálogo crítico
de los astrolabios in España, 1945), not a single one can be classified as medieval;
the only surviving Catalonian and Spanish instruments just happen to be
preserved in collections outside Spain.
The potential of astronomical instruments as historical sources has
been stressed by David King (“Astronomical Instruments between East and
West,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzident, ed. Harry Kühnel, 1994,
143–98; and id., In Synchrony, Pt. XIIIa; the latter dealing with astrolabes).
Some individual instruments of particular historical interest have now been
studied in exhaustive detail. Thus, for example, we have lengthy descrip-
tions of the earliest European astrolabe from late-10th-century Catalonia
(collected articles in The Oldest Latin Astrolabe, ed. Wesley Stevens, Guy
Beaujouan and Anthony J. Turner, Physis: Rivista di storia della scienza,
N. S. 32:2–3,1995, 189–450; with several contributions of doubtful value);
an astrolabe from Catalonia datable ca. 1300 (David A. King and Kurt
Maier, “The Medieval Catalan Astrolabe of the Society of Antiquaries, Lon-
don,” From Baghdad to Barcelona: Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences in Honour
of Prof. Juan Vernet, ed. Josep Casulleras and Julio Samsó, 2 vol., 1996,
II, 673–718); a non-functional 14th-century Italian astrolabe copied from
a highly sophisticated Islamic prototype (King, In Synchrony, 2005, pt. XIIId);
a 14th-century Spanish astrolabe with inscriptions in Hebrew, Latin and
Arabic (King, In Synchrony, 2005, pt. XV); an astrolabe, probably made in
Erfurt, commissioned by the treasurer of the Stiftskirche in Einbeck (King,
“An Astrolabe from Einbeck datable ca. 1330,” to appear in a Festschrift for
Menso Folkerts, ed. Andreas Kühne, Paul Kunitzsch, and Richard P.
Lorch); a 14th-century Picard astrolabe with numbers written in monastic
ciphers (King, The Ciphers of the Monks: A Forgotten Number-Notation of the
Middle Ages, 2001, 131–51 and 391–419); an early-14th-century astrolabic
quadrant (Elly Dekker, “An Unrecorded Medieval Astrolabe Quadrant
from ca. 1300,” Annals of Science 52 [1995]: 1–47); and the remarkable astro-
Astronomical Instruments 130

labe presented by the astronomer Regiomontanus to his patron Cardinal

Bessarion in 1462 with a complex acrostic in its dedication (King, Astrolabes
and Angels, Epigrams and Enigmas, 31–46 and 259–74).
A catalogue of the entire corpus of surviving medieval instruments, still
mainly unpublished, and a survey of the related literature, also mainly un-
published, is a desideratum for the future. Since this would be such a monu-
mental international project (previous ventures by Derek Price and David
King did not achieve a publishable handlist or a catalogue, respectively), re-
gional overviews (say, detailed descriptions of all medieval English instru-
ments, or all Fusoris astrolabes, or all 15th-century Vienna instruments) or
surveys of all examples of a specific instrument-genre (say, all naviculas, or all
torqueta) would be more feasible undertakings. In all cases, the associated tex-
tual tradition should not be overlooked.

Select Bibliography
Robert T. Gunther, The Astrolabes of the World, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1932; rpt in 1 vol., London: The Holland Press, 1976; long out of date but still
the major work on medieval European astrolabes); David A. King, “Astronomical
Instruments between East and West,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzident,
ed. Harry Kühnel (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994),
143–98; David A. King, In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping
and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2004–05;
although mainly dealing with Islamic instruments, this work contains substantial
new material on the medieval European tradition); John North, Richard of Wallingford:
An Edition of His Writings with Introductions, English Translation and Commentary, 3 vols.
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976); Ernst Zinner, Deutsche und Niederländische astro-
nomische Instrumente des 11.–18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1956, rpt. 1972).

David A. King
131 Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia

Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia

A. Introduction
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (Mihail Љ Miha“loviљ
Љ BAHTiЉ N) (born No-
vember 17, 1895; died March 7, 1975) was not a medievalist per se. However,
the theories of discourse and the novel that he composed in the 1930s and 40s
have found significant reception among medievalists since the early 1980s
with appearance of Michael Holquist’s and Caryl Emerson’s translation
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (1981) and the subsequent
wider reception of Hélène Iswolsky’s translation of Rabelais and His
World (1968). Dialogic Imagination is based on a collection of Bakhtin’s essays
written during the 1930s and 40s, which appeared together for the first time
in Russian as Questions of Literature and Aesthetics (Vopros« literatur« i Њste
tiki) in 1975; thus placing the full emergence of Bakhtinian studies in the
early 1980s is not unique to the English speaking world. Dialogic Imagination
contains the four essays, “Discourse in the Novel” (“Slovo v romane,”
1934–1935), “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” (“Form«
vremeni i hronotopa v romane,” 1937–1938), “From the Pre-History
of Novelistic Discourse” (“Iz pred«storii romannogo slova,” 1940), and
“Epic and Novel” (“Ѓpos i roman,” 1941). These essays, along with Rabelais
and His World (Tvorљestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaѕ kulцtura sredneve
kovцѕ i Renessansa, 1965), contain the five key concepts of Bakhtinian dis-
course theory most relevant to medieval studies: dialogism, heteroglossia,
the chronotope, the carnivalesque, and the grotesque. It is important to note,
however, that Bakhtin had limited access to medieval texts and only really
glances the medieval period as he explores the development of the novel,
which culminates, in Bakhtin’s theoretical oeuvre, with the work of Dos-
toyevsky.

B. Theory of the Novel

Bakhtin seeks “the authentic spirit of the novel” in texts that “anticipate
the more essential historical aspects in the development of the novel in mod-
ern times” (“Epic and Novel,” 22). He identifies two lines of stylistic develop-
ment in the move from monologic to a fully dialogic novelistic discourse,
Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia 132

that of the First and Second Line novel (“Discourse in the Novel,” 366–76).
Bakhtin locates the courtly romance as the site of transition between these
two stylistic lines and his theory has, therefore, become a focus of medieval
studies. He asserts that the novel emerged out of a gradual development
from single-voiced (monologic) to double-voiced (dialogic) literary discourse
in Western literature (“Discourse in the Novel,” 259–422). Monologic dis-
course is the language of First Line novels and dialogic discourse is the lan-
guage of Second Line novels. Bakhtin’s theory holds that only one cultural
code or one voice operates within the monologic text. The novel, on the other
hand, is double-voiced or dialogic.
Bakhtin locates the beginnings of the First Line of novelistic develop-
ment in the novellas, satires, biographies and autobiographies of late an-
tiquity. He explicates Lucius Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (ca. 160 C.E.) as
an example of the First Line of the development of novelistic discourse. He
also places the medieval vitae and some courtly epics in this category, the
works of Chrétien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, and Gottfried von Straß-
burg, for instance. Bakhtin employs the term heteroglossia to characterize
the multiple voices and various cultural codes interacting with one another
in the novel. Some courtly romances contain heteroglossic and dialogic dis-
course and are regarded as novels. First Line novels have dialogic or hetero-
glossic elements like word plays or parodies but more advanced forms of het-
eroglossic discourse, like the inclusion of non-literary discourses, such as the
language of medical science or animal husbandry, remain outside of the nar-
rative. Bakhtin then concludes that the dialogical discourse functions in
the background of First Line novels, where the idealizing language of the
narrative and the everyday language of the world in which the narrative
emerges conflict (“Discourse in the Novel,” 376).
According to his theory, the Second Line of novelistic development pro-
duces the full-fledged dialogic and heteroglossic novel. Bakhtin describes
heteroglossia as “another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express
authorial intentions but in a refracted way” (“Discourse in the Novel,” 324).
Heteroglossia denotes language alien to a given context, which is employed
to express intentions that conflict with what might be generally understood
by the communication. The language of this discourse is double-voiced. It
serves two speakers at once and expresses their conflicting intentions. In the
same word or expression, the literal meaning articulated by the fictional
characters in the work collides with the covert intentions of the author. The
dialogic utterance expresses two voices, two meanings and two perspectives
simultaneously. These voices charge the dialogic expression and react to one
another within that expression (“Discourse in the Novel,” 324–25). Hetero-
133 Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia

glossia and dialogic discourse differ therein that the double-voiced word or
dialogic expression provides a space in which conflicting discourses collide
to produce one word or expression with two possible meanings. Heteroglos-
sia simply denotes the concurrence of conflicting discourses not their inter-
action. The arrangement of heteroglossic and dialogic elements expresses
authorial intention. Bakhtin’s author intentionally subverts her/his own
intentions. That is, Bakhtin’s author consciously activates dialogic dis-
course and crafts a language whose meaning strays intentionally beyond his/
her control. The author provides the reader with an “interruptive,” a word or
expression which points to the plurality of its meaning. The resulting insta-
bility of meaning in the text remains, to a certain degree, under the control of
the author and his text cannot be conceived as something totally subject to
the whims of the reader.
Bakhtin notes that the literary consciousness of the authors and audi-
ence of the courtly romances formed during a period of extensive cultural
exchange. Individual European cultures began assimilating elements of
foreign languages and cultures into their own. The exchange between the
French and the Germans exemplifies this process. Bakhtin asserts that this
cultural assimilation impacted on the literary production of the period and
produced a new literary consciousness: “Translation, reworking, re-concep-
tualizing, re-accenting – manifold degrees of mutual orientation with alien
discourse, alien intentions – these were the activities shaping the literary
consciousness that created the chivalric romance” (“Discourse in the Novel,”
377). Bakhtin regards Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival as the first truly
dialogic novel and one of the earliest examples of a Second Line “real” novel.
According to Bakhtin, Wolfram’s particular brand of heteroglossia, a lan-
guage that revels in the mixing of high and low discourses, inaugurated
the predilection for this type of discourse in the German literary tradition
(“Discourse in the Novel,” 324–25).

C. The Chronotope
Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope represents the third equally important
contribution to literary theory discussed here. He uses the term chronotope
to describe the phenomenon of the organization and interaction of time and
space in a given text (“Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel:
Notes toward a Historical Poetics,” 84–85). Arthur Groos (“Dialogic Trans-
positions: The Grail Hero Wins a Wife,” Chrétien de Troyes and the German
Middle Ages, 1993, 257–76.) describes the chronotope as “the differentiation
of discourse through the articulation of time and space” (“Dialogic Trans-
positions,” 262). The degree of chronotopic complexity, as with the notion of
Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia 134

single and double-voiced discourse, depends on the genre and line of devel-
opment. Single-voiced or monologic forms have very simple and distinctly
separate chronotopic levels. Bakhtin identifies the adventure as the most
common chronotope. During an adventure the rules of time and space
change. The site of the adventure is enchanted and unfamiliar. The events
that occur in this space are of an indeterminate duration. Pure chance usually
governs the switch from the “realistic” stable chronotopes of the narrative
(the court) to the adventure chronotope (the wilderness) (“Forms of Time and
of the Chronotope in the Novel,” 87–92).

D. The Carnivalesque
In his essay “Epic and the Novel” Bakhtin distinguishes the novel further
by ascribing an intrinsically subversive element to it. The novel differenti-
ates itself from epic, in that epic relies on the notion of past and tradition as
sacred, where as the novel continually functions to destabilize such notions
(“Epic and Novel,” 15). Continuing in this vein, Bakhtin develops the no-
tion of the carnivalesque, “In the world of the carnival the awareness of the
people’s immortality is combined with the realization that established auth-
ority and truth are relative” (Rabelais and his World, 10). Like the novel, for
Bakhtin the “Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming,
change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and com-
plete” (Rabelais and his World, 109). The carnivalesque unfolds as class struggle
with lower elements of society, discourse, and the body itself. The latter as-
pect being central to Bakhtin’s notion of the grotesque, also developed in
his work on Rabelais, in which the body itself, particularly the body in a state
of openness, expulsion or transformation such as during eating, drinking,
copulating, defecating, urinating, menstruating, birthing and dying and all
of the fluids associated with these activities become expressions of class
struggle and social anxiety. Bakhtin characterizes the literary mode which
describes these activities as grotesque realism, and ascribes to it an essentially
socially transgressive quality.

E. Critical Reception
Thomas J. Farrell observes that “Bahktin hovers around medieval topics,
he usually stops at the threshold” (Bakhtin and Medieval Voices, 1995). As useful
as Bahktinian theory is for exploring medieval literature, there are many
gaps to fill and pitfalls to avoid when applying it. Bakhtin constructs the
history of the novel from back to front. He begins with narrative strategies
specific to Dostoyevsky and then searches for traces of these characteristics
elsewhere. Bakhtin mainly looks for a mixing of genres. Heteroglossia is
135 Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia

the language produced by this pastiche. Heteroglossic language is inherently

dialogic, that is, double voiced. Readers of Bakhtin often overlook the fact
that discourse does not need to be heteroglossic in order to be dialogized.
Moreover, neither of these elements, the heteroglossic nor the dialogic, ac-
count for the distinctive evolution of narrative practice that remains far more
important for the development of the novel and must play a role in any con-
sideration or definition of novelistic discourse. In “What Bakhtin Left Un-
said” (Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, 1985),
Cesare Serge points out that “experimental and heteroglot texts constitute,
outside the novel’s development but also within it, a discontinuous, fre-
quently interrupted series,” while the romance as narrative form “develops
by means of its very transformations, uninterruptedly and coherently to
the present day” (26). The fetishization of polyphonic discourse as rigidly de-
fined by modern reception of Bakhtin obscures the larger role that medi-
eval romances play in the development of the novel.
Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia presumes that the competing dis-
courses arise from the mixing of discursive genres organized according to
social stations. The language of the court competes with scientific narrative
or the language of peasants, creating multiple perspectives that serve to des-
tabilize one another. This theory, steeped in Marxist ideology, makes too
much of the social milieu. The changing perspectives in any text, regardless
of the idiolect employed, can generate this heteroglossia, or a web of compet-
ing meanings. Moreover, in many “chivalric novels” the generation of dia-
logic discourse does not result from heteroglossia but rather from the intro-
duction of metonymical symbolic import, which relies on the introduction
of time and internal progression in the text. Bakhtin posits his theory of
time in the novel, the chronotope, independently of his theory of heteroglos-
sia. Although his theory explores the interrelationship of the generation
of multiple meanings and the portrayal of time, too often, critics employing
his theories treat these aspects separately. The varying discourses must be in-
serted into a progression over time in order to activate the social import and
context that distinguishes them from one another; simple heterogeneity of
discourse does not produce multiple meanings.
The formulation of novelistic discourse based on socially or stylistically
distinguishable genres of language does not engage the competing medieval
literary conceptual models behind the emergence of heteroglossia. Bakhtin
fails to consider fully the role of allegory or medieval historiography in the
development of the novelistic discourse in the “chivalric novels.” In fact, this
omission accounts for the problematic position of chivalric verse narrative
in his theory, because these were the very narrative forces informing the ro-
Bakhtinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia 136

mances. Recent scholarship has shown that the gradual separation of histori-
cal and imaginative literatures in the 12th and 13th centuries was the pivotal
moment in creation of both the novel and modern historiography (see
for example, Gabrielle M.Spiegel, “Social Change and Literary Language:
The Texualization of the Past in Thirteenth-Century Old French Histori-
ography,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 17 [1987]: 149–74.) More-
over, in many medieval texts, the role of time in the generation of a “double
voiced” discourse depends on the development of religious and spiritual
conceptions. Since Bakhtin’s theory does not account for these impulses,
nor even address the Bible as literary text within the framework of his theory,
it hardly provides an accurate description of discourse in the romances.
Moreover, already in many presumed First Line “novels” the dissolution of
the chronotopic boundaries between the various adventure spaces thwart the
linear progressive model that Bakhtin applies to them.
The most widely applied of Bakhtin’s theories, the carnivalesque,
is also the most widely assailed. The assertion of the carnival as social trans-
gressive represents perhaps the weakest aspect of the concept. As Terry
Eagleton has pointed out in Walter Benjamin: Towards a Revolutionary Criti-
cism (1981), “Carnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible
rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and
relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art. As Shakespeare’s Olivia
remarks, there is no slander in an allowed fool” (148). In their work The Politics
and Poetics of Transgression (1986), Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, then,
seek the transgressive elements of carnivalesque in the grotesque. For medi-
evalists however, the notion of the grotesque has a history that precedes
Bakhtin and conflicts with his theory. As John Ganim notes, “Bakhtin’s
grotesque, and his Middle Ages, intervene in [a] long history of spurious as-
sociations […] his own definition of the medieval was not meant to be histori-
cally accurate; instead, it was meant to be itself carnivalesque and dialogic, re-
sponding to and parodying definitions which had attempted to repress the
anarchic energies he admired” (“Medieval Literature as Monster: The Gro-
tesque Before and After Bakhtin,” Exemplaria 7.1 [1995]: 27–40). Despite these
well-considered theoretical objections, the usefulness of Bakhtinian concepts
for the analysis of medieval literature continues to be manifest in practice.

Select Bibliography
Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin: Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: New Left
Books, 1981); John Ganim, “Medieval Literature as Monster: The Grotesque Before
and After Bakhtin,” Exemplaria 7.1 (1995): 27–40; Arthur Groos, “Dialogic Transposi-
tions: The Grail Hero Wins a Wife,” Chrétien de Troyes and the German Middle Ages, ed.
Martin H. Jones and Roy Wisbey (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1993),
137 Biblical Exegesis

257–76; The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist
and Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981); Cesare Segre, “What
Bakhtin Left Unsaid,” trans. Elise Morse, Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien
de Troyes to Cervantes, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee
(Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1985), 23–46; Peter Stally-
brass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1986).

Stephen M. Carey

Biblical Exegesis

A. Historical Background
Medieval Biblical exegesis is greatly indebted to the Patristic period. Some
scholars identify two distinct exegetical traditions in ancient Christianity,
the Alexandrine tradition, more prone to allegoresis, mainly represented by
the Church father Origen (d. 254), and the Antiochene tradition, one more
literal, mainly represented by Theodore of Mospuestia (d. 428) (Frances
Young, “Alexandrian and Antiochene Exegesis,” A History of Biblical Interpre-
tation, vol. 1, The Ancient Period, ed. Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson,
2003, 334–54).
But this distinction is more descriptive of early Christianity in the East
than Western (Latin) Christendom. The Western church fathers, such as
Jerome (d. 420), Augustine (d. 430), and Gregory the Great (d. 604), all of
whose commentaries became foundational for the medieval understanding
of Scripture, believed that the spiritual meaning of Scripture was its hidden,
but true meaning, only perceptible to those who were initiated into the mys-
teries of faith. Jerome, in addition to producing the Latin Bible translation
that would become basis of the standard Vulgate Bible translation of the
Middle Ages, wrote commentaries on almost all books of the Old Testament
that would be the source of many medieval commentaries.
In the early Middle Ages, scholars like Isidore of Seville (d. 636) built upon
the patristic tradition, while providing a great number of allegorical inter-
pretations of Biblical passages that would become standard fare throughout
the Middle Ages. Commentaries and Bible glosses of a more “Antiochene”
character were produced in monastic foundations by Irish and Anglo-Saxon
monks, such as Saint Gall, Werden, and Reichenau (M. L. W. Laistner,
“Antiochene Exegesis in Western Europe During the Middle Ages,” Harvard
Biblical Exegesis 138

Theological Review 40 [1947]: 19–31). Many of these commentaries bear the

traces of the scholarly activity of archbishop Theodore (d. 690) and his com-
panion Hadrian, whose arrival in Canterbury in the 7th century marked
the beginning of a rich tradition of learning in the British isles (Bernhard
Bischoff and Michael Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury
School of Theodore and Hadrian, 1994), which eventually would culminate in the
work of the Venerable Bede (d. 735) (Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration
of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner,
1976). On the Continent, the Carolingian period witnessed a proliferation of
Biblical commentaries, many of them associated with monastic learning in
monastic centers such as Fulda, Auxerre, and Saint Gall (John J. Contreni,
“Carolingian Biblical Studies,” Carolingian Essays: Andrew W. Mellon Lectures
in Early Christian Studies, ed. Uta-Renate Blumenthal, 1983, 71–98). The
aim of the Carolingian commentators was primarily educational: to make
the patristic heritage accessible to clergy and monks, by inventorizing and
classifying the diverse patristic commentaries, sermons, homilies, treatises,
histories, and handbooks, and transforming them into consistent, running
commentaries on almost the entire Bible (Bernice M. Kaczinsky, “Edition,
Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians and the Bible,” The Gentle Voices
of Teachers: Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian Age, ed. Richard E. Sullivan,
1995, 171–85). Among these exegetes, Haimo of Auxerre (d. 855), Johannes
Scottus Eriugena (d. 877), Paschasius Radbertus (d. 865), and Hrabanus
Maurus (d. 856) stand out. For instance, Hrabanus composed commentaries
on almost the entire Bible by collecting exegetical opinions of the Church
fathers, and he often listed their original authors (PL, 107–112). This way,
he created a new genre of Bible commentary, which would have enormous
influence on the formation of the 12th-century Glossa ordinaria (E. Ann
Matter, “The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria,” The Reception of the
Church Fathers in the West from the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus,
1997, 83–111).
In the High Middle Ages, monasteries continued to be important sites
for the composition and collection of Biblical commentaries. The large
number of commentaries, and especially sermon series, on the Song of Songs
by Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1135), Gilbert of Hoyland (d. 1172), and William
of Saint Thierry (d. 1149) attest to this. But in the 12th century, the main focus
of medieval learning shifted to the cathedral schools. It was here, and in the
other schools of the pre-university era, that the main exegetical works were
composed. The greatest exegetical accomplishment of the 12th-century
cathedral schools was the compilation of patristic and Carolingian exegesis
into a standard gloss on almost all books of the Bible, the Glossa ordinaria.
139 Biblical Exegesis

This gloss was unique in that it combined the two prevalent formats of Bib-
lical commentary: a marginal commentary that surrounding the central Bib-
lical text, and interlinear glosses featuring short explications. Until the
mid-20th century, scholars assumed that the origin of the Glossa ordinaria was
Carolingian. But its authorship is more correctly associated with Anselm of
Laon (d. 1117) and his brother Ralph of Laon (d. 1133). They were probably
the authors of the gloss on Song of Songs, the Gospels, and Romans, while
Gilbert of Auxerre (also nicknamed “the Universal”, d. 1134) was the likely
author of the gloss on Lamentations, the Twelve Prophets, and possibly Sa-
muel and Kings (Giuseppe Mazzanti, “Anselmo di Laon, Gilberto L’Uni-
versale e la ‘Glossa ordinaria’ alla Bibbia,” Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano
per il medio evo e Archivio Muratoriano 102 [1999]: 1–19). The composition of the
gloss was not a planned and uniform process by one author; for example, the
Gloss on Psalms went through no less than three successive redactions, by
Anselm of Laon, Gilbert of Poitiers (d. 1154), and Peter Lombard (d. 1160) re-
spectively (Mark A. Zier, “Peter Lombard and the ‘Glossa Ordinaria’ on the
Bible,” A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle O.P., ed. Jac-
queline Brown and William P. Stoneman, 1997, 629–41). In the 1130s
through 1150s, Paris (possibly the collegiate abbey of Saint Victor) became a
major center for the production of glossed Bibles (Christopher F. R. De
Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible and the Origins of the Paris Booktrade, 1984; Pa-
tricia Stirnemann, “Oú ont été fabriqués les livres de la glose ordinaire
dans la première moitié du XIIe siècle?,” Le XIIe siècle: Mutations et renouveau en
France dans la première moitié du XIIe siècle, ed. F. Gasparri, 1994, 257–301).
The Church fathers already had distinguished between a literal and a
spiritual sense of Scripture, while often dividing the latter into a tropological
(that is, moral), an allegorical (referring to the life of Christ or the Church),
and an anagogical sense (referring to matters pertaining to the future life).
Medieval exegetes generally adopted this fourfold scheme (or threefold,
since allegory and anagogy were often seen as two different aspects of the
same sense). It was not until the late 13th century that the famous mnemo-
technic verse was formulated:
Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria
moralia quid agas, quid speres anagogia.
(The letter teaches historical facts; allegory what to believe.
The moral sense how to act; what to hope for, anagogy.)
(Augustinus de Dacia, “Rotulus Pugillaris,”
ed. A. Waltz, Angelicum 6 [1929]: 256)
Biblical Exegesis 140

Ironically, in this period, the strict division between the different senses was
fading (if, indeed, it ever existed), and authors started to emphasize the
importance and primacy of literal exegesis over allegory. This emphasis on
the primacy of the literal sense was developed by Hugh of Saint Victor, in his
foundational reformulation of Augustinian hermeneutics in his Didascalicon,
basing himself on the theory of signification offered in Augustine’s De
doctrina christiana and De magistro (Hugo de Sancto Victore, Didascalicon
De Studio Legendi: A Critical Text, ed. Charles Henry Buttimer, 1939). Hugh’s
methodology gave the study of literal interpretation, and with it, the study of
Hebrew and of Jewish exegesis, a new impetus. We can see his influence not
only in Richard (d. 1173) and Andrew of Saint Victor (d. 1175) (Rainer
Berndt, André de Saint-Victor[†1175]: Exégète et théologien, 1992; Bibel und
Exegese in der Abtei Sankt Viktor zu Paris, ed. Rainer Berndt, 2006), but also in
exegetes who had ties to the abbey of Saint Victor, such as Herbert of Bosham
(d. after 1189), one of the most accomplished Hebraists of his time (Deborah
L. Goodwin, “Take Hold of the Robe of a Jew”: Herbert of Bosham’s Christian
Hebraism, 2006), and Peter Comestor (d. 1179), the author of the influential
medieval exegetical handbook, the Historia Scholastica (PL, 198).
Another contributing factor to the emphasis on the literal sense was the
demand for the practical and pastoral training for clerics by the end of the
12th century. The Gregorian Reform had stressed the pastoral responsibil-
ities of the clergy, and schools were offering more practical training as a re-
sult. Preaching and confession were seen as the two main purposes for the
study of the Bible in the schools, and as a result, Biblical exegesis now empha-
sized the doctrinal and moral implications of Scripture over the more medi-
tative spiritual exegesis. We can see this development represented in the
works of schoolmen like Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) and Alexander Neckham
(d. 1217). At the same time, the 12th century brought about a renewed inter-
est in the philological dimension of Scriptural exegesis. Cistercian scholars
such as Nicholas de Maniacoria (12th c.) and Stephan Harding (d. 1134) had
started the process of correcting the Biblical text against the original Greek
and Hebrew (Vittorio Peri, “‘Correctores immo corruptores,’ un saggio di
critica testuale nella Roma del XII secolo,” Italia Medievale e Umanistica 20
[1977]: 19–125; and Matthieu Cauwe, “Le Bible d’Étienne Harding,” Revue
Bénédictine 103 [1993]: 414–44). This work would be continued in the 13th
century in the so-called correctories of Franciscans and Dominicans such as
Guillelmus Brito, William de la Mare, and Hugh of Saint Cher (Franz Ehrle,
“Die Handschriften der Bibel-Correctorien des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für
Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Heinrich Denifle and
Franz Ehrle, 1888, 263–311). The mid-13th century also saw an explosion
141 Biblical Exegesis

in the commercial production of Bibles of a small format, the so-called Paris

Bible. It was innovative in its format, and it offered a portable and accessible
Bible for used by the emergent Mendicant orders (Christopher F. R. De
Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible, 2001, 114–39).
The Bible was one of the main school texts in the mendicant studia,
which prepared students for study at the universities. This was attested by
the great number of didactic works meant to facilitate the study and preach-
ing of Scripture: glossaries, such as Marchesinus of Reggio’s Mammotrectus
(ca. 1280) and John Balbo’s Catholicon; didactic versifications (such as
Petrus Riga’s Aurora); concordances; topical indexes; and Biblical Distinctiones
(Louis-Jacques Bataillon, “Intermédiaires entre les traités de morale pra-
tique et les sermons: Les ‘Distinctiones’ bibliques alphabétiques,” Les genres
littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales, 1982, 213–26).
The scholastic practice of reading the Bible cursorie through the first years of
theology study also generated a large number of commentaries referred to as
Postillae. These Postillae were commentaries on the entire Biblical text that
combined textual analysis with moral and doctrinal application (Mariken
Teeuwen, The Vocubulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, 2003, 307–08).
They generally abandoned the sharp distinction between literal and spiritual
exegesis that had characterized the monastic commentaries. They estab-
lished the literal sense as the basic and most important interpretation of
Scripture, but this literal sense often incorporated the idea that much of the
Biblical texts should be regarded as metaphor. The “literal” sense was thus
broadened to include a Christological interpretation of most Old Testament
passages. These Postillae probably reflected much of the scholastic practice of
the medieval universities, with their Aristotelian emphasis on text division
as a method of interpretation, and with their incorporation of thematic
quaestiones among the more verse-by-verse commentaries. Some of the most
important postillators were the Dominicans Nicholas de Gorran (d. 1295)
and Hugh of Saint Cher (d. 1263); the latter’s massive commentary was un-
doubtedly undertaken not by one person, but by a whole team of Dominican
exegetes at the friary of Saint Jacques in Paris under the direction of Hugh.
The most important Franciscan postillators were Alexander of Hales (d. 1245),
William of Meliton (d. 1257), John of Peter Olivi (d. 1298), and especially
Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349), whose Postilla literalis, known for its high standard
of Hebrew scholarship, was often printed together with the Glossa ordinaria to
provide a standard Bible commentary in the 16th century.
The later Middle Ages saw a steady increase in the quantity and volume
of Biblical commentaries and sermons, partly as a result of the growth of uni-
versities and studia, where these were the staple of academic output. Ironi-
Biblical Exegesis 142

cally, little scholarly attention has been given to exegesis in this period;
scholars have even characterized it as a period of “decline”, partly because it
has often been viewed teleologically through the lens of the subsequent
Reformation. This false teleology has, for instance, characterized much of
the scholarship on John Wycliffe (d. 1384) (Gustav Adolf Benrath, Wyclif ’s
Bibelkommentar, 1966). As the work of scholars like Henri of Langenstein
(d. 1397), Alonso Tostado (d. 1455), Francis Michele of Padua (d. 1472), and
Johannes de Zymansionibus (15th c.) shows, late medieval exegesis was a
lively field of scholarship, with more continuities between the late medieval
period and the Reformation than has often been assumed (William J. Cour-
tenay, “The Bible in the Fourteenth Century: Some Observations,” Church
History 54 [1985], 176–87; Christopher Ocker, Biblical Poetics Before Hu-
manism and Reformation, 2002).
Christians were not the only Biblical scholars in medieval Europe. Jewish
exegesis in the early Middle Ages produced substantial homiletic commen-
taries (the Midrashim), which mainly expanded on the narrative to provide
moral edification and legal and ritual guidance. In the 11th and 12th cen-
turies, Jewish exegesis in Northern France took a distinctive turn away from
this more associative exegesis (Derash), and under Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac
of Troyes (Rashi, d. 1105) started to emphasize the “simple”, that is, more lit-
eral and direct, meaning of scripture, the Peshat (Menahem Banitt, Rashi:
Interpreter of the Biblical Letter, 1985). Rashi’s example was followed by a
number of Northern French exegetes, such as his son-in-law R. Solomon b.
Meir (Rashbam, d. 1174), Joseph Kara (d. 1170), Eliezer of Beaugency (12th c.),
and Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak, d. 1235). Possibly the rise of Hebrew philol-
ogy, exemplified by the Spanish/Southern French commentator Abraham
Ibn Ezra (d. 1164), influenced this Peshat exegesis. It had considerable in-
fluence on the Christian exegetes of its time, such as Andrew of Saint Victor,
Herbert of Bosham, and Nicholas of Lyra (Gilbert Dahan, Les Intellectuels
Chrétiens et les Juifs du Moyen Âge, 1990). At the same time, a reaction against
rationalist Aristotelianism and the rise of the mystical movement of Kab-
balah produced a completely different kind of commentary; kabbalistic com-
mentaries are best exemplified in the works of Ezra of Gerona (d. 1238) and
Moses of Leon (d. 1305) (Geshom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 1987;
Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 1988).

B. Research History
The outline given by Ceslas Spicq is still considered a classic overview of
medieval exegesis. Good general introductions to medieval Biblical exegesis
are given in the Cambridge History of the Bible: The West, soon due for a complete
143 Biblical Exegesis

revision; its French counterpart La Bible au Moyen Âge; and the Italian La Bibbia
nel Medioevo. An indispensable reference work on the sources of medieval exe-
gesis is Friedrich Stegmüller’s Repertorium Biblicum (1950–1980), which
gives an alphabetical list of medieval exegetes and their works, with a hand-
list of printed editions and manuscripts. For the Patristic and early medieval
period (up to Bede, d. 735), however, the updated version of the Clavis Patrum
Latinorum (ed. Eligius Dekkers and Aemilius Gaar, 1995) should also be
consulted. Many exegetical texts have recently been edited (such as Andrew
of Saint Victor, CCCM, 53–53G, Petrus Comestor, CCCM, 191, and Petrus
Cantor, Glossae super Genesim, ed. Agneta Sylwan, 1992). Because the edition
of Glossa ordinaria in the Patrologia latina (PL, 113) left much to be desired, Mar-
garet T. Gibson and Karlfried Froehlich oversaw the reprint of the 1480
edition of the Glossa ordinaria (Biblia Latina Cum Glossa Ordinaria. Anastatical
Reproduction of the First Printed Edition: Strassburg, c. 1480 [Adolph Rusch?], 1992).
The critical edition of the entire Gloss is a massive undertaking, which has
been taken up only recently (Glossa ordinaria in Canticum Canticorum, CCCM,
177; Glossa Ordinaria in Lamentationes, ed. A. Andrée, 2005). Good overviews
of the textual history of the Vulgate are offered by Samuel Berger (Histoire de
la Vulgate pendent les premiers siècles du Moyen Âge, 1893) and P. M. Bogaert
(“La Bible latine des origines au moyen âge. Aperçu historique, état des ques-
tions,” Revue théologique de Louvain, 19 [1988]: 137–59, 276–314).
Two scholars whose work was seminal for the field of Biblical exegesis
were Beryl Smalley (The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 1952; see also
The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Honour of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine
Walsh and Diana Wood, 1985) and Henri de Lubac (Exégèse Médiévale:
Les quatre sens de l’Écriture, Paris, 1959–1964). De Lubac saw the greatness
of medieval exegesis in the monastic, spiritual exegesis, while Smalley’s
research emphasized the more “literal” and philological strain of medieval
exegesis as a scholastic activity. This same emphasis characterizes the work
of Gilbert Dahan (L’Exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval, XIIe–XIVe
siècle, 1999). Most scholarly work of the last decades has been published
in conference volumes and anthologies. Some of these emphasize the 12th
and 13th centuries (La Bibbia nel Medioevo, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli and
Claudio Leonardi, 1996; La Bibbia nel XIII secolo, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli
and Francesco Santi, 2004); others sum up recent trends in scholarship
(Neue Richtungen in der hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E.
Lerner and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, 1996); and yet others emphasize
exegesis across religious cultures of Christianity and Judaism (Hebrew
Bible / Old Testament, ed. Magne Sæbø, Chris Brekelmans, and Menahem
Haran, 2000), or even Islam (With Reverence for the Word, ed. Jane Dammen
Biblical Exegesis 144

McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering, 2003; Scripture

and Pluralism, ed. Thomas. J. Heffernan and Thomas E. Burman, 2005).
It was Bernhard Bischoff who first emphasized the importance of In-
sular exegesis (“Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im
Mittelalter,” Sacris Erudiri 6 [1954]: 189–281), even though his thesis is still
very much debated (Michael M. Gorman, “A Critique of Bischoff’s Theory of
Irish Exegesis: The Commentary on Genesis in Munich Clm 6302,” Journal of
Medieval Latin 7 [1997]: 178–233; Dáibhí O Cróinín, “Bischoff’s Wende-
punkte Fifty Years On,” Revue Bénédictine 110 [2000]: 204–37). Bischoff also
was the first to “discover” the Biblical glosses from the school of Theodore
and Hadrian. These anonymous Bible glosses have now appeared in a com-
prehensive edition (CCCM, 189A-B). Irish exegesis was the topic of a 1976
conference (Irland und die Christenheit, ed. Próinséas Ní Chatáin and Michael
Richter, 1987); much of it focusing on the so-called Bibelwerk, an early
medieval collection of various exegetical texts, which appeared in a 2000 edi-
tion (CCCM, 173). A recent congress volume edited by Celia Chazelle and
Burton Van Name Edwards (The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era, 2003)
gives a good overview of the current state of studies in Carolingian Biblical
exegesis.
Various scholastic postillators have been the subject of conferences and
anthologies, such as Nicholas of Lyra (Nicholas of Lyra, ed. Philip D. Krey and
Lesley Smith, 2000), John of Peter Olivi (Pietro di Giovanni Olivi: Opera edita et
inedita, 1999), and Hugh of Saint Cher (Hugues de Saint-Cher, ed. Louis-Jacques
Bataillon, Gilbert Dahan, and Pierre-Marie Gy, 2004). Olivi’s exegetical
works have appeared in some critical editions (Peter of John Olivi on the Bible,
ed. David Flood and Gedeon Gál, 1997; Expositio in Canticum Canticorum,
ed. Johannes Schlageter, 1999; Lectura Super Proverbia et Lectura Super Ecclesi-
asten, ed. Johannes Schlageter, 2003). By contrast, many of the other pos-
tillators’ works are still waiting critical editions, such as Nicholas of Lyra
(Lyons, 1545), and Hugh of Saint Cher (Cologne, 1621).
The classic work on the theory of medieval interpretation and the study
of hermeneutics is still that of Hennig Brinkmann (Mittelalterliche Herme-
neutik, 1980), but much research has been done to connect medieval herme-
neutics with medieval literary theory, often emphasizing the study of the
medieval Accessus (Edwin A. Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,”
Traditio 3 [1945]: 215–64; Alistair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship,
1984).
A good introduction to the sources of Rabbinical exegesis is offered by
Hermann L. Strack in 1887, but updated many times (Einleitung in Talmud
und Midrasch, 1982; Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Mid-
145 Botany

rash, 1991). Erwin I. Rosenthal offers a fine overview and bibliography of

medieval Jewish exegesis (“Medieval Jewish Exegesis: Its Character and
Significance,” Journal of Semitic Studies 9 [1964]: 265–81). A recent anthology
by Michael Fishbane offers a good impression of the state of scholarship on
Rabbinical and early medieval Jewish Midrashic exegesis (The Midrashic
Imagination, 1993), while the study of 12th-century peshat exegesis owes much
to the work of Sarah Kamin (Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible, 1991; see also
The Bible in the Light of its Interpreters: Sarah Kamin Memorial Volume, ed. Sara
Japhet, 1994, in Hebrew). Especially the exegete Rashi has been the subject
of several studies and anthologies (Esra Shereshevsky, Rashi: The Man and
His World, 1982; Albert Van der Heide, “Rashi’s Biblical Exegesis: Recent
Research and Developments,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 41 [1984]: 292–318; Rashi
1040–1990, ed. G. Sed-Rayna, 1993).

Select Bibliography
La Bibbia nel Medioevo, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli and Claudio Leonardi (Bologna:
Edizioni Dehoniane, 1996); Gilbert Dahan, L’Exégèse Chrétienne de la Bible en Occident
médiéval, XIIe-XIVe siècle, Patrimoines: Christianisme (Paris: Cerf, 1999); Henri De
Lubac, Exégèse Médiévale: Les Quatre Sens de l’Écriture, Théologie (Paris: Aubier,
1959–1964); Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1984); Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1952, 3rd ed. 1983); Ceslas Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse Latine au
Moyen Âge (Paris: Vrin, 1944); Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi
(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Francisco Suárez,
1950–1980); The West From the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G.W.H. Lampe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969).

Frans van Liere

Botany

A. The Dark Ages of Medieval Botany

Knowledge of plants during the late 15th century, which was closely linked to
materia medica and therapeutics, was made obsolete by the reintroduction
of classical literature (particularly Greek) principally by Ferrara physician
Nicolao Leoniceno (1428–1524). In a booklet published in 1492 (De Plinii et
aliorum in medicina erroribus), Leoniceno virulently attacked the trans-
formation of botany from antiquity to his days – mainly the influence of the
Arabic world –, arguing that patients’ lives were at risk because of the many
Botany 146

confusions between plants used for therapeutic purposes. He thus promoted

to return to ancient literature, principally Dioscorides (1st c. C.E.) whose
treatise (De materia medica) he contributed to get published in a critical edition
printed by Aldo Manuzio (July 1499). From then on, medieval botany and
therapeutic uses of plants were largely ignored in Western scholarly litera-
ture, science, and practice, even more so because, at the same time as Leo-
niceno, the civil authority in Florence requested a commission of physicians
to compile a new codex medicamentarius (the Ricettario fiorentino first published
in 1499) aimed to replace any anterior receptory. The movement was further
amplified with the herbals of those whom the historian of classical botany
and medicine Kurt Sprengel (1766–1833) called the ‘German Fathers
of Botany’ (Historia Rei Herbariae, 2 vols., 1807–1808), among others Otto
Brunfels (ca. 1489–1534) (Eicones vivae herbarum, 1530) and Leonhart Fuchs
(1501–1566) (Historia stirpium, 1542). Shortly after, new botanic gardens were
created in Pisa and Padua, and the teaching of botany at such medieval uni-
versity as Montpellier was transformed with the introduction of a teaching
based on Dioscorides, field work (herborisation in which François Rabelais
[ca. 1494–ca. 1553] participated), and a botanic garden (Louis Dulieu, La
médecine à Montpellier, vol. 2: La Renaissance, 1979, passim). Last but far from
least, the introduction of plants and drugs from the New World that were un-
known in the Old World led to relativize the notion of local flora, and opened
the way to a new concept of the vegetal world.
As a result, medieval botany had been definitely made obsolete by
mid-16th century and almost disappeared from the history of the discipline.
In his Bibliotheca Botanica qua scripta ad rem herbariam facientia a rerum initiis
recensentur (2 vols., 1771–1772), the Swiss anatomist, physiologist and natu-
ral historian Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) devotes to the Middle Ages
only 40 out of the 1.500 pages in the work (vol. 1, 214–54), while he dedicated
170 pages to antiquity (vol. 1, 1–170) and barely more than 40 to the Arabic
world (vol. 1, 171–213). Significantly, the chapter on the Middle Ages is
entitled Arabistae (vol. 1, 214), whereas the chapter on the Renaissance is en-
titled Instauratores (vol. 1, 255), and starts with the following statement:

Felicitas est seculi XV. quod eo vertente literae in Europa renasci ceperint. Eo enim
aevo Graeci Constantinopoli pulsi in Europam confugerunt, & secum codices
veterum M.S. adtulerunt […] Ita sensim barbarities Arabum displicuit […].

Coming almost fifty years after Sprengel’s Historia Rie Herbariae, the monu-
mental Geschichte der Botanik in four volumes (1854–1857) by Ernst H. F.
Meyer (1791–1858) opened the doors of the history of botany to the Middle
Ages, though in a subtle, oblique, and highly biased form. After the entire
147 Botany

volume 1 (X + 406 pp.) and half of volume 2 (pp. 1–273 out of X + 440 pp.) on
antiquity, he discussed together the East and the West in the book covering
the period from Julian the Apostate to Charlemagne (that is, 363–800 C.E.)
(vol. 2, 274–423). In volume 3, after a long discussion of Arabic botany
(preceded, maybe significantly, by an 88-page section on East-Asian, Indian,
Persian, and Nabatean peoples), he turned to the Europeo-Christian world from
Charlemagne to Albertus Magnus (corresponding to the years 800 to 1280
C.E.). The pre-Salernitan West is briefly dealt with (391–434) and followed
by a long chapter on Monte Cassino and Salerno (435–513). Meyer then
turned to the transalpine area, France, England, Germany (mainly Hildegard
von Bingen [1098–1179]), and Denmark, concluding the volume with a four-
page section on travels to unknown countries (539–42: “Reisen in unbekannte
Länder”). Interestingly, in the section on Germany, Meyer included a list
of botanical lexica (521–23) “left unused by [his] predecessors” (521: “[…] die
zahlreichen botanischen Glossarien des Mittelalters […] die meine Vorgän-
ger noch unbenutzt liessen […]”). Volume 4 is not less significant: it opens
with Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280) under the title “Botany under the re-
newed influence of Aristotelian natural philosophy” (1: “Die Botanik unter
dem erneuerten Einfluss der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie”). In this
view, Albertus receives 80+ pages (1–84). Short chapters follow, which are
more like a series of unavoidable intermezzos: the encyclopedias (84–106),
the “botanical knowledge from the countries opened to Christians thanks to
the Crusades” (110–14), the travels of Christians to far, non-European coun-
tries (114–38), agronomical theory (138–59), medical dictionaries (159–77),
and popular books on medicinal plants (177–206). The Renaissance coming
then and covering half of the volume (207–444) is a “return to the observa-
tion of nature thanks to the study of classical literature” (207: “Rückkehr
durch das Studium der klassischen Literatur zur Naturbeobachtung”).
The door opened onto medieval literature in Meyer’s history was
quickly closed. In 1875, Julius von Sachs (1832–1897), a professor for Bot-
any at the University of Würzburg, published a history of botany, which was
translated into English as early as 1906. Although the title announces 1530
as the starting point (that is, the publication of Brunfels’ herbal), the analysis
actually starts with the year 1542 (that is, with the first edition of Fuchs’s
herbal). The Middle Ages are simply eliminated with such considerations as
(p. 3 of the 1906 English translation):

[…] the corrupt texts of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen had been in
many respects improved and illustrated […] [by] the Italian commentators of the
15th and of the early part of the 16th century […] a great advance was made by the
first German composers of herbals, who went straight to nature, described the
Botany 148

wild plants growing around them and had figures of them carefully executed in
wood. Thus was made the first beginning of a really scientific examination of
plants […]

Further on, Sachs explained better his idea about the pre-1530 state of bot-
any (14–5):
[…] the botanical literature of the middle ages […] continually grows less and
less valuable […] the works of Albertus Magnus, as prolix as they are deficient in
ideas […] productions of medieval superstitions […] (15) […] botanical literature
had sunk so low, that not only were the figures embellished with fabulous addi-
tions, as in the Hortus Sanitatis, and sometimes drawn purely from fancy, but the
meager descriptions of quite common plants were not taken from nature, but bor-
rowed from earlier authorities and eked out with superstitious fictions […]

Going on, he identified the cause of this in the fact that (15):
[…] the powers of independent judgment were oppressed and stunned in the
middle ages, till at last the very activity of the senses, resting as it does to a great
extent on unconscious operations of the understanding, became weak and sickly;
natural objects presented themselves to the eye of those who made them their
study in grotesquely distorted forms; every sensuous impression was corrupted
and deformed by the influence of a superstitious fancy […]

Concluding, he opposed the newly produced herbal of Bock, though “art-

less,” as an achievement (15) “[…] in comparison with these perversions […]”
of the Middle Ages.
The two-volume work Les Plantes dans l’antiquité et au moyen âge (1897–1904)
by the French Charles Joret (1839–1914) announced a treatment of the
Middle Ages of a new type. In the introduction, he described, indeed, his pro-
ject as follows (vol. 1, XV–XVI):
[…] je voudrais essayer de retracer l’histoire agricole, industrielle, poétique, artis-
tique et pharmacologique des espèces végétales connues des différentes nations
de l’antiquité classique et du moyen âge. Je ne me dissimule pas les difficultés
de l’entreprise; elles sont d’autant plus grandes que personne jusqu’ici n’a abordé
ce vaste sujet.

It seems, however, that he could not achieve his vast and ambitious program,
as the two published volumes (which were the first part, devoted to what
Joret called “L’orient classique”) cover only a short segment of the topic: the
ancient Near East (actually Egypt, the Chaldeans, Assyria, Judea, and Phoeni-
cia) (volume 1), and Iran and India (volume 2). It is not sure, however, that
Joret would have dealt with the Middle Ages with the same depth as he
would have for antiquity. In summarizing the contributions of his prede-
cessors in the introduction, he jumped, indeed, from antiquity to modern
times, simply dropping the Middle Ages (vol. 1, XVI):
149 Botany

[…] Kurt Sprengel et Ernst Meyer […] nous apprendre quelles étaient les con-
naissances botaniques des naturalistes, médecins et agronomes de l’antiquité,
comme des temps modernes […]

Two works written during the same period share a similar omission, al-
though they are very different under many aspects: the Landmarks of Botanical
History by the botanist Edward Lee Greene (1843–1915), and the epoch-
making Herbals by another botanist, Agnes Arber (1879–1960). Greene’s
work, which was completed in 1907 but left unpublished until 1983 (2 vol.),
was intentionally conceived as a sort of portrait gallery. According to Green
himself, indeed, knowledge of the history of botany is almost impossible,
because it requires first to have “mastered that science itself” (vol. 1, 89) and,
then, to have a “second lifetime” (ibid.). But even so:
[…] the presentation of a complete and accurate history of botany would remain
impossible. Important data wanting, and hopelessly so […] the same is in a
measure true of comparatively recent periods […] (ibid.).

This is why he limited himself to a presentation of landmarks, with “some

prominence […] given to biography” (vol. 1, 91). Significantly, however, no
medieval author appears in this gallery, even though Green himself, who
was then a seasoned scientist, recognizes that the work of the German Fathers
should be scrutinized as (vol. 1, 90):
[…] no annalist of a later age seems to have had time or disposition to ascertain
how much of the assumed new and original botany of those German Fathers […]
was taken out of old manuscripts which, although they may still be extant, later
historians have neither consulted nor troubled themselves to enquire after.

As for Arber’s volume (first published in 1912, with several re-editions,

some of which revised and augmented), which was the first essay of a young
scholar, it had a very specific object, made clear from its full title: Herbals, their
Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany 1470–1670. The introduc-
tory chapter (1–12) devoted to the pre-printing period (since herbal printing
is the focus of the book) and entitled “The Early History of Botany,” falls
short from what it announces, as it focuses on Aristotle, Albertus Magnus,
Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, that is, the Aristotelian and the classical
tradition, omitting the Middle Ages even in the treatment of medicinal bot-
any. Nevertheless, the next chapter (13–37), on early printed herbals, deals
with some medieval works, with a major, if not an exclusive, focus on them as
printed objects, rather than as scientific achievement.
It was the merit of the German botanist Hermann Fischer (1884–1936)
to create the field of the history of medieval botany in his book Mittelalterliche
Pflanzenkunde (1929). As he put it in the preface ([V]–VI), there was a growing
Botany 150

interest in the Middle Ages, not only in Europe but also in America. How-
ever, only an interest in, and a love for, medieval culture ([V]: “Nur Interesse
und Liebe”) could push anybody to penetrate into the domain of medieval
plant “systematic” and “scholastic method.” After this opening remark, in
which he seems to consider medieval botany as an arcane science requiring
uncommon interests, Fischer defined it as a history of plants, which, when
applied practically, contributes to the cultural history of peoples ([V]):

die mittelalterliche Botanik hauptsächlich Geschichte der Pflanzen bleibt und die
angewandte Botanik einen Teil der Kulturgeschichte der Völker bildet.

To research the history of medieval botany, Fischer used the sheer quantity
of material that came to light after the publication of the then last history of
medieval botany, Meyer’s Geschichte der Botanik. Such material consisted in
manuscripts and early printed books with botanical contents, for the further
exploration of which Fischer’s book was to serve as a tool to penetrate the
scientific thinking and method of work of medieval authors ([V]-VI).
With this book, Fischer not only pulled the medieval botany out of the
dark ages in which it had been relegated in the early-Renaissance, but also he
sketched a new historiography of medieval botany, identified its sources,
proposed an agenda and, on this basis, defined appropriate methods. Never-
theless, the concept of Dark Ages of Botany had a long after-life, as the not-
so-ancient volume by Alan G. Morton, History of Botanical Science: An Account
of the Development of Botany from Ancient Times to the Present Day, 1981 shows
(see the chapter 4 [82–114] entitled “The Dark Ages of Botany in Europe (200
to 1483)”).
Whereas the history of Western medieval botany underwent this slow
transformation, botany of the Arabo-Islamic world was gaining increasing
attention as the difference in its treatment from Haller to Meyer indi-
cates. As a further example, the French physician and Arabist Lucien Le-
clerc (1816–1893) started publishing in 1877 a translation of the treatise
of medical botany by the Andalusian scientist ibn al-Baytar (d. 1248 C.E.)
considered to be the most achieved work of the Arabic world in the field of
botany. The real nature of this interest in Arabo-Islamic should not be over-
estimated, however, as Leclerc emphasizes much the role of Arab and
Arabic speaking scientists as intermediaries in the transmission of the Greek
heritage. This was already the case in his history of Arabic medicine pub-
lished one year before, in which Arabic science is presented as an intermedi-
ary between Antiquity and the West. Its title makes it plain: “Histoire de la
médecine arabe, […] exposé complet des traductions du Grec, […], leur
transmission à l’Occident par les traductions latines […].” Not to mention
151 Botany

the Orientalism so much criticized by Edward Said (1935–2003). Whatever

the case, Arabic botany was the only one to be considered in the scholarly
community, as Byzantine botany did not retain much the attention, in spite
of sporadic mentions in Meyer’s Geschichte der Botanik.

B. Beginnings and Institutionalization

However programmatic and promising it was, Fischer’s Mittelalterliche
Pflanzenkunde was not immediately followed by specific studies on the history
of medieval botany. With some exceptions, research in the field started only
after World War II, particularly with the late Jerry Stannard (1926–1988),
whose major publications have been reproduced in two volumes of collected
studies edited by Katherine E. Stannard, and Richard Kay, both published
in 1999: Pristina Medicamenta: Ancient and Medieval Medical Botany, and Herbs
and Herbalism in the Middle Age and the Renaissance. Jerry Stannard was fol-
lowed by John Riddle, who specialized more on the history of pharmacy,
however. Several of his many publications have been reproduced in a volume
of collected studies: Quid pro quo: Studies in the History of Drugs, 1992. Although
both have paved the way for new and innovative research, they have not been
followed by other scholars, be it in-house or in another institution, nation-
ally or internationally.
In the current state, the only real school for historical studies in the field
of botany is the School for Arabic Studies (Escuela de Estudios Arabes) of the
National Foundation for Scientific Research of Spain (Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas) in Granada, specialized, however, on Andalusian
botany and agriculture. Also, a program on the history of botany, particu-
larly in the Eastern Mediterranean, with a special focus on medicinal plants,
is currently running in the Botany Department of the National Museum
of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.,
where the collection Historia plantarum specialized on the history of botany is
housed.
There are individual scholars, however, who work on some topics in the
field, in departments of classics, history, history of medicine, or history of
medieval languages and literature. With some exceptions, research is rarely
of a transdisciplinary nature, taking into account all the components of the
topic, from manuscripts and textual tradition to botany stricto sensu and
medicine in the case of therapeutic uses of plants. On the other hand, since
medicinal plants are currently the object of a renewed interest in contempor-
ary society, there are plenty of micro-studies of a monographic nature on the
uses of determined plants made by ethno-botanists and ethno-pharmacol-
ogists that include historical data. The historical part of such studies is not
Botany 152

necessarily based on a direct access to primary sources in the original lan-

guage, as accurate as a sound historical investigation would require, or done
in collaboration by a team of specialists of the several disciplines involved in
the research.
Finally, there is no scientific journal specifically devoted to the history of
botany, no society or formal group either, no conference or meeting of any
type, except occasional articles in such journals as the Journal for the History of
Biology, Isis, Taxon, Economic Botany, Journal of Ethnopharmacology or Fitoterapia,
for example, and occasional panels in conferences organized by such so-
cieties as the History of Science Society (of America, but by far and large the
most important worldwide), the Renaissance Society of America, or national
societies of history of science.

C. Primary Sources, Encyclopedias, Bibliographies

In spite of this absence of institutionalization, much work was been done
during the 20th century. Some primary sources – actually the Greek, viz.
Byzantine manuscripts containing anonymous treatises of botany currently
preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France – have been inventoried as
early as 1933 by Margaret Head Thomson, “Catalogue des manuscrits de
Paris contenant des traités anonymes de botanique,” Revue des Etudes Grecques
46 (1993): 334–48. In the absence of any other specific inventory of manu-
scripts, it is still necessary to consult the catalogue of medical manuscripts by
Hermann Diels, given the confusion of medical botany and medicine dur-
ing the Middle Ages. The catalogue lists not only the Greek (viz. Byzantine)
manuscripts of Greek medical treatises, but also those of their Latin, Syriac,
Arabic, and Hebrew translations, accordingly (Die Handschriften der antiken
Ärzte: Griechische Abteilung, 1906, with a supplement in 1908). Since then,
some new documents were brought to the attention, a papyrus (Campbell
Bonner, “A Papyrus of Dioscorides in the University of Michigan Collec-
tion,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 53
[1922]: 142–68), as well as a manuscript of Dioscorides with color plant rep-
resentations (Elpidio Mioni, Un ignoto Dioscoride miniato (Il codice greco 194 del
Seminario di Padova), 1959, the first part of which was published in Libri e stam-
patori in Padova. Miscellanea di Studi storici in onore di Mons. G. Bellini, 1959,
345–76, while the color illustrations were published under the title “Un
nuovo erbario greco di Dioscoride,” Rassegna Medica. Convivium Sanitatis 36
[1959]: 169–84). Since collections changed location, manuscripts were de-
stroyed or damaged during 20th-century conflicts of all kind, and some
codices previously unknown came to light, a new catalogue of Greek medical
manuscripts is current being prepared (Alain Touwaide, “Byzantine Me-
153 Botany

dical Manuscripts: Toward a New Catalogue,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 101

[2008]: 199–208; ID ., “Byzantine Medical Manuscripts: Towards a New
Catalogue, with a Specimen for an Annotated Checklist of Manuscripts
Based on an Index of Diels’ Catalogue,” Byzantion 79 [2009]: 453–595).
For the Arabic world, there are now the encyclopedic studies published
almost simultaneously by Fuat Sezgin and Manfred Ullmann, which,
for each author and work, list all the manuscripts known at the time of the
publication: Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte der arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 4: Alchimie,
Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur bis ca. 430 H., 1971, and Manfred Ullmann, Die
Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, 1972.
For Latin Pre-Salernitan codices, see the classical inventory by Augusto
Beccaria, I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli IX, X e XI), 1956.
For the late-medieval medical manuscripts in French libraries, see: Ernest
Wickersheimer, Les Manuscrits latins de médecine du haut moyen âge dans les
bibliothèques de France, 1966. Useful also, the catalogue of incipit of Latin medi-
eval texts by Lynn Thorndike, and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits
of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin, 1963 (the work is now available in an ex-
panded and updated digital version identified as eTK, which is accompanied
by the so-called eVK, that is, the updated version by Linda Ersham Voigts,
and Patricia Deery Kurts, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle Eng-
lish: An Electronic Reference, CDRom, 2000).
In recent times, the range of primary sources for the history of botany has
also included remains of plants found in archeological excavations. This
archeology of a new genre was developed largely thanks to the late Wilhel-
mina Feemster Jashemski (1910–2007), who worked on Pompeii (see her
1979 volume The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculanum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesu-
vius, followed by a more recent synthesis edited in collaboration with Fre-
drick G. Meyer, The Natural History of Pompeii, 2002). Here are some examples
of this new archeology: (Byzantium) Jon G. Hather, Leonor Peña-Cho-
carro, and Elizabeth J. Sidell, “Turnip Remains from Byzantine Sparta,”
Economic Botany 46 (1992): 395–400; (the Arabic world) Natália Alonso
Martínez, “Agriculture and Food from the Roman to the Islamic Period in
the North-East of the Iberian Peninsula: Archaeobotanical Studies in the City
of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain),” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14 (2005):
341–61; (the Western Middle Ages) Marta Bandini Mazzanti, Giovanna
Bosi, Anna Maria Mercuri, Carla Alberta Accorsi, and Chiara Guar-
nieri, “Plant Use in a City in Northern Italy during the Late Mediaeval and
Renaissance Periods: Results of the Archaeobotanical Investigation of “The
Mirror Pit” (14th–15th c. A.D.) in Ferrara,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
14 (2005): 442–52. A synthesis on this field is now available: Rowena Gale,
Botany 154

and David Cutler, Plants in Archeology; Identification Manual of Vegetative Plant

Materials Used in Europe and Southern Mediterranean to c. 1500, 2000.
History of botany has been included in the several encyclopedias of
history of science published during the 20th century (mainly in the form of
bio-bibliographical chapters or entries) from George Sarton, Introduction to
the History of Science, 3 vols., 1927–1948; and Lynn Thorndike, A History of
Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., 1923–1958; to the recent encyclopedia of
medieval science Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed.
Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis, 2005, including the
Neue Pauly, 13 vols. with an index and 5 supplements, 1996–2003, and its
English translation Brill’s New Pauly, 16 vols. and 1 supplement (published
from 2002) and, most recently, Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The
Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs, ed. Paul Keyser, and Georgia Irby-mas-
sie, 2008, for all the classical authors and texts that were transmitted to the
subsequent periods, Byzantium, the Arabic World and the West.
In addition, for Byzantium, there is also Herbert Hunger (1914–2000),
Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, 1978, vol. 2, 271–76, and the
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 1991. For the Arabo-Islamic world, in addition
to Sezgin and Ullmann above, see the entries in the Encyclopedia of Islam
(2nd ed.), the Encyclopaedia Iranica (also available on the Internet in open ac-
cess), and in the most recent encyclopedia, Medieval Islamic Civilization: An En-
cyclopedia, ed. Josef W. Meri, 2006, 2 vols.
In the field of medical botany, an inventory of the literature on materia
medica and formulas was compiled by Jakob Büchi, Die Entwicklung der
Rezept- und Arzneibuchliteratur, vol. 1: Altertum und Mittelalter, 1982, recently
completed by Freyer H.-P. Michael, Europäische Heilkräuterkunde: Ein Er-
fahrungsschatz aus Jahrtausenden, 1998. For an analysis of botanical data in late-
medieval receptaries, see Jerry Stannard, “Botanical Data and Late Medi-
eval Rezeptliteratur,” Fachprosa-Studien: Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Wissen-
schafts- und Geistesgeschichte, ed. Gundolf Keil et al., 1982, 371–95 (repro-
duced in Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism … [above], no. VI).

D. Rupture or Continuity?
One of the questions about medieval botany is its continuity with the pre-
vious period. This is particularly the case for the Arabic world and the West.
Among the works on this problem, we can mention here Alonso Martí-
nez, “Agriculture and Food from the Roman to the Islamic Period […]”
(above) for the Western Arabic World (al-Andalus), and, for the West: Jerry
Stannard, “Medieval Reception of Classical plant Names,” Actes du XIIe
Congrès International d’Histoire des Sciences, Paris août 1968, Colloque no 2: Traduc-
155 Botany

tions médiévales, Communications du 28 août, 1971, 150–62 (published also in

Revue de Synthèse 2e série, nos. 49–52 [1968]); and also Innocenzo Mazzini,
“Présence de Pline dans les herbiers de l’Antiquité et du haut Moyen-Age,”
Pline l’Ancien temoin de son temps. Conventus Pliniani Internationalis, Namneti
22–26 Oct. 1985 Habiti, ed. Jackie Pigeaud, and José Oroz Reta, 1987,
83–94.
Most of the research during the 20th century was about texts: inventory
of manuscripts, history of the text (including analysis of the manuscripts,
some of which have been reproduced in facsimile [below]), critical editions
(sometimes also with a translation), and/or analysis from a botanical view-
point.

E. Byzantium
For Byzantium, Vilhelm Lundström (1869–1940) published as early as
1904 the lexicon of the 14th-century Constantinopolitan monk, philosopher
and probably physician Neophytos Prodromenos (“Neophytos Prodrome-
nos’ botaniska namnförteckning,” Eranos 5 [1903–1904]: 129–55). From
1930, the Belgian philologist Armand Delatte (1886–1964) published
several botanical lexica and texts on plants: “Le lexique de botanique du
Parisinus Graecus 2419,” Serta Leodiensia ad celebrandam patriae libertatem iam
centesimum annum recuperatam composuerunt philology leodienses, 1930, 59–101,
and Anecdota Atheniensia et alia, vol. 2: Textes Grecs relatifs à l’histoire des sciences,
1939, passim. It was not until 1955, however, that new editions came to
light, thanks to Margaret H. Thomson already mentioned, who published
two volumes (Textes grecs inédits relatifs aux plantes, 1955, and Le Jardin symbo-
lique: Texte grec tiré du Clarkianus XI, 1960). More recently Ernst Heitsch
edited the so-called Carmen de viribus herbarum, in his work Die griechischen
Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit, vol. 2, 1964, 23–38; John Riddle
focused on 14th-century commentators on Dioscorides (“Byzantine Com-
mentaries on Dioscorides,” Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, ed. John Scar-
borough, 1985, 95–102 [reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above],
no. XIII]); and, to quote but a few, Jean Barbaud who offered a synthesis of
the research on the alphabetical manuscripts of Dioscorides, De materia
medica (“Les Dioscorides ‘alphabétiques’ (à propos du Codex Vindobonensis
Med. Gr. 1),” Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 41 [1994]: 321–30), while Alain
Touwaide focused on Byzantine lexica of plant names, of which he gave
a list (“Lexica medico-botanica byzantina. Prolégomènes à une étude,” Tês
filiês tade dôra. Miscelánea léxica en memoria de Conchita Serrano, 1999, 211–28).
Somewhat different, but not less important, is the tradition of Theo-
phrastus’s botany from antiquity to the Renaissance, which has been the
Botany 156

object of a systematic examination in the context of the Theophrastus Project.

The fragments of the several authors quoting Theophrastus have been col-
lected and discussed in Robert W. Sharples, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for
his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. Commentary, vol. 5: Sources on Biology,
1994, 124–207.

F. The ArabicWorld
During the 20th century research on Arabic botanical texts has been more
abundant, although it was largely focused on medical botany and on the
major Andalusian botanists, al-Ghafiqi (d. ca. 1165), and ibn al-Baitar
(ca. 1204–1248). One of the most active scholars before World War II was
Max Meyerhof (1874–1945), author, among others, of the following essays
in the history of botany: Über die Pharmakologie und Botanik des Ahmad al-Gha-
fiqi, 1930; Das Vorwort zur Drogenkunde des Beruni, 1932; Sarh asma’ al-‘uqqar
(l’Explication des noms de drogues), un glossaire de matière médicale composé par Maï-
monide. Texte publié pour la première fois d’après un manuscrit unique, avec traduc-
tion, commentaire et index, 1940 (rpt. in Mûsâ ibn Maymûn/Maimonides (d. 1204).
Texts and Studies. Collected and Reprinted, vol. 4, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1996; English
translation: Moses Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names. Translated from Max
Meyerhof ’s French edition by Fred Rosner, 1979). Several botanico-pharmaco-
logical articles by Meyerhof were reproduced recently (for some of them,
see below; also: Max Meyerhof, Studies in Medieval Arabic Medicine: Theory and
Practice, ed. Penelope Johnstone, 1984).
The post-World War II period saw two major achievements: one was the
first critical edition of an Arabic translation of Dioscorides, De materia medica.
The text was edited by César E. Dubler (1915–1966) and Elias Terés
(1915–1983) in the second volume of the monumental work by the former,
La “Materia Medica” de Dioscórides, 6 vols., 1953–1957 (the second volume was
published in Tetuan in 1952, and in Barcelona in 1957). This edition was
made on the basis of three manuscripts (Madrid, El Escorial, and Paris). Sev-
eral more have been brought to the attention since, something that would
require to have a new edition of the text. One of the manuscripts (Leiden, Or.
289) has been studied in detail: Mahmoud M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia
Medica of Dioscorides, 1983. The other achievement was an inventory of the fo-
lios torn out of manuscript Ayasofia 3703 (dated 1224 C.E.) now preserved at
the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi in Istanbul. The leaves appeared on the anti-
quarian market in the early 20th century (actually, after the exhibition of Mu-
hammadan art, as it was called, in Munich in 1910), and repeatedly changed
owner since then; although some had been gradually located, the list was
never complete. It was the merit of Ernst J. Grube to publish an almost com-
157 Botany

plete inventory: “Materialen zum Dioskurides Arabicus,” Aus der Welt der isla-
mischen Kunst: Festschrift für Ernst Kühnel, 1959, 163–94. Since some folios
changed owners after the publication, and since Grube’s list appeared to be
incomplete, the research has been taken over by Alain Touwaide, who pub-
lished also a large portion of the body of the manuscripts and almost all
the loose folios: Farmacopea araba medievale: Codice Ayasofia 3703, 4 vols.,
1992–1993.
In addition to these two achievements, a major contribution was the
edition of the preserved fragments in several Oriental languages (actually
Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew), together with the Greek and Latin text, of
Aristotle, De plantis, in the version of Nicolas of Damas: Hendrik J. Dros-
sart Lulofs, and E. L. J. Poortman, Nicolaus Damascenus “De plantis”: Five
Translations, 1989. The original text is lost, as well as its revision by Nicolaus
of Damas. The Greek text currently known is a recent retro-version whose
authorship has been discussed; see: Bertrand Hemmerdinger, “Le De plan-
tis de Nicolas de Damas à Planude,” Philologus 111 (1967): 56–65; and more
recently: Elizabeth A. Fisher, “Manuel Holobolos, Alfred of Sareshel, and
the Greek Translator of Ps.-Aristole’s De Plantis,” Classica et Mediaevalia 57
(2006): 189–211.
Among the other publications on Arabic botany, several were devoted
to ibn al-Baitar whose works were edited: Ibrahim Ben Mrad, Ibn al-Baytar
(m. 646 H./1248 J.C.): Commentaire de la “Materia Medica” de Dioscoride, 1990; Ana
María Cabo González, Ibn al-Baytar al-Malaqi (m. 646–1248), Kitab al-Yami
li-mufradat al-adwiya wa-l-agdiya, Colección de Medicamentos y Alimentos. Intro-
ducción, edición crítica, traducción e índices de las letras sad y dad, 2002. Also, the
French translation by Lucien Leclerc published under the title ibn al Bei-
thar, Traité des simples, 3 vols., 1877–1883, was reprinted twice: by the Insti-
tute du Monde Arabe in Paris (1992), and by Fuat Sezgin, at the Institut für
Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften of the Johann Wolf-
gang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) in 1996. Several
studies were also published and included: Rainer Degen, “Al-safarjal: a
Marginal Note to Ibn al-Baytar,” Journal for the History of Arabic Science 2 (1978):
143–48; Juan Luís Carrillo, and Maria Paz Torres, Ibn al-Baytar y el ara-
bismo español del XVIII: Edición trilingue del prologo de su “Kitab al-chami,” 1982;
S. M. Imamuddin, and S. M. Pervaiz Imam, “Impact of the Spanish Mus-
lim Pharmacologist Ibn al-Baitar,” Hamdard medicus 36 (1993): 116–18; Esin
Koahya, “Ibn Baitar and his Influence on the Eastern Medicine,” Actas del
XXXIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Medicina: Granada-Sevilla, 1–6 sep-
tiembre, 1992, ed. Juan Luís Carrillo, and Guillermo Olagüe de Ros,
1994, 401–07.
Botany 158

Production was not less abundant on al-Ghafiqi: Max Meyerhof, Über

die Pharmakologie und Botanik des Ahmad al-Ghafiqi, 1930; Max Meyerhof, and
George P. Sobhy, The Abridged Version of “The Book of Simple Drugs” of Ahmad
Ibn Muhammad Al-Ghafiqi, by Gregorius Abu-l-Farag (Barhebraeus). Edited from the
only known Manuscript with an English Translation, Commentary and Indices, 1932,
and Max Meyerhof, The Abridged Version of “The Book of Simple Drugs” of Ahmad
Ibn Muhammad Al-Ghafiqi, by Gregorius Abu-l-Farag (Barhebraeus). Edited from the
only two known Manuscripts with an English Translation, Commentary and Indices,
vol. 2: Letters BA’ and GIM, 1937 (both works have been reprinted as vols. 51
and 57 [1996] of the series Islamic Medicine of the Publications of the Institute
for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, published under the direction of
Fuat Sezgin at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt).
Also, three previously published studies on al-Ghafiqi have been reproduced
in the same series under the title Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Ghâfiqî (d. c. 1165):
Texts and Studies Collected and Reprinted, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1996: Moritz Stein-
schneider, “Gafiki’s Verzeichniss einfacher Heilmittel (1873 and 1881)”;
Max Meyerhof, “Über die Pharmakologie und Botanik des Ahmad al-Ghâ-
fiqî (1930)”; Max Meyerhof, “Deux Manuscrits illustrés du Livre des Simples
d’Ahmad al-Gâfiqî. (1940–41).”
Research on other authors included: Hakim Mohammed Said, al-Biru-
ni’s Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica, 2 vols., 1973 (vol. 1 contains the text
edited with an English translation by H. K. Said; and vol. 2 an introduction,
commentary, and evaluation by Sami K. Hamarneh); Rana M. H. Ehsan
Elahie, “Sources of Kitab al-Saidana of al-Biruni,” Studies in History of Medi-
cine 1 (1977): 118–21; Max Meyerhof, Das Vorwort zur Drogenkunde des Beruni,
1932; Kamal Muhammad Habib , “The Kitab al-Saidana: Structure and Ap-
proach,” Studies in History of Medicine 1 (1977): 63–79; Martin Levey, and
Noury al-Khaledy, The Medical Formulary of al-Samarqandi: and the Relation of
Early Arabic Simples to those Found in the Indigenous Medicine of the Near East and
India, 1967; Max Meyerhof, “Sur Un Glossaire de matière médicale
composé par Maïmonide,” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte 17 (1935): 223–35 (re-
produced in Mûsâ ibn Maymûn / Maimonides (d. 1204): Texts and Studies. Collected
and Reprinted, vol. 4, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1996).
Three further works should be mentioned here as they illustrated the
trends in the research about Arabic science and botany: the catalogue of an
exhibition that displayed many lavishly illustrated manuscripts, including
botany, together with original scientific essays that went beyond the com-
mentary on the pieces on display (À l’ombre d’Avicenne: La Médecine au temps des
califes. Exposition présentée du 18 novembre 1996 au 2 mars 1997, Institut du Monde
Arabe, 1996); a list of manuscripts that contains a significant number of
159 Botany

copies of scientific texts, particularly of botany (Marie-Geneviève Guesdon,

“Manuscrits et histoire de la médecine: le fonds arabe de la Bibliothèque
nationale à Paris,” Maladies, médecines et societies: Approches historiques pour le pré-
sent, ed. François-Olivier Touati, 2 vols., 1993, vol. 1, 36–40), and a study on
the life sciences in the Arabo-Islamic world (Paola Carusi, Lo zafferano e il geco.
Le scienze della vita nella società islamica del Medioevo, 2007).
A special case is al-Andalus. Botanical work in the area dated back to the
early time of the Arabo-Islamic presence in the peninsula, which included
the transfer and naturalization of Eastern plants. Also, in the 10th century,
local scientists who had an Arabic translation of Dioscorides, De materia
medica, made in Baghdad in the 9th century, were in contact with Byzantine
scientists (on this, see Juan Vernet, La cultura hispanoárabe en Oriente y Occi-
dente, 1978 [French translation: Ce que la culture doit aux Arabes d’Espagne,
1985], 81–5; more recently, Julio Samsó, Las ciencias de los antiguos en Al-Anda-
lus, 1992, 110–16).
The production of al-Andalus has been abundantly researched as early as
Max Meyerhof, who published “Esquisse d’Histoire de la Pharmacologie
et Botanique chez les Musulmans d’Espagne,” Al-Andalus 3 (1935): 1–41.
However, it is mainly thanks to the school in Granada (above) that research
made substantial progress. Several essays were published in the follow-
ing volumes: Ciencias de la naturaleza en Al-Andaluz, Textos y Estudios, 1–3, ed.
Expiración García Sanchez, 1990–1994, and 4–6, ed. Camilo Alvarez
De Morales, 1996–2001. It is not possible to mention here all these publi-
cations, also because they deal mainly with agriculture (for the Arabo-Anda-
lusian sources on agriculture, see Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums.
4 … [above], and, for a synthetic presentation of the Arabic contribution to
this field, including Andalusia, see Toufic Fahd, “Botany and Agriculture,”
Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols., ed. Roshdi Rashed, and
Régis Morelon, 1996, vol. 3, 813–52). Nevertheless, one work needs special
mention, because of its originality and innovative method: Julia Ma Cara-
baza Bravo, Expiración García Sánchez, Esteban Hernández Ber-
mejo, and Alfonzo Jiménez Ramírez, Árboles y arbustos de Al-Andalus, 2004.
Although the question is discussed below, it should be mentioned here that,
on the identification of the plants mentioned in ancient texts, this work is of
a truly interdisciplinary nature.
The work on al-Andalus The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra-
Jayyusi, 2 vols., 1994, includes some contributions on, or related to, the his-
tory of botany as: Juan Vernet, “Natural and Technical Sciences in al-Anda-
lus” (937–51); Expiración García Sánchez, “Agriculture in Muslim
Spain” (987–99); Lucie Bolens, “The Use of Plants for Dyeing and Cloth-
Botany 160

ing” (1000–15); James Dickie, “The Hispano-Arabic Garden: Notes To-

wards a Typology” (1016–35).
One cannot conclude the review of the work done on Andalusian botany
without mentioning the fundamental editions (with translation and com-
mentary) by the late Albert Dietrich (1913–2001), who taught at the Uni-
versity of Göttingen (Germany) and specialized on Arabic botanical lexicol-
ogy. His three major contributions to this field are (in chronological order of
publication): Dioscurides triumphans: Ein anonymer arabischer Kommentar (Ende
12. Jahrh. n. Chr.) zur Materia medica. Arabischer Text nebst kommentierter deutscher
Übersetzung, 2 vols., 1988; Die Dioskurides-Erklärung des Ibn al-Baitar: Ein Beitrag
zur arabischen Pflanzensynonymik des Mittelalters. Arabischer Text nebst kommen-
tierter deutscher Übersetzung, 1991; Die Ergänzungen Ibn Gulgul’s zur Materia
medica des Dioskurides: Arabischer Text nebst kommentierter deutscher Übersetzung,
1993.

G. Late Antiquity in the West

The area of the Middle Ages that was most studied in our field here is the
West. For the sake of clarity, it may be useful to divide its history in three
major phases, however artificial and conventional such divisions might be:
Late-Antiquity, the Early Middle-Ages, and the Salernitan/Post-Salernitan
period.
For Late-Antiquity, texts are listed with the references of their editions
in Bibliographie des textes médicaux latins: antiquité et haut moyen âge, ed. Guy
Sabbah, Pierre-Paul Corsetti, and Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, 1987, with a
supplement by Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Bibliographie des textes médicaux la-
tins: antiquité et haut moyen âge. Premier Supplément 1986–1999, 2000. For the
authors of many of such texts (or on the anonymous ones), see the entries to
the Neue Pauly/New Pauly, and Keyser and Irby-Massie (above).
Botanical texts of this period were mainly the Latin translation(s) of
Dioscorides, De materia medica, and its epiphenomena. The “old” Latin trans-
lation of Dioscorides identified as Dioscorides Longobardus was edited by Kon-
rad Hofman, and Theodor M. Auracher, “Der langobardische Diosko-
rides des Marcellus Virgilius,” Romanische Forschungen 1 (1882): 49–105
(Book I); Hermann Stadler, “Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod. Lat. Mon-
acensis 337). Aus T. M. Aurachers Nachlass herausgegeben und ergänzt,”
Romanische Forschungen 10 (1897): 181–247 (Book II), and 369–446 (Book III);
11 (1899): 1–93 (Book IV); Hermann Stadler, “Dioscorides Longobardus
(Cod. Lat. Monacensis 337),” Romanische Forschungen 13 (1902): 161–243
(Book V); and Stadler, “Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod. Lat. Monacensis
337). Index der Sachnamen und der wichtigeren Wörter,” Romanische
161 Botany

Forschungen 14 (1903): 601–36. Book I, has been re-edited by Haralambie

Mihaescu, Dioscoride Latino, Materia medica, Libro primo, 1938. See also John
Riddle, “The Latin Alphabetical Dioscorides,” Actes du XIIIe Congrès Inter-
national d’Histoire des Sciences, Moscou, 18–24 août 1971, Sections III & IV: Antiquité
et Moyen Age, 1971, 204–09 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above],
no. IV), and Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez, “Notas para la difusión alto-
medieval de una traducción latina de Dioscórides,” Actas del II Congreso Hispá-
nico de Latín Medieval (León, 11–14 de noviembre de 1997), 1998, vol. 1, 471–81.
First among the epiphenomena of Dioscorides, De materia medica, there
is the so-called De herbis feminis ascribed to Dioscorides. It was studied as early
as Hermann Kästner, “Pseudo-Dioskorides de herbis femininis,” Hermes 31
(1896): 578–636. More recently, see (chronological order of publication):
John Riddle, “Pseudo-Dioscorides’ Ex herbis feminis and Early Medieval
Medical Botany,” Journal of the History of Biology 14 (1981): 43–81 (reproduced
in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above], no. IX); Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez,
“El Pseudo-Dioscórides De herbis femininis, los Dynamidia e Isidoro de Sevilla,
Etym. XVII, 7,9–11,” Tradición e innovación de la medicina latina de la Antigüedad y
de la Alta Edad Media, ed. Manuel E. Vázquez Buján, 1994, 183–203; as well
as Annalisa Bracciotti, “Un modello greco per l’erba spheritis degli erbari
pseudo-dioscoridei latini,” Helikon 38 (1995–98): 419–35; Ead., “Gli erbari
pseudo-dioscoridei e la trasmissione del Dioscoride alfabetico nell’Italia
meridionale,” Romanobarbarica 16 (1999): 285–315; Arsenio Ferraces Ro-
dríguez, “Le Ex herbis femininis: traduction, réélaboration, problèmes
stylistiques,” Les textes médicaux latins comme literature: Actes du VIe colloque
international sur les textes médicaux latins du Ier au 3 septembre 1998 à Nantes, ed.
Alfrieda and Jackie Pigeaud, 2000, 77–89; Annalisa Bracciotti, “L’esem-
plare del De herbis femininis usato dal traduttore dell’Erbario antico inglese,”
Cassiodorus 6–7 (2001): 249–74; ead., “Osservazioni sulla forma del latino
lauer nell’edizione Wellmann di (pseudo)-Dioscoride e nelle edizioni di al-
cuni erbari latini,” Filologia antica e moderna 26 (2004): 45–55; and Arsenio
Ferraces Rodríguez, “Una fuente desconocida del De herbis femininis, la
antigua traducción latina del De plantis duodecim signis et septem planetis subiectis
atribuido a Tésalo de Tralles,” Latomus 64 (2005): 153–68.
Many of the other derivatives from Dioscorides are grouped in the Late-
Antique corpus that can be qualified as classical and included Antonius Musa,
De herba vettonica; the herbal attributed to Apuleius; and Sextus Placitus. It
was edited by Ernst Howald, and Henry E. Sigerist, Antonii Musae De herba
vettonica liber. Pseudoapulei Herbarius, Anonymi De taxone liber. Sexti Placiti liber
Medicinae ex animalibus, 1927. The full text of the corpus as it appears in the
codex 296 of the Biblioteca Statale at Lucca has been reproduced and trans-
Botany 162

lated into Spanish in the volume of commentary that accompanies the recent
facsimile reproduction of the manuscript under the title Herbolarium et ma-
teria medica (Biblioteca Statale de Lucca, ms. 296), 2007.
Since the edition above, the Pseudo-Apuleius was the object of several
publications among which: Friedrich W. T. Hunger, The Herbal of Pseudo-
Apuleius: from the Ninth-Century Manuscript in the Abbey of Monte Cassino (Codex
casinensis 97) together with the First Printed Edition of John Phil. De Lignamine (Editio
princeps Romae 1481), 1935; Erminio Caproti, and William T. Stearn
(1911–2001), Herbarium Apulei (1481) – Herbolario volgare (1522), 1979 (intro-
duction by E. Caproti with an essay by W.T. Stearn). For the study of the
text, see Henry E. Sigerist, “Der Herbarius Apulei,” Janus 29 (1925):
180–82; id., “Zum Herbarius Pseudo-Apulei,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin
23 (1930): 197–204; Linda Erhsam Voigts, “The Significance of the Name
Apuleius to the Herbarium Apulei,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 52 (1978):
214–27; Maria Franca Buffa Giolito, and Gigliola Maggiulli, L’altro
Apuleio. Problemi aperti per una nuova edizione dell’Herbarius, 1996.
Among the other texts that have been edited, translated, and/or studied,
there was the so-called curae herbarum. The text was edited by Sofia Mattei,
“Curae herbarum,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Macerata, 1995, and further
studied by Annalisa Bracciotti, “L’apporto della tradizione indiretta per
la costituzione di un testo critico delle “Curae herbarum,” Rivista di Cultura
Classica e Medioevale 42 (2000): 61–102; Ead., “Nomen herbae selenas: Un passo
bilingue delle Curae herbarum,” Il plurilinguismo nella tradizione letteraria latina,
ed. Renato Oniga, 2003, 213–53; and Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez, “Un
manuscrito con textos inéditos de las Curae ex animalibus,” Vir bonus docendi
peritus: Homenaxe a José Pérez Riesco, 2002, 123–39; and id., “Las Curae herbarum
y las interpolaciones dioscorideas en el Herbario del Pseudo-Apuleyo,” Euphro-
syne 32 (2004): 223–40.
Other texts include the so-called alfabetum Galieni studied by Carmélia
Halleux-Opsomer, “Un Herbier médical du haut moyen âge: l’Alfabetum
Galieni,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 4 (1982): 65–97; and Gargilius
Martialis, first analyzed by John Riddle, “Gargilius Martialis as Medical
Writer,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 39 (1984): 408–29
(reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above], no. X), and recently edited by
Brigitte Maire, Gargilius Martialis, Les Remèdes tirés des légumes et des fruits, texte
établi, traduit et commenté, 2002; see also the concordance by Brigitte Maire,
Concordantiae Gargilianae, 2002.
For the inventory of the plants mentioned in these and other texts, see
Alexander Tschirch, Handbuch der Pharmakognosie, 4 vols., 1909–1925, vol. 2
(1910), passim, and also Carmélia Opsomer, Index de la pharmacopée de Ier au
163 Botany

Xe siècle, 2 vols., 1989, with a short description of the research program, and,
for each text, a brief characterization, the editions, and, when appropriate,
any other relevant literature. Also, for the identification of the plants, see
Stirling below.

H. The Pre-Salernitan Centuries

For the early-medieval or Pre-Salernitan period, the Carolingian world pro-
vides much information (see Carmélia Opsomer-Halleux, “The Medieval
Garden and Its Role in Medicine,” Medieval Gardens, ed. Elizabeth B. Mac-
dougall, 1986, 93–114, which includes [106–12] a Tentative List of Garden
Plants). A significant document is the Capitulare de Villis. Whatever its
date (which has been debated), it provides (paragraph 70) a list of 95 herbs
supposedly to be cultivated in the villae of the Empire (Opsomer-Halleux,
“The Medieval Garden …” [above], 98; edition of the text in Gerhard
Schmitz, Die Kapitulariensammlung des Ansegis, 1996). Another important
document is the so-called Lorscher Arzneibuch (dating back to ca. 795), which
was recently rediscovered (facsimile edition with a volume of commentary
under the title Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Faksimile der Handschrift Msc. Med. 1 der
Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, ed. Gundolf Keil, 1989. The volume of commentary
contains an introduction and the translation of the text by Ulrich Stoll and
Gundolf Keil in collaboration with Albert Ohlmeyer. For a critical edition
of the text, with a German translation and a study, see Ulrich Stoll, Das “Lor-
scher Arzneibuch”: Ein medizinisches Kompendium des 8. Jahrhunderts [Codex Bamber-
gensis medicinalis 1]: Text, Übersetzung und Fachglossar, 1992). This manuscript
documents not only the range of plants known in North-West Europe at that
time, but also the continuity with previous knowledge and practice, as well
as, if not more, the contacts between West and East, that is, between the Ca-
rolingian and the Byzantine Worlds.
Saint Gall Abbey documents further the botany of the Carolingian period.
The so-called Botanicus Sangallensis, which was known since 1928 at least (see
Erhard Landgraf, “Ein frühmittelalterlicher Botanicus,” Ph.D. thesis, Uni-
versity of Leipzig, 1928 [reproduced in Kyklos 1 [1928]: 114–46]), was not
studied until very recently, however: Monica Niederer, Der St. Galler ‘Botani-
cus’. Ein frühmittelalterliches Herbar: Kritische Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar,
2005. The study of the garden is part of the research program conducted at
the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Virginia,
and consisting, among others, in producing a virtual tri-dimensional recon-
structing of the monastery. See Walter Horn, and Ernest Born, The Plan of
St Gall: A Study of the Architecture & Economy of, & Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian
Monastery, 3 vols., 1979 (see vol. 2, 175–209 and 300–13 for the garden).
Botany 164

The next document in a chronological sequence is the Hortulus by Walah-

frid Strabo. It was repeatedly studied during the 20th century: Karl Sud-
hoff, Des Walahfrid von der Reichenau Hortulus: Gedichte über die Kräuter seines
Klostergartens vom Jahre 827, Wiedergabe des ersten Wiener Druckes vom Jahre 1510,
eingeleitet und medizinisch, botanisch und druckgeschichtlich gewürdigt, 1926;
Walahfrid Strabo, Hortulus, translation by Raef Payne; commentary by Wil-
frid Blunt, 1966; or, more recently, Hans-Dieter Stoffler, Der hortulus des
Walahfrid Strabo: aus d. Kräutergarten d. Klosters Reichenau, 1978. Also, in a vol-
ume published on the occasion of the rediscovery of the Lorscher-Arznei-
buch (Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Klostermedizin in der Karolingerzeit. Ausgewählte
Texte und Beiträge, 1989), there is (196–98) a list of the plants mentioned in the
Hortulus together with their identification. The same volume contains also
(199–202) an inventory of the plants in the Würzburg collection, dating back
to 840 circa.
Of this period are also the many receptaries published by Henry E. Si-
gerist, Studien und Texte zur frühmittelalterlichen Rezeptliteratur, 1923, and
Julius Jörimann, Frühmittelalterliche Rezeptarien, 1925. The many plants they
mention are listed in Opsomer, Index de la pharmacopée … (above).

I. Salerno and After

The translation into Latin of Arabic medical and, particularly, pharmaceuti-
cal treatises transformed previous botanical knowledge. Books of medicinal
plants circulated in a significantly increased number. Although many texts
of this period have already been edited, several are still waiting to be brought
to light. This is the aim of the program recently launched on Salerno, aiming
to edit as many texts as possible (see the several essays in La Scuola Medica Sa-
lernitana: Gli autori e i testi, ed. Danielle Jacquart, and Agostino Paravicini
Bagliani, 2007).
The texts that have been edited and/or studied include the following:
(circa instans) Carmélia Opsomer, Livre des simples medecines. Codex Bruxellensis
IV 1024, 2 vols., 1980; and Ead., Book of Simple Medicines, with a preface by Wil-
liam T. Stearn, 2 vols., 1984; Le livre des simples médecines d’après le manuscrit
français 12322 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, 1986, and Le Livre des simples
médecines, 2001; Leo J. Vandewiele, Een middelnederlandse versie van de “Circa
instans” van Platearius naar de hss Portland, British Museum ms. Loan 29/332, XIVe
eeuw, en Universiteitsbiblioteek te Gent Hs. 1457, XVe eeuw. Uitgegeven en gecommen-
tarieerd, [1970]; (Albertus Magnus) Klaus Biewer, Albertus Magnus, De veg-
etabilibus Buch VI, Traktat 2, lateinisch-deutsch, Übersetzung und Kommentar.
Mit einem Geleitwort von Rudolf Schmitz, 1992; and the following three
studies by Jerry Stannard, “Identification of the Plants Described by Alber-
165 Botany

tus Magnus, De vegetabilibus, lib. VI,” Res Publica Litterarum 2 (1979): 281–318;
“The Botany of St.Albert the Great,” Albertus Magnus, Doctor Universalis,
1280/1980, ed. Gerbert Meyer, and Albert Zimmerman, 1980, 345–72
(reproduced in Stannard, Pristina medicamenta … [above], no. XIV); and
“Albertus Magnus and Medieval Herbalism,” Albertus Magnus and the Sciences.
Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. James A. Weisheipl, 1980, 355–77 (repro-
duced in Stannard, Ibidem, no. XIII); (Arnau de Vilanova) edition of his
Latin translation of the Book of Simple Medicines (that is, medicinal plants) by
Abu l-Salt Umayya in a volume that contains several texts by different
scholars (I reproduce the Latin title from the frontispiece): Arnaldi de Villa-
nova, Traslatio Libri albuzale de medicinis simplicibus. Ediderunt José Martínez
Gásquez et Michael R. McVaugh. Abu l-Salt Umayya, Kitab al-adwiya al-
mufrada. Edidit Ana Labarta. Llibre d’Albumesar de simples medecines. Edidit
Luis Cifuentes. Praefatione et comentariis instruxerunt Ana Labarta,
José Martínez Gásquez , Michael R. McVaugh, Danielle Jacquart et
Luis Cifuentes, 2004; (Rufinus) after a first study was published by Lynn J.
Thorndike, “Rufinus: A Forgotten Botanist of the Thirteenth Century,”
Isis 18 (1932): 63–76, his text was edited by the same, assisted by Francis S.
Benjamin, The Herbal of Rufinus, Edited from the Unique Manuscript, 1946; on it,
see recently Annalisa Bracciotti, “Osservazioni sull’Erbario di Rufino,” …
un tuo serto di fiori in man recando: Scritti in onore di Maria Amalia D’Aronco, ed.
Patrizia Lendinara, and Silvana Serafin, 2 vols, 2008, vol. 2, 63–73;
(Pierre d’Auvergne) his botanical treatise (in fact, a commentary on Aris-
totle and Theophrastus) has been recently edited: E. L. J. Poortman, Petrus
de Arvernia, Sententia super librum De vegetabilibus et plantis, 2003; (anonymous
herbals and receptaries) see for example: Maria Sofia Corradini Bozzi,
Ricettari medico-farmaceutici medievali nella Francia meridionale, vol. 1, 1997;
Anna Martellotti, I ricettari di Federico II. Dal “Meridionale” al “Liber de
coquina,” 2005; Paul Aebischer, and Eugène Olivier, L’herbier de Moudon,
un recueil de recettes médicales de la fin du 14e siècle. Notes sur la botanique médicale du
moyen-âge, 1938; Stefania Ragazzini, Un erbario del XV secolo. Il ms. 106 della
Biblioteca di botanica dell’Università di Firenze, 1983; and the so-called Herbal
of Roccabonella, on which, see, for example: Francesco Paganelli, and Elsa
M. Cappelletti, “Il codice erbario Roccabonella (sec. XV) e suo contributo
alla storia della farmacia,” Atti e memorie della Accademia Italiana di Storia della
Farmacia 13 (1996): 111–17.
A special case is the transfer of classical botany to England, which has
been much studied and discussed (for an overview, see Maria Amalia
D’Aronco, “Le traduzioni di testi medico-botanici in inglese antico,” Testo
medievale e traduzione, ed. Maria Grazia Cammarota, and Maria Vittoria
Botany 166

Molinari, 2001, 227–35). At the center of this, there is the manuscript of

the British Library, Cotton Vitellius C III, which contains the late-antique
corpus above (among others, the Pseudo-Apuleius). It was studied as early
as 1864 by Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early
England: Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illus-
trating the History of Science in this Country before the Norman Conquest, 3 vols.,
1864–1866. Vol. 1 includes “Herbarium of Apuleius. Continued from Dios-
korides … Medicina de quadrupedibus of Sextus Placitus; all from Brit. mus.
ms. Cotton. Vitellius C. III …” The Cotton Vitellius manuscript has been
recently reproduced in facsimile by Maria Amalia D’Aronco, and Margaret
L. Cameron, The Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia. British Library Cotton
Vitellius C III, 1998, with a study. One should also mention here such other
publications as (selection; chronological order of publication): Walter Hof-
stetter, “Zur lateinischen Quelle des altenglischen Pseudo-Dioskurides,”
Anglia 101 (1983): 315–60; Maria Amalia D’Aronco, “L’erbario anglo-
sassone, un’ipotesi sulla data della traduzione,” Romanobarbarica 13
(1994–1995): 325–66; Annalisa Bracciotti, “L’esemplare del De herbis fe-
mininis usato dal traduttore dell’Erbario antico inglese,” Cassiodorus 6–7
(2001): 249–74, and Philip Rusche, “Dioscorides’ De materia medica and Late
Old English Herbal Glossaries,” From Earth to Art: The Many Aspects of the Plant-
World in Anglo-Saxon England: Proceedings of the First ASPNS Symposium, University
of Glasgow, 5–7 April 2000, ed. Carole P. Biggam, 2003, 181–94. Also, Anne
Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-
Saxon medicine, 2002, who suggested a new approach to the text, which may
be characterized as ethnobotanical.

J. Lexica and inventories of plants

In the study of primary sources, a first – and major – problem is the lexicon of
plant names. Whereas no other modern reference work is available for the
Greek Byzantine world than the 19th-century analytical lexicon by Bernhard
A. Langkavel (1825–1902), Botanik der spaeteren Griechen vom dritten bis drei-
zehnten Jahrhunderte, 1866 (rpt.: 1964), there is now a particularly useful in-
strument recently published by Johannes Stirling, Lexicon nominum herba-
rum arborum fructuumque lingua latinae, 4 vols., 1995–1998, for the West.
Similarly, vernacular names have been systematically collected by Willem F.
Daems (1911–1994), Nomina simplicium medicinarum ex synonymariis Medii
Aevi collecta: Semantische Untersuchungen zum Fachwortschatz hoch- und spätmittel-
alterlicher Drogenkunde, 1993.
Some studies have been made on such aspects of the medieval botanical
lexicon as the continuity of classical names (Jerry Stannard, “Medieval Re-
167 Botany

ception of Classical Plant Names,” (above), and the contribution of some

medieval scholars to this question (Jerry Stannard, “Bartholomaeus Angli-
cus and Thirteenth Century Botanical Nomenclature,” Actes du XIIe Congrès In-
ternational d’Histoire des Sciences, Paris, août 1968, 1971, vol. 8, 191–94 [repro-
duced in Stannard, Pristina Medicamenta … [above], no. XVI]).
Linked with the lexicon is the inventory of plant names in the texts.
A pioneering work was the research program THEOREMA, which aimed to
inventory all the terms of materia medica – including plant names – in the
pharmaceutical literature prior to the 10th century (on which, see in chro-
nological order of publication: Carmélia Halleux-Opsomer, and Louis
Delatte, “Ancient Medical Recipes and the Computer: the THEOREMA
Project,” Pharmacy in History 23 (1981): 87–9; Carmélia Halleux-Opsomer,
“Le traitement informatique des recettes médicales du haut moyen âge,”
Actes du Congrès International “Informatique et Sciences Humaines,” 1981, 649–67;
and Ead., “Une banque informatisée de pharmacopée ancienne: Pour une
histoire quantitative du médicament,” Actes du XXVIIIe Congrès International
d’Histoire de la Médecine, 1982, vol. 2, 215–19), which led to the publication of
an index by Carmélia Opsomer, Index de la pharmacopée … (above).
Another program was launched slightly later, which was presented by
Sergio Sconocchia, Programma di concordanze e lessici di autori medici latini, Atti
del I Seminario di studi sui Lessici tecnici greci e latini (Messina, 8–10 marzo 1990), ed.
Paola Radici-Colace, and Maria Caccamo-Caltabiano, 1991, 311–21.
As a result of this research program, several lexica of Late-Antique texts were
published in the Alpha-Omega series of Olms. They are listed in 1991, along
with other publications, by Alain Touwaide, “L’inventaire des matières
médicales dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Age: des compléments,” Revue d’His-
toire de la Pharmacie 291 (1991): 393–97.
A similar program dealing with classical and Byzantine Greek texts was
presented by Alain Touwaide in 1993: “Towards a Thesaurus of Ancient
Materia Medica: a Methodological Analysis for the Constitution of a Compute-
rised Database,” Lingue tecniche del greco e del latino: II, Atti del II Seminario inter-
nazionale sulla letteratura scientifica e tecnica greca e latina, Trieste, 4–5 ottobre 1993,
ed. Sergio Sconocchia, and Lucio Toneatto, 1997, 227–47. The program
is now carried out in the Department of Botany of the National Museum of
Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.

K. Identification of Plants
The identification of the plants according to current taxonomy is of primary
importance. It has been the object of much research in the early 20th century,
particularly on the basis of Greek illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides,
Botany 168

De materia medica. The literature published on this question from Linnaeus

to 1998 has been collected in Alain Touwaide, “Bibliographie historique
de la botanique: Les Identifications des plantes médicinales citées dans les
traités anciens, après l’adoption du système de classification de Linné
(1707–1778),” Centre Jean Palerne – Lettre d’Information 30 (1997–1998): 2–22,
and 31 (1998): 2–65. Among the several works of this type, one could quote
here: Edmond Bonnet (1848–1922), “Essai d’identification des plantes
médicinales mentionnées par Dioscoride, d’après les peintures d’un manu-
scrit de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (Ms. grec No. 2179),” Janus 8
(1903): 169–77, 225–32, 281–85; id., “Etude sur les figures de plantes et
d’animaux peintes dans une version arabe, manuscrite, de la Matière Médi-
cale de Dioscoride, Conservée à la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris,” Janus 14
(1909): 294–303; Emmanuel J. Emmanuel, “Etude comparative sur les
plantes dessinées dans le Codex Constantinopolitanus de Dioscoride,” Jour-
nal Suisse de Chimie et Pharmacie/Schweizerische Wochenschrift für Chemie und Phar-
mazie 50 (1912): 45–50, 64–72; Krikor Jacob Basmadjia (Grigor Pasmac-
hean), “L’identification des noms de plantes du Codex Constantinopolitanus de
Dioscoride,” Journal Asiatique 230 (1938): 577–621 (rpt. in Texts and Studies on
Islamic Medicine, 1, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1997, 27–71). In the current state of re-
search, the classical reference work on this point is still Jacques André
(1910–1994), Lexique des termes de botanique en latin, 1956, with a revised edi-
tion published almost 30 years later under a new title: Les noms de plantes dans
la Rome antique, 1985. However useful it is, it does not include any methodo-
logical statement. Some works have been devoted to this question (in chro-
nological order of publication): Bernhard Herzhoff, “Zur Identifikation
antiker Pflanzennamen,” Vorträge des ersten Symposions der Bamberger Arbeitskre-
ises “Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption (AKAN),” 1990, 9–32; Alain
Touwaide, “L’identification des plantes du “Traité de matière médicale”
de Dioscoride: Un bilan méthodologique,” Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre
Rezeption, vol. 1 and 2, ed. Klaus Döring, and Georg Wöhrle, 1992,
253–74; James L. Reveal, “Identifying Plants in Pre-Linnean Botanical Lit-
erature,” Prospecting for Drugs in Ancient and Medieval European Texts: A Scientific
Approach, ed. Bart K. Holland, 1996, 57–90; Giovanni Cristofolini, and
Umberto Mossetti, “Interpretation of Plant Names in a Late Medieval
Medical Treatise,” Taxon 47 (1998): 305–19. A new approach – of a truly in-
terdisciplinary nature – has been proposed for the trees mentioned in Anda-
lusian agronomic literature by Carabaza Bravo et al., Árboles y arbustos …
(above), 2004.
169 Botany

L. Plants
Some plants have been studied in monographic publications (books or ar-
ticles). Being impossible to mention here all such works, I list some (recent
or not so recent), representative of this type of research because of the nature
of the plant, the method of the research, or any other significant aspect.
Works are listed in alphabetic order of English plant names: (beet) John
A. C. Greppin, “The Words for ‘Beet’ in three interrelated Systems: Greco-
Roman, Armenian and Arabic,” Byzantion 60 (1990): 145–63; (belladonna)
Brigitte Schwamm, Atropa Belladonna: eine antike Heilpflanze im modernen
Arzneischatz. Historische Betrachtung aus botanischer, chemischer, toxikologischer,
pharmakologischer und medizinischer Sicht unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des syn-
thetischen Atropins, 1988; (betony) Valérie Bonet, “La bétoine et ses noms,”
Le Latin médical: La constitution d’un langage scientifique: Réalités et langage de la
médecine dans le monde romain. Actes du IIIe Colloque internationale “Textes médicaux
latins,” Saint-Etienne, 11–13 septembre 1989, ed. Guy Sabbah, 1991, 143–50;
(garlic) John Heinerman, The Healing Benefits of Garlic, 1994 (Spanish trans-
lation: El ajo y sus propriedades curativas. Historia, remedios y recetas, 1995);
(hellebore) Ferdinand Wick, “Beiträge zur Geschichte von Helleborus und
Veratrum,” Ph. D. thesis, University of Basel, 1939; (liquorice) Marielene
Putscher, “Das Süssholz und seine Geschichte,” Ph.D. thesis, University of
Cologne, 1968; (mandrake) Laurie Gluckman, “Mandragora: its Pharma-
cology and Superstitions,” Scalpel & Tongs 37 (1993): 58–60; (mistletoe) Hans
Becker, and Helga Schmoll, Mistel: Arzneipflanze, Brauchtum, Kunstmotiv
im Jugendstil, 1986; (roses) Mia Touw, “Roses in the Middle Ages,” Economic
Botany 36 (1882): 71–83; (rue) Antonino Pollio, Antonino De Natale,
Emanuela Appetiti, Gianni Aliotta, and Alain Touwaide, “Continuity
and Change in the Mediterranean Medical Tradition: Ruta spp. (Rutaceae) in
Hippocratic Medicine and Present Practices,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology
116 (2008): 469–82; (saffron) Annick Lallemand, “Le Safran et le cinna-
mome dans les Homélies sur le Cantique des cantiques de Grégoire de Nysse,”
L’Antiquité Classique 71 (2002): 121–30; (silphium) Denis Roques, “Méde-
cine et botanique: Le Silphion dans l’oeuvre d’Oribase,” Revue des Etudes Grec-
ques 106 (1993): 380–399; (thyme) Quentin Seddon, A Brief History of Thyme:
From Magical Power to the Elixir of Youth, 1994; (valerian) Mansoor Ahmad,
“Valerian, a Drug Ignored by Us,” Hamdard medicus 35 (1992): 80–85.
In some cases, such publications cover a group of plants, related or not:
Pierre Cuttai, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der officinellen Drogen Semen Lini,
Fructus Colocynthidis, Radix Saponariae,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Basel,
1937; Heinrich Lehmann, “Beiträge zur Geschichte von Sambucus nigra,
Juniperus communis und Juniperus Sabina,” Ph.D. thesis, University of
Botany 170

Basel, 1935; Jerry Stannard, “Vegetable Gums and Resins in Medieval

Recipe Literature,” Acta Congressus Internationalis Historiae Pharmaciae Bremae
MCMLXXV, 1978, 41–8 (reproduced in Stannard, Pristina Medicamenta …
[above], no. XVII).
Spices constitute a chapter in itself in the history of medieval botany,
with a wide range of aspects, from the identification and trade of the sub-
stances (among others along the silk-road) to their social and cultural mean-
ing. It will suffice to mention here two works of a different nature recently
published: Sami H. Hamarneh, “Spices in Medieval Islam: a Perspective,”
Hamdard medicus 35 (1992): 82–90; and Marina Ferrara Pignatelli, Viag-
gio nel mondo delle essenze, 1991. The cultural values linked with spices have be-
come the object of a dictionary: Hansjörg Küster, Wo der Pfeffer wächst: Ein
Lexikon zur Kulturgeschichte der Gewürze, 1987. More recently, spices in the
Middle Ages have been analyzed in an essay by Paul Freeman, Out of the East:
Spices and the Medieval Imagination, 2008.
From a more general viewpoint, the history of plants with therapeutic
applications has been of particular interest, with a significant trans-
formation from late 19th-century pharmacognosy (which was living its last
days, as it was replaced shortly after by pharmaco-chemistry) to the current
revival worldwide. Here is a selection of this variety of aspects (works
are listed in chronological order of publication): Friedriech A. Flückiger
(1828–1894), and Daniel Hanbury (1825–1875), Pharmacographia: A History
of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin Met with in Great Britain and British India,
1874; Heinrich Marzell (1885–1970), Alte Heilkräuter, 1926; Pierre Dela-
veau, Histoire et renouveau des plantes medicinales, 1982; Ernesto Riva, Non far di
ogni erba un fascio. Botanica e storia di proprietà farmacologiche di duecento piante
medicinali, 1990; Liana Palazzi Mariotti, Il giardino dei semplici: Un itiner-
ario fra le piante aromatiche medicinali velenose esotiche, 1993; Pierangelo Lom-
agno, Storie di piante medicinali eccellenti, 1994.

M. Herbals
Books of herbs used for medicinal purposes were also the object of a theoreti-
cal analysis on their actual nature, evolution, and transmission. A fundamen-
tal work was Arber, Herbals … (above). Later on, Agnes Arber returned to
the topic: “From Medieval Herbalism to the Birth of Modern Botany,” Science,
Medicine, and History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Prac-
tice written in honour of C. Singer, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood, 2 vols., 1953,
vol. 1, 317–36. In the meantime, other contributions explored the antique
and medieval history of such books.Among them, see, for example: Warren
Royal Dawson (1888–1968), “Studies in Medical History, a) the Origin of
171 Botany

the Herbal, b) Castor-Oil in Antiquity,” Aegyptus 10 (1929): 47–72; Charles

Singer (1876–1960), “The Herbal in Antiquity,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 47
(1927): 1–52; Juan Carlos Ahumada (1890–1976), Herbarios medicos primiti-
vos, 1942; Jerry Stannard, “Medieval Herbals and their Development,” Clio
Medica 9 (1974): 23–33 (reproduced in Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism …
[above], no. III); and Salvatore Pezzella, Gli erbari: I primi libri di medicina (Le
virtù curative delle piante), 1993.

N. Botanical Science
Theoretical notions of botany, its scientific methods, and other aspects of the
approach to the world of plants have been little investigated. On the classical
background of medieval botanical knowledge, see Alain Touwaide, “La
botanique entre science et culture au Ier siècle de notre ère,” Geschichte der
Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike, vol. 1: Biologie, ed. Georg
Wöhrle , 1999, 219–52. The continuity of the ancient system of classifi-
cation in a 7th-century Greek manuscript of Dioscorides was ascertained in
Annamaria Ciarallo, “Classificazione botanica delle specie illustrate nel
Dioscoride della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli,” Automata 1 (2006): 39–41.
A global evaluation of the contribution of Byzantium to botany was
made as early as 1939: Félix Brunet (b. 1872), “Contribution des médecins
byzantins à l’histoire des plantes et à la botanique médicale en France,” Hip-
pocrates 5 (1939): 524–31. Similarly, Jerry Stannard, “Botany,” Dictionary of
the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (1982), 344–49, proposed a synthesis that he further sub-
stantiated in such article as “The Theoretical Bases of Medieval Herbalism,”
Medical Heritage 1 (1985): 186–98 (reproduced in Stannard, Herbs and Her-
balism … [above], no. IV).
Other scholars focused more on the scientific method behind the con-
struction of botanical knowledge: Guy Beaujouan (1925–2007), “La prise
de conscience de l’aptitude à innover (le tournant du milieu du 13e siècle),” Le
Moyen âge et la science: Approche de quelques disciplines et personnalités scientifiques
médiévales. Actes du colloque d’Orléans, 21–22 avril 1988, ed. Bernard Ribemont,
1991, 5–14, and, in the same volume, Bernard Ribemont, and Geneviève
Sodigne-Costes, “Botanique médiévale: tradition, observation, imagin-
aire: L’Exemple de l’encyclopédisme,” 153–72. The question of observation
was also taken into consideration in the analysis of illustrated herbals as in
the following contribution by Giulia Orofino, “Il rapporto con l’antico
e l’osservazione della natura nell’illusrazione scientifica di eta’ sveva in Italia
meridionale,” Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen: Proceedings
of the symposium sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts,
18–20 January 1990, ed. William Tronzo, 1994, 129–49. Also, the notion
Botany 172

of observation has been approached from a theoretical viewpoint: Danielle

Jacquart, “L’observation dans les sciences de la nature au moyen âge:
Limites et possibilités,” Micrologus 4 (1996): 55–75. This set of notions is
linked with the concept of nature, which was the object of several studies,
among which we can mention here: Franz Gräser, “Die Naturwissen-
schaften und das Benediktkloster Fulda im VIII. und IX. Jahrhundert,” Die
Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der
Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses
in Rotterdam vom 17. – 21. September, ed. Georg Edmund Dann, 1965, 61–71;
Andreas Speer, “The Discovery of Nature: The Contribution of the Char-
trians to Twelfth-Century Attempts to Find a Scientia Naturalis,” Traditio 52
(1997): 135–51; also Vito Fumagalli, L’uomo e l’ambiente medievale, 1992.
Research on these aspects also included an investigation on the link between
folk lore and learned herbalism: Jerry Stannard, “Folk Medicine, Philos-
ophy and Medieval Herbalism,” Res Publica Litterarum 3 (1980): 229–36, and
id., “Folkloristic Elements in Medieval Herbalism,” Actes du XXVIe Congrès
international d’histoire de la médecine, Plovdiv (Bulgaria), 20–25 août 1978, 1981,
vol. 2, 203–5.
Finally, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance was the
object of some studies that included the theoretical aspects (works are listed
in chronological order): Jerry Stannard, “Medieval Italian Medical Bot-
any,” Atti del XXI Congresso internazionale di storia della medicina, Siena, 22–28 set-
tembre 1968, 2 vol., 1970, 1554–65 (reproduced in Stannard, Pristina Medic-
amenta … [above], no. XI); Richard Palmer, “Medical Botany in Northern
Italy in the Renaissance,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 78 (1985):
149–57; and Karen Meier Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Univer-
sities, 1991.

O. Astrology and Symbolism

The uses of plants also included astrology and magic as the many manu-
scripts listed and accurately described in the Corpus Codicum Astrologorum Grae-
corum (11 vols., 1898–1951) show. Specific studies have been devoted to this
aspect of medieval botany, from a general presentation in the Realencyclopädie
der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Friedrich Pfister, “Pflanzenaberglau-
be,” RE XIX, 2 [1938], 1446–56) to the edition and analysis of manuscripts
and texts, as for example: Armand Delatte, “Le traité des plantes plané-
taires d’un manuscrit de Léningrad,” Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’his-
toire orientales 9 (1949): 145–77; Adalberto Pazzini (1878–1975), Virtù delle
erbe secondo i sette pianeti. L’erbario detto di Tolomeo e quelli di altri astrologi (Cod. Vat.
11423), 1959, which analyses a broad range of texts; or, more recently, an edi-
173 Botany

tion of some fragments: Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez, “Dos fragmentos

inéditos de la antigua traducción latina del De plantis duodecim signis et septem
planetis subiectis atribuido a Tésalo de Tralles,” Traditio 59 (2004): 368–82. On
magic, see also, and among many others, such study as Jerry Stannard,
“Magiferous Plants and Magic in Medieval Medical Botany,” The Maryland
Historian 8 (1977): 33–46 (reproduced in Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism …
[above], no. V).
Such uses of plants were linked with, and implied, the whole discourse
on plant symbology, which cannot be presented in detail here, however. We
shall mention only the general Cultural History of Plants edited by Ghillian
Prance, and Mark Nesbitt, 2005, and the recent synthesis by Marcel De
Cleene, and Marie Claire Lejeune, Compendium of Symbolic and Ritual Plants
in Europe, 2 vols., 2002. Of interest, also a text edited by Margaret H. Thom-
son (Le jardin symbolique: Texte grec tiré du Clarkianus XI [above]), and the study
by Jean-Pierre Albert, Odeurs de sainteté: La mythologie chrétienne des aromates,
1990, which focused on the Christian discourse of spices. Contributions to
this vast sector dealt also with particular plants, among which (to quote just
one): Anthony R. Littlewood, “The Symbolism of Apple in Byzantine Lite-
rature,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 23 (1974): 33–59.

P. Gardens
Theoretical botany and plant uses and symbolism combined in the creation
of gardens. Much literature has been devoted to the topic of medieval
gardens. A collection of essays is Der Garten von der Antike bis zum Mittelalter, ed.
Maureen Carroll-Spillecke, 1992.
For Byzantium, more specifically, we could mention the classical work
by Otmar Schissel (1884–1943), Der byzantinische Garten: seine Darstellung im
gleichzeitigen Romane, 1942, now to be replaced (or completed) with the series
of essays in the volume Byzantine Garden Culture, ed. Antony Littlewood,
Henry Maguire, and Joachim Wolschke-bulmahn, 2002. Other essays
should also be mentioned, as for example: Leslie Brubaker. and Anthony R.
Littlewood, “Byzantinische Gärten,” Der Garten …, ed. Carroll-Spil-
lecke (above), 212–48; Anthony R. Littlewood, “Gardens of Byzantium,”
Journal of Garden History 12 (1992): 126–53; and id., “Gardens of the Palaces,”
Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire, 1997, 13–38.
For the Arabic world, one could select, among the abundant production,
the following recent essays, all lavishly illustrated (photos and maps of
gardens, reproductions of manuscripts, photos of works of art) (chronologi-
cal order of publication): Arabesques et jardins de paradis: Collections françaises
d’art islamique, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 16 octobre 1989 – 15 janvier 1990, 1989; Il
Botany 174

giardino islamico. Architettura, natura, paesaggio, ed. Attilio Petruccioli, 1994;

D. Fairchild Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, & Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain,
2000; and Yves Porter, and Arthur Thévenart, Palaces and Gardens of Per-
sia, 2003 (first published in French: Palais et Jardins de Perse, 2002).
For the Western Medieval world, we could mention Marilyn Stokstad,
and Jerry Stannard, Gardens of the Middle Ages, 1983; Dieter Hennebo,
Gärten des Mittelalters, 1987; Sylvia Landsberg, The Medieval Garden, 1995;
and Sur la terre comme au ciel: Jardins d’Occident à la fin du Moyen Age. Paris, Musée
national du Moyen Age – Thermes de Cluny, 6 juin-16 septembre 2002, 2002.
Gardens of a special type were the monastic garden (on which see Paul
Meyvaert, “The Medieval Monastic Garden,” Medieval Gardens …, ed.
Macdougall [above], 23–53) and the garden of medicinal plants (on which
see Gundolf Keil, “Hortus Sanitatis, Garten der Gesundheit, Gaerde der Sunthede,”
Medieval Gardens …, Macdougall ed. [above], 55–68). The archetype of
both is the garden of Saint Gall, which has been the object of an exhaustive
analysis: Horn, and Born, The Plan of St Gall … (above), vol. 2, 175–209, and
300–13 for the garden of medicinal plants. At the other end of the chro-
nological spectrum are the Renaissance botanic gardens, the best and earliest
examples of which are those of Pisa and Padua. On these gardens, see most
recently: Fabio Garbari, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Alessandro Tosi,
Giardino dei Semplici: L’Orto botanico di Pisa dal XVI al XX secolo, 1991, and L’Orto
botanico di Padova, ed. Alessandro Minelli, 1995.
On the plants in the medieval gardens, whatever their nature, there are
several contributions in the volume Byzantine Garden Culture above: Alice-
Mary Talbot, “Byzantine Monastic Horticulture: the Textual Evidence,”
37–67; Costas N. Constantinides, “Byzantine Gardens and Horticulture
in the Late Byzantine Period, 1204–1453: the Secular Sources,” 87–103;
Robert Rodgers, “Kêpopoiia: Garden Making and Garden Culture in the
Geoponika,” 159–75; and John Scarborough, “Herbs of the Field and
Herbs of the Garden in Byzantine Medicinal Pharmacy,” 179–88. For the
Western medieval garden, see (in chronological order of publication): Jerry
Stannard, “Medieval Gardens and their Plants,” Gardens …, ed. Stok-
stad, and Stannard, (above), 37–69; Penelope Hobhouse, Plants in
Garden History, 1992; Miranda Innes, and Clay Perry, Medieval Flowers,
1997; Michel Botineau, Les Plantes du jardin médiéval, 2001; and Deirdre
Larkin, “Hortus Redivivus: The Medieval Garden Recreated,” Health and
Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. Peter Dendle, and Alain Touwaide,
2008, 228–41, which offers new insights on this question, as its author grew
the plants of medieval medicinal gardens at The Cloisters of the Metropoli-
tan Museum outside New York City.
175 Botany

Q. Plant Acclimatation
The question of the range of the plants in gardens leads to another one: the
transfer of plants, and, in the best cases, their acclimatization and naturali-
zation. A methodological essay was published by Alain Touwaide, “The
Jujube-Tree in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Case Study in the Methodology
of Textual Archaeobotany,” Health and Healing …, ed. Dendle, and Tou-
waide (above), 72–100. The problem is not only to ascertain that non-native
plants mentioned in texts are actually present in a new environment, but also
to identify appropriate sources to trace introduced plants. In this sense, Jerry
Stannard explored medieval tables of taxes: “Medieval Arzneitaxe and
Some Indigenous Plant Species,” Orbis Pictus: Kultur und pharmaziehistorische
Studien. Festschrift für Wolfgang-Hagen Hein zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Werner
Dressendörfer, and Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke , 1985, 267–72. As
for tracing non-native plants, some studies were made (in chronological
order of publication): John M. Riddle, “The Introduction and Use of East-
ern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages,” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin
und der Naturwissenschaften 49 (1965): 175–98 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid
pro quo … [above], no. II); Jerry Stannard, “Eastern Plants and Plant Prod-
ucts in Medieval Germany,” Actes du XIIIe Congrès International d’Histoire des
Sciences, Moscou, 18–24 août 1971, Sections III & IV: Antiquité et Moyen Age, 1974,
220–25; and several studies by Alain Touwaide: “Un manuscrit athonite du
Traité de matière médicale de Dioscoride: l’Athous Magnae Laurae  75,” Scrip-
torium 45 (1991): 122–27; “Arabic Materia Medica in Byzantium during the
11th Century A.D. and the Problems of Transfer of Knowledge in Medieval
Science,” Science and Technology in the Islamic World, ed. S. M. Razaullah An-
sari, 2002, 223–47; Medicinalia Arabo-Byzantina, 1: Manuscrits et textes, 1997;
“Lexica medico-botanica byzantina … [above]”; “Arabic Medicine in Greek
Translation. A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the International Society
for the History of Islamic Medicine 1 (2002): 45–53; “Magna Graecia iterata. Greek
Medicine in Southern Italy in the 11th and 12th Centuries,” Medicina in Magna
Graecia: The Roots of our Knowledge, ed. Alfredo Musajo Somma , 2004,
85–101; and “Medicina Bizantina e Araba alla Corte di Palermo,” Medicina,
Scienza e Politica al Tempo di Federico II. Conferenza Internazionale, Castello Utveggio,
Palermo, 4–5 ottobre 2007, ed. Natale Gaspare De Santo, and Guido Bel-
lingghieri, 2008, 39–55.
Such process of transfer of plants had also an impact on botanical lexi-
con, on wich there are many studies. For an example, see John A. C. Grep-
pin, Bark’ Galianosi: The Greek-Armenian Dictionary to Galen, 1985.
Botany 176

R. Botanical Illustration
Last but far from least, the botanical illustration. Publications are numerous,
from coffee-table books and commented color tables from illuminated manu-
scripts to expensive facsimiles of manuscripts (with a volume of commentary)
and specialized studies best represented by such work as Giulia Orofino,
“Gli erbari di età sveva,” Gli erbari medievali tra scienza simbolo e magia: Testi del
VII Colloquio Medievale, Palermo, 5–6 maggio 1988 [1990], 325–46, and, more re-
cently, Ead., “Ad decus et utilitatem operis. Caratteristiche e funzioni dell’illus-
trazione scientifica nel medioevo,” Medicina nei secoli 14 (2002): 439–60.
This field of study was radically transformed during the 19th century.
At its very beginning, indeed, Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison
(1759–1818) published an article in which he denied that plant represen-
tations in the manuscripts of Dioscorides, De materia medica, had any value:
“Observations Sur les Manuscrits de Dioscorides qui sont conservés à la Bib-
liothèque nationale,” Magasin Encyclopédique/Journal des Sciences, des Lettres et
des Arts 2 (1802): 152–16. Nevertheless, the English botanist John Sibthorp
(1758–1796), who was the first to describe and identify the Greek flora ac-
cording to Linnaeus’ system, consulted three illustrated manuscripts of
Dioscorides. On his way to Greece, indeed, he stopped in Vienna where
he examined the 6th-century manuscript now at the Österreichische National
Bibliothek, medicus graecus 1, and the 7th-century copy now in Naples,
National Library. He also visited Mount Athos where he inspected a codex
of Dioscorides, which might be the mid-11th-century copy in the collection
of the Megisti Lavra Monastery ( 75). In 1855, the German bibliographer
of the history of medicine Ludwig Choulant (1791–1861) drew the atten-
tion of the scientific community to the Vienna and Naples copies of Diosco-
rides’ treatise and to their use by Western botanists from Rembert Dodoens
(1516–1585), author of the famous Cruydeboeck first published in 1554:
“Ueber die Handschriften des Dioskurides mit Abbildungen,” Archiv für die
zeichnenden Künste 1 (1855): 56–62. In 1883, Henri Bordier (1817–1888)
published a systematic census of the illustrations in the Greek codices of
the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, including the medical manuscripts with
botanical illustrations: Description des peintures et autres ornements dans les manu-
scrits grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale, 1883. However, it was only with the
magisterial study of the codex Vienna medicus graecus 1, published in 1906 ac-
companying its first facsimile that the scientific analysis of ancient botan-
ical illustration started: Antonius De Premerstein (1869–1935), Carolus
Wessely (1860–1931), and Iosephus Mantuani (1860–1933) De codicis
Dioscuridei Aniciae Iulianae, nunc Vindobonensis Med. Gr. 1 historia, forma, scriptura,
picturis, ed. Iosephus de Karabacek (1845–1918), 1906.
177 Botany

Since then, much work has been done. A classical volume is The Art of
Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History by Wilfrid Blunt (1901–1987) with
the assistance of William T. Stearn, which was first published in 1950, and
has been repeatedly reedited since. The work was followed by The Illustrated
Herbal by Blunt, and Sandra Raphael, first published in 1979 (with a re-
vised edition in 1994), and also translated, among others into Italian (1989).
Among the many illustrated books in this vein, we could mention the follow-
ing (of different types, in different languages, and in chronological order
of publication): Karl Eugen Heilmann, Kräuterbücher in Bild und Geschichte,
1966; Immagine e natura: L’immagine naturalistica nei codici e libri a stampa delle
Biblioteche Estense e Universitaria. Secoli XV XVII, Catalogo della mostra, Modena, 21
marzo-15 maggio 1984, 1984; and Celia Fisher, Flowers in Medieval Manuscripts,
2004.

S. Facsimiles of Herbals
The study of botanical manuscripts and, by way of consequence, of botanical
illustration – has immensely benefitted from the improvement in printing
techniques and quality during the last quarter of the 20th century, and, more
recently in image technology, which made it possible to produce facsimiles
of manuscripts of the highest quality, almost identical to the originals.
The most ancient Greek manuscripts of Dioscorides, De materia medica,
have been reproduced twice each (also in more common editions), as well as
the Greek Nicander of Paris, some Arabic copies of Dioscorides, other botan-
ico-pharmaceutical compilations, many Latin herbals and, also, the splen-
didly and lavishly 14th-century illustrated copies of the Tacuinum sanitatis.
The production of such high-quality and expensive facsimiles is now
challenged by the digital reproduction of manuscripts, be it on CDRom or on
the Internet, which is much less expensive and open to a larger audience.
Many libraries and museums, particularly libraries of botanical gardens and
specialized rare-book collections, are currently digitizing all or parts of the
herbals in their collections (manuscript and printed). However interesting
these reproductions are (as they give a wider access to these documents,
usually rare and often of a restricted access), they do not cover the whole sector
and do not provide relevant analytical information (especially botanical).
This is the objective, instead, of the Web site PLANT (the name of which is the
acronym of Plantarum Aetatis Novae Tabulae or Renaissance Botanical Illustrations)
created at the Botany Department of the National Museum of Natural His-
tory at the Smithsonian Institution, on the site of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion Libraries (http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/herbals). Though de-
voted to Renaissance botanical illustration, it includes late medieval books.
Botany 178

Furthermore, it adds original scientific metadata on the authors and their

works, the books themselves, and the history of plant representations. Also
and no less important it gives the scientific name of the plants, as well as their
medieval names in a broad range of languages extracted from the books
themselves, and their names in five modern languages (English, French, Ger-
man, Italian, Spanish). Images can be consulted by author, title, period, and
plant name (in all the languages above, including the several medieval ones).
A world inventory of medical and natural history manuscripts with
scientific illustrations (in all languages) was published by Loren MacKin-
ney (1891–1963), Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, 1965. The
photographic archive created by MacKinney to compile this list is deposited
at the library of the North Carolina State University at Chapel Hill and is ac-
cessible via Internet (http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/mackinney).

T. The Classical Pictorial Tradition

In spite of the vast quantity of material preserved, research on botanical illus-
tration has focused on some major illustrated herbals, principally De materia
medica by Dioscorides and its epiphenomena, particularly in the Latin West,
from the Pseudo-Apuleius to late medieval anonymous herbals of all kinds.
On Dioscorides, one could single out the following publications in addi-
tion to the 1906 epoch-making study edited by de Karabacek above, and
the volumes of commentary that accompany the facsimiles. See, for example
(in chronological order of publication): Miranda Anichini, “Il Dioscoride di
Napoli,” Atti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze
morali, storiche e filologiche Serie VIII, n. 11 (1956): 77–104; Ranuccio Bianchi-
Bandinelli (1900–1975), “Il Dioscoride napoletano,” La Parola del Passato
11 (1956): 48–51; Herbert Hunger, “Dioskurides,” Reallixikon zur byzantin-
ischen Kunst, vol. 1 (1966): 1191–96; and, more recently, Sergio Toresella,
“Dioscoride,” Enciclopedia dell’Arte Medievale, vol. 5 (1994), 655–63. These
publications of an introductory or encyclopedic nature can be usefully com-
plemented by the following in-depth analyses of illustrated herbals: [Henri
Omont (1857–1940)], Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei De Materia Medica Libri VII:
Accedunt Nicandri et Eutecnii Opuscula Medica. Codex Constantinopolitanus saeculo X
exaratus et picturis illustratus, olim Manueli Eugenici, Caroli Rinuccini Florentini,
Thomae Phillipps Angli, nunc inter Thesauros Pierpont Morgan Bibliothecae asserva-
tus, 2 vol., 1935; Paul Buberl (1885–1942), Die byzantinische Handschriften,
1. Der Wiener Dioskurides und die Wiener Genesis, 1937; Otto Mazal, Pflanzen,
Wurzeln, Säfte, Samen. Antike Heilkunst in Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurides,1981;
Alain Touwaide, “Un recueil grec de pharmacologie du Xe siècle illustré
au XIVe siècle: le Vaticanus graecus 284,” Scriptorium 39 (1985): 13–56; Emilie
179 Botany

Leal, “Un manuscrit illustré du traité de matière médicale de Dioscoride

le Paris grec 2180,” B. A. thesis, University of Provence, Aix-Marseille, 2 vols.,
1997; Alessia Aletta, “Studi e ricerche sul Dioscoride della Pierpont Mor-
gan Library M. 652”, B. A. thesis, University of Rome “La Sapienza,” 2 vols.,
1997–1998; Daniela Fausti, “MP3 2095 Erbario illustrato,” Estratto provviso-
rio dal Corpus dei Papiri Greci di Medicina, 1998, 43–58; Mauro Ciancaspro,
Guglielmo Cavallo, and Alain Touwaide, Dioscurides, De materia medica,
facsimile edition with a commentary, 2 vols., 1999; and Alain Touwaide, “The
Salamanca Dioscorides (Salamanca, University Library, 2659),” Erytheia 24
(2003): 125–58.
Many of such publications deal mainly with the tradition of the illus-
trations, that is, their models and copies, without necessarily considering the
macroscopic tradition of botanical illustration. We cannot discuss here the
debated question of the origins of botanical illustration (do they go back to
Dioscorides or have they been introduced later into the manuscripts of De ma-
teria medica?), as it is out of the scope of the present essay (for one of the latest
contributions to this question in the current state, see Giulia Orofino,
“Dioskurides war gegen Pflanzenbilder,” Die Waage 30 [1991]: 144–49).
The major question posed by the representations of plants in medieval
manuscripts (whatever the language, Greek, Latin, or Arabic) is their relation
with ancient models. This question implies, as a corollary, another one, on
the existence or not of periods of artistic revival. The major contributions
in this field were by the historians of art Kurt Weitzmann (1904–1993) (see
Die byzantinische Buchmalerei des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., 1935 [rpt. 1996];
“Das klassische Erbe in der Kunst Konstantinopels,” Alte und Neue Kunst:
Wiener kunstwissenschaftliche Blätter 3 [1954]: 41–59; English translation: “The
Classical Heritage in the Art of Constantinople,” Studies in Classical and Byzan-
tine Manuscript Illumination, ed. Herbert L. Kessler with an introduction by
Hugo Buchthal, 1971, 126–150; and Geistige Grundlagen und Wesen der make-
donischen Renaissance, 1963; English translation: “The Character and Intellec-
tual Origins of the Macedonian Renaissance,” Studies … [above], 176–223),
and Heide Grape Albers (Spätantike Bilder aus der Welt des Arztes: Medizin. Bil-
derhandschriften der Spätantike und ihre mittelalterliche Überlieferung, 1977). On
this question, see also such work as Diane O. Le Berrurier, The Pictorial
Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ De rerum
naturis, 1978. Another corollary of this question of the link between book
production and tradition is the problem of personal observation of nature. In
an often cited article considered as seminal, Otto Pächt (1902–1988)
(author also of “Die früheste abendländische Kopie der Illustrationen des
Wiener Dioskurides,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 38 [1975]: 201–14) ident-
Botany 180

ified the late 13th-century manuscript now in London, British Library, Eger-
ton 747, possibly of Salernitan origin, as the first manifestation of the inter-
est for nature showed by Italian artists (“Early Italian Nature Studies and the
Early Calendar Landscape,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13
[1950]: 13–47). Much of the later production focused on this question of the
birth or realism (see, for example, Sergio Toresella, “Il Dioscoride di Istan-
bul e le prime figurazioni naturalistiche botaniche,” Atti e Memorie dell’Accade-
mia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 13 [1996]: 21–40, who locates the origin of
realism in a 13th-century of the Arabic translation of Dioscorides), and on the
Egerton manuscript, traditionally considered as a milestone in the develop-
ment of scientific botanical illustration (in this sense, see, for example, the
recent reproduction of the manuscript, with a study, by Minta Collins, and
Sandra Raphael, A Medieval Herbal: A Facsimile of British Library Egerton MS 747,
2003. For a renewed approach to the manuscript, its text and its illus-
trations, see Jean Givens, “Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de
herbis, 1280–1526,” Visualizing … , ed. Givens, Reeds, and Touwaide,
(above), 115–45, and also Iolanda Ventura, “Per un’edizione del Tractatus de
herbis manoscritto Egerton 747,” Salerno: Un progetto di paesaggio, ed. Paola Ca-
pone, and Pierfranco Galliani, 2002, 129–37). However correct Pächt’s
study might be, other manuscripts make it possible to trace earlier signs of
observation of nature. On this question of observation in ancient natural
sciences, see, in addition to the articles by Beaujouan, “La Prise de con-
science …” (above), Ribemont and Sodigne-Costes, “Botanique médi-
évale …” (above), and Jacquart, “L’Observation …” (above), Orofino, “Il
rapporto con l’antico e l’osservazione …” (above), and also Jean Givens, Ob-
servation and image-making in Gothic art, 2005. More generally, see also Guy
Beaujouan, “Réflexions sur les rapports entre théorie et pratique au Moyen
Age, The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning: Proceedings of the First International
Colloquium on Philosophy, Science, and Theology in the Middle Ages September 1973,
ed. John E. Murdoch, and Edith Dudley Sylla, 1975, 437–84.
The recent work by Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Tradi-
tions, 2000, does not bring any new element (and is largely misleading on nu-
merous points), however lavishly illustrated it is and well documented it
might seem. The fact is that the approach to ancient and medieval botanical
illustation lacks a semantics of scientific illustration and particularly of natu-
ral history illustration in spite of such publications as, for instance, Alfred
Stückelberger, Bild und Wort: Das illustrierte Fachbuch in der antiken Natur-
wissenschaften, Medizin und Technik, 1994. However needed such study is, the
most recent research shifted focus from the pictures themselves to their mak-
ing and the way they translate the perception of nature (rather than the sup-
181 Byzantine Art and Architecture

posed objectivity of nature itself), in a significant, and probably post-modern

way, as is shown, for example, by the several essays in the collection Visualiz-
ing …, ed. Givens, Reeds, and Touwaide, (above).

Select Bibliography
Julia Ma Carabaza Bravo, Expiración García Sánchez, Esteban Hernández
Bermejo, and Alfonzo Jiménez Ramírez, Árboles y arbustos de Al-Andalus (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2004); Willem F. Daems, Nomina sim-
plicium medicinarum ex synonymariis Medii Aevi collecta: Semantische Untersuchungen zum
Fachwortschatz hoch- und spätmittelalterlicher Drogenkunde (Leiden, New York, and Co-
logne: E. J. Brill, 1993); Marcel De Cleene and Marie Claire Lejeune, Compendium of
Symbolic and Ritual Plants in Europe, 2 vols. (Ghent: Mens & Cultuur, 2002); Hendrik J.
Drossart Lulofs, and E. L. J. Poortman, Nicolaus Damascenus ‘De plantis’: Five Trans-
lations (Amsterdam, Oxford, and New York: North-Holland Publishing Company,
1989); Hermann Fischer, Mittelalterliche Pflanzenkunde (Munich: Verlag der Münch-
ner Drucke,1929; rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1967); Carmélia Opsomer, Index de la phar-
macopée de Ier au Xe siècle, 2 vols. (Hildesheim, Zurich, and New York: Olms, 1989); John
M. Riddle, Quid pro quo: Studies in the History of Drugs (Aldershot, Hampshire, and
Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1992); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte der arabischen Schrifttums,
vol. 4: Alchimie, Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur bis ca. 430 H. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); Jerry
Stannard, Pristina medicamenta: Ancient and Medieval Medical Botany, ed. Katherine E.
Stannard, and Richard Kay (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, VT: Variorum,
1999); id., Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Age and the Renaissance, ed. Katherine E.
Stannard, and Richard Kay (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate,
1999); Johannes Stirling, Lexicon nominum herbarum arborum fructuumque lingua latinae
ex fontibus Latinitatis ante saeculum XVII scriptis, collegit et descriptionibus botanicis illustravit,
4 vols. (Budapest: Encyclopaedia, 1995–1998); Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und
Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1972).

Alain Touwaide

Byzantine Art and Architecture

A. Introduction
Byzantine art is a Christian art, dedicated to the expression of the faith and
the dogmas of the Eastern, Orthodox Church. It includes several aspects of
pictorial arts, such as mosaics, murals, icon-painting, illuminative manu-
scripts, sculptures, ceramics, metal and stone objects, jewels, coins, textiles
as well as church- and secular architecture. Both chronologically and topo-
graphically it concerns a vast space of time and a wide geographical area,
Byzantine Art and Architecture 182

with, however, unstable borders; from eastern Asia Minor to southern Balk-
ans, and from northern Africa to Italy and Greece. A typical – not by all
scholars accepted – date for its official start is 324 A.D., when the emperor
Constantine the Great transferred the capital of the Roman Empire from
Rome to the newly-founded city of Constantinople. An equally important
date is 313, when the Mediolano (Milano) Edictum was declared, which led
to religious liberty, and consequently, to the recognition of Christian faith
as the state’s religion. A definite end is 1453, when Constantinople, the
capital of the Byzantine state, was finally conquered by the Ottoman Turks.
During the Byzantine era foreign cultures, such as Islam or the West, ac-
cepted impacts and transferred influences, establishing interesting forms.
After the fall of Constantinople, the tradition of Byzantine art remained
vivid and it was reflected centuries hereafter to the artistic production of
eastern world (Georg Ostroworsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates
[1940; 1963]; The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. IV, 1966; Dionysios Za-
kythinos, The Byzantine Empire 324–1071, 1st ed. 1969, 1972, 19–23; Gilbert
Dagron, Naissance d’ une capitale: Constantinople et ses constitutions de 330 à 451,
1974; Ekaterini Christophilopoulou, Byzantine History, vol. 2, 1st ed.
1975, 1993, 20–21,127–138; Ioannis Karayiannopoulos, The Byzantine
State, 1st ed. 1983, 2001, 52–61.

B. Terminological Definition and Analysis

Despite the variations of style, due to epoch or locality, Byzantine art and
architecture is of uniform and distinct character, without nevertheless luck-
ing of experimentations. In order to study it in a more effective, methodo-
logical way, a division of time periods and geographical locations is tradi-
tionally established. Consequently, there is a typical distinction of the Early
Christian (330–843), Middle Byzantine (843–1204) and Late Byzantine era
(1204–1453), as well as the artistic production and monuments of great
centers (Constantinople, Thessaloniki, northern Italy, etc.) and those of the
provinces (Greece, Asia Minor, Balkans, Near East, etc.).
The typological evolution of Byzantine architecture is characterized by
the progressive abandonment of the large scale basilicas with wooden or
vaulted roofs of the first centuries. Parallel to this tendency is the emergence
of the magnificent domed churches in Constantinople (Saint Sophia, Saint
Erene, etc.) in the middle of the 6th century, which led to the adoption of new
provincial types like triconchs, tetraconchs, free crosses, remaining however
to a modest scale.
The popular use of the cross-in-square inscribed domed type appeared
officially in mainland of Greece, in the second half of the 10th century
183 Byzantine Art and Architecture

(Church of Theotokos, Boiotia). The use of brick patterns as decoratives

(letters, crosses, meanders, etc.) as well as of the cloisonné masonry (stones
encircled by bricks), prevailed as elements that characterized the church
architecture hereafter.
The dominance of the Crusaders after 1204 in lands of the Byzantine em-
pire brought about changes in the provincial church architecture. Cheaper
and easier to built types became common, such as the traverse vault or the
single vaulted churches. The style of late Byzantine architecture is expressed
by the addition to the main church of collateral spaces, such as naves, and
chapels, with a rich and elegant brick decoration.
In pictorial arts, the main tendencies were a higher or lesser degree of ab-
straction, the corresponding amount of classical heritage, the intense spiri-
tuality of figures and the deliberate refusal of nature resemblance. The ear-
liest depictions are testified in tombs and catacombs, with vivid symbolic
content. Landmarks of the early Christian period are the panel-icons of the
encaustic technique, dated from the 6th to 9th century. The application of mo-
saic decoration was also common during this period, reaching a peak during
the reign of emperor Justinian (527–565). The fact displays the lavish patron-
age that allowed huge funds on the erection and the decoration of the
churches in the grand centers. During however the centuries of Iconoclasm
(726–843), a period of political and religious crisis, non-pictorial symbols,
such as crosses or geometrical and plant motives were imposed as the official
expression of art.
A period of great influence of classical artistic values succeeded, known
as “Macedonian Renaissance” named after the dynasty that ruled the empire
from the 9th century. It inspired miniature painting and reflected in ambi-
tious iconographic programs. In the region of Cappadocia a provincial ex-
pression of painting was exercised, further influencing iconography and
style of the so-called “lay” art.
The conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 and the conse-
quent division of the former Byzantine lands in Latin states, left decisive
effects in the pictorial arts of the East, visible in details in figures and in com-
positions. The last phase of the Byzantine art, the so-called “Paleologean
Renaissance.” named after the last dynasty that ruled the empire, adapted a
humanistic character, with dramatic and passionate gestures, voluminous
and plastic figures, representations of rich architectural and natural land-
scape (Architecture: Gabriel Millet, L’ École grecque dans l’ architecture Byzan-
tine, 1916; Georgios Sotiriou, Christian and Byzantine Archaeology, 1942;
André Grabar, Martyrium: Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’ art Chrétien
antique, 1946; Anastasios Orlandos, H 
« 
   
Byzantine Art and Architecture 184

   « 
 « «, vol. 1–3, 1952–1957; Richard Kraut-
heimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 1st ed. 1965, Cyril Mango
Architettura Bizantina, 1979; Friedrich-Wilhelm Deichmann, Einführung in
die christliche Archäologie, 1983; Painting: Otto Demus, Byzantine mosaic decora-
tion, 1964, Viktor Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina, 1967, David Talbot-
Rice, Byzantine painting, the last phase 1968; Kurt Weitzmann-Manolis
Chatzidakis, Krsto Mijatev, and Svetozar Radojcic, Frühe Ikonen: Sinai,
Griechenland, Bulgarien, Jugoslawien, 1965; Kurt Weitzmann, Studies in Classi-
cal and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, 1971.

C. History of Research and Future Trends

The particular interest in Byzantine studies was first demonstrated in the
sections of Byzantine literature and theology. Foreign travelers were the first
who preserved a picture of Byzantine monuments, through descriptions
and engravings. Byzantine art was at first considered as part of medieval
history and philology, and the first “Department of Byzantine Studies”
was founded in Munich, Germany, in 1892 by the scholar Karl Krum-
bacher. The first books concerning architecture and mural painting were
published mainly at the beginning of the 20th century. Scholarly interest was
especially focused on the Byzantine antiquities of Asia Minor and Cappado-
cia, as well as those of Northern Africa. Matters concerning the origin and the
expansion of the cross-in-square and of the traverse vault type are still open
to debate.
A long list of scientific journals and institutes treat aspeds of Byzantine
culture, history, and archaeology. The “International Association for Byzan-
tine Studies” was organized in 1948 and since then 21 conferences have been
held in several cities. After the end of Second World War, publications as well
as great scale excavations took place. One of the greatest expositions that
brought out the Byzantine art to the world was organized in Athens in 1964.
Since then, numerous exhibitions and museum collections from Europe to
the United States have been dedicated to the art of Byzantium.
Future trends include the study of settlements, church, secular and pre-
industrial buildings. Light is also shed upon fields such as ceramics or metal
artifacts of daily life – finds often neglected in former times.

Select Bibliography
Marcell Restle and Klaus Wessel, Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst (Stuttgart:
Hiersemann, 1966); Charles Delvoye, L’art byzantin (Paris: Arthaud, 1967); Wolfgang
Fritz Volbach and Jacqueline Lafontaine-dosogne, Byzanz und der christliche
Osten (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1968); André Grabar, L’art de la fin de l’antiquité et
185 Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

du moyen age, 3 vol. (Paris: College de France, 1968); David Talbot Rice, Art of the Byzan-
tine Era (New York: Praeger 1963/1994); L’art byzantin, art européen (Athens, 1964
[exhibition catalogue]); The Glory of Byzantium, ed. Helen Evans and William Wixom
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997 [exhibition catalogue]); Byzantium:
Faith and Power, ed. Helen Evans (London: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004
[exhibition catalogue]).

Sophia Germanidou

Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

A. Introduction
Modern academic Byzantine Studies began around the mid-19th century.
Because these Studies had their origin in classical philology, they were first
focused on literature, historiography, rhetoric, the visual arts and jurispru-
dence. Philosophy remained outside the scope of the main interests in
Byzantine Studies, despite the seminal research of Karl Krumbacher
(Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur, 1897), and perhaps precisely because of
his work, insofar as he treated philosophical texts within the study of Byzan-
tine literature in general, without specifically differentiating philosophical
texts from other types of literature. Moreover, Krumbacher denied the
possibility of any original philosophical development in Byzantine thought,
and spoke of the “further fruitlessness” of the “Greek intellect” (op. cit.,
428).
In light of the origins of Byzantine Studies and Krumbacher’s judg-
ment, Herbert Hunger’s statement in the mid-20th century comes as no sur-
prise: “It could be argued that there was no Byzantine philosophy at all!
Theology was once and for all responsible for the sphere of metaphysics, and
every philosophical work produced outside this framework, as far as we can
conceive today, essentially is merely some derivative of Platonism and/or Ar-
istotelianism, without even mentioning that there is no room for talking
about some development of the Byzantine philosophy” (Herbert Hunger,
Byzantinische Geisteswelt, 1958, 15). Exactly twenty years later, however, the
same author devoted the first sixty pages of his major work, Die hochsprach-
liche profane Literatur der Byzantiner (vol. 1, 1978, 4–62), to philosophy in By-
zantium, defining the main orbits that research in the next 20 years would
follow. So, something happened between 1958 and 1978 – the foundations
of which were laid somewhat earlier – that changed Hunger’s views.
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises 186

B. The Real Beginning: Tatakis

Indeed, the real beginning of the study of Byzantine philosophy may be
dated shortly before Hunger’s first book, and is related to the works of Basil
Tatakis, most of all to his book La Philosophie Byzantine, published in 1949 as
a fascicule supplementaire to the Histoire de la philosophie of Emile Brehier.
Tatakis himself declares in the preface of that book that there had been no
preceding studies or texts on the subject that he could use in his own re-
search: the philosophical thought in Byzantium had not before then been an
object of detailed and systematic research. Although some of Tatakis’s ana-
lyses may seem superficial today, we would be ungrateful not to remark his
exceptional merits in the study of Byzantine philosophy, of which he un-
doubtedly is to be considered as the modern founder. Besides identifying the
major figures in Byzantine philosophy and their most important teachings,
Tatakis posed several questions that became crucial for interpreters in the
course of the next 50 years.
The first question posed by Tatakis is whether philosophy, in the strict
sense of the term, really existed in Byzantium or whether it was merely a
technical and didactic instrument of theology. Tatakis answered this ques-
tion in favor of the independence of philosophy, stressing the higher level
of autonomy of philosophy in Byzantium in comparison with the situation
in medieval Western Europe. In the context of that argument, it is not by
chance that he highlights the work of Michael Psellos; because of Tatakis’s
influence Psellos is still regarded by many as “the central figure in Byzantine
philosophy,” and his name is known even to those who otherwise do not
have the slightest idea about the existence of philosophy in Byzantium. Ta-
takis’s position entails another question, concerning the relative influence
on Byzantine philosophy of ancient philosophy, on the one hand, and of
Christian dogma, on the other (for ancient philosophy and Christian dogma
indisputably are the two basic sources of philosophy in Byzantium).
Tatakis also raised questions concerning, strictly speaking, the actual
temporal beginning of Byzantine philosophy. The question arises because of
the gradual, “evolutionary” and non-catastrophic beginnings of the histori-
cal Byzantine period. Even now historians still argue whether Byzantine
philosophy has its origins in the 4th or in the 6–7th or even in the 9th century.
Today, there is a tendency to accept that the main problems, definitions and
methods of Byzantine philosophy were formed in the period before the
7th century, that the independence of Byzantine philosophy is already visible
during the 7–8th century, and that in the 9th century we are able to speak
about a “Byzantine classicism” (so Paul Lemerle’s expression, Le Premier hu-
manisme byzantin, 1971, 196 and 204) that refers to “classics” at the roots of its
187 Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

own tradition. An overemphasis on the problem of dating is evidence of the

uncertainty concerning the constructive elements of Byzantine philosophy.
Tatakis, who in 1949 put the beginning in the 4th century, in 1969
(“La Philosophie grecque patristique et byzantine, “Histoire de la philosophie,
vol. I, Orient, Antiquité, Moyen Age, 1969, 936–1005) yet speaks about a preced-
ing “early Byzantine period,” which he names “patristic.” He thus sympto-
matically introduces a concept of “patristic” that is alien to the Byzantine
tradition itself, and thereby casts the problem of the self-identity of philos-
ophy into an inadequate and distorting framework. For a long time the crite-
ria determining the “essence” of Byzantine philosophy have been borrowed
from the perspective and categories of Western European medieval culture.
That perspective is especially evident in the ways scholars have posed and re-
solved questions concerning the relationship between “theology and philos-
ophy” in Byzantium.

C. The Establishment of the Paradigm

The book Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich by Hans-Georg
Beck, published in 1959, advanced this question further. Beck catalogues,
systemizes and characterizes the authors and the texts, which still today
remain the most important objects of research for the historians of Byzantine
philosophy; working as an historian of theology and adopting an entirely
Western European definition of “theology,” he subdivides philosophical
texts into the categories “dogmatic and polemical.” He thus began a discus-
sion that has lasted for nearly 50 years, providing a framework for the inves-
tigation of the philosophical affiliations of authors, with fundamental sig-
nificance for philosophical developments in Byzantium.
In his collection of articles titled Antike Philosophie und byzantinisches Mit-
telalter and especially in his program text, “Die Kontinuität in der Philoso-
phie der Griechen bis zum Untergang des byzantinischen Reiches” (op. cit.,
15–37), Klaus Oehler established another circle of questions and problems
concerning Byzantine philosophy. As the title of his program text indicates,
Oehler sought to prove that Byzantine philosophy was essentially a con-
tinuation of ancient philosophy in the Byzantine Christian “regime;” thus
he emphasized the continual reception of Aristotle and especially of Plato by
Byzantine thinkers, and invented the formula of the “neo-Platonic-Byzan-
tine” philosophy – also under the sign of Christianity – which according to
him lasted from the 3rd until the 15th century. Oehler’s interpretation has
given rise to endless discussions concerning Platonism and Aristotelianism
in Byzantium; as a result of being analyzed in these broad categories, it be-
came a commonplace that the prevailing “Platonic” character of Byzantine
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises 188

philosophy may be contrasted with the prevailing “Aristotelian” character

of Western philosophy. Reading Byzantine philosophy in these terms made
it difficult to find anything philosophically specific to the thought of Byzan-
tine thinkers themselves. This discussion has become exhausted. Contem-
porary scholarship on Byzantine philosophy supports the argument of Linos
Benakis that despite the direct reception and assimilation of terms, con-
cepts, problems and views articulated in ancient philosophy, it is proper
to think of “an authentic […] philosophical tradition in the Byzantine
world” (“Byzantine Philosophy,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol 2, ed.
E. Craig, 1998, 160–65, here 162). Indeed, we can speak properly and not
merely generically about Byzantine “Platonism” and “Aristotelianism” only
during and after the decade of the 1440s! It is curious, for Benakis claims
that Byzantine philosophy exactly at that time is “unsystematic,” a state-
ment which itself has recently become an object of dispute.
Oehler also undertook to identify and systemize what he judged to be
the main problems of Byzantine philosophy. He determined the most im-
portant basic questions concerning not only the origins and primary sources
of Byzantine philosophy but also concerning its “essence” or “spirit.” That
‘essence’ of Byzantine philosophy, Oehler argued, is to be found especially
in anthropological questions concerning the human substance and hyposta-
sis, the soul, reason and the body. Within this network of anthropological
questions, Oehler identifies the doctrine concerning the distinction be-
tween the essence and its energies (which has its origins in Aristotle but was
transmitted as well in neo-Platonic and Christian speculations) as central to
all of Byzantine philosophy.
The main lines of research on Byzantine philosophy in the period
1949–1969 were consolidated and ratified in Hunger’s fundamental work
published in 1978. The whole problematic of this line of interpretation
centers around three questions or topics: (1) the definition of philosophy
(which established, entails the question of the historical “continuity” and
“innovation”); (2) the relations between “Platonism” and “Aristotelianism”;
(3) the relation between “philosophy and theology.”
Another product generated by Hunger’s analysis of Byzantine philos-
ophy is the notion “Christian Humanism” in Byzantium, which term in the
end explains nothing – or perhaps everything. In any event, the tight linking
of philosophy with theological discourse in Byzantium has enabled scholars
to comprehend the whole content and wide range of problems discussed by
Byzantine “philosophic” thinkers.
In 1977 Gerhard Podskalsky published his capital work titled Theologie
und Philosophie in Byzanz (Podskalsky’s recent book, Von Photios zu Bessarion,
189 Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

2003, develops the same line of interpretation). The significance of Pod-

skalsky’s book surpasses that of the works I have mentioned heretofore.
Podskalsky’s work is based on a detailed knowledge of the sources and
evinces several other remarkable qualities, without which the advances of
contemporary studies of Byzantine philosophy would be inconceivable. At
the same time, one cannot fail to remark the polemic character of his work,
whereby he defines his own positions by contrast with those of a set of oppo-
nents (which doe not include any of the authors that was mentioned so far).
This character of Podskalsky’s work makes it easy for one to identify the
preconceptions that affect his interpretations.
One should first note that Podskalsky does not radically pose the ques-
tion of the specific meaning of the concept of ‘theology’ within Byzantine
culture; rather, he insists that in relation to this term we ought to speak
mainly of a spiritual experience, and he points out further that in Byzantium
theology was not transformed into “science,” as was attempted in the West.
Although he does not say so explicitly, Podskalsky’s arguments suggest
that the speculative discourse and reflection on theological problems in By-
zantium is an element of philosophical thought, that is, that such discourse
and speculation pertains to the superior part of “first philosophy.” Podsk-
alsky’s re-conception of Byzantine theological speculation enables him to
draw attention to the actual methods of philosophizing in Byzantium, and
to differentiate diverse tendencies in Byzantine philosophical culture. Some
of his preconceptions and prejudices, however, cause him underestimate
a limine some trends in Byzantine thought in favor of others; thus, for
example, he speaks of a collision between “mystical theology” (identified
with some “bildungsfeindliche Orthodoxie”) and “humanism” standing for
an “assimilationsfreudige theologische Wissenschaft.” Podskalsky’s crite-
ria for “humanism” (like Hunger’s) are such that under this category one
may include, de facto, all of the philosophically active authors in Byzantium.
That Podskalsky places authors whom he does not like in a contrary cat-
egory is not the result of an analysis of historical realities but of his polemical
preconceptions.
Podskalsky’s modern opponents are thinkers, who have contributed
decisively to the development of the studies in Byzantine philosophy, even
though none of them is a philosopher ex professo and many of them explicitly
reject philosophizing in the theological sphere. Here we refer to such figures
as Vladimir Lossky, Georgy Florovsky and Jean Meyendorff, to which
we can add the names of Vasilij Kriwoshein, Dumitru Staniloae, Kallis-
tos Ware and others. The works of these scholars and thinkers, the so-called
“neo-Palamites” (originally a pejorative name), began to appear in the years
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises 190

immediately following World War II; in their writings they construct an im-
manently coherent or “integral” theological teaching, based strongly on the
works of Gregorius Palamas, which they polemically defend and cast in the
conceptual framework of western European culture, where most of them
anyway live and work.
The significance of these thinkers’ work is to be appreciated by reason of
the fact that, by means of immanent criteria, they discovered the main prob-
lems pertaining to thought about God in the Eastern Christian tradition,
emphasized the main stages in its unfolding, and produced the first critical
editions of Byzantine authors of capital importance. Their work reveals the
specific character of thought within the Eastern tradition and its indepen-
dent value. Precisely in their attempt to stress the specific identity of Byzan-
tine thought and its independence, and in their responses to sharp criticisms
of their work by its opponents, the “neo-Palamites” choose often to exagger-
ate the “otherness” of the Eastern tradition, to ascribe to it an absolute in-
communicability with Western philosophical and theological thought, and
in so doing not rarely impose upon Byzantine thought a certain antiratio-
nalism and anti-philosophic attitude, etc.

D. The Academical Establishment and the Quest for Philosophical

Histories
It is within this perspective that one should evaluate the work of Linos Bena-
kis, whose first article on Byzantine philosophy was published in 1958.
One can say surely that thanks to the books and articles of Benakis, concern-
ing key authors and the general characteristics of Byzantine thought, studies
of Byzantine philosophy now move steadily in the direction of the investi-
gation of authentic philosophical problems within the Byzantine cultural
tradition, and that they are perceived through the lens of a problematic spe-
cific to Byzantine thought (and not, for example, imported from the study
of Western Latin philosophy). Benakis has made another major contribu-
tion: from Tatakis until now students of Byzantine philosophy have la-
mented that a huge number of Byzantine philosophical texts remain un-
edited or published at all. Benakis, his students and the school founded by
him have done much to remedy that situation and to fill that serious void.
Concerning Benakis one should acknowledge yet another important con-
tribution: it was because of his initiative that in 1987 the Commission
on “Byzantine philosophy” in the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la
Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.) was founded; Benakis served as the
President of that Commission from that date until 2002. In sum, one can say
that it is due to the efforts of Linos Benakis’s that studies in Byzantine phil-
191 Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

osophy have become recognized as a normal research and academic disci-

pline.
At this historical juncture, it is a fact that all of the large questions con-
cerning Byzantine philosophy posed by scholars during the second half of
the 20th century concerning the existence, sources and general character-
istics of Byzantine philosophy, its main trends, historical developments,
periods and figures are in principle answered, at least according to the
terms in which they were posited. Essentially a macro-framework for the
study of Byzantine philosophy has achieved consensus. This makes pos-
sible and even demands the investigation of what until now have been
by-passed fields of research. Such, for instance, are the analyses of the
influence of Latin philosophy and theology upon Byzantine thinkers
(important here are the works of John Demetracopoulos) and com-
parative analyses of the Byzantine and Latin traditions (such as the works of
Tzotcho Boiadjiev and generally those of the Bulgarian school of philo-
sophical medieval studies, exemplified, e. g., by the volume Die Dionysius
Rezeption im Mittelalter, ed. Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Georgi Kapriev, and An-
dreas Speer, 2000). Likewise Byzantine philosophers have been studied
in perspectives that are not strictly “philosophical”; noteworthy in this
regard is Nagel G. Wilson’s Scholars of Byzantium (1st ed. 1983, 2nd. ed. 1996),
wherein Wilson explores the Byzantine philosophers in terms of their
relation to the written text.
As I stated above, the study of Byzantine philosophy has become increas-
ingly recognized as a distinct academic discipline. Since 1999 course in the
history of Byzantine philosophy have been established in the curricula of the
universities in practically all of the Orthodox Balkan countries. Such courses
have also appeared in the universities of Western Europe and in America.
There is a noticeable similar expansion of the geography of the research
centers. More and more Byzantine philosophy has attracted interest inde-
pendently of religious or regional and cultural motivation, and there has
developed an interest in philosophical texts beyond the disciplinary bound-
aries of philosophy and theology, e. g., among sociologists. Having reached
the first decade of the 21st century, it is just to say that the founding, accumu-
lative phase of research in Byzantine philosophy – during which the basic
facts were accumulated, the major themes determined and the proper
methods established – has successfully come to an end.
It is for that reason to disagree with Linos Benakis’s thesis from 2002,
according to which “we are not yet ready to replace Tatakis’s work with
a new, more comprehensive history of Byzantine philosophy” (“Current
research in Byzantine Philosophy,” Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources,
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises 192

ed. K. Ierodiakonou, 285). On the contrary, today we are not only ready
but obliged to “replace” it.
Of course, the point here is not simply to replace Tatakis’s book with
books of the same kind, even if these books would be broader in scope, more
detailed or more precise. The development of research has already reached
a point at which the creation of historical surveys of Byzantine Philosophy,
i. e. of more or less elaborate descriptions of its contents, could be viewed
only as anachronism. On the contrary, the period that was started in such one
honorable way by Tatakis, requires, in order to be worthy of the honor due
to its pioneers, to be finished by the construction of a philosophical history
or even philosophical histories of the philosophical practices in Byzantium
(to make use of a Kent Emery’s, Jr., terminological formulation of this dis-
tinction). Only a mature conceptual analysis of the Byzantine philosophical
tradition can explicate to the full the essence of what Tatakis started in
1949.
One contribution to that effort is Georgi Kapriev’s book, Philosophie in
Byzanz, 2005; as well as its pilot Bulgarian version (The Byzantine Philosophy:
Four Centres of the Synthesy, 2001). The object in that book is to present a gen-
eral outline of Byzantine philosophy, constructed in light of the research ac-
cumulated during the period that has just now come to an end.
The book answers or responds to at least two questions that have
remained open. First, it has addressed the problem of the so-called “unsys-
tematic” quality of the thought of Byzantine philosophers. This view was
imposed by two different parties. The first group is constituted by the Ortho-
dox theologians of the 20th century, who correctly relate the concept of a “sys-
tem” with a certain quality of the strictly rational reflection, and therefore re-
ject such a notion in light of their entirely theological interpretation of the
Byzantine tradition. The second group consists of those who have adopted
the Western assumption that the presence of a “system” requires and is
necessarily verified by a systematic text. On the contrary, the book argues
that “systematic” thought exists foremost in the mind, whether or not it ever
finds explicit literary expression, which it is not obliged to do by some inner
necessity. Following a remark by Vladimir Lossky, Kapriev has deter-
mined the systematic structure of Byzantine philosophy through certain
points of the synthesis in which the whole tradition regroups around a given
concept, which defines the paradigm of philosophizing for a sufficient
period of time, although Byzantium does not witness the establishment of
philosophical schools in the strict sense of the term. Against this background
can be solved the problem of the “development” of Byzantine philosophy,
which is “unthinkable” (Hunger) if one tries to chart that development
193 Byzantine Philosophical Treatises

according to the measure of the Latin tradition. If, however, one considers
the new problematic spheres that emerge from a different structuring of the
thematic massifs, the increasing subtlety of the conceptual apparatus, and an
in-depth control of the problems, we can speak with confidence of the un-
folding of a philosophical tradition that moves towards a more-and-more
universal philosophical synthesis, until the time that it was violently rup-
tured.
The end of the 50-year period of scholarly research that outlined will be
marked by the critical recapitulation of that research to be published in the
fascicule on Byzantinische Philosophie in the new Ueberweg history of philos-
ophy (Byzantinische Philosophie: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: Begründet
von Friedrich Ueberweg, rev. ed., ed. Helmut Holzhey, Die Philosophie des Mit-
telalters, vol. 1/1, ed. Georgi Kapriev, forthcoming). Klaus Oehler was
indignant at the fact that in the old four-volume edition of the Ueberweg-
Geschichte all of Byzantine philosophy is summarized in 7 pages. In the new
edition Byzantine philosophy will receive around 30 times more space,
which still is not enough to do full justice to the scope of the tradition and the
factual knowledge that we have about it. Even so, it is adequate for a fitting
summary.

E. The New Phase of Research

At the same time, the strategies and perspectives that will characterize the
new period of research on Byzantine philosophy have already been delin-
eated. These may be seen most clearly in the volume Byzantine Philosophy and
its Ancient Sources, 2002, edited by Katerina Ierodiakonou. The approach
taken by the authors in this volume leaves behind generalizing problems,
while standing firmly on what has already been achieved. The authors study
their subjects in-depth and in detail, focusing on special, concrete and symp-
tomatic problems. So the authors refrain from generalizing conclusions,
understanding that new discoveries will call into question some things that
have seemed evident until now. I do have no doubts that this volume will be
interpreted as the first complete product establishing the paradigm for a
new, second period of research in Byzantine philosophy.
Thus, we are entering an intensive (as opposed to extensive) phase of
scholarship in Byzantine philosophy. During this phase texts offering a gen-
eral explanation of Byzantine philosophy will be fewer and fewer. The schol-
arship will concentrate on investigating concrete details through different,
sometimes unexpected and provocative points of view. An expansion of hor-
izons will undoubtedly occur, as will discoveries of unexpected connections,
until now not seriously considered, and new parameters of the Byzantine
Byzantine Philosophical Treatises 194

tradition of thought will be established. Prejudices and clichés of the past

generation will be overcome, although the new scholarship will probably
generate its own “clichés of the second generation” that will be detected by
some third generation of scholars that follow. The new phase of scholarship
that we are entering will be more firmly based on a more elaborate and per-
fected material and technical apparatus; this aspect means that we shall see
a more dynamic activity in the editing and publishing of primary texts and
sources. Another salient characteristic of the new research agenda will be ex-
tensive international cooperation, conceived in the framework of precisely
formulated and detailed projects, conducted by large-scale international
teams. In this context, one can expect a closer cooperation among the grow-
ing number of research centers dedicated to specialized research in Byzan-
tine philosophy and intellectual history.
All will observe that this state of affairs parallels rather closely the pres-
ent historical situation in many long well-established fields of research (e. g.,
in the field of medieval Latin philosophy). Studies in Byzantine philosophy,
then, are not under-going some scientific revolution, but are experiencing a
normal stage of growth, evincing all of the advantages and disadvantages of
its particular condition.

Select Bibliography
Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich: Beck,
1959); Linos Benakis, Byzantine Philosopha (Athens: Parusia, 2002); Herbert Hunger,
Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1978), 4–62;
Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Cla-
rendon Press, 2002); Georgi Kapriev, Philosophie in Byzanz (Wuerzburg: Königshausen
& Neumann, 2005); Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur von Justi-
nian bis zum Ende des oströmischen Reiches (527–1453) (1892; Munich: Beck, 2nd ed. 1897);
Paul Lemerle, Le Premier humanisme byzantin (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1971); Klaus Oehler, Antike Philosophie und byzantinisches Mittelalter: Aufsätze zur Ge-
schichte des griechischen Denkens (Munich: Beck, 1969); Gerhard Podskalsky, Theologie
und Philosophie in Byzanz: Der Streit um die theologische Methodik in der spätbyzantinischen
Geistesgeschichte (14./15. Jh.), seine systematischen Grundlagen und seine historische Entwick-
lung (Munich: Beck, 1977); Basile Tatakis, La philosophie byzantine (Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, 1949).

Georgi Kapriev
195 Byzantine Sciences

Byzantine Sciences

A. The End of Byzantine Science: the East

Scientific activity was thriving in the Byzantine Empire after the re-conquest
of Constantinople in 1261 over the ephemeral Latin Kingdom (particularly
in the late-13th and the early-14th centuries). Nevertheless, it necessarily de-
creased during the last decades of the Empire because of the strong reduction
of the territory, the population, and the available resources, without ceasing,
however, and not even after the fall of Constantinople on the 29th of May
1453, contrary to an opinio communis. After the Ottoman conquest, the Byzan-
tine scientists who had stayed in the area of the former empire, be they phys-
icians, mathematicians, astronomers, or geographers for instance, integrated
into the Ottoman society and worked for the new ruling class – including in
close collaboration with Ottoman and other colleagues – as such a manu-
script as Vienna, Austria National Library, medicus graecus 1 (dating back to ca.
512 C.E.) suggests.
If the practice of science was not interrupted by the Ottoman conquest,
it was partially transformed, however, as it included from then on a process
of transcultural interaction and transfer, as the many multilingual lexica of
plant names, for example, indicate. Such transcultural exchange increased
over time, particularly with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire by Soli-
man the Magnificent (b. ca. 1494; sultan 1520; d. 1566), the conquest of Per-
sia, and the capture of such important cities as Baghdad in 1535. The library
collections in the capital and in other wealthy cities of the ex-Abbasid Empire
were transferred to Istanbul, and their books moved to the hands of Greek
librarians, if not scientists, as their re-binding indicates. Nevertheless, with
the passing of time, this trend decreased, if it did not stop. With the organiz-
ation of Ottoman Empire and the instauration of the system of the millet, that
is, the groups within the Ottoman society defined on the basis of religions,
Greek speaking communities interacted increasingly less with the other lin-
guistic and religious groups of the Empire, and became gradually isolated
without necessarily having the indispensable means to pursue and develop a
scientific culture. Among others, they did not have access to printing within
the Ottoman Empire (books in Greek alphabet were printed outside, princip-
ally in the Austrian Empire).
In these conditions, Greek communities in the Ottoman world tended to
perpetuate the Byzantine tradition. In medicine, this took the form of the
iatrosofia, that is, compilations of formulas for medicines listed according to
the principle a capite ad calcem (from head to toe). Although such compilations
Byzantine Sciences 196

were often entitled as being by Hippocrates (460–between 375 and

351 B.C.E.), Dioscorides (1st c. C.E.), Galen (129–after 216 [?] C.E.), and Mele-
tius (of uncertain epoch; usually dated between the 7th and the 13th c.), the
formulas were often of a different origin: they came from the medical prac-
tices of the authors of these manuals, as well as from Byzantine medical en-
cyclopedias and therapeutic handbooks preserved among Greek-speaking
groups. The attribution of iatrosofia to the physicians of classical Antiquity is
significant, for it reveals a process of self-identification of Greek-speaking
populations, who affirmed in this way not only their authenticity, but also –
if not above all – their anteriority in a context in which they felt segregated,
and even oppressed. As for the Byzantine Meletius, he was included in the
titles of iatrosofia because he was the author of the work of Christian anthro-
pology that had probably the largest circulation in the Byzantine world. The
presence of his name in the title of iatrosofia reveals the second most import-
ant parameter of the self-definition of the Greek-speaking communities
in the Ottoman world, that of religion, in the specific case here Orthodoxy,
and shows that the Ottoman division of society into groups defined by their
religion was not necessarily perceived as a measure imposed from the outside
by the political authority, but corresponded to a reality (for the primary
sources on Greek science in the Ottoman Empire, see the inventory by
Giannês Karas, Oi epistêmes stên Tourkokratia: Cheirographa kai entupa, 3 vols.,
1992–1994; for the iatrosofion, see Touwaide Alain, “Byzantine Hospital
Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source for the Study of Therapeutics,” The Medieval
Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara S. Bowers, 2007, 147–73).
It was only with the independence of Greece in 1829 that modern, viz.
Western, science arrived in Greece, mainly with the German scientists in-
vited by King Otto (b. 1815; king 1832; d. 1867) to become the first professors
of the newly founded university at Athens. Printing also started to develop
in the country, contributing to the introduction and diffusion of modern
science among the Greek population of the kingdom. Nevertheless, such
works as the iatrosofia continued to be copied by hand until late in the 19th
century, not only within the Greek-speaking communities still in the Otto-
man empire (for example, in Egypt), but even in Greece.

B. The End of Byzantine Science: the West

In the West, Byzantine science had a different fortuna. During the 15th cen-
tury, particularly after the fall of Constantinople, many Byzantine scientists
left the territory of the defunct Empire in a wide move of population going
into exile. They fled westward, to Crete (then a Venetian territory) or further
west to Italy, mainly Florence, Venice-Padua, and Rome, but also to such im-
197 Byzantine Sciences

portant cities as Milan or smaller, but not necessarily less intellectually active
towns such as Ferrara, Modena, or Urbino. They brought with them the texts
that provided the basis of their education, be it general – from Homer to De-
mosthenes, including Pindar, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides or Thucydides
to mention some – philosophical – Plato, for example – or scientific – from
Aristotle to Dioscorides, Ptolemy, or Galen, for instance. In a first phase, such
texts were newly translated into Latin and printed, replacing old medieval
translations. The availability of Greek works in the original language – be
they literary, philosophical, or scientific – and their comparison with the
Latin versions produced in the Middle Ages made Western scientists aware
of the transformations introduced in these works over time, particularly
because of their translation(s) and their transmission from one culture to an-
other, first from Byzantium to the Arabic world and then from the Arabic
world to the West. Although these transformations were not always deterio-
rations resulting from the reproduction of texts by hand, but were often new
developments added to the texts in layered levels of sedimentation by Arabo-
Islamic and then medieval scientists, they were seen by Western Renaissance
scientists as corruptions of the original contents. The medieval versions of
classical texts that circulated in the West at that time were rejected, as were
also their epiphenomena, be they glosses, more developed commentaries,
new interpretations, or more original works rooted, however, in the ancient
heritage.
One of the most adamant defenders of this return to the supposed orig-
inal purity of ancient scientific works was the physician of Ferrara, Nicolao
Leoniceno (1428–1524). Probably transferring to scientific treatises the
methods of textual criticism developed for literary works by Angelo Po-
liziano Ambrogini (1454–1494), better known as Poliziano, Leoniceno pro-
moted a return to the most ancient works of the Greeks, which, in the field of
medicine, were those by Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen, thus eliminat-
ing de facto, though not necessarily explicitly, their subsequent developments
in the Byzantine world, from Oribasius (4th c.) to Nicolaus Myrepsus (14th c.),
and including Aetius and Alexander of Tralles (both 6th c.), Paul of Egina
(7th c.), Theophanes Chrysobalantes (10th c.; renamed Theophanes Nonnos in
the Renaissance), Symeon Seth (11th c.), or Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius
(13th–14th c.). The corpus of writings by or attributed to Aristotle was printed
in Greek as early as 1495–1497 by the humanist publisher Aldo Manuzio
(1449–1515), the Corpus Galenicum in 1525 by the heirs of Aldo Manuzio, and
the whole series of treatises ascribed to Hippocrates in 1526 by the same.
There were some exceptions in this shift from contemporary to ancient
works, the most characteristic of which was Giorgio Valla (ca. 1447–1500).
Byzantine Sciences 198

The owner of the largest collection of Greek manuscripts of that time, he

translated into Latin some Byzantine scientific treatises, among them the
11th-century Byzantine translation of the Arabic treatise On Smallpox and
Measles originally by abû Bakr ar-Râzî (865–925 C.E.). The work seemed to
offer therapeutic value for the treatment of syphilis that was spreading
throughout Europe at that time. This case of transfer from Byzantine to
Western medical practice is probably unique, however.
Leoniceno’s program, first embraced and reinforced by publishers and
printers, particularly Aldo Manuzio with whom Leoniceno was in close con-
tact, had a deep impact on contemporary scientists. Byzantine scientific lit-
erature did not disappear totally, however, but benefitted from the search
of ancient Greek books in the 16th century and the formation of collections
of manuscripts such as the Bibliothèque royale in France, the Bibliotheca
Vaticana, or the collection at El Escorial in Spain, to mention just a few.
Byzantine science entered the many collections of Greek manuscripts created
at that time, without being printed, be it in Renaissance Latin translations or
in the original Greek text, before the 1530s, however (with few exceptions) (al-
phabetical order of names and titles: Aetius: 1533–35 Latin, and1534 Greek;
Cassius iatrosophistes [between the 4th and the 7th c.]: 1541 Greek [and also a
Latin version the same year]; Demetrius Pepagomenos [15th c.], De podagra:
1517 Latin, and 1558 Greek; Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius, De actionibus et affec-
tibus spiritus animalis: 1547 Latin, 1557 Greek; De medicamentorum compositione:
1540 Latin; De urinis: 1519 Latin; Methodus medendi: 1554 Latin; Meletius: 1552
Latin; Nemesius [late 4th c.]: 1538 Latin, 1565 Greek; Nicolaus Myrepsus: 1541
Latin; Oribasius: 1543 Greek and Latin; Paul of Egina, Book I: 1510 Latin;
opera omnia: 1528 Greek; Stephanus of Athens [or Alexandria; 5th/6th c.], Al-
phabetum empericum: 1581 Latin, and Commentarium in Galeni de medendi
methodo: 1536 Greek). Even when Byzantine scientific texts were printed, the
interest was more of an antiquarian than of a scientific nature, contrary to
what happened with the Corpus Hipppocraticum, Dioscorides, and Galen.

C. Early History of Byzantine Science

At the turn of the 17th to the 18th century, the interest in Byzantine science
faded even more. The field of medicine is significant. When the Frenchman
Daniel Le Clerc (1652–1728) wrote his Histoire de la médecine, which was pub-
lished in 1702, he covered the period from Hippocrates to Galen. It was the
merit of the Englishman John Freind (1675–1728) to take over the history of
medicine from Oribasius on in his History of physick published in 1725–1726.
However, whereas he treated Oribasius in seven pages (4–10 of the 1735 Latin
edition of Venice), Aetius and Alexander of Tralles in twelve each (11–23 and
199 Byzantine Sciences

24–35 respectively), Uranius (6th c.) and the historian Procopius (507–after
555) in eight (36–43), and Paul of Egina in seventeen (44–60), he covered the
whole period from 640 (the supposed date of Paul of Egina) to 1453 in
26 pages (61–86) which included general considerations on the style of late
Byzantine physicians and conclusive reflections (five pages, 82–86).The only
late Byzantine to receive more attention is Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius, to
whom Freind devoted nine pages (73–81). This exception might result from
a practical consideration, expressed by Freind in the title page of his History,
where the subtitle reads: “… In qua ea praecipue notantur quae ad Praxin
pertinent …” Yet, in the fight of English physicians against smallpox, Freind
suggested, in a way that reminds of Giorgio Valla, the use of treatments pre-
scribed by ancient physicians, namely purgation. Indeed, in his History of
medicine, Freind prized Actuarius for being, according to him, the first among
Greek authors to recommend the use of purgative agents (75–76).
This regain of interest was short-lived. After Freind and during the whole
18th and 19th centuries, Byzantine medicine and, more generally, Byzantine
science did not receive much attention among scholars and scientists. This
was particularly the case in the 19th century, during which two monumental
editions of classical works were produced that eclipsed almost any other
work: the Opera omnia of Galen edited by the German physician and classicist
Karl Gottlobb Kühn (1754–1840) and published in 20 volumes (with 22
tomes) from 1821 to 1833, and, slightly later, the Oeuvres complètes d’Hippo-
crate by the French scholar and lexicographer Emile Littré (1801–1877),
published in 10 volumes from 1839 to 1861.
Classicism was triumphant as was further demonstrated by the catalogue
of Greek medical manuscripts published under the direction of the German
philologist Hermann Diels (1848–1922) by the Academy of Sciences of Prus-
sia in Berlin (Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte, vol. 1: Hippokrates und Galenos,
ed. Hermann Diels, 1905; Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte, vol. 2: Die übrigen
griechischen Ärzte ausser Hippokrates und Galenos, ed. id., 1906; with a supple-
ment: Bericht über den Stand des interakademischen Corpus Medicorum Antiquorum
und erster Nachtrag zu den in den Abhandlungen 1905 and 1906 veröffentlichten Kata-
logen: Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte. I. und II. Teil, ed. id., 1908. The first
two parts were republished in 1906 under the following title: Die Hand-
schriften der antiken Ärzte: Griechische Abteilung, ed. id., 1906. This version was
reprinted together with the supplement under the following title: Die Hand-
schriften der antiken Ärzte. I. Hippokrates und Galenos; II. Die übrigen griechischen
Ärzte; III. Nachtrag, ed. id., with a preface by Fridolf Kudlien, 1970). The pur-
pose of the enterprise was to edit critically Greek medical texts (see, for
example, Hermann Diels, “Über das neue Corpus medicorum,” Neue Jahrbücher
Byzantine Sciences 200

für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur und für Pädagogik 19
[1907]: 722–26). The focus was mainly on a narrowly defined classical an-
tiquity as an overview of the two volumes of the catalogue shows. Whereas
the first volume (1905) was devoted to Hippocrates and Galen and contained
151 pages, the second (1906) was to “all other physicians” from Diocles (4th
c. B.C.E.) to Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius, and consisted of only 112 pages.
The list of physicians included the post-Aristotelian physician Diocles (2 pp.,
27–28), the Alexandrian surgeon Heliodorus (2 pp., 41–42), such classical
authors as Aretaeus (3 pp., 17–19), Dioscorides (6 pp., 29–35), Rufus (4 pp.,
88–91), and Soranus (3 pp., 92–94), the three 4th-century Christian anthropol-
ogists Basil the Great (1 p., 21), Gregory of Nyssa (2 pp., 39–40), Gregory the
Theologian (2pp., 40–41), Meletius (3pp., 62–64), Nemesius (3pp., 66–68),
and Hermes Trismegistus (6pp., 43–48). Among the Byzantine authors, Ae-
tius (3 pp., 5–7), Alexander of Tralles (3 pp., 11–13), Oribasius (5 pp., 70–74),
and Paul of Egina (4 pp., 77–81) (that is, the early Byzantines who pursued the
classical tradition) cover 15 pages (i. e., 14 % of the volume), while the others
(actually, some early Byzantine, and a selection of Middle- and Late-Byzan-
tine ones) are almost all treated in one page as the following cases show (se-
lection; alphabetical order of names): Antonius Pyropoulos (15th c.) (p. 15, 2
manuscripts), Constantine Meliteniotes (14th c.) (p. 24, 1 ms.), Ioannes of
Alexandria (6th or 7th c.) (p. 51, 1 ms.), Ioannes Choumnos (15th c.) (p. 52, 1
ms.), Ioannes Staphidaces (14th c.) (p. 55, 1 ms.), Leo (9th or 10th c. ?) (p. 57, 3
mss. and some fragments), Neophytos Prodromênos (14th c.) (p. 68, 7 mss.),
Nicolaus Myrepsus (59, 7 mss.), Stephanus of Alexandria and Athens (2 pp.
each, pp. 95–96 and 97–98, and 18 and 29 mss., respectively), Theophilus
(7th c.) (6 pp., pp. 101–106), and Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius (4 pp., pp.
108–111). This treatment reflects a major focus on classical antiquity (177
pages out of a total of 263 corresponding to almost 70 %), and, for the rest, a
similar importance given to the authors of late antiquity (15 pp.) and the
Christian anthropologists (11 pp.), followed by Hermes Trismegistus (6 pp.).
None of the Byzantine physicians equal this latter number of pages, with the
exception of Theophilus, whose treatises had been very influential in the
West (in Latin trans.).

D. 20th-Century Obscurantism
In 20th-century Byzantine Studies, science(s) might be rightly considered as
la grande absente. As in the previous centuries, the case of medicine is particu-
larly revealing. The conclusions by Auguste Corlieu (1825–1905), Les méde-
cins grecs depuis la mort de Galien jusqu’à la chute de l’empire d’Orient (210–1453),
1885, are emblematic (pp. 173–74):
201 Byzantine Sciences

Qu’ont produit les médecins que nous avons cités dans les pages précédentes? Peu
de choses sans doute … Oribase n’a presque rien ajouté à l’anatomie de Galien …
Aétius ne fut qu’un compilateur … C’est le seul médecin que fournisse le Ve siècle.
Le VIe siècle ne nous laisse aussi qu’un nom … Le VIIIe siècle est moins riche … Le
XIe siècle et les siècles suivants n’ont guère produit que des thérapeutistes”. As for
the causes of this (p. 174): “… nous trouverons, dans des considérations d’ordre
politique, l’application de cette décadence de la médecine grecque … il n’y avait
de calme que dans les monastères. Ce furent alors les moines qui s’emparèrent
en Occident de l’étude de la médecine grecque. Ce fut le temps propice pour les
pratiques mystiques, les prières, les invocations. On retombait dans les temps
pré-hippocratiques. En Orient, au contraire, un essor avait été donné par des chefs
arabes …

This judgment was shared by Byzantinists as the epoch-making Geschichte

der byzantinischen Literatur von Justinian bis zum Ende des oströmischen Reiches
(527–1453), published in 1897 by Karl Krumbacher (1856–1909), shows
(pp. 613–14):

Auch auf diesem Gebiete [= medicine] … äusserte die blindgläubige Verehrung

der alten ihre verderbliche Wirkung auf die Entwicklung einer originellen for-
schenden und darstellenden Thätigkeit …

Krumbacher covered the whole section of Byzantine science in only 23 out

of the 1193 pages contained in his monumental work, treating all disciplines
in an equally brief way (medicine, pp. 613–16 [bibliography 616–20]; mathe-
matics and astronomy, 620–24 [bibliography 624–31]; zoology, botany, min-
eralogy, alchemy, 631–33 [bibliography 633–34]). The historian of medicine,
Iwan Bloch (1872–1922), in the Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin edited by
Max Neuburger (1868–1955) and Julius Leopold Pagel (1851–1912), and
published in 1902, had a somewhat more complex, though still negative,
opinion. Starting with a seemingly positive reevaluation of Byzantium
(p. 492):

Die Kultur des byzantinischen Reiches war nicht bloss … eine Kultur des Verfalls,
nicht bloss eine in das Mittelalter hineinragende Ruine des Altertums …

He went on with a dark evocation of Byzantine political life (p. 492):

Die politische Geschichte des Byzantinerreiches ist im grossen und ganzen eine
“eintönige Geschichte der Intrigen von Priestern,Verschnittenen und Frauen, der
Giftmischereien, der Verschwörungen der gleichmässigen Undankbarkeit, der
beständigen Vatermorde” …

Once the stage was set, he described science in negative terms and identified
the following factors as the causes of this:
Byzantine Sciences 202

(493) Das Christentum … musste, je mehr es sich in der Kirche organisierte, den
Fortschritt der Wissenschaft in ungünstigem Sinne beeinflussen … (p. 501) Ne-
ben dem Einflusse der christlichen Lehre ist derjenige der philosophischen My-
stik und des Aberglaubens bezeichnend (p. 502) für den Charakter der byzantini-
schen Epoche … (p. 504) Eine noch bestimmtere Ausgestaltung erfuhren Magie
und Zauberglauben durch ihre Verknüpfung mit der Philosophie …

Nevertheless, Bloch credited Byzantine physicians with one merit: they

traveled abroad to learn about medicine and therapeutics ([sic]) (p. 513)!
More recently, the authoritative and deeply respected Viennese Byzan-
tinist Herbert Hunger (1914–2000), though not openly as critical as his pre-
decessors, was no more positive, devoting to science some 100 pages (vol. 2,
p. 218–320) of his 2-volume set Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzan-
tiner, 1978 (XXVI + 542, and XX + 528 pp.) in the new authoritative Handbuch
der Altertumswissenschaft. His consideration on iatrosofia is significant (vol. 2,
p. 304):
Niemand wird monatelange Arbeit auf das Lesen elend geschriebener Codices
aufwenden wollen, um zuletzt eine Rezeptsammlung mehr aus dem Dschungel-
bereich der Iatrosophia in Händen zu haben, noch dazu wo es in der byzantini-
schen Literatur allenthalben reizvollere Inedita gibt …

Shortly after, in his introductory remarks to a symposium on Byzantine

medicine held in 1983, the convener, John Scarborough, opened the meet-
ing with the following statement (Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, 1984) (see
p. ix):
Among medical historians, the commonly held opinion of Byzantine medicine is
one of stagnation, plagiarism of the great medical figures of classical antiquity,
and a somber boredom that seemingly awaited the Italian Renaissance …

And referring to Guido Majno, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the
Ancient World, 1975, he added (p. ix):
Typical is Majno’s “… after Galen, the history [of medicine] grinds to a halt for at
least one thousand years. Europe sank into the Dark Ages” …

E. The Long Search for a Method

20th-century research on Byzantine science came out of an increased interest
in material life and the developments in manuscript heuristic in the 19th cen-
tury.
The German classicist August Friedrich von Pauly (1796–1845), who
was more interested in the concrete aspects of life than in linguistics, literary
criticism, or hermeneutics, as he himself stated, conceived and started pub-
lishing the Real-Encyclopädie der Alterthumswissenschaft in 1839 (Stuttgart).
203 Byzantine Sciences

His death in 1854 at the age of 49 prevented him from completing the work,
which was achieved in 1852 (6 vols.). The Real-Encyclopädie, which was later
expanded, devoted a certain number of entries to the history of sciences,
including the continuity of classical science in Byzantium, although the
work was specifically about classical antiquity.
Manuscript heuristic started at almost the same period, with the German
physician and classicist Friedrich Reinhold Dietz (1804–1836) of Königs-
berg. In preparing critical editions, he did not limit his work to consulting
only locally available manuscripts, but he traveled throughout Germany,
Italy, Spain, France, and Britain, systematically searching codices containing
Greek medical texts. Although he was mainly focused on Hippocrates,
he was also interested in Byzantine physicians from Oribasius to Actuarius.
He was supposed to prepare an edition of Oribasius for the corpus edited
by Kühn (below), and he collated manuscripts of (in chronological order) Ae-
tius, the Alexandrian commentators on Hippocrates, Paul of Egina, Theo-
philus, Symeon Seth, Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius and others. He could not
fully complete his program, however, because he died in 1836 at the age of
32. Editorial activity was taken over and transformed into a systematic enter-
prise by the German physician and historian of medicine, Karl Gottlob
Kühn, who launched a monumental corpus entitled Medicorum graecorum
opera quae exstant in 28 volumes (Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, and Are-
taeus), which should have also included Oribasius (to be published
by Dietz), Aetius (to be published by Karl Christian Lebrecht Weigel
[1769–1845]), and Paul of Egina (to be published by the botanist and his-
torian of botany Kurt Sprengel [1766–1833]).
The search for manuscripts was pursued mainly by the French physician
and historian of medicine Charles Daremberg (1817–1872), who proposed
in 1847 the publication of a new corpus of ancient medical texts, the Col-
lection des médecins grecs et latins, with an intention similar to that of Dietz,
that is, to produce critical editions based on an accurate examination and
collation of manuscripts. Daremberg differred from Dietz, however, as he
wanted to be exhaustive. He visited libraries in Germany, Belgium, England,
and Italy, and brought back a great wealth of data, which he combined
with the results of his examination in loco of the codices in the Bibliothèque
nationale in Paris. On this basis he prepared what he called a Catalogue
raisonné des manuscrits médicaux, a project that dated back to an incubation in
the years 1841–1844. The catalogue was conceived as the necessary first step
for the publication of medical texts in the Collection des médecins grecs et latins.
But, as Daremberg explained, this catalogue was more than a list of manu-
scripts: it also included data on the production of the manuscripts (their
Byzantine Sciences 204

period and place of writing), as, according to him, such information is of pri-
mary importance for the history of science. A specimen of the catalogue was
published in two parts in 1851 and 1852, with a revised edition in 1853.
As active Daremberg had been, neither the full Catalogue raisonné nor
the comprehensive Collection of ancient medical texts he had envisioned ever
appeared, with the exception of an edition of Oribasius prepared in collabor-
ation with the Dutch scholar Ulgo Cats Bussemaker (1810–1865). Never-
theless, Daremberg could illustrate the validity of his intuition about the
value of manuscripts as witnesses to the practice of science in Byzantium.
In analyzing a codex of the Phillipps collection in England, he investigated
the genesis of the Byzantine translation of the zâd al musâfir wa qût al hâdir
(Provisions for the Traveller and Nourishment for the Sedentary) by ibn al-Jazzâr
(d. 979/980 or 1010 C.E.), known as the efodia tou apodêmountos (that is, [Medi-
cal] Recommendations for the Traveler), producing an important contribution to
the history of medicine in the Byzantine world, particularly in southern Italy
(Sicily or the mainland). Nevertheless, he did not apply this approach to
other works, and did not bring to light, thus, the new scientific activity gen-
erated by the classical texts. It will be a century before Daremberg’s intu-
ition is rediscovered and applied in a productive way.
In the meantime, several Byzantine scientific texts were edited, among
which (in the fields of medicine, and natural sciences) Alexander of Tralles
in 1878–1879 by Theodor Puschmann (1844–1899); the the Epistula de ver-
mis of Alexander of Tralles, Cassius iatrosophistes, and Theophilus, to mention
some, by Julius Ideler (1809–1842) in the Physici greci minores (2 vols.,
1841–1842); Adamantius (5th c.) by Valentin Rose (1829–1916) in his
Anecdota Graeca et Graecolatina (vol. 1, 1864); Meletius by John Anthony
Cramer (1793–1848) in his Anecdota Graeca (4 vols., 1835–1837); the Scrip-
tores physiognomici (1893) by Richard Förster (1843–1922); Theophilus
by William Alexander Greenhill (1814–1894) in 1842, and the alchemists
(1887–1888) by Marcelin Berthelot (1827–1907) and Charles-Emile
Ruelle (1833–1912).
The idea of a systematic inventory of manuscripts first launched by Da-
remberg was still present in the scholarly community even though Da-
remberg could not implement it. The Athenian ophthalmologist Georges
A. Costomiris (1849–1902), who was also doing historico-medical research
in Paris in the footsteps of Daremberg, began in 1887 to browse the hold-
ings of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, and to consult printed catalogues
of Greek manuscripts, in order to bring to the attention of the scholarly com-
munity unknown Greek medical texts. Costomiris’s catalogue, published
in five issues of the French Revue des Études Grecques (1889–1897), listed 214
205 Byzantine Sciences

different codices containing the texts of twenty authors, many of whom

were Byzantines (names are followed by the references to the several issues of
Costomiris’ work [number of the issue, and pages]): Ioannes Zacharias
Actuarius (5.414–445), the Byzantine compilations attributed to Aelius
Promotus (2nd c. C.E.) in the manuscripts and by modern scholars
(1.363–368), Aetius (2.150–179), Damnastes (11th c. [?]) (4.71–72), the Epho-
dia (11th c.) (3.101–110), the Hippiatrica (4.61–69), Leo the Philosopher
(3.99–100), the enigmatic Metrodora of unknown time period (2.147–148),
Nicolaus Myrepsos (5.406–414), Oribasius (2.148–150), Psellus (1018–
after [?] 1081) (4.68–60), Symeon Seth (4.70–71), Theophanes Nonnos
(3.100–101), Timotheus (5th c.) (3.99), and Tzetzes (ca. 1110–between 1180
and 1185) (5.405). On the basis of such inventory – and as a sort of défense et il-
lustration – Costomiris produced a critical edition of the twelfth book of Ae-
tius’ medical encyclopedia (1892).
Another Greek physician, Skeuos Geôrgios Zerbos (1875–1966), inves-
tigated Greek medical manuscripts, with a particular interest in Aetius, Paul
of Nicea (between the 7th and the 9th/10th c.), Metrodora, and Magnos of
Emessa (4th c. [?]) as he himself indicated (“Kathorismos tôn onomatôn tôn
suggrafeôn duo anônumôn iatrikôn keimenôn,” Athêna 20 [1908]: 502–08;
see 502). On this basis he published critical editions of Aetius (partial; see
[chronological order of publication]): Aetii Sermo sextidecimus et ultimus: Erstens
aus Handschriften veröffentlicht mit Abbildungen, Bemerkungen und Erklärungen,
1901; “Aetiou Amidênou peri daknontôn zôôn kai ibolôn êtoi logos dekatos
tritos,” Athêna 18 (1905): 241–302 (contains many, but not all chapters of
book 13), with a re-edition as a monograph under the same title and two dif-
ferent printings (1905, in the series Editio graeca scriptorum medicorum veterum
graecorum, and Syros, 1909); “Aetiou Amidênou logos dekatos pemptos,”
Athêna 21 (1909): 2–138; “Aetiou Amidênou logos enatos,” Athêna 23 (1911):
265–392. Also, he studied some aspects of Byzantine medicine and some
Byzantine physicians, including specific manuscripts (“O suggrafeas duo
anônumôn archaiôn iatrikôn keimenôn,” Athêna 21 [1909]: 381–83) (alpha-
betical order of names of Byzantine authors): (Aetius) Die Gynekologie des Aë-
tios, 1901, and “Paratêrêseis eis ton triskaidekaton logon êtoi peri daknontôn
zôôn kai ibolôn ofeôn Aetiou Amidênou,” Epetêris Ethnikou Panepistêmiou
(1908): 307–60; (Metrodora) “Das unveröffentliche medizinische Werk der
Metrodora,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 3 (1909–1910): 141–44; (Paul of
Nicea) Oi kôdikes tôn archaiôn anekdotôn iatrikôn cheirografôn tou Paulou Nikaiou:
Ai peri toutôn dêmosieutheisai eidikai meletai mou kai ai ep’ autôn kriseis tês aka-
dêmias tôn epistêmôn tou Berolinou kai tou kathêgêtou tês Istorias tês iatrikês en tô
Panepistêmiô tou Berolinou, 1915.
Byzantine Sciences 206

Daremberg’s and Costomiris’s work highlighted the interest and ur-

gent need of a systematic catalogue of manuscripts containing scientific
works, be they Byzantine or earlier. It was the merit of the Prussian Academy
of Sciences in Berlin to produce such a general catalogue of medical manu-
scripts, published under the direction of Hermann Diels and referred to
above. Interestingly, the catalogue included the codices of the medieval
Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew translations of the Greek works, and con-
stituted a basis for further study of the diffusion of classical science from the
Byzantine Empire to the West (the early medieval Latin translations) and to
the East (the translations into oriental languages).
The project of new editions to be published in a new Corpus Medicorum
Graecorum came to fruition as early as 1908, with the first volume on Philu-
menus (3rd c. C.E. [?]), edited by Max Wellmann (1863–1933) on the basis of
an unicum (Vaticanus graecus 284). After 3 volumes of Galen were published
(1914 [2 items] and 1915), Paul of Egina (2 vols., 1921–1924) was edited by
Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1854–1928), Oribasius by Johann Georg Raeder
(b. 1905) in 5 volumes (1926–1933), and half of Aetius’s medical encyclo-
pedia in 2 volumes (1935 and 1950) by Alessandro Olivieri (b. 1872).
Whereas this editing activity seemed promising for Byzantine science, it was
only in 1969 that a volume on a physician of the middle Byzantine period
came out (Leo, edited by Robert Renehan). Then, from 1983 to 1997, the
commentaries on Hippocrates, Aphorisms, and Prognostic by the late Alexan-
drian Stephanus were edited in 5 volumes by Leendert G. Westerink
(1913–1990). That is, a total of 15 out of the almost 60 volumes currently
published in the Corpus (= 25 %), with three authors from late antiquity –
actually a commentator on a classical author and three encyclopedists who
synthesized the classical literature (mainly Galen) – and only one after the
end of the school of Alexandria.
A leading figure in the publication of Greek scientific texts from the
1880s to 1927 was the Danish scholar and historian of ancient science Johan
Ludvig Heiberg. He edited (alphabetical order of ancient authors’ names):
(anonymous) Anonymi logica et quadrivium cum scholiis antiquis (1928); (Apol-
lonius of Perga [between 260 and 190 B.C.E.]) Apollonii Pergaei quae graece
exstant (2 vols., 1891–1893); (Archimedes [287–212 B.C.E.]) Archimedis opera
omnia (3 vols., with two editions: 1880–1881, and 1910–1915); (Corpus
Hippocraticum) Aphorisms (1892), and the first volume of the Opera (1927) in
the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (in collaboration with Johannes Mewaldt
[1880–1964], Ernst Nachmanson [1877–1943], and Hermann Schöne
[1870–1941]); (Euclid [ca. 300 B.C.E.]) Euclidis opera omnia (8 vols.,
1883–1916); (Hero [1st c. C.E.]) Heronis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt omnia
207 Byzantine Sciences

(5 vols., 1899–1914); (mathematicians) the Mathematici graeci minores (1927);

(Paul of Egina) Pauli Aeginetae libri tertii interpretatio latina antiqua (1912);
Glossae medicinales (1924); (Ptolemaeus [1st-2nd c.]) the Syntaxis mathematica
(2 vols., 1898–1903), and the Opera astronomica minora (1907) in Claudii Ptol-
emaei opera quae exstant omnia; (Serenus [4th c. C.E.]) Sereni Antinoensis opuscula
[mathematica] (1896); and (Theodosius [ca. 160–ca. 90 B.C.E.]) De sphaericis
(1927). Heiberg wrote also a history of mathematical and natural sciences in
antiquity (Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften im klassischen Alter-
tum, published in the Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, 1st ed. in 1912 [Eng-
lish trans. in 1922; Italian trans. in 1924], with a rev. ed. in 1925). In spite of
its title, the latter includes some data about post-classical and Byzantine
science, as it extends up to Martianus Capella (early 5th c.) for the mathemat-
ics; it mentions the university of Constantinople, created in 425 (p. 61), and
such Byzantine scientists as Psellus, Theodoros Metochites (1270–1332),
Nicephore Gregoras (ca. 1290–between 1358 and 1361), Georgios Chryso-
kokkes (fl. ca. 1335–1350) (author of a work based on Persian astronomy and
dated 1346), Isaak Argyros (between 1300 and 1310–ca. 1375), and Nicolaus
Kabasilas (d. 1371) in the chapter on astronomy (pp. 61–62); and, in that on
medicine (p. 116), it includes Oribasius, Paul of Egina, Stephanus of Athens
(and Alexandria), and Theophilos Protospatharios. Next, however, the
chapter passes to Byzantium, which it treats in half-a-page, with such con-
siderations as (p. 117):

Auch in Byzanz wurde medizinische Schrifstellerei bis zuletzt betrieben, ohne

Originalität, aber recht fleissig … Im 10. Jahrh. hat Theophanes Nonnos eine
kümmerliche Kompilation Iatrika aus Oreibasios hergestellt …

This corresponds to what Heiberg wrote about Byzantine geography (de-

prived of originality according to him [p. 87]) and botany (supposedly absent
from the Byzantine scientific panorama unless it was agronomical or medical
[p. 90]).
Such statements contrasted with Heiberg’s knowledge of Byzantine
manuscripts, of which he mentioned some (for example the Florentinus
Laurentianus 74, 7, containing Apollonius of Citium [1st c. B.C.E.] and richly
illustrated [p. 117]), and in some of which he traced an Arabic influence on
Byzantine astronomy (pp. 61–62) and medicine (p. 117). To prepare his many
editions, Heiberg consulted, indeed, a great many manuscripts from sev-
eral collections in Europe, which he knew well, including their history (he
published an article on one of the most significant collections of the Renais-
sance, that of Giorgio Valla [above], which is still the work of reference on the
topic). Also, he participated in the Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs
Byzantine Sciences 208

(vols. 1 and 3 [both 1924]). Such familiarity with manuscripts probably con-
tributes to explain why, in 1901, he invited Diels to publish a new corpus of
ancient Greek medical literature for which preparation the catalogue of
Greek medical manuscripts would be indispensable. But, at the same time,
this deep knowledge of the manuscripts stresses a contradiction in Hei-
berg’s work, and perhaps also in the practice of the history of ancient and
Byzantine science, be it at Heiberg’s time or possibly also in current research:
Byzantium was viewed mainly – if not only – as the agent of transmission of
classical science, and not so much as a producer of science, whatever its form.
Such an interpretation is not contradicted by the major programs on astro-
logical and alchemical manuscripts (all Byzantine) that started at that time
and in the launching of which Heiberg participated (Catalogus Codicum
Astrologorum Graecorum, 20 vols., 1898–1953; Catalogue des manuscrits alchim-
iques grecs, 8 vols., 1928–1932): astrological and alchemical manuscripts were
considered as sources for the history of mentalities and religion, both in An-
tiquity and Byzantium, and not for the history of science(s), according to an
approach going back to Karl Usener (1834–1905), who had been a univer-
sity teacher of Diels. Such approach was particularly the case of the Belgian
philologist Franz Cumont (1868–1947), who created and directed the cor-
pus of astrological manuscripts for a certain time, and shared such respon-
sibility with his co-citizen Joseph Bidez (1867–1945).
In this view, Heiberg did not bring to light the data he discovered in the
Byzantine manuscripts of the texts he studied, and did not consider the data
resulting from their codicological, paleographical, and historical analysis as
a significant primary source for the history of Byzantine science(s). Instead,
he simply reproduced the interpretation of Byzantine science developed dur-
ing the 19th century, particularly in the German school of Altertumswissen-
schaft, for which culture and science were born in classical antiquity (particu-
larly in Greece) and declined afterwards until the Renaissance. Significantly,
however, although he used the few available 19th-century editions of Byzan-
tine scientific texts and some 19th-century secondary literature (among
others the works by Usener), Heiberg relied on late 18th-century anti-
quarian bibliography in his references to Byzantine scientists (mainly the
Bibliotheca graeca of Johann Albert Fabricius [1668–1736] in the 4th edition
by Gottlieb Christoph Harles [1738–1815], published in 1790–1804).
Only in the 1930s did historians and philologists begin to have a per se in-
terest in Byzantine scientific texts. The Greek physician Aristotelês Kouzês
(1872–1961) of Athens published several articles on Byzantine physicians
and their works on the basis of his explorations of Greek manuscripts. His
activity seems to have proceeded in two waves. In a first time (1907–1910),
209 Byzantine Sciences

after a critical edition of Marcellus of Side, On pulses (1907), he focused on

three key, though minor, Byzantine texts, which he edited: the treatise On
Gout by Demetrius Pepagomenos (Dêmêtriou Pepagomenou, Suntagma peri tês
podagras, 1909), the translation into Greek of the treatise On Smallpox and
Measles originally written in Arabic by the physician abu Bakr ar-Râzî, best
known in the medieval West as Rhazes (Razê, Logos peri loimikês exellênistheis ek
tês surôn dialektou pros tên êmeteran, 1909), and the influential treatise On urine
by Theophilos (Theofilou, Peri ourôn biblion, 1910). Then, after an interruption
of almost 20 years, he published again on the history of Byzantine medicine,
starting with a general note drawing the attention to some unedited manu-
scripts (“Paratêrêseis epi tinôn anekdotôn iatrikôn kôdikôn tôn bibliothê-
kôn tês Eurôpês kai kathorismos eniôn toutôn,” Epetêris Etaireias Byzantinôn
Spoudôn 6 [1929]: 375–82). His subsequent production was more markedly
based on, and oriented toward, manuscript analysis, and resulted in bring-
ing little known texts to the attention (chronological order of publication)
(Neophytos Prodromênos): “To peri tôn en odousi pathôn ergon Neofutou
tou Prodromênou,” Epetêris Etaireias Buzantinôn Spoudôn 7 (1930): 348–57;
(Ioannes Prisduanôn [of unknown epoch: 12th c. ?]) “To peri ourôn ergon
tou Iôannou episkopou Prisduanôn,” Epetêris Etaireias Buzantinôn Spoudôn 10
(1933): 364–71; (Constantine Meliteniotes) “Quelques considérations sur
les traductions en grec des oeuvres médicales orientales et principalement
sur les deux manuscrits de la traduction d’un traité persan par Constantin
Méliténiotis,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 14 (1939): 205–20; (Nicephoros
Blemmydes [1197–ca. 1269]) “Les oeuvres médicales de Nicéphore Blém-
mydes selon les manuscrits existants,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 19
(1944): 56–75; (Theophilos) “The Apotherapeutic of Theophilos according
to the Laurentian Codex, plut. 75, 19,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 19
(1944): 9–18; (Romanos [10th c.]) “The Medical Work of Romanos According
to the Vatican Greek Codex 280,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 19 (1944):
162–170; (Leo) “The Written Tradition of the Works of Leo the Iatrosoph-
ist,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 19 (1944): 170–177; (Antonius Pyropou-
los [15th c.]) “Some New Informations on Antony Pyropoulos as Physician
and on his Small Notice: ‘Peri metrôn kai stathmôn’ according the Codex 877
of the Iberia Monastery on Mount Athos and the Cod. med. gr. 27 of the
National Library of Vienna,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 21 (1946): 9–18.
Almost at the same time Kouzês was starting the second phase of his
activity, the Belgian philologist Armand Delatte (1886–1964) published
several botanical lexica and texts on plants from manuscripts: “Le lexique
de botanique du Parisinus graecus 2419,” Serta Leodiensia ad celebrandam patriae
libertatem iam centesimum annum recuperatam composuerunt philologi leodenses,
Byzantine Sciences 210

1930, 59–101, and Anecdota Atheniensia et alia, vol. 2: Textes grecs relatifs à l’his-
toire des sciences, 1939, passim.
The troubled history of the 20th century brought an end to these attempts.
After World War II, it was the merit of Joseph Mogenet (1913–1980) to
show that Byzantine manuscripts of classical scientific texts may illustrate
the practice of science in Byzantium – instead of being just the vehicles of
these texts. Mogenet showed, indeed, that a scholion in a manuscript of
Ptolemy’s Almagest (Vaticanus graecus 1594, 10th c.) reveals a practice of the text
that was not limited to a poor or impoverished repetition, but was also used
for new applications, including methods of calculation borrowed from the
Arabic world (Joseph Mogenet, “Une Scolie inédite du Vat. gr. 1594 sur
les rapports entre l’astronomie et Byzance,” Osiris 14 [1962]: 198–221). In so
doing, Mogenet transformed the study of Byzantine scientific manu-
scripts: instead of only transmitting classical texts, they also bear witness to
the way these texts were studied and to the work done on these texts, in a sig-
nificant shift of the focus that brilliantly illustrated the validity of Darem-
berg’s intuition on the interest of studying the history of manuscripts, and
eventually laid down the necessary methodological foundations for Byzan-
tine science to be investigated on a solid basis.

F. 20th-Century Research
While history of Byzantine science(s) was searching its way in the late 19th
and early 20th century, ongoing research on the history of science(s) included
Byzantium in some of its encyclopedic programs. One of them was the
monumental five-volume Introduction to the History of Science (1927–1948) by
the Belgian-born historian of science(s) George Sarton (1884–1956), cover-
ing the whole Mediterranean and Western tradition from Homer to the 14th
century. In the first volume, the work proceeds by time-periods character-
ized by a leading figure each, some of whom are Byzantine: the time of Ori-
basius (second half of 4th c.) (1, pp. 359–76); the time of Proclus (412–485
C.E.) (second half of 5th c.) (1, pp. 399–413); and the time of Ioannes Philop-
onus (ca. 490–ca. 570) (first half of 6th c.) (1, pp. 411–42). All chapters (what-
ever their emblematic figure) include data about the several scientific tradi-
tions taken into consideration, Byzantine, Syriac, Arabic (when appropriate),
Persian, Indian, and Chinese. In the second volume, Sarton used the same ap-
proach, together with a more analytical one, by disciplines and/or problems.
For the first half of the 12th century, for example (under the sign of William
of Conches [before 1090–after 1154], Abraham Ibn Ezra [ca. 1089–ca. 1167],
and Ibn Zuhr [= Averroes] [ca. 1091–1162]), the place of Byzantium in the
initial synthetic survey (2.1, pp. 109–52) is pretty much reduced: it receives,
211 Byzantine Sciences

indeed, 9 lines (p. 120) in Philosophic Background (pp. 117–22), 4 (p. 124) in
Mathematics and Astronomy (pp. 122–27), 5 (p. 133) in Natural History
(pp. 132–33), and 6 (p. 134) in Medicine (pp. 133–37). Absent from Chemistry
(pp. 129–130) and Geography (pp. 130–32), it does not appear either in the
analytical part, in Religious Background (pp. 153–66), Translators (pp. 167–81),
Chemistry (pp. 218–20), and Geography (pp. 221–25), and is briefly treated
(191–92) in Philosophic Background (pp. 182–203), as in Mathematics
(pp. 204–15; 209 for Byzantium), Natural History (pp. 226–28; 228 for Byzan-
tium), and Medicine (pp. 229–48; 236 for Byzantium).
On astronomy, specifically, Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) compiled Le
Système du monde, devoted to the history of the discipline until Copernicus
(1473–1543). Whereas he intended it as a twelve-volume work, he could com-
plete only nine (published 1913–1959; English trans. of volumes 7–9 under
the title Medieval Cosmology, 1985). Similarly, on experimental sciences, Lynn
Thorndike (1882–1965) wrote an eight-volume History of Magic and Experi-
mental Science (1923–1958), During the First Thirteen Centuries of our Era, as the
sub-title specifies. Byzantium is barely present (1, pp. 480–503) with Basil,
Epiphanius (between 310 and 320–402 or 403), and the Physiologus, and post-
classical medicine (actually Oribasius, Aetius, Alexander of Tralles, and Paul of
Egina; 1, pp. 566–84).
Continuous during the 20th century with such major projects as the
Encyclopedia of Islam (2 editions, especially the 2nd; the 3rd is in preparation)
and the Encyclopaedia Iranica (now also available on the internet in open
access), encyclopedism was particularly productive toward the end of the
century, with the following realizations, specifically devoted to the history of
science or including it (in chronological order of publication): Dictionary of
Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Gillispie, 18 vols. (1970–1990), containing
the following entries on Byzantine scientists (alphabetical order of names):
Alexander of Tralles (1 p. 121), Nemesius (10, pp. 20–1), Oribasius (10,
pp. 230–31), Paul of Egina (10, pp. 417–19), Psellus (11, pp. 182–86), and
Stephanus of Alexandria (13, pp. 37–8); the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed.
Philip P. Wiener, 5 vols., 1973–74; the Lexikon des Mittelalters, ed. Robert
Auty, 9 vols., 1980–1999; the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph
Strayer (1904–1987), 13 vols., 1982–1989; the Oxford Dictionary of Byzan-
tium, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan et al., 3 vols., 1991; the Neue Pauly, ed. Hu-
bert Cancik, and Helmuth Schneider, 13 vols. with an index and 5
supplements, 1996–2003 (English trans. under the title Brill’s New Pauly,
16 vols. and 4 supplements published from 2002); Medieval Science, Technology,
and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith
Wallis, 2005, with contrasted information: whereas there is no entry on By-
Byzantine Sciences 212

zantium and no mention of Byzantium in some important entries (Astronomy

[64–67], Euclid [164–67], Illustration, Medical [262–64] and Scientific [264–67],
Medicine [336–40], Ptolemy [427–29], and Translation Movements [482–86]),
others include Byzantium (Botany [96–8], Burgundio of Pisa [104–105], Car-
tography, Byzantine [117–18], Dioscorides [152–54], Galen [179–82], Herbals
[218–20], Kosmas Indikopleustês [302–303], Pharmaceutic Handbooks [393–94],
Pharmacology [394–97], and Pharmacy and Materia Medica [397–99]); Enzyklopä-
die Medizingeschichte, ed. Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf
Keil, and Wolfgang Wegner, 2005, with several entries on Byzantine phys-
icians (alphabetical order of names): Aetius (16), Alexander of Tralles (31–2),
Iohannes Zacharias Aktuarios (703), Nicolaus Myrepsus (1020), Nemesius
(1030), Oribasius (1076–77), Paul of Egina (1116), Philaretos (9th c. [?]) (1150),
Psellus (1189), Stephanus of Athens (1360), Symeon Seth (1332), the Suda (ca.
1000 [?]) (1366), and Theophilos Protospatharios (1385); the Biographical En-
cyclopedia of Astronomers, ed. Thomas Hockey, 2 vols., 2007, with a limited
number of Byzantine astronomers (alphabetical order of names): Gregory (or
George) Chionides (or Chioniades) (ca. 1240–1250–ca. 1320) (229); Nice-
phore Gregoras (440–41); Hypatia (ca. 370–415) (544–45), Olympiodorus the
Younger (ca. 495/505–after 565) (853); Pappus of Alexandria (4th c. [?])
(869–70); Ioannes Philoponus (900–1); Simplicius of Cilicia (ca. 490–ca. 560)
(1062–63); Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 365/370–ca. 413) (1117–18); and Theon of
Alexandria (ca. 335–ca. 400) (1133–1134); Medieval Islamic Civilization: An En-
cyclopedia, 2 vols., ed. Josef W. Meri, 2006; the Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural
Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs, ed. Paul Keyser, and Georgia
Irby-massie, 2008, which presents some data on Early-Byzantine scientists
or anonymous works; and the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Noretta
Koertge, 8 vols., 2008, which has some entries on less known or recently
better researched Byzantine men of science (alphabetical order of names,
with the mention of the field of activity): Isaac Argyrus (1300 or 1310–ca.
1375) (1, 98–9; astronomy); George (or Gregory) Chioniades (or Chionides)
(2, 120–2; astronomy); Ioannes Philoponus (4, 51–3, natural philosophy);
Theodore Meliteniotes (ca. 1320–1393) (5, 94–6, astronomy); Manuel Mos-
chopoulos (ca. 1265–after 1340) (5, 196, mathematics); Olympiodorus of
Alexandria (5, 338–40, natural philosophy, astrology, alchemy); and Steph-
anus of Alexandria (6, 516–19, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine,
mathematics).
Specialized research in the 20th century dealt with such topics as (alpha-
betical order of disciplines; within each section, chronological order of pub-
lication; selection) (alchemy) Robert Halleux, Les Textes alchimiques, 1979;
Maria Papathanassiou, “Stephanus of Alexandria: On the Structure and
213 Byzantine Sciences

Date of his Alchemical Work,” Medicina nei secoli 8 (1996): 247–266; L’alchimie
et ses racines philosophiques: La tradition grecque et la tradition arabe, ed. Cristina
Viano, 2005; (arithmetic, general) Paul Tannery (1843–1904), Mémoires
scientifiques, vol. 4: Sciences exactes chez les Byzantins, ed. Johan Ludvig
Heiberg, and Hieronymus Georg Zeuthen (1839–1920), 1920; André
Allard, “L’enseignement du calcul arithmétique à partir des XIIe et
XIIIe siècles: l’exemple de la multiplication,” Manuels, programmes de cours
et techniques d’enseignement dans les Universités médiévales, 1994, 117–35; Jaap
Mansfeld, Prolegomena Mathematica from Apollonius of Perga to Late Neopla-
tonism with an Appendix on Pappus and the History of Platonism, 1998; (arith-
metic, Diophantus of Alexandria [3rd c. C.E.]) Paul Tannery, Diophanti
Alexandrini Opera omnia cum Graecis commentariis, 1893–1895; André Allard,
“La Tradition du texte grec des Arithmétiques de Diophante d’Alexandrie,”
Revue d’Histoire des Textes 12/13 (1982/3): 57–137; Id., “Les scolies aux arith-
métiques de Diophante d’Alexandrie dans le Matritensis Bibl. Nat. 4678 et les
Vaticani gr. 191 et 304,” Byzantion 53 (1983): 682–710; Jean Christianidis,
“Une Interpretation byzantine de Diophante,” Historia Mathematica 25
(1998): 22–28; (arithmetic, George Pachymeres [1242–ca. 1310]) Paul
Tannery, Quadrivium de Georges Pachymère ou Suntagma tôn tessarôn mathêma-
tôn arithmêtikês, mousikês, geôgraphias kai astronomias, ed. E. Stéphanou, 1950;
(arithmetic, Isaac Argyrus) André Allard, “Le Petit traité d’Isaac Argyre
sur la racine carrée,” Centaurus 22 (1978): 1–43; (arithmetic, Indian) André
Allard, “Le premier traité byzantin de calcul indien: Classement des manu-
scrits et édition critique du texte,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 7 (1978): 57–107;
(arithmetic, Maximos Planudes [ca. 1255–ca. 1305]) André Allard,
Maxime Planude, le ‘Grand calcul selon les Indiens’: Histoire du texte, édition critique
traduite et annotée, 1981; Jean Christianidis, “Maxime Planude sur le sens
du terme diophantien plasmatikon,” Historia Scientiarum 6 (1996): 37–41; (as-
tronomy) David Pingree (1933–2005, “Gregory Chioniades and Palaeolo-
gan Astronomy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964): 135–160; Anne Tihon,
“Le calcul de la longitude de Vénus d’après un texte anonyme du Vat. gr. 184,”
Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome 39 (1968): 51–82; Ead., Le ‘Petit Com-
mentaire’ de Théon d’Alexandrie aux Tables Faciles de Ptolémée: Histoire du texte, édi-
tion critique, traduction, 1973; Joseph Mogenet, and Anne Tihon, in collab-
oration with Daniel Donnet, Barlaam de Seminara, Traités sur les éclipses de soleil
de 1333 et 1337: Histoire des textes, éditions critiques, traductions et commentaires,
1977 (on Barlaam [ca. 1290–1348]); Anne Tihon, “Un traité astronomique
chypriote du XIVe siècle,” Janus 64 (1977): 279–308; 66 (1979): 49–81; 68
(1981): 65–127; Ead., “L’astronomie byzantine,” Byzantion 51 (1981):
603–24; Joseph Mogenet, Le ‘Grand Commentaire’ de Théon d’Alexandrie aux
Byzantine Sciences 214

Tables Faciles de Ptolémée, Livre I: Histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction. Rev.,
with a trans. by Anne Tihon, 1985; Ead., “Calculs d’éclipses byzantins de la
fin du XIVe siècle,” Le Muséon 100 (1987): 353–61; Ead., Le ‘Grand Commen-
taire’ de Théon d’Alexandrie aux Tables Faciles de Ptolémée, Livres II et III: Histoire du
texte, édition critique, traduction, and id., Livre IV, 2 vols., 1991–1999; Ead.,
Etudes d’astronomie byzantine, 1994 (reproduces articles previously published
by the author); Ead., “Sous la plume de Jean Chortasmenos: Des scolies by-
zantines sur la trépidation des équinoxes,” Philosophie et sciences à Byzance de
1204 à 1453: Les textes, les doctrines et leur transmission, ed. Michel Cacouros,
and Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, 2006, 157–184 (on Ioannes Chortasme-
nos [ca. 1370-before 1439]; (astronomy, applied) Otto Neugebauer
(1899–1990), and Henry Bartlett Van Hoesen (1885–1965), Greek Horo-
scopes, 1959; (biology) Jean Théodoridès, Les sciences biologiques et médicales à
Byzance, 1977; (botany) Vilhelm Lundström (1869–1940), “Neophytos Pro-
dromenos’ botaniska namnförteckning,” Eranos 5 (1903–1904): 129–55; Ar-
mand Delatte, “Le lexique de botanique …” (above); Id., Anecdota …
(above), passim; Félix Brunet (b. 1872), “Contribution des médecins byzan-
tins à l’histoire des plantes et à la botanique médicale en France,” Hippocrates
5 (1939): 524–31; Armand Delatte, “Le traité des plantes planétaires d’un
manuscrit de Léningrad,” Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales
9 (1949): 145–77; Margaret H. Thomson, Textes grecs inedits relatifs aux
plantes, 1955; Ead., Le jardin symbolique: Texte grec tiré du Clarkianus XI, 1960;
Ernst Heitsch, ‘Carmen de viribus herbarum’, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente
der römischen Kaiserzeit, vol. 2, 1964, 23–38; John Riddle “Byzantine Com-
mentaries on Dioscorides,” Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, ed. John Scar-
borough, 1985, 95–102 (reproduced in John M. Riddle, Quid pro quo:
Studies in the History of Drugs, 1992, no. XIII]); Alain Touwaide, “Lexica medi-
co-botanica byzantina. Prolégomènes à une étude,” Tês filiês tade dôra. Miscel-
ánea léxica en memoria de Conchita Serrano, 1999, 211–28; (chemistry) James R.
Partington (1886–1965), A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, 1960; Carlo
Maria Mazzucchi, “Il fuoco greco,” Storia della guerra futura: Atti del Con-
vegno, Varallo, 22 settembre 2006, ed. Carlo Rastelli, and Giovanni Cerino
Badone, 2006, 125–32; (geography) Didier Marcotte, Les géographes grecs,
vol. 1: Introduction générale and Pseudo-Scymnos, Circuit de la Terre, 2000; Maria
Gabriela Schmidt, Die Nebenüberlieferung des 6. Buchs des Geographie des Ptol-
emaios. Griechische, lateinische, syrische, armenische und arabische Texte, 1999;
(mathematics) Jean Verpeaux (1922–1965), Nicéphore Choumnos, homme
d’état et humaniste byzantin (ca. 1250/1255–1327), 1959 (see 151–70: chapter 5:
Nicéphore Choumnos et les connaissances mathématiques); Alistair Macintosh Wil-
son, The Infinite in the Finite, 1995, on Pappus of Alexandria (408–20) and The
215 Byzantine Sciences

Last of the Greeks (420–23); (medicine [general; see below for specific studies])
Théodoridès, Les sciences … (above); Aristotelês Eytichiadês, Ê aksêsis tês
buzantinês iatrikês epistêmês kai koinônikai afarmogai autês kata schetikas diataxeis,
1983; Nicoletta Palmieri, “La théorie de la médecine des Alexandrins aux
Arabes,” Les voies de la science grecque: Etudes sur la transmission des textes de l’An-
tiquité au dix-neuvième siècle, ed. Danielle Jacquart, 1997, 33–133; Marie-
Hélène Congourdeau, “La médecine byzantine: Une réévaluation néces-
saire,” La revue du praticien 54 (2004): 1733–37; Ead., “La médecine à Nicée
et sous les Paléologues: état de la question,” Philosophie et sciences …, ed.
Cacouros, and Congourdeau (above), 185–88; Alain Touwaide, “The
Development of Palaeologan Renaissance: An Analysis Based on Dioscorides’
De materia medica,” ibid., 189–224; (metrology) Erich Schilbach, Byzantin-
ische Metrologische Quellen,1970; Id., Byzantinische Metrologie, 1970; (miner-
alogy) Dietlinde Golz, Studien zur Geschichte der Mineralnamen in Pharmazie,
Chemie und Medizin von den Anfängen bis Paracelsus, 1972; Sonja Schönauer,
Untersuchungen zum Steinkatalog des Sophrosyne-Gedichtes des Meliteniotes mit kri-
tischer Edition der Verse 1107–1247, 1996; (oneirology) M. Andrew Holow-
chak, Ancient Science and Dreams. Oneirology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 2001;
Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon
of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, 2002; Steven M. Oberhelman, Dreambooks in
Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction,
2008; (pharmacy) Pan. G. Kritikos, and Stella P. Papadaki, “Contribu-
tion à l’histoire de la Pharmacie chez les Byzantins, “Die Vorträge der Hauptver-
sammlung der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während
des Internationalen Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses in Athen vom 8. bis 14. April
1967, ed. Georg Edmund Dann (1898–1979), 1969, 13–78; Jerry Stannard,
“Aspects of Byzantine Materia Medica,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough
(above), 205–11 (reproduced in Jerry Stannard, Pristina Medicamenta:
Ancient and Medieval Medical Botany, ed. Katherine E. Stannard, and Richard
Kay, 1999, no. IX); John Scarborough, “Early Byzantine Pharmacology,”
Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 213–32; Maria Papathomopou-
los, “Stephanus of Alexandria: Pharmaceutical Notions and Cosmology
in his Alchemical Work,” Ambix 37 (1990): 121–33; Rudolf Schmitz
(1918–1992), Geschichte der Pharmazie, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang
des Mittelalters, 1998, 205–17; Marie-Hélène Marganne, “Etiquettes de
médicaments, listes de drogues, prescriptions et réceptaires dans l’Egypte
gréco-romaine et byzantine,” Pharmacopoles et apothicaires: Les ‘Pharmaciens’ de
l’Antiquité au Grand Siècle, ed. Franck Collard, and Evelyne Samama, 2006,
59–73; (veterinary medicine) Gudmund Björck (1905–1955), “Le Parisi-
nus grec 2244 et l’art vétérinaire grec,” Revue des études grecques 48 (1935):
Byzantine Sciences 216

505–24; Anne-Marie Doyen-higuet, “The Hippiatrica and Byzantine Vet-

erinary Medicine,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 111–20; Stav-
ros Lazaris, “Les rapports entre l’illustration et le texte de l’Epitome, manuel
byzantin d’hippiatrie,” Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 49 (1999):
281–301; Id., “La production nouvelle en médecine vétérinaire sous les
Paléologues et l’oeuvre cynégétique de Dèmètrios Pépagôménos,” Philoso-
phie et sciences …, ed. Cacouros, and Congourdeau (above), 225–68;
Anne-Marie Doyen-Higuet, L’epitomé de la Collection d’hippiatrie grecque: His-
toire du texte, édition critique, traduction et notes, vol. 1, 2006; Anne McCabe, A
Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine: The Sources, Compilation, and Trans-
mission of the Hippiatrica, Oxford, 2007; (zoology) Jean Théodoridès, “L’in-
térêt scientifique des miniatures zoologiques d’un manuscrit byzantin de la
‘matière médicale’ de Dioscoride (Codex M 652, Pierpont Morgan Library,
New York),” Acta biologica Debrecina 7–8 (1969–1970): 265–72; Zoltan Kádár,
Survivals of Greek Zoological Illuminations in Byzantine Manuscripts, 1978; Stavros
Lazaris, “Le Physiologus grec et son illustration: Quelques considérations à
propos d’un nouveau témoin illustré (Dujcev. gr. 297),” and Jacqueline Le-
clerc-Marx, “La sirène et l’(ono)centaure dans le Physiologus grec et latin
dans quelques Bestiaires: Le texte et l’image,” Bestiaires médiévaux: Nouvelles
perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, ed. Baudouin Van den
Abeele, 2005, 141–67 and 169–82 respectively; Pierre Beulens, “L’étude
de l’Histoire des animaux durant l’occupation latine de Constantinople et sous
les Paléologues,” Philosophie et sciences …, ed. Cacouros, and Congour-
deau (above), 113–25.
The current bibliography on the history of sciences, can be found in the
volume ISIS Current Bibliography of the History of Science and its Cultural Influences,
published as a yearly supplement to ISIS, the journal of the History of Science
Society (HSS) of America. Byzantium is dealt with in a specific section
(no. 220), which includes several sub-sections (by disciplines). Since there are
also disciplinary sections (nos. 101–64), all sections are crossed-referenced
and indexed (subject index) in order to make it possible to easily locate any
relevant item.
Besides the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum and the Catalogue des
manuscrits alchimiques grecs (above), another important 20th-century achieve-
ment is the Corpus des astronomes byzantins, 10 vols., by different publishing
companies over time, 1983–2001 (in chronological order of publication, and
number in the series): Joseph Mogenet, Anne Tihon, Robert Royez,
and Anne Berg, Nicéphore Grégoras, Calcul de l’éclipse de Soleil du 16 juillet 1330,
1983; David Pingree, The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, 2 vols.,
1985–1986; Alexander Jones, An Eleventh-century Manual of Arabo-Byzantine
217 Byzantine Sciences

Astronomy, 1987; Régine Leurquin, Théodore Méliténiote, Tribiblos astrono-

mique, 3 vols., 1993; Raymond Mercier, An Almanac for Trebizond for the Year
1336, 1994; David Pingree, The Preceptum Canonis Ptolomei, 1997; Anne
Tihon, and Raymond Mercier, Georges Gémiste Pléthon, Manuel d’astronomie,
1998; Anne Tihon, Régine Leurquin, and Claude Scheuren, La version
grecque du Traité sur l’astrolabe du Pseudo-Messahalla, 2001.

G. The Case of Medicine

The field of Byzantine science that developed more in 20th-century Western
scholarship is medicine. Though with the limitations we have stressed, many
texts have been edited and studied (including sometimes the biography of
the author). A bibliographical guide on Greek medical literature (actually,
a list of critical editions by ancient authors) including some Byzantine auth-
ors has been published by Helmut Leitner, Bibliography to the Ancient Medical
Authors, 1973, which was not necessarily well received (see, for example,
a review by K. R. Walters, and David Wilson, Gnomon 48 [1976]: 604–06).
Supplementary bibliographical information has been provided in such notes
as John Scarborough, “Texts and Sources in Ancient Pharmacy,” Pharmacy
in History 29 (1987): 81–84, and 133–39; Wesley D. Smith, “The Leitner
Supplements: An Addendum,” Society for Ancient Medicine Newsletter 20 (1992):
34–35; and John Scarborough, “New Texts in Byzantine and Arabic
Toxicology and Pharmacology,” Pharmacy in History 38 (1996): 96–99. Also,
several reports on such major enterprise as the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum
(which includes some early-Byzantine physicians) have been published
during the century; for the most recent (with the references of the earlier
reports), see: Jutta Kollesch, “Das Berliner Corpus der antiken Ärzte: Zur
Konzeption und zum Stand der Arbeiten,” Tradizione e ecdotica dei testi medici
tardoantichi e bizantini: Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Anacrapri 29–31 ottobre
1990, ed. Antonio Garzya, 1992, 357–50. Finally, an anthology of texts
(in Italian trans.) has been recently published by Neapolitan philologists (see
below): Medici Bizantini, 2006, (includes [chronological order of Byzantine
authors] Oribasius, Aetius, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Egina, Leo; trans-
lations are by Antonio Garzya, Roberto De Lucia, Alessia Guardasole,
Anna Maria Ieraci Bio, Mario Lamagna, Roberto Romano).
For specific studies on Byzantine authors and medical texts, see (alpha-
betical order of Byzantine authors’ name; selection): Aelius Promotus
(pseudo-) Sibylle Ihm, “Der Traktat peri tôn iobolôn thêriôn kai dêlêtêriôn
farmakôn des sog. Aelius Promotus: Vorstellung eines erstmals vollständig
edierten toxikologischen Textes,” Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption,
ed. Klaus Döring, Bernhard Herzhoff, and Georg Wöhrle, vol. 5 (1995):
Byzantine Sciences 218

79–89; Ead., Der Traktat peri tôn iobolôn thêriôn kai dêlêtêriôn farmakôn des sog.
Aelius Promotus: Erstedition mit texkritischen Kommentar, 1995; (Aetius), Ales-
sandro Olivieri, “Gli Iatrika di Aetios nel cod. Messinese no. 84,” Studi ita-
liani di filologia classica 9 (1901): 299–367; Zerbos, Die Gynekologie … (above);
Id., Aetii Sermo sextidecimus … (above); Id., “Aetiou Amidênou peri daknon-
tôn zôôn …” (above); Id., “Paratêrêseis eis ton triskaidekaton logon …”
(above); Id., “Aetiou Amidênou logos dekatos pemptos” (above); Id., “Aetiou
Amidênou logos enatos” (above); Jean Théodoridès, “Sur le 13e livre du
traité d’Aétios d’Amida, médecin byzantin du VIe siècle,” Janus 47 (1958):
221–37; Antonio Garzya, “Problèmes relatifs à l’édition des livres IX–XVI
du Tétrabiblon d’Aétios d’Amida,” Revue des Etudes Anciennes 86 (1984):
246–57; (Alexander of Tralles) Félix Brunet, Médecine et thérapeutique
byzantines: Œuvres médicales d’Alexandre de Tralles, le dernier auteur classique des
grands médecins grecs de l’antiquité, 4 vols., 1933–1937; Barbara Zipser, “Die
Therapeutica des Alexander Trallianus: Ein medizinisches Handbuch und
seine Überlieferung,” Selecta colligere, vol. 2: Beiträge zur Technik des Sammelns
und Kompilierens griechischer Texte von der Antike bis zum Humanismus, 2005, ed.
Rosa Maria Piccione, and Matthias Perkams, 2005, 211–34; (anony-
mous) Ivan Garofalo (ed. and comm.), and Brian Fuchs (trans.), Anonymi
Medici, De morbis acutis et chronicis, 1997; (Antonius Pyropoulos) Kouzês,
“Some new informations …” (above); (Constantine Meliteniotes) Kouzês,
“Quelques considérations …” (above); (Demetrius Pepagomenos)
Kouzês, Dêmêtriou Pepagomenou, Suntagma …, (above); Maria Capone Ci-
pollaro, Demetrio Pepagomeno, Prontuario medico, 2003; (Dioscorides) Pan.
G. Kritikos, and Theodora Athanassoula, Sur les codex pharmaceutiques
grecs: Un Codex inconnu de Dioscoride (1ère communication), no date; Geôrgios
Christodoulos, Summikta kritika, 1986, 131–99 (on the Athos manuscript
of Dioscorides [=  75, 11th c.]); Alain Touwaide, “Le traité de matière médicale
de Dioscoride en Italie depuis la fin de l’Empire romain jusqu’aux débuts
de l’école de Salerne: Essai de synthèse,” From Epidaurus to Salerno: Symposium
held at the European University Centre for Cultural Heritage, Ravello, April, 1990, ed.
Antje Krug, 1994, 275–305; Emilie Léal, “Un manuscrit illustré du traité
de matière médicale de Dioscoride: le Paris grec 2180,” 2 vols., B.A. thesis,
University of Provence, Aix-Marseille, 1997; Alessia Aletta, “Studi e
ricerche sul Dioscoride della Pierpont Morgan Library M.652,” 2 vols., B.A.
thesis, University of Rome, 1997–1998; Pascal Luccioni, “La postérité de
l’œuvre de Dioscoride jusqu’au VIe siècle: Remèdes, fraudes et succédanés,”
Ph.D. thesis, University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1998; Annamaria Ciarallo,
“Classificazione botanica delle specie illustrate nel Dioscoride della Bib-
lioteca Nazionale di Napoli,” Automata 1 (2006): 39–41; (Pseudo-Diosco-
219 Byzantine Sciences

ride, toxicological treatises) Julius Berendes (1837–1914), “I. Des Pedan-

ios Dioskurides Schrift über die Gifte und Gegengifte – II. Des Pedanios
Dioskurides Schrift über die giftigen Tiere und den tollen Hund,” Apotheker
Zeitung 20 (1905): 908–11, 918, 926–28, 933–35, 945–46, 952–54; Alain
Touwaide, “Les deux traités toxicologiques attribués à Dioscoride: La
Tradition manuscrite grecque, édition critique du texte grec, index,” 5 vols.,
Ph.D. thesis, University of Louvain, 1981; Id., “L’authenticité et l’origine des
deux traités de toxicologie attribués à Dioscoride: I. Historique de la ques-
tion. II. Apport de l’histoire du texte grec,” Janus 70 (1983): 1–53; Id., “Les
deux traités de toxicologie attribués à Dioscoride: Tradition manuscrite,
établissement du texte et critique d’authenticité,” Tradizione e ecdotica …
(above), 291–339; (Pseudo-Dioscorides [?], On simple medicines) Julius
Berendes, “Die Hausmittel des Pedanios Dioskurides, übersetzt und mit
Erklärungen versehen,” Janus 12 (1907): 10–33, 79–102, 140–63, 203–24,
268–92, 340–50, 401–12; (efodia) Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “À propos
d’un chapitre des Éphodia: L’avortement chez les médicins grecs,” Revue des
Etudes Byzantines 55 (1997): 261–77; Alain Touwaide, “Magna Graecia iterata:
Greek medicine in Southern Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries,” Medicina in
Magna Graecia: The Roots of our Knowledge, ed. Alfredo Musajo Somma, 2004,
85–101; Id., “Medicina Bizantina e Araba alla Corte di Palermo,” Medicina,
Scienza e Politica al Tempo di Federico II: Conferenza Internazionale, Castello Utveggio,
Palermo, 4–5 ottobre 2007, ed. Natale Gaspare De Santo, and Guido Belling-
hieri, 2008, 39–55; (Galen) Nigel G. Wilson, “Aspects of the Transmission
of Galen,” Le strade del testo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, 1987, 45–64; Jean Iri-
goin (1920–2006), Tradition et ecdotique des textes grecs, 1997, passim; Vivian
Nutton, “Galen in Byzantium,” Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium
(400–1453): Proceedings of the International Conference (Cambridge, 8–10 September
2001), ed. Michael Grünbart, Ewald Kislinger, Anna Muthesius,
and Dionysios Stathakopoulos, 2007, 171–76; Peter E. Pormann,
“The Alexandrian Summary (Jawami) of Galen’s On the Sects for Beginners:
Commentary or Abridgment?,” Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic
and Latin Commentaries, ed. Peter Adamson, Han Baltussen, and
M. W. F. Stone, 2 vols., 2004, vol. 2, 11–33; (Hippocrates) Owsei Temkin
(1902–2002), “Geschichte des Hippokratismus im ausgehenden Altertum,”
Kyklos 4 (1932): 1–80; Id., Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians, 1991;
(Ioannes of Alexandria) Iohannis Alexandrini Commentaria in Librum De Sectis
Galeni, ed. C. D. Pritchet, 1982; John of Alexandria, Commentary on Hippo-
crates’ Epidemics VI, Fragments, ed. and trans. John M. Duffy, and Commentary
on Hippocrates’ On the Nature of the Child, ed. and trans. T. A. Bell et al., 1997;
(Ioannes Argyropoulos [ca. 1393/4–1487]) Alain Touwaide, “The Letter …
Byzantine Sciences 220

to a Cypriot Physician attributed to Johannes Argyropoulos (ca. 1448–1453),”

Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999): 585–601; (Ioannes Prisduanôn) Kouzês,
“To peri ourôn …” (above); (Ioannes Zacharias Actuarius) Stauros Iô.
Kourouzês, “O Aktouarios Iôannês Zacharias paralêpês tês epistolês i’ tou
Geôrgiou Lakapênou,” Athêna 78 (1980–1982): 237–76; Armin Hohlweg,
“Johannes Aktouarios: Leben, Bildung und Ausbildung; De methodo
medendi,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 76(1983): 302–21; Id., “John Actuarius’s De
methodo medendi: On the New Edition,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough
(above), 121–33; Stauros Iô. Kourouzês, To epistolarion Geôrgiou Lakapênou-
Andronikou Zaridou (1299–1315 ca.) kai o iatros Aktouarios Iôannês Zacharias (1275
ca.-1328?): Meletê filologikê, Athens, 1984–1988; (Leo the Physician) Kouzês,
“The Written Tradition …” (above); Robert Renehan, “On the Text of Leo
Medicus: A Study in Textual Criticism,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 113
(1970): 79–88; Lawrence J. Bliquez, “The Surgical Instrumentarium of
Leon Iatrosophistes,” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999): 291–322; Barbara Zipser,
“Überlegungen zum Text der Sunopsis iatrikes des Leo medicus,” Studia
Humanitatis ac Litterarum Trifolio Heidelbergensi dedicata: Festschrift für Eckhard
Christmann, Wilfried Edelmaier und Rudolf Kettemann, ed. Angela Hornung,
Christian Jäkel, and Werner Schubert, 2004, 393–99; Ead., “Zu Aufbau
und Quellen der Sunopsis iatrikes des Leo medicus,” Antike Fachtexte-Ancient
Technical Texts, ed. Thorsten Fögen, 2005, 107–15; (Meletius) Robert
Renehan, “Meletius’ Chapter on the Eyes: An Unidentified Source,” Sympo-
sium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 159–68; (Metrodora) Zerbos, “Das
unveröffentlichte medizinische Werk …” (above); Marie- Hélène Congour-
deau, “Mètrodôra et son œuvre (traduction d’un traité de gynécologie popu-
laire),” Maladie et société à Byzance, ed. Evelyne Patlagean, 1994, 21–42;
(Nemesius) Hellen Brown Wicher, “Nemesius Emesenus,” Catalogus Trans-
lationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and
Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides, ed. F. Edward Cranz (1914–1998),
vol. 6, 1986, 31–72; Moreno Morani, Nemesius, De natura hominis, 1987;
(Neophytos Prodromênos) Lundström, “Neophytos Prodromenos’ …”
(above); Kouzês, “To peri tôn en odousi pathôn …” (above); (Nicephoros
Blemmydes) Id., “Les œuvres médicales …” (above); Evangelia A. Varella,
“Nicephorus Blemmydes: Naturwissenschafliches Porträt eines Gelehrten
des späten Mittelalters,” Orthodoxes Forum 2 (1990–1991): 1–16; Athanasios
Diamantopoulos, Musical Uroscopy: On Urines by the Wisest Vlemydes; An Excel-
lent Medical Work in the Iambic Manner by the Wisest Psellus, 1996; (Paul of
Egina) Julius Berendes, “Des Paulos von Aegina Abriss der gesammten
Medizin in sieben Büchern, übersetzt und mit Erklärungen versehen,” Janus
13 (1908): 417–32, 515–31, 538–600, 654–69; 14 (1909): 33–49, 124–39,
221 Byzantine Sciences

602–24, 689–707, 754–74; 15 (1910): 9–40, 73–111, 143–73, 229–60,

462–83, 534–62, 622–49; 16 (1911): 153–68, 381–89, 492–511, 548–65; 17
(1912): 20–44, 93–116, 233–61, 316–47, 368–99, 448–79, 557–72, 593–609;
18 (1913): 24–55, 121–51, 210–14, 282–97, 380–401; this translation was
further reproduced in a monographic form under a new title: Paulos’ von
Aegina des besten Arztes, Sieben Bücher. Übersetzt und mit Erläuterungen versehen,
1914; Mario Tabanelli, Studi sulla Chirurgia Bizantina: Paolo di Egina, 1964;
Eugene F. Rice, “Paulus Egineta,” Catalogus Translationum et Commentario-
rum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated
Lists and Guides, ed. F. Edward Cranz, vol. 4, 1980, 145–91; (Paul of Nicea)
Zerbos, Oi kôdikes tôn archaiôn anekdotôn iatrikôn cheirografôn tou Paulou
Nikaiou … (above); Anna Maria Ieraci Bio, Paolo di Nicea, Manuale Medico,
1996; (Philaretos) John A. Pithis, Die Schriften peri sfugmôn des Philaretos: Text,
Übersetzung, Kommentar, 1983; (Psellus) Armin Hohlweg, “Medizinischer
‘Enzyklopedismus’ und das ponêma nousôn des Michael Psellos,” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 81 (1988): 39–49; Robert Volk, Der medizinische Inhalt der Schriften des
Michael Psellos, 1990; Diamantopoulos, Musical Uroscopy …, (above); (Râzî)
Kouzês, Razê, Logos peri loimikês … (above); (Romanos) Id., “The Medical
Work …” (above); (Stephanos of Athens [and Alexandria]) Wanda Wols-
ka-conus, “Stéphanos d’Athènes et Stéphanos d’Alexandrie: Essai d’identi-
fication et de biographie,” Revue des Etudes Byzantines 47 (1989): 5–89; Ead.,
“Les commentaires de Stéphanos d’Athènes au Prognostikon et aux Aphor-
ismes d’Hippocrate: de Galien à la pratique scolaire alexandrine,” Revue des
Etudes Byzantines 50 (1992): 5–86; Ead., “Stéphanos d’Athènes (d’Alexandrie)
et Théophile le Prôtospathaire, commentateurs des Aphorismes d’Hippo-
crate: Sont-ils indépendants l’un de l’autre?,” Revue des Etudes Byzantines 52
(1994): 5–68; Ead., “Sources des commentaires de Stéphanos d’Athènes et de
Théophile le Prôtospathaire aux Aphorismes d’Hippocrate,” Revue des Etudes
Byzantines 54 (1996): 5–66; Ead., “Un ‘Pseudo-Galien’ dans le commentaire
de Stéphanos d’Athènes aux Aphorismes d’Hippocrate: O neôteros exêgêtês,”
Revue des Etudes Byzantines 56 (1998): 5–78; Keith Dickinson, Stephanus the
Philosopher and Physician: Commentary on Galen’s Therapeutics to Glaucon, 1998;
(Theophanus Nonnus [actually, Chrysobalantes]) Io. Steph. Bernard
(1718–1793), Theophanis Nonni Epitome de Curatione Morborum Graece ac Latine
ope codicum manuscriptorum recensuit notasque adiecit, 2 vols., 1794–1795; Joseph
A. Sonderkamp, “Theophanes Nonnus: Medicine in the Circle of Constan-
tine Porphyrogenitus,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 29–41;
Id., Untersuchungen zur Überlieferung der Schriften des Theophanes Chrysobalantes
(sog. Theophanes Nonnos), 1987; (Theophilos) Kouzês, Theofilou, Peri ourôn bib-
lion … (above); Id., “The Apotherapeutic …” (above).
Byzantine Sciences 222

Over time – particularly in recent years – a different type of approach

developed, by topics (alphabetical order of topic names; selection) (abortion)
Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou, John Lascaratos, and Spyros G. Marke-
tos, “Abortions in Byzantine Times (325–1453 AD),” Vesalius 2 (1996):
19–25; Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “Les abortifs dans les sources byzan-
tines,” Le corps à l’épreuve: Poisons, remèdes et chirurgie. Aspects des pratiques
médicales dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen-Age, ed. Franck Collard, and Evelyne
Samama, 2002, 57–70; (Alexandria) Owsei Temkin, “Studies on Late Alex-
andrian Medicine. I: Alexandrian Commentaries on Galen’s De Sectis ad Intro-
ducendos,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 3 (1935): 405–430; (analgesics)
George Kalantzis, Constantine Trompoukis, Constantine Tsiamis, and
John Lascaratos, “The Use of Analgesics and Hypnotics in the Ancient
Greek and Byzantine Era,” Proceedings of the History of Anaesthesia Society 32
(2003): 27–31; Kônstantinos Tsiamês, and Iôannês Laskaratos, “Anal-
gêtika kai upnôtika stên Archaia Ellada kai sto Buzantio,” Hellenic Journal of
Surgery 76 (2004): 65–71; (anthropology, Christian) Carolus Burkhard
(b. 1858), Alfanus, Nemesii Episcopi Premnon Physicon Peri fuseôs anthrôpou liber
a N. Alfano achiepiscopo Salerni in Latinum translatus, 1917; Alexis Smets, and
Michel Van Esbroeck, Basile de Césarée, Sur l’origine de l’homme (Hom. X et XI de
l’Hexaéméron): Introduction, texte critique, tradution et notes, 1970; Kristijan
Domiter, Gregor von Nazianz, De human natura (c. 1, 2, 14): Text, Übersetzung,
Kommentar, 1999; (cosmetic medicine) John Lascaratos, Constantine
Tsiamis, Gerassimos Lascaratos, and Nicholas G. Stavrianeas,
“The Roots of Cosmetic Medicine: Hair Cosmetics in Byzantine Times
(AD 324–1453),” International Journal of Dermatology 43 (2004): 397–401;
(Crusades) Piers D. Mitchell, Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds
and the Medieval Surgeon, 2004; (dentistry) Effi Poulakou-Rebelakou,
M. Stravrou, Constantinos Tsiamis, J. Stravrou, and M. Prokopidi,
“Dental Drugs during the Byzantine Times (330–1453 AD),” Program Ab-
stracts of the XXth Nordic Medical History Congress, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 10–13,
2005; (diet) Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the
Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and
Epidemics, 2004; Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drink in Byzantium, ed. Wendy
Mayer, and Silke Trzcionda, 2005; Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Luke 12:19):
Food and Wine in Byzantium, in Honour of Professor A. A. M. Bryer, ed. Leslie Bru-
baker, and Kalliroe Linardou, 2007; (elderly) John Lascaratos, and
Effie Poulacou-rebelacou, “The Roots of Geriatric Medicine: Care of the
Aged in Byzantine Times (324–1453 AD),” Gerontology 46 (2000): 2–6; (gen-
eration) Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “Sang féminin et génération ches
les auteurs byzantins,” Le sang au moyen âge: Actes du quatrième colloque inter-
223 Byzantine Sciences

national de Montpellier, Université Paul-Valéry (27–29 novembre 1997), 1999,

19–23; Ead., “L’embryon entre néoplatonisme et christianisme,” Oriens-Oc-
cidens 4 (2002): 201–16; (hospital) Timothy Miller, “Byzantine Hospitals,”
Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 53–63; Id., The Birth of the Hospital
in the Byzantine Empire, 1985 (rev. ed. 1997); Urs Benno Birchler-Argyros,
Quellen zur Spitalgeschichte im Oströmischer Reich, 1998; Timothy Miller, “By-
zantine Physicians and Their Hospitals,” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999):
323–35; David Bennett, “Three Xenon Texts,” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999):
507–19; Andrew Crislip, From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism &
the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity, 2005; Peregrine Horden,
“The Earliest Hospitals in Byzantium, Western Europe, and Islam,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005): 361–89; Id., “How Medicalised were By-
zantine Hospitals?,” Medicina e storia 10 (2005): 45–74; (iatromathematics)
Maria Papathanassiou, “Iatromathematica (Medical Astrology) in Late
Antiquity and the Byzantine Period,” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999): 357–76;
(illness, plague) Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “La peste noire à Constant-
inople de 1348 à 1466,” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999): 377–89; Plague and the
End of Antiquity, ed. Lester K. Little, 2007; (illness, smallpox) Karl-Heinz
Leven, “Zur Kenntnis der Pocken in der arabischen Medizin, im lateini-
schen Mittelalter und in Byzanz,” Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten:
Kongressakten des 4 Symposion des Mediävistenverbandes in Köln 1991 aus Anlass des
1000. Todesjahres der Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. Odilo Engels, and Peter Schrei-
ner, 1993, 341–54; John Lascaratos, “Two Cases of Smallpox in Byzan-
tium,” International Journal of Dermatology 41 (2002): 792–95; (Late An-
tiquity) Vivian Nutton, “From Galen to Alexander: Aspects of Medicine
and Medical Practice in Late Antiquity,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough
(above), 1–14; (leprosy) Luke Demaître, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Mal-
ady of the Whole Body, 2007; (monasteries) Volk Robert, Gesundheitswesen und
Wohltätigkeit im Spiegel der byzantinischen Klostertypika, 1983; (ophthalmol-
ogy) John Lascaratos, and Spyros Marketos, “Ophthalmological Ther-
apy in Hospitals (xenones) in Byzantium,” Documenta Ophthalmologica 77
(1991): 377–83; John Lascaratos, “Eyes on the Thrones: Imperial Ophthal-
mologic Nicknames,” Survey of Ophthalmology 44 (1999); 73–8; Id., “Ophthal-
mology in Byzantium (10th–15th Centuries),” Medicina nei Secoli 11 (1999):
391–403; (psychosomatic medicine) Aristotelis Chr. Eftychiadis, “By-
zantine Psychosomatic Medicine (10th–15th Centuries),” Medicina nei Secoli 11
(1999): 415–21; (rabies) Jean Théodoridès, “Rabies in Byzantine and
Islamic Medicine,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 149–58; Id.,
Histoire de la rage: Cave canem, 1986; (Ravenna) Nicoletta Palmieri, “Un
antico commento a Galeno della scuola medica di Ravenna,” Physis 23 (1981):
Byzantine Sciences 224

197–296; (religion) Gary B. Ferngren, and Karl-Heinz Leven, “Médecine

aux premiers siècles du christianisme,” Lettre d’informations-Université Jean
Monnet-Saint Etienne (Centre Jean Palerne) 26 (1995): 2–22; Pierre Julien, Fran-
çois Ledermann, and Alain Touwaide, Cosma e Damiano dal culto popolare
alla protezione di chirurghi, medici e farmacisti: Aspetti e immagini, 1993; Jean-
Claude Larchet, Théologie de la maladie, 1991; Les pères de l’église face à la science
médicale de leur temps, ed. Véronique Boudon-Millot, and Bernard Poude-
ron, 2005; (rhumatism) Constantine Tsiamis, Nicholas Tiberio Econ-
omou, and Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou, “Teorie e trattamento delle mal-
attie reumatiche nel periodo bizantino (330–1453),” Reumatismo 58 (2006):
157–64; (surgery) Lawrence J. Bliquez, “Two Lists of Greek Surgical
Instruments and the State of Surgery in Byzantine Times,” Symposium …, ed.
Scarborough (above), 187–204; John Lascaratos, and Athanasios Kos-
takopoulos, “Operations on Hermaphrodites and Castration in Byzantine
Times (324–1453 AD),” Urologia Internationalis 58 (1997): 232–35; John Las-
caratos, C. Liapis, and C. Ionidis, “Surgery on Aneurysms in Byzantine
Times (324–1453 A.D.),” European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery
15 (1998): 110–14; John Lascaratos, Constantine Tsiamis, and Alkiviadis
Kostakis, “Surgery for Inguinal Hernia in Byzantine Times (A.D. 324–1453):
First Scientific Descriptions,” World Journal of Surgery 27 (2003): 1165–69;
Stephanos Geroulanos, “Surgery in Byzantium,” Material Culture ...
(above), 129–34; (terminal patients) John Lascaratos, Effie Poulakou-
Rebelakou, and Spyros G. Marketos, “Abandonment of Terminally Ill
Patients in the Byzantine Era: An Ancient Tradition?,” Journal of Medical Ethics
25 (1999): 254–58; (therapy) Aristotelês Eytychiadês, Eisagogê eis tên buz-
antinên therapeutikên, 1983; Pavlos Ntafoulis, and G. Lavrentiadis,
“Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in 6th Century: St. John’s Ladder of Divine
Ascent,” Psychiatriki 16 (2005): 270; (urology) Mario Lamagna, ‘Il trattato
De urinis di Stefano d’Atene e l’uroscopia alessandrina,” Galenismo e medicina
tardoantica: Fonti greche, latine e arabe. Atti del Seminario Internazionale di Siena,
Certosa di Pontignano, 9 e 10 settembre 2002, ed. Ivan Garofalo, and Amneris
Roselli, 2003, 54–73; (uroscopy) Konstantin Dimitriadis, “Byzantin-
ische Uroskopie,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Bonn, 1971; Athanasios A.
Diamantopoulos, “Uroscopy in Byzantium,” American Journal of Nephrology
17 (1997): 222–27 (reproduced in Istoria tês Ellênikês Nefrologias, vol. 1., ed.
Thanasês Diamantopoulos, 2000, 220–25); Alain Touwaide, “On Uro-
scopy in Byzantium,” Istoria tês Ellênikês Nefrologias (above), 218–20; The
History of Byzantine Uroscopy, ed. Athanasios Diamantopoulos, 2005;
(well being) Athanasios Diamandopoulos, “The Effect of Medicine, in
Particular the Ideas about Renal Diseases, on the ‘Well-Being’ of Byzantine
225 Byzantine Sciences

Citizens,” Material Culture … (above) 93–99; Klaus Bergdolt, Wellbeing:

A Cultural History of Healthy Living, 2008.
Also, social historians have become increasingly interested in the history
of medicine. Investigation on the scientific and intellectual life in Byzan-
tium, which constituted the context of the exercise of science, is not new, as
it was illustrated as early as the 1960s (if not before) by such works as Ihor
Sev čenko (1922–2009), Etudes sur la polémique entre Théodore Métochite et Nicé-
phore Choumnos: La vie intellectuelle et politique à Byzance sous les premiers Paléo-
loques, 1962; Id., “Théodore Métochites, Chora et les courants intellectuels
de l’époque,” Art et société à Byzance sous les Paléologues: Actes du colloque organisé
par l’Association Internationale des Etudes Byzantines, Venise, 1968, 1971, 13–39
(reproduced in Id., Ideology, Letters & Culture in the Byzantine World, 1982, no.
VIII; English trans.: “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and the Intellectual
Trends of his Time,” The Kariye Djami, vol. 4: Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami
and its Intellectual Background, ed. Paul Atkins Underwood, 1975, 19–91). In
this view, teaching, be it general or scientific, became an object of renewed
study after such classical works as (chronological order of publication): Theo-
dor Puschmann (1844–1899), Geschichte des medicinischen Unterrichts von den
ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart, 1889, 113–30 (see chapter 2: Der medicinische
Unterrichte im Mittelalter: Der Einfluss des Christenthums); Friedrich Fuchs (b.
1890), Die höheren Schulen von Konstantinople im Mittelalter, 1926. For more re-
cent work, see Marjorie Ann Moffat, “School-Teachers in the Early Byzan-
tine Empire, 330–610 A.D.,” Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1972; Con-
stantinos N. Constantinides, Higher Education in Byzantium in the Thirteenth
and Early Fourteenth Centuries (1204–ca. 1310), 1982; John Duffy, “Byzantine
Medicine in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries: Aspects of Teaching and Prac-
tice,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 21–27; Anne Tihon, “En-
seignement scientifique à Byzance,” Organon 24 (1988): 89–108 (reproduced
in Ead., Etudes d’astronomie … [above], no. IX). Also, the place of medicine in
literature became a topic for research: Alice Leroy-Molinghen, “Méde-
cins, maladies et remèdes dans les Lettres de Théophylacte de Bulgarie,” By-
zantion 55 (1985): 483–92; Alexander Kazhdan, “The Image of the Medical
Doctor in Byzantine Literature of the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries,” Sympo-
sium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 43–51; Karl-Heinz Leven, Medizinisches
bei Eusebios von Kaisareia, 1987; Paraskevi Timplalexi, Medizinisches in der by-
zantinischen Epistolographie (1100–1453), 2002. Similarly, the place of medicine
in society, its role and impact on the patients’ health was investigated. One
component of such research is the investigation about famous patients:
Ewald Kislinger, “Der kranke Justin II. und die ärztliche Haftung bei Ope-
rationen in Byzanz,” Jahrbuch der österreichischen byzantinistischen Gesellschaft
Byzantine Sciences 226

36 (1986): 39–44; John Lascaratos, “The Poisoning of the Byzantine Em-

peror Romanos III Argyros (1028–1034 A.D.),” Mithridata 10 (1995): 6–10;
John Lascaratos, and Panaghiotis Vassilios Zis, “The Epilepsy of the Em-
peror Theodore II Lascaris (1254–1258),” Journal of Epilepsy 11 (1998):
296–300; John Lascaratos, and Spyros Marketos, “The Cause of Death
of the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces (969–976): Poisoning or Typhoid
Fever?,” Journal of Medical Biography 6 (1998): 171–74; John Lascaratos, and
V. Manduvalos, “Cases of Stroke on the Throne of Byzantium,” Journal of
the History of the Neurosciences 7 (1998): 5–10; John Lascaratos, and Effie
Poulakou-rebelakou, “Did Justinian the Great (527–565 CE) Suffer from
Syphilis?,” International Journal of Dermatology 38 (1999): 787–91; John Lasca-
ratos, and Panaghiotis Vassilios Zis, “The Epilepsy of Emperor Michael IV,
Paphlagon (1034–1041 A.D.): Accounts of Byzantine Historians and Phy-
sicians,” Epilepsia 41 (2000): 913–17. Going together, research on famous his-
torical individuals who are also physicians: John Lascaratos, and Spyros
Marketos, “A Little-known Emperor-physician: Manuel I Comnenus of
Byzantium (1143–1180),” Journal of Medical Biography 4 (1996): 187–90.
This shift toward the perception of medicine – rather than its produc-
tion – took a new dimension with the interrogation on the body and the con-
struction of a new perception of the body in the Early-Byzantine world: Peter
Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Chris-
tianity, 1988. In the same way, research became interested in the reactions,
both of individuals and the society, toward diseases, plague among others:
Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, and Mohammed Melhaoui, “La percep-
tion de la peste en pays chrétien byzantin et musulman,” Revue des Études By-
zantines, 59 (2001): 95–124; Alessio Sopracasa, “Aspetti dell’immaginario
bizantino: Le fantasie e la verità nell’esperienza della malattia, una quotid-
ianità straordinaria,” Annali 2000. Studi e Materiali dalle Tesi di laurea, II, Univer-
sità Ca’ Foscari-Venezia, Dipartimento di studi storici, 2001, 29–50; Id., “La maldie
et la peste dans l’empire byzantin à l’époque des Paléologues (XIIIe-XVe
siècles)”, M.A. thesis, University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2000–2001.
Another aspect of this new orientation is the interest in a whole region
approached in all its aspects at a certain point of time, as is the case in Patricia
Skinner, Health & Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy, 1997. The focus
is not on the capital or a major city (wherever it was located), but on an area
taken as a whole, in the periphery of the empire; not only the producers of
medical knowledge, but also the users of such knowledge in the daily prac-
tice of medicine; not only the schools and centers of learned medicine (in-
cluding libraries and their books, as well as other professional loci), but also
the places where medical service was provided, with the providers and users
227 Byzantine Sciences

(that is, the patients) of such service, including the epidemiological condi-
tions of the population.
This orientation of the historical enquiry had also an impact on the ap-
proach to the primary sources, that is, the manuscripts containing medical
texts. The medical book became a specific object of historico-medical investi-
gation, of an archeological nature. See for example: Aristomenis Matsagas,
Spyros Marketos, and Konstantinos Siokos, “Das medizinische Buch in
Byzanz,” Proceedings of the XXX International Congress of the History of Medicine,
Düsseldorf, 1986, 1988, 1139–45; Guglielmo Cavallo, “I libri di medicina:
Gli usi di un sapere”, Maladie et société …, ed. Patlagean (above), 43–56;
Iatrika buzantina cheirografa, 1995. In this view, scientific illustration was
particularly scrutinized as a source of information on the practice of medi-
cine, making inventories of illustrations more necessary than ever, from
the old and now obsolete, though still useful work of Henri Bordier
(1817–1888), Description des peintures et autres ornements dans les manuscrits grecs
de la Bibliothèque nationale, 1883, to such other works as Loren Mackinney
(1891–1963), Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, 1965, or, more re-
cently (though limited to only one sector): Stavros Lazaris, “Inventaire
sommaire des manuscrits grecs scientifiques illustrés de la Bibliothèque
nationale de Paris: Manuscrits zoologiques, botaniques, remèdes, recettes
d’antidotes, alchimiques, astrologiques,” Byzantiaka 13 (1993), 191–265.
Also, single manuscripts of particular importance were analyzed in detail
(chronological order of publication; selection): Paul Buberl (1885–1942),
Die Byzantinischen Handschriften, vol. 1: Der Wiener Dioskurides und die Wiener
Genesis, 1937 (about codex Vienna, National Library of Austria, medicus graecus
1); Jean Théodoridès, “Remarques sur l’iconographie zoologique dans
certains manuscrits médicaux byzantins et étude des miniatures zoolo-
giques du codex Vaticanus graecus 284”, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzanti-
nischen Gesellschaft 10 (1961): 21–29; Alain Touwaide, “Un recueil grec de
pharmacologie du Xe siècle illustré au XIVe siècle: Le Vaticanus graecus 284”,
Scriptorium 39 (1985): 13–56; Léal, “Un manuscrit illustré …” (above) (about
codex Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, graecus 2180); Aletta, “Studi
e ricerche …” (above) (about codex New York, Morgan Library, M652); and
Alain Touwaide, “The Salamanca Dioscorides (Salamanca, University Li-
brary, 2659),” Erytheia 24 (2003): 125–58.
Also, the lexicology of medical texts was newly approached, particularly
in the context of the dictionary of Byzantine Greek prepared at the Univer-
sity of Vienna (below). See for example: Armin Hohlweg, “Terminologie in
Byzantinischen Medizinischen Texten und Lexikographie,” Lexicographica
Byzantina: Beiträge zum Symposion zur Byzantinischen Lexikographie (Wien, 1.–4. 3.
Byzantine Sciences 228

1989), ed. Wolfram Hörander, and Erich Trapp, 1991, 129–35; Dionysios
Ch. Stathakopoulos, “Die Terminologie der Pest in Byzantinischen
Quellen,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 48 (1998): 1–7.
The analysis of textual traditions, however, remained mainly oriented
to the construction of a stemma codicum (instead of considering the way the
texts were read and used at the different time periods of Byzantine history or,
conversely, investigating what the books and texts tell about the places
where they were produced and used as is the case, for example, in David Ben-
nett, “Medical Practice and Manuscripts in Byzantium,” Social History of
Medicine 13 [2000]: 279–91), following a tradition going back to the early
days of the scientific approach to textual tradition and illustrated in the
20th century by such works as Hermann Diels, Die handschriftliche Überliefe-
rung des Galenschen Commentars zum Prorrheticum des Hippokrates, 1912; Georg
Helmreich (1849–1921), Handschriftliche Studien zu Meletius, 1918; Fridolf
Kudlien, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Galenkommentars zu Hippokrates
De articulis, 1960; Jean Irigoin, “Tradition manuscrite et histoire du texte:
Quelques problèmes relatifs à la Collection hippocratique,” Revue d’Histoire
des Textes 3 (1973): 1–13; Id., “L’Hippocrate du Cardinal Bessarion (Marcianus
graecus 269 [533]),” Miscellanea Marciana di studi Bessarionei a coronamento del V
Centenario della donazione nicena, 1976, 161–74; Jacques Jouanna, “L’analyse
codicologique du Parisinus gr. 2140 et l’histoire du texte hippocratique,”
Scriptorium 38 (1984): 50–62; Id., “L’Hippocrate de Modène: Mut. Est. gr. 233
(. T. 1. 12), 220 (. O. 4. 8) et 227 (. O. 4. 14),” Scriptorium 44 (1995): 273–83;
Anna Maria Ieraci Bio, “Testi ginecologici tra Oriente ed Occidente,
1. Metrodora ed il Dynameron di Nicola Mirepso. 2. Una testimonianza italo-
greca su una Quaestio medicalis salernitana,” La Scuola Medica Salernitana: Gli
autori e i testi, Convegno internazionale, Università degli Studi di Salerno, 3–5 nov-
embre 2004, ed. Danielle Jacquart, and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani,
2007, 283–314. This is also – and particularly – the case of the Italo-French
conferences on medical literature organized since 1990, markedly of a philo-
logical nature, rather than of history of medicine (chronological order of
the conferences and their proceedings): Tradizione e ecdotica dei testi medici tardo-
antichi e bizantini: Atti del Convegno internazionale, Anacapri, 29–31 ottobre 1990,
ed. Antonio Garzya, 1992; Storia e ecdotica dei testi medici greci: Atti del II
Convegno Internazionale, Parigi 24–26 maggio 1994, ed. Antonio Garzya, and
Jacques Jouanna, 1996; I testi medici greci: Tradizione e ecdotica: Atti del III
Convegno Internazionale, Napoli, 15–18 ottobre 1997, ed. Antonio Garzya,
and Jacques Jouanna, 1999; Trasmissione e ecdotica dei testi medici greci: Atti
del IV Convegno Internazionale, Parigi, 17–19 maggio 2001, ed. Antonio Garzya,
and Jacques Jouanna, 2003; Ecdotica e ricezione dei testi medici greci: Atti del V
229 Byzantine Sciences

Convegno Internazionale Napoli, 1–2 ottobre 2004, ed. Véronique Boudon-Mil-

lot, Antonio Garzya, Jacques Jouanna, and Amneris Roselli, 2006.
Among the many contributions to these volumes of proceedings, one could
quote the following from the 2006 proceedings, which illustrate well the
strictly philological approach of such conferences (alphabetical order of
modern author’s name): Maria Capone Ciollaro, “Un ricettario medico
attribuito a Giovanni Archiatra,” 213–30; Marie Cronier, “Quelques as-
pects de l’histoire du texte du De materia medica de Dioscoride: Forme origi-
nelle, remaniements et révisions à Constantinople aux Xe – XIe siècles,”
43–65; Roberto De Lucia, “La sezione ginecologica della miscellanea
medica in Vat. gr. 299,” 231–51; Rita Masullo, “Sul Peri sfugmôn attribuito a
Mercurio monacho,” 335–46.
More interested in the transmission of knowledge, instead, though
based only on manuscripts, is Nigel G. Wilson, “Aspects of the Trans-
mission of Galen,” Le strade del testo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, 1987, 45–64,
and Jean Irigoin, Tradition et critique des textes grecs, 1997, which contains
several fundamental studies on the history of medical texts: (35–7) Le corpus
hippocratique: la tradition médiévale; (191–210) Hippocrate et la Collection hippocra-
tique; (211–36) Hippocrate, Galien et quelques autres médecins grecs.
In general, the model of textual explanation of classical literature (be it
Greek or Latin) is simply transferred to medical treatises. This is particularly
the case in the critical editions and in the analysis of medical and scientific
texts, which focus on such aspects as the literary explanation, the identifica-
tion of the sources, and/or the influence. For example: Claudio Schiano,
“Il trattato inedito Sulle febbri attribuito a Giovanni Filopono: Contenuto,
modelli e struttura testuale,” Galenismo e medicina …, ed. Garofalo, and
Roselli, …, 75–100; Nicoletta Palmieri, “Fonti galeniche (e non) nella
lettura alessandrina dell’Ars medica,” ibid., 133–60; Ivan Garofalo,
“I sommari degli Alessandrini,” ibid., 203–231; Peter E. Pormann, “Jean le
Grammarien et le De sectis dans la littérature médicale d’Alexandrie,” ibid.,
233–263.

H. Current Organization of Research and Future Directions

As this panorama shows, the history of Byzantine science(s) is still largely
philological, and deals predominantly with the search for manuscripts,
their deciphering and analysis, the edition of texts that may have been
known but have been overlooked, or, instead, that remained unknown, and
the understanding of their content from a philological, and not necessarily
from a technical viewpoint, that is, from the viewpoint of the history of
science(s).
Byzantine Sciences 230

History of Byzantine science(s) is a multi-faceted field of scientific inves-

tigation located at the intersection of several historical techniques and requi-
ring a solid philological formation, an excellent training as codicologist, the
acute eye of a paleographer, the perseverance of a Benedictine (to decipher
texts), the endurance (and funding) of an explorer (to travel worldwide, visit
the libraries where manuscripts are preserved, and browse their collections),
and also a good level of acquaintance with – or at least of understanding of –
the scientific discipline of the field of study, astronomy, medicine, botany, or
mathematics, for example. As such, the history of Byzantine science(s) does
not always find a place in the current structure of the academia.
As a consequence, there are no departments, no research centers, no
society, no journal, or no specialized library collection on the argument, with
the very few exceptions below. More deeply, many of the indispensable
instrumenta studiorum are still lacking, starting with the inventory of the
manuscripts and, on this basis, of the texts that have been preserved. Medi-
cine, astrology, and alchemy are exceptions, however, as there are specific
catalogues of manuscripts (Diels, Die Handschriften …; the Catalogus Codicum
Astrologorum …, and the Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs [all above]).
Nevertheless, these catalogues, which were compiled in the early or until
mid-20th century, are not as useful as one would wish because of limitations
in their approach (this is particularly the case for medical manuscripts, pre-
dominantly oriented toward classical antiquity sensu stricto), the sources used
to compile the information (earlier printed catalogues, sometimes with two
catalogues for the same collection, each of them possibly using a different
system of shelfmarks), and changes in the collections during the 20th century
(damages because of conflicts in Europe, and/or move of some collections)
(for some updates for medical manuscripts, see, for example, Mariarosa
Formentin, I codici greci di medicina nelle tre Venezie, 1978, and, though of a
different nature [the manuscripts produced in southern Italy]: Anna Maria
Ierraci Bio, “La trasmissione della letteratura medica greca nell’Italia mer-
idionale fra X e XV secolo,” Contributi alla cultura greca nell’Italia meridionale, I,
ed. Antonio Garzya, 1989, 133–258). Also, cataloguing of Greek manu-
scripts made substantial progress during the 20th century, particularly the
second half (for a list of the catalogues of Greek collections of manuscripts by
cities, see Jean-Marie Olivier, Répertoire des bibliothèques et des catalogues de
manuscrits grecs de Marcel Richard. Troisième édition entièrement refondue, 1995).
On the basis of this renewed production, the so-called Greek Index Project, orig-
inally located at the Pontifical Institute of Medieaeval Studies in Toronto,
aimed to catalogue all the manuscripts of all Greek authors from Antiquity to
the end of Byzantium, including scientists and anonymous scientific texts
231 Byzantine Sciences

(Robert E. Sinkewicz, and Walter H. Hayes, Manuscript Listings for the Auth-
ored Works of the Palaeologan Period, 1989; Robert E. Sinkewicz, Manuscript List-
ings for the Authors of Classical and Late Antiquity, 1990; Id., Manuscript Listings
for the Authors of the Patristic and Byzantine, 1992). In 1993, the Project was trans-
ferred to the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes of the French
CNRS and transformed into the database PINAKES: Textes et manuscrits grecs,
which has been recently (September 2008) made available through the Inter-
net (http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr). PINAKES compensates partially for the prob-
lems of the Project, as it includes some update on the current location of items
that have been moved during the 20th century and since the publication of the
catalogues in which they are listed (if any). Also, some catalogues and/or
studies of scientific manuscripts by author and type of texts have been pub-
lished. For Aristotle, see Paul Moraux (1919–1985), Dieter Harlfinger,
Dietrich Reinsch, and Jürgen Wiesner, Aristoteles Graecus: Die griechischen Manu-
skripte des Aristoteles, vol. 1: Alexandrien-London, 1976; for medical commentaries:
Sibylle Ihm, Clavis Commentariorum der antiken medizinischen Texte, 2002; for
lexica: Les manuscrits des lexiques et glossaires de l’antiquité tardive à la fin du moyen
âge: Actes du Colloque international organisé par le “Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific
Culture” (Erice, 23–30 septembre 1994), ed. Jacqueline Hamesse, 1996, and Le-
xiques bilingues dans les domaines philosophique et scientifique (Moyen Age et Renais-
sance): Actes du Colloque international organisé par l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
(Paris, 1997), ed. Jacqueline Hamesse, and Danielle Jacquart, 2001; and
Touwaide, “Lexica medico-botanica byzantina …” (above). Also, a program
aimed at producing a new listing and, later on, a catalogue of Greek medical
manuscripts is currently running at the Institute for the Preservation of Medi-
cal Traditions located at the Smithsonian Institution (Alain Touwaide,
“Greek Medical Manuscripts-Toward a New Catalogue,” Byzantinische Zeit-
schrift 101 [2008]: 199–208; Id., “Byzantine Medical Manuscripts: Towards a
New Catalogue, with a Specimen for an Annotated Checklist of Manuscripts
Based on an Index of Diels’ Catalogue,” Byzantion 79 [2009]: 453–595). Such
listing is posted on the Internet (as the catalogue also will be) so as to be poss-
ibly updated constantly (http://www.medicaltraditions.org).
Research centers that have been active in the last decades of the 20th cen-
tury – or still are – in History of Byzantine Science(s) include the Université
de Louvain (Belgium), where the type of analysis based on manuscripts
described above has been particularly developed. Anne Tihon (above, for
her publications) pursued the activity on Byzantine astronomy started by
Joseph Mogenet (above) and, before him, by Adolphe Rome (b. 1889), edi-
tor of Pappus’ and Theon’s commentaries on Ptolemy’s Almagest (3 vols.,
1931–1943). Besides her own publications – with a particular focus on the
Byzantine Sciences 232

exchanges between the Arabic and Byzantine worlds in more recent times –
Tihon has launched the Corpus des astronomes byzantins (above). Typically,
publications from Louvain are of a technical nature, and analyze the data of
the texts in great detail. The historian of mathematics and astronomy David
Pingree (below) published important texts in the Corpus des astronomes by-
zantins (above), as did also Alexander Jones (above), who edited astronomical
papyri, including early-Byzantine ones (Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus,
1999), and is now with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World of
New York University in New York, N.Y.
The model developed at Louvain on the history of astronomy was further
transposed to other sectors: the history of mathematics with André Allard
(Faculté Universitaires de Namur, and Université catholique de Louvain,
at Louvain-la-Neuve [Belgium]) (above); medicine and natural sciences with
Alain Touwaide (currently at the Smithsonian Institution, National Mu-
seum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. [U.S.A.]) (below); and veterinary
medicine with Anne Marie Doyen-Higuet (Faculté Universitaires de
Namur, and Université catholique de Louvain, at Louvain-la-Neuve [Bel-
gium]) (above).
In Belgium also, the Université de Liège has developed similar research
programs in history of science, which include Byzantine science and deal with
two different disciplines: medical papyri with Marie-Hélène Marganne at
the CEDOPAL-Centre de Documentation de Papyrologie Littéraire. Mar-
ganne has published an inventory of Greek medical papyri (including Early-
Byzantine pieces) (Inventaire analytique des papyrus grecs de médecine, 1981), and
wrote a thesis on the same topic (“Papyri Medicae Graecae. Contribution de la
papyrologie à l’histoire de la médecine antique,” Ph.D. thesis, University of
Liège, 1982–1983). She curates the so-called Mertens-Pack3 archive on literary
papyri, with a particular focus on medical pieces. She has published regular
updates, with a synthesis in “Médecine grecque et papyrologie: bilan et per-
spectives,” Colloque la médecine grecque antique: Actes, ed. Jacques Jouanna, and
Jean Leclant, 2004, 235–251. The archive on Greek medical papyrus has
been transformed in a computerized database available on the Internet since
2001: http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/indexanglais.htm. In colla-
boration with the pharmacist Pierre Koemoth, she has also posted on the
Internet a bibliographical list on pharmacology in papyri entitled Pharmaco-
poea aegyptia et graeco-aegyptia, which contained some material on the Byzan-
tine period and is regularly updated (http://www2.ulg.ac.be/facphl/services/
cedopal/pages/bibliographies/PHARMEG.htm). In Liège also, Robert Hal-
leux at the Centre d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, specialized on
mineralogy and metallurgy and edited, among others, Greek lapidaries (Les
233 Byzantine Sciences

lapidaires grecs: Lapidaire orphique, Kérygme, Lapidaires d’Orphée, Socrate et Denys,

Lapidaire nautique, Damigéron-Evax, 1985).
Other centers worldwide include the Laboratoire “Médecine grecque”
currently directed by Véronique Boudon-Millot, in the Unité Mixte de
Recherche (UMR) 8167 Orient et Méditerranée affiliated with the French CNRS
and the Université Paris Sorbonne. The Laboratoire co-organizes with the
University of Naples the philological conferences on medical texts originally
started by Antonio Garzya (above). Some of the scholars associated with the
Laboratoire work on early-Byzantine medical texts, doing philological work.
The Laboratoire has created and still develops the Medic@ Library in collab-
oration with the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Médecine (BIUM) in
Paris directed by Guy Cobolet (himself a historian of medicine). It is a digi-
tal collection available in open access on the Internet (http://www.bium.
univ-paris5.fr/histmed/medica.htm), which contains, among others, printed
editions (16th to the 19th c.) of Byzantine medical texts (Aetius, Alexander of
Tralles, Oribasius, Paul of Egine, Stephanus of Athens, Theophanes Nonnus,
and Theophilus) and also secondary literature. In Paris also, the Centre de re-
cherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance affiliated with the CNRS and
participating in the Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 8167 Orient et Méditer-
ranée is hosted by the Collège de France. Some among the scholars associated
with the Centre (for instance Marie-Hélène Congourdeau) include Byzan-
tine medicine in their programs.
In Italy, the Istituto Papirologico “G. Vitelli” in Florence prepares a cor-
pus of Greek medical papyri (including Early Byzantine [up to the 6th c.]),
which was coordinated by Isabella Andorlini, now with the University of
Parma. A prototype of the corpus was published in 1997: ‘Specimina’ per il Cor-
pus dei Papiri Greci di Medicina: Atti dell’incontro di studio (Firenze, 1996), ed. Isa-
bella Andorlini, 1997. Andorlini also published a list of medical papyri
similar to that previously authored by Marganne (above): Isabella Andor-
lini Marcone, “L’apporto dei papiri alla conoscenza della scienza medica
antica,” ANRW II.37.2 (1996): 458–562. In Naples, Antonio Garzya, form-
erly at the Department of Classics of the University Federico II, fostered the
study of the history of Greek medicine, including early-Byzantine texts. In so
doing, he followed Alessandro Olivieri, editor of Aetius (vols. 1 and 2) in the
Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (above). He also launched the series of philolo-
gical conferences on classical medical texts now held in Naples and Paris
(above), and announced a program aimed to take over the program of com-
pleting the critical edition of Aetius.
In Greece, the Chair of History of Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the
University of Athens was held for a long time by Spyros Marketos. Himself
Byzantine Sciences 234

a physician, he associated several others to the Chair, among whom

John Lascaratos (an ophthalmologist), and Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou
(a pediatrician). Frequently with one or more of his collaborators, he auth-
ored several specialist analyses on Byzantine medicine (see the many refer-
ences above). Also, Stefanos Geroulanos, a physician initially in Zürich
and now in Athens, developed a museum of history of medicine at the Uni-
versity of Iôannina, and published on the history of Byzantine medicine and
surgery (above). In Patras, Athanasios Diamantopoulos, a physician and
an archeologist, worked particularly on nephrology and urology (above). In
Thessalonika, the pharmacist Evangelia Varella specialized on the history
of her own discipline (including Byzantium), and contributed to the creation
of a museum of history of pharmacy, which opened recently.
In Germany, the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum in Berlin, which was di-
rected for a long time by Jutta Kollesch, publishes the Corpus (above) and
holds the archive of the catalogue of Greek medical manuscripts compiled by
Diels’s collaborators (above).
Many of these centers host researchers preparing a Ph.D. thesis, as do
also individuals worldwide, and other research centers and libraries special-
ized in Byzantine studies or in the history of medicine. Vienna (Austria) is a
major center for Byzantine studies with a cluster of institutions that have
published (or are preparing) reference works for Byzantine studies: the Insti-
tut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik at the University, the Institut für
Byzanzforschung of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and
the Österreichische National Bibliothek. None of the research programs in
Vienna (conducted or sponsored by any single institution or in collaboration)
specifically deals with the history of science(s). However, many such pro-
grams (completed or still running) offer important information for the study
of science(s) in Byzantium: the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaeologenzeit
(directed by Erich Trapp [now with Bonn University] and published by the
Academy, 1976–1996) lists all the individuals in the Byzantine Empire from
1261–1453 known by name (including scientists); the Lexikon zur Byzanti-
nischen Gräzität, besonders des 9.–12. Jahrhunderts (University and Academy) in-
cludes many items from scientific texts (published by the Academy; current
state of publication: until palianthrôpos); the program on Alltagsleben und ma-
terielle Kultur von Byzanz (University) studies the material component of every
day life in the Byzantine Empire, including medicine; the Bibliography on
Byzantine Material Culture and Daily Life (University) aims “to collect all second-
ary sources concerning objects of daily life and the material culture of Byzan-
tium”; and the Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800–1600 (Academy, 3 vols.
published so far; research has been conducted under the supervision of the
235 Byzantine Sciences

late Herbert Hunger, by Ernst Gamillscheg [now at the National Library]

in collaboration with Dieter Harlfinger then [and now again, after years in
Hamburg] at the Aristoteles-Archiv in Berlin [below]; from volume 3 on, ex-
ternal collaborators have been associated) lists all the Greek manuscripts
signed by, attributed to, or newly identified as being produced by known
copyists. The Aristoteles-Archiv, at the Freie Universität in Berlin, “has a
unique microfilm collection of all Greek Aristotle manuscripts as well as ap-
proximately 1,000 additional manuscripts with late antique and Byzantine
commentaries on Aristotle’s treatises.”
The Program in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collections of Harvard University, but located in Washington, D.C.
(U.S.A.), hosts a collections of 149,000 volumes devoted to all aspects of By-
zantine history, including sciences. It offers yearly fellowships for pre- and
post-doctoral research, and publishes the Dumbarton Oaks Papers. In Washing-
ton also, the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions hosted by
the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of Natural History, Depart-
ment of Botany) preserves a library collection of ca. 15,000 items specifically
on the history of science(s) (mainly natural and life sciences) in the ancient
Mediterranean (Antiquity, the Middle Ages [with a particular focus on By-
zantium], and the Renaissance), which contains critical editions of primary
sources, secondary literature (from classical philology to botany, ethnobot-
any, and ethnopharmacy, and including Greek paleography and codicology),
microfilms of Greek medical manuscripts, computerized databases, and
a digital collection of still unpublished Byzantine medical texts reproduced
from manuscripts. Close to Washington (actually in Bethesda, MD), the His-
tory of Medicine Division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine on the
campus of the National Institutes of Health has one of the most extensive
collections in the world on the history of medicine, including early printed
books. Though not specialized on Byzantium or any other specific time
period and/or area, it holds a vast quantity of material relevant for the study
of Byzantine medicine and science (from incunabula printed editions to the
most recent secondary literature). In the United States also, Brown Univer-
sity (Providence, Rhode Island) had a Department of History of Mathematics
specialized in the Mediterranean tradition from Mesopotamia to the Renais-
sance and including Byzantium. The Department was created by Otto Neu-
gebauer (above) and directed until recently by David Pingree (above), who
built a library of more than 20,000 items on the history of exact sciences. The
collection is now included in the library of Brown University.
In London (U.K.), the Wellcome Library of History of Medicine is a major
repository of material on the history of medicine (books, journals, manu-
Byzantine Sciences 236

scripts, and pictures), including Byzantium (some items in the manuscript

collection are Byzantine).
Whereas there is no society, group of any kind, or conference specifically
devoted to the history of Byzantine science(s), many local, national, and
international societies (be they devoted to Byzantine history or history of
science, medicine, pharmacy or other discipline[s]) usually include Byzan-
tium into their fields of interest (even though, often, they do not necessarily
encourage the history of Byzantine science[s]). Many such societies usually
organize annual meetings (particularly the national societies), whereas the
international societies (history of science, and Byzantine studies) organize
large conferences every four years.
There is no specific medium for publications on the history of Byzantine
science, with the exception of the Corpus des astronomes byzantins (above) and,
for medicine, the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (particularly its Supplementum
Orientale as the Corpus is focused on classical antiquity from the 5th century
B.C.E. to the end of antiquity [“… vom 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zum Aus-
gang der Antike …”]), and the newly created series Medicine in the Medieval
Mediterranean focusing on Byzantium and its neighbors in the Eastern
Mediterranean. However, such journals as (alphabetical order of titles) By-
zantinische Zeitschrift (currently edited by Albrecht Berger, Ludwig-Maximi-
lians-Universität in Munich), Byzantinoslavica (published by the Academy of
Sciences of the Czech Republic, in Prague), Byzantion (published by the So-
ciété belge d’études byzantines), the Dumbarton Oaks Papers (above), Erytheia
(directed by Prof. Pedro Bádenas de la Peña [Madrid] and published by the
Asociación cultural Hispano-Helénica), Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
(edited by Duke University, Durham, N.C. [U.S.A.]), the Jahrbuch der Öster-
reichischen Byzantinistik (edited by the Österreichische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften in Vienna [Austria]), the Revue des Etudes Byzantines (published by the
Société française d’études byzantines), and Thesaurismata (published by the
Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini in Venice [Italy]) accept
articles on topics related to the history of science(s) in Byzantium. The Byzan-
tinische Zeitschrift also includes in each issue a bibliography of current produc-
tion with the following sections on the history of sciences: 11. Fachwissen-
schaften, with the subsections A. Mathematik, Physik, Astronomie, Astrologie;
B. Naturwissenschaften (Zoologie, Botanik, Minealogie, Alchemie); C. Medizin, Phar-
mazie. Also, the editions of texts (including scientific ones) are listed in the
section 1 A. Hochsprachliche Literatur, with its several subdivisions: b. Literatur-
gattungen; c. Fortleben antiker Autoren; d. Byzantinische Autoren (Ausgaben, Über-
setzungen, Sekundärlitertur). On the other hand, the journals on the history of
sciences below publish ocasionally articles on Byzantine science (though
237 Byzantine Sciences

not necessarily soliciting them) (alphabetical order of titles): Ambix (special-

ized on the history of alchemy), Centaurus (history of mathematics), Early
Science and Medicine, Historia Scientiarum, Historia Mathematica, ISIS (history of
sciences in general), Nuncius (id.), Physis (id.), and Sudhoffs Archiv (id.). Given
the importance of manuscripts and texts in the field, such journals as (alpha-
betical order of titles) Codices manuscripti, Manuscripta, Revue d’Histoire des
Textes, Scriptorium, Scrittura e civiltà (until 2001), and the newly created journ-
als Galeno and Scripta also publish articles on manuscripts and the tradition of
text of scientific works, including Byzantine ones. Finally, some of the journ-
als above are accompanied by a series of monographs, and the International
Society of History of Sciences edits the series De diversis artibus, which pub-
lishes any work relevant to the history of science(s), including Byzantine
science(s).
Byzantine science(s) is an under-researched field of historical inquiry,
where fundamental research is urgently needed (actually, inventory and
critical editions of primary sources from manuscripts [themselves still to be
systematically explored], ideally also translation of edited texts into a mod-
ern language, and technical analysis of such edited texts). Such need explains
the profile of the all too rare researchers in the field, who are primarily (and
altogether) classicists, Byzantinists, philologists, historians, codicologists,
paleographers, historians of texts and editors, preferably with a good level of
understanding, if not of knowledge, of the scientific discipline of the texts
they are working on. Only such fundamental research will make it possible to
write the documented syntheses on Byzantine science(s) that are still miss-
ing, and, on this basis, to do comparative work on the several medieval tradi-
tions, so as to make it possible to perceive the place, importance, and impact
of Byzantine science(s) in medieval Mediterranean science(s).
Work of this type has already started, however. As I have mentioned, in-
deed, the introduction of Arabic medicine into Byzantium has been noticed
as early as the 1930s by Aristotelês Kouzês (“Quelques considérations …,”
[above]). Later on, Joseph Mogenet brought to light the earliest known
trace of this phenomenon in astronomy (“Une scolie …,” [above]), and the
German historian of medicine Georg Harig (1935–1989) in Berlin (Ger-
many) made similar work on the 11th-century polymath Symeon Seth (“Von
den arabischen Quellen des Simeon Seth,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 2 [1967]:
248–68). Probably following Mogenet, Anne Tihon studied more in-
depth the introduction and assimilation of Arabic astronomy into Byzan-
tium, as did also Alain Touwaide for medicine (chronological order of pub-
lication): Anne Tihon, “Les tables astronomiques persanes à Constanti-
nople dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle,” Byzantion 57 (1987): 471–87;
Byzantine Sciences 238

Ead., “Sur l’identité de l’astronome Alim,” Archives internationales d’histoire

des sciences 39 (1989): 3–21; Ead., “Tables islamiques à Byzance,” Byzantion 60
(1990): 401–25; Alain Touwaide, “Un Manuscrit athonite du Traité de
matière médicale de Dioscoride: l’Athous Magnae Laurae  75,” Scriptorium 45
(1991): 122–27; Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “Prolongements et diffu-
sion: Le monde byzantin,” A l’ombre d’Avicenne: La médecine au temps des califes,
1996, 271–73; Alain Touwaide, Medicinalia Arabo-Byzantina, vol. 1: Manu-
scrits et textes, 1997; Anne Tihon, “Les textes astronomiques arabes importés à
Byzance aux XIe et XIIe siècle,” Occident et Proche-Orient: Contacts scientifiques au
temps des Croisades. Actes du colloque de Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997, ed. Isabelle Drae-
lants, Anne Tihon, and Baudouin van den Abeele, 2000, 313–24; Ead.,
“Un texte byzantin inédit sur une horloge persane,” Sic itur ad Astra: Festschrift
für den Arabisten Paul Kunitzsch zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Menso Folkerts,
and Richard Lorch, 2000, 523–35; Alain Touwaide, “Arabic Medicine
in Greek Translation: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the International Society
for the History of Islamic Medicine 1 (2002): 45–53; Id., “Arabic Materia Medica
in Byzantium during the 11th Century A.D. and the Problems of Transfer
of Knowledge in Medieval Science,” Science and Technology in the Islamic World,”
ed. S. M. Razaullah Ansari, 2002, 223–47; Id., “Magna Graecia iterata …,”
Medicina …, ed. Musajo Somma (above), 85–101; Id., “Arabic Urology in
Byzantium,” The History of Nephrology New Series, vol. 1, ed. Natale G. De
Santo, Luigi Iorio, Spyros G. marketos, Shaul G. Massry, and Garabed
Eknoyan, 2004, 167–73; Id., “The Jujube-Tree in the Eastern Mediterra-
nean: A Case Study in the Methodology of Textual Archaeobotany,” Health
and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. Peter Dendle, and Alain Tou-
waide, 2008, 72–100; Id., “Medicina Bizantina …,” Medicina …, ed. De
Santo, and Bellinghieri (above) (the works by Mario Lamagna, “La re-
censio amplior inedita del De urinis di Avicenna,” Trasmissione e ecdotica …, ed.
Garzya, and Jouanna [above], 271–80; and “La recensio amplior del De uri-
nis di Avicenna: Lo stato della tradizione manoscritta,” Ecdotica e ricezione …,
ed. Boudon-Millot et al. [above], 321–44, are only philological [producing
a stemma codicum and discussing the variant readings] and not interested in
the origin of the text, a comparison with the text in Arabic, the impact of the
translation on Byzantine medicine, a scientific approach and/or evaluation,
or any other aspect of the transfer of knowledge).
This highly-specialized and multi-faceted profile required from histori-
ans of Byzantine science(s) may contribute to explain their rarity and, conse-
quently, the exiguity of the space given to the history of Byzantine science(s)
in current historical research. Also, the high level of specialization of the dis-
cipline may be responsible for the absence or misconception about Byzantine
239 Byzantine Sciences

science(s) in reference works aimed at a wider audience, however well in-

formed such works might be (see for example in Lawrence I. Conrad, Mi-
chael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter [1946–2002], and Andrew Wear,
The Western Medical Tradition, vol. 1: 800 BC to AD 1800, 1992, where Byzantium
is almost totally absent, and Gotthard Strohmaier, “La ricezione e la tra-
dizione: la medicina nel mondo bizantino e arabo”, Storia del pensiero medico oc-
cidentale, vol. 1: Antichità e medioevo, ed. Mirko D. Grmek, 1993, 167–215
[English trans.: “Reception and Tradition: Medicine in the Byzantine and
Arab World”, Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. Mirko
D. Grmek [1924–2000], 1998, 139–69], where Byzantine medicine is briefly
treated as lacking originality). Conversely, the rarity of scholars in the field,
and the lack, together with the crucial need, of reference works leaves the field
open and more necessary than ever, also allowing for original research. This is
valid for both individual involvement and major research programs to be in-
stitutionally supported and sponsored (be it in the disciplines that have al-
ready been – and still are – studied [from medicine to zoology, for example] or
new ones still to be explored). Only new and innovative research, preferably
based on primary sources and of a truly trans-disciplinary nature, will make it
possible to compensate for the lacunas on Byzantium in the current pan-
orama of history of science(s), as it has started to be the case, though in a li-
mited way, in such historical dictionaries and encyclopedias as the New Dic-
tionary of Scientific Biography (above), the Encyclopedia of Astronomers (above), and
Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine (above), in which entries on Byzantine
scientists of different disciplines have been written by modern specialists.

Select Bibliography
Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs, 5 tomes in 8 vols. (Brussels: Lamertin [except
vols. 4 and 8: Secretary of the Union Académique Internationale], 1924–1932); Catalo-
gus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, 12 tomes in 20 vols. (Brussels: Lamertin [ex-
cept vols. 5/4, 9/1 and 9/2: Aedes Academiarum], 1898–1953); Corpus des astronomes
byzantins, 10 vols. (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben [vols. 1–6]; and Louvain-la-Neuve: Aca-
demia-Erasme [vol. 7]; Academia Bruylant [vols. 8–9]; and Bruylant-Academia [vol. 10],
1983–2001); Herbert Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, 2 vols.
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1978); Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, ed. John Scarborough
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985); Anne Tihon, Etudes d’astronomie byzantine
(Aldershot [UK]: Variorum, 1994); Alain Touwaide, “Greek Medical Manuscripts-
Toward a New Catalogue,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 101 (2008): 199–208; id., “Byzan-
tine Medical Manuscripts: Towards a New Catalogue, with a Specimen for an Anno-
tated Checklist of Manuscripts Based on an Index of Diels’ Catalogue,” Byzantion 79
[2009]: 453–595.

Alain Touwaide
Byzantine Theology 240

Byzantine Theology

A. Historical Background
Byzantine theology was shaped through a succession of debates, conflicts
and confluences, intellectual and others, that took place ever since the in-
stauration of the Byzantine state as a Christian state. The Hellenistic heritage
was simultaneously denied and assumed by the intellectuals of the new faith.
A series of Ecumenical Councils, seven in total (from 325 to 787), were to con-
strue the doctrinal configuration of the new Church. The struggle against
the heresies such as monophysitism was the impetus behind the need for stat-
ing the dogmas in a time where doctrinal formulations were the subject even
of common discussion. The Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory Nazianzus, Gre-
gory of Nyssa, and Basil the Great, together with John Chrysostom (4th c.),
were key figures in the origin of the new tradition. The co-presence of the
organized Church and the imperial structures gave to the new state form its
distinctive nature although remnants of the Roman ‘imperial cult’ con-
tinued to play some role. The decisive factor that Church and Orthodoxy
were in Byzantium made possible the later attribution to this form of gov-
ernment of the rather confusing terms of ‘Theocracy’ or ‘Caesaro-papism.’
The conflict with the rising Islamic force of the Arabs restrained the spread of
Byzantine Christianity but made the men of the Church even more decisive
as to the defense of their faith. Maximus the Confessor (580–662) distilled
the negative theology of pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita and the origenism in
the service of Orthodoxy and Byzantine mysticism; apophatic or negative
theology became the special trend of the Eastern Christian tradition. The
Iconoclastic crisis, from 730 to 843, permitted to decide, on the basis of the
paradigm of the cult of the icons, upon the measure of abstraction that was
theologically admitted and to confirm that the more spiritual and mystic
representatives of the Church, i. e. the monastic people, were an important
factor in the overall life of the state. John of Damascus (Mansur ibn Sarjun to
his real name, ca. 665–749) although residing out of Byzantium contributed
greatly to the construction of the new tradition with his work The Fountain
Head of Knowledge, a sum of the up to his time theological and philosophical
knowledge; the same man was of the principal defenders of the icons. By the
end of the crisis, the reinforced Church assumed a more humanistic role re-
garding the safeguard and cultivation of the Greek letters while the dog-
matic argument became less inspired.
The splendor of the Byzantine Church appealed to the non-Christians of
the North, the Slavs, and attracted them to Orthodoxy. The opposition to the
241 Byzantine Theology

Church of Rome was to push even further towards the affirmation of the
identity of the Byzantine Orthodoxy. An imposing Patriarch like Photius
(ca. 820–893) is emblematic of the evolution of Byzantine theology: a great
humanist himself but also a strong ecclesiastical man who did not hesitate
before the conflict with the Roman Church. The Schism between the two
Churches was not to be consumed before two centuries, at the time of the
Patriarch Michael Keroularios. The period before the Schism was marked by
the exceptional presence of a mystical writer as Symeon the New Theologian.
The invasions of the Crusaders and the sack of Constantinople (1204) op-
posed radically the orthodox folk religion and the spiritual representatives
of Orthodoxy to the ‘Latins’. The short-lived Latin Empire could not alter this
state of things and attract the Byzantines to the western faith. The regain of
Constantinople by the Byzantines (1261) gave life to the mortally wounded
state. In front of the rising power of the Ottoman Turks, the union with the
Latin Church was felt as a necessity by a part of the governing elite as the
state needed the help of the forces of the West but the Orthodoxy had by then
acquired a distinctive national character and the people and the monks
strongly opposed to the idea of a possible association between the two
Churches. The Hesychast crisis (14th c.), from which the defender of the mys-
tical method of the hesychast-quietist monks – the ‘omphaloscopes’/navel
gazers for their opponents – Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) and his followers
came out triumphant, insisted upon and furthered the tradition of the or-
thodox spirituality and mysticism. Among his adversaries figured an intel-
lectual party that was influenced by and translating the works of Thomas
Aquinas. A Union purposed Council held in Florence/Ferrara in the 15th cen-
tury had no pragmatic effect. Georgios Gemistos Pletho (ca.1355–1452),
a neo-pagan anti-unionist philosopher, felt that the rescue of the state could
be achieved by the adoption of a state religion inspired by the Hellenic
twelve-gods paganism but this idea found no echo and the Greek nation
could not henceforth be regarded as distinguished from Orthodoxy. Only a
small portion of the Byzantine intellectuals that fled the Turks was con-
verted to Catholicism. The fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Otto-
man Turks in 1453 did not condemn the Orthodoxy that continued to live as
a ‘Byzantium after Byzantium’ for the Slavic peoples and strengthen the
sentiment of national identity of the Greeks.

B. The Problem of Definition

The study of the Byzantine theology is an historical science not to be con-
fused with Orthodox theology although the two domains are often inter-
mingling. Since Orthodox religion and theology is still vivid, Byzantine
Byzantine Theology 242

theology is an historical discipline concentrated on dogmas and ideas about

the divine developed in the areas once governed by the Byzantine state. The
Orthodox Theology refers to a tradition that is still living and active while
Byzantine Theology refers to a tradition that is historically limited. We could
say that the second is a part of the first but there is another crucial distinc-
tion: the study of Byzantine theology does not have to draw the same con-
clusions as the Orthodox theology because the former is not directly a theo-
logical or religiously motivated or oriented science. Hans-Georg Beck
defined the representatives of the historical science of Byzantine theology as
the “theologische Byzantinistik” (Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinin-
schen Reich, 1959, 7–23). In reality, the study of Byzantine theology as doc-
trinal science is further obstructed by the fact that the Byzantines were reluc-
tant to reduce all religious sentiment to dogma and were very sensitive to
the mystical aspect of their religion. Thus Beck rightly divides the history of
Byzantine dogmas in two parts: “Dogmengeschichte,” the proper history of
dogmas and “Askese und Mystik,” ascetism and mysticism (op. cit., 279–368).
This double feature of Byzantine theology is shown in the title of Joan
Mervyn Hussey’s and T.A. Hart’s, “Byzantine Theological Speculation and
Spirituality” in the Cambridge Medieval History (see Bibliography). Yet, Beck’s
doctrinal chapter constitutes only a small part of his basic work and it reflects
the fact that in practice the historical study of Byzantine theology is of philo-
logical character and seems to concern texts of which the more profound
understanding is left to the study of the general histories of the Byzantine
state and civilization – such as those by Alexander Vasiliev, Louis Bré-
hier, George Ostrogorsky, John Bagnell Bury, Steven Runciman,
André Guillou, Ioannes Karayannopoulos and others. We shall see later
the problems that are engendered by the philological ‘take over’ in the study
of Byzantine theology.

C. Research History

(1) Erudition
Edward Gibbon has written in the concluding chapter of his monumental
historical work: “I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion” (His-
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776–1788], ed. D. Womersley,
1994, 1068). In this way, he was summing up the Enlightenment’s view on
Middle Ages and religion, a position that was already manifest in Montes-
quieu’s Grandeur et décadence des Romains (1734) and in Voltaire’s Essais
sur les mœurs (1756). The merit of the writers of Enlightenment is to have
perceived a separate historical entity; but, they failed to distinguish between
243 Byzantine Theology

different religious traditions and saw in the medieval religion a common

tradition of misplaced faith. That the medieval religiosity is one is an idea
that we see in scholars like the Greek Leo Allatius (1586–1669) who, con-
verted to Catholicism, worked for the accomplishment of the reconciliation
between the Greek and the Roman Church and to this end he wrote the book
De Ecclesiae Occidentalisatque Orientalis perpetua consensione (1648) in which he
emphasized the aspects of agreement between the two Churches and mini-
mized their differences. Other western writers tended to see a series of errores
graecorum in the Byzantine religion. While Allatius fails as to the consider-
ation of the specificity of Byzantine theology, his work corresponds to the
time and place of birth of the modern research on the topic. Other Renais-
sance scholars have also turned to the study of the Oriental tradition; a list of
the names and the tendencies is presented by Beck (“Entwicklung der theol-
ogischen Byzantinistik,” Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantininschen
Reich, op. cit., 7ff.). Among them, Aloisius Lippomani (1500–1559), Lorenz
Sauer (Surius; 1522–1578), Francesco Torres (Turrianus, 1504–1584),
Theodor Peltanus (1511–1584), Pierre Stevart (1547–1624), Petrus
Canisius (1521–1597), his nephew Heinrich Canisius (1557–1610), Jacob
Spanmüller (Pontanus; 1542–1626), Fronton de Duc (Ducaeus;
1558–1624), Balthasar Cordier (Corderius; 1592–1650), Jakob Goar
(1601–1654), Philippe Labbe (1607–1667), Pierre Poussines (Possinus;
1609–1686), Jean Morin (1591–1659) et al.
Other names are of greater distinction: Dionysius Petau (Petavius;
1583–1652), an important historian of Dogmas and his pupil Louis Tho-
massin (1619–1695); Heribert Rosweyde (1569–1629) who is at the origin
of the study of the Lives of the Saints; François Combefis (1605–1679),
editor of works by Maximus the Confessor. It is a time of ‘intuitive science’,
erudition and editing effort. With the names of Casimir Oudin (1638–1717),
Eusèbe Renaudot (1648–1720), Jean Hardouin (1646–1729), Michel
Lequien (1661–1733), Jean Mabillon (1682–1771), William Beveridge
(Beveregius; 1638–1708), William Cave (1637–1713) we pass to the
18th century. Joannes Bollandus (1596–1665), a continuator of the work
of Rosweyde is the initiator of the Bollandist tradition of studying the Lives
of the Saints. Giovanni Domenico Mansi (1692–1769) from Lucca, Italy,
presented an ample collection of the Acts of the Councils (Sacrorum Concilio-
rum nova et amplissima Collectio, 31 vols., 1759–1798).
If another Greek of Italy, Nikolaus Comnenus Papadopoulos
(1651–1740) walks on the steps of Allatius as to the erudition and the
idea of the unity between the churches of the East and West, we see other
Greeks to insist upon the specificity of the Orthodox faith often with a strong
Byzantine Theology 244

anti-Latin stand; this is the case of Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem

(1641–1707) and his collections of Byzantine Anti-latin writings: Tomos
katallagis (1692), Tomos agapis (1698), Tomos haras (1705) published in Jassy,
Romania. The first representative of Greek Enlightenment, and also an
Orthodox ecclesiastical man, Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806), besides his
philosophical and other works, hasn’t disdained the study of Byzantine
theology: he published the works of the theologian of the 15th c. Joseph
Bryennios. His successor to the episcopate of Cherson in Russia, Nikephoros
Theotokis (1731–1800) was of the same flair. The 18th century saw also the
formation of an anthology of Byzantine mystical writers from the 4th c. and
onwards like Gregorios Palamas, Symeon the new theologian, Markos
Eugenikos and others; the anthology had the title Philokalia of the Holy Neptic
Fathers (Philokalia in brief; 1st ed. 1782 Venice). The editors were St Maka-
rios of Corinth (1731–1805) and St Nikodimos the Hagiorite (1749–1809),
zealots who belonged to the movement of kollyvades proclaiming a return to
the sources of Orthodox Christianity. Nikodimos, nevertheless, according
to some views, was influenced by the legalist spirit of the Catholic church.
Philokalia played an important role in the safeguard of the Byzantine relig-
ious spirit in Greece, the Slavic countries and elsewhere in the world.

(2) Romanticism–Nationalism–Positivism
Later, the need for greater syntheses and higher scientific ambitions as to
the critical editing was becoming more and more evident. The German
Joannes Albertus Fabricius (1668–1736) and his Bibliotheca Graeca (14 vols.,
1705–1728) offered much to the knowledge of the Byzantine theological
literature. His compatriots contributing to the same field were: Gottfried
Christoph Harles (1738–1815), Johann Georg Walch (1693–1775),
Johann Rudolf Kiesling (1706–1778), Christian Friedrich Matthäi
(1744–1811), Joannes Jacob Reiske (1716–1774), Karl Bernhard Hase
(1780–1864), Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler (1792–1854), Walter Wolf-
gang (1818–1885), and Konstantin Tischendorf (1815–1874). Wilhelm
Gass (1813–1889) presented an edition of the mystic Nicolaos Kabasilas’s
On the Love of Christ and the Cardinal Joseph Hergenröther (1824–1890) a
study on Patriarch Photius.
The liberation of Greece from the Turkish yoke coincided with the rising
of Romanticism and in the case of the Greek struggle for freedom caused
a strong philhellenic movement. In this light we must see the grand fresco
of the Byzantine history, a part of a general history of the Greek Nation,
written by the Greek Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos (1815–1891),
Historia tou Hellinikou Ethnous, 1860–1876. Paparrigopoulos presented a
245 Byzantine Theology

theory about the origins of iconoclasm, seeing in it the struggle of the Greek
love for the Forms against the oriental aniconism. He was preceded by the
Greek Spyridon Zampelios (1815–1881) who, in his work Asmata Dimotika
tis Hellados ekdothenta meta meletis historikis peri mesaionikou hellinismou (1852),
applied the Hegelian tripartite model to Greek history making the Byzantine
theology an inheritor of Ancient Greek Philosophy and a prelude to
Greek nationalism. Other Greek scholars with less breadth of inspiration
were Andronikos Demetracopoulos (1825–1872), Joannes Sakkelion
(1815–1891), Joannes Valettas (1814–1900), who published the letters
of Patriarch Photius and Matthaios Paranikas (1832–1885) editor of an an-
thology of Byzantine church poetry.
In France, the Abbé Jacques Migne (1800–1875), thanks to his organiz-
ational skills, published the important series of Byzantine theological litera-
ture (Patrologia Cursus Completus. Series Graeco-Latina = Patrologia Graeca, 161
vols. (162), 1857–1866). The exemplary figure of the times is the Italian Car-
dinal and philologist Angelo Mai (1782–1854), representative of the Italian
ecclesiastic Romantic movement. Jean Baptiste Pitra (1812–1889) walked
on the steps of Mai (see his Analecta Sacra et Classica Spicilegio Solesmensi Parata,
8 vols., 1876–1888). A lot of historical texts concerning matters of Byzantine
theology were published in the German series Corpus Scriptorum Historiae By-
zantinae, 1828–1897.
In Germany, Karl Eduard Zachariae von Lingenthal (1812–1894)
presented a collection and study of Byzantine laws including or relevant to
canon law (Collectio Librorum Juris Graeco-Romani Ineditorum, 1852; Jus Graeco-
Romanum, 7 vols., 1856–1884). In Greece, his work was continued by the Jur-
ists Georgios A. Rhallès (1804–1883) and Michael Potlès (1812–1863).
The Greek Konstantinos Sathas (1842–1914) published a vast editorial
work of Orthodox and other sources in his Medieval Library series. The ancient
erudition was thus culminating in the development of the modern editing
science. This modern editing spirit was simultaneous to the Romantic move-
ment that, in contrast to the Enlightenment’s aversion, had an esteem for the
medieval literature and coincided with the rise of nationalist sentiments.
The Russians contributed to the study of Byzantine culture and theology
that were seen as precursors of the Russian culture and theology. The names
of Vasilij Vasil’evski (1838–1899), Alexej Pavlov (1832–1898), and Nikolaj
Krasnol’cev (1845–1898) are to be mentioned here. In France, following
Pope Leo’s XIII (1810–1904) opening to sciences and the study of religious
traditions, the French Assumptionists started researching the oriental tradi-
tions and from their labor the journal Échos d’Orient was to come up. Among
the scholars distinguished in this field were Jules Pargoire (1872–1905),
Byzantine Theology 246

Jean Baptiste Rabois-Bousquet (1864–1911), Louis Petit (1868–1927)

also the Catholic Archbishop of Athens, Severien Salaville (1881–1965),
and mostly Martin Jugie (1878–1954), the great historian of Dogmas of
the Christian oriental churches (Theologia Dogmatica Christianorum Orientalium
ab Ecclesia Catholica Dissidentum, 5 vols., Paris, 1926–1935). Together with
L. Petit and the Greek scholar from Constantinople Xenophon Sideridès
(1851–1929), he published (1928–1930) the Complete Works of the Byzan-
tine anti-unionist leader Georgios Scholarios who under the name Genna-
dios II became the first Patriarch of Constantinople after the fall of the city in
the hands of the Ottomans. Notable contributions to the editing explosion
concerning Byzantine theology, are: Frank E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern
and Western, I. Eastern Liturgies, 1896; Heinrich Gelzer, Texte der Notitiae
Episcopatum, 1901; Philipp Meyer, Die Haupturkunden für die Geschichte der
Athos-Klöster, 1894 (now also available online at: http://books.google.com/
books?id=Rwf2-Dh7Rb0C&dq=%3B+P.+MEYER,+Die+Haupturkunden+ fü);
Franz Miklosich and Joseph Müller, Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi
Sacra et Profana, 6 vols., 1860–1890.

(3) From Philologism to Postmodernism

It is often said that the proper Byzantine theology has been developed after
the Patristic period. The passage from the 19th to the 20th century saw an
important rise of the patristic studies. From this tendency, some names
of importance for the research on Byzantine theology are: Otto Zöckler,
Wilhelm Bousset, Nathanael Bonwetsch, Karl Holl, Friedrich Loofs,
Ernst von Dobschütz, Adolf von Harnack, Franz Diekamp, Louis-
Marie-Olivier Duchesne, Gustave Bardy, Henri Leclerq. The scholar-
ship that inclined to the study of Byzantine theological literature is marked
by the edition of the monumental history of Byzantine literature by Karl
Krumbacher (Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur, Munich, 1891, 2nd ed.
1897). In the second edition, Albert Ehrhard was responsible for the
chapters on the religious literature where we see the exposition of prominent
writers, of the relevant genres and the history of their evolution. It followed
an important development in the study of the Byzantine Christian literature,
inspired by the “Krumbacher Schule” that marked the scientific activity of
scholars like August Heisenberg, Carl de Boor, Philipp Meyer, Johannes
Dräseke, where the science of philology had an important part. The study
of the Lives of the Saints was developed by the work of Charles de Smedt and
mainly by the prolific Hippolyte Delehaye (1859–1940). In Greece, Spyri-
don Lampros (1851–1919) responded to this call for philological rigor,
especially by the publication of the series Neos Hellenomnemon that offered a
247 Byzantine Theology

stand for inventory and editing work. A Greek of the diaspora, Athanasios
Papadopoulos-Kerameus (1856–1919) accomplished an important edi-
ting work with his Analekta Hierosolymitikis Stahyologias, I–V, 1891–1898.
Other notable Greek scholars were: Manuel Gedeon (1851–1943), the Arch-
bishop of Athens Chrysostomos (Papadopoulos; 1868–1938), Gregorios
Papamichael, Sophronios Eustratiadès, Konstantinos J. Dyobou-
niotès (Ta mysteria tès anatolikès orthodoxou ekklesias ex apopseos dogmatikis,
1923), Demetrios S. Balanos (Oi ekklesiastikoi byzantinoi syggrafeis, 1951). In
Russia, we have the historians Fedor Uspenskij (1845–1928), Chrysanth
Loparev (1862–1918), and Aleksandr Aleksandrovic Vasiliev (1867–1953).
Supplementary information about the Byzantine theology we find in:
A. Bardy, chapters 5–10 in Augustin Fliche and Victor Martin, Histoire de
l’Église, IV, 1–2, 1934; and in: Karl Joseph von Hefele, Histoire des Conciles,
(contin. and trans. Henri Leclerq, 8 vol, 1907–1921). Information is also
available in: Gyula Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, I, 2 vols., 1958. A lot of rel-
evant entries are to be found in: Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (ed. Alfred
Vacant et al., 15 vols., 1907–1953). See also: Dictionnaire de la Spiritualité,
1932ff; and August Pauly and Georg Wissowa, Real-Enzyklopädie der klassi-
schen Altertumswissenschaft, 1893–1980. As for the monastic institutions see:
Placido de Meester, De monachico statu iuxta disciplinam byzantinam, 1942.
The 20th century brought about a real outburst in the disciplines related
to Byzantine theology of which philology was only an introduction. History,
of course, continued to have a preponderant place invigorated by new ap-
proaches and thematic pluralism. Here, we can give only an indicative image
of the literature strictly relevant to theology. Among the notable historians
of ideas we find Francis Dvornik (The Photian Schism, Cambridge, 1948;
The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew, 1958; By-
zantium and the Roman Primacy, 1966; Byzantine Missions among the Slavs, 1970)
as well as another eminent historian, Sir Steven Runciman (Eastern Schism,
1956; The Great Church in Captivity, 1968; The Byzantine Theocracy, 1977). For
general and introductive studies to Byzantine theology, see: Mauricius Gor-
dillo, Compendium theologiae orientalis in commodum auditorum facultatis theo-
logicae concinnatum, 2 vols., 1939; Andrea Palmieri, “La teologia bizantina,”
Studi Religiosi 2 (1902): 115–35, 333–51. Venance Grumel, “Les aspects
généraux de la théologie Byzantine,” Echos d’Orient 30 (1931): 385–96; Kon-
stantinos Bonis, “Byzantinè Theologia,” Theologia 19 (1941–1948): 171–86,
287–300; J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, 1986.
In sum, the general surveys are never as definitive as we would like them to
be due to the dispersion of the related scientific fields and to the difficulty of
the subject itself characterized by a mystical aspect that resists analysis.
Byzantine Theology 248

The question of the relations of the Church of Constantinople with the

Church of Rome is a dominant subject. See: Walter Norden, Das Papsttum und
Byzanz. Die Trennung der beiden Mächte und das Problem ihrer Wiedervereiningung
bis zum Untergange des byzantinischen Reiches, 1903; Marcel Viller, “La ques-
tion de l’union des églises entre Grecs et Latins depuis le Concile de Lyon
jusqu’à celui de Florence,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 16 (1921): 260–305,
515–32, and 18 (1922): 20–60; Anton Michel, Humbert und Kerullarios,
1924–1930; Philip Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West, 1959; J. Gill,
The Council of Florence, 1959; Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant,
1976–84; On the relations between Byzantine theology and Western ideol-
ogy, see Ioannes S. Romanides’ Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine:
An Interplay between Theology and Society, 1981. On the influence of Thomist
theology and philosophy in Byzantium, see: Stephanos Papadopoulos,
Hellinikai metaphraseis thomistikon ergon. Thomistai kai antithomistai en Byzantio,
1967.
The question of ecclesiastical geography is also an issue. See: Raymond
Janin, La Géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire byzantin, 1953; relevant are the
subjects dealing with regionalism: John A. Hackett, A History of the Orthodox
Church in Cyprus, 1901; Mgr Chrysanthos, Hè Ekklesia tès Trapezountos,
1933; Orest Tafrali, Thessalonique au quatorzième siècle, 1913. We see also re-
gional studies combined with the research on the spreading of Orthodoxy
into the Slavic countries: Dimitrije Bogdanovic, Jovan Lestvicnik u vizan-
tijskoi I staroj srpskoi knjizenvosti (John Climacus in Byzantine Literature and
the Ancient Serb Literature), 1968, and in connection with heresies: Jacques
Jarry, Hérésies et factions dans l’Égypte Byzantine, 1970. The relation to the
Islamic world is detailed in studies like: Speros Vryonis, The Decline of
Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamisation from the 11th through
the 15th Century, 1971. On the two Byzantine ‘Commonwealths’, following
Dmitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453,
1971, see: for the first commonwealth, in the East: Garth Fowden, Empire
to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, 1993; for the
second one, in the North: Simon Franklin, Byzantium-Rus-Russia, 2002.
See also: Evangelos Chryssos, Hè ekklesiastike politikè tou Ioustinianou, 1969
and Walter Emil Kaegi, Army, Society and Religion in Byzantium, 1982. On the
question of the ‘imperial cult’ or ‘imperial religion’ in Byzantium, see: Louis
Bréhier and Pierre Battifol, Les Survivances du culte impérial romain, 1920;
Franz Joseph Dölger, “Zur antiken und frühchristlichen Auffasung der
Herrschergergewalt von Gottes Gnaden,” Antike und Christentum 3 (1932):
117–27); Wilhelm Ensslin, Gottkaiser und Kaiser von Gottes Gnaden, 1943;
for the difference between ‘worship’ and ‘adoration’ related to the ‘imperial
249 Byzantine Theology

cult’, see Kenneth M. Setton, Christian Attitude Towards the Emperor in the 4th
Century, 1941. See also: Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le ‘césaro-
papisme’ byzantin, 1996.
Jacques Gouillard translated a brief selection from the Philokalia: Petite
philocalie de la prière de cœur, 1953. A full edition in French was begun in 1979
and completed in 1986 (trans. Jacques Touraille). It was also partly trans-
lated into English, first by E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (1951)
and later gradually by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos
(Timothy) Ware (4 vols. since 1979). Jacques Gouillard published a study
about the liturgical text “Synodicon of Orthodoxy” (“Le synodikon de l’Or-
thodoxie. Edition et commentaire,” Travaux et mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316).
A lot of information about Byzantine religiosity and everyday life we find in:
Phaidon Koukoulès, Byzantinon Bios kai Politismos, 8 vols., 1947–1957. The
question of ‘philosophical theology’ was debated in: Basil Tatakis, La phil-
osophie Byzantine, 1949 (the first monograph on Byzantine philosophy) and
more particularly in: Gerhard Podskalsky, Theologie und Philosophie in
Byzanz, 1977; see also, Endre von Ivánka, Plato Christianus, 1964; Georgi
Kapriev, Philosophie in Byzanz, 2005. For the relation to ethical philosophy,
see: Georges Arabatzis, Éthique du bonheur et orthodoxie à Byzance, 1998.
Jacques Gouillard edited and commented on the trial of the philosopher
John Italos for impiety in the 11th c.: “Le procès officiel de Jean l’Italien, les
Actes et leurs sous-entendus,” Travaux et mémoires 9 (1985): 133–73. On that
period see: Lysimaque Oeconomos, La vie religieuse dans l’Empire Byzantin au
temps des Comnènes, 1918, and Michael Angold, Church and Society in Byzan-
tium under the Comneni, 1081–1261, 1995. The relations between theology and
education are treated in studies such as J. M. Hussey, Church and Learning in
the Byzantine Empire, 867–1185, 1937. On the relations between Hellenism and
Christianity from an Orthodox point of view, see John Zizioulas, Hellinis-
mos kai Christianismos. Hè synantisi ton dyo kosmon, 2003.
Byzantine spiritualism was approached by Irénée Hausherr, La mé-
thode d’oraison hésychaste, Orientalia Christiana, IX, 1927; Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners, Einsie-
deln, 2nd ed. 1961. The Greek Panayotis Chrestou edited the complete
works of Gregorios Palamas and inaugurated in Thessaloniki a book series of
high scholarly quality (Analekta Vlatadon); The iconoclasm constitutes a separ-
ate field of study, see: Edward James Martin, A History of the Iconoclastic
Controversy, 1930; and more recently an overview of the literature: Leslie
Brubaker, John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca 680–850): The
Sources, an annotated survey, with a section on “The Architecture of Icono-
clasm: the Buildings” by Robert Ousterhout, 2001. For the philosophical
Byzantine Theology 250

foundations of the iconoclastic crisis, see: Marie-José Mondzain, Nicéphore:

Discours contre les iconoclastes, 1989.
Besides the great heresies of the times of the formation of Dogmas,
a more recent heresy like Paulicianism (7th–9th c.) has been studied in: Paul
Lemerle, “Histoire des Pauliciens d’Asie Mineure d’après les sources grec-
ques,” Travaux et Mémoires, 5 (1973): 1–144. The Paulician texts were edited
in: Charles Astruc, Wanda Wolska-Conus, Jacques Gouillard, Paul
Lemerle, Denise Papachryssanthou, Joseph Paramelle, Travaux et
mémoires 4 (1970): 2–227; see also: Dmitri Obolensky, The Bogomils, 1948;
Nina G. Garsoïan, The Paulician Heresy: A Study of the Origin and Development of
Paulicianism in Armenia and the Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire, 1967;
Janet and Bernard Hamilton, Christian Dualist Heresies in the Byzantine World,
c. 650 – c. 1405, 1998. An outline of the evolution of heresies is Jacques Gouil-
lard’s, “L’hérésie dans l’empire byzantin des origines au XIIe siècle,” Tra-
vaux et Mémoires 1 (1965): 299–325.
The outcome of the soviet research on Byzantine theology has been bib-
liographically summed up in sections of the French series Travaux et mémoires.
The circle of the Russian theologians exiled in the West after the rise of
Communism was very prolific and influential and rightly called the ‘Russian
Renaissance’. Interesting figures as to the study of Byzantine theology are:
Georges Florovsky (1893–1979; St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the
Fathers, 1961; Collected Works. Vol. 8: Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century;
Vol. 9: Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Centuries; Vol. 10: Byzantine Ascetic
and Spiritual Fathers, 1972) and Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), a familiar of
the French historian of medieval philosophy Étienne Gilson, who wrote the
very influential Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’église de l’orient, 1944. John
Meyendorff (1926–1992) was issued from the circle of the Russian exiled;
he wrote abundantly on subjects related to Byzantine theology and spiritual-
ism: Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680, 1989; St Gregory
Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, 1974; (with Aristeides Papadakis), The
Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church 1071–1453, 1994. To John
Meyendorff we owe a summa on Byzantine theology: Byzantine Theology:
Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 1974.
For particular topics, see: Agostino Pertusi, Fine di Bisanzio e fine del
mondo. Significato e ruolo storico delle profezie sulla caduta di Constantinopoli, 1988;
Gerhard Rottenwöhrer, Unde malum? Herkunft und Gestalt des Bösen nach he-
terodoxer Lehre von Markion bis zu den Katharen, 1986; Alexander Böhlig, Myste-
rion und Wahrheit: Gesammelte Beiträge zur spätantiken Religiongeschichte, 1968. On
the question of the relations between clerical organization and theology some
of the relevant publications are: Hans-Georg Beck, “Kirche und Klerus im
251 Byzantine Theology

staatlichen Leben von Byzanz,” Revue des études byzantines 24 (Mélanges V. Gru-
mel, I) (1966): 1–24; Luciana Mortari, Consacrazione episcopale e collegialità.
La testimonianza della Chiesa antica, 1969; André Guillou, “L’évêque dans la
société méditerranéenne des VI–VII siècles. Un modèle,” Bibliothèque de l’École
des Chartes 131 (1973): 5–19. Guillou wrote also on the central sentiment of
piety (eusebeia) in the Byzantine orthodoxy: “Piété filiale, piété impériale,”
Mélanges P. Lévêque 1, 1988, 143–53, offering an approach based on the subjects
of mentality and emotions. Separate studies on Byzantine theology we find
in the following journal series: Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels, 1882ff.; Acta
Sanctorum, ed. Socii J. Bolandi, Antwerpen, 1643ff.; Byzantinoslavica, Prague,
1929ff.; Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipzig, 1892ff, Munich, 1950ff.; Byzantion,
Brussells, 1924ff.; Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Washington DC, 1941ff.; Ekklesias-
tikè Aletheia, Constantinople, 1880–1923; Echos d’Orient, Paris-Constantin-
ople, 1897ff.; Epetèris Etaireias Byzantinon Spoudon, Athens, 1924ff.; Neos Helle-
nomnemon, 1904–1917, 1920–1927; Nea Sion, Jerusalem, 1901ff.; Orientalia
Christiana Periodica, Rome, 1935ff.; Revue d’études Byzantines, Paris, 1943ff., etc.
From the philologism of the early 20th century that remains a dominant
trend in research, and through the outburst of the historical emphasis,
we pass to the postmodernism of studies focusing on the peripheral, the
decentred, the research on genre literature (Margaret Mullett) and on the
relations between knowledge and power in Byzantine theology. See the pre-
cursory, Robert Browning, “Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium
in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Past and Present 69 (1975): 3–23, and
Paul J. Alexander, “Religious Persecution and Resistance in the Byzantine
Empire of the 8th and 9th Centuries: Methods and Justifications,” Speculum 52
(1977): 238–64; Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire, ed. Susanna Elm, Éric
Rébillard and Antonella Romano, 2000; Averil Cameron, Christianity
and the Rhetoric of the Empire: The Formation of Christian Discourse, 1991; Dion
Smythe, “Alexios I and the Heretics,” Alexios I Komnenos, ed. M. Mullett,
D. Smythe, 1996, 232–52; Paul Speck, Ich bin’s nicht: Kaiser Konstantin ist
es gewesen: Die Legenden vom Einfluss des Teufels, des Juden und des Moslem auf den
Ikonoklasmus, 1990; for a different perception of a Cappadocian Father: Gre-
gory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, ed. Jostein Bortnes and Thomas
Hägg, 2006; and for another basic writer of Byzantine theology: Andrew
Louth, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology, 2002;
and also, Byzantine Orthodoxies, ed. Andrew Louth and Augustine Casiday,
2006. In spite of the plurality and abundance of studies, the fragmentation
of the Byzantine religious tradition by various scientific disciplines, and in
first place by philology, had been so successful that the research often lost
track of the specific character of Byzantine spirituality.
Byzantine Theology 252

Select Bibliography
Albert Ehrhard, “Theologie,” Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur, ed. Karl Krum-
bacher 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 2nd ed. 1897; 1st ed. of 1891, but without the section of
Ehrhard; rpt. Burt Franklin Bibliographical Series XIII, New York: Burt Franklin),
37–218; Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich
(Munich: Beck, 1959); The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. IV: The Byzantine Empire, Part II:
Government, Church and Civilisation, ed. Joan Mervyn Hussey (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967; of special interest are the chapters: Emil Herman S.J.,
“The Secular Church,” 105–34, J. M. Hussey, “Byzantine Monasticism,” 161–84,
J.M. Hussey and T.A. Hart, “Byzantine Theological Speculation and Spirituality,”
185–205); John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
(New York and London: Fordham University Press/Mowbrays, 1974); J. M. Hussey,
“The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire,” Oxford History of the Christian Church
ed. Henry and Owen Chadwick (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); La théologie byzantine
et sa tradition, vol. II, XIIIe–XIXe siècle, ed. Carmelo Giuseppe Conticello and Vassa
Conticello (Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum), 2002) (two more vols. are
expected).

George Arabatzis
253 Classics and Mythography

Classics and Mythography

Although not all Greek and Latin works concern themselves with religion or
what later epochs called mythology, myth forms the foundation of classical
history and the allusive backcloth to most classical literature. The general
study of the classics in the Middle Ages and classical mythology per se, there-
fore, necessarily overlap. Yet while mythologists and classicists specializing
in the Middle Ages both took philological study of European culture as their
starting point, their theories and methodologies soon diverged.

A. The theory that myth, grammar, and culture share cognate structures,
what would later be called structuralism, was a notion born among early
nineteenth century German comparative philologists standing at the con-
fluence of historical linguistics and anthropology. Jakob Grimm’s Deutsche
Mythologie (2 vols., 1835), which pursued the etiologies of German myths to
classical fonts and beyond, transformed a folklore archive into a cultural and
linguistic history and source of paradigms for his later philological work, the
Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (2 vols., 1848), and Deutsche Grammatik (4 vol.,
1819–1837). Alongside other 19th-century scholars such as Franz Bopp in
comparative grammar (Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Send, Armenischen,
Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gothischen und Deutschen,
3 vol., 1857–1861), and in comparative religion Max Müller (Lectures on the
Science of Language, 2 vols., 1862–1865), Anthropological Religion (2 vols., 1890),
and James Frazer (The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, 1892),
Grimm helped pioneer an approach to human culture through an analysis of
the deep structures that unite culture’s linguistic and psycho-social aspects,
structures that reveal themselves at their most naked and unmediated in
myth. Further developed in Vladimir Propp’s work on folklore, Morphology
of the Folktale (1927), as well as that of that of Annti Aarne and Stith Thomp-
son (The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, 1961), this line
of inquiry matured into the myth-based anthropology of Claude Lévi-
Strauss (Anthropologie Structurale, 1958; Mythologiques, I–IV, 1964–1971),
and the formalist genre theory of Northrop Frye (The Anatomy of Criticism,
1957).
Classics and Mythography 254

Preferring historicism to structuralism, twentieth century medievalists

tended not to make distinctions of manner or matter between classical myth-
ology and classical literature. Their scholarly interests ran rather to Rezep-
tionsgeschichte, that is to the history of rhetoric through the Middle Ages as
the conduit through which classical cultural and aesthetic ideals were trans-
mitted to and appropriated by a Christian Europe hungry for sophistication.
Ludwig Traube, who coined the terms aetas virgiliana, horatiana, and ovi-
diana to characterize the 8th–9th, 10th–11th, and 12th–13th centuries respect-
ively (Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, vol. 2, 1909–1920, 113), popularized the
notion that medieval cultural history can be correlated to a canon of classical
authors whose particular stylistic influence imprinted an indelible stamp on
all aspects of artistic expression in a given age. The cultural homology that
Traube found in the medieval Latin inheritance – Europe’s shared roman-
itas – took shape in and against the climate of racial and cultural division of
World Wars I and II, finding oblique expression in Ernst Robert Curtius’s
epitome of classical rhetoric in medieval literature European Literature in the
Latin Middle Ages (1948). Curtius’s work remains to this day the highwater
mark of medieval Geistesgeschichte in which ethics and aesthetics form a uni-
fied category accessible entirely through Christianized classicism.
The post-war period witnessed a polemicization of medieval source and
influence study and the emergence of critical schools of reception. Building
on the work of patristic scholars such as Pierre Courcelle (Recherches sur les
Confessions de St. Augustin, 1950) and Henri de Lubac (Exégèse médiéval, 1959),
D. W. Robertson Jr. argued that Augustinian hermeneutics served as the
ineluctable lens through which classical mythology passed into medieval
culture: all medieval literature and art taught the distinction cupiditas and
caritas, and all classical literature was allegorised tendentiously in the ser-
vice of Christian morality (“The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Literary
Gardens,” Speculum 26 [1950]: 24–49; A Preface to Chaucer, 1963). While detrac-
tors chafed at the critical, not to mention cultural reductivism of Robertso-
nian exegetical historicism, it furnished an acute corrective to wayward in-
terpretations of classical doctrines of love, particularly Ovidian, and their
relation to “courtly love” as articulated by such classicizing medievalists of
the previous generation as C.S. Lewis (The Allegory Of Love, 1936).
If Curtius’ Middle Ages favored a timeless classicism whose aesthetic
continuity is extra-historical, and Robertson’s a classicism whose aesthetic
is historically contingent, Hans-Robert Jauss offered a compromise. In his
1967 essay “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft”
(reprinted in Rezeptionsästhetik, ed. Rainer Warning, 1994, 126–62), the
medievalist argued that literary historicity exists only at the point of recep-
255 Classics and Mythography

tion by the contemporary reader, but that it is possible to derive historically

objective local meanings from classical and medieval texts through a system
of expectations (Erwartungshorizonte) encoded in the text’s generic, formal
and thematic gestures as well as through its aesthetic distance from the
source of imitation. With reception theory, Jauss breathed new life into the
superannuated study of classical influence in the Middle Ages weakened by
the depredations of Marxists and historicists. To be sure, other scholars of
classical influence were working independently toward a similar shift from
influence to reception in apparent ignorance of Jauss. Thomas Greene’s The
Light in Troy (1982), which applies his theory of “dialectical imitation” to late
medieval and Renaissance reception of Latin classics, is likewise dedicated to
bridging the gap between the historical and aesthetic treatment of literature,
while David Quint’s more recent Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from
Virgil to Milton (1993) explores the ways in which political ideology is trans-
mitted in myth and encoded in genre. Indeed, Jauss’s theoretical presence
among classicists and medievalists grew slowly beginning in the 1980s
(J. E. Müller, Literaturwissenschaftliche Rezeptionstheorien und empirische Rezep-
tionsforschung, 1981; Udo Frings, Antike Rezeption im altsprachlichen Unterricht,
1984; Peter Leberecht Schmidt, “Reception Theory and Classical Scholar-
ship: A Plea for Convergence” Hypatia [1985]: 67–77), eventually achieving a
degree of prominence in the work of Charles Martindale who has edited
several important collections of essays (Virgil and his Influence, 1984; Ovid Re-
newed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth
Century, 1988; Classics and the Uses of Reception, 2006).
The last noteworthy approach to classics and mythology in the Middle
Ages is one that has not yet earned a critical cognomen, although somatic
theory will suffice provisorily. In The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and
the Pursuit of Paganism (1986), Leonard Barkan traces the reception not of
Ovid per se, but of the idea of the metamorphic body as a figural microcosm of
larger social, cosmological, and poetic issues present in medieval and Renais-
sance art and literature. The body, in effect, becomes a metaphor for the
connection between social or anthropological evolution of a culture and the
classical mythological corpus that both effects and records that change. Bar-
kan’s approach has been refined and extended by Lynn Enterline in The
Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (2000), Bruce Holsinger in Music,
Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture (2001), particularly in the final chapter on
Orpheus, and Gregory Heyworth in Desiring Bodies: Ovidian Romance and the
Cult of Form (2009).
Classics and Mythography 256

B. Bibliography and Transmission

Of course, all theoretical work in classical reception in the Middle Ages must
be built first on a material knowledge of sources – what texts were available,
when, and where – and then, at one remove of abstraction, on a diachronic
understanding of the history of manuscript diffusion that defines a textual
tradition. Cataloguing the material records of the medieval appropriation of
classical literature is a project in many ways more vast and daunting than
understanding the cultural and poetic theories guiding that appropriation.
Much of the research in the field of classics in the Middle Ages in the past cen-
tury has been dedicated to the less-than-glamorous disciplines of bibli-
ography and textual transmission. These, in turn, make possible the study of
reception.
Catalogues of manuscript holdings in classics are an essential instru-
ment for research into influence, reception, and the connections of medieval
intellectual life to antiquity. But as Albert Derolez notes (Les catalogues
de bibliothèques, 1979), a record of the existence of a classical text at one point
in time affords little insight into its history of use, and hence its influence.
Thus, while catalogues provide the raw bibliographical repertories, they are
only as informative as the collateral data that accompany them. Some of the
first bibliographies of classical manuscript holdings to attempt a more ambi-
tiously contextual account are Hans Meier’s two-volume A Bibliography of
the Survival of the Classics (1931–33), a project thereafter abandoned, and Max
Manitius’s Handschriften antiker Autoren in mitteralterlichen Bibliotheks-
katalogen (1935). Hilda Buttenwieser’s Master’s thesis “The Distribution
of the Manuscripts of Latin Classical Authors in the Middle Ages” (1930) while
never published, is a useful resource particularly for the thirteenth century,
and is augmented by her subsequent article “Popular Authors of the Middle
Ages: The Testimony of the Manuscripts” (Speculum 17 [1942]: 50–55). For
Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century, there is E. A. Lowe’s Codici
Latini Antiquiores, vol. 1–12, (1934–1971), supplemented with addenda and
corrigenda in 1985 by Bernhard Bischoff and V. Brown (Mittelalterliche
Studien 47, 317–66). The next significant bibliographical contribution is a
two-volume collection of essays published as La cultura antica nell’Occidente
latino dal VII all’XI secolo (1975), a resource rendered nugatory by its extreme
scarcity. During the 1980s, the Danish scholar Birger Munk Olsen, the pre-
mier bibliographer of classical reception in the Middle Ages, published his
four-volume L’étude des auteurs classiques aux XIe et XIIe siècles (1982–1989).
Olsen details European manuscript holdings and fragments by author in
both public and private collections, important bibliographic material treat-
ing each author, and essays on the history of significant collections and col-
257 Classics and Mythography

lectors. Paul Oskar Kristeller’s Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or

Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and
Other Libraries, vol. 1–6 (1963–1992), while describing mainly late manu-
scripts, gives a wealth of references to classical texts not found in other cata-
logues. Finally, there is Bernhard Bischoff’s Manuscripts and Libraries in the
Age of Charlemagne (trans. Michael Gorman, 1994), which serves both as a
catalogue and as a work of intellectual history.
Specialized catalogues of individual libraries abound. Their contribu-
tion to bibliography in classical literature of the Middle Ages is narrow, and
yet those covering the most important collections deserve mention. Such are
Colette Jeudy’s and Yves François Riou’s, Les manuscrits classiques latins de
bibliothèques publiques en France (vol. 1, 1989), and Les manuscrits classiques latins
de la Bibliothèque Vaticane (ed. Elisabeth Pellegrin, vol. 1–4, 1975–1991).
Similarly narrow but important for the study of mythology are the single
author manuscript lists for Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Franco Munari (Cata-
logue of the MSS of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. BICS supplement 4 [1957]); and
the supplements by Munari (“Supplemento al catologo dei manoscritti
delle ‘Metamorfosi’ ovidiane,” Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica, 93
[1965]: 288–97; id. “Secondo supplemento al catalogo dei manoscritti delle
‘Metamorfosi’ ovidiane,” Studia florentina A. Ronconi oblata [1970]: 275–80),
and Frank Coulson (“Newly Discovered Manuscripts of Ovid’s ‘Metamor-
phoses’,” Scriptorium 46 [1992]: 285–88). Also important is Frank Coulson’s
and Bruno Roy’s Incipitarium ovidianum: A Finding Guide for Texts in Latin
Related to the Study of Ovid in the Middle Ages (2000). For medieval manuscripts
of Vergil, see L. Holtz’s “La redécouverte de Virgile aux VIIIe et IXe siècles
d’après les manuscrits conservés” (Lectures médiévales de Virgile: Actes du colloque
organisé par l’Ecole française de Rome, 1985, 9–30), and his “Les manuscrits carol-
ingiens de Virgile (Xe et XIe siècles),” (La fortuna di Virgilio: Atti del Convegno
internazionale, 1986, 127–49); and G. C. Alessio “Medioevo – tradizione ma-
noscritta,” (Enciclopedia virgiliana, vol. 3, 1987, 432–43).
Much of the work in classical transmission and textual tradition in the
Middle Ages has been undertaken in article form and published diffusely.
Several books, however, present the subject in epitome. R. R. Bolgar’s
The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries: From the Carolingian Age to the End of the
Renaissance (1954) is essential, as is his subsequent edited volume Classical
Influences on European Culture A.D. 500–1500 (1971). Also seminal are Herbert
Hunger’s Geschichte der Textüberlieferung (2 vols., 1961–1964), Leighton
Reynold’s and Nigel Wilson’s Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission
of Greek and Latin Literature (2nd ed. 1974), and Reynold’s later Texts and Trans-
mission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (1983). For the study of textual trans-
Classics and Mythography 258

mission in the Middle Ages, three single-author histories deserve mention:

Birger Munk Olsen’s “Ovide au Moyen Age (du IXe au XIIe siècle)” (Le Strade
del Testo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, 1987, 65–96), L. Holtz’s “La survie de
Virgile dans le haut moyen âge” (Présence de Virgile: Actes du colloque des 9, 11, et 12
décembre 1976, ed. Raymond Chevallier, 1978, 209–22), and Robert
Kaster’s The Tradition of the Text of the Aeneid in the Ninth Century (1990).
As bibliographers and textual historians were compiling the material
evidence of medieval classical influence and reception, so philologists were
recording vernacular borrowings from classical sources. Studies of source,
influence, and reception all concern themselves with imitatio in one sense or
another, but the object of source study, the earliest intervention in the field,
was analogue. Uninflected by theories of intertextuality, classicizing medi-
evalists collected literal, verbatim borrowings in a preliminary effort to dem-
onstrate the habits of medieval classical appropriation. Foremost among
these was Edmond Faral whose Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et
romans courtois du moyen âge (1913) pioneered investigations into the relation-
ship of the medieval romance to classical models. In general, source study
treats medieval popular literature, which is to say genres involved in the
invention of a medieval vernacular mythology, namely romance and the fab-
liau. While source studies modulated relatively early into influence studies
as scholars turned their attention from genres to the relationship of individ-
ual classical and medieval authors, they endured in work on fabliaux. Thus,
Edmond Faral’s “Le Fabliau Latin au Moyen Age” (Romania 50 [1924]:
321–85) was supplemented fifty years later by Peter Dronke’s “The Rise of
Medieval Fabliau: Latin and Vernacular Evidence” (Romanische Forschungen 85
[1973]: 275–97), and even today articles on the fabliau and classical influence
still appear.

C. Reception
Medieval culture in Western Europe rests upon the twin pillars of the Bible
and classical mythology. Each contributes a discrete aesthetic and ethos. One
of the major tasks of medieval scholarship, then, has been to understand the
differences and confluences of Christian and pagan mythoi through the lit-
erature and art that employ them. The opus is vast. First, the classical sources
of mythology are many, the most important of which are Ovid, Vergil,
Statius, Homer (or pseudo-Homer), Plato, Varro, Horace, Lucan, Hyginus,
Aesop and the late antique authors Boethius, Macrobius, and Martianus Ca-
pella. The influence of these canonical authors is in turn mediated by import-
ant commentators, Chalcidius or Guillaume de Conches on Plato, Arnulf of
Orleans or Alexander Neckam on Ovid, Servius or Bernardus Silvestris on
259 Classics and Mythography

Vergil, Remigius or Trivet on Boethius to name but a few, as well as by

patristic interpreters and encyclopedists such as Augustine and Isidore of Se-
ville, and christianizing mythographers and allegorizers such as Fulgentius,
Lactantius, Claudian, Dracontius, the Vatican mythographers, and Petrus
Berchorius. It is not within the scope of this essay to give more than an over-
view of the most important these.

C.1. Ovid
Often called collectively the “poet’s Bible,” Ovid’s main mythographic works –
Metamorphoses, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris, Heroides, Fasti – constituted the
primary reference manuals for classical myth and Augustan culture in the
Middle Ages, acting also as the cultural counterpoise to the Christian Bible.
The tension between rival aesthetic and moral systems especially as concerns
love, is at the crux of the earliest influence studies. Articulated by Edward
Rand (Ovid and His Influence, 1925) and Salvatore Battaglia (“La tradizione
di Ovidio nel Medioevo,” Filologia romanza 6 [1959]: 185–224), the dichotomy
has endured to the present as manifest in Robert Edward’s The Flight from
Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer (2006). Many early and mid-century
studies of Ovid’s medieval Nachleben indulged an actuarial penchant for
source-spotting and allusion-counting, a practice that fell into disregard
after the publication of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence (1973) which
encouraged critics to search for creative misreadings rather than faithful ven-
triloquism. Subsequent work in the field has focused therefore on “appropri-
ation” whereby medieval authors consciously recontextualize and culturally
reinflect canonical texts rather than forge allegorical harmony from literal
discord. John Fyler’s Chaucer and Ovid (1979), a book that treats nearly
exclusively Ovid’s amatory writings, represents this trend, as well as that of
dual author influence studies. More recently still, Ovidian influence has
been considered diachronically in books of collected essays each treating the
dialogue of such authors as Chaucer, Gower, Dante, Petrarch with Ovid (Ovid
Renewed, ed. Charles Martindale, 1988; The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid
in Dante’s ‘Commedia,’ ed. Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey Schnapp, 1991; Desiring
Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, ed. James Paxson and
Cynthia Gravlee, 1998). The drawback of these essay collections is that they
lack a unifying argument that comprehends Ovidian reception as something
more than a series of local readings of mythic transformations.
The dilemma facing Ovidian commentators and imitators of the Middle
Ages turned on how to reconcile his stylistic attractions with his ostensible
immorality, or more subtly whether his mores should be understood them-
selves as a stylistic posture. Early Christians intent on appropriating, or
Classics and Mythography 260

merely perpetuating, the sophistication of the classical cultus, what Origen

called “plundering the Egyptians,” produced a series of influential allegoriz-
ations of the major authors designed to resolve that problem, most promi-
nently of Ovid and Vergil (Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient
and Medieval Technique, 1987). Research into Ovidian commentators and
allegorizers falls into two categories: descriptive (historical) and interpretive,
the former tracing the various traditions of allegory, and the latter the idea
of allegory as a poetic theory or cultural response to paganism. Among the
former, Fausto Ghisalberti made seminal early contributions on Arnulf
of Orleans (Arnolfo d’Orleans: Un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo XII, 1932) and John of
Garland (Integumenta Ovidii: Poemetto Inedito del Secolo XIII, 1933), and Lester
Born gives an overview in “Ovid and Allegory” (Speculum 9 [1934]: 362–79),
while Jane Chance provides useful, well-documented accounts in chapters
one and two of Medieval Mythography (vol. 2, 2000). Among the latter,
Jon Whitman’s book (see above) treats medieval allegoresis generally, while
Robert Levine (“Exploiting Ovid: Medieval Allegorizations of the Metamor-
phoses” Medioevo Romanzo XIV [1989]: 197–213), Judson Boyce Allen (“Com-
mentary as Criticism: The Text, Influence, and Literary Theory of the ‘Ful-
gentius Metaphored’ of John Ridewall” Acta Conventus Neo-Latini
Amstelodamensis, ed. P. Tuynman, G. Kuiper, and Eckhard Kessler, 1979,
25–47), and Ralph Hexter (“Medieval Articulations of Ovid’s Metamor-
phoses: From Lactantian Segmentation to Arnulfian Allegory,” Medievalia 13
[1987]: 63–82) explore issues of poetics and cultural appropriation specific to
Ovidian allegoresis.
The final important line of inquiry into medieval readings of Ovid
has sought to understand popular interpretations through records of Ovid’s
corpus and Ovidian commentary as school texts. E. H. Alton’s and D. E. W.
Wormell’s “Ovid and the Medieval Schoolroom” (Hermathena 94 and 95
[1960–1961]: 21–38; 67–82), and Ralph Hexter’s Ovid and Medieval Schooling
(1986) underscore the primary importance of Ovid’s erotic writing in
schools, often interpreted, as Hexter demonstrates, in a frank and literal
manner. Gregory Hays gives a brief account of the reception of the most im-
portant, late-antique Ovidian commentator as a school text in “Tales out of
School: Grammatical Culture in Fulgentius the Mythographer” (Latin Gram-
mar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice, ed. Carol Dana Lan-
ham, 2002, 22–47).
261 Classics and Mythography

C.2. Virgil
A pagan as near as possible to sainthood as Dantean providence could allow
and widely credited in the Middle Ages for prophesying the advent of Christ
in the fourth Eclogue, Virgil was never the catalyst of controversy and division
that Ovid was. Untainted by problems of irony, political heterodoxy, and
moral turpitude, Virgilian influence in the Middle Ages has generated
commensurately fewer lines of research, a fact exacerbated first by the over-
shadowing presence of two works of critical influence, and second, by the
lack of a thorough and reliable modern edition of Servius’ commentary.
In 1872, Domenico Comparetti published Virgilio nel medioevo which, in its
numerous translations and editions, dominated studies of medieval Vergil
until Pierre Courcelle’s monumental Lecteurs païens et lecteurs chrétiens de
l’Enéide (2 vols., 1984). Both books incline more toward source studies than
influence studies and are complementary. Volume one of Courcelle up-
dates Comparetti, compiling Virgilian readings by both patristic and secu-
lar authors while volume two provides detailed descriptions and discussions
of manuscript illustrations of mythographical themes between the 10th and
15th centuries, the latter serving as a useful prequel to Jean Seznec’s The
Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance
Humanism and Art (1953).
The primary focus of research into the medieval Vergil has been to assess
the allegorical interpretations of his major works, particularly the Aeneid and
the Eclogues. The Aeneid’s main allegorical interpreters – Fulgentius (6th c.),
Bernardus Silvestris (12th c.), and Cristoforo Landino (15th c.) – agree on three
salient points: (1) that Vergil followed “Platonic” moral doctrine; (2) that the
epic is a Bildungsroman depicting Aeneas’s maturation into pietas or “grace;”
(3) that book 6 illustrates a crucial descent to knowledge motif (J. W. Jones,
Jr., “The Allegorical Traditions of the Aeneid,” Vergil at 2000: Commemorative
Essays on the Poet and His Influence, ed. John D. Bernard, 1986, 107–32; Win-
throp Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century, 1972, 105–06).
The Eclogues, by contrast, were read, especially by Servius, as biographical
allegory of the author’s political and financial fortunes (James Zetzel,
“Servius and Triumviral History in the Eclogues,” Classical Philology 79
[1984]: 139–42; Raymond Starr, “Vergil’s Seventh Eclogue and its
Readers,” Classical Philology 90 [1995]: 129–38). While Servius’s biographical
conjectures about Vergil were an attempt at an allegorical historicism,
non-allegorical readers used the Aeneid, particularly Book 6, as material
for medieval legends about Vergil himself as psychopomp, magician (L. virga
= magician’s wand), and genius. This latter tradition is taken up by John
Spargo in Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends (1934), and Jane
Classics and Mythography 262

Chance Nitzsche, The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1975,
esp. 42–64).

C.3. Statius
Second in influence only to the Ovidian corpus, Statius’ Thebaid and Achilleid
served as mythological sourcebooks throughout the Middle Ages (C. Landi,
“Stazio nel Medio Evo,” Atti dell’Accademia Padovena 37 [1921]: 201–32). In-
fluence on Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer form the central thrust of research
into the medieval Statius. Dante is attracted to Statius less poetically than
personally, both because of the legend that he converted to Christianity after
reading Vergil’s fourth Eclogue and because he may have found his own poetic
career echoed in that of Statius (Winthrop Wetherbee, “Dante and the The-
baid of Statius,” Lectura Dantis Newberryana, ed. Paolo Cherchi and Antonio
Mastrobuono, vol. 1, 1988, 71–92). Boccaccio’s Thebaid makes a romance
of epic, substituting amatory motives (the love of Emilia) for political ones,
as does Chaucer’s remaniement of Statius via Boccaccio (David Anderson,
Before the Knight’s Tale: Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio’s “Teseida,” 1988).
The pseudo-Fulgentian commentary Super Thebaiden, which allegorizes the
Thebaid as a psychomachia with Thebes as the soul, ruled by virtue (Laius)
and vitiated by carnal desire (Oedipus), may also be of influence on Chaucer’s
Knight’s Tale (Boyd Wise, The Influence of Statius on Chaucer, 1967, rpt. of
1911).

C.4. Plato
The “renaissance” of the twelfth century, as Charles Homer Haskins de-
scribed it in his classic The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1927), was fueled
intellectually in large measure by the confluence of Ovidian mythology and
Platonic philosophy. Plato’s Timaeus, widely read, provided poets and philos-
ophers with a powerful myth of a rational cosmos, a world of seeming flux
superintended by a divinely ordained figure of natural order, what in the
Platonising Boethius appears allegorically in the figure of Lady Philosophy,
in Alanus Insulis as Nature, and the Romance of the Rose as Raison. Not only
did Plato’s rational cosmology of the Timaeus jibe neatly with Biblical
genesis, as Thierry of Chartres endeavored to demonstrate in his Heptateuch,
but, mediated by the in bono commentary of Arnulf of Orleans on the first
book of the Metamorphoses, with Ovidian cosmology and ideology of meta-
morphosis (Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Cen-
tury, 1973, 11–73).
Recent research into medieval Plato, particularly into his influence upon
literature and mythography, has failed to discover new lines of inquiry.
263 Classics and Mythography

Scholars of the field in the mid- to late 20th century took on the task of distin-
guishing the various ways in which Plato was used in the service of art, theol-
ogy and literature – as philosopher, moralist and cosmographer – and with
distinguishing among the schools of thought and commentary he provoked –
Middle Platonism, neo-Platonism, the School of Chartres. Raymond Kli-
bansky’s overview The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages
(1939), has been superseded by Stephen Gersh’s Middle Platonism and Neo-
Platonism: The Latin Tradition (2 vol., 1986). Of Plato’s readers, St. Augustine
is the most influential purveyor of the moral imperative to transcend the
worldly for the supersensual that becomes the corner stone of Christian
theology (Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages,
1955). Numerous works have treated the commentary on the Timaeus, and
the connection between cosmography and myth in the twelfth century, the
best of which remain Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie comme science
au XIIe siecle (1957), and Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century
(1972).

C.5. Boethius
Writing in the fifteenth century, the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla com-
mented astutely that Boethius was the “last of the Romans, and first of the
scholastics,” accurately placing him between commentator and poetic inno-
vator. Translator and exegete of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, theorist of music
and arithmetic, and theologian, his single most influential work in the
Middle Ages was the Consolation of Philosophy. Second in popularity perhaps
only to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Consolation of Philosophy served as an ideo-
logical and mythological counterpoise to the latter (Durant Waite Robert-
son, A Preface to Chaucer, 1962, 27) for authors such as Jean de Meun, Chaucer,
and Petrarch. With more than 400 extant manuscripts of the Consolation of
Philosophy alone, and a commentary vaster and more complex still, Boethian
scholarship is still in the early stages of sorting out textual history, and edi-
ting various commentary traditions as a preliminary step toward authori-
tative reception study. In the meantime, early studies treating synoptically
the life, works and literary influence of Boethius provide a useful general
overview. Howard Patch’s The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of his Importance in
Medieval Culture (1935), with short chapters on biography and biographical
legend, philosophy, translations and influence, is meager. Henry Chad-
wick’s Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy (1981)
is strong on biography, cultural context and and gives the most thorough
discussion of Boethian philosophy and logic, omitting the literary influence.
Fortunately, the latter is treated thoroughly by Pierre Courcelle La Conso-
Classics and Mythography 264

lation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire: Antécedents et Posterité de Boèce

(1967). The most sophisticated literary and rhetorical interpretation of Boe-
thius’ work in late antique and medieval context, particularly of the Conso-
lation, comes from Seth Lerer (Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in the
‘Consolation of Philosophy,’ 1985) who reads Boethius’ dialogical structure as a
response to dialogues of Cicero, Augustine and Plato (Timaeus), while making
intertextual readings of mythographic technique and motif in Fulgentius
(on Aeneas) and Seneca (on Orpheus and Circe).
The Latin and vernacular commentary traditions of Boethius – Remi-
gius, Trevet, William of Conches, Alfred – as well as the translations of the
Consolation of Philosophy, the most famous of which by Chaucer and Jean de
Meun, are a subject too complex for a single author. Overviews of the tradi-
tions by Alistair Minnis (The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Trans-
lations of the ‘De Consolatione Philosophiae,’ 1987; Chaucer’s ‘Boece’ and the Medieval
Traditions of Boethius, 1993) and Maarten Hoenen and Lodi Nauta (Boethius
in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the ‘Consolatio Philosophiae,’
1997) both present the subject in its Hydra-headed enormousness, and cor-
rect earlier misconceptions of the commentators (such as Courcelle’s no-
tion that Trevet was an anti-Platonist) was by placing them in the context of
medieval scholastic debates. The commentaries of King Alfred are the subject
of the ongoing collaborative Alfredian Boethius Project centered in Oxford
and directed by Malcolm Godden.

D. Mythography
Mythography, the systematic collection and critique of a culture’s mythos,
begins for Greco-Roman antiquity in Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar, but has its
critical origins in Herodotus and Plato who first theorized the relationship of
myth to history, literature, and philosophy (Felix Buffière, Les mythes
d’Homère et la Pensée Grecque, 1956). In the Middle Ages, Platonic and neo-Pla-
tonic interpretation of myth served as the model upon which Christian my-
thographers systematized classical mythology (Jean Pépin, Mythe et Allegorie:
Les origines grecques et les contestations judéo-chrétiennes, 1976; Robert Lamber-
ton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the
Epic Tradition, 1986). From Cicero’s De natura deorum, medievals had received
the notion that myth was euhemerized history, a theory that flourished in
the early medieval mythography of Orosius and Isidore of Seville (Jacques
Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans l’espagne wisigothique,
vol. 2., 1959). The long standing connection between astrology and the Olym-
pian pantheon promulgated influentially by Eratosthenes’s Catasterismi and
popularized in Latin by Hyginus’s Astronomica, was a mythographic ideology
265 Classics and Mythography

opposed by such late antique and early medieval writers as Boethius and
Augustine who argued that divine providence and man’s free will can over-
come the influence of pagan cosmic deities. The pagan mythographer Macro-
bius also opposed astrological interpretation of myth after a fashion, arguing
for a kind of monotheism whereby all the gods are expressions of the Sun, the
cardinal deity. Christian apologists, hungry for classical sophistication, were
caught in a desperate quandary: because mythology served as the single
frame of reference for classical physics, philosophy, literature, and ethics,
Christian apologists wary of irreligion could not simply dismiss it or wholly
reinvent it according to a Christian mythos (Gerard Ellspermann, The Atti-
tude of Early Christian Latin Writers Toward Pagan Literature and Learning, 1949,
9). The alternative was to impose a new ideological hermeneutic upon it
through allegory. Allegoresis, justified by Biblical precedent, and theorized
by patristic writers, became the predominant method of mythography
among Christian mythographers beginning with Fulgentius and continuing
in the work of the Vatican mythographers (Paule Demats, Fabula: Trois études
de mythographie antique et médiévale, 1973; Richard Krill, “The Vatican My-
thographers: Their Place in Ancient Mythography,” Manuscripta 23 [1979]:
173–77).
Modern research into medieval mythography begins with Thomas
Muncker’s annotated edition Mythographi Latini (1681) reprinted and aug-
mented by August van Staveren (1742), that anthologizes Hyginus, Ful-
gentius, Lactantius Placidus, and Alberic of London. From the late nine-
teenth century onward, the study of mythography has been shared among
the disciplines of art history and philology with the former as the motive
force. Aby Warburg and the art historical library and institute he founded
at the turn of the twentieth century effectively established iconography as
a central modern concern of mythography, a tendency expressed in the work
of Fritz Saxl, the Warburg Library’s first curator (Verzeichnis astrologischer und
mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters, 2 vols.,
1915–1927), and other art historians in Warburg’s circle, among whom
Erwin Panofsky (Studies in Iconology, 1939; Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1955).
The classic work on the history and iconography of mythography from
the Warburg-circle remains Jean Seznec’s La survivance des dieux antiques
(= Studies of the Warburg Institute 11, 1940). Scholars of allegory have benefited
as well from the iconography of classical myth, particularly the Robertso-
nians (D. W. Robertson, Preface to Chaucer, 1962; id. and Bernard Huppé,
Fruyt and Chaf: Studies in Chaucer’s Allegories, 1963; John Fleming, The Roman
de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography, 1969), and independently Rose-
mond Tuve (Allegorical Imagery: Some Medieval Books and their Posterity, 1966).
Codicology and Paleography 266

Theorists of allegoresis, who represent the other main thrust of research into
mythography, recognize the importance of the image to mythic narrative,
hence Peter Dronke’s notion of the fabula as interchangeably narrative and
iconic (Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism, 1974).
Purely textual studies of mythography continue to appear, most focusing
on the vernacular tradition (Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Reading Myth:
Classical Mythology and Its Interpretation in Medieval French Literature, 1997; Jane
Chance, The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular
in Early France and England, 1990; Jane Chance, The Mythographic Chaucer:
The Fabulation of Sexual Politics, 1995). Lacking, however, is a study that com-
bines the art historical and philological approaches to mythography. Jane
Chance’s two-volume Medieval Mythography (1994–2000), manages at once
to be compendious and superficial, useful for its comprehensive overview of
mythographic commentary and for its bibliography, but poor (or wrong) in
its interpretation of the sources it covers. Meanwhile, the field awaits the
scholar or group of scholars to provide a panoptic view of myth and its medi-
eval reception both in its vastness and minuteness.

Select Bibliography
Leonard Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Pierre Courcelle, Lecteurs païens et lecteurs
chrétiens de L’Enéide, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Gauthier-Villars, 1984); Ernst Robert
Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: A. Francke, 1948);
Birger Munk Olsen, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles (Paris: ed. Du
C.N.R.S, Imprimerie Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1982); Jean Pépin, Mythe et allégorie: Les
origines grecques et les contestations judéo-chrétiennes (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1958).

Gregory Heyworth

Codicology and Paleography

Introduction: the Beginnings

The analysis and history of ancient and medieval writing and book making
may be the fields of historical investigation that underwent the most dra-
matic transformation over the past century. They changed status within the
realm of historical studies, passing from ancillary techniques (“sciences auxi-
liaires de l’histoire” in French; “Hilfsdisziplin” in German) to disciplines of
their own. It is a tradition, however, to consider that paleography obtained a
267 Codicology and Paleography

proper status with the work on ancient Greek writing by the French Benedic-
tine Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741), Palaeographia graeca, sive, De
Ortu et Progressu Literarum Graecarum: et De variis omnium saeculorum Scriptionis
Graecae generibus: itemque de Abbreviationibus & de Notis variarum Artium ac Disci-
plinarum, Additis Figuris & Schematibus ad fidem manuscriptorum Codicum … 1708
(rpt. [1970]). Whatever the contribution of Montaucon might have been,
the interest in, and a certain level of analysis of manuscripts (all medieval)
and their writing started as early as the Renaissance, and took much more
time to lead to a discipline than the historiographical narrative in the style of
the Founding Fathers attributing the origin of paleography to one specific per-
son (in the specific case, to Montfaucon) wants.
For practical reasons (principally, the quantity of available studies, the
recent expansion of the field, and, consequently, the unavoidable specializ-
ation), this essay focuses more on Greek manuscripts and their study in West-
ern scholarship (for a synthetic presentation of manuscript studies, see, for
example and recently: The Book Encompassed: Studies in Twentieth-Century Bibli-
ography, ed. Peter Davison, 1992, particularly the following three chapters:
Christopher De Hamel, “Medieval Manuscript Studies” [37–45]; Tom
Davis, “The Analysis of Handwriting: An Introductory Survey” [57–68]; and
John Bidwell, “The Study of Paper as Evidence, Artefact, and Commodity”
[(69–82]). With some exceptions, however, it does not consider Latin pa-
leography and codicology (however active the field might have been; for a
bibliographic survey, see Leonard E. Boyle [1923–1999], Medieval Latin
Palaeograhy: A Bibliograhic Introduction, 1984, and, for an overview of current
trends, see for example: Id., Integral Palaeography, 2001, and Classica et Bene-
ventana: Essays Presented to Virginia Brown on the Occasion of her 65th Birthday, ed.
Frank Thomas Coulson and Anna Grootjans, 2008; for an instance of
specialized study, see Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript
Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, 2003), or any other lin-
guistic area of the Middle Ages.

A. Renaissance Collectionism and Knowledge of Manuscripts

During the Renaissance, existing collections were further developed and sev-
eral others were created by individuals often wealthy but also of any rank in
society, acting on their own or on behalf of a patron, as well as by all sorts of
institutions (civil, religious, or political). Whatever the case, collections were
developed or created by transferring a private collection to a civil institution
(as it happened, for example, in Venice with Bessarion’s collection [below]),
by acquiring entire collections or large group of manuscript (sometimes in
loco, for example, from Greeks selling the family collection, as in the case of
Codicology and Paleography 268

Antônios Eparchos [below], but also by sending agents to the East [e. g., the
Greek Janos Laskaris for Lorenzo de’ Medici [below]), by purchasing manu-
scripts on the market or having them newly copied (intramurally or overseas
[for example, Michaêl Apostolês in Creta [below], by copyists hired by a
wealthy patron or working independently, alone or in the context of a scrip-
torium duly organized [see below on copyists and scriptoria]), or simply by
seizing entire manuscript collections (by confiscation, peace treatises at the
conclusion of a conflict, or any other kind of agreement not necessarily fair).
All this happened in Italy and in the trans-alpine world (Andreas Darmarios,
for example, in Spain [below]).
Much research has been devoted since the 1830s until recently to the
search (often presented as a discovery process) and study of manuscripts in
the Renaissance with both detailed and synthetic studies. Among the syn-
thetic studies, one could mention the following (chronological order of pub-
lication; to allow for contextualization, author’s names are followed [when-
ever possible] by the years of birth and death at their first mention, except for
contemporary scholars): Remigio Sabbadini (1850–1943), La scoperta dei
codici latini e greci ne’ secoli XIV e XV, 1905; Robert Ralph Bolgar (1913–1985),
The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, 1954; Nigel Guy Wilson, From
Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 1992 (on Greek manu-
scripts, more specifically); or Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999), “The
Search for Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts,” Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 120 (1976): 307–10. As for detailed studies, many publi-
cations have dealt with specific collections (alphabetical order of owners’
name [followed, here as in the whole essay, by the years of birth or death of
the collectors in order to allow for historical contextualization; the list is
not exhaustive, either for the collectors or for the publications, but aims
to be representative of the history of the book and its research; in each sec-
tion, the selected works are listed in chronological order of publication):
Bessarion (1399/1400–1472) Heni Omont (1857–1940), “Inventaire des
manuscrits grecs et latins donnés à Saint-Marc de Venise par le Cardinal Bes-
sarion en 1468,” Revue des Bibliothèques 4 (1894): 129–87; Lotte Labowsky
(1905–1991), “Manuscripts from Bessarion’s Library Found in Milan,” Medi-
eval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961): 108–31; Tullia Gasparrini Leporace
(1910–1969), and Elpidio Mioni (1911–1991), Cento codici Bessarionei, 1968;
Tullia Gasparrini Leporace, “L’ordinamento della bibliotheca Nicena,”
Medioevo e Umanesimo 24 (1976): XIII–XX; Lotte Labowsky, Bessarion’s Library
and the Biblioteca Marciana: Six Early Inventories, 1979; Concetta Bianca, Da Bis-
anzio a Roma: Studi sul cardinale Bessarione, 1999 (see especially 43–106: chapter
3: “La formazione della biblioteca latina del Bessarione”); Marino Zorzi,
269 Codicology and Paleography

“Bessarione e i codici greci,” L’eredità greca e l’ellenismo, ed. Gino Benzoni,

2002, 93–121; Jean Hurault de Boistaillé (†1572): Karl Wilhelm Mueller
(1801–1874), “De Boëstallerii bibliotheca greca,” Analecta Bernensia 1
(1839/1840): 2–19 (reproduced in Id., “Der Katalog der griechischen Biblio-
thek von Boistaillé,” Serapeum 19 [1858]: 161–64, 169–72, and also in Pandôra
20 [1869]: 117–18, 138–40); Henri Omont, “Inventaire des manuscrits de
Hurault acquis pour la bibliothèque du roi en 1622,” Anciens inventaires et
catalogues de la Bibliothèque nationale, vol. 2, 1909, 404–15; Donald Jackson,
“The Greek Manuscripts of Jean Hurault de Boistaillé,” Studi italiani di filolo-
gia classica 4th ser., 2 (2004), 209–52; Marie-Pierre Laffitte, “Une acquisi-
tion de la Bibliothèque du roi au XVIIIe siècle: Les manuscrits de la famille
Hurault,” Bulletin du bibliophile 2008, 42–98; Federico de Montefeltro
(1422–1482): Cesare Guasti (1822–1889), “Inventario della Libreria Urbi-
nate compilato nel secolo XV da Frederigo Veterano,” Giornale storico degli
archivi toscani 6 (1862): 127–47; 7 (1863): 46–55, and 130–54; Antonio Val-
enti, Sul trasferimento della biblioteca ducale d’Urbino a Roma: Memorie critiche,
1878; Stanislaus Legrelle, “De ordinibus codicum urbinatum,” Codices Ur-
binates Latini, ed. Cosimo Stornajolo (1849–1923), vol. 3, 1921, VI*-XXIX*;
Fugger family: Paul Lehmann (1884–1954), Eine Geschichte der alten Fuggerb-
ibliotheken, 2 vols., 1956–1960; Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–1585): Brigitte
Mondrain, “Copistes et collectionneurs de manuscrits grecs au milieu du
XVe siècle: Le cas de Johann Jakob Fugger d’Augsbourg,” Byzantinische Zeitsch-
rift 84 (1991–1992): 354–90; Domenico Grimani (1461–1523): Henri
Omont, “Notes sur quelques manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque archiépi-
scopale d’Udine provenant du Cardinal D. Grimani,” Zentralblatt für Biblio-
thekswesen 12 (1895): 415–16; Theobald Freudenberger (b. 1904), “Die
Bibliothek des Cardinals Domenico Grimani,” Historisches Jahrbuch 56 (1936):
15–45; Giovanni Mercati (1866–1957), Codici Latini Pico Grimani Pio e di altra
biblioteca ignota del secolo XVI, 1938; Donald F. Jackson, “Grimani Greek
Manuscripts in Vienna,” Codices Manuscripti 27/28 (1999): 3–7; Aubrey Dil-
ler (1903–1985), Henri Dominique Saffrey, Leendert G. Westerkink
(1913–1990), Bibliotheca graeca manuscripta Cardinalis Dominici Grimani
(1461–1523), 2003; Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503–1575): Gregorio De
Andrés, “Dos listas inéditas de manuscritos griegos de Hurtado de Men-
doza,” La Ciudad de Dios 174 (1961), 381–96; Id., “La biblioteca de Don Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza (1576),” Documentos para la Historia del Monasterio de San
Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial, vol. 7, 2, 1964, 235–324; Isodoros of Kiev (be-
tween 1380 and 1389–1463): Giovanni Mercati, Scritti d’Isodoro, il cardinale
Ruteno e codici a lui appartenuti che si conservano nella Bibliotheca Apostolica Vati-
cana, 1926; Otto Kresten, Eine Sammlung von Konzilsakten aus dem Besitze des
Codicology and Paleography 270

Kardinals Isidoros von Kiev, 1976; Ioannês Laskaris (1445–1535): Pierre de

Nolhac (1859–1936), “Inventaire des manuscrits de Jean Lascaris,” Mél-
anges d’archéologie et d’histoire 6 (1886), 251–74; Léon Dorez (1864–1922),
“Un document nouveau sur la bibliothèque de Jean Lascaris,” Revue des Biblio-
thèques 2 (1892), 280–81; Graham Speake, “Janus Lascaris’ Visit to Mount
Athos in 1491,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 34 (1993), 325–30; Basile
Markesinis, “Janos Lascaris, la bibliothèque d’Avramis à Corfou et le Paris.
gr. 584,” Scriptorium 54 (2000), 302–306; Nicolao Leoniceno (1428–1524):
Daniela Mugnai Carrara, La biblioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno: Tra Aristotele e
Galeno: cultura e libri di un medico umanista, 1991; Stefania Fortuna, “A pro-
posito dei manoscritti di Galeno nella biblioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno,” Italia
medioevale e umanistica 35 (1992): 431–38.; Ead., “Sui manoscritti greci di
Galeno appartenuti a Nicolò Leoniceno e al cardinale Bessarione,” ‘In partibus
Clius’: Scritti in onore di Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, ed. Gianfranco Fiacca-
dori, 2006, 189–211; Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490): Csaba and Klára
Csapodi, Bibliotheca Corviniana, 1967 (in Hungarian; several translations:
The Corvinian Library: History and Stock, 1973; Bibliotheca Corviniana: La Biblio-
thèque du roi Mathias Corvin de Hongrie, 1982); Otto Mazal (1932–2008), König-
liche Bücherliebe: Die Bibliothek des Matthias Corvinus, 1991; de’ Medici family:
Enea Piccolomini (1844–1910), “Delle condizioni e delle vicende della lib-
reria medicea privata dal 1494 al 1508,” Archivio storico italiano 3rd ser., 19
(1874): 101–29; Id., “Documenti intorno alle vicende della libreria medicea
privata dal 1494 al 1508,” ibid., 254–81; Id., “Inventario della libreria medi-
cea privata compilato nel 1495,” ibid. 20 (1874): 51–94; Id., “Richerche in-
torno alle condizioni alle vicende della libreria medicea privata dal 1498 al
1508,” ibid. 21 (1875), 102–12, 282–96 (the articles in all three issues have
been reproduced in 1875 as a monograph with the same title); Francis Ames-
Lewis (b. 1943), “The Inventories of Piero de’ Medici’s Library,” La Bibliofi-
lia 84 (1982): 103–142; Id., The Library and Manuscripts of Piero di Cosimo
de’ Medici, 1984; Edmund Boleslav Fryde (1923–1999), Greek Manuscripts
in the Private Library of the Medici 1469–1510, 2 vols., 1996; Lorenzo de’ Medici
(1449–1492): Enea Piccolomini, “Due documenti relativi ad acquisti di
codici fatti da Giovanni Lascaris per conto di Lorenzo de’ Medici,” Rivista di
Filologia Classica 2 (1874): 401–23; Karl Konrad Mueller (1854–1903),
“Neue Mitteilungen ueber J. Laskaris und die Mediceische Bibliothek,”
Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 1 (1884): 333–413; G. Del Guerraiorgio
(1905–1979), “I manoscritti greci di Lorenzo il Magnifico e il rinascimento
medico italiano,” Rivista di Storia delle scienze mediche e naturali 43 (1952):
225–34; Donald F. Jackson, “Fabio Vigili’s Inventory of Medici Greek
Manuscripts,” Scriptorium 52 (1998), 199–204; Id., “A New Look at an Old
271 Codicology and Paleography

Book List,” Studi italiani di filologia classica, 3rd ser., 16 (1998): 83–108; Id.,
“Janus Lascaris on the Island of Corfu in A.D. 1491,” Scriptorium 57 (2003):
137–39; Markesinis, “Janos Laskaris …” (above); Guillaume Pellicier
(1498/1499–1568): Richard Foerster (1843–1922), “Die griechischen
Handschriften von Guillaume Pellicier,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 40
(1885): 453–61; Henri Omont, “Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de Guillaume
Pellicier,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 6 (1885): 45–83 and 594–624; Id.,
“Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de Guillaume Pélicier, ambassadeur de
François Ier à Venise (1539–1542),” Catalogues des manuscrits grecs de Fontaine-
bleau sous François Ier et Henri II, 1889, 393–427; Id., “Inventaire de la biblio-
thèque de Guillaume Pellicier évêque de Montpellier (1529–1568),” Revue des
Bibliothèques 1 (1891): 161–72; Annaclara Cataldi Palau, “Manoscritti
greci della collezione di Guillaume Pellicier, Vescovo di Montpellier
(ca. 1490–1568): Disiecta membra,” Studi italiani di filologica classica, 3rd ser.,
3 (1985): 103–15; Ead., “Les vicissitudes de la collection de manuscrits de
Guillaume Pellicier,” Scriptorium 40 (1986): 32–53; Annaclara Palau, “Les
copistes de Guillaume Pellicier, évêque de Montpellier,” Scrittura e civiltà 10
(1986): 199–237; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494): Pearl
Kibre (1900–1985), The library of Pico della Mirandola, 1936; Mercati, Codici
latini Pico … (above); Hermann Walter, “Per la biblioteca di Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola: L’inventario anonimo nel cod. Va. lat. 3436, foll.
263r–296v,” Studi Umanistici Piceni 24 (2004): 119–28; Gian Vincenzo Pi-
nelli (1535–1601): Adolfo Rivolta (b. 1876), Contributi a uno studio sulla bib-
lioteca di Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, 1914, and Id., Catalogo dei codici Pinelliani dell’Am-
brosiana, Milano, 1933; Angelo Poliziano Ambrogini (1454–1494), more
commonly known as Poliziano: Mostra del Poliziano nella Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana: Manoscritti, libri rari, autografi e documenti, ed. Alessandro Perosa
(1910–1999), 1954; Augusto Campana (1906–1995), “Contributi alla bib-
lioteca del Poliziano,” Il Poliziano e suo tempo: Atti del IV convegno internazionale di
studi sul rinascimento, 1957, 173–229; Ida Maïer, Les manuscrits d’Ange Politien:
Catalogue descriptif, avec dix-neuf documents inédits en annexe, 1965; Niccolò
Ridolfi (1501–1550): Henri Omont, “Un premier catalogue des manuscrits
grecs du Cardinal Ridolfi,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 49 (1888): 309–24;
Giovanni Mercati, “Indici di Mss. Greci del Card. N. Ridolfi,” Mélanges
d’archéologie et d’histoire 30 (1910): 51–55; Roberto Ridolfi (1899–1991), “La
biblioteca del cardinale Niccolò Ridolfi (1501–1550),” La Bibliofilia 31 (1929):
173–93; Donald F. Jackson, “Unidentified Medici-Regii Greek Codices,”
Scriptorium 54 (2000): 197–208; Royal Library, Paris: Henri Omont,
Catalogues des manuscrits grecs de Fontainebleau sous François Ier et Henri II, 1889;
Janos Számboki (Johannes Sambucus) (1531–1584): Hans Gerstinger
Codicology and Paleography 272

(1885–1971), “Johannes Sambucus als Handschriftensammler,” Festschrift

der Nationalbibliothek zur Feier des 200 jährigen Bestehens des Gebäudes, 1926,
251–400; Henry (1549–1622) and Thomas (d. 1593 Saville: Mark So-
sower (1949–2009), “Greek Manuscripts Acquired by Henry and Thomas
(d. 1593) Saville in Padua,” The Bodleian Library Record 19 (2006): 157–184;
Henry Scrimgeour (ca. 1505–1572): John Durkan, “Henry Scrimgeour,
Fugger Librarian: A Biographical Note,” The Bibliotheck: A Scottish Journal of
Bibliography and Allied Topics 3 (1960): 68–70; Id., “Henry Scrimgeour, Renais-
sance Bookman,” Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 5 (1978): 1–31;
Nicolò Leonico Tomeo (1456–1531): Fabio Vendruscolo, “Manoscritti
greci copiati dall’umanista e filosofo Nicolò Leonico Tomeo,” Odoi Dizêsios, Le
vie della ricerca: Studi in onore di Francesco Adorno, ed. M. Serena Funghi, 1996,
543–55; Giorgio Valla (1447–1500): Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1854–1928),
Beiträge zur Geschichte Georg Vallas und seiner Bibliothek, 1896.
No less important, the search of manuscripts, their collection and circu-
lation, and their use among printers and publishers, often in collaboration
with scholars and scribes. Although research on Renaissance printers and
editions of classical work started early (see, for example, Antoine Augustin
Renoir (1765–1853), Annales de l’imprimerie des Aldes, ou Histoire des trois
Manuce et de leurs éditions, 1803), the identification of the manuscript source(s)
of their editions has only recently become an object of study particularly
illustrated by Martin Sicherl (1914–2009), Handschriftliche Vorlagen der Edi-
tio princeps des Aristoteles, 1976. The same scholar pursued this type of research
and published several studies, which he reproduced later in a volume of col-
lected studies: Id., Griechische Erstausgaben des Aldus Manutius: Druckvorlagen,
Stellenwert, kultureller Hintergrund, 1997. Among the many similar publi-
cations, one could single out Annaclara Cataldi Palau, Gian Francesco
d’Asola e la tipografia aldina: La vita, le edizioni, la biblioteca dell’Asolano, 1998, on
the editions by the successor of Aldo Manuzio (1449–1515), Gian Francesco
d’Asola (ca. 1498–1557/1559).
It is true that the search of manuscripts, collectionism, and the use of the
texts found in manuscripts (be it for scholarly studies or for the preparation
of printed editions) did not necessarily translate into a specific science. Never-
theless, there was a certain level of practical expertise and knowledge of
manuscripts, particularly thanks to the scribes and craftsmen specialized in
the business of book (be they local or Greek immigrants) who collaborated to
the development or creation of collections. Furthermore, manuscripts were
objects of prestige and were used for display of opulence and culture, and
thus needed to be properly showcased, something that required to have at
least some information on their history, textual interest, and cultural value.
273 Codicology and Paleography

B. Pre-Montfaucon History
In their rediscovery of ancient literature (be it Greek or Latin) through manu-
scripts – whose circulation, for the Greek ones, increased dramatically in
the West after the Fall of Constantinople (29th May 1453) without starting
at that moment, however, contrary to an ancient historical interpretation –
Humanists, whoever they were, used paleographical and codicological par-
ameters to estimate the value of manuscripts as testimonies of the text(s) they
were reading, studying and possibly also editing. In so doing, they followed
the philological approach to ancient literary works (including medieval)
developed (but not necessarily created) by Poliziano in his Miscellanea, pub-
lished in two Centuriae (1489 for the first, while the second [achieved between
1493 and 1494] remained unpublished, and was rediscovered only recently
and published in 1972: Poliziano, Miscellaneorum centuria secunda, ed. Vittore
Branca [1913–2004], and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, 1972 [on this dis-
covery, see Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, and Alessandro Daneloni, “Ma-
noscritti e edizioni,” Pico, Poliziano e l’umanesimo di fine Quattrocento: Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana, 4 novembre-31 dicembre 1994, ed. Palolo Vitti, 1994,
308–09]). A sign of this early paleographical and codicological interest can
be found in the many critical editions of classical authors by 16th-century hu-
manists: in their triumphalist titles, scholars claimed to have used manu-
scripts defined as antiquissimi, vetustae antiquitatis, and other paleographico-
codicological descriptions supposed to guarantee the quality of the newly
published critical editions precisely thanks to the antiquity of the manu-
script(s) they were based on (on the humanist meaning of these and similar
terms, see Silvia Rizzo, Il lessico filologico degli umanisti, 1973, passim). For
a remarkable example, see Conrad Celtis’s discovery of the religious plays
and narratives by the 10th-century canoness Hrotsvita of Gandersheim (ca.
935–ca. 1002)in 1493 and his re-edition of her works in 1551.
In spite of the subordination of such paleographico-codicological con-
siderations – whatever their value – to the work of critical edition, manu-
scripts were the object of a more specific interest. They were soon listed and
inventoried in more or less systematic ways, with different purposes: private
use, heritage, and also consultation by external readers. A fundamental
work – though not the first – was by the Swiss polymath Conrad Gesner
(1516–1565) often qualified with the title of Father of Bibliography (according
to the historiography of the Founding Fathers already evoked, even if such
attribution is not necessarily correct) in his Bibliotheca Uniuersalis, siue Catalo-
gus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus, in tribus linguis, Latina, Graeca, & Hebraica
extantium & non extantium, veterum & recentiorum in hunc usque diem, doctorum &
indoctorum, publicatorum & in Bibliothecis latentium. Opus nouum, & non Bibliothe-
Codicology and Paleography 274

cis tantum publicis priuatisque instituendis necessarium, sed studiosis omnibus cuius-
cunque artis aut scientiae ad studia melius formanda utilissimum, 1545 (with a sum-
mary ten years later: Epitome Bibliothecae, 1555).
In many cases, the interest in manuscripts at that time was more directly
oriented toward the search of texts to be edited and printed, particularly
because the printing press was making technical progress and allowed for
the reproduction of texts previously known only in manuscript form. The
circulation of manuscripts, the printed editions of Latin translations, and
commentaries of several classical authors have been studied in the volumes
of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (8 volumes published so far,
1960–2003), originally edited by Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999).
The diffusion of ancient scientific works during the century of 1450–1550,
for example, has been the object of an inventory by Margaret Bingham
Stillwell (1887–1984), The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Cen-
tury of Printing 1450–1550: An Annotated Checklist of First Editions viewed from the
Angle of their Subject Content, 1970.
Catalogues of collections and libraries appeared shortly thereafter with
such works as Giacomo Filippo Tomasini’s (1595–1655), Bibliothecae Patavi-
nae Manuscriptae publicae et privatae quibus diversi scriptores hactenus incogniti
recensentur ac illustrantur, 1639, and Id., Bibliothecae Venetae manuscriptae publi-
cae et privatae quibus diversi scriptores hactenus incogniti recensentur, 1650. Im-
mediately after (1653), the French Jesuit Philippe Labbé (1607–1677) pub-
lished a list of libraries (and their holdings), together with a list of
bibliographies of all kind (Nova bibliotheca mss librorum, sive Specimen anti-
quarum lectionum latinarum & graecarum in quatuor partes tributarum, cum coronide
duplici, poetica et libraria, ac supplementis decem, 1653, with a second edition of
the list of libraries in 1657 under the title Novae bibliothecae manuscript. libro-
rum tomus …. In 1664, he published the list of bibliographies as a separate
volume, entitled Bibliotheca bibliothecarum curis secundis auctior: Accedit Bi-
bliotheca nummaria …).
Published catalogues of manuscripts were not necessarily just lists
of codices whose content was cursorily listed, but they began to offer some
description of the manuscripts and their texts. Among the catalogues pub-
lished during the post-Labbé and pre-Montfaucon era, one can list the
following examples, with different levels of completion (selection, chro-
nological order of publication [first volume]; for the clarity, the name of the
library and city follows the date): 1665, Vienna, Imperial Library: Peter
Lambeck (1628–1680), Commentarium de augustissima bibliothecae Caesareae
Vindobonensi, 1665–1679; 1676, Leipzig, Library of the Academy: Joachim
Feller (1628–1691), Oratio de Bibliotheca Academieae Lipsiensis Paulina: in so-
275 Codicology and Paleography

lemni XIX. Philosophiae Baccalaureorum renonciatione d. XV. April. Anno Aer. Chri.
M.DC.LXXVI. habita, cui duplex subjunctus est catalogus Alter Manuscriptorum mem-
branaceorum, alter manuscriptorum chartaceorum, in eadem bibliotheca extantium;
1690, Vienna, Imperial Library: Daniel De Nessel (1644–1700), Brevi-
arium et Supplementum Commentariorum Lambecianorum sive Catalogus aut Recen-
sio specialis Codicum Manuscriptorum Graecorum, necnon Linguarum Orientalium
Augustissimae Bibliothecae Caesareae Vindobonensis, cum locupletissimis Indicibus
et selectissimis Additamentis. Partes I–V; 1697, England and Ireland: Edward
Bernard (1638–1696), Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in
unum collecti, cum indice alphabetico.
Characteristically, during the three decades covered by the publication
of these catalogues, a reflection started on the impact of available manu-
scripts on the reading of the texts they contain. Two (almost contemporary)
scholars played a fundamental role in these new developments: the French-
men Jean Mabillon (1632–1707) and Richard Simon (1638–1712).
A Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, Jean Mabil-
lon formulated first rules for a critical evaluation of manuscripts as testi-
monies of the texts they contain in his edition of the life of St Bernard
(1091–1153) (Sancti Bernardi … Opera omnia …, 9 vols., 1667) and in the
Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti to the publication of which he collaborated
(several volumes, by century: 1st c.: 1668; 2nd c.: 1669; 3rd c. [2 vols.]: 1672;
4th c. [2 vols.]: 1677–1680; 5th c.: 1685; 6th c. [2 vols.]: 1701). Also, on the basis
of his examination of charts and archival documents related to the history of
the Church (some of which of discussed authenticity) he laid down the basis
of diplomatics in his 1681 treatise De re diplomatica whose title deserves to be
quoted in full, as it makes explicit the work performed by Mabillon: De re
diplomatica libri VI, in quibus quidquid ad veterum instrumentorum antiquitatem,
materiam, scripturam, et stilum; quidquid ad sigilla, monogrammata, subscriptiones,
ac notas chronologicas; quidquid inde ad antiquariam, historicam forensemque disci-
plinam pertinet, explicatur et ilustratur. Accedunt commentarius de antiquis regum
Francorum palatiis; veterum scripturarum varia specimina, tabulis LX comprehensa;
nova ducentorum, et amplius, monumentorum collectio (with a supplement in 1704
and several re-editions from 1709). Typically, Mabillon traveled to explore
library and archive collections for his further works – and in some cases also
to acquire manuscripts for the royal collection of France (Flanders, 1672;
Switzerland and Germany, 1683; Italy, 1685–1686), reporting the results of
his travels in different works: (Flanders) Iter Burgundicum, 1685; (Germany)
Iter germanicum anni 1683, s.l.n.d., and also Libri Germanicum or Itererarium
Germanicum, 1685 (in the 5th vol. of the Analecta, with a reproduction in 1717
by Johann Albertus Fabricius [1668–1736] under the title Io. Mabillonii
Codicology and Paleography 276

Iter Germanicum et Io. Launoii De Scholis celebribus a Carolo M. et post Carolum M.

in Occidente instauratis liber …); (Italy): Iter italicum litterarium … annis 1685 et
1686, 1687 (with a reproduction of the first part of the 1st vol. as Museum itali-
cum, seu Collectio veterum scriptorum ex bibliothecis italicis, 2 vols., 1687–1689).
His major work was his Vetera analecta (Veterum analectorum tomus I[-IV] com-
plectens varia fragmenta et epistolia scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, tam prosa, quam
metro, hactenus inedita. Cum adnotationibus et aliquot disquisitionibus, 4 vols.,
1675–1685).
Richard Simon, studying the text of the Old and New Testament, was
less prolific, but not less influential, as he laid down the basis of textual criti-
cism in five seminal studies (in French) published first in Paris and then in
Rotterdam because of the opposition of his religious order with a final vol-
ume in Paris again: Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 1678; Histoire critique du
texte du Nouveau Testament où l’on établit la vérité des actes sur lesquels la religion
chrétienne est fondée, 1689 (rpt.1968); Histoire critique des versions du Nouveau Tes-
tament où l’on fait connaître quel a été l’usage de la lecture des Livres sacrés dans les prin-
cipales Eglises du monde …, 1690; Histoire critique des principaux commentateurs du
Nouveau Testament depuis le commencement du christianisme jusqu’à notre temps,
avec une Dissertation critique sur les principaux actes manuscrits qui ont été cités dans
les trois parties de cet ouvrage …, 1693; Nouvelles observations sur le texte et les ver-
sions du Nouveau Testament, 1695.

C. The Montfaucon Era

Bernard Montfaucon (above) was a contemporary of both Mabillon and
Simon, though slightly younger. As early as 1702 he published a Diarium
Italicum, sive Monumentorum Veterum, Bibliothecarum, Musaeorum, etc. Notitiae
singulares in Itinerario Italico Collectae; adiectis Schematibus ac figuris (rpt. [1968]
and 1982) in which he related a travel he made to Italy (1698–1701), collect-
ing information on antiquities, libraries, and any other curiosity worth of
notice. With this travel, he confirmed Mabillon’s paradigm for collecting
information on library collections and manuscripts. In Italy, he gathered the
information that enabled him to publish his 1708 Palaeographia greca, in
which he formalized the study of ancient writing, particularly Greek.
The antiquarian component present in Montfaucon’s travel to Italy
(and dating back to the Renaissance, if not earlier) shaped the work of Johann
Albertus Fabricius , whose monumental Bibliotheca Graeca (14 vols. in the
original ed.: Bibliotheca Graeca, sive notitia scriptorum veterum graecorum quorum-
cunque monumenta integra, aut fragmenta exita exstant: tum plerorumque e MSS.
ac deperditis, 1705–1728) is a sum of all available information on ancient
Greek literature, including data coming from the manuscripts that had been
277 Codicology and Paleography

brought to the attention of the scholarly community of that time thanks to

printed catalogues, or were available in any other form.
Catalogues of manuscripts continued to be published, in different styles
and with different levels of achievement (chronological order of publication):
1715, Paris: Bernard Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliana, olim Segueriana;
1734, London: David Casley (1681/82–1754), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts
of the King’s Library: An Appendix to the Catalogue of the Cottonian Library: Together
with an Account of the Books Burnt or Damaged by a Late Fire: One Hundred and
Fifty Specimens of the Manner of Writing in Different Ages, from the Third to the
Fifteenth Century, in Copper-plates: and Some Observations upon Mss, in a Preface;
1739–1744, Paris: Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae regiae …;
1740, Venice: Antonio Maria Zanetti (1706–1778), and Antonio Bon-
giovanni (b. 1712), Graeca D. Marci Bibliotheca codicum manu scriptorum per titu-
los digesta ….
In 1739, Bernard Montfaucon, capitalizing on his personal knowl-
edge of collections and available catalogues, published a general inventory
of manuscripts, returning, in a certain way, to the tradition of Gesner
(although he no longer proceeded by authors and works, but by libraries) and
to the simple listing of manuscripts, not necessarily with any kind of paleo-
graphical or codicological information: Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscripto-
rum nova: ubi, quae innumeris pene manuscriptorum bibliothecis continentur, ad
quodvis literaturae genus spectantia & notatu digna, describuntur et indicantur, 1739
(rpt. 1982).
Publication of catalogues was for a long time the major goal of manu-
script studies as the following examples show: 1749, Turin: Joseph Pasini
(1687–1770), Antonio Rivautella (1708–1753), and Francesco Berta
(1719–1787), Codices manuscripti Bibliothecae regii taurinensis athenaei, per linguas
digesti: & binas in partes distributi, in quatrum prima Hebraei, & Graeci, in altera
Latini, italici, & Gallici, recensuerunt, & animadversionibus illustrarunt … insertis
parvis quibusdam opusculis hactenus ineditis, praeter characterum specimina, & varia
codicum ornamenta partim aere, partim ligno incisa, 2 vols.; 1759–1763, London:
A catalogue of the Harleian Collection of manuscripts purchased by authority of Parlia-
ment for the use of the publick, and preserved in the British Museum; 1764, Paris, Col-
legium Claromontani (Collège de Clermont): Catalogus manuscriptorum codicum
Collegii Claromontani quem excipit catalogus mss. domus professae parisiensis, 1764.
1764–1770, Florence: Angelo Maria Bandini (1726–1803), Catalogus codi-
cum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae varia continens opera Grae-
corum Patrum …, 3 vols. (rpt.: Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae
Mediceae Laurentianae. Accedunt supplementa tria ab Enrico Rostagno et Niccola
[sic] Festa congesta necnon additamentum ex inventariis Bibliothecae Laurentianae
Codicology and Paleography 278

depromptum, ed. Fridolf Kudlien, 1961); 1769, Madrid: Joannes Iriarte

(1701–1771), Regiae bibliothecae matritensis codices graeci ms. …; 1780, Vienna:
Peter Lambeck, Commentariorum de Augustissima Bibliotheca Caesareae Vindobo-
nensi, liber sextus, ed. Adam Franciscus Kollar (1718–1783), 1780; and 1784,
Venice, Nani family: Iohannes L. Mingarelli (1722–1793), Graeci codices
manu scripti apud Nanios patricios Venetos asservati, 1784.
More careful exploration of collections and increased interest in manu-
scripts brought to light texts previously unknown and sometimes – if nof
often – incorrectly identified and unduly considered as discoveries. The titles
of such editions were carefully written so as to make clear that these were first
editions based on manuscripts newly located in library collections, such
as Johannes Stephanus Bernard (1718–1793), Synesius de Febribus, Que nunc
primum ex codice MS. Bibliothecae Lugduno Batavae edidit, vertit, notisque illustravit
–. Accedit Viatici Constantino Africano interprete lib. VII. Pars, 1749. Almost fifty
years later, the same author edited another medieval work from manuscripts
as the title makes clear (with a major difference, however: the ed. was based
on several manuscripts cursorily discussed in the Praefatio [vii-xxii], and no
longer just one as in the 1749 work): Theophanis Nonni Epitome de Curatione
Morborum Graece ac Latine ope codicum manuscriptorum recensuit notasque adiecit,
2 vols., 1794–1795.
Also, collections of anecdota were published, for example by the French
scholar Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d’Ansse de Villoison (1750–1805), who
studied first in Paris and explored the holdings of the Bibliothèque royale,
before sojourning in Venice, where he frequented the Marciana library,
befriended with the curator of manuscripts, and published a wealth of pre-
viously unknown and unpublished texts: Anecdota graeca e Regia Parisiensi et e
Veneta S. Marci Bibliothecis deprompta, 2 vols., 1781.
A similar case is provided by the German scholar Christian Friedrich
Matthaei (1744–1811), who was a professor at the imperial university in
Moscow and explored – and exploited – systematically the holdings of the
Synodial (that is, Patriarchal) library. Among the results of his investigations,
he published a critical edition of the New Testament in no less than 12 vol-
umes: Nouum Testamentum XII tomis distinctum Graece et Latin textum denuo recen-
suit, varias lectiones nunquam antea vulgatas ex centum codicibus mss. variarum bi-
bliothecarum … summa diligentia et fide collegit et vulgauit, lectionaria Ecclesiae
Graecae primo accurate euoluit singulasque lectiones sedulo indicauit, plerorumque
codicum specimena aere expressa exhibuit, priorum editorum … sententias examina-
uit, editiones etiam alias … inspexit, scholia Graeca maximam partem inedita addidit,
commentarios Graecos … notauit … animadversiones criticas adiecti et edidit …,
12 vols., 1782–1788. The title is pretty different from the modest – almost
279 Codicology and Paleography

anonymous – one of d’ansse De Villoison: Matthaei claims, indeed,

to include in his edition variant readings never previously published and
compiled from a hundred of manuscripts preserved in different libraries.
Also, he provided tables reproducing pages of the codices he used in the prep-
aration of the edition. Later on (1805), Matthaei published a catalogue
of the manuscripts in the Synodial collection (Accurata codicum Graecorum mss.
bibliothecarum Mosquensium Sanctissimae Synodi notitia et recensio, 2 vols., 1805)
and, shortly after (1808), he edited a collection of medical fragments
extracted from a manuscript in the Moscow collection: XXI Veterum et Claro-
rum Medicorum Graecorum Varia Opuscula. Prima nunc impensis Anastasii, Nicolai,
Zoës, et Micahëlis, fratrum Zosimadarum Ioanninorum, de litteris graecis intra et extra
patrima suam optime meritorum ex Oribasii codice mosquensi graece edidit, interpreta-
tionem latinam Io. Baptistae Rasarii item suas animadversiones et Indicem vacabulo-
rum adjecit, 1808.
More careful inspection of library holdings in many European libraries
and editorial activity made it possible to renew the encyclopedias of ancient
works available until then, with, among others, a new edition of Fabri-
cius’s Bibliotheca greca that updated the original information of the author
and included also new analytical chapters based on data compiled from
manuscripts and from the scholarly literature available at that time: Johann
Albertus Fabricius, Bibliotheca graeca sive notitia scriptorum veterum graecorum
quorumcumque monumenta integra aut fragmenta edita exstant tum plerorumque
e mss. ac deperditis ad auctore recognita. Editio nova variorum curis emendatior
atque auctior curante Gottlieb Christophoro Harles. Accedunt Iohannis
Alberti Fabricii et Christophi Augusti Heumanni (1681–1763) supple-
menta inedita, 5 vols., 1790–1807 (rpt. 1966–1970). Similarly, the genre of
specialized encyclopedias was renewed (among other reasons thanks to a
better knowledge of manuscript evidence) as shown by the scientific encyclo-
pedias by the Swiss physician Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), in which
ancient works are abundantly mentioned and referred to (chronological
order of publication): Bibliotheca botanica, 2 vols., 1771–1772; Bibliotheca anat-
omica, 1774; Bibliotheca chirurgica, 2 vols., 1774–1775; Bibliothecae medicinae
practicae, 4 vols., 1776–1788.

C. Travels, Catalogues, Ecdotics

The troubled period of the late 18th and early 19th century affected many
libraries as several private or institutional collections (among others those of
the religious communities in France) changed owners. As a consequence,
the circulation of books on the market increased dramatically. The English
bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847), for example, toured
Codicology and Paleography 280

Europe to acquire books on this new market, and authored an Introduction

to the Knowledge of Rare and Valuable Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics (1802)
(on him and his activity, see Edward John O’Dwyer, Thomas Frognal Dibdin:
Bibliographer & Bibliomaniac Extraordinary, 1967), while the Frenchman Jacques-
Charles Brunet (1780–1867) wrote his famous Manuel du libraire et de l’ama-
teur de livres (1810), typically illustrating the renewed interest in books in the
post-Napoleonic era.
Awareness of the interest of the information contained in manuscripts
was rising, sometimes in a community different from that of library curators,
classical scholars, and book collectors. An example is provided by the English
botanist John Sibthorp (1758–1796) who described the flora of Greece.
In order to take advantage of historical resources before beginning his field
work, he stopped in Vienna on his way to Greece in 1786 where he examined
two illustrated copies of the herbal extracted from Dioscorides (1st c. C.E.),
De materia medica, which was the most important botanical work produced
in antiquity. One of these two copies is the early 6th-century manuscript now
at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, medicus graecus 1, and
the other the 7th-century manuscript now in Naples. Sibthorp also visited
Mount Athos in 1787 where he inspected a codex of Dioscorides, which
might be the mid-11th-century copy in the collection of the Megisti Lavra
Monastery.
Perhaps such awareness (or classicizing assumption, instead) contributed
to the subsequent development of travels to visit libraries and personally in-
spect manuscript collections and single codices on the model of Mabillon
and Montfaucon. A pioneer in the early 19th century was the German
scholar Friedrich Reinhold Dietz (1804–1836) of Königsberg. In preparing
critical editions of classical medical texts, he traveled throughout Germany,
Italy, Spain, France, and Britain systematically searching for codices. The
titles of his editions make it clear: Galeni de dissectione musculorum et de consue-
tudine libri: Ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum alterum secundum, primum alterum
graece edidit, 1832; Analecta medica ex libris mss., 1833; Apollonii Citiensis,
Stephani, Palladii, Theophili, Meletii, Damasci, Ioannis aliorum Scholia in Hippocra-
tem et Galenum e codicibus mss. Vindobonens. Monacens. Florentin. Mediolanens.
Escorialens. etc., 2 vols., 1834 (rpt. 1966); Severi Iatrosophistae De clysteribus liber:
Ad Fidem Codicis Manuscripti unici Florentini primum Graece edidit, 1836.
Whatever the rationale of this renewed interest, manuscript studies
began to develop greatly, even though traditional cataloguing continued
at the same time, with catalogues by libraries such as Ignatius Hardt
(1749–1811), Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum graecorum Bibliothecae Regiae
Bavaricae, 5 vols., 1806–1812, and also more comprehensive catalogues by
281 Codicology and Paleography

areas as Gustav Friedrich Haenel (1792–1878), Catalogi Librorum Manuscrip-

torum qui in Bibliothecis Galliae, Helvetiae, Belgii, Britanniae M., Hispaniae, Lusit-
aniae asserrantur, 1830 (rpt. 1976). The several European countries where
manuscripts began to be studied more properly, approached such study dif-
ferently – among others on the basis of their own scholarly tradition(s) – and
gradually developed differentiated orientations (almost methodological
schools) that have had (and probably still have) a long-term impact on the dis-
cipline.
One such orientation is the search and analysis of manuscripts aimed
at (and subordinated to) the critical edition of texts. This was particularly
the case in Germany as the example of Dietz suggested. Editorial activity
was prosperous then, particularly because scholars launched large-scale
programs, pre-industrial printing allowed for audacious endeavours, and
scholars and librarians took the risk of creating publishing companies. One
of these vast edition and publishing projects was the Medicorum Graecorum
opera quae exstant directed by the physician and classical scholar Karl Gottlob
Kühn (1754–1840). Whereas the initial project included the works of Hip-
pocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, Aretaeus, Oribasius, Aetius, and Paul of Egina
in 28 volumes, only the volumes on the first four appeared between 1821 and
1833. Kühn himself edited Hippocrates (3 vols., [nos. 21–23 of the Corpus],
1825–1827), Galen (20 vols., [nos. 1–20], 1821–1833), and Aretaeus (1 vol.,
[no. 24], 1828). Dioscorides (2 vols., [nos. 25–26], 1829–1830, including the
two treatises On Venoms and On Poisons ascribed to Dioscorides), was edited by
the botanist and classical scholar Kurt Sprengel (1766–1833). While Kühn
mainly reproduced the text of previous editions (for Galen, see vol. 1 [1821],
IX–XIII, where Kühn explains that he reproduced the edition of René
Chartier [1572–1654] published in Paris, in part posthumously, from
1639 to 1679, and that he collated the manuscripts that he could find,
together with the corrections and conjectures by Joseph Scaliger
[1540–1609] and Janus Cornarius [1500–1558]; on the Aretaeus edition,
see Carolus Hude, Aretaeus, 1958, X), Sprengel collected variant readings
from codices on the basis of a personal inspection of manuscripts (enumer-
ated and briefly described in the preface) or through collations reported in
existing printed editions as the title page explicitly mentions.
Editorial activity, which was by no means limited to medical and scien-
tific treatises but covered the whole range of classical texts, was theorized at
that time by the German classical philologist Karl Lachmann (1793–1851).
In his many critical editions, he applied rules aiming to be objective in the
selection of the manuscripts to be used as sources and in the choice of their
possible variant readings (his method has been studied in detail by Sebas-
Codicology and Paleography 282

tiano Timpanaro [1923–2000], La genesi del metodo di Lachmann, 1963 [several

reprints]; English trans.: The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, Glenn W. Most
[ed. and trans.], 2005, which includes an analysis of Timpanaro’s contribu-
tion to the history of ecdotics). Lachmann, however, did not formulate
an explicit theory of ecdotics, something that did slightly later the Danish
philologist Jean-Nicolas Madvig (1804–1886) in his edition of Cicero, De
finibus (1839).
Another approach to manuscript studies was the systematic cataloguing
of large collections formed by the acquisition en bloc of earlier collections over
the centuries. This was particularly the case in the United Kingdom, where
such libraries as the British Museum (now British Library) in London, and
the Bodleian at Oxford required continued effort. At the British Museum,
many such collections were merged, and the immense collection resulting
from these successive accretions was gradually catalogued further, starting
with Samuel Ayscough (1745–1804), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved
in the British Museum, hitherto undescribed, Consisting of Five Thousand Volumes,
including the Collections of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., the Rev. Thomas Birch, D.D. and
about Five Hundred Volumes Bequeathed, Presented, or Purchased at Various Times,
2 vols., 1782. This first work was followed by a series of others: Joseph
Planta (1744–1827), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library
deposited in the British Museum, 1802; Robert Nares (1753–1829), A Catalogue
of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols., 1808–1812; Josiah
Forshall (1795–1863), Catalogue of Manuscripts in the British Museum, New
Ser., vol. 1, part 1: The Arundel Manuscripts, 1834; vol. 1, part 2: The Burney
Manuscripts, 1840; Frederic Madden (1801–1873), and Edward-Augustus
Bond (1815–1898), Index to the Additional Manuscripts with those of the Egerton
Collection preserved in the British Museum and Acquired in the Years 1783–1835,
1849. Then, the recent acquisitions were listed in periodical publications,
following an irregular calendar: List of Additions made to the Collections in the
British Museum in the Year 1831, 1833; List [2] … 1833, 1835; List [3] … 1834,
1837; List [4] … 1835, 1839; List [5] … 1836–1840, 1843; Catalogue of Additions to
the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1841–1845, 1850; Catalogue
[2] … 1846–1847, 1864; Catalogue [3] … 1848–1853, 1868; Catalogue [4] …
1854–1875, 3 vols., 1875–1880; Catalogue [5] … 1876–1881, 1882; Catalogue
[6] … 1882–1887, 1889; Catalogue [7] … 1888–1893, 1894; Catalogue [8] …
1894–1899, 1901; Catalogue [9] … 1900–1905, 1907; Catalogue [10] …, 1906–1910,
1912; Catalogue [11] … 1911–1915, 1925; British Museum, Catalogue of Additions
to the Mss, 1916–1920, 1933; British Museum, Catalogue [2] … 1921–1925, 1950.
The strategy at the Bodleian Library was slightly different: its several
collections were catalogued one by one in a somewhat summary form by
283 Codicology and Paleography

three generations of classical scholars, starting with Thomas Gaisford

(1779–1855), Codices manuscripti et impressi, cum notis manuscriptis, olim d’Orvil-
liani, qui in Bibliotheca Bodleiana apud Oxonienses adservantur, 1806, and Catalo-
gus sive notitia manuscriptorum qui a Cel. E.D. Clarke comparati in Bibliotheca
Bodleiana adservantur, vol. 1, 1812. He was followed by Henry O. Coxe
(1811–1881), who worked on most of the collections of Greek manuscripts
and also on some Latin codices: Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae
Bodleianae, Pars Prima Recensionem Codicum Graecorum Continens, 1853; Catalogi
Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae Pars Tertia Codices Graecos et Lati-
nos Canonicianos Complectens, 1854. Then, all the still uncatalogued collections
and items were systematically included in a comprehensive short-title cata-
logue, whose publication extended from the end of the 19th century to well
into the 20th: Falconer Madan (1851–1935), A Summary Catalogue of Western
Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued
in the Quarto Ser. with References to the Oriental and Other Manuscripts, vol. 3: Col-
lections Received during the 18th Century, Nos 8717–16669, 1895; vol. 4: Collections
Received during the First Half of the 19th Century, Nos. 16670–24330, 1897; vol. 5:
Collections Received during the Second Half of the 19th Century and Miscellaneous
Manuscripts Acquired between 1695 and 1890, Nos 24331–31000, 1905. This monu-
mental work was further completed going backward in time by Madan in
collaboration with Herbert H. E. Craster (1879–1959): vol. 2, 1st part:
Collections Received before 1600 and Miscellaneous Mss acquired during the First Half
of the 17th Century, Nos 1–3490, 1922; vol. 2, 2nd part: Collections and Miscellaneous
Mss acquired during the Second Half of the 17th Century, Nos 3491–8716, 1937. Once
the whole catalogue of the collections and items acquired in the past was
completed, Madan and Craster covered the current acquisitions: vol. 6:
Accessions 1890–1915, Nos. 31001–37299, 1924.
The libraries of the several colleges oxonienses were catalogued altogether
by Henry O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum MSS. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus
hodie adservantur, 2 vols., 1852. However, the catalogue of a single library
was published shortly after: George William Kitchin (1827–1912), Catalo-
gus Codicum MSS. qui in Bibliotheca Aedis Christi apud Oxonienses adservantur,
1867.
At Cambridge, Oxford’s first strategy was followed for the University
Library (Henry Richards Luard [1825–1891], A Catalogue of the Manuscripts
preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols., 1856–1867),
whereas Oxford’s second strategy was adopted for the many colleges. It was
the merit of Montague Rhodes James (1826–1936) to catalogue almost all
from 1895 to 1913: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts others than Oriental
in the Library of King’s College, 1895; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in
Codicology and Paleography 284

the Library of Sidney Sussex College, 1895; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts
in the Library of Peterhouse, 1899; The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity
College. A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols., 1900–1904; The Western Manuscripts in
the Library of Emmanuel College, 1904; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Manu-
scripts in the Library of Queen’s College, 1905; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western
Manuscripts in the Library of Christ’s College, 1905; A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, 1905; A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Western Manuscripts in the Library of Clare College, 1905; A Descriptive Catalogue of
the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, 2 vols., 1907–1908
(with a Supplement in 1914); A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Col-
lege Library of Magdalene College, 1909; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in
the Library of Corpus Christi College, 1912; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manu-
scripts in the Library of St John’s College, 1913.
A more analytical approach was preferred in France. Nevertheless,
printed editions of classical and medieval texts, which were not necessarily
prepared on the basis of an exhaustive census of manuscripts and a first codi-
cological and paleographical analysis contrary to what was happening in
Germany at the same time, continued to be published. An example of this
editorial practice is the Patrologiae (Greek and Latin) by the Maurist Jacques-
Paul Migne (1800–1875) (on the whole enterprise, see R. Howard Bloch,
God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce
of the Abbé Migne, 1994). The edition of the complete work of Hippocrates in
10 vols. (1839–1861) by the French scholar Emile Littré (1801–1880) indi-
cates a substantially different orientation (that is, the direct examination of
manuscripts), which Charles Daremberg (1817–1872) followed. He visited
several libraries in Europe, searching for medical manuscripts in order to
publish a Bibliothèque des médecins grecs et latins (see his prospectus: Bibliothèque
des médecins grecs et latins, publiée avec le concours de médecins érudits de la France et
de l’étranger: Prospectus et spécimen, 1847). Although he could not publish his
Bibliothèque, Daremberg made groundbreaking work, with an accurate
description of manuscripts that he published in the reports of his research
travels: “Rapport adressé à M. le Ministre de l’Instruction Publique par …
chargé d’une mission médico-littéraire en Allemagne,” Journal général de
l’instruction publique 14.33 (1845): 193–96, and 14.34 (1845): 198–202 (also
printed as a booklet under the same title, 1845); “Résumé d’un voyage médi-
co-littéraire en Angleterre lu à l’Académie des inscriptions et belle-lettres,
dans la séance du 6 octobre,” Gazette médicale de Paris 4 novembre 1848; Notices
et extraits des manuscrits médicaux d’Angleterre, 4 fascicles, 1851–1852 (with
a new ed. under the title Notices et extraits des manuscrits médicaux grecs, latins et
français, des principales bibliothèques de l’Europe, 1st part: Manuscrits grecs d’Angle-
285 Codicology and Paleography

terre suivis d’un fragment de Gilles de Corbeil et de scolies inédites sur Hippocrate,
1853).
Such method was adopted also by a Greek ophthalmologist interested in
the history of medicine and doing research in Paris: Georges A. Costomiris
(1849–1902) (sometimes also spelled Kostomoiris). He browsed, indeed,
the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, and compiled also
information from printed catalogues of collections worldwide. On this basis,
he published a series of inventories of Greek medical manuscripts (“Études
sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs et ceux dont le texte original
est perdu, mais qui existent en latin ou en arabe. Première série: Hippocrate,
Cratevas, Aelius Promotus, Galien,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 2 [1889]:
343–83; “Études sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs. Deuxième
série: L’Anonyme de Daremberg, Métrodora, Aétius,” Revue des études grecques
3 [1890]: 145–79; “Études sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs.
Troisième série: Alexandre (Sophiste et Roi), Timothée, Léon le Philosophe,
Théophane Nonnos, les Ephodes,” Revue des Etudes Grecques, 4 [1891]: 97–110;
“Études sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs. Quatrième série:
Hippiatriques et auteurs du XIe siècle: Psellus, Siméon Seth, Damnastès,”
Revue des Etudes Grecques 5 [1892]: 61–72; “Études sur les écrits inédits des
anciens médecins grecs. Cinquième série: XIIe–XIVe siècles. Jean Tzetzès. Ni-
colas Myrepsus. Jean Actuarius,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 10 [1897]: 405–45).
During the same period, a curator of ancient manuscripts at the Biblio-
thèque nationale, Henri Auguste Omont, opted for a different strategy,
closer to that of the British Museum. He published, indeed, many summary
catalogues of manuscript collections of different size (chronological order):
Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits du supplément grec de la Bibliothèque nationale,
1883; “Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs des Bibliothèques Maza-
rine, de l’Arsenal et de Sainte-Geneviève à Paris,” Mélanges Graux: Recueil de
travaux d’érudition classique dédié à la mémoire de Charles Graux, maître de confé-
rences á l’Ecole pratique des hautes études et à la Faculté des lettres de Paris, bibliothé-
caire à la Bibliothèque de l’Université; né à Vervins le 23 novembre 1852, mort à Paris
le 13 janvier 1882, 1884, 305–20; Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de la bibliothèque
royale de Bruxelles et des autres bibliothèques publiques de Belgique, 1885; “Cata-
logue des manuscrits grecs des Bibliothèques de Suisse: Bâle, Berne, Einsie-
deln, Genève, Saint-Gall, Schaffouse et Zurich,” Zentralblatt für Bibliotheks-
wesen 3 (1886): 385–452; and his monumental Inventaire sommaire des
manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale et des autres bibliothèques de Paris et des
Départements, 4 vols., 1886–1898.
A similar activity took place across Europe, with some individuals emerg-
ing as major catalographers (alphabetical order of country names; within
Codicology and Paleography 286

each section, chronological order; selection): Denmark: Charles Graux

(1852–1882), Notices sommaires des manuscrits grecs de la grande Bibliothèque royale
de Copenhague, 1879; Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean: Athanasios
Papadopoulos-Kerameus (1856–1912), Ekthesis peri tôn en tê bibliothêkê tês
Palaias Phôkaias ellênikôn cheirografôn, 1876; Id., Katalogos tôn cheirografôn tês en
Smurnê bibliothêkês tês Euaggelikês Scholês, 1877; Id., Katalogos tôn en tais bibliothê-
kais tês nêsou Lesbou ellênikôn cheirografôn, 1888; Id., Ierosolumitikê Bibliothêkê,
êtoi Katalogos tôn en tais bibliothêkais tou agiou apostolikou te kai katholikou orthodo-
xou patriarchikou thronou tôn Ierosolumôn kai pasês Palestinês apokeimenôn ellênikôn
kôdikôn, 5 vols., 1891–1915; Iôannês (1815–1891) and Alkibiadês Sakke-
lion, Katalogos tôn cheirografôn tês bibliothêkês Ellados, 1892; Spyridon P. Lam-
bros (1851–1919), Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts on Mount Athos, 2 vols.,
1895–1900; Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Katalogos tôn ellênikôn
cheirografôn tês Mêleais bibliothêkais, 1901; Sophrônios Eustratiadês, Kata-
logos tôn en tê monê Vlateôn (Tsaous-monastêri) apokeimenôn kôdikôn, 1918; Id.,
Katalogos tôn kôdikôn tês monês Batopediou, 1921; Sophrônios Eustratiadês,
and Arkadios of Batopedi, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in the Library of the
Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, 1924; Spyridon Lauriotês, and Sophrô-
nios Eustratiadês, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in the Library of the Laura
on Mount Athos, with Notices from Other Libraries, 1925; Italy: Giuseppe
Valentinelli (1805–1874), Bibliotheca manuscripta ad S. Marci Venetiarum,
6 vols., 1868–1873; Emilio Martini (1852–1940), Catalogo di Manoscritti greci
esistenti nelle Biblioteche italiane, 2 vols., 1893–1902; Vittorio Puntoni
(1859–1926), “Indice dei codici greci della Biblioteca Estense di Modena,”
Studi italiani di filologia classica 4 (1896), 379–536; Emilio Martini
(1852–1940), and Domenico Bassi (1859–1942), Catalogus codicum graecorum
Bibliothecae Ambrosianae, 1906; Seymour de Ricci (1881–1942), “Liste som-
maire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliotheca Barberina,” Revue des Biblio-
thèques 17 (1907): 81–125); the Netherlands: Jacobus Geel (1789–1862),
Catalogus librorum manuscriptorium qui inde ab anno 1741 Bibliothecae Lugduno-Ba-
tavae accesserunt, vol. 1: Codices graeci, vol. 2: Codices latini; vol. 3: Libri recentiores,
1852; Philip Christian Molhuijsen (1870–1944), Codices Scaligerani (praeter
Orientales), 1910; Portugal and Spain: Emmanuel Miller (1810–1886),
Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque de l’Escurial, 1848; Charles
Graux, “Rapport sur une mission en Espagne,” Archives des Missions scienti-
fiques et littéraires, 3e série, 5 (1879): 111–36; Charles Graux, and Albert Mar-
tin (1844–1912), Notices sommaires des manuscrits grecs d’Espagne et de Portugal,
1892, and Rudolf Beer (1863–1913), Handschriftenschätze Spaniens: Bericht
über eine im Auftrage der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in den Jahren
1886–1888 durchgeführte Forschungsreise, 1894; Vatican City: Henry M. Ste-
287 Codicology and Paleography

venson (1818–1898), Codices manuscripti palatini graeci bibliothecae Vaticanae,

1885; Id., Codices manuscripti graeci Reginae Suecorum et Pii PP. II Bibliothecae Vati-
canae, 1888; Cosimo Stornajolo, Codices Urbinates Graeci Bibliothecae Vatica-
nae, Rome, 1895.

D. Fresh Activity
However Herculean it might have been, the task of cataloguing these and
many other collections contributed to the development of a specific paleo-
graphical and codicological approach. This dynamic relationship is particu-
larly illustrated by the development of investigations on the history of li-
braries and collections, and such cataloguer as Henri Omont, curator of
manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and author of the cata-
logues mentioned above. If he worked on collections at the origin of the
Bibliothèque nationale (“Un premier catalogue des manuscrits grecs …”
[above], and Catalogues des manuscrits grecs … [above]), he also investigated
other, non-French collections, for example: “Inventaire des manuscrits grecs
et latins donnés à Saint-Marc …” (above) and “Notes sur quelques manu-
scrits grecs …” (above). In so doing, he was not a pioneer, however, as this
type of historical investigation had started before him. To the examples
above, one could add among others: Richard Foerster, De Antiquitatibus
et Libris Manuscriptis Constantinopolitanis Commentatio, 1877, and Karl von
Christ (b. 1878), “Zur Geschichte der griechischen Handschriften der Pa-
latina, “Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 36 (1919): 3–34; 49–66. Significantly,
new journals on the history of libraries and archives were created during the
second half of the 19th century, such as the Giornale storico degli archivi toscani 1
(1857), Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 1 (1884), and Revue des Bibliothèques 1
(1891).
In one case at least, this new type of inquiry did not grow out of intellec-
tual curiosity, but was probably linked to contemporary circumstances: the
collection of manuscripts formed by Guillaume Pellicier, which was acquired
in 1764 by the Dutch book collector Gerard Meerman (1722–1771) after sev-
eral other intermediary passages and in 1824 by the famous British collector
Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), was purchased by Germany after Phillipps’s
death (on the history of the collection, see recently Jos van Heel, “From Ve-
nice and Naples to Paris, The Hague, London, Oxford, Berlin …: The Odys-
sey of the Manuscript Collection of Gerard and Johan Meerman,” Book on the
Move: Tracking Copies through Collections and the Book Trade, ed. Robin Myers,
Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote, 2007, 87–111). On the occasion
of their acquisition by Germany, the manuscripts were catalogued by Wil-
hem Studemund (1843–1889), and Leopold Cohn (1856–1915), Verzeich-
Codicology and Paleography 288

niss der griechischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 1st part:
Codices ex Bibliotheca Meermanniana Phillippici Graeci nunc Berolinenses, 1890.
During the same period, paleography was developing. In 1866, the
specialist of primary sources (Urkunden) (manuscripts and archives) Wilhelm
Wattenbach (1819–1897) published his Beiträge zur lateinischen Paläogra-
phie, 1866 (2nd ed. 1872; 3rd ed. 1878; 4th rev. ed. 1886 [rpt. 1971]), followed
in 1867 by: Anleitung zur griechischen Palaeographie, 1867 (2nd ed. 1877; 3rd ed.
1895 [rpt. 1971]), and, four years later, by a more general work: Das Schrift-
wesen im Mittelalter, 1871 (2nd rev. ed. 1875; 3rd rev. ed. 1896; 4th ed. 1958).
This initial impetus was taken over by Viktor Emil Gardthausen
(1843–1928), who started with Griechische Palaeographie, 1879, and also cata-
logued two collections: Catalogus codicum graecorum sinaiticorum, 1886; and Ka-
talog der griechischen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek zu Leipzig, 1898.
Between Gardthausen’s initial work and his catalogues, Theodor Birt
(1852–1933) authored a more comprehensive work on the history of ancient
book: Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Literatur, mit Beiträgen zur
Textgeschichte des Theokrit, Catull, Properz und anderen Autoren, 1882, followed, in
1907, by Die Buchrolle in der Kunst: Archäologisch-antiquarische Untersuchungen
zum antiken Buchwesen. Ten years after Das antike Buchwesen, the classical phil-
ologist, editor of texts, and theoretician of textual criticism Friedrich Blass
(1843–1907) wrote the chapter “Palaeographie, Buchwesen und Handschrif-
tenkunde,” of the Handbuch der klassischen Altertums-Wissenschaft, vol. 1: Ein-
leitende und Hilfsdisziplinen, 2nd ed., ed. Iwan von Müler (1830–1917), 1892,
297–355. Shortly after, the English scholar Edward Maunde Thompson
(1840–1929) authored a similar manual: Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeo-
graphy, 1894 (2nd rev. ed. 1903; 3rd ed. 1906; rpt. 1966, 1975; Greek trans.
1973).
Complementary, cataloguers and paleographers reproduced pages of
manuscripts whose writing illustrated particularly the history of paleography.
In London, a group of scholars (mainly curators of the British Museum)
founded in 1873 a Palaeographical Society, which was funded by private sub-
scriptions, and launched an important initiative: the Facsimiles of Manuscripts
and Inscriptions, with a first series edited by Edward August Bond, and Ed-
ward Maunde Thompson, 3 vols., 1873–1883. In 1894, the Society was dis-
solved and a New Palaeographical Society was created later (1903), which started
again the publication of facsimiles. In the meantime, several similar publi-
cations followed (chronological order): Wilhelm Wattenbach, Schrifttafeln
zur Geschichte der griechischen Schrift und zum Studium der griechischen Palaeogra-
phie, 2 vols., 1876–1877 (the subsequent editions have a different title: Scrip-
turae graecae specimina in usu scholarum, 1883, with two re-editions in 1897 and
289 Codicology and Paleography

1936); Id., Exempla codicum Latinorum litteris maiusculis scriptorum et supplemen-

tum, 1876; Wilhelm Wattenbach, and Adolf van Velsen (1832–1900),
Exempla codicum graecorum litteris minusculis scriptorum, 1878; the Palaeographi-
cal Society (in London): Facsimiles of Manuscripts and Inscriptions, 2nd ser., I, ed.
Edward August Bond, Edward Maunde Thompson, and George Frederic
Warner (1845–1936), 2 vols., 1884–1894; Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in
the British Museum, part 1: Greek, 1881; part 2: Latin, 1884; Girolamo Vitelli
(1849–1935), and Cesare Paoli (1840–1902), Collezione fiorentina di facsimili
paleografici greci e latini, 1884–1897; Henri Omont, Facsimilés de manuscrits
grecs des XVe et XIVe siècles reproduits en photographie d’après les originaux de la Biblio-
thèque Nationale, 1887; Id., Facsimilés des manuscrits grecs datés de la Bibliothèque
Nationale du IXe au XIVe siècle, 1891 (shortly followed by “Les manuscrits grecs
datés des XVe et XVIe siècles de la Bibliothèque nationale et des autres biblio-
thèques de France,” Revue des Bibliothèques 2 [1892]: 1–32); Charles Graux
and Albert Martin, Facsimilés de manuscrits grecs d’Espagne gravés d’après les
photographies de Ch. Graux, avec transcription et notices par Albert Martin, 1891,
2 vols. (1: Texte; 2: Planches); Henri Omont, Facsimilés des plus ancients manu-
scrits grecs en onciale et en minuscule de la Bibliothèque Nationale du IVe au XIIe siècle,
1892.
As paleographical studies were quickly developing, it became necessary
to sum up contemporary production. It was the merit of the German philol-
ogist Wilhelm Weinberger (1866–1932), who first authored Adnotationes
ad graecos Italiae codices spectantes, 1897, to compile a bibliography of current
research on the model of the bibliographies that had been developing since
the early 19th century by Theodor Johann Chrisitan Enslin (1787–1851),
Samuel Fridrich Wilhelm Hoffmann (1803–1873), Wilhelm Engel-
mann (1808–1878), Emil von Preuss (b. 1845), and Rudolf Klussmann
(1846–1925). Weinberger started in 1898 with a report covering the pro-
duction of twenty five years (1874–1896) (“Bericht über Paläographie und
Handschriftenkunde,” Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertums-
wissenschft begründet von C. Bursian 98 [1898]: 187–310), and continued until
the issue 236 (1932): 85–113 of the same Jahresbericht with a report covering
the years 1926–1930.
More specialized studies started to appear, such as on abbreviations
(Thomas William Allen [1862–1950], Notes on Abbreviations in Greek Manu-
scripts with Eleven Pages of Facsimiles by Photolithography, 1889 [rpt. 1967]; and
Grigori Filimonovich Tseretelli [1870–1938], De compendiis scripturae codi-
cum graecorum praecipue Petropolitanorum et Mosquensium anni nota instructorum,
1896), on the paleography of Greek papyri (Frederic George Kenyon
[1863–1952], The Palaeography of Greek Papyri, 1899 [rpt. 1970]), on specific
Codicology and Paleography 290

manuscripts (Thomas William Allen, Notes on Greek Manuscripts in Italian Li-

braries, 1890), and also on the illustration of manuscripts with both the analy-
sis of some codices (François Lenormant [1837–1883], “Peintures d’un
manuscrit de Nicandre,” Gazette archéologique. Recueil de monuments pour servir à
la connaissance et à l’histoire de l’art antique 1 [1875]: 125–27; Id., “Pan Nomios
et la naissance des serpents: Peintures d’un manuscrit de Nicandre,” Gazette
archéologique. Recueil de monuments pour servir à la connaissance et à l’histoire de l’art
antique 1 (1875): 69–72; and Edouard de Chanot, “Miniatures d’un manu-
scrit de Nicandre,” Gazette archéologique. Recueil de monuments pour servir à la con-
naissance et à l’histoire de l’art antique 2 [1876]: 87–89) and a first inventory and
analysis of illustrated manuscripts in a library (Henri Bordier [1817–1888],
Description des peintures et autres ornements dans les manuscrits grecs de la Biblio-
thèque nationale, 1883).
The decades at the turn of the century were characterized by special pro-
jects, particularly selective inventories of manuscripts (chronological order
of publication) (Patristic, Latin) Bibliotheca Patrum Latinorum Britannica, ed.
Henry Schenkl (1859–1919), 13 vols., 1890–1908, and the Bibliotheca Pat-
rum Latinorum Hispaniensis, ed. Wilhelm August von Hartel (1839–1907)
(who was also a papyrologist and edited in 1895 the volume Die Wiener Gene-
sis, on the illustrated ms. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, theol.
gr. 31, perhaps of the 6th c.), and Zacharias Garcia, originally published as 5
issues of the Sitzungsberiche der philosophisch-historische Classe der kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften (111, issue 1; 112, 1 and 2; 113, 1; 169, 2) and
further reproduced in 2 vols. (1887–1915); (astrology, Greek) Catalogus Codi-
cum Astrologorum Graecorum, 20 vols., 1898–1953, originally edited by Franz
Cumont (1868–1947); (Fathers of the Church, Latin) Wilhelm Wein-
berger, Catalogus catalogorum: Verzeichnis der Bibliotheken, die ältere Hand-
schriften lateinischer Kirchenschriftsteller enthalten, 1902; (medicine, Greek) Die
Handschriften der antiken Ärzte, 1st part: Hippokrates und Galenos; 2nd part: Die
übrigen griechische Ärzte auser Hippokrates und Galenos, ed. Hermann Diels
(1848–1922), 1905, 1906, with a supplement in 1908: Bericht über den Stand
des interakademischen Corpus Medicorum Antiquorum und Erster Nachtrag zu den in
den Abhandlungen 1905 and 1906 veröffentlichten Katalogen: Die Handschriften der
antiken Ärzte. I. und II. Teil (parts 1 and 2 have been reproduced as a vol. under
the title Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte: Griechische Abteilung in 1906, and
this vol. has been reprinted with the 1908 supplement in 1970 with a preface
by Friedolf Kudlien).
Pursuing the enterprise of facsimiles started by the Paleographical Society
in London, scholars reproduced manuscripts of exceptional significance
(be it for paleographical, codicological, textual, or artistic reasons) such as the
291 Codicology and Paleography

Clarkianus 39 of the Bodleian Library containing Plato, Phaedrus, in the hand

of Arethas of Caesarea (ca. 850–944): Thomas William Allen, Codex Oxonien-
sis Clarkianus 39 Phototypice editus, 2 vols., 1898–1899; Allen also reproduced
the 11th–12th-century Venice copy of Aristophanes containing seven of his
plays: Facsimile of the Codex Venetus Marcianus 474, 1902; and a group of scholars
contributed to a facsimile of the so-called Dioscorides of Vienna, that is,
the early 6th-century codex medicus graecus 1 of the Österreichische National-
bibliothek, Vienna, lavishly illustrated with plant representations; the vol-
ume was edited by Josef von Karabacek (1845–1918) and included ex-
haustive studies by Anton von Premerstein (1869–1935) on the history of
Dioscorides’s text and its manuscripts; Karl Wessely (1960–1930) on the
paleography of codex Vindobonensis; and Josef Mantuani (1860–1933) on its
illustration: De codicis Diosuridei Aniciae Iulianae, nunc Vindobonensis Med. Gr. 1
historia, forma, scriptura, picturis, 1906, 2 vols. Somewhat later and on the basis
of the Viennese Dioscorides, the historian of science Charles Singer
(1876–1960) sketched the first attempt for a modern history of botanical
illustration in manuscripts: “The herbal in antiquity and its transmission to
later ages,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 47 (1927): 1–52.
In these years, major paleographical publications came out, particularly
in the German world, such as (chronological order of publication): Viktor
Emil Gardthausen, Sammlungen und Catalogue griechischer Handschriften,
1903 (a list of published catalogues of manuscripts); Wilhelm Schubart
(1873–1960), Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern: Eine Studie aus der berliner
Papyrussammlung, 1907 (2nd ed. 1921); Viktor Emil Gardthausen, Geschichte
der griechischen Tachygraphie, 1st part, 1906; Marie Vogel, and Viktor Emil
Gardthausen, Die griechischen Schreiber des Mittelalters und der Renaissance,
1909 (Greek manuscripts signed by their copyists, listed in alphabetical
order of copyists’ name; rpt. 1966); Wilhelm Weinberger, Beiträge zur
Handschriftenkunde, 2 vols., 1908–1909 (vol. 1: Bibliotheca corvina).
Another fundamental contribution of these years was the study of water-
marks in paper (for a synthesis on the history of studies on watermarks, see
Jean Irigoin (1920–2006), “La datation par les filigranes du papier,” Codico-
logica 5 [1980]: 9–36). Much research on paper history was done in the 19th
century, among others the inventory and reproduction of watermarks. See,
for example, the work by the brothers Aurelio (1830–1902) and Augusto
Zonghi on Fabriano paper making (Aurelio Zonghi, Documenti storici fabria-
nesi, 1880, and The Ancient Papers of Fabriano Exhibited at the General Italian Ex-
hibition Held at Turin, 1884; see also the album of watermarks published in
1953, Zonghi’s watermarks) (on their work, see recently: Giancarlo Castag-
nari, L’opera dei fratelli Zonghi: L’era del segno nella storia della carta, 2003), and
Codicology and Paleography 292

Francisco de Asís de Bofarull y Sans (1843–1936) (La heráldica en la filigrana

del papel, 1901 [Engl. trans. Heraldic Watermarks or La Heráldica en la filigrana del
papel, 1956], and Animales en las marcas del papel, 1910 [Engl. trans. Animals in
Watermarks, 1959]). After some precursory studies, the Russian scholar Niko-
lai Petrovitch Likhachev (1862–1936) published in 1899 a dictionary (in
Russian) La signification paléographique des filigranes du papier, 3 vols.: 1. Liste nu-
mérique; 2. Listes alphabétique et numérique; 3. Album, 1899 (Engl. trans.: Likha-
chev’s Watermarks: An English-language version, 1994). As Likhatscheff puts it
(see also his review of the catalogue by Briquet [below] in Zentralblatt für Bib-
liothekswesen 25 (1908): 265–67), he transferred to the study of manuscripts a
method already applied by scholars for the analysis of early printed books
and incisions from the early 19th century. Whatever the explanation and the
claim for priority, in 1907 Charles-Moïse Briquet (1839–1918) published
another dictionary. Briquet started working on the history of paper (Re-
cherches sur les premiers papiers employés en Occident et en Orient du Xe au XIVe siècle,
1886) and shifted quickly to the inventory of watermarks in dated archival
documents (Papiers et filigranes des archives de Gênes de 1154 à 1700, 1888). Then,
he published his dictionary: Les filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du
papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, 4 vols., 1907, with a second edi-
tion in 1923 (and several reprints) that has been the major reference after the
method of dating manuscripts by means of their watermarks had been ac-
cepted.
Paleographical publications increased dramatically. Thomas William
Allen took over the task of reviewing current production started by
Weinberger: “Greek Palaeography (and Textual Criticism),” The Year’s
Work in Classical Studies, 1911, 127–32 (pursued until 1934, 69–74). Almost
every year, indeed, new publications of all types came out, often followed
shortly by a new, revised edition (chronological order of publication): Franz
Steffens (1853–1930), Lateinische Paläographie: Hundert Tafeln in Lichtdruck
mit Transcription nebst Erläuterungen und einer systematischen Darstellung der Ent-
wicklung der lateinischen Schrift, 4 vols., 1903 (2nd rev. ed. [125 tables], 1909;
supplement in 1910; French trans. 1910; rpt. 1964); The New Palaeographical
Society, Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts and Inscriptions, 1st ser., ed. Edward
Maunde Thompson, George Frederic Warner, Frederic George Kenyon,
and Julius Parnell Gilson (1868–1929), 10 parts constituting 2 vols.,
1903–1912; Franz Steffens, Proben aus handschriftlichen lateinischen Schrift-
stellern: 24 Tafeln in Lichtdruck zur ersten Einführung in die Paläographie für Philolo-
gen und Historiker, 1909; Scato Gogko de Vries (1861–1937), Album palaeo-
graphicum: Tabulae LIX selectae ex cunctis iam editis tomis codicum graecorum et
latinorum photogrphice depictorum, 1909; Pio Pietro Franchi de’Cavalieri
293 Codicology and Paleography

(1869–1960), and Hans Lietzmann (1875–1942), Specimina codicum graeco-

rum Vaticanorum, 1910 (2nd ed. 1929); Wilhelm Schubart, Papyri Graecae
Berolinenses, 1911; the second edition of Viktor Emil Gardthausen’s man-
ual of paleography published the same year (1911) is in two volumes each of
which with a separate title: Das Buchwesen im Altertum und im byzantinischen
Mittelalter, and Die Schrift, Unterschriften und Chronologie im Altertum und im by-
zantinischen Mittelalter (rpt. 1978) (with an index of the manuscripts quoted
by Beate Noack, Indices zu Viktor Gardthausen, Griechische Palaeograhie, 2Leipzig
1911/1913, 1983); Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and
Latin Palaeography, 1912 (rpt. 1973); Franz Steffens, Proben aus griechischen
Handschriften und Urkunden: 24 Tafeln im Lichtdruck zur ersten Einführung in
die griechische Paläographie für Philologen und Historiker, 1912; The New Palaeo-
graphical Society, Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts and Inscriptions, 2nd ser., I, ed.
Edward Maunde Thompson, George Frederic Warner, Frederic George
Kenyon, Julius Parnell Gilson, John Alexander Herbert (1862–1948),
and Harold Idris Bell (b. 1879), 13 parts constituting 2 vols., 1913–1930.
The circle of paleographers and codicologists was enlarged with Russian
scholars. The collections of the Synodial library had already been studied
by Matthaei (above). Since then, the holdings in Greek manuscript in the
country increased, among others with the leaves of the so-called codex Sinai-
tius (a 4th-century copy of the Bible originally at the Monastery of Saint
Catherine in the Sinai on which see recently: Scot McKendrick, In a Monas-
tery Library: Preserving Codex Sinaiticus and the Greek Written Heritage, 2006)
brought from the Sinai by Constantine Tischendorf (1815–1874) in three
campaigns (1844, 1853 and 1859), and the many other manuscripts and
fragments he brought to Russia (see Eduard von Muralt [1808–1895],
Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque impériale publique, 1864).
Tischendorf specialized in editing vetero- and neo-testamentary texts
from ancient manuscripts (including the codex Sinaiticus), which he sub-
mitted to a certain paleographical and historical analysis (the titles of his
works are particularly significant and deserve to be quoted almost all in full
although they may seem repetitive): Monumenta sacra inedita, sive reliquiae
antiquissimae textus Novi Testamenti Graeci ex novem plus mille annorum codicibus
per Europam dispersis, 1846; Codex Friderico-Augustanus, sive Fragmenta Veteris Tes-
tamenti e codice graeco omnium qui in Europa supersunt facile antiquissimo in Oriente
detexit, in patriam attulit, ad modum codicis edidit, 1846; Evangelium Palatinum
ineditum, sive Reliquiae textus Evangeliorum Latini ante Hieronymum versi, ex Codice
Palatino Purpureo quarti vel quiti P. Chr. Saeculi nunc primum eruit atque edidit,
1847; Codex amiatinus: Noveum Testamentum latine interprete Hieronymo, ex cele-
berrimo codice amiatino omnium et antiquissimum et praestantissimo nunc primum
Codicology and Paleography 294

edidit, 1850; Codex Claromontanus, sive Epistulae Pauli omnes Graece et Latine ex
codice Parisiensi celeberrimo nomine Claromontani plerumque dicto, sexti ut videtur
post Christum saeculi, nunc primum edidit, 1852; Fragmenta sacra palimpsesta, sive
Fragmenta cum Novi tun Veteris Testamenti ex quinque codicibus Graecis palimpsestis
antiquissimis nuperrime in Oriente repertis: Addita sunt fragmenta Psalmorum papy-
racea et fragmenta evangelistariorum palimpsesta, item fragmentum Codicis Friderico-
Augustani nunc primum eruit atque edidit, 1855; Fragmenta evangelii Lucae et libri
Genesis ex tribus codicibus Grecis quinti, sexti, octavi saeculi, uno palimpsesto ex Libya
in Museum Britannicum advecto, altero celeberrimo Cottoniano ex flammis erepto, ter-
tio ex Oriente nuperrime Oxonium perlato; addita sunt et Novi et Veteris Testamenti
fragmenta similia nuperrime in codicum sex antiquissimorum reliquiis inventa nunc
primum eruit atque edidit, 1857; Fragmenta Origenianae Octateuchi editionis cum
fragmentis Evangeliorum Graecis palimpsestis ex codice Leidensi folioque Petropolitano
quarti vel quinti, Guelferbytano Codice quinti, Sangallensi octavi fere saeculi eruti
atque edidit, 1860; Notitia editionis codicis bibliorum Sinaitici auspiciis Imperatoris
Alexandri II susceptae; accedit catalogus codicum nuper ex oriente Petropolin perla-
torum …, 1860; Bibliorum codex sinaiticus petropolitanus auspiciis augustissimis
imperatoris Alexandri II ex tenebris protraxit in Europam transtulit ad iuvandas atque
illustrandas sacras litteras edidit, 1862; Novum Testamentum Sinaiticum sive Novum
Testamentum cum epistula Barnabae et fragmentis pastoris, ex codice sinaitico auspi-
ciis Alexandrii II descripsit, 1863; Epistulae Pauli et Catholicae fere integrae ex libro
Porphyrii Episcopi palimpsesto saeculi octavi et noni nuper ex Oriente allato rara
textus antiquitate insigni eruit atque edidit, 1865; Appendix codicum celeberrimorum
Sinaitici, Vaticani, Alexandrini, cum imitatione ipsorum antiqua manuscriptorum,
s.l.n.d.; Apocalypsis et Actus Apostolorum cum quarti Maccabaeorum libri fragmento;
item quattuor Evangeliorum reliquiae ex duobus codicibus palimpsestis octavi fere et
sexti saeculi, altero Porphyrii Episcopi, altero Guelferbytano eruit atque edidit, 1869;
Codex Laudensis, sive Actus Apostolorum graece et latine ex codice olim Laudiano iam
Bodleiano sexti fere saeculi; addita sunt nonnulla ex celebri codice Prophetarum Mar-
chaliano Vaticano eruit atque edidit, 1870.
The Russian scholars of the early 20th century had a special interest in
paleography and codicology, rather than in text edition, and published
tables of manuscripts: Grigori Filimonovich Tseretelli (who had authored
a book on abbreviations from manuscripts in St. Peterburg and Moscow
[above]), and Sergei Ivanovich Sobolevski (1864–1963), Exempla codicum
graecorum litteris minusculis scriptorum annorumque notis instructorum, 1st part:
Codices Mosquenses; 2nd part: Codices Petropolitani, 1911–1913; Id., Exempla codi-
cum Graecorum litteris uncialibus scriptorum, 1913; and Vladimir Nikolaevich
Bene ševi č (1874–1943), Monumenta Sinaitica archaeologica et palaeographica,
2 vols., 1912–1925.
295 Codicology and Paleography

At this time, too, and linked with Tischendorf also, is the so-called
Archimedes Palimpsest, that is a 10th-century copy of Archimedes that was
re-used in the 12th century to copy a liturgical text. Tischendorf saw it in
Constantinople in the 1840s and brought a page to Russia. The Danish editor
of scientific texts, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, saw it again in 1906, photo-
graphed it, and published its text 1910–1915. The manuscript disappeared
then and resurfaced only recently on the antiquarian market (below).
With the progress of research, paleography and codicology took new
directions. For example, the paleographer Thomas William Allen investi-
gated the origin of Greek minuscule writing (“The Origin of the Greek Min-
uscule Hand,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 40 [1920]: 1–12), while the classical
philologist Paul Maas (1880–1964), author of a synthesis on Greek pa-
leography (“Griechische Paläographie”) in the third edition of the Einleitung
in die Altertumswissenschaft, ed. by Alfred Gercke (1860–1922) und Eduard
Norden (1868–1941) (vol. I, 9, 1927, 69–81) (as did also Wilhelm Schu-
bart, Griechische Palaeographie, 1925), revisited Lachmann’s principles for
the analysis of textual tradition (Paul Maas, Textkritik, 1927 [several re-edi-
tions]; Italian trans. 1952; Engl. trans. 1958). Also the Canadian classical
scholar Margareth H. Thomson compiled a specialized catalogue of manu-
scripts containing texts on botany (“Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de Paris
contenant des traités anonymes de botanique,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 46
[1933]: 334–48).
Work that was already traditional was pursued, contributing to consoli-
dating the realm, objectives, and methods of paleography and codicology,
although the two disciplines were still at the edge of the more established
field of Classical Studies (chronological order of publication): Wilhelm
Weinberger compiled a list the collections of ancient manuscripts (Weg-
weiser durch die Sammlungen altphilologischer Handschriften, 1930); Alejo Revilla
(1892–1951) started cataloguing the collection of the Escorial, in Spain,
which had remained rather unknown until then (Catálogo des Codices Griegos
de la Biblioteca de El Escorial, vol. 1, 1936). Collections of tables of different types
were published: scribes identified in the manuscripts of a library (Vienna, Ös-
terreichische Nationalbibliothek) by Josef Bick (1880–1952), Die Schreiber der
Wiener griechischen Handschriften, 1920; dated manuscripts of a determined
period (9th c. and 10th c.), for example, by the Louvain paleographers Louis
Théophile Lefort (1879–1959), and Joseph Cochez (1884–1956), Palaeo-
graphisch album van gedagteekende grieksche minuskelhandchriften uit de IXe en Xe
eeuw, met enkele specimina van handschriften uit de XIe–XVIe eeuw-Album paleo-
graphicum codicum graecorum minusculis litteris saec. IX et X certo tempore scriptorum,
1932–1934, and also a more general album by Joseph Cochez, Paleographisch
Codicology and Paleography 296

album, 1935; as well as a study on earlier Greek writing by the Italian papyrol-
ogist Medea Norsa (1877–1952), La scrittura letteraria greca dal secolo IV A.C.
all’VIII D.C., 1939 (followed after World War II by her volume Papiri greci delle
collezioni italiane: Scritture documentarie dal III secolo a.C. al secolo VIII d. C., 1946).
During these years, the geography of manuscript studies underwent
an important change: in Europe, the Vatican Library started emerging as
a major research center not only thanks to its collection of an exceptional
antiquity and its tradition of scholarship illustrated by such erudites as,
in the 19th century, Angelo Mai (1782–1854) (who was first [1813] a doctor of
the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan before moving to the Vatican [1819])
(see, for example, his Picturae antiquissimae bellum Iliacum repraesentantes nunc
primum ex Homeri codice non sine descriptionibus editae, 1819 [reproduction of
manuscript Ambrosianus F 205 inf.]; Catalogo de’ papiri egiziani della Biblioteca
Vaticana e notizia più estesa di uno d’essi, con breve discorso e con susseguenti riflessioni,
1825; and Scriptorum veterum nova collectio e vaticanis codicibus, 10 vols.,
1825–1838) and, from the early 20th century, by Franz Ehrle (1845–1934)
(author, among others, of a history of the Vatican library: Historia bibliothecae
romanorum pontificum, tum Bonifatianae tum Avenionensis, 2 vols., 1890; and of
a collection of paleographical tables: Specimina codicum Latinorum Vaticanorum
[in collaboration with Paul Liebaert, d. 1915], 1912), and Giovanni Mer-
cati, for example, but also thanks to its catalogues, which took advantage
of the progress made in codicology over the past decades and transformed
earlier practice. The best example was by Givoanni Mercati, and Pio Pietro
Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Codices Vaticani Graeci, vol. 1: Codices 1–329, 1923,
where watermarks of paper manuscripts, for example, were identified,
though not systematically.
The other major change in the geography of our studies was the appear-
ance of America in the field. Thanks to the economic development of the
continent, some successful businessmen who generated exceptional for-
tunes started acquiring manuscripts on the European market. One of them
was John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (1867–1943) who acquired, for example, the
10th-century Dioscorides manuscript owned by the Phillipps library in Chel-
tenham (U.K.) (shelfmark 21975 in the Phillipps collection; M652 in the
Morgan Library, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.). In collaboration with the Biblio-
thèque nationale in Paris, particularly Henri Omont, a sepia facsimile of the
manuscript was produced: Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei, De Materia Medica
Libri VII. Accedunt Nicandri et Eutecnii, Opuscula Medica. Codex Constantinopoli-
tanus saeculo X exaratus et picturis illustratus, olim Manuelis Eugenici, Caroli
Rinuccini Florentini, Thomae Phillipps Angli, nunc inter Thesauros Pierpont Morgan
Bibliothecae asservatus, 2 vols., 1935. The same year, Seymour de Ricci
297 Codicology and Paleography

(1881–1942) (who had previously published the catalogue of several collec-

tions in Europe: A Hand-List of a Collection of Books and Manuscripts Belonging to
the Right Hon. Lord Amherst of Hackney at Didlington Hall, Norfolk, 1906; Liste som-
maire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliotheca Barberina, 1907; Catalogue d’une collec-
tion de miniatures gothiques et persanes appartenant à Léonce Rosenberg, 1913; Les
Manuscrits de la collection Henry Yates Thompson, 1926; and also English Collectors
of Books and Manuscripts, 1530–1930, and their Marks of Ownership, 1930) started
publishing, in collaboration with William Jerome Wilson (b. 1884), a Census
of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, made up
of three volumes (1935–1940). Also, exhibitions of manuscripts were organ-
ized, such as: The Pierpont Morgan Library: Exhibition of Illuminated Manuscripts
Held at the New-York Public Library, introduction by Charles Rufus Morey
(1877–1955), catalogue of the manuscripts by Belle da Costa Greene
(1882–1950), and Meta Philippine Harrsen (b. 1891), 1933–1934.
Academic research on manuscripts was also starting in America thanks
to a translatio eruditorum. A pioneer was the English-born Biblical scholar Kir-
sopp Lake (1872–1946). A professor at the University of Leiden (1904–1913),
he then moved to Cambridge, MA, Harvard University (1914). His research
activity was devoted to neo-testamentary literature, particularly through
Greek manuscripts. He explored the collection of several libraries in the
Levant (Mount Athos, Sinai, and Turkey), and published extensively on this
topic (including on the codex Sinaiticus above) while still in Europe: The Text of
the New Testament, 1900 (several re-editions); Texts from Mt Athos, 1902; Codex 1
of the Gospels and its Allies, 1902; Facsimiles of the Athos Fragments of Codex H
of the Pauline Epistles Photographed and Deciphered, 1905; Facsimiles of the Athos
Fragments of the Shepherd of Hermas Photographed and Transcribed, 1907; Codex Si-
naiticus Petropolitanus: the New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd
of Hermas Preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Peterburg now Reproduced in Facsi-
mile from Photographs with a Description and Introduction to the History of the Codex,
1911 (in collaboration with Helen Courthrope Forman Lake, his first wife).
After he moved to America, Lake pursued the research activity started in
Europe: Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus et Friderico-Augustanus Lipsiensis: The Old
Testament Preserved in the Public Library of Petrograd, in the Library of the Society
of Ancient Literature in Petrograd, and in the Library of the University of Leipzig, now
Reproduced in Facsimile from Photographs, with a Description and Introduction to the
History of the Codex, 1922, in collaboration with Helen Lake; and, in collabor-
ation with Silva Tipple New (b. 1898), further on Silva Lake (his second wife
and a professor at Bryn Mawr College): Six Collations of New Testatment Manu-
scripts, 1932; The Byzantine Text of the Gospels, 1940; and Family 13 (the Ferrar
group): the Text according to Mark with a collation of Codex 28 of the Gospels, 1941.
Codicology and Paleography 298

Of a definitely more paleographical inspiration was the collection of tables

of minuscule manuscripts published in collaboration with Silva Lake
(Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200, 9 fascicles, 1934–1939 [with
a 10th fascicle of index, 1945]), in which the Lakes included the description
of the ruling of the manuscripts, as well as the article “The Scribe Ephraim,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 62 (1943): 263–68.
Paleographical studies in the United States were further pursued by
Alexander Turyn (1900–1981). Originally from Poland, Turyn earned a
Ph.D. degree in Warsaw (1923), left his country for the United States for
political reasons, and became a professor of Classics at the University of Illi-
nois at Urbana-Champaign, where he opened the way for the study of the
textual tradition of classical texts. In Poland, he published some preliminary
works of this type: De Aelii Aristidis codice Varsoviensi atque de Andrea Taranowski
et Theodosio Zygomala, 1929; De codicibus Pindaricis, 1932; and Symbolae ad recen-
sionem Pindaricam pertinentes, 1934. As soon as he was stabilized in America, he
published the first of his studies on the manuscript tradition of the Greek
playwright: The Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Aeschylys, 1943. After
World War II, he pursued and expanded his activity, with significant con-
tributions to the field of dated manuscripts (below).
A similar case is that of the historian of art Kurt Weitzmann
(1904–1993). He started his career in Germany, publishing a fundamental
work on Byzantine book illustration (Die byzantinische Buchmalerei des 9. und
10. Jahrhunderts, 1935 [rpt. 1996]). Due to the political climate in his home-
land, he emigrated to America where he pursued his intense activities,
concretized immediately after World War II by Illustrations in Roll and Codex:
A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration, 1947 (several translations).
Illustration was entering the agenda of paleographers and codicologists.
Such interest came out of several lines of investigation: cataloguing of collec-
tions with such a work as Henri Omont, Miniatures des plus anciens manuscrits
grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale du VIe au XIVe siècle, 1929; history of art: Hans
Gerstinger (1885–1971), Die griechische Buchmalerei, 1926; and analysis
of scientific viz naturalist manuscripts, particularly of Dioscorides, De materia
medica: Henri Omont collected material (Etudes et notes sur les manuscrits de
Dioscoride) left unpublished and currently preserved at the Bibliothèque
nationale de France as Papiers Henri Omont, XLI (Parisinus Nouvelles acquisitions
françaises, 13052); Eulogios Kourilas authored a work very similar to that of
Omont, which was for a long time the only major study on the Athos copy of
Dioscorides (Dioskorideioi meletai kai o Lauriôtikos Dioskoridês, 1935), and also
Paul Buberl (1885–1942) wrote an essay on the Viennese Dioscorides: “Die
antiken Grundlagen der Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurideskodex,” Jahr-
299 Codicology and Paleography

buch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts 51 [1936]: 114–36; then in analyzing

Viennese illustrated manuscripts, he focused on both the Dioscorides and
the so-called Wiener Genesis: Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Hand-
schriften in Österreich, N. F. IV, vol. 1: Der Wiener Dioskurides und die Wiener
Genesis, 1937.

E. Second Beginning
In the 1920s-1930s, the French archivist and paleographer Félix Grat
(1898–1940), a graduate from the Ecole des Chartes who spent some time at
the Ecole française in Rome where he discovered still unknown manuscripts
of Tacitus and taught paleography in Paris and Nancy upon his return,
wished to take advantage of the progress of photographic techniques to cre-
ate a collection of images that would gather copies of manuscripts in collec-
tions across the world. Such collection would be an ideal library that would
save scholars from the obligation to travel all over the world to inspect per-
sonally the codices they wouldbe interested in, and would also allow to com-
pare manuscripts preserved in different institutions. In 1937 he succeeded in
convincing the French Minister of scientific research to create the so-called
Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes. World War II interrupted the
initiative and Grat died in the hostilities. After 1945, the project was taken
up again and the Institute started creating a collection of microfilms of
manuscripts open to the scientific community that made it possible to access
codices from all over the world in an easy and inexpensive way.
This was not an isolated initiative. The papyrologist Bernhard Abraham
van Groningen (1894–1987), who had published, among other philologi-
cal works, De papyro oxyrrynchita 1380 before World War II (in 1912), authored
a Short Manual of Greek Palaeography, 1940 (2nd rev. ed. 1955; 3rd rev. ed. 1963;
4th ed. 1967), and, in 1946, a group of Belgian scholars – Camille Gaspar
(1876–1960), Frédéric Lyna (1888–1979) who was then the Director of the
Bibliothèque royale in Brussels, and François Masai (1909–1979) – founded
Scriptorium. According to its title, it was to be an International Review of Manu-
scripts Studies. However, its object was more precise as the editorial of the issue
no. 1 (1946–1946) explains (III–IV):
… L’objet de Scriptorium n’est pas défini de façon adéquate par le terme de “paléo-
graphie,” à moins d’entendre par là l’étude des manuscrits sous tous leurs aspects.
En effet, ce ne sont pas les écritures mais les manuscrits mêmes qui constitutent
l’objet premier, le centre de nos études. De là, à côté des recherches de paléogra-
phie proprement dite, des études consacrées à l’enluminure des manuscrits, à leur
décoration, à leur reliure, à leur histoire aussi et à l’histoire des bibliothèques et
des scriptoriums qui nous les ont donnés …
Codicology and Paleography 300

Since then, Scriptorium has been hosted by the so-called Cabinet des manus-
crits at the Bibliothèque royale in Brussels, which preserves a significant col-
lection dating back to the Dukes of Burgundy. Scriptorium is published in two
issues per year, including the so-called Bulletin codicologique, which lists and
reviews current production.
This was the sign of a fresh start, characterized by a group of works that
played a fundamental role in the history of codicology and paleography,
mentioned here not in strict chronological order, but from a conceptual
viewpoint. The French classical philologist and editor of many classical and
less classical texts Alphonse Dain (1896–1924) published in 1949 a small
book entitled Les manuscrits (1949; 2nd rev. ed.: 1964; 3rd ed.: 1975) in which he
proposed the term codicology to identify the study of manuscripts as a disci-
pline of its own (there have been discussions to know who was the author
of the term, Alphone Dain or the historian Charles Samaran [1879–1982].
It seems, however, that Dain actually created codicology, while Samaran sug-
gested codicography).
The difference of perspective in manuscript studies between the period
in discussion here and the previous one is best illustrated by the two volumes
by Paul Henry (1906–1984) on Plotinus (études plotiniennes) published with
an interval of 10 years, before and after World War II. Whereas the first vol-
ume deals with the textual tradition (Les états du texte de Plotin, 1938) and is
of a Lachmannian nature, the second is about the manuscripts (Les manuscrits
des Ennéades, 1948) and takes advantage of the codicological analysis of the
manuscripts, including the identification of watermarks.
In the context of this new approach, the systematic heuristic of manu-
scripts became a fundamental issue. Coming after Labbé, Montfaucon,
and Gardthausen, the French Marcel Richard (1907–1976) doing re-
search at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes where he created
the Greek section, published as early as 1948 a new list of libraries holding
Greek manuscripts, together with their catalogue(s): Répertoire des biblio-
thèques et des catalogues de manuscrits grecs, 1948, followed by a second edition in
1958 and a Supplément 1 (1958–1963) in 1964 (it was not followed by any other
supplement, but by a 3rd ed. by Jean-Marie Olivier in 1995 [below]).
Another fundamental work in these years was by the French Classical
philologist Jean Irigoin (1920–2006): Histoire du texte de Pindare, 1952. A stu-
dent of Alphonse Dain (whom he followed as director of the Greek section
in the so-called Collection des Universités de France and also as Directeur d’études
at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, IVe section), he did not limit his
approach to Pindar’s tradition to textual analysis as was often the case before,
but integrated the data resulting from the codicological analysis of manu-
301 Codicology and Paleography

scripts, which he carefully described. Complementary, Joseph Mogenet

(1913–1980) transformed the way to analyze the transmission of texts in his
volume Autolycus de Pitane: Histoire du texte suivie de l’édition des traités de la sphère
en mouvement et des levers et des couchers, 1950. Instead of analyzing the trans-
mission of a text as a mechanic phenomenon in a Lachmannian way, he pro-
posed more realistically to consider it as a human endeavour. He tried to con-
ceptualize the human dimension of the act of copying, and succeeded in
translating such theoretical analysis in parameters that can account for, and
precisely measure (in an objective way), the impact (or interference) of
human intervention in the tradition of texts.
At that time, manuscript cataloguing had become a key issue, with a
double set of requirements: on the one hand, it was tempting to integrate all
the new developments of codicology into catalogues and, on the other hand,
it was indispensable to do it in a handy way. The rules applied in the cata-
logues of the Vatican library by Mercati and Franchi de’ Cavalieri
(above) did not seem to be universally applicable. Coming after Karel Adriaan
de Meyier, Bibliotheca Universitatis Leidensis, Codices manuscripti, vol. 6: Codices
Vossiani graeci et miscellanei, 1955 (who published earlier a history of the collec-
tion of Paul [1568–1614], and Alexandre [d. 1672] Petau: Paul en Alexandre
Petau en de geschiedenis van hun handschriften, voornamelijk op grond van de Peta-
haundschriften in de Universiteitsbibliothek te Leiden, 1947), the Austrian scholar
Herbert Hunger (1914–2000), who had directed the papyrus collection of
the National Library of Austria and was a Professor of Byzantine studies at
the University of Vienna, tried to solve this contradiction. In his endeavour of
cataloguing the Greek holdings of the National Library in Vienna for which
the only available catalogue at that time was by Lambeck in the revised
edition by Kollar, he created, indeed, a model that integrated the recent
acquisitions of codicology and, at the same time, did it in a simplified,
synthetic form, without abandoning, however, the necessary precision
and exactness. Together with a concise, though detailed, analysis of the
texts, his catalogue of the Viennese collections of Greek manuscripts con-
tributed to creating and diffusing a standard format that has been widely
adopted since, even though it has often been modified on a case-by-case basis
according to individual or institutional exigencies, local peculiarities of
collections, or any other parameter: Herbert Hunger, Katalog der griechischen
Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, vol. 1: Codices Historici,
Codices Philolophici et Philologici, 1961; vol. 2: Codices Juridici, Codices Medici,
1969; vol. 3: Codices Theologici, in 3 parts, 1976–1992; vol. 4: Supplementum
graecum, 1994. Hunger did not limit his academic production to this cata-
logue, but also published extensively on paleography and codicology
Codicology and Paleography 302

(below), including “Antikes und mittelalterliches Buch- und Schriftwesen,”

Geschichte der Textüberlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literature, vol. 1,
1961, 25–247.
The field of book illustration was also consolidating. Again, the illus-
trated manuscripts of Dioscorides drew the attention. Two studies on the
Napolitan codex came out the same year: Miranda Anichini, “Il Dioscoride
di Napoli,” Rendiconti della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche dell’Accade-
mia nazionale dei Lincei, ser. 8, 11 (1956), 77–104, and Ranucio Bianchi-
Bandinelli (1900–1975), “Il Dioscoride Napoletano,” La Parola del Passato
11 (1956): 48–51. Shortly after, entries on Dioscorides were included in two
histories of ancient and Byzantine art: Carlo Bertelli, “Dioscuride,” Enci-
clopedia dell’Arte Antica, vol. 3 (1960), 127–31, and Herbert Hunger, “Diosku-
rides,” Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, vol. 1 (1966), 1191–96. Then Elpi-
dio Mioni discovered a new copy: “Un ignoto Dioscoride miniato (Il codice
graeco 194 del Seminario di Padova),” Libri e stampatori in Padova: Miscellanea
di studi storici in onore di Mons. G. Bellini, 1959, 345–76, and Id., “Un nuovo
erbario greco di Dioscoride,” Rassegna Medica-Convivium Sanitatis 36 (1959):
169–84. As early as high-quality photo and printing techniques made it pos-
sible, a facsimile of the Viennese manuscript of Dioscorides was published,
which was a milestone in the history of facsimile production: Dioskurides
Codex Vindobonensis Med. Gr. 1 der. Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, with a vol-
ume of commentary by Hans Gerstinger, 1970. The reproduction and
study of Dioscorides’s manuscripts was to be pursued during the last decades
of the 20th century.

F. Two Established Disciplines

Paleography and codicology developed in an unprecedented way in the
following decades. This increase was consecrated in 1974 when the first con-
ference on Greek paleography was organized in Paris in collaboration by the
Hellenist Jacques Bompaire (1924–2009) and Jean Irigoin: La paléographie
grecque et byzantine, Paris, 21–25 octobre 1974, 1977. This first initiative has been
followed by other conferences that have contributed to create a tradition:
1983, Germany, Berlin and Wolfenbüttel; 1988, Italy, Erice; 1993, United
Kingdom, Oxford; 1998, Italy, Cremona; 2003, Greece, Drama; the most re-
cent one was held in Spain, Madrid, and Salamanca, 2008. Proceedings have
not been published for all the editions of the conference: Paleografia e codicolo-
gia greca: Atti del II Colloquio internazionale (Berlin-Wolfenbüttel, 17–21 ottobre
1983), ed. Dieter Harlfinger, and Giancarlo Prato, in collaboration with
Marco D’Agostino, and Alberto Doda, 2 vols., 1991; I manoscritti greci tra rif-
lessione e dibattito: Atti del V Colloquio Internazionale di Paleografia Greca (Cremona,
303 Codicology and Paleography

4–10 ottobre 1998), ed. Giancarlo Prato, 3 vols., 2000; Actes du VIe Colloque Inter-
national de Paléographie Grecque (Drama, 21–27 septembre 2003), ed. Basile Atsa-
los and Niki Tsironi, 3 vols., 2008. Other paleographical conferences have
been organized, of a thematic nature: Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di
Bisanzio: Atti del seminario di Erice (18–25 settembre 1988), ed. Guglielmo
Cavallo, Giuseppe De Gregorio, and Marilena Maniaci, 2 vols., 1991,
and Ancient and Medieval Book Materials and Techniques (Erice, 15–25 september
1992), ed. Marilena Maniaci, and Paola F. Munafò, 1993.
The new developments of paleography and codicology resulted not only
from the ground-breaking work in the immediate after-war period, but also
from the personal involvement of individuals who devoted their scientific
activity to manuscript studies, often capitalizing on a local tradition or new
initiatives. At the Vatican Library, for example, Mgr. Paul Canart, origin-
ally a scriptor in the historical tradition of the library, catalogued the Greek
manuscripts in the Archivio di San Pietro (Catalogue des manuscrits grecs de
l’Archivio di San Pietro, 1966), edited, completed, and compiled the index of
the catalogue left unachieved by Ciro Giannelli (1905–1959) (Codices Vati-
cani graeci, Codices 1684–1744, 1961), and compiled the catalogue of the Vaticani
graeci 1745–1962 (2 vols., 1970–1973). He also started a research activity on
Greek copyists which gradually led him to other paleographical and codico-
logical topics, and taught these disciplines at the Scuola Vaticana di Paleogra-
fia Diplomatica e Archivistica. Some of his many – and fundamental – con-
tributions are listed below, under the several sections they are related to, and
several of them have been recently republished in a volume of collected
studies: Etudes de paléographie et de codicologie, which Paul Canart himself
edited in collaboration with Maria Lusia Agati, and Marco D’Agostino,
2 vols., 2008.
In Rome, at the University, Guglielmo Cavallo had a polymorph career
and activity. Successively a professor of textual tradition, Latin and then
Greek paleography, he started publishing on paleography (Ricerche sulla
maiuscola biblica, 1967, for example) and shifted rapidly toward a dynamic
analysis of writing (“Struttura e articolazione della minuscola beneventana
libraria tra i secoli X–XII,” Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 11 [1970]: 343–68) and a
cultural analysis of calligraphy (for instance, “Fenomenologia ‘libraria’ della
maiuscola greca: stile, canone, mimesi grafica,” Bulletin of the Institute of Clas-
sical Studies of the University of London 19 [1972]: 131–40), book production (“La
genesi dei rotoli liturgici alla luce del fenomeno storico-librario in Occidente
ed Oriente,” Miscellanea in memoria di Giorgio Cencetti, 1973, 213–29), and book
consumption (“Libri di medicina: gli usi di un sapere,” Maladie et société à
Byzance, ed. Evelyne Patlagean, 1993, 43–56). Initially more focused on
Codicology and Paleography 304

southern Italy (“Manoscritti italo-greci e trasmissione della cultura classica,”

Magna Grecia bizantina e tradizione classica: Atti del decimosettimo Convegno di studi
sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto, 9–14 ottobre 1977, 1978, 193–233) and the West (“La
produzione di manoscritti greci in Occidente tra età tardoantica ed alto
medioeve: Note ed ipotesi,” Scrittura e Civiltà 1 [1977]: 111–31), he gradually
expanded the scope of his investigations, and included other areas and peri-
ods. He teaches Greek paleography at Rome University “La Sapienza,” Fac-
ulty of Letters and Philosophy, Department of Studies on Medieval Societies
and Cultures (Dipartimento di studi sulle società e culture del medioevo),
whose two units (paleography and medieval history) study jointly Western
and Eastern medieval societies with a particular focus on the problems
linked with writing culture (“… due sezioni di Paleografia e di Storia Medi-
evale, che congiuntamente affrontano lo studio delle società medievali nel
mondo occidentale e orientale con particolare attenzione alle problematiche
connesse con la civiltà della scrittura …).
In Berlin, the Belgian classical philologist Paul Moraux (1919–1985)
created in 1965 the so-called Aristoteles Archiv at the Freie Universität, which
is “dedicated to the exploration of the history of how the Corpus Aristoteli-
cum has been handed down through time.” It has “a unique microfilm col-
lection of all Greek Aristotle manuscripts as well as approximately 1,000 ad-
ditional manuscripts with late antique and Byzantine commentaries on
Aristotle’s treatise.” A researcher at the center, Dieter Harlfinger, investi-
gated the textual history of Aristotle treatise De lineis insecabilibus (Die Text-
geschichte des Pseudo-Aristotelischen Schrift peri atomôn grammôn; Ein kodikologisch-
kulturgeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Klärung der Überlieferungsverhältnisse im Corpus
Aristotelicum, 1971) and was able to identify the hand of a great number of the
manuscripts containing the text. Other collaborators of the center worked
on a similar endeavour (Jürgen Wiesner and Ulrich Victor, “Griechische
Schreiber der Renaissance,” Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, new ser. 8–9
[1971–1972]: 51–66). Harlfinger also collaborated to the catalogue of the
Aristoteles Graecus project: Die griechischen Manuskripte des Aristoteles, ed. Paul
Moraux, vol. 1, 1976, for the preparation of which he personally analyzed
many of the codices in-situ. Dieter Harlfinger further moved to the Uni-
versity of Hamburg, where he contributed to the organization of Teuchos-
Center for Manuscript and Text Research (Teuchos-Zentrum für Hand-
schriften und Textforschung) devoted to the application of information
technologies to philological research, with a special focus on textual tradi-
tion, codicology, and variant readings in manuscripts.
In Vienna, where there was not only a cluster of institutions with collec-
tions of Byzantine manuscripts (the National Library of Austria) and a strong
305 Codicology and Paleography

interest in Byzantine studies (the Academy and the University), but also
a rich tradition of pre-paleographical and pre-codicological studies dating
back to Peter Lambeck that was then brilliantly illustrated by Herbert
Hunger (above), Ernst Gamillscheg developed an expertise in codicology
and paleography, particularly the identification of hands of Greek copyists
similar to that of Dieter Harlfinger. They quickly joined their efforts for a
program on Greek copyists aimed to list all the manuscripts that have been
signed by one or more copyist(s) or that are unsigned but can be attributed to
known copyists (or even to anonymous ones whose hand can be recognized in
several items). To this end, both Gamillscheg and Harlfinger surveyed
the major collections in Europe and published as early as 1978 a specimen of
the catalogue they were preparing: Ernst Gamillscheg, and Dieter Harl-
finger, “Specimen eines Repertoriums der griechischen Kopisten,” Jahrbuch
der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 27 (1978): 293–322. Since then, they have pub-
lished three volumes of the Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800–1600, vol. 1:
United Kingdom, 1981; vol. 2: France, 1989; vol. 3: Rome, including the Vati-
can Library, 1997. Characteristically, each volume contains three parts: A. List
of copyists; B: Paleographical analysis (by Herbert Hunger); C: Tables.
Studies were further boosted by an unexpected discovery: in 1975,
indeed, the monks of Saint Catherine monastery in the Sinai discovered in
a wall 12 leaves and forty fragments of the codex Sinaiticus (for a report, see, for
example: Linos Politis, “Nouveaux manuscrits grecs découverts au Mont
Sinaï: Rapport préliminaire,” Scriptorium 34 [1980]: 5–10), which had been
dismembered and whose leaves are now in Leipzig, London, and Saint Pe-
tersburg (above).
During this period color-printing technique made further progress,
allowing for unprecedented development of manuscript reproduction.
A spectacular realization was the 1970 facsimile of the Dioscorides of Vienna
already mentioned, published by the Austrian company ADEVA, which was a
pioneer in this sector and recently celebrated 60 years of activity. Since then,
many new publishing houses specialized in this type of production have
been created, particularly in recent years in Italy (in the north; for example,
Directa in Brescia; Franco Cosimo Panini, in Modena; Ozzano Emilia, in Bo-
logna; or Trident Editore, in Castel San Pietro) and Spain (among others, AyN
and Testimonio in Madrid, Moleiro in Barcelona, and Patrimonio in Valen-
cia). This development resulted not only from technical improvements and
reduced costs, but also from the interest in manuscripts outside the world of
specialists.
From the late 1980s, indeed, the antiquarian market of art grew in an
exceptional way, particularly in auctions in London and New York. Impres-
Codicology and Paleography 306

sionist painting was especially sought after and some works were sold for
record prices that ended up on the front page of newspapers worldwide. The
book market – among others Western and Arabic manuscripts – benefitted
from this dynamic. Auction houses hired the services of specialists from the
academia or had in-house experts who moved later on to the academia, as
did Christopher De Hamel who had been for years with Sotheby’s. Some
auctions and manuscripts were largely publicized in the news, such as the
Archimedes palimpsest studied in the early 20th century by Heiberg, and re-
cently re-emerged on the market as the “property from a French private col-
lection” (for the auction catalogue, see: Christie’s New York, The Archimedes
Palimpsest, Thursday 19 October 1998, with a thorough analysis by Nigel Guy
Wilson). The codex was acquired by a private collector, and submitted to a
highly technologized treatment that brought its first text to light. The whole
story has generated a strong interest in the media, and led also to the publi-
cation of a popular book (William Noel, and Reviel Netz, The Archimedes
Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest
Scientist, 2007). The interest in manuscripts generated by this activity and its
report in the news offered an opportunity for books of introduction, coffee-
table volumes lavishly illustrated, and even novels of historical inspiration
that had been preceded by such a masterpiece as the Name of the Rose by Um-
berto Eco (1980), which was built on a library and manuscript story. Not all
items offered on auction attracted the attention of the lay audience. This is the
case, for example, of the Galen codex sold by Christie’s in London (Christie’s
London, Valuable Manuscripts and printed Books, Wednesday 7 June 2006 … King
Street … London, 2006), which is now at the Beinecke Library of Yale University
and appears to be a key piece in the medieval transmission of Galen’s text.
In earlier years, interest in manuscript and ancient book outside the
academia was limited to the world of collectors, with such specialized anti-
quarians as Hans Peter Kraus (1907–1988) in New York, who has been one of
the most important for several decades (Kraus published an autobiography:
A Rare Saga: The Autobiography of H. P. Kraus, 1978; when Kraus’s business
closed, the collection was sold: Sotheby’s, The Inventory of H. P. Kraus. Property of
Sotheby’s, New York: Sotheby’s, Thursday & Friday, December 4 & 5, 2003);
large antiquarian companies as Bernard Quaritch and Maggs Bros. in Lon-
don, or smaller individual booksellers like Alan G. Thomas in London also
(see, for example, his catalogues, Fine Books: Catalogue Twenty-Nine 1972, 1972,
and Fine Books: Catalogue Thirty-Four 1975, 1975, which include manuscripts),
and, among many others, Heribert Tenschert in Bibermühle (Switzerland).
This without mentioning the major auctioneers Christie’s and Sotheby’s
worldwide.
307 Codicology and Paleography

The 20th-century book market was largely dominated by the dispersal of

Thomas Phillipps’ collection (for the catalogue of the collection, see Catalogus
librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca D. Thomae Phillipps Bart. A.D. 1837–1871,
4 parts, 1837–1871 [rpt.: The Phillipps Manuscripts: Catalogus librorum manu-
scriptorum in biblioteca D. Thomae Phillips, BT: impressum typis Medio-Montanis
1837–1871, ed. Alan Noel Latimer Munby, [2001]) (for some catalogues of the
dispersal of Phillipps’s manuscripts, see [selection]: William Robinson Ltd.,
A Selection of Precious Manuscripts, Historic Documents, and Rare Books, the Majority
from the Renowned collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Br (1792–1872), 1950; Sotheby
& Co, Bibliotheca Phillippica, Catalogue of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Yugos-
lav and Slavonic Manuscripts from the Celebrated Collection Formed by Sir Thomas
Phillipps, Br. (1792–1872), New Ser., Sixth Part: comprising … which will be sold by
Sotheby & Co, Days of Sale, Monday, 15th June, 1970; Tuesday, 16th June, 1970;
Sotheby & Co, Bibliotheca Phillippica, Medieval Manuscripts, new ser., 6th part:
Catalogue of Manuscripts on Papyrus, Vellum and Paper of the 7th century to the
18th century from the celebrated collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872)
The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson Trust, Day of Sale: Tuesday, 30th No-
vember 1971; Sotheby & Co, Bibliotheca Phillippica, Catalogue of French, Spanish
and Greek Manuscripts and English Charters From the Celebrated Collection formed
by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt. (1792–1872). The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson
Trust, new ser., 9th part: Monday, 25th June 1973 and Tuesday, 26th June 1973;
Sotheby & Co, Bibliotheca Phillippica, new ser., 4th part: Catalogue of Italian,
French, Greek, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian Manuscripts From the Celebrated
Collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt. (1792–1872). The Property of the
Trustees of the Robinson Trust, Tuesday, 8th July, 1975; Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca
Phillippica, new ser., 16th part: Catalogue of French, Spanish, Greek and Serbo-Croat
Manuscripts with a few Slavonic and Portuguese From the Celebrated Collection formed
by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt. (1792–1872). The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson
Trust. [London: Sotheby’s], Monday, 29th June, 1976, and Tuesday, 26th June,
1976; Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca Phillippica, new ser., 18th part: Catalogue of Pritned
Books on Science, Medicine and Botany with a Few Botanical Drawings From the
Celebrated Collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt. (1792–1872) and from
other sources. The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson Trust, Monday, 29th No-
vember, 1976; Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca Phillippica, new ser., 19th part: Catalogue
of English, French, Greek & Icelandic Manuscripts From the celebrated collection formed
by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt. (1792–1872). The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson
Trust. [London: Sotheby’s], Monday, 27th June, 1977, Tuesday, 28th June,
1977.
Codicology and Paleography 308

G. Major Trends of Research: Codicology

After codicology had emerged as a discipline of its own, the number of pub-
lications rapidly increased according to a typical pattern, from introductory
to more specialized works. A list follows, which is far from being complete
and includes, instead, some representative works on a series of topics ordered
according to the process of production of manuscripts (after introductory
works) (within each section, works are listed in chronological order of publi-
cation): (definition of the field and introduction) Robert Devreesse
(1894–1978), Introduction à l’étude des manuscrits grecs, 1954; Léon Gilissen,
Prolégomènes à la codicologie, 1977; Denis Trémault, Archéologie du livre médi-
éval, 1987; Jacques Lemaire, Introduction à la codicologie, 1989; Marilena
Maniaci, Archeologia del manoscritto: Metodi, problemi, bibliografia recente, 2002;
(terminology, English, Renaissance to modern) Peter Beal, A Dictionary
of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450–2000, 2008; (terminology, French)
Denis Muzerelle, Vocabulaire codicologique du français, 1985; (terminology,
Italian) Marilena Maniaci, Terminologia del libro manoscritto, 1996; (termi-
nology, Spanish) Pilar Ostos, Maria Luisa Pardo, and Elena E. Rodrí-
guez, Vocabulario de codicología, 1997; (bibliography, general) Laurel Ni-
chols Braswell, Western Manuscripts from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance:
A Handbook, 1981; (bibliography, Greek manuscripts) Paul Canart, Paleo-
grafia e codicologia greca: Una rassegna bibliografica, 1991; (current work) Id.,
“Nouvelles recherches et nouveaux instruments de travail dans le domaine
de la codicologie,” Scrittura e civiltà 3 (1979): 267–307; analytical bibliography
of current production in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 3rd part: Bibliographische Noti-
zen, Sections 2 A, a: Allgemeine Darstellungen; b: Kataloge, Tafel- und Facsimile Aus-
gaben, …; c: Kopisten, …, and Scriptorium, Bulletin codicologique; (terminology,
Greek, Byzantium) Basile Atsalos, La terminologie du livre-manuscrit à
l’époque byzantine, 1971; (bibliography on manuscripts, Vatican library)
Paul Canart, and Vittorio Peri (1932–2005), Sussidi bibliografici per i manos-
criti greci della bibiotheca Vaticana, 1970; Massimo Ceresa, Bibliografia dei fondi
manoscritti della Biblioteca Vaticana (1991–2000), 2005; (form of the book: roll)
William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, 2004; (transition
from roll to codex) Colin Henderson Roberts, The Birth of the Codex, 1983;
Alain Blanchard, Les débuts du codex, 1989; (medium: parchment) Julien
Leroy (1916–1987), “La description codicologique des manuscrits grecs de
parchemin,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine (above), 27–41; (medium:
paper, production) Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique
of an Ancient Craft, 1978; Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and
Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 2001; (medium: paper, diffusion) Jean
Irigoin, “Les premiers manuscrits grecs écrits sur papier et le problème du
309 Codicology and Paleography

bombycin,” Scriptorium 4 (1950): 194–204; Id., “Les débuts de l’emploi du pa-

pier à Byzance,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 46 (1953): 314–19; Id., “Papiers
orientaux et papiers occidentaux,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine (above),
45–54; Id., “Les types de formes utilisés dans l’Orient méditerranéen (Syrie,
Égypte) du XIe au XIVe siécle,” Papiergeschichte 13 (1963): 18–21; Marie-
Thérèse Le Léannec-Bavavéas, Les papiers non filigranés médiévaux de la Perse
à l’Espagne: Bibliographie 1950–1995, 1998; Ead., “Les papiers non filigranés
médiévaux dans les manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothéque Nationale de
France,” Scriptorium 53 (1999): 275–324; (watermarks, methods) Jean
Irigoin, “La datation par les filigranes …” (above); Dieter Harlfinger,
“Zur Datierung von Handschriften mit Hilfe von Wasserzeichen,” Kodikologie
und Textüberlieferung, ed. Dieter Harlfinger, 1980, 144–69; Monique Zer-
doun Bat- Yehouda, Les papiers filigranés médiévaux: Essai de méthodologie de-
scriptive, 1989; (watermarks, dictionaries) Vladimir A. Mo šin, and Seid M.
Tralji ć, Vodeni znakovi XIII. i XIV vijeka – Filigranes des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, 2 vols.,
1957; Monumenta chartae papyraceae historiam illustrantia, or Collection of Works
and Documents Illustrating the History of Paper, ed. E. J. Labarre, 14 vols. and
a Supplement, 1950–1994 (includes the albums by the Zonghi brothers,
Bofarull y Sans, Likhachev, and Briquet [above]); Dieter and Joanna
Harlfinger, Wasserzeichen aus griechischen Handschriften, 2 vols., 1974–1980;
the several volumes by Gerhard Piccard among which: Die Kronenwasser-
zeichen, 1961; Die Ochsenkopfwasserzeichen, 3 vols., 1966; Die Turmwasserzeichen,
1970; Wasserzeichen Waage, 1978; Wasserzeichen Anker, 1978; Wasserzeichen
Horn, 1979; Wasserzeichen Schlüssel, 1979; Wasserzeichen Werkzeug und Waffen,
2 vols., 1980; Wasserzeichen Fabeltiere: Greif-Drache-Einhorn, 1980; Mark L. So-
sower, Signa officinarum chartariarum in codicibus graecis saeculo sexto decimo fab-
ricatis in bibliothecis Hispaniae, 2004; (ruling) Julien Leroy, Les types de réglures
des manuscrits grecs, 1976; Id., “Quelques systèmes de réglure des manuscrits
grecs,” Studia codicologica 1977, 291–312; Jacques-Hubert Sautel, Répertoire
de réglures dans les manuscrits grecs sur parchemin, 1995; (layout) Henri-Jean
Martin, Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, 1990; (ink) Monique
Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda, Les encres noires au Moyen Âge (jusqu’à 1600), 1983;
Carlo-Maria Mazzucchi, “Inchiostri bizantini del XII secolo,” Rivista
di Studi Bizantini e Neogreci, new ser. 42 (2005): 15–62; (writing, concept) Co-
lette Sirat, Jean Irigoin, and Emmanuel Poulle, L’écriture: Le Cerveau, l’oeil
et la main, 1990; (writing, origin) Peter Damerow, The Origins of Writing as a
Problem of Historical Epistemology, 2006; (writing, general history) Khosro
Khazai, Naissance et évolution de l’écriture, 1985; Donald Jackson, The Story of
Writing, 1981 (Italian trans.: La scrittura nei secoli, 1988); (writing, semantics)
Stanley Morison, Politics and Script: Aspects of Authority and Freedom in the Devel-
Codicology and Paleography 310

opment of Graeco-Latin Script from the Sixth-Century BC, 1972; Jack Goody, The
Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, 1986; Id., The Interface Between
the Written and the Oral, 1987; (paleography, terminology) André Bataille,
Pour une terminologie en paléographie grecque, 1954; (paleography, manuals)
Elpidio Mioni, Pat Easterling, and Carol Handley, Greek Scripts: An Illus-
trated Introduction, 2001; Stan Knight, Historical Scripts from Classical Times
to the Renaissance, 2003; Guglielmo Cavallo, Il calamo e il papiro: La scrittura
greca dell’età ellenistica ai primi secoli di Bisanzio, 2005; (paleography, tables)
Colin Henderson Roberts, Greek Literary Hands, 350 B.C.–A.D. 400, 1956;
Alexander Turyn, Codices graeci Vaticani saeculis XIII et XIV scripti annorumque
notis instructi, 1964; Martin Wittek, Album de paléographie grecque: Spécimens
d’écritures livresques du IIIe siècle avant J.C. au XVIIIe siècle, conservés dans des collec-
tions belges, 1967; Tullia Gasparrini Leporace, and Elpidio Mioni, Cento
codici bessarionei: Catalogo di mostra, 1968; Athanasios D. Komines, Facsimiles of
Dated Patmian Codices, 1970 (originally published in Greek in 1968); Richard
Seider, Paläographie der griechischen Papyri, vol. 1: Tafeln, 2 parts, 1967–1970;
Enrica Follieri (1926–1999), Codices graeci Bibliothecae Vaticanae temporum
locorumque ordine digesti commentariis et transciptionibus instructi, 1969; Eric
Gardner Turner (1911–1983), Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 1971
(2nd rev. ed. 1987); Alexander Turyn, Dated Greek Manuscripts of the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries in the Libraries of Italy, 2 vols., 1972; Nigel Guy Wil-
son, Medieval Greek Bookhands: Examples Selected from Greek Manuscripts in Oxford
Libraries, 2 fascicles, 1973; Dieter Harlfinger, Specimina griechischer Kopisten
der Renaissance, vol. 1: Griechen des 15. Jahrhunderts, 1974; Elpidio Mioni, and
Mariarosa Formentin, I codici greci in minuscola dei sec. IX e X della Biblioteca
Marciana, 1975; Agamemnôn Tselikas, Deka aiônes ellênikês grafês (9os-19os
ai.), 1977 (collection of the Benaki Museum, Athens); Silvio Bernar-
dinello, Autografi greci e greco-latini in Occidente, 1979; Alexander Turyn,
Dated Greek Manuscripts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in the Libraries of
Great Britain, 1980; Ruth Barbour, Greek Literary Hands A-D. 400–1600, 1981;
Dieter Harlfinger, Dieter Roderich Reinsch, Josef A. M. Sonderkamp,
and Gian-Carlo Prato, Specimina Sinaitica: Die datierten griechischen Handschrif-
ten des Katharinin-Klosters auf dem Berge Sinai. 9. bis 12. Jahrhundert, 1983; Gug-
lielmo Cavallo, and Herwig Maehler, Greek Bookhands of the Early Byzantine
Period A.D. 300–800, 1987; (dated manuscripts) Turyn, Codices graeci Vaticani
saeculis XIII et XIV scripti … (above); Id., Dated Greek Manuscripts … Italy …
(above); Id., Dated Greek Manuscripts … Great Britain (above); Manuscrits grecs
datés des XIIIe et XIVe siècles conservés dans les bibliothèques publiques de France, 2 vols,
1989–2005; (paleography, evolution of writing) Jean Irigoin, “Structure
et évolution des écritures livresques de l’époque byzantine,” Polychronion Fest-
311 Codicology and Paleography

schrift für Franz Dölger, 1966, 253–65; (paleography, majuscule) Guglielmo

Cavallo, Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica, 1967; Jean Irigoin, “L’onciale grec-
que de type copte,” Jahrbuch der Östereichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 8
(1959): 29–51; Guglielmo Cavallo, “Funzione e strutture della maiuscola
greca tra i secoli VIII–XI,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine (above), 95–110;
(paleography, minuscule) Herbert Hunger, Studien zur griechischen Paläeo-
graphie, 1954, 22–32: “Die Perlschrift, eine Stilrichtung der griechischen
Buchschrift des 11. Jahrhunderts”; Enrica Follieri, “La minuscola libraria
dei secoli IX e X,” La Paléographie grecque et byzantine (above), 139–65; Herbert
Hunger, “Minuskel und Auszeichnungsschriften im 10.–12. Jahrhun-
dert,” ibid., 201–20; Jean Irigoin, “Une écriture du Xe siècle: la minuscule
bouletée,” ibid., 191–99; Cyril Mango, “L’origine de la minuscule,” ibid.,
175–80; Silvio Bernardinello, “Nuovi manoscritti in minuscola ‘boule-
tée’ dalle biblioteche di Firenze, Ochrida, Padova, Venezia, Wolfenbüttel,”
Miscellanea codicologica François Masai dicata, 1979, ed. Pierre Cockshaw
(1938–2008), Monique-Cécile Garand, and Pierre Jodogne, 2 vols., 1979,
vol. 1, 105–13; Julien Leroy, “Les manuscrits grecs en minuscule des IXe et
Xe siècles de la Marcienne,” Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 27 (1978):
25–48; Maria Luisa Agati, “La congiunzione kai nella minuscola libraria
greca,” Scrittura e Civiltà 8 (1984), 69–81; (majuscule letters in minuscule
writing) Enrica Follieri, “La reintroduzione di lettere semioncali nei piu
antichi manoscritti greci in minuscola,” Bulletino dell’Archivio paleografico ita-
liano, 3rd ser., 1 (1962): 15–36; R. Valentini, “La reintroduzione dell’onciale
e la datazione dei manoscritti greci in minuscola,” Scritti in onore di Carlo
Diano, 1975, 455–70; Herbert Hunger, “Epigraphische Auszeichnungs-
majuskel: Beitrag zu einem bisher kaum beachteten Kapitel der griechischen
Paläographie,” Jahrbuch der Östereichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 26 (1977):
193–200; (paleography, areas) (Athos) Boris L. Fonki č, “Biblioteka Lauri
su. Afanasii na Afone v. X–XIII vv.,” Palestinskij Sbornik 17 (1967), 168–69; Id.,
“La production des livres grecs et les bibliothèques de l’Athos aux Xe-XIIIe
ss.: Quelques résultats et perspectives de la recherche,” Bolletino della Badia
Greca di Grottaferrata n. s. 49–50 (1995–1996): 35–61; (Cyprus) Jean Dar-
rouzes, “Manuscrits originaires de Chypre à la Bibliothèque Nationale de
Paris,” Revue des Etudes Byzantines 8 (1950): 162–96; Id., “Autres manuscrits
originaires de Chypre,” Revue des Etudes Byzantines 15 (1957): 131–68; Paul
Canart, “Un style d’écriture livresque dans les manuscrits chypriotes du
XIVe siècle: la chypriote ‘bouclée’,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine (above),
303–21; Id., “Les écritures livresques chypriotes du milieu du XIe siècle au
milieu du XIIIe et le style Palestino-Chypriote ‘epsilon,’” Scrittura e Civiltà 5
(1981): 17–76; (Grecia) Giancarlo Prato, “Manoscritti greci in Grecia,” Scrit-
Codicology and Paleography 312

ture, libri e testi … (above), 3–24; Id., “Scritture e libri in Grecia tra IX e XIV se-
colo,” Bisanzio fuori di Bisanzio, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, 1991, 48–65; (Italy,
Southern) Robert Devreesse, Les manuscrits grecs de l’Italie méridionale (his-
toire, classement, paléographie), 1955; Julien Leroy, “Les manuscrits grecs d’Ita-
lie,” Codicologica 2 (1978): 52–71; Id., “Le Parisinus gr. 1477 et la détermination
de l’origine des manuscrits italo-grecs d’après la forme des initiales,” Scrip-
torium 22 (1978): 191–212; Paul Canart, “Le livre grec en Italie méridionale
sous les règnes Normands et Souabe: aspects matériels et sociaux,” Scrittura
e Civiltà 2 (1978): 103–62; André Grabar (1896–1990), Les manuscrits grecs
enluminés de provenance italienne (IXe–XIe siècles), 1972; Guglielmo Cavallo,
“Scritture italo-greche librarie e documentarie,” Bisanzio e l’Italia: Raccolta di
studi in memoria di Agostino Pertusi, 1982, 29–38; Giancarlo Prato, “Attività
scrittoria in Calabria tra IX e X secolo: Qualche riflessione,” Jahrbuch der öster-
reichischen Byzantinistik 36 (1986): 219–228; Annaclara Cataldi Palau,
“Manoscritti greco-latini dell’Italia meridionale: Un nuovo Salterio vergato
da Romano di Ullano,” Nuove ricerche sui manoscritti greci dell’Ambrosiana: Atti del
Convegno, Milano, 5–6 giugno 2003, 2004, 37–78; (Reggio di Calabria) Paul
Canart, and Julien Leroy, “Les manuscrits en style de Reggio: Etude paléo-
graphique et codicologique,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine (above),
241–61; (West) Guglielmo Cavallo, “La produzione di manoscritti greci in
occidente tra età tardo antica e alto medioevo: Note ed ipotesi,” Scrittura e
Civiltà 1 (1977), 111–31; (paleography, periods) (9th c.) Boris L. Fonki č,
“Sulla datazione dei codici greci in minuscola del secolo IX,” Byzantina Medi-
terranea: Festschrift für Johannes Koder zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Klaus Belke,
Ewald Kislinger, Andreas Külzer, and Maria A. Stassinopoulou,
2007, 175–81; (1071–1261) Boris L. Fonki č, “Les manuscrits à Byzance
(1071–1261),” XVe Congrès international d’études byzantines, Rapports et co-rap-
ports: II Langue, Littérature, Philologie, 3: Les conditions matérielles, sociales et écon-
omiques de la production culturelle à Byzance, 1976, 26–35; (1204–1261) Gian-
carlo Prato, “La produzione libraria in area greco-orientale nel periodo del
regno latino di Costantinopoli (1204–1261),” Scrittura e Civiltà 5 (1981):
105–147; (Palaeologan period) Id., “I manoscritti greci dei secoli XIII e XIV:
Note paleografiche,” Paleografia e codicologia: Atti … (above), 131–149; Id.,
“Scritture arcaizzanti della prima età dei paleologi e i loro modelli,” Scrittura e
Civiltà 3 (1979), 151–193; (paleography, tachygraphy) Sofia Torallas
Tovar, and Klaas A. Worp, To the Origins of Greek Stenography: P. Monts. Roca 1,
2006; (paleography, styles) Paul Canart, “Le problème du style d’écriture
dit en as de pique dans les manuscrits italo-grecs, “Atti del 4o congresso storico-
calabrese, 1969, 53–69; Dieter Harlfinger, “Zu griechischen Kopisten und
Schriftstilen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine,
313 Codicology and Paleography

(above), 326–62; (colophon) Thérèse Glorieux-De Gand, Formules de cop-

iste: Les colophons des manuscrits datés, 1991; (binding) Elisabeth Baras, Jean
Irigoin, and Jean Vezin. La reliure médiévale: Trois conférences d’initiation,
1981; Legature bizantine vaticane e marciane: Storia dei materiali e delle tecniche di
manifattura, ed. Assunta Di Febo, 1989; Heinz Petersen, Bucheinbände,
1991; Philippa J.M. Marks, Bookbinding: History and Techniques, 1998; An-
thony Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting: Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza, their Books and Bindings, 1999; Annaclara Cataldi Palau, “Legature
costantinopolitane del monastero di Prodromo Petra tra i manoscritti di
Giovanni di Ragusa (+ 1443),” Codices Manuscripti 37/38 (2001): 11–50; La re-
liure médiévale: Pour une description normalisée, ed. Guy Lanoë, 2008; Nikê Tsi-
rônê, To biblio sto Buzantio: Buzantinê kai metabuzantinê bibliodesia. Praktika
diethnous sunedriou, Athêna 13–16 oktôbriou 2005, 2008; (trade) Jean Irigoin,
“Les ambassadeurs à Venise et le commerce des manuscrits grecs dans les an-
nées 1540–1550,” Venezia centro di Mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV–
XVI) Aspetti e problemi, ed. Hans Georg Beck (1910–1999) et al., 2 vols., 1977,
vol. 2, 399–415; Paul Canart, “Jean Nathanaël et le commerce des manu-
scrits grecs à Venise au XVIe siècle,” ibid., vol. 2, 419–38; Ellês Giôtopou-
lou-Sisilianou, Antônios o Eparchos enas kerkuraios oumanistês tou IST’ aiôna,
1978 (owners and readers) Giovanna Derenzini, “Demetrio Triclinio e il
codice marciano greco 264,” Scrittura e Civiltà 3 (1979): 223–41; (manuscripts
and printing) Griechische Handschriften und Aldinen, ed. Dieter Harlfinger,
Joanna Harlfinger, Josef A. M. Sonderkamp, and Martin Sicherl,
1978.

H. Major Trends of Research: Copyists and Scriptoria

(signed manuscripts and identification of hands, general works) Al-
phonse Dain, “Copistes grecs de la Renaissance,” Bulletin de l’Association Guil-
laume Budé n. s. 3 (1963): 361–363; Christos G. Patrinelis, “Ellênnes kôdi-
kografoi tôn chronôn tês Annagennêseôs,” Epetêris Mesaiônikou Archeiou 8–9
(1958–1959): 63–124; Paul Canart, “Scribes grecs de la Renaissance,” Scrip-
torium 17 (1963): 56–82; Karl Antoon de Meyier, “Scribes grecs de la
Renaissance,” Scriptorium 18 (1964): 258–66; Jürgen Wiesner, and Ulrich
Victor, “Griechische Schreiber der Renaissance,” Rivista di Studi Bizantini e
Neoellenici n. s. 8–9 (1971–1972): 51–66; Carla Casetti Brach, “Copisti
greci del Medioevo e del Rinascimento: Aggiunte ai repertori di Vogel-Gardt-
hausen, Patrinelis, Canart, De Meyier e Wiesner-Victor,” Epetêris Etarireias
Buzantinôn Spoudôn 42 (1975): 234–52; Ernst Gamillscheg, and Dieter
Harlfinger, “Specimen eines Repertoriums …” (above); Martin Sicherl,
“Parerga zu griechischen Kopisten der Renaissance,” Studi in onore di Aristide
Codicology and Paleography 314

Colonna, 1982, 265–81; Gamillscheg and Harlfinger, Repertorium …

(above).
(copyists: signed manuscripts and identification of hands, individ-
ual copyists) (Anonymus Dioscoridis) Daniele Arnesano, “Il ‘Copista del
Dioscoride’: Un anonimo salentino del secolo XIII,” Bolletino dei Classici,
3rd ser., 24 (2003): 29–55; (Anonymus Harvardianus) Philippe Hoffman,
“Un mystérieux collaborateur d’Alde Manuce: L’Anonymus Harvardianus,”
and “Autres données relatives à un mystérieux collaborateur d’Alde,” Mé-
langes de l’Ecole française de Rome: Moyen Age, Temps Modernes 97 (1985): 45–143,
and 98 (1986): 673–708 respectively; (Apostolês Michaêl) Martin Wittek,
“Manuscrits et codicoloqie. 4: Pour une étude du scriptorium de Michel
Apostolès et consorts,” Scriptorium 7 (1953): 290–97; Id., “Michel Apostolès et
la survie des textes classiques grecs,” Ph.D. thesis University of Brussels,
1963; (Apostolês, Michaêl and Aristoboulos) Paul Canart, “Note sur
l’écriture de Michel et Aristobule Apostolès et sur quelques manuscrits attri-
buables à ce dernier,” Un esemplare autografo di Arsenio e il Florilegio di Stobeo, ed.
Anna Lucia Di Lello-Finuoli, 1971, 87–101; (Bessarion) Henri D. Saf-
frey, “Recherches sur quelques autographes du Cardinal Bessarion et leur
caractère autobiographique,” Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, vol. 3, 1964, 263–97;
Elpidio Mioni, “Bessarione scriba e alcuni suoi collaboratori,” Miscellanea
marciana di studi bessarionei, 1976, 263–318; (Dêmêtrios Damilas) Paul
Canart, “Démétrius Damilas alias le Librarius Florentius,” Rivista di Studi
bizantini e neoel1enici, new ser. 14–16 (1977–1979): 281–347; (Andreas Dar-
marios) Otto Kresten, “Der Schreiber und Handschriftenhändler Andreas
Darmarios: Eine biographische Skizze,” Griechische Kodikologie …, ed. Harl-
finger (above), 406–19; Id., “Die Handschriften des A. Darmarios im Jahre
1564,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 24 (1975): 147–93; (Nicolas
de la Torre) Karl Antoon de Meyier, “Les manuscrits grecs de Leyde écrits
par Nicolas de la Torre,” Scriptorium 5 (1951): 46–59; Gregorio De Andrés, El
Cretense Nicolas de la Torre, copista griego de Felipe II, 1969; Mark Sosower, “The
Greek Manuscripts Written by Nicholas Turrianos in the Library of Diego de
Covarrubias (1577), Bishop of Segovia,” Codices Manuscripti 41 (2002): 13–30;
(Glynzounios) Martin Sicherl, “Manuel Glynzounios als Schreiber grie-
chischer Handschriften,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 49 (1956): 34–54; Paul Can-
art, “Nouveaux manuscrits copiés par Emmanuel Glynzounios,” Epetêris
Etaireias Buzantinôn Spoudôn 39–40 (1972–1973): 527–544; (Geôrgios and
Manouêl Grêgoropoulos) Elenê Kakoulidi, “Duo neoi kôdikes tôn krê-
tikôn bibliografôn Geôrgiou kai Manouêl Manousou Grêgoropoulou,” El-
lênika 21 (1968): 178–79; (Iôannês of Korônê) David Speranzi, “Un nuovo
codice di ‘Giovanni di Corone’: lo Strabone Laur. Plut. 28.40,” Medievo e
315 Codicology and Paleography

Rinascimento 16 (2005): 61–80; (Andronikos Kallistos) Robert B. Todd,

“Baltasar Meliavacca, Andronicus Callistus, and the Greek Aristotellian
Commentators in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 37
(1994): 67–75; (Kônstantinos Laskaris) Teresa Martinez Manzano, Kon-
stantinos Laskaris: Humanist, Philologe, Lehrer, Kopist, 1994; Ead., “Un nuevo
manuscrito de Constantino Láscaris en la Biblioteca universitaria de Got-
inga,” Erytheia 21 (2000): 131–36; (Michaêl Louloudês) Antonio Bravo
García, and Inmaculada Peréz Martin, “Un nuevo manuscrito copiado
por Miguel Luludes: el Escurialensis . III. 11,” ‘Opôra: Studi in onore di Mgr
Paul Canart per il LXX compleanno, 1998, 227–234; (Manouêl Malaxos) Giu-
seppe De Gregorio, Il copista greco Manouel Malaxos: Studio biografico e paleo-
grafico-codicologico, 1991; (Theodôros Meliteniôtês) Régine Leurquin, “Un
manuscrit autographe de la Tribiblos astronomique de Théodore Méliténiote: le
Vaticanus graecus 792,” Scriptorium 45 (1991): 145–62; (Moschos family) Gra-
ham Speake, and Francis Vian, “The So-Called D Manuscript of Apollo-
nius,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 14 (1973): 301–18; Graham
Speake, “The Scribal Habits of Demetrius Moschus,” Greek, Roman and Byzan-
tine Studies 15 (1974): 113–33; (Markos Mousouros) Martin Sicherl, “Mu-
suros Handschriften,” Serta Turyniana: Studies in Greek Literature and Pa-
leography in Honor of Alexander Turyn, ed. John Heller, 1974, 564–608;
(Iôannês Onorios a Maglia) Maria Luisa Agati, Paul Canart, and Carlo
Federici, “Giovanni Onorio da Maglie instaurator librorum graecorum à la fin
du Moyen âge,” Scriptorium 50 (1996), 363–69; (Petros Krêtikos) Ernst Ga-
millscheg, “Beobachtungen zur Kopistentätigkeit des Petros Kretikos,”
Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 24 (1975): 137–45; Jean Irigoin,
“Deux copistes d’Apollonios de Rhodes au début du XVe siècle: Pierre le Cré-
tois et Georges Chrysokokkès,” Rodônia: Timê ston M. I. Manousaka, 2 vols.,
1994, vol. 1, 147–55; (Maximos Planoudês) André Allard, “L’Ambrosia-
nus Et 157 sup., un manuscrit autographe de Maxime Planude,” Scriptorium
33 (1979): 219–34; Mariarosa Formentin, “La grafia di Massimo Planude,”
Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 32 (1982): 87–96; (Emmanouêl Pro-
batarês) Paul Canart, “Les manuscrits copiés par Emmanuel Provataris
(1546–7570 environ),” Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, vol. 6, 1964, 173–287; (Kôn-
stantinos Resinos) Paul Canart, “Constantin Rhésinos, théologien popu-
laire et copiste de manuscrits,” Studi di bibliografia in onore di Tammaro De Mari-
nis, 2 vols., 1964, vol. 1, 241–71; (Iôannês Seberos) Paul Canart, “Un
copiste expansif: Jean Sévère de Lacédémone,” Studia codicologica, ed. Kurt
Treu, 1977, 117–39; (Zacharias Skordulês) Ernst Gamillscheg, “Scordy-
liana,” Codices manuscripti 3 (1977): 17–22; (Nikolaos Sofianos) William A.
Pettas, “Nikolaos Sophianos and Greek Printing in Rome,” The Library,
Codicology and Paleography 316

5th ser., 29 (1974): 206–13; (Geôrgios Tribizias, Andronikos Kallistos,

Geôrgios Ermônumos) Aubrey Diller, “Three Greek Scribes Working for
Bessarion: Trivizias, Callistus, Hermonymus,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 10
(1967): 403–10; (Dêmêtrios Tribolês) Alexandre Oleroff, “Démétrius
Trivolis, copiste et bibliophile,” Scriptorium 4 (1950): 260–63;
(scriptoria, general) Jean Irigoin, “Pour une étude des centres de
copie byzantins, II. Quelques groupes de manuscrits,” Scriptorium 13 (1959):
177–209; (scriptoria and libraries) Jean Irigoin, “Centres de copie et
bibliothèques,” Byzantine Books and Bookmen, 1975, 17–27; Horst Blanck,
“Scriptoria e biblioteche nel mondo classico,” La città e la parola scritta, ed. Gio-
vanni Pugliese Carratelli (1911–2010), 1997, 3–61; Francis Newton,
The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino 1058–1105, 1999; (scriptoria)
(monastery of Dousikou) Photios Ar. Demetrakopoulou, “To kôdiko-
grafiko ergastêrio tês monês Dousikon ton 16o aiôna kai o bibliografos
Kallistos,” Epetêris Etaireias Buzantinôn Spoudôn 50 (1999–2000), 403–47;
(Iôannikios) Nigel Guy Wilson, “A Mysterious Byzantine Scriptorium,”
Scrittura e civiltà 7 (1983): 161–76; Id., “New Light on Burgundio of Pisa,”
Studi italiani di filologia classica, 3rd ser., 4 (1986): 113–18; Id., “Ioannikios and
Burgundio: a Survey of the Problem,” Scritture, libri e testi … (above), 447–55;
(scriptorium of Paleologina) Inmaculada Pérez Martín, “Irene Cumno
y el ‘Taller de la Paleologuina’,” Scrittura e civiltà 19 (1995): 223–34; (Guil-
laume Pellicier) Annaclara Palau, “Les copistes de Guillaume Pellicier …”
(above).

I. Major Trends of Research: Codicology and Textual Tradition

(general studies) Dieter Harlfinger, Griechische Kodikologie und Textüber-
lieferung, 1980; Guglielmo Cavallo, Dalla parte del libro: Storie di trasmissione
dei classici, 2002; (general studies, areas, Southern Italy) Jean Irigoin,
“L’Italie méridionale et la tradition des textes antiques,” Jahrbuch der österrei-
chischen Byzantinistik 18 (1969): 37–55; Vittorio Peri, “Birgilios = sapientissi-
mus: Riflessi culturali latino-greci nell’agiographia bizantina,” Italia medio-
evale e umanistica 19 (1976): 1–40; Giovanna Derenzini, “All’origine della
tradizione di opere scientifiche classiche: vicende di testi e di codici tra Bisan-
zio e Palermo,” Physis 18 (1976): 87–103; Paul Canart, “Le livre grec en
Italie méridionale sous les règnes Normand et Souabe: aspects matériels et
sociaux,” Scrittura e Civiltà 2 (1978): 103–162; Guglielmo Cavallo, “La tras-
missione scritta della cultura graeca in Calabria e in Sicilia tra i secoli X–XV:
Consistenza, tipologia, funzione,” Scrittura e civiltà 4 (1980): 157–245; Id.,
“La cultura italo-greca nella procuzione libraria,” I bizantini in Italia, 1982,
495–612; Id., “Mezzogiorno svevo e cultura greca: Materiale per una messa
317 Codicology and Paleography

a punto,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 84–85 (1991–1992): 430–40; (general

studies, periods, Renaissance) Paul L. Rose, “Humanist Culture and
Renaissance Mathematics: The Italian Libraries of the Quattrocento,” Studies
in the Renaissance 20 (1973): 46–105; (studies on specific authors) (Aris-
totle) Harlfinger, Die Textgeschichte … (above); Aristoteles graecus: Die Griechi-
schen Manuskripte … (above); (Autolycus of Pitane) Mogenet, Autolycus de
Pitane … (above); (Dioscorides) Antonio Giuliano, “Il codice di Dioscuride
a Vienna in una notizia di Giovanni Tortelli,” La parola del passato 23 (1968):
52–54; Pan. G. Kritikos, and Stella Athanassoula, “Oi en Elladi euris-
komenoi farmakeutikoi kôdikes: Athônikoi kôdikes tou Dioskoridou,”
Archeia tês farmakeutikês 4 (1972): 41–69; (Euripides) Alexander Turyn, The
Byzantine Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Euripides, 1957; (Jambichus)
Martin Sicherl, Die Handschriften, Ausgaben und Übersetzungen von Jamblichos
De Mysteriis: Eine kritisch-historische Studie,1957; (Lucian) Jürgen Coenen,
Lukian Zeus tragodos: Überlieferungsgeschichte, Text und Kommentar, 1977; (Marc
Aurelius) Charles Astruc, “Un fragment de manuscrit grec (extraits de
Marc-Aurèle et d’Elien) conservé à la Bibliothèque Mazarine dans la Collec-
tion Faugère,” Serta Turyniana … (above), 525–46; (Musaeus) Paolo Eleu-
teri, Storia della tradizione manoscritta di Museo, 1981; (Strabo) Aubrey Dil-
ler, The Textual Tradition of Strabo’s Geography, 1975; (Theognis) Douglas C. C.
Young, “A Codicological inventory of Theognis manuscripts,” Scriptorium 7
(1953): 3–36; (Theophrast) John J. Keaney, “The Early Tradition of
Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum,” Hermes 96 (1968): 293–98; Benedict Ei-
narson, “The Manuscripts of Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum,” Classical
Philology 71 (1976): 67–76; (Xenophon) Michele Bandini, “Senofonte nella
prima età paleologa: il testo di Memor. IV 3, 7–8 nel codice Urb. gr. 95,” Nea
Rômê 3 (2006): 305–16.

J. Major Trends of Research: Illustration

(introductions) Maurits Smeyers, La miniature, 1974; Michelle P. Brown,
Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms, 1994;
(inventory of reproductions) Sever J. Voicu, and Serenella D’Alisera,
I.M.A.G.E.S.: Index in Manuscriptorum Graecorum Edita specimina, 1981; (general
studies) Kurt Weitzmann, Ancient book Illumination, 1959; Victor Lazarev
(1897–1976), Storia della pittura bizantina, 1967; Hans Belting, Das illumi-
nierte Buch in der spätbyzantinischen Gesellschaft, 1970; Kurt Weitzmann,
Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscripts Illumination, ed. Herbert
Kessler, 1971: (126–150) “The Classical Heritage in the Art of Constanti-
nople”; (176–223) “The Character and Intellectual Origins of the Macedo-
nian Renaissance”; Kurt Weitzmann, The Place of Book Illumination in Byzan-
Codicology and Paleography 318

tine Art, 1975; Christopher De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts,

1986 (Italian trans. Manoscritti miniati, 1987); Giulia Bologna, Manoscritti e
miniature: Il libro prima di Gutenberg, 1988 (Engl. trans.: Illuminated Manuscripts:
The Book Before Gutenberg, 1988); (analysis by time period) (1261–1667) John
Lowden, “Manuscript Illumination in Byzantium 1261–1667,” Byzantium:
Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans, 2004, 259–69; (manu-
scripts by places of preservation) (America) Illuminated Greek Manuscripts in
American Collections: An Exhibition in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Gary Vikan,
1973; (Athens) Catalogue of the Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts of the National
Library of Greece, 3 vols., 1978–1997; (Athos) Oi thêsauroi tou Agiou Orous, 1st
ser.: Eikonografêmena cheirografa, 4 vols., 1973–1991; (London, British Li-
brary) Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript
Painting in the British Library, 1997; (Oxford) Irmgard Hutter, Corpus der
byzantinischen Miniaturhandschriften, vols. 1–3: Oxford, Bodleian Library,
1977–1982; vol. 4: Oxford, Christ Church, 1993; vol. 5: Oxford, College Libraries,
1997; (Sinai) Kurt Weitzmann, and George Galavaris (d. 2003), The Mon-
astery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Illuminated Manuscripts, 1990; (re-
lation illustration and text) Kurt Weitzmann, Problems in the Relation be-
tween Text and Illustration, 1982; (illustration, studies, topics) (Arabic
world) Kurt Weitzmann, “The Greek Sources of Islamic Scientific Illus-
trations,” Archaeologia Orientalia in Memoriam E. Herzfeld, 1952, 244–66;
(Athos) George Galavaris, “Aspects of Book Illumination on Mt. Athos,”
Diethnes Sumposio Buzantinê Makedonia 324–1430 m. Ch., Thessalonikê 29–31 Oktô-
briou 1992, 1995, 91–103; (Beatus de Liébana) John Williams, The Illustrated
Beatus: A Corpus of the Illustrations of the Commentary on the Apocalypse, 5 vols.,
1994–2003; and the facsimiles of several manuscripts: Beato de Liébana: Códice
de Fernando I y Doña Sancha, 2 vols., 1994; Beato de Liébana: Códice del Monasterio
de San Andrés de Arroyo, Palencia, 2 vols., 1999; Beato de Liébana: Códice del Mon-
asterio de San Pedro de Cardeña, 2 vols., 2000; Beato de Liébana de Girona, 2 vols.,
2003; Beato de Liébana: Códice del Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos, 2 vols.,
2004; (botany) Giulia Orofino, “Gli erbari di età sveva,” Gli erbari medievali
tra scienza, simbolo, magia: Testi del VII Colloquio Medievale, 1994, 325–46; (Dios-
corides) Otto Mazal, Pflanzen, Wurzeln, Säfte, Samen: Antike Heilkunst: Minia-
turen des Wiener Dioskurides, 1981; Alain Touwaide, “Un recueil grec de phar-
macologie du Xe siecle illustré au XIVe siècle: le Vaticanus gr. 284,” Scriptorium
39 (1985): 13–56; Id., “Les manuscrits grecs illustrés du traité Peri ulês iatrikês
de Dioscoride,” Proceedings of the XXX International Congress of the History of Medi-
cine, Dusseldorf 1986, 1988, 1148–51; Salvatore Lilla, Guglielmo Cavallo,
Giulia Orofino, and Carlo Bertelli, Dioskurides, Codex Neapolitanus, Napoli,
Biblioteca nazionale, Ms. Ex Vindob. gr. 1: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe in Original-
319 Codicology and Paleography

format, Graz and Rome, 1988; Otto Mazal, Der Wiener Dioskurides: Codex medi-
cus graecus 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 2 vols., 1998 (a small size
reproduction of codex Vindobonensis medicus graecus 1); Mauro Ciancaspro,
Guglielmo Cavallo, and Alain Touwaide, Dioscurides, De materia medica:
Codex Neapolitanus graecus 1 of the National Library of Naples, Athens, 1999; Alain
Touwaide, “The Salamanca Dioscorides (Salamanca, University Library.
2659),” Erytheia 24 (2003): 125–58; (Gregory Nazianzenus) George Gala-
varis, The Illustrations of the Liturgical Homilies of Gregory Nazianzeus, 1969;
(hippiatric) Stavros Lazaris, “Les rapports entre l’illustration et le texte de
l’Epitome, manuel byzantin d’hippiatrie,” Archives internationales d’histoire des
sciences, 49 (1999): 281–301; (Hraban Maur) Diane O. Le Berrurier, The
Pictorial Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ ‘De
rerum naturis’, 1978; Marianne Reuter, Metodi illustrativi nel Medioevo: Testo e
immagine nel codice 132 di Montecassino ‘Liber Rabani de originibus rerum’, 1993;
(Italy, southern) Irmgard Hutter, “La décoration et la mise en page des
manuscrits grecs de l’Italie méridionale: Quelques observations,” Histoire et
culture dans l’Italie byzantine: Acquis et nouvelles recherches, ed. André Jacob,
Jean-Marie Martin, and Ghislaine Noyé, 2006, 69–93; (Antônios Ma-
lakês) Robrt S. Nelson, “The Manuscripts of Antonios Malakes and the Col-
lecting and Appreciation of Illuminated Books in Early Palaeogan Period,”
Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 36 (1986): 229–54; (mythology) Kurt
Weitzmann, Greek Mythology in Byzantine Art, 1951; (Nicander) Stavros
Lazaris, “A Propos du Nicandre de Paris (Suppl. gr. 247): son illustration et
son modèle,” Scriptorium 59 (2005): 221–27; (Octateuchs) Kurt Weitzmann,
and Massimo Bernabò, with the collaboration of Rita Tarasconi, The
Byzantine Octateuchs, 1999; (Physiologus) Stavros Lazaris, “Le Physiologus grec
et son illustration: Quelques considérations à propos d’un nouveau témoin
illustré (Dujčev. gr. 297),” Bestiaires médiévaux: Nouvelles perspectives sur les
manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, ed. Baudouin van den Abeele, 2005,
141–318; (Regimen sanitatis) Giulia Orofino, “L’iconografia del Regimen
Sanitatis in un manoscritto angioino (Napoli, Bibl. Naz., XIII C 37),” Studi
Medievali 3rd ser., 31 (1990): 775–87; (Sacra parallela) Kurt Weitzmann, The
Miniatures of the Sacra parallela, Parisinus graecus 923, 1979; (Septuagint) Kurt
Weitzmann, The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the Septuagint, 1941; (Van-
gel) Saveria Rito, “Un Vangelo di età comnena dal monastero del Prodromo
di Petra e Constantinopoli: l’Angel. gr. 123,” Nuovi Annali della Scuola Speciale
per Archivisti e Bibliotecari 20 (2006): 5–17; (Virgil) David H. Wright, The
Roman Virgil and the Origins of Medieval Book Design, 2001; (Zoology) Jean
Théodoridès, “Remarques sur l’iconographie zoologique dans certains
manuscrits médicaux byzantins et étude des miniatures zoologiques du
Codicology and Paleography 320

codex Vaticanus graecus 284,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesell-

schaft 10 (1961): 21–29; Id., “Intérêt scientifique des miniatures zoologiques
d’un manuscrit byzantin de la ‘Matière médicale’ de Dioscoride (Cod. M 652
Pierpont Morgan Library, New-York),” Acta Biologica Debrecina 7–8 (1969–70):
265–72; Zoltan Kadar, Survivals of Greek zoological illuminations in Byzantin
manuscripts, 1978.

K. Major Trends of Research: Collections and Libraries

For several collections, see above. Furthermore, see: (bibliography) Paul
Oskar Kristeller, Latin Manuscript Books Before 1600: A List of Printed Cata-
logues and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections, 4th rev. and enlarged
ed. by Sigfrid Krämer, 1993; (general) Konstantinos Sp. Staikos, Libraries
from Antiquity to the Renaissance and Major Humanist and Monastery Libraries
(3000 BC-AD 1600), 1997; Id., The History of the Library in Western Civilization,
3 vols. published so far, 2004–2007; (ancient libraries in Byzantium)
(Constantinople, Thessalonika and Asia Minor) Otto Volk, “Die byzan-
tinischen Klosterbibliotheken von Konstantinopel, Thessalonike und Klein-
asien,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Munich, 1954; (Constantinople) Kôn-
stantinou Manafê, Ai en Kônstantinoupolei bibliothêkai autokratorikai kai
patriarchikê kai peri tôn en autais cheirografôn mechri tês alôseôs (1453): Meletê filolo-
gikê, 1972; (Constantinople, Prodromos) Elenê D. Kakoulidê, “Ê biblio-
thêkê tês Monês Prodromou Petras stên Kônstantinoupolê,” Ellênika 21
(1968): 3–39; (El Escorial) Gregorio de Andrés, Catalogo de los codices desapa-
recidos de la Real Biblioteca de El Escurial, 1968; Id., Documentos para la Historia del
Monasterio de San Lorenzo el Real del Escorial, vol. 7, 1964; (Milan, Biblioteca
Ambrosiana) Cesare Pasini, “Giovanni Donato Ferrari e i manoscritti greci
dell’Ambrosiana (con note su Francesco Bernardino e Ottavio Ferrari e sui
manoscritti di Ottaviano Ferrari all’Ambrosiana),” Nea Rômê 1 (2004):
351–86; Id., “Giovanni Santa Maura e la Biblioteca Ambrosiana,” Rivista di
Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici n. s. 42 (2005): 223–70; (Paris, Bibliothèque
nationale de France) Simone Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale des origines à
1800, 1988; (Salamanca, University) Teresa Martínez Manzano, “El
Salm. 2659 de Dioscórides y la historia del fondo griego de la Biblioteca de Sa-
lamanca procedente del Colegio de San Bartolomé,” Helmantica 44 (1998):
309–27; (Vatican Library) Robert Devreesse, “Pour l’histoire des man-
uscrits du fonds Vatican grec,” Collectanea Vaticana in honorem Anselmi M. Card.
Albareda a Bibliotheca Apostolica edita, 315–36; Id., Le fonds grec de la Bibliothèque
Vaticane des origines à Paul V, 1965; Jeanne Bignami Odier (1902–1989) and
José Ruysschaert, La Bibliothèque vaticane de Sixte IV à Pie XI: Recherches sur
l’histoire des collections de manuscrits, 1973; Salvatore Lilla, I manoscritti vaticani
321 Codicology and Paleography

greci: Lineamenti di una storia del fondo, 2004; (collections and collectors)
(Augsburg) Donald F. Jackson, “Augsburg Greek Manuscript Acquisitions
1545–1600,” Codices Manuscripti 29 (2000): 1–10; Id., “Augsburg Greek
Manuscript Acquisitions 1600–1633,” Codices Manuscripti 30 (2000): 27–34;
(Johannes Cuno) Martin Sicherl, Johannes Cuno, ein Wegbereiter des Grie-
chischen in Deutschland, 1978; (John Moore [1646–1714]) Donald F. Jackson,
“The Greek Manuscripts of John Moore and Etienne Baluze,” Codices Manu-
scripti 56/57 (2006): 29–42; (Ziskind collection) Bernard M. W. Knox, “The
Ziskind Collection of Greek Manuscripts,” The Yale University Library Gazette
32 (1957): 39–56.

L. Major Trends of Research: Cataloguing and Catalogues

(guidelines for the catalographic description of manuscripts) Guide pour
l’élaboration d’une notice de manuscrit, 1977; Viviana Jemolo, and Mirella
Morelli, Guida ad una descrizione catalografica uniforme del manoscritto, 1984;
Richtlinien Handschriftenkatalogisierung, 4th ed., 1985 (published by the Deut-
sche Forschungsgemeinschaft); Pieter F. J. Obbema, “Varia Bibliographica:
Towards a Uniform Inventory of Surviving Medieval Manuscripts,” Quae-
rendo 17 (1987): 284–88; Armando Petrucci, La descrizione del manoscritto:
storia, problemi, modelli, 2nd rev. ed., 2001; (computerized description of
manuscripts) The Use of Computers in Cataloging Medieval and Renaissance Manu-
scripts: Papers from the International Workshop in Munich, 10–12 August 1989, ed.
Menso Folkerts, and Andreas Kühne, 1990; Bibliographic Access to Medieval
and Renaissance Manuscripts: A Survey of Computerized Data Bases and Information
Services, ed. Wesley M. Stevens, 1991; Metodologie informatiche per il censimento
e la documentazione dei manoscritti ed. Antonio Maria Adorisio, 1993;
(new locations of manuscripts) Guy Fink-Errera, “A propos des biblio-
thèques d’Espagne: Tables de concordance,” Scriptorium, 13 (1959): 89–118;
(cataloguing of manuscripts, overview) cataloguing of manuscripts
remained a major enterprise during the last decades of the 20th century. Peri-
odic notices about new catalogues or cataloguing enterprises were published
such as: Jean Irigoin, “Trois catalogues de manuscrits grecs,” Revue des
Etudes Grecques 74 (1961): 275–291; Id., “Les manuscrits grecs, I,” Revue des
Etudes Grecques 83 (1970): 500–29, and “Les manuscrits grecs, II,” Revue des
Etudes Grecques 85 (1972): 543–71; or Renate Schipke, “Die Katalogisierung
mittelalterlicher Handschriften in der Deutschen Demokratischen Repu-
blik,” Scriptorium 37 (1983): 275–85. It became necessary to publish toward
the end of the 20th century a “new Richard”: Jean-Marie Olivier, Répertoire
des bibliothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits grecs de Marcel Richard. Troisième
édition entièrement refondue, 1995.
Codicology and Paleography 322

(catalogues) among the many catalogues, notes or any other form of list
of Greek manuscripts published during the second half of the 20th century,
one could quote the following items, significant from some viewpoint, be it
the methods, the novelty, the richness of the collection catalogued, or any
other remarkable feature (chronological order of publication): Valentinus
Capocci (1901–1969), Codices Barberiniani graeci, vol. 1: 1–163, 1958; Charles
Astruc, and Marie-Lousie Concasty, Bibliothèque nationale, Catalogue des
manuscrits grecs, 3rd part: Le Supplément grec, vol. 3: nos 901–1371, 1960 (with a
preface by Alphonse Dain); Ruth Barbour, “Summary Description of the
Greek Manuscripts from the Library at Holkham Hall,” The Bodleian Library
Record 6 (1960): 591–613; Elpidio Mioni, Bibliothecae Divi Marci Venetiarum
codices graeci manuscripti, 3 vols. in 4 parts, 1960–1972; William H. Bond,
Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United
States and Canada originated by Christopher U. Faye, 1962; Samuel Arthur Joseph
Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome
Historical Medical Library, vol. 1: MSS. written before 1650 AD, 1962; Gino Pier-
leoni (1875–1951), Catalogus codicum graecorum Bibliothecae nationalis Neopoli-
tanae, vol. 1, 1962; Linos Politês, “Ta cheirografa tou Agiou Orous,” Nea
Estia 74 (1963): 116–27; Antonio Tovar (1911–1994), Catalogus codicum grae-
corum universitatis salamantinae, 1: Collectio Universitatis antiqua, 1963; Karel
Adriaan de Meyier, and Elfriede Hulshoff Pol, Bibliotheca Universitatis
Leidensis, Codices manuscripti, vol. 8: Codices bibliothecae publicae graeci, 1965;
Nikos A. Bees (1887–1958), Les manuscrits des Météores, Catalogue descriptif des
manuscrits conservés dans les monastères des Météores, vol. 1: Les manuscrits du mo-
nastère de Transfiguration, 1967; Martin Wittek, “Les manuscrits grecs de la
Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier: nouvelles acquisitions (1974–1978),” Miscel-
lanea Codicologica F. Masai Dicata (above), 551–57; Elpidius Mioni, Bibliothecae
Divi Marci Venetiarum codices Graeci Manuscripti, vol. 1: Thesaurus Antiquus,
Codices 1–209; vol. 2: Thesaurus Antiquus, Codices 300–625, 1981–1985; Jean-
Marie Olivier, and Marie-Aude Monegier du Sorbier, Catalogue des
manuscrits grecs de Tchécoslovaquie, 1983; Nikos A. Bees, Les manuscrits des Mé-
téores. Catalogue descriptif des manuscrits conservés dans les monastères des Météores,
vol. 2: Les manuscrits du monastère de Barlaam, 1984; Salvatore Lilla, Codices
Vaticani Graeci: codices 2162–2254 (Codices Columnenses), 1985; Demetrios Z. So-
fianos, Les manuscrits des Météores,Catalogue descriptif des manuscrits conservés
dans les monastères des Météores, vol. 3: Les manuscrits du monastère de Saint-Etienne,
1986; Athanasiou Kominê, Patmiakê bibliothêkê êtoi neos katalogos tôn cheirogra-
fôn kôdikôn tês ieras monês agiou Iôannou tou theologou Patmou, vol. 1: Kôdikôn
1–101, 1988; Joseph Mogenet, Codices Barberiniani Graeci, vol. 2: Codices
164–281, ed. Julien Leroy, and Paul Canart, 1989; Demetrios Z. Sofianos,
323 Codicology and Paleography

Les manuscrits des Météores, Catalogue descriptif des manuscrits conservés dans les
monastères des Météores, vol. 4: Les manuscrits du monastère de Sainte-Trinité (Hagia
Triada), 2 vols., 1993; Angel Escobar Chico, Codices Caesaraugustani Graeci:
Catálogo de los manuscritos griegos de la biblioteca capitular de La Seo Zaragoza, 1993;
Panagiôtê Sôtêroudê, Iera Monê Ibêrôn, Katalogos ellênikôn cheirografôn, vol. 1:
1–100, 1998; Scot Mckendrick, The British Library: A Summary Catalogue of
Greek Manuscripts, 1999; Annette von Stockhausen, “Katalog der grie-
chischen Handschriften im Besitz der Thüringer Universitäts- und Landes-
bibliothek Jena,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 94 (2001): 684–701; Marina Molin
Pradel, Katalog der griechischen Handschriften der Staats- und Universitätsbiblio-
thek Hamburg, 2002; Catálogo de Manuscritos de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Salam-
anca, vol. 2: Manuscritos 1680–2777, 2002; Nadia Kavrus-Hoffmann, “Cata-
logue of Greek Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Collections of
the United States of America, Part I: Columbia University: Rare Book and
Manuscript Library,” Manuscripta 49 (2005): 165–245; Id., “Part II: The New
York Public Library,” Manuscripta 50 (2006): 21–76; Erich Lambertz, Katalog
der griechischen Handschriften des Athosklosters Vatopedi, vol. 1: Codices 1–102,
2006; Mark Sosower, A Descriptive Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at St John’s
College, Oxford, 2007; Matoula Kouroupou, and Paul Géhin, Catalogue des
manuscrits conservés dans la Bibliothèque du Patriarcat Oecuménique: Les Manuscrits
du monastère de la Panaghia de Chalki, 2 vols., 2008; R. Varteni Chétanian,
Catalogue des fragments et manuscrits grecs du Matenadaran d’Erevan, 2008.
(thematic catalogues of manuscripts) (medicine, Hippocrates,
Latin) Pearl Kibre, “Hippocrates latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writ-
ings in the Latin Middle Ages,” Traditio 31 (1975): 99–126; 32 (1976): 257–92;
33 (1977): 253–95; 34 (1978): 193–266; 35 (1979): 273–302; 36 (1980):
347–92; 37 (1981): 267–89; 38 (1982): 165–92 (published as a monograph:
Hippocrates latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages,
rev. ed. 1985); (medicine, illustrated manuscripts) Loren MacKinney
(1891–1963), Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, 1965; (medicine,
Latin) Richard J. Durling (1932–1999), “Corrigenda and Addenda to Diels’
Galenica. I. Codices Vaticani,” Traditio 23 (1967): 461–76; Id., “Corrigenda
and Addenda to Diels’ Galenica. II. Codices Miscellanei,” Traditio 37 (1981):
373–81; Id., “Corrigenda and addenda to Diel’s Galenica,” Traditio 23 (1967):
461–76; (medicine, Greek, area of Venice) Mariarosa Formentin, I codici
graeci di medicina nelle tre Venezie, 1978; (humanistic manuscripts) Paul
Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely
Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries,
vol. 1: Italy, Agrigento to Novara, 1963; vol. 2: Italy, Orvieto to Volterra Vatican City,
1967; vol. 3: Alia itinera I: Australia to Germany, 1983; vol. 4: Alia Itinera II: Great
Codicology and Paleography 324

Britain to Spain, 1989; vol. 5,1: Alia itinera III and Italy III: Sweden to Yugoslavia,
Utopia, Supplement to Italy (A-F), 1990; vol. 5,2: Alia itinera III and Italy III: Sweden
to Yugoslavia, Utopia, Supplement to Italy (A-F). Index and Addenda. Compiled by
Mrs. Judith Wardman and her assistants in collaboration with the author,
1993; vol. 6: Italy and Alia Itinera IV: Supplement to Italy (G-V), Supplement to Vati-
can and Austria to Spain, 1992; vol. 7: A cumulative index to volumes I–VI of Paul
Oskar Kristeller’s Iter Italicum accedunt alia itinera, 1997; (humanistic man-
uscripts, medicine) Richard J. Durling, “A Guide to the Medical Man-
uscripts mentioned in Kristeller’s ‘Iter italicum’ III,” Traditio 41 (1985):
341–65; Id., “A Guide to the Medical Manuscripts mentioned in Kristeller’s
‘Iter italicum’ I–II,” Traditio 44 (1988): 485–536; Id., “A Guide to the Medical
Manuscripts mentioned in Kristeller’s ‘Iter italicum’ IV,” Traditio 46 (1991):
347–79; Id., “A Guide to the Medical Manuscripts mentioned in Kristeller’s
‘Iter italicum’ V–VI,” Traditio 48 (1993): 253–316.
(computerization of catalogues) heuristic of manuscripts has been
greatly improved by the use of computerized methods of recording, storing,
and retrieving information. The so-called Greek Index Project, originally
located at the Pontifical Institute of Medieaeval Studies in Toronto, aimed to
cataloguing all the manuscripts of all Greek authors from Antiquity to the
end of Byzantium: Robert E. Sinkewicz, and Walter H. Hayes, Manuscript
Listings for the Authored Works of the Palaeologan Period, 1989; Robert E. Sinke-
wicz, Manuscript Listings for the Authors of Classical and Late Antiquity, 1990;
Id., Manuscript Listings for the Authors of the Patristic and Byzantine, 1992. In
1993, the Project was transferred to the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des
Textes of the French CNRS (see below).

M. Current Organization of Research

Besides the manuscript departments in such libraries as (alphabetical order
of name) the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City, the Biblioteca del
Real Monasterio at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the Biblioteca Medicea Lau-
renziana in Florence, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, the Bi-
bliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the
British Library in London, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna,
the Universiteitsbibliothek in Leiden, and the University Library in Cam-
bridge, and individuals all over the world, the major research centers and
documentation repositories, and the schools specialized in paleography and
codicology include (alphabetical order of countries) (Austria) the Kommis-
sion für Byzantinistik of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaft in
Vienna; (Belgium) the Cabinet des manuscrits at the Bibliothèque royale,
which is also the head-quarter of Scriptorium, and the Société des Bollandistes,
325 Codicology and Paleography

“dedicated to the critical study of hagiography,” in Brussels; at the Flemish-

speaking University of Louvain, the Series Graeca of the Corpus Christianorum;
(Canada) Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto; (France) the
Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance of the Collège de France, the
Institut de Recheches et d’Histoire des Textes of the French CNRS, and the
Ecole des Chartes in Paris; (Germany) the Aristoteles Archiv at the Freie
Universität Berlin, and the Teuchos Center at the University of Hamburg;
(Greece) the Center for History and Paleography of the Morfôtikê Idruma tês
Ethnikês Trapezês Ellados (Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of
Greece) in Athens, directed by Agamemnon Tselikas; (Italy and Vatican
City) the Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Diplomatica e Archivistica in Vati-
can City; the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari, and, at the Faculty
of Philosophy and Letters, the Department of Studies on Medieval Societies
and Cultures (Dipartimento di studi sulle società e culture del medioevo),
unit of paleography, both at the University “La Sapienza,” in Rome, and the
Monastery of Cassino, and the University of Cassino.
In the United States, several libraries have extensive holdings in manu-
scripts (not necessarily Greek; for an ongoing catalogue of Greek manu-
scripts, see Kavrus-Hoffmann, “Catalogue of Greek Medieval and Renais-
sance Manuscripts in the Collections of the United States of America …”
[above]), complemented with large filmotheques of microfilms and substan-
tial collections of secondary literature. Among the prominent collections,
one could quote the following (alphabetical order of cities) (Chicago, Illi-
nois) Newberry Library; (Collegeville, Minnesota) Hill Monastic Library
(specialized in “creation and preservation of manuscript images”); (New
Haven, Connecticut, Yale University) Beinecke Library; (New York, New
York) Columbia University and the Morgan Library; (Notre Dame, Indiana)
Notre Dame University, which owns a large collection of microfilms of
manuscripts of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milano (see Gabriel L. Astrik
(1907–2005), A Summary Catalogue of Microfilms of One Thousand Scientific Man-
uscripts in The Ambrosian Library, Milan, 1968); (Saint Louis, Missouri) Vatican
Film Library at Saint Louis University, which holds an extensive collection of
microfilm reproductions of manuscripts of the Vatican Library; (Washing-
ton, District of Columbia) Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies
whose library (149,000 volumes) is complemented by a unique collection of
images, including of manuscripts. Many of these research centers offer com-
petitive grants and support for research.
Besides the many collections published by the several research centers
and institutions above, the major journals in the field are (alphabetical order
of titles) Codices Manuscripti, Zeitschrift für Handschriftenkunde, started in 1975,
Codicology and Paleography 326

with a series of supplements beginning in 2009; Manuscripta, from 1957

edited by the Vatican Film Library; Scripta-An International Journal of Codicology
and Palaeography, launched in 2008; Scriptorium (above); Scrittura e Civiltà,
1977–2001, which was a major journal for the cultural dimension of book
history. There is also now a magazine devoted to manuscript studies aiming
at a wider audience: Alumina: Pagine illuminate. Publication started in 2003
and is quarterly. Lavishly illustrated articles usually deal with a specific
manuscript, a collection or also a spectacular restoration, and are authored
by specialists of the argument. Each issue contains a presentation of a pub-
lishing company specialized in facsimiles and/or an antiquarian bookseller.
A group of scholars specialized in Greek paleography and codicology
have formed in 1981 the so-called “Comité International de Paléographie
Grecque (CIPG)”. In 1953, a “Comité international de paléographie” was
founded, which changed its name in 1985 and became the “Comité inter-
national de paléographie latine.” Members of the CIPG are 20 maximum;
new members are elected by current members upon nomination by one of
them. The Comité has taken over the task of overseeing the series of confer-
ences started in 1974 and held every five years (above). There is also an Associ-
ation Paléographique Internationale: Culture, Ecriture, Société (APICES), open to
“everyone interested in the scholarly study of the history of writing …, books
and documents, both in their physical aspects and in their contents, the per-
sons and institutions connected with making, using and keeping books.”

N. Recent and New Directions of Research and Ideas

In recent years, some new initiatives have been developed, which capitalize
on the activity of the last decades and go beyond, opening new avenues
for productive research. Some of these new directions and ideas are listed
here (alphabetical order of major themes; within the sections, chronological
order of publication): (comparative studies and material for com-
parative studies) Recherches de codicologie comparée: La composition du codex au
Moyen Âge, en Orient et en Occident, ed. Philippe Hoffmann, 1998; Adam
Gacek, The Arabic Manuscript Tradition: A Glossary of Technical Terms and Bibli-
ography, 2001 with a Supplement, 2008; Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture
and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 2007; (computerization of paleographi-
cal analysis) Peter A. Stokes, “Palaeography and Image-Processing: Some
Solutions and Problems,” Digital Medievalist 3 (2007–2008), available online
at: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/3/stokes; (computerized
modelization of stemmatic relationships) Caroline Macé, Thomas
Schmidt, and Jean-François Weiler, “Le classement des manuscrits par la
statistique et la phylogénétique: Les cas de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Basile
327 Codicology and Paleography

le Minime,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 31 (2001): 243–76; Philippe Baret,

Marc Dubuisson, Anne-Catherine Lantin, and Caroline Macé, “Experi-
mental Phylogenetic Analysis of a Greek Manuscript Tradition,” Journal of the
Washington Academy of Sciences 89 (2003): 117–24; Marc Dubuisson, and Ca-
roline Macé, “Handling a Large Manuscript Tradition with a Computer,”
Caroline Macé, and Philippe Baret, “Why Phylogenetic Methods Work:
The Theory of Evolution and Textual Criticism,” and Philippe V. Baret,
Caroline Macé, Peter Robinson et al., “Testing Methods on an Artificially
Created Textual Tradition,” The Evolution of Texts: Confronting Stemmatological
and Genetical Methods. Proceedings of the International Workshop held in Louvain-la-
Neuve on September 1–2, 2004, ed. Caroline Macé, Philippe Baret, and Andrea
Bozzi, 2006, 25–37, 89–108, and 255–283 respectively; (digital recon-
struction of manuscripts) virtual reconstruction of the Codex Sinaitius
(above) whose folios are currently preserved at Saint Catherine Monastery in
the Sinai, Leipzig (University Library), London (British Library), and Moscow
(National Library of Russia): http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en; (digital re-
production of manuscripts on CD) Historia plantarum: Erbe, oro e medicina nei
codici medievali, 3 vols., 2002; reproduction on CD-ROM of manuscript Rome,
Biblioteca Casanatense, 459, with a volume of commentary edited by Vera
Segre Rutz, and a volume with the transcription and Italian trans. of
the text; (digital reproduction of manuscripts online) several models of
presentation and delivery of digital images are currently developed; here
are some examples: Codices Electronici Sangallenses (CESG): http://www.cesg.
unifr.ch: digital reproduction of the manuscripts in the Stiftsbibliothek
of St. Gallen; Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image (SCETI): http://sceti.
library.upenn.edu/ljs: digital catalogue and reproduction of the private col-
lection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg; the digitization, Web site and on-line con-
sulation of the manuscripts is made in collaboration with the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Teuchos Repository of the Teuchos
Center, University of Hamburg and Aristotle Archiv, Freie Universität Berlin;
the Repository will offer a digital version of selected manuscripts, together
with all the relevant information on such codices; as of July 2009, a catalo-
graphic description and digital reproduction of manuscript Berlin, Staats-
bibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Hamilton 512 is available: http://
beta.teuchos.uni-hamburg.de/teuchosclient2/home.seam; the Turkish Min-
istry of Culture has launched a large project to digitize manuscripts (in
Turkish and/or Arabic) currently preserved in libraries in Turkey, as well
as in libraries across the world (for example, the Vatican Library): https://
www.yazmalar.gov.tr/index.php?dill=eng. Access is upon registration; im-
ages need to be ordered and are delivered via email for a very small fee; (early
Codicology and Paleography 328

medieval book) Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A His-
tory of Early Christian Texts, 1995; Dorothy Verkerk, Early Medieval Bible Il-
lumination and the Ashburnam Pentateuch, 2004; Anthony Grafton, and
Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Euse-
bius, and the Library of Caesarea, 2006; Megan Halle Williams, The Monk and the
Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship, 2006; (fragments of
manuscripts in bindings) Franca Petrucci Nardelli, Legatura e scrittura:
Testi celati, messagi velati, annunci palesi, 2007; (gender) Katrin Graf, Bildnisse
schreibender Frauen im Mittelalter 9. bis Anfang 13. Jahrhundert, 2002; Cynthia
J. Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents in Late Medieval Germany, 2009; (lab-
oratory analysis of manuscripts) Nikolaos Poulakakis, Agamamnon
Tselikas, Ianis Bitsakis, Moysis Mylonas, and Petros Lymberakis,
“Does the Molecular Analysis Shed Light on the Origin of the Ancient Greek
Manuscripts?” Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007): 675–80; Nikolaos
Poulakakis, Agamenon Tselikas, Ianis Bitsakis, Moysis Mylonas, Pet-
ros Lymberakis, “Ancient DNA and the Genetic Signature of Ancient Greek
Manuscripts,” Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007): 675–80; (margins)
Howard J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books, 2001; Camille Mi-
chael, Images dans les marges: Aux limites de l’art médiéval, 1997; Maurizio Fio-
rilla, Marginalia figurati nei codici di Petrarca, 2004; Scientia in margine: Etudes
sur les marginalia dans les manuscrits scientifiques du moyen âge à la Renaissance, ed.
Danielle Jacquart, and Charles Burnett, 2005; Kathleen McNamée,
Annotations in Greek and Latin texts from Egypt, 2007; (mathematical modeliz-
ation of manuscript destruction/preservation) Sharon Larimer, and
Florence Eliza Glaze, “How Science Survived: Medieval Manuscripts as
Fossils”, and John L. Cisne, “How Science Survived: Medieval Manu-
scripts’ “Demography” and Classical Texts’ Extinction,” Science 307 (2005):
1208–1209 and 1305–1307 respectively; (online catalogues of manu-
scripts) the Greek Index Project originally located at the Pontifical Institute
of Medieaeval Studies in Toronto and managed by Robert E. Sinkewicz
(above) has been transferred in 1993 to the Institut de Recherche et d’His-
toire des Textes of the French CNRS and transformed into the database
PINAKES: Textes et manuscrits grecs, which has been recently (September 2008)
made available on-line (http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr); (palimpsests) Rinasci-
mento Virtuale: Digitale Palimpsestforchung, Rediscovering written records of a
hidden European cultural heritage, 2002; Dieter Harlfinger, “Palimpsest,” Re-
ligion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 6, 2003, 837; Dieter Harlfinger, Carl
Wolfram Brunschön, and Maria Vasiloudi, “Die griechischen medizi-
nischen Palimpseste (mit Beispielen ihrer digitalen Lektüre),” Ärzte und ihre
Interpreten: Medizinische Fachtexte der Antike als Forschungsgegenstand der Klas-
329 Codicology and Paleography

sischen Philologie, 2006, 143–64; El palimpsesto grecolatino como fenómeno librario

y textual, ed. Angel Escobar Chico, 2006; (reconstruction [virtual] of
dispersed libraries) reconstruction of the library of Matthias Corvinus
(1443–1490), king of Hungary (1458), duke of Austria (1486), and king of
Bohemia (1468); the project Bibliotheca Corviniana Digitalis (BCD) aims to list-
ing and digitizing the volumes of the library: http://www.corvina.oszk.hu;
(scientific manuscripts) Linda Ehrsam Voigts, and Patricia Deery Kurtz,
Electronic Thorndike Kibre (eTK) and Electronic Voigts Kurtz (eVK), 20 August 2004;
Alain Touwaide, “Byzantine Medical Manuscripts: Toward a New Cata-
logue,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 101 (2008): 199–208; id., “Byzantine Medical
Manuscripts: Towards a New Catalogue, with a Specimen for an Annotated
Checklist of Manuscripts Based on an Index of Diels’ Catalogue,” Byzantion
79 [2009]: 435–595; (themes in illustrations) Janet Backhouse, Medieval
Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter, 2000; Ead., Medieval Birds in the Shelborne Missal,
2001; Sophie Page, Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts, 2002; Alixe Bovey,
Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts, 2002; Pamela Porter, Courtly
Love in Medieval Manuscripts, 2003; Justin Clegg, The Medieval Church in Manu-
scripts, 2003; (medical miracles) Deirdre Jackson, Marvelous to Behold: Mir-
acles in Medieval Manuscripts, 2007; (medicine) Peter Murray Jones, Medieval
Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 1998; (writing in bilingual context)
Paolo Radiciotti, “Il problema del digrafismo nei rapporti fra scrittura
latina e greca nel medioevo,” Nea Rômê 3 (2006): 5–55.

Select Bibliography
Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeograhy: A Bibliograhic Introduction (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1984); Charles-Moïse Briquet, Les filigranes: Dictionnaire
historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 16002, 4 vols. (Leizpig:
Karl W. Hiersemann, 1923); Paul Canart, Paleografia e codicologia greca: Una rassegna bi-
bliografica (Vatican City: Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Diplomatica e Archivistica,
1991); Alphonse Dain, Les manuscrits3 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1975); Dieter Harlfin-
ger, Griechische Kodikologie und Textüberlieferung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, 1980); I manoscritti greci tra riflessione e dibattito: Atti del V Colloquio Inter-
nazionale di Paleografia Greca (Cremona, 1998), ed. Giancarlo Prato, 3 vols. (Florence:
Gonelli, 2000); Jean Irigoin, “La datation par les filigranes du papier,” Codicologica 5
(1980): 9–36; Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten 800–1600 (Vienna: Österreichische
Akademie der Wissenschaften), 3 parts published so far; part 1: Ernst Gamillscheg,
Dieter Harlfinger, and Herbert Hunger (vol. 2), Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Gross-
britaniens, 3 vols., 1981; part 2: Id., Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Frankreichs und Nach-
träge zu den Bibliotheken Grossbritaniens, 3 vols., 1989; part 3: Ernst Gamillscheg, and
Herbert Hunger (vol. 2), in collaboration with Dieter Harlfinger, and Paolo Eleu-
teri, Handschriften aus Biblioheken Roms mit dem Vatikan, 3 vols., 1997.

Alain Touwaide
Communication in Medieval Studies 330

Communication in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
All human interaction, including transportation, labor, art, currency, sales,
religious services, and literature can be defined as communication because
they connect people. A narrow definition, however, would limit communi-
cation to an exchange via human language, either through spoken words in
some kind of syntactical sequence so as to create signs, images, and actions,
or gestures with the purpose of establishing meaning relevant for both sides.
Even performance, including dance, posture, and other body movements,
can serve the purpose of communication. Communication has been of cen-
tral importance for all human societies throughout time (Christof Bäumle,
“Kommunikation/Kommunikationswissenschaft,” Theologische Realenzyklo-
pädie, vol. XIX, 1990, 384–402), and so also in the Middle Ages, insofar as it
establishes structure, community, and institutions, such as the court, or the
Catholic Church (Peter Strohschneider, “Institutionalität,” Literarische
Kommunikation und soziale Interaktion, ed. id., Beate Kellner, and Ludger
Lieb, 2001, 1–26). Communication as practiced in the Middle Ages has been
preserved through manuscripts, but also in a more abstract fashion through
illustrations, paintings, sculptures, tapestry, and other objects. Wherever we
turn, we observe the preeminence of human language as the crucial instru-
ment to establish, maintain, and protect the social community predicated on
a firm set of rules, values, morals, ethics, and ideals (or, of course, to destroy
it, depending on the individual strategies and interests, see Convaincre et per-
suader: Communication et propagande aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Martin Aurell,
2007). Laws, common rules regarding human interaction, contracts, but also
literary documents, chronicles, and gnomic texts encapsulate the petrified
oral communication carried out in the past. Medieval documents provide
a rich panoply of references to communication, either oral (dialogue),
written (letters), or a combination thereof, such as through messengers who
delivered oral reports and letters (Albrecht Classen, “Female Epistolary Lit-
erature from Antiquity to the Present,” Studia Neophilologica 60 [1988]: 3–13;
Martin Camargo, The Middle English Verse Love Epistle, 1991; Gespräche – Boten –
Briefe, ed. Horst Wenzel, 1997; see also the entries on letters and letter col-
lections in this Handbook). But as we know from our own time, communi-
cation has always been prone to failure or to suffer from numerous shortcom-
ings, which has continually led to countless conflicts throughout history.
In fact, good communication might well be defined as the basic approach to
combat violence, both on a personal and a public level (William T. H. Jack-
331 Communication in Medieval Studies

son, “Problems of Communication in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes,”

Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies, ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Ro-
senberg, 1970, 39–50; Albrecht Classen, “Kommunikation: Mittelalter,”
Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher, 1993, 370–90;
2nd ed. 2008, 424–47).

B. Oral Communication
It is generally assumed, and has often been documented for individual cases,
that the early Middle Ages were characterized by orality because only a small
percentage of people were literate. Only the high Middle Ages, but especially
the late Middle Ages, witness the growth of literacy, both within the world of
the cities and also at the courts (Eric A. Havelock, Origins of Western Literacy,
1976; Michael Thomas Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 1979; Franz
Bäuml, “Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,”
Speculum 55 [1980]: 237–65; John Miles Foley, Oral-Formulaic Theory and
Research, 1985). We can identify oral communication as it took place in the
past only through indirect sources, but research on “oral poetry” has un-
earthed numerous approaches to this fascinating and fruitful field of inves-
tigations (Michael Curschmann, “Oral Poetry in Mediaeval English,
French, and German Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research,” Speculum
42 [1967]: 36–52; D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading, 1994). Political
and military operations throughout the Middle Ages were determined, as in
other periods, by communicative approaches, both successful and unsuccess-
ful, either establishing a harmonious community or leading to violence and
disruption (Word, Image, Number: Communication in the Middle Ages, ed. John J.
Contreni and Santa Casciani, 2002). Functioning communication has
always been fundamental for peace, whereas the opposite resulted in war
(Albrecht Hagenlocher, Der guote vride, 1992; Stefan Hohmann, Friedens-
konzepte, 1992; Peace and Negotiation, ed. Diane Wolfethal, 2000; Writing
War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, ed. Corinne J. Saunders et al.,
2004). Moreover, communication determines the relationship between rep-
resentatives of many different social groups, such as between men and
women, old people and young people, parents and children, rulers and their
subjects, merchants and their customers, lords and their farmers, priests and
their flock, local authorities and criminals, teachers and students, architects
and masons, doctors and their patients, etc. (Sophia Menach, The Vox Dei,
1990; Dialoge: sprachliche Kommunikation in und zwischen Texten im deutschen Mit-
telalter, ed. Nikolaus Henkel et al., 2003).
All these documents reflect specific forms of communication and also
constituted elements of the general communication process that experi-
Communication in Medieval Studies 332

enced a dramatic paradigm shift in the 12th century when a sudden increase
of literacy at various social levels occurred (Peter Dinzelbacher, Europa im
Hochmittelalter 1050–1250, 2003). In this sense, most, if not practically all,
fields within the Humanities dealing with the Middle Ages have been con-
cerned with the question of communication because everything pertaining
to humans can be translated into a signal, which in turn translates into a
basic communicative element (Kommunikation und Alltag in Spätmittelalter und
Früher Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Hundsbichler, 1991).

C. Religious Communication
Mystical visions, prayers, and other religious texts reflect the attempt by
individuals to establish communication with the divine (Peter Dinzel-
bacher, Mittelalterliche Frauenmystik, 1992; Volksreligion im hohen und späten
Mittelalter, ed. id. and Dieter R. Bauer, 1990; Karl A. Keller, Communi-
cation avec l’ultime, 1987; Margarete Hubrath, Schreiben und Erinnern, 1996;
Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, 1995), whereas sermons and peni-
tentiaries represent the practical efforts by clerics to communicate with their
flock (G. R. Oust, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 1933; Michel Zink,
La prédication en langue romane avant 1300, 1976; Franco Morenzoni, “Les
prédicateurs et leurs langues à la fin du moyen âge,” Zwischen Babel und Pfing-
sten, ed. Peter von Moos, 2008, 501–17). The vast number of medieval ser-
mons informs us in most impressive terms how the authoritative institution
of the Church struggled hard to reach out to its parishes and to offer instruc-
tion, guidance, information, education, and teaching, not to mention the
most important function, spiritual support (Aaron Gurevich, Historical
Anthropology of the Middle Ages, orig. 1981, Engl. trans. 1992; D. L. d’Avray,
The Preaching of the Friars, 1985; Daniel R. Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Flo-
rence, 1989; De ore Domini, ed. Thomas L. Amos et al., 1989).

D. Military Communication
On the other hand, numerous accounts of military conflicts and a plethora of
other violent interactions provide insights into the enormous difficulties
characterizing human interaction and communication throughout time,
and so in the Middle Ages (Roger D. Sell, Literature as Communication, 2000;
Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004). In this
sense, medieval knighthood can be described both as an expression of suc-
cessful communication within the social group for the purpose of defense
and self-identification, or self-representation, and also as the result of failed
communication with the outside world, such as in the case of the Crusades
(Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, 1953;
333 Communication in Medieval Studies

José María Gárate Córdoba, Espiritu e milicia en la España medieval, 1967;

Maurice Hugh Keen, Chivalry, 1984). For instance, only those military oper-
ations in the Crusades achieved their goals and intentions if there was inter-
nal organization and efficient communication among the members of the
mostly diverse armies. A peaceful crusade, organized by Frederick II, on the
other hand, was possible because of his outstanding communicative skills
that allowed him to reach out to the Sultan, Al-Kamil, with whom he negoti-
ated a long-term armistice and the return of the demilitarized Jerusalem to
the Christians (Ulrich Müller, “Friedrich II.,” Herrscher, Helden, Heilige, ed.
id. and Werner Wunderlich, 1996, 197–212), though this led to severe
conflicts with the papacy (John Phillip Lomax, “Frederick II,” Medieval Chris-
tian Perceptions of Islam, ed. John Victor Tolan, 1996, 175–97). One of many
communicative systems within the world of knighthood was the use of coats
of arms, shields, and other elements signaling personal identity and social
status in a world where weapons speak the loudest and traditional communi-
cation with words takes a back-seat. Heraldry, in other words, was also an ex-
tremely important vehicle for non-verbal communication (see, for instance,
Gustav A. Seyler, Geschichte der Heraldik, 1885; Evan John Jones, Medieval
Heraldry, 1983; Giacomo C. Bascapè and Marcello Del Piazzo, Insegne e sim-
boli, 1983; Stephen Friar, A New Dictionary of Heraldry, 1987; Michel Pas-
toureau, Les armoiries, 1998; Waltraud Gut, Schwarz auf weiß, 2000; and
Ludwig Biewer, Wappen als Träger von Kommunikation im Mittelalter, 2003).
Vol. 11 of the journal Das Mittelalter, ed. by the “Deutsche Mediaevistenver-
band” (2006), was dedicated to the idea of coats of arms as vehicles for com-
munication (Wappen als Zeichen) (see further the entry on “Heraldry” by Heiko
Hartmann in this Handbook).

E. Symbolic Communication
Especially the early Middle Ages, a time characterized by wide-spread illiter-
acy, witnessed the emergence of a whole apparatus of ritual symbols, as Geof-
frey Koziol (Begging Pardon and Favor, 1992), Klaus Schreiner (“Texte,
Bilder, Rituale,” Bilder, Texte, Rituale, ed. id. and G. Signori, 2000, 1–15) and
Gerd Althoff (Die Macht der Rituale, 2003; id., Inszenierte Herrschaft, 2003),
among others, have demonstrated. Symbolic communication implies the use
of gestures, objects, clothing, and performance because words prove to be in-
capable of relaying the complex set of information within a political, relig-
ious, but also amatory context. It also substitutes for the writing process that
became more widespread not until the 12th century (Gabriele Raudszus,
Die Zeichensprache der Kleidung, 1985). The considerable body of heroic epics,
byzantine bridal quest narratives, religious tales, and charms indicate the
Communication in Medieval Studies 334

predominance of oral cultures in the early period. This might explain the
interest of the Church in these text genres because they served well as com-
municative channels to address their flock, to utilize their communicative
strategies, and to establish a common, because symbolic language (Giselle de
Nie, “Text, Symbol and ‘Oral Culture’ in the Sixth-Century Church,” Medi-
aevistik 9 [1996]: 115–33; Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung, 2002,
1–52). By the 11th century, however, as Patrick Geary underscores, a new in-
terest in written documents emerged among the learned, which profoundly
transformed the nature and performance of communication (Phantoms of Re-
membrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium, 1994; see also
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 1983; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory
to Written Record, 1993; Communicatie in de Middeleeuwen, ed. Marco Mos-
tert, 1995). In most cases, however, communication operates with numer-
ous different elements, incorporating oral, written, symbolic, and deictic el-
ements (Werner Faulstich, Medien und Öffentlichkeit im Mittelalter 800–1400,
1996). C. Stephen Jaeger has explained this paradigm shift as the result of
the disappearance of charismatic teachers at the cathedral schools and their
substitution through the written book and disputational learning (Envy of
Angels, 1994).

F. Types of Communication
As Verena Epp has outlined, communication includes: 1. written documents,
such as contracts, and correspondence; 2. embassies; 3. oaths; 4. gifts and
tributes; 5. hostages; 6. marriage between dynasties; 7. personal contacts be-
tween the contract partners, along with festive means (“Rituale Frühmittel-
alterlicher ‘Amicitia’,” Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im
Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Althoff, 2001, 11–24). In the same volume, Matthias
Becher (“Cum lacrimis et gemitu,” 25–52) examined the communicative func-
tion of shedding of tears by victors or the defeated as symbolic language,
which finds its perhaps best expression in the heroic epic Diu Klage (Albrecht
Classen, “Trauer müssen sie tragen,” Ostbairische Grenzmarken 41 [1995]:
51–68). Klaus Schreiner studied the nature of the ritual performance of
walking with bare feet that signaled the person’s willingness to submit him/
herself under the Church’s authority in order to gain penance (“Nudis pedibus:
Barfüssigkeit als religiöses und politisches Ritual,” ibid., 53–124). Accord-
ing to Gerd Althoff, in an article also included in this volume (“Die Verän-
derbarkeit von Ritualen im Mittelalter,” [2001, 157–76]), religious rituals
might have been performed unchangeably throughout times, whereas rit-
uals in the political arena underwent countless transformations and were
constantly adapted to the demands of the respective circumstances. He em-
335 Communication in Medieval Studies

phasizes that the semi-oral world of medieval society heavily relied on both
the ritual/performance and on the written record to certify the validity of the
intended purposes (see also Michael Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im
Mittelalter, 1979; Michel Banniard, Viva voce, 1992; and the contributions to
Vox intexta, ed. A. N. Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack, 1991; Enrico
Artifoni, “Sull’eloquenza politica nel Duecento italiano,” Quaderni medi-
evali 35 [1993]: 174–75). Similar observations have already been developed
by Dietmar Peil in his Die Gebärde bei Chrétien, Hartmann und Wolfram (1975),
by the contributors to Höfische Literatur, Hofgesellschaft, höfische Lebensformen um
1200 (ed. Gert Kaiser and Jan-Dirk Müller, 1986), Harald Haferland
(Höfische Interaktion, 1989), Martin Schubert (Zur Theorie des Gebarens im Mit-
telalter, 1991), and Jan-Dirk Müller (Spielregeln für den Untergang, 1998). We
also need to consider negative types of communication, especially in cases of
lying, deception, cheating, falsifying, and misrepresentation, as Umberto
Eco argued in his Theory of Semiotics (1976) and, together with Constantino
Marmo, in his On the Medieval Theory of Signs (1989 [orig. 1972]), which are
discussed both in the Latin exempla literature and in the wide range of short
verse and prose narratives in the vernacular. More profoundly, many late-an-
tique and medieval theologians, beginning with St. Augustine, examined
the meaning of lying in its theological and communicative significance (Gre-
gor Müller, Die Wahrhaftigkeitspflicht und die Problematik der Lüge, 1962; Arno
Baruzzi, Philosophie der Lüge, 1996).

G. Ritual and Gesture as Communication

Sociolinguists, such as Adam Kendon, have explicitly underscored that
all bodily actions that serve to convey meaning are communicative, such as
gestures and ritual. Adam Kendon identifies gesture as the “visible action
as utterance” (Gesture, 2004). Marc Bloch already emphasized that feudal
society was highly ritualized and relied more on gestures and spoken words
than on the written record (La société féodale, 1939). But Jean-Claude Schmitt
has warned us not to distinguish schematically the “gestural” culture” from
the “literate” culture, though the communicative codes of gestures could
easily change from one social group to another, but they played the most
significant role within the monastic communities, as perhaps best reflected
by Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Institutio novitiorum (Schmitt, “The Rationale of
Gestures in the West,” A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Her-
man Roodenburg, 1991, 57–70). Following these approaches, recent
scholarship has deepened our understanding of gesture and ritual in medi-
eval literature. For instance, parallel approaches inform the studies by Co-
rinna Dörrich (Poetik des Rituals, 2002) and Christiane Witthöft (Ritual
Communication in Medieval Studies 336

und Text, 2004), the former placing the emphasis on the performance of
political actions, whereas the latter focusing on the mode of symbolic com-
munication as reflected in German historiographical writing and literature
from the late Middle Ages. But Will Hasty also deserves to be mentioned for
his collection of articles in the volume Art of Arms that deals with aggression
and dominance in medieval German courtly literature (2002), indirectly
media for communication as well. One of the most powerful examples of
misunderstood ritual, or at least of how to respond to the ritual, can be found
in Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval and in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, re-
spectively, which leads to a collapse of the communicative community (Jesse
M. Gellrich, Discourse and Dominion in the Fourteenth Century, 1995; Albrecht
Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung, 2002). Very important for all societies,
and so in the Middle Ages, was the ability to command the language or code
of gestures, as most courtly romances, but also courtly love poems, and other
genres demonstrate in multiple fashion (for Middle High German literature,
see Martin J. Schubert, Zur Theorie des Gebarens im Mittelalter, 1991; for
Middle English and Italian literature, see John Anthony Burrow, Gestures
and Looks in Medieval Narrative, 2002).

H. Public Communication
One remarkable example, carefully studied first by Heinrich Fichtenau
(Lebensordnungen des 10. Jahrhunderts, 1984; but see also his Mensch und Schrift
im Mittelalter, 1946), then by Klaus Schreiner, was the function of the
kiss on the mouth as a public sign of a peaceful relationship (“Er küsse mich
mit dem Kuß seines Mundes,” Höfische Repräsentation, ed. Hedda Ragotzky
and Horst Wenzel, 1990, 89–132). Along the same lines, Horst Fuhrmann
analyzed the symbolic functions of greetings at public events in the Middle
Ages (“‘Willkommen und Abschied’,” Mittelalter: Annäherungen an eine fremde
Zeit, ed. Wilfried Hartmann, 1993, 111–39). Most remarkably, as Gustav
Ehrismann had discovered in a lengthy article (“Duzen und Ihrzen im
Mittelalter,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortforschung 1 [1901]: 117–49; 2 [1902]:
118–59; 5 [1903–1904]: 127–76, 177–220), in Old High German literature
the use of the second person singular “du” (you) was common even among
members of different social ranks, whereas in Middle High German litera-
ture the difference was expressed with the second person plural “Ihr” (you)
for the lord and “du” for the lower-ranking subject, and by the late Middle
Ages with “Euer Gnaden” (Your Honor) (see now Thomas Behrmann,
“Zum Wandel der öffentlichen Anrede im Spätmittelalter,” Formen und
Funktionen, 2001, 291–317). In this regard, ambassadors and legates deter-
mined much of public communication, connecting the various kingdoms
337 Communication in Medieval Studies

and the papacy, cities and the empire (see Wilhelm Janssen, Die päpstlichen
Legaten vom Schisma Anaklets II. bis zum Tode Coelestius II. (1130–1198), 1961;
Johannes Bachmann, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Deutschland und Skandinavien
(1125–1159), 1965 (orig. 1913); Donald E. Queller, The Office of Ambassador
in the Middle Ages, 1967; Hans Ollendiek, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 1976;
Theodor Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 1976, Christina Lutter,
Politische Kommunikation an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, 1998, etc.).
Interestingly, even the process of canonizing a holy person served exceed-
ingly well for the establishment of intense communication channels, see
Christian Krötzl, “Fama sanctitatis: Die Akten der spätmittelalterlichen
Kanonisationsprozesse als Quelle zu Kommunikation und Informations-
vermittlung in der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft” (Procès de Canonisation
au Moyen Âge: Aspectsjuridiques et religieux, ed. Gabor Klaniczay, 2004,
223–44).

I. Communication as Strategy
Political performance also served, quite naturally, the purpose of propa-
ganda, which heavily relied on, or was determined by, the skillful use of com-
municative strategies, as Donald A. Bullough (Games People Payed, 1974),
Janet L. Nelson (“Ritual and Reality in the Early Medieval Ordines,” ed.
Derek Baker, The Materials, Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, 1975,
41–51), and David A. Warner (“Henry II at Magdeburg,” Early Medieval
Europe 3 [1994]: 135–66) have demonstrated (see also Convaincre et persuader:
Communication et propagande aux XII et XIIIe siècles, ed. Martin Aurell, 2007).
Jean Claude Schmitt confirmed these observations in his study La raison des
gestes dans l’occident médiéval (1989), whereas Jeffrey Chipps Smith argued
that tapestries could also function for the same purpose (“Portable Propa-
ganda: Tapestries as Princely Metaphors at the Courts of Philip the Good and
Charles the Bold,” Art Journal 48 [1989]: 123–29). See also the excellent collec-
tion of articles ed. by Martin Aurell, Convaincre et persuader: Communication et
propagande aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (2007), that focus on propaganda, communi-
cation, collection of information, transmission and alteration of memory,
and visual aspects of propaganda in the high Middle Ages. By the same
token, throughout the Middle Ages numerous efforts to bridge conflicts
failed for many different reasons, hence leading to a collapse of the com-
municative efforts and internal harmony, as Gerd Althoff (“Demonstra-
tion und Inszenierung,” Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalters, 1997 [1989],
229–57) and Werner Goetz, “Canossa als deditio?,” Studien zur Geschichte des
Mittelalters: Jürgen Petersohn zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Matthias Thumser et al.,
2000, 92–99) have pointed out. Ceremonies, such as a ruler’s official entry
Communication in Medieval Studies 338

into a city (adventus ceremony; see Gerrit Jasper Schenk, “Enter the Em-
peror: Charles IV and Siena Between Politics, Diplomacy, and Ritual [1355
and 1368],” Renaissance Studies: Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies 20.2
[2006]: 161–79), or religious processions, also belonged to the vast field of
symbolic communication (Karl Leyser, Communication and Power, 1990; Zere-
moniell als höfische Ästhetik in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Jörg Jochen
Berns and Thomas Rahn, 1995; Gerrit Jasper Schenk, Zeremoniell und Poli-
tik, 2003). According to Adam J. Kosto (Making Agreements in Medieval Catalo-
nia, 2001), we could also identify commercial contacts as important elements
of mercantile, and furthermore as cultural and political communication.

J. Honor and Gift Giving

Honor, once compromised or damaged, could not be easily recovered, lead-
ing to profound conflicts in the political communication, as the contributors
to Verletzte Ehre: Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neu-
zeit (ed. Klaus Schreiner and Gerd Schwerhoff, 1995) demonstrated
(see also George Fenwick Jones, Honor in German Literature, 1959). The extent
to which gifts were accepted or rejected indicated the social status of the
respective other and the degree to which open communication dominated
their relationship (William C. McDonald, “‘Too softly a gift of treasure’,”
Euphorion 78 [1984]: 1–16; Knut Görich, “Geld und ‘Honor’,” Formen und
Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation, 2001, 177–200). In fact, the courtly
world fully acknowledged the value of gifts as a political gesture, as a com-
municative instrument, and as a symbol of legal, religious, and economic
commitment (contract), mostly requiring some kind of reciprocity both in
terms of value and also in terms of self-imposed modesty (Harald Hafer-
land, Höfische Interaktion, 1988, 150–59). The Irish knight Gandin in
Gottfried von Strasbourg’s Tristan, for instance, inordinately demands Isolde
as the reward for his playing music, thereby painfully betraying the basic
courtly values of the communicative gift-giving principle (Hugo Bekker,
Gottfried von Strassburg’s ‘Tristan’, 1987, 191–92). The same conflict, or break-
down of symbolic communication also occurs in the Saga and in Sir Tristrem,
but not in Eilhart of Oberg’s Tristrant, though we observe it again in the vari-
ous Lancelot romances (Rosemary Norah Combridge, Das Recht im ‘Tristan’
Gottfrieds von Straßburg, 1964, 123ff.; see also Irmgard Gephart, Geben und
Nehmen im “Nibelungenlied” und in Wolframs von Eschenbach “Parzival,” 1994).
Valentin Groebner, responding to the seminal anthropological work done
by Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, emphasized the political na-
ture of gift-giving, which was always a highly ambivalent and multivalent
operation (Gefährliche Geschenke, 2000; see also Medieval Transformations: Texts,
339 Communication in Medieval Studies

Power, and Gifts in Context, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong, 2001).
Nevertheless, gift-giving was fundamental and crucial for medieval society
because, as we might add, gifts have always served either as media of com-
munication or could have easily been misconstrued as instruments of black-
mail, extortion, or simple political and personal demands on the receiver.
Laws certainly regulated most medieval societies, but only gift-giving, on a
symbolic level, when predicated on altruistic, loving motifs, made human
coexistence truly possible because this process relied on voluntariness and
mutual respect, as the Italian cleric Thomasin von Zerclaere emphasized,
who wrote his didactic treatise Der Welsche Gast in Middle High German in
1215, addressing a wide range of values, strategies, and principles of human
coexistence (Haferland, 1988, 150–59).
This meta-language, determined by communicative symbolism, made
it possible for all public figures on the pan-European stage and considerably
beyond, as Janet Nelson has underscored (“Government and Rulers,” The
New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III, 1999, 95–129), to understand each
other within the world of curialitas (Curialitas, ed. Josef Fleckenstein,
1990). Its components consisted, as we have seen above, of symbols, rituals,
and rules, all determining either the behavior of members of social units
(family, tribe, kingdom) or of the heads of political territories, as William I.
Miller (Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 1990) has illustrated with respect to the
Icelandic sagas, whether we think of strategies of persuasion or harmonious
peacemaking, of aggressive exchanges or bloody warfare (Lars Lönnroth,
“Rhetorical Persuasion in the Sagas,” Scandinavian Studies 42 [1970]: 71–98;
Volker Roloff, Reden und Schweigen, 1973; Ulrich Baltzer, “Strategien der
Persuasion,” ZfdA 121 [1991]: 119–39).

K. Purpose and Effectiveness of Communication

On another level, as social historians have pointed out, the exchange of emo-
tions could also serve the global purpose of communication, such as anger,
sorrow, happiness, and moodiness (Dietmar Rieger, “‘E trait sos meillors
omes ab un consel’,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 114.4 [2001]: 628–50;
Anger’s Past, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein, 1998). Most recently, Irmgard
Gephart (Der Zorn der Nibelungen, 2005) emphasized the communicative
function of gestures of wrath, hatred, love, and lament within a heroic so-
ciety, such as the one portrayed in the Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200). Similar obser-
vations could be made with respect to Beowulf, the Chanson de Roland (also the
Rolandslied), and El Cid, wherever the protagonists resort to symbolic gestures
and mimicry to communicate their inner emotions and to exchange their
ideas and values with their compatriots (see, for instance, A Cultural History
Communication in Medieval Studies 340

of Gesture, ed. Jan N. Bremer and Herman Roodenburg, 1993; Horst

Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, Schrift und Bild, 1995, 138–42).
Insults and damage to honor could only be overcome through public
penance, gifts, negotiations, and contracts, as Gerd Althoff indicated
(Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter, 1997), all of which intimately pertained
to symbolic communication, most powerfully represented by the deditio, the
public submission under the Church or a worldly lord (Timothy Reuter,
“‘Velle sibi fieri in forma hac,’” Formen und Funktionen, 2001, 201–25). Robert
Jütte rightly identified this type of public communication as the semiotics
of the ruling class, whether we turn to the royalty and the courts, or to the
political situation in medieval cities (“Funktion und Zeichen: Zur Semiotik
herrschaftlicher Kommunikation in der Stadtgeschichte,” Anzeiger des germa-
nischen Nationalmuseums: und Berichte aus dem Forschungsinstitut für Realien-
kunde, 1993, 13–21; see also Karl-Heinz Spiess, “Kommunikationsformen
im Hochadel und am Königshof,” Formen und Funktionen, 2001, 261–90).
Words often proved to be not enough to establish peaceful relationships,
hence political communication had to be utilized to overcome profound
conflicts and to force an opposing group or individual to accept the other’s
submission, outreach, or implied messages. This problem emerged as a criti-
cal aspect especially in 14th-century philosophy with its deep “nominalist
climate,” when all human signs and all communicative efforts were
increasingly cast in deep ambivalence and ambiguity, as powerfully reflected
in the narrative works by Boccaccio, Juan Ruiz, and Geoffrey Chaucer
(N. S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love, 1996, 49). The need
to probe the relevance and meaning of human communication might have,
however, already gained in urgency and poignancy since the 13th century, as
Cesare Vasoli has argued (“La ‘crisi’ linguistica trecentesca,” Conciliarismo,
stati nazionali, inizi dell’Umanesimo, 1990, 245–63; see also Holly Wallace
Boucher, “Nominalism: The Difference for Chaucer and Boccaccio,” The
Chaucer Review 20 [1985/1986]: 213–20), if we don’t have to accept that people
have always lied, have always resorted to deceptive strategies, and so have
deliberately undermined the premises of the communication process for
their own purposes (Hans-Jürgen Bachorski, “Lügende Worte, verstellte
Körper, falsche Schrift,” Gespräche–Boten–Briefe, ed. Horst Wenzel, 1997,
344–64). In fact, as Karen K. Jambeck has recently suggested (“‘De parler
bon’ eloquence’: Words of Love in the Lais of Marie de France,” Words of Love
and Love of Words, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2007), the entire discourse of courtly
love, both in Latin and in the various vernaculars, was predicated on elo-
quence, hence on successful communication, as it is perhaps best illustrated
by the most theoretical, yet also highly ironic, text, Andreas Capellanus’s
341 Communication in Medieval Studies

De amore (Don A. Monson, Andreas Capellanus, 2005; Bonnie Wheeler, “The

‘Sic et Non’ of Andreas’s De Amore,” Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2008, 149–68).

L. Literature and Communication

As we have learned only recently, particularly medieval literary texts provide
intriguing insights into the wide range of communicative efforts among
people, whether we think of the numerous dialogues, speeches, discussions,
debates, but also letters (Christine Wand-Wittkowksi, Briefe im Mittelalter,
2000), gift exchanges, aggressive exchanges that determine much of medi-
eval heroic poetry, courtly romance, courtly love poetry, and didactic treat-
ises (Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung, 2002; Corinna Dörrich,
Poetik des Rituals, 2002; Christiane Witthöft, Ritual und Text, 2004). We
might even want to go so far as to identify some of the greatest accomplish-
ments of 12th- and 13th-century literature as having created new forums for
the establishment of communicative communities (Paul Zumthor, La poésie
et la voix dans la civilisation médiévale, 1984; C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins
of Courtliness, 1985; for a survey, see Marco Mostert, “Lezen, schrijven
en geletterdheid,” Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 28, 2 [2002]: 203–21). By
contrast, late-medieval literature, though still predicated on the under-
standing of the profound relevance of human communication, indicates a
growing realization how easily this community could break apart. For in-
stance, Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350), Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
(ca. 1395–1400), Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring (ca. 1400), and Christine de
Pizan’s La Cité de dames (1405) illustrate the drastic consequences if people fail
to establish harmonious, constructive relationships through communicative
operations (for a detailed study of Boccaccio’s Decameron, now see Ursula
Kocher, Boccaccio und die deutsche Novellistik, 2005). Powerful echoes of this
thematic interest (Albrecht Classen, “Wort und Gemeinschaft: Sprachliche
Apokalypse in Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring,” Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolken-
stein Gesellschaft 8 [1994/1995]: 141–57; Wim Blockmans, “The Feeling of
Being Oneself,” Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle
Ages, ed. Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse, 1999, 1–16; Speaking in the
Medieval World, ed. Jean E. Godsall-Myers, 2003; Peter Dinzelbacher,
Europa im Hochmittelalter, 1050–1250, 2003; Elizabeth C. Zegura, “True
Stories and Alternative Discourses,” Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgres-
sion, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004, 351–68). The danger might be, however,
that the term “communication” could be used in such generic contexts that
every exchange between literary figures can become the topic of scholarly
investigations (Kommunikation und Alltag in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,
Communication in Medieval Studies 342

ed. Helmut Hundsbichler, 1991; Andreas Urscheler, Kommunikation in

Wolframs ‘Parzival,’ 2002), thereby watering down the critical issue of com-
munication in epistemological, logical, and social terms. On the other hand,
numerous medieval epics, romances, and poems reflect a profound concern
with communication and its fragility, which could lead to catastrophic con-
sequences (Albrecht Classen, “What Could the Burgundians Have Done to
Avoid the Catastrophe? The Breakdown of the Communicative Community
in the Nibelungenlied,” Neophilologus LXXXV, 4 [2001]: 565–87; id., Verzweif-
lung und Hoffnung, 2002). As the pan-European narrative Apollonius of Tyre in-
dicates, for instance, the degree to which communication is practiced among
individuals and social units represents the well-being of the community at
large (Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern
Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004).
But many texts, such as Marie de France’s Lais (ca. 1150–1160), Ulrich
von Liechtenstein’s Frauendienst (13th c.), and Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor
(14th c.) offer powerful insights into the complex, numerous, and fertile at-
tempts at establishing communication within the literary universe (Sandra
Linden, Kundschafter der Kommunikation, 2004), providing a fictional basis for
the critical examination of how people ought to communicate with each
other (see also Joy Hambuechen Potter, Five Frames for the Decameron,
1982). In most cases, however, as we can observe especially in late-medieval
texts, this communication tends to fail, or at least reveals its problems, be-
cause of unequal power distribution, gender-specific language codes, vested
interests, and material competition, whether we think of the anonymous
Historia septem sapientum, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, or
Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring (Marilyn Migiel, A Rhetoric of the Decameron,
2003, ch. 6).
Neither the Lexikon des Mittelalters nor the Dictionary of the Middle Ages
offers an entry on the topic of “communication,” and older historiography,
though already investigating many aspects of the history of intellectualism,
science, urban life, and popular religious movements (Charles Homer Has-
kins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, 1927; Friedrich Heer, Mittelalter,
1961), had not yet focused on this issue. Although difficult to pinpoint, re-
search on human interaction in the Middle Ages began approximately in the
early 1980s, particularly emphasizing political relations between rulers and
their subjects, everyday life, and epistolarity (Giles Constable, Letters and
Letter Collections, 1976; Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence,
1980; Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity, 1982; Jean-Claude Schmitt, La
raison des gestes dans l’occident médiévale, 1990; see also the entries on “Letters”
and “Letter Collections in this Handbook). Percy Ernst Schramm coined the
343 Computer-Based Medieval Research

metaphor of the “political drama” for the public events determining medi-
eval society (Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 1954–1956; see also his
Kaiser, Könige, Päpste, 4 vols., 1968–1971). Research on communication in
the Middle Ages, however, did not really begin until Sophia Menache pub-
lished her seminal study on The Vox Dei: Communication in the Middles Ages
(1990; see also Karl J. Leyser, Communication and Power in Medieval Europe, ed.
Timothy Reuter, 1994; La circulation des nouvelles au Moyen Age, 1994; Kom-
munikationspraxis und Korrespondenzwesen im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance,
ed. Heinz-Dieter Heimann et al., 1998). The considerable impact of political
correspondence is powerfully demonstrated by Christina Antenhofer’s
monograph on the diplomatic exchanges involving the wedding of Paula de
Gonzaga and Leonhard von Görz (Briefe zwischen Süd und Nord, 2007).

Select Bibliography
On the Medieval Theory of Signs, ed. Umberto Eco and Constantino Marmo (Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1989); New Approaches to Medieval Communication, ed.
Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Hans-Werner Goetz, Moderne Mediävis-
tik, 1999; Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Alt-
hoff (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2001); Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung:
Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters
(Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2002); Convaincre et persuader: Communication et propagande
aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Martin Aurell (Poitiers: Université de Poitiers-centre
d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale, 2007); J. A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks
in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Zwischen Babel
und Pfingsten: Sprachdifferenzen und Gesprächsverständigung in der Vormoderne (8.–16. Jh.), ed.
Peter von Moos (Vienna and Berlin: LIT, 2008).

Albrecht Classen

Computer-Based Medieval Research

(with an Emphasis on Middle High German)

A. Introduction
For centuries people have dreamt of getting support in mathematics from
elaborate machines and not only by an abacus, that is “a calculation tool,
often constructed as a wooden frame with beads sliding on wires” (Wiki-
pedia), which are used, for example, in China until today. For example Rai-
mundus Lullus Ars magna (ca. 1300/ 1305), Giordano Bruno De lampade
combinatoria lulliana (1587), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ars combinatoria
Computer-Based Medieval Research 344

(1666) wrote about such elaborate mathematical machines, and Jonathan

Swift (Gulliver’s Travels 1726: III, 5: “The Academy of Lagado;” see Jan Chris-
toph Meister, 2005) even delineated a ‘literary engine’ which would be ca-
pable “to write books […] without the least assistance from genius or study” –
a satire. Roughly 200 years later, in the 1930s, the first electronic devices or
machines were developed which could be used with some kind of program-
ming software for calculating (Konrad Zuse 1910–1995, Louis Couffig-
nal 1902–1966, Howard Aiken 1900–1973, George Stibitz 1904–1995):
Soon the military, especially in the United States during World War II, real-
ized how useful such electronic devices, i. e., mainframe machines of impres-
sive size, were for military purposes. The first academic disciplines which
benefitted from the new technology were, of course, natural sciences of all
kinds; in the 1960s the humanities began to explore the new technique, and
so did very soon medievalists. In the 1980s the epoch of microcomputers
began, of so-called ‘personal’ computers (Apple, PCs), and it became more
and more common to use them on individual writing desks.
Personal computers and word processing software are nowadays indis-
pensable tools for nearly most people who are professional writers. Probably
no academic book, article, or even a student’s paper is anymore written with-
out using IT – and of course this is also the case in Medieval Studies. We can
assume that colleagues who use a typewriter today or even write their manu-
scripts by hand are now a very rare species. Publishers nearly all over the
world expect to get the texts from their academic authors as electronic files,
and often the authors are even responsible for the lay-out. It is therefore not
only impossible, but no longer neccessary to outline the importance of IT
tools for writing all kind of texts.
At the moment Microsoft’s Word for Windows is nearly omnipresent
although it is not an perfect writing software for academic writers; some saw
Wordperfect for Windows as superior. I myself, for example, prefer Nota Bene
(and here still one of the later DOS-versions, not that for Windows); it dates
back to old CP/M-times, but it was very creatively conceived for academic
writers and adapted for DOS and Windows, especially in the humanities.
A software, originally conceived for mainframe machines and later adapted
for DOS, called TUSTEP (Tübinger System von Textverarbeitungsprogrammen,
‘Tübingen System of Text-Processing Programs’), is probably the most
powerful software for texts, but unfortunately also extremely difficult to
handle. It is no WYSIWYG program, but otherwise one can use it for nearly
every purpose to produce and retrieve words: for writing the most tricky
texts (for example for all natural sciences, for maths, and linguistics), but also
for comparing several texts, to produce at least half-automatically an edi-
345 Computer-Based Medieval Research

torial apparatus, or concordances; it was conceived by Wilhelm Ott (Univer-

sity of Tübingen: Classical studies [!]), and various times used for editions of
old German texts (and here Paul Sappler, Tübingen, should be mentioned
as an oustanding specialist; see: Wilhelm Ott, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen
von Programmsystemen für wissenschaftliche Textverarbeitung,” Maschi-
nelle Verarbeitung altdeutscher Texte, ed. Kurt Gärtner, Paul Sappler, and
Michael Trauth, 1991, 129–39).
But in the philologies word-processing was not the origin of applying IT:
In the beginning there was the analysis of huge amounts of linguistic material
to collect word indexes and word concordances. The following paragraphs
will outline the evolution (and revolution!) of computer-based research in
medieval philologies, mainly based on my own experience and competence
as a medievalist of German Studies.

B. Concordances, Indexes
Two theologians, Roberto Busa and Bonifatius Fischer, were the fore-
runners for computer-based word indexes and concordances. Father Busa,
professor at the Papal Gregorian University of Rome, started in 1949 to ana-
lyze the complete works of Thomas of Aquin with the help of indexes and
concordances; the project was supported by IBM with millions of dollars,
and finally the Index Thomasticus comprised altogether 57 volumes. Bonifa-
tius Fischer (Vetus Latina Institut at the Benedictine Monastery of Beuron,
Germany) conceived a concordance of the complete Bible (Vulgata), which was
published in 1977: Novae concordantiae Bibliorum sacrorum iuxta vulgatam versio-
nem critice editam, 5 vols., 1977. Both projects, naturally, took decades to com-
plete.
The first medievalist in German Studies who produced a computer index
was Harald Schuller at the University of Ann Arbor (A Word Index to the ‘Nibe-
lungenklage’. Based on K. Lachmann’s Edition, 1966). The decisive protagonist in
this field was the British medievalist Roy A. Wisbey (Cambridge, later Lon-
don): Between 1967 and 1976 he published concordances for the following
works: Wiener Genesis (1967), Vorauer and Strassburg Alexander (1968), Latin and
Early Middle High German Speculum ecclesiae (1968), Konrad’s Rolandslied
(1969), Middle High German Biblical Epics (David A. Wells, Vorauer Bücher
Moses; Roy A. Wisbey, Altdeutsche Exodus; Brian O. Murdoch, Anegenge,
Microfiche, 1976). In 1968, he founded a series for concordances: Compendia
(see: Kurt Gärtner, “Concordances and Indices to Middle High German,”
Computer and Humanities 14 [1980], 39–45; Roy A. Wisbey, “Computer und
Philologie in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft,” Maschinelle Verarbei-
tung altdeutscher Texte IV, ed. Kurt Gärtner, Paul Sappler, Michael Trauth,
Computer-Based Medieval Research 346

1991, 346–61; Kurt Gärtner and Peter Kühn, 1998 [see bibliography]).
Together with Roberto Busa he was a co-founder of the Association for Literary
and Lingistic Computing (ALLC) in 1973, which later became a founding chapter
of the important Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), which has
ACLL’s journal LLC (Literary and Linguistic Computing: Journal for Digital Scholar-
ship in the Humanities, 1986 sqq.) as its main print publication.
The first German computer-index for later German texts (18th to 20th
centuries) was published in 1968 by Helmut Schanze (Index zu Novalis Hein-
rich von Ofterdingen). During the following three decades dozens of computer-
based indexes and concordances of medieval German texts were presented:
A list which comprises most of these books (not all!) can be found in Kurt
Gärtner and Peter Kühn (1998, 719–21, 735–39). They applied different
methods: plain alphabetization of word-forms; with or without parsing,
lemmatisation and/or segregation of homographs; some with a ranking list
of frequencies, an index of rhymes, or a reverse index of the graphic forms.
Many editors can be named (for details see Gärtner and Kühn, 1998):
Robert R. Anderson et al. (Die Heidin, 1981; Heinrich von Mügeln, Der meide
kranz, 1981; Ackermann aus Böhmen, 1973/1974); Erika Bauer (Heinrich
Haller, 1982, 1984); Franz H. Bäuml and Eva-Maria Fallone (Nibelungen-
lied, 1976); Roy A. Boggs (Hartmann von Aue 1979); Ernst Brenner and
Klaus Ridder (Vocabularius optimus 1990); Harald Bühler (Frauenlob,
1985); Udo von der Burg (Stricker, Karl der Große, 1974); Siegfried Chris-
toph (Stricker, Werke, 1997); Hans Eggers (Latin and Old High German
Isidor 1960); Ulrich Goebel (Moriz von Craon, 1975); Dagmar Gottschall
(Lucidarius, 1975); Clifton Hall (Parzival, 1990; Tristan, 1992); Clifton Hall
and Samuel Coleman (Walther von der Vogelweide, 1995); Olga Janssen
(Schweizer Minnesänger,1984); Thomas Klein, Joachim Bumke et al. (Hes-
sisch-thüringische Epen um 1200); Jean L.C. Putmans (Herzog Ernst, 1980);
Margot Schmidt (Rudolf von Biberach); Masahiro Shimbo (Otfrid, 1990);
Hirohiko Soejima (Stricker, 1988, Helmbrecht, 1990); Paul Sappler (Kauf-
ringer, 1974); Katrin Woesner (Albrecht, Jüngerer Titurel, 2003).
For years there was a productive teamwork of conceiving concordances
between the universities of Maryland, College Park (George F. Jones et al.),
and Salzburg (Ingrid Bennewitz, Hans-Dieter and Heike Mück, Ulrich
Müller, Franz Viktor Spechtler et al.): Oswald von Wolkenstein (1974),
Mönch von Salzburg (religious songs, 1975), lyric manuscript B Weingarten
and Stuttgart (1978), lyric manuscript A Heidelberg (1979), Hugo von Mont-
fort (1981), Neidhart, Berlin Ms. c (1984).
The quality of all these indexes and concordances is different, and it
depends above all of the quality of the edition which was used (Franz Viktor
347 Computer-Based Medieval Research

Spechtler, “Textedition–Textcorpus–EDV: Zum Problem der philolo-

gischen Grundlagen für die linguistische Datenverarbeitung,” Association for
Literary and Linguistic Computing, Bulletin 4 [1976]: 95–96). Four of the College
Park, MD, Salzburg concordances are based on the authentic texts of
important manuscripts lyrical mss. A very special case are three indexes by
Klaus M. Schmidt (Ulrich von Lichtenstein, 1981; Ulrich von Zatzikhoven,
1993; Kudrun, 1994): They present not only word lists, but also semantic
glossaries, and this method became the basis of the MHDBDB (Mittelhoch-
deutsche Begriffsdatenbank, ‘Middle High German Conceptual Data Base’),
which since 2002 has been installed at the University of Salzburg (see below).
All these printed indexes and concordances are books which can simply be
used and which present a lot of information, at least for philologists, but they
represent a former epoch of computing. The present state of art is much more
effective, more elegant – and costs much less to publish: medieval texts,
stored in computer databases, which can be analyzed by any word-searching
or concordance program (early examples: TUSTEP [see above], OCP = Oxford
Concordance Program; Wordcruncher). A combination of book and computer
data-base was created by Hermann Reichert (Nibelungenlied, MS B, 2 vol.,
2006).

C. Conferences
Possibilities and methods of literary and linguistic computing have been
presented and discussed at an increasing number of conferences. For old Ger-
man texts the first was organized by Winfried Lenders and Hugo Moser
at Mannheim (Maschinelle Verarbeitung altdeutscher Texte I, 1971, published
1978 [!]; see also Winfried Lenders, “Lexigraphische Arbeiten zu Texten
der älteren deutschen Literatur mit Hilfe von Datenverarbeitungsanlagen,”
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 90 [1971]: 321–36; Untersuchungen zur automa-
tischen Indizierung mittelhochdeutscher Texte, ed. Winfried Lenders, Hans-
Dieter Lutz, and Ruth Römer, 1969, 2nd ed. 1973). More conferences of the
same kind followed, for example: Maschinelle Verarbeitung altdeutscher Texte II
(Mannheim 1973; published in 1978: ed. Winfried Lenders and Hugo
Moser); III (Tübingen 1977; published in 1980: ed. Paul Sappler and Erich
Strassner); IV (Trier 1988, published 1991: ed. Kurt Gärtner, Paul
Sappler, and Michael Trauth); V (Würzburg 1997, published in 2001,
ed. Stephan Moser); Mediävistik und neue Medien (Bamberg 2001, published
in 2004, ed. Klaus van Eickels, Ruth Weichselbaumer, and Ingrid Ben-
newitz). See also, for example, Data Bases in the Humanities and Social Sciences
(conference Grinnell, Iowa 1987), ed. Thomas F. Moberg, 1987; Historische
Edition und Computer: Möglichkeiten und Probleme interdisziplinärer Textverarbei-
Computer-Based Medieval Research 348

tung und Textbearbeitung (conference Graz 1989), ed. Anton Schwob et al.,
1989.

D. CD-ROMs, Internet/World Wide Web

Indexes and concordances were only the beginning. To produce them it was
necessary to transform printed texts into computer-readable texts. Most of
them were just used for a special project, but there were also plans to publish
them on CD-ROMs, and very soon in the new World Wide Web, making them
directly accessible – and mostly gratuitous. PCs, the Internet, and the World
Wide Web introduced possibilities to present and to analyze large amounts
of data, home-pages which could be linked, and which made projects acces-
sible without publishing them as printed and mostly expensive books. They
revolutionized research in all disciplines, and so also in Medieval Studies.
Nearly monthly there are new plans, concepts, and projects world-wide, and
things change so rapidly that it is nearly impossible to overview even the
IT-sites of an individual academic field. Some people prophesied the exitus
of printed books, the end of the so-called ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ (Marshall
McLuhan), but that seems to be an exaggeration created by technical en-
thusiasm. Even if there are academic journals, monographs, and articles
published in the World Wide Web, large projects and sample of data which
can only be presented by IT, the new technology as well as printing on paper
will probably coexist according to specific intentions. Robert Darnton
(“The New Age of the Book,” New York Times Review of Books, March 18th, 1999
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546]) wrote about reading texts on a
screen: “The world of learning is chanching so rapidly that no one can predict
what it will look like ten years from now. But I believe it will remain within
the Gutenberg galaxy – though the galaxy will expand, thanks to a new
source of energy, the electronic book, which will act as a supplement to, not a
substitute for, Gutenberg’s great machine.” And Darnton quotes William
H. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft: “Reading off the screen is still vastly
inferior to reading off a paper. Even I, who have these expensive screens and
fancy myself as a pioneer of this Web Lifestyle, when it comes to something
about four of five pages, I print it out and I like to have it to carry around with
me and annotate. And it’s quite a hurdle for technology to match that level of
usability.”
Academic texts until today must be written according to the rules, and
there is no fundamental difference in academic rules and standards if the
texts will be published on paper or on screen. One can present texts and data
of enormous size in the WWW, much faster and less expensive than printed
books, but they must have sufficient quality. Furthermore, there is always
349 Computer-Based Medieval Research

the problem of their volatile character. Websites appear and disappear,

and a text, printed on paper and/or bound as a book, is probably much more
lasting (and it might be that in hundreds or thousands of years only texts
survive that are written on parchment manuscripts or in stone, but not
printed on paper or published by electronical methods). But there is also
the opposite opinion: “People worry about the problems of digital preser-
vation, and wether the e-texts of today will still be readable ten years
from now. We all know some standard horror stories to illustrate this, but
again, can we really believe that this will be other than a transient problem?”
(David Pearson: “Digitisation: do we have a strategy,” Ariadne, 30 [2001]
[http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue30/digilib/]; see also Susanne Dobratz and
Inka Tappenbeck, “Thesen zur Zukunft der digitalen Langzeitarchivie-
rung in Deutschland,” Bibliothek, 26 [2002]: III: 257–61).

E. Travelling in the WWW

It is until today possible to be more or less informed about what is presented
on CD-ROMs (and also what has been printed on paper). But the enormous
amount of material which can be found in the WWW makes special reference
tools a necessity. Two of them should be mentioned here as examples, both
with a focus on German Medieval Studies.
Ruth Weichselbaumer published in 2005 a monograph (Mittelalter
virtuell: Mediävistik im Internet) about Medieval Studies and IT, presenting and
discussing many websites and IT tools. It is an excellent guide book through
the regions of the WWW; there is a short and legible description of the many
websites which are enlisted. Another guide tool can be found within the
WWW itself: Mediaevum (www.mediaevum.de). It is kind of a IT-‘portal,’ i. e.,
it assembles information and presents it with a classified system of links. One
can, for example, look for the names, addresses and bibliographies of medi-
evalists of the German-speaking universities; for a list of medieval manu-
scripts which are at the moment accessible as a digitalized version in the
WWW; for links to databases about the Middle Ages; for a conference calendar
etc. The presented material is, of course, sometimes incomplete. Regarding
digitalized medieval manuscripts and information about manuscripts there
should be added the medieval section of the website of the University Library
of Salzburg (www.ubs.sbg.ac.at/sosa/webseite/sosa.htm; conceived by
Beatrix Koll) and the famous Wolkenstein-MS of the University Library of
Innsbruck – at the moment it is nearly ingeniously hidden, and the easiest
way to visit is via Wikipedia (Oswald von Wolkenstein: links). For many
more ‘guides,’ see Ruth Weichselbaumer, Mittelalter virtuell (2005); there
is also a good, but of course subjective overview published by Sonja Glauch,
Computer-Based Medieval Research 350

one of the protagonists of the above mentioned mediaevum: “Neue Medien,

alte Texte? Überlegungen zum Ertrag digitaler Ressourcen für die Alt-
germanistik,” Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft auf dem Weg zu den neuen
Medien, ed. Michael Stolz, Lucas Marco Gisi, and Jan Loop, 2007; also:
www.germanistik.ch/autorin.php?id=Sonja_Glauch).
Further Mediävistik – Das deutschsprachige Mittelalter, a homepage at the
University Bayreuth should be mentioned, conceived in cooperation with
the University of Regensburg (http://www.aedph.uni-bayreuth.de/media
evistik.htm): It is a mailing list for medievalists, which is extensively
used for questions and discussions (in German). Also very useful is a biblio-
graphical searching machine (bibliographical ‘portal’) which is presented
by the university library of Karlsruhe, the Karlsruher Virtuelle Katalog
(KVK: ‘Karlsruhe virtual catalogue’: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/
kvk.html). There one can search for a book in dozens of scientific libraries all
over the world, including the US (Library of Congress), UK (British Library),
France (Bibliothèque National), and elsewhere in Europe; the various library
catalogues to be searched through with one single [!] command can be se-
lected specifically; the KVK can be used for books in general, as far as they are
listed in electronic catalogues, but it is extremely helpful also for medieval
studies.

F. Electronic Texts, Editions, Editorial Databases

Texts of all kinds have been increasingly stored and presented in the WWW
(sometimes also on CD-ROMs). Numerous websites present texts, also medi-
eval ones of various languages, and very often gratuitous (see the list of links
to medieval Latin and German texts in: texte.mediaevum.de/index.htm; for
medieval English, French and other Romance languages, see Ruth Weich-
selbaumer, Mittelalter virtuell, 2005, 67–70). But there is one problem: they
can only be as good as the editions on which they are based, and therefore one
should look for editorial information before downloading them and using
them. Of course also older editions may be presented in the WWW (and as
mentioned above, now all new ones have been written and published with
the help of IT).
Followers of the so-called New Philology have been advising strongly to
publish future editions not as printed books, but with the help of computers
and online (see, above all, Bernard Cerquiglini, Eloge de la variance: Histoire
critique de la philologie, 1989; regarding the ‘New Philology,’ see “The New
Philology” Speculum 65 [1990]: 1–208). But until today no completely elec-
tronic edition has been published, and many scholars suppose that such an
edition would not be useful and not practical; above all, German medieval-
351 Computer-Based Medieval Research

ists have argued against this ‘new wave’ and stressed that much of it is not
really ‘new’ at all (Karl Stackmann, “Die Edition – Königsweg der Philol-
ogie?,” Probleme und Methoden mittelalterlicher deutscher Texte, ed. Rolf Berg-
mann et al.,1993, 1–18; Ingrid Bennewitz, “Alte ‘Neue’ Philologie?,”
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 116 [1997], Sonderheft: Philologie als Textwissen-
schaft, 46–61; Rüdiger Schnell, “Was ist neu an der ‘New Philology’?” Alte
und neue Philologie, Beihefte zu ‘editio,’ 1997, 61–95). It might be a perspective
for the future to combine for editions a printed book and presentation of ad-
ditional material in the WWW; Wernfried Hofmeister’s new edition of the
songs of Hugo von Montfort (2005) is a first example.
But the best possibilities to display medieval texts would be to combine
the presentation of digitalized manuscripts or incunabula, transcriptions,
editions, and – perhaps – translations all in one project online. Ulrich Mül-
ler (“Mittelalterliche Codices und Computer: Projektskizze einer integrier-
ten Video- und Datenbank,” Jahrbuch der Universität Salzburg 1983–1985, 1987,
163–68; id., “Mittelhochdeutsche Texte im Aktenköfferchen,” Maschinelle
Verarbeitung altdeutscher Texte: Beiträge zum Vierten Internationalen Symposion
1988, ed. Kurt Gärtner et al., 1991, 96–103) proposed such a design, apply-
ing the possibilites of hypertexts. Such projects are beeing been carried out at
several universities, for example: (a) the Princton University (The Princeton
Charrette Project, i. e., Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charette, con-
ceived by Karl D. Uitti 1994 sqq.: http://www.princeton.edu/ lancelot/ss/);
(b) the University of Birmingham, UK (The Canterbury Tales project: CD-ROMs,
and on-line: www.canterburytalesproject.org); (c) the Florida Gulf Coast
University (Roy A. Boggs 1991 sqq.: The Hartmann von Aue (Knowledge Based)
Portal: www.fgcu.edu/rboggs/Hartmann; or: www.HvA.uni-trier.de; see:
Roy A. Boggs, “The Hartmann von Aue (Knowledge Based) Portal. An Intro-
duction and Description,” cristallîn wort. Hartmann Studien 1 [2007]: 13–32);
and (d) the Universities of Basel and Bern (Michael Stolz, Parzival-Projekt).
Michael Stolz, who refers to the Chaucer project as one of his prototypes,
presented the latest plans of this ambitious project at the conference Graz
2008 (see below): Selected sections of Wolfram’s Parzival are presented in the
WWW – digitalized manuscripts, parallel transcriptions, variants of the
other manuscripts (www.parzival.unibe.ch); the full Parzival manuscript
of the Bavarian State Library Munich cgm 19 (CD-ROM 2008, and on-line:
http://mdz10.bib-bvb.de/ db/bsb00002134/images/index.html). A complete
printed edition of the four most important manuscripts will follow, pres-
ented in parallel columns. All these projects are, naturally, works in progress
(Roy A. Boggs 2007 [see above], 13: “never be perfect, never be finished, and
always without boundaries […], an imperfect tool for better scholarship”);
Computer-Based Medieval Research 352

but ‘work in progress’ also means that they can continually and easily be aug-
mented and actualized.

G. Databases About the Middle Ages

The same must be said about nearly all databases. Meanwhile there are nu-
merous databases that store and present all kinds of information on Medi-
eval Studies. Just some philological ones (German Studies) might be men-
tioned here: (a) Handschriftencensus (www.handschriftencensus.de), an online
digital archive of dates about medieval German manuscripts and early print-
ings; this international project is situated at the University of Marburg;
(b) Mittelhochdeutsche Wörterbücher im Verbund (‘Collected Middle High
German Dictionaries’: germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/MWV), a database
which presents the two major dictionaries of Middle High German (Lexer,
and Benecke/Müller/Zarncke) and additional material; it is also available on CD-
ROM; and (c) the Middle High German Conceptual Data Base (‘Mittelhoch-
deutsche Begriffsdaten-Bank’: mhdbdb.sbg.ac.at), conceived by Klaus M.
Schmidt and Horst Peter Pütz (Bowling Green State University and Uni-
versity of Kiel), and since 2002 located at the University of Salzburg: It is the
largest database of MHG language (about 250 works, roughly 8 million
words at the moment [April 2010]). All the word material can be searched for
word-forms, parts of words, or any compounds of letters, everything in vari-
ous combinations, and partly further for “Begriffsfelder.” It is by far the largest
‘intelligent’ medieval database and is much more powerful, for example,
than the above mentioned TUSTEP (see Klaus Schmidt and Horst Peter
Pütz, “Die Mittelhochdeutsche Begriffsdatenbank,” Zeitschrift für deutsches
Altertum 130 [2001]: 493–95; Margarete Springeth, “Die Mittelhochdeutsche
Begriffsdatenbank (MHDBDB: http://mhdbdb.sbg.ac.at) “[= “Computer
und Film als Medien der Erinnerung,” I], Literatur als Erinnerung: Winfried
Woesler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Bodo Plachta, Tübingen 2004, 52–58). The
most recent information about various MHG databases was presented at a
conference in Graz (Austria), September 2008, among others by Klaus Klein
(Handschriftencensus) and Margarete Springeth (MHDBDB), and can be
read in the proceedings (Wege zum Text: Grazer germanistisches Kolloquium über
die Verfügbarkeit mediävistischer Editionen im 21. Jahrhundert, (Beihefte zu ‘editio’),
ed. Wernfried and Andrea Hofmeister, 2009). The MHDBDB is linked
with an on-line collection of medieval miniatures and paintings depicting
every-day life in the late Middle Ages and early modern times, a project of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences (‘Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften’),
and established in Krems (Lower Austria): REALonline: www.imreal.oeaw.ac.
at/realonline.
353 Conversion

IT is nowadays indispensable to write and publish any texts; and it will

be more and more applied to analyze and evaluate them – also in Medieval
Studies where they were used rather early. An online catalogue is currently
created at the UCLA for the location and identification of digitized medieval
manuscripts: http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu.

Select Bibliography
Kurt Gärtner and Peter Kühn, “Indices und Konkordanzen zu historischen Texten
des Deutschen: Bestandsaufnahme, Typen, Herstellungsprobleme, Benutzungs-
möglichkeiten,” Sprachgeschichte: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und
ihrer Erforschung, ed. Werner Besch et. al. (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2nd ed.
1998), I, 715–42; Kurt Gärtner, “Texte im Netz – Perspektiven Digitaler Biblio-
theken” (paper at the Internationale Conference of Manuscript Editors 2003), online:
http://www.dfg.de/forschungsfoerderung/wissenschaftliche_infrastruktur/lis/
veroeffentlich ungen/dokumentationen/download/vortrag_gaertner.pdf; Jan Chris-
toph Meister, “Projekt Computerphilologie: Über Geschichte, Verfahren und Theo-
rie rechnergestützter Literaturwissenschaft,” Literarität und Digitalität: Zur Zukunft der
Literatur, ed. Harro Segeberg and Simone Winko (Munich: Fink, 2005), online:
http://www.jcmeister.de/downloads/texts/jcm-project-cp.html; Maschinelle Verarbei-
tung altdeutscher Texte I–V (conferences 1971–1997), ed. various (Berlin and Tübingen:
Schmidt and Niemeyer, 1977–2001); Mediävistik und Neue Medien (conference Bamberg,
2001), ed. Klaus van Eikels, Ruth Weichselbaumer and Ingrid Bennewitz (Ost-
fildern: Thorbecke, 2004); Ulrich Müller, “Medieval German Lyric Poetry and Com-
puters: A Project at the University of Salzburg: With the prospect of a computer-based
integration of facsimile, transcription and concordance,” Data Bases in the Humanities
and Social Scienes, ed Thomas F. Moberg (Osprey, FL: Paradigm, 1987), 329–36; Wege
zum Text: Grazer germanistisches Kolloquium über die Verfügbarkeit mediävistischer Editionen
im 21. Jahrhundert (conference Graz, September 2008), Beihefte zu ‘editio,’ ed. Andrea and
Wernfried Hofmeister (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009); Ruth Weichselbaumer, Mit-
telalter virtuell: Mediävistik im Internet (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2005).

All Web sites which are mentioned in the article above were last accessed in October
2008.

Ulrich Müller

Conversion

A. Definition
In the year 300, Christianity was only one of many religions in the Roman
world, a sect occasionally persecuted by the emperors. By 1000, however,
Christian churches dotted the map from Iceland to western China. More-
Conversion 354

over, throughout a string of lands running from the Atlantic to the River
Volga and Asia Minor, Christianity was the established religion. Together
these Christian states represented Christendom: a self-conscious Christian
community that abutted still pagan territories to the north and east (es-
pecially in the Baltic region) and the dominions of Islam stretching from
Spain to Syria (which hosted a significant Christian population down to the
modern period). Although always a mystery to most medieval western Chris-
tians, a Christian state also existed throughout the Middle Ages in Ethiopia.
The seven centuries between the conversion of Constantine, the first Roman
emperor to legalize Christian worship, and the turn of the millennium
when, in the words of a contemporary, Europe was “decked white” in a flurry
of church-building are usually conceived as the conversion of Europe.
The main stages in this conversion can be quickly sketched, beginning of
course with Constantine’s Edict of Milan (313) that granted Christians the
right to free public assembly. Increasing imperial patronage of the Christian
Church followed, with the outlawing of the sacrifices of traditional Greco-
Roman paganism in 395. In 438, the Codex Theodosianus proclaimed the
Roman Empire a formally Christian state, establishing an intimate identifi-
cation between romanitas and Christianity that was reiterated in the Codex Ius-
tinianus in 529. Justinian’s Code provided the legal foundation for Rome’s
continuation in the Eastern Mediterranean, “Byzantium” (the empire ruled
from Constantinople whose inhabitants never ceased to call themselves Ro-
mans until the final demise of their state in 1453) and sealed the formal
Christian (‘Orthodox’) identity of the eastern, Greek-speaking half of medi-
eval Christendom (see Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome,
1980; and Averil Cameron, The Byzantines, 2007).
In the East, Byzantium exported Christianity to Ethiopia during the
4th century; periodically sponsored Christian communities in the Caucasus
(where an Armenian Christian state had existed since the early 4th century)
against Persian domination until that empire’s collapse in 651; and brought
the southern and eastern Slavs into the medieval Christian orbit. The conver-
sion of the Slavs to Orthodoxy took place notably through the missionary
endeavors of Ss Cyril (827–869) and Methodius (826–885), the baptism of the
Bulgar khan, ca. 865, and the adoption of Christianity by the rulers (later
tsars) of Kiev from 988 and later Moscow, and giving birth to what Dimitri
Obolensky called the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’ (The Byzantine Common-
wealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453, 1971). Church leaders in Orthodox Slav lands
acknowledged the pre-eminence of the bishop of Constantinople as Ecu-
menical patriarch and drew heavily on Byzantine theology and spirituality
translated from Greek, but developed a liturgy in “Old Church” Slavonic. On
355 Conversion

the other side of the ledger, Christological disputes between 431 and 553
splintered the Eastern Church into a complex array of mutually-hostile hier-
archies, that included the Syriac- and Coptic-speaking churches that inhab-
ited the Islamic Caliphate from its rise in 632, central Asia and southern
India, whose later medieval developments are admirably covered by Gilbert
Dagron, Pierre Riché and André Vauché (Histoire du Christianisme des ori-
gines à nos jours, 4, Évêques, moines et empereurs (610–1054), ed. id., 1993).
A different story unfolded in western Europe where the bishops of
Rome, the See of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles, developed a distinctive
claim to direct jurisdictional authority over all Christian peoples. Following
the disintegration of Roman authority, symbolized in the abdication of the
last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus, in 476, Rome’s west-
ern territories fell under the sway of Germanic military leaders (“barbarians”
to the Romans) who were either Arian Christians (heretics in “Catholic”
Roman eyes for Christological reasons) – as with the Goths in Italy, Spain and
southern Gaul, the Burgundians in the Rhone valley, Sueves in Galicia and
the Vandals in North Africa – or pagans – such as the Franks in northern Gaul
and Anglo-Saxons in lowland Britain. In the eyes of early medieval Catholic
Churchmen, therefore, conversion signified as much the persuasion of Ar-
ians to adopt Catholic Christianity as it did the baptism of pagans. The latter
often took place first, beginning with St Patrick’s mission to Ireland during
the 5th century (see David Dumville, Saint Patrick, AD 493–1993, 1993; Kath-
leen Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society, 1966 [1980]) and followed by
the all-important conversion and baptism of Clovis, king of the Franks,
around 500, which inaugurated a long tradition of Frankish leadership of
western Europe, in tandem with the papacy from 754 (Clovis: Histoire et mém-
oire, ed. Michel Rouche, 1997; John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, The
Frankish Church, 1983; La christianisation des pays entre Loire et Rhin, ed. Pierre
Riché, 1976). In 597, Pope Gregory I (“the Great”) sent a Roman mission
to England which succeeded in converting Ethelbert, king of Kent (Robert
Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 1972; St Au-
gustine and the Conversion of England, ed. Richard Gameson, 1999). Despite
Walter Ullmann’s long-standing thesis to the contrary (The Growth of Papal
Government, 1955; id., A Short History of the Papacy, 1972 [2003]), Gregory’s
mission should be considered an act of spiritual devotion rather than politi-
cal strategy according to Robert Markus, Gregory the Great and His World
(1997). With competition for converts between the native British church,
Roman and Irish missionaries, all of Britain’s Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
were formally Christian by 700. By this time Anglo-Saxon missionaries were
actively baptizing their German cousins on the Continent, where the Irish
Conversion 356

were also actively promoting a new monastic revival among the old Gallo-
Roman Christians further south. Further north still, Catholic Christianity
reached Scandinavia from the 9th century, initiating the gradual foundation
of bishoprics and monasteries, as well as the introduction of literacy that had
been typical of Christianity’s advance elsewhere in western Europe (see Bir-
git and Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood, The Christianization of Scandinavia,
1987). Poland and Hungary formally entered the Catholic fold in 963 and
1001 respectively. The Baltic states proved more resistant, but with the con-
version of Lithuania in 1386 the final piece in the jigsaw of medieval
Christendom fitted into place.
The first Germanic kingdom to adopt Catholic Christianity in place of
Arianism was Visigothic Spain in 589. The Arian elites of that country pos-
sibly deduced the dangers that could flow from allowing religion to divide
them from their catholic subjects. In 533, Justinian, emperor of Byzantium,
manipulated Arian persecution of Catholics in Vandal Africa to justify the
liquidation of that kingdom; a similar fate eventually befell the powerful
Ostrogothic state in Italy in 554. Conversely, the kings of the Franks (and
subsequently of France) derived prestige throughout the medieval period
from the fact that they had converted directly to Catholicism, with no inter-
vening period spent in heresy. The Lombards oscillated between paganism,
Arianism, and Catholicism throughout their independent existence in Italy.
Arianism was finally extinguished as an organized competitor to the Cath-
olic Church with Charlemagne’s conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774
and incorporation of it into his greater Catholic, Frankish empire that domi-
nated Continental north western Europe.
Of course, the baptism of kings is only one aspect of the formation of
Christendom. Equally important was the evangelization of the countryside.
From the start, Christianity was a city-based religion; scattered communities
of illiterate village-peasants fitted ill with the traditional Christian paradigm
of city-based congregations under the oversight of a literate bishop and
clergy. Outreach by bishops such as St Martin of Tours (ca. 316–ca. 397) to
the peasantry began under the Christian emperors of the 4th century, as is
documented through the destruction of sacred groves and rural shrines and
temples in contemporary saints’ Lives from Gaul (see Clare Stancliffe, St
Martin and his Hagiographer, 1983). Thanks in part to similar sources, Frank
Trombley (Hellenic Religion and Christianization, c. 370–529, 1993) charts the
resilience of non-Christian traditions in Asia Minor as late as the 6th century.
Such activities remained the standard practice of missionaries in German
and Scandinavian lands down to the turn of the millennium. Folk customs,
including “magic,” were labeled as sacrilegious superstition by Church auth-
357 Conversion

orities throughout the Middle Ages but, according to Valerie Flint (The Rise
of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, 1991) never ceased to inform the lives of a sig-
nificant proportion of the population of Christendom. Even if the memory of
pre-Christian gods had vanished, their functions were often subsumed in the
spectacular multiplicity of popular medieval saints’ cults.
Another important conversion that took place during late antiquity and
the early Middle Ages was the Christianization of space, time and communal
history, according to norms that were perceived to be consistent with biblical
revelation and Christian teaching. As shown by Robert Markus (The End of
Ancient Christianity, 1990) this can be observed in the creation of the Christian
liturgical year, beginning with the celebration of Advent, Christmas and
Epiphany and culminating in Lent and the great celebrations of Easter and
Whitsun (Pentecost). Modelled on the life of Christ, the Christian year was
also punctuated by the feasts of the martyrs and saints, some local others Eu-
rope- and Mediterranean-wide. Corresponding to this was the overlaying of
an old pagan landscape with a new Christian topography. Emperors raised
basilicas that housed dazzling mosaics of Christ, the saints and the heavenly
city to steal the glory of the old pagan temples. Bishops dedicated shrines to
the memory of martyrs in various corners of early medieval cities: where a
city possessed the body of no martyr of its own, relics brought from else-
where ensured that it was nonetheless connected to the great Christian net-
work that recast the sacred geography (pagan springs, groves and oracles) of
the pre-Christian era. States depicted Christian themes on coins, ivory dip-
tychs and other objects imbued with official significance, where emperors
and kings projected an image of themselves as ruling with the authority of
Christ. In church, prayers for Christian rulers were an integral part of the
Sunday liturgy. The result was by the 6th century a society on the way to be-
coming completely transformed in its own imagination of itself. The meta-
morphosis was most striking perhaps in the city of Rome where the popes
deployed the relics of Ss Peter and Paul to create a Christian city designed to
eclipse the memory of pagan Rome with its myth of Romulus and Remus.
This is documented by Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City (1980);
id., Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (1983).

B. History of Research
The emergence of medieval Europe as a formally Christian society clearly
demands explanation. It has long been accepted that the so-called conversion
of Constantine (306–337) launched Christianity as a formerly persecuted
religion on its way to becoming within less than a century the sole permitted
religion in the Mediterranean world and an essential element of Roman
Conversion 358

political and cultural identity. Continuing a tradition epitomized by A. H.

M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (1948), Ramsay MacMul-
len’s words have much justification for the medievalist as well: “Nothing
counts more than the year 312” (Christianizing the Roman Empire, 1984, 102).
Outwardly, the only hiccup in this steady process was the pagan revival pur-
sued by Julian the Apostate during his brief reign (360–361). Since the 1970s,
however, historians of early medieval Europe have increasingly recognized
the indispensability of a deeper understanding of late antiquity as the cul-
tural matrix for Europe’s conversion. Peter Brown (The World of Late Aniti-
quity, 1971; The Rise of Western Christendom, 1996 [2003]), places the formal
acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Empire’s barbarian successor states
in the context of late antique developments, and demonstrates that the na-
ture of the Christianity medieval people were converted to was hierarchical,
bishop-dominated and culturally Roman, thanks at least in part to the
Church’s experience in the Empire. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians
(1986) remains the classic treatment of relations between pagans and Chris-
tians in the empire up to Constantine’s death; Peter Brown, Authority and the
Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (1995) and R. A. Mar-
kus, End of Ancient Christianity (1990) have brought to the fore the tensions
that Christianization provoked in the Roman world. Averil Cameron, Chris-
tianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (1991)
investigates how words themselves were converted in the late antique world
as Christians created literary discourses and developed a totalizing Christian
worldview. The various contributors to Kenneth Mills and Anthony Graf-
ton, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing
(2003) have underscored the social and political tensions between church
and empire that accompanied the public expansion of Christianity in the
Roman world and Neil McLynn’s concluding essay especially is an invalu-
able roadmap of possibilities for future research into the social ramifications
of changed religious loyalties in late antiquity. Judith Herrin, The Formation
of Christendom (1987) serves as the handbook for the growing awareness of
distinctive eastern (“Orthodox”) and western (“Catholic”) Christian iden-
tities from the 5th down to the 9th centuries.
It is helpful to seek some definitional clarification, given that the mean-
ing a scholar of the middle ages attaches to the word “conversion” will in-
exorably bear upon his or her appreciation of it as a socio-historical phenom-
enon. There are perhaps three principal ways in which medieval conversion
has been conceived and each implies its own chronology and view of medi-
eval society. These are, broadly, conversion as a (1) personal and inward ex-
perience, (2) historico-political narrative, and (3) ongoing sociological pro-
359 Conversion

cess. Conversion as a personal experience of changed religious conviction is

embodied above all in the “Damascus Road” model provided by St Paul’s
conversion in the Acts of the Apostles – the text of primordial importance for
all Church history. Although Acts provides other models of conversion as
well, conversion as conceived of as a dramatic change in an individual’s reli-
gious conviction was entrenched in 20th-century English-language scholar-
ship by Arthur Darby Nock’s Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from
Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (1938). Nock famously defined con-
version as “the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turn-
ing from indifference or an earlier form of piety to another, […] a conscious-
ness that […] the old was wrong and the new is right” (7) and his focus on
the individual’s psychological motivations for conversion from one religion
to another owed its methodology to the American psychologist William
James’s turn-of-the-century study, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). As
Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe (1997), points out (see below), the prob-
lematic nature of representing medieval conversion in these terms is com-
pounded by the fact that, for the entire period from Constantine to Luther
(†1546), the sources for the history of personal conversion from inside the
mind of the convert are lacking, with exceptions in only an extremely limited
number of cases. Among these, however, are the towering figures of Ss Au-
gustine of Hippo (ca. 354–430) and Anselm of Canterbury (†1109), modern
biographies of whose Christian calling provide superb historical analysis:
Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (1967; 1998), and Richard Southern, St An-
selm and his Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c.1130 (1961).
In a similarly individual-orientated perspective, Karl Morrison, Under-
standing Conversion (1990) also studies the language used to describe conver-
sion to discern the religious experience of monastic converts during the 11th
and 12th centuries in the context of an outwardly-converted Christian so-
ciety.
The second way in which scholars have imagined conversion is as part of
a quasi-political historical narrative leading to the formation of Christen-
dom with its individual national kingdoms. This conception of conversion
focuses on peoples rather than individuals and often takes its cue from the
sources themselves, e. g., Bede’s 8th-century History of the English Church and
People (731) or Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards, although the objectiv-
ity of these texts has been problematized by Walter Goffart, The Narrators
of Barbarian History (AD 550–800) (1988). The underlying model for conversion
is “top-down,” with the entry of a previously pagan or heretic people group
following upon the baptism of a powerful king and his retainers. Conversion
as national narrative is the favored domain of most traditional scholarship
Conversion 360

on medieval conversion, e. g. Ferdinand Lot, La fin du monde antique et le début

du Moyen Âge (1927) and Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe: An Intro-
duction to the History of European Unity (1932; 2003). Such works entwine
“Church” and “State” as normative categories for the consideration of the
whole of medieval history, constructing the Christian Middle Ages as a con-
certed dance between political and ecclesiastical interests and typically focus
on the conversion of the various Germanic kingdoms between the collapse of
Rome’s authority in the West, ca. 378–476, and the flowering of the Frankish
empire under Charlemagne (774–814). On the contrary, Peter Brown, The
Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, 200–1000 (1996; 2003) pro-
poses as an important revisionist view of early medieval Christian societies
that considers as much the cultural as the political dynamics of Europe’s con-
version; in place of a single grand narrative, the second edition presents the
Mediterranean and north-western Europe as a devolved network of regional
“micro-Christendoms.”
Within a longer chronological purview, the most accessible and compre-
hensive recent contribution in English to this strand of medieval conversion
history is Richard Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Chris-
tianity, 371–1386 (1997). Jacques Brosse, Histoire de la Chrétienté d’Orient et
d’Occident: De la conversion des barbares au sac de Constantinople (1995) and rel-
evant volumes of Desclée’s Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours are
noteworthy in French. In German, Lutz von Padberg, Die Christianisierung
Europas im Mittelalter (1998) provides an invaluable pocket-sized overview of
the expansion of Christianity throughout the Roman and medieval periods,
including diachronic discussions of important themes and translations of se-
lected sources; Peter Thrams, Die Christianisierung des Römerreiches und heid-
nischer Widerstand (1992) restricts himself to the Roman period. Marina Mon-
tesano, La Cristianizzazione dell’Italia nel Medioevo (1997) is the handbook for
this change in Italy, with Augusto Fraschetti, La Conversione: Da Roma pag-
ana a Roma cristiana (1999) concentrating on the dynamics of Constantine’s
conversion. Articles in Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood, Christianizing
Peoples and Converting Individuals (2000) suggest the possibility of revisionist
perspectives, with those by Wood and Pohl containing important con-
siderations for students of the Anglo-Saxons and Lombards respectively.
The conversion of Europe as narrative has been contested by different
historiographical traditions. Among Roman Catholic historians (e. g., Daw-
son), the early medieval conversion period is portrayed as the Church’s her-
oic age – an “age of saints,” as Henri-Iréné Marrou put it in his Nouvelle
Histoire de l’église: Des origines à saint Grégoire le Grand (vol. 2, 1963, 247–48) –
during which disciplined Benedictine monks overcame the uncouth barbar-
361 Conversion

ism of the continent’s un-Romanized peoples to lay the foundations for the
achievements of European civilization that followed. The obvious flaw in
a narrative history of conversion is the teleology it often involves, particu-
larly in triumphalist accounts that assume the inevitability of Christianity’s
winning out over competitors. Apart from representing a late flowering of
the esteem in which 19th-century romanticism held the Middle Ages (con-
sider especially the Neo-Gothic craze of Victorian Britain), however, such a
perspective was, of course, also a reaction to the overwhelmingly negative
view of a period cast during the Enlightenment as the “Dark Ages” – a view
expressed especially in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776), which considered the rise of Christianity as a cause for Rome’s disin-
tegration. Since the 1970s, Peter Brown has led the critique of Gibbon,
presenting the triumph of the Church not as the result of Christianity’s
inherent superiority or divine favor, but of the Church’s willingness to ne-
gotiate and ability to adapt creatively to different cultural environments.
Brown’s many publications emphasize early medieval continuities with an-
tiquity (hence, the widespread rise of “late antiquity” as a term that some-
times replaces “early Middle Ages”). They also highlight the extent to which
Christianity shared its adaptability with other religions in the dynamic cir-
cumstances of a period that saw not only the consolidation of Christianity,
but also the formalization of Talmudic Judaism and the birth of Islam in the
Persian-dominated Near East, territory that was Rome’s, if not north western
Europe’s, next door neighbor (see Brown, The World of Late Anitiquity, 1971;
id., Rise of Western Christendom, 1996 [2003]).
Brown’s thesis has been extremely successful and supplied a new nar-
rative for the origins of Christendom that was especially creative during the
1990s and early years of this millennium, as reflected in the various volumes
of the Transformation of the Roman World series published by Brill (Leiden,
The Netherlands). Even when they do not deal with conversion itself, these
volumes often dramatically shift notions concerning the cultural setting of
late Roman and early medieval societies in which the expansion of Christian-
ity took place. Nevertheless, whereas such a perspective encourages a view
of the adoption of Christianity by Rome and its successors as dynamic and
culturally creative, recently Christianization has been once again viewed as
an outright negative because culturally destructive phenomenon (see Ray-
mond Van Dam, Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia, 2003,
3). This probably reflects a post-colonial critique of Christian mission in gen-
eral, which, as Antony Grafton and Kenneth Mills expressed it, could sig-
nify “an unyielding conquest […] the takeover of human identity, imagin-
ation and consciousness” (Conversion: Old Worlds and New, 2003, ix). Since the
Conversion 362

late 1990s, moreover, the Brownian narrative has itself been challenged by
historians reasserting the magnitude of Roman political and social collapse
during the 5th century and the real cultural regression that ensued in north
western Europe: e. g. Andre Giardini, “L’esplosione di tardo antico,” Studi
Storici 40 (1999): 157–80; Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End
of Civilization (2005); Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire (2006).
Recently, a more popular way of conceiving of conversion is as less a
linear narrative than an on-going process of negotiation between various
competing parties, with the study of which prioritizing sociological and an-
thropological theories. Whereas the focus of narrative histories of conversion
was top-down, conversion as process aims to view the phenomenon from the
bottom up. Exemplary studies of this sort from the early medieval period are
James Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistori-
cal Approach to Religious Transformation (1994); Carole Cusack, Conversion
Among the Germanic Peoples (1998); and especially The Cross Goes North: Processes
of Conversion in Northern Europe, ed. Martin Carver (2003). These studies por-
tray conversion as a dialectical process between the representatives of Chris-
tianity and the recipients of the new religion, stressing the changes that
Christianity itself underwent to appeal to early medieval converts, particu-
larly convert rulers. According to Carver, “the Age of conversion was […] an
age of ideological diversity and political experiment” (12). Other studies of
this kind, with differing degrees of emphasis are Nicholas Higham, The Con-
vert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England (1997); and
Barbara Yorke, The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain,
c. 600–800 (2006), both treating Anglo-Saxon England.
Rather than taking the Christian identity of medieval society for granted,
scholars have also re-examined the depth of commitment to Christianity by
the vast majority of the members of medieval society who existed outside the
orders of the Church. This has reminded historians to consider conversion an
on-going process throughout the Middle Ages in which Europe never com-
pletely succeeded in living up to its claims to be a uniformly Christian
society. Conceived as process, the conversion of medieval Europe has no his-
torical endpoint other than the end of the Middle Ages themselves, with re-
lations between the various parties to religious change constantly transform-
ing as each renegotiated their place in Christian society, as shown in the
relationship between the Church and military aristocracies in Guerriers et
moines: Conversion et sainteté aristocratiques dans l’Occident médiéval (IXe–XIIe
siècle), ed. Michel Lauwers (2002). This perspective has been employed by
historians to great effect in diversifying historical accounts of conversion to
concentrate upon more than just the baptism of rulers or the organization
363 Conversion

of an established Church. From this point of view, every aspect of medieval

society can be considered from the perspective of conversion, understood as
the Christian’s unending spiritual pursuit of God, including the written
word: Michel Zink, Poésie et conversion au Moyen Âge (2003) who argues that
medieval Latin poetry was not completely “converted” before Dante. Conver-
sion as process also foregrounds the aporetic character of medieval Europe’s
Christian identity, as can be seen regarding women, Jews and other margi-
nalized groups. Nicole Bériou and François-Olivier Touati, Voluntate Dei
Leprosus: Les lépreux entre conversion et exclusion aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (1991),
examine the religious experience of lepers.
Recent studies also stress the medieval rather than modern meaning of
the Latin word conversio, placing Christians themselves – saints and heretics
alike – in the category of those who fitted awkwardly within the strictures of
Christian society. Accepting medieval Latin terminology on its own terms,
historians have also investigated the meaning of conversio to medieval people
themselves, drawing attention to the factors that led certain individuals in
a nominally Christian society to seek a deeper sense of personal religious
vocation, as well as the often destabilizing social consequences of such a
choice. Conversion in this sense is inseparable from the study of monasticism,
especially monastic reform, sainthood, popular religion and heresy. Far from
imagining the European Middle Ages as synonymous with Christendom,
modern studies of conversion have therefore tended to highlight the diver-
sity of medieval religious experience – including that of women (see below),
Jews, Muslims and other non-Christian minorities – along with the inherent
tension between the claims of a Christian society and the convert’s call to the
renunciation of social bonds with its implicit condemnation of the Christian
credentials of society at large. Taking the ideal of renunciation implicit in the
ideal of conversion seriously, John van Engen has argued that such individ-
uals considered personal conversion to Christianity paradoxically to require
exile from and condemnation of wider medieval Christian society: “Conver-
sion and conformity in the early fifteenth century, “(Conversion: Old Worlds and
New, ed. Anthony Grafton and Kenneth Mills, 2003, 30–65).

C. Issues in Conversion History

C.1. Theological Considerations

In the immediate post-imperial setting (ca. 400–600) many of Germanic
warrior societies (Visigoths in the Iberian peninsula and southern Gaul,
Ostrogoths in Italy, Vandals in north Africa, etc.) were at least nominally
Christianized before their formal entry into Roman territories. This requires
Conversion 364

engagement with patristic theology since the Christology to which these

Germanic peoples converted was Arian, which maintained in opposition to
the Orthodox, or Catholic, Nicene Christology the ontological subordination
of Jesus as Word of God to God the Father. The authoritative guide to these
developments is Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1, The Emergence
of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (1971). Theological considerations reappear
regarding the different positions held by Rome and Constantinople on
matters such as images, the filioque clause, papal primacy and permissible
liturgical languages (that is, whether as Rome insisted, God could be for-
mally worshiped in a language other than Hebrew, Greek or Latin). This is
especially true during the competition between both of these patriarchal sees
for influence in Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans. The
sharpening of the Catholic-Orthodox divide during the High Middle Ages
demands familiarity with the late antique ecclesiastical context that set east-
ern (Greek) and western (Latin) Christianity on their separate trajectories, on
which see Herrin, Formation of Christendom (1987).

C.2. Conversion as Acculturation (Christianization)

Most modern studies increasingly take the view that the conversion of the
barbarians really represented a process of acculturation, rather than reli-
gious conversion per se, and consequently prefer the term ‘Christianization’
to ‘conversion.’ Roman Christianity promised the possibility of belonging,
through the diplomatic recognition that a converting barbarian king re-
ceived from the Roman emperor who still existed in Constantinople, to a
Mediterranean-wide political network with its roots in the unimpeachable
legitimacy of Greco-Roman antiquity and of access to sophisticated Roman
culture, especially reading and writing, with the obvious advantages in-
herent in both for effective government and tax collection. Given the cultural
prestige attached to bishops as representatives of literate Roman culture
with a history of pretensions to universal authority, the fact that more than
religious factors were at play in this conversion seems obvious. It has been ar-
gued that the greatest attraction for pagan kings in conversion to Christian-
ity was the religion’s association with Roman culture. It is worth noting that
the attraction of similar incentives involving access to what is deemed to be
a more universal and prestigious cultural system still seems to be at play in
conversions to Christianity among modern peoples: Conversion to Christianity:
Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, ed. Robert
Hefner (1993), the introduction to which by Hefner is the best account
available of the theoretical history of conversion and conversion as an anthro-
pological-historical phenomenon. The conversion of the Franks is paradig-
365 Conversion

matic of the problems for the historian of Europe’s conversion. Clovis re-
ceived baptism from a leading representative of the former Roman provincial
order and the conversion is recorded for posterity in the writings of another
representative of that order several decades after the event. This reflects the
early medieval situation in general. Historians can seldom assess the reli-
gious experience of the vast majority of early medieval people other than
through the writings of those supportive of Christianity, owing to a lack of
sources from non-Christian agents.

C.3. Diplomacy and “Native” Christians

Despite the tales of the missionaries themselves, Ian Wood (Christianizing
Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood,
2000, 27–36) has shown that early medieval missionaries to the Anglo-
Saxons probably did not arrive among peoples who had had no exposure to
Christian symbols or teachings. This seems to be a model capable of exten-
sion to other sectors of early medieval conversion where cross-cultural con-
tact in frontier zones arguably played a much greater role in preparing pagan
societies for Christianization than has heretofore been recognized. Christian
influence among pagan societies was often the by-product of diplomacy
aimed at other ends. Telescoping several centuries to the politics of conver-
sion along the 13th- and 14th-century Baltic coast, the rulers of Lithuania
were certainly familiar with at least the outwards demands of Christianiz-
ation (such as the destruction of non-Christian temples and the erection
of churches) several decades before their final acceptance of Catholicism
through marriage to the heir to throne of Poland (see Fletcher, The Conver-
sion of Europe, 1997).

C.4. Women
The important role played by the wives of early medieval rulers in their
husbands’ is often noted in historical accounts. This disguises, however, the
general scarcity and brevity of sources dealing directly with women through-
out the conversion process in early medieval Europe. As demonstrated by
Cordula Nolte and Ruth Mazo Karras in Varieties of Religious Conversion in
the Middle Ages (ed. James Muldoon, 1997, 91–99 and 100–14), this throws
into relief, with its preponderance of monks, bishops and kings, not only the
male-dominated interests of the early medieval sources, but also those of
much modern historiography. The most extensive treatment of women in
the early medieval conversion process is Cordula Nolte, Conversio und Chris-
tianitas: Frauen in der Christianisierung vom 5. bis 8. Jahrhundert (1995). In other
periods, finding new ways of approaching taciturn sources has achieved
Conversion 366

startling effects, with Valerie Flint deploying a close and subtle reading of
male sermonizing in the context of high medieval art, symbolism, and
science to argue for women’s resistance to conversion – or at least conversion
to the Crusades, if not to Christianity – in 13th-century England and France:
“Conversion and Compromise in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Kenneth
Mills and Anthony Grafton, Conversion: Old Worlds and New (2003, 1–29).

C.5. The Means of Conversion

The Christianization of the barbarians also raises important questions about
the means employed to promote conversion. Language arose as an especially
important issue during the 9th century when both Frankish and Byzantine
missionaries competed for influence in central Europe. The willingness of
the Greek Church to permit native liturgies is usually seen as affording By-
zantium a distinct advantage in this field over the Papacy with its insistence
on the use of Latin. The place of the vernacular in the Christianization pro-
cess of lands that fell under papal authority is therefore an important issue.
As Bruno Dumézil has argued in his Les Racines chrétiennes de l’Europe: Conver-
sion et liberté dans les royaumes barbares, Ve–VIIIe siècles (2005) the use of force
to impose conversion must also be considered, especially from the time of
Charlemagne’s baptism of the Saxons at sword-point during the early 800s
(see also Famille, violence et christianisation au Moyen Âge: Mélanges offerts à Michel
Rouche, ed. Martin Aurell and Thomas Deswarte, 2005). High medieval
theology and canon law generally eschewed violence as a means for obtaining
baptism, but sanctioned it for punishing those who had converted and
relapsed, as was often claimed in the case of Jews, see Guyda Armstrong
and Ian Wood, Christianizing Peoples (2000). Dual monastic-military orders
such as the Teutonic Knights were also crucial for the Christianization of the
Baltic from Pomerania to Lithuania, and demonstrate what later medieval
conversion techniques owed to the ideology of the Crusades.

C.6. Medieval European Conversion in a Global Context

Traditionally focused upon the experience of the western barbarian king-
doms during the early medieval period (ca. 500–1000), only recently has
scholarship broadened its horizons to include eastern and central Europe,
including Russia and the Caucasus, extending the conversion period itself
up to the symbolic conversion of Lithuania to Catholicism in 1386 – the last
state in Europe to do so. A horizon as broad as western China is necessary for
understanding what was historically distinctive about the conversion of the
various kingdoms of north-western Europe to Roman, Latin-language Chris-
tianity, but also for how the medieval Christendom to which it gave rise con-
367 Conversion

sidered Jews and Muslims both within and outside its porous frontiers. Such
a viewpoint also has the great advantage of relativizing western Europe’s
Catholic Christian identity by affording equal room historically for Chris-
tianity’s growth and implantation in Byzantium, including especially medi-
eval Bulgaria and Russia, Armenia and the Caucasus (Die Christianisierung
des Kaukasus, ed. Werner Seibt, 2002), Coptic Ethiopia (Stephen Kaplan,
The Monastic Holy Man and the Christianization of Early Solomonic Ethiopia, 1984)
and the significant, if politically disenfranchised communities, of Syriac
and Coptic Christians throughout the Near East, Central Asia and India.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Catholic Europe was just one among many
Christian societies. Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood, Christianizing Peoples
(2000) is again a good place to get a sense of the cultural and linguistic
breadth of medieval conversion experiences in both the early, high and late
medieval periods. Chronologically and geographically, Anthony Grafton
and Kenneth Mills, Conversion: Old Worlds and New (2003) bridges the gap be-
tween conversion in high medieval Christian Europe and experiences in
early modern Asia and the Americas, as well as modern Africa.

D. Sources
Important sources include theological treatises; chronicles, histories and an-
nals; law codes; saints’ Lives; sermons, letters, penitentiaries. Almost all
sources for the period were produced by parties favorable to the mission and
subsequently transmitted by through the Christian monastic tradition. The
lack of sources providing reliable evidence for pre-Christian religion is char-
acteristic of the early medieval period. Consequently, very little is known
about Europe’s pre-Christian religions at all. For a thorough introduction
to the primary sources for conversion in the early medieval period, see Ian
Wood, “Christianization and the Dissemination of Christian Learning,”
(New Cambridge Medieval History, I, c. 500–700, ed. Paul Fouracre, 2005,
710–34); On Saints’ Lives especially, see Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints
and the Evangelization of Europe, 400–1050 (2001).

E. Questions for Future Research

Future research will continue to probe what Christianity meant to the so-
cieties that received it and develop awareness of how the conversion process
shaped both medieval Christianity and the medieval Church. Considerable
interest still surrounds groups who were marginalized in Christian society.
Above all, perhaps, it is important not to overlook the broader historical
context of Europe’s early medieval Christianization. The rise and spread of
Islam from the 640s across the Near East and the southern shore of the Medi-
Conversion 368

terranean (including Spain) provides a crucial and compelling comparison

for Europe’s experience of Christianization. The 9th-century conversion of
the Khanate of Khazaria on the Black Sea to Judaism should not be over-
looked either. Questions for future research concern why monotheism itself
flourished in the early medieval period, how they differed historically be-
tween them and what both similarities and differences in the historical ex-
perience of monotheism meant to contemporaries. It is fitting to end with
Zink’s comment: “Pourquoi la conversion? Parce que c’est au Moyen Âge ce
vers quoi doit tendre toute vie.”

F. Modern Congresses
A string of favorable anniversaries in recent years (viz., 1000th anniversary of
the acceptance of orthodoxy from Byzantium by Kievan Rus’ in 1988; the
1400th anniversary of the arrival of the Roman monk St Augustine at Canter-
bury in 1997; 1500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis 1999–2005) has
seen a proliferation of international conferences and congresses dedicated
to the subject of conversion. The proceedings of many of these have been
published and provide a useful starting point for revisionist accounts of
many aspects of the traditional conversion narratives, for example: Conver-
sion and Christianity in the North Sea World (ed. Barbara Crawford, 1998); and
The Legacy of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Kiev and Moscow (ed. Anthony-Emil
Tachiaos, 1992).

Select Bibliography
Ian Wood, “Christianization and the Dissemination of Christian Learning,” New Cam-
bridge Medieval History, I, c. 500–700, ed. P. Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2005), 710–34; Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and
Diversity, 200–1000 (1996; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); Jacques Brosse, Histoire de la chré-
tienté d’Orient et d’Occident: De la conversion des barbares au sac de Constantinople (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1995); Lutz von Padberg, Die Christianisierung Europas im Mittelalter (Stutt-
gart: Reclam, 1998); Marina Montesano, La cristianizzazione dell’Italia nel Medioevo
(Rome: Laterza, 1997).

Matthew J. Dal Santo

369 Cornish Literature

Cornish Literature

A. Definition
Cornish is one of the Celtic languages of the British Isles, specifically one of
the so-called p-Celtic group, its closest relatives being Welsh in Britain, and
more closely Breton in present-day Brittany. South-West Brythonic, the com-
mon ancestor of Cornish and Breton, separated from the ancestor of Welsh in
the 6th century. In some early documents (especially glosses) it can be unclear
whether the language is Cornish or Breton, but the distinction becomes clear
from the later eleventh to the mid-12th century. Cornish was spoken broadly
in the area of modern Cornwall, but retreated gradually and survived longest
as a spoken language in the far west of the duchy. Very little survives of
the earliest stage of the language (a manumission document of the late 10th
or early 11th century with a list of names, and a Vocabularium Cornicum from
about 1100 with around a thousand Cornish words), but after 1200 the
second stage of the recorded language, Middle Cornish, began to develop
a literary tradition which had a florescence in the drama of the 14th century.
By the late 16th century the language underwent further changes, but was by
now under considerable pressure from English. Late Cornish, its final stage
as a spoken community language, shows a small amount of (not always very)
literary survivals, mostly short pieces, and it is usually assumed that Cornish
died out as a language of spoken intercourse even in the far western region
in the 18th century, the final surrender to English assisted by the absence of
a tradition of printed material, and especially of a Bible and an authorized lit-
urgy in Cornish, although the existence of a now-lost Middle Cornish Bible
has been postulated (Charles Penglase, “La Bible en moyen-cornique,”
Etudes Celtiques 33 [1997]: 233–43; against this Malte W. Tschirschky,
“The Medieval Cornish Bible,” Cornish Studies 11 [2003]: 308–16). See Ma-
thew Spriggs, “Where Cornish was Spoken and When: A Provisional Syn-
thesis” (Cornish Studies 11 [2003]: 228–69). The importance of the Cornish
language and its literature for Medieval Studies lies in the existence of a
number of works in Middle Cornish, most notably Biblical and other dra-
mas, which provide evidence of a tradition different from medieval drama in
English, sometimes with unusual material, which was performed in a differ-
ent way, and which in some respects matches more closely continental forms.
This has been a focus of comparative and contrastive scholarship.
Cornish Literature 370

B. Medieval Literature
The earliest text with a claim to be seen as literature is probably the Charter
Fragment, forty-one lines of Cornish verse probably from the late 14th century,
and written on the back of a charter dated 1340 relating to the parish of
St Stephen in Brannel, containing two different speeches, perhaps from a
play. The earliest full work is a strophic Passion-poem (first published as
Mount Calvary, but referred to now as Pascon agan Arluth, “The Passion of Our
Lord”). The major medieval work, however, is the so-called Ordinalia, a three-
day cycle of strophic verse-plays on the Creation, the Passion and the Resur-
rection related to (and including material from) the poem, and probably with
a provenance in a single literary center. The Passion-poem and plays were
probably written in the 14th century, and have been linked with Glasney Col-
lege, a college of secular canons with a constitution based on the Chapter of
Exeter cathedral, established near Penryn in 1265 by Bishop Walter Brones-
combe and dissolved in 1545. Glasney was not the only secular college in
Cornwall – other similar establishments were known at various times at dif-
ferent locations – but there are strong links through place-names in the plays
between the college at Penryn (near Falmouth) and the Ordinalia, which not
only drew upon the Passion-poem but which was also known to the writer of
a later Cornish Creation-drama. There is some indication that there may
originally have also been a nativity play, and two modern versions have been
supplied by modern writers: Ken George, Iuventus Christi/Flogholeth Krist
(2006), in Cornish and English; and Alan Kent, Nativitas Christi (2006), in
English, both imitating the style of the other plays. The Glasney appropri-
ations included the church of St Just in Penwith, near one of the surviving
playing-places or rounds where the plays were performed. J. A. C. Vincent,
“The Glasney Cartulary” (Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 6 [1878–81]:
213–58); James Whetter, The History of Glasney College (1988).
Later than the Ordinalia is a two-day verse drama cycle centered upon the
life of a Breton saint, Meriadoc, the Cornish version of whose name, Meria-
sek, gives the title Beunans Meriasek, “Life of Meriasek.” It also includes ma-
terial on St Sylvester and the conversion of Constantine, plus a legend of the
Virgin known from the Golden Legend. Camborne was the center of Meriasek’s
cult, but the probable time of composition (late 15th century; the manuscript
is dated 1504) coincides with the move of Provost John Nans of Glasney to
Meriasek’s church at Camborne. Few dramatized saints’ lives have survived
in Britain in English, and none of non-biblical saints. The world of Cornish
Studies was surprised in 2001 when the discovery was announced of a
mid-16th century manuscript donated to the National Library of Wales con-
taining the fragmentary text in late medieval Cornish, probably of the later
371 Cornish Literature

15th century, of two hitherto unknown verse plays or parts of a cycle (Graham
C. G. Thomas, “Two Middle Cornish Plays: A Note,” The National Library
of Wales Journal 32 [2001]: 121–22). The manuscript contains 3308 lines,
increasing the Middle Cornish corpus by about twenty percent. Of the two
pieces, the first is on the life of another non-biblical saint, St Kea, also known
from Breton sources and the patron of Kea parish in Cornwall, and his (suc-
cessful) conflict over land-claims with Teudar, a local king who appears also
in Meriasek (see W. H. Pascoe, Teudar: A King of Cornwall, 1985); the other,
based largely on Geoffrey of Monmouth, is concerned with King Arthur’s
(disputed) tribute payments to the Roman emperor Lucius, with Guenevere
and Modred, and the battle with the latter. The work clearly contains con-
temporary historical allusions and is of course also linguistically valuable.
The manuscript has now been published as Bewnans Ke/Bywnans Ke, “The Life
of Kea.” The last major work in Cornish was composed probably around the
middle of the 16th century; the first play survives of another two-day biblical
verse cycle, known as Gwreans an Bys; the manuscript, dated 1611, has the
English title The Creacion of the World. It draws to a certain extent upon the
Ordinalia (using mainly the role of God, in fact: Paula Neuss, “Memorial
Reconstruction in a Cornish Miracle Play,” Comparative Drama 5 [1971]:
129–37), but is essentially a different work, again with unusual biblical mo-
tifs. William Jordan, to whom it was once ascribed, was probably the copyist.
The basic form of the medieval Cornish drama is stanzaic rhymed verse,
with stanzas of varying lengths and lines usually of seven syllables (some-
times shorter) and repeated rhymes (the Passion-poem is in regular 8-line
stanzas). There are, however, a great many differences from the medieval
English drama-cycles. The Cornish plays were performed in a circular plen-
an-gwary (‘playing place’), which had various stations around the edge where
the most important characters were based, with the action taking place in the
central area; the manuscripts of the Ordinalia and of Meriasek contain dia-
grams of this staging in the round. The content of the plays differ from that
of the English dramas not only in the dramatization of the lives of non-bibli-
cal saints, but in the inclusion of unusual material within the biblical context
not found in the English cycles (though they are known on the continent),
such as the motif of the Holy Rood and the extended dramatization of the
story of David and Bathsheba in the Ordinalia, or the death of Cain in Gwreans
an bys.
There is little post-Reformation material in Cornish. One curiosity is a col-
lection of sermons (identified as Cornish only in 1949) known as the Tregear
Homilies, from the name of the presumed translator, John Tregear, a clericus
who cannot otherwise be identified. The translation is of the first twelve ser-
Cornish Literature 372

mons in a collection of thirteen published in 1555 by Edmund Bonner, John

Harpsfield and Henry Pendleton, from the Catholic side in a period of heated
religious conflict. The material in the thirteenth Cornish piece, which may
not be a sermon, however, is distinct from the rest of the manuscript and has
aroused interest. It is not a translation or the same as the thirteenth sermon
in the original collection, and has been evaluated by D. H. Frost (“Sacrament
an Alter: A Tudor Cornish Patristic Catena,” Cornish Studies 11 [2003]: 291–307)
as a collection of patristic quotations, providing evidence of ongoing Cathol-
icism in Cornwall. An oration in Cornish was reputedly held at Valladolid in
1600, and Nicholas Roscarrock, a 16th-century Catholic scholar and collector
of the lives of British saints, referred in a letter in 1607 to a (lost) Cornish life
known to him of a (female) St Columba, and there may very well have been
others.

C. Editions
The following standard editions contain texts and translation unless other-
wise stated.

C.1. Early Cornish: M. Förster, “Die Freilassungsurkunden des Bodmin-

Evangeliars,” A Grammatical Miscellany Presented to Otto Jespersen, ed. N. Bøg-
holm (1939), 77–99; Eugene van Tassel Graves, “The Old Cornish
Vocabulary” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia, 1962; Ann Arbor, Mich: University
Microfilms, 1962).

C.2. Middle Cornish: Lauran Toorians, The Middle Cornish Charter Endorse-
ment: The Making of a Marriage in Medieval Cornwall (1991); Whitley Stokes,
“The Passion. A Middle Cornish Poem,” Transactions of the Philological Society
(1860–1), Appendix, 1–100; Edwin Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama,
2. vol. (1859, rpt. 1968); Phyllis Pier Harris, “Origo Mundi: First Play of the
Cornish Mystery Cycle, The Ordinalia: A New Edition” (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Washington, 1964; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1964); Mark-
ham Harris, The Cornish Ordinalia: A Medieval Dramatic Trilogy (1969) (prose
translation only); Whitley Stokes, The Life of St Meriasek, Bishop and Confessor:
A Cornish Drama (1872); Markham Harris, The Life of Meriasek: A Medieval Cor-
nish Miracle Play (1977) (prose translation only); Myrna Combellack-Har-
ris, “A Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek” (Ph.D. diss., Exeter, 1985);
Bewnans Ke: The Life of St Kea, ed. Graham C. G. Thomas and Nicholas J. A. Wil-
liams (2007); Bywnans Ke, ed. Ken George (2006) (original text, translation,
version in Kernewek Kemmyn); Whitley Stokes, Gwreans an bys: The Creation
of the World (1864); Paula Neuss, “The Creation of the World” (Ph.D. diss.,
373 Cornish Literature

Toronto, 1970; 1983); Christopher Bice, The Tregear Manuscript: Homeliyes

XIII in Cornysche (1969): rpt. as The Tregear Homilies by Ray Edwards (1994).
Following the Cornish language revival in the 20th century, editions in
Unified Cornish of some of the texts have been produced with translations:
R. Morton Nance and A. S. D. Smith, Passyon agan Arluth, ed. E. G. R. Hoo-
per (1972);, The Cornish Ordinalia, Second Play: Chris’s Passion, ed. R. Morton
Nance, A. S. D. Smith and Graham Sandercock (1982); The Cornish Ordi-
nalia, Third Play: Resurrection, ed. id. (1984); The Cornish Ordinalia, First Play:
The Creation of the World, ed. and trans. R. Morton Nance and A. S. D. Smith,
new ed. Ray Chubb, Richard Jenkin and Graham Sandercock (2001);
R. Morton Nance and A. S. D. Smith, Gwryans an bys (1959), rev.
E. G. R. Hooper (1985). Separate translations have since appeared of Gwy-
reans an bys, Beunans Meriasek, and of the Ordinalia, the latter using modern
Cornish dialect. Donald R. Rawe, The Creation of the World (Gwryans an bys)
(1978); Myrna Combellack-Harris, The Camborne Play: A Verse Translation
of Beunans Meriasek (1988); Alan Kent, Ordinalia: The Cornish Mystery Play Cycle
(2005). See also the anthology Looking at the Mermaid: A Reader in Cornish Litera-
ture 900–1900, ed. Alan M. Kent and Tim Saunders (2000).

D. History of Research
The first scholarly work on Cornish was being carried out at precisely the
time Cornish was ceasing to be used as a community language, with 17th- and
18th-century scholars showing an interest in and collecting the early material
(“gathering the fragments”), and thus consciously preserving a knowledge of
the language and such written material as they could before it was too late.
Special mention must be made of William Scawen, vice-warden of the
Stannaries, whose studies of the language and of some of the medieval texts,
his Antiquities Cornubrittanic, were published long after his death and even
then not in the full form (Matthew Spriggs, “William Scawen (1600–1689):
A Neglected Cornish Patriot and Father of the Cornish Language Revival,”
Cornish Studies 13 [2005]: 98–125); of John Keigwin of Mousehole,
(1641–1716), who translated the medieval Biblical texts; and of Edward
Lhuyd (1659/60–1709), a Welsh-speaker and Oxford antiquary who printed
a grammar with a long preface in Cornish (Entries on Scawen and Keigwin
by Matthew Spriggs in the Oxford DNB, vol. 49 (2004), 195–56, and 31, 39;
entry on Lhuyd by Brynley F. Roberts in vol. 33, 710–12). The lawyer
and antiquary Daines Barrington (1727–1800) published in the journal
Archaeologia (3 [1777]: 278–84), a piece “On the Expiration of the Cornish Lan-
guage,” on the alleged last speaker of the language, Dolly Pentreath (who
died in that year), though there are other claimants, and it is never entirely
Cornish Literature 374

clear when a language ceases to be a living one; see also his “On Some Addi-
tional Information Relative to the Continuance of the Cornish Language”
(Archaeologia 5 [1779]: 81–86). The Boson family of Newlyn (Nicholas, Tho-
mas and John) wrote and preserved works in Cornish in the 17th and early
18th centuries (Oliver J. Padel, The Cornish Writings of the Boson Family (1973),
including the folktale John of Chyanhor, which has elements in common (ser-
vice rewarded with ‘points of wisdom’) with material as early as the 11th-cen-
tury German-Latin Ruodlieb (Brian Murdoch, “Is John of Chyanhor really a
Cornish Ruodlieb?” Cornish Studies 4 [1996]: 45–63). Other antiquaries con-
cerned with the preservation and study of Cornish include William Gwavas
(1676–1741), Thomas Tonkin (1678–1742), William Borlase (1696–1772)
and Henry Ustick (1720–1769).
The earliest scholarly productions in the 19th century were of (Keigwin’s)
texts and translations of the medieval works, most notably those edited by
Davies Gilbert, Mount Calvary […] Interpreted in the English Tongue […] by John
Keigwin (1826) and The Creation of the World with Noah’s Flood, written in Cornish
in the Year 1611 by Wm. Jordan, with an English Translation by John Keigwin (1827).
Edwin Norris’s two-volume Ancient Cornish Drama, appeared in 1859, and
new versions of the Passion-poem and of the later Creation-play, plus the
drama of Meriasek were published towards the end of the century by the Cel-
tic scholar Whitley Stokes. The early editions by Gilbert (original name
Giddy, 1767–1839) are more usually cited with opprobrium than applause
because in the preface to Gwreans an bys in 1826 he seemed to welcome the
demise of the Cornish language. Notwithstanding the outrage expressed
by Cornish language enthusiasts ever since, Gilbert praised the excellence of
the original language, but as a Member of Parliament and an early technocrat
he knew that separation and provinciality was bad for Cornwall. Gilbert did
not glory in the death of Cornish, but he was concerned for the development
of Cornwall, and his editions, if flawed, were still the first. Even Matthew
Arnold voiced the opinion that Cornwall was the better for adopting Eng-
lish and for becoming one with the rest of the country. The 19th century also
saw the publication of dictionaries by Robert Williams, Lexicon Cornu-Bri-
tannicum (1865) and by Fred. W. P. Jago, An English-Cornish Dictionary (1887,
rpt. 1984). Norris’ edition of the Ordinalia included a grammar and vocabu-
lary of about 300 pages, but there was really no convenient scholarly gram-
mar of medieval Cornish until the early 20th century, and for some time this
was only available in Welsh: Henry Lewis, Llawlyfr Cernyweg Canol (1923,
2nd ed. 1946, rpt. 1980). It was translated into German by Stefan Zimmer
(with an updated bibliography by Andrew Hawke) as Handbuch des Mittelkor-
nischen (1990).
375 Cornish Literature

In the early years of the 20th century a book by Henry Jenner, A Handbook
of the Cornish Language (1904), sparked off a renewed interest in the language
which led to a revival of Cornish on the basis of Middle Cornish, because
that stage of the language contained fewer English borrowings and a larger
(though necessarily not complete) lexicon than Late Cornish, which had,
however, undergone distinctive sound-changes. Jenner (1848–1934) him-
self, and then in particular Robert Morton Nance (1873–1959), established
a “Unified Cornish” which was used for teaching the revived language and
for new writing. Other orthographic and grammatical systems for revived
Cornish have since been developed, not without considerable controversy,
and the future of this development remains unclear. The existence of (vari-
ous) revived forms, incidentally, accounts for variations in the titles given
to some of the Cornish works. The publication of Jenner’s Handbook was of
considerable importance to the development of scholarship, even though
Jenner was himself not convinced of the literary value of some of the early
texts. Once the language revival established itself under the forceful hand of
Nance, a Federation of Old Cornwall Societies came into being in the 1920s
and a journal, Old Cornwall, was begun in 1925, followed by the establish-
ment of a gorsedd with bards in 1928. The journal included material of gen-
eral antiquarian interest and also more preserved fragments of the language,
sometimes little more than a sentence. Other journals appeared later at inter-
vals, devoted largely to promoting the revived language (see Henry and Katha-
rine Jenner, ed. Derek R. Williams, 2004; Derek Williams, “Robert Morton
Nance,” An Baner Kernewek/The Cornish Banner 88 [May 1997]: 14–18; Brian
Murdoch, entry on Nance in the Oxford DNB, vol. 40 [2004], 137–38).
The efforts of Nance and his collaborator A. S. D. Smith (1883–1950)
led to new writing in Cornish, but also to the re-editing and translating of
many of the medieval texts. However debatable the linguistic principles of
these new editions may be, this meant that the texts were again disseminated
and examined closely, and some errors in the older editions were corrected.
The publication for language teaching purposes of individual episodes from
the medieval plays may, however, have been detrimental to the perception of
the unity in the cycles in terms of literary scholarship.

E. Recent Research
Even for some years after the Second World War, medieval Cornish literature
was often (though not always) regarded as an insignificant subsidiary to the
English drama-cycles. Gradually, however, it came to be viewed both as a lit-
erary area in its own right and appreciated for its literary and especially
dramatic value. The full-scale studies by Robert Longsworth, The Cornish
Cornish Literature 376

Ordinalia: Religion and Dramaturgy (1967) and by Jane Bakere, The Cornish
Ordinalia: A Critical Study (1980) provided detailed analyses of the principal
dramas in the Ordinalia, and already in 1955 F. E. Halliday had published a
selection from the Ordinalia in English focussing upon the unusual Holy
Rood material: The Legend of the Rood (1955). However, once again extracting
the episodes from the cycle as such did not help in the evaluation of the unity
of the integrated trilogy, which critics from Bakere onwards have tried to
stress (see in this case: Brian Murdoch, “Legends of the Holy Rood in Cor-
nish Drama,” Studia Celtica Japonica 9 [1997]: 19–34). The coherence of other
plays, initially seen as disparate in their apparently varied themes within a
single cycle has also been asserted (R. T. Meyer, “The Middle Cornish Play
Beunans Meriasek,” Comparative Drama 3 [1969]: 54–64; Brian Murdoch,
“The Holy Hostage: de filio mulieris in the Middle Cornish Play Beunans Meria-
sek,” Medium Aevum 58 [1989]: 258–73).
Cornwall in the Middle Ages has an interest for literary studies which
goes beyond the material that is actually extant, and there are major Euro-
pean motifs that are linked with Cornwall. One such is the Tristan-material,
on which see O. J. Padel, “The Cornish Background of the Tristan Stories”
(Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 1 [1981]: 53–81). Important figures of Cor-
nish origin, such as John Trevisa of Oxford, for example, have also been the
object of study: David C. Fowler, John Trevisa (1993). Within the context
of the surviving literature, evidence from outside written material as such
is also of importance. Thus Evelyn Newlyn, “Between the Pit and the
Pedestal: Images of Eve and Mary in Medieval Cornish Drama” (New Images of
Medieval Women, ed. Edelgard DuBruck, 1989, 121–64; and also in the Cor-
nish material in the relevant volume of the Records of Early English Drama)
examines church windows portraying the saga of Adam and the Rood as re-
flected in the plays.
Full-scale overviews of the literature were rare for a long period after
Jenner’s language-based introduction. Surveys were provided by P. Berres-
ford Ellis, The Cornish Language and its Literature (1974) and Brian Murdoch,
Cornish Literature (1993). It is important as far as the perception of Cornish
drama is concerned that a chapter on Cornish had already been included in
a reference work on the medieval drama in England: Brian Murdoch,
“The Cornish Drama” (Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Ri-
chard Beadle, 1993, 211–39). The Passion-poem has received less attention.
Brian Murdoch established its chronological precedence (“Pascon agan
Arluth: the Literary Position of the Cornish Poem of the Passion,” Studi Medi-
evali 22 [1981]: 822–36) and compared it with other Gospel-narratives (“Vari-
ous Gospels,” Studi Medievali 26 [1995]: 777–96), and he has been particularly
377 Cornish Literature

concerned to link the Cornish plays with a broader European tradition, while
stressing their differences from the English plays (Brian Murdoch, “Dos
piezas dramáticas en verso del Génesis, una germana y una celta, de finales de
la Edad Media,” Acta Poetica 16 [1995]: 349–68).
Interest was shown from an early stage in the special nature of perform-
ance of the Cornish material, from Richard Southern, The Medieval Theatre
in the Round (1957) onwards; George F. Wellwarth, “Methods of Produc-
tion in the Medieval Cornish Drama” (Speech Monographs 24 [1957]: 212–28);
Raymond Williams, Drama in Performance (1972); Neville Denny, “Arena
Staging and Dramatic Quality in the Cornish Passion Play,” in his Medieval
Drama (1973, 124–53). Some modern performances have also taken place.
Textual work on smaller pieces, such as the Charter Fragment (in Toorians’s
edition) are also important, but it has to be stressed that all the work done on
medieval Cornish literature before the turn of the millennium was rendered
incomplete by the discovery of Bewnans Ke, which had and still has impli-
cations for literary and linguistic research.
In language studies based on the early material, detailed work (and com-
puter technology) has been carried out by Kenneth J. George, “The Phono-
logical History of Cornish” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Brest, 1984); id., “A
Computer Model of Sound Changes in Cornish,” Association for Literary and
Language Computing Journal 4 (1983): 39–48. On Cornish and English, see
Martyn F. Wakelin, Language and History in Cornwall (1975). A separate issue
has been the thorough investigation of Cornish elements in place-names,
most notably by Oliver J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (1985); and id.,
A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (1988). See also W. M. N. Picken, A
Medieval Cornish Miscellany, ed. O. J. Padel (2000).

F. Current Conditions
Work continues (especially in the context of Bewnans Ke) on the Cornish
language. Much energy – sadly – has been expended upon conflicts within
the proponents of different forms of revived Cornish, but the interest thus
generated in the language has proved fruitful insofar as more detailed atten-
tion has necessarily been paid to the earlier stages of the language, with
a focus on the medieval period (for those in favor of “Unified Cornish”
or amended versions of it), or on the last stage (for those who wished to see a
revived language based upon Cornish in the 17th century). Dictionaries,
grammars and original writings have been produced in all the forms.
Nance’s Unified Cornish held sway for a long period, and has more recently
been amended by N. J. A. Williams. Kenneth J. George developed a
phonemic “common Cornish” (Kernewek Kemmyn), while Richard Gendall
Cornish Literature 378

based his revived modern Cornish (Kernuack) on the final stage of the lan-
guage (see Neil Kennedy, “Fatel era ny a keel? Revived Cornish: Taking
Stock,” Cornish Studies 10 [2002]: 283–302). Scholarly editions of some of the
medieval texts remain in forms that are hard to access (Beunans Meriasek) or
are still desiderata (the Tregear Homilies). There has, on the other hand, been a
steady increase in the study of aspects of the medieval works, again with an
emphasis on the drama. The individuality and special value of these works
on the one hand, and their internal coherence on the other, have continued to
be the focus of study, and the Cornish medieval plays are increasingly in-
cluded in surveys and comparative studies. In parallel with the attempts to
stress the value of the medieval Cornish material and also to afford it a place
within the broad scheme of medieval writings, attempts have also been made
to seek for a continuity between medieval Cornish writings and new con-
structions of Cornish identity in Anglo-Cornish (or Cornu-English) from the
end of the middle ages, notably by Alan M. Kent, The Literature of Cornwall:
Continuity, Identity, Difference, 1000–2000 (2000). The application of new ap-
proaches and of new theoretical areas to the study of Cornish (Bernard Dea-
con, “From ‘Cornish Studies’ to ‘Critical Cornish Studies’: Reflections on
Methodology,” Cornish Studies 12 [2004]: 13–29) and to individual aspects of
the medieval plays (Paul Manning, “Staging the State and the Hypostatis-
ation of Violence in the Medieval Cornish Drama,” Cornish Studies 13 [2005]:
126–69) has been marked. In terms of performance, an invaluable source-
book was provided by the Records of Early English Drama volume, the Cornish
section of which includes sections on both the Cornish and the English
drama in Cornwall, edited by Sally L. Joyce and Evelyn S. Newlyn (1999).
Other relevant material now available includes Nicholas Roscarrock’s Lives of the
Saints: Cornwall and Devon, ed. Nicholas Orme (1992; see also as a reference
text Nicholas Orme, The Saints of Cornwall, 2000). Studies of medieval Cor-
nish literature and of the language continue to appear in mainstream literary
and drama-history journals, journals concerned with medieval studies and
with Celtic studies as a whole (there is interest in the area in Japan, for
example), and most notably in Cornish Studies under the editorship of Philip
Payton, Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies of the University of Ex-
eter, as well as in more localized magazines, such as An Baner Kernewek/The
Cornish Banner. Cornish Studies are available at the University of Exeter,
which has a Cornwall campus not far from Glasney.
379 Crusades Historiography

Select Bibliography
Jane A. Bakere, The Cornish Ordinalia: A Critical Study (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1980 2nd ed. 2009); P. Berresford Ellis, The Cornish Language and its Literature
(London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); Crysten Fudge, The Life of Cor-
nish (Redruth: Truran, 1982); Henry Jenner, A Handbook of the Cornish Language (Lon-
don: Nutt, 1904); Alan M. Kent, The Literature of Cornwall: Continuity, Identity, Difference
1000–2000 (Bristol: Redcliffe, 2000); Robert Longsworth, The Cornish Ordinalia: Re-
ligion and Dramaturgy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); Brian Mur-
doch, Cornish Literature (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1993); Brian Murdoch,
“The Cornish Drama,” Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard
Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 211–39; P. A. S. Pool, The
Death of Cornish 1600–1800 (1975; Saltash: Cornish Language Board, 2nd ed. 1982); Rec-
ords of Early English Drama: Dorset, ed. Rosalind Conklin Hays and C. E. McGee; and op.
cit. Cornwall, ed. Sally L. Joyce and Evelyn S. Newlyn (Toronto: Brepols and Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1999); Lauran Toorians, “Passie, lief en leed; de oudste poëzie
van het Keltische Cornwall,” Kruispunt 129 (March 1990): 3–55.

Brian Murdoch

Crusades Historiography

A. Introduction
Dating nearly to the inception of the crusading movement, we can trace a
large number of trends and shifts in the way scholars and historians have
analyzed and understood the crusades. Not surprisingly, there have been
nearly as many disagreements over issues concerning the crusading move-
ment, as there have been crusades historians. Yet what is perhaps the most
important recent dispute among crusades scholars is also fundamental to
this study of crusades historiography.

B. Definition
While historians have differed over what qualifies as a crusade, such a qualifi-
cation is necessary in determining the proper scope of crusades histori-
ography. The issue is an important one for historians because with the ex-
pansion of the crusading movement comes the corresponding expansion of
sources available for study. Yet the very issue of defining a crusade has, until
recently, been one of the areas of greatest disagreement among crusades
scholars. Historians have essentially divided into two camps on the issue,
those known as traditionalists and those known as pluralists.
Crusades Historiography 380

Traditionalists have emphasized the well-known and often popularized

crusading efforts in the East, which took place from the end of the eleventh to
the end of the thirteenth centuries, as the embodiment of the crusading
movement. In this case, the purpose of a crusade is either to assist eastern
Christians or to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher. Among the most
notable of the traditionalists is the German historian Hans Eberhard
Mayer. In his work The Crusades, first published in German in 1965 and in
English in 1972, Mayer defined a crusade as having Christian domination
over the Holy Sepulcher as its goal. This narrow definition allows for only
those expeditions to Jerusalem as a proper crusade and may also be a more ac-
curate reflection of contemporary understandings of the crusades.
Pluralists, as opposed to the traditionalists, cite papal authorization as
the defining feature of a crusade, regardless of against who or where it is di-
rected. Consequently, the pluralists’ definition of a crusade provides for a
broad expansion of the crusading movement including expeditions against
religious dissenters, pagans, political opponents, and Muslims in Europe.
Among such expeditions are included the so-called Reconquista, the Albi-
gensian Crusades, the Baltic or Northern Crusades, and the Italian Crusades.
Because pluralists are increasingly dominating the ranks of crusades histori-
ans, the field of crusades studies has grown correspondingly to address the
broader pluralist definition. Perhaps the most well known and influential
of the pluralists is Cambridge University historian Jonathan Riley-Smith.
In 1977 he defined a crusade as “[…] a holy war authorized by the pope, who
proclaimed it in the name of God or Christ […] a defensive reaction to injury
or aggression or as an attempt to recover Christian territories lost to the infi-
dels, it answered the needs of the whole church or all of Christendom […]
rather than those of a particular nation” (Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were
the Crusades?, 1977). Historian Elizabeth Siberry is representative of many
other scholars in that she has embraced Riley-Smith’s definition with
minor modifications arguing the crusades were also launched by the papacy
“against heretics, schismatics, and Christian lay powers in the West as well as
the campaigns against the Muslims in the Near East” (Elizabeth Siberry,
Criticism of Crusading, 1985, preface). Riley-Smith argues that the pluralist
movement began with Princeton historian Giles Constable in 1953. It was
then that Constable demonstrated that the various expeditions around
the time of the Second Crusade taking place in the Levant, Spain, and Central
Europe, were parts of a larger collective movement, rather than separate un-
associated movements (see Giles Constable, “The Second Crusade as Seen by
Contemporaries,” Traditio 9 [1953]: 213–79). Contributing to Constable’s
pluralist position was Norman Housley’s work on the Italian Crusades,
381 Crusades Historiography

which demonstrated their compatibility with the crusades to the East (Nor-
man Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades
Against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343, 1984). Additional summaries of the
pluralist-traditionalist debate, as well as a broader examination of crusading
historiography, are found in Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The Crusading Move-
ment and Historians,” The Oxford History of the Crusades (1999), 1–15; and Giles
Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades,” The Crusades from the Per-
spective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (2001), 1–22.

C. Chronological Overview of Crusades Historiography

The historiography of the crusades begins with the earliest accounts of con-
temporaries who were often, but not always, participants and eyewitnesses to
the crusades. Like in any area of historical studies, a critical analysis of primary
source texts is necessary, as it often would have benefited many source authors
to portray their involvement in the best possible way. By most primary source
accounts, the crusaders believed they were fighting what amounted to a de-
fensive war that sought to end the Turkish abuse of Eastern Christians and re-
store the Holy Land to Christian control. Byzantine source authors, with the
exception of limited initial praise for some of the earliest crusaders, are gen-
erally distrustful of crusaders whom they view as rude, unrefined, and un-
grateful guests in their homeland. The accounts of contemporary Muslim his-
torians of the crusades are equally dominated by cultural and religious
loyalties. Regardless of past Turkish and Arab conquests of Christian lands, for
Muslims, the crusades amounted to a brutal invasion by western Christians.
A large number of surviving manuscripts demonstrate the continued
legitimacy with which the crusading movement was viewed in Latin
Christendom after the fall of the last crusader state at Acre in 1291. Perhaps
this is best demonstrated by the repeated calls for renewed crusading in the
East to reclaim the Holy Land during the fourteenth century and later. Peter
Dubois was typical of the many Christian authors who called for a new cru-
sade to reclaim the Holy Land. Writing in the wake of the events of 1291
(ca.1305) Peter advocated the study of oriental languages as the means by
which crusades preachers might convert large numbers of Arabs and make it
possible to retain the Holy Land after a successful crusade. As late as 1430,
Joan of Arc wrote to the Hussites and equated them with Muslims in their
rejection of the Catholic faith. She used the imagery of crusading, implying
its continued legitimacy in her age, as she threatened to lead an army against
them if only she were not so busy with her efforts against the English.
During the sixteenth century, crusading ideology survived largely in re-
sponse to the advance of the Turks into Europe as well as the wars of religion.
Crusades Historiography 382

Both Catholics and Protestants used crusading rhetoric in their calls for
warfare against the Turks, and occasionally each other. For example, Pope
Gregory XIII offered the same indulgence that had been offered to crusaders
centuries earlier to the Irish who opposed the Protestant English Queen El-
izabeth. Also, the enthusiastic reception to the publication in 1581 of Tasso’s
fictional Gerusalemme Liberata, which came out ten years after the battle of
Lepanto, reflected the way in which European clashes with the Turks had in-
spired interest in the crusading movement and crusading theory.
In 1611 appeared the important collection of primary sources on the
crusades edited by Jacques Bongers called the Gesta Dei per Francos sive orien-
talium expeditionum et regni Francorum Hierosolimitani historia. This influen-
tial collection of sources was followed by the 1639 publication of the Protes-
tant Minister Thomas Fuller’s Historie of the Holy Warre, considered the
first serious general history of the crusades. Fuller, writing from a decided-
ly anti-Catholic perspective, was the first to both question the legitimacy of
the crusades and assign them to the past, rather than as part of a continu-
ing movement. In 1670 the French writer Louis Maimbourg responded with
his generally more positive depiction of the crusades in his Histoire des croi-
sades.
It would not be until the period of the Enlightenment that the general
hostility of several thinkers of this era toward religion in general, and Cath-
olicism in particular, initiated a significant shift in European thinking about
the crusades. For the rationalists of the Enlightenment, the crusades were
nothing more than the product of religious extremism and greed. In Vol-
taire’s 1751 work on the crusades, which was incorporated into his Essai sur
les mœurs, he referred to the crusaders as adventurers motivated only by “the
thirst for brigandage.” His opinion of Christianity was perhaps best summed
up in a letter to Frederick the Great in which he wrote that Christianity was
“the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever in-
fected the world.” About the Albigensian crusade, Voltaire wrote, “[…]
there was never anything as unjust.” In comparison with Voltaire and
other Enlightenment era writers, the English writer Edward Gibbon wrote
generally more sympathetically of the crusaders. Yet in some instances Gib-
bon reflected the spirit of many Enlightenment era authors as when he
claimed the crusaders were motivated by a “savage fanaticism” (Edward Gib-
bon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vol., 1776–1789).
With the rise of the Romanticism movement of the nineteenth-century,
the influence of Enlightenment depictions of the crusades was reduced and
the crusades were increasingly portrayed in a positive way. Popular novelists
like Sir Walter Scott emphasized the heroism and adventure of the crusading
383 Crusades Historiography

movement through positive portrayals of the heroic exploits of both cru-

saders and their Muslim opponents. Out of this era of greater popular interest
for the crusaders emerged the so-called “golden age” of crusades scholarship
in the second half of the nineteenth century. Few had a greater influence on
understandings of the crusades during this period than the French historian
Joseph-François Michaud (d. 1839). Michaud’s popular and monumental
work, Histoire des Croisades (1st ed., 3 vol., 1812–1817; 6th ed. Poujoulat,
6 vol., 1841) became a standard reference work during the late nineteenth
century and portrayed the crusaders as heroes whose achievements inspired
the rebirth of the West. As a supplement to his Histoire, Michaud also pro-
duced a four volume collection of crusades sources in translation, including
one volume of Arabic sources translated by M. Reinaud, titled the Biblio-
theque des croisades. Michaud also served as a member of the Acadèmie des
Inscriptions et Belles letteres which in 1824 began several decades of work on
what remains to the present as the most important collection of crusades
sources, the sixteen volume Recueil des Historiens des croisades.
Michaud’s work was representative of the efforts of German and French
scholars during the 19th century who laid a foundation for modern scholarly
approaches to crusades studies. During this time scholars critically sifted
through the earliest primary source accounts, which were becoming increas-
ingly accessible during this period, and made significant breakthroughs on
a number of issues. For example, from the era of the crusades until the
nineteenth century, the origins of the First Crusade were often attributed
to the efforts of a wandering preacher known as Peter the Hermit. Accord-
ing to the traditionally accepted narrative, Peter had been the inspiration be-
hind Pope Urban II’s calling of the First Crusade and spoke at the Council of
Clermont in 1095. However, in the later nineteenth century the German his-
torian Heinrich Hagenmeyer convincingly demonstrated that Peter did not
inspire the Pope to preach, did not speak at Clermont, and was only a minor
figure during the First Crusade (Heinrich Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremit,
1879).
In the early 20th century, Princeton University historian Dana Carleton
Munro was perhaps the leading U.S. scholar of the crusades. Munro pub-
lished numerous journal articles and essays on the crusades on a host of
issues in leading publications of his time. His influence on the field of cru-
sades studies was demonstrated by the 1928 publication of a collection of es-
says by his former students, many of whom were by then teaching at various
universities and colleges, titled The Crusades and Other Historical Essays Pres-
ented to Dana C. Munro by his Former Students. Munro’s final work, The Kingdom
of the Crusaders, was published shortly after his death in 1935 and focused on
Crusades Historiography 384

the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Munro died before finishing what would
have been his opus magnum, a history of the crusades based on an exhaustive
and critical use of contemporary sources and fieldwork in the Near East.
Munro also contributed an influential essay on perceptions of Islam
during the crusades with his 1931 article for Speculum, “The Western Atti-
tude Toward Islam During the Period of the Crusades” (329–43) Munro’s
efforts were followed with significant research in this area by R.W. South-
ern’s broader examination of Medieval Europe in his 1962 work, Western
Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. As recently as 2002 John Tolan also con-
tributed to this field of study with his book, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval
European Imagination. While both Southern and Tolan did not focus
exclusively on the period of the crusades, their work addressed the issue sub-
stantively enough to be of value for crusades studies. Conversely, few cru-
sades historians have dealt with the issue opposing issue of Muslim perspec-
tives of the crusades. That is until Carole Hillenbrand came out with her
groundbreaking work published in 2000, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives.
Many of these books, to varying degrees, also touch on the issue of Muslim-
Christian interaction during the crusades, but among the most focused re-
cent works dedicated to the subject is the 1986 volume edited by Vladimir P.
Goss, The Meeting of Two Worlds.
While Dana Carleton Munro was active in the United States in the
1930s, European scholarship during this time was perhaps best represented
by French historian Rene Grousset who published his authoritative His-
toire des croisades between 1934–1936, and German scholar Carl Erdmann,
whose influential Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, published in 1935,
argued that the crusades was a product of the eleventh century ecclesiastical
reform movement. Erdmann posited that the efforts to purify the church
during this period extended to the greater Christian society, including
Christian knights and soldiers. Consequently, the crusading movement pro-
vided an opportunity to purify the actions of such warriors, by their taking
up arms in defense of other Christians and Christian holy places. As a result,
the so-called Erdmann thesis is that the crusades were effectively an export
of violence carried out primarily for the benefit of a western Christian society
attempting to reform itself. It would be nearly thirty-five years before Oxford
historian H.E.J. Cowdrey provided the first serious challenge to the Erd-
mann thesis. Cowdrey’s most direct rebuttal to Erdmann came in 1970
with the publication of his article “Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the Second
Crusade” (History 55 [1970]: 177–88). In it Cowdrey convincingly argued
that Pope Urban II’s true goal was the liberation of Jerusalem, rather than
simply an export of violence as advocated by Erdmann.
385 Crusades Historiography

The later half of the twentieth century saw the rise and eventual domi-
nance of British historians of the crusades. British historian Jonathan Riley-
Smith has described this movement as nothing less than “phenomenal.” He
notes that in the early 1950s there were only two historians of the crusades
teaching in British universities, but by 1990 there were twenty-nine British
universities and colleges that had faculty members belonging to the Society for
the Study of the Crusades to the Latin East, the leading scholarly organization for
crusades historians. While not many crusades historians were employed at
British universities in the 1950s, this does not take into account the influence
of Steven Runciman, perhaps the world’s most famous crusades scholar.
Runciman’s three volume History of the Crusades, published between 1951
and 1954, remains among the most popular works on the crusades even
today. Runciman approached the crusades from a Byzantine perspective
and, as a result, found several causes for criticism of the movement and he
did not shy away from expressing moral indignation. This was perhaps best
demonstrated in Runciman’s often quoted description of the crusading
movement, “High ideas were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise
and endurance by a blind and narrow self righteousness, and the Holy War
itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God,
which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.”
Current scholars generally speak of Steven Runciman with respect
for the popular enthusiasm his works have generated for crusades studies.
Yet while current popular understandings of the crusades remain largely
in line with those propagated by Runciman, scholars have largely rejected
his moral condemnation of the crusaders, preferring instead to understand
the crusaders according to standards and morality of their time. This has
resulted in a striking divide of current scholarly and popular opinions of
the crusades. Runciman, as well as many modern popular writers on the
crusades, found it hard to accept that violence motivated by religion was con-
sidered legitimate to those who took the cross. Yet as Jonathan Riley-Smith
has argued, this is a mental block that belongs to a post-Enlightenment
Christian age, rather than medieval Christianity. Riley-Smith notes,
“They, and everyone else, have forgotten how intellectually respectable the
Christian theory of positive violence was.” Then the 1960s saw the rise of the
Christian Liberation movement in South America. Some aspects of the move-
ment justified the use of violence during acts of rebellion as a moral good and
an act of Christian charity. As a result, crusades historians realized that there
were sincere Christian contemporaries advocating positions nearly identical
to those of the crusaders, thus making the concept of Christian violence dur-
ing the crusades much more believable and respectable for modern scholars.
Crusades Historiography 386

In 1965, German historian Hans Eberhard Mayer argued that the cru-
saders were motivated by religious reasons. Specifically, Mayer noted that
the crusaders were driven by a desire to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim con-
trol and to come to the aid of Eastern Christians whom they believed suffered
as a result of Turkish abuse. Mayer based his conclusions on a common
theme in contemporary western Christian accounts of the crusades that
claim Christian charity was essentially at the heart of crusading. Cambridge
historian Jonathan Riley-Smith has explored this issue in his 1980 article
aptly titled, “Crusading as an Act of Love” (History, 65, 177–85) The idea of
crusading “as an act of love” or charity, comes from the reasoning reportedly
employed by the earliest crusades preachers used to stir their listeners to take
crusading vows. Clerics regularly cited the suffering of eastern Christians
under Turkish rule and the blasphemies committed by Turks against holy
places in the Holy Land to great effect, contributing to the argument that
many crusaders held only sincere motives in taking the cross. This was the
dominant thought of crusades historians roughly until the Enlightenment
when greater suspicion was directed toward the motives of the crusaders. Yet
since the late twentieth century, largely due to the work of Riley-Smith,
historians are reconsidering the issue and increasingly favoring the view that
many participants in crusades understood crusading as, essentially, an act of
Christian charity.
One would have to go back to Steven Runciman to find another scholar
that has had nearly the impact on crusades studies as Cambridge historian
Jonathan Riley-Smith. Undergraduates are usually introduced to the
scholarship of Riley-Smith through his massively popular 1987 textbook
titled, The Crusades: A Short History. As already mentioned in this essay, and as
reflected by the scope of his textbook, Riley-Smith is a major proponent of
the idea that the crusading movement included efforts in Europe against
northerners, heretics, and Muslims in Spain, rather than only the crusades
to the East. Riley-Smith’s works are greatly at odds with many popular per-
ceptions of the crusades. His scholarship, once considered revisionist in light
of the popular works by earlier historians like Runciman, is now main-
stream in the scholarly community. Riley-Smith has effectively argued
that the crusaders were largely sincere and motivated by piety more than
greed, as had been argued since the Enlightenment. Riley-Smith has also
shown the great personal sacrifice involved for each crusader and his or her
family, demonstrating the enormous amount of wealth that flowed from
West to East rather than the other way around. He also has contributed sub-
stantially to undermining the so-called “younger sons” theory of crusade
motivations in his 1986 work The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. In the
387 Crusades Historiography

work, he demonstrates that heads of families often went on crusade, and that
younger sons seeking land of their own, as normally only their oldest brother
would inherit their father’s lands, were a small minority of crusaders.
While the vast majority of modern crusades historians have embraced
the theories advocated by Riley-Smith concerning the motivations of the
crusaders, there are some dissenters. A major challenge has come from John
France, another respected British historian from the University of Wales-
Swansea. While crusades historians have largely embraced Riley-Smith’s
rejection of greed as a motivation of the crusaders, France has argued that
many crusaders did, in fact, hope to get wealthy. France does not deny
Riley-Smith’s argument that religious devotion was a major motivating
factor for crusaders, but he argues that the hope of acquiring wealth also
served as a motivation for crusaders (see, for example, “Patronage and the
Appeal of the First Crusade” The First Crusade, ed. Jonathan Phillips, 1997,
5–20). Although crusades scholars generally agree that crusading was ex-
pensive and a very poor way to try to earn one’s wealth, France argues that
the earliest crusaders did not yet know of the burdensome costs associated
with crusading. If France’s argument is correct, it would apply only to the
motives of the earliest crusaders, as the hardships of crusading became well
known by the Second Crusade at the latest. In addition to France, historian
Ronald C. Finucane has also challenged the religious motivations theory.
In his 1983 book, Soldiers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War, Finucane
argues that while religious motivations were significant, many other factors
must also be acknowledged. He argues that political, social, economic, and
military factors also played an important role in determining the composi-
tion of crusader armies. Few historians would deny this; however the real
dispute is over the level of importance of such factors when weighed against
religious factors.
Among U.S. scholars, Thomas Madden is quickly becoming one of
the most visible and highly regarded historians of the crusades. In addition
to Madden’s well-received scholarly works, his articles for non-scholarly
publications, including religious and political magazines, have positioned
him in the thick of modern debates over the crusades and Islam and generally
reflect his conservative viewpoints of each. His highly regarded scholarly
work has examined Italian history at the time of the crusades as well as the
Fourth Crusade. His work on the controversial Fourth Crusade resulted in
his 1997 co-authorship of The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople
with the late Donald Queller. Madden and Queller argued what has
come to be known as the accident theory, which holds that the crusaders only
ended up attacking Constantinople at the end of a series of unforeseeable and
Crusades Historiography 388

unpredictable events rather than plotting such an attack from the begin-
ning.

D. Areas of Crusades Studies

Regardless of how one defines or limits the crusading movement, the cru-
sades remain an enormous field for scholarly study. Scholars working in dis-
ciplines including literature, philosophy, and religion will find enough to
satisfy a lifetime of study within the crusading movement. Even researchers
in non-traditional areas like economics and psychology have ventured into
the realm of crusades studies for their research. Despite the appeal of cru-
sades studies to scholars in other disciplines, it is without doubt historians
who dominate the field. Historians of the crusades approach their studies
from several broad backgrounds, including Medieval European, Byzantine,
and Islamic History. Areas of specialization range from the more traditional
study of the military orders, the clerical preaching of the crusades or the cru-
sader states, to relatively new areas of specialization such as the study of sex
and gender during the crusades.

E. The Current State of Crusades Research and Graduate Studies

Because the United Kingdom is home to a disproportionate share of promi-
nent crusades historians, it is one of the best places to pursue advanced
studies of the crusades. A large number of historians completed their PhD
studies at Cambridge University under the supervision of Jonathan Riley-
Smith. His former students have had great success in obtaining teaching
positions at various universities and colleges in the United Kingdom and the
United States, and essentially form a school of historians that insure the sur-
vival of Riley-Smith’s influence on crusades studies well into the future.
The University of London currently offers an M.A. in Crusader Studies that
is jointly run by the Department of History at Queen Mary, University of
London and the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of
London. Their program boasts a faculty of no less than five crusades histori-
ans, an exceptionally large number to be associated with one university.
They include such prominent historians as Jonathan Phillips, Thomas
Asbridge, Jonathan Harris, and Susan Edgington. Oxford University is
the home of crusades historian Christopher Tyreman, author of the recent
mammoth work, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (2006), as well as Eric
Christiansen, perhaps the leading scholar of the so-called Northern Cru-
sades against European pagans (Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades,
1980). Other important British historians one might consider working with
for advanced studies of the crusades include Carole Hillenbrand at the
389 Crusades Historiography

University of Edinburgh, Peter Edbury and Helen Nicholson at Cardiff

University, Marcus Bull at the University of Bristol, A. J. Forey at the Uni-
versity of Durham, John France at the University of Wales-Swansea, Mal-
colm Barber at the University of Reading, Norman Housley at the Univer-
sity of Leicester, and Alan V. Murray at the University of Leeds.
If the United Kingdom is at the forefront of Crusades Studies, the United
States is not far behind. Although a number of esteemed U.S. historians of
the crusades are retired, they are in most cases still active at conferences and
in publishing and are known for their willingness to help younger scholars.
Included among their ranks are James Powell, Alfred Andrea, and James
Brundage. U.S. historians active in teaching positions at universities and
colleges include William Chester Jordan at Princeton, Michael Lower at
the University of Minnesota, Thomas Madden at St, Louis University, Kelly
Devries at Loyola College in Maryland, Jaroslav Folda and Brett Whalen
at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Ronald Finucane at
Oakland University, William Urban at Monmouth College, and Edward
Peters at the University of Pennsylvania. Especially noteworthy are the ef-
forts of scholars at St. Louis University which, at times, has appeared poised
to become a center for crusades studies in the United States under the direc-
tion of Thomas Madden.
French and German scholars, whose predecessors laid the foundations of
modern crusades studies from the nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries,
continue to rank among the leading specialists of the crusades. The French
historian Jean Richard, for example, has published a number of important
works on varying crusading topics over a period of more than four decades
including Le royaume latin de Jérusalem (1953), Saint-Louis (1983), and his popu-
lar general history Histoire des croisades (1996). Jean Flori, who serves as Di-
rector of Research at the Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médi-
évale in Poitiers, has also established himself as a leading French historian of
the crusades through several well received works including Pierre l’ermite et la
premiere croisade (1999) and La guerre sainte: la formation de l’idee de croisade dans
l’Occident chretien (2001). Michel Balard at the University of Paris, Sorbonne,
has also made important contributions to crusades studies (see M. Balard,
ed., Autour de la Première Croisades, 1996). Karl Borchardt at the University
of Würzburg is among the leading German scholars of the crusades (see
The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean, and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell, ed.
K. Borchardt, Nikolas Jaspert, and Helen J. Nicholson, 2007). Sabine
Geldsetzer has also made an important contribution to the study of
women during the crusades (Frauen auf Kreuzzügen, 2003). Allan Oslo’s work
Der Erste Kreuzzug: Hintergründe und Auswirkungen (1999) challenged many
Crusades Historiography 390

scholarly assumptions about the uniqueness of the First Crusade by pointing

out that very similar holy wars had been waged against various European
peoples prior to 1095. Finally, Malte Prietzel at Humboldt University of
Berlin has published two recent works on warfare in the Middle Ages (Kriegs-
führung im Mittelalter, 2006, and Krieg im Mittelalter, 2006).
There are, of course, a host of scholars from other countries who have
made important contributions to crusades studies. They include, but are not
limited to, Niall Christie at the University of British Columbia whose
knowledge of Arabic allows for his comparative research on the nature of
early crusades and jihad (see “Parallel Preachings: Urban II and al-Sulami,”
with Deborah Gerish, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 15
[2003]: 139–48); Italian scholar Francesco Gabrieli whose 1957 Islamic
sourcebook Storici arabi delle crociate (Arab Historians of the Crusades) has been
translated into several languages and is commonly assigned by instructors
teaching crusades courses throughout the world; Christoph T. Maier at the
University of Zurich, whose research has focused on crusading sermons and
propaganda, is perhaps the leading Swiss scholar of the crusades (Crusade
Ideology and Propaganda: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross, 2000); Israeli
historian Joshua Prawer, who innovatively used legal and governmental
sources for research on crusader institutions (Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jéru-
salem, 2 vols., 1969, 1970); Hebrew University historian Benjamin Z. Kedar
is one of the leading scholars of the Frankish Levant (The Franks in the Levant,
11th to 14th Centuries, 1993) and his colleague David Jacoby has also made
significant contributions in the same area (“Aspects of Everyday Life in
Frankish Acre,” Crusades, vol. 4 [2005], 73–105). Most recently Conor Kostick
of Trinity College in Dublin Ireland has published a promising volume
examining the social structure of the First Crusade (The Social Structure of the
First Crusade, 2008).

F. Language Competencies
The largest number of surviving crusades sources unsurprisingly originates
with western authors, but a large number of Arabic sources survive, as well
as considerable Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, and Old French records. Conse-
quently, Latin is the essential language for crusades studies while additional
training in the other relevant languages opens new possibilities for the
scholar. While it is standard that crusades scholars are proficient in Latin,
and to a lesser extent Greek, relatively few are trained in Arabic. The primary
modern research languages for a study of the crusading movement include
English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
391 Crusades Historiography

G. Professional Associations
The sole international organization for scholars of the crusades is the Society
for the Study of the Crusades in the Latin East, more commonly known as the
SSCLE. It claims nearly 500 members from thirty countries, including the
world’s top scholars, and is active in the promotion of crusades research
around the world. SSCLE conferences, held every four years, have met in the
United Kingdom, France, Israel, and the United States, and their next meet-
ing is scheduled for 2008 in Carcassonne, France. The Society is also active
hosting panels at various other medieval studies conferences including the
Annual Congress on Medieval Studies held each May at Western Michigan
University. The SSCLE also publishes its prestigious annual journal Crusades
(Ashgate Press), which is devoted exclusively to the crusades and boasts
an impressive editorial board including Jonathan Riley-Smith, Karl Bor-
chardt, Jean Richard, James Brundage, and many others. While the
SSCLE is the only scholarly organization exclusively devoted to the broader
crusading movement, a number of crusades historians are involved with re-
lated organizations such as the Society for Medieval Military History or organiz-
ations devoted to the studies of particular military orders.

H. Source Collections
The largest and most important collection of crusades sources is the Recueil
des Historiens des Croisades, commonly known as the RHC. The Acadèmie des
Inscriptions et Belles letteres began compiling the sources for the RHC
in 1824 and took decades to complete. The RHC comprises sixteen lengthy
volumes of crusades sources in their original languages including Latin,
Greek, Arabic, Armenian, and Old French. Lengthy introductions written in
modern French accompany the sources for each volume. The Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Gallica Project, has generously made the entire RHC
available online for viewing or downloading by volume in PDF format. Other
important collection of crusades sources include the Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, commonly referred to as the MGH and the Palestine Pilgrims Text
Society Library (PPTSL). The MGH contains a number of important papal docu-
ments related to the crusades while the PPTSL includes a large collection
of documents of travelers to the Holy Land before and during the time of the
crusades as well as important crusades era histories and biographies. For ad-
ditional sources on the Latin East one might also consult Comte Riant’s
Archives de l’orient latin published in Paris between 1881–1884 and for sources
concerning Byzantium during the crusades see the Exuviae Sacrae Constantin-
opolitanae.
Crusades Historiography 392

Select Bibliography
For a useful examination of the various trends in crusades historiography, including
important secondary sources addressing issues disputed by historians, see Thomas
Madden. The Crusades: The Essential Readings, ed. Thomas Madden (Oxford: Black-
well, 2002). For bibliographical references, see Aziz Atiya, The Crusade: Historiography
and Bibliography (Bloomington, IN: University Press, 1962); Hans E. Mayer, Biblio-
graphie zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1960); and
J. Mclellan and H.W. Hazard, “Select Bibliography of the Crusades,” History of the
Crusades, vol. 6: The Impact of the Crusades on Europe, ed. Kenneth M. Setton (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 511–664.

Andrew Holt
393 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

A. General Outline of Topic

Deconstruction, pioneered by the French philosopher Jacque Derrida
(1930–2004), has yet to achieve comparable influence in Medieval Studies
as it has in the study of modern literature. In the study of medieval texts this
is likely due to what appears to be a tendency to apply an hermeneutic inter-
pretational approach, the objective of which is to reconstruct and convey the
intention of the author through textual analysis to the modern reader and
thus establish a ‘most likely’ or ‘most accurate’ interpretation or understand-
ing – and thus significance – of a piece of literature for the reader, whereas
deconstruction is understood in a contrastive manner as a process of demon-
strating the potential for any number of alternative interpretations, effec-
tively endlessly deferring meaning and, as a result, final significance of the
text for the reader. It is noted here that the topic of this entry is that of decon-
struction in a very narrow sense, and will not conflate it with the topics of
post-structuralism, post-modernism, New Medievalism etc.

B. The Rise and Spread of Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida first addressed what would grow to become ‘deconstruc-
tion’ in the late 1960s: Speech and Phenomena (1967), Structure, Sign and Play
(1967), Of Grammatology (1967); among other works important to the spread
of deconstruction are his Dissemination (1972) and Margins of Philosophy
(1972). These works emerged to constitute a school of philosophy formu-
lated as a response to the philosophical considerations of Edmund Husserl,
Ferdinand de Saussure and Sigmund Freud, among others, whose works
were significant for phenomenology, structuralism and psychoanalysis. De-
construction is considered to both criticise and expand upon Martin Hei-
degger’s Dekonstruktion and Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of Western
metaphysics and philosophy. Deconstruction was developed by Derrida to
encourage/enable a new understanding of the influence of metaphysics on
intellectual history and the field of philosophy, quickly transcended the
boundaries of the discipline, and was adopted/co-opted by scholars of liter-
ary criticism in the 1970s and early 1980s in what is today known as the Yale
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 394

School that included professors from both English and Comparative Litera-
ture departments such as Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Mil-
ler and Harold Bloom. Richard Rorty, “Deconstruction” (The Cambridge
History of Literary Criticism VIII: From Formalism to Poststructuralism, ed. Raman
Selden, 1995, 166–96), notes that “Derrida was made famous (in English-
speaking countries) not by his fellow-philosophers but by literary critics
(who were looking for new ways of reading texts rather than for a new under-
standing of intellectual history), this label has (in those countries) become
firmly attached to a school of which Derrida is, rather to his own surprise
and bemusement, the leading figure. As used by members of this school,
the term ‘deconstruction,’ refers in the first instance to the way in which the
‘accidental’ features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its pur-
portedly ‘essential’ message.” This development lead deconstruction to be
more significant as a movement in the U.S.A. than in continental Europe,
and was further facilitated by Derrida teaching at Yale from 1975–1985.
The Yale School established itself in print in Paul de Man’s Blindness and
Insight (1971), and the closest this circle came to establishing or making a pro-
grammatic statement for the school of deconstruction can be found in the
anthology Deconstruction and Criticism (1979). Deconstruction as practiced in
the U.S.A. has often been criticized as investing literary texts with a philo-
sophical agenda, treating the text as an inferred and/or accidental statement
about said agenda (e. g. epistemological issues). Derrida’s work can thus
be viewed as having been adapted into a ‘method’ of reading or ‘strategy’ of
approaching the text through which it is possible to challenge the canonical
understanding, interpretation and significance of any given text. Thus, what
was originally a critical approach toward the question of the metaphysics
of presence (the privileging of presence over absence; logocentrism, phallo-
gocentrism) in Western philosophy was adopted by the field of literary criti-
cism (for a summary of the differing objectives between Derrida and the
reception of his work among literary critics, see: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht,
“Deconstruction deconstructed: Transformationen französischer Logozen-
trismuskritik in der amerikanischen Literaturwissenschaft” [Philosophische
Rundschau 33 [1986]: 1–35); this process that has been criticized on numerous
fronts, among others by Umberto Eco, “Intentio Lectoris: The State of the
Art” (Differentia 2 [1988]: 147–68): “It so happened that a legitimate philo-
sophical practice has been taken as a model for literary criticism and for a new
trend in textual interpretation […] this […] should not have happened”
(166).
395 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

C. Definition
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000) provides the fol-
lowing definition of deconstruction: “A philosophical movement and theory
of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty,
identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and
attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own
meanings: ‘In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be
found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcil-
able, ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning’
(Rebecca Goldstein).” Despite this and the ensuing attempt at defining
Deconstruction, it should be noted that many of the prominent scholars who
have written on it have intentionally (and inevitably in keeping with decon-
struction itself) left any definition purposefully vague. Perhaps the most
widely cited ‘definition’ of Deconstruction isn’t a definition at all, but an
indication of what it can do; Paul de Man writes: “It’s possible, within text,
to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by means of el-
ements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures
that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements” (Interview with
de Man in: A Recent Imagining, ed. Robert Moynihan, 1986, 156). It is this
subversive aspect that led Nikolaus Wegmann to provide the definition of
deconstruction as “Kalkül, das bei der Lektüre von Texten angewandt wird,
um die Geltungsansprüche einer auf die Ermittlung von Sinn zentrierten
Interpretation zu unterlaufen” (“Calculation used for reading texts in order
to subvert the validity of an interpretation that is based on the conveyance
of meaning”) (Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 1 [1997], 334).
A perhaps more benign definition can be found in Barbara Johnson’s
The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading (1980, 5):
“Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction’, however. It is in fact
much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis’ itself, which
etymologically mean ‘to undo’ – a virtual synonym for ‘to de-construct’. The
deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary sub-
version, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification
within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it
is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of sig-
nifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyzes
the specificity of a text’s critical difference itself.” In the face of many mis-
apprehensions Martin McQuillan, “Five Strategies for Deconstruction”
(Deconstruction: A Reader, 2001, 1–46), has attempted to define what decon-
struction is not: “Deconstruction is not a school or an ‘ism.’ There is no such
thing as ‘deconstructionism’: this is a word used by idiots. Deconstruction is
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 396

not a theory or a project. It does not present an idea of the world with which
we should keep faith, nor does it offer rules for achieving that idea. Decon-
struction is not an ‘application’ of the thought of Derrida or de Man or
Hillis Miller or Barbara Johnson or … Deconstruction undoes the logic of
outside-inside which the idea of an application presupposes. Deconstruction
is not literary criticism. Deconstruction is not philosophy … Deconstruction
is not postmodernism … Deconstruction is not a political ideology … De-
construction is not solely about language … Deconstruction is not opposed
to reality/history/the world … Deconstruction is not discourse … Decon-
struction is not reading … This word ‘deconstruction’ is only the metaphys-
ical name we give to the effects of an ethico-theoretico-political situation. De-
construction is what happens” (41–42).
It may be worth venturing the definition that deconstruction, at least
in literary studies, is a ‘strategy’ for approaching a text that identifies and
expounds upon key concepts and terms that evidence paradox and the sub-
version of meaning, that identifies those elements that compromise or entail
a re-evaluation of ‘traditional’ understandings, traditionally with regards
to the tenets of Western metaphysics. Deconstruction could be understood as
a ‘strategy’ of textual criticism that identifies foundational concepts and the
assumptions that accompany them in order to enable alternative readings
by questioning the logocentrism they are attributed or with which they are
invested by the reader. Finally, Deconstruction entails recognizing the mal-
leable or unstable meanings found in a text in order to derive, differ with, or
defer meaning and/or significance. Derrida himself specifically states that
deconstruction is not a literary method of textual analysis, insofar as there is
not a set sequence of steps for “deconstructing” a text, however, literary
critics that attempt ‘deconstructive’ readings frequently employ a strategic
approach to the text that questions the self-evident, hierarchical scale of di-
chotomies within a text by emphasizing the interdependence, instabilities,
tensions and contradictions within it, the attention to which in ‘traditional’
reading has been marginalized. Thus multiple readings of the same text are
possible – those of established canonical significance and/or those that break
from such a view and examine its deviation and marginality produced
through the ‘wandering’ of meaning. Derrida makes use of many different
terms in his texts treating deconstruction, which is considered one means of
demonstrating the mutability of meaning inherent in the strategy of decon-
struction, and by doing so enables him to focus on discrete words or themes
within a text that undermine the ‘explicit’ intent of the text on account of
their ambiguity. Frequently utilized and referred to terms in deconstructive
readings include arche-écriture, blanc, différance, écriture, iterability, hymen,
397 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

invagination, pharmakon, supplement and trace among others. For an intro-

duction to deconstruction and its terminology, consult Jonathan Culler,
On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (1983); Deconstructions:
A User’s Guide, ed. Nicholars Royle (2000); Christopher Norris, Deconstruc-
tion: Theory and Practice (New Accents) (2002).

D. Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

D.1. Current State of Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

To date there are no monographs or reference works that specifically treat
the topic of deconstruction in Medieval Studies as a whole. The recognition
of deconstruction as relevant for Medieval Studies has been present from the
beginning, and a few authors have ventured to break ground in what will cer-
tainly become an important aspect of Medieval Studies, namely the re-evalu-
ation of traditional understandings – or re-approaching – of medieval texts
by questioning long-held assumptions about the medieval text, author
and/or environment. In an expanded sense, whenever a new interpretation
of a medieval text is presented that questions previous interpretations, or
whenever a specific ‘under’-recognized aspect of a text is drawn to the fore
and the possibilities for (non/-)significance or deferral of meaning inherent
in its presence are expounded upon, it could be considered an inroad of de-
construction into Medieval Studies. For the purposes of this entry only those
texts that make explicit use or mention of deconstruction as such in order to
explicate their (medieval) topic will be referenced. Further, an appropriation
of ‘deconstruction’ as ‘revision’ or ‘exacting analysis’ can be identified in cer-
tain instances in lieu of an explicit methodological approach, as can a lack of
theoretical stringency through the conflation of ‘deconstruction’/’post-
structuralism’/’post-modernism’ in others; despite this said studies will
be included below to provide a broader foundation for future consideration
of deconstruction in medieval studies. The following overview of research
to date is arranged chronologically within the ‘sub-discipline’ of Medieval
Studies in which it is deemed most appropriate, and should not be con-
sidered an exhaustive list of available literature as countless studies avail
themselves of the tenets of deconstruction or reference Derrida’s ideas
without being beholden unto them/him.
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 398

D.2. Select Publications Exhibiting the Influence of Deconstruction

in Medieval Studies
As perhaps can be expected by the rise of deconstruction’s popularity in the
United States, it appears that most treatments of medieval topics with
recourse to deconstruction are to be found in the English speaking world,
and more specifically in terms of English studies, in the study of Geoffrey
Chaucer: An early study considering the Chaucer’s puns in a deconstructive
light can be found in Joseph Gerhard, “Chaucer’s Coinage: Foreign
Exchange and the Puns of the Shipman’s Tale,” Chaucer Review 17 [1983]:
341–57). It appears that the decisive publications for widespread advent of
the treatment of Chaucer from a deconstructive approach were two pieces
detailing a pro and con debate on this issue of whether his work should be
‘deconstructed’: Peggy Knapp, “Deconstructing The Canterbury Tales: Pro”
(Studies in the Age of Chaucer: Proceedings 2, 1986, 73–81), and Traugott Lawler,
“Deconstructing The Canterbury Tales: Con” (Studies in the Age of Chaucer:
Proceedings 2 1986, 83–91). Marshall H. Leicester Jr.: “Oure Tonges Différ-
ance: Textuality and Deconstruction in Chaucer” (Medieval Texts and Contem-
porary Readers, ed. Laurie A Finke and Martin Shichtman, 1987, 15–26),
discusses Chaucer’s literary environment as one in which the textual heri-
tage has assumed the status of culture, and Chaucer’s puns and other lan-
guage thus constitutes him as “an active deconstructionist” (22). At the end
of the 1980s we find: Ruth Waterhouse, “‘Sweete Wordes’ of Non-Sense:
The Deconstruction of the Moral Melibee” (Chaucer Review 23–24 [1989]:
338–61 and 53–63); and R.Allen Shoaf, “Medieval Studies after Derrida
after Heidegger” (Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and
Literature, ed. Julian Wasserman and Lois Roney, 1989, 9–30), in which
Shoaf explores the ramifications of Derridean concepts of margin and différ-
ance for modern understanding of medieval discourse, “we humans come
to the truth only by wandering. For Derrida such wandering consists in
detours” (23); Henry Marshall Leicester, Disenchanted Self: Representing the
Subject in the Canterbury Tales (1990), argues that Chaucer represents a “disen-
chanted” and practical comprehension of self-construction in terms of
gender and social ranking, indeed, in his discussion of the Pardoner he notes
in a decidedly deconstructionist vein that “The ironist notoriously does not
‘stand behind’ what he says. Because you can never be sure if he is serious or
ironic, sincere or rhetorical, his ‘real meaning’ and his ‘real self’ are always
displaced. They are always something and somewhere else, different and
deferred […] Language itself reflexively deconstructs the self” (170), and can
be considered one of the major works in the field availing itself of decon-
struction to make its arguments, which was followed and expounded upon
399 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

in his “Structure as Deconstruction: ‘Chaucer and Estates Satire’ in the Gen-

eral Prologue: Or, Reading Chaucer as a Prologue to the History of Disen-
chantment” (Exemplaria 2 [1990]: 241–61). In that same year, R.Allen Shoaf,
“Literary Theory, Medieval Studies, and the Crisis of Difference” (Reorien-
tations: Critical Theories & Pedagogies, ed. Bruce Henricksen and Thais Mor-
gan, 1990, 77–92), discussed the difficulties of translation, particulary in
regards to Chaucer and Beowulf, commenting that the crisis of différance has
significant ramifications for the translation of medieval literature: “Trans-
lation without transformation is a dream of fullness and presence hopelessly
afflicted with nostalgia – a nostalgia, moreover, that is corrupt, since it
entices its victim to shirk authorial responsibility” (80). This is followed by a
deconstructive approach to the narrative frame in Peter Travis, “Decon-
structing Chaucer’s Retraction” (Exemplaria 3 [1991]: 135–58), and David
Aers, “Medievalists and Deconstruction: An Exemplum” (From Medieval
to Medievalism, ed. John Simons, 1992, 24–40), who discusses the decon-
structionist approach of Leicester (1987, 1990). This was followed by a
consideration of Andrew Taylor, “Chaucer Our Derridean Contemporary?”
(Exemplaria 5 [1993]: 471–86). This was followed by Liang Sun-chieh,
“Chaucer, Joyce, Lacan, and Their ‘We Men’” (Ph. D. diss. State Univ. of New
York, Buffalo 1997), who discussed the role of femininity in Chaucer with re-
course to the theoretical approaches of Jacques Lacan and Derrida. A con-
tribution in Korean, with English summary was provided by Jae-Whan Kim,
“[M/W: A Deconstructive Reading of the Wife of Bath]” Journal of English Lan-
guage and Literature/Yongo Yongmunhak 44 [1998]: 255–74). A brief summary of
scholarship with an eye to postmodern literary theory and criticism was pro-
vided by Michaela Grudi, “Chaucer Scholarship at the Turn of the Century:
Postmodernism, Poetry, and Comfortable Assumptions” (Review 23 [2001]:
107–37). Stephanie Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to
Postmodern (2002) reminds us that “In foregrounding the role of the reader
and the act of communication as a two-way process, Derrida reminds us
to put our own habits of reading into the historical picture” (72). A broader
discussion of Chaucer in regards to literary theory and criticism, in which
deconstruction plays a role, can be found in Carolyn Dinshaw, “New
Approaches to Chaucer” (The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, ed. Jill Mann,
2003, 270–89). Franziska Scheitzeneder, “‘For myn entente nys but
for to pleye’: On the Playground with the Wife of Bath, The Clerk of Oxford
and Jacque Derrida” (PhiN – Philologie im Netz [2006]: 44–59), discusses
how “taking Derrida’s assumptions and implications about decentered
structure […] for a reading of the Wife of Bath and the Clerk […] show(s) how
both the anxieties and the affirmation in regard to a dismissal of the illusion
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 400

of stability are inherent in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” demonstrates how a

reading that is “delayed from the writing process bears unexpected inter-
pretations […] It illustrates how we as modern readers approach a medieval
text from our own background and influence the text accordingly. And ulti-
mately, it acknowledges that in the end, interpretation is itself simply a play
of infinite substitutions while we are on the quest for a center of the text”
(55–56). And most recently the possibilities for instruction have been con-
sidered by James Paxson, “Triform Chaucer: Deconstruction, Historicism,
Psychoanlysis, and Troilus and Criseyde” (Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Troi-
lus and Criseyde and the Shorter Poems, ed. Tison Pugh and Angela Weisl, 2007,
127–32).
Arthurian: Other notable contributions to the deconstructive approach
in the study of medieval English literature can be found in the Arthurian
vein, including a treatment of King Arthur and his relationship to women in
light of deconstruction provided by Sheila Cavanagh, “‘Beauties Chalice’:
Arthur and Women in The Faerie Queene,” The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in
Arthurian Tradition, ed. Christopher Baswell and William Scharpe, 1988,
207–18. See also the unpublished considerations of Cathy Darrup, A New
Medievalist Approach to the Madness of Merlin/Lailoken, B.A. thesis, Bucknell Uni-
versity, 1995. To these can be added Miranda Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin:
Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest,” Neophilologus 88 (2004):
499–519; and Raluca L. Radulescu: “‘Now I Take uppon Me the Adven-
tures to Seke of Holy Thynges’: Lancelot and the Crisis of Arthurian Knight-
hood,” Arthurian Studies in Honour of P. J. C. Field, ed. Bonnie Wheeler et al.,
2004, 285–95.
Theology: In addition to English studies, deconstruction has found a
forum in relation to metaphysics, which can be considered a logical out-
growth of Derrida’s own concerns with the ontology of presence. This
category can be discerned as treating the relationship between deconstruc-
tion and Christian (particularly Meister Eckhart), Arabian and Jewish meta-
physics.
Christian Metaphysics: John Caputo, “Mysticism and Transgression:
Derrida and Meister Eckhart,” Derrida and Deconstruction, ed. Hugh Silver-
man, 1989, 24–39; David Thomson, “Deconstruction and Meaning in
Medieval Mysticism,” Christianity and Literature 40 (1991): 107–21; David
Thomson: “Deconstruction and Negative Meaning in Medieval Mysti-
cism,” Negation, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Textuality, ed. Daniel Fisch-
lin, 1994, 41–58; Maris Fiondella, “Derrida, Typology and the Second
Shepherds’ Play: The Theatrical Production of Christian Metaphysics,”
Exemplaria 6 (1994): 429–58; Niklaus Largier, “Repräsentation und Nega-
401 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

tivität: Meister Eckharts Kritik als Dekonstruktion,” Contemplata aliis tradere:

Studien zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Spiritualität, ed. Claudia Brinker et
al., 1995, 371–90; Marie-Ann Vannier, “Déconstruction de l’individualité
ou assomption de la personne chez Eckhart?” Individuum und Individualität
im Mittelalter, ed. Jan Aertsen and Andreas Speer, 1996, 622–41; William
Young, “Naming God and Friendship in the Work of St. Thomas Aquinas
and Jacques Derrida”, Ph. D. diss. University of Virginia, 2000); Anne Clark
Bartlett, “Reading It Personally: Robert Glück, Margery Kempe, and Lan-
guage in Crisis,” Exemplaria 16 (2004): 437–56; Susan Stephenson, “Der-
rida, Deconstruction and Mystical ‘Languages of Unsaying’,” Studies in Spiri-
tuality 16 (2006): 245–71.
Arabian Metaphysics: The consideration of deconstruction in relation
to Western metaphysics in the Middle Ages has found a counterpart in
Ian Almond’s treatment of deconstruction and medieval Arabic mysticism:
Ian Almond, “The Honesty of the Perplexed: Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi on ‘Be-
wilderment’,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70 (2002): 515–37; Ian
Almond, “The Meaning of Infinity in Sufi and Deconstructive Herme-
neutics: When Is an Empty Text an Infinite One?” Journal of the American Acad-
emy of Religion 72 (2004): 97–117.
Jewish Studies: Straddling the border can be found Inge Siegumfeldt,
“The Double Movement of Creation: Vignettes of Kabbalistic and Decon-
structive Thought” (Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of
Creation, ed. Sven Havsteen et al., 2007, 247–54), which leads to the few
studies available linking deconstruction and medieval Jewish Studies, which
includes such contributions as Steven Kruger, “The Spectral Jew,” New
Medieval Literatures II, ed. Rita Copeland et al., 1998, 9–35, and Albrecht
Classen, “Jewish-Christian Relations in the German Middle Ages-The
Exploration of Alternative Voices? The Deconstruction of a Myth or Factual
History? Literary-Historical Investigations,” ABäG 58 (2003): 123–49. This
enables us to segue to the study of language and literature in German,
French, Italian, and Spanish Studies:
German studies: The contributions in German also appear limited, but
notable contributions include: Priscilla Hayden-Roy, “Till Eulenspiegel’s
Transgressions against Convention: Interpreting the Parasite,” Daphnis 20
(1991): 7–31; Waldemar Riemer, “Deconstructing an Established Ideal:
Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Criticism of the Minne/Aventiure System in Par-
zival,” ABäG 35 (1992): 65–86; Volker Mertens, “Konstruktion und Dekon-
struktion heldenepischen Erzählens: Nibelungenlied–Klage–Titurel,” PBB
118 (1996): 358–78; Armin Schulz, “Morolfs Ende: Zur Dekonstruktion
der feudalen Brautwerbungsschemas in der sogenannten ‘Spielmannsepik’,”
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 402

PBB 124 (2002): 233–49; Albrecht Classen, “Moriz, Tristan, and Ulrich as
Master Disguise Artists: Deconstruction and Reenactment of Courtliness in
Moriz von Craûn, Tristan als Mönch, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Frauen-
dienst,” JEGP 103 (2004): 475–504; Jan-Dirk Müller, Rules for the Endgame:
The World of the Nibelungenlied, trans. William Whobrey, 2007.
Similarly, French, Italian and Spanish studies have seen limited inroads
of deconstruction into the study of medieval texts and/or traditions: Peter
Haidu, “The Hermit’s Pottage: Deconstruction and History in Yvain”
The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Rupert Pickens, 1983,
127–45; John Grigsby, “Perceval devant l’herméneutique et la grammato-
logie,” Esprit Créateur 23 (1983): 25–37; Carine Bourget, “Allégorie et dé-
construction dans Le Roman de la rose,” Chimères 24 (1997): 41–52; Sharon
Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries: Rethinking Difference in Old French Literature,
2006; John Leavey, “Derrida and Dante: Différance and the Eagle in the
Sphere of Jupiter,” MLN 91 (1976): 60–68; Marguerite Waller, “Histori-
cism Historicized: Translating Petrarch and Derrida,” Historical Criticism and
the Challenge of Theory, ed. Janet Smarr, 1993, 183–211; Christian Thomsen,
“Was haben der Garten von Bomarza und die Divina Commedia mit dem
Dekonstruktivismus zu tun? Leuchtspuren zu Techniken und Ausdrucks-
formen des Komischen in der Architektur,” Von Rubens zum Dekonstruktiv-
ismus: Sprach-, literatur- und kunstwissenschaftliche Beiträge-Festschrift für Wolfgang
Drost, ed. Helmut Kreuzer et al., 1993, 228–64; John Dagenais, “That
Bothersome Residue: Toward a Theory of the Physical Text,” Vox Intexta:
Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. Alger Doane and Carol Pastern-
ack, 1991, 246–59.

E. Current Issues and Future Perspectives

Whereas deconstruction has apparently in some instances been misappropri-
ated as an orientation with which to champion an exclusive orientation on
‘modern’ as ‘relevant’ and ‘medieval’ as ‘irrelevant’, as depicted in the fol-
lowing passage, it should not be so: “Others have pointed out the need to
change our historical perspective altogether and to follow an exclusively
postmodernist, deconstructionist path both in research and teaching of lit-
erature: that is to say, to turn away from the Middle Ages and begin with a
‘more relevant’ interpretive work, resisting traditional orientation and stifl-
ing canon building. This has led, indeed, to practical consequences in a
number of graduate programs across the country” (Paden 21f.) as quoted in
Albrecht Classen, “The Never-Ending Story of the (German) Middle Ages:
Philology, Hermeneutics, Medievalism and Mysticism” (Rocky Mountain
Review [Fall 2001]: 67–79, here 67; see also his “The Literary Puzzle of Hein-
403 Deconstruction in Medieval Studies

rich von Türlin’s Diu Crône: Seen from a Postmodern Perspective,” Michigan
Germanic Studies XXIV,2 [1998, published in 2000]: 111–28). It is worth
speculating if the apparent reluctance to adopt or adapt postmodern theor-
etical approaches, including deconstruction, has not done more to harm
medieval studies than to preserve them by enabling the study of the Middle
Ages to appear outdated or irrelevant to those who must compete for fund-
ing to see their own ‘modern and relevant’ research goals achieved. As Ursula
Schaefer, “Alterities: On Methodology in Medieval Literary Studies” (Oral
Tradition 8 [1993]: 187–214), has discussed, “Medieval literary studies hold
a privileged position in methodological and theoretical argumentation. The
privilege is based on the limitedness of and the in-immediate access to their
‘material.’ The latter is created by the philological barrier that virtually keeps
theoretical and/or methodological intruders out. In that sense medieval lit-
erary studies potentially enjoy a sanctuary privilege: theoretical and metho-
dological novelties may enter the sanctuary only if the philologically trained
so warrant. That is, literary medievalists are very much in control of theoreti-
cal and/or methodological import because, due to their philological training,
they are the only ones who can handle the ‘material’ in the first place” (187).
If this is an accurate depiction of the field, as it appears to be to this author
at this time, it would behove medievalists to actively adopt and adapt new
theoretical approaches in order to deconstruct the misapprehension of the
intentionally maintained ivory tower and encourage others – particularly
students to preserve the discipline for future generations – to engage them-
selves with medieval topics from a ‘post-/modern’ perspective. This engage-
ment could be considered as encouraged and facilitated by Schaefer’s
consideration that “Due to the limitedness of their material, medieval liter-
ary studies do, however, have another kind of privilege. The concept of some
monolithic entity called ‘the Middle Ages’ creates a kind of laboratory situ-
ation where new approaches/methods/theories can furnish quick results.
Since the Middle Ages – or any period within it, or any ensemble of phenom-
ena from remote periods that are made the object of research – are constructs
in the mind of the scholarly beholder to begin with, the (sometimes sparse)
building blocks, as it were, out of which the respective constructs are built,
can more easily be shuffled about according to one’s (methodologically
geared) Erkenntnisinteresse” (187–88). In order to achieve this posited har-
monious synthesis of post-modern approaches (here understood as decon-
struction in particular) and medieval studies, the current issue that is in
most dire need of being addressed is a clear distinction between deconstruc-
tion and other post-modern, post-structuralist approaches in their methodo-
logical application to the field of Medieval Studies, achieving consensus on
Deconstruction in Medieval Studies 404

which would be a significant contribution, and a more stringent use of the

term, so as – at least in academic study – to preserve the term deconstruction
from becoming diluted and synonymous with ‘revision’ or ‘exacting analy-
sis’. Thereto a monograph treating deconstruction in medieval studies in
terms of a comprehensive survey of its impact, influence, forms and adap-
tation and trends in the respective sub-disciplines would prove beneficial.
Being as no such work is available for the study of modern literatures, where
deconstruction has experienced the widest reception, nor for the individual
medieval sub-disciplines, and the (perhaps) slow adaptation of deconstruc-
tion to the medievalist’s repertoire of tools for literary criticism and inter-
pretation, such a project would require both innovation and cooperation
between many individuals, departments and universities. Fortunately, the
advent of what is known as New Medievalism does avail itself of post-mod-
ern intellectual achievements in order to understand medievalism, as Wil-
liam Paden, “‘New Medievalism’ and ‘Medievalism’” (The Year’s Work in
Medievalism X [1995]: 232–33), defines it “What, then, does New Medieval-
ism mean? I will offer you two versions. First, it means study of the Middle
Ages in the light of what literary scholars call, by ellipsis, ‘theory’ – that is,
the literary and cultural theories associated with thinkers such as Derrida
and Michel Foucault […] More specifically, New Medievalism means Post-
modern Medievalism, study of the Middle Ages from a consciously held post-
modern perspective, a point of view which distinguishes itself from modern-
ity, or what I have proposed to call the Long Renaissance.” Despite the
challenges facing a harmonious synthesis of deconstruction and medieval
studies, the future of deconstruction in medieval studies, perhaps precisely
due to the lack of distinction often drawn between it and post-structuralism
and post-modernism, is bright. The pluralities of understandings that are ca-
pable of being rendered by deconstruction do point towards a new horizon, if
not several new horizons, for medieval studies. Perhaps the most readily
feasible could be the expanded provision of alternative readings in tradi-
tional annotated commentaries to medieval texts, and the ready provision
to students of understandings that have traditionally been marginalized.
One such example in medieval German literature could be to provide addi-
tional annotation allowing that Isolde’s trial before God in Gottfried von
Straßburg’s Tristan could be understood as a staged event following her duti-
ful payment of an indulgence, and not rigidly as a miraculous moment of di-
vine mercy for an adulterous duo. As Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “Writing
Commentaries” (The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship, 2003,
41–52), rightfully comments “Commentaries should be every deconstruc-
tor’s dream” (49).
405 Diplomatics

Select Bibliography
Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980); Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruc-
tion: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (London: Routledge, 1983); Jacques Derrida,
ed. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990); Deconstruction:
A Reader, ed. Martin McQuillan (New York: Routledge, 2001); Jacques Derrida and the
Humanities: A Critical Reader, ed. Tom Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).

Maurice Sprague

Diplomatics

A. Definition
The term ‘diplomatics’ is derived from Jean Mabillon’s standard work De re
diplomatica libri VI (Paris 1681) and stands for both the teaching and the study
of charters (in German: “Urkundenlehre,” “Urkundenforschung”). Diploma
(greek 
), originally denoting a writing on two folded sheets (in pa-
leography and codicology, the folded double sheet is called ‘diploma’), is,
in the wider sense of the word, synonymous with the term ‘document’, and
in its narrow sense a synonym for praeceptum, i. e., a document (of an author-
ity, i. e., a king/emperor, pope, or bishop) which – at least in theory – claims
permanent validity, as opposed to the mandatum, which is a temporary order.
Therefore, a diploma is both a dispositive document and a document of
proof, and the word is still used in this sense today (e. g., university diploma).
“The term document designates […] written declarations recorded in com-
pliance with certain forms alternating according to the difference in person,
place, time, and matter, which are meant to serve as a testimony of proceed-
ings of a legal nature” (Harry Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre, vol. 1,
4th ed. 1969, 1).

B. Nature of Documents
Thus, documents, unlike annals and chronicles, are legal documents and,
therefore, unfiltered relics of the past as defined by Ernst Bernheim (Lehr-
buch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie, 3rd/4th ed. 1903). Such
legal documents remained valid right up to the French Revolution, which, in
the name of “égalité” and on the basis of a codified uniform law, put an end
to prerogatives based on privileges. Consequently, early diplomatics was the
Diplomatics 406

profession of lawyers, and the well-known bella diplomatica dealt with the
legality and authentication of documents as legal titles. Diplomatic criticism
remained the most important task of diplomatics even after the French Rev-
olution, although it was now historians who pursued the discrimen veri ac falsi
in order to use documents as reliable historical sources; diplomatics changed
from a predominantly legal to a purely historical auxiliary science. After all,
even documents identified as forgeries do not lose their significance as his-
torical sources, although they must then be understood as being situated in
different historical contexts. This means: a diplomatist decides, first of all,
on the usefulness of a document as a source; all subsequent interpretations
depend on this judgment. With this in mind, the diplomatist needs to rank
undated documents or forgeries chronologically and, last but not least, pre-
serve the text on the basis of systematically collected testimonies (normally
in the form of a critical edition into which all diplomatic observations need to
be incorporated). Every diplomatist, hence, works in an interdisciplinary
way by systematically utilizing the findings of other auxiliary sciences and
related disciplines or those of specialized fields of history, true to Jean Ma-
billon’s motto that, first and foremost, all findings are to be gathered with
regard to internal and external features, before a judgment can be formed.

C. Forgeries
Medieval diplomatic criticism was, by all means, underdeveloped, and this is
why the general conditions were auspicious for forgers: both methodological
and technical prerequisites and reliable parameters were missing, so that the
efforts of Pope Alexander III and, most notably, Innocent III to counteract
the proliferation of forgeries appear rather inept in retrospect; Innocent III
himself was frequently taken in by forgeries. When Italian humanist Lo-
renzo Valla (†1457) exposed the famous Constitutum Constantini as a forgery
(De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione [= MGH Quellen zur Geistes-
geschichte des Mittelalters, 10], ed. Wolfram Setz, 1976) or the Centuriators
of Magdeburg furnished proof of the fictitiousness of the Pseudo-Isidorian
Decretals (Martina Hartmann, Humanismus und Quellenkritik: Matthias Fla-
cius Illyricus als Erforscher des Mittelalters, 2001), they did their research cum ira et
studio and primarily drew on contents-based criteria.
When analyzing large corpora of forgeries, a large variety of motives
come to light. As a general rule, forgeries react to political, legal and even per-
sonal issues in their time of origin: unlawful acquisition or endorsement of
actual legal titles, precautions against impending legal disputes, personal
vanity, etc. Occasionally, for instance in the case of the monastery of Reiche-
nau in the 12th century, a single forger served customers from a whole region,
407 Diplomatics

which suggests a widespread knowledge of the existence and adoption of

forgeries, even although secular and ecclesiastic law allotted severe penalties
for forgeries; confessions of forgers, however, are rarely recorded. Just as
manifold as the motives are also the forms of forgery of documents, ranging
from interpolation and falsification of authentic documents (usually by
means of erasure) and forgeries based on an authentic specimen (if applicable
as copies figurées, possibly including the fraudulent use of a seal) all the way
to completely forged documents (including the falsification of a seal); cf.
Theo Kölzer, “Urkundenfälschungen im Mittelalter,” Gefälscht! Betrug in
Politik, Literatur, Wissenschaft, Kunst und Musik, ed. Karl Corino, 1990, 15–26;
id., Studien zu den Urkundenfälschungen des Klosters St. Maximin vor Trier, 10.–12.
Jahrhundert, 1989.

D. Jean Mabillon
In the early stages of diplomatics, at best incidental comparative materials
were consulted in disputes about single documents, which frequently re-
sulted in forgeries being compared with other forgeries; a method that, as
is generally known, still played a role in the controversy about the Hitler Di-
aries. There was urgent need for a comprehensive compendium, finally pro-
vided by the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon (†1707), who was assisted
in his work by the whole order (Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Jean Mabillon,
1988). Mabillon responded to a rival project which had been undertaken
by the Jesuit Daniel Papebroch (Papenbroek, †1714). As the successor of
Jean Bolland, Papebroch was head of the editing project Acta Sanctorum
(published since 1643), and in a royal charter (MGH Diplomata Merov., ed.
Theo Kölzer, vol. 1, 2001, n. 65) he found that Saint Irmina of Oeren
(Treves) was supposed to have been the daughter of a certain King Dagobert.
It was the trustworthiness of this source that Papenbroch was interested
in, and accordingly he attempted to develop methodological parameters for
its evaluation on a total of 31 folio sheets (Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis t. 2, 1675) –
after all with the correct result that the document was a forgery. The Order
of Saint Benedict, however, in view of its antique treasury of documents, felt
challenged by Papebroch’s casual remark that he had not found a single
genuine document in the whole of France that dated back to before King
Dagobert I (†639) (this observation, too, is not to be easily dismissed, since
the oldest predominantly authentic Merovingian royal charter is dated 596:
MGH Diplomata Merov. 25). Mabillon’s De re diplomatica (1681), hence, was
written as an apology of Benedictine transmission. Contents: (Book I) types
of documents, general fundamental terms, writing materials, typefaces;
(II) style and conventional form of charters, chancery staff, seals, witnesses,
Diplomatics 408

signatures, dating; (III) Criticism on the old doctrines (e. g. Papebroch’s et

al.), notitiae, cartularies; (IV) palatinates of the Frankish kings; (V) specimen
of handwriting; (VI) appendix of documents.
It is important to note that in his methodological approach (comparison
of each single document with contemporary practice) Mabillon did not
surpass his rival Papebroch; however, his findings were founded on a
decidedly wider and more sound basis of material (the materials of the
“correspondents” have been mostly preserved at the BnF Paris). In spite of a
few critical voices (e.g., Bartholomé Germon S. J.), Mabillon’s opus pro-
ceeded quickly to conquer the world of letters in Europe (an enhanced second
edition was prepared in 1709 by Mabillon’s disciple Thierry Ruinart;
3rd ed. in 2 vols., 1789). This compendium has been the methodological key
to diplomatic transmission ever since, in legal practice as well as in regard to
historical epistemological interest.
It is remarkable that the first usage in Germany was by a jurist, Johann
Nikolaus Hert (†1710), Professor of Law at Gießen university, who also was
the first to attempt a compendium of German diplomatics: Dissertatio de fide
diplomatum Germaniae imperatorum et regum (1699, several reprints); cf. Theo
Kölzer, “Mabillons ‘De re diplomatica’ in Deutschland,” Papstgeschichte und
Landesgeschichte: Festschrift für Hermann Jakobs, ed. Joachim Dahlhaus and
Armin Kohnle, 1995, 619–28. For the teachings at universities, too, the al-
liance of diplomatics and palaeography with jurisprudence was still in effect,
starting with Christian Eckhard in Halle (†1751), Johannes Heumann
von Teutschenbrunn in Altdorf (†1760) and Johann Christoph Gatterer in
Göttingen (†1799), all of whom were, at the same time, also authors of their
own compendia; cf. Richard Rosenmund, Die Fortschritte der Diplomatik seit
Mabillon, 1897.

E. The Aftermath
The progress of diplomatics after Mabillon occurred primarily in four do-
mains: 1. amendment of the subject matter; 2. systematization of the subject
matter; 3. instruction and institutionalization; 4. special analyses.
Ad 1) An unsurpassed opus is that of the two Maurists Charles-François
Toustain and René-Prosper Tassin, Nouveau traité de diplomatique …,
6 vols., 1750–1765. Nevertheless, it did not have the same impact as Mabil-
lon’s compendium, apparently for the sole reason that the accumulated
bulk of material rather impeded its use. More comprehensive editions of
documents were only rendered possible by a facilitated access to the archives.
In the wake of the French Revolution, thus, the consolidation of documents
and archival material of the clerical institutions abolished in 1803 into cen-
409 Diplomatics

tral national archives with soon well-regulated access proved advantageous.

As early as 1794, a right of admission for all citizens was certified in France.
Subsequently, the Vatican Archives were opened to historic research in 1880.
Ad 2) The most extreme example is, without doubt, Johann Christoph
Gatterer, who essayed to graft Linné’s system of biological classification
onto diplomatics and paleography, without achieving any scientific prog-
ress. At least, however, this dependence on the natural sciences anticipates
Sickel in some respects.
Ad 3) In 1821, the École nationale des Chartes was founded in Paris
as the central French training post for the higher archival service (one of the
Grandes Écoles). Thus, diplomatics – in union with the other auxiliary
sciences – was provided with a study center outstanding even by today’s stan-
dards, whose instructors have always ranked among the leading professionals
throughout the world. When founding the Institut für österreichische Ge-
schichtsforschung (Austrian Institute for Historical Research) in Vienna in 1854,
Theodor Sickel, who had been allowed to attend courses at the École
des Chartes, took the latter as his model; in 1894, Paul F. Kehr established
the Marburger Archivschule along with the Institut für historische Hilfswis-
senschaften (Institute for Auxiliary Historical Sciences). The Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica, founded in 1819, have since then been aiming at publish-
ing and researching Germany’s medieval sources. And even though the first
edition of royal charters turned out to be entirely uncritical (Diplomatum
imperii tomus I [Diplomata regum Francorum e stirpe Merowingica], ed. Karl A. F.
Pertz, 1872; replaced by: Diplomata regum Francorum e stirpe Merovingica, ed.
by Theo Kölzer in collaboration with Martina Hartmann and Andrea
Stieldorf, 2 vols., 2001), the Diplomata series of the MGH has substan-
tially advanced the field of diplomatics in both terms of methodology and
factual findings; Theodor Sickel’s edition of Ottonian royal charters (Con-
radi I., Heinrici I. et Ottonis I. Diplomata, 1879–1884) can be regarded as the first
really critical edition of medieval documents.
Ad 4) Various specific analytical methods were applied to all aspects of
diplomatics (seals, monograms, practice of shortening, etc.), thus deepening
the knowledge of the material and refining the parameters of comparison.
The analysis of particular corpora of documents or periods of time was also
begun at this time. The abbot of Göttweig Abbey, Johann Georg Bessel
(†1749): Chronicon Gotwicense … Tomus prodromus de codicibus antiquis manu-
scriptis: De imperatorum ac regum Germaniae diplomatibus (1732), must be con-
sidered groundbreaking in this respect. He analyzed the documents issued
for his monastery in the time from Konrad I to Frederick II in reference
to their internal and external features (Peter G. Tropper, Urkundenlehre
Diplomatics 410

in Österreich, 1994, chap. 4). The above-mentioned Johannes Heumann

(†1760) can be seen as on a par with him: Commentarii de re diplomatica imper-
atorum ac regum Germanorum inde a Caroli Magni temporibus adornati (2 vols.,
1745–1753), Commentarii de re diplomatica imperatricum ac reginarum germaniae
(1749). Heumann could not draw upon the original documents and accord-
ingly underestimated the importance of the external features; in turn, how-
ever, he was forced to give more emphasis to the contents of the documents.
Both criteria are of equal importance.
Another factor not to be underestimated is the improvement of the
general conditions of diplomatic research. The enhanced accessibility of the
material in well organized archives has already been mentioned. Improved
conditions of travel and communication, as well as technical innovations
(photography of documents, photocopies, scans, computers) have to be taken
into account as well. Against this background, one has to appreciate the
achievements of past editors, who were forced to cope without the techno-
logical possibilities taken for granted nowadays.

F. Progress after Mabillon

After Mabillon, substantial progress in the field of diplomatics is closely
connected with the names of Johann Friedrich Böhmer (†1863), Theodor
Sickel (†1908), and Julius Ficker (†1902). Johann Friedrich Böhmer,
town registrar and librarian of his hometown of Frankfurt/Main, and in the
MGH’s beginnings considered for the position of editor of the royal and im-
perial documents, today is regarded as the originator of the Regesta Imperii.
This organization, nowadays financed by the Union of the German Acad-
emies of Sciences and Humanities as well as by the Austrian Academy of
Sciences, has devoted itself to the systematical and chronological registration
of all attestable royal activities, including the issuing of documents. These
activities have been paraphrased in a “regest,” a short synopsis. (For the cur-
rent state of research, see www.regesta-imperii.org). Admittedly, however,
the test prints of documents of Conrad I as submitted by Böhmer still reflect
the pre-scientific practices of editing, thus prompting Georg Waitz to raise
the fundamental question, “How should documents be edited?” (Historische
Zeitschrift 4 [1860]: 438–48). Waitz’s study is one of the earliest theoretical
treatises on the subject-matter.
The most relevant methodological progress, however, was achieved by
Sickel and Ficker, the former working in a strictly diplomatic context,
while the latter analyzed relations to the field of general history. Sickel’s
Beiträge zur Diplomatik of the Carolingian and Ottonian dynasties, published
between 1861 and 1882 in the Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akadmie, proved to be
411 Diplomatics

pioneering: they presented comprehensive studies of the documents of Louis

the German, of Carolingian privileges of protection and immunity, of the
chancellors and those who filled in their recognition, etc. In 1867, with his
Acta regum et imperatorum Karolinorum (2 vols.), Sickel published the first self-
contained specimen of special diplomatics, in which he elaborated his Lehre
von den Urkunden der ersten Karolinger (751–840). This work was followed by
a sample of documents in the form of regests commented at great length. His
argumentation focused on the organization of the chancery, which he seems
to have envisaged as too bureaucratic – according to the habits of his times –,
as well as on chancery style, i. e. the observable practice of issuing documents
as a parameter of the discrimen veri ac falsi. His methodological tools were
comprised of the detailed analysis of the external structure, as well as of a
comparative analysis of handwriting and dictamen, and, for documents ex-
clusively transmitted in copied form, the recordation and assessment of all
transmissions according to Lachmann’s method, the clarification of pos-
sible originals, or of the use of formulae, etc. His endeavor to align diplomatics
as a quasi-empirical academic discipline with the aspiring natural sciences of
his day is apparent. That this method not infrequently mislead into unwar-
ranted certainties can be clearly discerned from a present-day point of view,
but this does not discredit Sickel’s approach at all. The comparative analy-
sis of dictamen in particular every now and then meets with a certain skepti-
cism, particularly since this method used to be applied in a very superficial
way at times in the past – resulting in grave misjudgments (e.g., Bernhard
Schmeidler, Kaiser Heinrich IV. und seine Helfer im Investiturstreit, 1927).
In principle, however, the scientific value of the comparative analysis of dic-
tamen should always be taken into account, provided that it is implemented
with caution and a strict adherence to the philological method, and without
succumbing to the “manie de la certitude” (Georges Tessier) (Heinrich
Appelt, “Diktatvergleich und Stilkritik erörtert am Beispiel der Diplome
Friedrichs I.,” MIÖG 100 [1992]: 181–96). Today, the use of information tech-
nology (corpus linguistics) offers substantial assistance, also regarding the
discrimen veri ac falsi (Nicolas Brousseau, “Lemmatisation et traitement stat-
istique: De nouveaux instruments pour la critique diplomatique? Le cas des
diplômes pseudo-originaux au nom de Louis le Germanique,” Médiévales 42
[2002]: 27–44). It may be legitimate to venture the prognosis that, due to
these technological possibilities, the old diplomatics of the context à la
Stengel, an approach which has not yet found an adequate successor, may
be obsolete (Edmund E. Stengel, Diplomatik der deutschen Immunitäts-Privile-
gien vom 9. bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts, 1910). Problems similar to those of
the comparative analysis of dictamen also apply to the comparative analysis
Diplomatics 412

of handwriting and to the identification of scribes: there is no absolutely re-

liable method, but many uncertainties exist, especially with regard to the
limits of tolerance. Yet this does not imply a fundamental discreditation of
the methodological instruments (some methodological remarks are given by
Jan W. J. Burgers, “Aspekte der diplomatischen Methode,” Skripta, Schreib-
landschaften und Standardisierungstendenzen: Urkundensprachen im Grenzbereich
von Germania und Romania im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Kurt Gärtner,
Günter Holtus et al., 2001, 9–36).
For the practical implementation of his methodological arguments,
Sickel did not, as might be expected, choose the Carolingian documents,
but the documents of the Ottonian kings, which were published between
1879 and 1893 (3 vols.). For a long time, these earliest truly critical editions of
charters were considered to be the benchmark, although they have, by now,
come into the need of supplementation (cf. http://www.mgh.de/diplomata/
nachtraege.htm).
Julius Ficker, Westphalian by birth, declined any kind of participation
in the MGH on account of Prussian predominance. Throughout his life, he
remained a historian first and foremost, in particular focusing on Legal and
Constitutional History, and he has come to be most notably known as the ad-
versary of Heinrich von Sybel in the so-called Sybel-Ficker Controversy
(1859/62), in which he advocated a pan-German position. His main interest
was in Forschungen zur Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte Italiens (4 vols., 1868–1874),
as well as in the Constitutional History of the 12th to 14th centuries in general.
Documents were important sources for these fields, and this is why he pur-
sued diplomatics as an auxiliary science in the truest sense of the term. In
opposition to the “Sickeliotes” of “strict observance,” Ficker stated that
diplomatics drew its “raison d’être” exclusively from a general historical
epistemic interest. Hence, Ficker did not draw up a system of theories (Bei-
träge zur Urkundenlehre, 2 vols., 1877–1878). He was primarily concerned with
the genesis of documents, which might account for some anomalies, and
with their “place in life,” i. e., the actual analysis of documents as historical
sources. Ficker was the one to realize that the chancery was not a well-coor-
dinated agency and did not function nearly as reliably as had been assumed;
that discrepancies in dating could frequently be traced back to a time lag
between legal act and registration; that, subsequently, the roles of witnesses
needed to be differentiated; and, furthermore, that inconsistencies in the
lists of witnesses could by no means automatically be classified as a sign
of forgery, etc. In summary, the rules of diplomatics might not be applied
schematically. Most certainly, nevertheless, Ficker too adhered to Hans
Hirsch’s dictum that “a diplomatist’s synthesis is legal history” (“Die Syn-
413 Diplomatics

these des Diplomatikers heißt Rechtsgeschichte”: Hans Hirsch, Die hohe

Gerichtsbarkeit im deutschen Mittelalter, 2nd ed. 1958, 9). The 1908 founding of a
new periodical called Archiv für Urkundenforschung by Harry Bresslau, Karl
Brandi, and Michael Tangl also led to an increased historical orientation
of diplomatics, which was taken as an offence by inveterate followers of
Sickel (Annkatrin Schaller, Michael Tangl [1861–1921] und seine Schule,
2002, 215–28). The Archiv für Diplomatik, founded after World War II (1955),
has continued this tradition.

G. The 20th Century

The methodological principles of diplomatics, established in their funda-
mentals by Mabillon, Sickel and Ficker, were subsequently refined
more and more in connection with the major editing endeavors or the evalu-
ation of larger complexes of documents and forgeries. It is no coincidence
that the two authoritative handbooks of diplomatics were written in the
final years of the 19th century (Arthur Giry, Manuel de diplomatique, 2 vols.,
1894; Harry Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien,
2 vols., 2nd ed. 1912/1915 [1st ed. in 1 vol.: 1889]). Heinrich Fichtenau, Das
Urkundenwesen in Österreich vom 8. bis zum frühen 13. Jahrhundert (1971) must be
considered a fundamental exemplar of regional diplomatics, Tom Graber’s
(ed.), Diplomatische Forschungen in Mitteldeutschland (2005) might serve as a pre-
liminary work in this respect. There is also a very well-written survey from
more recent times that deserves mentioning, concerning the diplomatics of
papal documents (Thomas Frenz, Papsturkunden des Mittelalters und der Neu-
zeit, 2nd ed. 2000). Furthermore, the growing efforts concerning the diplo-
matics of modern times should also be noted (Olivier Poncet, “Défense et
illustration de la diplomatique de l’époque moderne,” Archiv für Diplomatik
52 [2006]: 395–416; Bernard Barbiche, “La diplomatique royale française
de l’époque moderne,” id., 417–27).
Completely innovative methodological approaches are comparatively
rare. One example is W. Schlögel’s attempt at applying the methods of
forensic document analysis to the analysis of subscriptions (Waldemar
Schlögl, Die Unterfertigung deutscher Könige von der Karolingerzeit bis zum Inter-
regnum durch Kreuz und Unterschrift. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Technik der Unter-
fertigung im Mittelalter, 1978). Due to the rarity and characteristics of the
source material, the benefits to be expected from this approach are ad-
mittedly limited. Contributions to a more recent miscellany demonstrate,
however, that the methodological approach in conjunction with graphology
and typographics may prove advantageous for diplomatics and paleography
(Methoden der Schriftbeschreibung, ed. Peter Rück, 1999). Besides special diag-
Diplomatics 414

nostic procedures (fluorescence photography, X-rays, CT), other scientific

analytical methods have also been employed occasionally (Karl-Ernst Lup-
prian, “Die Altersbestimmung mittelalterlicher Pergamenturkunden mit
der Radiokarbonmethode,” Archivalische Zeitschrift 88 [2006]: 573–83).
Especially Paul F. Kehr (†1944), with his life achievement as editor of
documents and his skills in organizing, brought about a lasting advance.
The first three volumes of the Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe Karolinorum
(documents from Louis the German to Arnolf, 1932–1940), besides prelimi-
nary studies (Paul F. Kehr, Ausgewählte Schriften, 2 vols., ed. Rudolf Hie-
stand, 2005), are owed to him. The founding of the Göttinger Papsturkun-
denwerk (Center for Research on Papal Documents at Göttingen) (Hundert Jahre
Papsturkundenforschung: Bilanz – Methoden – Perspektiven, ed. Rudolf Hie-
stand, 2003), Kehr’s contribution to the work of the Prussian Institute of
History in Rome, which he headed from 1903 on (Italia Pontificia, vols. I–VIII,
1906–1935; vols. IX–X, 1962, 1975; Germania Pontificia [for regular reports cf.
Deutsches Archiv], Gallia Pontificia [vol. 1: Diocèse de Besançon, par Bernard De
Vrégille, René Locatelli et Gerard Moyse, 1998; most recently vol. 3/1:
Diocèse de Vienne, par Beate Schilling, 2006]), must be considered
groundbreaking. No less so was his founding of the Germania Sacra, the his-
torical statistical study of the medieval German Church, which is based on
archival materials and documents to a notable extend (www.germania-
sacra.mpg.de/). Kehr, a stranger to theoretical reflections or historical de-
scriptions, shared the rigorism of his teacher Sickel.
Late antiquity’s foundations of medieval documentary practices were
remarkably illuminated by Peter Classen (“Kaiserreskript und Königs-
urkunde: Diplomatische Studien zum römisch-germanischen Kontinuitäts-
problem,” Archiv für Diplomatik 1 [1955]: 1–87; 2 [1956]: 1–115; rpt. as: Kaiser-
reskript und Königsurkunde. Diplomatische Studien zum Problem der Kontinuität
zwischen Altertum und Mittelalter, 1977; id., “Spätrömische Grundlagen mit-
telalterlicher Kanzleien,” Ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Josef Fleckenstein,
1983, 67–84). The new edition of the documents of the Merovingian kings
(Diplomata regum Francorum e stirpe Merovingica, ed. Theo Kölzer et al., 2 vols.,
2001) has insofar led to more precision as it indicated that, in the Frankish
Empire north of the River Loire, the transition from late antiquity’s records
to early medieval documents must have taken place in the last third of the
6th century (Theo Kölzer, Tra tarda Antichità e Medioevo: l’edizione critica dei
diplomi merovingici. Inaugurazione del Corso Biennale Anni Accademici 1998–2000,
2000; id., “Merowingische Kapitularien in diplomatischer Sicht,” Scientia
veritatis. Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Oliver Münsch
and Thomas Zotz, 2004, 13–23).
415 Diplomatics

Of all the major European editing endeavors, the Monumenta Ger-

maniae Historica has made the most notable progress in the postwar period.
Today, there are only a few gaps left in the line of royal charters from the Me-
rovingian time to the end of the Hohenstaufen era; the editions still due are
being worked on, and, in some cases, much progress has been made. In the
neighboring countries there has been less progress and the gaps are wider,
despite an ongoing editing process (Rudolf Schieffer, “Diplomatik und
Geschichtswissenschaft,” Archiv für Diplomatik 52 [2006]: 233–48).
For the royal charters of South Italy and Sicily, the Codex diplomaticus regni
Siciliae, ed. Carlrichard Brühl, Francesco Giunta, and André Guillou,
might be cited as an example of an editing endeavor that started as a private
initiative (Rogerii II. regis diplomata latina, ed. Carlrichard Brühl, 1987; Guil-
lelmi I. regis diplomata, ed. Horst Enzensberger, 1996; Tancredi et Willelmi III
regum diplomata, ed. Herbert Zielinski, 1982; Constantiae imperatricis et regi-
nae Siciliae diplomata, 1195–1198, ed. Theo Kölzer, 1983; new edition: id.,
MGH Diplomata XI/3, 1990). In reference to this and to the accompanying
special studies cf. Theo Kölzer, “Codex diplomaticus regni Siciliae. Erläu-
terungen zu einem internationalen Forschungsvorhaben,” Jahrbuch der histo-
rischen Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1983, 1984, 17–22; id.,
“Die normannisch-staufische Kanzlei 1130–1198,” Archiv für Diplomatik 41
(1995): 273–89. The documents of Frederick II (1198–1212), originally in-
tended for this series, have now been edited within the MGH: Friderici II.
diplomata, ed. Walter Koch et al., vol. 1, 2002. After a long time of editing,
the Codice diplomatico longobardo was also completed, whose first two volumes,
containing private documents, had been edited by Luigi Schiaparelli in
1929/33 for the Fonti per la storia d’Italia (vol. III/1 [royal charters], ed. Carlri-
chard Brühl, 1973; vol. III/2: Indici, 1984; vol. IV/1 [dukes of Spoleto],
ed. Carlrichard Brühl, 1981; vol. IV/2: I diplomi dei duchi di Benevento,
ed. Herbert Zielinski, 2003; vol. V: Le chartae dei ducati di Spoleto e di Benevento,
ed. Herbert Zielinski, 1986).
The number of successes like this one might very well grow, since the
activities of editing and collecting regesta, including that of local or regional
documentary corpora, are progressing everywhere (Robert-Henri Bautier,
“Les orientations de la diplomatique en Europe depuis la fin de la seconde
guerre mondiale,” Cento anni di cammino. Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplo-
matica e archivistica (1884–1984), a cura di Terzo Natalini, 1986, 101–45; Ru-
dolf Schieffer, “Neuere regionale Urkundenbücher und Regestenwerke,”
Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 127 (1991): 1–18; id., “Diplomatik und
Geschichtswissenschaft,” Archiv für Diplomatik 52 (2006): 233–48; Stand, Auf-
gaben und Perspektiven territorialer Urkundenbücher im östlichen Europa, ed. Win-
Diplomatics 416

fried Irgang and Norbert Kersken, 1998), although editing is not held
in high regards nowadays and constantly needs defending, even against his-
torians (Quelleneditionen und kein Ende? Symposium der Monumenta Germaniae
Historica und der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, ed. Lothar Gall and Rudolf Schieffer, 1999; Vom Nutzen des Edie-
rens. Akten des internationalen Kongresses zum 150-jährigen Bestehen des Instituts für
Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Wien, 3.–5. Juni 2004, ed. Brigitte Merta,
Andrea Sommerlechner and Herwig Weigl, 2005; Hubert Seibert,
“Wozu heute Urkunden edieren? Zum Abschluß des Babenberger Urkun-
denbuches,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 64 [2001]: 295–308).
Nevertheless, critical editing will, even in the future, retain its central posi-
tion in a scholarship of history that considers historical sources its essential
foundation, since sources and methods are all that historians have at their
disposal. Diplomatic editions do not guide research in terms of concept, and
neither do they follow the ever-changing trends, both because they are based
on a reliable methodology and because further editions are predetermined
by the obvious gaps.
In this respect, the “crisis of diplomatics,” which was declared in the be-
ginning of the 1960s (Armando Petrucci, “Diplomatica vecchia e nuova,”
Studi medievali, 3a ser. 4 [1963]: 785–98), is a misinterpretation; to speak of an
exhaustion of the material or the method would be plainly wrong (Theo
Kölzer, “Diplomatik und Urkundenpublikationen,” Historische Hilfswissen-
schaften, ed. Toni Diederich and Joachim Oepen, 2005, 7–34; Herwig
Wolfram, “Die Krise der Diplomatik – ein Missverständnis,” Tirol – Öster-
reich – Italien. Festschrift für Josef Riedmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Klaus Brand-
stätter and Julia Hörmann, 2005, 661–71).
Despite the false premise that, in the field of documents, everything, or
at least the major part, has already been accomplished, it would be mislead-
ing to follow the recommendations uttered in the wake of this discussion
and extend the field of diplomatics to all kinds of archival documents (Ro-
bert-Henri Bautier, “Propositions méthodologiques pour la Diplomatique
du Bas Moyen Age et les débuts des temps modernes,” id., Chartes, sceaux et
chancelleries. Études de diplomatique et de sigillographie médiévale, vol. 1, 1990,
35–45, in particular p. 36), because then it would compete with what in Ger-
man is called ‘Quellen- und Aktenkunde’ (the study of sources and docu-
ments) by employing a method which was not developed for this purpose
and seems hardly applicable to it. Most recently, however, even Ivan Hlavá-
ček, “Das Problem der Masse: Das Spätmittelalter,” Archiv für Diplomatik 52
(2006): 371–93 has argued in agreement with Bautier.
417 Diplomatics

H. More Recent Trends

With their studies on the arenga and the intitulatio (Heinrich Fichtenau,
Arenga. Spätantike und Mittelalter im Spiegel der Urkundenformeln, 1957; Herwig
Wolfram, Intitulatio I. Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel bis zum Ende des
8. Jahrhunderts, 1967), which they regarded as being in line with the tradition
of historical diplomatics as established by Julius Ficker and Hans Hirsch,
Heinrich Fichtenau and his disciple Herwig Wolfram have opened
up the field of diplomatics to the history of ideas. Works with similar aims
but of a more limited scope have also been dedicated to other parts of written
documents: the invocations, formulas of devotion, addresses, appartenance
clauses, as well as the intercessors and witnesses or the subscriptions (Hein-
rich Fichtenau, Beiträge zur Mediävistik, vol. 2, 1977, 37–61; op. cit., vol. 3,
1986, 149–66; Dietrich Lohrmann, “Formen der Enumerationes bonorum
in Bischofs-, Papst- und Herrscherurkunden, 9.–12. Jahrhundert,” Archiv
für Diplomatik 26 (1980): 281–311; Alfred Gawlik, Intervenienten und Zeugen
in den Diplomen Kaiser Heinrichs IV., 1056–1105, 1970; Lothar Saupe, Die Unter-
fertigung der lateinischen Urkunden in den Nachfolgestaaten des weströmischen
Reiches, 1983). Both rhetoric and royal propaganda, including “political
dating,” have also been objects of diplomatic interests (Heinrich Fich-
tenau, Beiträge zur Mediävistik, vol. 2, 1977, 18–36, 126–56; vol. 3, 1986,
186–285; Herwig Wolfram, “Politische Theorie und narrative Elemente in
Urkunden,” Kanzleiwesen und Kanzleisprachen im östlichen Europa, ed. Christian
Hannick, 1999, 1–23; id., “Diplomatik, Politik und Staatssprache,” Archiv
für Diplomatik 52 [2006]: 249–70) and have thus supplemented the more
legal and formal approach of earlier stages of research. In more recent times,
increasing attention has been given to the ritual and performance surround-
ing the act of privileging (Peter Worm, “Beobachtungen zum Privilegie-
rungsakt am Beispiel einer Urkunde Pippins II. von Aquitanien,” Archiv für
Diplomatik 49 [2003]: 15–48; Hagen Keller and Christoph Dartmann,
“Inszenierungen von Ordnung und Konsens: Privileg und Statutenbuch
in der symbolischen Kommunikation mittelalterlicher Rechtsgemein-
schaften,” Zeichen – Rituale – Werte, ed. Gerd Althoff, 2004, 201–23; Arnold
Angenendt, “Cartam offerre super altare: Zur Liturgisierung von Rechtsvor-
gängen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 36 [2002]: 133–58), and documents have
been considered a link for “the communication between the king and his
retainers” (Hagen Keller, “Zu den Siegeln der Karolinger und der Ottonen.
Urkunden als ‘Hoheitszeichen’ in der Kommunikation des Königs mit
seinen Getreuen,” FMSt 32 [1998]: 400–41).
The ritual act of privileging has been perceived as the one crucial act
which opens up a new dimension of meaning essential to understanding the
Diplomatics 418

text and its function. Before this, Peter Rück had already postulated a return
to a discipline of diplomatic semiotics that regards documents as a system
of signs in a communication process (Peter Rück, “Beiträge zur diploma-
tischen Semiotik,” Graphische Symbole in mittelalterlichen Urkunden, ed. id.,
1996, 13–47; regarding Rück’s approach, cf. most recently Peter Worm,
“Ein neues Bild von der Urkunde: Peter Rück und seine Schüler,” Archiv
für Diplomatik 52 (2006): 334–52). Rück focuses on “visual rhetoric,” on
encrypted sub-messages, and graphical symbols that, in a largely illiterate
society, render documents “medieval posters”. However, for the decryption
of such mystery symbols (“Rätselzeichen”), there is want of a reliable tertium
comparationis keeping subjective interpretations at bay; the interpretative
approaches offered so far cover a spectrum too broad for these symbols to be
a reliable source of historical insight (cf. Theo Kölzer, “Diplomatik und Ur-
kundenpublikationen” [see above], 20 ss.). Despite the fact that there has
been constant skepticism regarding the details, Peter Rück nevertheless is to
be considered the most innovative diplomatist of the last third of the
20th century, who, amongst other things, has emphasized the epistemic
value of statistical survey methods, stressed the importance of format and
layout, reevaluated the musicality of rhythmical conclusions of sentences,
underlined the value of modern photography, and provided a new impetus
to the field of parchment research (Fotografische Sammlungen mittelalterlicher
Urkunden in Europa, ed. Peter Rück, 1989; Pergament. Geschichte – Struktur –
Restaurierung – Herstellung, ed. Peter Rück, 1991; Fachgebiet Historische Hilfs-
wissenschaften: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zum 65. Geburtstag von Peter Rück, ed. Erika
Eisenlohr and Peter Worm, 2000).
The work on documentary language which has been intensified by the
École des Chartes and the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique
(La langue des actes. International congress in Troyes, September 11–13, 2003;
for most contributions, refer to: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/sommaire163/
html) stands as one attempt at measuring a field long neglected. In more re-
cent times, and following the example of Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory
to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (1979, 2nd ed. 1993), impact and usage
of documents in a predominantly illiterate society (Brigitte Bedos-Rezak,
“Diplomatic Sources and Medieval Documentary Practises: An Essay in
Interpretive Methodology, “The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John
van Engen, 1994, 313–43; Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval
Society, ed. Karl Heidecker, 2000) have more and more become a focus of
research, especially in the context of conflicts (Laurent Morelle, “Les
chartes dans la gestion des conflits [France du Nord, XIe – début XIIe siècle],”
Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 155 [1997]: 267–98).
419 Diplomatics

The French ARTEM-Project ([Atelier de Recherche sur les Textes Médi-

évaux, Nancy]: La diplomatique française du Haut Moyen Age: Inventaire des chartes
originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, 2 vols., sous la direction de
Benoît-Michel Tock par Michèle Courtois et Marie-José Gasse-Grand-
jean avec la collaboration de Philippe Demonty, 2001) demonstrates that
systematically surveyed material yields surprising results, raising a variety
of new questions. In turn, entirely new insights are gained by regarding the
different kinds of document traditions not as “quarries” for the purpose of
constituting a text as part of a critical edition, but rather as carriers of indi-
vidual traditions in the context of a recipient’s archives (Charters, Cartularies,
and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West,
ed. Adam J. Kosto and Anders Winroth, 2002), of its keeping and organ-
ization (Elke Goez, Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit und Archivpflege der Zisterzienser,
2003). Recent French research has been particularly dedicated to the analysis
and interpretation of cartularies (Les Cartulaires, ed. Olivier Guyotjeannin
et al., 1993). It should be noted that the richly decorated cartularies possessed
a great symbolic value as a collection of different libertates (Theo Kölzer,
“Codex libertatis. Überlegungen zur Funktion des “Regestum Farfense” und
anderer Klosterchartulare,” Il ducato di Spoleto. Atti del 9 Congresso interna-
zionale di studi sull’alto medioevo, vol. 2, 1983, 609–53). A special research
project based in Münster is devoted to “pragmatic writing” in its broadest
sense (Hagen Keller, “Träger, Felder, Formen pragmatischer Schriftlich-
keit im Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 22 [1988]: 388–409; Pragma-
tische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen, ed.
Hagen Keller et al., 1992). Research in the Italian notary’s office, tradition-
ally the field of Italian medieval studies, has recently been added to by two
profound foreign contributions (Andreas Meyer, Felix et inclitus notarius:
Studien zum italienischen Notariat vom 7. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert, 2000; Petra
Schulte, Scripturae publicae creditur: Das Vertrauen in Notariatsurkunden im kom-
munalen Italien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, 2003).
Two more recent research papers have had far-reaching methodological
ramifications: H.-H. Kortüm falsified the idea of an early institutionalized
Papal chancery predominant so far by showing that, in their individually
formulated parts (Petitio, Dispositio), Papal documents were strongly in-
fluenced by the addressee (Hans-Henning Kortüm, Zur päpstlichen Urkun-
densprache im frühen Mittelalter: Die päpstlichen Privilegien 896–1046, 1995). As a
methodological ramification, the parameters of “chancery style” and “indi-
vidual dictamen,” employed since Sickel in the context of the discrimen veri
ac falsi, now carry much less weight and also demand a systematic review
from the addressee’s point of view in every single case. Generally speaking,
Diplomatics 420

there should be claims for a more diligent differentiation when it comes to

identifying chancery documents and documents originating from outside
the chancery (Jaap G. Kruisheer, “Kanzleiausfertigung, Empfängerausfer-
tigung und Ausfertigung durch Dritte: Methodologische Anmerkungen an-
läßlich einiger neuerer Untersuchungen,” AfD 25 [1979]: 256–300).
Along similar lines, W. Huschner opposed Sickel’s idea of an hier-
archically organized, bureaucratic royal chancery in Ottonian times by
pointing out that, in the royal or imperial court, the persons engrossing
the documents were often distinguished prelates, and not the subordinate,
anonymous notaries to whom Sickel had attributed grammalogues (Wolf-
gang Huschner, Transalpine Kommunikation im Mittelalter: Diplomatische, kul-
turelle und politische Wechselwirkungen zwischen Italien und dem nordalpinen Reich,
9.–11. Jahrhundert, 3 vols., 2003; for a critical comment cf. Hartmut Hoff-
mann, “Notare, Kanzler und Bischöfe am ottonischen Hof,” Deutsches Archiv
61 [2005]: 435–80). Consequentially, royal and imperial documents may no
longer be interpreted as statements by the monarchs themselves; a closer
look should be taken into the striking innovations enacted, for instance, dur-
ing the reign of Otto III.
French researchers have recently suggested comparing “European”
diplomatics with cultures outside of Europe (contributions on Mesopota-
mia, Japan etc. in Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 160 [2003]: 477 ss.). How-
ever enriching this may prove, it cannot and will not change the very nucleus
of diplomatics, which is still arranged around the discrimen veri ac falsi as the
source of all further conclusions. Not least of all, the large amount of medi-
eval forgeries demonstrates that contemporaries used to perceive medieval
documents as legal documents first and foremost (Fälschungen im Mittelalter:
Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 6 vols., 1988, 1990,
especially vols. 3–4). “Visual rhetoric” is not the “raison d’être” of medieval
documents but merely a circumstantial detail; this does not affect the notion
that documents may also and additionally be “expression du pouvoir,”
a notion that has, after all, never been contended by anyone (Les actes comme
expression du pouvoir au Haut Moyen Age, ed. Marie-José Gasse-Grandjean
and Benoît-Michel Tock, 2003).

I. Digital Diplomatics
Recent technological developments have started a revolution in respect to
availability and linking of the source material: whole series of editions and
regesta have been made available on CD-ROM or can be accessed on the Inter-
net (e.g. the d(igital)MGH; Regesta Imperii; Thesaurus diplomaticus [CD-ROM],
ed. Paul Tombeur et al., 1997); first attempts with single archival material
421 Diplomatics

or archival stocks look promising, and it does no longer appear illusory to

believe that, one day, the most important stocks of documents will be acces-
sible from individual computer workstations and will supplant extremely
elaborate and expensive facsimile editions, such as, for instance, the system-
atic collection of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, which covers the period up to
the year 800 and has by now been extended to the 9th century (ed. Anton
Bruckner and Robert Marichal, 49 vols., 1954–1998; 2nd series, ed. Gug-
lielmo Cavallo and Giovanna Nicolaj, 27 vols., since 1997). For “digital
diplomatics” cf. most recently the contributions by Patrick Sahle, Georg
Vogeler and Gautier Poupeau, Archiv für Diplomatik 52 (2006): 429–78.
Already the first special internet journal (Scrineum) is available online
(http://scrineum.unipv.it). All the euphoria notwithstanding, it should be
noted that neither the increased availability of material nor the digital archi-
tectures of editions, however sophisticated they may be, will be able to sup-
plant the methodologic work of the diplomatist. In fact, the nearly unlimited
options of digital editing actually call for an intensification of the historian’s
technical training, which has, in some places, been unduly neglected.
Whether a new area of applications might be opened up to diplomatics,
such as, for instance, the categorizing of digital administrative records, is
still a controversy (Angelika Menne-Haritz, “Archivwissenschaft, Diplo-
matik und elektronische Verwaltungsaufzeichnungen,” Archiv für Diplomatik
44 [1998]: 337–76).

J. Diplomatics of the Papal Document

In view of the large amount of material scattered all over the whole Orbis chris-
tianus, there is still a lot of catching up to do when it comes to critical editions;
we are largely dependent on outdated regesta and occasional editions (a sur-
vey can be found in Thomas Frenz, Papsturkunden des Mittelalters und der Neu-
zeit, 2nd ed. 2000). The first critical edition not to recur to Papal Registers was
published only two decades ago (Papsturkunden 896–1046, 3 vols., ed. Harald
Zimmermann, 2nd ed., 1988/1989). There is no prospect of a sequel, particu-
larly since it is reasonable to reckon on another 20.000 documents for the
period up to 1198. For the subsequent period, a compensation is offered by
the Papal Registers, edited by the Österreichisches Kulturinstitut and the
École française in Rome, and supplemented for their original transmission
with the “Censimento Bartoloni” (planned until 1417) (Die Register Innozenz’
III., ed. Othmar Hageneder et al., vols. 1–2, 5–8, 1964–2001; the French
printed series of registers [Paris 1883 ss.] and the current status of the “Cen-
simento” in Frenz, Papsturkunden, op. cit., 123–25; last volume: Tilman
Schmidt, Die Originale der Papsturkunden in Norddeutschland [Bremen, Hamburg,
Diplomatics 422

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein] 1199–1415, 2003). A more recent

conference of the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique (Papsturkunde
und europäisches Urkundenwesen: Studien zu ihrer formalen und rechtlichen Kohärenz
vom 11. bis 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Peter Herde and Hermann Jakobs, 1999)
has highlighted how profoundly European diplomatics were shaped by
the Papal document in the High Middle Ages. The best survey of the current
state of research on Papal documents is offered by Frenz, Papsturkunden
(2nd ed. 2000).

K. Private Documents
Another field that is difficult to survey and has only been explored to varying
degrees is, for obvious reasons, the wide field of so-called “private docu-
ments,” including in particular the Episcopal charters, the notary’s office,
and urban diplomatics. Here, too, the Commission Internationale de Diplo-
matique has organized important conferences to establish at least approxi-
mate surveys and to initiate a dialogue among the experts (Landesherrliche
Kanzleien im Spätmittelalter: Referate zum VI. Internationalen Kongress für Diploma-
tik, München 1983, ed. Gabriel Silagi, 2 vols., 1984; Notariado público y docu-
mento privado: de los orígenes al siglo XIV. Actas del VII. Congreso internacional de
diplomática, Valencia 1986, Josip Trenchs Odena, 1989; Estudios sobre el nota-
riado europeo (siglos XIV–XV), ed. Pilar Ostos and Maria Luisa Pardo, 1997;
Die Diplomatik der Bischofsurkunde vor 1250: Referate zum VIII. Internationalen
Kongress für Diplomatik, Innsbruck 1993, ed. Christoph Haidacher and Walter
Köfler,1995; La diplomatique urbaine en Europe au moyen âge: Actes du Congrès de
la Commission internationale de diplomatique, Gand 1998, ed. Walter Prevenier
and Thérèse de Hemptinne, 2000). Exemplary for the analysis of the
significant Episcopal charters are, for instance, the closed series of the regesta
of the Archbishops of Cologne, which by now comprises 12 volumes (Die
Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Köln im Mittelalter, vol. 1, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm
Oediger, 1954–1961, vols. 8–12, ed. Norbert Andernach, 1981–2001), as
well as the more recent editing project of the English Episcopal Acta, which has
reached a total of 28 volumes in relatively short time (1980–2004).

L. Quo vadis?
Despite the fact that university posts are currently being cut everywhere
(with the two exceptions of Italy and Spain), and, consequently, education is
being stunted, diplomatics may look into the future rather optimistically.
This positive attitude, which seems to disregard the bleak academic reality, is
rooted in the confidence that no historian will, upon unbiased reflection,
deny the fact that diplomatics is able to uncover crucial historical findings
423 Diplomatics

otherwise inaccessible; in many areas, diplomatics establishes the parameters

of the historical verdict. For even in the aftermath of the “linguistic turn,”
documents are neither random “texts” nor iridescent sources of memory,
but legal documents intended to record specific circumstances of a legal na-
ture. In this respect, they are more reliable witnesses of the past than the
sources of “tradition”. It is, accordingly, no coincidence that diplomatics
have remained unchallenged by past theoretical disputes; they are, at any
rate, not subject to the need of vindicating themselves, even if this may not be
immediately evident to every single disciple of Clio’s. Resting on the firm
foundations of a well-tried methodology, the field of diplomatics will con-
tinue to be open to new research questions and technical challenges in times
to come. In doing so, however, it must always be mindful of its actual pur-
poses, to determine the usefulness of documents as historic evidence, and to
exploit them as extensively as possible in the line of general historical epis-
temic interest. A source-oriented historiography will not be able to forego
these contributions. Now more than ever, the new world of bits and bytes
calls for a solid education in diplomatics and the auxiliary sciences in general.

Select Bibliography
Carlrichard Brühl, “Derzeitige Lage und künftige Aufgaben der Diplomatik,” Lan-
desherrliche Kanzleien im Spätmittelalter, vol. 1 (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1983, rpt.
id., Aus Mittelalter und Diplomatik: Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 2 [Hildesheim: Olms, 1989],
463–73); Robert-Henri Bautier, “Les orientations de la diplomatique en Europe
depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale,” Cento anni di cammino: Scuola vaticana di
paleografía, diplomatica e archivistica (1884–1984), ed. Terzo Natalini (Città del Vaticano:
Scuola Vaticana, 1986) 101–45; Ma Milagros Cárcel Ortí, La eseñanza de la paleografía
y diplomática (Valencia: Artes Gráficas Soler, 1996); Rudolf Schieffer, “Zur derzei-
tigen Lage der Diplomatik,” Diplomatische Forschungen in Mitteldeutschland, ed. Tom
Graber (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2005), 11–27; Theo Kölzer, “Diplo-
matik und Urkundenpublikationen,” Historische Hilfswissenschaften: Stand und Perspek-
tiven der Forschung, ed. Toni Diederich and Joachim Oepen (Cologne, Weimar, and
Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 7–34; Diplomatik im 21. Jahrhundert: Stand und Perspektiven: Ta-
gung der Commission internationale de Diplomatique, Bonn 7.–11. September 2005, Archiv für
Diplomatik 52 (2006): 233–673.
Handbooks: Harry Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien,
3 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1958, 4th ed. 1969); Alain de Boüard, Manuel de diploma-
tique française et pontificale, 2 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1929, 1952); Georges Tessier,
La Diplomatique, Paris: PUF, 1952, 3rd ed. 1966); Alessandro Pratesi, Genesi e forme del
documento medievale (Roma: Jouvence, 1979, 2nd ed. 1987); Giovanna Nicolaj, Lezioni
di diplomatica generale (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007); Thomas Vogtherr, Urkundenlehre
(Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2008). An introduction to diplomatics as well as
a first-rate work book for self-study (with a comprehensive bibliography): Olivier
Guyotjeannin, Jacques Pycke and Benoît-Michel Tock, Diplomatique médiévale
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1993, 2nd ed. 2006). Technical terms are explained in: Vocabulaire
Disability Studies 424

international de la diplomatique, ed. M. Milagros Cárcel Ortí (Valencia: Generalitat

Valenciana, Conselleria de Cultura, 1994, 2nd ed. 1997). Introductions to diplomatics
in English are rare, however: Leonard E. Boyle, “Diplomatics,” Medieval Studies: An
Introduction, ed. James M. Powell (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2nd ed. 1992),
82–113; Richard Sharpe, “Charters, Deeds, and Diplomatics,” Medieval Latin: An Intro-
duction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. Frank A. C. Mantello and Arthur G. Rigg (Wash-
ington: Catholic University of America University Press, 1996), 230–40; Brigitte
Bedos-Rezak, “Diplomatic Sources and Medieval Documentary Practises: An Essay
in Interpretive Methodology,” The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John Van
Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 313–43.
Web sites containing important hyperlinks or bibliographies:
http://www.vl-ghw.uni-muenchen.de/diplomatik/html
http://www.phil.uni-passau.de/histhw/bibliographie.html
http://theleme.enc.sorbonne.fr/sommaire64.html
More useful bibliographical references are to be found in: Martha Howell and Walter
Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca andLon-
don: Cornell University Press, 2001); revised German version: Werkstatt des Historikers
(Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2004).

Theo Kölzer

Disability Studies

A. Definition
Disability Studies is, broadly speaking, an interdisciplinary approach stem-
ming from the consideration of disability as a social construct. The Disability
Studies perspective is less clinical than representational, focusing on percep-
tions of the impaired body and on interactions between the impaired subject
and sociopolitical institutions. Therefore, like the related fields of Gender
Studies and Cultural Studies, Disability Studies draws upon a variety of ma-
terials and disciplinary approaches, such as social history, literary and visual
analysis, history of science and medicine, ethnology, and sociology.

B. Emergence of Disability Studies

Disability Studies emerged principally in the social sciences in the late 1980s
and early 1990s; its inception thus coincided with the surge in activism sur-
rounding the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the
United States in 1990. Early articles and monographs, such as many repro-
duced in the Disability Studies Reader, tend toward an ahistorical and pres-
entist view of the social construction of disability. Prior to the mid-2000s,
425 Disability Studies

most general social histories of disability, as well – with the notable exception
of Henri-Jacques Stiker (Corps infirmes et sociétés, 1982) and Walter Fandrey
(Krüppel, Idioten, Irre: Zur Sozialgeschichte behinderter Menschen in Deutschland,
1990) – omitted the medieval period or depicted it as a “Dark Age” marked by
the neglect or persecution of the physically and mentally disabled.

C. Disability Studies from a Medieval Perspective

From the late 1990s onward Disability Studies broadened in its scope, as the
Middle Ages became the object of several articles, and in its disciplinary ap-
paratus, as scholars of literature and art history began adopting key concepts
and terminology. Lois Bragg (now known as Edna Edith Sayers) was
among the first literary scholars to develop Disability Studies as an approach
to medieval texts in her studies of Icelandic saga, notably “Disfigurement,
Disability, and Dis-integration in Sturlunga Saga” (Alvíssmál 4 [1994]: 15–32),
“From the Mute God to the Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old
Norse Literature” (Disability and Society 12.2 [1997]: 165–77), and Oedipus bor-
ealis: The Aberrant Body in Medieval Iceland (2004). Edward Wheatley, author
of numerous studies of blindness in England and Normandy (“‘Blind’ Jews
and Blind Christians: Metaphorics of Marginalization in Medieval Europe,”
Exemplaria 14 [2002]: 351–82; “A River Runs Through It: Disability, Homo-
sexuality, Queered/Disabled Discourse, and the Isle of Blandie in Bérinus,”
Exemplaria 19 [2007]: 386–401), has developed the concept of the “religious
model” of disability, an institutionalized construction of disability that, like
the modern era’s “medical model,” stands in opposition to the construction
of disability as a social category and serves to segregate and disempower
the disabled. Other major contributors to medieval Disability Studies in-
clude Irina Metzler, author of the first monograph offering an overview of
disability in the Middle Ages (Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About
Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c.1100–1400, 2006), which
adopts a spiritual framework for the understanding of medieval disability;
Wendy J. Turner, who has explored the definition and treatment of mental
illness, particularly in a legal context, in medieval England (“Mental Inca-
pacity and Financing War in Medieval England,” The Hundred Years War:
vol. 2: Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay, 2008,
387–402); and Encarnación Juárez-Almendros, whose research has
focused on women and disability in medieval Spain (“The Autobiography
of the Aching Body in Teresa de Cartagena’s Arboleda de los enfermos,”
Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo
Brueggeman, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 2002, 131–43). Much
research concerning the medieval body, while not explicitly subscribing to
Disability Studies 426

the Disability Studies approach, nonetheless intersects with medieval Dis-

ability Studies: for example, Fedwa Malti-Douglas’s essay “Mentalités
and Marginality: Blindness and Mamlûk Civilization,” Power, Marginality, and
the Body in Medieval Islam, 2001, 211–37, or Caroline Walker Bynum’s studies
of embodied female spirituality (Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 1987; Fragmentation
and Redemption, 1991). Scholarship in medieval Disability Studies has con-
tinued to expand through the present decade. A number of recent disser-
tations and dissertations in progress (including those of Mark O’Tool, Uni-
versity of California Santa Barbara, 2007; Alexsandra Pfau, University of
Michigan, 2008; Julie Singer, Duke University, 2006; and Tory Vandev-
enter Pearman, Loyola University Chicago, 2009) have provided deeper
consideration of the applicability of Disability Studies to medieval materials
and contributed to the elaboration of critical vocabulary appropriate to the
study of medieval disability. The ongoing establishment of Disability
Studies programs at numerous U.S. and U.K. universities will likely increase
the level of scholarly interest in medieval disability. Additionally, a number
of monographs and essay collections are forthcoming as of January 2009: Ed-
ward Wheatley’s Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a
Disability, Encarnación Juárez-Almendros’s Women and Disability in Early
Modern Spain: Duennas, Prostitutes and Saints (Mujeres y discapacidad en la España
pre-moderna: dueñas, prostitutas y santas), Wendy J. Turner’s collection on
Madness and Law in the Middle Ages, and Joshua T. Eyler’s collection of essays
on disability in the Middle Ages. These studies, supplementing Metzler’s
monograph, provide more detailed accounts of the social markers of disabil-
ity within specific geographic areas. In addition to offering a more nuanced
social history of disability, the authors of recent and ongoing projects in
medieval Disability Studies are increasingly attuned to the intersection of
gender, sexuality, class, and disability.

Selected Bibliography
Lois Bragg, Oedipus borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (Madison, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004); Lennard J. Davis, The Disability Studies
Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997; 2nd ed., 2006); Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval
Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400
(London: Routledge, 2006); Henri-Jacques Stiker, Corps infirmes et sociétés (Paris: Aubier,
1982); Edward Wheatley, “Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the
Foundation of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts,” Disability Studies Quarterly 22 (2002):
194–212.

Julie Singer
427 Editing Medieval Texts

Editing Medieval Texts

A. Introduction
Because of the nature of textual transmission in the Middle Ages, the major-
ity of texts that have come down to us are at some remove from the authors
who composed them. Few authorial MSS or authorized copies have survived
from before the end of the Middle Ages, and the later copies that preserve
medieval works inevitably contain errors and often present modifications
introduced by scribes who sought to adapt these works to the esthetic, lin-
guistic and cultural codes of their milieu. Whether only a single MS is extant
or whether several divergent copies have survived, editors are faced with the
question of how best to represent the work to a modern public. In practical
terms, this has often meant deciding to what degree an edition should faith-
fully reproduce the text as it stands in MSS, and to what degree, on what
grounds, and according to what methods the text should be modified in pas-
sages where it is perceived to be faulty or to result from scribal intervention.
The various solutions that have been adopted over time depend on practical
considerations like the nature of the documents preserved and knowledge of
the material aspects of transmission, but are also determined by the ways in
which editors have defined the nature of medieval works and evaluated the
respective roles of author and scribe.

B. Early History and the Terms of the Debate

B.1. Early History

The critical editing of medieval texts has a long history. As early as the
14th century, Boccaccio produced an ‘edition’ of Dante’s Commedia based on
several MS witnesses that combined their readings with conjectural emen-
dations in order to restore the text of his illustrious predecessor. In Italy, the
interest in medieval texts would remain more or less constant over time and
literary works continued to be read and published; in most countries, how-
ever, the medieval heritage rapidly fell into oblivion and went virtually un-
known for several centuries. This situation changed at the beginning of the
19th century, when a renewed interest in medieval history and literature led
Editing Medieval Texts 428

to the rediscovery and publication of numerous works. The editors of this

period were not only scholars, but also antiquarians, bibliophiles, and ama-
teurs. As a result, and because there were as yet no rigorous standards for the
editing of medieval texts, the nature and reliability of these early editions
varied greatly. The quality of the texts produced depended largely on the
number and quality of MSS known to the editor and on his skill in reading
the witnesses and correcting their errors, either by combining variants from
other known MSS or through conjectural emendation. Moreover, editorial
procedures differed widely, and editors did not always feel the need to in-
form their readers about the provenance of the lessons adopted: whereas
Francisque Michel, for example, published a text of the Chanson de Roland
(1837) that closely adhered to the oldest known witness, Dominique Martin
Méon silently combined lessons from twelve MSS to create as complete a
text as possible of the Roman de Renart (4 vols., 1826).
As the century progressed, Medieval History and Medieval Literary
Studies continued to gain importance and would eventually establish them-
selves as recognized disciplines within the academic world. This led to the
inclusion of medieval literature in university curricula, the founding of insti-
tutions specialized in the study of MSS and archival materials, and the cre-
ation of learned societies and editorial collections for the publication of
medieval works (e.g., Les Anciens Poëtes de la France, 1856; Deutsche Klas-
siker des Mittelalters, 1864; EETS, 1864; Chaucer Society, 1865; SATF, 1875;
Società dantesca, 1888). As the discipline became increasingly professional-
ized, scholars sought to elaborate a series of norms and scientific methods
that would guarantee the quality of their research and publications. The de-
bates that took place and the methodological innovations that were intro-
duced in the late 19th and early 20th century have had a long-lasting influence
on the theory and practice of medieval textual philology.
Almost all modern discussions center around two methods that pursue
opposing goals: a documentary approach, that aims to reproduce faithfully
the documents that have come down to us, and a reconstructive approach,
that attempts to go beyond the documentary evidence in order to restore
the text of the author’s lost original. In the history of editing, these opposing
approaches are not new; the arguments set forward in the modern period
and, to some degree, the methods adopted, however, are. In classical and
medieval studies, these two approaches have come to be associated (rightly or
not) with two major figures: the German classical scholar Karl Lachmann
(1793–1851), and the French medievalist Joseph Bédier (1864–1938).
429 Editing Medieval Texts

B.2. The “Lachmannian” Method

This editorial approach – variously referred to as the scientific, common-
error, stemmatic, or recension method – was devised in order to establish a
text which approximates as closely as possible the author’s original work in
cases where the original has been lost, but where multiple copies have sur-
vived.
Ideally, the systematic nature of the early stages of the editorial work was
to allow for establishing the majority of the critical text by objective, me-
chanical procedures (recensio). Whereas previous editors had often based their
texts on an incomplete knowledge of the extant MSS or had given undue
preference to the lessons contained in the largest number of witnesses, in the
vulgate (textus receptus), or in a single MS deemed the most reliable (because of
age, completeness or correctness), the new method insisted on the need to
examine all the surviving MS evidence and to establish the critical text based
on a precise knowledge of the relationships that exist between the various
copies and between these copies and the original. The determination of these
relationships is based on the principle of common error, according to which
two copies that make the same mistake in the same passage must be related
to one another: either one MS was copied from the other, or both derive from
a third copy that contained the error but which no longer exists. On the basis
of these errors, the filiation of the MSS is established: the MSS are grouped
into families, and the relationship of these families to the lost original is de-
fined by positing a minimal series of lost intermediaries. Ideally, these rela-
tionships are represented graphically in the form of a stemma codicum (genea-
logical tree of MSS).
In the final stage of recension, the stemma serves to reconstruct step by
step the lost intermediaries between the extant MSS and the original, until
reaching the oldest common ancestor of all surviving copies (the archetype).
In its simplest form, the reconstruction obeys a more or less mechanical pro-
cedure. If it can be ascertained that the MSS fall into three main families, the
text of the common ancestor is automatically established by the agreement of
any two of them, unless it can be shown that they agree in an error. If the MSS
form only two families, the text of the common ancestor can be determined
whenever the two families agree; if they disagree, and both lessons are ac-
ceptable, the editor must rely on other sources or on his own judgment to es-
tablish the authentic text.
This last operation belongs to the second phase of the editing procedure
(examinatio), in which the editor examines the reconstructed text and at-
tempts to determine if it corresponds to the original work as written by the
author. In cases where the editor is faced with two variants of equal stem-
Editing Medieval Texts 430

matic value, the text is to be established either by selecting one or by conjec-

turing a third lesson that can explain the divergence in the MS tradition.
Even if the reconstructed text does not present variants, however, it must be
examined in all passages in order to detect and emend corruptions. Since the
MSS can offer no more assistance, corrections will necessarily be introduced
by conjecture (divinatio), informed by an intimate knowledge of the author’s
language, style, and intellectual milieu. The successive operations of recensio
and examinatio produce a critical reconstruction that resembles the texts of-
fered by extant witnesses, but is identical to none of them; in the “Lachman-
nian” perspective, these copies are merely a means to attaining the ultimate
goal, which is the recovery of the original work of the author.
Although most often referred to as the “Lachmannian” method, this edi-
torial approach was in fact not invented by the great German scholar, nor,
does it seem, was it even employed by him. Sebastiano Timpanaro (La genesi
del metodo del Lachmann [1963], 2nd ed. 2003) has shown that the various con-
cepts and techniques that compose the stage of recension are the result of
a collective endeavor begun by classical and biblical scholars in the 18th cen-
tury; key principles were developed by such early critics as Johann Albrecht
Bengel (1687–1752), Johann Jacob Wettstein (1693–1754), and Fried-
rich August Wolf (1759–1824). The first systematic description of the
mechanical method in its canonical form would come only much later, when
in 1927 Paul Maas published his slender volume on textual criticism (Text-
kritik, 4th ed. 1960; Elio Montanari, La critica del testo secondo Paul Maas,
2003). Lachmann himself seems to have had little interest in stemmatics.
While he was a tireless and talented editor of medieval German and classical
texts, and although he greatly impressed contemporaries with his detailed
description of the archetype of the extant MSS of Lucretius’ De rerum natura,
his editions were largely based on what he determined to be the best MS of
each work and he never attempted to reconstruct an archetypal text by me-
chanical application of a stemma (Giovanni Fiesoli, La genesi del lachman-
nismo, 2000).
The method continued to gain favor amongst critics, however, and by
the end of the 19th century it had entered most fields of medieval studies.
In the romance literatures, the first detailed exposition and full application
of the new method came with Gaston Paris’ 1872 edition of the Old French
Vie de saint Alexis. In a lengthy introduction, Paris not only explained and
demonstrated the technique of establishing the substantive lessons in his
critical text (“critique des leçons”), but also offered a more than 100-page
study of the original language of the poem (“critique des formes”), which
formed the basis for his linguistic reconstruction of the work. Doubts and
431 Editing Medieval Texts

misgivings were expressed by early reviewers and critics, but the new tech-
nique won large acceptance from practicing editors and by the beginning of
the 20th century it had been used to produce important editions in a number
of medieval literatures: e.g. editions by Léopold Constans of the Roman
de Thèbes (1890), by Michele Barbi of Dante’s Vita nuova (1907), by Carl Appel
of Bernart de Ventadorn’s poetry (1915), by John Manly and Edith Rickert
of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (8 vols., 1940). In Spain, where the number
of extant witnesses is generally much lower than in other national litera-
tures, the stemmatic method, which is designed to deal with multiple-MS
traditions, would only be introduced much later and in a more evolved form:
the first applications to works in medieval Castillian came in 1964 with
Alberto Vàrvaro’s Premesse a un’edizione critica delle poesie minori di Juan
de Mena and Giorgio Chiarini’s edition of the Libro de buen amor (Alberto
Blecua, “Los textos medievales castellanos y sus ediciones,” RPh 45 [1991]:
73–88).

B.3. Joseph Bédier

While the stemmatic method met with some early resistance, the strongest
challenge would come at the beginning of the 20th century from the student
of one of its most fervent promoters. In 1913, Joseph Bédier, who had
studied under Gaston Paris, published his second edition of Le lai de l’ombre;
with its polemical introduction and iconoclastic editorial approach, it se-
verely shook confidence in the scientific method.
In his first edition of the poem (1890), Bédier had adopted the then
prevalent editorial method: basing analysis on the principle of common
error, he determined that the seven extant MSS divided themselves into two
major families; he then proceeded to establish the critical text according to
the stemma he had devised, and finally rewrote the work in what he deemed
to be Jean Renart’s original language. The edition was reviewed by Paris,
who contended that Bédier’s stemma was faulty: the MSS formed three
families, not two; the text could therefore be reconstructed mechanically.
When Bédier returned to the text some twenty years later, however, he
would reject the “Lachmannian” method altogether.
His contestation stems from the study of other editions of Old French
texts. While three-branch stemmas appear in preliminary studies and critical
reviews, scholars who actually publish editions of medieval texts arrive al-
most invariably at two-branch stemmas: of the eighty editions he consulted,
seventy-eight were based on bipartite stemmas. This “surprising law” of
textual editing was, he argued, evidence of a methodological flaw: that the
extant copies all derive from two exemplars may very well be the case for
Editing Medieval Texts 432

some texts, but the systematic nature of this conclusion “indicates that we
are most often not in the presence of true facts of the history of textual trans-
mission, but of phenomena that occur in the minds of textual editors” (1913,
xxvii). He explained the predominance of two-branch stemmas by the un-
conscious desire of editors to maintain control over the establishment of
their critical texts and exercise their judgment when faced with two variants,
rather than blindly follow a mechanical two-against-one rule that imposed
the choice of lessons. Therefore, while in theory the “Lachmannian” method
appeared to be scientific and objective, in practice it allowed for a subjective
representation of the facts and an arbitrary reconstruction of the text.
In the specific case of the Lai de l’ombre, Bédier strove to show that the
common-error method was incapable of producing unequivocal results. His
demonstration is based on three main considerations. First, one of the two
MS families he had identified in 1890 contained no obvious errors and the
reality of the family was therefore impossible to prove: in such a case, the
decision to group the MSS in one family, as he had done, or to divide them
into two separate families, as Paris proposed, was arbitrary. In the absence
of errors, the method was incapable of providing a solution. Secondly, the
“Lachmannian” method is based on an unexamined assumption that the
original (or the archetype) was without flaw, and that the MS transmission of
the text was an uninterrupted process of degradation at the hands of incom-
petent scribes. Surely, Bédier argued, this was not the only possibility: when,
for example, one of his MS families presented an error absent from the other,
it was equally possible that the error was already present in the archetype and
that the seemingly correct lesson was no more than a scribal emendation.
Finally, faced with one very innovative MS of the Lai de l’ombre, he declared
that it was not possible to decide whether its text represented the work of an
intelligent scribe – in which case its individual lessons should be eliminated –
or a second authorial redaction – in which case it was to be considered apart
from the rest of the tradition. Bédier concluded that the interpretation of
the MS evidence could lead to the elaboration of different stemmas and to the
constitution of different critical texts; the reconstruction of the lost “origi-
nal” was therefore “generally nothing more than one more or less plausible,
but unverifiable hypothesis, arbitrarily chosen from amongst several others
that are equally plausible and equally unverifiable” (xl).
Refusing to base his edition on such questionable grounds, Bédier
chose to reproduce the text of one witness and to introduce only a minimal
number of corrections. As his base MS, he chose what he considered to be a
“good manuscript,” i. e. one that was not necessarily the closest to the origi-
nal, since this was impossible to determine, but that presented the fewest
433 Editing Medieval Texts

number of individual lessons and that the editor was therefore less often
tempted to correct. In the 962 lines of the poem, Bédier intervened only 34
times, in order to eliminate obvious scribal errors. Because the new method
he advocated did not function mechanically and because the subjective na-
ture of weighing variants was explicitly recognized, he provided numerous
textual notes, convinced as he was that for this type of edition “the editor
must endeavor to justify his choice in each doubtful case” (xliv).
The first response to Bédier’s challenge came from the French biblical
scholar Dom Henri Quentin, who had devised what he considered a more
mathematical and objective stemmatic method in order reconstruct the text
of the Vulgate (Essais de critique textuelle [ecdotique], 1926). Quentin advocated
a method based on the comparison of all MS variants and not just their er-
rors. By a statistical analysis of the agreement and disagreement between the
MSS, he claimed it was possible to arrive at an objective determination of the
MS families and their relationships to the lost original. Though concentrat-
ing on the text of the Vulgate, Quentin applied his method to the Lai de
l’ombre and drew up a stemma for the MS tradition that was different from
both Bédier’s and Paris’.
Bédier’s reply came almost immediately, in the form of a cogent, pol-
emical critique of stemmatic methods: “La tradition manuscrite du Lai de
l’ombre. Réflexions sur l’art d’éditer les anciens textes” (R 54 [1928]: 161–96
and 321–56). Reiterating his arguments of 1913 against “Lachmannian”
reconstructive techniques and the composite texts they produced, Bédier
went on to show that Quentin’s proposed modifications produced results
that were no more certain and that the text reconstructed according to his
stemma was esthetically unsatisfying. Bédier’s main argument rests, again,
on the impossibility of reaching an unequivocal interpretation of the MS
tradition based on the variant distribution. If Quentin’s method, like
Lachmann’s, succeeded in grouping the MSS into families, neither, he
argued, could determine the exact relationships of these families to one
another and to the lost original. In addition to the four possible stemmas he
had drawn up in his 1913 edition, he now added seven more – including
Quentin’s – that were equally possible, and equally unverifiable. Since each
stemma would produce a different critical text, Bédier contended that edi-
tors of medieval texts in the vernacular should refrain from reconstructing
originals until such a time as editorial methods might provide us with the
one “true” stemma. Generalizing from his experience with the Lai de l’ombre,
he concluded with the following recommendation:
Editing Medieval Texts 434

Therefore, the most commendable editorial method is perhaps, in final analysis,

one dictated by an attitude of distrust of oneself, of prudence, of extreme “conser-
vatism,” and by a strong, indeed unyielding determination to trust scribes as
much as possible and to modify the text of the manuscript one is publishing only
in cases of extreme and nearly self-evident necessity: all conjectural emendations
should be relegated to an appendix (356).

In calling for conservative single-MS editions, Bédier not only rejected re-
constructionist methods, he also ultimately rejected the values on which
they were predicated. Inverting the “Lachmannian” view both in his demon-
stration and in his final recommendation, he transformed the traditional
defiance of scribal copies into defiance of oneself: copyists were now to be
“trusted”; and their copies were no longer a mere means to end: given the
impossibility of attaining the authorial original, they had become an end
in themselves. In the years following, notably in his work on the Chanson de
Roland (1927, 1937–1938), Bédier would endorse and practice an increas-
ingly conservative adherence to the base MS.
The approach recommended by Bédier was not entirely new. Editions
that offered the text of a single MS with minimal emendations had been pub-
lished by many early editors and advocated by such scholars as Hermann
Paul and Gustav Roethe (Leithandschriftenprinzip); contemporary editors of
Old English were already shifting to an even more conservative, diplomatic
approach. Bédier’s importance, however, lies in the fact that his self-pro-
claimed “return” to pre-scientific editorial techniques rests upon a methodi-
cal examination and critical rejection of the “Lachmannian” method, and
offers a clearly articulated theoretical justification for single-MS editions.
Reactions to Bédier’s propositions varied according to national traditions:
whereas the majority of editors of Old French texts, for example, quickly
adopted them, such conservative principles were slow to spread into the
neighboring fields of Spanish and German literatures; in general, Italian edi-
tors and editors of medieval Latin texts have strongly opposed them (see Pra-
tiques philologiques en Europe, ed. Frédéric Duval, 2006 and Scholarly Editing,
ed. David C. Greetham, 1995).

B.4. Merits and Limitations

Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses. Alongside the obli-
gation to examine the entire body of available evidence, one of the greatest
contributions of the “Lachmannian” method is the principle of common
error, i. e. the realization that amidst all the lessons shared by different MSS,
only the agreement in errors is pertinent for retracing MS filiation. The dis-
covery of this principle, grounded in the very nature of scribal activity, was
435 Editing Medieval Texts

a milestone in the historical understanding of MS transmission and has had

a profound impact on the evaluation of extant documents. At the same time,
as Bédier showed, the immediate usefulness of this principle was limited,
and at times counteracted, by the fact that the “Lachmannian” method, at
least in its early formulation, adopted a simplistic view of MS transmission
and assumed that all copies derived from a single archetype in a linear de-
scent that could be characterized as a slow but constant degradation of the
original. Other criticisms, such as the argument of circularity (errors are used
to establish a stemma that determines error) or the idea that the method
leads only to subjective, modern rewritings of ancient texts, are unfounded
(D’Arco Silvio Avalle, “La critica testuale,” GRLMA t. 1 [1972]: 538–58, rpt.
as “Fenomenologia ecdotica del Medioevo romanzo,” La doppia verità, 2002,
142–45; R. B. C. Huygens, Ars edendi, 2001, 40).
One of the great merits of Bédier’s challenge resides in his reevaluation
of scribal activity, which has brought about a heightened awareness of the
complexity of MS transmission and the intrinsic value of scribal copies; and
his call for single-MS editions and editorial justification of all doubtful pas-
sages has fostered undeniable progress in the linguistic analysis of medieval
texts. For a number of scholars, however, Bédier’s radical skepticism is no
less dangerous than the naïve optimism of some early “Lachmannians,”
since it denies the possibility of studying an essentially historical phenom-
enon from a historical perspective and thereby leads to a misrepresentation
of medieval texts by placing the editor, and reader, at the mercy of capricious
scribes. It has been argued, moreover, that Bédier’s conclusions are exag-
gerated: while the study of one MS tradition (the Lai de l’ombre) indeed high-
lights certain limitations of the “Lachmannian” method, it by no means im-
peaches its general usefulness or its validity for other traditions. In this
respect, however, it has also been noted that Bédier’s attitude towards
“Lachmannian” techniques was in fact less radical than some of his pole-
mical affirmations suggest (Cesare Segre, “L’Après Bédier: Due manuali fran-
cesi di critica testuale,” Ecdotica 2 [2005]: 171–82).

C. Development and Diversification of Methods

Neither of these competing methods has won unanimous favor with editors
and the debate continued – and sometimes raged – throughout the 20th cen-
tury. Whereas some adopted, and even radicalized Bédier’s recommen-
dations, others took up his challenge to “define the limits of [the “Lachman-
nian” method], to refine it, to make it more flexible, and, thereby, to solidify
it” (“La tradition manuscrite …,” 355–56). New orientations, the diversity
of practices and the importance of methodological innovations are such that
Editing Medieval Texts 436

current references to the mythical figures of Lachmann and Bédier

are often anachronistic and misleading; one may more accurately speak
of “author-centered approaches” and “transmission-oriented approaches”
(Mary B. Speer).

C.1. Author-Centered Approaches

Unwilling to abandon the search for a historical understanding of MS trans-
mission, as Bédier had done, and convinced that the “Lachmannian” method
offered valuable, if imperfect, techniques for distinguishing between the
work of authors and the work of scribes, a number of scholars continued
to reflect on the process of MS transmission and the means at the disposal
of editors for coming to terms with it. Giorgio Pasquali’s landmark Storia
della tradizione e critica del testo (1934), which grew out of a review of Paul
Maas’s Textkritik, constitutes a penetrating reevaluation of the method that
takes into account the complex nature of MS traditions. Together with
Michele Barbi’s La nuova filologia (1938), Pasquali’s study marked the be-
ginnings of the Italian school of New Philology that was founded on the con-
viction that editors needed to exercise their judgment at all stages of the edit-
ing process and adopt a case-by-case approach, since no method could claim
universal validity: “each text presents a specific critical problem, each prob-
lem has its own solution, and […] editions are not established according to a
model or […] by a machine” (Barbi, 1938, x). Building on the “Lachman-
nian” legacy and attempting to render it more historical and less mechanical,
these scholars believed that the editor’s main task remained the reconstitu-
tion of the author’s original text from the entire MS tradition. With the fol-
lowing generation of Italian scholars, nuova filologia evolved into the influen-
tial school of “neo-Lachmannian” criticism (a term coined by Gianfranco
Contini). A similar attitude and similar goals were adopted by contempo-
rary textual critics in other countries – often referred to as “eclectic” editors.
Over the course of the last century, continued reflection by editors who have
refused the single-MS approach has striven to implement more rigorous
definitions of concepts and a more judicious application of techniques, to
specify the limits of the “Lachmannian” method, and to discover new criteria
that could complement traditional techniques or be used in their stead.

C.1.1. Common Errors

Given that the very act of copying lends itself to certain characteristic mis-
takes (Louis Havet, Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins, 1911)
and that scribes tend to intervene and correct errors in their exemplars,
Maas argued as early as 1937 for a more stringent selection of errors and
437 Editing Medieval Texts

a more methodical examination of their significance for the establishment

of the stemma (“Stemmatica,” rpt. in Textkritik, appendix; cf. Pasquali,
1934, 17). In order for a shared error to be stemmatically relevant, it must be a
“significant error” (Leitfehler), i. e., a mistake such that one may reasonably
exclude the possibility that two scribes committed it independently or that
another copyist corrected it by conjecture. To establish MS families with cer-
tainty, the significance of the errors must be determined by distinguishing
those that demonstrate kinship between two copies (errores coniunctivi) and
those that prove their independence (errores separativi). Some more recent edi-
tors have also argued in favor of the stemmatic value of innovations and in-
terpolations that can be surely identified as such.

C.1.2. Recentiores, non deteriores

Contrary to a previously common assumption, it has been proven that older
MSS are not necessarily less corrupt than more recent ones and that the
quality of a witness is in fact independent of its age (Pasquali, 1934), a fact
that underscores the necessity to examine carefully the entire MS tradition.

C.1.3. Two-Branch Stemmas

Recent scholarship has shown that while bipartite stemmas predominate,
they are not as systematic as Bédier claimed. Purely statistical explanations
for this prevalence have been advanced, but fail to convince; current views
tend to consider either that a number of bipartite stemmas result from insuf-
ficient analysis of MS traditions on the part of editors, or that their predomi-
nance in fact results from the material conditions of medieval MS produc-
tion (Armando Balduino, Manuale di filologia italiana [1979], 3rd ed. 2001,
354–60).

C.1.4. Types of Manuscript Traditions

Critical reflection on various traditions has lead to a better understanding
of the complexity of MS transmission and its relevance to textual editing.
Pasquali proposed a typology distinguishing, on the one hand, traditions
in which scribes were content to merely copy their exemplars (closed tradi-
tions) from those in which they more or less freely intervened in the text they
were copying (open traditions), and, on the other, traditions in which each
copy was based on a single exemplar (vertical traditions) from those in which
MSS from one family were contaminated through consultation of members
of another family (horizontal traditions). Since the early mechanical pro-
cedures of the “Lachmannian” method assumed, and were therefore only
applicable to closed, vertical traditions, editors searching to restore the au-
Editing Medieval Texts 438

thor’s original but faced with other types of transmission had to proceed
with extreme caution, adopt other means, or limit their ambitions. Pursuing
Pasquali’s reflections, Alberto Vàrvaro has explored differences between
medieval and ancient traditions and the techniques used by their respective
editors (“Critica dei testi classica e romanza. Problemi comuni ed esperienze
diverse,” RAN 45 [1970]: 73–117, rpt. in: Identità linguistiche e letterarie nell’Eu-
ropa romanza, 2004, 567–612).

C.1.5. Multiple Redactions and Authorial Variants

Pasquali was also one of the first scholars to accord critical attention to
the fact that ancient and medieval authors, like their modern counterparts,
at times produced more than one version of their works. While this is obvious
in cases like that of Petrarch, where autograph or partially autograph copies
have survived, the distinction between authorial variants and scribal inno-
vations can often be difficult to make. Subsequent research has established
minimal stemmatic criteria for the identification of authorial redactions
(Balduino, Manuale, 378–79), but the distinction can be blurred in in-
stances where the author revised a corrupt scribal copy rather than a pristine
copy of the original redaction.

C.1.6. Contamination
Medieval correctors at times revised MSS on exemplars from different
families, inscribing corrections and variants in the margins or between lines
of text. When such a MS in turn served as model, the new copy could contain
lessons derived from two different families, thus obscuring its place in the
tradition. While rampant contamination can render the establishment of a
stemma impossible, scholars have devised criteria for identifying contami-
nation, for determining its nature and degree in various traditions, and
for limiting, if not eliminating the risks it poses to critical reconstructions
(Maas, Textkritik, § 10; Segre, “Appunti sul problema delle contaminazioni
nei testi in prosa,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale, ed. Raffaele Spongano,
1961, 63–67, rpt. in: Ecdotica e comparatistica romanze, 1998, 71–74; Avalle,
Principî di critica testuale [1972], 2002, § 3.3).

C.1.7. Lectio difficilior, lectio potior

Based on the observation that scribes tend to replace unfamiliar words and
constructions with more familiar ones, this old axiom asserts that a more dif-
ficult or idiosyncratic lesson contained in one or more MSS is more likely to
be authentic than other banal lessons offered by the tradition. Because this
principle, like that of usus scribendi, trumps the rule of stemmatic majority,
439 Editing Medieval Texts

thus offering a corrective to the mechanical nature of the stemma, it has at-
tracted a good deal of attention. Gianfranco Contini, in a series of penetrat-
ing contributions dating from 1953–1977 (now in Breviario di ecdotica, 1986),
showed how difficult lessons create a phenomenon of diffraction in the MS
tradition, with various scribes either misreading the lesson or replacing it
with a more common synonym; the occurrence of this phenomenon in tradi-
tions where the lectio difficilior has been preserved by at least one witness leads
to positing a lectio difficilior, and correcting by conjecture, when it has not
been, but when the tradition shows such a typical dispersion of variants. The
plausibility of this type of conjectural emendation is reinforced by the serial
nature of certain phenomena within the same work or the same historical
period. Maurizio Perugi, a student of Contini, has further refined the con-
cept and invested it with greater methodological importance in his editions
of Arnaut Daniel (1978) and La vie de saint Alexis (2000).

C.1.8. Usus scribendi

Like the concept of lectio difficilior, the linguistic and stylistic traits of the
author are extra-stemmatic criteria that have received much attention from
theorists and practitioners. In cases where the common-error method fails to
produce results (due to bipartite stemmas or contamination), some recent
scholars have given it a central role in the establishment of the critical text.
Good examples of this are Alfred Foulet’s “grid-editing” (“On Grid-Edit-
ing Chrétien de Troyes,” L’Esprit créateur 27 [1987]: 15–23) and George Kane
and E. T. Donaldson’s “deep editing” of Piers Plowman (1960, 1975; Lee
Patterson, “The Logic of Textual Criticism and the Way of Genius: The
Kane-Donaldson Piers Plowman in Historical Perspective,” Negotiating the
Past, 1987, 77–113). Assigning the concept a more limited role, Segre has
offered a clear theoretical exposition based on the linguistic concept of dia-
system and has underscored the need to study the habits of each individual
scribe, in order to found editions on a differential analysis of competing
linguistic, esthetic and ideological systems that coexist in medieval copies
(“Critique textuelle, théorie des ensembles et diasystème,” BCLSMP 62
[1976]: 279–92).

C.1.9. Control Manuscripts

Faced with problematic traditions, other editors have sought less conjectural
means for editing. In cases where the stemma remains uncertain, but the
MSS can be divided into families, the control method consists of choosing the
best MS of the least innovative family as base and using the best MSS of the
other families as controllers (Alexandre Micha, Prolégomènes à une édition de
Editing Medieval Texts 440

Cligès, 1938; id., La tradition manuscrite des romans de Chrétien de Troyes, 1939).
This method allows for a limited restoration of the authorial text by elimi-
nating obvious scribal innovations.

C.1.10. Use of Computers

In the last few decades, some editors have attempted to explore the useful-
ness of modern technologies for the analysis of MS traditions (e. g. The Canter-
bury Tales Project Occasional Papers, 1993–). For all its help in managing large
amounts of information, however, the computer remains incapable of dis-
tinguishing between a minor variant and a significant error, and has thus not
brought with it any tangible methodological advantage in this respect.

C.2. Transmission-Oriented Approaches

Abandoning interventionist methods, others scholars have reaffirmed the
primacy and intrinsic interest of individual copies. The motivations for pro-
ducing conservative editions of scribal copies are varied. In some cases, an
individual MS warrants particular interest: autograph MSS, texts copied
under the supervision of the author, MSS of particular historical or linguistic
value, etc. In other cases, the adoption of this approach to textual editing is
prompted by methodological and theoretical concerns. Some editorial pro-
jects are closely associated with the elaboration of dictionaries (e. g., EETS,
HSMS) and the conservative editorial principles have aimed at supplying
lexicographers with a large and varied array of attested words and construc-
tions. Most frequently, however, the adherence to the text of scribal copies
results from a perceived impossibility or the affirmed undesirability of re-
constructing an authorial version. In almost all cases, the choice to present
the text of one or more scribal copies rests on the argument that this type of
edition offers the reader access to actual documents that were written and
read during the medieval period; its historical, documentary nature is often
opposed to the hypothetical nature of reconstructive editions. While the so-
lution adopted seems simple, theory and practice have brought out a certain
number of complexities. Over the course of the 20th century, the various so-
lutions devised by editors for presenting scribal copies bears witness to the
continuing reflection on the nature of medieval documents and the aims and
implications of modern editions.

C.2.1. The “Best-Manuscript” Approach

Where the decision to present this type of edition rests on a conscious rejec-
tion of other methods, the solution implies a rehabilitation of scribal copies.
The nature of this promotion and its consequences, however, vary. In the
441 Editing Medieval Texts

case of Bédier, the decision to edit a scribal copy resulted not from the un-
desirability, but rather from the methodological impossibility of retrieving
the authorial original. Although he argued for the historical and esthetic
value of scribal copies and suggested the interest of editing all extant copies
of medieval works, his own published editions offered the text of only one
witness, deemed to be “good” or “the best.” Over the course of the entire his-
tory of editing medieval texts, the presentation of one scribal copy of a work
is undoubtedly the solution that has most commonly been adopted by prac-
ticing editors. While the value of such editions is undeniable, it has been
noted that the approach presents other limitations. At the same time it shifts
the editor’s and the reader’s attention away from the authorial original, it
also runs the risk of turning attention away from the MS tradition as a whole:
in its presentation of MS evidence, the best-MS approach in fact does not in-
vest all scribal copies with greater value, but accords a privileged status to one
single witness. Other scholars and critical currents have given greater im-
portance to scribal activity and sought new ways to present and understand
the dynamic character of textual transmission. A useful distinction may be
drawn between approaches that focus on the scribe and those that remain
centered on the work.

C.2.2. The Scribe-Centered Approach

Examining editorial practices and their relationship to the historical reality
of textual transmission, Avalle concluded that insufficient attention had
been given to individual copyists and the MSS they produced (“La critica tes-
tuale,” GRLMA, t. 1, 1972, 546–48). For him, Bédier’s shift from authorial
original to scribal copy was incomplete and his recommendation to edit ac-
cording to conservative principles would remain unproductive so long as the
object and the aims of an edition had not also been redefined. As a corrective,
he advocated expanding the perspective from single texts to complete MSS
containing multiple texts. In this larger framework, he argued, a conser-
vative approach to editing found its legitimate application and could con-
tribute to a genuine renewal of MS studies: by integrating the study of the
treatment of individual texts into a global vision of the MS as a coherent cul-
tural program, such an approach would afford a more complete picture of
medieval scribal activity while at the same time offering invaluable insights
into the cultural and historical significance of MSS (concrete linguistic
usage, medieval “editorial techniques,” the chronological and geographical
diffusion of texts, the existence of scriptoria, the role of entire MSS in textual
transmission, etc.). This renewed approach to scribal activity informs not
only his study of the occitan tradition (La letteratura medievale in lingua d’oc
Editing Medieval Texts 442

nella sua tradizione manoscritta, 1961), but also his edition of early Italian lyric
MSS (Concordanze della lingua poetica italiana delle origini, 1992).

C.2.3. Work-Centered Approaches and the Concept of “mouvance”

Whereas Avalle focused on individual scribes whose activity could be ob-
served through multiple texts, other editors and theorists have sought to
understand scribal activity by concentrating on the multiple manifestations
of individual works. This has led to editions that rather than, or in addition
to presenting a single critical text, offer editions or transcriptions of all major
redactions or even of every single witness of a given work. While in and of
itself the decision to edit multiple versions of a medieval text is by no means
indicative of the rejection of the authorial original (as witness the editions of
the Vie de saint Alexis by Gaston Paris [1872], or Guido Faba’s Formule volgari
by Arrigo Castellani [SFI 13 (1955): 5–78]), the approach has become more
frequent and has inspired – and in turn been inspired by – a radical redefini-
tion of the concepts of “author” and “work.”
Building on his study of lyric poetry in a neo-traditionalist perspective,
Paul Zumthor coined the term “mouvance” (see also Roy Rosenstein’s
contribution in this Handbook of Medieval Studies) in order to underscore what
he considered to be one of the defining characteristics of medieval literature:
its inherent instability, as seen in the course of its transmission (Essai de
poétique médiévale, 1972, 65–75 and 507). He conceived this instability not
as a negative phenomenon, but rather as a positive form of re-creation that
constitutes the very life of medieval works. In his view, the modern notion
of a fixed text attributable to a single author is anachronistic: for the medi-
eval period, the notion of author must be expanded to include the perform-
ers and scribes who continually reinterpreted and recreated works; and
the abstract notion of a static work must be replaced by a dynamic conception
that includes, and is defined by the multiple, concrete manifestations of
the work in extant documents. Though Zumthor did not deny the possible
existence of an original authorial composition, his conception of medieval
textuality refuses any esthetic priority to such an original, whose relevance
is reduced to that of a reference point from which to measure the textual
variance of its individual materializations. It is the latter, he argued,
that constitutes the proper subject of scientific enquiry. Such a radical
redefinition of the nature of medieval works and the aims of scholarly re-
search questions the traditional notions upon which textual philology was
founded, and goes beyond Bédier’s views by attributing, at least virtually,
the same value to all copies of a given work. Similar revisions have since been
pursued in other fields, such as that by Hubert Heinen who developed the
443 Editing Medieval Texts

concept of Mutabilität in his study of German lyric (Mutabilität im Minnesang,

1989).
This new conception of medieval textuality may be responsible for an
increasing number of parallel-text editions, but has remarkably not lead to a
full-scale revolution in editing techniques. The first, and one of the only edi-
tions, to be explicitly based on Zumthor’s theory of mouvance illustrates
well the difficult relationship between theories of literature and the concrete
practice of editing. Published in 1978, Rupert T. Pickens’s edition of Jaufre
Rudel’s occitan lyrics reproduces the texts of all extant witnesses, but organ-
izes them according to their greater or lesser proximity to the poet’s lost
original, thus reintroducing a “Lachmannian” hierarchy based on the notion
of textual authority. Later parallel-text editions have shown a similar ten-
dency (see Mary B. Speer, “Wrestling with Change: Old French Textual
Criticism and Mouvance,” Olifant 7 [1980]: 311–26; id., “Editing Old French
Texts in the Eighties: Theory and Practice,” RPh 45 [1991]: 7–43). Though
paradoxical within this theoretical framework, attempts to establish the
relative authority of different lessons or redactions are not entirely illogical,
for if MS variance is to be understood, and not just reproduced, it can only be
evaluated with respect to the putative original.
Further theoretical reflections on the fundamental instability of medi-
eval works and on the relevance of the concept of authority have been offered
by scholars such as Bernard Cerquiglini, in his highly polemical Eloge de la
variante (1989), and Tim W. Machan, in Textual Criticism and Middle English
Texts (1994). While rightly underscoring the difficulty of representing MS
variance in print format, both works have been faulted for failing to bridge
the gap between theory and practice by proposing new editorial solutions
and, especially in the case of Cerquiglini, for placing too much faith in
computer-based editions, a medium which is no less anachronistic than the
printed book. The potential influence of such work on concrete editing prac-
tice remains to be seen.

C.2.4. Conservative Emendation

Whatever the theoretical and practical concerns that motivate transmission-
oriented editions, conservative editors remain faced by the question of when
and how much to correct. Answers to these questions have varied, as the goals
of editors and their conception of what an edited text should represent have
differed. In order to reduce the number of potentially unjustified alterations
of the documentary evidence, Bédier and many other editors have advocated
correcting only obvious scribal errors. As early as 1939, Eugène Vinaver
analyzed the concrete process of copying in order to establish a typology
Editing Medieval Texts 444

of purely mechanical errors and thereby provide objective criteria for such
limited editorial intervention (“Principles of Textual Emendation,” Studies
in French Language and Mediaeval Literature presented to Mildred K. Pope, 351–69).
The resultant text offers a compromise between respect for the scribal copy
and the desire to produce a text that is intelligible. To some degree, it also con-
stitutes a compromise between the scribal copy and the authorial original,
since in order to establish an acceptable text editors will at times correct an
error that appears not only in their base MS, but also in the entire MS family
to which it belongs. A similar tension between the original and the copy
arises when in versified texts a semantically and grammatically sound lesson
runs counter to meter: while emendation is not rare, some recent editors
have preferred to retain the scribal variant. Alongside conservative editions
that present varying degrees of intervention, a number of scholars choose to
publish transcriptions of scribal copies without any editorial emendation.
The aim of such diplomatic or near-diplomatic editions is to provide an exact
documentation of the MS evidence, the interpretation of which is either pro-
vided elsewhere or left to the reader.

D. The Diversity of Problems and the Variety of Solutions

Although approaches to editing medieval texts and the theoretical models
that inspire them differ widely, the acrimony of the debate between different
schools of thought has abated in recent years as readers and editors have
increasingly realized the validity and complementary nature of apparently
opposing critical stances. Both author-centered and transmission-oriented
approaches have, in various ways, made us aware of the complex nature of
medieval textuality and scribal activity. Certain approaches are characteristic
of various national and critical traditions, but individual editors continue to
question their methods, attempt to adapt their strategies to the nature of the
specific work they are editing, and explore new ways of understanding and
presenting MS evidence.

D.1. Production and Diffusion

Progress in research into various aspects of the creation and circulation of
medieval texts allows for a continually better informed, more nuanced ap-
proach to editing. Reflection on specific metrical traditions, for example, has
underscored the problems posed by certain types of verse, regional practices,
and diachronic evolutions that affect the work of editors (Middle English
alliterative verse, anisosyllabism in Castillian, Anglo-Norman, Sicilian, etc.).
Much work has been devoted to the specific issues raised by differing modes
of composition and of diffusion for various genres and types of texts (oral
445 Editing Medieval Texts

vs. written transmission; the pecia-system; romance, epic, translations, tech-

nical texts, etc.). Among the fastest growing fields of inquiry are those of MS
studies and of research on individual scribal copies. From the notion of “the
scribe as editor” to “New Codicology,” these studies offer an increasingly
clear view of the general mechanisms of MS variance while at the same time
demonstrating that each scribal copy represents a more or less personal and
coherent linguistic, esthetic, and ideological project in the framework of
which individual innovations may be understood.

D.2. Approaches
Informed by such considerations, the diversity of current editorial practice
not only illustrates attempts to adapt methods to varying material circum-
stances, but also attests to the vitality of reflection on what a critical edition
can or should be.

D.2.1. Single-MS Traditions

The conservation of a medieval text by only one non-autograph witness im-
poses severe limitations on any attempt to restore the lost original. Editors
therefore tend to adopt a conservative approach, or opt for diplomatic or
semi-diplomatic editions. The fact that only one MS has survived, however,
is not in and of itself an argument in favor of a diplomatic transcription.
Careful consideration of internal and external evidence – such as authorial
usage, scribal error patterns, genre, period, linguistic usage, or indirect testi-
mony – can allow for restoring a certain number of critical passages. Though
rarely applied to texts whose interest is primarily linguistic or historical,
a more interventionist approach has at times been taken to literary texts.
The Cantar de Mio Cid offers a good example of the various possibilities:
the unique MS that preserves its text has been published in a diplomatic
transcription (Ramón Menéndez Pidal [1908–1911], Obras completas,
1964–1969, 3: 907–1016), reproduced in facsimile (1982), and edited accord-
ing to both conservative (ed. Colin Smith, 1972) and more interventionist
principles (ed. Alberto Montaner, 1993). Exemplary editions offer detailed
codicological analyses of the sole surviving witness, and departures from the
documentary evidence are often signaled directly in the critical text by the
use of diacriticals. Since there are no MS variants to document, some editors
have used the critical apparatus to record the conjectural emendations of pre-
vious scholars, thus providing a valuable tool for future research and reflec-
tion on the text (see also: Edmond Faral, “A propos de l’édition des textes an-
ciens: Le cas du manuscrit unique,” Mélanges Clovis Brunel, 1955, 1: 409–21;
Rudolf Hofmeister, “The Unique Manuscript in Mediaeval German Lit-
Editing Medieval Texts 446

erature,” Seminar 12 [1972]: 8–25; Germán Orduna, “La edición crítica y el

codex unicus: el texto del Poema de Mio Cid,” Incipit 17 [1997]: 1–46.).

D.2.2. Originals
The existence of original documents, autograph and partially autograph
MSS create a situation similar to that of single-MS traditions, by most often
imposing the choice of base MS and inspiring a conservative editorial ap-
proach. While the accurate reproduction of such documents is invaluable,
original official acts and autograph copies are not always error-free and some
critics advocate and practice limited emendation in order to establish the
text as it was intended by the writer (cf. Franca B. Ageno, L’edizione critica
dei testi volgari, 1975, 2nd ed. 1984, 31–44). Even when the original survives,
recent work has shown the importance of examining the entire tradition,
since later innovations, such as the falsification of acts, and variant versions
by which texts were widely known and cited may have historical signifi-
cance. (Gli autografi medievali, ed. Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Pinelli, 1994).

D.2.3. Multiple Copies

In cases where the original has been lost, but multiple copies survive, current
editorial practices vary widely as editors continue to explore the full range
of possibilities in terms of presentation of MS evidence. The commonly
adopted solution of publishing a single critical text tends to imply some de-
gree of editorial intervention, but the goals pursued by editors range from
the reproduction of one witness with minimal emendation (e. g., The Fables of
‘Walter of England,’ ed. Aaron E. Wright, 1997) to the restoration of the au-
thor’s “ipsissima verba” (Chrétien de Troyes: Le roman de Perceval, ed. Keith Busby,
1993). Editions based on variations of the best-MS approach (Dantis Alagherii
Comedia, ed. Federico Sanguinetti, 2001), on eclectic principles (Robert
de Boron. Joseph d’Arimathie, ed. Richard O’Gorman, 1995), and on a flexible
application of stemmatic methods (Il trovatore Raimon Jordan, ed. Stefano
Asperti, 1990) regularly appear. Some editors, aware that a single-text edi-
tion may convey an unduly static image of the MS tradition, but convinced
that, when feasible, a synthetic presentation of the documentary evidence is
desirable, have experimented with the critical apparatus: the organization of
variants according to MS families, redactions, or relative pertinence to estab-
lishing the text, and the distinction between variants and other elements
(rejected lessons, previously proposed emendations) facilitate consultation
of the critical apparatus, while at the same time emphasizing the dynamic
character of the tradition and the importance of editorial decisions. Other
scholars, faced with highly divergent redactions, have attempted to produce
447 Editing Medieval Texts

stratigraphic editions that distinguish successive stages of the work’s evo-

lution by the use of various typographical conventions within the critical
text (e. g., La chanson de Roland, ed. C. Segre, 1971; La vie de saint Alexis, ed.
M. Perugi, 2000).
Editors who, for various reasons, conclude that it is not possible or
not desirable to reduce the MS tradition of the works they are editing to
a single version often choose to edit two or more copies in parallel or in
sequence. Here, too, practices and aims vary from one edition to the other.
For example, A. V. C. Schmidt’s parallel-text edition of the A, B, C, and Z
versions of Langland’s Piers Plowman (1995) focuses attention on the relation-
ships between these four supposedly authorial redactions, while Neil
Wright’s edition of the Historia regum Britannie (1985–1991) contrasts the
authorial text with later variant versions. Less concerned with authority,
Willem Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard offer diplomatic transcrip-
tions of all MS witnesses of the Old French fabliaux (NRCF, 1983–2001), thus
supplying a wealth of raw material that invites inquiry into all aspects of the
diffusion of these comic tales. And, going a step further by offering individ-
ual editions of every extant witness, collaborative editions like those of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (gen. ed. David Dumville, and Simon Keynes, 1983–),
the German poet Neidhart (ed. Ulrich Müller, Ingrid Bennewitz, and
Franz V. Spechtler, 2007) or the Chanson de Roland (dir. Joseph J. Duggan,
2005) elevate scribal copies to the status of works in their own right.

D.2.4. Complete-MS Editions

A number of recent editors have taken a different approach to medieval texts
and scribes by editing entire composite MSS. Following Avalle’s example,
Francesco Carapezza produced an edition of a songbook, accompanied by a
lengthy study: Il canzoniere occitano G (Ambrosiano R 71 sup.) (2005). Other, more
diversified MSS have been edited by Middle Dutch scholars, who show par-
ticular interest in this type of edition: since 1994, the Middeleeuwse verzamel-
handschriften uit de Nederlanden series has published ten complete-MS edi-
tions. While it is curious to note that MSS have not yet been elevated to the
same artistic and intellectual status as some of the scribal versions of individ-
ual works they may contain – complete-MS are transcribed diplomatically,
not edited critically – this type of edition offers interesting new perspectives
on linguistic usage, scribal activity, and social and cultural aspects of the
codex.
Editing Medieval Texts 448

D.3. The Letter

An apparently minute aspect of editing, but one that continues to provoke
reflection, is that of accidentals, and in particular the question of how words
and letters are to be represented in the published text. Answers have varied
over time, and in some fields the issue is not yet settled. Early editors had a
tendency to rewrite medieval texts: Lachmann, for example, convinced
that medieval poets wrote in a literary koine, regularized orthography and
eliminated dialectal traits, whereas a number of romance scholars attempted
to systematically recreate the presumed dialect of authors. Such reconstruc-
tions have been criticized for obscuring important aspects of medieval lin-
guistic usage, and in most – though not all – fields have been abandoned in
favor of a greater fidelity to the forms actually present in the MSS. Some lin-
guists and critics have objected to other types of intervention, notably in
terms of modernization (resolution of abbreviations, modern word-division
and punctuation, etc.), and individual editors continue to seek an acceptable
compromise between fidelity to the MSS and adaptation to a modern public.

D.4. From Page to Screen

While the use of computers has not had a profound impact on editorial tech-
niques, it clearly offers new possibilities in terms of presentation. By over-
coming some of the physical and economic constraints of the printed book,
it allows editors to accompany their critical texts with large amounts of
supplementary information (complete MS transcriptions, the texts of pre-
vious editions, reproductions of miniatures, etc.) and offer an impressive
array of search options. A number of projects have already shown the rich
potential of this medium, and the diversity of possible formats: entirely web-
based editions (José Manuel Lucía Megías, Literatura románica en internet:
los textos, 2002), CD-ROM publications (e. g., Canterbury Tales Project), and
combinations of print and digital media (e. g., Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lan-
zelet, ed. Florian Kragl, 2006). While the quantity of raw material presented
in a format that is not always congenial to in-depth study may daunt readers
who lack training in textual criticism, the abundant documentation pro-
vided by such editions is clearly one of the great advantages of this type of
project. The challenge posed to electronic editors, however, may well be that
of insuring the long-term conservation and accessibility of their work in the
face of rapidly evolving digital technologies.
449 Editing Medieval Texts

D.5. Current Research

The vitality of current critical reflection on textual editing is visible not only
in the intense, multifarious activity of recent editors and their specific pro-
jects, but also in the ever-increasing number of publications devoted to ques-
tions of method. Alongside individual monographs and isolated articles,
a number of colloquia have made important contributions to the debate: e. g.
Atti del XIV congresso internazionale di linguistica e filologia romanza, ed. Alberto
Vàrvaro, 1978; Editionsberichte zur mittelalterlichen deutschen Literatur, ed.
Anton Schwob, 1994; La critica del testo mediolatino, ed. Claudio Leonardi,
1994; Alte und neue Philologie, ed. Martin-Dietrich Glessgen and Franz Leb-
sanft, 1997. In addition to such sporadic publications, various permanent
fora for discussion have also been established, and periodicals dedicated
principally or entirely to editing are increasingly numerous: e.g., Studi e pro-
blemi di critica testuale (1970–); Incipit (1981–); TEXT (1984–2006; continued
as: Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation [2006–]); Editio (1987–); Critica
del testo (1998–); Variants (2002–); Ecdotica (2004–). Faced with the swell of ac-
tivity and the proliferation of individual case studies, however, many have
felt the need for comprehensive reviews of current practice, as well as for the
establishment or reaffirmation of shared norms. This has lead to the publi-
cation of numerous manuals and introductions, most often conceived along
linguistic or national boundaries: e.g. Armando Balduino, Manuale di filolo-
gia italiana, 1979 (3rd ed. 1989; rpt. 2001); Alfred Foulet and Mary Blakely
Speer, On Editing Old French Texts, 1979; Alberto Blecua, Manual de crítica tex-
tual, 1983 (cf. Hugo Bizzarri, “Veinte años de reflexión sobre crítica textual
[1983–2003],” RCPR 4–5 [2003–2004]: 296–318); Thomas Bein, Textkritik,
1990 (2nd ed., 2008); Guide to Editing Middle English, ed. Vincent McCarren
and Douglas Moffat, 1998; Ursula Kocher, Einführung in die Editionswis-
senschaft (forthcoming). By offering an overview of current practices and
norms, such works play an important role within the various fields of medi-
eval textual criticism; one may hope that they will also facilitate exchange
and discussion across the disciplines. Several recent publications clearly en-
courage this larger debate by adopting a pluridisciplinary perspective: e.g.
Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, ed. David C. Greetham, 1995; Filologia
classica e filologia romanza: Esperienze ecdotiche a confronto, ed. Anna Ferrari,
1998; Pratiques philologiques en Europe, ed. Frédéric Duval, 2006.

E. Conclusions
The current rhythm of publication of new editions and critical reflections on
editing shows no signs of abating and clearly attests to the vitality and im-
portance of the discipline. Whether they are editors or simply readers of
English Studies 450

medieval texts, scholars are increasingly aware of the ways in which modern
editions help shape our understanding of the past and of the symbiotic rela-
tionship between textual theories and editorial praxis. Interpretation, read-
ing, and editing are intimately bound together. Over time, approaches to
editing and the concepts that inform them have evolved and diversified; and
the aims and methods of textual criticism continue to vary according to
national traditions, critical orientations, and individual convictions. The
diversity of current approaches and the on-going debates are healthy signs,
since the practice of editing consists of a constantly renewed effort to dis-
cover the strategies best-suited to the materials and to our understanding
of them, and there can probably be no “definitive” editions. While the critical
edition is established according to tried methods and rigorous standards, it
remains a “working hypothesis” (Contini), an interpretation of the docu-
mentary evidence and an attempt to convey to the modern reader a certain
understanding of a specific historical reality. And it is precisely for this rea-
son that textual editing continues to play a central role in medieval studies.

Select Bibliography
D’Arco Silvio Avalle, La doppia verità (Florence: Galluzzo, 2002); Joseph Bédier,
“La tradition manuscrite du Lai de l’ombre: réflexions sur l’art d’éditer les anciens
textes,” R 54 (1928): 161–96 and 321–56 [rpt. independently, Paris: Champion, 1929,
1970]; Conseils pour l’édition des textes médiévaux, 3 vols. (Paris: ENC, 2001–2002); Gian-
franco Contini, Breviario di ecdotica (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1986); Deutsche Texte
des Mittelalters zwischen Handschriftennähe und Rekonstruktion, ed. Martin J. Schubert
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005); Pratiques philologiques en Europe, ed. Frédéric Duval (Paris:
ENC, 2006); Les problèmes posés par l’édition critique des textes anciens et médiévaux, ed.
Jacqueline Hamesse (Louvain-la-Neuve: UCL, 1992); Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Re-
search, ed. David C. Greetham (New York: MLA, 1995); Martin L. West, Textual Criti-
cism and Editorial Technique Applicable to Greek and Latin Texts (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973).

Craig Baker

English Studies

A. Definition
Medieval English Studies denotes the modern academic investigation of lit-
erature produced in England in the vernacular during the period ca. 650–ca.
1500 CE. Talk of English literature as constituting a single, unified field is
problematic, even anathema, since the body of writing has diverse linguistic
451 English Studies

bases, which evolved over time. The English language contains numerous
Celtic components derived from the early inhabitants of the British Isles.
With the annexing of the territory to the Roman Empire, Latin was installed
as the official language of the Church (Richard Gameson, St Augustine and
the Conversion of England, 1999), and the vernacular was affected also by the
tongues of Norse and Germanic settlers during the first millennium. After
the Norman Conquest of the 11th century Norman French operated within
England with various linguistic registers (Ian Short, “Patrons and Poly-
glots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England,” Anglo-Norman Studies
14 [1991]: 229–49; William Rothwell, “The Trilingual England of Geof-
frey Chaucer,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 [1994]: 45–67). For the purposes
of the present article Old and Middle English texts are dealt with exclusively
and cognate literatures are touched upon as source materials rather than a
subject of immediate study.

B. Terminological Definition:
the Canon of Medieval English Literature

B.1. Old English Literature

Although verse comprises only about nine per cent of the corpus of extant
Old English writing its critical understanding historically dominates the
field of pre-Conquest English studies (Robert D. Fulk and Christopher M.
Cain, A History of Old English Literature, 2000, 26). A handful of early poems,
including Caedmon’s Hymn, the Ruthwell Cross Inscription, Bede’s Death Song,
can be dated to the 8th century and are concerned with creation and mortal-
ity. The transience of life and wealth are recurrent themes throughout
Anglo-Saxon verse, having their efflorescence in elegies like The Wanderer,
and Resignation, a poem which likens separation from one’s kin to martyr-
dom.
The Old English poetic record survives in four main manuscripts: Lon-
don, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius AV, the so-called “Beowulf-manu-
script,” famed for its illustrations of monsters; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Junius XII, which contains three poetic versions of Old Testament books
(Genesis, Exodus, Daniel) together with the poem Christ and Satan; the Exeter
Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501) includes a mixture of saints’ lives
(Guthlac A and B, Cynewulf’s Juliana), elegy (The Wanderer, The Seafarer), three
poems from the Physiologus or bestiary (The Panther and The Whale and The Par-
tridge), and a set of cryptic riddles; the Vercelli Book (Vercelli Biblioteca Capi-
tolaire CVII) resided largely unnoticed in an Italian library until the 18th cen-
tury and preserves the hagiographies Andreas and Elene by Cynewulf and The
English Studies 452

Dream of the Rood, a devotional vision centred on the cross of Christ, which
bares close verbal affinities with the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross.
Dating any of these texts is troublesome, since they may have circulated
aurally for generations prior to their recording in the present codices (Jeff
Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions, 1980). The Vercelli
Book is usually ascribed to ca. 970 and MS Cotton Vitellius AV to the first
quarter of the 11th century. Heroic poems like Widsi6 in the Exeter book and
Beowulf, by far the longest epic in the corpus, make allusion to having been
heard and memorialised, but the historical truth, if any, behind the antedi-
luvian stories they recount remains obscure. The Battle of Maldon is atypical,
since it refers to an actual event which happened in 991 CE and purports to
record the testimony of survivors or observers thereof. Apart from the pre-
eminent genres outlined above (Old Testament poetry, hagiography, epic,
elegy, riddles, homily), Old English poetry encompasses a number of modes,
which seem not to have lasted into the later Middle Ages. The Gifts of Men in
the Exeter Book is based around the parable of the talents found in Mat-
thew 25:14–20, meanwhile The Fates of the Apostles in the Vercelli book, ap-
pears as a mnemonic on the deaths of Christ’s followers, intended as an aid to
meditation on the life of holiness.
The watershed for Anglo-Saxon prose occurred during and after the
reign of King Alfred (871–899), who instigated an educational programme,
which brought a number of Latin texts into the vernacular for the first time.
His Pastoral Care is drawn from Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis and his
own added Preface outlines the duty which he feels he has as king, namely to
restore the golden age of Anglo-Saxon learning now long past. Other texts
translated under Alfred are Boethius from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,
which exhorts the reader to strive after God, and the Soliloquies, which com-
pletes Saint Augustine of Hippo’s dialogue to affirm that one must think
always upon the afterlife. Wærferth’s Dialogues also translates Gregory and
the anonymous Orosius renders Paulus Orosius’s History Against the Pagans to
show the triumph of Christian civilisation over barbarity. Similarly Bede
takes the Venerable Bede’s The Ecclesiastical History of the English People as a
timely account of the conversion of the English to Roman Christianity. His-
tory writing flourished too with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which provides a
mostly retrospective digest for the period 1–1154 CE, with two manuscripts
recording the Roman invasion of Britain.
The composition of prose saints’ lives came to intervene in the consoli-
dation of a native identity and literary tradition. In the late 9th century, fol-
lowing a precedent established by Bede and others, the Old English Martyrol-
ogy set 238 vitae to the dates of the calendar. Ælfric, the abbot of Eynsham
453 English Studies

(died ca. 1010), was to take the form one stage further with his two sets of
Catholic Homilies and Lives of the Saints. The homilies are organized for reci-
tation over a period of two years so as not to become langsumlic (“tedious”) to
the layman. Contemporary anxieties about Danish incursion are enunciated
in his hagiographical narratives, palpably in the passio of Saint Edmund King
and Martyr. Through his Biblical prefaces Ælfric devised a more straightfor-
ward, less verbose manner of composition, attuned to his educative pur-
poses.
Archbishop Wulfstan of York (d. 1023), was a prolific homilist like his
contemporary Ælfric. His Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (“Sermon of the Wolf to the
English”) sees the coming Danish raids as an expression of divine wrath
upon the English, with later versions of the text suggesting that the English
should remember how God was thought to have used their pagan ancestors
as a scourge against the Christian Britons four centuries earlier. Scientific
texts dating from the latter end of this period, such as Ælfric’s De temporum
anni, medical works like Bald’s Leechbook, and the Old English Lapidary each
possess a rhetorical value, but have yet to be drawn into the orbit of literary
examination.

B.2. Middle English Literature

The period of Middle English literature is broadly given as ca. 1100–ca. 1500
C.E. when the Germanic character of the language was transformed by the
absorption of Norman French. Early Middle English texts such as The Ormu-
lum, a life of Christ, retained the orthography of Anglo-Saxon as did later
works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1380) originating from far
beyond the London metropolis. Debate literature continued to be one means
of illustrating philosophical arguments. Just as the Old English The Soul’s
Address to the Body had set the angry soul against the corrupt body, The Owl and
the Nightingale employed fictive avian personae to argue the benefits of a sto-
ical versus a care-free attitude towards life. A small body of latter-day
homilies is extant from the 12th century, and from the 13th century there sur-
vives literature of guidance like the vernacular rule for anchoresses Ancrene
Wisse or Ancrene Riwle and the Wohunge Group, a set of prayers addressed to
Christ, and the Katherine Group, a collection of saints’ lives also compiled for
female recluses.
The production of instructive writing in the vernacular gained necessary
impetus from the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which instituted the
requirement of annual confession from the laity. The long didactic poem the
Pricke of Conscience and Handlyng Synne seems to succour to just such a need for
penance. The works of the hermit Richard Rolle (ca. 1300–1349) became
English Studies 454

hugely popular amongst the clergy and non-clerical devotees. His epistles
Ego Dormio, The Commandment and The Form of Living were originally composed
for a female anchoritic audience, yet were evidently embraced with enthusi-
asm by what Pantin was to call “the devout and literate layman,” individuals
who had the education, the curiosity and the material means to seek out
literature that would nourish their spiritual development (W. A. Pantin,
The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, 1955, 262). Far more restricted in
their contemporary circulation, though of great modern interest, were the
two versions of the Shewings of Julian of Norwich (ca. 1343–post 1416), and
the Book of Margery Kempe (ca. 1373–ca. 1439). The latter, a genre defying
memoir-cum-auto-hagiography, lay unknown for centuries only to resur-
face in the 1930s. A large body of saints’ lives survives in collections like the
Northern Homily Cycle, the Southern English Legendary and Osbern Bokenham’s
(1393–ca. 1467) Legendys of Hooly Wummen, together with the vitae of Saints
Katherine, Augustine and Gilbert of Sempringham translated by John
Capgrave (1393–1464). Alongside exemplary hagiography later medieval
readers could glean an insight into the afterlife through works like The Vision
of Tundale and A Vision of Purgatory, a genre already rehearsed in the Old Eng-
lish Vision of Saint Paul. Medieval drama transformed the Scriptures and the
life of Christ into public spectacle, with the principal extant records deriving
from York, Chester, Wakefield and the semi-anonymous “N-town” in East
Anglia.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s (ca. 1343–1400) œuvre reveals a keen awareness
of the possibilities of pre-existing literary forms, many of them ultimately
continental in derivation. In addition to the Canterbury Tales, which included
adaptations of the French fabliau and the romance, he reworked the dream
vision in The Book of the Duchess. The same genre provided William Langland
(ca. 1325–post 1388?) with a vehicle for interrogating abuses of the Church
and charity in Piers Plowman and gave rise to a poignant exploration of pater-
nal grief in the poem Pearl. Chaucer, like his contemporary John Gower
(ca. 1330–1408), drew upon a rich stock of classical and ancient myth, so for
instance, The Man of Law’s Tale and Book II of Gower’s Confessio Amantis both
retell the legend of the exiled queen Constance. Gower is notable for strad-
dling the three languages of England, using Latin in the apocalyptic Vox
Clamantis (“A Voice Crying Out”) and French in the allegorical Mirour de
l’omme (“The Mirror of Man”). The likes of Thomas Hoccleve (ca. 1367–1426)
and John Lydgate (ca. 1371–1449) carried over the Chaucerian style of poetry
into the 15th century, though these men were always overshadowed by their
illustrious predecessor. As well as producing poets of lasting repute, the later
Middle Ages saw the rising popularity of “commonplace” and “household”
455 English Studies

manuscripts, compilations often gathering together anonymous materials.

One of the most famous examples of this phenomenon is London, British
Library, MS Harley 2253, which contains an eclectic variety of religious and
secular lyrics.
As in the Early Middle Ages the telling of historical narratives continued
to assume many guises. Layamon’s Brut (after 1189) drew upon Anglo-Nor-
man and Latin sources to present an alliterative account of the history of Eng-
land from the arrival of Brutus to Cadwallader (639 CE). The massive Cursor
Mundi (“runner of the world”) of ca. 1300 presents the history of the universe
from the creation until the apocalypse. In spite of its vivid descriptions of
foreign lands and races, the Travels of John Mandeville was likely to be a fab-
rication, the brainchild of one who may never have ventured much beyond
the confines of a well-stocked library.
Romance persists in different milieus passing down the centuries.
Alongside the refined courtliness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight there sur-
vive numerous later medieval texts termed as “popular romance” by modern
day criticism (Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, The Spirit of Medieval English
Popular Romance, 2000). Sir Gowther, The King of Tars and The Squyr of Low Degre
are appreciably more explicit and unsettling in their treatment of violence,
sex and monstrosity. At the farthest extremity of later Middle English writ-
ing the Morte d’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471) stands as the great
summa of Arthurian literature. The extensive emendation of this text by the
print pioneer William Caxton in 1485 gives cause to reflect upon how late the
standardisation of English had its inception.

C. History of Research, Schools of Thought, Approaches

C.1. Philology and the Classics in the Academy

Attempts to catalogue and describe the early vernacular literature of England
began centuries before the development of English as a field for university
study. Only decades after Caxton published Malory, John Bale’s (1495–1563)
Illustrium majoris Britanniae scriptorum (1548 and 1549), and Leland’s
(ca. 1503–1552) de Rebus Brittanicis Collectanea (6 vols., 1716) and Commentarii
de scriptoribus britannicis (2 vols., 1709) reviewed the insular literary achieve-
ments of recent centuries. Latin literature and authors form the backbone of
Leland’s Commentarii, though he does refer to Ælfric’s use of “the Saxon
tongue” (lingua Saxonica scriptae) (John Leland, Commentarii, vol. 1, 169), con-
fusing him with the Archbishop of Canterbury of the same name, and la-
ments how later authors who sought to write in Latin were forced to confront
the “massive barbarity” (ingens barbaries) (John Leland, Commentarii, vol. 2,
English Studies 456

348; translation James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution: The Oxford
English Literary History, vol. 2: 1350–1547, 2002, 25).
Stemming from the middle years of the 16th century, a smattering of
wordlists, the earliest of which is that of Robert Talbot (ca. 1505–1558), re-
veal a curiosity with the Old English language. Matthew Parker’s A Testi-
monie of Antiquitie (1566/1567), which includes items by Ælfric, is believed
to have been the first volume to reproduce Anglo-Saxon writing in type. At
around the same time Laurence Nowell (1530–ca. 1570) was compiling the
Vocabularium Saxonicum, consulted by generations of scholars in manuscript
form. It was to be another century before an Old English dictionary was
actually published with the appearance of William Somner’s Dictionarium
Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum in 1659. Somner derived encouragement from Wil-
liam Camden’s (1553–1623) Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine,
the Inhabitants Thereof, Their Languages, Names (1605), an innovative descriptive
guide to the Anglo-Saxon heritage of England, touching on architectural
remains, language and customs. In 1705 the scope of pre-Conquest learning
was to become evident as never before with the addition of Humphrey Wan-
ley’s inventory of manuscripts containing Old English to George Hickes’
earlier Institutiones grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae, et Moeso-Gothicae (1689).
The foundations of modern scholarship on medieval literature are to be
found in the 18th and 19th centuries. Popular accounts like Sharon Turner’s
History of the Anglo-Saxons (3 vols., 1799–1805) posited an almost evolutionary
view of vernacular writing whereby the rude accents of Old English poetry
foreshadowed the greater achievements of present day authors. This notion
was still current in the time of Macauley (Thomas Babbington Macauley,
History of England, 5 vols., 1848). The first recognition for medieval studies
within the academy came in 1795 with Richard Rawlinson’s creation and
assumption of a Chair in Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Rawlinson’s
Chair was subsequently occupied by a number of Anglo-Saxonists, although
the marginality of Old English literature meant that these were invariably
autodidacts. On the other side of the Atlantic, Old English studies had a simi-
larly long gestation period and the University of Virginia became the first
college to offer it as a discipline in the 1830s.
In the United Kingdom the systematic investigation of early vernacular
languages flourished under the aegis of several individuals of exceptional
linguistic range. With little in the way of dictionaries to aid him, the palaeo-
grapher Sir Frederic Madden used his long-term post at the British Mu-
seum to edit Havelok the Dane (1828), Gesta Romanorum (1838), Sir Gawayne and
the Grene Knight (1839) which he also discovered, Layamon’s Brut (1847) and
the Wycliffite Bible (1850). Two of the early English Anglo-Saxonists of note
457 English Studies

Benjamin Thorpe and John Mitchell Kemble were heavily influenced by

continental philologists; the Dane Rasmus Christian Rask in the case of the
former and the German Jakob Grimm in the case of the latter. Thorpe pub-
lished in Copenhagen an English translation of the second edition of Rask’s
Anglo-Saxon Grammar (1830) and followed this with, amongst other works,
the anthology Analecta Anglo-Saxonica (1834). The latter was embraced by the
then Rawlinson Chair and remained a standard textbook, alongside Edward
J. Vernon’s Guide to the Anglo-Saxon Tongue (1846), until the appearanc
e of Henry Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader (1876). These were in turn accompa-
nied by the dictionaries of Bosworth (1789–1876), revised by Toller
(1844–1930) (An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of
Joseph Bosworth. Edited and Enlarged by Thomas Northcote Toller,
1882–98); Clark Hall (John R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary for
the Use of Students, 1894); and James W. Bright’s Anglo-Saxon Grammar (1891),
and Reader (1894).
John Kemble is frequently credited with having introduced “scientific”
rigour to the study of Old English in Britain (Allen J. Frantzen, Desire
for Origins: New Language, Old English and Teaching the Tradition, 1990, 34–35).
He pioneered the now standard practice of using half-line lineation to orga-
nise Anglo-Saxon poetry on the printed page and the introduction to his edi-
tion of Beowulf reveals an interest in recovering the Germanic past of his
homeland (John M. Kemble, The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, The Travellers
Song and The Battle of Finnes-burh, 2nd ed., with trans., 2 vols., 1835–1837). His
nationalism is similarly evident in The Saxons in England (2 vols., 1849) and
in his two part essay on the connections between the runic inscriptions on
the Northumbrian Ruthwell obelisk and the poem The Dream of the Rood (John
M. Kemble, “On Anglo-Saxon Runes,” Archaeologia XXVII [1840]: 327–72,
esp. 349–57; id., “Additional Observations on the Runic Obelisk at Ruth-
well,” Archaeologia XXX [1843]: 31–46). The last-named anticipates the inter-
disciplinary flavour of much subsequent Anglo-Saxon scholarship.
Where Old English poetry was concerned, the question of the historicity
of events behind the epics continued to prove vexatious. The same problems
had previously surfaced in relation to the narratives of Homer and Virgil and
German philologists proffered that the Classics were assembled from lieder,
units which circulated for centuries as oral legend. The so-called liedertheorie
was extended to explain the late date of many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts,
though it seldom yielded favourable comparisons with ancient Greek and
Latin literature. Karl Müllendorff, Bernhard Ten Brink, and Levin L.
Schücking approached Beowulf as a composite of short episodic tales
(Kar Müllendorff, “Die innere Geschichte des Beowulfs,” ZdfA 14 [1869]:
English Studies 458

193–244; Bernhard Ten Brink, Beowulf: Untersuchungen, 1888; Levin L.

Schücking, Beowulfs Rückkehr: Eine kritische Studie, 1905). Across the English
Channel, W. P. Ker found the same text irremediably diffuse when set
alongside the Iliad and the Aeneid (W.P. Ker, Epic and Romance, 1st ed. 1897, 2nd
ed., 1908, 159–78). If liedertheorie endorsed askew value judgments, Germany
nonetheless set persistently high standards of scholarship which the Anglo-
phone world would struggle to follow. The Old English poetic record was
gathered in its entirety by Grein and Wülcker in the second half of the 19th
century (Christian W. M. Grein, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie, 2 vols.,
1857–1858; 2nd rev. ed. Richard P. Wülcker in 3 vols., 1881–1898). Two
generations were to pass before Krapp and Kirk Dobbie completed the suc-
cessor to this collection (George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie,
The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 6 vols., 1931–1953).
British interest in Middle English literature during the same period
was in no small way bound up with emerging political consciousness. When
Thomas Dale resigned as the first Chair of English at University College,
London, in 1835 his position was taken by the proto-Christian socialist F.D.
Maurice, who was anxious to establish Chaucer at the centre of the canon.
He felt that The Canterbury Tales, with their gallery of social types, demon-
strated the essentially middle class origins of the English literary tradition
and earmarked its suitability for study by the contemporary bourgeoisie and
proletariat. Many of Maurice’s principles, both scholarly and political,
were imbibed by Frederick R. Furnivall. The long time secretary of the
Philological Society at Oxford, he was the prime instigator of the Early Eng-
lish Text Society (1864), the Chaucer Society and the Ballad Society (1868),
and the Wyclif Society (1882).
Furnivall’s Six-Text Print of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1869) introduced
the editorial practice of presenting parallel columns of variant manuscript
texts. This was one of several innovations taken up by W.W. Skeat, for
instance in his edition of Langland (William Walter Skeat, The Vision of Piers
the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, 2 vols., 1886), and more generally by the
E.E.T.S. Even though Skeat’s habit of occasionally “correcting” Chaucer’s
language so as to neaten the poetic meter remains controversial, the inclu-
sion of continental antecedent texts and glossary in his edition of the auth-
or’s complete works demonstrates how far English Studies had advanced to-
wards becoming a fully fledged source-based discipline (William Walter
Skeat, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Edited, from Numerous Manuscripts,
1894).
The late 19th century also saw the publication of Horstmann’s Yorkshire
Writers, which in spite of its spurious attribution of many works to Richard
459 English Studies

Rolle, long remained an invaluable anthology of devotional and didactic

literature (Carl Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle and his Followers,
2 vols., 1895–1896). The turn of the 20th century heralded a new era of biblio-
graphic endeavour, encompassing John Edwin Wells’ manual (John Edwin
Wells, Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, 1916) and the
Index to English Medieval Verse (Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins,
The Index to Medieval English Verse, 1943), sources which enabled scholars to
overcome the vagaries of referencing texts between different manuscripts. It
also witnessed the first etymological dictionary of Old English (Ferdinand
Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1934; 2nd ed. with a bib-
liographical supplement by H. C. Matthes, 1963; rpt. 1974) and the incep-
tion of a multi-volume Middle English dictionary (Middle English Dictionary,
ed. Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn, 1956–). New heights of rigour
were attained at the heart of the canon through a line-by-line examination of
Chaucer (John M. Manly, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of
all Known Manuscripts, 1940) and attempts were made to establish authori-
tative editions in more marginal genres like romance (Middle English Metrical
Romances, 2 vols., ed. W. H. French and C.B. Hale, 1930).

C.2. New Criticism versus Exegetical Criticism (“Robertsonianism”)

in the Mid-20th Century
English studies post World War II was initially colored by the tension
between two conflicting schools of thought. ‘Exegetical criticism,’ a term
coined only in the 1980s (Lee Patterson, “Historical Criticism and the
development of Chaucer Studies,” id., Negotiating the Past: The Historical
Understanding of Medieval Literature, 1987, 3–39), emphasized the allegorical
nature of medieval writing, imputing to literary texts a sophisticated en-
gagement with theological questions first raised by the Church Fathers. The
roots of this approach can be seen in an essay by J. M. Campbell (J. M. Camp-
bell, “Patristic Studies and the Literature of Medieval England,” Speculum 8
[1933]: 465–78), though its application was most closely identified with the
work of D.W. Robertson, Jr., and “Robertsonianism” or “the Princeton
school,” after the university at which he was based, were often used as titles
for the movement. He adopted Alain de Lille’s metaphor of the text as a fruit
in which the shell or rind (the fable) was merely a covering to the kernel
(the meaning) and argued, apropos Saint Augustine of Hippo’s De Doctrina
Christiana, “that story and expression are of value only insofar as they leave
the mind with a conception of fundamental doctrinal truths” (Bernard F.
Huppé and D. W. Robertson, Fruyt and Chaf: Studies in Chaucer’s Allegories,
1950, 6; see also D. W. Robertson, “Historical Criticism,” 1950, in id.,
English Studies 460

Essays in Medieval Culture, 1980, 3–20; id., Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradi-
tion, 1951). Robertson’s neglect of romance analogues in his monograph on
Chaucer (id., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives, 1963) was
noted at the time (R. E. Kaske, “Chaucer and Medieval Allegory,” English
Literary History 30 [1963]: 175–92). Meanwhile others decried his perceived
inattention to aesthetics and the apparent disposition towards searching for
literary examples which neatly augmented his thesis (R. S. Crane, The Idea of
the Humanities, 2 vols., 1967, 2:246–58).
Exegetical criticism became one of the motors driving the return to
sources and a renewed emphasis on allegory in Anglo-Saxon studies. Mid-
20th-century editions of Beowulf searched for Christian echoes in the epic
(C. L. Wrenn, Beowulf with the Finnesberg Fragment, 1953) as did critical
studies (Morton W. Bloomfield, “Patristics and Old English Literature,”
Comparative Literature XIV [1962]: 36–37, and 39–41; Margaret E. Gold-
smith, The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf, 1970). For Bernard Huppé and Geof-
frey Shepherd Augustine’s theory of literature provided the main cipher
for understanding Old English poetry (Bernard F. Huppé, Doctrine and Poetry:
Augustine’s Influence on Old English Poetry, 1959), both the manifestly allegori-
cal, as in the Anglo-Saxon elaborations of the Old Testament found in the Ju-
nius XI manuscript (Geoffrey Shepherd, “Scriptural Poetry,” Continuations
and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Eric G. Stanley, 1966,
1–36), and the heroic (Bernard F. Huppé, The Web of Words: Structural Analyses
of the Old English Poems, Vainglory, the Wonder of Creation, the Dream of the Rood, and
Judith, 1970; Hero in the Earthly City: A Reading of Beowulf, 1984).
Counter-posed to “Robertsonianism,” “New Criticism” (J. C. Ransom,
The New Criticism, 1941), or “practical criticism” as it was known in the
United Kingdom (I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924; id.,
Practical Criticism, 1929), stressed the integrity of the text as an individual and
self-sufficient artefact, dismissing the biography of the author and literary
history as apparatus for producing a critical reading. The independence of
the text was expressed through several figures, including the “well-wrought
urn” (Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn, 1947) and the “verbal icon”
(William K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon, 1954). New Criticism was indebted to
the practices of the Russian formalists of the early 20th century. It sought to
produce “explications” or “close readings” of literary works, whereby the
reader was made conscious of the internal function of irony, symbolism, fig-
ures of speech, fallacy and ambiguity in the production and undercutting of
meaning.
For the study of medieval literature, New Criticism at first represented
a break with the dominant tradition of philology. Tolkien’s decision
461 English Studies

to focus upon the vocabulary employed to describe Grendel and his mother
propagated interest in the application of close reading to Old English texts
(J. R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Proceedings of
the British Academy, XXII [1936]: 245–95; Stanley B. Greenfield, A Critical
History of Old English Literature, 1965). In later medieval poetry New Criti-
cism afforded the opportunity to concentrate on the function of irony and
symbolism in authors such as Chaucer (Charles A. Owen, Jr., “The Crucial
Passages in Five of the Canterbury Tales: A Study in Irony and Symbol,” JEGP
52 [1953]: 294–311; Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition,
1957). It also presented a means of interrogating the narrowly allegorical
interpretations encouraged by exegetical criticism. Donaldson’s rejoinder to
Robertson’s “Historical Criticism” demonstrates the potential inattention to
verbal effects resulting from the reading of poetry through the prism of se-
lected Scriptures and Augustine (E. Talbot Donaldson, “Patristic Exegesis
in the Criticism of Medieval Literature: The Opposition,” Critical Approaches
to Medieval Literature, ed. Dorothy Bethurum, 1960, 1–26). Leading advo-
cates of close reading were not, however, wholly averse to philological
endeavour as witnessed in Donaldson’s attempt to establish an edition of
Piers Plowman (E. Talbot Donaldson and George Kane, Piers Plowman: The
B Version, 1975; rev. 1988). Therein the footnotes are crammed with lin-
guistic variants from different manuscripts as opposed to the notation of
antecedents.
The relict of the debate between “New Criticism” and “Exegetical Criti-
cism” persists in the generation of scholars who reached maturity before the
rise of literary theory. John V. Fleming has tried to establish the centrality of
Augustine’s Cassiciacum dialogues to the education of Jean de Meun, author
of the Roman de la Rose (John V. Fleming, Reason and the Lover, 1984) and has
stressed the strong Classical antecedents of Chaucer (id., Classical Imitation &
Interpretation in Chaucer’s Troilus, 1990). Ann Astell’s exploration the Song of
Songs has revealed how exegesis seeped into religious and secular literature
(Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, 1990).

C.3. Current Issues and Future Trends

C.3.1. Germania and Latina in Old English Literary Criticism

Joyce Hill has linked the rise in exegetical criticism within Old English
studies with a shifting perception of early medieval literary endeavour, based
around two contrasting viewpoints, Germania and Latina. Germania stressed
“the survival of essential Germanic spirit, evidenced in vocabulary, formu-
laic structures, verse form, and those scenes and episodes which – so the
English Studies 462

critics claim – testify to the heroic ethos of the Anglo-Saxons” (Joyce Hill,
“Confronting Germania Latina: Changing Responses to Old English Biblical
Verse,” Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe: Proceedings of the First
Germania Latina Conference held at the University of Groningen, 26 May 1989, ed.
Richard North and Tette Hofstra, 1992, 71–88; here 71). During the
19th and early 20th centuries this approach predominated under the apostasy
of Anglo-German scholarship. She labels exegetical criticism, as practiced by
Huppé and Robertson, as “the extreme manifestation of the shift to the
Christian (Latina) approach to Old English poetry” (North and Hofstra,
81). Hill suggests that these in turn affected the shape of the canon. During
the height of the Germania phase, critical attention was focused squarely
upon the heroic poems Beowulf and Widsi6 and the fragmentary remnants of
Waldere and Finnsburh to the neglect of the series of Old Testament verses
found in London, British Library, MS Junius XI.
Ethnographic readings of Old English literature have resurfaced in more
sophisticated guises, aided in recent years by the work of historians Patrick
Wormald and Sarah Foot (Patrick Wormald, “Enga-Lond – The Making
of an Allegiance,” Journal of Historical Sociology 7. 1 [1994]: 1–24; Sarah Foot,
“The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest,”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th Series 6 [1996]: 25–49). Wormald
has questioned the privilege traditionally afforded to historiography over
heroic poetry in recovering the attitudes of the later Christian Anglo-Saxons
to the paganism of their ancestors. He asks us to consider the values conveyed
by epic poets as being just as informative as the judgements of ecclesiastical
commentators (Patrick Wormald, “Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the
Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy,” Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R. T. Farrell,
BAR 46 [1978]: 32–95). Nicholas Howe has investigated how the migration
of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes to Britain continued to be an important
legitimising myth in a range of writers from Archbishop Wulfstan to Bede
and the Junius-poet, working after the conversion (Nicholas Howe, Mi-
gration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, 1989). Those poems which de-
pict documented historical conflicts (The Battle of Maldon, AD 991, ed. Donald
G. Scragg, 1991; Janet Cooper, The Battle of Maldon: Fact and Fiction, 1993;
C. R. Davis, “Cultural Historicity in the Battle of Maldon,” Philological
Quarterly 78:1–2 [1999]: 151–69) and the disputed (Patrizia Lendinara,
“The Battle of Brunanburh in later Stories and Romances,” Anglia 117.2 [1999]:
201–35) have also been re-assessed in their cultural and ethnic contexts.
463 English Studies

C.3.2. Theory and the Medieval Text

Theory had its naissance in the study of modern literary texts, and yet recent
decades have seen the application of conceptual or even counter-intuitive
modes of thought to medieval writing. Early attempts at scrutinising litera-
ture in terms of the Marxist view of history proved to be short-lived in their
influence (Margaret Schlauch, English Medieval Literature and its Social Foun-
dations, 1956). These accounts were succeeded in the 1980s by a new gener-
ation of historical analyses informed by cultural materialism (David Aers,
Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History, 1986). The pertinence of New
Historicism, a line of enquiry developed first within Renaissance literary
studies, has been debated (Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning:
From More to Shakespeare, 1980; Paul Strohm, “Postmodernism and His-
tory,” id., Theory and the Premodern Text, 2000, 149–64), and the spectre cast
over literature by political upheavals, most prominently the 1381 Peasant’s
Revolt, continues to exercise fascination (J. R. Maddicott, “Poems of Social
Protest in Early Fourteenth-Century England,” England in the Fourteenth
Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. Mark Ormrod,
1986, 130–44; Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Four-
teenth-Century Texts, 1992).
Gender studies have interacted in productive ways with English studies.
Old English heroic poetry has been re-evaluated for its portrayal of feminine
protagonists (Jane Chance, Woman as Hero in Old English Literature, 1986)
with some critics contending that Cynewulf’s Elene possesses considerable
agency for a woman (Alexandra Hennessey Olson, “Cynewulf’s Auton-
omous Women: A Reconsideration of Elene and Juliana,” New Readings on
Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey
Olson, 1990, 222–32), whereas others see the character’s gender as part
of her casting as an elaborate, if conventional, figura for the Church (Clare A.
Lees, “At a Crossroads: Old English and Feminist Criticism,” Reading Old
English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe, 1997, 146–69). In later litera-
ture, the mystic Julian of Norwich’s claim to be a “simple creature vnlet-
tyrde” has come to be seen as something more than a reflection upon the state
of her schooling. Her Shewings have frequently been studied alongside The
Book of Margery Kempe as expressive of, and even subversive of, medieval con-
structions of the female body and femininity (Karma Lochrie, Margery
Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, 1991; Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissent-
ing Fictions, 1994; Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in
the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, 2004).
The interrogation of the human subject and authorial intention, two pil-
lars of literary criticism, have come to be re-considered in the light of psycho-
English Studies 464

analysis and queer theory. Psychoanalytic readings of Beowulf (Clare A. Lees,

“Men and Beowulf,” Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages,
ed. id., 1994, 129–40; Judy Anne White, Hero-Ego in Search of a Self: A Jungian
Reading of Beowulf, 2004) have scrutinized the heroic ethic of the poem, whilst
in the study of later medieval romance the questioning of patriarchal power
has become a leitmotif (Clare R. Kinney, “The Disembodied Hero and the
Signs of Manhood in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Medieval Masculinities,
ed. Clare A. Lees, 47–60; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Gowther among the Dogs:
Becoming Inhuman c.1400,” Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey
Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, 1997, 219–44). Psychoanalysis has
also influenced the interpretation of Chaucer (L. O. Aranye Fradenburg,
Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer, 2002) and the interaction
between the male hagiographer and his female subject (Gail Ashton, The
Generation of Identity in Late Medieval Hagiography: Speaking the Saint, 2000).
“Queer”-informed readings have illumined subversive gender relations
in romance (Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, 2003; Carolyn
Dinshaw, “A Kiss is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and its Consolation in Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight,” diacritics 24, 2–3 [1994]: 205–26). Meanwhile,
Queer Studies has made possible a radical re-evaluation of John Gower,
a writer sometimes seen as an uncomplicated exponent of politically conser-
vative myth and literature (Diane Watt, Amoral Gower: Language, Sex and
Politics, 2003), as well as one Anglo-Saxon poem, maligned as a problem text
for its generic uniqueness and manifest paganism (David Townsend, “The
Naked Truth of the King’s Affection in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre
[Reflections on constructions of gender and sexuality],” Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 34.1 [2004]: 173–95). Carolyn Dinshaw’s Getting
Medieval pursues “historical analyses that embrace the heterogeneity of sex,”
a call to see the increasing instability of categories of sexuality as a herme-
neutic tool for understanding the past (Carloyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval:
Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern, 1999, 1). Concepts of “Other-
ness” now inform the reading of Mandeville’s Travels (Chapter 5 of Geral-
dine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy,
2003). One of the additional insights of post-colonialism has been to see the
spread of early English studies across the world through such organs as the
E.E.T.S. as being complicit with the values of colonialist enterprise (Kathleen
Biddick, “introduction,” The Shock of Medievalism, 1998).
465 English Studies

C.3.3. The Return to Philology

The manuscript and the codex have never been entirely eliminated as fertile
fields of enquiry. Interest in the nature of literacy (Michael T. Clanchy,
From Memory to Written Record, c. 1066–1307, 1979), the way literature was
memorialised (Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory) and the composition
of the reading public (Felicity Riddy, ‘“Women Talking about the Things of
God’: A Late Medieval Subculture,” Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500,
ed. Carol M. Meale, 1993, 104–27) have ensured the persistence of the ma-
terial letter in Medieval English Studies.
In the early 1990s the coming of a “new philology” was postulated (Spe-
culum 65 [1990]). One of the watchwords of this movement was “mouvance,”
the notion that the scribe is in some instances as much the maker of the medi-
eval text as the author, since many considerations affecting the reception of a
text, such as lineation and interpolation, lie in his hands (Bella Millet,
“Mouvance and the Medieval Author,” Late Medieval Texts and their Trans-
mission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. Alistair J. Minnis, 1994, 9–20; Paul
Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, 1972). Many of the protocols of “new”
philology were, however, already long evident in the work of scholars and
editors like E. J. Dobson (E. J. Dobson ed., The English Text of the Ancrene
Riwle: Edited from B.M. Cotton MS. Cotton Cleopatra C.VI, 1972), Pamela Gradon
(Elene, ed. Pamela Gradon, 1958) and Malcolm Godden (Ælfric’s Catholic
Homilies: The Second Series: Text, ed. Malcom Godden, 1979). A specific point
of rupture with the “old philology” remains unidentified.
In the area of dialectology, the completion of The Linguistic Atlas of Late
Medieval English has given a comprehensive view of the language used in post-
Conquest vernacular manuscripts (Angus McIntosh and M. L. Samuels,
The Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols., 1987), though reservations
have been expressed about the practical value of the project to English tex-
tual criticism (Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebra-
ting the Publication of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, ed. Felicity
Riddy, 1991). The continued importance of palaeography to literary studies
as opposed to philology per se has been demonstrated by Linne Mooney’s
recent, and contentious, unmasking of Chaucer’s “drasty” scribe as Adam
Pinkshurst. Pinkshurst was a clerk hitherto known for his copying of peti-
tions rather than poetry (Linne Mooney, “Chaucer’s Scribe,” Speculum 81
[2006]: 97–138).
English Studies 466

C.3.4. Medieval Literary Theory

The variegation of English studies to absorb a range of contemporary concep-
tual approaches has coincided with renewed interest in pre-modern atti-
tudes towards authorship and textual authority. The potential anachronism
of applying, for instance structuralist or poststructuralist methodologies has
helped give rise to the postulation of a “medieval literary theory.” Minnis
and Scott have sought to recover and translate the auctores, scholastic auth-
orities who were appropriated during the Middle Ages (Alistair J. Minnis,
Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages,
1984, 1988; Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c1100-c1375: The Commentary
Tradition, ed. Alistair J. Minnis and A.B. Scott, with David Wallace,
1988) Amongst the topics illumined by their work are the different levels of
exegesis and the aesthetic value of literature as comprehended in the Middle
Ages.
Minnis’s and Scott’s framework has been followed up by the editors of
the argued anthology The Idea of the Vernacular, which brings together pro-
logues from Middle English works and uncovers the politics and theory
behind the act of translation (The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle
English Literary Theory, 1280–1520, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., 1999).
A number of other collections have attempted to situate the drive towards
composition in Middle English within a broader European context of trans-
lation (The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren,
2002). Rita Copeland’s coining of the expressions “primary” and “second-
ary” translation has lent vitality to the debate over the relationship between
writing in which the “exegetical motive” seems to take precedence and lit-
erature by the likes of Chaucer, which renders continental or Latin sources
into Middle English and yet reveal greater “rhetorical” or “literary” ambi-
tion (Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages:
Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, 1991, 94). The work of Seth Lerer
shows indebtedness to both medieval and modern literary theories. His
discussions of authority and authorship reference the auctores and exploit
structuralist and post-structuralist conceptions of the nature of the sign
(Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature, 1991).

C.3.5. Periodization and the Rethinking of the Canon

The division of medieval writing into separate periods has been one of the
practices to be re-evaluated in the light of modern criticism. Hitherto it was
commonplace to speak of the early Middle Ages and later Middle Ages as
though they were distinct entities, each possessing his own literatures. Upon
467 English Studies

reflection, the boundary between Old English and Middle English is increas-
ingly porous. Work on post-Conquest writing in English has highlighted
how past studies have underestimated the vitality of the vernacular in the
Central Middle Ages (Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. Mary
Swan and Elaine M. Treharne, 2000). Treharne brings to our attention
a number of homilies produced after Ælfric and Latin sermons which include
piquant annotations in English (Elaine M. Treharne, “The Production and
Script of Manuscripts Containing English Religious Texts in the First Half
of the Twelfth Century,” Rewriting Old English, 11–40), also Susan Irvine
reveals a continued reverence towards Anglo-Saxon literature during the
Latinate Central Middle Ages (Susan Irvine, “The Compilation and Use of
Manuscripts Containing Old English in the Twelfth Century,” Rewriting Old
English, 41–61).
At the other end of the chronological scale, Derek Pearsall, James
Simpson, and David Lawton have each drawn into question the priority
long given to the literature of the 14th century over that of the 15th. The title
of an essay by Lawton encapsulates how the generations following Chaucer’s
death had been retrospectively seen to witness an atrophying of literary skill
and ambition (David Lawton, “The Dullness of the fifteenth century,” Eng-
lish Literary History 54 [1987]: 761–99). Hoccleve’s reputation has been reha-
bilitated so that he is now no longer seen as merely a clerkly imitator of
Chaucer (Ethan Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Litera-
ture of Late Medieval England, 2001; Albrecht Classen, Die autobiographische
Lyrik des europäischen Spätmittelaltlers, 1991), and Lydgate has re-emerged as a
hagiographer and historiographer of incidence (Derek Pearsall, John
Lydgate, 1970). Simpson reminds us of the fact that Julian of Norwich died
after 1416 and that Margery Kempe lived on until ca. 1439, so that to group
these women among the “14th-century mystics” would be to risk overlooking
the changing context to religious writing since the death of Rolle in 1349
(James Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution: The Oxford English Literary His-
tory, vol. 2: 1350–1547, 2002). Nicholas Watson has demonstrated that the
copying and circulation of Middle English religious literature occurred
under ecclesiastical prohibitions not envisaged by their authors (Nicholas
Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Ver-
nacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitu-
tions of 1409,” Speculum 70 [1995]: 822–64).
Helen Cooper’s study of romance utilizes the taxonomy of evolution-
ary biology to unpick the development of the genre. “Meme” expresses the
capacity of an individual motif, such as the penitential quest, to behave like
a gene, in its capacity “to replicate faithfully and abundantly, but also on
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 468

occasion to adapt, to mutate, and therefore survive in different cultures”

(Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey
of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, 2004, 3). A more seminal role has sim-
ultaneously been argued for popular romance (Nicola F. McDonald, Pulp
Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, 2004).

D. Summary
Writing at the beginning of the 1990s, Allen Frantzen reflected upon how
the quest for a sense of origin has always been intrinsic to Old English studies
(The Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English and Teaching the Tradition,
1990). The examination of early vernacular literature yields a host of ques-
tions about linguistic and ethnic antecedents, and also about how English
relates to Latin, the dominant language of ecclesiastical and secular adminis-
trative communication. Origins loom large in institutionalised university
English studies to which Frantzen ascribes a Foucauldian desire to exca-
vate an epistemological ground for present endeavours. Both Old and
Middle English studies continue to be shaped by the tension between emerg-
ent methodologies and the pull of philology in its various guises.

Select Bibliography
Allen J. Frantzen, Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English and Teaching the Tradition
(New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990); R. D. Fulk and
C. M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Lee Patter-
son, “On the Margins: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Specu-
lum 65 (January 1990): 87–108; Wendy Scase, “Medieval Studies and the Future of
English,” Vital Signs: English in Medieval Studies in Twenty-First Century Education, ed. id.
(Leicester: English Association, 2002); Paul Theiner, “Medieval English Literature,”
Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James M. Powell (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1992).

Robin Gilbank

Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

A. Definition of the Period

Enlightenment can either be understood ahistorically as a cultural manner of
thought, or historically as an epoch. As an epoch, the Enlightenment covers,
at most, the period between 1688, when Charles Perrault began the Querelle
469 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

des Anciens et des Modernes in the Academie Francaise, and the death of Imma-
nuel Kant in 1804. The period thus covers the rationalism of the early En-
lightenment, Sentimentalism, ‘Sturm and Drang,’ Weimar Classicism, the
Early Romantics, and the Berlin Late Enlightenment. However, a narrower
definition of ‘Enlightenment’ underlies the following article. It should be re-
membered, although this cannot be considered in the present article, that el-
ements of the Middle Ages continued to be of significance in the culture
of the Enlightenment (law, Christian religion, scholarship, politics, and
lordship), as well as its institutions (courts, monasteries, churches, libraries,
universities, courts, and administrative structures) and its art (architecture,
painting, texts).

B. Enlightenment in the Middle Ages

A few studies have focused on the ahistoric aspect of the Enlightenment,
claiming a group of enlightenment ideas as peculiarly medieval. They regard
Enlightenment as a modernizing movement which began in the early mod-
ern period and especially in the late Middle Ages. An overview can be found in
the work of Kurt Flasch and Udo R. Jeck (Das Licht der Vernunft: Die Anfänge
der Aufklärung im Mittelalter, ed. Kurt Flasch, and Udo R. Jeck, 1997), as well
as the collection of essays on Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment (Wal-
ter Haug, “Experimenta medietatis im Mittelalter,” Aufklärung und Gegen-
aufklärung in der europäischen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart, ed. Jochen Schmidt, 1989, 129–51; and Kurt Flasch, “Aufklä-
rung und Gegenaufklärung im späten Mittelalter,” op. cit., 152–67). Mai-
monides, Averroes, Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Meister
Eckhart, and Boccaccio have all been linked to the enlightenment.

C. ‘Medieval’ as a Pejorative Term in the Enlightenment

The concept of the “dark Middle Ages” is explored in two studies (Lucie
Varga, Das Schlagwort vom finsteren Mittelalter, 1932; Klaus Arnold, “Das
finstere Mittelalter: Zur Genese und Phänomenologie eines Fehlurteils,”
Saeculum 32 [1981]: 287–300;). Furthermore, Haslag investigates the
change in meaning of the term ‘Gothic’ in relation to conceptions of the bar-
baric and of the dark night (Josef Haslag, Gothic im siebzehnten und acht-
zehnten Jahrhunder: Eine wort- und ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung, 1963).
Varga argues that medieval structures were active within the En-
lightenment, but were strongly and systematically opposed by William Ro-
bertson, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, David Hume, Voltaire, Marie
Jean Caritat de Condorcet, and Isaak Iselin. She points to the continued pres-
ence of the topos of night in the later Johann Gottfried Herder (“Nacht der
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 470

mittleren Zeiten,” night of the middle times, Ideen zur Philosophie der Ge-
schichte der Menschheit, 1787). The Enlightenment developed three points of
criticism: a) criticism of medieval understanding of religion; b) criticism of
medieval culture; c) criticism of the absence of a concept of statehood in the
Middle Ages. The theorists named generally understand the Middle Ages as a
period of decline.
Arnold expands this argument. The term “dark Middle Ages” was first
found in Petrarca and Boccaccio. The Renaissance saw itself as an epoch of
light, which was played off against the darkness of the Middle Ages, which
were viewed negatively. The motif can again be found in the Enlightenment.
In his Essais sur Moeurs (1752–1756), Voltaire spoke of “ces tristes temps,”
“siècle d’ignorance,” of ignorance, rawness, superstition, and barbarism.
David Hume added to the picture: “some faint glimmerings of common
sense might sometimes pierce through the thick cloud of ignorance.” In Levi-
atan (1677) Thomas Hobbes spoke of a “kingdom of darkness.” Yet Arnold
points out that the negative view was not the only one. Valentin Ernst
Löscher made an early rescue attempt in his Die Historie der Mittleren Zeiten als
ein Licht aus der Finsterniß vorgestellet (1725). In 1718 Polykarp Leyser went so
far as to speak of the riches of medieval poetry in his Dissertatio de ficta medii
aevi barbarie inprimis circa poesiam Latinam. In this connection, Zimmermann
further considers Löscher’s manifesto, although it never got beyond the draft
stage (Harald Zimmermann, “Valentin Ernst Löscher, das finstere Mittel-
alter und dessen Saeculum obscurum,” Gesellschaft, Kultur, Rezeption und Origi-
nalität im Wachsen einer europäischen Literatur und Geistigkeit, ed. Karl Bosl,
1975, 259–77).
Josef Haslag (Gothic, 1963) has shown the development of the term
‘Gothic’ in English literature. This term, too, was taken over from the Re-
naissance. The Neo-classical period used it as a derogatory term for an idea of
art and a political attitude which the Middle Ages had not yet overcome. In
the course of its development, ‘Gothic’ came to be used as a classification of a
type of style, which was later used ahistorically: ‘Gothic taste’ set against
‘true taste.’ The Neo-classic epoch rejected Gothic architecture and pre-En-
lightenment garden design.
The decisive change can be found in a dualistic attitude which was fully
developed in England around 1750. Contemporary historiography under-
stood ‘Gothic’ as describing something barbaric, yet at the same time Ger-
manic and medieval society and politics were thought of as highly civilized.
The models were the totally uncivilized barbarian, or the hospitable, moder-
ate and brave, yet also just member of a society which viewed freedom as
the highest good. The familiar tripartite scheme of ideal antiquity, barbaric
471 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

Middle Ages, and the revival of the ideal in the Renaissance began to dissolve.
These characteristics also dominated the debate surrounding the reception
of the Middle Ages in other European countries.
By the early Enlightenment period, some scholars, critics, and thinkers
used the term ‘Gothic’ in art appreciation. James Thomson or Richard Steele
viewed the medieval epoch positively; Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Earl of Shaf-
tesbury rejected it as a period lacking freedom; Thomas Warton even spoke
of Gothic slavery. However, the whole early and middle Enlightenment was
dominated by the traditional view of the Middle Ages as an epoch of night.
The terms “German,” “Teutonic,” “northern,” “Gothic,” and “barbarian”
could be easily substituted for each other. However, in the Neo-classical
period and the transition to the late Enlightenment, study of the older texts
of the North, such as the Gothic Bible, and a growing knowledge of old Scan-
dinavian literature, began to alter attitudes, especially among British histori-
ans and philosophers.
The aesthetic and poetic condemnation lasted longer. In debates about
taste, Gothic was whatever was not Greco-Roman. The argumentation was
expanded on the basis of architecture, painting, and landscapes. Everything
‘unnatural’ was labeled as ‘Gothic,’ as raw and barbaric. The old cathedrals,
in particular, were perceived as ugly. Musical aesthetics agreed: opera was
‘Gothic’ with its swollen style (compared to tumors) and bombastic orna-
mentation.
In the late Enlightenment, the term ‘Gothic’ underwent several changes
of meaning. It certainly changed from an ethnological, political or social con-
cept to a stylistic term which could be used ahistorically. By 1760 at the latest,
the Middle Ages were viewed not as the night of reason, which was to be
opposed, but as a night with positive connotations. Richard Hurt introduced
a relativized reading of the period, connecting ‘Gothic’ with ‘chivalry’ and
‘romance’ (Richard Hurd, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762). Ossian’s
songs determined the outcome of the matter: aesthetically, ‘Gothic’ now par-
took of the spirit of the sublime, of romance and fancy. With Ossian and Ho-
race Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765), a sensational novel drawing on medi-
eval matter and motifs, a positive concept of the Middle Ages appeared in
poetics, which the Romantics quickly and enthusiastically espoused for their
own purposes.

D. The Middle Ages Before and During the Early Enlightenment

Heinrich Heine argued that the discovery of medieval culture was an achieve-
ment of German Romanticism (Heinrich Heine, Die romantische Schule, 1836).
While this belief held good for over a century, today it is only of literary-his-
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 472

torical significance (Wolfgang Harms, “Das Interesse an mittelalterlicher

deutscher Literatur zwischen der Reformationszeit und der Frühromantik,”
Akten des VI. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses, ed. Heinz Rupp and Hans-
Gert Roloff, 1981, 60–84). There are two reasons for this: first, the Renais-
sance appears in some discussions as an integral part of the early enlighten-
ment (Daniel G. Morhof, Unterricht von der Teutschen Sprache und Poesie, 2nd ed.
1700; cf. Wolfgang Beutin, “Contraria contrariis curantur? Über die Inter-
dependenzen von Mittelalter-Rezeption und Renaissance-Rezeption von
der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart,” Mittelalter-Rezeption, ed. Ulrich Müller
et al., 1996, 46–61); second, the epochs after 1500 continued traditions and
research of and about the Middle Ages. Arnold lists Christoph Cellarius,
Du Cange, Georg Horn, Philipp Labbé, William Camden, and Estienne
Pasquier. The Baroque period was heavily influenced by the Middle Ages,
although the term itself had no clear meaning then (Wolfgang Harms,
“Rezeption des Mittelalters im Barock,” Deutsche Barockliteratur und euro-
päische Kultur, ed. Internationaler Arbeitskreis für Deutsche Barockliteratur,
1977, 23–52). Baroque reception of the Middle Ages has been described in
detail in early studies like that of Lempicki (Sigmund von Lempicki,
Geschichte der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts,
1920, 99–188; Rudolf von Raumer, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie vor-
zugsweise in Deutschland, 1870, 154–93, 247–91; Hermann Paul, “Geschichte
der germanischen Philologie,” Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss, ed. Hermann
Paul, vol. 1, 1897, 2nd ed. 1901, 9–158) and briefly sketched by Janota
(Johannes Janota, “Zur Rezeption mittelalterlicher Literatur zwischen
dem 16. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Das Weiterleben des Mittelalters in der deutschen
Literatur, ed. James Poag, Gerhild Scholz-Williams, 1983, 37–43). Ja-
nota describes the work of Melchior H. Goldast as the most important stage
of the reception, and a long list of medieval works which received intensive
attention (Melchior H. Goldast, Paraeneticorum veterum, pars I, 1604; on this:
Wolfgang Harms, “Des Winbeckes Genius. Zur Einschätzung didaktischer
Poesie des deutschen Mittelalters im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Mittelalter-
Rezeption: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986, 46–59). Harms argues
differently, rejecting the thesis and maintaining that the reception of indi-
vidual works was rare. Harms believes that the reception of the mentality of
the Middle Ages was more important than that of content, though at the
same time he points to a small but real interest in the Latin literature of the
Middle Ages, as well as vernacular chapbooks and romances. The Baroque
seems to have viewed the Middle Ages as possessed of high ethical value and a
secure authority for both scientific and religious knowledge. In particular,
the encyclopedic literature of the baroque draws on medieval texts. Harms
473 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

also shows that traditions survived within art history on the basis of the
example of fortune’s wheel. As Albrecht Classen could demonstrate, con-
siderably more Baroque authors were interested in and drew more from the
medieval world than has been assumed so far (Albrecht Classen, “Literar-
historische Reflexionen in der Barockliteratur: Interesse an und Widerstand
gegen das Mittelalter als Medium der poetischen Selbstidentifikation im
Werk von Lohenstein und Hoffmannswaldau,” Etudes Germaniques 63.3
[2008]: 551–70).

E.1. The German Enlightenment and the Middle Ages

Only two detailed monographs address the history of reception. Christoph
Schmid divided it into four phases: around the mid-18th century (Gott-
sched, Bodmer); Sturm und Drang (Herder, Ossian, folk song); the transition
to the early Romantics (Bodmer and his ‘school’, ballads); and the early Ro-
mantics (Novalis, Tieck). He sees a dominant continuity of reception between
the early Enlightenment and the Romantics (Christoph Schmid, Die Mittel-
alterrezeption des 18. Jahrhunderts zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, 1979). Felix
Leibrock assesses the manuscripts of Bodmer and Gottsched, with the
focus of his study resting not on the portrayal of the Middle Ages, but from
the standpoint of memory and understanding, which he sees as important
for Bodmer (Felix Leibrock, Aufklärung und Mittelalter: Bodmer, Gottsched und
die mittelalterliche deutsche Literatur, 1988). For him the ideas of Gottsched and
Bodmer are in radical opposition to each other. Leibrock also wrote the
only study containing a literature review on the theme of ‘reception of the
Middle Ages’ in the works of both authors (9–14). A shorter overview of the
history of reception is also offered by Brinker-Gabler (Gisela Brinker-
Gabler, Poetisch-wissenschaftliche Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ludwig Tiecks Erneue-
rung altdeutscher Literatur, 1980).According to existing views, the study and
reception of the Middle Ages built upon the pejorative judgment of the Re-
naissance, which viewed (as shown in the example of England) the epoch as
a time of decay, barbarism, darkness, superstition, scholasticism, ignorance,
despotism, and a decline in morals. The reformation criticism of the Catholic
church was expanded by the Enlightenment to apply to the Middle Ages
as a whole. The criticism by empirical natural scientists of book learning
strengthened this rejection. On the other hand, a minority opinion quickly
formed which stressed continuity between the eras. This was particularly the
case in Scandinavia, where scholars of the Nordic Enlightenment developed
a positive view of the Germanic period. The models of world literature,
which quickly emerged within literary theory and literary history, and which
viewed the Middle Ages as an independent era, should also be taken into
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 474

account here (Reinhold Münster, “Der Beginn der Komparatistik in der

Aufklärung und die Konzeption der Weltliteratur,” Estudios Filológicos Alem-
anes 12 [2006]: 147–60).

E.2. The Significance of Bodmer

The focus of the current research of reception has been on the work of Johann
Jakob Bodmer (Wolfgang Bender, J. J. Bodmer und J. J. Breitinger, 1973, 30–51;
Albert Debrunner, Das güldene schwäbische Alter: Johann Jakob Bodmer und
das Mittelalter als Vorbildzeit im 18. Jahrhundert, 1996; Jan-Dirk Müller,
“J. J. Bodmers Poetik und die Wiederentdeckung mittelhochdeutscher
Epen,” Euphorion 71 [1977]: 336–52; Paul Merker, “J. J. Bodmers Parzival-
bearbeitung,” Vom Werden des deutschen Geistes: Festschrift Gustav Ehrismann, ed.
Paul Merker and Wolfgang Stammler, 1925, 196–219; Volker Mertens,
“Bodmer und die Folgen,” Die Deutschen und ihr Mittelalter: Themen und
Funktionen moderner Geschichtsbilder vom Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Althoff, 1992,
55–80; Berta Raposo, “Parzival ilustrado, Parzival romántico: Bodmer y
Fouqué,” Parzvial: Reescritura y transformación, ed. eadem, 2000, 185–202).
Delbrunner’s study aims to depict Bodmer’s part in the development
of the Romantic view of the Middle Ages, and describes the influence of the
Zurich artist on the mode of observations of the 18th century with regard to
literature and art. The monograph places Bodmer’s method of reception in
the context of the discourse of the time (understanding of history, poetry as
Anacreonics, Thomas Blackwell’s theories, parallels between the Middle
Ages and antiquity, architecture). Scholarship has, as whole, stressed the sig-
nificance of Bodmer as an editor and a poet who revived medieval themes and
material, and even wrote in Middle High German, and as a literary critic and
historian. Bodmer’s examination of the Middle Ages began in his Discoursen
der Mahler (1721–1723). In it, he compared Gothic architecture with Baroque
fashion, and rejected both. This attitude was based on an enlightened cul-
tural criticism and the aesthetic ‘tumor criticism’ (Tumorkritik), attacking
swollen, ugly forms, in vogue at the time. Bodmer perceived a continuity
with inflated stylistic techniques such as hyperbole, metaphor, and word-
play. He criticized the doggerel of previous epochs. Equally, he rejected the
chivalric romances and adventure stories, the tales of murder and violent
death, witch stories, alchemical books and astrological writings. His attitude
in the Discoursen tended ever more to ahistorical judgments, such as he might
have found in British Classicism, which had a strong influence on the circle
around the Moralische Wochenschrift. Bodmer developed a new approach in
his Character Der Teutschen Gedichte (1734). Bodmer defended German poetry
against the attacks of the Abbé Bouhours in the Querelle des Anciens et des Mod-
475 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

ernes, and the reproach that Germans were incapable of culture. He painted a
history of progress in the matter of ‘taste’ (Geschmack), which was simulta-
neously a critical portrayal of German literary history. In the night of history,
bards sang their sublime songs, which echoed the raw manners of the popu-
lace, and the bardic song soon sank back into the dark night. Monks, with
their superstitious teaching, drove men and art still deeper into the dark.
The Middle Ages were in “tieffer Dunckelheit” (deep darkness). A dim light
shone under the Hohenstaufens, as the “Winsbekin” sang her didactic
poems (he refers to an anonymous 13th-century didactic debate poem invol-
ving a mother and her daughter). Once again art fell back into barbarism,
into a fantastic-wild world, and the savage night. Only with Sebastian Brandt
and Johann Fischart did the light begin to return in the Renaissance, and
with Erasmus of Rotterdam’s art, as if by itself, revived. The height of artistic
development, however, was the poetry of Martin Opitz (1597–1639).
Once again, Bodmer turned to the English and French classicist aesthetics
(Richard Steele, Joseph Addison; Nicolas Boileau) and disarmed the criticism
of the alleged provincialism of medieval literature. The ‘bardic’ period and
that of the Hohenstaufens, later Bodmer’s ‘Swabian’ period were depicted as
positive developments. This method of appraisal can be found in Tactitus
and Caesar – Bodmer used Roman opinions in his understanding. The Cath-
olic Church – Bodmer was a Reformed minister in Zürich – was criticized
from the standpoint of the reformed tradition.
The next stage of reception can be found in the text Von den vortreff-
lichen Umständen für die Poesie unter den Kaisern aus dem schwäbischen Hause
(in Sammlung Critischer, Poetischer und Geistvoller Schriften, 7th part, 1743). Here
enlightened anti-feudalism combined with Blackwell’s theories on Homer.
Bodmer reapplied the classical model of Homeric Greece to the European
Middle Ages. Greece replaced Rome. The key features of this innovative essay
are: an enlightened conception of nature, an expanded conception of a high
medieval cultural progress influenced by bourgeois-urban mobility, and
more general civilizing developments, the abandoning of purely national
criteria of reception, and a recognition of extra-national influences on cul-
ture, the description of specific feudal social and cultural experiences, the
actual living conditions of medieval singers, and finally the interpretative
possibilities of a liberal, sensualist aesthetics of effect and expression. Some
thoughts on an authentic emotionality of the Middle Ages were also ex-
plored. To be sure, this essay was a giant step in a new direction for medieval
reception (Anacreonics and sentimentalism served as the basic models).
This change of events cannot be fully grasped without a consideration of En-
lightenment editorial activity. Bodmer’s interest as a collector ranged from
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 476

the Bible to medieval texts; he was particularly interested in lyric poetry, in-
cluding that of the Paris Minnesänger manuscript. He edited texts from the
Codex Mannese. He drew parallels between the lyrics from the 13th century
[really the 12th] (Proben der alten schwäbischen Poesie des Dreyzehnten Jahrhunderts,
1748) and those from antiquity to the Anacreonics, the typical Enlighten-
ment literary form, which Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, Johann Peter Uz,
and Johann Nicolaus Götz had made the dominant paradigm, with encour-
agement from Friedrich von Hagedorn. In Neue Critische Briefe (1749) Bodmer
discussed the influence of the lyrics from the Provence (France) on Minnes-
ang, which he thought was transmitted via Tuscan literature. Bodmer came
to favor the art of the south (in contrast to the research of his Scandinavian
contemporaries) in his reception of the Middle Ages, and he thus attempted
to show the similarities between the lyrics of the Provence and Swabia. (In
this connection, he published his own Middle High German compositions).
In all his works, sharp criticism of the Catholic church remained. However,
Bodmer connected his criticism ever more closely with Enlightenment his-
toricism as established in the middle period of the Enlightenment, and he
also drew from Abbé Dubos’s climate theories. The positive response which
his poetry edition received, particularly from the Anacreontics and Hage-
dorn, encouraged Bodmer to bring out his Sammlung von Minnesingern aus dem
schwäbischen Zeitpuncte CXL Dichter enthaltend, durch Rüdiger Manessen … (1758,
1759). Although Bodmer, rejecting knightly and adventurous stories,
regarded medieval epics with skepticism, he reworked Parzival (Der Parcival.
Ein Gedicht in Wolframs von Eschilbach Denckart …, 1753) for an edition. He also
turned to the Nibelungenlied. Jacob Hermann Obereit, the medical doctor who
had discovered manuscript C at Schloß Hohenems, informed Bodmer of his
find, who published the manuscript under the title Crimhilden Rache, und die
Klage, zwey Heldengedichte: Aus dem schwäbischen Zeitpuncte. Samt Fragmenten aus
dem Gedichte von den Nibelungen und aus dem Josaphat. Darzu kömmt ein Glossarium
(1757). Bodmer still clung to Blackwell’s theories, and compared the Nibelun-
genlied with the Ilias.
Bodmer’s preoccupation with the Middle Ages continued for the rest of
his life. However, Sturm und Drang developed new paradigms of reception,
which the elderly Bodmer rejected. In Literarische Denkmale von verschiedenen
Verfassern (1779) he opposed the views of Herder and the importance of the
Nordic-Germanic in literature. However, his editorial work continued with
Altenglische Balladen: Fabel von Laudine. Siegeslied der Franken (1780).
477 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

E.3. Gottsched’s Contribution

Gottsched’s significance lies in his literary criticism and historical writings,
as well as his frequent efforts to acquire medieval texts, and so to form a kind
of school. Scholarship has placed emphasis on his concept of the patron.
Gottsched attempted to interest absolute rulers of his time in the medieval
period and its literature. He quickly developed the goal of a comprehensive
history of literature and language, but his various drafts remained incom-
plete. His plan to tackle the literary history of the Middle Ages can be shown
to have existed by 1742 at the latest. Gottsched made intensive use of the
various editions produced in the Baroque period or earlier. There is evidence
of countless research trips to libraries in search of medieval texts (he con-
sulted libraries in Vienna, the monasteries of Melk and Neuburg, Gotha,
Kassel, Göttingen, Hanover, Braunschweig, Wolfenbüttel, Dresden, and
Leipzig). A comprehensive list of texts which Gottsched owned or obtained
copies from can be found in Leibrock (47–49). Gottsched also published the
work of other authors who had concerned themselves with the Middle Ages.
In a speech delivered at the University of Leipzig in 1746, the Abhandlung
von dem Flore der deutschen Poesie, zu Kaiser Friedrichs des ersten Zeiten, eine Rede,
Gottsched sketched out his concept of literary history. His model of under-
standing, and the selection of his sources, owed much to Tacitus. He placed
the beginnings of German poetry with the bards; Charlemagne was praised
as a patron of the arts and the sciences. Despite his sympathy for absolutism,
Gottsched particularly criticized the Catholic Church and the Pope. A further
preparatory work on the history of literature can be found in the Nöthiger
Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen Dramatischen Dichtkunst (vol. 1, 1757; vol. 2,
1765), a catalogue of dramatic works from 1450 to 1760. Gottsched’s hand-
written bibliography, Verzeichnis einiger alter deutscher Gedichte, so im XVten
XVIten und XVIIten Jahrhunderte durch den Druck bekannt gemacht worden (1767), is
also worthy of note. Gottsched, too, initially analyzed medieval texts accord-
ing to the paradigms of Classicism, but increasingly turned to more aca-
demic-objective positions. Gottsched, as an editor and critic, appeared most
concerned with questions of dating and origins. He was also interested in
Old French epics. Gottsched made few alterations to the linguistic form of
the Middle and Old High German texts, and hoped that the reader would
learn the old languages. This can be seen, too, in his translation of Reineke
Fuchs (1752, edition and translation). Leibrock provides a further list of his
publications (61–62). Gottsched’s concentration on the prince as patron
(both in the past and in his present) remained.
In his Critischen Dichtkunst (esp. 4th ed., 1751; 1st ed. 1729) Gottsched
added many sections on medieval literature. In the chapters on Milesian tales
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 478

and knightly novels and heroic epic, he undertook a periodization of Ger-

man epic poetry. The criterion he used was the matter of the poems: Theo-
deric’s conquest of Italy, King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table,
Charlemagne and the deeds of Roland, the crusades. Reineke Fuchs is classed
with the ‘comic heroic epic.’
A comparison of Gottsched and Bodmer shows that their opinions were
frequently opposed. Gottsched paid more attention to Old High German lit-
erature, interpreted the texts from the perspective of courtly patronage, and
portrays the Middle Ages in relation to national ideology and the dynasties of
the day. While Bodmer gave central importance to lyric poetry, Gottsched
was most interested in the didactic tendencies of medieval literature. His
intellectual model was defined by three stages: the mythological, bardic
period, the age of heroic epic, and the crusades.

E.4. The Reception of the Middle Ages Around Gottsched and Bodmer
In the first phase, the school around Gottsched replied to Bodmer’s 1734
didactic poem on Die Teutsche Poesie. Johann J. Schwabe published Der Deut-
sche Dichterkrieg (1741). He attempted to integrate the Middle Ages into the
courtly tradition (specifically, that of the Saxon court), and to view it as a
national inheritance. In opposition to Bodmer, he rehabilitated the bardic
poetry, the love of liberty, and the heroism of the Germanic tribes in their
war of independence against Rome. He also viewed the clerical early Middle
Ages positively, as the monasteries made a contribution to education.
Schwabe shows himself to be a strict follower of Enlightenment ideas ar-
guing for a parallel to the pedagogical ideals of his own era. Like Bodmer,
Schwabe developed comparisons here with antiquity (Homer) and medieval
authors. Schwabe’s attitude cannot be understood without consideration
of the development of research into Scandinavian literature. Germanic
scholarship became particularly important, thanks to D. von Stade, Frede-
rik Rostgaard, Olof Rudbeck, Erik Berelius, Gerg Stjernhjelm, who edited
the Edda, Johann G. von Eckhart (Hildebrandslied), Johann Philipp Palthen
(Tatian), and D. Dieckmann (Maurus Rhabanus). From 1760, knowledge
of Germanic culture and Nordic literature became more widespread. Chris-
tian D. Ebeling published a Kurze Geschichte der deutschen Dichtkunst in the
Hannoverisches Magazin (1767), based on Michel Hubers Choix de poesis alle-
mands (1766). He described the character of medieval literature critically,
and judged it according to the spirit of the north. At that point, Skaldic
poetry was enjoying a wide reception in Scandinavia through the efforts of
Daniel Bartholius, Erich Julius Björner, and Ole Wormius. The trend was
strengthened by Thomas Percy’s Relicks of Ancient English Poetry (1765) and
479 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

James Macpherson’s Fragments (1760–1763), as well as by the imitations of

Ossian.
The sphere of influence of the Gottsched school also included the 18th-
century Austrian researchers who had close ties with Gottsched and advised
him on his travels (Fritz Peter Knapp, “Die altdeutsche Dichtung als Gegen-
stand literarhistorischer Forschung in Österreich von den Brüdern Pez bis
zu Friedrich Schlegels Wiener Vorlesungen im Jahre 1812,” Die österreichische
Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert, 1750–1830, ed. Her-
bert Zeman, vol. 2, 1979, 697–734). The Benedictines Bernhard and Hie-
ronymus Pez, who both undertook countless journeys in Austria, Switzer-
land, and Bavaria in the hopes of locating and collecting medieval texts
merit particular mention. Placidius Amon provided Gottsched and his pupil
Franz Christoph Scheyb with many texts for publication. Florian Anton von
Khautz, from the Viennese Bücherhofkommision, supplied Gottsched’s maga-
zine, the Neuer Büchersaal, with sources and documents. Johann Bendedikt
Gentilotti and Adam Franz Kollar carried out manuscript studies in the
Imperial Court Library in Vienna. Michael Denis translated Ossian and
discovered the poems by Oswald von Wolkenstein. Gottlieb Leon not only
published lyrics in the medieval-anacreontic style of Gleims, but analyzed
and evaluated medieval manuscripts from the court library (Wienerischer Mu-
senalmanach [Minnelieder], 1778; Gedichte, 1788). The beginnings of German
philology can be traced to Karl Joseph Michaeler (Iwein, 1786). Johann Bap-
tist Gabriel Mareck contributed a Verzeichniß österreichischer deutscher Dichter
(manuscript 1795, published in 1972).
Bernhard Christian B. Wiedeburg of the University of Jena brought
Bodmer’s theories to the book trade in his Ausführliche Nachricht von einigen
alten teutschen poetischen Manuscripten aus dem dreyzehnten und vierzehnten Jahr-
hunderte, welche in der Jenaischen Bibliothek aufbehalten werden (1754). Christian
Fürchtegott Gellert, following the didactic concerns of the Enlightenment,
was interested in medieval fables. He enthusiastically took up Bodmer’s edi-
tion of Fabeln aus der Zeit der Minnesinger (1757), but he had published a preface
to his own fable edition long before that (Nachricht und Exempel von alten deut-
schen Fabeln, 1746). Gellert’s own fables owe much to Johann Georg Scherz’s
Philosophiae moralis Germanorum medii aevi (1704–1710).
Over time, the quarrel between the two schools died down. Johann Jakob
Rambach expanded Bodmer’s model of the Middle Ages (Abhandlung aus der
Geschichte und Litteratur, 1771); while he still referred to Anacreonics, he re-
lated Minnesang to the folk song tradition. He also considered non-literary
elements: the development of sea travel, trade and the crusades, as well as the
cultural influence of the East.
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 480

Leonhard Meister also worked in the Bodmer tradition. The medieval

section of his book, Beyträge zur Geschichte der teutschen Sprache und National-
Literatur (1771), showed the influence of Enlightenment historicism. Meister
investigated the differences between Gothic and Old High German, and
broadened the corpus of texts studied (the Wulfila Bible in Fr. Junius’s edi-
tion, the Weingartner Liederhandschrift, the Trojanerkrieg and Freidank from
Strasburg, Iwain and Tristan from Florence, Justus Möser’s Reinbot manu-
script, the Annolied (first ed. by Martin Opitz, 1639), the Rolandslied, the
Weltchronik, and Rudolf von Ems’s Josaphat, the Cruziger manuscript from
Klosterneuburg, and the St. Gallen Codex (the Nibelungenlied B text). His
Charakteristik der Dichter (2 vols., 1789) offered further texts from the Gothic
period to the end of the Middle Ages.
In fact, the Middle Ages became a popular source of themes, material,
and motifs in literature. Bodmer wrote dramas and epics in that vein: Hein-
rich IV. (1768), Conradin von Schwaben (1771), Friedrich der Rothbärtige and Albert
von Gleichen (1778), Hildebold und Wibrade (1776), and Maria von Brabant (1776).
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock took up the theme, e.g. in his ode Kaiser Heinrich
(1764; 1771). His poetry was aimed at the princes, whom he wished to win
over to nationalist literature. At the same time, he drew on the bard cult.
Klopstock (Hermanns Schlacht, 1769; Hermann und die Fürsten, 1784; Hermanns
Tod (1787), and Johann Elias Schlegel (Herrmann, 1743) wrote dramas on Ar-
minius. Schlegel also produced an epic (Heinrich der Löwe, 1742) and a Danish-
Nordic national drama (Canut, 1746). Treatments of Götz von Berlichingen
and Faust appeared in print. Many of those texts were influenced by the An-
acreonticists, or the ideal of archaism and the adaptation of medieval lin-
guistic forms as practiced by the Göttingen League of the Grove (Göttinger
Hain-Bund).
Ossianism played a central role for belletristic literature (Sven Aage Jør-
gensen, Klaus Bohnen, and Per Øhrgaard, Aufklärung, Sturm und Drang,
frühe Klassik, 1990, 159–67). James Macpherson had laid the foundations
with his Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland and trans-
lated from the Gaelic or Erse Language (1760). The epics Fingal (1762) and Te-
mora (1763) followed next. Ossian was later turned into hexameters by Mi-
chael Denis. Johann Georg Sulzer tackled the parallels with Homer in the
article “Oßian,” in his Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste (1771–1774; vol. 2,
865–73). In addition to Ossianism, a fashion for bardic and skaldic literature
emerged. Heinrich Wilhelm Gerstenberg published the Gedicht eines Skalden
(1766). He maintained that Ossian should be taken as an example for litera-
ture. Herder believed that Ossian was not forged, although arguments sug-
gesting this were already circulating at that time. By contrast, the interest in
481 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

Ossian grew considerably, influenced by French studies. Paul Henri de Mal-

let (Introduction à la Historie de Dannemarc, 1755; Monuments de la Mythologie et
de la Poesie des Celtes et particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves, 1756) argued for
the identity of Celtic with the Scandinavian languages. His works were trans-
lated into English by Percy. Klopstock developed a similar line of argument
to Mallet (theory of Scythian natural religion). Klopstock’s Germanic
enthusiasm can be traced in his lyrics Der Hügel und der Hain and Vaterlandslied
(1770). General information on the image of the Teutons can be found
in Klaus See (Deutsche Germanenideologie: Vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart,
1970).

E.5. The Reception of the Middle Ages in and around the Journals
Deutsches Museum, Bragur and Olla Potrida, and by Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing
The editions of the Deutsches Museum (1776–1791) brought out by Heinrich
Christian Boie, provided an important basis for scholarship on the general
and for the literary reception of the Middle Ages (esp. for the Göttingen
Grove) in particular. Johann Jakob Eschenburg, active in Boie’s circle, began
a comparative study of medieval texts (Wigamur manuscript in Wolfenbüttel,
Engelhart, edited with Lessing, and Vom alten Hildebrandt, 1799). Carl August
Küttner broke away from Bodmer in Charaktere teutscher Dichter und Prosaisten
(1780/1781). Küttner produced a biographical-bibliographical work and
added Johannes Tauler to his objects of study. Christian Heinrich Schmid
continued this line of academic research in the Anthologie der Deutschen
(1770–1772), the Biographie der Dichter (1769/1770) and Skizzen der teutschen
Dichtkunst (1780–1784) in Olla Potrida. Schmid attempted to write a represen-
tative and complete history of literature. This was also the goal of Johann
Traugott Plant in his Chronologischer biographischer und kritischer Entwurf einer
Geschichte der deutschen Dichtkunst und Dichter von den ältesten Zeiten bis aufs Jahr
1782 (1782), in which he focused on national aspects. Erduin Julius Koch’s
Grundriss einer Geschichte der Sprache und Literatur der Deutschen von den ältesten
Zeiten bis auf Lessings Tod (1790) then provided a reliable basis for literary his-
tory. Koch also attempted to produce a bibliography of the complete history
of German national literature. The number of editions increased enormously
in this period. Bodmer’s pupil, Christoph Heinrich Müller/Myller published
a representative selection of texts. His Sammlung deutscher Gedichte aus dem XII.
XIII. und XIV. Jahrhundert (1784, 1785, 1787) was one of the most important
editorial projects of its day. Müller printed manuscripts C and A of the Nibe-
lungenlied, Eneite, Got Amur, Parzival, Der Arme Heinrich, Tristan, Floris und
Blanchflur, Iwein, Freidank, Meliure und Partenopier, the Trojanerkrieg, and count-
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 482

less songs. Gundolf Schütze edited texts from the holdings of Hamburg
libraries, and became an important historian of Old Norse and of Germanic
antiquarianism. Friedrich Christoph Jonathan Fischer published Waltharius
(De prima expeditione Attilae … ac de Rebus gestis Waltharii (1780) and com-
mented on the Middle Ages in Sitten und Gebräuche der Europäer im V. und
VI. Jahrhundert (1784). Wilhelm Johann Gustav Casparson added Willehalm to
the list of editions (1781). Karl Michaeler of the Viennese University Library
presented the Innsbruck Iwain manuscript (1786). By this stage, a complete
translation of De La Curne de Sainte-Palaye’s Mémoires sur l’ancienne Chevalerie
(1759–1781) was available, which further stimulated scholarship. Johann
Ludwig Klüber, a legal historian, added a commentary and further material
relating to cultural history to his translation (1786, 1788, 1791). Other
authors used the theme of Prussia as their point of departure. Martin Ernst
v. Schlieffen used Germanic ideology to justify the eastern colonization
in Prussia in his Nachricht von einigen Häusern der Geschlechter der von Schlieffen
(1784). Christian Wilhelm Dohm pointed to Prussia’s claim to leadership in
an Abhandlung worin die Ursachen der Ueberlegenheit der Deutschen über die Römer …
(Deutsches Museum, 1780). Chistian Ernst Weiße, the son of the poet Christian
Felix Weiße, glorified feudalism in Von den Vortheilen der teutschen Reichsverbin-
dung (1790). Meves provides information on the close connection between
Prussianism and the Middle Ages in the late Enlightenment in the Berlin
grammar schools (Uwe Meves, “Zur Rezeption der altdeutschen Literatur
an den Gelehrtenschulen in Preußen am Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts,”
Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986, 473–98).
Christian Heinrich Müller, an author who worked as a teacher, published
a collection of poets from the 12th to the 14th centuries (1784), Johann
Peter Willenbücher (Praktische Anweisung zur Kenntnis der Hauptveränderungen
und Mundarten der teutschen Sprache, von den ältesten Zeiten bis ins vierzehnte
Jahrhundert, 1789) and Erduin Julius Koch advanced the knowledge of
the Middle Ages in schools. A similar transfer of knowledge took place
in Hamburg grammar schools, thanks to Paul Dietrich Giesecke (Über der
Nibelungen Liet, 1795) and Gundolf Schütze (Rudolf von Ems: Weltchronik,
1779/1781).
The Deutsches Museum and Olla Potrida played an important role for litera-
ture inspired by the Middle Ages. Here works were published which glori-
fied the literature of the past. The contribution of August Wilhelm Iffland,
Schloss Frankenstein (Deutsches Museum, 1782) in particular shows a literary
reception of the Middle Ages which drew on the English Gothic novel and
aimed to revive the vanished glory of times past. Christian Vulpius (Das Aben-
theuer auf dem Raubschlosse, Olla Potrida, 1783) continued this trend.
483 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

Scholarship gained its first journal of medieval literary history in Bragur:

Ein litterarisches Magazin der Deutschen und Nordischen Vorzeit (ed. Friedrich
David Gräter, 1791–1797) It numbered among its staff Herder, Klopstock,
Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, Uz, Gotthart
Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten, Friedrich Weiße, Johann Joachim Eschenburg,
Karl Gottlob Anton, David Christoph Seybold, Georg Gustav Fülleborn, Au-
gust Böckh, J. Wilhelm Petersen, G. W. Friedrich Panzer, Johann Heinrich
Häßlein, Karl Joseph Michaeler, Michael Denis, Gottlieb Leon, Johann Fried-
rich August Kinderling, Friedrich A. Knittel, Johann Christian Zahn, Karl
Friedrich Conz, W. Hertzberg and, later, the Brothers Grimm, and Friedrich
Heinrich von der Hagen.
Lessing was particularly influential in the Late Enlightenment. He was
especially interested in the didactic genre of the fable, and remained within
the traditions of the nationalist Enlightenment, without taking on Bodmer’s
and Herder’s expanded view of the Middle Ages. Two recent studies present
his achievements as a medievalist (Ursula Liebertz-Grün, “Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing als Mediävist,” Euphorion 77 [1983]: 326–41; Albrecht
Classen, “Lessing als Philologe: Seine Kenntnis und Wertung mittelalter-
licher Dichtungen und Texte,” Lessing Yearbook 19 [1987]: 139–65). Lie-
bertz-Grün links Lessing to 17th-century polyhistoricism, but also sees his
academic writings as exemplary for the Enlightenment period. Liebertz-
Grün emphasizes that Lessing first became seriously preoccupied with the
Middle Ages in Wolfenbüttel. The study concentrates on Lessing’s observa-
tions on the medieval Biblia Pauperum.
Classen shows that Lessing was interested in the fashion for bardic
poetry from an early age, and undertook detailed criticism of it. Lessing
listed philological errors in the Swiss fable edition (Über die sogenannten Fabeln
aus den Zeiten der Minnesinger: Zweyte Entdeckung, 1781). From an anti-Absolut-
ist position, he investigated the patron-theory developed by Gottsched in the
study Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur von den Minnesängern bis
auf Luther (1777). Lessing was also interested in the Wolfenbüttel manuscript
of Hugo von Trimberg’s Renner on the grounds of its didactic content. In the
field of theology, Lessing dealt with Berengar of Tours (who had been labeled
a heretic), in whom he believed he had discovered a kindred spirit. Marco
Polo also gained Lessing’s attention. Lessing and Herder entered into an
intensive debate on the term ‘folk poetry’ (Volkspoesie). On the one hand,
Classen sees this as confirming the polyhistoricist theory, but on the other,
he gives Lessing and his endeavors toward objectivity a place between the En-
lightenment and Romanticism. The article concludes with a complete list of
Lessing’s work on the Middle Ages (156–61).
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 484

E.6. Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism

Scholarship connects the reception of the Middle Ages in ‘Sturm and Drang’
above all with the work of Johann Gottfried Herder. Heinrich Wilhelm von
Gerstenberg opened the horizon of reception for the concept of ‘genius’ and
anti-Classicist approaches. The alteration in opinion about Shakespeare and
the folk song also formed the new picture of the Middle Ages. Irrational el-
ements of the Middle Ages (e.g. the witches in Macbeth) were now viewed
positively. The reception of folk songs was enabled by the concept of natural
poetry (Naturpoesie). Nordic mythology replaced the Greek.
The young Herder agreed with these views (Heinz Stolpe, Die Auffas-
sung des jungen Herder vom Mittelalter, 1955; Schmid. loc. cit.). In Fragmente
ueber die neuere Deutsche Literatur (1766–1767), he was guided by the ideal of a
national literary language, which is linked to his observations on medieval
language. At the same time, he stressed the cultural and political freedom
of the Germanic tribes. He counted freedom as one of the elements of the
German national character. As he saw it, an oriental-Arabic influence was
also present. Herder drew comparisons between contemporary war poetry
(Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim’s Grenadierlieder) and the national war songs
of the Germanic tribes. His Kritische Wälder (1769) explicitly compared Orien-
tal and Nordic literature and developed the term ‘folk literature’ (Volksdich-
tung), not to be confused with the vulgar literature of the mob, and the con-
cept of the Nordic national character. He criticized the contemporary Ossian
craze (Oßian und die Lieder der alten Völker) in the collection Von Deutscher Art und
Kunst (1773). Against it, he placed the sense of German ancestral strength and
simplicity. The medieval Germanic peoples or tribes are used as models for
the ur-German, who honored the ideals of virtue, patriotism, and chastity.
Herder saw the Ossian lyrics, however, as an opportunity to rehabilitate the
term ‘Volk,’ and the focus of his interest shifted to the lyric.
By contrast, Paolo Frisis’s contribution to the collection (Versuch über die
Gothische Baukunst) persisted in using ‘medieval’ as a pejorative term. Johann
Wolfgang Goethe’s essay Von deutscher Baukunst (1772) related it to the or-
ganic, and compared the cathedral with an enormous tree. He thus placed
himself in line with the traditions of the Anglo-Saxon Gothic revival and the
Gothic novel. Justus Möser’s Patriotische Phantasien (1766) began with
knightly epic, which he took to mirror the social conditions of the Middle
Ages. His key term was the law of the jungle.
Herder’s Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit
(1774) was influential for the further development of Sturm und Drang and
beyond. The old structures (the patriarchy as the original model of bourgeois
order, the church, feudalism) guaranteed historical continuity. Herder inter-
485 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

preted the history of feudalism teleologically. The Northern air and the wild-
ness of nature produced knights inspired by the values of courage, honor
(noblesse obligée), chastity (marriage), devotion (the church), and loyalty
(the feudal structure). This allowed him to integrate criticisms of the church
(especially those formulated by the French Enlightenment). The work found
a provisional end in a collection of folk songs, but curiously Herder omitted
Minnesang from his considerations on linguistic and aesthetic grounds. In
Jena, 1790 Friedrich Schiller published Allgemeine Sammlung historischer Me-
moires as well as Universalhistorische Übersicht der vornehmsten an den Kreuzzügen
teilnehmenden Nationen on Anna Commnena, Otto von Freising and Bohadin
Saladin (Byzantium–Rome–Arabia). Although Schiller saw the crusades as
a folly (“Raserei,” delirium), he gave the Middle Ages a singular place in
European history. In his view, Rome had placed the nations in an unnatural
calm, a soft slavery which suffocated humanity’s powers. The stormy, rebel-
lious revolt for freedom in the “Germanic period” (i. e., the Middle Ages)
struck against this repression of the energies of humanity, which eventually
reached the happy medium which benevolently combined calm and activity,
freedom and order, variety and harmony. Schiller constructed a three stage
development from captivity (“non-freedom,” Unfreiheit) via anarchy (lawless-
ness) to the freedom of an ethically ordered life (Rudolf Stadelmann,
“Grundformen der Mittelalterauffassung von Herder bis Ranke,” Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft 9 [1931]: 45–88).

E.7. German Painting and Enlightenment Art

Within the development of Enlightenment historical painting, a small but
significant corpus of medieval subjects can be made out. (Frank Büttner,
“Die Darstellung mittelalterlicher Geschichte in der deutschen Kunst des
ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts,” Mittelalter-Rezeption: ein Symposion, ed. Peter
Wapnewski, 1986, 407–33).
Wilhelm Tischbein painted Konradin von Schwaben und Friedrich von Öster-
reich vernehmen im Gefängnis von Neapel ihr Todesurteil at Bodmer’s instigation.
Tischbein, true to the narrative models of the Enlightenment, intended the
painting to have exemplary functions, but he also attempted to portray his
figures in accurate dress (Enlightenment historicism). His paintings reveal,
however, that patriotism had not yet achieved enough influence on the art
world to justify putting medieval subjects on canvas. The situation is differ-
ent with regard to the frescos in the Würzburg Residence (1752). Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo gives scenes showing the bestowal of feudal fees a central
place, which points to the great significance which the Prince Bishops of
Schönborn and Greiffenklau ascribed to feudalism. A transformation took
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 486

place in book illustration where the painter Bernhard Rode was active from
1751. He was concerned with the historical fidelity of his depictions, not
their effects. In historical painting, medieval themes first achieved their
breakthrough from 1780 onwards. Daniel Chodowiecki attempted to popu-
larize knightly and old German themes. He chose to paint historical celeb-
rities of heroic temper with characteristic local color.

F. The Middle Ages in France

France’s appropriation and judgment of the Middle Ages and its culture was
dominated by the discourse of the European Enlightenment. Two studies
deal explicitly with this question (Jürgen Voss, Das Mittelalter im historischen
Denken Frankreichs: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalterbegriffes und der
Mittelalterbewertung von der zweiten Hälfte des 16. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts,
1972; Werner Krauss, “Das Mittelalter in der Aufklärung,” Medium Aevum
Romanicum: Festschrift Hans Rheinfelder, ed. Heinrich Bihler and Alfred
Noyer-Weidner, 1963, 223–31). Several categories of reception can be dis-
tinguished: the movement influenced by Classicism took a negative view;
there was a small counter-movement that created a positive judgment; then
there was a larger movement which was objective, a group driven by political
considerations, and finally one which was militantly against the Middle Ages.
The first group inherited the judgments of Classicism, but was inclined
to relativize its prejudices. The works of Ellis Dupin, Abbé Claude Fleury,
Gabriel Daniel, Abbé Louis de Gendre, Charles Rollin, Luc de Clapier Mar-
quis de Vauvenargues, Abbé Velly, Juvenal de Carlancas, Joseph Ducreux,
Chevalier de Méhégan, Rigoley de Juvigny, Abbé Bérault-Bercastel, Abbé
de Longchamps, and Nicolas de Bonneville belong into this category. They
all repeated in some form the idea that the Middle Ages were an epoch of bar-
barism, ignorance, and decline. The classical attitude condemned medieval
architecture on the basis of the same criteria, but here too the theory of an art
which is defined by the individual historical situation and the customs of the
time began, slowly, to emerge.
The belief of the second group, of which there is still no summarizing
account available, were determined by a positive revaluation of the Middle
Ages, and they became interested in old French and Provencal literature. In
this group Classicist dogma retreated to the background, and great names
were involved: Jean Baptiste de La Curne, who covered several art forms
in his reflections (theater, novels, poetry, opera), Guillaume Massieu, Abbé
Goujet, Legrand d’Aussy, and Etienne de Barbazan, who compiled a diction-
ary of Old French and published medieval fables for the educated public, and
thus rehabilitated older French literature. (It was at this time that Bodmer
487 Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages

was taking up studies of older German in Switzerland.) The troubadours

were declared models of contemporary literature. On the artistic side of the
movement, older lyrics were revived by the Comte de Tresan or the Marquis
de Paulmy.
The third group attempted an objective evaluation of the Middle Ages.
The Christian congregations and the Academies, in particular the “Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (AIBL),” gave this model of reception cul-
tural importance. Jacob Nicolas Moreau’s “Cabinet des Chartes” also belongs
into this category. Importance should be given to the congregations’ efforts,
which resulted in the writings of Bernard de Montfaucon, Antoine Rivet, and
Martin Bouquet. In due course, the discussion developed outside the struc-
tures of the church, in the Academies, which now, like the AIBL, made a defi-
nite turn toward the Middle Ages: their members included Abbé Vertot, the
Orientalist Antoine Galland, Jean Boivin de Villeneuve, Antoine Lancelot,
Camille Falconet, and J. B. de La Curne de Sainte Palaye (on La Curne cf.:
Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment, 1968). The
latter wrote his own chivalric romances, as well as investigations of chivalric
culture and medieval languages. He linked the study of objects to the study
of words, and so set new standards. Abbé Lebeuf compiled a glossary, com-
mented on Gothic architecture, and practiced an enlightened form of scien-
tific archaeology. Abbé Octavien de Guasco worked on the art and literature
of the Middle Ages. Jean Baptiste d’Anville researched medieval geography.
In Alsace, Johann Daniel Schöpflin dedicated himself to writing regional his-
tory (Alsatia illustrata, 1761). Up until 1770, the group was dominated by sub-
ject-oriented research interests with a politically conservative undertone.
J. N. Moreau devoted himself to legal questions, and built up a historical and
legal library, together with his circle and some AIBL members.
The fourth group was concerned with the political model of the medieval
state, and was dedicated to the restoration of the rights of the nobility. Abbé
Dubos expanded upon theories of Absolutism, and believed that he had
found the vindication of this form of government in the Middle Ages.
The final group consisted of militant Enlightenment ‘philosophers,’
who researched and assessed the medieval epoch not out of an interest in his-
torical knowledge, but in opposition to it and with political considerations
in mind. The aesthetic principles of classicism were applied to cultural ones
in general, to state institutions, and to the Church. The key names here are
Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu and Voltaire, whose universal history
portrayed the Middle Ages as barbaric, Gothic, and as a time of ignorance.
Only the 13th century brought a small change, where Voltaire located the
replacement of “ignorance sauvage” with “ignorance scolastique.” This atti-
Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages 488

tude did not prevent Voltaire from publishing a popular play with knights,
Tancrède (1771). D’Alembert’s and Diderot’s Encylopaedia, by contrast, ap-
peared without an article on the ‘Middle Ages.’ Etienne Bonnot de Condillac
categorically rejected the Middle Ages; Gabriel Bonnot de Mably deprecated
it, and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot described it as an epoch of decay. Marie
Jean Caritat de Condorcet saw the crusades as the beginning of a dark deca-
dence, but he viewed scholasticism positively. Abbé Sièyes traced contempor-
ary social injustice to the Frankish conquests. All the authors in this group
discovered the origins of the miseries of the revolutionary period in the
Middle Ages: absolutism, ecclesiastical dominance, and oppression.

G. The Middle Ages in Spain

The situation in Spain was very different to that in France (Werner Krauss.
loc. cit.; Heinrich Bihler, Spanische Versdichtung des Mittelalters im Lichte
der spanischen Kritik der Aufklärung und Vorromantik, 1957). In Spain, a continu-
ity remained between the epochs. The accent placed on historical questions
merely shifted. The Academia de Historia, founded in Madrid in 1735,
assembled an impressive amount of research on the Middle Ages. The work
of Padre Enrique Flórez, whose handbook España sagrada was first printed in
1747, deserves special notice. Caspar Melchior de Jovellanos wrote about
medieval culture in detail. Xavier Lampilla attempted to portray the Arab
Middle Ages in Spain. Thomás Antonio published a four volume collection
of texts (1779–1790), including El Cid, Gonzalo de Berceo’s Milagros, and the
Arcipreste de Hita’s Libro de buen amor.

H. Research on Individual Medieval Works and Themes

Rautenberg and Grosse provide information on adaptations and trans-
lations of medieval texts during the Enlightenment (Ursula Rautenberg,
and Siegfried Grosse, Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher deutscher Dichtung: Eine
Bibliographie, 1988). Frenzel does the same for individual figures of medi-
eval literature and history (Elisabeth Frenzel, Stoffe der Weltliteratur, 9th ed.
1998; 1st ed. 1961). Grunewald reports on the reception of the Manessa
lyrics (Eckhard Grunewald, “Zur Rezeption und Reproduktion der Ma-
nessischen Liederhandschrift im 18. Jahrhundert und frühen 19. Jahr-
hundert,” Mittelalter-Rezeption, ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986, 435–49). A new
collection of essays describes the reception of Arthur with a detailed perspec-
tive on France and England (Moderne Artus-Rezeption: 18.–20. Jahrhundert, ed.
Kurt Gamerschlag, 1991). Ehrisman provides information about knowl-
edge of the Nibelungenlied in the 18th century (Otfrid Ehrismann, Nibelun-
genlied 1755–1920. Regesten und Kommentare zu Forschung und Rezeption, 1986).
489 Epigraphy

Select Bibliography
Lucie Varga, Das Schlagwort vom finsteren Mittelalter (Aalen: Scientia, 1932); Josef
Haslag, Gothic im siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhundert: Eine wort- und ideengeschicht-
liche Untersuchung (Cologne: Böhlau, 1963); Christoph Schmid, Die Mittelalterrezeption
des 18. Jahrhunderts zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik (Frankfurt a. M., Bern, and Las
Vegas: Peter Lang, 1979); Felix Leibrock, Aufklärung und Mittelalter: Bodmer, Gottsched
und die mittelalterliche deutsche Literatur (Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 1988); Gisela Brinker-
Gabler, Poetisch-wissenschaftliche Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ludwig Tiecks Erneuerung altdeut-
scher Literatur (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1980); Jürgen Voss, Das Mittelalter im histori-
schen Denken Frankreichs: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalterbegriffes und der Mittel-
alterbewertung von der zweiten Hälfte des 16. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Fink,
1972).

Reinhold Münster

Epigraphy

A. Terminology
‘Epigraphy’ is the study of inscriptions. The name of the discipline derives
from the Greek words  and  φ (write upon), so that  φ (epi-
graphe, Lat. inscriptio) initially meant merely ‘writing,’ that is script on some
kind of material (not further defined). It occurs as a term for ‘inscription’
from the late 17th century on. ‘Epigraphy’ is found as an academic term from
1843 on, and was adopted by the Academie Français in 1878. The Latin
inscriptio was used in antiquity to mean ‘writing’ or ‘heading,’ but while it
can occasionally be found in our sense in the Middle Ages, it only became
usual during the 16th century. In the Middle Ages, titulus or epitaphium oc-
cured more frequently, or verbal forms such as scriptum, inscriptum, caelatum,
etc. were used (Robert Favreau, Les inscriptions médiévales [= Typologie des
sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 35], 1979, 13–17).
Epigraphy concerns itself with everything necessary for the appraisal of
inscriptions. This means – apart from the script form and the graphical
‘mise-en-page’ as a whole and among other considerations – language and
linguistic characteristics, formularies, metrics and musicality where relevant;
text analysis and a determination of the sources used, the patron, where
possible the author of the text and the craftsman responsible; the placing of
the inscription within the context of inscription genres (grave inscriptions,
memorial inscriptions, building or dedication inscriptions, house inscrip-
tions etc.); interpretation of the content of the inscription and valuation of its
Epigraphy 490

sources; the investigation of the object bearing the inscription according

to historical, and art and cultural historical criteria; culminating in a suitable
editorial strategy for the publication of the texts. Increasingly, the term
Inschriftenpaläographie (inscription paleography) is being used for the area of
the subject dealing purely with script (Walter Koch, “Inschriftenpaläogra-
phie: Ein schriftkundlicher Beitrag zu ausgewählten Inschriften Kärntens
mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Gurk,” Carinthia I.162 [1972]: 115–47,
esp. 115–17; id., Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittelalters und der
früheren Neuzeit: Früh- und Hochmittelalter, 2007, 26). Inscription paleography
deals with everything that has to do with the appearance of the script. The
goal is a description of the script style, as well as the determination of dating
and, where possible, localization characteristics. Initially, it is concerned
with individual forms. Individual letter forms and their proportions and
construction in strokes, cross-strokes, bows and finishing strokes and their
formation, the thickness of strokes and its variation within a form, the dec-
orative elements attached to the letters, combinations of letters such as nexus
litterarum, ligatures, merged and connecting bows, enclaves, interlacing, the
appearance of abbreviations, word division and signs indicating word divi-
sions, as well as numbers and their development are of interest. However,
graphical study is not restricted to the consideration of individual forms. At-
tention must be paid to whether the aspect of the script is open or cramped,
the layout of lines, the question of ‘scriptura continua,’ the homogeneity of
the script as a whole, as well as the possibility of later revision(s) or additions
(cf., on the criteria to be studied, Rudolf M. Kloos, “Methoden und Mög-
lichkeiten der lateinischen Epigraphik des Mittelalters,” Actes du VIIe Congrès
International d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine, Constantza, 9–15 septembre 1977, ed.
D. M. Pippidi, 1979, 91–107, esp. 95ff.; and Robert Favreau, Èpigraphie
médiévale, 1997, 59–60. On the technique of letter description, cf. Deutsche
Inschriften: Terminologie zur Schriftbeschreibung, devised by the staff of the Acad-
emies of the Sciences and Humanities in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Göttingen, Hei-
delberg, Leipzig, Mainz, Munich, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in
Vienna, 1999).

B. Subject
Inscriptions form the central – and often exclusive – source-material on civil
and public life for the ancient historian, and the international corpora begun
in the 19th century for the collection and critical edition of inscriptions of
classical antiquity – Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) or Inscriptiones Graecae
(IG) – made epigraphy the most prestigious branch of the study of an-
tiquities. Yet at the same time, the systematic cataloguing and methodical
491 Epigraphy

academic study of medieval and early modern inscriptions of the post-an-

tique, western-occidental area, (that is inscriptions in Latin script) which is
the subject of this literature review, is relatively young, developing slowly
during the 20th Century on the local and national level – far too late, accord-
ing to some (Alphons Lhotsky, Quellenkunde zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte
Österreichs, 1963, 65). Although the study of the inscriptions of the Middle
Ages and the periods following constitutes a new and independent disci-
pline, at least a basic knowledge of the epigraphy of antiquity is necessary.
After all, it is the alphabet developed and formed then which despite many
modifications – remains the bearer of the inscription, even to this day. The
capitalis developed for the political and sacral epigraphic requirements of
Rome and the Latin parts of the Roman empire, a script suitable for stone
monuments with the greatest representative function, was later – in a delib-
erate recourse to antiquity – revived, not merely in the humanism of the tran-
sition from the Middle Ages to the modern, but also, for instance, in the so-
called Carolingian renaissance. Indeed, it was the broad tradition of epi-
graphic script of Late Antiquity and above all the early Christian period
which in many cases seamlessly continued in early medieval epigraphy,
though the quality of execution varied considerably. While it is often the case
that medieval and modern inscriptions exist in parallel to other textual
sources (archival sources and chronicles) – and this is even more the case for
the more recent – , the spontaneity of their statements nevertheless often
makes them valuable sources. In addition, the inscriptions are often still at
their original location, or easily localizable, so that their connection to a li-
mited area is generally clear. Due to the almost unlimited range of themes
which appear in the texts, the value of inscriptions as sources is manifold.
The variety of their form and above all content – there is almost nothing
which cannot be the theme of an inscription – makes them valuable sources
for countless disciplines; not just for the epigrapher in the narrow sense, but
also the local or town historian, the social historian, the historians of the
economy, law, and the church, for the genealogist and the student of heral-
dry, the philologist – the latinist as well as the representatives of the ver-
nacular –, students of dialect, art historians, ethnologists, for modern disci-
plines like the history of mentalities or objects, and more. As bearers of
cartulary information – though more in the south of Europe than further
north – inscriptions are often of value to the diplomatist, while connections
to various kinds of writing interest the paleographers (cf. the case studies
in Walter Koch, “Epigraphische Editionen europaweit: Inschriften als
Quellen verschiedenster Art,” Vom Nutzen des Edierens: Akten des internationalen
Kongresses zum 150jährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichts-
Epigraphy 492

forschung. Wien, 3.–5. Juni 2004, ed. Brigitte Merta, Andrea Sommerlech-
ner, and Herwig Weigl, 2005, 229–54, esp. 236–54). In the last three or
four decades, the study of medieval inscriptions, and to a lesser extent the
epigraphy of the early modern period have been taking the decisive step to-
wards academic coherence and have established themselves as an individual
discipline in the canon of historical subjects. As an expression of this, they
have begun to appear in the regular teaching programs of a number of uni-
versities, and a number of international co-operations have been begun or
are planned, and, most importantly, a number of handbooks summarizing
the principles and practice of working with inscriptions and the editing pro-
cess have appeared (see below).

C. Definition
It is impossible to give a definition of the term ‘inscription’ which does jus-
tice to all aspects without some reflection. Its differentiation from other
written utterances, which fall instead within the competence of the pa-
leographer, remains at times unclear or willful. The primary characteristics
of an inscription are, according to Robert Favreau, durability and public-
ity, “durée” and “publicité” (see Robert Favreau, “L’épigraphie médi-
évale,” Cahiers de la civilisation médiévale Xe–XIIe siècles 12 [1969]: 394–98; or id.,
Les Inscriptions médiévales, 1979, 16). Further, monumentality or a sculptural
impulse are certainly criteria which generally or at least to a great extent fit
inscriptions, but they are doubtless unable to cover the whole spectrum of
monuments which can be viewed as inscriptions. In the German-speaking
area, a negative definition formulated by Rudolf M. Kloos, which confines
itself to the lowest common denominator, has proved serviceable: “In-
schriften sind Beschriftungen verschiedener Materialien – in Stein, Holz,
Metall, Leder, Stoff, Email, Glas, Mosaik u.s.w., die von Kräften und Metho-
den hergestellt sind, die nicht dem Schreibschul- und Kanzleibetrieb ange-
hören” (Rudolf M. Kloos, Einführung in die Epigraphik des Mittelalters und der
frühen Neuzeit, 1980, 2nd ed. 1992, 2). The most important element of the defi-
nition is the almost unlimited variation in the carriers of the inscription, and
therefore the varying production techniques. The formulation aims at a clear
distinction from paleography, which according to an established academic
consensus describes the description and interpretation of written utterances
on ‘soft’ substances, i. e., papyrus, parchment, paper, and also on wax tablets.
Kloos’ definition shuts out certain marginal areas which tend to be classed
as inscriptions, such as the broad group of graffiti. They are made on ‘epi-
graphic’ surfaces, and there is a certain wish for durability and above all, pub-
lic communication. However – many scribbles on walls are executed with ink
493 Epigraphy

or colored pens – they generally, if not exclusively, fall under the graphical
assessment of the paleography of written hands, in particular that of the cur-
sive. By contrast, the inscriptions on seals and coins do fall entirely under
Kloos’ definition. However, they tend to be considered to lie at the margins
of epigraphy, as their study remains the province of the older special disci-
plines of sphragistics and numismatics, particularly as the inscription is only
one aspect relevant to the classification of the object as a source. It is only with
regard to the script that the interests of the epigraphers coincide with those
of the other disciplines, although of course the serial mass production means
that the inscription reveals the age of the type or the die, rather than the date
of production of the actual seal or coin (among the few epigraphic studies
of these objects, cf. Ilse-Maria Michael-Schweder, Die Schrift auf den päpst-
lichen Siegeln des Mittelalters, 1926).
Inscribed monuments have, as a result of their function, physical charac-
teristics, and production, a different status to other textual utterances as
preserved in codices and charters. A different group of people was respon-
sible for their origins; they were craftsmen of varying techniques, whether
masons, fresco painters, goldsmiths, mosaic makers or others. In many peri-
ods a different writing system appears in the inscriptions than the writing of
the codices; genuinely epigraphic scripts which have their origins in the capi-
talis of the monuments of antiquity. Nonetheless, it would be mistaken to
hermetically seal epigraphy and paleography off from each other. There are
always connections between the two, though they vary in their thickness
from era to era. For instance, the most prestigious antique monumental
script was adopted in the decorative scripts of Carolingian manuscripts, and
later – in the Romanesque and Gothic eras – the headings of the codices
acted, more or less, as examples for inscriptions. Finally, in the later period
(from the beginning of the long 14th century) various types of writer’s hand –
such as textura, bastarda and humanist minuscules – appeared, suitably
adapted, in the field of inscriptions (gothic minuscule; fractura, antiqua
minuscule).

D. Corpora
The large scale – often national – projects for the collection and critical edi-
tion of material are of decisive importance for our knowledge of the Middle
Ages. While large collections of transcriptions of important inscriptions have
existed in manuscript or printed form since the humanist period (cf. the
summary in Walter Koch, Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittel-
alters und der früheren Neuzeit: Früh- und Hochmittelalter, 2007, 11–14), these
older works, usually the fruit of individual labor, were generally made out of
Epigraphy 494

antiquarian interest, to serve as evidence for mostly regional history or gen-

ealogy, or as a preliminary documentation of larger collections. They did not
yet involve the wish for the development of systematic academic study of the
inscriptions of post-antiquity. Nevertheless, these collections – particularly
those from the 17th and 18th century – are of considerable value, as they pre-
serve in transcription, and sometimes even as illustrations, countless medi-
eval inscriptions which have been destroyed in the succeeding centuries by
war, in some regions by radical ‘baroquization’ and, to this day, simple care-
lessness. Only the national ventures of the 20th century were intended, not
merely to make available valuable historical sources, but to lay the foun-
dations of an academic discipline concerned with medieval and, with reser-
vations, early modern, inscriptions, allowing a correct and consistent evalu-
ation of the inscriptions and their carriers – that is, much later than was the
case with epigraphic monuments of antiquity or the early Christian period.
The large, long term projects currently underway are products of the second
half of the 20th century. This is true – de facto – even of the oldest of them, the
German inscription project (Die Deutschen Inschriften), which has published
around 70 imposing quartos, with more than two dozen well in hand. While
the undertaking was begun in the thirties, and the first volume actually
appeared in 1942, the war and the immediate post-war period interrupted
and indeed seriously threatened the project. In other countries comparable
endeavors began decades later – and in some cases only in the recent past,
around the millennium.

E. Projects, Corpora and Editions

Die Deutschen Inschriften owes its existence to the dogged enthusiasm of one
individual, the Heidelberger Germanist Friedrich Panzer, whose proposals
and plans for a national inscription catalogue comparable to the great cor-
pora of inscriptions of antiquity was adopted in 1934 by the German acad-
emies and the Viennese Academy as the basis of a joint project (on its history,
cf. Walter Koch, “50 Jahre Deutsches Inschriftenwerk (1934–1984): Das
Unternehmen der Akademien und die epigraphische Forschung,” Deutsche
Inschriften: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, 1984; Vor-
träge und Berichte, ed. Karl Stackmann, Abhandlungen der Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philol.-hist. Kl. 3. Folge Nr. 151, 1986, 15–45).
In 1938 Friedrich Panzer published a programmatic paper summariz-
ing the scholarly motives behind the ambitious project for a wider audience:
Die Inschriften des deutschen Mittelalters: Ein Aufruf zu ihrer Sammlung und Bearbei-
tung (1938). These included the development of medieval epigraphy, a history
of numbers and figures, the techniques of production, linguistic history,
495 Epigraphy

the accommodation between German and Latin, the role of middle Latin and
the German dialects, the sociological and the religious distribution of the in-
scriptions, the objects bearing the inscriptions and their art-historical inter-
pretation, an interpretation of religious scenes, the development of epitaphs
and ideas about the afterlife, study of memorial stones and cartulary inscrip-
tions, mentions of historical events, inscriptions of secular buildings, in-
scriptions of ethnological interest, joke and puzzle inscriptions, etc. This
rather unsystematic list at least shows how large the goals of the project
were – a huge demand on the staff of the project (as it is to this day). A com-
prehensive sourcebook was also planned. The basis for unified working and
editorial guidelines was laid in the first phase. Far-reaching modifications
in the seventies meant, in addition to a coherence of working practices, the
deciphering of abbreviations using round brackets, whereas previously only
the exact letters of the inscription had been reproduced. The optically at-
tractive but academically worthless gimmick of devising fonts to represent
the various alphabets used had already been abandoned. The project collects,
criticizes and edits the Latin and German inscriptions of Germany and Aus-
tria of the Middle Ages and the early modern period (until c. 1650) in chro-
nological order – both those inscriptions preserved in the original as speci-
mens surviving only in pictorial or transcript form. Every academy involved –
today, all the German academies except Berlin, and the Austrian Academy
of Sciences – has a particular working area. The common editorial principles
for the Viennese element of the project have been published: Walter Koch,
Bearbeitungs- und Editionsgrundsätze für die “Wiener Reihe” des deutschen Inschrif-
tenwerks (1991; with additional guidelines privately printed for internal use).
The inscriptions are generally grouped by political units at district level or by
town – occasionally single locations, such as cathedrals are used where they
offer a rich enough source of material. A pragmatic decision was made to ex-
clude runes as well as seals and coins which – given their serial production –
are left to the relevant specialist disciplines. An inter-academy steering
group was set up at when the project was re-founded in 1960, made up of the
chairs of the individual academy commissions. As previously, staff members
of the individual academies meet regularly and are the real bearers of the
work. More than a third of all the volumes thus far published date from
the last decade (1997–2006), nearly two thirds from the last two decades
(1987–2006), a sign of the enormous development of the project and how
work on it has intensified. The French inscription center, founded in 1969 at
the ‘Centre d’études supérieurs de civilisation médiévale’ of the University of
Poitiers under René-Edmond Labande, has published, under the academic
supervision of Robert Favreau (who later took over leadership of the center)
Epigraphy 496

22 volumes of the Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale between 1974 and
the present. The small staff of the project has completed the South of France
and most of the central region. The last volume published, on the departe-
ments of Normandy, has reached the northern areas. Inscriptions up to the
end of the medieval period have been photographically documented, but
only those pre-1300 are to be published. While this early cut-off point is re-
grettable, the richness of southern France in particular, where the edition
began, in the old inscriptions is undeniable, for there is an often seamless
tradition dating back through the early Christian period to antiquity. Two
French volumes include almost as much material from the Early and High
Middle Ages as all existing German volumes put together. The catalogue
entries are strictly schematized and offer quick access to information:
A) function of the inscription, B) location, C) material, technical execution,
size, D) transcription, E) translation, F) paleographic comments, G) lin-
guistic comments, H) biblical, liturgical or secular sources, formularies,
I) historical commentary and date, finally bibliographical material.
The work begins in the Carolingian period and thus follows on from the
excellent new version of Edmond Le Blant’s older edition of early Christian
Gaulish inscriptions, which covers the period up to the end of the Meroving-
ian, and has been slowly appearing since 1975 under the title Recueil des
inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures à la Renaissance carolingienne. Only
three of the planned 19 volumes are available to date (Première Belgique,
Aquitaine Première, Viennoise du Nord). The Corpus Inscriptionum Medii
Aevi Helvetiae, founded in 1971 at the Medieval Institute of the University of
Fribourg, Switzerland, under the leadership of Carl Pfaff, was completed
in 1997 with the fifth volume, the inscriptions of Graubünden and Ticino.
This edition, too, only covers the period up to 1300, but offers excellent
specimens, particularly from the early period of transition from late an-
tiquity to the early Middle Ages. The treatment is characterized above all by
an effort to link individual inscriptions to literary or linguistic monuments.
Among the older projects of the second half of the 20th century is the Corpus
Inscriptionum Poloniae, founded by Józef Szymanski in 1973, which covers
the inscriptions of modern Poland until 1800 (medieval inscriptions worth
mentioning being lacking). The project consists of teams of historians at
various Polish universities, who have divided the country up between them.
Up to the present, 17 volumes/fascicles have appeared, covering nine voivode-
ships (regions). New projects – clear evidence both of increasing interest in in-
scriptions and a concern to preserve these sources from increasing environ-
mental threats – continue into the very recent past. The first volume of a
Corpus Inscriptionum Bohemiae, closely linked to the art historical survey of the
497 Epigraphy

Czech Republic appeared in 1996, covering the inscriptions of the mining

town Kuttenberg, the second volume on the Kuttenberg region appearing in
2002. Material from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period until
about 1800 is covered. An epigraphic centre at León University in northern
Spain is being set up under Vicente Garcia Lobo and his colleague María
Encarnación Martín López with the aim of producing a Corpus Inscriptio-
num Hispaniae Medievalium. At present, one volume has been published – that
on the inscriptions of the town and province of Zamora, from 1997. The
growth of epigraphic studies in Spain is extremely gratifying, as it offers
not only extremely interesting material which differs significantly from the
rest of Europe until well into the Middle Ages, but also connections to the
inscriptions of the South of France. A three volume book on the medieval in-
scriptions of Portugal has recently appeared, in which volume two – split
into two half-volumes – offers an edition which reaches into the start of the
15th century: Mário J. Barroca, Epigrafia medieval Portugesa, 842–1422 (2000).
The beginnings of a national Italian corpus of medieval inscriptions (Inscrip-
tiones Medii Aevi Italiae [saec. VI–XII]), centered on Spoleto, which occurred a
few years after several attempts, is also cheering. Presumably this took place
so late because of the overweening competition from inscriptions from an-
tiquity and the early Christian period in the consciousness of the Italians.
However, the new project only covers material from the 6th century up to
1200. That is bitter, considering the endless riches of late-medieval inscrip-
tions in the politically and culturally diverse Italian landscape. The first vol-
ume, covering the inscriptions of part of the province Viterbo has appeared
(2002). The new project will eventually replace the five volume work on the
6th–8th century by another hand, Pietro Rugo, Iscrizioni dei secoli VI–VII–VIII
esistenti in Italia (1974–1980). In addition to these national corpora, countless
editions exist dealing with larger regions, towns or individual locations scat-
tered across Europe. A few important larger scale projects are: Sabino De
Sandoli, Corpus inscriptionum crucesignatorum Terrae Sanctae (1099–1291): Testo,
traduzione e annotazioni (1974); Inscripciones medievales de Asturias, ed. Francisco
Diego Santos (1994); André Guillou, Recueil des inscriptions grecques médi-
évales d’Italie (1996); Rolant A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum
Celticarum, 2 vols. (1945–1949); Elisabeth Okasha, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon
Non-Runic Inscriptions (1971); Elisabeth Okasha and Katherine Forsyth,
Early Christian Inscriptions of Munster: A Corpus of the Inscribed Stones (2001);
Martin Syrett, The Roman-Alphabet Inscriptions of Medieval Trondheim, 2 vols.
(2002); Ottavio Banti, Monumenta epigraphica Pisana saeculo XV antiquiora
(2000); Giancarlo Roversi, Iscrizioni Medievali Bolognesi (1982); id., Corpus
Inscriptionum Medii Aevi Liguriae, 4 vols. currently available (1978–2000).
Epigraphy 498

F. Phases and Emphases of Scholarship

Approaches to the inscriptions can take various routes. The most obvious is
that via the visual, i. e. the form of the lines of text and the individual letters
and the general impression the inscription makes, as well as its layout and,
where relevant, artistic aspects. This is closely related to technical questions
and the production of the text. A further possibility is via literary-linguistic
considerations – the formularies used, rhythm, the question of the composi-
tion of the text. Finally, the interpretation of the manifold information con-
tained in the texts and their integration into a social context remains a major
goal of research, including a determination of the desired goal – ‘eternal’
validity, representative character, public announcement, etc. The first steps
on the road to a systematic academic discipline studying the inscriptions of
the Middle Ages were taken between the wars, both in Germany and in
France. It began with the creation of an overview of the development of
script, the change of forms over the centuries – concentrating initially on in-
scriptions in stone. In the German area, the earliest works attempt to study
relatively small areas over long periods. Konrad F. Bauer should be men-
tioned first, who studied material from Mainz and created a basis of knowl-
edge which is useful to this day (“Mainzer Epigraphik, Beiträge zur mittel-
alterlichen Monumentalschrift,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Buchwesen
und Schriftttum 9 [1926]: 1–45). His work began with early Christian material
and reached to around 1400. He was followed by Rudolf Conrad, Nieder-
rheinische Epigraphik vom achten bis zum dreizehnten Jahrhundert (1931), and
Rudolf Rauh, Paläographie der mainfränkischen Monumentalinschriften (1935),
while Karl Brandi – in connection with the beginnings of the Deutsche
Inschriftenwerk (see above) – produced the summary Grundlegung einer deutschen
Inschriftenkunde (1936, 11–43; see also id., Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1938, 64–8).
Another pioneer of the early period – though in the area of inscription for-
mularies – was Rudolf Zimmerl, “Die Entwicklung der Grabinschriften Ös-
terreichs” (Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Leo-Gesellschaft [1934]: 185–220). In
French scholarship, it was Paul Deschamps who listed and discussed the
development of forms up to the end of the 12th century using a selection of
material from all over France (“Étude sur la paléographie des inscriptions
lapidaires de la fin de l’époque mérovingienne aux dernières années du XIIe
siècle,” Bulletin monumental 88 [1929]: 5–88). Nicolette Gray’s study, written
between the wars but not published until 1948, is still useful today (“Pa-
leography of Latin Inscriptions in the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Centuries in
Italy,” Papers of the British School at Rome 16 [1948]: 38–171). She discusses 161
inscriptions from all over Italy, ordered by period and region, with especial
reference to regional differences and to comparing the products of ‘popular
499 Epigraphy

schools’, i. e., rustic inscriptions, with those on a higher stylistic level. Gray
came from the circle around the venerable representative of early Christian
epigraphy Angelo Silvagni, whose four volume Monumenta epigraphica chris-
tiana saeculo XIII antiquiora quae in Italiae finibus adhuc extant (1943) and its pic-
tures is indispensable for medieval Italian epigraphy. It offers examples from
various Italian towns (Rome, Milan, Pavia, Como, Lucca, Naples, Benevento).
German epigraphic scholarship in the sixties and seventies was domi-
nated by the leading researchers of the great inscription projects, distin-
guished personalities from the first period following the recommissioning
of the inter-academy project. They were Rudolf M. Kloos (Munich), Renate
Neumüllers-Klauser (Heidelberg), and Ernst Schubert (Halle-Berlin),
the former regularly offering epigraphic courses at the University of Munich
since 1967. Apart from the preparation of volumes, the discussion dealt with
questions of editorial practice, the validity of 1650 as a period marker,
but also the criteria used to judge the inscriptions by internal and external
markers. On the French and German sides the first handbook summaries of
the state of the field appeared almost simultaneously in 1979 and 1980, act-
ing both as a stock-taking and the basis of further work (Robert Favreau, Les
Inscriptions médiévales, 1979; and Rudolf M. Kloos, Einführung in die Epigrap-
hik des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 1980, 2nd ed. 1992). The two works
complement each other admirably. The French epigraphic centre in Poitiers
prioritizes, as can be seen in the work of Favreau and his colleagues, the in-
scription as a source on medieval life as influenced by Christianity; that is,
the cultural or history of mentalities aspect clearly dominates (cf. Favreau’s
work as summarized up to 1995 in: Études d’épigraphie médiévale, 2 vols.,
1995). German scholarship, however, has always been dominated by an
orientation toward the auxiliary sciences, i. e., a preoccupation with the
script of the inscriptions as the basis for their dating and where applicable lo-
calization, or where required a judgment as to the “discrimen veri ac falsi,”
and all this as a precondition for all further interpretation of the texts. This
fundamental orientation has been followed by recent surveys: Robert Fav-
reau, L’épigraphie médiévale (1997); and – restricted to the paleographic as-
pect – Walter Koch, Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittelalters und
der früheren Neuzeit. Früh- und Hochmittelalter (2007). In Italy, alongside investi-
gations of individual monuments and places, as in the countless studies of
Ottavio Banti on Pisa (cf. the summary of his works up to 1995 in: Scritti di
storia, diplomatica ed epigrafia, ed. Silio P. P. Scalfati, 1995), there is a trend
toward work which thematizes written culture – codex, charter, and inscrip-
tion as a whole (Gugliemo Cavallo, “Le tipologie della cultura nel riflesso
delle testimonianze scritte,” Bisanzio, Roma e l’Italia nell’ Alto medioevo: Settim-
Epigraphy 500

ane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 34, vol. 2, 1988,
467–516; id., “La cultura scritta a Ravenna tra antichità tarda e alto medio-
evo,” Storia di Ravenna 2: Dall’età Bizantina all’età Ottoniana, ed. Antonio
Carile, 1992, 79–125; Francesco Magistrale, “La cultura scritta latina
e greca: Libri, documenti, iscrizioni,” Federico II. Immagine et potere, ed. Maria
S. Calò Mariani, Raffaella Cassano, 1995, 125–41; id., “Cultura grafica
a Bari fra IX e XI secolo,” Storia di Bari dalla Preistoria al Mille, ed. Raffaella Cas-
sano, Giosue Musca, and Mario Pani, 1989, 411–43; Armando Petrucci,
“Mille anni di forme grafiche nell’area milanese,” Il millennio ambrosiano:
La nuova città dal Comune alla Signoria, ed. Carlo Bertelli, 1989, 140–63). Epi-
graphic interest in the British Isles on a significant scale is restricted almost
entirely to the Anglo-Saxon and Irish Celtic period (6th/7th–9th century).
Cf. a number of larger works under “Selected Bibliography.” One of the spe-
cific features of the insular inscription culture of the period – and this is an
appreciable difference to the situation on the continent – is that the national
language, whether Anglo-Saxon or Celtic can be found in inscriptions in par-
allel to the imported learned language, Latin, and are only gradually driven
out by it. The co-existence of the Latin alphabet, also for texts in the vernacu-
lar – with inscriptions in Germanic runes and Celtic Ogham, which are often
bilingual, is also worthy of notice. It is hardly surprising that stone inscrip-
tions have been, and are, at the centre of epigraphy. However, from the end of
the sixties on, there was a systematic turn towards inscriptions on other sur-
faces (cf. Walter Koch, “Paläographie der Inschriften österreichischer
Fresken bis 1350,” MIÖG 77 [1969]: 1–42; id., “Zur Schrift auf den österrei-
chischen Bildfenstern,” Corpus vitrearum medii aevi, Österreich, vol. 2: Die mittel-
alterlichen Glasgemälde in Niederösterreich, part 1, ed. Eva Frodl-Kraft, 1972,
LI-LVI; Rudolf M. Kloos, “The Paleography of the Inscriptions of San
Marco,” The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, part 1: The Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries, vol. 1, ed. Otto Demus, 1984, 295–307, and 382–85; Clemens
M. M. Bayer, “Versuch über die Gestaltung epigraphischer Schriften mit
besonderem Bezug auf Materialien und Herstellungstechniken: Beobach-
tungen und Folgerungen anhand von Inschriften rhein-maasländischer
Goldschmiedewerke des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts,” Inschrift und Material,
Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik,
Ingolstadt 1997, ed. Walter Koch and Christine Steininger, 1999, 95–125).
The trend continues, as the question of ‘inscription and material,’ and the
varying techniques of production, often connected to the cultural gradient
from West to East are sometimes of paramount importance for the dating of
inscriptions, for instance in the High Middle Ages just prior to the triumph
of Gothic script. It is apparent that painted inscriptions or those in gold- or
501 Epigraphy

enamelwork are considerably more sophisticated than those works in stone

in terms of stylistic developments (cf. Walter Koch, “Auf dem Wege zur go-
tischen Majuskel: Anmerkungen zur epigraphischen Schrift in romanischer
Zeit,” Inschrift und Material, Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalter-
liche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Ingolstadt 1997, ed. Walter Koch and Chris-
tine Steininger, 1999, 225–47). While some publications have recently
appeared on the subject, the question of the closeness – or otherwise – of the
relationship between heading scripts in books and, sometimes, charters, re-
mains a desideratum, the relative priority always requiring reassessment.
The question is particularly interesting with regard to insular inscriptions of
the 7th–9th centuries, as well as those of the Iberian peninsula of the 9th–11th
centuries (some studies are: John Higgitt, “The Stone-Cutter and the Scrip-
torium: Early Medieval Inscriptions in Britain and Ireland,” Epigraphik 1988:
Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Graz, 10.–14. Mai 1988,
ed. Walter Koch, 1990, 149–62; Walter Koch, Auszeichnungsschrift und Epi-
graphik: Zu zwei Westschweizer Inschriften der Zeit um 700, 1994; Jean Vezin,
“Épigraphie et titres dans les manuscrits latins du haut Moyen Âge,” Titres et
articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques: Actes du Colloque International de
Chantilly, 13–15 décembre 1994, éd. par Jean-Claude Fredouille, Marie-Odile
Goulet-Cazé et al., Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 152
[1997], 549–58; Vicente García Lobo, “La escritura publicitaria en la Pen-
ínsula Ibérica: Siglos X–XIII,” Inschrift und Material, Inschrift und Buchschrift:
Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Ingolstadt 1997, ed.
Walter Koch and Christine Steininger, 1999, 151–90; Walter Koch,
“Epigraphik und die Auszeichnungsschrift in Urkunden,” Documenti medi-
evali greci e latini: Studi comparativi: Atti del seminario di Erice 23–29 ottobre 1995,
ed. Giuseppe de Gregorio, and Otto Kresten, 1998, 309–26). Some
studies have also appeared on the subject ‘inscription and printing’ (Franz-
Albrecht Bornschlegel, “Druckschriften und epigraphische Schriften auf
der Schwelle zum Frühdruck am Fallbeispiel Augsburg,” Inschrift und Ma-
terial, Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epi-
graphik, Ingolstadt 1997, ed. Walter Koch and Christine Steininger, 1999,
213–24; Thomas Glöss, Druckschrift und Inschrift: Formzusammenhänge und
wechselseitige Einflüsse von frühen Druckschriften und epigraphischen Schriften der
Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts bis zum Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland,
2006). Epigraphic studies of geographically limited areas within the frame-
work of the large corpora projects make it possible, during periods where
much material exists, to identify many groups of inscriptions which should
probably be regarded as the products of workshops. The identification and
study of workshops whose names are known is an area of particularly pro-
Epigraphy 502

ductive cooperation between art history and epigraphy, especially for the
period of the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern. In not a few uncertain
cases, the identification of characteristic graphical elements which appear
repeatedly is very helpful in attributing monuments to particular masters
(Franz-Albrecht Bornschlegel, “Die Inschriften des Loy Hering und
seiner Werkstatt,” Pinxit / sculpsit / fecit. Kunsthistorische Studien: Festschrift für
Bruno Bushart, ed. Bärbel Hamacher and Christl Karnehm, 1994,
39–50; id., “Stilpluralismus oder Einheitszwang? Die Schriften in süddeut-
schen Bildhauerwerkstätten der frühen Renaissance,” Epigraphik 2000: Neunte
Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Klosterneuburg 9.–12.
Oktober 2000, ed., Gertrud Mras and Renate Kohn, 2006, 39–63; Rüdiger
Fuchs, “Die Schrift der Werkstatt Hans Ruprecht Hoffmanns [†1616] in
Trier,” Sancta Treveris: Beiträge zu Kirchenbau und bildender Kunst im alten Erz-
bistum Trier: Festschrift für Franz J. Ronig zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Em-
bach, Christoph Gerhardt, Wolfgang Schmid, Annette Schommers,
and Hans-Walter Stork, 1999, 147–71; id., “Die Kapitalis-Inschriften von
Trierer Bildhauern des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Epigraphik 2000: Neunte Fachtagung
für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Klosterneuburg 9.–12. Oktober 2000,
ed., Gertrud Mras and Renate Kohn, 2006, 15–37; Ramona Epp, “In-
schriften als Quellen für Leben, Werk und Werkstatt Jörg Gartners,” Passauer
Jahrbuch 47 [2005]: 85–106). With regard to historical periods, recently the
12th and 13th centuries, and the transition between the medieval and the
modern have recently been of particular interest. The first relates to the
Gothicization of script, the phase of transition between the various develop-
ments from Romanesque script to the Gothic majuscule. This was a process
which regionally took genuinely different courses, fairly continuous in Ger-
man-speaking territories, but elsewhere – for instance, southern and central
France, detouring via various whimsical, hypertrophic forms, whose vari-
ations first opened the way to the Gothic majuscule, a script form prevalent
throughout Europe (Walter Koch, “Auf dem Weg zur gotischen Majus-
kel: Anmerkung zur epigraphischen Schrift in romanischer Zeit,” Inschrift
und Material, Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeit-
liche Epigraphik, Ingolstadt 1997, ed. Walter Koch, and Christine Steininger,
1999). The majuscule scripts ‘between’ the Middle Ages and the early-mod-
ern world, that is, after the end of the Gothic Majuscule – in central Europe
around 1400, in Rome around the second quarter of the 15th century, and in
Liguria only later in the second half of the century – and the revival of the
capitalis of antiquity under the banner of humanism first in Italy and then,
much later, north of the Alps, sometimes takes rather curious forms. These
‘early humanist’ scripts are often given an individual form by each master,
503 Epigraphy

and often appear as a conglomerate of pre-Gothic majuscules and modern

capitalis forms. The net result is the co-existence of multiple script forms.
With regard to miniscule, a transition style exists, the ‘gothic-antiqua’ pri-
marily found in Passau’s sphere of influence, which departs from the gothic
miniscule and was eventually replaced, a few decades later, by the modern
antiqua miniscule (Barbara Treli ńska, “Epigraficzna kapita a protorenes-
ansowa w Polce,” Tradycje i perspektywy nauk pomocniczych historii w Polce,
ed. Mieczyslawa Rakosza, 1995, 209–22; Ottavio Banti, “Dall’ epigrafica
Romanica alle Pre-umanistica: La scrittura epigrafica dal XII alla fine del XV
secolo a Pisa,” Scrittura e civiltà 24 [2000]: 61–97; Walter Koch, “Das 15. Jahr-
hundert in der Epigraphik: Die Schriften ‘zwischen’ Mittelalter und Neuzeit
in Italien und nördlich der Alpen,” Libri, documenti, epigrafi medievali, possi-
bilità di studi comparativi: Atti del convegno internazionale di studio dell’ Associazione
italiana dei Paleographi e Diplomatisti, Bari 2.–5. ottobre 2000, ed., Francesco
Magistrale, Corinna Drago, and Paolo Fioretti 2002, 587–606; id.,
“Variationsfreudige Majuskel,” Mediterraneo, Mezzogiorno, Europa: Studi in onore
di Cosimo D. Fonseca, ed. Giancarlo Ardenna and Hubert Houben, 2004,
621–40; id., “Epigraphische Vielfalt am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neu-
zeit,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 54 [2000]: 367–76;
Ramona Epp, “Eine epigraphische Minuskel zwischen Mittelalter und Neu-
zeit: Die Gotico-Antiqua in den Inschriften,” Archiv für Diplomatik 47/48
[2001/2002]: 167–221). Characteristic of the growing academic professional-
ism of the epigraphy of post antiquity and the increase of knowledge is a
gratifying growth of international networks, which continues apace, and has
the ultimate goal of a European comparative discipline. The process is driven
by international congresses which are wholly or partly dedicated to inscrip-
tions. This is particularly true of the German inscription project, which has
been holding regular conferences with foreign participants since 1980,
usually on clearly defined themes. Furthermore, congresses and seminars on
medieval epigraphy have taken place in Rome, Erice, Poitiers, Oxford, León
and Prague. Most of the proceedings, with contributions from leading epi-
graphicists, most of whom are involved in the large-scale projects, and repre-
sentatives of related fields, have been published and make clear the progress
made in medieval and modern epigraphy, and the continual opening of new
themes (Fachtagung für lateinische Epigraphik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit.
Landshut, 18.–20. Juli 1980, ed. Rudolf M. Kloos, 1982; Epigraphik 1982: Fach-
tagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Klagenfurt, 30. September –
3. Oktober 1982, ed. Walter Koch, 1983; Deutsche Inschriften: Fachtagung für
mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Lüneburg 1984, ed. Karl Stackmann,
Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philol.-hist.
Epigraphy 504

Kl. 3. Folge Nr. 151, 1986; Deutsche Inschriften: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche
und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, ed. Harald Zimmermann, Abhandlungen der
Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Kl. der Akademie der Wissenschaften
und Literatur zu Mainz Jahrgang 1987, Nr. 12, 1987; Epigraphik 1988: Fachta-
gung für mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Graz, 10.–14. Mai 1988. Refe-
rate und Round-Table-Gespräche, ed. Walter Koch, Denkschriften der Phil.-
hist. Kl. der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 213 = Veröffent-
lichungen der Kommission für die Herausgabe der Inschriften des deut-
schen Mittelalters 2, 1990; Vom Quellenwert der Inschriften: Vorträge und Berichte
der Fachtagung Esslingen 1990, ed. Renate Neumüllers-Klauser, Supple-
mente zu den Sitzungsberichten der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, Phil.-hist. Kl. 7, 1992; Inschriften bis 1300: Probleme und Aufgaben ihrer
Erforschung. Referate der Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Epi-
graphik, ed. Helga Giersiepen and Raymund Kottje, Abhandlungen der
Nordrhein-westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 94, 1995; Inschrift
und Material: Inschrift und Buchschrift: Fachtagung für mittelalterliche und neuzeit-
liche Epigraphik, Ingolstadt 1997, ed. Walter Koch and Christine Steininger,
Abhandlungen der Phil.-hist. Kl. der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften NF 117, 1999; Epigraphik 2000: Neunte Fachtagung für mittelalterliche
und neuzeitliche Epigraphik, Klosterneuburg 9.–12. Oktober 2000, Denkschriften
der Phil.-hist. Kl. der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 335 =
Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 10, 2006 [the meeting was
dedicated to the early modern period]). The proceedings of the last two con-
ferences – Halberstadt 2004 (Theme: “Inscriptions and European Treas-
ures”) and Greifswald 2007 (Theme: “Traditions, Caesuras, Fresh Starts:
Inscriptions of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period;” the event
was mostly concerned with the Baltic regions) – have not yet been published.
(On proceedings of conferences outside German-language scholarship, see:
Epigrafia medievale greca e latina. Ideologia e funzione: Atti del seminario di Erice
12–18 settembre 1991, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Cyril Mango, Biblioteca
del “Centro per il collegamento degli studi medievali e umanistici in Um-
bria,” 11, 1995; Épigraphie et iconographie: Actes du Colloque tenu à Poitiers les 5–8
octobre 1995, ed. Robert Favreau, Civilisation Médiévale, 2, 1996; Roman,
Runes and Ogham: Medieval Inscriptions in the Insular World and on the Continent,
ed. John Higgitt, Katherine Forsyth, and David N. Parsons, 2001;
Documenti medievali greci e latini: Studi comparativi: Atti del seminario di Erice
23–29 ottobre 1995, ed. Giuseppe de Gregorio and Otto Kresten, 1998;
Libri, documenti, epigrafi medievali: Possibilità di studi comparativi: Atti del Convegno
internazionale dell’Assoziazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti, Bari, 2–5 ot-
tobre 2000, ed. Francesco Magistrale, Corinna Drago, and Paolo Fio-
505 Epigraphy

retti, 2002; Epigraphica & Sepulcralia 1: Sborník příspěvkù ze zasedání k

problematice sepulkrálních památek pořadných Ústavem Dějin Kmění
AVMR v letech 2000 až 2004, ed. Dalibor Prix and Jiri Rohá ček, 2005). The
Epigraphische Forschungs- und Dokumentationszentrum (center for epigraphic
research and documentation) of the University of Munich, founded in the
1980s within the School of History (Dept. of the auxiliary sciences) regards
itself as a service point for the discipline. It aims to catalogue and where pos-
sible acquire works published on the subject throughout Europe, both that
directly relating to epigraphy as well, in selection, historical and art histori-
cal works where inscriptions play a central role. With what is now the largest
library on medieval and modern epigraphy, the center is the first port of
call for research trips and enquiries from Germany and abroad. Literature
reviews are published at intervals (see “Selected Bibliography”), which
arrange and discuss publications under eight thematic headings: 1) Confer-
ence proceedings, handbooks, large-scale summaries. 2) National edition
series. 3) Other editions. 4) Epigraphic methodology, aims, projects.
5) Scripts. 6) Language, formularies, meter, ‘mentalité.’ 7) Individual monu-
ments or groups of monuments in historical perspective. 8) Epigraphy and
art history, the applied arts, studies of objects and restoration questions.
These reviews have become a means of international communication,
and show the progress made in research, as well as the growing appreciation
throughout Europe of inscriptions as a varied and spontaneous source on the
life of earlier ages.

Select Bibliography
Rudolf M. Kloos, “Epigraphische Bemerkungen zum Aachener Karlssiegel,” Zeit-
schrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 82 (1972): 5–10; Harald Drös, “Siegelepigraphik im
Umfeld des ältesten Kölner Stadtsiegels,” Archiv für Diplomatik 39 (1993): 149–99;
Jürgen Sydow, “Paläographie der Kölner Münzinschriften des Mittelalters,” Bonner
Jahrbücher 149 (1949): 239–86; Rudolf M. Kloos, Einführung in die Epigraphik des Mit-
telalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980,
2nd ed. 1992; with an excellent bibliography); Robert Favreau, Les Inscriptions médi-
évales: Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental, 35 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979); id.,
L’Épigraphie médiévale. L’Atelier du Médiéviste, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997; with an excel-
lent bibliography); Nicolette Gray, A History of Lettering (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986);
Helga Giersiepen and Clemens Bayer, Inschriften, Schriftdenkmäler – Techniken, Ge-
schichte, Anlässe (Niedernhausen/Ts.: Falken, 1995); Vicente García Lobo and Encar-
nación Martín López, De Epigrafia Medieval. Introducción y Album (León: n.p., n.y.);
Walter Koch, Inschriftenpaläographie des abendländischen Mittelalters und der früheren Neu-
zeit: Früh- und Hochmittelalter (Vienna and Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2007; with an excel-
lent bibliography); Rudolf M. Kloos, “Die deutschen Inschriften: Ein Bericht über
das deutsche Inschriftenunternehmen,” Studi Medievali 3a serie XIV, I (1973): 335–62;
Walter Koch, “50 Jahre Deutsches Inschriftenwerk (1934–1984): Das Unternehmen
Eschatology 506

der Akademien und die epigraphische Forschung,” Deutsche Inschriften: Fachtagung für
mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik. Lüneburg 1984. Vorträge und Berichte, ed. Karl
Stackmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 15–45; Robert Favreau,
“L’Épigraphie médiévale: Naissance et dévéloppement d’une discipline,” Académie des
inscriptions & belles lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l’année (Paris: Boccard, 1989),
328–63; Walter Koch, “Das Schweizer Inschriftenwerk im Rahmen der europäischen
Epigraphik,” Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 61 (2004):
45–59; id., “Die mittelalterliche und neuzeitliche Epigraphik: Das Werden einer
neuen Historischen Hilfswissenschaft,” AfD 50 (2004): 547–77; id., Literaturbericht
zur mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Epigraphik (1976–1984) (Munich: Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica, 1987; with an introduction reviewing the discipline’s history);
Walter Koch (with contributions from Franz-Albrecht Bornschlegel, Albert
Dietl, and Maria Glaser), Literaturbericht zur mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Epigra-
phik (1985–1991) (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1994); Walter Koch,
Maria Glaser, and Franz-Albrecht Bornschlegel, Literaturbericht zur mittelalter-
lichen und neuzeitlichen Epigraphik (1992–1997) (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung,
2000); Walter Koch and Franz-Albrecht Bornschlegel, Literaturbericht zur mittel-
alterlichen und neuzeitlichen Epigraphik (1998–2002) (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhand-
lung, 2005).

Walter Koch

Eschatology

A. Definition
Eschatology (from Greek “ta eschata,” the last things) will here be under-
stood as collective term for all conceptions concerning the life after death
current in Latin Christendom between the age of migration and the Protes-
tant Reformation. During that epoch, death, judgment, Heaven and Hell
were known as the four last things, quattuor novissima, de veer uitersten, etc. The
idea of our present dwelling in this ‘vale of tears’ being but a short time of
examination for the everlasting life to come shaped the mentalities of our
forefathers much more intensively than we can imagine today. The existence
of the Church as organisation and of monasticism as institution, both con-
sidering themselves and being considered by most lay people as necessary
intermediaries between man and the divinity, depended most on the sugges-
tion that priests and monks possessed the means of securing a place in
Heaven for the believers. This they would do only in exchange for earthly
goods, i. e., administer the sacraments and pray for the dead. Eschatological
beliefs therefore had a most intensive impact not only on medieval mental-
507 Eschatology

ities, but on economics and power structures as well (as has been, several er-
rors notwithstanding, convincingly demonstrated by Robert B. Ekelund et
al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm, 1996; Achim Mayer,
Fegefeuer und Bettelorden: Päpstliches Marketing im 13. Jahrhundert, 1996).
Most modern investigations into this subject of the medieval history
of religiosity, however, usually do not have an interpretative character, but
try, in the tradition of positivism, to collect and classify the material. This is
sound, because much less work has been done in that field than, e. g., on the
medieval epic, the iconography of the saints, or the political theories etc. It is
self-evident that for this subject matter the period which attracts the major-
ity of scholars from different disciplines are the late Middle Ages, which pro-
vide extensive source material.
Perhaps the psychological and social functions of fantasies of a life after
death, when the good will be rewarded and the bad ones be punished, are
so obvious that psychohistory does not see a particular need to deal with this
subject. For the historian of medieval mentalities, however, it would be vital
to integrate these all-pervasive concepts into every single kind of his recon-
structions of that period.

B. Dying
The shifts in the situation and conception of dying throughout the various
ages have become one of the favourite themes for the history of mentalities
after the general books by Philipp Ariès and Jean Delumeau, which, how-
ever, are not well informed concerning the epochs before the 16th century
(Ariel Guiance, Muertes medievales: Mentalidades medievales. Un estado de la cues-
tion sobre la historia de la muerte en la Edad Media, 1989; T. Worcester, “In the
Face of Death: Jean Delumeau on Late-Medieval Fears and Hopes,” Death and
Dying in the Middle Ages, ed. Edelgard E. DuBruck and Barbara I. Gusick,
1999, 157–74). Pre-Christian attitudes can be reconstructed via the archae-
ological finds and those Old Norse texts that point to the time before conver-
sion (G. Steinsland, “Antropologiske og eskatologiske ideer i förkristen
nordisk religion,” Collegium medievale 3 [1990]: 59–71). For the Middle Ages,
it has become clear that usually people died at home, surrounded by their
family, not separated in medical care (Peter Dinzelbacher, “Sterben/Tod –
Mittelalter,” Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte, ed. id.,1993, 244–60, now see
the 2nd ed. 2008; in how far there was a new sentiment of privacy at the end
of the Middle Ages remains to be seen, cf. Christoph Kiening, “Privatheit
und Innerlichkeit: Figuren des Todes an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit,” Das
Öffentliche und Private in der Vormoderne, ed. Gert Melville et al., 1998,
527–48). More and more, Christian rites surrounded the act of dying (Fre-
Eschatology 508

deric Paxton, Christianizing Death, 1996), though pagan uses were never
completely eradicated (cf. The Pagan Middle Ages, ed. Ludo J. R. Milis, 1991/
1998). Given the much more detailed pictures of the afterlife which the new
religion communicated to the people, death and the realms of the dead prob-
ably figured more strongly in Christian thinking than in that of classical
or Germanic antiquity. In the hour of death, spiritual leaders tried to give
their fellow-Christians exemplars of a “pia mors” (M. Lauwers, “La Mort et
le corps des saints: La scène de la mort dans les Vitae du haut Moyen Age,”
Le Moyen Age 94 [1988]: 21–50), but even repenting criminals did the same
(Valentin Groebner, Ungestalten: Die visuelle Kultur der Gewalt im Mittelalter,
2003, 111).
There is a great number of general overviews on the subject, e. g., Le Senti-
ment de la mort au moyen âge, ed. C. Sutto, 1979; Death in the Middle Ages,
ed. H. Braet and W. Verbeke, 1982; Dies irae: Death in the Middle Ages, ed.
J. Taylor, 1984; Tod im Mittelalter, ed. Norbert Ohler and Arno Borst et
al., 1993; D. Alexandre-Bidon et al., A Réveiller les morts: La Mort au quotidien
dans l’Occident médiéval, 1993; du guoter tôt: Sterben im Mittelalter: Ideal und Reali-
tät, ed. Markus Wenninger, 1998; D. Alexandre-Bidon, La Mort au
Moyen Age, 1998.
Though a general set of expectations was shared by all Christians, one
must not marginalize the individual, temporal, and social differences (for
the medieval sovereigns, see Medievales 31, 1996; all contributions dedicated
to the theme ‘La mort des grands’; see also Der Tod des Mächtigen, ed. Lothar
Kolmer, 1997). One of the most remarkable studies dealing with those
attitudes in front of death typical for a certain community, the followers of
the Devotio Moderna, is still Leen Breure, Doodsbeleving en levenshouding: Een
historisch-psychologisch studie betreffende de Moderne Devotie in het Ijsselgebied in
de 14e en 15e eeuw (1987). The Carthusians have created an especial interest
in the last hour as an English manuscript of that provenience dealing with
all sorts of death-motifs demonstrates (e. g., see James A. Hogg, “Morbid
Preoccupation with Mortality?” Analecta Cartusiana 117.2 [1986]: 139–89. Be-
cause of its broad overview, Ariel Guiance, Los disursos sobre la muerte en la Cas-
tilla medieval [s. VII–XV], 1998, can be recommended as a regional study. Much
shorter is Arnved Nedkvitne, Mötet med döden i norrön medeltid, 2004).
The memento mori and the ars moriendi were at first monastic, later on gen-
eral themes for pious meditations which were supposed to help to produce
contrition at the hour of death, considered, during the later Middle Ages,
more and more the decisive point of man’s destiny in the other world (cf. Ger-
hild Scholz Williams, The Vision of Death: A Study of the Memento Mori Ex-
pressions … of the 11th and 12th Centuries, 1976. As an example of the ars moriendi
509 Eschatology

may serve: Scone leeringe om salich te sterven: Een Middelnederlandse Ars moriendi,
uitegeg, geannoteerd en ingeleid door, ed. B. de Geus and J. van der Heiden,
1985. A collection of texts from ancient Rome to the Protestant Reformation
is presented by Jacques Laager, Ars moriendi, 1996).
Studies on dying in diverse literary genera have not proved to be particu-
larly helpful, but can be used for collecting source-material (e. g., Edelgard
Dubruck, The Theme of Death in French Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance, 1964; Philipp Tristram, Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English
Literature, 1976; B. Gottschling, Die Todesdarstellung in den Islendingasogur,
1986; Claude Blum, La Représentation de la mort dans la litterature francaise de la
Renaissance, I, 2nd ed. 1989; Alois Haas, Todesbilder im Mittelalter, 1989; Daniel
Schäfer, Texte vom Tod: Zur Darstellung und Sinngebung des Todes im Spätmittel-
alter, 1995).
Many regional studies deal with last wills as serial sources which are
unambiguous testimonies of the attitudes toward death and of the fear of
Purgatory and Hell. They show, among other things, which religious orders
might be preferred for donations in exchange for masses, which churches in
a certain town would be most searched after for being interred in, how many
percent of the legacies were intended for the family, for monks and nuns, for
secular priests, and so on (to quote a few examples: Heinz-Dieter Heimann,
“‘Testament’, ‘Ordenung’,‘Giffte under den Lebendigen’: Bemerkungen zu
Form und Funktion deutscher Königs- und Fürstentestamente sowie Seel-
gerätstiftungen,” Ecclesia et Regnum, ed. Dieter Berg and Hans-W. Goetz,
1989, 273–84; A. Bejarano Rubio, El hombre y la muerte: Los testamentos mur-
cianos bajomedievales, 1990).

C. Death
The personification of death is an intellectual invention of the later Middle
Ages, appearing at first in Latin poems of the second half of the 12th century,
becoming more frequent in the 13th century, and entering iconography only
after 1300 (L. E. Jordan, “The Iconography of Death in Western Medieval
Art to 1350,” Ph.D. diss. Notre Dame, 1980). Whilst the famous triumph of
death at Pisa is a work shortly before the Plague (Friederike Wille, Die Todes-
allegorie im Camposanto in Pisa, 2002), the epidemics did reinforce the occu-
pation with this sinister figure (Peter Dinzelbacher, Angst im Mittelalter:
Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung: Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikonographie, 1996).
The late 15th century were the heydays of this allegory both in art, literature,
and on the stage, developing not only the skeleton shaped death but also a
set of special motives as death riding on an oxen, etc. (Anna Rooth, Döden
och den svarta oxen, 1985). Best known are the dances of death – more correctly:
Eschatology 510

of the dead with the living – mostly painted on the walls of churches and
cemeteries, but existing also in dramatized versions. They seem to be an
inexhaustible topic, as demonstrated by regular congresses of the inter-
national society for their study (e. g., Il trionfo della morte e le danze macabre
dagli Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale tenutosi in Clusone, 1997; Den Tod tanzen?
Tagungsband des Totentanzkongresses Stift Admont 2001, ed. Renate Hausner
and Winfried Schwab, 2002). For a bibliography, see: Hans Ferdinand
Massmann, Literatur der Totentänze, rpt. of the 1840–1850 ed., with an
epilogue, and bibliography of the dances of death 1830–1976 by Rainer
Taepper, 2002. The fullest studies remain, however, Stephan Cosacchi,
Makabertanz, 1965; and Reinhold Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes,
1980; to be supplemented by Hélène Bertrand Utzinger, Itinéraires des
danses macabres, 1996; Brigitte Schulte, Die deutschsprachigen spätmittelalter-
lichen Totentänze: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Inkunabel “Des dodes
dantz,” Lübeck 1489, 1990; and Andreas Mühling, Der Tod tanzt mit dem Leben:
Totentänze des Spätmittelalters und ihre theologische Deutung des Lebens, 2005. It
goes without saying that the concept of the macabre, so typical for late-medi-
eval art, is the background for this phenomenon (Roberto Gigliucci, Lo spet-
tacolo della morte: Estetica e ideologia del macabro nella letteratura medievale, 1994).

D. Burial
For the early Middle Ages, we are very well informed on all manners of inter-
ment and the objects with which the corpses were provided in the hope of
their usefulness in the other world (cf. e. g., Bonnie Effros, Merovingian Mor-
tuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages, 2003). There is, how-
ever, no unanimity about the question of how characteristic the diverse grave
goods were for a certain ethnic group.
Many descriptions of the ceremonies surrounding the interment of a
person of a high social rank have been conserved, be it for a certain city (Leo-
nor Gómez Nieto, Ritos funerarios en el Madrid medieval, 1991), be it for one of
the great persons in history (a south-east European example is analyzed by
Johannes Grabmayer, “Das Opfer war der Täter: Das Attentat von Belgrad
1456 – über Sterben und Tod Ulrichs II. von Cilli,” MIÖG 111 [2003]:
286–316). There is no need to underline the fact that we are best informed
about the ceremonies celebrated for the religious and secular leaders, the
popes (Agosto Paravicini Bagliani, Le corps du pape, 1997; Wendy J. Rear-
don, The Deaths of the Popes, 2004), and the kings (F. Sabaté, Lo senyor rei est
mort! Actitud i cerimònes dels municipes Catalans baix-medievals devant las mort del
monarca, 1994; Hartmut Jericke, Begraben und vergessen? Tod und Grablege der
deutschen Kaiser und Könige, 2005). The lament for the dead always had been
511 Eschatology

also a topic of learned lyrics, and is well documented in the vernacular

tongues as well (e. g., Albrecht Classen, “Death Rituals and Manhood in
the Middle High German Poems The Lament, Johannes von Tepl’s The
Plowman, and Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring,” Grief and Gender 700–1700, ed.
Jennifer Vaught and Lynne Dickson Bruckner, 2003, 33–47), whereas
preachers spoke only in honor of the great (e. g., D. L. D’Avray, Death and the
Prince: Memorial Preaching Before 1350, 1994).
For the central and late Middle Ages, the inscriptions and tomb slabs
are the richest sources for a person’s concrete ‘memoria,’ being addressed to
the living, among whom the ‘glory’ of the dead should be preserved. An over-
view has been published by Hans Körner (Grabmonumente des Mittelalters,
1997), but there appear, of course, continually new monographs on the local
level (cf., e. g., the collection edited by Wilhelm Maier et. al., Grabmäler:
Tendenzen der Forschung an Beispielen aus Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, 2000).
Of course, also the place of interment has been studied (cf. Michel Lauwers,
“Le cemetière dans le Moyen Âge latin: lieu sacré, saint et religieux,” Annales:
Histoire: Sciences sociales 54/5 [1999]: 1047–72). But ‘memoria’ is also a term
used by modern medievalists for all possible positive ways of dealing with
the dead, the study of the varied forms of keeping alive their memory, being
intensively promoted above all in Germany by the school of Otto Oexle
(cf. his Memoria in der Gesellschaft und in der Kultur des Mittelalters: Modernes
Mittelalter, ed. Joachim Heinzle, 1999, 297–323; cf. also Michel Lauwers,
La mémoire des ancêtres, la souci des morts: Morts, rites et société au Moyen Âge,
1997).

E. Visions of the Other World

For medieval people, the main sources of information on the life after death
would have been the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the visions of contempor-
aries, from those of the Frankish monks Barontus and Wetti of Reichenau
to that of the Irish knight Tundal (1148, the best known text of this genus,
ca. 200 manuscripts still extant today) or of the monk Edmund of Eynsham
and of the peasant Gottschalk (both late 12th c.). Contrary to common
opinion, the revelations of the late-medieval female mystics do not contain
only images of heavenly and symbolic spaces, but also extensive and ex-
tremely sadistic descriptions of the punishments in Purgatory and Hell, such
as provided by Hildegard of Bingen (Barbara Newman, “Hildegard of
Bingen and the ‘Birth of Purgatory’,” Mystics Quarterly 19.3 [1993]: 90–97),
Mechthild of Magdeburg (Katharina Bochsler, Ich han da inne ungehyrtú ding
gesehen: Die Jenseitsvisionen Mechthilds von Magdeburg in der Tradition der mittel-
alterlichen Visionsliteratur, 1997), and, much more detailed, Bridget of Sweden
Eschatology 512

and Francesca of Rome, whose eschatological ideas still remain to be ex-

plored.
Even if mirroring authentic experiences, the structure and details of these
showings, when recorded by an ‘amanuensis,’ were influenced markedly by
apocalyptic apocrypha (Jewish and early Christian, like the otherworldly
journeys ascribed to the apostles Peter and Paul), for which the volumes
of the specialized yearbook Apocrypha: Le Champ des apocryphes (1990–) are in-
dispensable.
Though singular studies on the vast visionary literature have from time
to time been published already by 18th century theologians and 19th century
literary scholars, especially by those interested in the “precursors” of the
Divine Comedy (the fullest overview remains August Rüegg, Die Jenseitsvor-
stellungen vor Dante und die übrigen literarischen Voraussetzungen der “Divina Com-
media”, vol. I, 1945; the most recent one, albeit concentrated on Italian texts,
is Guiseppe Tardiola, I viaggiatori del Paradiso: Mistici, visionari, sognatori alla
ricerca dell’Aldilà prima di Dante, 1993), the subject has not been – and still is
not sufficiently – recognized in its importance for the history of mentalities
(notwithstanding the full monograph of Peter Dinzelbacher, Vision und
Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter, 1981; and id., Mittelalterliche Visionsliteratur: Eine
Anthologie, 1989; see also his “Vision Literature,” Medieval Latin, ed. Frank A.
Mantello and A. Rigg, 1996, 688–93; cf. id., “La Littérature des visions au
Moyen Age: un document historique,” Revue historique 275 [1986]: 289–305).
Even when both Jacques Le Goff (“The Learned and Popular Dimensions
of Journeys in the Otherworld in the Middle Ages,” Understanding Popular
Culture, ed. Steven L. Kaplan and W. De Reuyter, 1984, 19–37) and Aaron
Gurevich (“Per un’antropologia delle visioni ultraterrene nella cultura
occidentale del Medioevo,” La semiotica nei paesi slavi, ed. C. Prevignano,
1979, 443–62; id., “Oral and Written Culture in the Middle Ages: Two ‘Peas-
ant Visions’ of the Late Twelfth-Early Thirteenth Centuries,” New Literary
History 16 [1984]: 51–66) declared their interest in this matter, only a few his-
torians would accept these texts as valuable enough to be considered in his-
torical studies. At least one volume of the Typologie de sources du Moyen Age occi-
dental (57) by Peter Dinzelbacher (Revelationes, 1991) has been dedicated to
this type of texts as a historical source. The best bibliography on the subject
of the eschatological visions, though rather specialized, is Robert Easting,
Visions of the Other World in Middle English (1997); many details are given
by Claude Carozzi, Le Voyage de l’âme dans l’au-delà d’après la littérature latine
(Ve-XIIIe s.) (1994); (cf. also the collective volume Le ‘visiones’ nella cultura medi-
evale, 1990; and J. Rubio Tovar, “Literatura de visiones en la Edad Media ro-
mánica: Una imagen del Otro Mundo,” Etudes de lettres 4. ser. 3 [1992]: 53–73).
513 Eschatology

Therefore, the bulk of editions and secondary publications comes from

literary historians, who usually overstress the part of fiction and topoi in this
genus, minimizing the actual experiences of seers and mystics (Peter Din-
zelbacher, “Zur Interpretation erlebnismystischer Texte des Mittel-
alters,” ed. id.: Mittelalterliche Frauenmystik, 1993, 304–31). The interest in
the dissemination of the manuscripts of eschatological visions has been
stimulated above all by Nigel Palmer (Visio Tnugdali: The German and Dutch
Translations and their Circulation in the Later Middle Ages, 1982). The most recent
critical editions in this field are: Th. Silverstein, A. Hilhorst, Apocalypse
of Paul, 1997 (the long Latin versions); L. Jirousková, Die Visio Pauli, 2006
(medieval Latin, German, and Czech texts); La visione di Tungdal, ed. Marg-
herita Lecco, 1998 (medieval French translations); Die ‘Vision des Tnugdalus’
Albers von Windberg, ed. Brigitte Pfeil, 1999 (the Latin text, without the Ger-
man; the interpretation fills the bulk of this book!). Though most manu-
scripts have not been adorned by illuminations, there is nevertheless a splen-
did exception, viz. the French Tundalus, made for Margaret, King Eduard’s
IV sister, by the painter Simon Marmion (†1489): Thomas Kren, ed., Marga-
ret of York, Simon Marmion, and ‘The Visions of Tondal’ (1992).
Not a few visions contain descriptions of the divine punishments which
persons of political importance have (or will have) to endure. That often has
been used for propagandistic aims, so by Carolingian writers (Paul Edward
Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire, 1994), as well as
during the investiture controversy (Roland Pauler, “Visionen als Propagan-
damittel der Anhänger Gregors VII.,” Mediaevistik 7 [1994]: 155–79), and in
the contest between the popes in Rome and Agivnon, as both parties were
supported by their prophets (Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints,
and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417, 2006).
One can gain a wealth of information about the knowledge of popular
expectations regarding the hereafter by analyzing visions of peasants, as
demonstrated by Peter Dinzelbacher’s articles “verba haec tam mistica ex ore
tam ydiote glebonis: Selbstaussagen des Volkes über seinen Glauben, unter be-
sonderer Berücksichtigung der Offenbarungsliteratur und der Vision Gotts-
chalks” (Volksreligion im hohen und späten Mittelalter, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher
and Dieter Bauer,1990, 57–99), and id., “Bäuerliche Berichte über das
Leben in der anderen Welt” (du guoter tôt: Sterben im Mittelalter: Ideal und Real-
ität, ed. Markus Wenninger, 1998, 255–71).
It should be noted that this corpus of texts is of interest to modern than-
tology as well, given that the medieval visions of the other world have been
near death experiences, psychologically not different from those of reani-
mated patients which have received so much attention through the seminal
Eschatology 514

work of R. Moody Jr. (Caroline Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-

Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times, 1987; and, independently, Peter
Dinzelbacher, An der Schwelle zum Jenseits: Sterbevisionen im interkulturellen
Vergleich, 1989). The evidence from different cultures makes it impossible to
explain similarities as nothing but literary topoi (as was the opinion of Marc
Van Uytfanghe, “Les Visiones du très haut Moyen Age et les récentes ‘ex-
périences de mort temporaire’,” Instrumenta Patristica 23 [1991]: 447–82; con-
tinued in Sacris Erudiri 33 [1992/1993]: 135–82).

F. The Realms of the Other World

Though understandably denied by modern theologians, the common
opinion of all orthodox medieval writers was (in concordance with St. Au-
gustine) that only a small number of human beings was predestined for sal-
vation, whereas the vast majority (all pagans, heretics, and unrepentant
sinners) would go to Hell. The evidence has been collected already by Fran-
çois Xavier Godts, De paucitate salvandorum quid docuerunt sancti (3rd ed.,
1899). According to the norm setting Thomas Aquinus, “very few will be re-
dempted […] most fail salvation […] (Summa Theologiae I, q. 23, 7, resp. ad 3).
It is small wonder, then, to find much more evidence for fear of Hell than for
anticipated joy of bliss. Regularly, eschatological texts and paintings treat
the underworld with much more detail and fascination than the regions of
the righteous. In both cases, however, one can often recognize a mirror of the
social groups of the seer’s or writer’s time in the descriptions of the transcen-
dent realms: clerics and lay people, for example, though the main grouping
was structured according to virtues (virgins, martyrs, confessors …) or to
vices (like in Dante’s Divine Comedy) (see Peter Dinzelbacher, “Klassen
und Hierarchien im Jenseits,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 12 [1979]: 20–40; id.,
“Reflexionen irdischer Sozialstrukturen in mittelalterlichen Jenseitsschild-
erungen,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 61 [1979]: 16–34).

G. Heaven
In medieval imagination, the land of the blessed was constructed with
elements drawn from the Bible and from the many eschatological apocrypha
in circulation (Mary Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys: A Study of the Motive in
Hellenistic Jewish Literature, 1984). Both in the literature and painting of the
era, its descriptions were significantly less vivid than the places of punish-
ment. Here all structures are well ordered and extremely calm, whereas the
devil’s home is a place of utmost chaos (Jerôme Baschet, “Image du
désordre et ordre de l’image. Représentations médiévales de l’enfer,” Médi-
évales 2 [1983]: 15–36; Margherita Lecco, “Ordine” e “disordine” nelle rap-
515 Eschatology

presentazioni medievali del Aldilà,” Quaderni medievali 20 [1985]: 133–43).

This restricted fascination may be the reason for the rather limited quantity
of modern works on medieval Heaven, too (cf. the works by Oechslin Weibel
and by Dinzelbacher, quoted below).
Who enters this region? Before resurrection, the saints only; after the
Judgment, all good Christians. But prior to humans, this realm has been
populated by the angels faithful to God. Their nine choruses (a conception of
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita) have interested both art historians (Barbara
Bruderer Eichberg, Les neuf choeurs angéliques: Origine et evolution du thème
dans l’art du Moyen Âge, 1998) and, because of their singing and playing, musi-
cologists (Reinhold Hammerstein, Die Musik der Engel, 1962, containing
many illustrations; Hubert Herkommer, “Sphärenklang und Höllenlärm,
Lächeln oder Fratzen,” Engel, Teufel und Dämonen, ed. id., 2006, 199–224).
A controversy about the “visio beatifica” (do the righteous souls see God im-
mediately after death or only after the Last Judgment?), initiated in 1334 by
Pope John XXII., did affect only the learned specialists (Frans van Liere,
“Johannes XXII en het conflict over het moment van de visio beatifica,”
Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 44 [1990]: 208–22).
In accordance with the Revelation, Heaven was often imagined as ‘Hie-
rusalem caelestis,’ the many-towered, shining city of God (Piere Prigent,
La Jérusaleme Céleste, 2003), and as such it was seen in many a medieval
shewing, with many symbolic details; e. g., by Elisabeth of Schönau, † 1164
(Die Werke der Elisabeth von Schönau, trans. Peter Dinzelbacher, 2006).
(Cf. J. Emmerson, H. Feiss, ed., Imagining Heaven in the Middle Ages, 2000.
Collective publications by art historians comprise: The Iconography of Heaven,
ed. C. Davidson, 1994; and Der Himmel über der Erde, ed. Friedrich Möbius,
1995.)

H. Hell
Based on the Bible (parable of Lazarus; Revelation) and a bag of apocrypha
(Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian
Literature, 1983; Alan E. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribu-
tion in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds, 1993) medieval people ‘knew’ that
God had created Hell as the most terrible torture chamber he could think of
in order to punish there those angels who had sided with Lucifer in the great
rebellion against Him after creation. It used to be located in the very center of
earth, the volcanoes being regarded as entrances thereto.
Hell was omnipresent in the religious didactics of the epoch (theological
and devotional writings, visions, preaching, art, theater, etc.), but figured
in satires, too (D. D. R. Owen, The Vision of Hell: Infernal Journeys in Medieval
Eschatology 516

French Literature, 1970; H. Thieulin-Pardo, “La Vision de l’enfer et de

la damnation dans les manuels de confession, Castille, XIVe–XVe siècles,”
Enfers et damnations dans le monde hispanique et hispano-américain, ed. Jean-Paul
Duviols et al., 1996, 213–30).
As all Romanesque and Gothic churches possessed reliefs or wall paint-
ings with the Last Judgment, and preachers loved to speak about it, every-
body was confronted with this dogma. (A rich source for pictorial represen-
tations of this place in wall paintings is Jerôme Baschet, Les justices de
l’au-delà, Les représentations de l’enfer en France et en Italie (XIIe – XVe s.), 1993;
whereas The Iconography of Hell, ed. Clifford Davidson and Thomas H.
Seiler, 1992, offers only a few studies from the point of art history and
drama.) Rarely have musicologist written on the cacophonies with which the
damned are tortured, the standard work remaining Reinhold Hammer-
stein, Diabolus in musica (1974), who offers many illustrations of devilish
musicians, too (Hieronymus Bosch!).

I. Purgatory
Until the seminal book by Jacques Le Goff, La naissance du purgatoire (1981),
the place of cleansing for those Christians who were neither very good nor
very bad – a characteristic element of Catholicism in contrast both to the
teachings of the Early Church and of the reformed churches – had been
studied exclusively by theologians who, however, used to treat this subject in
an ahistoric dogmatic and apologetic way. Le Goff was the first medievalist
to draw attention to the significance of the “third place” between Heaven
and Hell for the history of mentalities, comparing this new structure to
the more differentiated society of the high Middle Ages (cf. J. Bougerol,
“Autour de ‘La naissance du purgatoire’,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littera-
ture du moyen âge 58 [1983]: 7–59). On the whole, one can accept this concep-
tion as valid, though several reviewers have shown the invention of the term
“purgatorium” to predate by one or two generations the last quarter of the
12th century (when Le Goff assumed its creation). And even if the term
did not exist during the early Middle Ages, there is no doubt that then
already such a cleaning punishment existed for the souls of Christians
(Peter Brown, “Vers la naissance du purgatoire,” Annales HSS [1997/1996]:
1247–61).The more people were indoctrinated with this belief (Peter
Dinzelbacher, “Das Fegefeuer in der mittelalterlichen Schrift- und Bild-
Katechese,” Studi medievali 3a, serie 38 [1997]: 1–66, Tav. I–VIII; and id.,
Von der Welt durch die Hölle zum Paradies – Das mittelalterliche Jenseits, 2007;
C. S. Watkins, “Sin, Penance and Purgatory in the Anglo-Norman Realm:
The Evidence of Visions and Ghost Stories,” Past and Present 175 [2002]: 3–33),
517 Eschatology

especially during the late Middle Ages, the more they spent money for indul-
gences (J. Chiffoleau, “Sur l’usage obsessionnel de la messe pour les morts
à la fin du Moyen Age,” Faire croire, 1981, 236–56). That abuse, which has
never been forgotten, was to lead to the abolishment of this part of the other
world topography by the Protestant Reformers (J. Finkenzeller, “Purga-
tory,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 1996, III, 363–64). An import-
ant step in the propagation of the cult of the poor souls has to be ascribed to
the priests in Southern France during the time of the residence of the popes
at Avignon (Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’au-delà: Les hommes, la
mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Age, 1980; Michelle
Fournié, Le ciel peut-il attendre? Le culte du Purgatoire dans le Midi de la France
(1320 environ – 1520 environ), 1997). The presence of evocations of purgatory in
late-medieval literature as analyzed partly by Takami Matsuda (Death and
Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry, 1997) could easily been shown for
the other national literatures as well.
Only a few saints, like Pope Gregory I and Odilia of Alsace, were special-
ized in saving souls from purgatory (Leopold Kretzenbacher, Legenden-
bilder aus dem Feuerjenseits, 1980). However, most of the late medieval practical
mystics, especially the female ones, saw apparitions of tormented souls beg-
ging for help and were asked by believers to use their special contacts with
Jesus in order to free their relatives from the purgatorial fires (Erich Bauer,
“Die Armen-Seelen- und Fegefeuervorstellungen der altdeutschen Mystik,”
Ph.D. diss. Würzburg, 1960). There was yet the possibility to make a pilgrim-
age to a famous entrance to this place, a cave in an island in Lough Derg, Ire-
land, known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. A stay there would free the penitent
from all purgatorial pains after his/her passing away (bibliography and edi-
tion of the Latin and Middle English treaties on the “Purgatorium Patricii”
by Robert Easting, St Patrick’s Purgatory, 1991). There is a famous Anglo-
Norman version of the story by Marie de France, which has been edited many
times, lately by: G. Lachin, Maria di Francia: Il purgatorio di San Patrizio (2003);
and Sonia Maura Barillari, Maria di Francia: Il purgatorio di San Patrizio
(2004); Visiones Georgii (ed. Bernd Weitenmeier, 2006) prints the early-
modern German versions of Gregory of Hungary’s record of his visit to S. Pa-
trick’s Purgatory in 1353.
It is a strange contrast that medieval Latin and vulgar writings on purga-
tory by far outnumber the pictorial representations conserved today even
in the Catholic countries. Therefore the revision of the iconography of this
place has been undertaken only insufficiently (Gaby and Michel Vovelle,
Vision de la mort et de l’au-delà en Provence d’après les autels des âmes du purgatoire,
XVe – XXe siècles, 1970; and Susanne Wegmann, Auf dem Weg zum Himmel: Das
Eschatology 518

Fegefeuer in der deutschen Kunst des Mittelalters, 2003, which should be supple-
mented by studies on other countries).
But not all souls have to await their purgation in that subterranean dun-
geon. Some must stay as ghosts at the place of their sinful life, others are
forced to join the wild hunt. Given the possibility to explore in these con-
cepts pre-Christian forms of beliefs in man’s afterlife, which, however, must
be distilled out of ecclesiastical records, this had been a preferred theme of
the German mythological school before 1945, recently revived by French
medievalists: Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Les Masques, Le Diable, Les Morts
dans l’occident medieval” (Razo 6, 1986, 88–140); Claude Lecouteux, Ge-
schichte der Gespenster und Wiedergänger im Mittelalter (1987); id. and Philippe
Marcq, Les esprits et les morts, croyances médiévales (1990); Peter Assion,
“Von den abgeschiedenen Seelen: Kirchenlehre und Volksglaube in der
spätmittelalterlichen Fegefeuer- und Geisterliteratur” (Geist und Zeit: Fest-
schrift für Roswitha Wisniewski, ed. Carola Gottzmann and Herbert Kolb,
1991, 255–75); Jean-Claude Schmitt, Die Wiederkehr der Toten (1995);
Philippe Walter (Le mythe de la chasse sauvage dans l’Europe médiévale, ed. id.,
1997); Andrew Joynes, Medieval Ghost Stories (2001); Claude Lecouteux,
Das Reich der Nachtdämonen (2001); Christoph Fasbender, Von der Wiederkehr
der Seelen Verstorbener (2001; from a theological point of view); Alwine
Slenczka, Mittelhochdeutsche Verserzählungen mit Gästen aus Himmel und Hölle
(2004). From the 12th century onward, the stories about souls appearing
in order to get relief from the living via alms etc. multiplied (cf. Vito Fuma-
galli, “Il paesaggio dei morti: Luoghi d’incontro tra i morti e i vivi sulla
terra nel Medioevo,” Quaderni Storici 50 [1982]: 411–23; Marie-Anne Polo de
Beaulieu, Dialogue avec un fantôme, 1994; Robert Easting, ed., “Dialogue
Between a Clerk and a Spirit of a Girl de Purgatorio (1153),” Mediaevistik 20
[2007]: 136–83).

J. The Limbs

Limbus patrum
Located as a kind of vestibule to hell or a special compartment of it, a separate
subterranean dungeon was assumed to exist for the fathers and mothers of
the Old Testament. The main source for this idea was the Evangelium Nico-
demi, the narration of Christ’s “descensus” into the netherworld in order to
save these forerunners of the new religion, which is of course a special version
of the world-wide mythological theme of the hero’s journey to the nether-
world (cf. Höllen-Fahrten: Geschichte und Aktualität eines Mythos, ed. M. Her-
zog, 2006). Zbiginiew Zydorczyk edited an important handbook on the
519 Eschatology

Latin and vulgar versions of this most influential apocryphon (The Medieval
Gospel of Nicodemus, 1997). There were numerous pictorial representations of
the harrowing of Hell (Gary D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell,
1995), but the most important consequence of the reception of this tale was
the development of liturgical stage-plays at Easter time. Here the descensus
was dramatized, at first in Latin, but soon in the vernacular tongues, too
(to quote but one example: Das Redentiner Osterspiel: Mittelniederdeutsch / neu-
hochdeutsch, ed. Brigitta Schottmann, 2002).

Limbus puerorum
Medieval theologians taught that the unbaptized children would be shut up
forever in the Limbus puerorum, another prison for souls near hell. Opinions
were divided in how far they had to endure punishments because of the origi-
nal sin, the most severe doctrine being formulated by the Augustinian Gre-
gory of Rimini, therefore called “tortor parvulorum” (torturer of the little
ones) (cf. R. Weberberger, “Limbus puerorum,” Revue de theologie ancienne
et médiévale 35 [1968]: 83–133, 241–59; Jaques Le Goff, “Les limbes,” Nou-
velle revue de psychoanalyse 34 [1986]: 151–73; Didier Lett, “De l’errance au
deuil: Les enfants morts sans baptême et la naissance du Limbus puerorum
aux XIIe-XIIIe s.,” La Petite enfance dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, ed. Robert
Fossier, 1997, 77–92. Still very valuable, but nearly unknown, remains
G. G. Coulton, Infant Perdition in the Middle Ages, 1922).

K. Paradise
This word was used both for heaven and for the terrestrial garden of the Old
Testament, and could also mean a spiritual-allegorical place, the monastery,
a part of the church (Reinhold R. Grimm, Paradisus coelestis, paradisus terrestris,
1977; Ursula Frühe, Das Paradies ein Garten – Der Garten ein Paradies, 2002).
In the tradition of the Greek and Roman islands of the blessed, the Celtic
Avalon, and the Oriental myths of the Garden of Eden (John Prest, The
Garden of Eden, 1981; Günther Lanczkowski, Die Inseln der Seligen und ver-
wandte Vorstellungen, 1986) medieval legends had much to tell about the Bib-
lical paradise. As not a few people believed that the souls of the righteous
Christians would await the last day in the Earthly Paradise, a place situated in
the East, on a high mountain, and inaccessible for the living ones, it must be
considered one of the eschatological regions (Lars-Ivar Ringbom, Paradisus
Terrestris: Myt, Bild och Verklighed, 1958; Arturo Graf, Il mito del paradiso ter-
restre, rpt. 1982). Visionary excursions to this eschatological place, however,
seem to have been infrequent, like, e. g., the recently published narration of a
devout woman of Cologne, living in the early 13th century (Peter Dinzel-
Eschatology 520

bacher and Renate Vogeler, ed., “Die Jenseitsreise der Kölner Begine Pe-
trissa,” MlatJb 32 [1997]: 77–104).

L. Personal Judgment
Only very recently the completely incoherent doctrines of both a personal
judgment immediately after death and the Last Judgement at the end of time
have been investigated (Jerôme Baschet, “Jugement de l’âme, Jugement
dernier,” Revue Mabillon 67 [1995]: 159–204; Peter Dinzelbacher, “Persön-
liches Gericht und Weltgericht,” Endzeitvorstellungen, ed. Barbara Haupt,
2001, 95–131; Robert Easting, “Personal Apocalypse: Judgement in Some
Other-World Visions,” Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom, ed. Nigel
Morgan, 2004, 68–85). That double concept has been the result of two Bib-
lical models of divine arbitration which to reconcile medieval and post-medi-
eval theology never really succeeded. The most famous representation of the
personal (or particular) judgment is St. Michael who weighs the soul’s good
and evil deeds (also integrated in scenes of the Last Judgment) (cf. Leopold
Kretzenbacher, Die Seelenwaage, 1958; Mina Martens, Saint Michel et sa
symbolique, 1979; J. Yarza Luaces, “San Miguel y la balanza,” Formas artisti-
cas de lo imaginario, ed. id., 1987, 119–55).
An other device or rather automatic instrument to the same effect was
the testing bridge, waxing broad for the just souls, but growing so thin for
the bad ones that they must fall down into the fiery river of the underworld
(Peter Dinzelbacher, “The Ways to the Other World in Medieval Litera-
ture and Art,” Folklore 97 [1986]: 70–87; id. and Harald Kleinschmidt,
“Seelenbrücke und Brückenbau im mittelalterlichen England,” Numen 31
[1984]: 242–87; Peter Dinzelbacher, “Il ponte come luogo sacro nella
realtà e nell’immaginario,” Luoghi sacri e spazi della santità, ed. Sofia Boesch
Gajano and Lucia Scaraffia, 1990, 51–60). Rather as a symbol for the dif-
ficult ascension to heaven, the ladder functioned as a popular pictogram
(Christian Heck, L’échelle céleste dans l’art du Moyen Âge, 1997).

M. Apocalyptic Expectations
In contrast to the first centuries of Christendom, when the new religion tried
to win adepts by promising them never-ending felicity in heaven, without
stressing so much the doom of their enemies, in the Middle Ages there was
much more menacing with the tortures of Hell expecting not only all pagans
but all disobedient Christians, too. Therefore the waiting for the second
coming of Christ to judge all the world implicated much more fear than
hope, which is most evident in liturgy (the sequence Dies irae), art, religious
prose and poetry (some general overviews may be read in Bernard McGinn,
521 Eschatology

Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition, 1994; Claude Carozzi, Weltuntergang

und Seelenheil: Apokalyptische Visionen im Mittelalter, 1996; P. Eligh, Leven in
de eindtijd: Ondergangsstemmingen in de Middeleeuven, 1996; The Encyclopedia
of Apocalypticism, ed. John J. Collins et al., 1999; Peter Dinzelbacher,
“Antichrist/Apocalypse,” The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. I, ed. Richard M.
Golden, 2006, 45–48).
A vital question, getting acute in situations of depression, was the con-
crete term of the Great Judgment. That millennial fears existed about the
years 1000, 1033, 1260, 1348 etc. cannot be denied, though it is a matter of
discussion how far not only the intellectuals, but the common people, too,
were affected by such speculations (e. g., L’an mil: Medievales 21, 1991). As
the perhaps most interesting thesis in this connection, Johannes Fried, Auf-
stieg aus dem Untergang: Apokalyptisches Denken und die Entstehung der modernen
Naturwissenschaft im Mittelalter (2001), can be recommended. In this well-
documented book he shows how the wish to compute the date of the world’s
end fertilized studies in the fields of astrology/astronomy, mathematics, op-
tics etc. during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The black
death of the 14th century did have an impact to the religious imaginary, reviv-
ing, e. g., the angry God, the father from the Old Testament who destroys his
creations with darts and sword (Robert Lerner, “The Black Death and West-
ern European Eschatological Mentalities,” AHR 86 [1981]: 533–52; Dinzel-
bacher, Angst, loc. cit.).
Though Jesus himself had blocked any speculations on the hour and day
of the coming of the final realm, medieval scholars of course did reflect about
this question. Given his influence in particular among the Franciscans, the
theology of history by abbot Joachim of Fiore (†1202) has become a favorite
theme for historians of religion and philosophy. Only the two most recent
contributions can be mentioned here: G. L. Potestà, Il tempo dell’apocalisse:
Vita di Giocchino da Fiore (2004); Matthias Riedel, Joachim von Fiore: Denker der
vollendeten Menschheit (2004). In any case, the specialized review Florensia: Bol-
letino del centro internazionale di studi Gioacchimiti, should be consulted.
Antichrist, as a central figure of the last days, became, predominantly
in the later Middle Ages, a subject for theological disputations, the tractate
by the papal surgeon Arnold of Villanova, De tempore adventus antichristi (1300)
raising much objection against this idea (Manfred Gerwing, Vom Ende der
Zeit: Der Traktat des Arnald von Villanova über die Ankunft des Antichrist in der akade-
mischen Auseinandersetzung zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts, 1996; C. Backman,
“Arnau de Vilanova and the Body at the End of the World,” Last Things: Death
and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Bynum and Paul Freed-
man, 2000, 140–55, and 313–16). The legends surrounding him, telling
Eschatology 522

about his seduction of the kings and peoples by feigned miracles, were repre-
sented, from the 12th century onwards, on the stage (cf. Hans-Dieter Kahl,
“Der sog. ‘Ludus de Antichristo’ [De Finibus Saeculorum] als Zeugnis früh-
stauferzeitlicher Gegenwartskritik,” Mediaevistik 4 [1991]: 53–148). These
legends have attracted many scholars, such as Richard Kenneth Emmerson
(Antichrist in the Middle Ages, 1981), or J. Guadalajara Medina (Las profecías
del anticristo en la edad media, 1996). Also, images of that figure and his deeds
could been seen especially in early printed books of his vita (Rosemary Muir
Wright, Art and Antichrist in Medieval Europe, 1995).
Another complex of legends emerged around the strange “enclosed
nations” Gog and Magog, who were supposed to attack Christianity at the
end of time (A. R. Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog and the Enclosed
Nations, 1932; Helmut Brall-Tuchel, “Die Heerscharen des Antichrist:
Gog und Magog in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters,” Endzeitvorstel-
lungen, ed. Barbara Haupt, 2001, 197–228).
Apocalypticism manifested itself in many fields and movements, as has
been recognized since Norman Cohn’s seminal book, The Pursuit of the Mil-
lennium (1961, 3rd ed. 1970) (perhaps overinterpreting the evidence). Some of
the legends about the events of the last days could even become motivations
for political actions, be it within the pauperistic movements of the high
and late Middle Ages (Peter Classen, “Eschatologische Ideen und Armuts-
bewegungen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert,” id., Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1983,
307–26), be it when an impostor asserted to be the last of the emperors
(Hannes Möhring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit, 2000). Also the Hussite move-
ment was influenced by speculations on the end of the world (Eschatologie und
Hussitismus, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and F. Smahel, 1996).

N. Last Judgment and Resurrection

The end of the world and the second coming of Christ occupied many auth-
ors and artists of the period, as it then was a nearly undisputed element of the
weltbild (R. Schwarz, “Die spätmittelalterliche Vorstellung vom richtenden
Christus: Ein Ausdruck religiöser Mentalität,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 32 [1981]: 526–53). It also used to be represented, in the 14th and
15th century on the stage (one example must suffice: Churer Weltgerichtsspiel:
Nach der Handschrift des Staatsarchivs Graubünden Chur Ms. B 1521, ed. Ursula
Schulze, 1993).
Remarkably, most newer generalizing work on this subject seems to
have been carried out by art historians, given the importance of illuminated
manuscripts of the Apocalypse (and especially of its commentary by Beatus
of Liebana), and the frequency of the Final Judgment on the western facades
523 Eschatology

or the apsides of Romanesque and gothic churches and on famous reredos of

the 15th century (Fra Angelico, Memling, Bosch) (see Frits van der Meer,
Apokalpyse, 1978; De l’art comme mystagogie: Iconographie du Jugement dernier et des
fins dernières à l’époque gothique, ed. Yves Christe, 1996; id., Das Jüngste Ge-
richt, 2001). A few scholars have put forward the question: Who should be ad-
dressed by these pictures, and how did people react to them? (Cf. C. Consoli,
“Il Giudizio finale del Battistero di Firenze e il suo pubblico,” Quaderni medi-
evali 9 [1980]: 55–83; P. Klein, “Programmes eschatologiques, fonction et
réception historiques des portails du XIIe s.,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale
33 [1990]: 317–49.)
Though in medieval scholasticism the most minute details concerning
the appearance or age of the new bodies of the resurrected were matters for
discussion (Caroline Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, 1995), this expec-
tation did not play an important role in the common beliefs, as, e. g., the rare-
ness of tomb labels with an iconography and inscription hinting to the fu-
ture bodies shows (N. Rogers, “Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,”
Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom, ed. Morgan, 342–55). The new earth
and the new heaven of the Apocalypsis also remained mostly a theologume-
non without stimulating the concrete hopes of the faithful people.
A final note: In medieval literature, the Other World figured also in
forms which did not reflect Christian or apocryphal lore, but reflected
ancient motifs (as Charon, Cerberus, Elysium …), best known through the
katabasis in book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid. Of course the courtly Norman Roman
d’Eneas (1160) dwells deeply in Greco-Roman mythology, as does its some-
what later Teutonic counterpart, Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit (Hans
Fromm, “Die Unterwelt des Eneas, Topographie und Seelenvorstellung,”
Arbeiten zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, id., 1987, 101–21). Foremost
poets writing allegorical journeys to the beyond used such motifs, which
were accepted as literary devices, not as eschatological realities. They flour-
ished mostly in France, Spain, and England (Chaucer’s dream visions), but
found their undisputed climax in Dante’s Divine Comedy (A. Iannucci, “Al-
ready and Not Yet: Dante’s Existential Eschatology,” Dante for the New Millen-
nium, ed. Teodolina Barolini and H. Wayne Storey, 2003). Even the alle-
gory of life as a voyage integrated both Christian and antique motives which
originally had been founded in eschatological believes (Peter Dinzel-
bacher, “Die mittelalterliche Allegorie der Lebensreise,” Monsters, Marvels,
and Miracles: Imaginary Journeys and Landscapes in the Middle Ages, ed. Lars Sön-
dergaard and R. Hansen, 2005, 65–112; id., “Il viaggio allegorico per il
mare del mondo nella letteratura medioevale,” Poeti e poesia a Genova [e din-
torni] nell’età medievale, ed. Margherita Lecco, 2006, 101–25).
Eschatology 524

Select Bibliography
A comprehensive review of the relevant publications between 1980 and 1993 has been
published by Peter Dinzelbacher, “Nova visionaria et eschatologica,” Mediaevistik 6
(1993): 45–84; see further: Christoph Auffarth, Mittelalterliche Eschatologie (Göt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Cieli e terre nei secoli XI–XII (Milan: Vita e Pen-
siero, 1998); Peter Dinzelbacher, Die letzten Dinge: Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer im Mittel-
alter (Freiburg: Herder, 1999); id., Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen
Raum, II., Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000); id., Himmel, Hölle,
Heilige: Vision und Kunst im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
2002); id., “Visioni e profezie,” Lo spazio letterario del medioevo, vol. II (Rome: Salerno
Editrice, 1994), 649–87; id., Von der Welt durch die Hölle zum Paradies – Das mittelalterliche
Jenseits (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007); Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspektiven
im Mittelalter, ed. Jan Aertsen and Martin Pickavé (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) (mostly
on philosophical and theological questions); Enfer et paradis (Conques: Centre Euro-
péen d’Art et de Civilisation Médiévale, 1995); Endzeitvorstellungen, ed. Barbara Haupt
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 2001); Friedrich Heer, Abschied von Höllen und Himmeln (Esslin-
gen: Bechtle, 1971) (best general essay); Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer: Das Jenseits im Mittel-
alter, ed. Peter Jezler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1994); Last Things: Death and the Apoca-
lypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Caroline W. Bynum and Paul Freedman (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceed-
ings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nigel Morgan (Donington: Shaun Tyas,
2004); H. R. Patch, The Other World according to the Descriptions in Medieval Literature
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950); The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the
Middle Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988).

Selected Studies on Individual Autors

Berthold von Regensburg: Christa Oechslin Weibel, ‘Ein übergülde aller der saelikeit …’
Der Himmel und die anderen Eschata in den deutschen Predigten Bertholds von Regensburg (Bern:
Peter Lang, 2005); Floris: J. H. Winkelmann, “Eschatologie als dieptestructuur: Over
oorsprong en interpretatie von de Oudfranse Florisroman en zijn Middelnederlandse
bewerkingen,” Middelnederlandse letterkunde, stand en toekomst, ed. F. P. van Oostrom
and Frank Willaert (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989), 135–52; Giacomino da Verona:
Marco Schrage, Giacomino da Verona: Himmel und Hölle in der frühen italienischen Literatur
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003); Gregory the Great: R. Manselli, “L’eschatologia di
S. Gregorio Magno,” Ricerche di storia religiosa, vol. 1 (1954; journal demised thereafter),
72–83; id., Scritti sul medioevo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1994), 81–95; Heinrich von Neustadt:
Peter Dinzelbacher, “Eschatologie bei Heinrich von Neustadt,” Wirtschaft–Gesell-
schaft–Mentalitäten im Mittelalter: Festschrift Rolf Sprandel, ed. Hans-Peter Baum et al.
(Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2006), 643–58; Johannes Eriugena: T. Gregory, “L’escato-
logia di Giovanni Scoto,” Studi medievali 16 (1975): 497–535.

Peter Dinzelbacher
525 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
The study of everyday life comprises an effort by medievalists to understand
the common or mundane experiences of medieval people rather than focus-
ing on traditional issues of politics, economy, religion, institutions, and lan-
guage. Because this field is rather broad and encompassing, a precise defini-
tion of everyday life is elusive. Contemporary scholars have written that they
are examining daily life while investigating strikingly different topics.
Scholars also sometimes disagree about the subjects that should fall under
“everyday life.” Studies of court culture can certainly offer much informa-
tion about the daily experiences of the elite, and rich pictures of the quotid-
ian activities of royalty, for example, are often possible. Yet many scholars
of everyday life wish to emphasize the lives of the many rather than the few in
their studies, giving examinations of rural and city life primacy. Further-
more, this frequent emphasis on the underrepresented has led to overlap
with studies of women, the poor, children, and other groups often ignored
in scholarship prior to the 20th century. Investigations of everyday life in
the 1970s sometimes intersected or overlapped with the effort of scholars
to understand Lebensformen (ways of life) and mentality. Examining the way
medieval people thought about their world became increasingly important
with the development of postmodernism and the new cultural history,
which tend to emphasize the views that texts allow medievalists to discern
rather than the reconstruction of common events that scholars of everyday
life first emphasized.
Although this diversity does not lend the same coherence to everyday
life as that of many other established subject matters, it has led to a remark-
ably rich literature in a variety of disciplines. Historians, however, dominate
the subject, thus far producing more studies concerning everyday life than
their counterparts in literary studies, art history, or archeology. Neverthe-
less, many examinations of daily life employ an interdisciplinary approach
especially given the nearly unparalleled information that art and material
culture can provide. In order to explain this aspect of the Middle Ages, which
few medieval texts take as their main focus, medievalists have used a wide
range of sources, textual and material. They include court proceedings, wills,
archeological remains, chronicles, art, architecture, literature, trade records,
financial documents, inventories, theological and philosophical tracts, city
and manorial records, laws, church documents, mirrors, and hagiography.
The study of medieval everyday life is therefore inherently interdisciplinary,
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 526

and because of the rich information archeology can provide about every-
day life, it has strong intersections with material culture studies. Studies of
medieval daily life often take up rather specific topics, and even those
that purport to be general, covering the whole of the Middle Ages and all of
Europe, tend to focus on western Europe in the later Middle Ages. Very few
works have traversed both the early and late Middle Ages, which contributes
to the volume and diversity of studies produced.
Everyday life (vie quotidienne in French and Alltagsleben in German) be-
came a common subject of study in the early 20th century though it has roots
in the late 19th century. Neither the Lexikon des Mittelalters nor the Dictionary of
the Middle Ages offer an entry on everyday or daily life perhaps because of the
difficulty of working out its precise definition and scope. Although it is a
relatively recent subject of study, it is a well established one. Since the 1960s
broad examinations of everyday life as well as narrower studies that either
draw from this concept or directly address it have proliferated. In July 2007,
a search for the general subject “Daily Life” in the International Medieval
Bibliography produced a list of 5497 articles, and the number of books that
could fall under this category is enormous. The immense size of this field re-
lates to the fact that it naturally overlaps with many other areas of study. One
could argue that almost all medieval subjects touch upon aspects of daily life.
Thus, this essay can only offer a sampling of the various subjects one might
place under “everyday life” and some of the most important works. Works of
lesser importance will be listed to show the variety and proliferation of such
studies for there is no way to offer a comprehensive list in such a short piece.

B. History of Research
The first historians, art historians, and literary scholars to examine everyday
life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wished to investigate what they
termed “domestic life,” “private antiquities,” or domestic antiquities.”
Their strong desire to examine antiquities eventually developed into the
common use of material culture as a source in later investigations of everyday
life. Many of the most prominent among these early scholars were German
speakers: among them Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck, Hermann
Weiss, Jacob von Falke, Moriz Heyne, and Georg Steinhausen. (Küh-
nel, 7). John Thrupp, an example from Anglophone scholarship, published
in 1862 The Anglo-Saxon Home: A History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs
of England, whose originality for the time is recognized by current Anglo-
Saxonists. Among these early pioneers in the subject, the one still most cited
today is Alwin Schultz who wrote Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesänger
(1889); Alltagsleben einer deutschen Frau zu Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts (1890);
527 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

and Deutsches Leben im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert (1892). As an art historian, he
drew much evidence from artworks though he also employed literature and
other historical texts. In the most famous of his books, Das höfische Leben,
he used art and poetry especially to examine courtly life in the 12th and
13th centuries. In its focus on the elite, sometimes too literal interpretation
of sources, and desire to list and categorize, it is in keeping with much late
19th-century and early 20th-century scholarship, but his interest in the quo-
tidian was relatively innovative. Using artistic and textual descriptions
Schultz covered a staggering array of topics in chapters that employed the
following topics as organizing principles: fortifications, children, getting up
in the morning, meals, hunting, travel, courtly love, weapons, tournaments,
“feuds, the Peace of God, and robber barons,” warfare, ships, repentance,
starving a castle, and old age. Alltagsleben einer deutschen Frau equally reflects
19th-century ideas of possible female historical activities with its thematic or-
ganization into chapters on love and betrothal, clothing, marriage, house-
keeping, daily life and pleasures, birth, baptism, and child-raising, death
and burial, and prevailing beliefs.
The study of everyday life would not, however, take off until the early
20th century. Influenced by sociology and anthropology, medievalists began
in the 1920s and 1930s to address aspects of the past hitherto ignored in
scholarship. The ideas of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim began, for
example, to influence the work of medievalists. For historians, this scholar-
ship was part of the ‘new history’ that strove to examine not the elite, but so-
ciety as whole, making various groups, institutions, and ideas valid subjects
of scholarly research. Highly influential in this period was Charles-Victor
Langlois’ La vie en France au moyen âge de la fin du xiie au milieu du xive siècle
(1926–1928). This two-volume study represents the ways this scholar
worked against romanticizing history and rejected the idea that history
could be a “scientific” inquiry. In his first volume, Langlois examined
French life by studying the romances, and in the second he considered the
same subject from the view of contemporary moralists. Before discussing cer-
tain French romances in turn, Langlois paid tribute to Alwin Schultz’s
Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesänger, whom he credited with employing
literary sources to learn about courtly life (vol. 1, x-xi). He defined moralists
as those men who wrote seriously about the mores of their time, a large group
of medieval writers, whom he believed to deserve more attention for the light
they could cast upon French history. Though recognizing that they could not
entirely be separated from the romance writers and their commentary on
courtly life, he believed they offered another view of medieval existence
(vol. 2, vi-vii). In his willingness to employ a wide range of sometimes under-
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 528

appreciated sources, he presaged a typical approach to finding evidence in

the field of medieval everyday life.
Eileen Power helped to popularize the study of daily life and to bring
Langlois’s ideas to Anglophone scholarship. Having studied for a year
(1910–1911) with Langlois in Paris, she acknowledged her debt when she
dedicated to him her edition and translation of the Le ménagier de Paris, a 14th-
century manual on female deportment. With her famous portrait of “Bodo”
in the popular book Medieval People (1924) and with her depiction of a rural
English family, The Paycockes of Coggeshall (1920), Power helped many to ap-
preciate peasants’ historical roles. She called scholarly attention to the details
in medieval individuals’ lives, arguing that it was worthwhile to study them,
and at the same time she made social history accessible to a general audience.
To this day, everyday life remains a subject of great interest to non-scholars
with a rich bibliography of works addressed to the average reader. Even
children’s books cover this topic, such as Neil Grant’s beautifully illus-
trated but not entirely up-to-date Everyday Life in Medieval Europe (2004).
Power furthermore brought women to the forefront of historical inquiry
(Medieval Women, published posthumously in 1975) reconstructing their role
in medieval everyday life. Her English colleague and sometime collaborator
George Gordon Coulton edited and translated many medieval documents
for his Life in the Middle Ages (1910, 2nd ed. 1928) with later reprintings. He
then edited the series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought and
along with Power co-edited the Medieval Life and Letters Series.
Historians interested in social and economic history opened inquiry into
life in the medieval city and countryside. Though ostensibly interested mainly
in economic history, the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne offered examin-
ations of both the merchant and “middle class” as well as the institutions
that governed civic life in his influential Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the
Revival of Trade (1925, French edition 1927), thereby demonstrating the close
connection between economic and social history. This relationship between
these two historical branches results in the strong economic and trade com-
ponents of many studies of everyday life. When Pirenne also wrote the
seminal Mahomet et Charlemagne (English translation 1937; German trans-
lation 1963), he inspired historians like Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre to
start the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale. Among other subjects, Marc
Bloch turned to the study of medieval rural life in many articles and the
monograph Les caractères originaux de l’histoire rurale française (1931). He took a
wide view, concentrating upon broad developments in rural life.
Edmond Faral in his La vie quotidienne au temps de Saint Louis (1938), con-
tinued the trend of working against romantic notions of the Middle Ages. In
529 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

addition to examining the material particularities of medieval life, he tried

to determine the views that individuals held – their morals and conscience –
but within relatively narrow chronological and geographic confines in order
to produce a more comprehensive tableau. After describing the work and
customs of various groups (women, royalty, knights, clergy), including a
long chapter on “the people,” the non-elite from townspeople to rural peas-
ants and doctors to charlatans, he covered comforts and diversions, ideas of
life such as religious and moral views, literary conceptions, and concepts
shaping and shaped by the social order. This work’s appearance as part of the
Hachette series on la vie quotidienne directed mainly to a popular audience
again demonstrates the rather wide popularity of this approach to scholars
and average readers alike. The subject of everyday life continued to be popu-
lar in France and elsewhere in the West. In 1972, Robert Delort’s Le Moyen
Âge: Histoire illustrée de la vie quotidienne appeared (English translation 1973). It
was lavishly illustrated, using many images of everyday objects and artistic
depictions of daily events to make its points and was clearly meant to appeal
to general readers. The subjects of each of this book’s sections reflect areas of
growing concern to scholars, which would shape works on everyday life for
the next few decades. Delort’s chapter on the environment presages the
interest in natural resources. One on mentality reflects an interest in the
common perceptions of medieval people, especially those underrepresented
in the sources. Following the medieval idea of ordo, he offered successive
chapters on peasants, knights, and clerics. His last chapter on towns covers a
group that was in some senses outside the traditional medieval order – the
inhabitants of urban areas. The early 1970s were an especially important era
in the development of Medieval Studies of everyday life. In his Lebensformen in
Mittelalter (1973), Arno Borst influentially concerned himself with Lebens-
formen, a word he admitted was imprecise in meaning or “unscharf.” (14)
Borst argued that the idea that people conceived of themselves as being able
to follow various forms or ways of life was quite ancient in the West and that
their conceptions of these Lebensformen had changed over time. Therefore, he
saw utility in determining how medieval people understood their roles in
life and their perceptions of the possibilities they had for how they lived. Di-
viding his work in two sections entitled condicio humana and societas humana,
he indicated his desire to understand not only how medieval people lived
but also how they understood their place in society as a whole and the effects
each had upon the other. In the chapters “Time and Life,” “Space and En-
vironment,” and “Man and Community,” he explored a wide array of sub-
jects such as ruins, voluntary poverty, village planning, clothing, nature, in-
sanity, and dialect. For the next section’s chapters, “Farmers and Burghers,”
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 530

“Nobles and Princes,” “The Spiritual and the Educated,” and “Outsiders and
the Exotic,” he touched upon an equally diverse list of topics including mar-
ket economy, communes, robbers, virtue, court poets, students, heretics, and
Mongols. In addition to displaying the sheer variety of medieval experience
among other matters, Borst offered a means to examine how medieval ideas
shaped everyday events.
Another work to appear in 1973 was Pierre Riché’s La vie quotidienne
dans l’empire carolingien (English translation 1978), which examined everyday
life in the Carolingian Empire. As part of Hachette’s daily life series, it was
meant to serve a popular audience as well as a scholarly one. The book was
among the first works to examine daily life in the early Middle Ages. General
works on medieval everyday life prior to and after Riché’s book frequently
ignore or give little consideration to the centuries prior to 1000. On his first
page, Riché noted the difficulties of his undertaking given the paucity of
evidence for the early Middle Ages, but he was able to discern an extraordi-
nary amount about common experiences and groups underrepresented in
the sources. In addition to many chapters on lay and religious elite life, he in-
cluded ones on rural technology, artisan technology, building trades, furni-
ture and clothing, lighting, heating, and hygiene, food and drink, the land-
scape, cities, and demography. Other early medievalists have continued
Riché’s efforts to learn about this aspect of their period. For example,
Monika Obermeier has produced a study of servile women in the early
Middle Ages (“Ancilla:” Beiträge zur Geschichte der unfreien Frauen im Frühmittel-
alter, 1996), Gale Owen-Crocker a book on Anglo-Saxon dress (Dress in
Anglo-Saxon England, 1986, rev. ed. 2004), and Mechtild Müller a mono-
graph on early medieval clothing (Die Kleidung nach Quellen des frühen Mittel-
alters). Various articles have touched upon early medieval everyday life, es-
pecially in the Carolingian Empire for which sources are relatively abundant
(Jean Verdon, “La femme vers le milieu du ixe siècle d’après le polyptyque
de l’abbaye de Saint-Remi de Reims,” Mémoires de la société d’agriculture,
commerce, sciences et arts du département de la Marne 91 [1976]: 111–34; Ludolf
Kuchenbuch, “Trennung und Verbindung im bäuerlichen Werken des
9. Jahrhunderts,” Frauen in der Geschichte VII, ed. Werner Affeldt and An-
nette Kuhn, 1986, 227–42; id., “Opus feminile. Das Geschlechterverhältnis
im Spiegel von Frauenarbeiten im früheren Mittelalter,” Weibliche Lebensge-
staltung im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz, 1991, 139–78; Chris
Wickham, “Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval West-
ern Europe,” TRHS 6th ser., 2 [1992]: 221–46).
Though not necessarily directing himself squarely at the idea of daily
life, Jacques Le Goff made major contributions to the field through his
531 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

studies of many everyday issues as well as of the mentalities and views of a

broad spectrum of medieval society. Representative of his work is the collec-
tion of essays, Pour un autre Moyen Âge: temps, travail et culture en occident, (1977,
English translation 1980). Divided into four sections, the individual pieces
each examine the past through a different lens while combining the quotid-
ian experience with its contemporary intellectual understanding. In “Time
and Labor” Le Goff explored conceptions of time among merchants, la-
borers, and the church, legal and illegal trades, early medieval workers and
peasants, and the development from the 9th to 12th centuries of the social
ideology of ordo which divided the population into those who fight, those
who pray, and those who work. For “Labor and Value Systems” he studied
university life and confessors’ understanding of other trades and professions
while for “High Culture and Popular Culture” he chose not to view the two
cultures as separate phenomena but instead considered culture in the Mero-
vingian kingdoms, ritual and the cult of the saints, dreams, the marvels of
the east, and folktales. By ending with “Toward a Historical Anthropology”
Le Goff suggests anthropology as a means of better understanding the “or-
dinary man” as well as medieval ritual and indeed all the topics he covered. In
his introduction he argues that anthropology allows historians to examine
important sources like folklore and topics such as “daily habits, beliefs, beha-
vior, and mentalities” that might otherwise lie outside historical study (x-xi).
Some scholars, such as Heinrich Fichtenau in his Lebensordnung des
10. Jahrhunderts, (1984, English translation 1991), embraced the idea of exam-
ining the social order as medieval individuals understood it. He was not the
first to examine life in the 10th century (Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Death and
Life in the Tenth Century, 1967), but he brought many of the theoretical ideas of
the 1970s to bear on the surprisingly rich sources of this century. Overlap-
ping with scholars interested in mentality, Fichtenau gave a rich account
of the experiences of a variety of 10th-century people as he explained both
how they lived and how they understood the world around them. After es-
tablishing medieval ideas of ordo and familia, Fichtenau then covered in
turn various groups (nobility, secular clergy, monks, and peasants) discuss-
ing the manifestations of these two mentalities within each. He ended with a
chapter on disorder, a means to examine the ways in which people also mis-
treated each other.
Other general studies of medieval everyday life including Otto Borst’s
Alltagsleben im Mittelalter (1983), tried to make the daily life of medieval
people come alive for readers, to illuminate what might seem an alien past.
Borst wrote that “everyday” consisted of experiences that occurred on all
days. Acknowledging that surviving sources generally reflected the elite
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 532

rather than the majority of the medieval population (13), he nevertheless of-
fered in thematic chapters what he believed to be a sort of antidote to the
nationalist pride that some past Germans had taken in medieval high culture
and the nobility. Covering both medieval world views and occurrences while
emphasizing the rich variety and changes from the 11th to 15th centuries, he
insisted that medieval everyday life was not timeless. In Harry Kühnel’s All-
tag im Spätmittelalter (1984), he and his fellow authors examined the everyday
life of late medieval Germany employing the latest methodologies for ana-
lyzing material culture as well as considering textual sources. Among the
subjects they covered were conceptions and measurement of time, norms
and sanctions, city society, peace, social mobility, death, birth, work, food,
clothing, shelter, and art. These choices reflect both earlier interests in this
field and the topics of subsequent studies, doubtless influenced in part by
this richly illustrated publication from the Institut für Realienkunde Öster-
reichs.
In his Zwischen Augenblick und Ewigkeit (1989), Gerhard Jaritz hoped to
call attention rather than provide solutions to the many problems of re-
searching daily life in the 13th to 15th centuries. He argued that the history of
the everyday must necessarily be more than describing and explaining, not-
ing for example that medieval people themselves recognized a difference be-
tween holidays and other days, that they, too, would have recognized an
“everyday life.” He urged historians also to examine concepts, processes, and
structures as a means of explaining daily experiences. (10–11) Jaritz, for
example, explored subjects such as communication, the individual and the
group, meanings and symbols, and types and names in part to demonstrate
the variety of methods one could employ in examining everyday life. Jaritz
has also played a leading role at the Institut für Realienkunde des Mittel-
alters und der frühen Neuzeit, founded in 1969 and based in Krems. The In-
stitut has published proceedings from their congresses held regularly since
1977 concerning many topics related to everyday life and material culture.
In, for example, Norm und Praxis im Alltag des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit
(ed. Gerhard Jaritz, 1996), the various essays all tackle the fraught question
of the degree to which sources reveal norms or expectations versus actual
practices. For scholars examining everyday life, this question gets to the
heart of how they must interpret evidence in order to learn about a subject al-
most no medieval text addressed directly. Most agree that they must pay
careful attention to the details, conventions, and contexts of their sources
in order to distinguish between expectation and practice though the split
between the two is rarely tidy. A number of the essays in Jaritz’s collection
rely upon material culture as a means of testing and balancing evidence of
533 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

written sources that may reflect norm more than practice. Like most scholars
of everyday life, however, they recognize that one must be just as careful in
interpreting material evidence as texts. In another related volume, Termino-
logie und Typologie mittelalterlicher Sachgüter: Das Beispiel der Kleidung (ed. Ger-
hard Jaritz, 1986), the participants examined the problems in the termi-
nology used for medieval clothing in texts, an example of the difficulties
historians of everyday life face in interpreting the evidence available to them.
The Krems volumes also cover a wide range of topical subjects. Disziplinierung
im Alltag des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (ed. Gerhard Jaritz, 1999), for
example, covered discipline in late medieval cities and in Jewish commu-
nities as well as addressing different forms of discipline – royal discipline
concerning violence, discipline both as a means of explanation and as a social
reality in late medieval city chronicles, and self-discipline in mirrors for
princes. In sum, the publications of this group highlight the methodological
problems of examining everyday life while suggesting new avenues of in-
quiry. Associated with this Austrian institute is the society Medium Aevum
Quotidianum, founded in 1982, which in addition to publishing a journal of
the same name, promotes the study of everyday life and material culture
through conferences, publications, and research.
During the 1970s and 1980s, American scholar David Herlihy pro-
duced books and articles that addressed aspects of everyday life especially as
they related to women and family. In Medieval Households (1985) he offered a
broader European view of the family than Les Toscans et leurs familles (with
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, 1978). In examining the family through suc-
cessive eras in Medieval Households, Herlihy touches upon many aspects of
everyday life including domestic labor, child rearing, family size, marriage
practices, affection between parent and child, and management of familial
goods. In Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Europe, 1990, he examined
women’s labor in chronologically arranged chapters that provided a rich pic-
ture of the daily experiences of many medieval women. His posthumous col-
lection of previously published essays, Women, Family and Society in Medieval
Europe (1995), allows one to see both the breath of Herlihy’s interests and
the ways in which they drew from earlier works on everyday life, especially in
their concentration upon understudied groups like women and children and
in their details concerning society and customs in medieval Italy. In the
Festschrift for Herlihy, Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living (ed. Sa-
muel K. Cohn, Jr. and Steven A. Epstein, 1996), scholars produced a variety
of essays including a few on matters directly pertaining to daily life such as
Lisa Bitel’s “Reproduction and Production in Early Medieval Ireland,”
71–90; Giles Constable’s “Was There a Medieval Middle Class? Mediocres
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 534

(mediani, medii) in the Middle Ages,” 301–324; and Lorraine Attreed’s “Pov-
erty, Payments, and Fiscal Policies in English Provincial Towns,” 325–48.
A rich collection of essays concerning late medieval England appears in
Christopher Dyer’s Everyday Life in Medieval England (1994). Originally pub-
lished between 1980 and 1990, they reflect the subjects and approaches of
this decade. Touching upon economic history as well as issues of identity,
power, and material culture, Dyer examined village life and settlement, diet,
buildings, wages, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and markets. In essays con-
cerning “The Growth and Decline of Rural Settlements” and freshwater fish
consumption, he employed archeological evidence. Other important sources
for him and historians of England are manorial and parish records, estate
surveys, and other documents which allowed him to present findings on
changes in diet, peasant buildings, gardens, and orchards. Through analysis
of relevant portions of the Domesday Book, he was able to provide rather
abundant information on towns and cottages in the 11th century. Dyer ad-
mits that a combination of material and documentary evidence is best but
only rarely possible when exploring medieval rural life (101). Insistent that a
combination of local studies and general concepts provide the best way to
examine rural life, he also offered looks at Pendock, Worcestershire; Suffolk;
and especially the West Midlands.
Since the 1980s, research on aspects of everyday life has blossomed. List-
ing all recent studies is neither possible nor desirable, but a sampling of re-
cent works will indicate representative subjects and methodologies. Rather
than selecting the “most important” studies since it is as yet too early prop-
erly to judge their influence, those books and articles discussed below will
rather highlight areas that have been of particular interest without address-
ing large fields with which everyday life has strong connections such as
women’s studies, memory, death and dying, and the history of science and
medicine.
Often archeology provides rich evidence for medieval everyday life not
found in written texts; furthermore scholars sometimes weigh archeological
finds against the evidence of written sources. (Martina Hartmann, Aufbruch
ins Mittelalter, 2003) For western Europe, archeological studies that concern
medieval everyday life are much more common than for eastern Europe,
in part because Byzantine layers and finds have often been discarded in exca-
vations focused on earlier periods. A collection of essays edited by Ken Dark,
however, covers palaces, housing, shops, and religious artifacts in an effort
to cast light on Byzantine daily life (Secular Buildings and the Archaeology
of Everyday Life in the Byzantine Empire, 2004). Similarly, the interdisciplinary
Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life (ed. Nevra
535 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

Necipoglu, 2001) provides essays on various topics including ritual, urban

planning, architecture, markets, and foreign inhabitants. The authors often
combined the approaches of historians, art historians, and/or archeologists
in exploring these subjects. Others continue to examine the East through
more “traditional” means. Nicolas Oikonomidès, for example, employed
literature and inventories among other textual sources in order to under-
stand everyday life in the Byzantine world as seen in his collected essays,
Social and Economic Life in Byzantium (ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou, 2004).
Studies of everyday life continue to foster interest in those with the least
social status in the Middle Ages. Prisoners, jails, guards, and release condi-
tions are some of the subjects Jean Dunbabin discusses in her Captivity and
Imprisonment in Medieval Europe, 1000–1300, 2002. Clearly informed by cultural
history, Dunbabin in her examination of captivity nevertheless comments
frequently upon the daily conditions of the imprisoned and those who put
and kept them in and released them from confinement as well as prevailing
views of these individuals and the reasons for their detention. She demon-
strates a skepticism concerning the information of romances far removed
from the approach of Alwin Schultz and Charles-Victor Langlois, noting
that such sources are often imaginative. Though she agrees that skepticism
may not be a problem for “some postmodern literary critics,” it is a problem
for a historian trying to discern probable historical conditions. Like many of
her contemporaries she compares the literary sources to other historical
documents, in which she discovered enough commonalities to determine
that the romances could sometimes yield information about imprisonment
(16). If economic history has long overlapped with that of everyday life, in the
last thirty years cultural and social history have had many intersections in
studies of common and unusual medieval circumstances and experiences.
Among those individuals with low status who have interested medie-
valists are children, whose everyday experiences have been the subject of
much exploration. Among those works not already mentioned that discuss
children in the Middle Ages is Philippe Ariès’s Centuries of Childhood (1960,
English translation 1962), a famous work whose arguments concerning
medieval childhood have not held up under scrutiny. After using a small
fraction of the available medieval evidence on children, he concluded mainly
on the basis of artistic depictions that the concept of childhood did not exist
in the Middle Ages. Ample ensuing scholarship covering a range of eras and
places has proven this thesis untenable. Barbara Hanawalt in Growing Up
in Medieval London (1993), employed a wide range of evidence to learn about
the material culture, birth, baptism, mortality, instruction, and apprentice-
ship of children as well as about orphans, adolescence, and young servants
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 536

in late medieval London. Her use of legal evidence demonstrates its utility
to scholars desiring to learn about daily experiences. Taking an expan-
sive chronological view but focusing mainly upon France, Danièle Alex-
andre-Bidon and Didier Lett explored the daily experiences of children
from religious life to education, living conditions to apprenticeship, street
children to elite children in their Les enfants au Moyen Âge (1997, English trans-
lation 1999). Nicholas Orme, examined later medieval English childhood in
his Medieval Children (2001), including chapters on daily experiences such as
danger, words, rhymes, and songs, and play. He expanded upon his con-
sideration of English children’s education in Medieval Schools (2006). Many
of the essays in the collection Childhood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
(ed. Albrecht Classen, 2005), explore aspects of the everyday experiences of
children and particularly the nature of the parent-child relationship (see also
the collection of articles edited by Classen in 2007, Old Age in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance). Shulamith Shahar also examined childhood among
other aspects of medieval everyday experience. Her books Childhood in the
Middle Ages (1990); Growing Old in the Middle Ages (1997); Fourth Estate: A History
of Women in the Middle Ages (1983, rev. ed. 2003), all reflect the desire of those
examining everyday life to tap into the lives of the many people who lived
during the Middle Ages, not simply the male elite for whom the evidence
is much more abundant. In each of these works she synthesizes a great deal
of scholarship as well as adding new research. Typical of general studies,
however, the books focus far more upon the later than the early Middle Ages.
Concern with modern social problems has led scholars to explore them
in the Middle Ages. For example, the essays “Home and Homelessness in the
Middle of Nowhere” by William Ian Miller and “Looking for Home in
Anglo-Saxon England” by Nicholas Howe (Home and Homelessness in the Me-
dieval and Renaissance World, ed. Nicholas Howe, 2004, 125–42, 143–63),
examined the homeless and what constituted a home in the Middle Ages. In
Iceland, Miller determines that the law against homelessness, a capital of-
fense, resulted in part from a desire to identify each person with a household,
the primary legal and economic unit. Exploring evidence mainly from the
sagas, Miller examines issues such as the qualities of a home, hospitality,
outlaws, exiles, laws and beliefs concerning houses, the wild versus the do-
mestic, and contemporary conceptions of home. He notes that “nothing
seemed to horrify the Icelandic sensibility more than unattached people”
(137). Howe employs the evidence of Old English literature to determine
how Anglo-Saxons thought of home. Noting that much poetry suggests that
the hall, not a person’s individual dwelling, embodied one’s sense of home,
he further points out the dearth of evidence for housing since it was built of
537 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

materials that leave little archeological trace. Typical of early medievalists

working on the mundane experiences so rarely addressed in contemporary
sources, Howe must use the evidence available to him: in this case literary
sources since architectural remains and law codes offer little data. He ably
draws a surprising amount of information on building types, ideals of home,
and domesticity, though in the end he concludes that legal documents dem-
onstrate that Anglo-Saxons thought of home “through the concept of land
rather than the fact of houses” (159).
As for more ordinary matters, scholars have discovered a great deal about
food and drink from both written and archeological sources. Michel Rouche
examined Carolingian caloric consumption and food types by examining
monastic records (“Le repas de fête à l’époque carolingienne,” Manger et boire
au Moyen Âge, 1, ed. Denis Menjot, 1984, 265–96). Donald Bullough
examined the relationships and conflicts that could result from sharing
meals and drinking together (Friends, Neighbours and Fellow-Drinkers, 1991). In
order to learn about the level of nutrition for groups of varying social status,
gender, and age, Kathy L. Pearson examined a wide range of textual evi-
dence in her “Nutrition and the Early-Medieval Diet” (Speculum 72. 1 [1997]:
1–32). Bonnie Effros noted how food and drink affected the development
of Christian community in Merovingian Gaul, arguing that clerics under-
stood its profound importance in creating bonds or setting groups apart
from one another and in delineating status, authority, and hierarchy (Creat-
ing Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul, 2002). Maria Giagna-
lovo employed the notebooks of a Tuscan merchant in order to learn about
eating and drinking in Avignon in the 14th century (“Manger et boire à Avig-
non,” Provence Historique 54 [2004]: 463–72). Using Chaucer as a source, David
Moses examined the diet of late medieval monks (“Soul Food and Eating
Habits,” MAevum 75.1 [2006]: 213–22). Lack of food, particularly during a
famine, could become a crisis, but with the difficulties of medieval agricul-
ture hunger was not an unusual phenomenon (Hubert Mordek, “Karls des
Großen zweites Kapitular von Herstal und die Hungersnot der Jahre
778/779,” DA 61.1 [2005]: 1–52). Waste disposal was a common problem in
the past as now; archeology can cast light on this matter of daily importance
(Wim van Neer, Ides Boone, and Bea de Cupere, “Social Status as Re-
flected in the Food Refuse from Late Medieval Sites in Namur,” RBPh 80.4
[2002]: 1391–94; Jill Hooper, “Waste and its Disposal in Southwark,” Lon-
don Archaeologist 11.4 [2006]: 95–100).
Examining the lifecycle of certain groups of individuals has been a fruit-
ful means to understanding medieval everyday life. Some works are quite
broad (Deborah Youngs, The Life-Cycle in Western Europe, c. 1300–c.1500, 2006).
Everyday Life in Medieval Studies 538

Others have focused on certain groups. Isabelle Réal, for example, struc-
tured her examination of kinship as presented in Merovingian hagiography
in part by moving from the stage of marriage through the raising of children
(Vies de saints, vie de famille, 2001). In her Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers
(1983), Pauline Stafford organized her material according to the lifecycle
of the early medieval women she discussed. Similarly, Bridget Ann He-
nisch, in The Medieval Calendar Year (1999) examined late medieval illumi-
nations of the “labors of the months” in books of hours in order to explore
the rhythm of the medieval year. Though shaped by an idealized view of
medieval laborers, these depictions of seasonal activities provide “glimpses”
of aspects of everyday life in the countryside. Additionally, she included
three non-seasonal chapters on portrayals of children, women, and pursuits
of pleasure in these images. Festivals were another means of marking the
passage of time and pastime for medieval people (Ronald Hutton, “Sea-
sonal Festivity in Late Medieval England,” EHR 120 [2005]: 66–79). Other lei-
sure activities involved games, and scholars have begun to examine their so-
cial meanings as Oliver Plessow does in “What the Artefacts Tell: Medieval
chess pieces and the interpretation of the social connotations of the game of
chess” (The Mediation of Symbol in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times, ed. Ru-
dolf Suntrup, Jan R. Veestra and Anne Bollmann, 2005, 109–41). The
games of religious minorities such as the Jews have also been the subject of
research (Gerd Mentgen, “Alltagsgeschichte und Geschichte der Juden. Die
Juden und das Glückspiel im Mittelalter,” HZ 274.1 [2002]: 25–60). Music
and performances were also forms of medieval entertainment. Though most
scholarship on music and drama is directed more at musicologists and liter-
ary specialists than at the general medievalist, many such studies touch upon
everyday life. It is, however, quite difficult to learn about the experiences of
performers given the available sources, and late medieval performers are the
easiest to examine because of the greater number of extant texts for that
period (James Stokes, Musicians and Performance in Lincolnshire,” Early
Drama, Art, and Music Review 24.2 [2002]: 121–51).
Understanding human interaction with the environment and people’s
use of natural resources have also been topics of study relevant to medieval
everyday life. As medievalists across the 20th century became more interested
in understanding the living conditions of the majority of people, agricul-
tural history, for example, received increased attention (Georges Duby,
L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’occident médiéval, 1962, in English
1968; Bernard H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe,
English ed. 1963; Wilhelm Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe, 3rd ed.,
1978, in English 1980, 1–95). Paolo Squatriti in his Water and Society in
539 Everyday Life in Medieval Studies

Early Medieval Italy (1998), examined the relationship between Italians and
perhaps their most essential natural resource, water, from 400 to 1000. This
approach allowed him to comment on various aspects of everyday life: do-
mestic water supply and usage, hygiene, bathing, laundry, floods, drainage,
irrigation fishing, and milling. The use of space has also been the subject of
work by medievalists of various disciplines; understanding how medieval
people interacted with their natural and created environments has proven a
rich area of study. In particular, the use of domestic space received attention
in various archeological studies such as Chris King, “The Organization of
Social Space in late Medieval Manor Houses” (AJ 160 [2004]: 104–24), as well
as in some of the essays from Cadre de vie et manières d’habiter: xiie–xvie siècle (ed.
Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, Françoise Piponnier, and Jean-Michel Pois-
son, 2006): André Bazzana, “Espace privé/espace public: Maisons, ruelles
et jardins dans l’habitat andalou,” 293–306; and Danièle Alexandre-
Bidon, “Le confort dans la maison médiévale,” 129–44; Geoff Egan, “Le
mobilier et le décor de la maison médiévale à Londres,” 221–27; Gerhard
Jaritz, “Entre espace public et espace privé: le décor de la maison urbaine
(Europe centrale, XIVe–XVe siècle),” 249–52; Françoise Piponnier, “Dé-
nominations et fonctions des espaces dans l’habitation dijonnaise (XIVe–XVe
siècle),” 109–16.

Selected Bibliography
Alwin Schultz, Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesänger, vol. 1–2 (1889; Osnabrück:
O. Zeller, 1965); Eileen Power, Medieval People (1924; London: Methuen, 1963);
Charles-Victor Langlois, La vie en France au moyen âge de la fin du Xiie au milieu du XIVe
de l’histoire, vol. 1–2 (Paris: Hachette, 1926–28); Edmond Faral, La vie quotidienne au
temps de Saint Louis (Paris: Hachette, 1938); Arno Borst Lebensformen in Mittelalter
(Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1973); Robert Delort, Le Moyen Âge: Histoire illustrée de la vie
quotidienne (Lausanne: Editions Edita, 1972; English translation 1973); Pierre Riché,
La vie quotidienne dans l’empire carolingien (Paris: Hachette, 1973; English translation
1978); Jacques Le Goff, “L’historien et l’homme quotidien,” Pour un autre Moyen Âge
(Paris: Gallimard, 1978; English trans. 1980), 335–48; Otto Borst, Alltagsleben im Mit-
telalter (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1983); Heinrich Fichtenau, Lebensordnung des 10. Jahr-
hunderts (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1992; 1st ed. 1984, English trans.
1991); Alltag im Spätmittelalter, ed. Harry Kühnel (Graz: Verlag Styria, 1984); Gerhard
Jaritz, Zwischen Augenblick und Ewigkeit: Einführung in die Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters
(Vienna: Böhlau, 1989).

Valerie L. Garver
Feminism 540

Feminism

A. Definition
Over the last century no movement has altered the medieval studies land-
scape more than has feminism, an approach to the evaluation of women
involving research from all disciplines: history, humanities, sciences, social
sciences, economics. Feminist scholarship seeks to recover medieval women’s
contributions that had fallen into obscurity, to examine the relationship
between men and women in patriarchal cultures, and to study the roles of
women during the Middle Ages. The impact of feminism upon Medieval
Studies can be dramatically demonstrated by a comparison between two
medieval readers, popular anthologies that offer translations of primary
sources from the Middle Ages on such diverse topics as government, religion,
and literature. The 1949 Portable Medieval Reader (ed. Bruce Ross and Mary
Martin McLaughlin) contains a letter by a woman of the Stonor family, a
selection from Anna Comnena’s chronicle, and an excerpt from Margery
Kempe’s autobiography. As for writings addressed to or about women, there
is a letter from Abélard to Héloïse, excerpts from The Goodman of Paris’s
The Good Wife and from “The Case of a Woman Doctor in Paris,” and various
literary selections from the Miracles of the Virgin and from romance litera-
ture (e. g., Tristan and Iseult). In contrast, Norman F. Cantor’s 1994 The Medi-
eval Reader covers women much more extensively: it doubles the number
of women writers to six, it includes excerpts from Joan of Arc’s trial, and it
contains romantic literature and Miracles of the Virgin similar to the 1949
volume; most notably, it has a section entitled “Alienated Segments and
Unresolved Problems,” with nearly half of the selections by or about women
(the other group that is well represented is Jews).

B. Historical Development
With the onset of the Renaissance/Early Modern Era, women’s roles in
Europe tended to become restricted to the private sphere of the home, with
women who published, governed, or held other visible roles viewed with
increasing suspicion. Thus, very few printed editions of medieval women
writers appeared during the Early Modern Era – in 1501 Hrotsvit’s Opera
541 Feminism

Hrosvitae was published in Nuremberg and in 1566 Hildegard’s Epistolarum

Liber was published in Cologne. Although Christine de Pizan’s Les Faits
d’Armes et de Chevalerie appeared in a number of editions beginning in 1488,
many were printed without listing her name as author. Like Christine, Joan
of Arc’s influence became diminished: French official court historians of the
16th century had little to say about their national heroine, and Shakespeare in
1590 in 1 Henry VI depicted Joan as a witch in league with evil spirits.
This tendency to exclude women from spheres of power extended to
educational systems, so as modern universities in the 19th and 20th centuries
created departments organized around nation-states (e. g., German, Italian,
and English), women’s contributions from the past were often overlooked.
For example, W. P. Ker’s influential surveys of medieval literature made
brief mention of Marie de France and Anna Comnena, but no medieval
woman writer received the attention given to the men. Political histories
were geared toward celebrating “Great Men” as founders of civilizations, so
one had to turn to social histories to read about women and their daily lives,
such as those by Eileen Power (Medieval People, 1924).
One subject that fascinated both academic and popular audiences was the
mystical experiences of religious women, particularly Joan of Arc and medi-
eval saints, like St. Catherine of Siena. The Catholic Church responded to pub-
lic interest in Joan by canonizing her as a saint in 1920. However, academic
opinion dismissed the visions of female mystics as “hysteria,” a misogynistic
misapplication of science to women (Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neur-
osis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture, 1996). In recent decades aca-
demics have begun to analyze the behavior of medieval female saints in the
context of their culture and belief, not as a mental illness (Caroline Walker
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women, 1987; Frauenmystik im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher and
Dieter R. Bauer, 1985; Dinzelbacher, Mittelalterliche Frauenmystik, 1992).
Feminist scholarship in Medieval Studies paralleled political and civil
rights movements in Europe and the United States. Research into medieval
women’s contributions and lives developed at about the same time as the
suffragette movements of the late 19th century. The amount of scholarship
steadily increased as more and more women enrolled in the academy and
become lecturers/researchers. Certain subjects quickly became staples. There
were the “Great Women” of the Middle Ages, such as the Byzantine prin-
cess and writer, Anna Comnena (Georgina Buckler, Anna Comnena, 1929);
religious life was, of course, another popular topic (Lina Eckenstein, Wom-
an under Monasticism, 1896; Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, 1922;
Evelyn Underhill, Mystics of the Church, 1925).
Feminism 542

The rate of scholarship greatly accelerated with the feminist movement

of the 1960s. As feminists theorized about sex/gender and established places
in the academy for women, such as feminist presses and women’s studies de-
partments, the number of publications related to medieval women exploded
in the 1980s. Popular culture and the arts also drew attention to medieval
women – for instance, the film The Lion in Winter (1968) about the relation-
ship between Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, and Judy Chicago’s The
Dinner Party (1979), a work of art that referenced Christine de Pizan and other
influential women from the past.
Just as the suffragette and feminist movements proved controversial,
so, too, has been the academic study of medieval women. No figure better
illustrates the historical trajectory of feminism and Medieval Studies than
Christine de Pizan, the “first professional writer” and the inventor of “medi-
eval feminism.” This prolific author became one of the first medieval female
subjects of modern study (Raimond Thomassy, Essai sur les écrits politiques
de Christine de Pisan, 1838). Christine has fascinated feminists by her role in
the “querelle des femmes / woman question,” a debate in which Christine de-
fended women against the misogyny of her contemporaries. Thus, it is not
surprising that in the 20th century so many academics devoted their research
to the writings by Christine (Liliane Dulac, Earl Jeffrey Richards, Charity
Cannon Willard). Just as Christine’s defense of women created a backlash
against her during the 15th century, there has been a similar modern back-
lash against Christine and feminism. Gustave Lanson refused to include
Christine in his French literary history because he considered her the origi-
nal mediocre bluestocking (Histoire de la literature française, 1920). Even today
critics debate as to whether Christine’s writings have enough merit to be
in the canon or whether she is an inferior author being included because
“political correctness” demands it (see essays in Politics, Gender, Genre: The
Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed. Margaret Brabant, 1992).
A timeline that summarizes major publications by and about medieval
women entitled “Milestones in Medieval Women’s History” appears as Ap-
pendix 2 in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (ed. Margaret
Schaus, 2006). Women Medievalists and the Academy (ed. Jane Chance, 2005)
contains entries on feminist scholars and their contributions to Medieval
Studies. These two books provide helpful information relevant to the histori-
cal development of this subject.
543 Feminism

C. Major Contributors
Feminist research can be divided roughly into two categories – (1) gynocritic
treatments of medieval women and their contributions and (2) feminist
critiques of medieval men and patriarchal institutions. In the 1980s, antholo-
gies of translated primary documents by or about medieval women began to
be published. Peter Dronke (Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study
of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete, 1984) interspersed translations of
medieval women writers in his critical overview, while Katharina M. Wil-
son (ed., Medieval Women Writers, 1984) and Marcelle Thiébaux (The Writings
of Medieval Women, 1987) provided critical introductions to the translations
of medieval women writers, covering both religious and secular writers. Eli-
zabeth A. Petroff (ed., Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, 1986) focused
upon those women who related their mystical experiences; although most are
women affiliated with the church – St. Perpetua, Hrotsvit, Hildegard, etc. – a
few are affiliated with the court, such as Christine de Pizan. Collectively
these anthologies established a new gynocentric canon for the Middle Ages.
Also, essay anthologies and survey books summarizing and synthesiz-
ing historical research were made available. Becoming Visible: Women in Euro-
pean History (ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, 1976; 2nd ed.
1987; 3rd ed. 1997) was an early women studies book, quickly becoming a
standard, that surveyed women in societies from around the world (despite
the title) but with a decided emphasis upon Europe and from ancient up
through modern times. The essays in Women and Power in the Middle Ages (ed.
Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, 1988) broadened the definition of
power beyond such traditional public institutions as governments in exam-
ining women from various cultures throughout the Middle Ages. Suzanne
Wemple’s Women in Frankish Society (1981) reviewed the changes and con-
tinuities of aristocratic women’s powerful roles in Frankish society as it
adopted Christianity provided a model for medieval feminist research on a
particular culture. Shulamit Shahar’s Fourth Estate: History of Women in the
Middle Ages (1981) examined laws as applied to diverse groups of medieval
women – nuns and wives, aristocrats and peasants, witches and heretics.
Edith Ennen published a monumental historical introduction to signifi-
cant women in the Middle Ages and examined, above all, women’s roles in
the various social classes (Frauen im Mittelalter, 1984; 3rd ed. 1987; English
trans. as The Medieval Woman, 1989). Karl Schnith edited a volume with
biographies of some of the leading medieval queens and empresses (Frauen
des Mittelalters in Lebensbildern, 1997), and Helmut Feld published a useful col-
lection of twenty biographies of the most significant religious women in the
Middle Ages (Frauen des Mittelalters, 2000).
Feminism 544

One problem with the historicizing of the Middle Ages is that the epoch,
as it has been defined, spans a thousand years and covers countless cultures.
This brief article will focus upon the scholarship that casts a broad net, but
much of the available research narrows upon a particular figure or topic.
When introducing their work to general audiences, medieval scholars –
not just those dealing with feminism – inevitably grapple with the doctrine
of progress established during the 18th century that still has a stranglehold
today. This false assumption holds that the Middle Ages was the Dark Ages,
and subsequent history has been one of steady progress, with the history of
women illustrating this well: modern women in the West have rights, while
medieval women were repressed. Indeed, scholarly studies can reinforce this
misconception – e. g., Silences of the Middle Ages (vol. 2 in Georges Duby’s and
Michelle Perrot’s series, A History of Women in the West, 1992). This volume
claims that women in the Middle Ages were silenced and controlled by a
patriarchal church and government, while a revolution was slowly growing
among a small group of women writers. Examining the titles of the many
books that take medieval misogyny as their subject can also reinforce the
opinion that the Middle Ages was a dark time – for example, Katharina M.
Wilson and Elizabeth M. Makowski’s Wykked Wyves and the Woes of
Marriage: Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer (1990) and R. Howard
Bloch’s Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (1992). It
is undeniable that women in the Middle Ages faced many obstacles. How-
ever, Alcuin Blamires’s anthology of misogynist tracts, Woman Defamed and
Woman Defended (1992), includes defenses of women, and Blamires later
wrote The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (1997), which focuses upon pro-
feminine literature of the Middle Ages, serving as a counterbalance to the
misogynous tracts.
Feminist critiques of the representations of medieval women by their
male contemporaries illustrate the complexity of this subject. The ambigu-
ous evidence resists a reductive reading that men of the Middle Ages saw all
women as evil daughters of Eve or, conversely, as angelic daughters of Mary.
Joan M. Ferrante’s Woman as Image in Medieval Literature (1975) surveys how
male writers of the Middle Ages used women as symbols of masculine hopes
and fears. Jenny Jochens (Old Norse Images of Women, 1996) and Sarah An-
derson (ed., Cold Counsel: The Women of Old Norse Literature and Myth, 2002)
delve into the ways that Scandinavian Christian men depicted ancient pagan
goddesses and legendary feminine characters in sagas and eddic literature.
Irish writers were faced with a similar situation (see, for instance, Joanne
Findon, A Woman’s Word: Emer and Female Speech in the Ulster Cycle, 1997). Ro-
salind McKenzie points out that while Russian clerics produced misogynist
545 Feminism

literature about the evils of women, chroniclers wrote about the historical
figure of Princess Olga as though she were a folklore heroine (“Women’s
Image in Russian Medieval Literature,” A History of Women’s Writing in Russia,
ed. Adele Marie Barker and Jehanne Gheith, 2002, 16–36). In many
instances, male Christian authors, products of patriarchal cultures, had
to wrestle with cultural memories of powerful pagan women, both divine
and earthly, who were dominant figures from ancient matriarchal societies.
These ambiguous images of women from the Middle Ages can appear contra-
dictory to modern readers. The Wife of Bath, the popular character in Geof-
frey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, amply demonstrates the difficulties in inter-
preting portrayals of women. Critical opinion ranges from labeling the
outspoken and bawdy Wife – and by extension, her creator, Chaucer – as a
humorous “protofeminist” to condemning the Wife as the satiric embodi-
ment of Chaucer’s sexist attitudes (for an overview of conflicting opinions on
the Wife, see Elaine Tuttle Hansen, “‘Of His Love Dangerous to Me’: Liber-
ation, Subversion, and Domestic Violence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale,” Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, ed. Peter G. Beidler, 1996, 273–89).
Sister Prudence Allen, R.S.M., published two volumes on The Concept of
Woman from antiquity to the Renaissance, broadening our concept of how
women were viewed by their contemporaries (The Concept of Woman, vol. 1,
1985; vol. 2, 2002).
Despite the sexist attitudes of many men in the Middle Ages, the main
body of research refutes the opinion that women in the Middle Ages were
unable to accomplish anything because of a repressive patriarchy. The most
famous challenge to this assumption came in Joan Kelly-Gadol’s essay,
“Did Women Have a Renaissance?” (Becoming Visible, ed. Bridenthal, et al.,
loc. cit., 1st ed.1976; 2nd ed., 1987, 175–201), in which she posits that medi-
eval women had more civil rights than women of the Renaissance/Early
Modern Era, since that later era witnessed the rise of the division between
public and private spheres in which women were confined to the private
sphere of the home. Although scholars have not always agreed with some of
Kelly-Gadol’s arguments – such as her claim that the courtly love affairs
celebrated in medieval romance literature helped to elevate women in so-
ciety – nonetheless, her thesis has become a commonly accepted theory.
Despite misogynist literature by male clerics, women in the Church
carved a space for themselves based upon their readings of the Bible and of
church fathers, which are ironically the sources for the misogynist tracts.
One such Church Father was Jerome, who claimed that through commit-
ment to Christianity and to chastity, fallen women could become “virile” –
equal to men (Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Womanchrist: Studies in
Feminism 546

Medieval Religion and Literature, 1995). Women could also empower them-
selves through allegorical readings about “goddesses,” such as Lady Philos-
ophy (Barbara Newman, Gods and Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the
Middle Ages, 2002). Caroline Walker (Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious
Significance of Food to Medieval Women, 1988) and Albrecht Classen (The Power
of a Woman’s Voice, 2007) provide additional evidence that women of the
church, if not impervious to misogyny, nonetheless did not subscribe to the
view that they were inferior creatures unworthy to serve God. According to
Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, “Active participation in religious
life thus offered women access to power in all its forms, power that was other-
wise denied them. By carefully exploiting the institutional church (which
barred them from the priesthood and from high ecclesiastical office) and by
astutely manipulating religious precepts (which were a principal source of
the ideology of female inferiority), women were able to carve out for them-
selves broad areas of influence” (Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance
Italy, trans. Margery Schneider, 1996, 2). Examples from medieval Italy pro-
vided by Bornstein and Rusconi include St. Catherine of Siena and the
“Poor Clares.”
At courts, powerful women encouraged positive attitudes about women
through their patronage of the arts, with the most famous example being
Eleanor of Aquitaine. Thus, writers, such as Marie de France and Chrétien de
Troyes, may have been encouraged by their patrons to create the ideal we
now call “courtly love” (Joan M. Ferrante, Woman as Image in Medieval Litera-
ture, 1975; Joachim Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter, 1979; Eleanor of Aquitaine:
Patron and Politician, ed. William Kibler, 1976; The Cultural Patronage of Medi-
eval Women, ed. June Hall McCash, 1995; Women and Power in the Middle Ages,
ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, 1988). Some patrons may
have been artists themselves. One popular legend – now under attack – holds
that Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, commissioned and
helped embroider the Bayeux Tapestry celebrating her husband’s victory at
the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Although few works in the plastic arts, except
for textile art, have been attributed to medieval women artists, female pa-
trons could dictate the nature of the art. For instance, in 1329 Emilia Pannoc-
chieschi d’Elci was granted funds and permission to construct the convent
and church of Santa Marta in San Marco, Italy (Diana Norman, “An Abbess
and Painter,” Renaissance Studies 3.14 [2000]: 273–300). The wealth of research
available refutes the reductive view that women suffered in silence through-
out the Dark Ages, while awaiting some ray of light from the Renaissance.
However, it would be equally wrong to suggest that the Middle Ages was a
matriarchal golden age. It was an era when numerous women overcame ob-
547 Feminism

stacles to lead productive, successful lives (Claudia Spanily, Autorschaft und

Geschlechterrollen: Möglichkeiten weiblichen Literatentums, 2002).
Although the scholarship yields many differing opinions about the lives
of women in the Middle Ages, all these studies have resulted in remarkable
recoveries of the valuable contributions by women of the Middle Ages, which
in turn have expanded our knowledge about this epoch (see, for instance,
Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, ed. Emilie Amt, 1993). These recoveries con-
stitute an important part of feminist scholarship. Perhaps the most spectacu-
lar find came in 1934 when Hope Emily Allen uncovered a late medieval
English manuscript, The Book of Margery Kempe (ed. Sanford Brown Meech,
1940). The first autobiography in English, this book recounts Margery’s
personal history of her mystical visions. More recently, June Hall McCash
has convincingly argued that Marie de France, most famous for her Lais,
was the author of the Vie Seinte Audree (The Life of Saint Audrey, ed. June Hall
McCash and Judith Barban, 2006). A similar recovery has occurred with
the Hungarian-German chambermaid Helene Kottanner, who composed a
journal of her experiences at the Hapsburgian court under Queen Elizabeth
between 1439 and 1440 (first edited by Karl Mollay, Die Denkwürdigkeiten
der Helene Kottannerin 1439–1440, 1971; English trans. by Maya Bijvoet Wil-
liamson, 1998; for a critical examination, see Albrecht Classen, The Power
of a Woman’s Voice, 2007). Artistic and literary contributions by Italian women
in the Middle Ages are highlighted in the volume Creative Women in Medieval
and Early Modern Italy (ed. Ann Matter and John Coakley, 1994). Aside
from literature, songs and music of medieval women have also been re-
covered. For a focus on courtly love, see Medieval Woman’s Song (ed. Anne L.
Klinck and Ann Marie Rasmussen, 2002). The significant role of religious
women composing hymns in late-medieval Germany is extensively docu-
mented by Albrecht Classen (‘Mein Seel fang an zu singen’: Religiöse Frauenlieder
der [sic] 15.–16. Jahrhunderts, 2002; for a partial English transl., see id., Late-
Medieval German Women’s Poetry, 2004; see also his edition of secular women’s
songs, Deutsche Frauenlieder des fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1999).
Recovered work from women of the Middle Ages and other epochs
has led to speculation about “écriture féminine,” Hélène Cixous’ term for an
essentially female style of writing. Although many debate over what role
gender expectations and innate sexual characteristics play in determining
language, feminists tend to focus upon the manifestations of female subjec-
tivity and experience. Thus, much criticism centers upon autobiographical
genres. In medieval literature, there have been a numberous publications
on the epistolary genre (Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre,
ed. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, 1993). Examples include
Feminism 548

Héloïse’s letters to her castrated husband Abélard (Listening to Héloïse, ed.

Bonnie Wheeler, 2000), Catherine of Siena’s dictated letters about her mys-
tical visions (Maria Luisa Doglio, trans. Jennifer Lorch, “Letter Writing,
1350–1650,” A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. Letizia Panizza and
Sharon Wood, 2000), and private letters by such women as those of the
Paston family (Diane Watt, The Paston Women, 2004). In the Middle Ages
autobiography typically took the form of religious confession, beginning
with St. Augustine’s Confessions. A late medieval autobiographical writer like
Margery Kempe – who hired scribes to pen her story – had a long tradition
of female spiritual autobiographies to draw upon, and in particular she chose
as her model St. Birgitta of Sweden (see Translation of the Works of St. Birgitta
of Sweden into the Medieval European Vernaculars, ed. Bridget Morris and
Veronica O’Mara, 2000). Even the Alexiad by Anna Comnena contains per-
sonal reflections, although ostensibly she was writing a chronicle about her
father’s role in the Crusades composed in a style reminiscent of the epic.
Anna provides eyewitness accounts about the beginnings of the Crusades
and highlights her own involvement, while minimizing the role of her
brother and rival to the throne (Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia
Gouma-Peterson, 2000).
During the 1960s, feminist scholarship hovered at the margins of aca-
deme, but began to make inroads through women’s studies courses and
through components grafted onto traditional courses. Now feminist schol-
arship has merged into the mainstream of Medieval Studies so that women
are no longer studied in isolation. Nowadays, many women’s studies
courses/departments have been replaced by gender studies, which examine
both masculine and feminine gender roles, sexual orientation, and body the-
ory (see also the article on “Gender Studies” in this Handbook).
Now feminism intersects with virtually every postmodern movement.
For example, rather than seeing “woman” as an absolute category, “woman”
is examined in the context of other factors – ethnicity, race, class. Tova
Rosen breaks ground with her study on the medieval Jewish view of women
with Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature (2003), closely
paralleled by Elisheva Baumgarten’s Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life
in Medieval Europe (2004). Louise Mirrer calls attention to the hybridity that
existed in the Iberian Peninsula in Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Re-
conquest Castile (1996). Women in the Medieval Islamic World (ed. Gavin Hambly,
1998) corrects the Orientalist notion that Muslim women throughout time
have lived in repression behind a veil and in a harem. Crossing the Bridge:
Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers (ed.
Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho, 2000) examines European medieval
549 Feminism

women writers in context with those from Heian, Japan, perhaps the only
culture in the world whose classic literature is dominated by women writers.

D. Current Research
Because the number of approaches to and publications about medieval
women seems to be expanding exponentially, this article is cursory and
highly selective; it has only skimmed the surface of a rich, vast topic. The best
way to sort through the multitude of materials is to consult reference works
that can serve as overviews. For biographies on medieval women from
around the world, see Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia (ed. Katharina
M. Wilson and Nadia Margolis, 2004), and for entries on a wide range of
topics – patronage, medicine, etc. – see Women and Gender in Medieval Europe:
An Encyclopedia (ed. Margaret Schaus, 2006). Printed materials become
dated rapidly, so fortunately The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
maintains an online bibliography, Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html, in ad-
dition to printing its periodical, the Medieval Feminist Forum. The Cambridge
Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David
Wallace, 2003) provides helpful critical essays on medieval women writers.
Historical surveys also serve as useful starting points (Lisa M. Bitel, Women
in Early Medieval Europe, 400–1100, 2002; Jennifer Ward, Women in Medieval
Europe, 1200–1500, 2002). Finally, various publishers devote entire series to
medieval women – for instance, Brepols’ Medieval Woman: Texts and Contexts
and Boydell and Brewer’s Library of Medieval Women Series. The study of medi-
eval women has attracted scholars from all over the world (see, for instance,
Eva Parra Membrives, Mundos femeninos emancipados, 1998).

Select Bibliography
Lisa M. Bitel, Women in Early Medieval Europe, 400–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2002); Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study
of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984); Jennifer Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, 1200–1500 (London: Longman,
2002); Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia
Koonz (1976; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 3rd ed. 1997); The Cambridge Companion
to Medieval Women’s Writing, ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender
Index http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html; Women and
Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus (New York: Routledge,
2006); Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Katharina M. Wilson and Nadia
Margolis (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004).

Barbara Stevenson
Folklore in Medieval Studies 550

Folklore in Medieval Studies

A. Introduction
As an approach or field of inquiry with significance for medieval studies, the
beginnings of modern research in folklore are traced to 18th- and early 19th-
century figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder, the Grimm Brothers and
the Englishman William John Thoms. The latter scholar first encouraged
use of the term “folklore,” (Athenaeum) in order to render a concept that would
subsume the various approaches to both study and enjoyment of popular
culture. From the start, the archaeological nature of the discipline was recog-
nized, and the collection of pertinent data from among various manifes-
tations of the folk was pursued vigorously. Herein lay a problem broached by
later generations of medievalists who wished to incorporate the methods of
folklore into their areas of research, i. e., the present collecting of evidence
cannot reflect a full record of popular traditions from the past. Since live per-
formance or exercise of living custom was bound up with the evidence of
folkloric patterns, it was eventually recognized that a later, written record of
a deed or performance could represent only the shadow of an actual event.
Despite this critical admission, folklorists have been able to pursue their re-
search based on the supposition that some aspects of an oral or popular cul-
ture are retained in written evidence as well. Although much of this docu-
mentation must be presumed incomplete, the collection and evaluation of
both oral and written putative sources of folklore have been encouraged with
the general understanding that even a slight increment to the previous base
of accepted knowledge provides ample grounds for speculative research.
Contributions from the early generations of folklorists are identified pri-
marily as varying processes of collection. Both Herder and the Grimm
Brothers initiated projects whose goal was to assemble as broad an array of
folk songs or folk narratives as could be collected from contemporary mem-
ory. Herder aimed at the revival of a national German identity, in his view,
by means of learning from supposed evidence of earlier folk traditions. His
collection of Volkslieder (1778–1779), and Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (1806)
are testaments to the spirit of this endeavor. A modern revisionist perspec-
tive on Herder’s methods and the international influence of his goals in
using folk poetry to rediscover a culture’s past may be consulted at William
A. Wilson, “Herder, Folklore and Romantic Nationalism” (Journal of Popular
Culture 6 [1973]: 819–35). Although the primary interest of Herder and his
contemporaries was focused on the Germanic past, their efforts created a
model strong enough to be imitated by other cultures in search of a national
551 Folklore in Medieval Studies

folk tradition. In the early decades of the 19th century Jakob and Wilhelm
Grimm published their first editions of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1814–1816)
and Deutsche Sagen (1816–1818). By 1835 Jakob Grimm added to the field
of research in native culture with the completion of his Deutsche Mythologie,
seen both at that time and later as a major compendium serving the theoreti-
cal and etymological background of Germanic folklore. These early endea-
vors proved to be influential beyond immediate boundaries, so that by the
late 19th and early 20th centuries the example of the Grimms had spawned
both imitations and alternate, collective models for accepted medieval lore
in other Western and Slavic cultures. Significant examples of these include
the collection of Danish folk ballads under the direction of Svend Grundt-
vig (1824–83) and the well-known, multi-volume English and Scottish Popular
Ballads (1864–1871; last rev. ed. 1882–1898) assembled by Francis James
Child. Comparable endeavors were initiated in France, Russia, and other
Scandinavian cultures.
Although similarities in the degree and scope of assembling a localized
past record of folk traditions pervaded many research plans until well into the
20th century, the methods of evaluating any data collected varied in keeping
with several fundamental premises. Essential differences in methodology
centered on a philological vs. an anthropological approach. The former
approach, among whose proponents may be counted the Grimm brothers,
traced folk beliefs and traditions back to a single point of origin, i. e., folk
tales represent a latter day variation on original motifs inherited from an
Indo-European background. The alternate, anthropological view, fostered
especially by the Englishman Andrew Lang, associated the principle of evol-
ution with popular cultural development. According to this line of thought,
one presumes that all cultures are marked by an evolutionary process, at each
stage of which predictable yet individual types of custom or habit will nat-
urally arise. The expectations of this method led to an equally comparative
approach not only between cultures but also chronologically within individ-
ual societies. This model of folkloric development would then project oral
motifs and tales as being reinvented or surviving within the popular strata of
society, making it possible to study their transformation over an extended
period of generations.

B. The Early 20th Century and the Finnish Approach

Among methodologies of research in folklore during the first half of the
20th century the Finnish school gave rise to the motif or type index of folk
tales and folkloric patterns. From the first decade of the 20th century until
1950 the historic-geographic method, by which the Finnish approach is gen-
Folklore in Medieval Studies 552

erally known, was developed on the basis of Märchen and folk-tale analysis
and categorization. The work of Kaarle Krohn and his student Antti Aarne
coincided with the foundation of the series “Folklore Fellows’ Communi-
cations” (FFC), in which the early leading research undertaken, in keeping
with this method on folklore, was published. The influence of the FFC as
a forum and outlet for research in the field persisted throughout the last cen-
tury; indeed, the FFC continues now to serve, by its own definition, as a “ref-
ereed monograph series in the fields of folkloristics, comparative religion,
cultural anthropology, and ethnology.” This focus has been maintained to
the present as exemplified by recent titles on the body, society, and the super-
natural in rural Finland (Laura Stark, “The Magical Self,” 2006) and on Mo-
roccan (Maarten Kossmann, A Study of Eastern Moroccan Fairy Tales, 2000),
Tamil (Stuart Blackburn, Moral Fictions: Tamil Folktales from Oral Tradition,
2001) or Portuguese folktales (Isabel Cardigos, Paulo Correia, and J. J.
Dias Marques, Catalogue of Portuguese Folktales, 2006). The earliest essays
in collective volumes and individual monographs published by the FFC
(1910–1915) featured investigations on specific folklore collections (Axel
Olrik and Astrid Lunding, 1910), catalogues (Aantti Aarne and Oskar
Hackman, 1910–1911), and attempts to categorize motivic studies of in-
herited popular tales (Antti Aarne and Reidar Christiansen, 1912–1914).
In 1910 Aarne completed and published in the FFC the first version of his
Verzeichnis der Märchentypen (Catalogue of Folktale Types), subsequently trans-
lated into English and expanded significantly under the direction of Stith
Thompson (1927; 2nd rev. ed. 1961; rpt. 1987). This catalogue served a two-
fold purpose in folklore research as it could be applied to the study of medi-
eval literature and culture: 1) the principles of assembling such a working list
could be expanded to include additional stories or variants of the same from
alternate yet related cultural milieux; 2) at the same time, the index could
serve as a model or paradigm for predominant types in other genres of popu-
larly transmitted lore. During the first fifteen years or so of its existence the
series published not only catalogues of fairy and folk tales and their variants
but also individual studies on magic, puzzles and riddles, ethnic and Slavic
religions, and the first modern investigations on the Kalevala. The latter
were published by Krohn during the 1920s, who also released at this time
Die folkloristische Arbeitsmethode (1926; Folklore Methodology, trans. R. Welsch,
1971), his summary discussion of the method that had been developed
among the scholars associated from the start with the Bund der Folklore Fel-
lows, or “Folkloristischer Forscherbund.”
During succeeding decades the international influence of research pro-
moted by the FFC can hardly be overstated. Both in publications undertaken
553 Folklore in Medieval Studies

by the FFC series and investigations appearing independently the Finnish

approach was evident in American and European scholarly plans. In addition
to the above-noted translation and expansion of Aarne’s work on The Types
of the Folk-Tale, Stith Thompson published in the FFC, beginning in 1932,
his multi-volume Motif-Index of Folk Literature using principles of organiz-
ation similar to those of the earlier work on Types. In the larger Index the
text base was significantly broadened to include not only folk-tales and
Märchen, but also – as indicated in the title – ballads, myths, fables, romances,
exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, local legends, and proverbial texts. An equiv-
alent depth of focus was noted from the European perspective as well. By the
time of Thompson’s start on his Motif-Index the tradition of German folk-
tales had received additional significant attention and attempts at theoreti-
cal categorization due to the work of Johannes Bolte. In his collaborative
research on folktales Bolte contributed 1) detailed commentaries on the
Grimms’ collected tales, and 2) individual monographs on Märchen pub-
lished in 1920 and 1921 respectively by the FFC (Name und Merkmale des
Märchens and Zeugnisse zur Geschichte der Märchen). During its first thirty years
the FFC thus established guiding principles for further investigations and
enabled the publication of results that would affect the course of research on
Folklore and Medieval Studies for years to come.

C. Research on Medieval Drama and Folklore

The type of expansion into related, additional fields evident in the work of
Thomspon and his school was also found in projects initiated during these
years and afterward by other scholars who took up independent investi-
gations. Groundbreaking studies of importance to medievalists as well as
folklorists were The Medieval Stage (1903) by E. K. Chambers and The Drama
of the Medieval Church (1933) by Karl Young. Whereas the earlier study by
E. K. Chambers (on The Medieval Stage, 1903) was divided between folk
drama and its potential background in one volume, followed by religious
drama in a second, Young focused on the liturgy, the Bible, and popular
legends as predominant sources for medieval drama. Both Chambers and
Young discuss manuscripts as a source for performance practice or as evi-
dence for the development of dramatic habit and taste. The earlier work
by Chambers takes its impetus from the “persistence of the deep-rooted mi-
metic instinct in the folk,” an inborn tendency surviving even after the col-
lapse of the Roman world. After treating the earlier, popular manifestations
of drama, Chambers examines religious plays, derived from the liturgy,
as further evidence of this instinct in the display of Christian ceremony and
ritual. As a synthesis of both religious and non-religious aspects of dramatic
Folklore in Medieval Studies 554

inspiration, Chambers finally details the gradual evolution of sacred drama

into secular presentation. With often rich, accompanying detail he presents
a thesis on the secular transformation of religious spectacle in reference to
both participants and locales. Chambers concludes his presentation with
an overview of early Humanist drama showing the effects of a coalescence of
learned and folk elements. His appendices provide financial records for dra-
matic performances, lists of performers according to guild, as well as reprints
of pertinent sacred and popular texts edited from localized manuscripts.
Karl Young’s work from thirty years later profited, to be sure, from a wider
accessibility to manuscripts and liturgical records. Taking the Roman Mass
as a starting point, Young reviews the canonical structure of the liturgy in
its typical form from the 10th century, thus coinciding with the beginnings of
surviving religious drama. Following this introduction, the eight separate
services, which make up the Canonical Office and are observed at specific
hours of each day, are examined in their relation to the established mass.
Young’s intent is to undertake “an examination of the dramatic elements
inherent in the authorized liturgy itself, and in certain seasonal observances
which arose within the general liturgical frame-work and which received the
sanction of tradition.” Since for Young, “the plays of the Church owe to the
liturgy their very existence,” his method of examining dramatic elements
in the Mass or the Office could be expanded into scenic representation of
designated celebrations on the Passion or the Resurrection. In the same way,
Young treats the Nativity and specific narrative events, from both the Old
and New Testaments, which he shows to be transformed into dramatic tradi-
tions. The appendices to his two-volume work provide – as a further trove of
data supplementing that given in Chambers’ work – yet further records on
the performance of and attitudes toward medieval drama, hence making
available vital information on popular custom and pattern
All subsequent textual and critical studies on the confluence of folklore
and medieval drama draw on the groundwork completed by Chambers and
Young. During the decades following the appearance of Young’s study a
number of authentic, dramatic texts were made available in both critical and
diplomatic editions covering manuscripts in various vernacular languages as
well as in Latin. This editorial work, undertaken by scholars from Eduard
Hartl to Hansjürgen Linke, was often accompanied by research into evi-
dence of performance or documents of municipal and church records. Des-
pite the fragmentary nature of these data, they provided folklorists with
further examples of occasional authentic performance, thus fulfilling the
needs of a discipline attempting to base its evidence on a continuous tradi-
tion of performance. With increasingly more work focused on manuscripts
555 Folklore in Medieval Studies

of secular dramatic traditions – e. g., Shrovetide and Robin Hood plays – re-
search since the 1970s has been divided more evenly between earlier religious
and subsequent popular traditions. Evidence for the former was especially
documented in revised catalogues from this period. A categorization of Ger-
man liturgical plays, dealing especially with the Easter and Passion cycles
was published in 1970 as Die deutschen Oster- und Passionsspiele des Mittelalters
by Rolf Steinbach. A more expansive catalogue based on comparable reli-
gious evidence was completed by Rolf Bergmann in 1986 as Katalog
der deutschsprachigen geistlichen Spiele und Marienklagen des Mittelalters. Scholarly
works with a primary focus on Latin Easter tropes and their dramatic devel-
opment proved to be a springboard to critical discussion on a broader
European base. Hence the study by Helmut de Boor from 1967 on Die Text-
geschichte der lateinischen Osterfeiern considered the development of such dra-
matic traditions in France, England, and Spain in addition to the status in
German-speaking regions. In the same vein Sandro Sticca’s The Latin Passion
Play: Its Origins and Development (1970), and George B. Bryan’s Ethelwold and
Medieval Music-Drama at Winchester (1981) traced the early seeds of religious
drama in liturgical contexts with an eye to their subsequent transformation
in the following centuries. These and related developments were docu-
mented by the ongoing series Bibliography of Medieval Drama, sponsored in the
1970s and 1980s by Emporia State University, Kansas. As a resource the Bib-
liography covered trends in both religious and popular drama, thus emphas-
izing the critical attention which folklorists and literary historians had by
now assured to all aspects of the medieval stage.
The growing focus on popular drama since the 1970s and its emphasis
equivalent to that earlier afforded liturgical plays can be seen not only in the
number of contributions but also in the type of publications in this field.
What earlier counted as evidence of a comedic play or representation of a leg-
endary, popular figure has gradually developed into more recent attempts
to categorize dramatic types. Just as liturgical events had been studied by
Chambers and Young, among others, and had been defined according to
type, concerns of those working on secular drama now tend to cover not only
motif but also the categorization of plays and the significance of this concept
for a historical development of the genre. These tendencies have become a
predominant focus of the series “Ludus, Medieval and Renaissance Theatre
and Drama.” In recent volumes of “Ludus” individual essays grouped
around a common topic have especially covered issues in folklore as well as
religious drama with volumes such as Between Folk and Liturgy (1997), and Car-
nival and the Carnivalesque (1999). In the latter volume, as an example of recent
trends, Peter H. Greenfield’s article on “The Carnivalesque in the Robin
Folklore in Medieval Studies 556

Hood Games and King Ales of Southern England” (19–28) emphasizes depic-
tions of a popular figure, evidence of Robin Hood in dramatic performances
as documented, and the simultaneous connection to customs during a re-
peated popular season. Eckehard Simon’s book on the tradition of the late
medieval German secular play, Die Anfänge des weltlichen deutschen Schauspiels,
1370–1530 (2003), takes even further this method and the earlier work on Ger-
man popular plays undertaken by Dieter Wuttke and Hansjürgen Linke.
Simon examines potential categories of popular performance that devel-
oped in the period from the late 14th through the early 16th century. In his
consideration of Linke’s categories, earlier postulated for the seasonal Neit-
hart, and Shrovetide plays, Simon is concerned with broadening the dis-
cussion on “modalities of performance.” Especially in his presentation on
methods and records of performance of the Shrovetide plays Simon provides
vital information on locations, processions, staging, and timing of the dra-
matic presentations. Finally he discusses vernacular plays dealing with
saints’ lives that could also have been performed regionally during carnival.
Because of its emphasis on actual performance, the genre of drama has
yielded especially significant evidence bearing on the juncture of studies in
folklore and medieval culture. Critical research on both religious and secular
plays during the past two decades as noted points to continued future efforts
to examine the practice and performance of medieval drama as a source of
folkloric evidence.

D. Research on Medieval Lyric/Narrative and Folklore

In the fields of poetry, or song, as well as narrative the concepts of popular
performance and derivation from folk tradition have shown a degree of criti-
cal overlap. The figure of Robin Hood, already noted as significant in dra-
matic performance, has been widely discussed as a subject of ballad litera-
ture. Scholarly attention has focused primarily on efforts to differentiate late
medieval examples of the verifiable Robin Hood ballads from those later ac-
cretions which added to the earlier authentic base. In general, the initiatives
on popular song and ballad begun by Child continued to show his influence
for decades after the publication of his work. Long after Child’s pioneering
efforts in collecting ballads had been established, methods of analyzing or
achieving a critical understanding of ballad literature became and still re-
mains an ongoing task. It is here that a practical conflation with approaches
to the narrative or folk tale has taken place. The historic-geographic or Finn-
ish approach, applied earlier primarily to Märchen and folk tales, was used
subsequently in ballad research as a means of critical analysis of the corpus
collected by Child. Archer Taylor and Holger Olof Nygard made note-
557 Folklore in Medieval Studies

worthy contributions using this method from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Starting in 1959, Bertrand Bronson began the publication of his musical
analysis The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, a project which broadened
the interdisciplinary possibilities of research in folk poetry and narrative.
The composition and recitation of narrative poetry and songs subsequently
underwent significant fieldwork, the noteworthy figure in this area remain-
ing Albert B. Lord. Starting with the publication of The Singer of Tales in 1960
Lord analyzed the Yugoslav recitation of oral narrative poetry based on for-
mulas and themes. In his first book on this topic Lord applied the formulaic
technique especially to Homeric narrative. His later book, The Singer Resumes
the Tale (1995), devoted considerably greater focus to medieval narrative
poetry and the ballad. Just as Child’s work remained a predominant force
in the study of song and ballad, the research and published catalogues by
Aarne and Thompson have shown continued applicability in the areas of
Märchen and folk tale. In the next generation Richard Dorson expanded in
large measure interest in the areas of folklore studies and fieldwork under-
taken by scholars. Categorization and collecting have also progressed as
models for folk narrative in the work of Lutz Röhrich and Max Lüthi.
Both have been involved in assembling editions of folk tales, exempla, and
popular stories, these including previously inedited texts and alternate ver-
sions of known narrative sources. The number of prose genres considered has
grown to include more recent work on proverbs as well as sermons. The
motif index of Thompson has remained an invaluable tool as witnessed by
its continued use in individual scholarly studies and in recent handbooks. In
keeping with Thompson’s definition of the motif as “the smallest element
in a tale having the power to persist in tradition,” the significance of this
method in the joint fields of folklore and Medieval Studies has relied on the
expectations of tradition coupled with the search for new data showing its
transformation.

Select Bibliography
H. R. Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1988); Deutsche Märchen und Sagen (CD-Rom, No. 80) (Berlin: Digitale Bibliothek,
2004); Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les fées au moyen âge (Paris: Champion, 1984); Medi-
eval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. Carl Lindahl, John
McNamara, and John Lindow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Albert
Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Albert Lord,
The Singer Resumes the Tale, ed. Mary Louise Lord (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1995); Max Lüthi, Volksmärchen und Volkssage (Bern: Francke, 1975); Lutz Röhrich,
Erzählungen des späten Mittelalters und ihr Weiterleben in Literatur und Volksdichtung bis zur
Gegenwart, 2 vols. (Bern: Francke, 1962/67); Lutz Röhrich and Erika Lindig, Volks-
Formalism 558

dichtung zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1989); Ecke-
hard Simon, Die Anfänge des weltlichen deutschen Schauspiels, 1370–1530 (Tübingen: Nie-
meyer, 2003); Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, 6 vols. (Helsinki: FFC,
1932–1936); Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1933).

Salvatore Calomino

Formalism

A. Definition
Formalism holds that some particular fields of study or endeavor constitute a
type of closed system, in which interpretation and evaluation of system prod-
ucts are largely, if not entirely, governed by rules inherent in or generated
internally by the system itself. One prototype for formalism is the category of
mathematical and philosophic models founded on so-called “game formal-
ism,” which holds that mathematical proof is construable as adherence to a
set of mechanical rules, much like chess, wherein all that ultimately matters
is a result engendered by the following of those rules. Another is the related
concept of formal language, consisting of linguistic symbols and the rules for
concatenating those symbols. Within such systems, change, if any, is neces-
sarily incremental and comprehensible only with reference to the pre-exist-
ing elements and rules, whose vestiges are contained within any “novelty.”
In a sense, the field is ahistorical, the system having a history of its own insu-
lated from the larger historical context in which it occurs.
Since few fields of human endeavor can be conceived in terms of perfectly
rigorous rational or logical systems, formalism is usually a relative term.
Those scholars who emphasize in their work the historical continuities of
their field, whether law, art, literature, or philosophy, are frequently labeled
as formalists by their peers whose research objectives are directed to uncover-
ing innovation, though the former hardly deny all change however evol-
utionary, nor do the latter presume ex nihilo novelty. Rather, the debate sur-
rounds the degree of historicity or ahistoricity of the subject matter.

B. Formalism in Medieval Studies: French Iconography

In Medieval Studies, formalism has been most pervasive in the areas of art
history (iconology) and literary history (topoi); and, indeed, the two were
closely linked during the first half of the 20th century due to the “iconologi-
559 Formalism

cal” program of Kunstgeschichte of the Warburg institute. Before that, the

French had made the greatest contribution to medieval art and iconography.
The 19th century saw a spate of monographs on most of the major French
cathedrals, and from 1830 onward a number of reviews dedicated solely
to medieval art appeared, including the Annales archéologiques edited by
Adolphe-Napoléon Didron who was captivated like so many of his era with
Hugo’s Romanticism. Generally, however, medieval art was viewed simply
as a subset of Christian art and iconography, and rarely related specifically to
medieval theological, liturgical or legendary texts. The first significant effort
at a comprehensive analysis of medieval art qua medieval art manifesting a
cultural unity was the creation of Emile Mâle, a schoolteacher and dilet-
tante, who, between 1892 and 1922, completed a classic three-volume work
on French art and architecture from the 12th through the 15th centuries (L’art
religieux du XIIIe siécle en France: Etude sur l’iconographie du moyen âge et sur ses
sources d’inspiration, 1898, rev. and corrected, 1958; L’art religieux de la fin du
moyen âge en France: Etude sur l’iconographic du moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspira-
tion, 1908, 5th ed. rev. and corrected, 1949; L’art religieux du XIIIe siécle en France.
Etude sur l’origine de l’iconographie du moyen âge, 1922, rev. and corrected, 1953).
For Mâle, “In the Middle Ages form always clothed a thought. One might
say that thought worked within matter and formed it. Form can never be sep-
arated from the idea that created and animated it.” While largely descriptive,
it is true some scholars such as Norman Cantor are far too easily dismissive
of a work whose scholarship has influenced such contemporary art histori-
ans as Michael Camille. It was Mâle, after all, who in his first volume re-
lated the cathedral and the Speculum Maius of Vincent of Beauvais, and treated
the former as if it were a summa in stone, the sculpture as though a form of
writing, anticipating by several decades some of Panofsky’s work in prin-
ciple if not in scholarly technique. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable scent
of connoisserism to Mâle’s compilations and comparisons, itself represent-
ing a sort of intuitive formalism that has prevailed in subsequent French ico-
nographic studies.

C. Formalism and German Kunstwissenschaft

The more influential school of medieval art history begun by Erwin Pan-
ofsky was the direct descendant of the development of a philosophically-
grounded aesthetic counterpoint to the notion of logical formalism, the
product of a peculiarly German movement of psychological aesthetics in the
determined search for a basis for a true Kunstwissenschaft. The genesis of this
“aesthetic formalism” in 19th-century German philosophy lay with Kant’s ef-
forts to provide aesthetic judgment with a certain universality while preserv-
Formalism 560

ing its subjectivity. Hence, defining form as “that which allows the manifold
of appearance to be ordered in certain relations,” he added to his pure forms
of intuition, which encompassed the a priori idea of time and space, and his
forms of thought, regulating perceptual and conceptual structuring of the
world, a new notion of Zweckmäßigkeit (purposiveness), representing the
sense of internal harmony that we presume to exist. According to Kant, feel-
ings of pleasure or discomfort relate to the apprehension of form; and the
harmonious relation of objective form with the subjective structure of cogni-
tive faculties implies that these judgments are universal, being disinterested,
nonconceptual and without exterior purpose. Indeed, his third moment of
beauty he defined as “purposiveness without a purpose.” However, realizing
the limitations of his definition, he proceeded to subdivide beauty into
“free” and “ideal,” the latter adhering to a concept and hence uniting har-
monious form with content. Kant admitted an ideal basis only to the human
form.The consequence of Kant’s somewhat tortuous efforts to define a
science of aesthetics was nothing less than a schism within 19th-century aes-
thetics itself. The idealist component Kant introduced to broaden aesthetics
beyond “pure” (i. e., free) arts such as nonprogrammatic music, supported
the formulations of Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel, and especially the latter’s
unification of matter and Geist in harmonious balance implying the cultural
embeddedness and historicity of art. Kant’s initial problem of objective form
subjectively apprehended by the cognitive faculties prompted a line con-
cerned first with the subjective aspects of aesthetic contemplation and sec-
ond, with the attributes of pure form without content. This latter line of
thought included Schopenhauer’s will-less aesthetic contemplation, the ca-
pacity for which he denominated “objectivity,” and attempted to found
upon the physiology of the perceptual act; and the underrated Johann Fried-
rich Herbart (1776–1841), whose psychologism undertook to define aes-
thetics as the science of elementary relations of lines, tones, planes, colors,
ideas, etc., stripping away all “intrusions” into aesthetic perception, most
notably, “content,” and demanding as the perfect frame of mind a state of
complete indifference. Herbert influenced a generation of German
thinkers, not least Robert Zimmerman (1824–1898), who in his Aesthetik
undertook to expand Herbart’s prototypes into an aesthetics founded
entirely on form. To these efforts at a purely formalist aesthetics devoid of
content, Robert Vischer (1847–1933), son of the more famous Friederich
Theodor Vischer (1807–1887), who pioneered an aesthetics founded on
symbolization, introduced a sort of “counter-formalism” founded upon Ein-
fühlung (empathy) and symbolization, which process “can be based on no-
thing other than the pantheistic urge for union with the world, which can by
561 Formalism

no means be limited to our more easily understood kinship with the human
species but must, consciously or unconsciously, be directed toward the uni-
verse” (Über das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik, 1873, trans. Harry
Francis Mallgrave and Ikonnomou Eleftherios, Empathy, Form and
space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, 1994, 109). Forms are never
empty or subject to mathematical reduction, but are judged harmonious or
not according to the degree to which they complete or fulfill the perceiver’s
own complex mental life. “In the visual arts, it is not a question of content or
form but of the power of the image, of its phenomenality.” These two strains,
both anti-Idealist, are united in the work of Adolf Hildebrant (1847–1933)
who beginning with the Hebartian “visibility” thesis of Conrad Fiedler
(1841–1895), suggests that art can only be approached through itself because
its essence was the opposite of idealism – i. e., rather than trending from the
sensuous to the nonsensuous, from the visible to the invisible, from percep-
tion to abstraction, art takes place in the realm of visual imagination or ideas
(Vorstellungen) – argued that form should not simply be perceived but should
be intensified by art (Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst, 1893). A more
rigorous and self-conscious formalism was advanced by the Swiss art his-
torian, Heinrich Wölfflin, who eschewed in the closing lines of Die klas-
sische Kunst: Eine Einführung in die italienische Renaissance (1899) “a mere formal-
istic appreciation of art,” but maintained as well that all pictures owe more to
other pictures than they do to nature. For Wölfflin style and change of
style were matters of culture and psychology, both potentially understood as
encompassing a sort of Jungian collective memory. But that memory for
Wölfflin encompasses formal problems, such that every painting is a sort
of variant on its predecessors: “Every artist finds certain visual possibilities
before him, to which he is bound. Not everything is possible at all times.
Vision itself has its history, and the revelation of these visual strata must be
regarded as the primary task of art history.” Hence, Wölfflin has earned
the wrath of art historians such as Arnold Hauser, a product of the Vienna
school, who pointed to his “unhistorical” approach, read as indifference to
sociological explanation, and more generally, for concentrating exclusively
on the issue of morphology of visual forms to the exclusion of “meaning”
(The Philosophy of Art History, 1958, 147 et sqq.).

D. Formalism in Medieval Studies: Kulturwissenschaft and Iconology

While confluences of Wölfflin’s formalism and the Warburg program
are not hard to find, including an implicit reliance on the Jungian collective
memory, iconology can be seen just as easily as a type of counter-formalism
better labeled “contextualism,” and located not so much in Kunstwissenschaft
Formalism 562

as in the Kulturwissenschaft. Aby Warburg, scholar and heir to a banking for-

tune, who invested his inheritance in the library and institute in Hamburg
which was to bear his name, advanced a tripartite focus: the continuity of
images (iconography per se); the close relation of images to the systematically
examined literary text; and the interaction of artistic image with cultural
context. In this approach, closely akin to philology, the collective memory is
active and self-conscious, not the Jungian unconscious collective that seems
more at home in Wölfflin’s formalism. Moreover, also contrary to Wölff-
lin, it presumes the formal elements of the artwork are understood by the
artist as having meaning transcending mere taste or convention. Indeed,
Warburg described these formal elements as engrams become exemplars
which the artist employs as “maximal values of expressive movement.” Art
can be understood as the skill with which the craftsman employs these
elements. Hence, the importance of such concepts as “pathos formulae”
to Warburg’s analysis. Content and form thus are not easily separable,
but must be seen in their mutual illumination, as systemically one. The artist
is confronted with a panoply of choices in composition, not as mere epigone
in the historicist chain of evolving style reflective of the Zeitgeist, but as an in-
dividual often in conflict with that spirit. But to appreciate that artistic
achievement, it is necessary to “read” the artwork, in a sort of hermeneutics
of formulae. Neither Wölfflin, nor somewhat strangely in light of his con-
cern for pathos formulae, Warburg were interested in medieval art. That
field would become the bailiwick of Erwin Panofsky, who in a 1915 essay
“Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst” (Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und
allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 10, 460–67), already had criticized Wölfflin’s
effort to separate form and content and in1920 had written an essay ex-
hibiting a more than passing sympathy for Alois Riegl’s Kunstwollen, but de-
fined so as to be no longer synthetic (as, in fact, it was for Riegl), but directed
toward the “ultimate meaning residing in the artistic phenomenon (not for
us but objectively)” (“Der Begriff des Kunstwollen,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik
und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 14 [1920], 321–39). A professor at the new
Hamburg University, given his interests, he naturally gravitated toward the
Warburg library, until he fled the continent in 1933 for the United States.
His program of iconology became essentially a restatement of Warburg’s
in an attempt to approach an artwork exegetically, employing “historical
methods, tempered, if possible, by common sense. We have to ask ourselves
whether or not the symbolical significance of a given motif is a matter of
established representational tradition; […] whether or not a symbolical in-
terpretation can be justified by definite texts or agrees with ideas demon-
strably alive in the period and presumably familiar to its artists; […] and to
563 Formalism

what extent such a symbolical interpretation is in keeping with the historical

position and personal tendencies of the individual master” (“Iconography
and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” Meaning in
the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History, 1955, 32, in a bracketed remark
added to the original 1939 essay, Early Netherlandish Painting, 142, 143,
quoted and discussed in Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of
Art History, 1984, 164 and note 18). This does not obviate attention to form:
“in a work of art, ‘form’ cannot be divorced from ‘content’: the distribution
of color and lines, light and shade, volumes and planes, however delightful
as a visual spectacle, must also be understood as carrying a more-than-visual
meaning” (“Titian’s Allegory of Prudence: a Postscript,” op. cit., 168).

E. Formalism in Medieval Studies: Literature and Topology

Unfortunately, as critics have suggested, many of Panofsky’s followers,
and, too often, he himself, lost track of these theoretical underpinnings and
his iconological approach devolved into simple iconographical deciphering.
In fact, when pursued in such formalistic fashion, Panofsky’s iconology
bears much relationship to the topological method of the German linguist
and literary historian Ernst Robert Curtius (Europäische Literatur und lateini-
sches Mittelalter, 1948). For Curtius, an admirer of Warburg, medieval lit-
erature is an extended dialogue with successive generations of literary texts,
expressed in topoi largely inherited from classical and early Christian litera-
ture, wherein multi-faceted human experience is expressed symbolically
through the encoded system. But as in the case of the Jungian archetypes, to
which he himself seemingly acknowledged a debt, there is a certain loss as to
individual application. Even more formalistic are those works arguing that
the literary text is not merely a dialogue with preceding texts, but is essen-
tially self-reflexive. These include Paul Zumthor’s 1972 Essai de poétique
médiéval; Michael Zink’s Roman rose et rose mouge: Le Roman de la rose ou de
Guillaume de Dole de Jean Renart (1979); and Roger Dragonetti’s Le mirage des
sources: L’art du faux dans le roman médiévale (1987). Like in Derrida’s decon-
structionism, writing is ultimately about writing, and hence, historically
incommensurate. It was for E. Talbot Donaldson, principally, Charles
Muscatine, and Robert Hanning, inter alia and to a lesser extent, to de-
velop the topological approach into a more dynamic Exegetical method,
wherein literary traditions were employed consciously and frequently ma-
nipulated for the author’s own purposes, and hence as in the New Criticism,
meaning lies in the text itself not merely its genealogy. A more formalist ap-
proach was advocated by Durant Waite Robertson, Jr., in which the liter-
ary topoi are skillfully (or not) manipulated by the medieval author, not
Formalism 564

always in the manner, but always in accordance with the larger harmonious
meaning, or convenientia, of their predecessors and the culture as a whole; so
that, unlike Warburg’s formulae, the artist is never found in conflict with
his culture’s Weltanschauungen, which is no longer unbewusst, but as Patter-
son has suggested, “neatly if illegibly printed in the marching columns
of Migne’s Patrologia,” and in Robertson’s case, more particularly in the
Augustinian corpus. Hence, there is a tendency to gravitate away from a her-
meneutics of depth, requiring interpretation, and towards a positivizing of
Geistesgeschichte requiring merely description, because the content is ab-
sorbed entirely into the form.

F. Criticism
Indeed, this is the most frequently raised criticism of both the iconological
artistic and the exegetical literary approaches. As Henri Zerner wrote of
the former: “Only the methods and techniques of interpretation permit the
attainment of meaning.” Panofsky’s development is to be understood in
this sense. He worked to put in place a method of reading, limited to artistic
themes and valid only for the Christian West. But his ultimate goal was the
iconological level; that is to say, objective immanent meaning. His disciples
having lost sight of his theoretical preoccupations, which he himself seem-
ingly neglected more and more, the discipline he established has been
transformed into an isolated technique of decipherment. The aim of an
iconological level is generally abandoned and, what is worse, the icono-
graphic decipherment itself is too often substituted for meaning (“L’art,”
Faire de l’histoire: Nouveau problèmes, vol. 2, ed. J. Le Goff and Pierre Nora,
1974, 188). Such degeneration is not inevitable. In the last decade of the 20th
century, studies by scholars such as Michael Camille, while conceding the
importance of icons and topoi, have emphasized, contrary to the more static
and formalistic approaches, that “visual representations do not have settled
significance but are constantly changing.” Furthermore, “Once we see that
the transfer of power is a more important factor in the history of art than
the tedious transmission of models, and that this is the mechanism by which
content is carried down into tradition, the capacity of image-makers con-
stantly to reinvent rather than refer to meaning becomes clear and the more
easily will art history become essential to all historical inquiry” (The Gothic
Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, 1989, 114).
565 French Studies

Select Bibliography
Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1992); Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives,
Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century (New York: William Mor-
row & Co., 1993); Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); E. H. Gom-
brich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London: Warburg Institute by University
of London, 1970); Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in
German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, ed., trans. and introduction Harry Francis Mallgrave
and Ikonnomou Eleftherios (Santa Monica, CA: The Getty Institute for the History
of Art and the Humanities, 1994); Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic
Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press); id., Gothic Architec-
ture and Scholasticism: An Inquiry into the Analogy of the Arts, Philosophy, and Religion in the
Middle Ages (New York: Meridian, 1956); Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past: The His-
torical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1987); Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven: Yale, 1982); Earl
Jeffrey Richards, Modernism, Medievalism, and Humanism (Tuebingen: Niemeyer,
1983); D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Prince-
ton: Princeton University, 1962); id., Essays in Medieval Culture (Princeton: Princeton
University, 1980); Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der
Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1915).

Scott L. Taylor

French Studies

A. Definition
The field of Medieval French Literature and Language is extremely broad,
built on the contributions of many. From all over the world, scholars have
been drawn to France and to its literary traditions. Certainly the great major-
ity of students of this literary tradition have spent at least some time in
France and in its libraries, either as students or as scholars. This essay will
consider the study of medieval French literature and language in France,
Germany and North America. It must be noted that this division of topic by
country conceals the many interactions between scholars across national
borders. At all times, students of this discipline have studied in foreign uni-
versities; as scholars they have maintained contacts, personal and epistolary,
with colleagues in other countries.
French Studies 566

B. The French Side of French Studies

Not surprisingly, the position of French Studies in France is unequaled;
scholars are studying their own literary and linguistic heritage. One starting
point for French interest in the Middle Ages is Jean Baptiste de La Curne de
Sainte-Palaye (1697–1781), who published a good number of Old French
texts as part of the Enlightenment effort to shed light on French literary
history. While little of his scholarship is still cited, he merits responsibility
for making the French aware of their medieval literary history (see Lionel
Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment, 1968).
French scholars of note from the 19th century include Francisque Michel
(1809–1887), famous for having first identified in manuscript, and then
publishing the Chanson de Roland, the French national epic (1837). Another
important name is that of Achille Jubinal (1810–1875), a graduate of the
Paris-based Ecole des Chartes. While described as a historian, his contribu-
tions to medieval French literary studies are major. He published many
texts, the contents of entire manuscripts, for which his editions or transcrip-
tions remain the only printed source. Among the most important ones are
Jongleurs et trouvères ou choix de saluts, épitres, rêveries et autres pièces légères des XIIIe
et XIVe siècles publiés pour la première fois (1835), and Nouveau recueil de contes, dits,
fabliaux et autres pièces inédites des XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles, pour faire suite aux collec-
tions de Legrand d’Aussy, Barbazan et Méon, mis au jour pour la première fois d’après les
manuscrits de la bibliothèque du roi (2 vols., 1839–1842; rpt. 1975).
Two truly significant individuals are Collège de France professor
Paulin Paris (1800–1881), and more important still, his son, Gaston Paris
(1839–1903) who succeeded his father at the Collège de France in 1872. Gas-
ton Paris studied in Germany under Friedrich Diez and maintained an ac-
tive correspondence with German scholars throughout his life. He “lectured
on the Song of Roland as a national monument during the German siege
of Paris, 1870” (The Future of the Middle Ages, ed. Paden, 1994, 180; see also
Gerard J. Brault, “Gaston Paris [1839–1903],” Medieval Scholarship [1998]:
151–66).
After the 1870 defeat of France, French scholars used medieval literature
as an instrument of national promotion. The Emperor Charlemagne was one
bone of contention between French and German scholars, each group claim-
ing the emperor as their own. This political fight became a scholarly battle
as well; German scholars, following Lachmann, established a strong Ger-
man tradition of scholarship in French. Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm
Lachmann (1793–1851) was a German classicist who believed it possible to
“recreate” an original text by dint of comparing all the various extant manu-
scripts for that text and making judicious choices as to which reading to
567 French Studies

follow. In reaction to Lachmann and particularly to what is called the Lach-

mannian method of textual scholarship, the French sought a different
approach. One alternative was developed by Joseph Bédier (1864–1938),
a student of Gaston Paris. Bédier demonstrated the merits of using a single
manuscript with his edition of the Lai de l’ombre (1890). The Bédierist
approach did not seek to recreate an Ur-text, but offered readers a clean
(some argue completely rewritten) version of one manuscript witness. While
the edition of the Lai de l’ombre was ground-breaking, his work with the Chan-
son de Roland (1920) was also very important. His renown in the non-scholarly
world comes from his reworking of the Roman de Tristan et Iseut (first
published in 1900; reprinted repeatedly, most recently in 1996), blending
the different medieval sources into a single tale, rewritten in his inimitable
French prose (see William W. Kibler, “Joseph Bédier [1864–1938],” Medi-
eval Scholarship [1998]: 253–66).
Before becoming a teacher at the Collège de France, where his assigned
discipline was “langues et littératures de l’Europe méridionale,” Paul
Meyer (1840–1917) first worked at the French Bibliothèque nationale. In
1882, he became director of the Ecole des Chartes. His work in Old French lit-
erature is still cited, though it is also sometimes ridiculed, for his scholarship
reflects strongly the biases of his epoch. Among his lasting achievements is
the founding of the journal Romania (1872–present) and the establishment,
with Gaston Paris, of the Société des Anciens Textes Français (SATF), which
continues to publish and reprint critical editions of Old French texts.
Félix Lecoy (1903–1997), held the chair of medieval French language
and literature at the Collège de France from 1947 until 1974. In 1961, he
became editor of the important French series, Classiques français du Moyen
Age, in which series he published his edition of the Roman de la Rose
(1965–1970). Under the editorship of Lecoy, Mario Roques (1875–1961)
a student of Gaston Paris and another Collège de France faculty member,
published his editions of Chrétien de Troyes, Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes,
édités d’après la copie de Guiot (Bibl. nat., fr. 794), vol. I: Erec et Enide, vol. II: Cligés,
vol. III: Le Chevalier de la charrette, vol. IV: Le chevalier au lion (Yvain), and
vol. V: Le Conte du Graal (Perceval) (1957–1960; multiple reprintings). Lecoy’s
scholarly editions of the important works of the French Middle Ages cannot
be underestimated, as their multiple reprintings demonstrate.
Outside the traditional academic track was Frédéric Godefroy
(1826–1897), a self-trained scholar who compiled “the most fundamental
dictionary of reference for Old French,” his ten-volume Dictionnaire de l’an-
cienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (Rodney Sampson,
“Review of Frédéric Godefoy: Actes du Xe colloque international sur le moyen français,”
French Studies 568

French Studies 59 [2005]: 587–88). Godefroy remained outside the univer-

sity world his entire life. In 1896 he sought a chair in the Académie française,
against the candidacy of Gaston Paris; Godefroy was defeated twenty-
eight votes to two (42 in Fréderic Duval, “Frédéric Godefroy: Parcours bio-
bibliographique,” Frédéric Godefroy: Actes du Xe colloque international sur le moyen
français, 2003, 25–42). Godefroy’s contribution to the discipline was enor-
mous, for his dictionary, published in fascicules between 1879 and 1893
with a Complément published between 1895 and 1902, was the first modern
effort to build an Old French dictionary based on citations. Godefroy de-
voted his life to this project, “pour le bien de la science” in his words, a dic-
tionary so important that it is known today simply as “Godefroy.” The work
has been reprinted repeatedly and now exists in CD-ROM format (Editions
Champion, Paris).
Important names in the 20th century include the Sorbonne professor
Jean Frappier, whose doctoral work on La Mort le roi Artu (1936) led to a ca-
reer, devoted both to 13th-century Arthurian literature, and to a major effort
to popularize medieval texts. Frappier published a number of works des-
tined for a general audience (see his Chrétien de Troyes, published with Hatier,
1968) or for teaching professionals (see his Le théâtre religieux au moyen âge:
Textes, traductions, analyses, avec des notices, des notes explicatives, des jugements, un
questionnaire et des sujets de devoirs, 1935, rpt. 1964).
Michel Zink (1945–), currently teaching at the Collège de France, has
built his career more as a literary historian than as an editor of texts. His most
noteworthy publications are his dissertation, La prédication en langue romane:
avant 1300 (1976; rpt. 1982) and his Littérature française du Moyen Age (1992;
rpt. 2001, and 2004). Recent publications have brought his arguments to the
general audience, as in Nature et poésie au Moyen Age (2006). Long-time faculty
member at the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, Philippe Ménard (1935–)
is now the senior figure among French literary medievalists. Ménard’s
dissertation, Le rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois en France au Moyen Age
(1150–1250) (1969), was followed by the publication of editions of lyric poetry
by Guillaume le Vinier (1970), and by the supervision of a massive edition of
the Roman de Tristan en prose (1987–1997). Most recently, he has worked on
travel literature, supervising the edition of Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du
monde (2001), for example.
Important journals published in France that deal with French Studies
and medieval literature include Romania (Paris), founded in 1872 by Paul
Meyer and Gaston Paris, and the Revue des langues romanes (Montpellier),
founded in 1870. Both journals were created in reaction to the French defeat
in 1870; both served to remind French scholars of the glory of the French lit-
569 French Studies

erary past. And both served as intellectual if not also political reactions to
German periodicals that had begun to appear at roughly the same time, such
as the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, founded in 1877 by Gustav Gröber.
The French Ecole Nationale des Chartes, an elite graduate school
founded in1821, is known for the quality of its program, providing training
in philology, paleography, the edition of texts, and other topics relevant to
the research interests of the faculty. Graduates of the Ecole may become
manuscript librarians in research libraries or professors at well-respected
schools. One graduate of note is Félix Grat, who established the Paris-based
Institut de Recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT) in 1937.
Scholars of medieval French have been well served by the IRHT over the
years. Now a branch of the Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS),
the institute offers scholars a research library in Paris, a bibliographic cata-
logue, access to photographic and microfilm copies of documents, and the
expertise of its staff, important scholars in their own right. French Studies
is housed in the “Section romane,” which describes itself with terms that
include romance philology, French manuscripts, codicology, medieval lit-
erature, hagiography, historic literature and medieval literature. The IRHT
has its own series of specialized publications. Scholars of the IRHT have also
published works of general interest – one example is the Dictionnaire des lettres
françaises: Le Moyen Age (ed. Robert Bossuat, Louis Pichard, and Guy Ray-
naud de Lage, 1964, re-edited and updated in 1992 by editors Geneviève
Hasenohr and Michel Zink).
Current trends in France include a renewed effort to popularize medi-
eval French literature for the modern audience, with the publication of
facing-page editions and modernized texts (the collection Lettres gothiques is
a good example). French scholars appear interested in using modern ap-
proaches to their medieval literature, though not with the vigor of American
or British scholars.
The reverence of French scholars for their teachers makes it difficult for a
young French scholar to offer an interpretation that overturns the received
wisdom. Some younger scholars have expressed off-the-record frustration
about this aspect of French Studies in France.

C. French Studies in Germany

Germany was a destination for scholars throughout the 19th century, in
part because of the strength of the German university system. The study
of French was pursued by German scholars with as much eagerness as by
French. For example, Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876) studied French
and Occitan (Provençal), inspired in part by Goethe, whom he had met in
French Studies 570

1818. In 1830 Diez was named to the first chair of Romance Philology at
the University of Bonn. Noted among his students: Gaston Paris, Adolf
Tobler, and the linguist Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke. Diez was much more a
linguist than a French Studies scholar and more interested in Occitan and
Spanish languages than in Old French. His work as an historical grammarian
and as the author of important and still used dictionaries (e. g., Eymologisches
Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen, 1869) marks him as the founder of Ro-
mance Studies in Germany (Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, “‘Romania,’ ‘Ro-
manitas,’ ‘Romanistica,’” Estudis romanics 22 [2000]: 7–22, here 14).
Wendelin Foerster (1844–1915) was a student of Diez who succeeded
Diez as professor of Romance Philology in Bonn; Foerster also taught
in Prague and Vienna. His ground-breaking publication of the romances
of Chrétien de Troyes is still cited (Christian von Troyes Sämtliche Werke,
3 vols., 1890; reprinted in Romanische Bibliothek as separate volumes); he is
described by Pierre Kunstmann as the “père fondateur” of Chrétien studies
(http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/chwp/kunstmann, last accessed on Jan. 6,
2009). Foerster was responsible for fifteen volumes in the Altfranzösische
Bibliothek (15 vols., 1879–1897), in which he published many Old French
romances in addition to those of Chrétien.
Gustav Gröber (1844–1911) taught Romance Philology at the Uni-
versity of Strasbourg while Alsace was a part of Germany. He authored the
Grundriss der romanischen Philologie (1888–1898), an important and still cited
work. His other important contribution was the founding of the Zeitschrift für
romanische Philologie (1877–present), one of several learned journals founded
in the 1870s. The Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie serves not only as a period-
ical, but also as the sponsor of the monograph series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für
romanische Philologie, which published its 347th volume in 2008. Covering the
entire field of Romance Philology, the series is an important venue for sig-
nificant publications by scholars in the discipline of French Studies from all
over the world.
Philipp August Becker (1862–1947) began his university studies in
Strasbourg with Gröber, following these with work in Paris and at the Uni-
versity of Fribourg where he studied Romance Philology. His first teaching
position was at the University of Budapest, where he taught for twelve years.
In 1905, Becker moved to Vienna to replace Adolf Mussafia. Twelve years
later, he moved again, to Leipzig, where he taught until retirement in 1930.
He trained a number of students, the most significant of whom may well be
linguist Ernst Gamillscheg (1887–1971). Becker’s name is not particu-
larly well-known in the United States, perhaps because his works have not
been translated. However, his work on Old French epics (e. g., Die altfranzö-
571 French Studies

sische Wilhelmsage und ihre Beziehung zu Wilhelm dem Heiligen, 1896, rpt. 1974)
and on French authors of the late medieval and Renaissance periods is im-
portant and worthy of note.
An important student of Diez was Adolf Tobler (1835–1910), who
spent most of his teaching career at the University of Berlin, where he held
the first chair in Romance Studies, starting in 1867. Tobler’s career in
French was capped by his work on a major dictionary of Old French, the Alt-
französisches Wörterbuch, eleven volumes, known to this day simply as “Tobler-
Lommatzsch.” Essentially completed by his student, Erhard Lommatzsch
(1886–1975), the dictionary appeared in fascicles, starting in 1915. A final
fascicule, with additional notes and additions by Hans Helmut Christ-
mann, Richard Baum, Willi Hirdt, and Brigitte Frei was completed in
2002; the dictionary has been reprinted (1955, 1965, 1989) and is now avail-
able in DVD and CD-ROM formats. That this work of a 19th-century scholar
has been converted to contemporary digital formats proves the importance
of this tool for scholars.
Karl Bartsch (1832–1888) studied first in Breslau and then at the Uni-
versity of Berlin, though there was not, at that time, a position in French or
Romance Studies at that school. On completion of his studies, he worked
first as a tutor and then as librarian in the newly founded German National
Museum in Nuremberg. In 1871, he took the chair of Germanic and Ro-
mance Philology at the University of Heidelberg, where, in 1877, he created
a department that included those disciplines. He remains important as the
editor of several important anthologies of texts, notably the Chrestomathie
de l’ancien français, VIIIe–XVe siècles, accompagnée d’une grammaire et d’un glossaire
(1884; at least 12 re-editions, rpt. as recently as 1988) and Romances et pastour-
elles françaises des XIIe et XIIIe siècles: Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen
(1870, rpt. as recently as 1975).
Hermann Suchier (1848–1914) studied in Marburg and Leipzig. His
first teaching post was at Zurich before he moved to Halle. His work as an
editor of texts, notably that of Aucassin et Nicolette (first published in 1878;
reprinted repeatedly, most recently in 1957), and as a literary historian
(Geschichte der französischen Literatur von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart,
1900; rev. and expanded 1905; rpt. 1913) makes him a name to remember.
Erich Köhler (1924–1981) studied at Leipzig before teaching first at
Heidelberg and then at Freiburg. He brought to his studies of epic and lyric
a sociological angle which led the way to new interpretations of medieval
French literature. His contemporary, Hans Robert Jauss (1921–1997)
studied in Heidelberg, working on Marcel Proust before turning to medieval
literature. His first teaching position was at Münster, before moving to
French Studies 572

Gießen. In 1966, when Jauss’ former teacher Gerhard Hess became Rector
at the University of Constance, Jauss followed, there to continue his work on
Rezeptionsästhetik, the aesthetics of reception.
Köhler and Jauss worked together on what would become the Grund-
riss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (1972–1990), modeled, in part,
on Gröber’s 19th-century opus. This monumental bibliographic and criti-
cal effort, begun in the late 1960’s, was led by an international team of
scholars, with the goal of covering all Romance languages and their medieval
literatures. Organized by genre, then by language, the volumes were in-
tended to cover all of medieval literature in the Romance languages. The in-
itial plan was for thirteen volumes, each with two sides, one containing liter-
ary-historical analysis written by the leading world scholars in that subject,
the second a complete bibliographic entry for each and every work known,
the two sides linked by a system of cross-referencing. Though the Grundriss
will never be completed, the editorial team having run out of steam, the pub-
lished volumes represent a remarkable contribution to scholarship and serve
as an invaluable aid to the scholar and student. The Grundriss project spun off
at least one side project, the publication of Begleitreihe which offered addi-
tional analysis and critical approaches to medieval Romance literature.
Two of these volumes appeared: Literatur in der Gesellschaft des Spätmittelalters
(ed. Hans U. Gumbrecht, 1980) and Mittelalter-Rezeption: Zur Rezeptions-
geschichte der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters in der Neuzeit (ed. Reinhold
R. Grimm, 1991).

D. French Studies in the United States

French Studies have an American history longer than one might suspect.
Having served American interests in France in the 1770’s and knowing the
need for French speakers, Silas Deane “proposed a professorship in French
to his alma mater [Yale University] in 1778” (Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisa-
tion: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, 2005, 166), an offer that Yale
declined. Harvard began to teach French after 1787 and “Yale recognized it
officially in 1825” (Schiff, 166). In part, French Studies had a slow begin-
ning in the United States because of concerns about morality: “There were
those who reflexively felt [French] should be kept from the ladies. Where the
French language went, depravity, frivolity, and indolence were sure to fol-
low” (Schiff, 166).
Several decades later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
worked to establish French and French studies, initially at Bowdoin College
in Brunswick, Maine (1829–1834). While teaching in Maine, Longfellow
translated C. F. L’Homond’s Elements of French Grammar (1830) for American
573 French Studies

students. Longfellow then moved to Harvard University, in Cambridge,

Massachusetts, where he was professor of modern languages from 1836 until
1854. In that capacity, holding the Smith Professorship of Modern Lan-
guages and Belles-Lettres, he brought European languages and literatures,
including French, to the attention of American students and scholars. Har-
vard University’s collection of Longfellow papers includes notes on “History
of the French Language,” “Dialectes de la langue française,” and “Etat de la
langue française en Angleterre,” some of which appeared in print as “The
French Language in England” (1840).
Longfellow set a high standard for scholarship, but left the academy.
The baton soon passed to Aaron Marshall Elliott (1844–1910), who estab-
lished the art of textual criticism in North America while teaching at Johns
Hopkins University. Elliott learned his craft in Europe, where he had
studied in Paris at the Collège de France and Institut des Hautes Etudes,
before moving on to Florence, Madrid, Tübingen, and Munich in a grand lin-
guistic and scholarly tour (Francesco Carapezza, Ecdotica galloromanza negli
Stati Uniti d’America. Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 152, Classe di
scienze morali, storiche e filologiche: Memoria, ser. 9, vol. 19, fasc. 4, 2005,
598 n. 4). Elliott devoted his life to work on a critical edition of the Lais of
Marie de France. He was also instrumental in founding a learned society, the
Modern Language Association (MLA). Though Elliott never published his
work on the Lais, he trained a remarkable number of scholars in Old French
and in editorial technique, including H. A. Todd, E. C. Armstrong,
D. L. Buffum, T. A. Jenkins, J.E. Matzke, and W.A. Nitze (Carapezza,
Ecdotica galloromanza negli Stati Uniti d’America, 2005, 600).
Henry Alfred Todd (1854–1925) also studied in a number of European
universities, attending lectures given by Adolf Tobler in Berlin, Ernesto
Monaci in Rome, and Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo in Madrid, before
spending a year in Paris as a student at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
working with Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, and Arsène Darmesteter (Ca-
rapezza, Ecdotica galloromanza negli Stati Uniti d’America, 2005, 601). Todd
was the first foreigner to publish an edition with the Société des anciens
textes français in Paris, the Dit de la Panthère (1883). He followed this work
with the editio princeps of the Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne (1889), with criti-
cal apparatus in English, a significant departure from the press’ practice of
publishing only in French (Carapezza, Ecdotica galloromanza negli Stati Uniti
d’America, 2005, 603).
John Ernst Matzke (1862–1910), of German birth, was another of
Elliott’s students, though one who died quite young. Nonetheless, his
edition of Les œuvres de Simund de Freine (1909) has stood the test of time;
French Studies 574

it remains the only edition of Simund’s work to date (Carapezza, op. cit.,
605).
Thomas Atkinson Jenkins (1868–1935) moved from Johns Hopkins to
become professor at the University of Chicago, where he built its program in
French Studies. His work as a text editor includes the edition of Marie de
France’s Espurgatoire Seint Patriz (1903).
Edward Cooke Armstrong (1871–1944) replaced Elliott on the
latter’s death in 1910, serving as director of the department at Johns Hopkins
and as editor of Modern Language Notes (Carapezza, op. cit., 608) before mov-
ing to Princeton University in 1917. Among Armstrong’s accomplish-
ments are the establishment of the series “Elliott Monographs in the
Romance Languages and Literatures” (Carapezza, op. cit., 608) and the
edition of the Chevalier à l’épée (1900), an edition not replaced until 1972.
Armstrong was also a key member of the team that edited the Medieval
French Roman d’Alexandre (ed. M. S. LaDu, E.C. Armstrong, A. Foulet,
1937–1976). Armstrong was succeeded at Princeton by his student Alfred
Foulet (1900–1987), son of peripatetic French scholar Lucien Foulet
(1873–1958). Born in Pennsylvania, Alfred Foulet followed his father to
Berkeley before going to Paris for study; he completed his doctoral studies in
the United States, with an edition of the Couronnement de Renard (1929). Part
of the Roman d’Alexandre team, Foulet’s mark on American scholarship was
crowned with the publication of On Editing Old French Texts (1979), in which
he and co-author Mary Blakely Speer (1942–) offered American scholars
guidelines for preparation of critical editions. This volume has received uni-
form praise in reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.
William Albert Nitze (1876–1957) trained at Johns Hopkins and taught
at Chicago from 1909 until 1942 (Carapezza, op. cit., 614). Editor of several
Old French texts, he is best known for his work on Robert de Boron’s Roman
de l’Estoire dou Graal (1927; rpt. 1971, 1983) and the enormous Le haut livre du
graal: Perlesvaus (1932; rpt.1972).
A student of Nitze, William Joseph Roach (1907–1993) taught at the
Catholic University of America before moving to the University of Pennsyl-
vania in 1939. Roach’s work began with publication of the Didot Perceval
(1941; rpt.1977), followed by the monumental edition of the Continuation of
the Old French Perceval cycle (1949–1983). He was also responsible for student
editions of Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval (1959). The importance of Roach for
American scholarship cannot be overstated. In the words of Keith Busby,
“L’influence de cet homme […] a été incalculable, non seulement à cause
de ses propres travaux, mais aussi grâce à ses nombreux élèves” (quoted in
Carapezza, op. cit., 650, n. 114).
575 French Studies

In another quarter, after World War II, the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, became a venue for French Studies, particularly under the
leadership of Urban Tigner Holmes (1900–1972), described by Yakov Mal-
kiel as “one of the three or four most conspicuous figures on the American
scene” (“Necrology: Urban Tigner Holmes,” Romance Philology 27 [1973]:
62–67). Though Holmes was not a prolific editor (he edited but one text,
Adenet le Roi’s Berte aus grans piés, 1946; see Carapazza, op. cit., 669), he
wrote a significant number of literary studies relating to Chrétien de Troyes
as well as the history of French language and literature (with Alexandre
Schutz, A History of the French Language, 1938; rpt.1967), and he trained a re-
markable cohort of students, including Jan Nelson, Emmanuel Mickel,
Rupert Pickens and William Kibler. Founder of the series University of
North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, Holmes’ mark
on French Studies extends well beyond his own work.
On the West Coast, the University of California, Berkeley, maintained its
importance as a center for French Studies, notably within the broader disci-
pline of Romance Philology. Edward Billings Ham (1902–1965) worked as
a professor at the University of Michigan, but may have made his mark as
a visiting faculty member at Berkeley while he was on the faculty at Califor-
nia State College (now University) at Haywood. He was a prolific scholar in
his own right, though he may be better known today for his students than for
his own words. Berkeley was home to linguist Yakov Malkiel (1914–1998),
founder of the journal Romance Philology. While Malkiel’s own scholarship
was not in French Studies, his journal has been very important for that disci-
pline. Students in the Berkeley program included Peter Florian Dembowski
and Karl David Uitti. Another member of this cohort, still teaching at
Berkeley, is Joseph John Duggan (1938–), who published his important
Concordance of the Chanson de Roland in 1969. This volume gave scholars of the
epic access to the entire text in key-word-in-context (KWIC) format, breaking
new ground for linguistic and literary analysis of the poem. The Concordance
opened the eyes of scholars to the utility of computer-generated data, ex-
tremely beneficial in the linguistic analysis of a medieval French text.
Peter Florian Dembowski (1925–) has taught at the University of Chi-
cago since 1969, following in the footsteps of Nitze. Dembowski’s per-
sonal history is fascinating; part of it chronicled in his Christians in the Warsaw
Ghetto: An Epitaph for the Unremembered (2005). He received graduate training
in French philology at Berkeley, where he studied with Ham and Malkiel,
before taking a teaching position at the University of Toronto (1960–1967)
and then at Chicago (1969–). His contributions to French Studies are many,
including his editions of Ami et Amile (1969), Jourdain de Blaye (1969; rev. and
French Studies 576

rpt. 1991), Erec et Enide (1994), as well as texts from the later Middle Ages such
as Le paradis d’amour and L’orloge amoureus of Jean Froissart (1986). Now profes-
sor emeritus, he remains an active scholar.
Karl David Uitti (1933–2003) followed his studies at Berkeley with a
position at Princeton. Uitti’s importance to the field is apparent on several
fronts. A regular contributor to American debates on text editing (see his
“A la recherche du texte perdu,” L’hostellerie de pensée: Etudes sur l’art littéraire
au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poirion, 1995, 467–86), he also was a leader in the
use of new technology, notably publishing edited texts on-line. His work
with the “Charrette Project” points the way of the future for French Studies –
on a web site, scholars and the general public can see manuscript images,
transcriptions, lexical, grammatical, and rhetorical-poetic data for the
multiple manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la charette (Lancelot)
(see http://www.princeton.edu /˜ lancelot/ss/index.shtml [last accessed on
Jan. 6, 2009]).

E. Recent Trends
Bernard Cerquiglini’s publication, Eloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la
philologie (1989), an attack on the traditions of scholarship in France, elicited
a spirited response in the pages of the American journal Speculum. In a special
issue entitled “The New Philology” (Speculum 65.1 [1990]) Stephen G. Ni-
chols led the charge with his introduction “Philology in a Manuscript Cul-
ture” (1–10). Nichols’ argument, “[…] the insistence that the language of
texts be studied not simply as discursive phenomena but in the interaction of
text language with the manuscript matrix and of both language and manu-
script with the social context and networks they inscribe” (9), marks the
movement of American scholarship away from philology per se and towards
incorporation of new critical theory in approaches to medieval French litera-
ture. In the same issue, Suzanne Fleischmann (“Philology, Linguistics and
the Discourse of the Medieval Text,” 19–37) argues for the use of linguistic
theory to understand Old French texts. Reinforcing the approaches of his fel-
low contributors, Lee Patterson titles his contribution, “On the Margin:
Postmodernism, Ironic History and Medieval Studies” (87–108). For several
reasons, this issue of Speculum was a watershed moment in American scholar-
ship. First, it was a concerted reaction to a French challenge; second, the
response was published in the highly respected journal of the Medieval Acad-
emy of America; and third, from that point on, American scholars moved
quickly to change approaches, so that critical theory (albeit French critical
theory) invaded scholarship and education.
577 French Studies

F. French Studies in Canada

North of the US border, Medieval Studies has long been centered at the Uni-
versity of Toronto, where the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies
(founded in 1929) and the more recent parallel Centre for Medieval Studies
(established in 1959) have long attracted students. Medieval French language
and literature were part of the University of Toronto curriculum in the
1920’s, taught by Joseph Stanley Will. His successor, William Hilliard
Trethewey (1898–1981), trained at the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1935),
published the first volume to appear in the Anglo-Norman Text Society’s
publications, La Petite philosophie, an Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century
(1939). In the1960’s and 1970’s the faculty in French at the University of To-
ronto grew to include many medievalists, including Edward A. Heinemann
(1942–), noted for his work on Old French epics and the oral tradition; Robert
A. Taylor (1937–), author of a major bibliography of Old Occitan literature;
Brian S. Merrilees (1939–), editor of numerous Anglo-Norman texts; Peter
Grillo (1940–), editor of three volumes of the Old French Crusade Cycle;
John Ferguson Flinn (1920–), whose Le Roman de Renart dans la littérature fran-
çaise et dans les littératures étrangères au Moyen Age (1963) is still current; A. Robert
Harden (1919–), known for his work on medieval French drama; and his
student, Frank Collins (1942–), who began his career with work on Chrétien
de Troyes though he is currently more active in the field of semiotics.
Other Canadian universities followed the lead of the University of To-
ronto. Significant centers of study include the Université de Montréal and
the University of British Columbia, though the latter is more important for
its faculty in medieval history than in medieval French literature. In Mon-
treal, for example, Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker, who earned her doctor-
ate at the Sorbonne in France, has been a leader in French studies, working
in the university’s department of Linguistics and Translation. Schulze-
Busacker’s book, Proverbes et expressions proverbiales dans la littérature narrative
du Moyen Age français: recueil et analyse (1985), updated and improved on Joseph
Morawski’s Proverbes français antérieurs au XVe siècle (1925) in important
ways. Her research extends across Old French genres; she is also an active
scholar of medieval Occitan literature. Exerting great influence was, of
course, Paul Zumthor (1915–1995), who ended his career at the Université
de Montréal (retiring in 1980). Zumthor received his training in Paris and
taught for twenty years at the University of Amsterdam. During the period
from 1968–1972, a turbulent moment in university circles, he moved from
the Université de Vincennes (France), to Yale University, before arriving in
Montreal in 1972. His Histoire littéraire de la France médiévale (VIe–XIVe s.) (1954)
is still actively cited; his Langue et technique poétiques à l’époque romane (XIe–XIIIe
French Studies 578

s.) (1963), and Essai de poétique médiévale (1972; rpt. 2000) are scholarly master-
pieces. Zumthor brought linguistic theory to literary analysis, bringing his
unequaled understanding of the medieval French corpus, ranging from the
beginnings of that literature to the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, the subject of his
later work.

G. Conclusions
One significant international trend, beginning after World War II, and par-
ticularly noticeable in recent years, has been the growth in the number of
topic-specific or author-specific learned societies, each with its own journal.
Some of these are international in membership; others restricted more or less
to one country. Examples of the former would be the International Arthu-
rian Society (devoted to all matters touching on King Arthur of Britain),
founded in 1948 with an annual Bulletin biliographique, the Société Rencesvals
pour l’étude des épopées romanes (devoted to study of medieval epic poetry),
founded in 1956 and publishing a Bibliographic Bulletin since, and the Inter-
national Courtly Literature Society (open to all topics that relate to the court,
particularly in the Middle Ages), founded in 1973 with its journal Encomia.
Each of these societies counts several thousand members. Smaller in size
but equally international would be organizations like the Christine de Pizan
Society (founded circa 1990), with a regular program of international confer-
ences. An example of the latter, smaller, recent groups, would be the Marie
de France Society (founded in 1992), essentially based in North America
though drawing members from beyond those confines. These societies have
a tighter focus than is the case with organizations such as the Modern Lan-
guage Association, open to all languages, all disciplines and all time periods.
Another highly significant recent development has been the emergence
of the Annual Congress on Medieval Studies organized by the Medieval Insti-
tute of Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May of each
year. The meeting has become the pre-eminent event of its type in the world
and is known today simply as “Kalamazoo.” First organized in 1965 as a cen-
tral meeting for students and faculty from the Universities of Wisconsin,
Toronto and all points between, this congress has become a major meeting
for any scholar interested in the medieval period. Today, bringing together
more than 3000 participants from all over the world, the more than 500
sessions of this conference are a prime opportunity for the exchange of ideas
in the area of French Studies, along with other aspects of the Middle Ages.
“Kalamazoo” has proved so popular and so important an intellectual venue
that the British University of Leeds has copied it, creating a parallel medieval
conference in Europe. After a small beginning in 1994, the International
579 French Studies

Medieval Congress in Leeds now describes itself as “the largest conference of

its kind in Europe,” drawing roughly 1500 scholars to Leeds in July of each
year. Kalamazoo remains the congress for any medievalist, whereas Leeds
tends to draw more historians than scholars in other disciplines.
French Studies has long engaged scholars, who have seen medieval
French literature as a source of delight, national pride, and scholarly inquiry.
The discipline extends well beyond the borders of the countries discussed
here. As a discipline, French Studies has responded to events in the contem-
porary world, from wars in the 19th century, to the advent of new technology
in the twentieth. This article has focused on the edition of texts, leaving dis-
cussions of critical theory to other authors. The reader is invited to consult
specific entries on Deconstruction, Formalism, Hermeneutics, Intertextual-
ity, Marxist and Socialist Approaches, Narratology and Literary Theory, and
Structuralism, for more information on these topics. More detailed entries
can be found for a number of the scholars mentioned in this essay as well.
While medieval French literature may seem old to some, it remains alive and
well and flourishing in the 21st century.

Select Bibliography
Francesco Carapezza, Ecdotica galloromanza negli Stati Unite d’America: Atti della Accade-
mia nazionale dei Lincei, 152, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche: Memorie,
ser. 9, vol. 19, fasc. 4 (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 2005), 585–773; Medieval
Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 2: Literature and Philol-
ogy, ed. Helen Damico, Donald Fennema, and Karmen Lenz (New York and London:
Garland, 1998); Frédéric Duval, ed., Pratiques philologiques en Europe: Actes de la journée
d’étude organisée à l’Ecole des chartes le 23 septembre 2005. Etudes et rencontres de l’Ecole des
chartes 21 (Paris: Ecole des chartes, 2006); Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittel-
alters, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht et al. (Heidelberg: Winter; vol 1: Généralités, 1972;
vol. 2: Les genres lyriques, 1979–1990, still incomplete; vol 3: Les epopées romanes,
1981–2005, still incomplete; vol. 4: Le roman jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle, 1978–1984;
vol. 5: Les formes narratives brèves, 1985–1991, still incomplete; vol. 6: La littérature didac-
tique, allégorique et satirique, 1968–1970; [vol. 7, originally dedicated to L’âge de Dante, Boc-
cacce et Pétrarque has become part of vol. 10]; vol. 8: La Littérature en France aux XIVe et XVe
siècles, 1988, still incomplete; vol. 9: La littérature dans la péninsule ibérique aux XIVe et XVe
siècles, 1983–1985, still incomplete; vol. 10: Die italienische Literatur im Zeitalter Dantes
und am Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Renaissance, 1987–1989, still incomplete; vol. 11: La
Littérature historiographique des origines à 1500, 1986–1993, still incomplete; vol. 12: Le
Théâtre des origines à la fin du Moyen Âge, never appeared; vol. 13: Synthèses, Chronologie,
Index, never appeared); Tra filologia e comparatistica: Le riviste e la fondazione della filologia ro-
manza, ed. Maria Luisa Meneghetti, and Roberto Tagliani (Tavarnuzze: Sismel,
forthcoming); The Future of the Middle Ages: Medieval Literature in the 1990s, ed. William D.
Paden (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994).

Wendy Pfeffer
Friendship and Networks 580

Friendship and Networks

A. Introduction
Medieval friendship, amicitia (derived in the modern Germanic languages
from the Gothic frijõnds [friend] and the Indo-Germanic prãi- [to love], and
derived in the Romance languages from the Latin amicitia), whether linked
or not with the Christian concept of charity, caritas, has long been studied by
medievalists (cf. e. g., the already long contribution G. Vansteenberghe,
“Amitié,” DSAM I (1937): 500–29, with many references; cf. also Heinz-Horst
Schrey, “Freundschaft,” TRE 11 [1983]: 590–99). Significantly increasing
attention to the subject has been evident in the last three decades, not only to
the Western Middle Ages but also to Scandinavia and Byzantium (cf. below),
through which it has been analyzed from various approaches in an interdis-
ciplinary and comparative manner (fitting in with the renewed points of
special interest within contemporary historiography), with current national
and international research projects (cf. in this respect the Medieval Friendship
Networks project, cf. www.univie.ac.at/amicitia) and an already abundant
bibliography as a result.

B. The Medieval West

Medieval friendship is not understood to be only an emotional-affective rela-
tionship between two or more individuals – the “narrow” interpretation
characteristic of modern Western culture – but is understood also as a phe-
nomenon that had social, political and cultural interpretations and forms of
expression. This means that the focus of medievalists has become broader
than the study of the terms amicitia and caritas within a spiritual or philo-
sophical context, which was typical for the first half of the 20th century. Vari-
ous approaches have led to medieval friendship being differentiated not only
substantively, but also to a link being made, through the study of friendship
as a socially important and complex phenomenon, with other Medieval so-
cial and other manifestations, such as courtly love, spiritual brotherhood,
kinship, feudalism, marriage, and the like. Medieval friendship was an im-
portant social, political and cultural organizing principle within Medieval
(pre-modern) society. It encompassed a broad spectrum of significance and
externalized itself as a bond, whether formal or not, that had a socializing
function for individuals occupying various levels of the population. ‘Friends,’
together with relations, provided a fundamental support in the struggle for
social security; ‘friendship,’ whether formalized or not, not only played a so-
cializing role, but also constituted a central fact within the processes of social
581 Friendship and Networks

networking and the formation of states. In addition, it exerted influence as

an ideologizing frame of reference upon the cultural and intellectual execu-
tives of the clerical and secular elites, with the development of a set of con-
ventions and norms that, integrated into forms of communication, ceremo-
nials, ritual, and informal or formalized etiquettes, shaped human behavior
in a fundamental way. The research of past decades has demonstrated that
the study of medieval friendship is not without its problems of methodol-
ogy. The lexicon of the medieval sources that refer to friendship, in particu-
lar those in Latin but also in the vernacular languages – the main point of
entry for historians seeking to analyze the issue – were acknowledged as
being hardly unambiguous, cloaked in limitations, and complex, which has
given rise to a fragmented and differentiated picture. Behind the language
that points to friendship could lie concealed, depending on the source,
author and context, both spiritual, emotional-affective, pragmatic, instru-
mental, political, formal, homo-erotic, intellectual, etc. relationships of
friendship (as well as all possible combinations of the same; cf. below). At the
same time, this is a form of expression for group-related cultural, intellec-
tual, and social conventions that can also degenerate into a genre-bound
form of communication (Julian Haseldine, “Understanding the Language
of Amicitia: The Friendship Circle of Peter of Celle (ca. 1115–1183),” Journal of
Medieval History 20 [1994]: 237–60; Gillian R. Knight, The Correspondence Be-
tween Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairveaux: A Semantic and Structural Analy-
sis, 2002) or into a rhetorical artefact (Walter Ysebaert, “Medieval Letter-
Collections as a Mirror of Circles of Friendship? The Example of Stephen
of Tournai, 1128–1203,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue
Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83 [2005]: 285–300). Design and function of the
sources, in other words, play an important role in interpreting the friendship
and the options available for this. Furthermore, the loss of sources due
to time leads to a selective inventory, further distorting the picture. Finally,
account must be taken of the possibility that the lack of linguistic usage
referring to friendship does not exclude a source from offering access to
the underlying social relationships; this applies in particular to letters
(cf. below). Especially the study of what friendship meant within clerical
circles has in recent years brought about a growing sense of the complexity
evident within this area of study (cf. the interesting and synthesizing ap-
proach of those problems in Mullett’s introduction in Margaret E. Mul-
lett and Walter Ysebaert, “Power, Relations and Networks in Medieval
Europe,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie
et d’Histoire 83 [2005]: 255–60).
Friendship and Networks 582

C. Medieval Friendship in Byzantium and Scandinavia

As in the case of the Medieval West, increased interest in friendship can be
established for Byzantium and Scandinavia, where the general conditions
described above also apply. Specific to Scandinavia, it can be argued that,
given the nearly total absence of theorizing texts and letters and correspon-
dence, historiography is aimed especially at the role and importance played
by friendship as a socializing phenomenon and as an element of political
activities and network formation. ‘Friendship relationships’, as reflected, for
example, in the Icelandic sagas – having a vertical structure with reciprocal
obligations – and friendship networks formed a foundational element of the
social structures and, as evidenced by the development and deployment of
political structures and institutions, had a significant effect (cf. e. g. Jon Vidar
Sigurdsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth, 1999; Lars
Hermanson, Släkt, vänner och makt: En studie av elitens politiska kultur i 1100-ta-
lets Danmark, 2000). The study of friendship in Byzantine society was particu-
larly stimulated by an article of Margaret Mullett (Margaret E. Mullett,
“Byzantium: a Friendly Society?” Past and Present 118 [1988]: 1–24), who ex-
plained the lack of historiography by the absence of Byzantine theoretical
treatises on friendship, which left the issue long neglected. Since then there
is evidence of catching up, whereby friendship is well studied in relation to
other social ties and formalized forms of conduct (spiritual and kinship ties;
patron-client relationships; teacher-pupil-relations), with a great amount of
attention to narrative sources (such as vitae) and letters and collections of cor-
respondence (cf. Byzantium Matures: Choices, Sensitivities and Modes of Expression
(Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries), ed. Christine Angelidi, 2004; Michael Grün-
bart, “‘Tis love that has warm’d us’: Reconstructing Networks in 12th cen-
tury Byzantium,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de
Philologie et d’Histoire 83 [2005]: 301–14; Margaret E. Mullett, “Friendship
in Byzantium: Genre, Topos and Network,” Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed.
Julian Haseldine, 1999, 166–184; Stratis Papaioannou, “Michael Psel-
los: Rhetoric and the Self in Byzantine Epistolography,” L’épistolographie et la
poésie épigrammatique, ed. Michael Grünbart and Wolfram Hörandner,
2003; Franz Tinnefeld, “Freundschaft in den Briefen des Michael Psellos:
Theorie und Wirklichkeit,” JÖBG 22 ([1973]: 151–168; for a comparative ap-
proach toward a definition of the question, which considers various regions,
cf. Margaret E. Mullett and Walter Ysebaert, “Power, Relations and Net-
works in Medieval Europe,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/
Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83 [2005]: 255–314).
583 Friendship and Networks

D. Sources
The vocabulary of friendship may be found in medieval source material of
differing types. Depending on their approach, medievalists used different
types of sources to study friendship: literary, theoretical, religious-philo-
sophical and iconographic, and normative sources and letters and collections
of correspondence lent themselves in particular to research into the way in
which friendship and caritas were conceived. Narrative, diplomatic, adminis-
trative and juridical sources and letters and collections of correspondence
were and are used for the analysis of role, function, practice, and significance
of friendship in the societal context. More recent publications increasingly
reveal a combined use of the diversity of source materials. It can be said in
respect of the evolution of the source materials as such that no sources pre-
dating the 12th century have been found in which friendship is specifically
and exclusively written of. While there is frequent reflection throughout this
period about friendship and love in all sorts of texts (and the vocabulary
referring to friendship can be found in the most diverse types of sources),
actual treatises on friendship do not appear until the 12th century, in specific
those written by Aelred of Rievaulx (De spiritali amicitia) and Peter of Blois
(De amicitia christiana). A great deal of reflection on friendship and caritas may
be found, however, in older philosophical-religious treatises and in medieval
letters, as well as in poetic and literary texts from the late 11th century, where
the ideal of friendship is oftentimes linked to (courtly) love. Where one
especially finds in both of the former categories of sources theoretical obser-
vations about ‘ideal friendship’ (or in relation to God in particular), both
chivalric and courtly literature often provide an image of ideal friendships
between two individuals – based for the most part on ideal types of well-
known pairs of friends as may be found in these older sources and in Biblical
passages. The scholastic tradition and the influence of the courtly ideology
led to an increasing number of reflections in the source material from the
13th century onward, including literary sources. The diplomatic, juridical
and administrative source material after all employs a choice of words that
for the most part directly refers to some social reality but in general is lacking
in contemplative reflection.

E. Friendship (as an Ideal) in Spiritual, Philosophical and Theological

Texts
The medieval theoretical concepts, both spiritual and theological, of amicitia
and caritas, find their roots in the classical authors, chiefly Aristotle and
Cicero, but also Seneca, Lucian, and Plutarch, and in the manner in which the
views or models of these authors combined with Biblical passages and Chris-
Friendship and Networks 584

tian ideology were further developed by Augustine and other Church Fathers,
particularly in the 4th century (e. g., Wolfgang Brinckmann, Der Begriff der
Freundschaft in Senecas Briefen, 1964; Eoin G. Cassidy, “‘He who has Friends
can have no Friend’: Classical and Christian Perspectives on the Limits to
Friendship,” Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. Julian Haseldine, 1999,
45–67; Ludovic Dugas, L’amitié antique, 1894; Pierre Fabre, Saint Paulin de
Nole et l’amitié chrétienne, 1949; Jean-Claude Fraisse, La notion d’amitié dans la
philosophie antique, 1984; G. Herman, Ritualized Friendship and the Greek City,
1987; David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, 1997; James McEvoy,
“Philia and Amicitia: the Philosophy of Friendship from Plato to Aquinas,”
Sewanee Medieval Colloquium Occasional Papers 2 [1985]: 1–23; James McEvoy,
“De la Philia païenne à l’amicitia chrétienne: rupture et continuité,” Les phil-
osophies morales et politiques au moyen âge: Actes du neuvième Congrès International
de Philosophie médiévale I, ed. Bernardo C. Bazan, Eduardo Andujas, and
Léonard G. Strocchi, 1996, 136–47; Hélène Pétré, Caritas: Etude sur le vo-
cabulaire latin de la charité chretienne, 1948; Carolinne White, Christian Friend-
ship in the Fourth Century, 1992). Aristotle developed a model of friendship
(philia, ) based on the concept of ‘attraction’; what attracts is a sociabil-
ity, whoever would know friendship must study its object, that is, what is
friendly. He argued that friendship manifests itself in three ways: in the form
of utility, pleasure and virtue. From this he derived three types of friendship.
Only friendship based on virtue represents the paradigm of ‘ideal friend-
ship’; the other two are inherently unstable and transitory in nature because
they focus more on the object of the friendship, which was changeable, than
on the friendship itself. Ideal friendship was dedicated to the whole person
and committed to the joint project of living, not to separate utility or pleas-
ure characteristics. Aristotle thus endowed friendship with an altruistic sig-
nificance. In its ideal form it was a perfect social bond that brought about
unity among the citizens of the same city-state (Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea
VIII and IX; cf. e. g. John M. Cooper, “Friendship and the Good in Aris-
totle,” Philosophical Review 86 [1977]: 290–315; John M. Cooper, “Aristotle
on Friendship,” Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amélie O. Rorty, 1980,
301–40; Lorraine S. Pangel, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, 2003;
Anthony W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, 1989; Bénédicte
Sère, Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge, 2007 [with an extensive bibliography];
Suzanne Stern-Gillet, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Friendship, 1995). Cicero for-
mulated an analogous school of thought with the image of the ideal friend-
ship based on virtue framed within a Roman civil society and within the
ideal of humanitas. Friendship (amicitia) refers to a perfect combination of ex-
pressions of wills, tastes and thought, approaching an absolute agreement
585 Friendship and Networks

(consensio) on all matters human and divine, accompanied by benevolence

(benevolentia) and love (caritas). The ideal of friendship was linked with aeterni-
tas – the purpose of friendship existed in the life eternal (Cicero, Laelius vel
de amicitia, ed. and transl. Robert Combès, 1999 [Les Belles Lettres]). The ideas
of Aristotle and especially of Cicero had a lasting influence, not only on the
concepts of the Church Fathers such as Augustine and Ambrosius (e. g., Eph-
rem Boularand, “L’amitié d’après saint Ambroise dans le De officiis minis-
trorum,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 73 [1972]: 103–23; Eoin G. Cas-
sidy, “Le rôle de l’amitié dans la quête du bonheur chez S. Augustin,”
Actualité de la pensée médiévale: Recueil d’articles, ed. Jaques Follon and James
McEvoy, 1994, 171–201; Marie A. McNamara, Friendship in Saint Augustine,
1958; Venantius Nolte, Augustins Freundschaftsideal in seinen Briefen, 1938;
Tarcisius J. Van Bavel, “The Influence of Cicero’s Ideal of Friendship on
Augustine,” Augustiniana Traiectina: Communications présentées au Colloque
international d’Utrecht, ed. Jan Den Boeft and Johannes Van Oort, 1988,
59–72), but also on those of monks and theologians of later centuries (among
Benedictine and especially Cistercian monks; cf. below), on scholastic doc-
trine (e. g., Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghendt) and on the humanist ideals
and ethics of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (e. g., Ulrich Langer,
Perfect Friendship: Studies in Literature and Moral Philosophy from Boccacio to Cor-
neille, 1994). Christianity reformulated the Classical doctrines and added
new elements to them, such as the universal character of Christian love, cari-
tas, the purposefulness of the eternal and associativity of the individual love
upon God (the love of God was reflected in the friendship with one’s neigh-
bour). Passages from the Old Testament (I. Kings, XVIII–XX, II. Kings, I, deal-
ing with the perfect friendship of David and Jonathan; Chron, XX, 7; Prov.,
XIII, 20, XIV, 20, XVIII, 24, XIX, 4, 6, XXVII, 5, 6, 9, 10; Eccl, VI, 5–17, XXII,
17–24, XXVII, 1–6, 16–21; Isa., XLI, 8), the New Testament (especially Joh,
XV) and the letters of Paul (such as I Cor., 13) influenced the development of
Augustine’s views, which linked the personal experience of friendship to the
omnipresence of God (Contra Academicos, III. 6, 13; Confessions IV, 9), Cassian,
who integrated friendship in a monastic context (Collationes, XVI), and other
authors of the early Christian period (cf. especially Carolinne White, Chris-
tian Friendship in the Fourth Century, 1992; also, besides the references already
mentioned, several contributions in Adèle Fiske, Friends and Friendship in the
Monastic Tradition, 1970). Together with the classical texts, these authors in
turn were the object of reflection for later monastic and theological writers,
leading to a doctrine in which ideal friendship took on a largely spiritual
character whereby it was experienced as a power to hold dear, as a power that
called up the concept of the image (imago) of God. The accent among the mon-
Friendship and Networks 586

astic writers was on the gratuitousness of friendship. Whoever sought any re-
ward other than the friendship itself, did not understand what friendship
was, since it was its own reward, its own fruit. Friendship may not have any
‘utility’ but must be sought or desired for its intrinsic value. The friend was a
revelation of God’s hidden presence. God stood at the start and the finish of
each friendship. By having love for a friend one adored God. Friendship was,
in other words, inherently bound to the consideration of God and of divine
love (caritas); it is an inseparable part of all contemplative attitude. The pas-
sages in the medieval letters and sources that treat explicitly of divine love
(cf. for example the De natura et dignitate amoris of William of Saint Thierry, or
De speculo caritatis of Aelred of Rievaulx), cannot, therefore, be viewed apart
from Christian friendship. While these ideas were already fully developed in
the texts of Early Medieval writers, the actual working out of a doctrine took
place especially starting from the long 12th century, when one can observe
not only a considerable increase in reflections on amicitia and caritas in
letters – to such a degree that this period has been referred to as a “Century of
Friendship” (Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200, 1972) –
but also when, simultaneously, the first true treatises on friendship appear.
Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spiritali amicitia is a reflection cast in dialogue
strongly influenced by Cicero concerning the nature and origins of Christian
friendship (see the editions and translations, and e. g., Damien Boquet,
L’ordre de l’affect au Moyen Âge. Autour de l’anthropologie affective d’Aelred de Rie-
vaulx, 2005; Pierre-André Burton, “Ælred face à l’histoire et à ses historiens.
Autour de l’actualité aelrédienne,” Collectanea Cisterciensia, 58 [1996]:
161–93; Julian Haseldine, “Friendship, Equality and Universal Harmony:
The Universal and the Particular in Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spiritali amicitia,”
Friendship East & West: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Oliver Leaman, 1996,
192–214; Letterio Mauro , “L’amicizia come complimento di umanità nel
De Spirituali Amicitia di Aelredo di Rievaulx,” Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica
66 [1974]: 89–103; James McEvoy, “Notes on the Prologue of St. Aelred
of Rievaulx’s “De Spiritali Amicitia” with a translation,” Traditio 37 [1981]:
396–411; Brian Patrick McGuire, Brother and Lover: Aelred of Rievaulx, 1994);
Peter of Blois’s De amicitia christiana was a not very original and revived inter-
pretation of this (cf. especially Un traité de l’amour du XIIème siècle, Pierre de Blois,
ed. and trans. Marie-Magdalène Davy 1932). A further theoretical system-
atization may be found in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (Ia IIae, q. 36,
a. 3 et 4). Friendship is presented as “one” form of love, based on four forms of
love that are distinguished and combined (amor, amicitia, dilectio and caritas);
amicitia is offered as the perfect form: it is rational, stable, spiritual, and re-
flects the mystic perception of divine love. The systematics of Thomas Aqui-
587 Friendship and Networks

nas and the scholastics gave form to the development of a traditional friend-
ship that was offered up by the late medieval commentators and rethinkers
of Aristotelian ethics (Thomas Aquinas, Willem Ockham, Johannes Alten-
steig, John Major and others), next to the Neo-Platonic tradition with its con-
fusion of erotic love and friendship. Both gave rise to a proliferation of texts
and treatises during the 13th–15th centuries (cf. James McEvoy, “Amitié,
attirance et amour chez S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain,
ser. 4, 91 [1993]: 383–408; James McEvoy, “The Sources and the Signifi-
cance of Henry of Ghent’s Disputed Question ‘Is Friendship a Virtue?’” Henry
of Ghent, ed. Willy Vanhamel, 1996, 121–38; James McEvoy, “Grosse-
teste’s Reflections of Aristotelian Friendship: A ‘New’ Commentary on Ni-
comachean Ethics VIII. 8–14,” Robert Grosseteste. New Perspectives on his Thought
and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy, 1996, 149–168; Patrick Quinn, “St. Tho-
mas Aquinas and the Christian Understanding of Friendship,” Friendship
East & West. Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Oliver Leaman, 1996, 270–79; Béné-
dicte Sère, Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge, 2007).

F. Friendship in Literature.
Friendship appears frequently in literary texts of the Middle Ages, referring
to an informal contractual bond with associated reciprocal obligations, in
which often mythical friend-pairs are offered as examples (such as Amicus and
Amelius, Oliver and Roland in the Song of Roland, Athis and Prophilias), as well as
the sublimated form of friendship described in 12th century chivalric ro-
mances (especially Danielle Buschinger, Amitié épique et chevaleresque. Actes
du colloque d’Amiens, mars 2000, 2002; Reginald Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship:
The Idealization of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Litterature, 1994;
Huguette Legros, L’amitié dans les chansons de geste à l’époque romane, 2001).
Particularly in the latter, the perception and conception of friendship, in
courtly contexts, cannot be viewed separately from the manner in which the
concept of courtesy love developed (see C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of
Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210, 1985,
and id., Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility, 1999). Just in the way in
which the language of friendship was used especially in medieval letters (cf.
infra), in these sources this also gave rise to discussions of the question as to
what degree such usage referenced homo-erotic physical contact, no matter
to what degree sublimated (cf. infra). A few studies have also researched the
degree to which the Ciceronian concepts related to friendship were appropri-
ated in literary sources (Albrecht Classen, “Friendship in the Middle Ages:
A Ciceronian Concept in Konrad von Würzburg’s Engelhard (ca. 1280),” Mit-
tellateinisches Jahrbuch 41 [2006]: 227–46, with further references; or Jan M.
Friendship and Networks 588

Ziolkowski, “Twelfth-century Understandings and Adaptations of Ancient

Friendship,” Mediaeval Antiquity, ed. Andries Welkenhuysen, Herman
Braet and Werner Verbeke, 1995, 59–81).

G. Friendship in Practice

Secular World
The idealization of friendship, as it is found in medieval literature and the
philosophical and theological treatises, should not draw attention away
from the fact that, during all of the Middle Ages, friendship formed the com-
pletion of an important social relationship that exerted a structural and or-
ganizing influence on society. In pre-modern society, the institutional struc-
tures were for the most part inadequate in guaranteeing social cohesion. The
consequence was that stability largely depended on personal ties. Friend-
ship was a concept that served to strengthen these ties, as did kinship and
other types of relationships and group bonds, whether formalized or not
(cf. Gerd Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue: Zum politischen Stellenwert
der Gruppenbindung im früheren Mittelalter, 1990; Gerd Althoff, Amicitiae
und pacta: Bündnis, Einung, Politik und Gebetsdenken im beginnenden 10. Jahrhun-
dert, 1992; id., “Friendship and Political Order,” Friendship in Medieval Europe,
ed. Julian Haseldine, 1999, 91–105; Verena Epp, Amicitia: Zur Geschichte
personaler, sozialer, politischer und geistlicher Beziehungen im frühen Mittelalter,
1999; Claudia Garnier, Amicus amicis – inimicus inimicis. Politische Freund-
schaft und fürstliche Netzwerke im 13. Jahrhundert, 2000; Klaus Van Eickels,
Vom inszenierten Konsens zum systematisierten Konflikt: Die englisch-französischen
Beziehungen und ihre Wahrnehmung an der Wende vom Hoch- zum Spätmittel-
alter, 2002; Klaus Van Eickels, “Tradierte Konzepte in neuen Ordnungen:
Personale Bindungen im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, “Ordnungskonfigurationen
im hohen Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Schneidmüller and Stefan Weinfurter,
2006, 93–125; Jon Vidar Sigurdsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic
Commonwealth, 1999). Friendship stood for the promotion of consensus,
peace and solidarity. For the individual, friendship signified an expression
of a relationship with mutual obligations, solidarity in the form of practical
assistance and moral support (cf. besides the mentioned references, also the
studies on ‘amis charnels’: e. g. Françoise Autrand, “‘Tous parens, amis
et affins’: Le groupe familial dans le milieu de robe parisien au XVe siècle,”
Commerce, Finances et Sociétés (XIe–XVIe s.), ed. Philippe Contamine, Thierry
Dutour and Bertrand Schnerb, 1993, 347–57; Myriam Carlier, “Soli-
dariteit of sociale controle? De rol van vrienden en magen en buren in een
middeleeuwse stad,” Hart en marge in de laatmiddeleeuwse stedelijke samenleving,
589 Friendship and Networks

ed. Myriam Carlier, 1997, 71–91; Juliette M. Turlan, “Amis et amis char-
nels d’après les actes du Parlement au XIVe siècle,” Revue historique de droit
français et étranger, 47 [1969]: 645–98). Within the societal context it acted as
an instrument for the promotion of social cohesion. The influence of courtly
ideology, scholastic tradition and placement of the social context into a judi-
cial framework appeared to lead in the Late Middle Ages to a transforma-
tional referential framework among some social and other elites. Friendship
acquired a normative and bureaucratic character from the tendency to em-
body the mutual and reciprocal obligations and ties of friendship in the form
of a contract (Claudia Garnier, Amicus amicis – inimicus inimicis: Politische
Freundschaft und fürstliche Netzwerke im 13. Jahrhundert, 2000; Michael Hicks,
Bastard Feudalism, 1995; Peter S. Lewis, “Decayed and Non-Feudalism in
Late Medieval France,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 37/38
[1964–1965]: 157–84). In courtly milieus, one saw a ritualization and for-
malization of individual codes of behavior and obligatory activities as they
might fit into the context of friendship (Klaus Oschema, Freundschaft und
Nähe im spätmittelalterlichen Burgund: Studien zum Spannungsfeld von Emotion und
Institution, 2006).

Clerical Friendship and the Study of Letters and Letter Collections

It had been assumed for a long time that in spiritual milieus the perception
and experience of friendship more closely approached its idealized, theoreti-
cal manifestation (cf. supra) than was the case in the secular, social and politi-
cal forms of friendship. There seemed to be no room in the abbeys, convents
and chapters for friendship as a socializing, socially structuring, organizing
principle. A great deal of research in this area is still needed, but it is in the
meantime evident that ‘clerical friendship’ was more than a spiritual or re-
ligious friendship, and that the language of friendship, adopted by clerics
and referring to the practice of friendship relationships within the clerical
milieus, pointed to a complex set of underlying social ties and cultural prac-
tices (which in many cases were inherently tied to secular society) – insight
that to a significant degree was and is gained through the careful study of
medieval letters and correspondence. The unique character of letters as docu-
ments of the ego that offer the reflection of the relationship between one or
more persons has given rise to an extensive stream of publications focused on
medieval friendship, chiefly in clerical settings. Letters provide conceptual-
izations of friendship, ideal or not, any forms of expression of friendship
relationships in a discursive framework, and were for a long time regarded
as sources that provided insight into what friendship meant in practice. The
increase in the number of letters, especially during the long 9th and 12th cen-
Friendship and Networks 590

turies (with attention to, for example, Lupus van Ferrières, Alcuin of York,
Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable, Peter
of Celle, John of Salisbury, Stephen of Orléans, Peter of Blois, et al.) led to the
doctrines and practices relating to friendship and love within the clerical mi-
lieus already being intensively studied, with them being cast in widely rang-
ing and sometimes contradictory formulations. The studies of Leclercq
(Jean Leclercq, “L’amitié dans les lettres au Moyen Age. Autour d’un
manuscrit de la bibliothèque de Pétrarque,” Revue du Moyen Age Latin 1 [1945]:
391–410), Fiske (cf. supra), McGuire (especially Brian Patrick McGuire,
Friendship & Community. The Monastic Experience 350–1250, 1988), and Robin-
son (especially Ian S. Robinson, “The Friendship Network of Gregory VII,”
History 63 [1978]: 1–22) seem to have given the most important impetus to
this historiographical flood. McGuire in particular has worked out in great
depth (for monastic centers up to the 13th century) the relationship between
linguistic usage in these letters, on the one hand, and the so-called actual re-
lationship on the other. Based on the content and function of the letters and
linguistic usage, McGuire characterized the relationship between the author
and the addressee (or in some cases, third parties). Based on this he depicted
an evolution whereby the relationships between clerics, depending on the
context and the prevailing ideologies and conventions, appear to fluctuate
between ideal-Christian friendships to those rather to be characterized as
pragmatic. In more recent publications, such a view was both qualified and
contradicted. Not only could the language of friendship point to a greater
range of forms of social relationships with a horizontal or vertical, spiritual,
political-pragmatic, homoerotic, emotional-affective, or spiritual-mystic
character (see the many references in Margaret E. Mullett and Walter Yse-
baert, “Power, Relations and Networks in Medieval Europe,” Belgisch
Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83
[2005]: 255–314; for gay or homo-erotic friendship, see especially John Bos-
well, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Eu-
rope from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, 1980; John
Boswell, The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, 1994;
Alan Bray, The Friend, 2003; The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social
Tolerance and Homosexuality, ed. Mathew Kuefler, 2006; Dion C. Smythe,
“In Denial: Same-Sex Desire in Byzantium,” Desire and Denial, ed. L James,
1999, 139–48), but it was also demonstrated that the language of friendship
would be used as a form of communication within intellectual groups (Julian
Haseldine, “Understanding the Language of Amicitia”). Or, influenced by
the genre of the artes dictamines, it could take on a rhetorical character that
stood apart from any social reality (Walter Ysebaert, “Medieval Letter-Col-
591 Friendship and Networks

lections as a Mirror of Circles of Friendship?”). The understanding that there

is no direct link between the language used in the letters and the social rela-
tionship between author and addressee has since become definitive.
The manner in which friendship and friendship relationships are
studied on the basis of medieval letters reflects the historiography of medie-
val friendship in general. A good example of this is provided by the relation-
ship between Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable, abbot of
Cluny. Based on the language used in the letters that both abbots sent to one
another, and those handed down in their collected correspondence, it was
originally concluded that their mutual relationship could be characterized
as having been one of deepest friendship, an expression of “real Christian
friendship,” even if at the time of their holding office there was a serious
rivalry between the orders of which they were heads (cf. for example, Jean-
Baptiste Auniord, “L’ami de Saint Bernard,” Collectanea ordinis cisterciensium
reformatorum 18 [1956]: 88–99 (with references to older studies) or Ann P.
Lang, “The Friendship between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clair-
vaux,” Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclercq, 1973, 35–53
(for the context of the competing orders cf. especially Adriaan H. Bredero,
Cluny et Cîteaux au douzième siècle: l’histoire d’une controverse monastique, 1985).
Goodrich criticized this position with the argument that both authors
held a fundamentally different interpretation of the concept of charity, and
concluded that each conclusion with respect to the relationship between
them drawn directly from their use of words in the letters that referred to
caritas and amicitia, was incorrect (W. Eugene Goodrich, “The Limits of
Friendship. A Disagreement Between Saint Bernard and Peter the Venerable
on the Role of Charity in Dispensation From the Rule,” Cistercian Studies 16
[1981]: 81–97). Lortz had already dismissed the linguistic usages in the
letters as merely rhetorical devices (Bernhard von Clairveaux: Mönch und Mys-
tiker: Internationaler Bernhardkongress Mainz 1953, ed. Joseph Lortz, 1955), and
Piazzoni argued in an extensive article that conclusions drawn about the
relationships between the two, on the basis of linguistic usage in the letters,
were impossible from a methodological point of view, and that the presenta-
tion of the question was irrelevant from an historiographical point of view
(Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, “Un falso problema storiografico. Note a proposito
della ‘amicizia’ tra Pietro il Venerabile di Cluny e Bernardo di Clairvaux,”
Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivo Muratoriano 89
[1980–1981]: 443–87). Bredero eliminated the so-called relationship of
friendship based on a very thorough and detailed study of all related sources,
with a view to contextual circumstances (Adriaan H. Bredero, “Saint Bern-
ard in his Relations with Peter the Venerable,” Bernardus Magister: Papers Pres-
Friendship and Networks 592

ented at the Nonacentenary Celebration of the Birth of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Ka-
lamazoo, Michigan), ed. John R. Sommerfeldt, 1992, 315–47). Finally,
Gillian Knight studied the letters in a chronological semantic-intertextual
framework, arguing that the relationship between Bernard of Clairvaux and
Peter the Venerable could only be understood as a textual reflection of an in-
tellectual discourse that must be projected to the 4th century (Gillian R.
Knight, The Correspondence Between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux:
A Semantic and Structural Analysis, 2002). Notwithstanding the various critical
interpretations, the discussion continues to this day about the relationship,
whether it is to be interpreted as one of friendship or not, between Bernard
of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable (and others) (cf. further references in
Julian Haseldine, “Friends, Friendship and Networks in the Letters of
Bernard of Clairvaux,” Cîteaux 57 [2006]: 243–80).

H. Friendship Groups, Networks and Circles

Studies that have as their subject friendship within the medieval secular
world have paid more attention to the socializing and group formational
character of friendship, than to individual friendship relationships as such
(especially Althoff, mentioned above). As far as friendship within clerical
milieus is concerned, just the opposite holds. Starting in the 1980s, the first
studies appeared that passed over the individual relationship as a subject
of research and took on the study of an author’s friendship relationships in
respect of his or her social and cultural living environment, as part of the
whole of relationships that could be detected (Marinus Maier, “Ein schwä-
bisch-bayerischer Freundeskreis Gregors VII.: Nach der Vita Herlucae des
Paul von Bernried,” Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-
ordens und seiner Zweige 74 [1963]: 313–32; John McLoughlin, “Amicitia in
Practice: John of Salisbury [c. 1120–1180] and his Circle,” England in the
Twelfth Century: Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Wil-
liams, 1990, 165–81; and the already mentioned studies of Robinson,
Haseldine, Mullett and Ysebaert). These publications demonstrate
the importance of friendship relationships and networks through the struc-
tures of classical institutions and illustrate the way in which individual
clerics were embedded in various types of networks that had different social,
cultural, and political purposes.
593 Friendship and Networks

Select Bibliography
Gerd Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue: Zum politischen Stellenwert der Gruppen-
bindung im früheren Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990);
Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. Julian Haseldine (Thrupp/Stroud: Sutton Publish-
ing, 1999); Reginald Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship: The Idealization of Friendship in
Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1994); Brian Pa-
trick McGuire, Friendship & Community: The Monastic Experience 350–1250 (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications, 1988); Margaret E. Mullett, “Byzantium: a Friendly So-
ciety?” Past and Present 118 [1988]: 1–24; Margaret E. Mullett and Walter Ysebaert,
“Power, Relations and Networks in Medieval Europe,” Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie
en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 83 [2005]: 255–314; Huguette
Legros, L’amitié dans les chansons de geste à l’époque romane (Aix-en-Provence: Université
de Provence, 2001); Bénédicte Sère, Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge (Turnhout: Brepols,
2007); Jon Vidar Sigurdsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth
(Odense: Odense University Press, 1999); Carolinne White, Christian Friendship in the
fourth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Walter Ysebaert
Gender Studies 594

Gender Studies

A. Definition
From the 1970s onwards and being enduringly influenced by the linguistic
turn, the historical study of gender at large has emerged from women’s his-
tory and still may to some extant overlap with feminist approaches (cf. “Fem-
inism” in this Handbook) while not being identical to it. Scholars such as Allen
Franzen (“When Women Aren’t Enough,” Studying Medieval Women, ed.
Nancy F. Partner, 1993, 143–69) even have proclaimed the end of femin-
ism in Medieval Studies due to the advancements of gender studies and
queer theory (cf. “Queer Theories” in this Handbook).
Generally, gender is understood as the social and cultural construction
of sex differences encompassing certain gendered identities, roles, and ideol-
ogies. Not only can these vary in different times and (social as well as geo-
graphical) spaces but be multiple and even ambivalent within any society
and its respective fragmented spheres.
Medievalists have participated early and actively in the larger enterprise
of historicizing gender systems and have hence inspired diverse, sometimes
even conflicting interpretations of how gendered thinking and gendered
performances have shaped the historical past (this, however, seems somehow
inherent in gendered thinking since early Christianity; cf. Daniel Boyarin,
“Paul and the Genealogy of Gender,” Representations 41 [1993]: 1–33; and
Jacqueline Murray, “Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval
Perspective,” Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Car-
penter and Sally-Beth MacLean, 1995, 1–26). The subjects range from
classic fields of feminist scholarship such as infanticide or labor division to
questions of crime and violence, literary production or representations
of piety, while one of the most prospering is the study of gender identities
(cf. Sarah Salih, “Sexual Identities: a Medieval Perspective,” Sodomy in Early
Modern Europe, ed. Tom Betteridge, 2002, 112–30), especially that of “mas-
culinity” (cf. the article in this Handbook).
595 Gender Studies

B. Gender and Religion

Still the primary fields of debating questions of gender are readings in reli-
gious or hagiographic literature and romance, both genres particularly fore-
grounding gendered bodies and related issues. This connects to a tradition
deriving from earlier feminist scholarship who have fruitfully rediscovered
not only women’s voices in the medieval past through witnesses of women’s
spirituality but also uncovered women and women’s bodies’ as images or
icons, as passive representations of abstract concepts that is (cf. Joan M. Fer-
rante, Women as Image in Medieval Literature, 1985; Karl F. Morrison,
History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 1990, 154–95; more
recently Kate Cooper, “The Virgin as Social Icon: Perspectives from Late
Antiquity,” Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies,
ed. Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip, 2005, 9–24; Fiona J. Griffith, “Sib-
lings and the Sexes within Medieval Religious Life,” Church History 77 [2008]:
26–53). Carolyn Walker Bynum, for instance, in her seminal study Holy Feast
and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987) has
particularly fostered the metamorphosis from medieval women’s history
to gender history. Focusing on the nature of medieval asceticism and the sig-
nificance of gender in medieval religion, Bynum comes to unveil the diver-
sity of medieval religious as well as bodily experiences beyond clerical preoc-
cupation usually perceived through canonical texts.
In the last decades, the investigation in intersections between gender
and religion has flourished in numerous studies, especially concerning ques-
tions of sanctity (amongst others cf. Catherine M. Mooney, “Voice, Gender,
and the Portrayal of Sanctity,” Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Inter-
preters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney, 1999, 1–15; Katherine Allen Smith,
“Mary or Michael? Saint-switching, gender and sanctity in a medieval mir-
acle of childbirth,” Church History 74 [2005]: 758–83). Indeed, the saint,
whom already in 1978 Alexander Murray had identified as a “man without
social class” (Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, 1978, 383–404), appears to
lend itself specifically for questioning and testing the gender dichotomy and
its related representations. The study of religious, pastoral and hagiographic
sources, however, has also brought gender questions to flourish within the
field of Medieval Latin Studies (cf. amongst others The Tongue of the Fathers:
Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin, ed. David Townsend and An-
drew Taylor, 1998; and Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The
Latin Tradition, ed. Barbara K. Gold et al., 1997).
Gender Studies 596

C. Thinking Sex and Gender in the Pre-Modern Era

As another aspect, gender issues have become one of the most vivid fields
of explicit interdisciplinary cooperation between medievalists and scholars
of Renaissance and early modern history who both engage in shaping the
distinctive alterity of gendered thinking in the pre-modern era. One key
work that has consequently inspired both Medieval as well as Early Modern
Studies is Thomas Laquer’s Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to
Freud (1990) in which he questions the validity of the two-sex-model (male/
female) for the study of pre-modern mentality claiming it to have basically
developed only in the 18th century. According to his findings, medieval con-
temporaries did not perceive the female body as fundamentally distinct
from the male but rather the former as an imperfect and physically under-
developed guise of the later. Hence, Laquer argues, there was no distinction
between the sexes but only one between genders (“one-sex-model”). Al-
though this proves to be true for a variety of medieval philosophers and
scientists, such as Thomas Aquinas or Hildegard of Bingen, medievalists
have brought a variety of evidence that confute Laquer’s assumption in its
generality. Recent scholarship rather has stressed the diversity of contradict-
ing, co-existing and sometimes plainly ambivalent ways of gendered think-
ing in medieval times. Joan Cadden, in her telling study Meaning of Sex
Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture, has posited “a cluster
of gender-related notions, sometimes competing, sometimes mutually rein-
forcing; sometimes permissive, sometimes constraining; sometimes consist-
ent, sometimes ad hoc” (1993, 9–10; also cf. Kathleen Coyne Kelly, Perform-
ing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages, 2000).
Still Laquer’s ideas have brought forward the understanding that not
only gender but sex as well owes its cultural debts and therefore directly aim
at basic ideas of earlier gender studies. Since its beginning, the concept of
gender has been opposed to that of sex, the latter addressing an anatomic if
not even biological component which initially seemed downright graphi-
cally palpable in the possession of certain genitals. Yet the transgression of
such seemingly biological boundaries has formed one of the most vivid fields
of gender studies – and still does so. It is one of the key questions of more
recent works to what extent gender and sex actually can be assumed to be
so closely related yet discrete. While still a common differentiation in many
current studies, critics inspired by Judith Butler’s ground-breaking and
controversially discussed books Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter
(1993) have stressed the performative dimensions of the sex-gender-binary
and have challenged it as a new bias that blurs historical perceptions.
Gender, Butler argues, by encompassing the most diverse discursive or cul-
597 Gender Studies

tural practices inescapably fosters the pre-discursive prescription of what is

conceived biological, hence what ascribes a person’s sex.
Still it remains a rather open and heavily debated question how to cope
with both the radical constructiveness of gender and the intractable physi-
cality of the body (cf. Caroline Walker Bynum, “Why all the Fuss About the
Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions
in the Study of Society and Culture, ed. Victoria E. Bonnel, 1999, 241–80). This
is especially true for studies that question the heteronormative feminity/
masculinity-binary in terms of gay/lesbian or queer studies, cross-dressing or
other phenomena of sexual and/or corporeal expression apart from the paths
of heterosexuality and gender-binaries. Karma Lochrie, for instance, has
suggested that the opposition between “natural” and “unnatural” sex seems
to have been much more pervasively binary than that between homosexual
and heterosexual intercourse for an estimable period of the European past
(Covert Operations: The Medieval Use of Secrecy, 1999, 199). Other recent works
utilize “third gender”-approaches in conceptualizing medieval accounts to-
ward eunuchs, virgins, or ascetic celibacy (cf. Jo Ann McNamara. “Chastity
as a Third Gender in the History and Hagiography of Gregory of Tours,” The
World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen A. Mitchel and Ian N. Wood, 2002,
199–209). David Nirenberg, when investigating the relations of Chris-
tians, Muslims, and Jews in 14th-century Aragon, even finds “a society of six
dynamically related genders, rather than of two genders and three religions”
(Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, 1996, 148;
on gender ideologies in medieval cultures others than the Christian cf. the
first section of articles in the volume Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages,
ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack, 2003; and Steven Kru-
ger, “Conversion and Medieval Sexual, Religious, and Racial Categories,”
Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. Karma Lochrie et al., 1997, 158–79; for
the often neglected Northern parts of Europe cf. Else Mundal, “Female Im-
purity and Cultic Incapability: the Influence of Christianisation on Nordic
Gender Models,” Christian and Islamic Gender Models in Formative Traditions, ed.
Kari Elisabeth Børresen, 2004, 203–18). As Felice Lifshitz has pointedly
put it: “Ultimately, indeed ironically, Gender History seeks to disaggregate
the very categories ‘men’ and ‘women’ – presumably its very subjects/objects
of inquiry – rather than to reify them” (“Difference, [Dis]appearances and
the Disruption of the Straight Telos: Medievalology [‘Mediävistik’] as a His-
tory of Gender,” Mediävistik im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz and
Jörg Jarnut, 2003, 295–312: 299; though not from a medievalist’s perspec-
tive cf. also the inspiring thoughts of early modern scholar Lynn Hunt, “The
Challenge of Gender: Deconstruction of Categories and Reconstruction of
Gender Studies 598

Narratives in Gender History,” Geschlechtergeschichte und Allgemeine Geschichte:

Herausforderungen und Perspektiven, ed. Hans Medick and Anne-Charlotte
Trepp, 1998, 57–97). One of the most radical and prominent exponents
of the constructivist trends in Medieval (Gender) Studies has lately been
Kathleen Biddick who emphatically claims “nonfoundational medieval
studies that articulates rather than re-presents the Middle Ages as a historical
category” (The Shock of Medievalism, 1998, 85).
Indeed, while for the most part accepting gender as a problematic yet in-
dispensable category in historical investigation, recent developments in- and
outside of gender related studies have compelled medievalists to consider
the ways in which gender not only poses hierarchy and domination between
the sexes but interacts with other categories of difference and power as well
(cf. amongst others Kimberly A. LoPrete, “Gendering viragos: Medieval
Perceptions of Powerful Women,” Victims or Viragos?, ed. Christine Meek and
Catherine Lawless, 2005, 17–38; as well as “Queer Theories” and “Post-
Colonialism” in this Handbook). This is why gender issues among other such
concepts still lie at the very heart of many recent theoretical debates in Medi-
eval Studies.
Ultimately, emphasizing gender as a ground-laying category of histori-
cal research implicitly challenges chronology and epoch-boundaries as one
of the basic scale types of traditional historiography, which already in 1977
led Joan Kelly to ask (and negate) provokingly: “Did Women Have a Renais-
sance?” (Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal
et al., 1977, 137–64; cf. Barbara Stevenson’s discussion of this article under
the lemma “Feminism”). More recently, Jo Ann McNamara (“Women and
Power Through the Family Revisited,” Gendering the Master Narrative: Gender
and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Earler and Maryanne Kowaleski,
2003, 17–30) has argued for a new periodization of European history by the
shifting of the gender systems.

D. International Research
Employing questions of gender in Medieval Studies already has a very strong
tradition in both Great Britain and the US (cf. Patrick Geary, “Mittelalter-
forschung heute und morgen: Eine amerikanische Perspektive,” Stand und
Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Arnold
Esch et al., 2000, 73–97), while in France, for instance, Medieval Studies
seem to have adopted gender as a category of historical research to far less
extent (cf. some more recent pertinent collective volumes, such as Bilan et
perspectives des études médiévales 1993–1998, ed. Fédération Internationale des
Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2004; or Les tendances actuelles de l’histoire du
599 Gender Studies

Moyen Age en France et en Allemagne, ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt, 2002, with only
the latter touching gender aspects, significantly under the headline “Pour
une histoire des femmes”) – probably due to its strong traditions in the
history of mentalities. Some notable exceptions, such as Alain Boureau,
Le droit de cuissage (2001), or Régine le Jan, Femmes, pouvoir et société dans le haut
Moyen Âge (2001), were followed cautiously by very few scholars who have
more explicitly drawn upon the concept of gender in their studies (cf. Isa-
belle Chabot, “‘Biens de famille’. Contrôle des ressources patrimoniales,
‘gender’ et cycle domestique (Italie, XIIIième–XVième siècles),” La maisonnée
dans les villes au bas moyen âge, ed. Myriam Carlier and Tim Soens, 2001,
89–104). The same seems to be true for Italy, where medieval genders seem to
be a field farmed predominantly by studies in literature (cf. Ashleigh Imus,
“‘Vaga è la donna vaga’: The gendering of vago in the Commedia, the
Decameron and the Canzoniere,” Forum Italicum 40 [2006]: 213–33), and
Spanish scholarship (cf. Lifshitz 2003, as above, 297; with respective item-
izations, as well as the remarkable intersections between Christian and
Arabic poetry observed by Vicente Cantarino, “Wa-hiya taklifu ghannat:
Genre and Gender in Hispano-Arabic Poetry,” Medieval Lyric: Genres in Histori-
cal Context, ed. William D. Jr. Paden, 2000, 255–72). Germanophone medi-
evalists, especially those active in studies in literature (cf. Judith Klinger,
“Ferne Welten, fremde Geschlechter: Gender Studies in der germanistischen
Mediaevistik,” Potsdamer Studien zur Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung 3 [1999]:
47–61; Genderdiskurse und Körperbilder im Mittelalter: Eine Bilanzierung nach
Butler und Laqueur, ed. Ingrid Bennewitz and Ingrid Kasten, 2002), have
comparatively late but with sensible verve adopted trends from the Anglo-
American (Lifshitz 2003, as above, 295: “The Second Language of Gender
Medievalology is German […]”). Noteworthy inspirations also were taken up
from the Netherlands, where medievalists have begun early to put gender on
their research agenda but have often been overlooked (cf. Anja Petrako-
poulos, “Middeleeuwse vrouwen, gender en macht. Historiografische
reflecties in een spiegelpaleis,” Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis 16 [1996]:
17–35). This is especially true for publications in Dutch language, such as
the noteworthy study of Petra J. E. M. van Dam and Johanna Maria van
Winter on the significance of gender for medieval eating habits (“Theorie
en praktijk van eetregimes in de Middeleeuwen,” Tijdschrift voor Sociale Ge-
schiedenis 29 [2003]: 385–412). Still, scholarly English remains the lingua
franca of medieval gender history.
Overall, gender approaches in medieval archaeology, such as Roberta
Gilchrist’s important Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious
Women (1993; cf. also the special forum on Gilchrist’s monograph in Cam-
Gender Studies 600

bridge Archaeological Journal 5 [1995]; a more recent example of plausible

gender awareness in early medieval archaeology is Christina Lee, “Grave
Matters: Anglo-Saxon Textiles and Their Cultural Significance,” Bulletin of
the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 86 [2004]: 203–21), have gotten
few notice outside its discipline. In this respect interdisciplinary cooperation
still has remained relatively dense although there is a vivid discussion on this
field within medieval archaeology which not only plainly employs but also
engages in critically reviewing and testing earlier and recent debates in
gender theory (Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, Gender Archaeology, 2000, pro-
vides a useful introduction; for more specifically medieval questions, cf. Ro-
berta Gilchrist, “Ambivalent Bodies: Gender and Medieval Archaeology,”
Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeol-
ogy, ed. Jenny Moore and Eleanor Scott, 1997, 42–58).
The same is comparably true for Medieval Byzantine Studies, although
scholars in this field have recently published remarkable investigations in
the political implications of gender in Byzantine imperial politics (cf.
amongst others Judith Herrin, “The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium,”
Past and Present 169 [2000]: 3–35; or Ruma Niyogi, Gender, Politics, and Rhetoric
in Byzantium, 1025–1081, 2005), especially in the role of eunuchs in higher
positions of Byzantine governance (cf. Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in
Byzantium, ed. James Liz, 1997 – with an instrumental introductory chapter
by James Liz, “Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Byzantine Studies,” XI–
XXIV). Though the study of monasticism, asceticism, and sanctity leaves in-
dications for fruitful encounters (such as Paul Halsall, Women’s Bodies, Men’s
Souls: Sanctity and Gender in Byzantium, 1999), which indeed thankfully have
been taken up by scholars of western Christianity (cf. Gender in the Early
Medieval World: East and West, 300–900, ed. Leslie Brubaker and Julia Mary
Howard Smith, 2004), basic comparative questions dealing with gender
in western and eastern Christianity, aside from examples of extraordinary
religiousness (sanctity etc.), have been touched upon neither extensively nor
even more explicitly.
Still, “gender” in Medieval Studies figures far too often as a simple syn-
onym for “women” – an observation being true for probably most other
fields of historical research as well (some scholar once called that phenom-
enon “add women and stir”). But, as sketched above, there is more to the con-
cept of “gender,” and an increasing number of highly inspired studies being
constantly published prove that.
601 Gender Studies

E. Getting Started
So far, there is no explicit least monographic introduction to the field of medi-
eval history and literatures specifically concerned with matters of gender
(except the notable attempt of Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Masculus et
Femina: Systematische Grundlinien einer mediävistischen Geschlechtergeschichte,
2001; 2nd rev. ed., 2005), while an almost overflowing pool of scholarly,
introductory and more popular monographs and collections on medieval
women has accumulated in the last forty years. The increasing interest of the
last two decades in the histories of medieval sexuality, as one of the most
basic practices of doing gender, has also brought up a series of publications of
considerable depth as well as digestible synthesizes for introductory pur-
poses. The first place to go when starting research in this specific field might
be the Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A.
Brundage, 1996; 2nd rev. edition, 2000; cf. especially Joyce E. Salisbury’s
chapter “Gendered Sexuality,” 81–102; for a comprehensive survey of recent
scholarship, see the Introduction and numerous contributions to: Sexuality in
the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2008). Also Ka-
therine Crawford’s recent textbook European Sexualities, 1400–1800 (2007),
which frequently glances back far into the Middle Ages, can turn out to be
useful once in a while. A good starting-point to the diverse fields of research
touched by gendered aspects should be Women and Gender in Medieval Europe:
An Encyclopedia (ed. Margaret Schaus, 2006) and the second volume of the
Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship and Sexuality Through History (6 vol.,
2007), while a useful tool in bibliography is provided by the online-databases
Feminae (http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html,
hosted by Margaret Schaus as well) and Matrix (http://monasticmatrix.usc.
edu), the latter however focusing on medieval religious women. There is
no scholarly journal specifically focusing on medieval gender systems, but all
major periodicals active in historicizing gender, such as Gender & History or
the Journal of the History of Sexuality, do regularly publish articles on medieval
history.

Select Bibliography
Caroline Walker Bynum, “Why All the Fuss About the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspec-
tive,” Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, ed. Victoria
E. Bonnell (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1999), 241–80; Joan
Cadden, Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Mary C. Earler and Maryanne Kowa-
leski, ed. Gendering the Master Narrative: Gender and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2003); Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, ed. Sharon
Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis et al.: University of Minnesota
German Studies 602

Press, 2003); Felice Lifshitz, “Difference, (Dis)appearances and the Disruption of the
Straight Telos: Medievalology (‘Mediävistik’) as a History of Gender,” Mediävistik im
21. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz and Jörg Jarnut (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,
2003), 295–312; Nancy F. Partner, ed. Studying Medieval Women (Cambridge, MA:
Medieval Academy of America, 1993); Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Cat-
egory of Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–75.

Hiram Kümper

German Studies

A. Definition
While German scholars dominated the field in the 19th century and con-
tinued well into the 20th – even after World War II –, scholars from other
nations were also busy building on the ground-breaking efforts of their
German colleagues and, beyond that, establishing their own identities and
approaches which came into full fruition, in the United States, especially, in
the last quarter of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st. This essay
will concentrate on the development of the field in Germany and, to a lesser
extent in the United States, Great Britain and France.
The number of significant scholars in the field – on both sides of the
Atlantic and past and present – is immense. If an attempt were to be made
to include the names of even just “a lot” of the individuals, this essay would
degenerate into a mere list. In the 19th century in Germany and Austria alone,
for example, such a list would comprise at least one hundred names from
Johann Christoph Adelung to Ignaz Vinzenz Zingerle. Thus more atten-
tion will be directed toward the establishment of the discipline, the schools
of thought, controversies, indeed disputes, and will demonstrate the slow,
but inexorable development from a narrow philological viewpoint of a text
to the exciting, multifaceted literary approaches continuing to unfold in the
present. Only those individuals will be singled out by name whose work
truly played a significant role in the development of the field. The scholars
of the 20th century, who will be singled out, will be considerably fewer in
number, not because this essay is epigonic in nature, far from it – for are we
not all like dwarves on the shoulders of giants? Nonetheless, rather than cit-
ing the names of individual scholars, especially of more recent times, for the
important scholarly contributions that they have made and, in some in-
603 German Studies

stances, continue to make, this essay will concentrate on the research im-
pulses that inform their work, but which, again, would not have been pos-
sible without the pioneering work of their 19th- and 20th-century forebears.

B. The Corpus
The periodization of medieval German literature (ca. 750 – ca. 1400) is as fol-
lows: The Old High German Period (ca. 750 – ca. 1050) is not only a stage in
the development of the German language, but also in the process that ulti-
mately culminates in a distinctively German literature. The beginnings are,
however, mainly a continuation of the impulses of late antiquity and early
Christianity. The extant literature can be seen as a voice trying to define itself
primarily within the Christian missionizing context, seeking to mediate be-
tween the new and foreign on the one hand and the traditional and familiar
on the other. With one significant exception, vernacular writings from this
period are primarily religious in nature. Most, if not all, had surely enjoyed a
pre-literary existence. Aside from many glosses and simple prayers the litera-
ture of this period offers fragments of Biblical epics and a heroic song (Hilde-
brandslied, ca. 800) in alliterative verse, as well as a complete Life of Christ
(Heliand, ca. 830), in Old Saxon, also in alliterative verse, and, most impor-
tantly, Otfried’s Evangelienbuch (ca. 870).
Middle High German literature (ca. 1060 – ca. 1400) can be subdivided
into three not completely discrete eras: a) Early Middle High German
(ca. 1060 – ca. 1160) comprising over ninety works primarily of a religious
content; b) The Classical Period (ca. 1160 – ca. 1250) comprising the great
romances of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Straßburg, and Hart-
mann von Aue, the heroic epic, the Nibelungenlied, and the first flourishing of
German courtly love lyric, (Minnesang), including Neidhart (von Reuental)
who made this very subtle genre even more so by appearing to coarsen it; and
c) Late Middle High German (ca. 1250 – ca. 1400) comprising the sometimes
very lengthy, often extremely tedious didactic works as well as shorter didac-
tic and poetic pieces of great originality, e. g., Helmbrecht (ca. 1280), master-
pieces of German mysticism, and one of the most original poets of the Middle
or any other age, Oswald von Wolkenstein. Of course there are many more
works, authors and genres. But before a broader public could become ac-
quainted with any of them, editions had to be produced.

C. The Beginnings
Long before the establishment of systematic editorial procedures in the 19th
century, portions of the Old High and Middle High German corpus were
published. The earliest complete text is an edition of Williram’s (d. 1085)
German Studies 604

paraphrase (ca. 1060) of the Song of Songs (Paullus Merula, Willirami Abbatis
in Canticum Canticorum Paraphrasis genuina, prior Rhythmis Latinis. Altera veteri
lingua Francica; addita explicatio lingua Belgica et notae quibus veterum vocum Fran-
cicarum ratio redditur, 1598). With respect to this Leiden Williram, it should be
noted that the text is based on a lost Old High German original and is the re-
sult of an unknown scribe’s attempt to render the East Franconian of the
original in his local Old Dutch dialect. And while it is true that the previous
year, 1597, also witnessed the publication of a fragmentary section (lines
19–78) of the ca. 1080 Annolied (Bonaventura Vulcanius, De literis et lingua
Getarum sive Gothorum, 1597), Vulcanius’s work is of prime importance not
for the appearance of several lines from an Early Middle High German work,
but rather that he was the first to make available the translation of the Gos-
pels in Gothic, as well as the first who connected this version with the name
of Ulfilas. It is to Martin Opitz (1597–1639) that we owe the only complete
copy (878 lines in 49 strophes of unequal length) of the Annolied (Incerti poetae
teutonici: Rhythmus de Sancto Annone colon: Archiepiscopo, 1639). Interestingly
both appear to be based on different redactions of the same manuscript
which is, unfortunately, lost.
Other works like the Nibelungenlied and the Klage saw several editions,
either complete or fragmentary, by such individuals as Johann Jakob
Bodmer (1757 – fragmentary using ms. C), Christoph Heinrich Myller
(1782 – using mss. A and C), Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (1807 –
mainly mss. A and C, with some consideration of mss. B and D; and again,
somewhat more scientifically, but still inadequate, in 1816 and 1820 accord-
ing to ms. B), August Zeune (1815 – using mss. A and C, with occasional con-
sideration of ms. B.). No doubt reflecting the nationalistic attraction of the
Nibelungenlied, Zeune published a “Zelt- und Feldausgabe” (edition for use
in the tent or field) in a smaller format which the soldiers could carry with
them into the war against Napoleon. Other works which were edited (after a
fashion) prior to Karl Lachmann were Minnesang (Johann Jacob Bodmer
and Johann Jacob Breitinger, 1759), Hartmann von Aue’s Arme Heinrich
(Christoph Heinrich Myller, Samlung deutscher Gedichte aus dem XII., XIII. und
XIV. Jahrhundert, vol. 1, 1784, 197–208) and Hartmann’s Iwein (Christoph
Heinrich Myller, Samlung deutscher Gedichte aus dem XII., XIII. und XIV. Jahr-
hundert, vol. 2, 1784/1785).
All of these editions were for their time important and the Opitz edition
is still being used today, to be sure in place of the lost manuscript. Nonethe-
less the range of quality among the various early editions even among those
by one editor, e. g. von der Hagen, was quite large and did not begin to ap-
proach that of the editions which would soon follow. The response of the
605 German Studies

readers to these editions was varied from Goethe’s early disinterest in the
Nibelungenlied to his enthusiasm for it in later life to the outright rejection of
the great epic by no less a personage than Frederick the Great, whose reaction
to Myller’s edition is well known: “In my opinion, such ‘poems’ are not
worth a rap and do not deserve to be lifted from the dust of obscurity. In my
library at any rate, I would not tolerate such miserable stuff but would toss it
out!”

D. The New Discipline

As crisp, clear, and unambiguous as the above declaration of Frederick the
Great might be and as appropriate as the sentiment expressed in it might
have been for Myller’s edition, the time of the emergence of German Phil-
ology as an independent discipline was at hand and the value of medieval
German literature would soon be recognized on the basis of reliable and
scientifically edited texts.
The area of Medieval German Studies is, however, quite complex and
cannot be understood properly without at least a glance at the discipline of
which it is an offspring, Classical Philology. With the publication of Richard
Bentley’s (1662–1742) Epistola ad Millium, appended to the 1691 edition
(editio princeps) of the Oxford Malalas, a new era of critical, philological
methodology began. This slender tract (fewer than one hundred pages) is a
masterpiece of brilliant emendations and corrections and displays the auth-
or’s complete familiarity with ancient grammarians, drawing on their works
to bolster his readings. He was in close contact with the great German Classi-
cal scholar, Johann Georg Graevius (1632–1703), who was a professor in
Utrecht and for whom he collected all the fragments of Callimachus, half of
which were unknown at that time – even to Graevius – and contributed
them to the latter, making Graevius’s Callimachus a model edition. In the
Netherlands, in general, Bentley was held in great esteem, but in Germany
it was primarily Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1820) who hailed him and,
according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, viewed himself as a sort of
Bentley teutonicus, a conceit that was carried on by Karl Lachmann and
others of his students.
If, as is claimed, in the beginning was the word, i. e. the text, then im-
mediately thereafter came Karl Lachmann (1793–1851), who, although a
Classical philologist by training, together with Jacob Grimm (1785–1863)
fashioned and defined the area of German philology (the only “German
Studies” at the time). Without his (Lachmann’s) editorial work the evol-
ution of the discipline to its present form would be quite unthinkable. As the
initiator of textual criticism in German philology as well as being one of the
German Studies 606

greatest textual critics in the history of Classical philology, Lachmann’s ap-

proach utilized the “genealogical” or “stemmatic” method which compared
all textual witnesses of a work and drew up a “family tree,” so to speak,
mainly by comparing variants, i. e. errors and omissions. After discarding all
repetitions, the text is reconstructed (with emendations) from the remaining
agreements among the witnesses. This text would then represent the “arche-
type,” i. e., the lost copy from which all the witnesses descend. During the
time he was a student in Göttingen, Lachmann attended lectures on older
German literature delivered by Georg Friedrich Benecke (1762–1844), pro-
fessor of English and older German. This experience left a lasting mark on
him – as well as leading to a later collaboration with the great scholar –, and
he spent the rest of his life dedicated both to Classical and German philology.
In addition to his pioneering work in the new discipline, he also continued to
be active in the area of Classical philology, among other things editing the
works of Propertius and Lucretius. Although Lachmann was involved
with several editorial undertakings in Classical Latin, the Bible, and Middle
High German, the discipline of German Philology can really be said to begin
with his treatise Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth
(1816). In this work, Lachmann applied Friedrich August Wolf’s theory,
set forth in his well-known Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) on the origin of
the Homeric epics, to the Nibelungenlied (Liedertheorie). Wolf postulated that
the Iliad and the Odyssey were not the work of one poet, but rather of a series of
poets or singers who composed short pieces which were then later ordered,
edited, and combined into the epics known by subsequent ages as being
composed by Homer. In his consideration of the Nibelungenlied, Lachmann
had two major concerns: the identification of the primary manuscript,
which, in his opinion, would be the least complete – something that would
speak for its greater age; and determining the structure of the epic. With re-
gard to the first concern, he determined that there were three genealogical
groups, aligned according to the three main manuscripts, A, B, and C, for all
textual witnesses known at that time. Because of its lack of polish and appar-
ent lacunae, he considered manuscript A to be the earliest and, therefore, pri-
mary manuscript (an assumption that would later be refuted as would the
concept of three genealogical groups; today they are viewed as representing
two redactions: the – nôt group and the – liet group, so named after the last
lines of the epic: “daz ist der Nibelunge liet” [C], or “daz ist der Nibelunge
nôt” [AB]). By 1836 in his Anmerkungen zu den Nibelungen und zur Klage, Lach-
mann had refined his Liedertheorie to the extent that he determined there
were twenty individual “Lieder” or rhapsodies that made up the structure of
manuscript A.
607 German Studies

From the beginning, Lachmann’s views were questioned, most notably

by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (1780–1856), the first academic
to hold the professorship for German Language and Literature in Berlin.
As noted above, von der Hagen, himself, had published editions of the
Nibelungenlied in 1807, 1816, and 1820. Unfortunately the editions, but es-
pecially the earliest, were not characterized by scholarly or any other kind of
rigor. The 1807 edition received little positive notice from the scholarly com-
munity, and in 1809 Wilhelm Grimm wrote about it: “It [the edition] is a
modernization, which is worse than the original, and yet not at all modern.”
As a result, von der Hagen’s protests failed to gain any significant sup-
port.
A brief glance at the events which took place after Lachmann’s death
with regard to the Nibelungenlied will provide a fascinating glimpse into the
development of German philology in general in the 19th and early 20th cen-
turies. For after his death, a scholarly struggle over his theories – concerning
both the primary manuscript and the genesis of the epic – ensued, character-
ized by unusual vituperativeness and ad hominem attacks, the so-called
Nibelungenstreit. The dispute centered around those followers of Lachmann
like Karl Müllenhoff (1818–1884) who not only advocated the primacy
of manuscript A, but also applied Lachmann’s Liedertheorie to the epic
Gudrun, and “dissidents,” like the Heidelberg professor Adolf Holtzmann
(1810–1870) and Friedrich Zarncke (1825–1891), professor at Leipzig who
claimed primacy for manuscript C. Holtzmann’s Untersuchungen über das
Nibelungenlied (1854) not only advocated manuscript C, but rejected the Lie-
dertheorie to boot! He was joined later in the same year by Zarncke, who
modified his support somewhat when Karl Bartsch (1832–1888) was the
first to champion manuscript B (1865) as the primary manuscript. We owe
to Bartsch the most widely-used critical edition of the epic to the present
day. Supporting Bartsch’s conjecture as to the primacy of B was Wilhelm
Braune’s (1850–1926) study, Die Handschriftenverhältnisse des Nibelungenliedes
(1900). He posited the stemma in which, as mentioned above, the three
main manuscripts form two branches *AB and *C and all derive from one orig-
inal *x. In 1963, in his Beiträge zur Handschriftenkritik des Nibelungenliedes,
Helmut Brackert subjected Braune’s theory to a rigorous examination.
Brackert concluded that the presupposition upon which Braune con-
structed his stemma, namely that there was an original (*x), was simply not
verifiable. Brackert’s equally controversial position theorizes that there
never was one single work that could be considered the original Nibelungen-
lied. The common text appearing to lie behind the transmitted texts is, in
actuality, just one of several versions. As might be expected, Brackert’s
German Studies 608

theories were also quite controversial. Although most scholars agreed that
Brackert had successfully dismantled Braune’s stemma, his conclusion
that there can thus be no ‘original’ provoked much discussion. While agree-
ing with Brackert about the inadequacy of Braune’s stemma, Joachim
Heinzle’s observations are typical of some of the scholarly reservations:
“We can infer an original in the sense that the Nibelungenlied tradition goes
back to an original or basic text, in whose author we may see the poet of the
Nibelungenlied. *AB and *C are revisions of this basic text, which is fairly well
preserved in *AB whereas *C represents a systematic reworking, which in
turn, however, influenced the total *AB tradition secondarily. In general, one
has to take into consideration also the repeated impact of oral epic tradition
on the written, but it is not the rule as Brackert thought. We have to see the
written tradition as essentially closed. In spite of these facts, it is just as im-
possible to reconstruct the basic text, which probably originated in Passau
around 1200, as it is to reconstruct the *AB-version” (The Nibelungen Tradition:
An Encyclopedia, 2002, 210).
The other Lachmann hypothesis, the Liedertheorie, was also disposed
of in the new century. In his classic work Lied und Epos in germanischer Sagen-
dichtung (1905), Andreas Heusler (1865–1940) convincingly demonstrated
the untenableness of Lachmann’s theory. Heusler differentiated between
“lay” and “epic” as follows: “A lay does not relate [just] an episode, but rather
a cohesive narrative. The epic narrative and the lay content are the same,” or
put more concretely: “According to [Lachmann’s] theory, the epic stands in
the same relationship to a lay as a group of trees to an individual tree […]. In
reality, however, the epic stands in relationship to a lay as a grown person to
an embryo.” Heusler’s refutation of the Liedertheorie, while viewed by some
scholars as too rigid, was nonetheless the final nail in the Lachmannian Nibe-
lungen coffin. We will return to the Nibelungenlied when discussing the turn
from philological to literary studies.
However completely Lachmann’s Nibelungen hypotheses were dis-
proved, his other critical and methodological achievements have stood the
test of time. Not only did he provide an exemplary edition of the works of
Wolfram von Eschenbach (1833), but also, together with Georg Friedrich
Benecke, Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein (1827) which forms the basis for all
subsequent editions to the present. In this connection mention must be
made of Benecke’s dictionary to Iwein (Wörterbuch zu Hartmanns ‘Iwein’,
1833). Indeed there is scarcely a major work from the Classical Middle High
German period with which Lachmann did not occupy himself – with the
notable exception of Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan. He also began work
on an edition of Minnesang which was, however, completed by his longtime
609 German Studies

associate and admirer Moriz Haupt (1808–1874), who, too, must be recog-
nized as playing a most important role, possibly as important as Lach-
mann’s, in the establishment of German philology. Like Lachmann, he was
a follower of the theory of the Classical philologist, Gottfried Hermann
(1772–1848), who maintained that the accurate knowledge of the respective
language(s) – in his case Latin and Greek – was the only path to an under-
standing of the ancient world (language as the only correct way to knowl-
edge). (In other words such “tangential” subjects as archeology, history and
the like play no significant role in Classical philology. This is in opposition
to August Böckh [1785–1867] whose expansive view of Classical philology
can be summed up as “language as one way among others.” The “Böckh-
Hermann dispute” – much like the Nibelungenstreit in German philology –
dominated the discussion in Classical studies in the 19th century.) Thus it is
no surprise that he (Haupt) defended Lachmann’s text-critical methods,
especially with regard to the Nibelungenlied (third and fourth editions of
Lachmann’s text, 1852, and 1867). As mentioned above, Haupt published
the edition of Minnesangs Frühling (1857) which Lachmann had started. In
addition, he edited and published the following: Hartmann von Aue’s Erec
(1839) and his Lieder, Klage, and the Arme Heinrich (1842); Rudolf von Ems’s
Guten Gerhard (1840); Konrad von Würzburg’s Engelhard (1844); the Winsbeke
(1845); Gottfried von Neifen’s Lieder (1851); the poetry of Walther von der Vo-
gelweide (1853, and 1864); Neidhardt von Reuental’s Lieder (1858; modern
scholarship no longer refers to this poet as ‘von Reuental’, which is only his
nom de plume); and Moriz von Craon (1871). To be sure, most of these editions
had to be completely reedited in the 20th century – and Minnesangs Frühling –
already in the early 1900s. In the newest edition (Hugo Moser and Helmut
Tervooren, Des Minnesangs Frühling, 1977) the entire editorial procedure
was changed from the basic principle of emendation, conjecture, and recon-
struction of the “archetype” to that of the “Leithandschrift,” a principle that
Werner Schröder also employed with his monumental edition of Wolf-
ram’s Willehalm (1978). These editions, plus several others, as well as impor-
tant studies, e. g. Brackert’s observations about the Nibelungenlied manu-
scripts, demonstrate the gradual loosening of the philological bonds
imposed upon the discipline by Lachmann and his followers. (We will have
occasion to mention these later when discussing “New Philology” in the
medieval German context.) Nonetheless, it must be pointed out, and forcibly
so, that the more recent developments would have been unthinkable, with-
out the pioneering accomplishments of Lachmann and others!
German Studies 610

E. Noteworthy Editions of Smaller Works

(including Old High German) in the 19th Century
Of course editing activity was not limited to the well-known epic and lyric
works of the Middle Ages. Many text editions were made which offered,
in addition to excerpts from larger works, complete texts of smaller works,
especially those from the Early Middle High German period as well as the few
monuments in Old High German and Old Saxon, and collections of courtly
love lyric. Some of the more noteworthy collections are: Karl Bartsch,
Deutsche Liederdichter des zwölften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (2nd ed. 1878, rpt.
1966); Karl Bartsch, Die Schweizer Minnesänger (1886, rpt. 1964); Eberhard
Gottlieb Graff, Diutiska: Denkmäler deutscher Sprache und Litteratur aus alten
Handschriften, vol. 1 (1826), vol. 2 (1827), vol. 3 (1829); Heinrich Hoffmann
(von Fallersleben), Fundgruben für Geschichte deutscher Sprache und Litteratur,
vol. 1 (1830), vol. 2 (1837); Hans Ferdinand Massmann, Deutsche Gedichte
des zwölften Jahrhunderts und der nächstverwandten Zeit, part 1: Die Straßburg-Mols-
heimische Handschrift, and part 2: Aus Wiener Handschriften (1837); Theodor G.
von Karajan, Deutsche Sprach-Denkmale des zwölften Jahrhunderts (1846);
Joseph Diemer, Deutsche Gedichte des XI. und XII. Jahrhunderts (1840, rpt. 1968);
Karl Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter (1854); Oskar Schade,
Geistliche Gedichte des XIV. und XV. Jahrhunderts vom Niederrhein (1854); Oskar
Schade, Veterum Monumentorum Theotiscorum Decas, Diss. Halle/Saale (1860);
Oskar Schade, Altdeutsches Lesebuch (1862); Karl Müllenhoff and Wilhelm
Scherer, Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem VIII.-XII. Jahrhundert,
vol. 1 (1864, 2nd ed. 1873, 3rd ed. 1892 by Elias Steinmeyer, rpt. 1964);
Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (1875, 17th ed. 1994); Wilhelm
Braune, Althochdeutsche Grammatik (1886, 14th ed. 1987); Paul Piper, Lese-
buch des Althochdeutschen und Altsächsischen (Die Sprache und Litteratur Deutsch-
lands bis zum zwölften Jahrhundert, 2. Theil) (1880); Paul Piper, Die geistliche
Dichtung des Mittelalters, 1: Die biblischen und die Mariendichtungen (1888, rpt.
1986); Albert Waag, Kleinere deutsche Gedichte des XI. und XII. Jahrhunderts,
(1890, 2nd ed. 1916). Waag’s edition has been reedited twice: an East German
edition by Hans Joachim Gernentz, Kleinere deutsche Gedichte des 11. und
12. Jahrhunderts: Nach der Ausgabe von Albert Waag (1970, 3rd ed. 1977); and
a West German one by Werner Schröder, Kleinere deutsche Gedichte des 11.
und 12. Jahrhunderts: Nach der Ausgabe von Albert Waag, 2 vols. (1972). The latter
two editions, especially Schröder’s, were made as a “protest” against the
magisterial accomplishment of Friedrich Maurer, Die religiösen Dichtungen
des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts: Nach ihren Formen besprochen und herausgegeben,
3 vols. (1964, 1965, 1970). This became a fairly contentious issue among
some scholars at the time in that Maurer maintained that the strophic form
611 German Studies

of Early Middle High German religious literature (ca. 1060 – ca.1160) was
composed of strophes of unequal length employing essentially the Otfridian
long line (ca. 870) with internal rhyme, as opposed to short line rhyming
couplets, the “new” form of Middle High German poetry. In volume three
Maurer presents those works which no longer offer evidence of the long-
line structure. The foreword to the third volume, in which Maurer dis-
cusses the criticism the first two volumes encountered, primarily from
Werner Schröder, reflects that the “battle” was still going on. Although,
ironically enough, Maurer, in his refutation of Schröder, makes his
claim even more compelling.

F. Other Disciplinary Developments in the 19th Century

In addition to textual criticism and the establishment of a more or less re-
liable scholarly corpus, three outstanding journals were founded: Zeitschrift
für deutsches Altertum (1841) by Moriz Haupt; Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
(1868) by Julius Zacher; and the Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache
und Literatur (1873) by Hermann Paul and Wilhelm Braune. All three
journals are still thriving today. And, of course, they have been joined by
many more in all parts of the world.
Large-scale dictionaries of Middle High German were also produced:
Georg Friedrich Benecke, Wilhelm Müller, and Friedrich Zarncke, Mit-
telhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 4 vols. (1854–1866; = BMZ); and Matthias Lexer,
Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols. (1872–1878). The BMZ is truly a
colossal achievement. While it has an abundance of contextual examples
taken from 250 sources, it can be difficult to work with due to its arrange-
ment according to word stem rather than the alphabet arrangement. And
what started out to be an alphabetical index to the BMZ became the massive
three-volume Lexer that not only collates its alphabetical entries with the word
stem ones in the BMZ, but also has included many more sources (720) and a
substantial supplement section – in the modern print version over 400
pages. Excerpted from the Handwörterbuch – mainly for the convenience of
students – was the venerable Taschenwörterbuch, the so-called ‘kleine Lexer’
(1882) which went through numerous reprintings and revisions well into the
1990s. It has now been thoroughly revised by Beate Hennig (Kleines mittel-
hochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 1993, 5th ed. 2007). The two dictionaries together
with supplementary materials linked to the original sources mentioned in
the dictionaries are available as a CD-Rom (Mittelhochdeutsche Wörterbücher im
Verbund, 2002). It is produced by a team of scholars led by Professor Kurt
Gärtner of the University of Trier. The ultimate goal of the project, which
is also being carried out in part at the University of Virginia, is to produce an-
German Studies 612

other printed dictionary – to be completed by 2025. More information about

the project can be found at: http://www.mwb.uni-trier.de/index.php?id=
6907.

G. University Professorships in the 19th Century

The discipline slowly established itself at German universities. The number
of Chairs dedicated to German philology before the full effect of Lachmann
was felt was small. Some of the more important of the early Chairs and their
holders were: Benecke, Professor of English and “Old German” in Göttin-
gen (1805); Jacob Grimm, Professor in Göttingen (1830) and in Berlin (1841);
Wilhelm Grimm, Extraordinary Professor (1831) then Ordinary Professor in
Göttingen (1835), and in Berlin (1841); von der Hagen moved from Berlin
as an Extraordinary Professor (1810) to Breslau and back to Berlin as an Ordi-
nary Professor (1824); Haupt, Ordinary Professor in Leipzig (1843) and Ber-
lin (1853); Karajan, Ordinary Professor in Vienna (1850); Lachmann,
Extraordinary Professor of Classical and German philology in Berlin (1825)
and Ordinary Professor (1827). The first “Deutsch-Philologische Seminar”
(=department or institute) dedicated to German Studies was instituted in
1858 at the University of Rostock. By the end of the century, however, Chairs
and Seminars were to be found at all universities in Germany and Austria.
A major reason for the acceptance of Altgermanistik, aside from the scien-
tific editorial procedures which were set in place or the enthusiasm which the
leading professors instilled in their students, was that the German Middle
Ages and its literature, particularly the Nibelungenlied (as indicated above) fil-
led a patriotic need of the Germans who until 1871 were united in language
only. From the wars of liberation in the 19th century to the periods of the
First World War, the Weimar Republic, and World War II in the twentieth,
the Nibelungenlied was viewed more as a nationalistic artifact than as a work
of genius in its own right, which hindered any serious literary analysis of
it until well after World War II. Essentially, medieval German literature was
viewed not so much as literature, but rather either as a philological or
nationalistic laboratory exhibit.

H. The 20th Century (and Beyond)

If one can characterize the 19th century as the era of a new beginning, the
20th is somewhat more elusive regarding convenient, all-encompassing des-
ignations. In addition to the obvious, the two World Wars greatly hindered
the productive analysis and study of medieval German literature. If nothing
else, at least two generations of young scholars either had their studies se-
verely interrupted or they were killed. Philological inquiry together with
613 German Studies

source studies still held the dominant hand through World War II. However,
whether that was because the subject matter was “objective” and, thus, non-
political, i. e., controversial or whether it was because philological investi-
gations had not run their course is difficult to say. I suspect it was a combi-
nation of both. One important contribution to the discipline was made in
the area of word-field investigations by Jost Trier (Der deutsche Wortschatz im
Sinnbezirk des Verstandes: Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes, 1931). His work
remained influential well into the latter part of the century. However, some
important literary and cultural analyses were also undertaken. Hans Nau-
mann (1886–1951) is an interesting, if unfortunate case in point. He pro-
duced major studies on Germanic history and culture, medieval culture, and
folklore. Höfische Kultur (1929) and Der staufische Ritter (1936) are two note-
worthy contributions. He was, however, an adherent of National Socialism
and was unable to separate his later writings, especially, from his ideology.
But perhaps one of the most important contributions and a topic which
Naumann might have taken up with more resolve had the political situ-
ation been different was written before World War I “Ministerialität und
Ritterdichtung” (Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 52 [1910]: 135–68) by Paul
Kluckhohn. Kluckhohn’s short but seminal work opened up an area of
research that introduced social factors for consideration, namely the role that
the ministerials played in the creation of chivalric literature that received its
greatest attention only well after the end of the World War II, first in Ro-
mance Studies with Erich Köhler (Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der höfischen
Epik, 1956; 2nd ed. 1970) followed in German Studies by Joachim Bumke
(Ministerialität und Ritterdichtung, 1976; and Studien zum Ritterbegriff im 12. und
13. Jahrhundert, 1964, 2nd ed. 1976). The thesis was applied to the Arthurian
romances of Hartmann von Aue by Gert Kaiser (Textauslegung und gesell-
schaftliche Selbstdeutung, 1973, 2nd ed. 1978). Influential for Bumke and
Kaiser were the many writings on the ministerials and medieval German
society of the eminent historian Karl Bosl.
Developments after World War II gradually shifted away from an almost
exclusive concentration on medieval works as philological artifacts to con-
sideration of them as literary ones. The late 1940s and the 1950s witnessed
the reemergence of Altgermanistik as discipline worthy of international re-
spect, and the 1960s and 1970s were the “golden age” of medieval German re-
search. From Hugo Kuhn and his pioneering essay on the formal structure of
Hartmann’s Erec (1948) to Gert Kaiser’s abovementioned socio-historical
study on Hartmann’s Arthurian romances, new critical vistas were being
opened and the emphasis had shifted irrevocably from exclusive concern with
textual criticism. Perhaps the one work which, in my opinion at any rate, was
German Studies 614

decisive in the struggle to view medieval literature as literature was by Frie-

drich Maurer (Leid: Studien zur Bedeutungs-und Problemgeschichte, besonders in
den großen Epen der staufischen Zeit, 1951, 3rd ed. 1964). Maurer’s study came as
a breath of fresh air in the area of Medieval German Studies, especially in Nibe-
lungenlied research, and while Maurer was a philologist of the first order, he
thought it possible to grasp authorial intention in a medieval literary work
and arrive at a consistent interpretation by utilizing the basic philological
tool of the word study. And as such, his examination represents a decisive
break with the thrust of medieval German research in Germany up to that
time. Well into the 1980s the major impulses in research methodologies came
from Germany, perhaps most conspicuously: Reception studies. The name
most closely linked with reception in Medieval German Studies is Ulrich
Müller, who in the late 1970s and 1980s held a series of conferences in
Salzburg which served to define the methodology – understood in English
more as “medievalism” than the theoretical proposals of Hans-Robert Jauss
and Wolfgang Iser. The fruitful interface of the latter’s ideas with concerns
in German studies occurred during the “orality-literacy” debate, about which
more below. Other areas which had their start in Germany would include
Gender and Cultural studies which were more or less conceived as part of the
already-existing socio-cultural approach. Last but certainly not least is the
Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences in Krems (http://www.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/) whose re-
search focus is Material Culture and daily life in the Middle Ages.
Perhaps a brief mention about the phenomenon known as “New Philol-
ogy” would be in order at this point. As has been pointed out in other essays
in this volume, volume 65/1 (1990) of Speculum was devoted to the “New Phil-
ology” and was hailed as the cornerstone of a new way of looking at medieval
literature without being encumbered by the various modes of thought of
traditional philology. Manuscript texts are perceived to have an “openness,”
a unique variability (or mouvance). Of course, the “New Philology” could have
implications for Medieval German Studies, which relies on texts, many of
which were produced using the methods of Lachmann or his followers, i. e.
reproducing the stemma or archetype. To determine how or if “New Philol-
ogy” affected Medieval German Studies, Horst Wenzel and Helmut Ter-
vooren edited a Special Volume of the Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
(116 [1997]), “Philologie als Textwissenschaft: Alte und neue Horizonte.”
A nuanced discussion of the volume and of the “importance,” if any, for
Germanists is provided by D. H. Green in The Modern Language Review (94.4
[1999]: 1145–47). In addition to demonstrating clearly that the “newness” of
the “New Philology” is, in most cases in German studies, at any rate, not all
615 German Studies

that terribly new, Green also raises the issue of the apparent absolute concen-
tration on the “manuscript” and the ignoring of other methods of trans-
mission or reception, namely oral. The question or “Orality” and “Literacy”
will be discussed below. To the other examples he cites indicating the antici-
pation of “New Philology” in Medieval German Studies, e. g., the research
areas of reception studies and analysis of the roles of patrons (Joachim
Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter: Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der höfischen Literatur
in Deutschland 1150–1300, 1979), one could also add the results of Helmut
Brackert’s above-mentioned research on the manuscripts of the Nibelun-
genlied as anticipating the manuscript uniqueness aspect of “New Philology.”

I. Medieval German Studies in the Diaspora

Until relatively recently, Medieval German Studies in non-German speaking
countries tended to be quite conservative in their methodologies, mirroring
the time-honored text-critical approach. Of course, there were some brilliant
scholars outside of Germany who contributed philological and literary
studies of high quality, but who were not pioneering in their methodologies
and, thus, did not influence the discipline as a whole. One who might have
been able to make a difference was the French scholar, Ernest Tonnelat
(La chanson des Nibelungen, 1926), who provided a new close reading of the Ni-
belungenlied, focusing on the style and character descriptions. Unfortunately,
Tonnelat’s theories could not overcome the dominance of Heuslerian
thought. Among Dutch scholars who have also made noteworthy, if not suit-
ably acknowledged, contributions to the field is Hendricus Sparnaay. His
Hartmann von Aue: Studien zu einer Biographie (2 vols., 1933, 1938), while now
somewhat out of date, still has much to offer in terms of the biographical ma-
terial collected in the volumes. In addition to much work on Hartmann von
Aue, Sparnaay wrote the unique monograph (Karl Lachmann als Germanist,
1948) which offers a remarkable depiction of Lachmann and convincingly
demonstrates that he truly deserves to be viewed as a giant of the discipline.
One important branch of research that began with the seminal essay of
the German historian Herbert Grundmann (“Litteratus-illitteratus. Der
Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kul-
turgeschichte 40 [1958]: 1–65) concerned the notion of literacy and the modes
of reception of literature in the Middle Ages. The attraction of this avenue
of inquiry (but not “medievalism” as advocated by Müller) resonated es-
pecially with scholars in the United States and Great Britain. The American
scholar Franz Bäuml was a pioneer in this endeavor and was the first to
apply the theories of Jauss and Iser to his work in “oral-formulaic theory”
(for an excellent appreciation of Bäuml’s achievement as well as a compre-
German Studies 616

hensive overview of pertinent research on the topic see: Ursuala Schaefer,

“Alterities: On Methodology in Medieval Literary Studies,” Oral Tradition 8.1
[1993]: 187–214). And although British researchers have been more philo-
logically and text-critically oriented, within the group of the many produc-
tive scholars one, especially, stands out, Dennis H. Green. His The Caroling-
ian Lord: Semantic Studies on Four Old High German Words. Balder, Fro, Truhtin,
Herro (1965) was to Medieval German Studies in English what Maurer’s Leid
was in German. Along with like-minded scholars in Germany (Alois Wolf)
and the United States (Michael Curschmann), Green took up the topic
of “orality” and “literacy.” Green provides insight into his thinking in
his 1989 plenary lecture to the Medieval Academy of America (“Orality and
Reading: The State of Research in Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65 [1990]:
267–80). In this lecture he, too, acknowledges the debt owed to Franz
Bäuml. He writes: “Franz H. Bäuml, to whom we owe the first applications
of the Parry-Lord theory to medieval German, now stresses more the need
for research into the interrelationship between literacy and orality, while
Michael Curschmann, whose work on the theory was always critical of it,
now writes on the different dimensions of hearing, reading, and seeing”
(269). The culmination of his research can be seen in Medieval Listening and
Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300 (1994). (For a thor-
ough and critical review not only of Green’s work but also its place within
that strand of research, see: David F. Tinsley, Speculum 71 [1996]: 952–54.)
Medieval German Studies – actually German Studies in general – in
North America, as in other countries in the diaspora, was dominated by text-
critical, philological methodology until well after World War II. (For a brief
overview of the establishment of German Studies, in general, and Medieval
Studies, in particular, in the United States see: Francis G. Gentry, “Medi-
eval German Literary Research from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Pres-
ent,” German Studies in the USA: A Historical Handbook, ed. Peter Uwe Hohen-
dahl, 2003, 275–84.) Colleagues in the area of modern German literary
studies, however, were able to emancipate themselves much earlier, due, in
part, to the emigration of many literary scholars from Germany in the 1940s,
1950s and into the 1960s who were able to convey to their students the
excitement of literary research then in full swing in Europe and to train them
correspondingly. But the post-WWII years did not see an influx of such
scholars interested in Medieval German Studies to this country – prominent
exceptions would be Julius Schwietering who spent part of 1954 at the
University of Chicago (Illinois) and Joachim Bumke who spent several years
at Harvard (Cambridge, MA) in the 1960s. Thus, the comparable catalyst
for much of the change in modern German Studies research in the 1950’s
617 German Studies

and 1960’s was missing. Some German colleagues did, of course, come to
America and enjoy distinguished careers, e. g., Otto Springer (Tübingen,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Michael Curschmann (Munich,
Princeton University, Princeton), Ingeborg Glier (Munich, Yale University,
New Haven), and Ernst Dick (Münster, University of Kansas, Lawrence).
“Medieval German Studies in the United States had to travel a long road
from its beginnings as a field in which only research into the structure of
the language counted, a view which continued well into the second half of
the 20th century. And even though by the late 1950s/early 1960s when the
discipline had managed to free itself of its philological shackles, American
medieval scholarship was, by and large, conservative and quite provincial”
(Gentry, 282). However, by the 1980s and especially 1990s, Gender Studies,
Queer Studies, consideration of the body, and the problem of the “other,”
all these and more became part and parcel of the critical apparatus of those
who were in the first “medieval wave” as students in the 1960s and which
they passed on to their students, who, likewise, continue to pass on to theirs.
The contact and cooperation with German colleagues, long lost, has been
restored and significant research impulses (precisely in the areas just men-
tioned) are emanating from this side of the Atlantic and are stimulating re-
search endeavors in German-speaking areas of Europe. Medieval German re-
search in North America has come of age.

J. Postscriptum
One of the great accomplishments on medieval German research has been
the almost continuous production of one-volume or multi-volume literary
histories. These are valuable handbooks for the present-day student and
scholar alike. Some of the more useful ones are:

(1) Gustav Ehrismann, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des
Mittelalters, 2 vols. in 4 parts (1918–1935; rpt. 1965/1966) – still an indispens-
able reference work – the bibliographies are complete until the date(s) of pub-
lication, all known manuscripts and manuscript fragments are recorded.
(2) Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Wolfgang Stamm-
ler and Karl Langosch, 5 vols., (1933–1955; has been superseded by no. 7
below. But it is still of historical interest).
(3) Julius Schwietering, Die deutsche Dichtung des Mittelalters (1932; rpt.
1957);
(4) Gechichte der deutschen Literatur, ed. Helmut de Boor and Richard Ne-
wald, 4 vols. in 5 parts (1949–1987; de Boor: vol. 1–3/1; I. Glier: vol. 3/2;
H. Rupprich: vol. 4/1).
German Studies 618

(5) Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed.
Ewald Erb, 2 vols. in 3 parts (1963/1964; of historical interest – presentation
from a Marxist viewpoint).
(6) Karl Bertau, Deutsche Literatur im europäischen Mittelalter, 2 vols. (1972/
1973).
(7) Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh et al.,
14 vols. (complete 2nd rev. ed. 1978–2007; an enormous undertaking, com-
pletely revising the earlier edition, adding new authors and works as well in-
cluding the Latin literature produced in Germany during the Middle Ages).
(8) Joachim Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter: Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der hö-
fischen Literatur in Deutschland 1150–1300 (1979).
(9) Max Wehrli, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur vom frühen Mittelaiter bis zum
Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (1980; the best, in my opinion, one-volume literary
history available).
(10) Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit,
ed. Joachim Heinzle, 3 vols. in 6 parts (1984–2004; Wolfgang Haubrichs:
vol. 1/1; Gisela Vollmann-Profe: vol.1/2; L. Peter Johnson: vol. 2/1;
Joachim Heinzle: vol. 2/2; Johannes Janota: vol. 3/1; Werner Williams-
Krapp: vol. 3/2).

Of course the list can be expanded almost infinitely. The above represent,
however, the best of the literary histories that are available, that is, literary
histories that provide literary, historical, and cultural material in a coherent
context. There are, to be sure, many “companions” or essay collections, but
since Heinzle few, if any, literary histories that are worthy of note.

Select Bibliography
Jacob Grimm, Reden und Abhandlungen (Berlin: Dümmler, 1864, 2nd ed.1879); Ulrich
von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Geschichte der Philologie (Leipzig: Teubner,1921);
Hugh Lloyd-Jones (trans.), History of Classical Scholarship (London: Duckworth,1982);
Germanistik und deutsche Nation 1806–1848, ed. Jörg Jochen Müller et al. (Stuttgart:
Metzler,1974); Jürgen Forhmann, Das Projekt der deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Stutt-
gart: Metzler, 1988); Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jürgen
Fohrmann, and Wilhelm Vosskamp (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1994).

Francis G. Gentry
619 Heraldry

Heraldry

A. Definition
Heraldic signs are personal, enduring, colored identifying symbols of a family
or a particular body, which are incorporated into the medieval defensive
weapons of shield and helmet. As dynastic emblems, they emerge from the
middle of the 12th century. Crests arose from the necessity of distinguishing
the troops fighting in mass battles, and to make the contingents recogniz-
able from a distance. Systematized battle standards were used during the
crusades in particular, in order to differentiate between large groups of
knights. The Greeks and Romans, too, had organized their troops with the
aid of banners and standards. However, the medieval heraldic system was
a novelty which cannot be directly derived from the standards of antiquity
or Germanic shield symbolism. Initially, the choice of various patterns and
figures was strongly determined by personal motifs. They became coats of
arms in the more narrow sense when they became permanently associated
with the family of their knightly bearer, and became hereditary. They then
became exclusive symbols of identity and lordship, without a direct connec-
tion to matters military. The medieval tournament had a decisive influence
on the development of heraldry. The great courtly combats offered partici-
pants the chance to portray themselves and their chivalric paraphernalia in
the best possible light. Furthermore, the crests were necessary in battle situ-
ations, in order to identify the squadrons and keep them separate as they
charged. The office of the herald developed in connection with the tourna-
ments. He stood in the service of the noble tournament participants, where
his knowledge of weapons and arms was indispensable during the prepara-
tion and staging of the show fights. Coats of arms quickly came into use as
distinguishing marks in other sections of society, too. While they were at
first only used by the higher and lower nobility, from the 13th century on they
were also used by the patricians, craftsmen and clerics, as well as corporate
bodies such as dioceses, orders, abbeys, towns and guilds. The zenith of
heraldry came during the mid-13th century and the beginning of the 17th.
The heraldry which was invented for battle and tournament in the Middle
Ages lives on today in the coats of arms of families, states and towns.
Heraldry 620

B. History of Research
There has been extensive international research into heraldry, and the re-
sults are almost impossible to keep track of. If one discards the heraldic rec-
ords and literature of the Middle Ages, and the first attempts at systemiz-
ation in the 14th and 15th centuries, then heraldic research proper only began
in the modern period. In the 16th and 17th centuries, large collections of arms
and studies of the laws of heraldry were produced, which often also treated
questions of regulation, systemization, and the description of crest (Bartho-
lomaeus Cassaneus’s Catalogus gloriae mundi, 1529; Cyriacus Spangen-
berg’s Adelsspiegel, 1591; Silvester de Petra Sancta’s De symbolis heroicis,
1634; Claude François Ménestrier’s Le Véritable art du blason, 1659; Philipp
Jacob Spener’s Insignium Theoria seu operis heraldici pars generalis, 1690; Johann
Christoph Gatterer’s Abriss der Heraldik, 1773). Academic heraldry began in
England with the work of James Dallaqay (Inquiries Into the Origin and Prog-
ress of the Science of Heraldry in England, 1793), in Germany with the research of
Christian Samuel Theodor Bernd (Handbuch der Wappenwissenschaft, 1836),
Leopold Freiherr von Ledebur (Streifzüge durch die Felder des Königlichen Preu-
ßischen Wappens, 1842) and Hermann Grote (Geschichte des welfischen Stamm-
wappens, 1862). Johann Baptist Rietstap’s Armorial général (1884–1887), in
which thousands of European crests are described, formed a decisive break-
through. The period around 1900 was particularly fruitful for academic
heraldry, and saw not only the founding of national heraldic societies, but
also numerous important academic works, for instance those of Louis Bouly
de Lesdain and Jacques Meurgey de Tupigny in France, of Maximilian
Gritzner and of Gustav Adelbert Seyler in Germany. The latter’s Ge-
schichte der Heraldik (1890) is a standard work which is still useful today, pay-
ing particular attention to the emergence of heraldry in the Middle Ages and
analyses rich and diverse sources, including medieval epics. With its wide
range of historical documents and examples from medieval material culture,
it is still indispensible for the modern medievalist. The 20th century, in
which heraldry has long become established as an exacting auxiliary histori-
cal discipline, produced not only countless profound monographs and text-
books but above all great historical surveys, in which the history of heraldry,
its rules, and its artistic forms and expressions were thoroughly categorized.
The Lehrbuch der Heraldik by Donald L. Galbreath and Léon Jéquier
(1978), the handbook Heraldik: Wappen – ihr Ursprung, Sinn und Wert, ed. Ott-
fried Neubecker (1977) as well as Michel Pastoureau’s Traité d’héraldique
(1977, 4th ed. 2003) are viewed as standard works. They all deal thoroughly
with the form and significance of medieval coats of arms, and are richly illus-
trated. They also show how heraldry can be made fruitful as a source for cul-
621 Heraldry

tural and sociological studies. Shorter introductions to the subject are pro-
vided by, among others, Václav Vok Filip (Einführung in die Heraldik, 2000),
Adolf Matthias Hildebrandt (Handbuch der Heraldik, 1887, 19th ed. 1998),
Thomas Woodcock and John Martin Robinson (The Oxford Guide to
Heraldry, 1988), Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (A Complete Guide to Heraldry,
1969), Michel Pastoureau (Les armoiries, 1998) as well as Claude Wenzler
(Le Guide de l’héraldique, 2000). The best German language textbook currently
available is by Georg Scheibelreiter (Heraldik, 2006). In addition, many
countries have a long tradition of publishing heraldic journals with valuable
single studies, e. g., Archivum heraldicum (since 1953) in Switzerland, Der He-
rold: Vierteljahrsschrift für Heraldik, Genealogie und verwandte Wissenschaften (since
1869) and Adler: Zeitschrift für Genealogie und Heraldik (since 1874) in Germany,
The Coat of Arms (since 1950) in Great Britain and the Revue française d’héral-
dique et de sigillographie (since 1938) in England. The comprehensive German
and Austrian research on heraldry is described in various bibliographies,
for instance the Bibliographie zur Heraldik by Eckart Henning and Gabriele
Jochums (1984), French literature being described in Gaston Saffroy’s
five-volume Bibliographie généalogique, héraldique et nobiliaire de la France
(1968–1988). Journal articles on genealogy and heraldry are documented
in the Göttingen catalog Der Schlüssel (ed. Wolfgang Ollrog and Dieter H. G.
Gerlach, 1986), where a well-differentiated index helps the reader. Since
1953 the Archivum Heraldicum has regularly published up to date selective
bibliographies for individual countries.

C. Major Contributors
Only a few central themes and questions of the comprehensive academic
literature can be dealt with here. From its beginnings, heraldic studies
have concerned themselves with the origins of heraldry. Older scholarship
attempted to derive the crest from the civic symbols of classical antiquity, the
military symbols of the Eastern armies which the crusaders encountered, and
from the runes and house symbols of the Germanic tribes (cf. Bernhard
Koerner, Handbuch der Heroldskunst, 1920–1928; Otto Höfler, Zur Herkunft
der Heraldik, 1962). All these theories have been superseded. Instead, modern
scholars assume that the coat of arms primarily developed in connection
with medieval tournaments and pitched battles, in order to identify individ-
ual groups of fighters (cf. Christian U. Freiherr von Ulmenstein, Über Ur-
sprung und Entstehung des Wappenwesens, 1941; Lutz Fenske, Adel und Rittertum
im Spiegel früher heraldischer Formen und deren Entwicklung, 1985; Michel Pas-
toureau, Les armoiries, 1998, 24–37). The question of the meaning of coats
of arms has also always been regarded as central. Modern heraldic scholars
Heraldry 622

approach the symbolism of individual crests with great caution, always pay-
ing attention to historical, art historical, and regional considerations. The in-
terpretation of historical coats of arms is extremely complicated, and gen-
erally, medieval crests had no deeper meaning, being simply inherited
dynastic identifiers, which often merely portrayed the name of a family as a
graphic, or indicated loyalty to a superior lord. The reconstruction of a subtle
meaning remains highly speculative in such cases – or is simply anachron-
istic (Adolf Matthias Hildebrandt, Handbuch der Heraldik, 1998, 131–133;
Michel Pastoureau, Les armoiries, 1998, 71–76; Georg Scheibelreiter,
Heraldik, 2006, 146–51). The origins and expression of medieval heraldry is
relatively well accounted for. There are many regional studies and histories
of individual motifs, as well as comprehensive surveys which show, among
other things, how unstable and dependent on the needs of their bearer coats
of arms initially were (Paul Ganz, Geschichte der heraldischen Kunst in der
Schweiz im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, 1899; Egon Freiherr von Berchem, Don-
ald L. Galbreath and Otto Hupp, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Heraldik, 1939;
Evan John Jones, Medieval Heraldry, 1943; Anthony R. Wagner, Heralds and
Heraldry in the Middle Ages, 1956; Lutz Fenske, Adel und Rittertum im Spiegel
früher heraldischer Formen und deren Entwicklung, 1985; Michel Pastoureau,
Les armoiries, 1998, 24–37). Heinz Waldner offers a reliable documentation
of the earliest European coats of arms (Die ältesten Wappenbilder, 1992). An
overview of the stylistic history of heraldry and its dependence on the tastes
of the day and the art historical context can be found in Walter Leonhard
(Das große Buch der Wappenkunst, 1976). As well as this, there are countless
specialist studies on important aspects of medieval heraldry, such as the
use of animals, or particular contexts of usage (Bruno Bernhard Heim, Wap-
penbrauch und Wappenrecht in der Kirche, 1947; Georg Scheibelreiter, Tier-
namen und Wappenwesen, 1976; Carl-Alexander von Volborth, Fabelwesen
der Heraldik in Familien- und Städtewappen, 1996). Little has been established
about the literary heraldry of the Middle Ages. The romances of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Konrad von Würzburg have been most frequently studied
(Arnold Galle, Wappenwesen und Heraldik bei Konrad von Würzburg, 1912;
Manfred Zips, Das Wappenwesen in der mittelhochdeutschen Epik bis 1250, 1966;
Gerard J. Brault, Early Blazon, 1972; Michel Pastoureau, Introduction à
l’héraldique imaginaire (XIIe–XVIe s.), 1978; Claus D. Bleisteiner, Heraldik im
‘Trojanerkrieg’ Konrads von Würzburg und ihre Reflexion des Wappenwesens seiner
Zeit, 1999; Heiko Hartmann, Heraldische Motive und ihre narrative Funktion in
den Werken Wolframs von Eschenbach, 2002; id., Grundformen literarischer Heraldik
im Mittelalter am Beispiel der ‘Krone’ Heinrichs von dem Türlin, 2006). It has been
shown that medieval authors made precisely targeted use of imaginary coats
623 Heraldry

of arms, in order to characterize and individualize figures, to relate them to

kin groups, and in general to make the work more plastic and more vivid.
Authors also used real coats of arms, in order to make multi-layered connec-
tions between their fictional figures and contemporary people – mostly
exemplary kings and princes – thus giving them more prestige and historical
depth. A comprehensive documentation of literary coats of arms and their
poetological function in European medieval literature is an urgent task
which remains for future scholars.

D. Current Research
A tendency towards analysis of coats of arms using, for example, theories
drawn from media studies, semiotics, sociology, and symbol theory can be
observed in recent scholarship. German literary studies, in particular, have
developed demanding sign theories with which to describe the function of
crests within literary texts. Haiko Wandhoff’s studies on the relationship
between texts and images in courtly literature view the use of coats of arms as
part of a narrative technique of visualization (Der Schild als Bild-Schirm, 2002).
He sees them as windows into the world of the text, through which readers
or listeners are drawn into the medium. Wandhoff interprets coats of arms
as part of a courtly poetics of visibility, which is intended to produce optical
impressions on the recipient, and thus to communicate the text as multi-
media. The journal of the German medievalists association (Das Mittelalter)
dedicated an interdisciplinary thematic issue, with contributions from his-
torians, literary scholars and art historians, to the subject (vol. 11, 2006:
Wappen als Zeichen). Further sign-theoretical approaches have been produced
by e. g. Waltraud Gut (Schwarz auf weiß, 2000) and Ludwig Biewer (Wappen
als Träger von Kommunikation im Mittelalter, 2003). The meaning of weapons in
connection with literary presentations of the body was investigated by Hans
Belting (Wappen und Porträt, 2002) and Walter Seitter (Das Wappen als
Zweitkörper und Körper-Zeichen, 1982). Beside these ambitious semiotic ana-
lyses, the international heraldic research continues to value the indispens-
able, positivistic work of collection, documentation and interpretation of
historical and contemporary coats of arms in repertories and periodicals, and
thus makes an important contribution to the preservation and transmission
of a cultural phenomenon which has remained vibrant for hundreds of years,
and creates individuality and identity using aesthetically valuable symbols.
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 624

Select Bibliography
Gustav Adelbert Seyler, Geschichte der Heraldik. Wappenwesen, Wappenkunst und Wappen-
wissenschaft, 2 vols. (Nuremberg: Bauer & Raspe, 1885–1889); Adolf Matthias Hilde-
brandt, Handbuch der Heraldik. Wappenfibel (Neustadt an der Aisch: Degener, 1887,
19th ed. 1998); Paul Ganz, Geschichte der heraldischen Kunst in der Schweiz im 12. und
13. Jahrhundert (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1899); Beiträge zur Geschichte der Heraldik, ed. Egon
Freiherr von Berchem, Donald L. Galbreath and Otto Hupp (Berlin: Verlag für
Standesamtswesen, 1939); Anthony R. Wagner, Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages:
An Inquiry into the Growth of the Armorial Function of Heralds (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1939, 2nd ed. 1956); Gérard J. Brault, Early Blazon. Heraldic Terminology in
the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: With Special Reference to Arthurian Literature (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972); Ottfried Neubecker, Heraldik: Wappen – ihr Ursprung, Sinn und
Wert (Frankfurt am Main: Krüger, 1977); Donald L. Galbreath and Léon Jéquier,
Lehrbuch der Heraldik (Munich: Battenberg, 1978); Michel Pastoureau, Traité d’héral-
dique (Paris: Picard, 1979, 4th ed. 2003); Thomas Woodcock and John Martin Robin-
son, The Oxford Guide to Heraldry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Michel
Pastoureau, Les armoiries (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Claude Wenzler, Le guide de
l’héraldique: Histoire, analyse et lecture des blasons (Rennes: Editions Ouest France, 2002);
Georg Scheibelreiter, Heraldik (Vienna and Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006).

Heiko Hartmann

Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

A. Definition
The word hermeneutics derives from the Greek verb hermeneuein meaning
translation, interpretation or explanation. Aristotle’s simple definition took
it as “a concern with linguistic action on things” (Rita Copeland, Rhetoric,
Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacu-
lar Texts, ed. Minnis, 1991, 18). Historically, it has been applied to the gen-
eral principles of Biblical exegesis. In ancient Judaic-Talmudic and Christian
traditions, hermeneutic analysis aimed primarily at uncovering the sacred
book’s divinely-revealed values and truths – analysis of its allegorical “sec-
ondary speech,” so to say (Hennig Brinkman, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik,
1980: “Zweite Sprache,” 260). Recently, scholars have supplemented the
study of allegory with that of grammar and rhetoric. The sophisticated medi-
eval understanding of grammar is closely linked to the medieval philosophy
of language. Exegesis, rooted in grammar and a philosophy of language, is
an integral part of this continuity – both of Scripture and of secular works.
The purpose is to illuminate the ontology of discourse, whether fictional,
625 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

parabolic or historical. As Patrick Gallacher and Helen Damico confirm,

in Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (1989, 6), “A classic function of interpre-
tation is to discover new meaning in a particular text or to restore a meaning-
ful context to a work no longer fully understood.”
St. Augustine observed, in his extraordinary treatise De doctrina christiana
(De vera religione, ed. K. D. Daur and J. Martin, 1962, III, i, 1), that Scriptural
ambiguity lay in the words themselves, whether metaphorical or translated.
For this Church Father, divine signs and allegory are inseparable, and lan-
guage remains the path to sacred truth: its revelation need not proscribe
heathen knowledge, though genuine revelation must arise uniquely from
Christ, the true teacher. More broadly speaking, hermeneutics, essentially an
18th-century development, belongs under the heading of epistemology and
metaphysics: it is the scholarly discipline that studies the character of and
presumptions in the interpretation of expression within the human sphere.
The densely-semiotic and conflicted term may in the end be indefinable
(Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradi-
tion from the Enlightenment to the Present, 1985, x). This article will focus prin-
cipally on concepts related to philosophy, theology, medieval literature and
textual criticism, but not on those principles that apply hermeneutical
methods as a tool of analysis in the fields of law, legal, jurisprudence or com-
puter science. Coverage will include (in order) illustrative biblical imagery
and examples; medieval exegesis and allegory in general; biblical herme-
neutics; interpretation and intentionality; commentary, translation and ap-
propriation; medieval poetics; and, finally, the contemporary complexities
of editing medieval texts.
Pervasive allegory in Dante’s Divina Commedia will permit us to lay a
bridge to textual criticism and the traditional discipline of medieval philol-
ogy (to create so-called definitive and valid texts), but before that we concen-
trate on medieval Latin and vernacular topics (on textual criticism cf. David
Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction, 1994, 295–346). Under this
rubric come comparative literature (and its twin, translation theory), and
metacritical studies (although this latter applies more to the modern and
postmodern eras).

B. An Image: “La Belle Captive”

In his exhaustive treatise on exegesis in the medieval period, Henri De
Lubac provides a powerful statement (Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of
Scripture, 2 vols., trans. Marc Sebanc (I) and E. M. Macierowski (II), 2000, I.
211–24) on one resonant and frequently-cited biblical metaphor that carries
over to translation and interpretation. Like Augustine’s argument about
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 626

“Egyptian gold” (De doctrina christiana II, xxxx, 28), the image stressed here is
that of the vile and illicit pagan woman (i. e., heretic), who is captured by the
skillful arms of desire: her head is shaved, her nails are pared and all poison-
ous members are cleansed and superfluous dress removed. This imagery re-
calls 5th-century philosopher Martianus Capella’s character Grammar (in De
Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii) who uses a “pruning knife” to excise learners’
errors (II, iii, 64–65). Now-disinfected classics retain their graceful and el-
egant musicality. The art of translation and the craft of editing a text rely
upon a similar strategy – apprehending the beautiful and legitimate truth
that lies beneath, though perhaps she ought not be too sanitized. Like perfec-
tion, complete consistency surely belongs to the superhuman sphere.

C. Illustrations
Perhaps a few examples of hermeneutics in action (solving puzzles, bringing
clarifications) are in order: one of the best and most illustrative examples lies
in the 19th-century view that the Old Testament Pentateuch derives from a
composite source – the Jahweh and the Elohim as vying redactions of Gen-
esis, then the Deuteronomy and Priestly codes, like overlays, supplying even
further textual versions (Gerald Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern,
1992, 277 f). Exodus 34:30 (Covenant restored) describes Moses as being
“radiant,” and the word was rendered in the Latin Vulgate as cornuta, which is
why most medieval visual representations of the prophet depict him with
horns.
New Testament readers have no doubt long wanted to reconcile the vari-
able accounts of Christ’s Ministry and Passion, told in four different ways by
the evangelists. Elsewhere, in Romans 5:1, Paul writes that Christians, as a re-
sult of their “justification by faith,” are told that they in fact “have peace with
God” (Vulgate) or that they “are to have peace with God.” The choice depends
on either the Greek indicative (echomen) or the hortatory subjunctive (echemen)
found in the different manuscript traditions. Dutch Biblical scholar and hu-
manist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) tells a story of a priest who fancied
the ludicrous and nonsensical Latin mumpsimus reading over the correct
sumpsimus (“let us take or choose”). Indeed, a single word variant can signifi-
cantly alter a given text’s meaning. Biblical scholar, theologian and critic
William Warburton (1698–1779) set himself on the level of Shakespeare, for
instance, by correcting “good” to “god” in the text of Hamlet (Act II, sc. 2).
627 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

D. Medieval Exegesis
While Hermes the ancient Greek messenger of the gods and divinity of
boundaries was early portrayed as a cunning and crafty rogue, certain theor-
ists saw him as the one who translated or interpreted the vague and complex
messages from on high. The deity, like the Roman Mercury, was a go-be-
tween who made all language intelligible. At the most fundamental level,
among patristic theologians (as De Lubac argues cogently, I, 66–74 and
passim) four major modes of hermeneutics came to light around 400 A.D.: the
literal (or historical), moral (or tropological), allegorical, and anagogical (or
eschatological). The first two (human-related) are complemented by the his-
torical and etiological senses (Mauricio Beuchot, La hermenéutica en la Edad
Media, 2002, 28). Aquinas added another category – parabolical (Jesse Gell-
rich, The Idea of the Book: Language Theory, Mythology and Fiction, 1985, 67).
Medieval exegesis of some passages in the Bible aimed, following these clas-
sic paths, to bring the true meaning of Scripture closer to its pristine original-
ity: the hope was to retrieve the Holy Spirit’s verbal presence in the texts,
without historical corruption. God’s words, in order to be understood and
interpreted, need to be read and re-read repeatedly, using these modes, as
St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) might have expressed it.
Of the fourfold way, the historical or literal interpretation first empha-
sizes that a biblical text is to be explained according to the essential meaning
expressed in its grammatical structure and historical milieu. Authorial in-
tentionality and belief in divine inspiration are the significant measures for
the literalist approach – favored by biblical students of the patristic, medi-
eval and Reformation eras. Yet medieval scholar Eugene Vance (Mervelous
Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages, 1986, 232) has shown that Au-
gustine viewed literal readings as perversely carnal, and that, according to
Dante, only charitable hermeneutics avoids vice and error (Vance, 253).
Moral interpretation is characterized by retrieval-like exegetical as-
sumptions following axiomatic lessons, a mode that draws from various
parts of the Bible and often employs allegorization. On the other hand, alle-
gorical or tropological interpretation, divinely-inspired, construes biblical
narratives as referring to another level behind or beyond immediate textual
situations. One kind of allegorical explanation is biblical typology, accord-
ing to which the key elements (figures, events and principal objects) of the
Old Testament are taken as anticipations (“types”) or foreshadowings of New
Testament persons, events or matters. This mode was doubtless inspired by
the example, found in Matthew’s Gospel (12:40), reporting the words of
Jesus analogizing Jonah’s three days and three nights in a whale’s belly with
Christ’s own experience in time after physical death, and before the Resur-
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 628

rection (de Lubac, I, 123). Further, as medieval literary critic and philos-
opher Brian Stock has explained (Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowl-
edge, and the Ethics of Interpretation, 1996, 167–68), the bishop of Hippo
proposes the book of Exodus not as a prefiguration of Corinthians 10:1–11, but
rather as a subtle allegorical rearrangement.
Finally, with the anagogical or mystical level, also divinely-inspired,
scholars examine biblical events insofar as they might prefigure the life to
come. Allusions to secret metaphysical or eschatological meanings are
unearthed. For example, authors of the Jewish Kabbala sought to unveil the
mystical significance of numerical values found in Hebrew letters and words.

E. Medieval Allegory
Allegory derives from the Greek allegorein or allos-agoreuin, “other speak.” Be-
fore Dante’s intellectual and spiritual elaborations in Italian, allegory in the
high medieval vernacular blossoms with the 13th-century Old French Roman
de la Rose, composed by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. To under-
stand the subject (too broad to be fully treated here), one may think of Lady
Liberty in New York City as a prime example of an abstraction meaning not
necessarily the statue itself but a principle and goal of human endeavor, a
symbol as well of Franco-American friendship. The signifier (the statue) is
not the same as the signified (liberty).
To comprehend the vitality of allegorical meanings in Dante’s Divina
Commedia, Joseph Mazzeo observed authoritatively, “[…] figural and typo-
logical interpretation, exemplaristic analogies between the creation and the
Creator, between this world and a transcendental one, the belief in corre-
spondences and affinities between orders of being, are all essentially poetic
ways of looking at the world, ways conducive to metaphorical plenitude and
exuberance” (“Medieval Hermeneutics: Dante’s Poetic and Historicity,” Re-
ligion & Literature 17 (1985): 1–24, here 15). Where Dante’s deployment of
“other-speaking” allegory in his great Commedia takes on a powerful theo-
logical and historical tenor even while gambling with what was considered at
the time “mendacious” poetic allegory. The Florentine’s poem, profoundly
concrete, realistic and honest, with its endless metaphoricity, yet with a
plenitude of historico-biographical underpinnings, shows how one “flawed
human soul called ‘Dante’ is gradually educated, first by reason (referred to
as ‘Virgil’), and then by theological certainty (code name ‘Beatrice’)” (Robert
and Jean Hollander, Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 2nd ed. 2002, xxix).
629 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

F. Biblical Hermeneutics
In the early-medieval and patristic era, by the studious collating and careful
study of biblical texts, Jerome, Basil and Augustine each attempted to avoid
the heavy hand of the older Judaizing interpretation (too literal), as well as
the proliferating figurations of the more recent Hellenizing insights. Simi-
larly, while we do see some reflection of this activity on the part of authors
in the high medieval period, it is the work of Renaissance humanists who
sought to establish scientifically-reliable texts of classical antiquity: for their
pioneering work on the Iliad and the Odyssey, for example, one might say they
applied an “anonymous hermeneutics” to determine the authentic Homeric
“originals.” As we will see, it was Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) who in the
end developed a standardized methodology for producing ancient texts.
As noted, the modern principles of hermeneutics actually date from the
Enlightenment and after. It originated in attempts to resolve conflicting
interpretations of texts. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834; “The Her-
meneutics: Outline of the 1819 Lectures,” trans. H. Wojcik and R. Haas, New
Literary History 10 [1978/1979]: 1–16) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911;
Selected Works, vol. IV, Hermeneutics and the Study of History, trans. Makkreel
and Rodi, 1996) are credited with advancing the discipline within and for
the new cultural sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, i. e., the humanities), to rival
the field of natural sciences.
Foundational hermeneutical strategies for resolving textual obscurities
and contradictions – the obvious textual sign and its deeper meaning – may
be said to begin, as Dilthey observed, with the post-Reformation. Scripture
had acquired that “dense mist” of obscurities and ambiguities Augustine
described (De doctrina II, vi, 7). This is the era when Catholics (favoring the
traditional spiritual sense) and Protestants (new literalists) bickered over ver-
sions of the Bible (see Greetham, Textual Scholarship, 1994, 297–305).
A contemporary of Schleiermacher, classical philologist P. A. Boeckh
(1785–1867; On Interpretation and Criticism, 1877, ed. and trans. Prichard,
1968) devised four types of interpretation that lead to understanding: gram-
matical, historical, individual and generic (Kurt Mueller-Vollmer The
Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the
Present, 1985, 136). But it fell to Schleiermacher – with his emphasis on
grammar, language, individual sensibility and psychology – to establish an
intuitive or psychological methodology of reliving an author’s aesthetic con-
sciousness (via the historical and cultural context), thus allowing an inter-
preter to understand a text better than its author (see further E. Donald
Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation, 1967, 86–89 and 199). As Schleierm-
acher himself states, “it is the primary task of interpretation not to under-
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 630

stand [… the] ancient text in view of modern thinking, but to rediscover the
original relationship between the writer and his audience” (5–6).
Yet historian Karl Morrison opines (the “Hermeneutical Gap,” in “In-
terpreting the Fragment,” 1989, 30–31) that medieval authors were inclined
to digest Scripture inwardly, i. e., by meditating within the “eye of the
heart,” a step that often deemed authorial intentions irrelevant. For philol-
ogist Leo Spitzer (1887–1960), Schleiermacher’s hermeneutical “com-
parative” methodology should be combined with the “divinatory” because
of its two modes, “grammatical” and “psychological” (this latter Spitzer
linked to the “philological circle;” Linguistics and Literary History, 1969, 19,
and 33 f).

G. Interpretation and Intentionality

The hermeneutical circle, neither personal nor general, takes understanding
as the relationship of tradition in motion, toward, as it were, the interpreter:
the circle is not methodological but is inscribed within “the ontological
structure of understanding” (Bruns 281–283). Placed in relation to the
hermeneutical circle, the philological circle implies an analysis of the whole
text’s aesthetics, then its parts, then its whole again, not unlike the parsing
of a Latin sentence. Spitzer illustrates this process deftly in his famous ex-
plication of Marie de France’s Prologue to her Lais (Spitzer, “The Prologue to
the ‘Lais’ of Marie de France and Medieval Poetics,” Modern Philology 41
(1943); but see now Jeff Rider, “Whence? Wither?” Exemplaria 3.1 [1991]:
261–65). As the philologist asserts, “Our to-and-fro voyage from certain out-
ward details to the inner center and back again to other series of details is
only an application of the principle of the ‘philological circle’” (Linguistics and
Literary History, 19–20). In this sense, hermeneutical analysis would seem to
mimic the complex but paradigmatic voyage of Odysseus: to reach home is to
grasp and reveal the true essence of a given text. The process produces knowl-
edge. Symbolic techniques for Holy Scripture may be applied in the field of
iconology as well, as medieval art especially lends itself to the kind of herme-
neutical decoding involved in these analyses.
But in the sense that hermeneutics may be said to search for what mod-
ernists term the “master narrative,” the discipline embraces an aesthetic not
of contradiction or ambivalence, rather one of harmony. As Copeland
points out in her important monograph, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Trans-
lation, hermeneutical methodology goes back at least to Aristotle’s notion
of practical and applied hermeneutics for rhetorical purposes (application
to appropriate circumstances, like “subject, audience, and moment” –
Copeland, 19). Harmonizing the master narrative par excellence, as Robert
631 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

Kaster (Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity,

1988, 169–97) has demonstrated convincingly, was the happy task of ancient
grammarians, like St. Augustine’s contemporary Servius, whose lengthy
commentary became an intimate part of the Virgilian canon; such glosses
sought to clarify textual obscurities, and, in so doing, availed themselves of
similar hermeneutical undertakings to resolve uncertainties and inconsist-
encies. Competing claims of the poet’s words or written words (verba, scrip-
tum) were weighed against his meaning or will (voluntas). The textual inten-
tion of the whole poem in relation to its parts, its historical context,
key-word definitions, poetic passages from the same text or from contem-
porary or near-contemporary poetry – all these may confirm and corroborate
the interpretation of the poem or text as a whole (Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics
and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy & Its Humanist Reception,
1997, 21–22).

H. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation

More recently, the study of hermeneutics has focused on the role of rhetoric,
translation and interpretation. In Copeland’s detailed study, while it treats
mostly the later medieval period, she has explored how hermeneia, interpreta-
tio, translatio and ethimologia became linked in medieval terminology, as
translation itself was often taken as a form of exegesis, and how adaptation of
elucidating commentary qua textual paraphrase came to represent a stan-
dard mode of vernacular translation (87–102). Following Cicero’s formula of
privileging not the source but the target language and culture, simple para-
phrase became elevated in the Middle Ages to textual commentary, and this
was associated with a new-style rhetoric (30–40). Copeland illustrates as
well the process of reconstructive inquiry and advanced recuperative investi-
gation, which used rhetorical and grammatical glossing, as developed in the
7th century by Isidore of Seville (57–60; 87–89). The secular tradition of ex-
position or commentary (enarratio), Copeland declares, “interprets, recon-
structs, revalorizes a world of ancient literature and learning from whose
original intellectual and cultural framework the Middle Ages is increasingly
distanced […]. Enarratio comes to represent a dynamic [and] re-creative en-
gagement with the language of tradition.” (61)
Copeland proclaims early on that “[m]edieval vernacular translation at
once serves, then mediates, and like an oppositional rival, displaces, and thus
appropriates the originary, authoritative text” (4). In her chapter on trans-
lation and interlingual commentary, regarding medieval hermeneutical
practice in Latin specifically, she states that it not only participates in the fa-
vorable language of classical elegance, it embodies a “myth of continuity,”
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 632

guaranteeing “its own cultural privilege” to those who employ that dis-
course (105). Whereas, Copeland writes, “vernacular exegesis and para-
phrase introduces the factor of an interlingual movement, the rendering of
text and commentary in a new language, or more precisely, in diverse new
languages which are outside the official culture of academic discourse […].”
(106)
At once contesting, then substituting by displacement the authority of
Latin, the “vernacular challenges the symbolic order of continuity by breach-
ing the very order that had suppressed historical difference and had con-
tained the disruptive force of exegesis itself.” (ibid.) Simply, a translated text
means the original loses authority. Copeland sees vernacular translation as
“appropriating the texts which it proposes to serve” (ibid.).

I. Commentary, Translation and Appropriation

However neglected today, hermeneutics and translation have often been as-
sociated, since the first obvious step in analyzing a text in another language
is to grasp the meaning of the lexicon, whether Hebrew, Greek or Old Norse.
As the 12th-century lexicographer Uguccio tersely noted, translatio est expositio
sententie per aliam linguam (Magne derivationes, s.v. glossa; A. J. Minnis, The
Medieval Boethius, 1987, 106). The inspired German thinker Walter Benja-
min (1892–1940), in his “Task of the Translator” (first trans. into English
in 1969; “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” 1955; “The Task of the Translator:
An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens,” ed.
Arendt, 1968, 69–82), sets an impossible, messianic goal for any serious ap-
proach to translation – a quest for perfect, pure and universal language lead-
ing up or back to God’s memory. The work fulfills or completes the original,
he argues, as language is viewed as a heap of fragments of a broken vessel
which, reassembled in a work of art or a translation, reveal inner Platonic in-
tegrity and, one might say in today’s technological jargon, synergy (Willis
Barnstone, The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice, 1993, 242–59).
Strategies here may range from formal or verbal equivalence to functional or
dynamic equivalence, not to mention paraphrase (Herbert Samworth,
“The English Bible and its Translators (Part Six: From the King James to
Modern Translations),” Glosses: The Bulletin of the Scriptorium 4.2–3 [1999]: 3).
In the quest for sublime absolutes, humans (even scholars) search for some-
thing like Pygmalion’s “ivory girl” – here the Belle captive rejoins Benjamin’s
“reine Sprache” (“Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers,” id., Illuminationen, 1923
[rpt. 1955]; here cited from “The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to
the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens,” Illuminations: Essays and
Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, 1968, 69–82, here 71).
633 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

Just as Servius exploited via exhaustive commentary upon the irresist-

ible works of Virgil in order to elucidate their deeper and archaic meanings,
one might take a small but powerfully illustrative example of hermeneutics
at work, the 12th-century French Eneas romance, which offers us a halcyon
but not insignificant “eloquent appropriation” of Virgil’s “hypotext.” This
romance “serves” Virgil by vernacularizing the Latin (Uitti and Freeman,
159). Old French scholar Karl Uitti (1935–2005) himself, ever aware of the
hermeneutic principle of elucidation and interpretation, proposes elsewhere
(Chrétien de Troyes Revisited, 1995) that the new 12th-century vernacular genre,
romance narrative, because of its hermeneutic challenges, is analogous to the
obscurities in the all-embracing commentaries on the Trinity written by
scholastic philosopher Peter Abelard’s (1079–1142): “Romance narrative
thrives on containing apparent contradictions,” insofar as its context “legit-
imizes the genuineness of these individuals’ lives [i. e., the lovers]” (25). On
another, more disputational and scholarly level, but dealing as well with the
overall interpretation of romance, the contentious clash over the deeper
meaning of Chrétien de Troyes’ Grail story – whether inspired by Christian
symbolism or Jewish allegory – set Urban Tigner Holmes and Jean Frap-
pier at hermeneutical crossed swords for over a decade (see for instance
Frappier, “Le Conte du Graal est-il une allégorie judéo-chrétienne?” Ro-
mance Philology 16 [1962–1963]: 1–31).
Coming back now to the subject of appropriation, as Maria Fabricius
Hansen might allow (The Eloquence of Appropriation, 2003, esp. 167–80) in her
study of early Christian spolia (plunder), the medieval anonymous Eneas ro-
mancer intentionally reshapes Virgil’s masterwork into his own creation.
She writes: “[The] ideal of borrowing from a multiplicity of sources with the
aim of transforming the gathered material to a coherent but new and differ-
ent whole, seems precisely to have been at stake in building with spolia” (19).
One can make the same observation about the “Romance of Eneas” as a syn-
thesizing translation that “re-uses” and inverts the text of Virgil (and many
other sources as well). Diverging with flourish – as in Book I with a special
treatment of the Judgment of Paris episode; in Book IV with Dido’s deathbed
pardon of Eneas; or having the rejoicing Trojans drink from the Tiber, Book
VII – the medieval poet faithfully translates here, as if in a mode of collusion
or confluence, whereas elsewhere, and for the most part, he embellishes, and
his eclectic strategies result in a completely new work, filled with heteroge-
neity. The romancer, taking full ownership of Virgil in every sense of the
word, is, one might say, reusing “classical columns” correctly here, to build
his own Romanesque “church.” His interpretive imitation is a real inno-
vation, just like his egregious and exceptional female heroine, Lavine. By lift-
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 634

ing and integrating elements from a wide variety of extraneous texts (for us
moderns anyway, e. g., glosses from Servius, characters and mythological
episodes from Ovid or descriptions from Pliny), the Old French author has
reiterated the hermeneutical act, smoothing out his narrative to recreate a
new and appealing story in the vernacular for his patrons. In addition, his
convoluted weaving (so much more subtle than anything Mary Louise
Pratt (“The Traffic in Meaning: Translation, Contagion, Infiltration,” Pro-
fession 2002, 25–36) might imagine for her 18th-century Peruvian problematic
text) is still being undone by modern critics using a hermeneutical method-
ology on the fabric. Similarly, the 12th-century authors of Old French adap-
tations from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, freely amplified and rewrote Ovid’s tragic
tales for a new audience (see Cormier, Three Ovidian Tales of Love, 1986).

J. Medieval Poetics
On the subject of 12th-century vernacular poetics, Walter Haug (Vernacular
Literary Theory, 1997 [orig. Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter, 1985, 15])
has argued for their emergence with new narrative forms of fictionality, i.e.,
not arising from the Latin rhetorical tradition (that gave birth to Christian
predication forms), but rather from the classics of antiquity. Haug claims to
identify the distinctive and experimental qualities of 12th- and 13th-century
vernacular literature. More focused on logical argumentation (dialectics) in
historical development, Haug then applies a more literary hermeneutic
analysis to Chrétien de Troyes’s first romance, Erec et Enide, concluding that
the closing sequence, the so-called “Joie de la Cort” episode, is quasi-allegori-
cal not typological, because it parallels the opening sequences of the romance
(ibid., 97). While he is at it, Haug attempts to draw out of Chrétien’s Pro-
logue a narrative theory, a new fictional approach (100), and, in the end, he
deduces poetry’s function as entertainment vs. instruction – to please (delec-
tare, cf. 123) vs. to teach (docere, cf. 125–127; see also Augustine, De doctrina IV,
xvii, 34).
In a hermeneutical mode as well, medieval French scholar Douglas
Kelly (The Art of Medieval French Romance, 1992, 85) observes, “[…] a given ro-
mance may well be clear and precise, original and inspired – yet false or de-
fective in the eyes of others. Medieval romance is a great dialectic between
idealism and human perception. Expressing that perception in matiere
[matter, content] is the art of bringing the unknown past into a meaningful
present context. It is the invention and reintegration of presumed historical
origins.”
Haug, like Kelly, aims to establish a poetics of medieval narrative by
drawing on theoretical statements by authors in their medieval texts. Else-
635 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

where Haug exhorts medieval scholars to take literary fiction as a possible

path to the truth (for example in Die Wahrheit der Fiktion, 2003).

K. Textual Criticism
Let us turn finally and specifically to the scholarly editing of medieval litera-
ture, whether Latin or vernacular, which often presents just as challenging a
task as biblical hermeneutics, though perhaps less spiritually rewarding.
Discernment and common sense must prevail amidst the swirl of herme-
neutical theories on the subject. Textual criticism aims to devise and apply
rules that allow an editor to select the most accurate text among variant read-
ings. Superior textual editors are born, not made, it seems, for the discipline
is not a science but an art, as Alfred Foulet and Mary Blakely Speer re-
mind us (On Editing Old French Texts, 1979), while echoing 1955 remarks by
Edmond Faral. Perhaps born editors possess that “science of the spirit”
(Geisteswissenschaft) that Schleiermacher advocated. Famed bibliographi-
cal scholar Fredson Bowers (1905–1991) defined the term textual criticism
as “a general term for the application of logical method to analyzing the rela-
tionship between preserved and inferential forms of the text, followed by the
application of various techniques, including critical judgment, designed to
establish what will ordinarily be the single definitive form of the text” (Fou-
let and Blakely Speer, 2; cf. Greetham, Textual Scholarship, 394–99).
While this definition may well apply to Shakespeare, Milton or even James
Joyce, “a single definitive form” cannot resolve the problems faced by medi-
evalists (on manuscript editing see Greetham, 272–83). Indiscriminate,
corrupt and generally irrelevant editions of medieval texts preceded objec-
tive and scientific methodologies of the 19th and 20th centuries. Controlled
and non-subjective strategies must outweigh divinatory, analogical or overly
conjectural approaches. As Jeff Rider expresses it cogently, “[h]istory and
philology have […] formed the propaedeutic disciplines of the study of medi-
eval literature, which attempts to reconstruct as fully and as authentically as
possible the text’s original inscription and to imagine as fully and as auth-
entically as possible its original context” (“Whence? Wither?” 249).
The critical circle that encloses an author’s text, a scribe and an audience
must be tread nimbly and cautiously, to paraphrase philologist Karl Lach-
mann (cf. Greetham, loc. cit., 320–23, 347–72). Lachmann’s formula
of recension maintained that agreement in error implied identity of origin.
He created a stemma for Lucretian manuscripts, and the edition – not based
on a “best single manuscript” – but rather on the significance of common er-
rors in several manuscripts became, as did his subsequent edition of the New
Testament, milestones for classical and Biblical studies. One may summarize
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 636

very briefly Lachmann’s principles as follows: agreement by all authorities

even if from different regions validates attestation (which nullifies particular
witnesses), and uncertain readings are those not universally attested in the
same region.

L. The Critical Edition

Consequently, and following now classical scholar E. J. Kenney’s authori-
tative guide (“Textual Criticism,” Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 2006), modern edi-
tors of critical editions move from a) recension, to b) examination and thence
to c) emendation, a process that harbors the habitus (or relevant information
and evidence on the “witnesses” and circumstances) of one’s chosen text and
its author (where possible). Examination involves an appropriate search for
authentic variants while implementing an historical analysis of language,
style, period, genre and so forth. “Conjectural emendation” may follow,
especially when the critic must use intelligent and discriminating guessing,
all the while “balancing possibilities” (Kenney). The directing principle,
as recommended by 18th-century New Testament editors, is: difficilior lectio
potior (“the more difficult reading is to be preferred”). As Karl Morrison
suggests, process and mediation lead not to facts but to understanding
(“Sounding Hermeneutics: Two Recent Works,” Speculum 73 [1998]:787–98,
here 797).
Contemporary with Lachmann’s innovations, more conservative
methods were developed, in Belgium, for example, by the Jesuits known
as Bollandists, by the Benedictines in France known as Maurists, and by the
French priest, Jacques-Paul Migne (1800–1875), whose extraordinary
energy resulted in the Patrologia Latina (1844–1855; now available in full-text
electronic version), plus four volumes of indexes (1862–1865; now digit-
ized). The Latin Patrologia comprises in 221 volumes the works of the Church
Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III. in 1216.
In addition, Migne edited the Patrologia graeca (81 vols., 1856–1861; a second
series contains the Greek text with Latin translations (166 vols., 1857–1866).
This activity was paralleled by a scientific team that produced, using (to-
ward the end, from ca. 1880) Lachmann’s formula, the Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica. In France, the editorial labors of Gaston Paris and Paul
Meyer on medieval French texts led to a renewed emphasis on the import-
ance of common scribal errors. This initiative was reinforced by what has
been called the “Roques rules,” an empirical prescriptive recipe devised by
Mario Roques, dating from 1925–1926, to reconstruct, wherever possible
the Ur-text or honor the best available manuscript (Foulet and Blakely
Speer, On Editing Old French Texts, xiii). Rational and scientific textual criti-
637 Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism

cism, deferential to the “author’s literary creation” allowed Gaston Paris to

create, with his landmark and trend-setting edition of La Vie de St. Alexis
(1872, 6th ed. 1965), a possible text as it might have existed in the period
(ibid., 8–12).
To illustrate, let us compare just one line, the opening verse of this poem
(“Life was good in ancient times”) as found in Paris’ reconstructed edition
(often called recensio), that drew on the text’s seven surviving manuscripts,
and in a more recent one, edited by English scholar Christopher Storey,
who chose a single manuscript:

Bons fut li siecles al tems ancïenor […] (Paris)

Bons fut li secles al tens ancïenur […] (Storey)

The differences are minute but crucial. Paris’ “archetypal” text has been
superseded by Storey’s reproduction of the text “just as it is.” Moreover,
endless attention to what the literary theorist E. D. Hirsch named the
“shared experiences, usage traits, and meaning expectations,” (Validity in
Interpretation, 1987, 131–32) can hardly ever help us know exactly what the
anonymous poet or the scribe of the St. Alexis wished to convey by this par-
ticular sequence of linguistic signs. We have lost the keys to the text’s pris-
tine, originary meaning: the text and its context are all we have at present.
The author’s original intention in this instance cannot be discerned – no
matter how convincing or thorough the philological circle – but the indeter-
minacy of textual meaning arises more from the historicity of the text than
from the historicity of modern understanding (Anthony Yu and Larry Bou-
chard, “Literature and Religion,” Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones,
2005, 5466–76).
Thus, an author’s purpose obviously cannot be a major concern for medi-
eval texts, so that an “authoritative edition” takes on a different meaning for
the medieval philologist. Arbitrary or conjectural emendation can be taken
to perilous extremes as well, so that the resulting mosaic might actually rep-
resent another version of the text (Foulet and Blakely Speer, 15). Béd-
ier reconstituted Jean Renart’s masterful Lai de l’Ombre (1913, following
19th-century standards), then re-edited it using his revolutionary art of edi-
ting texts (see Romania 54 [1928]: 161–96, 321–56). But, in the final analysis,
modern scholarship has determined that Bédier, his nemesis Dom Quen-
tin and Lachmann’s doctrines are too subjective, too systematic and too
controlled (Foulet and Blakely Speer, 19).
Laboring without the spark of mythical powers, yet like the mythologi-
cal Hermes, today’s textual critic takes as a guiding editorial principle the
need to buttress the “divine” readers’ understanding of the text’s base manu-
Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism 638

script. The editor’s maxims should be “knowledgeable work, judgment,

commitment” (Karl Uitti, “Medieval Specificity: Editing, Continuing,
Reading, Inventing: Poetico-Literary Dimensions and the Critical Editing of
Medieval Texts: The Example of Old French,” What is Literature?: France,
1100–1600, ed. François Cornilliat et al., 1993, 146; cf. Hirsch, 139–44).
In this ever-fluid and unstable environment (like the manuscript variants
themselves, i.e., mouvance), emendations bear, therefore, on the dubious
grammatical or lexical constructions which comparison with the other rel-
evant manuscripts of the text as well as of Old French show to be attributable
in all likelihood to scribal slips. Preferred readings of the chosen manuscript
(should be the least individualistic) must make good structural and syntactical
sense – the best version of an original, i.e., a real text, should be reproduced,
one that ideally a medieval reader might have enjoyed, as French philologist
F. Lecoy asserts (Jean Renart, 1983, vi-vii). Scholars are still debating today
which method works best, for despair will lead only to nihilism. But, Old
French scholar Peter Dembowski avers succinctly that “[t]he editor’s re-
sponsibility should not be abrogated in favor of any seemingly satisfying the-
ory. The first duty of any editor is not to be absolutely consistent with this or
that theoretical stance but to make the text readable for another reader”
(“The ‘French’ Tradition of Textual Philology and Its Relevance to the Edi-
ting of Medieval Texts,” Modern Philology 90, 4 [1993]: 512–32, 529). This was,
by the way, the guiding principle of the edition and translation of Three Ovi-
dian Tales of Love (ed., trans. Raymond Cormier, 1986).
Foulet and Blakely Speer simply phrase the procedure this way:
“One must conserve the most possible, repair the least and restore in no way”
(ibid., 20). As French scholar Philippe Ménard surmises (“Problèmes de pa-
léographie et de philologie dans l’édition des textes français du Moyen Âge,”
The Editor and the Text, ed. Philip Bennett and Graham Runnalls, 1990, 8)
caution and prudence must be invoked when faced with manuscript con-
flicts and/or a copyist’s errors. Neither blind adherence (i. e., excessive con-
servatism) nor too-facile (i.e., excessive intervention) interpolation of a text
will succeed. As he notes, “En tout domaine rien ne vaut la clarté” (10; Clarity
must be the rule in all cases). Perhaps, finally, it is the image of the “Belle
Captive” – bathed and clothed by “Radiant Textuality” (Jerome McGann,
Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web, 2001) – that heuristically
embodies today the definitive edition. And this brings “new meaning,” an
illuminated ontology, to edited texts. Hermeneutical methodology today
remains very much alive and relevant. Whether it is with the applications of
CASE (Computer Assisted Scholarly Editing; see Greetham, 360; and Peter
Shillingsburg, Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice. [Edi-
639 Historical Studies

torial Theory and Literary Criticism], 1st ed. 1986, 3rd ed. 1993), or especially for
the late Karl Uitti, she (it – the text’s meaning and access) would consist of a
reconstructable electronic hypertext with archived forms of all the manu-
scripts, variants and reworkings – exemplified by his exuberant Charrette
Project (quondam Princeton, hunc Baylor U.; see Uitti, 166–74). As the Prince-
ton don declared back in 1993, “The critical edition is here to stay […]” (166).

Select Bibliography
Pascale Bourgain and Françoise Vieillard, Conseils pour l’edition des textes mediévaux,
Fascicule III: Textes Littéraires (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques/
École nationale des chartes, 2002); Walter Haug, Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle
Ages: The German Tradition, 800–1300, In Its European Context, trans. Joanna M. Catling
(orig. in German, 1985; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Hermeneutics
and Medieval Culture, ed. Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1989); Geschichte der Textüberlieferung der antiken und
mitteralterlichen Literatur, ed. Herbert Hunger, 2 vols. (Zürich: Atlantis, 1961–1964);
E. J. Kenney, “Textual Criticism,” Encyclopædia Britannica (2006; Encyclopædia Britan-
nica Online: 17 Mar. 2006 http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9108631); Ralph McInerny,
ed., trans., “How Words Mean: Exposition of On Interpretation, 1–5,” in Thomas Aqui-
nas, Selected Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), 456–81; Martianus Capella,
The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, trans. William Harris Stahl et al., vol. 2, in Mar-
tianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press,
1971–1977); La Vie de Saint Alexis, Texte du Manuscrit de Hildesheim (L), ed. Christopher
Storey (Geneva and Paris: Droz and Minard, 1968); Sebastiano Timpanaro, La genesi
del metodo del Lachmann (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1963).

Raymond J. Cormier

Historical Studies

A. Definition
The field of medieval Historical Studies traditionally refers to the study of
European history from the decline of the Roman Empire in the West
(c. 500 C.E.) to the beginning of the early modern era (c.1500 C.E.). The idea
of a medieval period, or “Middle Ages,” as a distinct period in European his-
tory originated during the Italian Renaissance as humanists conceptualized
this period as a bridge between the classical and early modern worlds. Al-
though the idea of a Middle Ages began as a European construct, similar peri-
ods in the histories of China, India, and the Islamic world are increasingly
studied as distinct in their own right. Consequently, the study of the history
Historical Studies 640

of the Middles Ages has grown to encompass a much larger world view than
simply the traditional, though still dominant, study of medieval Europe.

B. Areas of Study and Language Competencies

The research interests of modern historians of medieval Europe fall into sev-
eral major areas. They include the more traditional fields of political, intel-
lectual, cultural, ecclesiastical, and military history, as well as relatively
newer fields like the history of mentality, everyday life, hagiography, and
gender. Because the Middle Ages cover roughly one thousand years, histori-
ans are also often considered specialists in either the early (ca. 500–1000 C.E.)
or late (ca. 1000–1500 C.E.) medieval period. Although the majority of re-
search on the Middle Ages has been done by Western scholars who focus on
Europe, the study of the neighboring worlds of Islam and the Mediterranean
(including North Africa) have also long been considered important areas of
study. The growing popularity of world history as a distinct field has also
contributed to the increased study of medieval China and medieval India.
Knowledge of multiple languages, both medieval and modern, is essen-
tial for historians doing original research on the Middle Ages. Latin is the
most important language for historians of medieval Western Europe, as is
Byzantine Greek for those who focus on Byzantium and other parts of medi-
eval Eastern Europe. Arabic is an important language for scholars of medi-
eval Spain, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. A host of regional lan-
guages are necessary for more detailed study of particular areas. Scholars of
medieval France often work with documents in Old French, Provençal, and
Occitan, whereas in Spain one might work with Catalan, Galician, or Basque
sources. Those studying medieval England might have the need to under-
stand both the old and middle forms of English, while those studying medi-
eval German might learn both Old and Middle German as well as the high
and low dialects of each language. Similar medieval vernacular languages are
often important for the study of medieval Italy (Sardinian, Venetian, and
Tuscan), Ireland (Gaelic), and Eastern Europe. Important languages for those
studying the medieval Middle East and Central Asia include Arabic, Persian
(and its predecessor Middle Persian), as well as various Turkic languages.
Middle Chinese is useful for those studying medieval China as is Hindi and
Urdu for those studying medieval India. Considerable new research is pub-
lished each year in English, French, German, and Italian, whether in books
or specialized journals. Rarely is such material translated into other lan-
guages, making knowledge of these languages important for modern
scholars to keep up with the latest research in their fields. Additional modern
languages may be necessary for highly specialized research.
641 Historical Studies

C. Historians of Medieval Europe, ca. 1500–1800

During the Middle Ages history was commonly divided according to Biblical
schemes. For example, some medieval European scholars divided history
into six ages based on the six days of creation in the Bible. The Italian hu-
manist Flavio Biondo was apparently the first to use the term “Middle Ages”
to refer to the period from the end of the Roman Empire until his time in the
early 15th century. In contrast to their medieval predecessors, early Renais-
sance historians who were motivated by their love of the classical age divided
history into three parts including the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and
their own age. In this scenario, the Middle Ages served as a bridge between
their beloved classical world and the Renaissance or modern age. Conse-
quently, because the achievements of the Middle Ages had little appeal to Re-
naissance scholars, the period became commonly referred to as a “Dark Age”
or simply, “the Dark Ages.” From this point on the Middle Ages were increas-
ingly understood as a distinct period, covering a timeframe from roughly
500 C.E. to 1500 C.E.
Negative views of the Middle Ages were also widely held during the Prot-
estant Reformation. Protestant reformers, like Renaissance humanists, also
had an appreciation of the ancient world. Yet their focus was not on classical
authors, but rather on the birth of Christianity and the life of the primitive
church, which many reformed churches claimed to imitate. As a result, the
Protestant belief that the medieval Catholic Church had become corrupted
and no longer resembled the primitive church of early Christianity became a
major justification for the Protestant Reformation.
Enlightenment era thinkers and writers also embraced the Renaissance
view of the Middle Ages as “Dark Ages” on account of their rejection of tradi-
tional religious, social, and political beliefs in favor of an “age of reason” (see
the entry on “Enlightenment” in this Handbook). Thinkers like Voltaire were
representative of the Enlightenment era view of the medieval world as a
place of endless feudal wars with scholasticism and the church as the enemies
of reason. A reflection of this hostility, especially to organized religion, is
found in English historian Edward Gibbon’s classic work The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with its six volumes published between
1776 and 1788. For Gibbon, the Roman Empire in the West had collapsed as
a result of Germanic invasions and finally ended with the death of the last
Emperor in 476 C.E. Thus began the Middle Ages, according to Gibbon, as
the focus of Gibbon’s work then shifted from the West to the East and the
development of the Byzantine Empire. Gibbon’s dating of the end of the
Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages in Western Europe has
been enormously influential among scholars, as his periodization was not
Historical Studies 642

seriously challenged by scholars until the 20th century and continues to in-
fluence popular understandings of the transition from the ancient Roman
world into the medieval period.

D. Historians and Historiography, ca. 1800 to Present

Many during the 19th century, although not all, found a new appreciation for
the Middle Ages. The industrial age was in full swing and the threat of ur-
banization and pollution to traditional norms of life provoked a backlash
among the so-called Romantics of the period. The Romantics rejected
the modern age and instead promoted what they understood as distinctly
medieval virtues in their art, literature, and nationalism. This new and more
positive image of the Middle Ages also extended to 19th-century historians,
although for different reasons. Modern historiography effectively began
with efforts of the highly influential late medievalist/early modernist Leo-
pold von Ranke (1795–1886), whose stated goal was to write history the
way it was. His purpose was to understand past cultures as they understood
themselves. Hence, he rejected the teleological view that modern societies
are superior to older societies and, consequently, refused to accept the idea
that the Middle Ages were inferior to the Renaissance.
The new popularity of the medieval world during the 19th century re-
sulted in the production of many important historical projects that continue
to have an impact on various fields of medieval history. Certainly one of the
most impressive projects was the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH), an
enormous collection of edited sources with an emphasis on German history
from the end of the Roman Empire until 1500 C.E. The MGH is divided into
five major areas including the Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae, and
Antiquitates, as well as thirty-three sub-series covering a wide range of medi-
eval historical documentation. The MGH was inspired by the Prussian re-
former and nationalist Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom Stein who,
in 1819, established a society for its creation with its first volumes published
in 1826. The project benefited enormously from the leadership of Georg
Heinrich Pertz who took over as editor in 1826 and remained so until 1874.
During this period the best scholars from Germany, and many other nations,
contributed to the MGH’s many scholarly editions. In 2004 the entire collec-
tion of the MGH was placed online in photo-digital reproduction at the MGH
web page at http://www.mgh.de.
The scholarship of French historian Joseph Francois Michaud
(1767–1839) was foundational for the so-called “golden age” of Crusades
Studies. Among his most influential works were his multi-volume History
of the Crusades (1st ed., 3 vols., 1812–1817; 6th ed., 6 vols., 1841), which served
643 Historical Studies

as one of the most important historical approaches to the study of the cru-
sades during the 19th century. Michaud followed this achievement with a
four volume collection of sources titled the Bibliothèque des Croisades (1829)
containing French translations of several European and Arabic chronicles of
the Crusades. Finally, as a member of the renown Academy of Inscriptions,
Michaud was instrumental in the creation and publication (published in
Paris from 1841 to 1906) of the sixteen volume Recueil des Historiens des Croi-
sades (RHC), which remains the most important collection of crusades sources
in their original languages to the present day. The entire collection of the
RHC, consisting of thousands of pages of sources in the original languages is
made available online through the Bibliotheque nationale de France’s Gal-
lica project at http://gallica.bnf.fr.
Yet another important source collection was constructed during the 19th
century by the French priest and scholar, Jacques-Paul Migne. Beginning in
1844, Migne oversaw the publication of the first volumes of the Patrologia
Latina (PL), a monumental collection of 217 volumes covering over one thou-
sand years of Latin sources from Tertullian to Pope Innocent III. It remains
among the most influential source collections for the study of medieval his-
tory and the entire collection is now available on CD-ROM at some research
libraries and an electronic version is available online for paid subscribers.
In the mid-19th century the Communist Manifesto was published by
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Feb. 21, 1848). Although the work was a
political call to action which sought to justify a revolution by workers, it had
an important impact on how later adherents of Communism would view the
past. Marx and Engels argued that economics was the driving engine of
history and that until their time human societies had been defined by the
exploitation of the common worker by a small elite minority. In the case of
the Middle Ages this meant that the aristocracy and clergy had unfairly sub-
jugated the peasantry, representing the vast majority of the population, to a
harsh servitude.
The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) influenced how
scholars understood the birth of the Middle Ages as a result of the so-called
“Pirenne Thesis.” Pirenne argued in his now classic work Mohammed and
Charlemagne against the traditional view (advanced by Edward Gibbon) that
Germanic barbarians had caused the fall of the Roman Empire and that
the removal of the last western Roman Emperor from the Imperial throne
in 476 C.E. effectively meant the end of the Roman Empire. According to
Pirenne, the real break in Roman history occurred in the 7th century as a re-
sult of Arab conquests which shifted European civilization to the North and
away from the Mediterranean. Pirenne’s works were also highly influential
Historical Studies 644

in subdividing the roughly one thousand year medieval period into what are
today known as the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.
Princeton scholar Dana Carleton Munro (1866–1933) published in a
number of areas concerning the Middle Ages. Among his more popular or in-
fluential works are A History of the Middle Ages (1902), The Middle Ages and Modern
Europe (1903), Medieval Civilization (1907), and The Middle Ages, 395–1272
(1921). His superior scholarship was recognized by his peers when he became
president of the American Historical Association in 1926, and he was hon-
ored by his former students, many of whom went on to teach in universities
themselves, in 1928 with the publication of a collection of essays titled The
Crusades and Other Historical Essays Presented to Dana C. Munro by his Former
Students. Munro died in 1933 before finishing what would have been his
“magnum opus,” a history of the crusades based on an exhaustive and critical
use of contemporary sources and field work in the Near East.
Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937) was considered America’s first
medieval historian (a curious distinction in light of Dana Carleton Munro’s
earlier career) and also served as an advisor to US President Woodrow Wilson
(a relatively common role for prominent historians in that period). Haskins
focused primarily on institutions, but his most influential work had to do
with his argument in favor of a 12th-century renaissance. In his 1927 work
The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Haskins examined art, science, philos-
ophy, architecture, literature, and the rise of universities to argue that this
was a period of unique innovation and creativity. Haskins had also won re-
spect for his earlier work Norman Institutions (1918) which contributed funda-
mentally to our understanding of medieval Normandy. Later scholars hon-
ored Haskin’s work on the Middle Ages by founding the Haskins Society in
1982, an international scholarly organization dedicated to the study of Vik-
ing, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early Angevin history. Haskins’s
best known student was medieval historian Joseph Strayer who began
teaching at Princeton University in the 1930s. During his career he served as
chair of the history department for twenty years and president of the Ameri-
can Historical Association in 1971. Strayer’s greatest influence on Medi-
eval Studies undoubtedly comes from the large number of American medi-
evalists teaching in universities that studied with him during his lengthy
career.
German historian Carl Erdmann (1898–1945) has been considered as
one of the most influential and important German scholars of medieval
political culture in the 20th century. Erdmann is perhaps best known for his
often cited 1935 work on the origins of the crusades Die Entstehung des Kreuz-
zugsgedankens (The Origins of the Idea of Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin and
645 Historical Studies

Walter Goffart, 1977). Erdmann argued that the crusades represented an

attempt by the Papacy to bring peace to Western Europe through redirecting
the violent energies of knights and other combatants to the East. Erd-
mann’s 1938 work on 11th-century correspondence between secular and ec-
clesiastical elites titled Studien zur Briefliteratur Deutschlands im XI. Jahrhundert
also won him considerable praise. Erdmann also worked as a researcher for
the prestigious Munich based institute of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) was a pioneer in the field
of cultural history. He wrote widely on a number of topics including not only
medieval history, but also American and early modern Dutch history. His
most important work of medieval history was his popular 1919 book The Au-
tumn of the Middle Ages, which rejected the idea of a Renaissance in the later
Middle Ages and instead viewed the period as one of pessimism and deca-
dence.
French historian and medievalist Marc Bloch (1886–1944) had an enor-
mous impact of modern understandings of historiography and feudalism. In
1929 Bloch and Lucien Febvre founded the journal Annales d’histoire écon-
omique et sociale (now called Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations). The name
of the journal became the basis for the name of the so-called Annales School
of Historiography, which combined history with geography and sociological
approaches to understanding the past and rejected the traditional 19th-cen-
tury emphasis on politics, diplomacy, and war. Instead of focusing on par-
ticular events, Bloch and Febvre focused on long-term historical struc-
tures known as la longue durée. In 1941 Bloch also authored a popular
historiographical work Apologie pour l’histoire ou metier d’historien (translated
into English in 1953 as The Historian’s Craft) that is still used widely in under-
graduate historiography classes today. Concerning specifically medieval his-
tory, Bloch’s influence was most seen on mid-20th-century understandings
of feudalism. In his 1939 work Feudal Society, Bloch argued that in addition
to a hierarchal relationship between lords and vassals in medieval feudal sys-
tems, there was a similar relationship between lords and peasants, an argu-
ment that had not previously been made. Bloch’s thesis was been dis-
credited for many as the concept of feudalism itself has come under intense
scrutiny by historians. In 1974, U.S. historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown, in
“The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe”
(American Historical Review 97: 1063–88), rejected the term feudalism arguing
that medieval economic and social systems were far too complicated for the
term to have any real meaning.
French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) was a student of An-
nales co-founder Lucien Febvre and became a prominent annales historian
Historical Studies 646

in his own right. He was best known for his monumental work La Méditer-
ranée et le monde méditerranéen a l’époque de Philippe II. Although Braudel
reportedly wrote the work from memory while he was a prisoner of war in
Germany in the early 1940s, La Méditerranée soon became the defining work
of the Annales School and was widely praised for its consideration of outside
disciplines (including economics, anthropology, and geography) over the
longue durée of medieval Mediterranean history.
Certainly one of the most popular medieval scholars during the 20th cen-
tury was British historian Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman, better
known as Steven Runciman (1903–2000). He was best known for his work
on Byzantium and the Crusades, we well as his linguistic abilities. He re-
portedly began learning French at the age of three and by the age of eleven he
had learned Latin, Greek, and Russian. Later in his life, he picked up various
Islamic languages that greatly informed his many scholarly works about the
Middle Ages including The History of the Crusades (3 vols., 1951, 1952, and
1954), The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (1947), The
Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century
(1958), The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965). Runciman was most influential
on modern understandings of the crusades and he did not portray the cru-
saders with sympathy. For Runciman, the crusaders destroyed the last bas-
tion of Antiquity, Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.
One of the most distinguished living historians of medieval Byzantium is
Angeliki E. Laiou, who is currently Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine
History at Harvard University. Laiou is also a former director of the Dum-
berton Oaks Research Library and Collection, an international center for
scholarship providing resources for the study and publication of scholarly
works in Byzantine history. She is also the author of a dozen books and sev-
eral dozen articles on Byzantine history covering topics ranging from gender
to the crusades. Perhaps her most important recent work is The Economic His-
tory of Byzantium (2002) for which she served as editor in chief for its three vol-
umes.
Irish historian Peter Brown (b. 1935), who began his career as a medi-
eval historian, is without question the leading historian of the period known
as late antiquity, a field that overlaps with the medieval period and did not
exist until he defined it in The World of Late Antiquity A.D. 150–750 (1971), and
The Making of Late Antiquity (1978). Brown’s many works led to the establish-
ment of late antiquity as a distinct period from roughly 200 C.E. to 800 C.E.
that focuses on the transformation of the Roman world into the medieval
world in both the East and the West. Brown is also well known for his
seminal work Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967, and 2000), which is still
647 Historical Studies

considered by many to be the best available work on the life of Augustine.

Brown has also made an impact on modern understandings of the develop-
ment of the cult of the saints (see The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in
Latin Christianity, 1981), about which he argues that such cults were not carry
overs from the pagan past.
The annales historian Georges Duby (1919–1996) ranked among the
most influential of French medievalists for his work on the first three cen-
turies of France under the Capetians (ca. 10th to 13th centuries). Duby’s col-
league, French historian Jacques LeGoff (b. 1924), also won international
renown for his work on medieval Europe. LeGoff is another Annales his-
torian who since 1977 has dedicated himself to researching the historical
anthropology of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. LeGoff held that
medieval Europe was a distinct civilization from the ancient Roman world
and, although the Annales School is not known for its appreciation of
biographies, he is also well know for his biographies of Louis IX and Francis
of Assisi.
Oxford University historian Richard W. Southern’s (1912–2001) 1953
book The Making of the Middle Ages won him considerable respect early in his
career and became a classic history of the Middle Ages covering the 10th
to 13th centuries. He followed up this work with other well received efforts
including Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (1962) and Western Society and
the Church in the Middle Ages (1970). Jonathan Riley-Smith (b. 1938), also of
Oxford University, found even greater success with his work on the crusades
which revolutionized modern crusades historiography. As the author of
more than a dozen books on the crusades, Riley-Smith has convincingly ar-
gued that greed as the primary motivator of the crusaders is unlikely and
misleading, as genuine religious devotion seems to have been an even greater
motivator. Riley-Smith has also been a chief advocate of expanding mod-
ern understandings of the crusading movement to include similar efforts in
places other than the Holy Land. He argues that crusading against Muslims,
pagans, and heretics also took place in Spain, the Baltic, Italy, and France.
Several medievalists have studied under Riley-Smith at Oxford and have
gone on to teaching positions at major research institutions around the
world. They include scholars such as Peter Edbury, Norman Housley,
and Michael Lower who have carried Riley-Smith’s perspectives into the
scholarly world.
University of Southern California historian Judith Bennett is one of
the leading scholars of the history of gender during the Middle Ages. Ben-
nett has published extensively on the subject with seven books and more
than two dozen articles that have helped to define the field. Perhaps her best
Historical Studies 648

known work is her account of the extraordinary life of Cecilia Penifader, an

English single woman living in the early 14th century in A Medieval Life: Cecilia
Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297–1344 (1998). University of Minnesota historian
Ruth Mazo Karras is another leading historian of gender and sexuality.
While she has published on a broad number of topics within her area of inter-
est, her more recent efforts focus on the formation of masculine identity in
the later Middle Ages. Her recent books include From Boys to Men: Formations
of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (2003), and Sexuality in Medieval Europe:
Doing Unto Others (2005).

E. Major Journals for Medieval Historians

There are a number of important peer reviewed journals, both interdisciplin-
ary and focused solely on history, in which historians of the Middle Ages
publish their research. Speculum has been published quarterly by the Medi-
eval Academy of America since 1926 and is the first scholarly journal in
North America devoted exclusively to the Middle Ages. Traditio, a leading
journal of ancient and medieval history, thought, and religion has been
published since 1945 by Fordham University. The interdisciplinary journal
Viator has been published since 1969 under the direction of the Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los An-
geles. UCLA also has a graduate journal, Comitatus, dedicated to Medieval
Studies and it is gaining increasing respect as a place for graduate students to
publish. Duke University Press annually publishes three issues of its Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, while Blackwell Publishing issues its Early
Medieval Europe quarterly. Mediaevistik: International Journal of Interdisciplinary
Medieval Research, ed. by Peter Dinzelbacher and Albrecht Classen (by
himself since 2010), is published in Frankfurt, Germany and accepts sub-
missions on an ongoing basis in German, English, French, and Italian. The
Medieval Review (formerly the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review) has published re-
views in all areas of Medieval Studies dating back to 1993. There are some
journals focused more narrowly on medieval history (as opposed to litera-
ture, philosophy, etc …) including The Journal of Medieval History and The
Medieval History Journal. Additionally, there are a number of journals devoted
to more specific medieval historical themes including The Journal of Medieval
Military History (published by De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Mili-
tary History), Crusades: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the
Latin East, Gender & History, and Golden Horn: Journal of Byzantium.
649 Historical Studies

F. Major Organizations for Historians of the Middle Ages

The Medieval Academy of America, founded in 1926, is the leading organiz-
ation for historians of the Middle Ages in North America. Other important
North American organizations include the American Academy of Research
Historians of Medieval Spain, founded in 1974 to promote the study of medi-
eval Spain; and the Southeastern Medieval Association which promotes the
study of the Middle Ages in the southern United States. There are also more
than seventy Medieval Studies centers based at various colleges and univer-
sities in the U.S. and Canada and dozens more at higher education institu-
tions in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. The Australian
and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies was
founded in 1996 to promote Medieval and Early Modern Studies in the
Pacific, as was the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney
(established in 1997). The Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris was
founded in 2003 to assist academics in Paris doing research on the Middle
Ages and regularly hosts symposiums on a number of medieval topics. In
Germany, the Medieval Institute at the University of Freiburg was estab-
lished in 1965 to promote and coordinate research and teaching in all fields
related to the study of medieval civilization.

G. Major Conferences
The largest gathering devoted to Medieval Studies in general, and Medieval
Historical Studies in particular, is without doubt the annual International
Congress on Medieval Studies hosted at the University of Western Michigan
in Kalamazoo. The conference is usually held at the beginning of each
summer and is attended by more than three thousand scholars and students
of all fields related to the Middle Ages, as well as a considerable number
of novelists and interested persons unaffiliated with a college or university.
The relatively informal atmosphere at Kalamazoo makes it an excellent place
for collaboration and collegiality among scholars. A similar event, which
serves as a type of European counterpart to the Congress at Kalamazoo, the
International Medieval Congress, is held in the United Kingdom each year
and is hosted by the University of Leeds. Although neither conference is spe-
cifically devoted to the field of history, historians are heavily represented in
the listings of those presenting papers and these conferences are among the
most important gatherings for historians of the Middle Ages. There are, of
course, several dozen other conferences and gatherings taking place through-
out the world in which historians devoted to medieval history might present
their research. Some include the annual meetings of the Medieval Academy
of America, the Midwest Medieval History Conference, the American His-
Historical Studies 650

torical Association, the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of

Toronto, and the annual symposium of the International Medieval Society,
Paris.

Select Bibliography
Fortunately, a high number of works dealing with Medieval Historical Studies have
been written by medievalists. One of the more interesting is the late Norman F. Can-
tor’s Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the
Twentieth Century (New York: William Morrow, 1991) which argued that romanticized
modern notions of the Middle Ages (as a place of knights, ladies, saints, wars, tourna-
ments, etc …) are a conceptual invention of 20th-century scholars influenced by their
particular backgrounds and modern events (World War II, for example). The 2005
work Medieval Concepts of the Past, ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J.
Geary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) examines how the history of
the Middle Ages is being restructured by medieval historians in Germany and the
United States in the light of cultural and social-scientific investigations into ritual,
language and memory. Ernst Breisach has written a useful review of historiography
from the ancient Greeks to the present in his work Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, &
Modern (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, 1994), and another work
examining the impact of rhetoric on the study of medieval history in Classical Rhetoric
and Medieval Historiography (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western
Michigan University,1985). Johns Hopkins University historian Gabrielle M. Spie-
gel’s book The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) examines the impact of postmodernism and
how it has challenged historians to look at historical texts in a new way. Kathleen Can-
ning’s work Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class and Citizenship
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), examines the field of gender history
from its origins in the 1980s until the present – a process in which Canning herself
has held a major role as an author, a teacher and an editor. For information on women
in Medieval Studies see Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison,
WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Marc Bloch’s 1953 work The Historian’s
Craft (New York: Knopf, 1953) investigated the techniques of historical inquiry to help
the beginning researcher, whether focusing on medieval history or other periods.
Bloch’s work has been widely distributed and is commonly assigned in college level
historiography classes. A revised and updated edition of Louis John Paetow’s classic
1931 work A Guide to the Study of Medieval History (Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1980) was made
available in 1980 and was followed in 1981 with the release of Gray Cohen Boyce’s Lit-
erature of medieval history, 1930–1975: A Supplement to Louis John Paetow’s A Guide to the Study
of Medieval History (Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1981). R. C. van Caenegem’s Guide to the
Sources of Medieval History (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1978)
provides a useful review of five areas of medieval history, including the typology of
medieval history, libraries and archives, collections and repositories of sources, refer-
ence works, and a bibliographic introduction to the auxiliary sciences of history. His-
torian James M. Powell’s work Medieval Studies: An Introduction (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1992) is designed to provide the advanced student with an introduc-
tion the world of Medieval Studies by offering essays by various authors on all aspects
of Medieval Studies including paleography, diplomatics, chronology, literature,
651 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

music, archaeology, law and science. For information about particular medievalists,
historians or otherwise, see Répertoire international des medievalists (Turnhout: Brepols,
1995).This work provides the names, addresses, and fields of specialization for 16,000
medievalists worldwide.

Andrew Holt

Historiography of Medieval Medicine

A. General Definition
There are many fundamental, practical and theoretical differences between
what is laterally understood by the term ‘medicine’ and how it was defined in
the Middle Ages. The difficulty in this regard arises out of the lack of useful
contemporary definitions. Accordingly, 20th-century scholarly contributions
to the history of medicine tend to be academically judged largely in terms of
their accuracy and scope and, crucially, in terms of how the term ‘medicine’
is understood by the researcher. We should not be surprised to learn, then,
that one of the major issues in the study of medicine in the Middle Ages is
precisely that of nomenclature; simply, the term ‘medicine’ and what that
implies cannot be as easily or cleanly applied to the medieval period as it is
used post-Enlightenment. When considering both the historiography of
medieval medicine and the practice of medicine in the Middle Ages, then, it
is necessary to regard both categories as fluid, with boundaries sufficiently
blurred to overlap into the academic sciences and folklore (herbalism, for
example) and pseudo-sciences (astrology, physiognomy and palmistry);
manuscript and book history; theories of textual production and dissemi-
nation; university history; the study of practitioners, both learned and local;
and social history.
The problems of definition have always been pivotal for the major con-
tributors in the field, most notably in the now-famous exchange between
George Sarton and Henry Sigerest. Sarton, in a paper titled “The His-
tory of Science versus the History of Medicine” (Isis 23.2 [1935]: 313–20),
challenged medicine as a science; this elicited a response from Sigerist in
“The History of Medicine and The History of Science” (Bulletin of the History
of Medicine 4 [1936]: 1–13), in which, as well as noting that medical history is a
field of study in its own right, he agreed that much of the work hitherto car-
ried out on the history of medicine was amateurish. The debate on the valid-
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 652

ity of medical history as a branch of science continues to some extent; Gert

Brieger notes, however, that the historiographical work has now become
more sophisticated and reliable (“Guest Editorial: The History of Medicine
and the History of Science,” Isis 72.4 [1981]: 537). Perhaps one of the most
helpful definitions of medieval medicine is that of Linda E. Voigts, who
asserts that medical texts are the records of “the theory and practice of what
was both science and craft … [which] survives, for the most part, in fourteenth-
and fifteenth-century manuscripts [and] includes both highly learned and
popular, traditional material” (“Medical Prose,” Middle English Prose: A Critical
Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, 1984, 315–35). Else-
where, the same author notes that “in practical terms, then as now, [medi-
cine] was largely perceived less as an attempt to understand the natural
world than as a technology for maintaining or restoring health” (“Scientific
and Medical Books,” Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed.
J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall, 1989, 345–402). The historiography of
medieval medicine, then, in its broadest terms, involves the consideration of
writings – and the application of learning in the practical sense – of varying
sophistication. As Rossell Hope Robbins wrote: “Allowing for the distinc-
tion between the graduate doctor and the leech … as far as the actual craft of
medicine itself was practiced, both classes would be relying on essentially the
same manuscript authorities” (“Medical Manuscripts in Middle English,”
Speculum 45.3 [1970]: 393–415). Medical practice, it would seem, had a con-
siderable theoretical grounding, whether treatment was administered by the
leech doctor, the barber surgeon, or the university-trained physician.
European medical theory of the Middle Ages was largely based on the
writings of Hippocrates (c. 470–360 BC). Generally credited as the father
of modern medicine, Hippocrates professionalized medical practice, linking
it to philosophy but divorcing it from religion and superstition. He also
wrote in detail on proper conduct and practice for physicians. His most en-
during legacy in the Middle Ages, however, was his theory of the humors.
This medical theory centered on the balance between the four humors
(blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile), in turn connected to the four el-
emental “qualities” (hot, cold, dry and moist); wellbeing was thus dependent
on balance, and much medieval medical healing was concerned to restore
imbalances in the bodily humors, which could be achieved by regulating
the diet, for example, or through an intervention like bloodletting. Pearl
Kibre’s work on Hippocratic reception in the Middle Ages is standard: Hip-
pocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (1985).
Equally influential, in terms of medical theory and practice in medieval
Europe were the writings and thoughts of Galen, whose treatises perpetu-
653 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

ated the Hippocratic method; in particular, the work of Vivian Nutton

(in particular, his edited volume Galen, Problems and Prospects, 1981, and his
monograph John Caius and the Manuscripts of Galen, 1987) is crucial with regard
to Galen’s reception in the Middle Ages. However, European medical the-
ories were frequently coupled with a belief, central to Arabic treatises, that
astrology had a part to play, with each house of the zodiac assumed to exert
influence over a particular body part; contemporary ‘vein men’ illustrations
show Aries having dominance over the head. Aries, in terms of qualities, was
considered “a fiery, hot and dry sign” (Irma Taavitsainen, “Science,”
A Companion to Chaucer, ed. Peter Brown, 2000, 378–396). Medicine was,
thus, inextricably linked to astrology and astronomy, and a belief in the
influence of the skies on humans in a holistic manner. The early work of
Donald Campbell, Arabian Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages (1926;
rpt. 2001) is testament to the influence of Arabic ideas on Europe’s medical
people; similarly, Kibre’s study “Giovanni Garzoni of Bologna (1419–
1505), Professor of Medicine and Defender of Astrology,” Isis 58 (1967):
504–14 demonstrates that medical theory, even at the scholastic level, was
inextricably linked to cosmology. Further, the research carried out by Allan
Chapman, “Astrological Medicine,” Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Six-
teenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (1979, 275–300), explains the principles
of medieval astrological medicine as a background to developments in the
Renaissance. Religion, too, had its influence on medicine; the role of the
medieval church – linked, naturally, to the role of the hospital – has been the
subject of several studies, including Eugene A. Hammond’s “Physicians in
Medieval English Religious Houses,” Bulletin in the History of Medicine 32
(1958): 105–20.
The history of 20th-century scholarship on medieval medicine has gen-
erally taken two approaches: a concern with medical texts and books, of vary-
ing academic interest but nonetheless widely read, disseminated, copied,
and translated throughout Europe, and an attempt at classification of the
texts circulated therein; and the social history of medicine: the identification
of sites of hospitals and doctor’s rooms; persons involved in medical practice;
the analysis and impact of epidemics like the Black Death and influenza; and
gender, politics, and class studies. It is perhaps due to this dichotomous
approach that it is frequently argued that students of the Middle Ages lack
“reference works” that provide a “reliable history of medicine” (Jonathan
Erlen, “Book Review: A Dictionary of the History of Medicine,” Journal of the His-
tory of Medicine and Allied Sciences 56.2 [2001]: 183). Nonetheless, the absence of
a defining study, encyclopedia or dictionary dedicated to the history of medi-
cine, rather than highlighting the difficulties connected to definition and
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 654

concentration, instead serve to demonstrate the richness and diversity of the

field. Moreover, this absence has the effect of foregrounding the many spe-
cific and unique contributions that have been made by individual scholars to
the many different aspects of historical medicine over the course of the 20th
century which, taken together, build an impressive repertoire of writing and
research on this multifaceted topic.

B. History of Research
The focus of much research into medicine in the Middle Ages is on the people
responsible for the practice of medicine, and appropriately, perhaps, it is
with this that the history of research into medicine in the 20th century begins.
The publication of two important scholarly resources for medieval medicine:
John Flint South’s Memorials of the Craft of Surgery in England (ed. D’Arcy
Power, 1886), and Sidney Young’s Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London
(1890), enabled further study by giving researchers access to important docu-
ments, while at the same time igniting interest in the theory and practice of
medicine in medieval Europe. These quickly became standard reference
works, and precipitated further investigation into the records of doctors,
surgeons, and other medical men. Ernst Wickersheimer’s two-volume
Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge (1936; rpt. 1979)
provides a similar survey of practitioners in medieval France, and is updated
by Danielle Jacquart’s Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au
Moyen Âge. Tome 3: Supplément, (1979). A different perspective on medieval
France is Isaac Alteras’s “Jewish Physicians in Southern France during the
13th and 14th Centuries,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 68.4 (1978): 209–23,
which uses notarial records to provide a list of practitioners living in ten
major towns in the south of France. Alteras notes that these pockets of
medical men “developed an activity that produced much original literature
and translations from Arabic into Hebrew and Latin” (209).
Further focus on the English medical community of the Middle Ages
came mid-century in the work of Charles H. Talbot and Eugene A. Ham-
mond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register
(1965), a directory of specific practitioners from the more learned to the
barber-surgeons and empirics, and dating from Anglo-Saxon times up to the
mid-16th century. Richard T. Beck’s The Cutting Edge: Early History of the
Surgeons of London (1974) has a similar focus, as does Robert S. Gottfried’s
Doctors and Medicine in Medieval England, 1340–1530 (1986), which broadens its
subject matter to consider apothecaries.
20th-century history of scholastic medicine is somewhat divided between
studies conducted by practitioners of medicine – or medical professionals –
655 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

at the beginning of the century, and the professional study of the history
of medicine, begun quite late in the century. Scholarly work on the sources
for the history of medicine was facilitated in no small part by Charles Joseph
Singer, a professor in the history of medicine at University College London,
and his many publications on Galen, the history of biology and the history of
science. It was the work of his wife, Dorothea Waley Singer, however, that
allowed the scholarly community unprecedented access to the medical and
scientific books held in British and Irish libraries. The results of her endea-
vors are a card-catalogue (held at the British Library but available, too,
on microfilm, and numerous publications: “Survey of Medical Manuscripts
dating from before the Sixteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Royal Society
of Medicine 12 (1918–1919): 96–107; and with Annie Anderson, Cata-
logue of Latin and Vernacular Plague Texts in Great Britain (1950). A similar work
resulted from the collaborative writings and research of Pearl Kibre and
Lynn Thorndike. Their Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in
Latin (1937) remains a standard tool for works of medicine in Latin. Much
early work, then, centered on the tradition of Latin scholastic texts in the
Middle Ages; for example, George W. Corner’s Anatomical Texts of the Earlier
Middle Ages (1927) contains a revised Latin text of the Anatomia Cophonis. Lynn
Thorndike’s Science and Thought in the Fifteenth Century (1929) is a survey of
manuscript sources for the history of medicine and surgery.
Recently – more specifically in the last two decades – academic interest in
medicine and medical texts of medieval Europe has shifted to include work
on vernacularization; as Keiser notes, “the demand for scientific and practi-
cal writings in the English language seems to have become more urgent in
the second half of the fourteenth century, and the response … was the pro-
duction of an extensive corpus of works” (1999, 3595). That demand was
mirrored throughout Europe as the producers and readers of medical texts
and books embarked upon a massive and important project to translate
books out of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. William Cossgrove’s intro-
duction to a dedicated volume of Early Science and Medicine (“The Vernacular-
ization of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Late Medieval Europe,” 3.2
[1998]: 81–87) succinctly explains the situation with regard to medicine as
being complex, since “this discipline was both a subject of scholastic study
and a practice carried out by healers without formal training, so we find
medical texts in vernacular languages, presumably aimed at bridging the
gap between learned and popular medicine, which coexisted with far more
numerous Latin medical treatises throughout the Middle Ages” (82). How-
ever, with the spread of literacy came the translation of the great encyclo-
pedias and works, like those of Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Albertus Mag-
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 656

nus, into various vernacular languages and, too, the compilation and even
composition of new texts in vernacular languages.
One of the most common subjects of medical tracts in the Middle Ages
in Europe is phlebotomy, or bloodletting. Because of the belief that astrol-
ogy / astronomy had a profound influence on all aspects of human exist-
ence, particularly connected to medical treatment and diagnosis, many
bloodletting tracts are subsumed into longer treatises on the zodiac, into
lunary and calendar texts, sometimes going unnoticed since as text might
be classified as ‘scientific’ as opposed to medical. On bloodletting and diet
see Linne R. Mooney, “Diet and Bloodletting: A Monthly Regimen,” Popu-
lar and Practical Science of Medieval England, ed. Lister M. Matheson (1994),
245–61.
Medical charms and recipes – connected in some ways to herbalism and
herbal lore – present problems in terms of classification, largely because of
their closeness to prayers, culinary recipes, and the occult; they present diffi-
culties too in terms of cataloguing because of the sheer numbers that survive,
copied either as collections in various types of manuscripts, or preserved
individually either in longer tracts or on flyleaves and as marginalia. There is
also some overlap into the occult and magic, as acknowledged by the work of
John Henry Grafton Grattan and Charles Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and
Medicine (1952). Again, though, the impetus to list, chronicle, and discuss
charms and recipes is primarily evident in short, exploratory yet important
work recorded in serial publications. The research by Thomas R. Forbes,
for example, took a wide view of folk charms in medicine, noting that in the
past, medical historians routinely ignored folk medicine, it being “the prod-
uct of superstition, hearsay and ignorance,” going on to state that since
“good’ medical care was not available to the majority of people in the Middle
Ages, charms and such texts are “profoundly important to the social history
of medicine” (“Verbal Charms in British Folk Medicine,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 115.4 [1971]: 293–316). Forbes goes on to
identify varieties of verbal charms and provides examples – that are revealing
in terms of how medicine was understood in the Middle Ages – and that in-
clude dentistry and exorcism. Similarly Douglas Gray (“Notes on Some
Middle English Charms,” Chaucer and Middle English Studies, ed. Beryl Row-
land, 1974, 56–71) connects medicine and prayer, quoting Singer’s asser-
tion that “paternosters accompany every conceivable medical process” (59).
Particularly noteworthy in Gray’s paper is the example of the ‘Flum Jordan’
charm (or Jordan-segen), one of the most frequently occurring methods to
staunch blood, and which is transmitted from a 9th-century Latin version
into various languages.
657 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

The history of hospitals in the Middle Ages has recently witnessed a re-
vival with the appearance of several dedicated, general studies; this is a wel-
come trend, according to Alfons Labisch, who notes that hospital histories
frequently treat of “single institutions and places … conceptualised and
written as special contributions on the occasion of anniversaries” (“Book
Review,” Journal of the History of Medicine 56.2 [2001]: 181). Rotha Mary Clay’s
Mediaeval Hospitals of England (1909) has long been the reference work for the
student of medieval care-giving institutions, and has only recently been
matched by Nicholas Orme’s and Margaret Webster’s The English Hospital,
1070–1570 (1995). The latter is now a standard text, being an authoritative
examination of hospitals both nationally and locally, providing valuable rec-
ords of practices, administration, finances and organization (Linda E.
Voigts, “Book Review,” Bulletin in the History of Medicine 71.4 [1997]: 707).
Sheila Sweetinburgh’s recent study, The Role of the Hospital in Medieval Eng-
land: Gift-Giving and the Spiritual Economy (2004) focuses on local institutions
in Kent, and while she draws comparisons with religious and political power
structures, Sweetinburgh’s focus is largely on the culture of gift-giving to
hospitals. Finally, Günther B. Risse’s Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of
Hospitals (1999) offers an overview of hospital history up to the present day,
with some sections on the Christian and plague hospitals of the Middle Ages.
The history of textual scholarship as it relates to medicine in the Middle
Ages is particularly germane here; simply put, without editions of key Latin
and vernacular medical texts we would not have as complete a picture of
medieval attitudes towards, and the practice of, medicine and surgery. In this
regard, the foundation in 1864 of the Early English Texts Society by Frederick
James Furnivall, Richard Morris, Walter Skeat and others was crucial to
the dissemination of previously-unseen medical tracts – both scholastic and
commonplace – throughout the scholarly community. The series had im-
mediate impact, bringing out an Extra Series in 1867, to re-issue texts that
already existed in inaccessible editions. Notable amongst the early editions
published by the society are Lanfrank’s Science of Cirurgie I (OS 102: 1894; rpt.
2002), edited by Robert von Fleischbacker, and The Anatomie of the Bodie of
a Man by Thomas Vicary (ES 53: 1888; rpt. 1996), ed. Frederick J. Furnivall
and Percy Furnival. Important, too, are Margaret Sinclair Ogden’s edi-
tion, The Liber de Diversis Medicinis in the Thornton Manuscript (OS 207: 1938; rpt.
1970) and her edition of the Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac (OS 265: 1971). Import-
ant, too, is the edition of William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence
(Mark Bullen and Arthur Henry Bullen; ES 52: 1888; rpt. 2001), as well as
longer, encyclopedic texts that deal with medical matters generally, such as
the Secretum Secretorum (ed. Mahmoud. A. Manzalaoui; OS 276: 1977) and
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 658

the verse dialogue Sidrak and Bokkus I and II (ed. Tom Burton; OS 311 & 312:
1998, 1999). Old English medical material is represented chiefly by Hubert J.
de Vriend’s The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus (OS 286:
1984). Although the EETS series has done much to promote the editing
and publication of lesser-known, overlooked, or obscure medical tracts, the
relatively small number of editions of medical texts produced may point to
the difficulties faced by editors of these writings; moreover, the Liber de Diver-
sis Medicinis contained in Robert Thornton’s commonplace book, or the ma-
terial contained in a text like the Secretum, material medica can be absorbed into
longer, more generally-themed tracts or books, and hence they defy facile
location or definition or, as is probably the case with the EETS, medical texts
can be too short, too fragmentary, or too variant to warrant a single edition.
The latter two decades of the 20th century witnessed an explosion of in-
terest in Fachliteratur in general (e. g., Bernhard Dietrich Haage and Wolf-
gang Wegner, Deutsche Fachliteratur der Artes in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,
2007), and in works of medicine in particular, due in no small part to the
identification and listing of unedited and/or unnoticed texts and tracts.
As George Keiser puts it, “writings that had once seemed marginal and
deserving of concern only for their philological value are now being shown
to be central to an understanding of literary, social, intellectual, political,
and cultural history” (“Scientific, Medical and Utilitarian Prose,” Anthony
Stockwell Garfield Edwards, ed., 2004, 231–48). Medical texts in Middle
English have been extremely well-served by Keiser’s own weighty con-
tribution to the Manual of the Writings in Middle English series; his volume ten,
Works of Science and Information, includes a lengthy and detailed section on
medicine, along with a handlist of manuscripts.
Initiatives such as the ongoing publication of volumes in the Index of
Middle English Prose series allow editors ready access to handlists of both com-
plete and fragmentary texts surviving in library collections worldwide. Prose
medical tracts, specifically, have received continued attention since the
inclusion of Laurel Braswell’s chapter on “Medicine” in Edwards’ edited
collection Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, 1984,
337–87), which surveyed major texts and traditions, and catalogued known
manuscripts preserving materia medica. That the recent updated and reworked
version of this volume omits this cataloguing work is testament to the
amount of new research carried out in the intervening twenty years. In A Com-
panion to Middle English Prose, ed. Edwards (2004), Keiser surveys research
to date whilst foregrounding texts and manuscripts in need of further atten-
tion (“Scientific, Medical and Utilitarian Prose,” 231–48). The appearance of
A New Index of Middle English Verse (Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, 2005)
659 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

records medical treatises that appear in verse form, as well as verse prologues
to prose tracts, updating the previous Index of Carleton Brown and Rossell
Hope Robbins (1943), and its Supplement (Robbins and John. L. Cutler,
1965). There has also been a move to update the philological work carried out
by Fredrick J. Furnivall and colleagues for The Early English Text Society at
the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the last.
The publication of Rossell Hope Robbins’s seminal paper, “Medical
Manuscripts in Medieval English,” in Speculum (45 [1970]: 393–415) ar-
guably spearheaded attempts to generically classify medical texts in terms of
the approach taken by each. Prior to this, Robbins noted, texts were clas-
sified either as university tracts or guides for unlearned practitioners. One
of the enduring legacies of Robbins’s work has been to encourage specific
research work, such as that of Monica H. Green. Her important study,
“Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English” (Studies in the Age of
Chaucer 14 [1992]: 53–88) builds on the work of Robbins, analyzing, iden-
tifying, and cataloguing texts which either concern themselves with mal-
adies particular to women or those that address themselves to a female audi-
ence or readership. Green notes that several Latin texts on women’s medical
concerns (such as the Gynaecia of Musico) circulated in medieval Europe,
along with translations from Greek and some translations into Anglo-Nor-
man; these texts were deposited in the extensive libraries of priories and
abbeys. Also circulating, and likewise important for research into medical
practices concerned with women, are the large encyclopedic tracts, like that
of Gilbertus Anglicus, which contained chapters or sections on childbirth
and women’s diseases (55). Green’s handlist, which accompanies the paper,
divides the extant texts into three categories: Middle English translations
of Trotula; manuscripts of “The Sekenesse of Wymmen,” and other obstetri-
cal and gynecological material, including recipe collections and shorter re-
medies.
Studies of the bubonic plague – and the plague tracts first catalogued
by Singer and Anderson (1950, see above) – are in many ways the nexus of
medical and social history, and were common in the Middle Ages. They have
steadily received critical attention throughout the 20th-century, notably by
Jean-Noël Biraben’s two-volume Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les
pays européens et méditerranéens (1975); in the work of Luke Demaitre (“The
Description and Diagnosis of Leprosy by Fourteenth-Century Physicians,”
Bulletin in the History of Medicine 59 [1985]: 327–44, and Leprosy in Premodern
Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body, 2007); and in a more general study by
Rosemary Horrox (The Black Death, 1994).
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 660

C. Major Contributors
As with the history of science, some of the most important and influential
contributions both on the cultural and practical history of medieval medi-
cine have appeared in serials. The journals Isis and Osiris, both founded early
in the 20th century, have been the loci for debate, new research, and defini-
tions of the study of medicine. Notable here is the volume of Osiris edited by
Michael R. McVaugh Nancy G. Siraisi and dedicated to medical knowl-
edge in Western Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries (6: 1990). This
issue contains studies by Vivian Nutton, Chiara Crisciani and Danielle
Jacquert, as well as by both editors.
One of the standard reference works on the history of medicine in spe-
cific societies and European countries is Charles H. Talbot, Medicine in Medi-
eval England (1967), which is aimed at the general reader but nonetheless is
exhaustive in its scope, examining medical texts from the leech-book to the
scholastic and addressing specific case-studies such as the medical schools at
Montpellier and Salerno, as well as treating of subjects such as hygiene and
etiquette, hospitals and epidemics.
With much of the focus on the history of medicine in England – or indeed
on medical texts in Old and Middle English – works that consider continen-
tal European medicine are welcome. General studies include Henry Sie-
gerist’s influential two-volume A History of Medicine (1951–1961); France
is treated of by Loren C. MacKinney’s Early Medieval Medicine with Special Ref-
erence to France and Chartres (1937). Medieval European medical practice and
textual history is recovered by Lusia Cogliati Arano’s Medieval Health Hand-
book – Tacuinum Sanitatis (1976), a blend of medical illustration and texts that
display the influence of Arabic medicine – from manuscripts produced in the
Po Valley in the late 14th century. Early – and extremely influential – German
scholarship for the history of medicine in Europe came with Heinrich
Häser’s three-volume Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medizin und der epidemischen
Krankheiten: Geschichte der Medizin im Alterthum und Mittelalter (Jena, 1882;
rpt.1971). Notable new scholarship in German is the edited volume of con-
ference proceedings from Andreas Meyer and Jürgen Schulz-Grobert,
Gesund und krank im Mittelalter: Marburger Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte der Medi-
zin (2007), containing new research on German and European medical history
of the Middle Ages. Research in English with a continental focus includes
Vivian Nutton’s “Medicine at the German Universities 1348–1500: A Pre-
liminary Sketch,” Roger. French et al., ed., Medicine from the Black Death to the
French Disease (1998), 85–109. Nutton has also placed focus on the Nether-
lands: “Dr James’ Legacy: Dutch Printing and the History of Medicine,” Lotte
Hellinga et al., ed., The Bookshop of the World: The Role of the Low Countries in
661 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

the Book Trade, 1473–1941 (2001), 207–18. Medicine and materia medica in Ire-
land have long been overlooked, with the exception of the work of Winifred
Wulff, who edited the Rosa Anglica, a Latin text that was extensively trans-
lated into Irish, in 1929. This neglect is slowly being redressed, not least by
Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha (“Irish Medical Manuscripts,” Irish Phar-
macy Journal 69.5 [1991]: 201–02), and by the important editoral work of the
CELT Project (http://www.ucc.ie/celt/medical.html).
Cornelius O’ Boyle’s book-length study of the Ars medicine builds upon
the important research carried out by Paul Oskar Kristeller on Articella in
the late 1970s (“Bartholomaeus, Musandinus and Maurus of Salerno,” Italia
medioevale e umanistica 19 [1976]: 57–87). O’ Boyle, in The Art of Medicine: Medi-
cal Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (1998), traces the textual tradi-
tion of the Ars, noting that of all texts studied in medieval and Renaissance
medical schools, it attracted the most commentaries. Furthermore, O’ Boyle
uses the Ars to compare medical centers in the 13th and 14th centuries, signifi-
cantly identifying how “differences in the style of textual arrangement in
Italy anticipated in Paris, and vice versa” (Walton O. Schalick, “Book
Review,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 55.4 [2000]: 428).
Schalick also notes that O’Boyle marries textual and social history to
demonstrate how the text was used by both students and teachers. Vern L.
Bullough has been a major contributor, specifically with regard to the role
of the universities, the professionalization of medicine, and the experiences
of both students and teachers of medicine not just in England but on the
continent. Notable amongst his numerous contributions are: “The Teaching
of Surgery at the University of Montpellier in the Thirteenth Century,” Jour-
nal of the History of Medicine 15 (1960): 202–04; “Medical Studies at Medieval
Oxford,” Speculum 36 (1961): 600–12; and the monograph The Development of
Medicine as a Profession (1966).
Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1999) collects some of
the published articles of Jerry Stannard. Perhaps reflecting the trans-disci-
plinary nature of the history of medicine, this work gathers papers of Stan-
nard’s that were previously disparate, described in one review as having
been “hidden away in Festschriften, congress proceedings, and small news-
letters” as well as in “journals [such] as the Bulletin of the History of Medicine”
(Ynez Violé O’Neill and Mark H. Infusino, “Book Review,” Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 56.2 [2001]: 184). Hailed as the “authority
on premodern medical pharmacology,” Stannard’s collection is divided
into four main sections: medieval herbals, late medieval Rezeptliteratur,
Renaissance Italy and Germany, and species studies, completing a study that
is not only important and comprehensive, but reflective of Stannard’s ulti-
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 662

mate legacy: “the development of scholarship that does not disdain Fach-
literatur” (O’Neill and Infusino, 2001, 187). Significant here, too, is Tony
Hunt’s Plant Names of Medieval England (1989), a scholarly and comprehensive
account of the complex linguistic history and medical significance of botany.
Linda Ersham Voigts, “Scientific and Medical Books,” Book Production
and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pear-
sall (1989), 345–402, and Peter M. Jones, “Medicine and Science,” The Cam-
bridge History of the Book in Britain, 1400–1557, ed. Lotte Hellinga et al. (1999),
433–69, are the starting points for students of book history, textual dissemi-
nation, and reception of medieval English medical treatises. Parallel to this,
Renate Wittern offers a solid overview of the continuities and changes
in the history of medicine from the 14th to the 16th century (“Kontinuität und
Wandel in der Medizin des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts,” Mittelalter und frühe
Neuzeit, ed. Walter Haug, 1999, 550–71). The cataloguing work carried out
by Singer (1919) and Thorndike and Kibre (1937) are still relevant, built
upon by Voigts (1984), Keiser (1999), and the re-publications by Voigts
and Kurtz (2000), and Pahta et al. (2004).
In the areas of the contribution of medieval women to medicine, and the
medical care of women in the Middle Ages, Monica H. Green’s research
must be the starting point. Falling into both categories, Green’s edited
translation of and commentary on the 11th-century Trotula, a compendium of
gynecological, regimens of health, and other material pertaining to the well-
being of women, is the first modern translation into English of a text that cir-
culated widely and in learned circles for much of the medieval period (Chris-
tiane Nockels, “Book Review,” Journal of the History of Medicine 57 [2002]:
353). The Trotula, reputedly authored by a woman named Trota in Salerno, is
not only revealing in terms of contemporary medical treatment of women
but is important too for the study of attitudes to and actualities of female sex-
ual practices. A general study on women’s health issues, specifically gynecol-
ogy, is Paul Diepgen’s Frau und Frauenheilkunde in der Kultur des Mittelalters
(1963). Significant in the latter distinction is Beryl Rowland’s Medieval
Woman’s Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (1981), which
edits a text from London, British Library, MS Sloane 2463; for a response
to this, see Jerry Stannard and Linda E. Voigts in Speculum 57 (1982):
422–26. M.-R. Hallaert does similar work in “The Sekenesse of wymmen:
A Middle English Treatise on Diseases in Women (Yale Medical Library,
MS 47 fols. 60r-71v,” Scripta: Mediaeval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 8
(1982). For a comprehensive study of the relationship between the body,
medicine, and gender, see Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomassat, Sex-
uality and Medicine in the Middle Ages (1988).
663 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

Anglo-Norman medicine and medical texts have recently had one sole
champion in Tony Hunt; his Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England:
Introduction and Texts (1990) edited some previously ignored treatises, recipes,
and notes. In Anglo-Norman Medicine, vol. 1: Roger Frugard’s ‘Chirurgia’ and
the ‘Practica brevis’ of Platearius (1994), he treats the scholastic tradition; both
texts are academic and theoretical, and Hunt comments on the contexts in
which they survive, noting the close connections between French and Eng-
lish medicine in the 12th century (John Scarborough, “Review,” Isis 86.3
(1995): 477–48). Scarborough observes, too, that the fresh editions of and
commentaries on these surgical texts represent the “long-awaited correc-
tions to the badly edited Latin texts by Karl Sudhoff” at the beginning
of the 20th century (477). The second volume of that work, Shorter Treatises
(1997), completes the edition of the Anglo-Norman texts from Cambridge,
Trinity College, MS O.1.20 (the Trotula and a treatise on visitation of the sick)
and includes two medical compendia: the “Euperiston” from Edinburgh,
National Library of Scotland, MS 18.6.9, and the practica from Cambridge,
Trinity College, MS O.5.32. Volume 2 also contains a comprehensive bibli-
ography, manuscript descriptions, and discussion. Earlier work on the social
history Anglo-Norman medicine was carried out by Edward J. Kealey: Medi-
eval Medicus: A Social History of Anglo-Norman Medicine (1981).
The contribution of Karl Sudhoff to German medical history cannot be
ignored. Generally credited with the professionalization of medical history
as a discipline in German universities, Sudhoff published extensively, his
focus being philological and source-oriented (Thomas Rütten, “Karl Sud-
hoff and ‘the Fall’ of German Medical History,” Locating Medical History: The
Stories and their Meanings, ed. Frank Huisman and John Harley Warner,
2004, 95–114). His editorial work for the Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin (est.
1907) led to the change in name to Sudhoff ’s Archiv in 1929; both publications
are littered with his contributions, and are too numerous to mention here;
however, among the most influential are his work on the translator Gerard of
Cremona: “Die kurze Vita und das Verzeichnis der Arbeiten Gerhards von
Cremona,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 14 (1923): 73–82, and his Beiträge
zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter: Graphische und textliche Untersuchungen
in mittelalterlichen Handschriften, 2 vols. (1914–1918).
Medical imagery, or illustrations in medical manuscripts (or, indeed,
accompanying medical texts) were also concerns of Sudhoff’s; he surveyed
anatomical drawings and schemas in “Anatomische Zeichnungen (Sche-
mata) aus dem 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und eine Skelettzeichnung des
14. Jahrhunderts,” Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin (1907), 49–65. Such
matters, however, have more recently had their champions in Loren Mac-
Historiography of Medieval Medicine 664

Kinney and Peter M. Jones, who build upon the work of Charles Singer
(“Thirteenth Century Miniatures Illustrating Medical Practice,” Proceedings of
the Royal Society of Medicine 9 [1916]: 29–42). MacKinney’s Medical Illus-
trations in Medieval Manuscripts (1965) is influential, covering medical manu-
scripts and texts in nearly 200 European library repositories; Jones’s Medi-
eval Medical Miniatures (1984) and the slightly revised version, Medieval
Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (1998) are comprehensive and authori-
tative, and contain admirable, wide-ranging surveys of medieval European
medicine in their respective introductions. Also useful is Robert Herr-
linger’s A History of Medical Illustrations from Antiquity to AD 1600 (1966).
Some recent, general yet important overviews are excellent for an intro-
duction to trends in research: in particular, Carol Rawcliffe, Medicine and
Society in Later Medieval England (1995) and Faye Getz, Medicine in the English
Middle Ages (1998). An accessible study has also recently been produced by
Roy Porter: Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine (2003). Rawcliffe has,
moreover, contributed a valuable compendium of documentary sources:
Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England (1995).

D. Discussion of Current Research

In recent times, technology has been employed to produce searchable data-
bases of texts surviving in Middle English in particular. The CD-Rom,
Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference
(routinely cited as eVK; Linda Ersham Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz,
2000) hosts an searchable database of texts, critical editions and secondary
material, and catalogues approximately ten thousand items from 1,134
codices surviving from the period 1375–1475 (Linda Ersham Voigts,
“What’s the Word? Bilingualism in Late-Medieval England,” Speculum 71.4
[1996]: 813–26). Revealingly, only one hundred of these texts have been fully
edited (Päivi Pahta and Irma Taavitsainen, “Vernacularisation of Scien-
tific and Medical Writing in Its Sociohistorical Context,” Medical and Scientific
Writing in Late Medieval English, 2004, 1–22. This publication helpfully incor-
porates the still-relevant work carried out by Lynn Thorndike and Pearl
Kibre in their ‘TK’ Index (Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in
Latin (1937, rev. 1963).
An equally important electronic publication comes out of the collabor-
ation between Päivi Pahta, Martii Mäkinen, and Irma Taavitsainen,
along with Raymond Hickey, taking the form of a fully-searchable CD-Rom
entitled Middle English Medical Texts or MEMT (2005). This resource, which is
intended for use by philologists and linguists as well as historians of medi-
cine, covers the period 1375–1500 (from c. 1330 for recipes). It differs from
665 Historiography of Medieval Medicine

eVK in that it mostly edits texts from printed sources, though some texts have
been transcribed for the first time from their manuscript sources (Peter
Grund, “Book Review,” Journal of English Linguistics 35.1 [2007]: 103). The
compilers impose a classification system on the eighty-three texts examined:
surgical, specialized, and remedies and materia medica, distinguishing verse
texts. The CD-Rom features a comprehensive introduction, detailing edi-
torial practices, relevant scholarly publications and editions, and catalogues,
cross-referencing both Keiser (1999), eVK and the Linguistic Atlas of Late Medi-
eval English (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin, 1986) (Year’s Work in English
Studies 86.1: 216). The CD-Rom places its focus on the later Middle Ages, nat-
urally, due to the exponential increase in the numbers of texts appearing in
English, as opposed to in Latin or French, at this time; significantly, this pub-
lication also contains extracts from, for example, John Trevisa’s On the Proper-
ties of Things and from some versions of the Secretum, both of which contain
medical advice and lore.
Advances in textual scholarship and in the identification, classification,
and cataloguing of texts has allowed research to be concentrated on specific
contexts of medieval medicine; M. Teresa Tavormina’s Sex, Ageing and Death
in a Medieval Medical Compendium (2006) places focus on one MS, Cambridge,
Trinity College, R.14.52, and seems to be representative of a shift in studies
of medieval medicine. Work by the same author on uroscopy is similarly
demonstrative of the tendency toward focused, specialized studies (“The
Twenty-Jordan Series: An Illustrated Middle English Uroscopy Text,” ANQ:
A Quarterly Journal of Short Notes, Articles, and Reviews 18.3 (2005): 43–67.
On the whole, the future of research into medicine in the European
Middle Ages is taking a directional change, discovering what medical texts
and their audiences can tell us about reading contexts and communities, scri-
bal activity, and book history, rather than just the theory and practice of
medicine. Recent work on reception, sociolinguistics, and translation col-
lected by Taavitsainen and Pahta (2004) is significant in that it fore-
grounds the more holistic treatment of the history of medicine in the Middle
Ages.

Select Bibliography
Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body, (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Tony Hunt, Anglo-Norman Medicine, 2 vols.
(Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 1994); Loren C. MacKinney, Early Medieval Medi-
cine with Special Reference to France and Chartres (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1937); Roy Porter, The Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge University
Press, 2006); Rossell Hope Robbins, “Medical Manuscripts in Middle English,” Specu-
lum 45.3 (1970): 393–415; George Sarton, “The History of Science versus the History
Historiography of Medieval Science 666

of Medicine,” Isis 23.2 (1935): 313–20; Henry A. Siegerist, “The History of Medicine
and The History of Science,” Bulletin in the History of Medicine 4 (1936): 1–13; Jerry
Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Brookfield, VT: Ash-
gate, 1999); Scientific and Medical Writing in Late Medieval English, ed. Irma Taavitsai-
nen and Päivi Pahta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Carrie Griffin

Historiography of Medieval Science

A. Foundations and Early Debates: Scientific Revolution or Continuity

The history of 20th-century interest in medieval science and science history
begins with George Sarton (1884–1956) and Pierre Duhem (1861–1916).
Sarton is considered to be the founder of the history of science, since he
worked to establish the infrastructure and tools required for the institu-
tionalization of the discipline. In 1912, he founded the journal Isis, which
continues as the foremost journal in the field. With funding from the Carne-
gie institute, he conducted research and directed graduate students at Har-
vard. His Introduction to the History of Science (3 vol., 1919–48) was intended to
be a compendium of sources for students. However, he underestimated the
slow pace of historical research and after three decades, he was only able to
complete half of the projected volumes, and so the study ends with 14th-cen-
tury Europe. Sarton had established the study of science history, believing
that it would become a “new humanism” and would celebrate the achieve-
ment of human progress from superstitious belief to enlightened rationalism
(Thackray and Merton, “George Sarton,” Dictionary of Scientific Biogra-
phy, 1976, XI: 113). Sarton’s idealistic teleology of progress has disap-
peared as a methodological principle and an explanation of scientific change.
However, questions concerning the causes of scientific change remain cen-
tral to the discipline: To what degree are changes in scientific thought the
consequence of historical continuity or the result of rebellion against tradi-
tion? What factors should be considered when examining the causes for
change? Is the history of scientific theory best described as a sequence of
intellectually motivated changes, as “internalist” historians would argue? Or
are scientific changes motivated by social or economic pressures, or by per-
sonal or religious beliefs, as “externalist” historians maintain?
Pierre Duhem provided a radical reformulation of the first question,
and introduced a new thesis for the nature of scientific change. Duhem was
667 Historiography of Medieval Science

perhaps the first person to recognize the intellectual worth of medieval

science and to challenge Burkhart’s representation of the Middle Ages as a
period of intellectual stagnation. In his three-volume Études sur Léonard de
Vinci (1906–1913) Duhem argued that many of the scientific theories sup-
posedly developed by Leonardo and Descartes were already found among the
14th-century scholastics. In the first four volumes of Le système du monde he
presented medieval theories of cosmology, and demonstrated how the reac-
tion to Aristotelian science in the 14th century allowed a new conceptualiz-
ation of the word-system to develop and flourish. Duhem translated and set
into print the work of Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan and other scholastics,
whose writings were previously unknown, being concealed in the Paris
archives. Drawing from the innovative achievements of these masters,
Duhem argued that the history of scientific change was characterized prin-
cipally by continuity and respect for tradition, not by revolution, reaction or
the inspiration of isolated genius. He argued that 14th-century theories of
motion already contained the essential elements of classical physics, and that
many of the so-called innovations of the 17th century had drawn largely from
this earlier period.
Duhem’s thesis had a polarizing effect and initiated an on-going debate
between medievalists, who defended the importance of earlier innovations,
and early modernists, who saw their chosen period as introducing a funda-
mentally different character of thought. Alexandre Koyré (1882–1964), a
historian of early modern science, was perhaps Duhem’s most persuasive
and influential opponent. He maintained that revolution was a necessary
part of scientific change, and indeed Koyré’s description of the Scientific
Revolution shaped the 20th-century understanding of the notion (H. Floris
Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, 1994, 74). Koyré
argued that the science of the early modern era broke radically with its prede-
cessors. If the early modern period had intellectual precursors at all, these
were to be found among the Greeks with Archimedes, not in the Middle ages
with Oresme and Buridan, as Duhem claimed (Koyré, Études galiléennes,
1939). He also argued that Duhem had grossly over-exaggerated the import-
ance of the Condemnations of 1277 as inaugurating a new era in scientific
thought, since the event was more accurately the result of ignorance and mis-
understanding (Koyré “Le Vide et l’espace infinie au XIVe siècle,” AHDLMA
24 [1949]: 47–91).
Several scholars in the United States extended Duhem’s continuity
thesis, applying the principle to other historical periods or other aspects of
scientific thought. During the years that Duhem was engaged in research
for his Études sur Léonard de Vinci, Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965) had nearly
Historiography of Medieval Science 668

completed his dissertation on the place of magic and experimental science in

intellectual history. Thorndike received his doctorate in 1905 and in the
following decade published several articles on Roger Bacon and astrology.
The publication of the first volume of The History of Magic and Experimental
Science (1923) marked the beginning of his life’s work. This encyclopedic
study of the history of science would extend eight volumes and four decades
(1923–64), and today Thorndike’s study remains an important research
tool for the history of science. Like Duhem, Thorndike introduced into
currency a wealth of texts and authors which had long remained hidden in
European archives. However, Thorndike’s handling of primary sources
was more careful and attentive than that of Duhem. Duhem often over-
translated the scholastic authors, presenting medieval natural philosophy
in the terms of 20th-century physics. In addition, Duhem had also set
the writings of individual authors into an overarching narrative of progress.
Thorndike’s scholarship resisted providing a connecting narrative.
Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937) drew from Thorndike’s work, but
focused his attention upon the 12th century. He considered the dissemi-
nation of Arabic treatises in mathematics and physics over the course of the
century, and demonstrated how the influx of these texts contributed to the
cultural renaissance of that period (Studies in the History of Medieval Science,
1924). Thorndike provided a favorable review of the book (Review:
“C.H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science,” American Histori-
cal Review 30 [1925]: 344–46).
The scientific topics Duhem investigated – physical theory, cosmology,
and mathematics – would dominate and define the history of science during
its first few decades. Attention to these areas was reinforced by George Sar-
ton, who preferred the theoretical nature of physical science. Sarton pro-
moted internalist histories; that is, he considered the history of science to be
a history purely of ideas. He objected to the study of the history of magic,
which he considered to be antithetical to true scientific inquiry: the historian
of science does not study magic, Sarton claimed, “because this does
not help him very much to understand human progress” (Introduction to the
History of Science, 1927, I: 19). Consequently, Sarton was initially critical of
Thorndike’s work (Review: “Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and
Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era,” Isis 6
[1924]: 74–89). However, he did acknowledge Thorndike’s contributions:
the eleventh volume of Osiris (1954) is dedicated to Lynn Thorndike. Like-
wise, Sarton considered the history of life sciences to be secondary to the
study of physics and mathematics: “the historian of medicine who imagines
that he is ipso facto a historian of science, is laboring under a gross de-
669 Historiography of Medieval Science

lusion […] however excellent of its kind, considered as history of science, [the
history of medicine] is essentially incomplete and misleading” (Sarton,
“The History of Science Versus the History of Medicine,” Isis 23 [1935]:
315–20). Sarton’s preferences held a wider currency among historians of
his generation, and so the initial decades of the history of science were domi-
nated by these interests. The history of biology, chemistry and medicine has
received less attention. The history of medieval technology emerged as a
topic in the early 1960s, thanks largely to Lynn White, Jr. The history of oc-
cult arts and experimentation has held an ambiguous relationship with his-
torians of science, being disregarded by Sarton and positivist historians,
but supported by the Warburg Institute and its community of scholars. Dur-
ing the 1960s the breadth of topics encompassing medieval science would
continue to diversify, as scholars became more attentive to the ways in which
social factors impinge upon and shape theories.
The scientific problems which Duhem had introduced continued to re-
ceive attention between the 1920s and 1960s. These topics included theories
of projectile motion, the acceleration of bodies in free fall, the intention and
remission of forms, the reformulation of Aristotelian theories of space and
time, and finally, speculations concerning other possible worlds and void
space. However, while Duhem’s topics persisted, the cardinal points of his
continuity thesis were modified. In 1959, Marshall Clagett (1916–2005) a
student of Lynn Thorndike, observed that “the succeeding study of me-
dieval mechanics has been largely devoted to an extension or refutation of
Duhem’s work” (The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, 1959, xxi). There
are three principle components to Duhem’s continuity thesis, all of which
were revised by the scholars of these decades. First, Duhem claimed that
the principal achievements of 17th-century physics were already found in
14th-century science. For example, he claimed that Buridan’s impetus theory
already embodied the law of inertia. The second part of Duhem’s thesis
identified the Condemnations of 1277 as the primary cause for the remark-
able outgrowth of innovative theories throughout the 14th century. The Con-
demnations of 1277 had challenged Aristotelian philosophy and its defini-
tions of time and space. Consequently philosophers were free to formulate
new definitions of the universe and so cultivate a new breed of experimental
science. Duhem even claimed that 1277 signaled the birth date of modern
science. The third, less crucial aspect of the thesis was that the principal
achievements of the 14th century occurred in France. He gave considerable
attention to the French masters Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme, and over-
looked the role of the Oxford Calculators. He often credited the French masters
with innovations which had in fact originated among the Oxford Calculators
Historiography of Medieval Science 670

(John E. Murdoch, “Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval

Science and Philosophy in the Lain West,” Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra otto e
novecento, ed. Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maieru, 1991, 253–302).
The Dutch scholar, Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965), was one of
the first to respond to Duhem’s work. In his Val en Worp (1924), he continued
to examine the topics which Duhem introduced: the theory of free fall and
projectile motion. His De Mechanisering van het wereldbeeld (1950) (in English
trans.: The Mechanization of the World Picture, 1960) proposed that scientific
developments were spurred by the “mathematization” of nature; in other
words mathematical and mechanical explanations of physical change were
fundamental in bringing about modern science. For instance, Bradwardine’s
theories of motion, describing variations in speeds through a series of pro-
portions, thus represent an important step towards Galileo’s experimen-
tations in measuring velocities. Like Duhem, Dijksterhuis emphasized
the continuity of scientific thought, though he would also criticize Duhem
for inaccuracies in his translations.
Anneliese Maier (1905–1971) provided one of the most influential reas-
sessments of Duhem’s thesis. She agreed with principle of continuity; how-
ever she criticized Duhem for anachronism and presentism. Duhem had
often translated scholastic theories into the terms of 20th-century physics
presentind them in relation to the writings of Galileo or Leonardo. Maier
maintained that 14th-century scholasticism must be examined in its own
terms, without reference to later periods. While Duhem translated his Latin
sources into French, Maier provided extensive Latin quotations to supple-
ment her German prose, and she used the terminology found within the
authors themselves, rather than importing terms from classical physics. She
modified Duhem’s continuity thesis. She demonstrated that the 14th-cen-
tury theory of impetus was fundamentally different from the law of inertia.
Thus, she claimed, the latter generation of 17th-century scientists can indeed
be credited with introducing a revolutionary new order of nature. The title of
her book, Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert (1949), suggestively indicates
her response to Duhem’s thesis. Obviously, then, Maier did not see 1277
as the birthdate of modern science; nor did she consider it the primary cause
of change initiating the re-conceptualization of nature in the 14th century.
She looked for other historical influences, and found that 14th-century natu-
ral philosophy had imported many of its innovations from optics, medicine
and technology. Apart from her criticisms and revisions, Maier still hailed
Duhem’s research as a pioneering achievement, not only because he had
brought to light so much scholastic material, but because he opened up a new
field of research.
671 Historiography of Medieval Science

Maier published a series of articles on 14th-century impetus theory

throughout the 1940s. The articles are still considered authoritative today.
At the time of their publication, however, her contributions were not ac-
knowledged, being overshadowed by the war. At the end of the 1950s, Mar-
shall Clagett drew attention to the importance of her work, and he is likely
responsible for the recognition she received in North America and her in-
fluence there. In the same preface where Clagett states the ambiguity of
Duhem’s legacy, he praises Maier for having put Duhem’s discoveries into
their proper setting (The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, 1959, xxi). Be-
cause of Clagett’s praise, Maier’s method of presentation and analysis
formed the model for examining scholastic material, situating it in its philo-
sophical and historical context (Edith Sylla, Texts and Contexts in Ancient and
Medieval Science, 1997, xii).
Marshall Clagett’s scholarship shared with Maier’s own a careful
attention to detail and fidelity to 14th-century terms. His most influential
book, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (1959) examined the medieval
science of weights and motion. He drew attention to the importance of the
Oxford Calculators, which Duhem had overlooked. He collaborated with
Ernst Moody, who originally had served on Clagett’s dissertation com-
mittee, and together they edited a collection of medieval statistical works:
The Medieval Science of Weights: Treatises ascribed to Euclid, Archimedes, Thatbit ibn
Qurrar, Jordanus de Nemore, and Blasius of Parma (1952). Clagett would pursue
this interest in the history of weights, editing Latin translations of Archi-
medes’ writings (Archimedes in the Middle Ages, 10 vol., 1964–1984). Clagett
engaged in a detailed investigation of specific topics and signaled the need
for more critical editions and translations of sources in medieval science
which might facilitate further studies of this nature. The students of Moody
and Clagett answered this call and produced critical editions of their own:
Lamar Crosby, Jr., Curtis Wilson, and Edward Grant, have provided a
small library of edited texts, published through University of Wisconsin.
Alister Crombie presented a variation Duhem’s continuity thesis,
invoking a different body of evidence. His Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of
Experimental Science, 1100–1700 (1953) claimed that the procedure of experi-
mentation carried out by Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon formed the
model for the experimental method of Francis Bacon, Descartes, Galileo,
and Newton. All of these thinkers recorded the results of their experiments
by writing discourses and in doing so, they followed a medieval tradition.
Clagett spoke positively of the book, but cautioned that the causal chain
which Crombie had outlined exaggerated the evidence (Review: “A. Crom-
bie, Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science,” Isis 46
Historiography of Medieval Science 672

[1955]: 66–69). Koyré challenged the book and argued that the documen-
tation of experimentation is not enough to create science (“The Origins of
Modern Science: New Interpretation,” Diogenes 16 [1956]: 1–22). Koyré was
interested in the more theoretical branches of science. Like Dijksterhuis,
he believed that the mathematization of physical sciences had lead to the
Scientific Revolution and he disregarded the role of the technical or experi-
mental as a force for scientific change. Crombie would find a more sympath-
etic voice with Lynn White and others who were more willing to consider
the role of the technical or experimental in shaping science theories.

B. “Paradigm Shifts”: Social Forces in Science History

During the 1960s, the study of science history changed dramatically, as schol-
arship became more aware of how knowledge can be shaped and determined
by social forces. In 1962, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
was published. In the year prior to this publication, a symposium on science
history was held at Oxford, and it anticipated some of the redirections her-
alded by Kuhn’s study. The title of the published proceedings, Scientific
Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social and Technical Conditions for Scien-
tific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present, as well as the
list of presented topics, both point to a growing interest in sociological factors
and in the role of technology; the papers show that the range of topics in
science history was becoming increasingly diversified. Lynn’s paper, “What
Accelerated Technological Progress in the Western Middle Ages” anticipated
his book, Medieval Technology and Social Change, published in the following year.
Kuhn’s paper “The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research” anticipated
the problems discussed in the The Structure. A. C. Crombie’s introduction to
the published proceedings acknowledges the diversity of factors, both inter-
nal and external, which the historian of science considers. The study of
science history began to look increasingly interdisciplinary.
The interdisciplinary nature of science history was only underscored by
Kuhn’s important study. What is so powerful and original with Kuhn’s ac-
count is that it describes scientific theory as being embedded in culture and
language. He describes a knowledge system as shaped, not only by its own in-
ternal logic, but by definitions which are agreed upon by a community of
practitioners; thus scientific theory is a sociological phenomenon. He de-
scribes knowledge systems as languages with their own lexicons, which
require translation; thus science theory shares the hermeneutical problems
of literary studies. Kuhn was hugely successful in disseminating his thesis
because he invited the entry of different disciplines. In response, these disci-
plines appropriated his model, so that the term “paradigm shift” is today ap-
673 Historiography of Medieval Science

plied throughout the humanities and social sciences. To what degree a

Kuhnian paradigm shift, in its strictest sense, can be applied to medieval
science is debated (Edward Grant, “Aristotelianism and the Longevity of
the Medieval World View,” History of Science 16 [1978]: 93–106).
The role of belief systems or symbolic mentalities which had been pre-
viously characterized as anti-rational and antithetical to science were recon-
sidered and shown to be influential for major scientific thinkers. Frances
Yates pointed to the influence of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism in the
work of Giordano Bruno (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1964). Her
claims were often overstated, and her work has been reconsidered and modi-
fied in succeeding studies (Charles B. Schmitt, Studies in Renaissance Philosophy
and Science, 1981; Robert Westman, Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution,
1977). Studies examining the origins of modern chemistry in alchemical and
occult practices were stimulated by Walter Pagel (Paracelsus: An Introduction
to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, 1958), and Allen Debus
(The English Paracelsians, 1965). Michel Foucault’s Les mots et les choses: Une
archéologie des sciences humaines (1966), might be grouped as part of these inves-
tigations, since it also examined how symbolic mentalities persisted in the
scientific discourse of the early modern period. However, Brian Copen-
haver has challenged the historical grounding of Foucault’s method,
describing the work as “architecture,” not “archeology” (“Did Science have a
Renaissance?” Isis 83 [1992]). The intersection of the history of science and
the religion was examined by the Dutch historian R. Hooykaas, who made
the counter-intuitive claim that Greek science was hindered by its overconfi-
dence in reason, and that the facts of nature can only be clearly interpreted
when the claims of reason are balanced with experience (Hooykaas, Religion
and the Rise of Modern Science, 1972). Amos Funkenstein demonstrated how
medieval theological conceptions of divine omnipresence and divine know-
ledge were transformed into the principles of 17th-century science (Funken-
stein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 1986).
Given the tremendous growth in the field from the 1970s to the present,
the following survey can only provide a sketch of major contributions. John
Murdoch has written numerous articles examining the Oxford Calculators
and the principal advancements which distinguished 14th-century physics
and mathematics. Edith Sylla’s published dissertation The Oxford Calculators
and the Mathematics of Motion, 1320–1350, Physics and Measurement by Latitudes
(1991) provides a detailed investigation of the major figures in the Oxford
school. Murdoch’s historiographical article surveying the scholarly litera-
ture on 14th-century philosophy is an invaluable research tool for navigating
these studies (“Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and
Historiography of Medieval Science 674

Philosophy in the Latin West” Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento,
ed. Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maieru, 1991).
Edward Grant’s books cover a wider historical range and address the
history of cosmologies. His Much Ado About Nothing (1981) examines a history
of theories concerning void space and the vacuum. His Planets, Stars and Orbs:
The Medieval Cosmos 1200–1687 (1991) considers changes in theories of cos-
mology and natural philosophy over the course of these centuries. His
A Source Book in Medieval Science (1974) remains the most comprehensive col-
lection of primary sources in medieval science. Richard Sorabji also inves-
tigates the history of cosmologies; however his research engages more
directly with the transmission of Greek theories of cosmology through the
Arabic and Jewish traditions (Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 1983; Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian
Science, 1987).
David Lindberg’s books provide a helpful overview, showing the his-
torical development of topics. His earlier career was devoted to the medieval
science of optics. He edited John Pecham and the Science of Optics (1970), and later
wrote an overview of medieval optical theories: Theories of Vision from al-Kindi
to Kepler (1976). His Science in the Middle Ages (1978) provided a compilation of
essays from leading scholars of different fields and aimed to serve as an intro-
duction to each of these branches of medieval science. The Beginnings of West-
ern Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious and Insti-
tutional Context 600–1450 (1992) readdresses the topics of Science in the Middle
Ages, and inserts the topics into a framework spanning centuries and cultural
traditions.

C. The History of Medicine

The historiography of medical history has undergone a similar transition,
from an emphasis on the intellectual theories of doctors, to a cultural history
of practices and patients. The earliest histories of medicine appeared during
the 18th and 19th centuries and were written by doctors for a medical audi-
ence. H. E. Sigerist was one of the first scholars to consider medicine as a so-
ciological phenomenon. When Sarton questioned the status of medicine as
a science in an article titled “The History of Science Versus the History of
Medicine” Sigerist issued a printed response titled “The History of Medi-
cine and the History of Science” in which he defended the history of medicine
as a field of study in its own right. The history of medicine is not a subsidiary
of science history, he claimed, but a social science (“The History of Medicine
and the History of Science,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 4
[1936]: 1–13). Sigerist’s A History of Medicine (2 vol., 1951–1961) is one of the
675 Historiography of Medieval Science

first histories to include a study of patients, as well as doctors, and to draw

from historical and medical texts alike.
The history of medieval medicine has given considerable attention to
medical treatises and institutional history. Pearl Kibre published several ar-
ticles on the curriculum of medical studies at medieval institutions; she also
edited the Hippocrates Latinus. Vivian Nutton examined the continuity of
the Galenic tradition. Danielle Jacquart investigated the transmission of
Arabic medicine into the Latin west, giving particular attention to the in-
fluence of Gerard of Cremona’s translations.
The cultural impact of disease has been most extensively investigated in
relation to the Plague. Studies include Philip Ziegler’s Black Death (1969);
Ann Carmichael, The Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (1986); Rose-
mary Horrox, The Black Death (1994).
The rift between institutional learning and the experience of the patient
is more pronounced in medieval medicine, where the education of physi-
cians was based upon texts and theory, while those who practiced healing-arts
could include unschooled practitioners and midwives. Michael Mcvaugh’s
Medicine Before the Plague: Practitioners and their Patients (1993) successfully
bridges the polarity between theory and practice. He draws upon his knowl-
edge of Arnald of Villanova’s medical writings and examines the relation be-
tween his theoretical writing and the documented evidence of his practice.
The collection of essays included in Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Cul-
ture (ed. Sheila D. Campbell et al., 1992), investigates links between medical
practice and its social impact. Carole Rawcliffe’s Medicine and Society in Later
Medieval England (1995) draws from literary sources to reveal popular beliefs,
examines the economic factors of cost and availability of treatment, and con-
siders the largely undocumented history of midwives. Faye Getz’s Medicine
in the English Middle Ages (1998) examines the relation between the medical
practitioner and patient, and considers how the practitioner establishes a
reputation and audience. Nancy Sirasi’s Medieval and Early Renaissance Medi-
cine: an Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (1994) provides an overview of
medieval medical theory and its applications.
Several studies have examined the intersection between medical theory
and notions of the body and sexuality: Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Differ-
ence in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (1993); Danielle Jacquart
and Claude Thomasett, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages (1995); Caro-
line Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Human Body in Medieval Religion (1992).
Historiography of Medieval Science 676

D. The History of Technology

The history of medieval technology was pioneered by Lynn White. He intro-
duced the topic to North American scholarship (“Technology and Invention
in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 15 [1940]: 141–59). A. C. Crombie, given his
interest in history of experimentation, encouraged White’s scholarship and
invited him to contribute to the Oxford Symposium on Scientific Change
in 1961. White’s Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) explored devel-
opments in agriculture, irrigation, and military technology. He showed the
impact technological innovation had on medieval society, and demonstrated
how advances in agriculture led to increasing food supplies and rising popu-
lation levels. He also introduced new models of research, drawing upon
evidence from archeology, iconography and art history, as opposed to docu-
mented records (White, Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays, In-
troduction, 1978). White’s research focused on technologies in agriculture.
However, the field of medieval technology has significantly broadened to in-
clude the study of innovations in glass-making, cartography, navigation,
and jewelry. The list of entries in the recently published Medieval Science Tech-
nology and Medicine: An Encyclopedia (ed. Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey,
and Faith Wallis, 2005), indicates the extent to which the field has diversi-
fied.
Following the interest in the influence of technology upon scientific
theory, Elizabeth Eisenstein examined the role of the printing press in the
Scientific Revolution in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979). She
argued that the Scientific Revolution was made possible by print technology,
since it allowed for the dissemination and influence of emerging theories.
Eisenstein’s perceptive appreciation of the power of print technology to
establish knowledge and authority has been tremendously influential; how-
ever, several of her claims within the book have required modification (Books
and the Sciences in History, ed. Marina Frasca-Spada, and Nick Jardine,
2000; and Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book, 1998). These studies on print
technology have implications for our understanding of medieval science,
since they suggest how communication media shape scientific theories and
communities.
From Sarton’s unified vision of the objectives of the history of science,
the field has grown and diversified to include a broad range of questions and
themes. This growth implies certain challenges. There have been an increas-
ing number of studies on specialized topics, and it has become very difficult
to offer a synoptic, generalized account of the history which the discipline
purports to examine. One speaks of a “Scientific Revolution” with quo-
tations marks, since so many studies have pointed to its failings and anach-
677 Historiography of Medieval Science

ronistic presuppositions. Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (ed. David

Lindberg, and Robert Westman, 1990) contains a collection of statements
from prominent historians who consider whether the term “Scientific Revol-
ution” still holds validity. One of the future challenges for the discipline will
be to recover or discover its purpose and identity.

Select Bibliography
Marshall Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1959); H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical
Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Edward Grant, A Source Book in
Medieval Science (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1974); John Harley Warner,
“History of Science and the Science of Medicine,” Osiris 10 (1995): 164–93; David
Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European scientific tradition in philosophi-
cal, religious and institutional context, 600B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992); Anneliese Maier, Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert: Studien zur Natur-
philosophie der Spätscholastik (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1949); John E. Mur-
doch, “Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy in the
Lain West,” Gli studi filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, ed. Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso
Maieru (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1991), 253–302; Nancy Sirasi, Medieval and Early
Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1990); Lynn Thorndike, The History of Magic and Experimental Science in
the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 8 vols.,
1923–1958).

Sarah Powrie
Iberian Studies 678

Iberian Studies

A. Definition
Medieval Iberian studies began with fits and starts, but slowly grew and
developed to become an energetic field of study that continues to open new
avenues to illuminating and understanding the Middle Ages and the role of
Iberian inhabitants in shaping Western, as well as Eastern thought and tradi-
tion. In broad terms, the history of Iberian studies may be said to begin in the
19th century with the three-volume work by George Ticknor in 1854 (His-
tory of Spanish Literature), followed by Amador De Los Ríos’s seven-volume
work seven years later (Historia crítica de la literatura española, 1861–1865).
Ticknor’s research and presentation of Iberian texts was colored by a phil-
osophy of literature that led him to pursue a historical rather than critical
examination of the works he presented, and to emphasize “national char-
acter” as a central tenet to that philosophy. The “genuinely national” ex-
pressions of character were to be found in the 13th to the 15th centuries and
“El cantar de mío Cid,” more than history or fact was seen by Ticknor to
contain the manners and interests of the Spanish “race.” The presentation of
his work to a non-Spanish speaking world was hailed not only by western
Europeans outside of Spain, but within Spain as well. For Spaniards of the
later 19th century, the value of Ticknor’s work lay in its service to the defi-
nition of a Spanish national identity in particular, which he defined in his
study. In fact, writers of the Generation of 1898, foundering after the loss of
the last vestiges of Spanish empire and greatness during the Spanish and
American war, found in Ticknor’s History a noble character that was for all
intents and purposes Castilian. Emblematic of attempts to describe a Span-
ish national identity through medieval peninsular texts is the work of
Ramón Menéndez Pidal, whose influence on Iberian Medieval Studies
continues to be felt to the present day.
Menéndez Pidal founded a school of scholars in what was called Neo-
traditionalism that expanded on German Romantic theories of folk tradi-
tions of literary composition. The later 19th century approach involved ana-
lyzing concepts of anonymous poets, a series of continuously re-worked
medieval compositions, and the diffusion of these compositions by traveling
679 Iberian Studies

minstrels. The analysis provided by this school was closely related to Tick-
nor’s preference for folk literature and in particular, ballads, as indicators
of national characteristics. Menéndez Pidal likewise privileged ballads,
marking those from Castile as the most significant and original (La épica medi-
eval española: Desde sus orígenes hasta su disolución en el Romancero, ed. Diego
Catalán and María del Mar Bustos, 1992). When he turned his critical eye
on the epic, he included a section on the national value of the work (La España
del Cid, 1929) in the introduction to his edition of the “Cid.” Pidal’s histori-
co-literary approach privileged Castile as the center of historical, literary and
linguistic developments in Spain and, due to his prolific and meticulous in-
terdisciplinary scholarship, marginalized, in effect, all other cultures on the
Iberian Peninsula as secondary, inferior, or copied works from Castilian orig-
inals. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the association of
Spain = Castile was finally brought up for debate with arguments to include
influences that had been previously ignored, specifically, Jewish, Arabic, and
the range of important Iberian cultures geographically peripheral to Castile,
especially those of Catalunya and Galicia, to name two.

B. Major Scholars
Perhaps the scholar most responsible for challenging the central position of
Castile in the Spanish Middle Ages was Américo Castro who published his
España en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos in 1948. Castro’s thesis was that
medieval Spanish culture was unique in Europe due to the confluence and
mixing of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures on the peninsula. His the-
sis was given support in the same year with Samuel Stern’s “discovery”
of the jarchas, strophs in Mozarabic that formed part of a larger poetic com-
position written in Arabic or Hebrew presented in the article “Les vers finaux
en espagnol dans les muwassahs hipano-hébraïques: Une contribution a
l’histoire du muwassah et a l’étude du vieux dialecte espagnol ‘mozarabe’”
(Al-Andalus, XIII, 1948). In addition, Ernst Robert Curtius published Euro-
päische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, in the same year, a major study
of medieval Latin literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern
European languages. The effect of Castro’s work, Stern’s discovery, and
Curtius’s insertion of Spain in the broader European medieval milieu
through his study, was to open the door to debate on the historico-literary
approach espoused by Menéndez Pidal and his school, as well as initiate
discussions on the Iberian medieval canon in its broadest sense. In point of
fact, the three studies were not mutually supportive nor were they univers-
ally embraced. They continue to spark opposing points of view, for example,
concerning the uniqueness of Iberian culture due to the influence of the
Iberian Studies 680

three different cultural groups that occupied the peninsula for some 700
years (Américo Castro: The Impact of His Thought: Essays to Mark the Centenary of His
Birth, ed. Ronald E. Surtz et al, 1988). Nevertheless, the impact on Iberian
Studies was to open, over time, and expand fields of investigation (The
Sephardi Heritage: Essays on the History and Cultural Contribution of the Jews of
Spain and Portugal, vol. I, ed. R. D. Barnett, 1971; The Legacy of Muslim Spain,
ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 12, 1992; José
Mattoso, Identificação de um país: Ensaio sobre as origens de Portugal, 1096–1325,
2 vols., 1985). Approaches and topics, combined with the rigorous inter-
disciplinary research introduced by Menéndez Pidal, yielded a robust,
ever-widening and more eclectic field of investigation focused on the Iberian
Middle Ages. For the first time, these discussions moved beyond the Pyre-
nees and introduced Medieval Iberian scholars to works by Marc Bloch (La
société féodale, 2 vols., 1939, 1940), Otto Brunner (Land und Herrschaft: Grund-
fragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Südostdeutschlands im Mittelalter,
1939), Georges Duby (L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’occident
médiévale (France, Angleterre, Empire, IX–XV siècles): Essai de synthèse et perspectives
de recherches, 2 vols., 1962), Umberto Eco (Sviluppo dell’estetica medievale, 1959)
and Jacques Le Goff (La civilisation de l’Occident médiéval, 1964), for example.
Attempts to broaden the fields of study concerning the Iberian Middle
Ages faced some limitations, the first of which was the scholars’ limited ac-
cess to pertinent materials important to the investigation of the Iberian
Middle Ages. Histories of the time period were antiquated, as were encyclo-
pedias and had to be updated (Benito Sánchez Alonso, Fuentes de la historia
española e hispano-americana, 3 vols., 3rd ed., 1952; and António José Saraiva,
História da Cultura em Portugal, 1950). Bibliographies of the Iberian Middle
Ages were limited until Francisco López Estrada published his Introduc-
ción a la literatura medieval española in 1952. Rafael Lapesa (Historia de la lengua
española, 1942) contributed a still-valuable linguistic study and Joan Coro-
minas (Diccionario crítico-etimológico de la lengua castellana, 1954) added his
critical and etymological dictionary to the linguistic studies of the languages
in use on the peninsula during the Middle Ages. As these works appeared, so
too did more and more literary, historical, linguistic and cultural studies on
the Iberian Middle Ages, and with them, the need for means of faster publi-
cation (António Henrique Oliveira Marques, A sociedade medieval por-
tuguesa: Aspectos de vida quotidiana, 1964; Alan Deyermond, A Literary History
of Spain: The Middle Ages, 1971).
The study of the Iberian Middle Ages was en vogue and several journals
like Speculum, Hispanic Review, Hispania, and MLN published important ar-
ticles by scholars like Anthony Zahareas (“Juan Ruiz’s Envoi: The Moral
681 Iberian Studies

and Artistic Pose,” MLN 79 Spanish Issue [Mar., 1964]: 206–11), Joaquín
Gimeno Casalduero (“Notas sobre el Laberinto de Fortuna,” MLN 79.2
[1964]:125–39), and Otis Green (“The Artistic Originality of ‘La Celestina’,”
Hispanic Review 33 [1965]:15–31).
Almost concomitant with the works that served to open the discussion
on the Iberian Middle Ages was the rise of literary theory (Edad Media y liter-
atura contemporánea: ensayos sobre tradición y modernidad, ed. Fernando Valls,
1985). Some theories, apart from their novel methods and conclusions, ques-
tioned what constituted a “text.” Theories such as Formalism placed import-
ance on the distinction between ‘literary’ and other sorts of texts, other
schools like Structuralism (Javier Huerta Calvo, “La teoría literaria de
Mijail Bajtín: Apuntes y textos para su introducción en España,” Dicenda I
[1982]:143–58]), Feminism (María Jesús Lacarra, “Mujer y literatura,” en
Mujer y literatura [1986] 100–131), and Marxism (John Beverly, “Class or
Caste: A Critique of the Castro Thesis,” Américo Castro: The Impact of His
Thought: Essays to Mark the Centenary of His Birth, ed. Ronald E. Surtz, Jaime
Ferrán, and Daniel P. Testa, 1988,141–49) applied their respective tools
of interpretation to a wide range of ‘texts’, thus opening the discussion of
what constituted the “canon,” which in turn had scholars turning critical
eyes on non-fiction, historical documents, law, and the like, in addition to
fictional works (Adam J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia:
Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000–1200, 2001).
At the same time, Iberian studies emigrated from the peninsula and to
other countries, principally the United Kingdom and the United States.
There, literary theory enjoyed its greatest popularity from the late 1960s
through the 1980s. In addition to the theoretical approaches mentioned
above, scholars investigated texts under the lens of Reader-Response theory
(Libros españoles de viajes medievales (Selección), ed. Joaquín Rubio Tovar, 1986),
Psychoanalysis in its variety of permutations, and Queer Theory (Queer Iberia:
Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed.
Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson, 1999), for example. Dur-
ing these years, literary theory was perceived as academically cutting-edge
research, and most university literature departments sought to teach and
study literature and culture through one or the other theoretical approach
and incorporate classes on literary theory or criticism into their curricula. By
the early 1990s, the texts of literary theory had been incorporated into the
study of almost all peninsular medieval courses.
Iberian Studies 682

C. Recent Trends
Perhaps as an outgrowth of the development of literary theory or as a reac-
tion against it, the 1980s and 1990s saw a renewed focus on the particular
rhetoric and theoretical premises characteristic to the Middle Ages, such as
the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, John of Salisbury, Brunetto Latini,
Matthew of Vendôme, and Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Ars praedicandi, laudandi, vit-
uperandi, rhetorica, and orandi, for example, were brought to bear on the texts
produced in the same era (Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later
Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction, 1982). The functions of mem-
ory, orality, exempla, the auctores, and the commentary tradition were em-
ployed in order to analyze and illuminate Iberian Medieval works (Alistair J.
Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later
Middle Ages, 1984). Medieval texts were used to illuminate themselves and the
era in which they were produced (James A. Grabowska, The Challenge to
Spanish Nobility in the 14th Century: The Struggle for Power in don Juan Manuel’s
Conde Lucanor, 1335, 2006). This “new” approach was called “New Philology”
or “New Medievalism” (Stephen G. Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a
Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65.1 [Jan., 1990]: 1–10).
New Philology was articulated as an attempt to advance the study of the
Middle Ages which had, according to some scholars, grown stale. The goal
of the New Philologists, then, was to transform traditional philology and re-
invigorate Medieval Studies in which interdisciplinarity would take a promi-
nent position (The New Medievalism, ed. Marina S. Brownlee et al., 1991).
History, histories of art, music, science, architecture, and warfare, literary
history, philosophy, law, paleography, sociology, economics, theology and
the like, in addition to linguistics, and more traditional philology, would all
be brought to bear on Iberian medieval manuscripts in order to tease out the
historical factors that affected the meaning of the literary work. By impli-
cation then, the medieval manuscripts would be placed in a broader context
that would consider the illuminations that accompanied them, the hands
that wrote them, a manuscript’s musicality, and the impact of law or theol-
ogy as aspects that influenced the creation and interpretation of the literary
work, for example. Thus, the search for a definitive manuscript out of the
varieties available or the reconstruction of an “original” manuscript would
be abandoned in favor of making the different versions all available so that
the different versions of a story could be read and studied.
683 Iberian Studies

D. Journals and Electronic Resources

Journals like La Corónica and more recently Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian
and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/
content/brill/me) limited their scope of interest, offering a venue to special-
ists of many different aspects of the Iberian Middle Ages. In addition, schol-
ars turned to digital technologies to publish their research. Significant digi-
tal publications that focus on Iberian Medieval Studies include Lemir, la
Revista de Literatura Española Medieval y del Renacimiento (http://parnaseo.uv.es/
lemir.htm), and Memorabilia, la Boletín de Literatura Sapiencial (http://parna-
seo.uv.es/Memorabilia.htm). Other online journals dedicated to the study of
aspects of the Middle Ages began to reflect the mission statement of the on-
line journal Exemplaria (http://www.english.ufl.edu/exemplaria/index06.
html) offering a “forum where different approaches can communicate with-
out sacrificing any of their distinctiveness.”
Integral to this expanded notion of Medieval Studies and distinctiveness
was the availability of digital technologies that made access to manuscripts
easier and accommodated the vast amounts of space necessary to bring addi-
tional studies to bear on the medieval Iberian work to be analyzed. The Hill
Monastic Manuscript Library at St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minne-
sota (USA) and the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison (USA) were two centers that recognized early on the
value of using contemporary technologies for the conservation and dissemi-
nation of medieval manuscripts, as well as Charles Faulhaber, Francisco
Marcos Marín, and Angel Gomez Moreno and the development of
ADMYTE, (http://www.admyte.com/home.htm). Faulhaber and Fran-
cisco Marcos Marín recognized in 1992 that manuscripts, indeed entire
libraries, were being lost to deterioration and lack of care. “Pero no basta con
conservar, también es necsario que esas obras cumplan su función al servicio
de los lectores, del público culto interesado, en general. Para ello sería preciso
ponerlas a disposición de éste, lo que inevitablemente acarrearía su deterioro
y hasta su destrucción, lentamente.” They observed that preservation was in-
sufficient and suggested that it was necessary to make the surviving Iberian
Medieval texts available digitally to the interested public so they would not
be lost through deterioration (Francisco Marcos Marín and Charles B.
Faulhaber, “La conservación y utilización de textos en el futuro inmedi-
ato: ADMYTE, el archivo digital de manuscritos y textos españoles,” Hispania
75 [Oct., 1992]: 1010–23). This mission statement has been broadly adopted
and has spread to other areas of Medieval Studies as well. Later came such
sites as ORB (http://www.the-orb.net/), LIBRO (http://libro.uca.edu/), LABY-
RINTH (http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/library.html), the
Iberian Studies 684

Medieval Sourcebook (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1p.html), NetSerf

(http://www.netserf.org/), and the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (http://
www.cervantesvirtual.com/index.jsp), to name a few. Many of the online
sites offer access to manuscripts as well as scholarly works and concordances
dedicated to their study. Today scholars have much broader access to original
texts and primary historical works as well as to secondary works associated
with Iberian Medieval Studies.
A project begun in the Stanford Humanities Lab took the practice of
storing materials on Medieval Iberia to the next level with Medieval Spains
(http://shl.stanford.edu/research/medieval_spains.html) an interdisciplin-
ary source of research- and curriculum-based materials on the different com-
munities of the Iberian Peninsula from 1st century Italica to the 16th century
expansion of Peninsular/Iberian influence. The site combines primary
sources with current scholarship and multimedia presentations that are de-
signed to provide students and scholars with research opportunities beyond
what is available strictly through paper publications.
Medieval Spain is illustrative of the current state of Iberian Medieval
Studies. Iberian medievalists in the past used texts to establish national his-
tory and national character. When that position was challenged, Iberian
Medieval Studies lost its role and began, out of necessity, to ask new ques-
tions: If there is no single national history, no single national character, who
were the peoples who inhabited the Iberian peninsula? What did they think?
Feel? How did they act and interact? These questions opened the canon to
a wide variety of texts that had heretofore been ignored. Studies began to ex-
plore science (Isidro J. Rivera, “Negotiation of Scientific Discourse in the
First Printed Edition of the Historia de la donzella Teodor: Toledo: Pedro
Hagenbach, ca. 1500,” Hispanic Review 66.4 [1998]: 415–32), gender (Michael
Solomon, The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain: The Arcipreste de Talavera
and the Spill, 1997), day-to-day living (Bernard F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains,
1993), law (Kathryn A. Miller, “Muslim Minorities and the Obligation to
Emigrate to Islamic Territory: Two fatwâs from Fifteenth-Century Gra-
nada,” Islamic Law and Society 7.2 [2000]: 256–88), historiography (E. Michael
Gerli, “Social Crisis and Conversion: Apostasy and Inquisition in the
Chronicles of Fernando del Pulgar and Andrés Bernáldez,” Hispanic Review
70.2 [2002]: 147–67), culture studies and so on (Multicultural Iberia: Language,
Literature, and Music, ed. Dru Dougherty and Milton M. Azevedo, 1999).
In addition, and as the New Philologists pointed out, the difference between
medieval and modern was no longer to be so clearly defined, and new rela-
tionships were established. The current state of Iberian Medieval Studies has
become so diverse so as to make some scholars and critics question if the term
685 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

“medievalist” may be obsolete (Hans-Werner Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik:

Stand und Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung, 1999). Scholars specialize in a
necessarily limited area or period. By breaking the Iberian Middle Ages into
smaller, more focused fields, Iberian medievalism has grown much larger, in
some cases more germane, and perhaps, more interesting.

Select Bibliography
Bibliografía de Latín Medieval en España (1950–1992), ed. Jose Manuel Díaz De Busta-
mante, María Elisa Lage Cotos, and José Eduardo López Pereira (Spoleto: Centro
italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994); Historia y crítica de la literatura española, vol. I,
edad media, ed. Alan Deyermond (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1980), I/I, edad media,
ed. Alan Deyermond (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1991); Iberia Cantat: Estudios sobre
poesía hispánica medieval, ed. Juan Casa Rigall and Eva María Díaz Martínez (San-
tiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2002); Medieval Iberia:
An Encyclopedia, ed. Michael Gerli (New York: Routledge, 2003); Medieval Iberia: Essays
on the History and Literature of Medieval Spain, ed. Donald J. Kagay, and Joseph T. Snow
(New York: Peter Lang, 1997); Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish
Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997); Francisco Muñoz marquína, Bibliografía fundamental sobre la literatura española:
Fuentes para su estudio (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2003).

James A. Grabowska

Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

A. General Outline of Topic

This article will base itself on the textual monuments written in Latin and
the vernacular in medieval Scandinavia and its settlements. Most distinctive
and best known among them are the Icelandic sagas, the Edda of Snorri Stur-
luson, the so-called Poetic Edda, the skaldic poems, the runic inscriptions, and
the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, but there also survives a large body
of religious literature, courtly romances, grammatical treatises, legal codes,
annals, and official documents. Numerous foreign sources for study in this
field also exist, among them the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Frankish Annals,
Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, and the Russian
Primary Chronicle, but they will not be considered here.
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 686

B. Terminological Definition: the Corpus of Primary Sources

for Medieval Scandinavian Studies
A Viking Age, characterized by extensive territorial movements and acquisi-
tions on the part of Scandinavian groups extending from the late 8th century
up until the early 12th century, overlaps with and is succeeded by the Scandi-
navian Middle Ages, which take their inception with the Christianization of
Denmark, Norway, and Iceland in the late 10th century and stretch as far as
the Reformation. The key geopolitical units are Denmark (which included
parts of modern Sweden and Germany), Sweden, and Norway, with Iceland,
Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes, Greenland, Normandy, and Ireland among the
seats of important settlements. Medieval sources claim that Scandinavians
spoke a common language, the dönsk tunga, “Danish tongue.” By the 10th cen-
tury, this common language had started to break up into mutually intelli-
gible varieties spoken in Norway, Greenland, Iceland, and the other Atlantic
islands, to the west, and in Denmark, Sweden, and Gotland, to the east.
Earliest among the primary texts are numerous brief runic inscriptions,
extant in homeland Scandinavia and in most of the settlements, with the no-
table exception of Iceland. The Viking Age marks their greatest flourishing
but some of the oldest inscriptions are yet earlier. In the Middle Ages runes
continue in regular use in Norway and Sweden but decline in Denmark, albeit
with a significant late flourishing in the so-called Codex Runicus (ca. 1300).
The oldest extant Scandinavian texts in the Latin alphabet date from the
decades immediately preceding 1200. The overwhelming majority of manu-
scripts are Icelandic in origin and accordingly the writings are for the most
part in either Latin or Old Icelandic, although numerous brief vernacular
texts from before 1370 are extant in Norway. In the case of some texts it is dif-
ficult to ascertain whether the region of origin was Iceland or Norway. Re-
mains in the other languages are much thinner or minimal.
The corpus of vernacular poetry is conventionally split into two types:
eddaic and skaldic (both terms being post-medieval misnomers). Eddaic
poetry centers upon the poems of the Codex Regius of the Elder Edda and di-
vides into mythological poems such as Völuspá and Hávamál and legendary
poems such as Atlakvi6a and Ham6ismál. Relicts of similar poetry occur in
runic inscriptions such as the 9th-century Rök stone.
The remainder of the poetic corpus is composed principally of skaldic
poetry, which is characterized by elaborate syntax, diction, and verse-forms.
Praise-poetry (such as Einarr Skálaglamm’s Vellekla), battle narratives (Sig-
vatr Qór6arson’s Nesjavísur), and mythological and legendary pieces (Qjó6ólfr
ór Hvini’s Haustlöng) are the dominant genres but personal poetry (Egill Skal-
lagrímsson’s Sonatorrek), hagiography (Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli), translations
687 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

(Gunnlaugr Leifsson’s Merlínússpá), instructional pieces (Snorri Sturluson’s

Háttatal), and devotional poems (Eysteinn Ásgrímsson’s Lilja) also occur.
Skaldic poetry emerges in the 9th century in Denmark and Norway and soon
spreads to Iceland, which becomes its key center of cultivation. The 10th-cen-
tury Karlevi runestone from Öland (modern Sweden) contains the oldest at-
testation. It continued in currency to the Reformation in Iceland and as late
as the 14th century in Norway, but was outmoded much earlier in Denmark
and Sweden. The composition of the earliest Icelandic rímur, among them
Ólafs ríma Haraldssonar, Skí6aríma, and Bjarkarímur, has its documented ori-
gins in the 14th century, overlapping with later skaldic poetry.
A remarkable vernacular prose treatise on native poetics and mythology
is the 13th-century Edda of Snorri Sturluson, which divides into a Prologue
and then three main sections: the Gylfaginning (a digest of the ancestral myth-
ology), Skáldskaparmál (an account of poetic diction), and Háttatal (a model
poem, with prose commentary). Grammatical treatises are also extant. Rím-
begla (a misleading early 16th-century title) is used in reference to a set of com-
putistic treatises.
The sagas are another predominantly Icelandic genre. The sagas of
Icelanders, the classic type, with their air of realism and historical veracity,
were authored or compiled in the 13th to 15th centuries. They include Band-
amanna saga, Egils saga, Fóstbrœ6ra saga, Hrafnkels saga, and Njáls saga. A notable
sub-group centers upon poets: Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa, Gunnlaugs saga orm-
stungu, Hallfre6ar saga, and Kormáks saga. Another has outlaws as its protagon-
ists: Gísla saga and Grettis saga. Another covers whole districts and commu-
nities rather than individual protagonists, among them Eyrbyggja saga,
Flóamanna saga, Laxdœla saga, Ljósvetninga saga, and Vatnsdœla saga.
The so-called fornaldarsögur “sagas of ancient times” (a 19th-century term)
also appear to date from the 13th to the 15th centuries. All the fornaldarsögur
have a dominant ingredient of romance or fantasy. Some, such as Göngu-
Hrólfs saga, Hervarar saga ok Hei6reks, Hrólfs saga kraka, Ragnars saga lo6brókar,
Völsunga saga, and Yngvars saga ví6förla, center on semi-historic personages
who are given a predominantly legendary treatment. Others lack the histori-
cal element altogether, among them Ásmundar saga kappabana, Bósa saga ok
Herrau6s, Fri6qjófs saga ins frœkna, Gautreks saga, Gríms saga lo6inkinna, Hálfs
saga ok Hálfsrekka, Ketils saga hœngs, and Örvar-Odds saga.
Kings’ sagas center on fully historical figures and are also predominantly
Icelandic in authorship. Vernacular sagas devoted to Norwegian kings are
Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (originally composed in Latin by Oddr Snorrason),
Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, the misleadingly titled Legendary Saga of
St Óláfr, Böglunga sögur, Sverris saga (in part by Karl Jónsson), and Hákonar saga
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 688

Hákonarsonar (by Sturla Qór6arson). Vernacular synoptic treatments include

Ágrip, Fagrskinna (a Norwegian redaction), Heimskringla, Hulda-Hrokkinskinna,
and Morkinskinna. Denmark is represented by Knýtlinga saga and the relicts
of a Skjöldunga saga. Loosely affiliated with the kings’ sagas are Jómsvíkinga
saga, Orkneyinga saga, and Færeyinga saga, which center on communities ruled
over by earls.
Among the samtí6arsögur “contemporary sagas,” Sturlunga saga is the
example par excellence. It represents a compilation prepared ca. 1300 from
nine originally separate sagas, among them Geirmundar qáttr heljarskinns,
Qorgils saga ok Hafli6a, Sturlu saga, and Íslendinga saga, the last-named, by Sturla
Qór6arson (1214–1284), being the most imposing. Related works are Hrafns
saga Sveinbjarnarsonar and Arons saga Hjörleifsson. The biskupa sögur could also
be termed contemporary sagas for the most part, encompassing bishops’
lives and ecclesiastical histories written from around 1200 until the mid-14th
century. One major group of these sagas devotes itself to the Skálholt diocese:
Hungrvaka (a synoptic account of the first five bishops), Qorláks saga helga,
Páls saga, and Árna saga biskups. Fragmentary Latin lives of Qorlákr are also
preserved, along with an early account of his miracles. A second group of bis-
kupa sögur centers on the diocese of Hólar: Jóns saga helga (originally written in
Latin by Gunnlaugr Leifsson), the Prestssaga Gu6mundar Arasonar, four further
Gu6mundr sagas, and Lárentíus saga. Kristni saga (mid-13th century) offers syn-
optic coverage of the Conversion of Iceland and the first bishops of Skálholt.
The corpus of foreign saints’ lives runs to over one hundred, drawn primarily
from the Latin lives of the apostles (postola sögur) and other sources. Also ex-
tant are Latin and vernacular lives of the native Norwegian saints.
Among the pseudo-historical works are Alexanders saga (from the Alexan-
dreis), Amícus saga ok Amilíus (based on the Speculum historiale), Breta sögur (from
the Historia Regum Britanniae), Klári saga, Trójumanna saga (from De excidio
Troiae), Qi6reks saga af Bern (from the Dietrich cycle) and Veraldar saga. Closely
aligned with these are the riddarasögur, sagas of knights or chivalric sagas,
which consist of two subtypes, translated and indigenous. The translated rid-
darasögur mostly stem from commissions from the Norwegian king Hákon
Hákonarson (1217–1263). Some are based on French chansons de geste, among
them Bevers saga and Elis saga ok Rósamundu; Karlamagnús saga additionally
draws on chronicle material. Others represent translations of French courtly
romances, among them Erex saga, Ívens saga, Möttuls saga, Parcevals saga, Tris-
trams saga ok Ísöndar, Valvens qáttr, and the Strengleikar “stringed instruments,”
the latter uniquely extant in a Norwegian manuscript of ca. 1270 and contain-
ing versions of lais attributed to Marie de France. Works in similar style,
some perhaps also commissioned by Hákon, are Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr,
689 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

Flóvents saga, and Partalopa saga. Indigenous riddarasögur (sometimes termed

lygisögur) include Adonias saga, Ála flekks saga, Blómstrvallasaga, Bærings saga,
Dámusta saga, Ectors saga, Gibbons saga, Kirialax saga, Konrá6s saga keisarasonar,
Mágus saga jarls, Melkólfs saga ok Solomons konungs, Mírmanns saga, Samsons saga
fagra, and Viktors saga ok Blávus. Some riddarasögur, such as Hrings saga ok
Tryggva and Sigur6ar saga fóts, are not clearly distinguishable from the more
romantic fornaldarsögur.
Affiliated to all these subtypes of sagas are numerous qættir (singular
qáttr), brief sagas (literally “strands”) that could be told separately or incor-
porated into a more extensive compilation. Examples are Grœnlendinga qáttr,
Hrómundar qáttr halta, Ævi Snorra go6a, Norna-Gests qáttr, Ragnarssona qáttr,
Sörla qáttr, Arnórs qáttr jarlaskálds, Au6unar qáttr vestfirzka, Qorleifs qáttr jarlas-
kálds, Sneglu-Halla qáttr, Qorvalds qáttr ví6förla, and Ísleifs qáttr. Many qættir af-
filiated to the kings’ sagas appear in manuscript compilations such as Mor-
kinskinna and Flateyjarbók.
Among the more strictly historical works relating to Iceland, the earliest
extant is the Íslendingabók of Ari Qorgilsson inn fró6i (c. 1122–1133). Landná-
mabók, which lists Iceland’s major settlers and their land-takes, exists in sev-
eral compilations, the oldest being Sturlubók, followed by Hauksbók, Skar6sár-
bók, and Qór6arbók. The oldest of the several sets of annals date from the turn
of the 14th century. The Diplomatarium Islandicum (Íslenzkt fornbréfasafn) con-
tains some 160 diplomas from before Union with Norway in 1264, along
with numerous subsequent diplomas and letters.
Among works of religious instruction, the Old Icelandic Homily Book and
Old Norwegian Homily Book were written early in the 13th century. Several other
manuscripts contain homiletic material, notable among them Hauksbók,
written at the beginning of the 14th century for, and in part by, the Icelandic
lawman Haukr Erlendsson. Also fragmentarily extant is an Icelandic “Physi-
ologus” (ca. 1200). The Elucidarius, adapted from Honorius Augustodunen-
sis, is extant in an early 13th-century fragment. Stjórn, a free translation of
scriptural material with commentary, stemmed from a commission by King
Hákon Magnússon (1299–1319). The Book of Judith and (in part) Daniel
appear separately in late 14th-century redactions. Ni6rstigningar saga is a 12th-
century translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus. Gy6inga saga, a history of the
Jews, was translated from Latin by Brandr Jónsson for King Magnús Hákon-
arson (1263–1284). Konungs skuggsjá, a father-son dialogue which combines
theological and judicial teachings with guidance to everyday life, is a mid-
13th-century Norwegian compilation. Also preserved are Lei6arvísir (a ver-
nacular itinerary to the Holy Land), 12th-century translations of the Dialogues
of Gregory and of the Visio sancti Pauli apostoli, Duggals lei6sla (a 13th-century
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 690

translation of the Latin Visio Tnugdali), and Speculum penitentis (a 15th-century

Icelandic penitential tract).
The surviving law-code of the Icelandic Commonwealth, editorially en-
titled Grágás “grey goose,” survives in two main codices: Konungsbók and
Sta6arhólsbók, both written in the later 13th century. It was superseded first
by Járnsí6a (1271–1281), associated with Sturla Qór6arson, and more defini-
tively by Jónsbók (1280), named for Jón Einarsson and extant in some 300
manuscripts.
Of Latin texts composed in Norway, notable are two synoptic histories
from around 1160–1190: the Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium,
composed by Theodoricus monachus, and the fragmentary Historia Norwe-
giae. The oldest Passion of St Óláfr, the Passio Olaui, survives in a northern
French manuscript. Of either Norwegian or Danish authorship is the Historia
de Profectione Danorum in Hierosolymam, a Crusader itinerary composed around
1200.
Of largely vernacular Norwegian texts, the Diplomatarium Norvegicum
contains documents ranging from ca. 1050 to 1570, the bulk of them after
1300. The law codes of Gulaqing and Frostuqing survive in early 13th-cen-
tury manuscripts. The Bjarkeyjar réttr (laws for the trading centers) were
first recorded toward the end of the 12th century. King Magnús Hákonarson
issued Landslög (a secular code for the whole of Norway), Hir6skrá (a manual
for courtiers), and a new municipal code. An ecclesiastical code was compiled
by Archbishop Jón of Ni6aróss.
Of Latin texts from Denmark, a number are historical works: the 12th-
century Chronicon Lethrense, Chronicon Roskildense, a version of Lex Castrensis
(a code of conduct for military personnel) compiled by Sven Aggesen around
1182, Sven’s Brevis Historia Regum Dacie from around 1187, and fragments of
his Genealogia Regum Dacie. Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus dates from
the first two decades of the 13th century. To these can be added the Colbaz
Annals, the Valdemar Annals, and later Lund annals, one preserved only in a
Danish translation from about 1400. The Vetus chronica Sialandiae was written
at Sorø ca. 1300, and on this are based the Annals of Ryd, while the Jutish Chron-
icle (Jyske krønike) depends on Ryd as well as on Sorø. The Diplomatarium dani-
cum contains both Latin and Danish texts. Saints’ lives in Latin include a
Passio Sancti Kanuti regis et martiris (ca. 1090) and a fragment of Robert of Ely’s
legend about Knud Lavard (ca. 1135), from which the anonymous Passio de Sct.
Canuto duce (ca. 1170) derives material. Also extant are lives of Sts Anders,
Kjeld, Knud, Margrethe, and Thøger, along with Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii, Ail-
noth’s life of Sven Estridsen and his five sons, a Vita et miracula S. Guillermi,
and a book of miracles devoted to Erik Plovpenning.
691 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

Of vernacular Danish texts, the so-called Jutish Law (Jyske Lov) is preserved
in a manuscript from 1280, along with supplementary documents. The Sca-
nian Law (Skånske lov) and Scanian Ecclesiastical Law are preserved in Codex
Runicus. A fragmentary regnal list, chronicle, and description of the Danish-
Swedish border (“the Daneholm settlement”) are believed to have been
added to the Codex later. The oldest law-code of Zealand, Valdemar’s Zealandic
Law, is extant in three redactions.
Earliest among attested Swedish writers of Latin texts is Petrus de Dacia
(ca. 1230–1289), who composed a Vita Christinae Stumbelensis and De virtutibus
Christinae Stumbelensis. Latin lives of saints are devoted to Botvid, David, Erik,
Eskil, Helena of Skövde, Henrik, Ingrid of Skänninge, and Sigfrid. The writ-
ings of St Birgitta were published as Revelationes celestes in 1492. Two lives of
Birgitta survive, as also of Birgitta’s daughter Katalina and of Petrus Olofs-
son of Skänninge. Some of these lives were translated into the vernacular.
A 15th-century Swedish life of Birgitta’s family is also extant. The Fornsvenska
legendariet “Old Swedish legendary” contains lives of many foreign saints and
martyrs.
Early Swedish vernacular texts include three chronicles of Västergotland
(Västgotakronikorna). Västgötalagen, the oldest of the Swedish provincial laws,
is extant in a manuscript dating to 1281, with an appended list of Swedish
kings. The national code (Landslag) was completed around 1350 on the basis
of provincial laws. Guta saga, a legendary history of Gotland (the title is edi-
torial), is included alongside the Laws of Gotland (Gutalag) in a medieval
manuscript. Tänkeböcker, 15th-century magistrates’ records, survive from
Arboga, Jonköping, Kalmar, and Stockholm. Of more literary monuments,
Namnlos och Valentin is a prose romance and Satiren om abbotarna an anti-
monastic piece, both from the 15th century. The Eufemiavisorna, consisting of
translations in knittelvers of Hærra Ivan, Hærtogher Fredrik, and Flores ok Blanzaf-
lor, date from the early 14th century. Later poetry includes the chivalric
romance Riddar Paris och Jungfru Vienna and a series of political pieces from the
Kalmar Union (1397–1523): the Brunkebergsvisan, Frihetsvisan, Gotlandsvisan,
and Thoro Bondes mord. The Swedish abduction ballads (klosterrovsvisor) prob-
ably go back to the 14th century, in an early exemplification of the composi-
tion of ballads in Scandinavia, but this genre is only fragmentarily attested in
medieval manuscripts.

C. History of Research, Schools of Thought, Approaches

In a sense, Medieval Scandinavian Studies have “always already” been under-
way – at least since the 12th century, when the cultivation of skaldic poetry
was taking a scholastic turn that culminates in Snorri Sturluson’s commen-
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 692

tary upon traditional skaldic practice and terminology in his Edda (Gu6rún
Nordal, Tools of Literacy, 2000). Some degree of antiquarian enquiry enters
into works such as Egils saga, Eiríks saga rau6a, and Eyrbyggja saga. Saxo Gram-
maticus claims to have collected materials from Icelandic informants. The
compilation and redaction of kings’ sagas, genealogies, and law codes was
being intensively pursued.
Many significant contributions to the field were made during the Hu-
manist era. Antiquarians and aristocratic patrons in Sweden and Denmark
commissioned the collection and transcription of Icelandic manuscripts,
aided by bishops Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skálholt (d. 1675) and Qorlá-
kur Skúlason of Hólar (d. 1656) and also by Arngrímur lær6i Jónsson
(d. 1648). This work culminated in the massive labors of collection and tran-
scription undertaken by Árni Magnússon (1663–1730). Meanwhile Ole
Worm (1588–1655) and other scholars undertook pioneering publications
of medieval poems and runic inscriptions, drawing on materials gathered by
Icelandic informants, among them the self-taught farmer Björn Jónsson of
Skar 5 sá (d. 1655).
Modern scholarship can be traced back to the 19th century, with the pub-
lication of monumental editions of such major individual works or compi-
lations as Breta sögur, Flateyjarbók, Njáls saga, and Snorra Edda and of text
series such as the fornaldarsögur. The native Icelandic scholars, notable among
them Jón Sigur 5 sson and Sveinbjörn Egilsson, did much of their work in
Copenhagen, where the University presided over Icelandic studies and the
largest library and manuscript repositories were located. Some Icelandic
scholars, among them Gu6brandur Vigfússon and Eiríkur Magnússon,
gained opportunities to operate from non-Scandinavian institutional bases.
Among the most eminent non-Scandinavian scholars were German aca-
demics Konrad Maurer and Eduard Sievers. By the 20th century the field
had become fully internationalized, with notable contributions from the
United Kingdom, European countries, and the United States, while native
Icelandic and other Scandinavian scholars have continued to play key roles.
Only a few facets of this huge research endeavor can be noted in the present
article.
A great part of the scholarly effort, down to the present day, has been
directed toward putting the medieval legacy in order through editorial and
explicatory activities so as to create what might be called a “resource base” for
the field. What could be regarded as “superstructural” types of scholarship,
such as literary criticism and theory, though far from neglected, have played
a much subordinate role if one compares with other fields of Medieval
Studies. Medieval Scandinavian Studies continue to be informed by a strong
693 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

ethos of positivism even in an era of poststructuralist and other literary or

cultural theory. At the same time, significant essays in literary criticism and
theory are offered in the collective volume edited by John Lindow, Lars
Lönnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber, Structure and Meaning in Old Norse
Literature, 1986; along with Ursula Dronke, The Poetic Edda, 1969, for the ed-
daic poetry; and Roberta Frank, Old Norse Court Poetry, 1978, for the skaldic
poetry. Topics in comparative ethnography, economics, and anthropology
are essayed in a collection edited by Ross Samson (Social Approaches to Viking
Studies, 1991) and in monographs by Kirsten Hastrup (e. g., Island of Anthro-
pology, 1990). In the present section of this article, primary attention will be
given to the status of the resource base.
Editions of the national runic corpora have been published in each of the
mainland Scandinavian countries and although they contain some specu-
lative commentary that has been superseded they still provide the basis for
scholarship. Meanwhile, however, the runic corpus continues to expand spec-
tacularly, in particular thanks to archaeological excavations of medieval town
centers, making this a permanent work in progress, for which on-line data-
bases are being increasingly utilized rather than traditional publication.
Diplomatic and facsimile editions of many significant manuscripts have
been made available. Text editions are sometimes on a fully critical basis but
more often, as in the case of the sagas, where typically numerous manuscripts
are preserved, a preferred manuscript is employed as copy-text and corrected
selectively from other manuscripts. Full scientific editions of many texts
have yet to be made.
The building of lexicographic resources remains another work in prog-
ress. Two dictionaries of medieval Icelandic (and Norwegian) were published
in the 19th century: Richard Cleasby and Gu6brandur Vigfússon, An Ice-
landic-English Dictionary, 1874, and Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle
norske sprog, 1886–1896. For the present these two dictionaries, reissued with
supplements, remain the default reference for the prose corpus. The new
collaboratively-edited dictionary project for Old Norwegian and Icelandic
(Ordbog over det norrøne prosaprog, 1989–), inaugurated in 1939 and still pro-
ceeding, concentrates on the prose corpus and will be complemented by
a thesaurus of non-runic Norwegian texts from ca. 1200 down to ca. 1550
being undertaken at the University of Oslo. A specialist dictionary of the
poetic corpus, Lexicon Poeticum, was prepared by Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1860)
and revised by Finnur Jónsson (1931), and although badly outdated it re-
mains the sole comprehensive resource, despite useful partial coverage pro-
vided by glossaries to the Poetic Edda (Glossary to the Poetic Edda, ed. Beatrice La
Farge and John Tucker, 1992), to Snorra Edda (Snorri Sturluson Edda: Prologue
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 694

and Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes, 1982; Skáldskaparmál, ed. Anthony

Faulkes, 1998), and to a selection of rímur (Finnur Jónsson, Ordbog til de …
Rímur, 1926–1928).
Scholarship on eddaic poetry has focused on codicology and redaction
criticism (Gustav Lindblad, Studier i Codex Regius av Äldre Eddan, 1954), on
establishment of the text, and on close philological explication of the poems.
The analysis of meter by Eduard Sievers (Altgermanische Metrik, 1893), in
broad comparison with other early Germanic verse corpora, has proved
largely definitive for the purposes of textual criticism. Privileged place in
scholarship has been given to the contents of Codex Regius, which are
supplemented in most editions by a somewhat arbitrary selection of other
poems in “eddaic” style. To complement the standard edition by Gustav
Neckel revised by Hans Kuhn (Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius, 1983), a com-
prehensive commentary is in progress (Klaus von See et al., Kommentar zu den
Liedern der Edda, 1997–). An English-language edition, with facing trans-
lation, is also in progress (Ursula Dronke, The Poetic Edda, 1969–).
The skaldic corpus has proved itself highly resistant to the concerted
efforts of scholars to create definitive editions and ancillary resources. Key
among pioneering activities was the reconstruction of extended poems from
the verse citations found in prose compilations (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed.
Jón Sigur 5 sson et al., 1848–1887; Bjarne Fidjestøl, Det norrøne fyrstedig-
tet, 1982). Such reconstructions remain tentative at best but of necessity built
upon them are the editions by Finnur Jónsson (Den norsk-islandske skjal-
dedigtning, 1912–1915) and E. A. Kock (Den norsk-isländska Skaldediktning,
1946), which for the present remain the default. Both rely upon copy-texts,
rather than attempting a full critical recension, and resort to heavy emen-
dation and reconstruction. A project toward a fully scientific edition is cur-
rently underway (Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. Margaret
Clunies Ross et al., 2008–). Scholars face the systematic difficulty that
a proper understanding of skaldic diction and syntax, a comprehensive and
objective glossary, and a fully authoritative edition are interdependent de-
siderata, none of which has yet been met. Thus, for instance, the standard
study of diction (Rudolf Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, 1921) is founded
on Finnur Jónsson’s edition. Refinements on Meissner have been at-
tempted using close reading (Edith Marold, Kenningkunst, 1983) and struc-
turalist analysis (Bjarne Fidjestøl, “Kenningsystemet. Forsøk på ein ling-
vistik analyse,” Maal og Minne [1974]: 5–50) but the presupposition that an
all-encompassing single system existed is not necessarily valid. The study
of skaldic meter, by contrast, has advanced to a point where, although
the underlying prosodic analysis is still disputed (Kristján Árnason, The
695 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

Rhythms of Dróttkvætt and other Old Icelandic Metres, 1991), an understanding

sufficient for practical editing purposes has been attained (Sievers, Altger-
manische Metrik, 1893; Hans Kuhn, Das Dróttkvætt, 1983; Kari Ellen Gade,
The Structure of Old Norse Dróttkvætt Poetry, 1995). A recent summation of prog-
ress in skaldic studies is Margaret Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry
and Poetics, 2005.
Scholarly work on the Prose Edda has centered upon questions of Snorri’s
putative authorship and his attitudes to the mythological material. The vari-
ous redactions have been thoroughly documented, in order to reveal succes-
sive states of the text and to reconstruct the writing process (Gu6rún Nor-
dal, Tools of Literacy, 2000).
Of the saga literature, it is the sagas of Icelanders and kings’ sagas that
have bulked largest for scholarship. Interest in the former starts to make itself
felt in the 19th century, coinciding with expressions of Icelandic nationalism.
A dominant element in the early to mid-20th century was the so-called “Ice-
landic school,” which pursued textual and source criticism while largely
eschewing discussions of ideology and aesthetics. Its central achievement
is the production of the Íslenzk fornrit series of editions, inaugurated in
the 1930s and currently still proceeding. Another notable series was the Alt-
nordische Saga-Bibliothek, from the turn of the 20th century. Numerous
post-medieval saga manuscripts have yet to be fully collated toward defini-
tive editions, with exceptions such as the recent editions of Hrólfs saga kraka
(ed. Desmond Slay, 1960) and Plácidus saga (ed. John Tucker, 1998). Most
scholarly among comprehensive translations is the German Thule series,
from the earlier 20th century but being reissued.
Where the kings’ sagas are concerned, the bulk of scholarly effort has
gone into identifying sources and disentangling textual relationships. The
three “Norwegian synoptics” (Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium,
Historia Norwegiae, and Ágrip), the so-called Oldest Saga of St Óláfr, and Fagr-
skinna have posed especially acute problems (Bjarni A 5 albjarnarson,
Om de norske kongers sagaer, 1937; Svend Ellehøj, Studier over den ældste norrøne
historieskrivning, 1965). Attempts have been made to localize the composition
of some kings’ sagas in a secular context at Oddi (Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Sag-
naritun Oddaverja, 1937). In the case of Sturlunga saga and related “contempor-
ary sagas,” the thrust of scholarship has been to accept them as an historically
reliable source for political and social history. More recently, in a reaction
against this orthodoxy, their historical truth-value has been put in question
by means of comparisons with contemporary European chronicles.
The fornaldarsögur have been extensively compared with related legend-
ary materials, such as the Gesta Danorum and the Nibelungenlied. They have
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 696

begun to attract attention as embodying myths and legends that may have
played an enabling role in the foundation of the Scandinavian colonies,
notably Orkney and Iceland (Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, “The Sea,
the Flame and the Wind,” The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North
Atlantic, ed. Colleen Batey et al., 1993, 212–21; Hermann Pálsson, Úr land-
nor6ri, 1997).
Scholars have given the riddarasögur, whether translated or indigenous,
short shrift compared to other saga types. There are few diplomatic or critical
editions. The indigenous riddarasögur (or lygisögur) are usually regarded by
scholars as artistically inferior to the other indigenous genres. Some remain
untranslated into modern languages and as a genre they have attracted least
attention in the research community, although some critical reassessment
has occurred under the influence of reception theory and the so-called New
Philology (Matthew Driscoll, The Unwashed Children of Eve, 1997). The
translated riddarasögur have received surprisingly little attention not merely
in Scandinavian scholarship but also in international romance research,
though initiatives of a comparative kind have not been altogether lacking
(Marianne Kalinke, Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland, 1990). Research
on the creation of the Scandinavian ballads has focused on the literary cul-
ture of Norway’s courtly milieu in the 13th and early 14th centuries, with the
production of the Eufemiavisor as a key element. The translation process in
and of itself has also been investigated, as for instance by Mattias Tveitane
(Om språkform og forelegg i Strengleikar, 1973) and Marianne Kalinke (“Erex
saga and Ívens saga: Medieval approaches to translation,” Arkiv for nordisk filo-
logi 92 [1977]: 125–44).
The biskupa sögur are at present being issued in an entirely new edition
under the aegis of Íslenzk fornrit. Some research on this genre has been di-
rected toward tracing authorship, assisted by the fact that a number of the
sagas were composed by known clerical authors who were contemporaries of
the subject of the saga (Stefán Karlsson, “Icelandic Lives of Thomas à
Becket: Questions of Authorship,” Proceedings of the First International Saga Con-
ference, ed. Peter Foote et al., 1973, 212–43). Other research has gone into
identifying political tendencies and allegiances, as revealed by the saga texts.
The literature of religious instruction is another area where basic work is
still in progress. Diplomatic editions of the Homily Books exist, but a fully an-
notated collation of versions of various homilies, some of which are attested
in other manuscripts, and identification of sources and analogues remains a
task for the future (David McDougall, [Review of The Icelandic Homily Book,
ed. Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, 1993], alvíssmál 5 [1995]: 107–11).
Whole and partial sources for some of the homilies have been identified
697 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

among patristic texts but the Latin background of many others still awaits
investigation. In stylistic analysis, a number of standard Latin-based rhetori-
cal features have been identified (Jakob Benediktsson, “Cursus in Old
Norse Literature,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 74 [1984]: 15–21).
Research on Landnámabók was for many years preoccupied with disen-
tangling the different major redactions (Jón Jóhannesson, Ger6ir Land-
námabókar, 1941). Work on annals has centered upon tracing their sources
(both patristic and vernacular) and textual relationships. In the case of the
Icelandic annals, comparisons with known historical works or sagas have re-
sulted in the identification of a large number of entries that must originate in
other types of source, for instance Easter tables. The sites of annalistic activ-
ity have also been canvassed, with Qingeyrar and Lund as leading candidates.
Several scholars have sought to associate compilation activity with known
figures such as Sturla Qór6arson (Jónas Kristjánsson, “Annálar og Íslend-
ingasögur,” Gripla 4 [1980]: 295–319). In the case of the Danish annals, a
topic of investigation has been the place of composition and its connection
with official authority (ecclesiastic or secular, e. g., the royal Chancellery).
From early notions that each religious house maintained its own set of an-
nals, recognition has grown that only a few centers were entrusted with this
function or chose to undertake it (Anne K. G. Kristensen, Danmarks ældste
annalistik, 1969).
While publication of the various law codes was among the earlier prior-
ities of scholars, much of the later medieval Norwegian corpus has yet to see
printed form. Ancillary research has centered upon source criticism, the
relation to continental law-codes, the possible presence of literary as well as
oral elements, the institutional or political status of compilations, and their
relation to actual social conditions at the time of enactment. The transfer of
legal and religious ideas and terminology from Latin codes into vernacular
codes remains to be fully investigated (Gudmund Sandvik and Jón Vi6ar
Sigur 5 sson, “Laws,” A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture,
ed. Rory McTurk, 2005, 223–44).
Saxo’s Gesta Danorum has been investigated from the point of view of its
author’s biography and affiliations, about which tantalizingly little is known
despite seemingly promising leads. His politics and ideology are equally dif-
ficult to pinpoint, though some kind of program of allusions to the Danish
crown is likely to have been intended. Source studies have combed the first
nine books for analogues to vernacular sources on myths and legends (Saxo
Grammaticus:, Gesta Danorum: Books 1–9, ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson and Peter
Fisher, 1979–1980; Georges Dumézil, The Stakes of the Warrior, trans. David
Weeks, ed. Jaan Puhvel, 1983). While earlier generations of scholars at-
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 698

tempted to reconstruct the traditional Danish and Icelandic poetry to which

Saxo declares his indebtedness (Axel Olrik, The Heroic Legends of Denmark,
transl. Lee M. Hollander, 1919), latterly greater emphasis has been placed
upon his emulation of poetry by Horace, Virgil, and other classical authors
(Karsten Friis-Jensen, “The Lay of Ingellus and its Classical Models,” Saxo
Grammaticus, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, 1981, 65–78). Appreciation of his
rhetorical and compositional skill has concomitantly increased (Thomas
Riis, Einführung in die Gesta Danorum, 2006).
The first comprehensive literary history, with primary emphasis on the
Icelandic and Norwegian material, was that by Finnur Jónsson (Den oldnorske
og oldislandske Literaturs Historie, 1920–1924). Like other scholars of his time,
he devoted much attention to the origin of the texts and their value as his-
torical and cultural sources, resisting attempts to trace vernacular works
to foreign sources and insisting on the general historical veracity of the sagas
of Icelanders. The main subsequent literary history, that by Jan De Vries
(Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 1964–1967), revised his predecessor’s ap-
proach so as to incorporate perspectives from comparative literature, some-
times rather uncritically.

D. Current Issues and Future Trends

Here, as before, amid a host of keenly debated issues and a variety of scholarly
trends only a few select points can be made. The decipherment of runic texts
remains amongst the most difficult and elusive goals in Medieval Scandina-
vian Studies: such significant monuments as the Rök inscription continue to
be the subject of intricate and largely inconclusive debate (Raymond Page,
Runes and Runic Inscriptions, 1995). Also far from straightforward is the inte-
gration of runic evidence into the wider study of texts and material culture,
at a stage when the corpus has still not been systematically excerpted for lexi-
cography (Judith Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age, 2001). The scope
of runic texts, their possible functions (on a spectrum from pragmatic to cer-
emonial to magical to ritual), and the social status and functionality of “runic
literacy” are matters of continuing discussion.
Although most medieval vellum manuscripts have long since been thor-
oughly examined and recorded and very few discoveries have been made in
recent years, the later Icelandic paper manuscripts have only partially been
taken up in existing scholarship. By the same token, they represent an out-
standing research opportunity, at a time when the New Philology (or “social
textuality”) is pointing up the need to examine individual witnesses in
their own immediate cultural-historical context. Such work would tie into a
“longue-durée” type of approach to sagas, where the shifting social relevance
699 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

and also, to a considerable extent, the shifting textuality of certain key works
is traced through the centuries (Kirsten Hastrup, “Tracing Tradition: an
Anthropological Perspective on Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar,” Structure and
Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and
Literary Criticism, ed. John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang
Weber, 1986, 281–316).
Many aspects of the eddaic corpus continue to be disputed. The problems
of dating remain unresolved, though three groups of poems – early, middle,
and late – have been postulated with broad consensus (Bjarne Fidjestøl,
The Dating of Eddic Poetry, 1999). Locations of composition have been subject
to rival claims, with Iceland, Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles as
principal contenders. German influence has been posited for the Völsung-
cycle poems, the so-called “Fremdstofflieder” (Hans Kuhn, “Westgermani-
sches in der altnordischen Verskunst,” Beiträge 63 [1939]: 178–236; Theodore
M. Andersson, The Legend of Brynhild, 1980). Connections with classical
poetry have also been made, thus Völuspá with the Sybilline oracles (Ursula
Dronke, The Poetic Edda, 1997) and Hávamál with Disticha Catonis (Klaus
von See, “Probleme der altnordischen Spruchdichtung,” ZfdA 104 [1975]:
91–118). In attempts at a genre taxonomy, such categories as “wisdom
poetry,” “senna” (Carol Clover, “The Germanic Context of the Unfer6 Epi-
sode,” Speculum 55 [1980]: 444–68), and elegy have been proposed, but the
validity of genre classifications arrived at from comparative literary perspec-
tives is questionable. Especially problematic is the invocation of dramatic and
even ritual functions for certain poems (Bertha Phillpotts, The Elder Edda
and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, 1920; Terry Gunnell, The Origins of Drama in
Scandinavia, 1995). A more viable view under discussion is that while eddaic
poetry may not represent ritual per se, it may contain allusions to it (Einar
Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual,” Edda: a Collection of Essays, ed. Robert Glen-
dinning and Haraldur Bessason, 1983, 3–24; Timothy R. Tangherlini,
“Some Old Norse Hang-ups,” Mankind Quarterly 31, 1–2 [1990]: 87–108).
Meanwhile, the aesthetic and reception aspects of eddaic recitation have been
imaginatively reconstructed by Lars Lönnroth (Den dubbla scenen, 1978).
Similarly, many if not most questions relating to skaldic poetry remain
unresolved. Dating is one acute problem. Most scholars harbor a conviction
that verses preserved in kings’ sagas are contemporaneous with the events
they describe, but this remains a strong probability rather than a certainty.
Considerably more problematic is Finnur Jónsson’s conviction that the
bulk of saga lausavísur are authentic personal statements from named saga
personages. The latter presupposition has been sharply contested by Peter
Foote (“An Essay on the Saga of Gísli and its Icelandic Background,” The
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 700

Saga of Gisli, trans. George Johnston, 1973, 93–134), among many other
scholars, but it still underlies the standard chronology of the corpus. Recent
work has isolated metrico-syntactic patterns that are arguably distinctive of
specific periods and poets (Kari Ellen Gade, The Structure of Old Norse Dróttk-
vætt Poetry, 1995) but at the risk of circular reasoning. The content of a few
of the poems with a prima facie claim to contemporaneity with Viking
Age events can be corroborated by comparison with foreign sources (Russell
Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” Speculum 62 [1987]:
265–98); in the great majority of cases, however, no such controls are avail-
able. The Viking Age origins of the skaldic art-form likewise remain undeter-
mined. One possibility is that it may have evolved internally from native Ger-
manic verse-forms, and one scholar has gone so far as to argue for stylization
under the influence of the plastic arts (Hallvard Lie, “Skaldestil-Studier,”
Maal og Minne 1952, 1–92). Recent discussion has seen ekphrastic poetry, as
practiced at the Carolingian court, playing a formative role (Russell Poole,
“Scholars and Skalds: the Northwards Diffusion of Carolingian Poetic
Fashions,” Mediaeval Scandinavia, forthcoming). Another candidate for exter-
nal influence is Irish bardic poetry (Edward O. G. Turville-Petre, Scaldic
Poetry, 1976). Contact with external poetic traditions in the later Middle Ages
has also been suggested (Alison Finlay, “Skalds, troubadours and sagas,”
Saga-Book 24. 2–3 [1995]: 105–53). Given the complexity of skaldic poetics,
the intelligibility of the poems has been hotly debated. Such scholars as Ernst
A. Kock (Notationes norrœnæ, 1923–1944) strove to wring “naturalness” and
lucidity out of the inherited texts, often in violation of the manuscript evi-
dence, while others have countered more pragmatically that “difficult
poetry” is a recognized type and have adduced evidence that the audience
would have been led by a poetically adept aristocratic élite (John Lindow,
“Riddles, Kennings, and the Complexity of Skaldic Poetry,” Scandinavian
Studies 47 [1975]: 311–27). Recent research indicates that these élite skills
continued down to the scribal period, when leading families in Iceland ex-
ploited them as a “tool of power” to be taught side by side with Latin-based
learning (Nordal, Tools of Literacy, 2000).
Possible links to Latin-based learning in Snorra Edda have been detected
in encyclopedic literature and school handbooks of grammar and rhetoric
(Margaret Clunies Ross, Skáldskaparmál, 1987). Concomitantly, if current
scholarship is to be believed, the traditional mythography and cosmography
presented in the Edda and more fugitively in compilations like Landnámabók
were not simply of antiquarian appeal to their audience but retained an en-
abling function where land tenure, legitimacy, and kinship links were con-
cerned (Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, 1994–1998).
701 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

Issues in scholarship on the sagas include the relationship between oral-

ity and literacy in the genesis of the saga; the contribution of indigenous and
foreign literary models; the relationship between verse and prose in the
prosimetric sagas (Joseph Harris, “The Prosimetrum of Icelandic Saga and
Some Relatives,” Prosimetrum, ed. Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl, 1997);
and the underlying causes for the distinctive features of structure and style.
Debate continues as to whether (and why) the first two-thirds of the 13th cen-
tury was the golden age of saga writing (Jürg Glauser, “Sagas of Icelanders
and qættir as the Literary Representation of a New Social Space,” Old Icelandic
Literature and Society, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross, 2000, 203–20) and how
the various subtypes (sagas of Icelanders, fornaldarsögur, kings’ sagas, riddara-
sögur, biskupa sögur) are sequenced within a posited chronology. One theory
starts with lives of saints and traces the evolution onwards to kings’ sagas,
skald sagas, and ultimately sagas of Icelanders (Gabriel Turville-Petre,
Origins of Icelandic Literature, 1953). Bjarni Einarsson preferred to see the
skald sagas as deriving from continental European romances (Skáldasögur,
1961). Such theories have a certain plausibility but have been shown to
fall down in the face of the detailed documentary evidence. As to the type of
textual process that generated the sagas, early debate centered on opposed
theories: “bookprose,” which sought to give sagas the status of written arti-
facts, and “freeprose,” which treated them as the product of oral composition
and transmission (Theodore M. Andersson, The Problem of Icelandic Saga
Origins, 1964). But these antinomies have broken down in current work, so
that orality and literacy are increasingly seen as existing in interaction (Gísli
Sigur 5 sson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, 2004). As current
hypotheses would have it, more or less free-standing episodic story materials
became aggregated and consolidated into classic saga format (Theodore
Andersson and William Ian Miller, Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland,
1989). Saga lausavísur have been investigated as a possible clue to the work-
ings of these processes (Russell Poole, “Composition Transmission Per-
formance: The first ten lausavísur in Kormáks saga,” alvíssmál 7 [1997]: 37–60).
Recent publications encourage us to envisage a synthesis – and indeed a syn-
ergy – of secular and ecclesiastical cultures. The kings’ sagas could arguably
have emerged as the product of this kind of dynamic and it could also help to
account for the indebtedness of specific saga episodes to patristic texts, chiv-
alric romances, Irish heroic tales, eddaic poetry, and other external sources.
A perennially fascinating candidate example of mixed oracy and literacy is
the so-called Vínland or North Atlantic group of sagas, Eiríks saga rau6a and
Grœnlendinga saga, which have attracted special attention in virtue of what
appears to be historical, geographical, and ethnographic reportage (Ólafur
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 702

Halldórsson, Grænland í mi6aldaritum, 1978). Attempts to identify “auth-

ors” of individual sagas continue. Snorri Sturluson retains his place as pre-
ferred nominee for Egils saga, Haukr Erlendsson has been nominated as
author of Flóamanna saga (Richard Perkins, Flóamanna saga, Gaulverjabær and
Haukr Erlendsson, 1978), and Sturla Qór6arson’s name has been linked with
a lost redaction of Grettis saga. Peter Hallberg used statistical analyses of vo-
cabulary in an endeavor to place the sagas in groups and assign them to auth-
ors (Stilsignalement och författarskap i norrön sagalitteratur, 1968). Other scholars
have tried to establish affiliations with specific families and districts, thus
Njáls saga with the Svínfellingar (Lars Lönnroth, Njáls saga: A Critical Intro-
duction, 1976). Attempts at dating individual sagas and the establishment of
a relative chronology have had an equally long and on the whole inconclusive
history. Among various works to undergo radical changes of dating is
Fóstbrœ6ra saga (Jónas Kristjánsson, Um Fóstbrœ6ra sögu, 1972). Vigorous
debate has also centered on the historical veracity or fictionality of sagas,
with Hrafnkels saga as virtually a test case (Sigur6ur Nordal, Hrafnkels saga
Freysgo6a, trans. R. George Thomas, 1958; Óskar Halldórsson, Uppruni og
qema Hrafnkels sögu, 1976; Dietrich Hofmann, “Hrafnkels und Hallfre6s
Traum,” Skandinavistik 6 [1976]: 19–36). In the confidence, not necessarily
justified, that the sagas reflect social conditions in the settlement period
accurately even if their narrative is partially fictitious, these texts have been
drawn on as sources towards studies of feuding (Jesse L. Byock, Feud in the Ice-
landic Saga, 1982; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 1990),
ethics (Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Fortælling og ære, 1993; Gu6rún
Nordal, Ethics and Action in Thirteenth Century Iceland, 1998), slavery, infanti-
cide, concubinage, status of women (Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse
Society, 1995), gift-exchange and the location of power and resources (Aron
Gurevic, “Wealth and Gift-Bestowal Among the Ancient Scandinavians,”
Scandinavica 7 [1968]: 126–38). But an unease at this trend is also being regis-
tered. Assessments of the sagas of Icelanders against the testimony of recent
excavations (Orri Vésteinsson, “Archaeology of Economy and Society,”
A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk,
2005, 7–26) and foreign primary sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
reveal awkward discrepancies. The use of law codes to corroborate the sagas
has been characterized as doubly hazardous, since we cannot be sure of the
validity of either source type (Jón Vi6ar Sigur 5 sson, Chieftains and Power in
the Icelandic Commonwealth, 1999; but cf. Gunnar Karlsson, “Social Institu-
tions,” A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory
McTurk, 2005, 503–17). Preferable for some scholars is to see the sagas as
embodying the later medieval ideology and culture within which they were
703 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

produced and consumed rather than that in which they are set (Preben Meu-
lengracht Sørensen, Saga og samfund, 1977; Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues
with the Viking Age, 1998). Discussions of saga reception and audiences have
explained the impersonality and impartiality of saga style as perhaps due
to the pragmatics of narrating hostilities between kindreds while not inflam-
ing their descendants in the audience. The nature of the ethical values to
be elicited from the sagas has proved equally debatable, with some scholars
positing a continuum from early Germanic society (Peter Hallberg, The Ice-
landic Saga, trans. Paul Schach, 1962) and others seeking a basis in Augusti-
nian doctrine (Hermann Pálsson, Art and Ethics in Hrafnkels Saga, 1971). For-
malist and structuralist analyses have sought to detect standard patterns of
plot and narrative but it is difficult to make headway beyond the “true but
trivial” (Theodore Andersson, The Icelandic Family Saga, 1967; Joseph Har-
ris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga qættir,” Scandinavian
Studies 44, 1 [1972]: 1–27). In aesthetic and literary-critical evaluations, Njáls
saga and Laxdœla saga have enjoyed special prominence (Einar Ól. Sveins-
son, Njáls saga: A Literary Masterpiece, trans. Paul Schach, 1971; Richard F.
Allen, Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to Njáls saga, 1971; Rolf Heller, Die
Laxdœla Saga, 1976).
Whereas the fornaldarsögur traditionally enjoyed scant literary-critical
attention, probably on the grounds that the content is typically less realistic
than that of the sagas of Icelanders, at present their study is undergoing a
revival (Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi, ed. Ármann Jakobsson et al.,
2003). This may be in part a reflex of the current vogue for fantasy literature.
Scholars are also sifting these sagas more thoroughly for source material
on ancestral mythology and religious practices. Jens Peter Schjødt, for
example, interprets the Höttr and Bö6varr bjarki episode from Hrólfs saga
kraka as a possible vestige of a pre-Christian initiation ritual (“Balder og Høt:
Om guder, helte og initiationsritualer,” International Scandinavian and Medi-
eval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. Michael Dallapiazza et al.,
2000, 421–33). A methodological difficulty in this is that although elements
within the story material may indeed have ancient origins, the extant redac-
tions have been shown, in this and other cases, to date from as late as the
15th century.
Many basic points about the genesis of the individual kings’ sagas
remain unresolved and perhaps permanently beyond our reach. In the case of
the Historia Norvegiae, for example, the location and dating of the composi-
tion remain uncertain (Carl Phelpstead and Devra Kunin, A History of
Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr, 2001). The methodology
of redaction criticism continues to be debated. One approach has been to
Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies 704

assume that the relationships between redactions are literary rather than
oral and therefore to posit lost written sources when unexplained material
crops up in sagas (Gustav Indrebø, Fagrskinna, 1917). The place of oral tradi-
tion was partially reinstated by Siegfried Beyschlag (Konungasögur, 1950)
and in the case of Morkinskinna the core “oldest” redaction has recently been
explained as drawn directly from oral tradition and skaldic verse (Theodore
M. Andersson, “Kings’ Sagas,” Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, ed. Carol J.
Clover and John Lindow, 1985). Trends in the copying of kings’ sagas in
later medieval Iceland have yet to be fully documented but the notion is
emerging, again in the spirit of New Philology, that each redaction or indi-
vidual manuscript witness must be situated within its own temporal context
and moreover can be used as a source of information about contemporary
attitudes (Sverre Bagge, “How Can We Use Medieval Historiography?,” In-
ternational Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber,
loc. cit., 2000, 29–42). Thus the activity of Icelanders in composing or per-
petuating kings’ sagas has been accounted for on the basis that it helped
to define attitudes towards royal power and the Norwegian parent society
(Ármann Jakobsson, Í leit a6 konungi, 1997). The application of literary criti-
cism and aesthetic evaluation to the kings’ sagas has been strikingly uneven.
If Heimskringla is the work to have undergone most searching analysis, it is
in part because of the conviction that Snorri Sturluson himself was the “true
begetter” (Hallvard Lie, Studier i Heimskringlas stil, 1937). By contrast, other
redactions have been considered of little merit and indeed Morkinskinna and
Hulda-Hrokkinskinna have never been published in normalized form.
One direction of scholarship on the biskupa sögur has been to align them
with known scriptoria and centers of literary patronage – each center being
credited with trademark methods and aesthetics. Sigur6ur Nordal recon-
structed a process whereby the Skálholt set of sagas, such as Qorláks saga helga,
came into being under the influence of the Hólar sagas, such as Jóns saga helga
(“Sagalitteraturen,” Litteraturhistorie: Norge og Island, 1953). More recent
scholarship has tried to foster a more holistic discussion of these vernacular
sources in integration with the Latin-language lives. Such a perspective re-
veals the Latin Qorlákr fragments as an experiment in the biskupa saga genre
antedating Jóns saga helga (Bjarni A 5 albjarnarson, “Bemerkninger om de
eldste islandske bispesagaer,” Studia Islandica 17 [1958]: 27–37). Another
scholarly approach had been to divide the biskupa sögur into two categories,
saints’ lives and historical works, and to evaluate their historical veracity ac-
cordingly. More recently a realization has grown up, once again as an out-
come of more holistic study, that many of the works traditionally considered
historical, notable among them Hungrvaka, in fact show the influence of
705 Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies

saints’ lives (Margaret Cormack, “Christian Biography,” A Companion to Old

Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk, 2005, 27–42). Current
investigations in religious history are focusing on the Conversion to Chris-
tianity in Scandinavia on an interdisciplinary basis, with skaldic verses,
Kristni saga, and other textual sources under investigation side by side with
evidence from material culture (Lesley Abrams, “The Anglo-Saxons and the
Christianization of Scandinavia,” Anglo-Saxon England 24 [1995]: 213–50).
Landnámabók is another text whose historicity continues to be at issue.
Attempts have been made to link its compilation with the assertion of the
property rights of certain chieftains (Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, “A6fer6ir og
vi6horf í Landnámurannsóknum,” Skírnir 150 [1974]: 213–38). If this line of
argument could be sustained, it would tend to call in question the veracity
and non-partisanship of this key text as a supposedly comprehensive account
of settlements. Like Landnámabók, the Icelandic annals are problematic inso-
far as their relationship with the sagas has proved difficult to disentangle.

E. Summary
This is a field with copious primary materials and an increasingly volumi-
nous scholarly literature. At the same time, a number of essential long-term
projects toward the establishment of basic scholarly resources are still pro-
ceeding and others have yet to be initiated. Coverage of the field is markedly
uneven, with an evident enduring preference for sources that can be con-
strued as indigenous, ancestral, and vernacular over those that are foreign
and Christian. Likewise, we see a preference for empiric and positivistic ap-
proaches over the more theoretical or aesthetically oriented.

Select Bibliography
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, ed. Jakob
Benediktsson and Magnús Már Lárusson (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger,
1956–1978); Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. Carol J. Clover and John
Lindow (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Old Icelandic Literature and Society,
ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Rory
McTurk, A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell,
2005); Encyclopedia of Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano et al. (New York: Gar-
land, 1993); Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967–).

Russell Poole
Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies 706

Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies

A. Definition
In general, Cultural Studies examines the whole of texts produced by a cul-
ture – not just traditional, canonical literature of “high” culture (the purview
of literary studies) – to include popular literature and other cultural forms,
such as art and architecture; thus, Cultural Studies tends to be interdisciplin-
ary and to subsume other disciplines, especially literary studies. In particu-
lar, Intercultural Studies focuses upon cultural artifacts produced as a result
of contact between two or more distinct cultural groups, while Crosscultural
Studies investigates a particular mode of cultural production, like theater,
that exists within various cultures that may not have had direct contact with
one another.
There has been considerable discussion about distinctions among vari-
ous approaches to the study of cultural artifacts. Multiculturalism surveys
diversity that is found within a particular region or nation and values the
diversity existing in that area. This subject also overlaps with Border Studies,
which explores the development of hybrid cultural forms by those peoples
whose positions on boundary lines separate them from other groups. Postco-
lonialism is a term for the theoretical analysis of the culture of former col-
onies and is inclined to critique sharply the colonizer’s assumed attitude
of superiority and the conflicted identity of the colonized. World literature
provides an overview of canonical literatures from across the world in trans-
lation, while comparative literature suggests a closer analysis of smaller
clusters of texts in their original language. Whether or not comparative/
world literature should be submerged within the broader rubric of Cultural
Studies has been under intense debate. In holocultural research, social scien-
tists use statistical analysis to examine large sets of data systematically col-
lected from many cultures. (For definitions and debates, see Charles Bern-
heimer, Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, 1995; Jan Walsh
Hokenson, in Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies, ed.
Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, 2003; Multicultural Europe and Cultural Ex-
change in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. James Helpers, 2005).
Thus, cultural analysis involves a bewildering array of approaches and
terms. For the purposes of this article, what follows is a brief survey of se-
lected Intercultural and Crosscultural Medieval Studies examined within
the context of controversies in the field. That this subject provokes conflict is
not surprising; the term “the Middle Ages” is a construct that subsequent
eras have imposed upon the past, and the interpretation of the medieval past
707 Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies

frequently reveals more about the scholar’s attitude toward cultural iden-
tities than about the Middle Ages itself.

B. History of Research
Inter/Cross-Cultural Studies has its roots in the 18th-and 19th-century com-
parative studies – particularly comparative literature and anthropology –
when European empires became established across the world. Crosscultural
Studies stemmed from the work of 19th-century anthropologists, such as
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, who published his influential Primitive Culture:
Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language,
Art and Custom in 1871. The investigation into mythology by Max Müller
(1823–1900) and Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) had a profound effect upon
the study of literature and led to early comparative studies that searched
for the sources and analogues of later literature. These early researchers,
influenced by Charles Darwin and other evolutionary theorists, assumed cul-
tural evolution would explain the difference between the “civilized” world
of Europe and North America of the researchers and the “primitive” societies
that they researched.
As for Medieval Studies, the tension between “primitive” and “civilized”
has been a pertinent point of debate in the formation of the Middle Ages.
According to a traditional definition of the medieval era, the thousand years
between the 400s and 1400s was a “middle” period between the fall of classi-
cal civilization and its “rebirth” during the Renaissance. Edward Gibbon
popularized this view with his monumental work, The History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788), which firmly established the belief
that Germanic barbarians destroyed the civilized classical world, thereby us-
hering in the Dark Ages of the medieval period. According to this view, dur-
ing late antiquity and early Middle Ages, invasions by Germanic tribes –
pagan, illiterate, primitive – overwhelmed the Classical world – literate and
civilized, with a nascent Christianity. Medievalists subsequently tempered
this harsh view of the Middle Ages to posit that, starting in late antiquity,
a transformation was underway, caused in part by the rise of Christianity
along with the assimilation and collision of Germanic and Roman cultures.
Also, this change was limited to the West and did not affect the eastern por-
tion of the empire based in Byzantium and Constantinople. Henri Pierre in
a series of papers in 1922–1923 argued that it was not the Germanic barbar-
ians but the rise of Islam that created the social, economic, and cultural shifts
that led to the Middle Ages. W. P. Ker (The Dark Ages, 1904) maintained that
the decaying classical world manifested itself in the pedantic Latin literature
of the Dark Ages and that vigorous literature was instead found in the sagas
Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies 708

and epics of the Germanic and Celtic peoples. Just as Homer and the ancient
Greeks were uncultured illiterates who formed the basis of classical gran-
deur, so, too, the barbarians of Northern Europe formed the basis of a high
culture that would emerge as these barbarians became literate and civilized
under the influence of the Christian Church and the legacy of the Roman
Empire. Ernst Robert Curtius (Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittel-
alter, 1948) demonstrated that the Latin language served as an assimilating
force for the various ethnic groups in Europe from the time of the Roman
Empire well into the Renaissance, and thus the elite culture of the Romans
never really disappeared. Since the 1970s, Peter Brown (World of Late An-
tiquity, 1971) has described the Middle Ages as a cultural transformation oc-
curring when Roman and Germanic leaders shared power. Thus, medieval-
ists have altered the perspective that the Middle Ages was a period devoid of
civilization and dominated by primitive barbarians to the view that the
Middle Ages formed a distinct civilization resulting from the assimilation of
Christian, Germanic, and Classical cultures.
However, the tension between the “primitive” and the “civilized” per-
sists today as seen in the titles of books that delineate the intercultural origins
of the medieval period. In The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005),
Bryan Ward-Perkins used textual and archaeological evidence to prove
that indeed the Germanic barbarians destroyed Roman civilization. A few
years earlier Thomas Cahill also pointedly used “civilization” in the title for
his book How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), which portrayed pre-Christian
Ireland as barbaric but vigorous and Rome educated but decadent, save for its
new religion of Christianity. As Germanic barbarians destroyed the Roman
Empire, the Irish remained in relative peace and converted to Christianity and
adopted the Roman alphabet. They copied texts that would otherwise have
been lost in the chaos of Europe, they assimilated their native Celtic culture to
Christianity, and they sent missionaries to spread their work, with the result
that the Irish “saved civilization.” Although Cahill’s research was not
ground breaking (despite the subtitle’s claim that the book is an “untold
story”) and scholars disputed some of his conclusions, its reception was un-
usual in that it became a popular bestseller, a rarity for a nonfiction account of
cultural change in the Middle Ages. Its anti-English slant appealed strongly
to those of Irish descent who believe that their contributions have been over-
looked and even maligned by historians favoring English imperialism.
Giving voice to the colonized and oppressed has been a hallmark of
scholarship in recent decades. Scholarship dramatically shifted in the latter
half of the 20th century in response to profound political events: World War II
ended with the dismantling of European Empires and the rise of postcolo-
709 Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies

nial nations; the 1960s were marked by civil rights movements and student
protests, leading to interest in feminism and the rights of ethnic/racial mi-
norities; the 1980s saw the end of the Cold War and a new emphasis upon
area studies of such regions as Eastern Europe. A variety of postmodern
theories emerged in response to the new political landscape. A call for medi-
evalists to join the new theory movements came with William Paden’s 1994
collection of essays, The Future of the Middle Ages, in which Joan Ferrante
encouraged medievalists to conduct “international, interdisciplinary, and
‘intersexual’ studies” (145) – i. e., Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies.
In this new climate, previous medieval approaches that stressed homo-
geneity gave way to diversity, with perhaps no better example than that of
multicultural medieval Spain. In 1948 Américo Castro (España en su historia)
argued that Spanish cultural identity was formed during the Middle Ages
with the convivencia (i. e., coexistence) of the Jews, Muslims, and Christians
living in the Iberian peninsula. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz in 1956 de-
nied this claim in España: Un enigma histórico; he said that the national char-
acter was indigenous and preceded the invasion of the Islamic Moors. These
diametrically opposing views are caused by the paucity of evidence from the
Middle Ages, compounded by researchers’ subjectivity. Thomas Glick
lamented that the rancor of the debate on the Spanish national character hin-
dered progress on Intercultural Studies in medieval Spain. However, with
the rise of postmodern theory, convivencia is now a popular topic of research
concerning medieval Iberia (Thomas Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the
Early Middle Ages, 1979; and Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medi-
eval Spain, ed. id. et al., 1992; Stacy N. Beckwith, Charting Memory: Recalling
Medieval Spain, 1999; Olivia Remie Constable, Medieval Iberia: Readings in
Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources, 1997). As the case of Spain illustrates,
people have a strong interest in locating the origins of their identity in the
medieval past, and over the past century research into this subject has moved
from an emphasis on homogeneity that excluded other voices to an investi-
gation into diversity’s role in cultural formation.
As the above scholarship implies, religion played an enormous part in
intercultural relationships during the Middle Ages. According to Richard
Gyug, religion was the most common source of identity formation for the
era (Medieval Cultures in Contact, ed. id., 2003, xii), later replaced by national
affiliation in the modern period. It was during the Middle Ages that Chris-
tianity and Islam formed the base of empires that overshadowed other re-
ligions. In antiquity, Christianity began as a small sect that broke with main-
stream Judaism. Jeremy Cohen, in Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of Jews in
Medieval Christianity (1999), traced the development of Christian reactions to
Inter-/Cross-Cultural Studies 710

Judaism. Since Jesus was a Jew, early Christians had to create a distinctly dif-
ferent cultural identity. Although Pope Urban II originated the Crusades as
a campaign to take Jerusalem from Muslims, some Crusaders generalized the
“holy war” to all non-Christians and attacked Jews. Robert Chazen, in Euro-
pean Jewry and the First Crusade (1987), discussed Hebrew chronicles about
Crusader attacks on Jews in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, and he analyzed the
ways that the chronicle genre as practiced by Jewish writers reflected the
influence of Christian genres. Chazen’s study underscored the closeness
of the Christian and Jewish communities in Germany, despite Crusader viol-
ence. However, by the late Middle Ages, the Church attempted to build its
eroding power and strengthen Christian unity by intensifying its rhetoric
against Jews, Muslims, pagans, and heretics. Miri Rubin’s Gentile Tales: The
Narrative Assault on Late-Medieval Jews (1999) included medieval narratives of
supposed murders perpetrated by Jews against Christians. By the 1490s,
Jews had been expelled from England, France, and Spain (which also event-
ually expelled the Moors).
Currently, massive immigration movements, especially in Europe and
North America, along with increased religious hostilities, as evidenced by
the rise of Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups, have magnified inter-
est in the medieval origins of inter/cross-cultural conflict, particularly of
religious origin. Scholarly publications reflect this concern, with Medieval
Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Cultures in Confluence and Dialogue
being one journal. Palgrave’s New Middle Ages Series frequently publishes
volumes about cross-cultural studies on a given topic – e. g., Robes and Honor
(ed. Stewart Gordon, 2001) surveyed the practice of investiture during the
medieval era in such diverse areas as Christian Europe, the Islamic Middle
East, along with China and the Far East. Routledge’s The Multicultural
Middle Ages Series published Sheila Delany’s Chaucer and the Jews (2002),
a book that illustrates another trend: taking a canonical subject aligned with
a particular national literature (in this case, Chaucer’s writings) and placing
it in the context of other cultures (Jews). Academic conferences and their
published proceedings often feature inter/cross-cultural themes: e. g., Images
of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700 (ed. David Blanks, 1997),
a collection of essays presented at the Conference on Cross-Cultural En-
counters in the Mediterranean. Studies now cover a panoply of medieval
inter/cross-cultural topics. For example, Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages
(ed. Albrecht Classen, 2002) discussed depictions of the Other by medieval
writers primarily from England and Germany. Alexandra Cuffel’s In Gen-
dering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (2007) examined images of bodily
impurity shared by medieval Jews, Muslims, and Christians in their religious
711 Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies

debates. Travel writing has proven to be a rich source of information about

intercultural relationships, as Marina Münkler has shown in her research
on travelogues about the Far East written by Marco Polo and other Euro-
peans (Erfahrung des Fremden, 2001). The Medieval World (ed. Peter Lineham
and Janet Nelson, 2001) spanned a broad geographical range with essays on
“Courts in East and West” (Jonathan Shepard, 14–36), “How Many Medi-
eval Europes? The ‘Pagans’ of Hungary and Regional Diversity in Christen-
dom” (Nora Berend, 77–92) and “Christians, Barbarians, and Monsters: the
European Discovery of the World Beyond Islam” (Peter Jackson, 93–110).
Medieval Cultures in Contact (ed. Richard Gyug, 2003) contained essays on
topics that have not been given much notice in the past; for example, James
D. Ryan detailed the reasons for the failure of 14th-century missionaries in
converting Central Asia to Christianity (19–38). It seems every topic imagin-
able related to the Middle Ages is now being discussed from the perspective
of multiple cultures because Medieval Europe was “multicultural in histori-
cal fact” (James Helpers, Multicultural Europe and Cultural Exchange in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, 2005, 7).

Select Bibliography
Medieval Cultures in Contact, ed. Richard Gyug (New York: Fordham University Press,
2003); Multicultural Europe and Cultural Exchange in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed.
James P. Helpers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); The Medieval World, ed. Peter Lineham
and Janet Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001); the journal Medieval Encounters: Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim Cultures in Confluence and Dialogue (Leiden: Brill, 1999–present).

Barbara Stevenson

Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
Questions of the relationship between different disciplines are generally
rather old. Today in the humanities and the sciences, on the one hand efforts
have increased greatly at differentiation and specialization, on the other
hand and at the same time interest in interdisciplinary research has consider-
ably intensified. The term ‘interdisciplinarity’ has become common among
members of every academic discipline. Thus, the seeming paradox can be ob-
served that the more knowledge production is differentiated the more loudly
the call for interdisciplinarity is articulated. Interdisciplinarity and special-
Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies 712

ization are parallel (Peter Weingart, “Interdisciplinarity: The Paradoxical

Discourse,” Practising Interdisciplinarity, ed. Peter Weingart and Nico
Stehr, 2000, 25–41).
Some of the problems with interdisciplinary research are connected with
uncertainty over the meaning of the term and the lack of a clear definition
(Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice, 1990,
12). In this respect, one may compare the difficulties with ‘interdisciplin-
arity’ to the sometimes also ambiguous use of the terms ‘transdisciplinarity,’
‘cross-disciplinarity,’ and ‘multi(pluri-)disciplinarity’ (Tom Horlick-
Jones and Jonathan Sime, “Living on the Border: Knowledge, Risk and
Transdisciplinarity,” Futures 36 [2004]: 441–56; Gilbert Weiss and Ruth
Wodak, “Theory, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Discourse Analysis,” Criti-
cal Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity, ed. id., 2003, 15–23).
A definition of ‘interdisciplinary history’ may be formulated as “historical
scholarship that makes use of the methods or concepts of one or more disci-
plines other than history” (T. C. R. Horn and Harry Ritter, “Interdisci-
plinary History: A Historiographical Review,” The History Teacher 19 [1986]:
428). The motivation for interdisciplinarity is recognition of incompleteness
(Mark Gibson and Alec McHoul, “Interdisciplinarity,” A Companion to Cul-
tural Studies, ed. Toby Miller, 2006, 26).
The trend toward interdisciplinarity has become one of the most im-
portant developments in the methodology of Medieval Studies in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth and in the 21st century. Today, interdisciplinary
approaches offer a variety of new opportunities but are also constrained by
a number of (institutional) obstacles. Often, interdisciplinarity just occurs
as a fashionable term used to get funding for projects but is ultimately not
realized. Interdisciplinary research (still) sounds innovative and substan-
tial but one has to be aware that each discipline has its own expert knowl-
edge and methods. This can lead to the situation and danger that someone
working interdisciplinarily is a specialist in one field but a dilettante
in others with which she or he wants to combine her or his research. The
hazard of uncritically adopting perspectives from other disciplines cannot
be denied. Thus, “[…] the question of whether or not the historian should
use the ideas and methods of other fields is no longer at issue. The question is,
rather, how well the historian selects and makes use of those concepts
and techniques” (Horn and Ritter, “Interdisciplinary History,” 446). One
of the dangers is also that ‘uncontrolled’ interdisciplinary research may serve
as an opportunity for prejudice and wishes to be included in scientific dis-
course (Ken Kalling, “Interdisciplinarity: A Gate for Wishful Thinking?”
History of Medieval Life and the Sciences, ed. Gerhard Jaritz, 2000, 29–43)
713 Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies

The particular question remains: whether and at what point proceeding

from the disciplinary to the interdisciplinary levels of research will end.
‘Mediävistik’ (Medieval Studies), which has always postulated a kind of unity
of the field, could become or, at least, should be seen as, the ideal of an ‘inter-
disciplinary interdiscipline,’ being about reaching new content and a new
program of research (Frank Fürbeth, “Was heißt, wozu dient und wohin
führt uns Interdisziplinarität?” Interdisziplinarität, ed. Wihelm G. Busse and
Hans-Werner Goetz, 1999, 7–16).

B. Developments and Emphases

Following the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest instance of the use
of the term ‘interdisciplinary’ goes back to a sociological article published
in 1937. The research of scholars in historical studies from the second half
of the 19th century already manifested these ideas. In this respect, Karl
Lamprecht (1856–1915), who taught at the University of Leipzig, is par-
ticularly important for Medieval Studies. In his approach toward cultural
history he tried to unite concepts of history, art history, economics, and
‘social psychology.’ Lamprecht remained isolated in German research, but
he influenced the New History that started to flourish in the United States
around the period of the First World War.
In France, the Revue de Synthèse Historique, founded in 1900 by the philos-
opher Henry Berr, turned against extreme specialization in various disci-
plines. This interdisciplinary orientation, at least indirectly, had an impact
on the founding of the famous French ‘Annales School,’ led at the beginning
by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, and its journal Annales d’Histoire Econ-
omique et Sociale in 1929. The Annales have influenced Medieval Studies in its
interdisciplinary focus for decades.
The actual discussion of interdisciplinarity started at the end of the
1940s and beginning of the 1950s (see, e. g., Wassily Leontieff, “Note on
the Pluralistic Interpretation of History and the Problem of Interdisciplinary
Cooperation,” The Journal of Philosophy 45 [1948]: 617–24). ‘Interdisciplinary
history’ became fashionable in the 1960s, particularly with the founding of
the Journal of Interdisciplinary History in 1970.
The peak of discussion concerning interdisciplinarity was reached in the
1970s and 1980s. In 1971, Roland Barthes stated (tr. 1977 as “From Work
to Text,” id., Image-Music-Text, 155) that interdisciplinarity “is not the calm
of an easy security; it begins effectively […] when the solidarity of the old
disciplines breaks down […] in the interests of a new object and a new lan-
guage […].” On the one hand, positive statements about the function and
possibilities of interdisciplinary research were expressed and a number of
Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies 714

important interdisciplinary studies published. On the other hand, questions

about the sense and problems of interdisciplinarity were put in larger
numbers: whether it was a new game for bored scholars or a system for vague
speculations (Nancy Ann Cluck, “Reflections on the Interdisciplinary Ap-
proaches to the Humanities,” Liberal Education 66 [1980]: 77); whether Clio
should not remain a virgin undefiled by contact with other disciplines; and
so on (see John M. Theilmann, “Crossing the Sacred Boundary Between the
Disciplines: Medieval History and Symbolic Anthropology,” The Midwest
Quarterly 24 [1982]: 28–38). Pressure for interdisciplinary studies was em-
phasized, which showed that a situation had arisen in which the current
categories of knowledge had become obsolete and new ones were not yet es-
tablished (Daniel Marder, “The Interdisciplinary Discipline,” ADE Bulletin
45 [1975]: 30). One author even stated that interdisciplinarity was “so over-
used as to be abused” (Michael W. Messmer, “The Vogue of the Interdisci-
plinarity,” The Centennial Review 12 [1978]: 467–78).
A large number of institutions dealing with Medieval Studies appointed
interdisciplinarity as one of the main aims of their existence. When the
German ‘Mediävistenverband’ (1983) was founded, support for the interdis-
ciplinary cooperation of medievalists was included in the by-laws. In the Ger-
man-speaking countries, the ‘Institut zur Interdisziplinären Erforschung
des Mittelalters und seines Nachwirkens’ was founded at the University of
Paderborn, the ‘Interdisziplinäre Zentrum Mittelalter–Renaissance–Frühe
Neuzeit’ at the Free University of Berlin, the ‘Interdisziplinäre Arbeitskreis
Mediävistik’ at the University of Mainz, and the ‘Interdisziplinäre Zentrum
für Mittelalter-Studien’ at the University of Salzburg.
In this peak period of interest, interdisciplinary approaches in Medieval
Studies could, in particular, be found in research that made use of concepts of
sociology, anthropology, psychology, the sciences, and medicine. Strong in-
fluences, especially concerning urban history, may be seen coming from soci-
ology, notably in the tradition of Max Weber (1864–1920) and Georg Sim-
mel (1858–1918). The interdisciplinary approaches and cooperation of
Medieval Studies and social anthropology were strongly influenced by Victor
Turner’s comparative symbology and Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick descrip-
tion’ (see Theilmann, “Crossing the Sacred Boundary between the Disci-
plines,” 28–38). Both of them emphasized that the interpretation of culture
is necessarily semiotic. This corresponds with the statement of Umberto
Eco, who defined semiotics as a methodological approach serving many
disciplines or, simply, as an interdisciplinary approach (“Semiotics: A Disci-
pline or an Interdisciplinary Method,” Sight, Sound and Sense, ed. Thomas A.
Sebeok, 1978, 73–83). Studies based on the interdisciplinary use of anthro-
715 Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies

pology (see Natalie Z. Davis, “The Possibilities of the Past,” The New History:
The 1980s and Beyond: Studies in Interdisciplinary History, ed. Theodore K. Rabb
and Robert I. Rotberg, 1982, 264–75) received special acknowledgment
(e. g., Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 1981).
Particularly in the 1970s, in the context of developments in social and
economic history, a special trend started toward the application of quanti-
tative methods in Medieval Studies (e. g., Quantitative Methoden in der Wirt-
schafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Vorneuzeit, ed. Franz Irsigler, 1978). A number
of interdisciplinary approaches were implemented based on taking over con-
cepts of technology. Lynn White’s classic Medieval Technology and Social
Change (1st ed. 1962) influenced, and continues to influence, a number of
other studies. Various areas of the sciences had important impacts on Medi-
eval Studies (e. g., Climate and History: Studies in Interdisciplinary History, ed. Ro-
bert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, 1981; Dietrich Denecke, “Inter-
disziplinäre historisch-geographische Umweltforschung: Klima, Gewässer
und Böden im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,” Siedlungsforschung.
Archäologie–Geschichte–Geographie 12 [1991]: 235–63; History of Medieval Life and
the Sciences, ed. Gerhard Jaritz, 2000).
Interdisciplinary cooperation with medicine and psychology, in particu-
lar, gave rise to new views on some old questions of Medieval Studies (e. g.,
Psychologie in der Mediävistik, ed. Jürgen Kühnel et al., 1985; Friedrich Wolf-
zettel, “Mediävistik und Psychoanalyse: Eine Bestandsaufnahme,” Mittel-
alterbilder aus neuer Perspektive, ed. Ernstpeter Ruhe and Rudolf Behrens,
1985, 210–237; John Theilmann and Frances Cate, “A Plague of Plagues:
The Problem of Plague Diagnosis in Medieval England,” Journal of Interdisci-
plinary History 37 [2007]: 371–93). The application of concepts of psychology,
however, occasionally shifting to psychohistory, sometimes led to massive
criticism (e. g., David E. Stannard, Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure
of Psychohistory, 1982).
In a large number of other fields of Medieval Studies the successful realiz-
ation of interdisciplinary approaches can be seen; for instance, in art history
and social and cultural history (e. g., Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experi-
ence in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 1972);
in literary history, art history, cultural history, and the history of mentalities
(e. g., Horst Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, Schrift und Bild, Kultur und Gedächtnis im
Mittelalter, 1995); and so on. Some conferences have concentrated on interdis-
ciplinary approaches toward traditional as well as new topics (e. g., Le travail au
Moyen Age: Une approche interdisciplinaire, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse and Colette
Muraille-Samaran, 1990; Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdis-
ciplinary History, ed. Mary Jo Maynes et al., 1996, with contributions concern-
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 716

ing the Middle Ages by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and Barbara Hana-

walt; Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm
Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2005; Old Age in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. id.,
2007; Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. id., 2008; Urban
Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. id., 2009; Laughter in the
Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. id., 2010. German research particularly
has been conducting an ongoing discussion about the perspectives and possi-
bilities of interdisciplinary studies in the future (e.g., Werner Rocke, “Welt-
bilder–Mentalitäten–kulturelle Praxis: Perspektiven einer interdiszipli-
nären Mediävistik,” Mittelalter und Moderne: Entdeckung und Rekonstruktion
der mittelalterlichen Welt, ed. Peter Segl, 1997, 3–14; Mediävistik im 21. Jahr-
hundert: Stand und Perspektiven der internationalen und interdisziplinären Mittel-
alterforschung, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz and Jörg Jarnut, 2003). Problems
in today’s society have also initiated intersdisciplinary approaches by medi-
evalists. Nowadays this is particularly true concerning the global effects of
climate (e. g., Michael McCormick et al., “Volcanoes and the Climatic For-
cing of Carolingian Europe, A. D. 750–950,” Speculum 82 [2007]: 865–95).

Select Bibliography
T. C. R. Horn and Harry Ritter, “Interdisciplinary History: A Historiographical
Review,” The History Teacher 19 (1986): 427–48; Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplin-
arity: History, Theory, and Practice (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990); Inter-
disziplinarität, ed. Wihelm G. Busse and Hans-Werner Goetz (Das Mittelalter: Zeit-
schrift des Mediävistenverbandes 4,1) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1999); Joe Moran,
Interdisciplinarity (New York: Routledge, 2002); In(ter)discipline: New Languages for Criti-
cism, ed. Gilian Beer et al. (London et al.: Maney Publishing, 2007).

Gerhard Jaritz

Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches

in Medieval Literature

A. Definition
Since much of medieval literature in some way responds to oral or written
authorities, many critical approaches to medieval intertextuality have been
offered over the years. Imitation, allusion, reference, indirect reference,
citation, quotation, insertion, poetic contests on a theme, rewriting, pas-
717 Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature

tiche, montage, gloss, recycling, plagiarism, parody (see entry on “Parody” in

this Handbook), and other forms of influence or derivation may all be read as
forms of intertextual writing. Intertextuality may be seen in works of the
same language, or through a comparative approach in different languages;
comparative approaches to medieval literature today owe much to the criti-
cal concept of intertextuality.
Reading each text as open and each composition as fluid, intertextuality is
the phenomenon whereby the meaning of a given text may only be discovered
in its relation to other texts. Growing out of structuralism, semiotics, and
dialogism, as well as out of the work of Saussure, Bakhtin, and the French
Tel Quel group, the poststructuralist study of intertextuality centers on
the meanings and signs of a given text in relation to other texts. The theory of
intertextuality has provided an approach to reading and decoding the en-
coding of writers and readers in a given text in relation to the context of other
posterior and anterior texts. Intertextuality as a named theory was first
identified by Julia Kristeva in 1966.
Since being coined by Kristeva in Paris of the 1960s, intertextuality has
come to mean many things to literary scholars and has been particularly use-
ful in studying the relationships between medieval texts, in which original-
ity was not the most prized quality. Harold Bloom termed an author’s
relationship to prior sources as “the anxiety of influence” (Anxiety of Influence:
A Theory of Poetry, 1973), suggesting that all poems, indeed all texts, must in-
escapably be responses to prior works and precursors, that authors, readers,
and critics alike cannot separate themselves from relationships of textual in-
fluence; Bloom’s idea that essentially there are no texts, only relationships
between texts, informed many poststructuralist readings and studies on in-
tertextuality. Roland Barthes’s concept of intertextuality is similar to that
of Kristeva’s, but Barthes addresses more the reader’s pleasure as part
of le plaisir du texte, in recognizing the playful elements of recognizing inter-
textuality. Gérard Genette’s Palimpsestes: La littérature au seconde degré, 1982,
a title that suggests the study of the medieval scribal phenomenon of the pal-
impsest (writing that has been partially erased or scratched off and written
over by the ink of a new text) as a metaphor for imitative and derivative texts
with intertextual, or what he terms more specifically hypertextual relation-
ships. In the 21st century, literary critics and philosophers have begun to ques-
tion the usefulness of the seemingly all-encompassing term intertextuality.
Postmodernism and the term hypertextuality offer an alternative perspec-
tive. More recently, William Irwin, “Against Intertextuality” (Philosophy
and Literature 28.2 [2004]: 227–42), attacks the possibility of careless overuse
of the term and criticizes the ambiguous use of the term by Julia Kristeva,
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 718

Roland Barthes, and their followers, pointing out that with intertextual-
ity, the pluralism of possible interpretations and relationships is nearly end-
less.

B. Early Comparative Approaches

The beginnings of comparative approaches to medieval literature were tied
to approaches of folklore in the 19th and early 20th century. Before the per-
spectives of intertextuality, translation studies, or comparative literature,
Folklore Studies was one of the first disciplines to cross language barriers in
comparing commonalities between literatures of different languages and
cultures. The perspective of folklore focused on the repetition archetypical
motifs that may be indexed according to their most basic elements (e. g., the
trickster, the loathly lady, the enchanted ring, the other world crossing, etc.).
Folklore scholars and scholars of Celtic literature published some of the first
comparative studies, which were essentially source studies which focused
on common folklore motifs; in the 19th century one of the first comparative
Medieval Studies was Albert Schulz, An Essay on the Influence of Welsh Tradi-
tion upon the Literature of Germany, France, and Scandinavia (1840, transl. M. Ber-
rington, 1841), and in the 20th century, Jessie Laidlay Weston’s roughly
contemporary and now very dated comparative folklore studies on the Celtic
rituals and Biblical origins of the Grail tradition and the romance genre in
The Quest of the Holy Grail (1913), and From Ritual to Romance (1920). Such
studies tended to focus on Celtic origins and oral or written sources of extant
European romance and epic.
Even before the term intertextuality was coined, medievalists provided a
number of other terms to describe the intertextual relationships so common
between medieval texts. In the late 19th century, source-studies and folklore
archetype studies were the early precursors to the critical perspective of
intertextuality that was used in the late 20th century and early 21st century.
In 1893, pioneering French philologist Joseph Bédier (Les fabliaux, études
de littérature populaire et d’histoire littéraire du moyen âge; see also entry on
“Bédier” in this Handbook) employed a metaphor to explain the medieval
strategies of composition that include the reuse of familiar material in the
notions of originality and invention. Bédier introduced the notion that Art-
hurian romances especially were not unoriginal; rather, they shared many
commonalities because they were all nourished by what he conceived of in
a sense as a common pollen. Several other attempts have been made to define
such reused literary allusion as the following: commonplaces, oral formulae,
matierel roulant, and parties cristallines. Daniel Poirion even referred to
links between medieval texts as a playful game or interplay on variations
719 Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature

and literary echoes (Précis de littérature française du moyen âge, 1983). Other
images have been applied to the phenomena of imitation and rewriting
in any period, from Roland Barthes’ appetizing metaphor of secondary
literature as a multi-layered filled feuilleté pastry, to Gérard Genette’s strik-
ing image of hypertextuality with multi-layered traces of ink left on erased
or recycled manuscript parchment with palimpsestes. Such metaphorical
terms have assisted critical dialogue concerning commonplaces and con-
ventions, but do not get at the heart of the phenomenon of 13th-century de-
rivative literature and relations to the prior texts to which it responds; the
perspective of intertextuality has aimed to better address these relations be-
tween texts.
Studies in the 1970s and 1980s (such as John A. Alford, “The Role of
the Quotations in Piers Plowman,” Speculum 52 [1977]: 80–99), looked at
inserted quotations and literary references of an intertextual nature before
the use of the term “intertextuality” as such came into full-scale critical
vogue in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, a groundbreaking special issue of the
journal Littérature explored the term and concept of intertextuality as applied
to the reading of medieval literature; from this special journal issue on, the
application of this term became a widely-used approach in medieval literary
criticism, in particular in the areas of English, French, Dutch, and German
verse and prose romance. Terms such as Paul Zumthor’s textual mouvance
and Daniel Poirion’s ré-écriture, or re-writing, became allied concepts to
intertextuality in Medieval Studies (see Hubert Heinen on intertextuality
and relationships between genres in the German tradition, for instance in his
edited volume, Genres in Medieval German Literature, 1986). The most influen-
tial articles in this issue have been Paul Zumthor’s illustration of the
concept of medieval textual fluidity and mutability with mouvance (“Inter-
textualité et mouvance,” Littérature 41 [1981]: 8–16; see also entry on “Paul
Zumthor” in this Handbook). Zumthor uses the image of movement to
explain the plurality and openness of medieval texts; he attempts to re-his-
toricize the theoretical concept of intertextuality so that the application of
the theory to medieval texts is not anachronistic. In the same landmark issue
of Littérature, Peter Dembowski’s article (“Intertextualité et critique des
texts,” Littérature 41 [1981]: 17–29) gives practical arguments for the appli-
cation of intertextuality to literary criticism, while Daniel Poirion explores
the concept of ré-écriture and reuse of borrowed material as a medieval com-
positional strategy (“Écriture et ré-écriture,” Littérature 41 [1981]: 109–18).
The influence of the Littérature editor Michael Riffaterre and the con-
clusion by Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner provided an illustration of theory
and practice that led to many future studies on intertextual relationships in
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 720

medieval romance and other genres. Over a decade later, Heinz Bergner
(“The Openness of Medieval Texts,” Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Develop-
ments in the History of English, ed. Andreas H. Jucker, 1995, 37–54) gives a
similar argument to the definition given for mouvance by Zumthor, but in-
stead with a historian’s perspective, emphasizing again the openness of the
concept of “text” within the context of manuscript culture, scribal copying
and error, gloss, rewriting of material, oral influence and other influences
that might change a text over time as it is transmitted, retransmitted, and
modified.

C. Romance Intertextuality
The Arthurian romance tradition lends itself to comparative studies because
of its broad range of genres and languages over the centuries. Taking the
much-studied case of intertextual relationships between Chrétien de Troyes’s
romances and later 13th century verse and prose romances in French and
in other language traditions as an example, it becomes clear that medieval
intertextuality scholarship has focused on more than just source studies or
recurring folkloric motifs; later scholarship has taken into view romancers’
reception of prior works and rewriting of familiar material in a complex
dialogue with past writers. Many such “intertextual” studies are essentially
comparative studies or translation studies of two or more different language
versions of a given story. Several of the first intertextual studies involving
Chrétien’s romances examined Lancelot, le chevalier de la charrette and its
relationships to Chrétien’s Yvain, Le Chevalier au lion and to other romances.
The debates on intertextuality and Chrétien’s Charrette continued through
the 1980s and 1990s (Karl D. Uitti, “Intertextuality in Le Chevalier au Lion,”
DFS 2 [1980]: 3–13), and continuing well over a decade later in more theoreti-
cal discussions (Debora B. Schwartz, “The Horseman before the Cart:
Intertextual Theory and the Chevalier de la Charrette,” Arthuriana 6.2 [1996]:
11–27).
A central work in Arthurian studies focuses on the intertextuality be-
tween Chrétien de Troyes and the 13th-century French verse romancers, or
epigones, who were possibly inspired by, responding to, borrowing from, or
parodying Chrétien is the highly influential scholarship of Beate Schmolke-
Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chré-
tien to Froissart (1980, trans. Margaret Middleton and Roger Middleton,
1998); this study demonstrates that far from suffering from the anxiety of in-
fluence, that poets in the centuries following Chrétien could even be critical
of his models. The definitive two-volume collection of essays on Chrétien’s
influence, which was also produced in the1980s, investigates intertextual
721 Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature

echoes of Chrétien in later verse, prose, and other language texts, while help-
ing to define the very nature of intertextuality in the Middle Ages (The Legacy
of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby,
2 vols., 1987–1988).
Elsewhere, intertextual studies involving Chrétien have tended to be
comparative studies, borrowing from the disciplines of Comparative Litera-
ture or Translation Studies, and focusing on primarily medieval German
adaptations of or references to Chrétien’s romances. In the past, many Chré-
tien scholars have treated Chrétien’s successors as romancers as affected by
such an anxiety of influences, treating them often with a sort of intertextual
inferiority complex, a relationship between the individual poet and his/her
tradition to be overcome. 21st-century scholars increasingly have begun to
treat Chrétien’s followers as romancers in their own right, considering them
often independently of Chrétien’s influence. A pan-European comparative
approach to intertextuality in romance is offered by the contributors to The
European Dimensions of Arthurian Literature (ed., Bart Besamusca and Frank
Brandsma, 2007), which includes intertextual references and ties between
French, German, Dutch, Celtic, and English texts.
Looking at Arthurian romance has led to “generic intertextuality,” a
broad subset of intertextuality which explores commonalities between texts
of different genres; this perspective is to be distinguished from “Inter-
textuality,” which explores the links between specific texts, rather than be-
tween genres or across genre lines. A section of essays in Norris J. Lacy, ed.,
Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature (1996), cover generic intertex-
tuality between verse/prose romances, lyric/narrative verse, English/French
romances, and Italian/English traditions; Text and Intertext also revisits the
definition of intertextuality and reevaluates its use in examining the alterity
of medieval texts.

D. Intertextuality and Genres

Intergeneric and even interdisciplinary studies between history and litera-
ture begin to reappear in the late 1980s and 1990s under the framework of
intertextuality, as in Neil Wright, History and Literature in Late Antiquity and
the Early Medieval West: Studies in Intertextuality (1995). Intergeneric intertex-
tual studies concerning references, parody, and allusions to epic, romance,
and religious texts in the French Roman de Renart have also been a focus of
scholarship, and not only by North American and French scholars (Massimo
Bonafin, “Intertestualità nel Roman de Renart,” MR 14 [1989]: 77–96). In the
21st century, work on intertextuality continues, Caroline A. Jewers, Chival-
ric Fiction and the History of the Novel (2000), takes a comparative approach as it
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 722

traces style, characterization, and commonalities in content from European

medieval romance to the modern novel, in a wide-reaching study of inter-
generic intertextuality over several centuries.
Many early comparative and intertextual studies on English medieval
literature focused on Chaucer, Malory, the Gawain poet, and others. Charles
Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition a Study in Style and Meaning (1957),
was one of the first significant comparative studies comparing English and
French texts in both form and content. Intertextual relationships between
Chaucer and Boccaccio have been revived as in Chaucerian studies through
the approach of Comparative Literature. The first studies in this area were
essentially lists of textual sources (Hubertis Cummings, The Indebtedness of
Chaucer’s Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio: A Review and Summary, 1916;
rpt. 1965). Another source-study with a folklore approach at the dawn of
Comparative Literature as a discipline was Originals and Analogues of Some of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (5 vols., ed. Frederick James Furnivall [see entry
on “Furnivall” in this Handbook], Edmund Brock, and W. A. Clous-
ton, published as a collaborative effort by the Chaucer Society over a decade,
1928–1937). It includes excerpts from a wide-range of suggested sources for
the Canterbury Tales with a global scope, including passages from Old French
fabliaux, Italian tales, analogues from Asian folklore, and Buddhist tales,
Latin fables, Marie de France, Le Roman de Renart, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and
others. Further linking French, English, and Italian traditions was Marius
Lange, Vom Fabliau zu Boccaccio und Chaucer: Ein Vergleich zweier Fabliaux mit
Boccaccios Decamerone IX. 6 und mit Chaucers Reeves Tale (1934); many later com-
parative studies also tend to focus on a particular tale in relation to influen-
tial or derivative French or Italian texts (see, for instance Klaus Grub-
müller, Die Ordnung, der Witz und das Chaos: Eine Geschichte der europäischen
Novellistik im Mittelalter, 2006; and the contributors to Mittelalterliche Novel-
listik im europäischen Kontext, ed. Mark Chinca, Timo Reuvekamp-Felber,
and Christopher Young, 2006). Later comparative studies on Chaucer focus
more on thematic and stylistic intertextuality, such as N. S. Thompson,
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: a Comparative Study of the Decameron and
the Canterbury Tales (1996), focusing on the themes of pilgrimage and love.
Malory scholars, too, in the late 20th century extend their analysis far beyond
the source-studies of earlier decades, building on earlier work by Eugène
Vinaver and others but informed by the critical discourse of intertextuality;
Sandra Ness Ihle’s study, for example (Malory’s Grail Quest: Invention and
Adaptation in Medieval Prose Romance, 1983), demonstrates the intertextuality
between the French prose romances and Malory’s compositional strategies of
rewriting, translation, and adaptation. A similar perspective on intertextual-
723 Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature

ity between the Gawain poet and French precursors is Ad Putter, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (1995).
Germanist Dennis Howard Green’s influential Irony in the Medieval
Romance (1979; rpt. 1980, 2005) is another example of a truly comparative
study, written when intertextual and comparative studies were on the rise,
focusing on narrative and stylistic strategies of verbal and dramatic irony,
drawing on sources from the English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to Ger-
man and French courtly romance. Among several comparative or translation
studies between English and French romances that have appeared, the most
comprehensive is William Calin’s The French Tradition and the Literature of
Medieval England (1994). Much comparative and intertextual scholarship has
been focused on cycles of romance, especially French, English, and German;
however, intertextuality has also been an important theoretical framework
in other languages, particularly in comparative studies on Scandinavian
texts and their manuscript traditions, as for example in Jonathan Evans,
“Intertextuality and Old Icelandic Manuscripts” (MedPers 2.1 [1987]: 17–24),
which compares not only content, but stylistic and scribal intertextual con-
nections.
Classical Greek and Latin and biblical intertextual borrowings in medi-
eval narrative or lyric have also been a focus of scholarship in the late 1980s
and 1990s, particularly in the case of Ovid in relation to medieval French
romance and to Dante. Douglas Kelly, The Conspiracy of Allusion: Description,
Rewriting, and Authorship from Macrobius to Medieval Romance (1999), reveals
classical rhetorical and Ovidian influences and intergeneric intertextuality.
Another study focusing on intertextual play with classical and Ovidian
sources is Doris Ruhe, “Intertextuelle Spiele bei Andreas Capellanus”
(GRM 37 [1987]: 264–79). Madison U. Sowell’s Dante and Ovid: Essays in Inter-
textuality (1991), covers Ovidian intertextual style, rhetoric, and content.
A similar intertextual approach to Dante and the Italian tradition, but look-
ing at biblical references and citations inserted within the narrative, is taken
by Christopher Kleinhenz, “Dante and the Bible: Intertextual Approaches
to the Divine Comedy” (Italica 63 [1986]: 225–36).
19th- and early 20th-century studies on German literature primarily con-
centrated on source-studies and relationships between the romances of
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue, and Gottfried von Strassburg
and their adaptations of earlier romance (in particular Chrétien) or epic.
In the 1980s and 1990s scholarship on the German literary tradition became
increasingly informed by the French and North American use of intertex-
tuality theory and terminology. Neil Thomas (The Defence of Camelot: Ideology
and Intertextuality in the “Post-Classical” German Romances of the Matter of Britain
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 724

Cycle, 1992) considers political themes in looking at later German Arthurian

and other romances through the lens of intertextuality. James W. Mar-
chand’s study on Wolfram defines theoretical terms as well as identifying
intertextual references in Wolfram, “Inter-, Intra-, and Intro-Textual Analy-
sis in Medieval Literature: The Case of Wolfram von Eschenbach” (The Ring
of Words in Medieval Literature, ed. Ulrich Goebel and David Lee, 1993,
203–18). Albrecht Classen has written on intergeneric intertextuality and
authorial response to a prior literary tradition, for example in Gottfried, “In-
tertextualität und Quellenbezug: Gottfrieds von Straßburg ‘Tristan’ und der
‘Morîz von Craûn’?” (Tristania 16 [1995]: 1–44). More importantly, his books
Zur Rezeption norditalienischer Kultur des Trecento im Werk Oswalds von Wolkenstein
(1987) and Die autobiographische Lyrik des europäischen Spätmittelalters (1991) es-
tablish new cross-European perspectives. He also explores the relationship
between Spanish and German literature during the Middle Ages in numer-
ous articles, for instance, “Spain and Germany in the Middle Ages: An Unex-
plored Literary-Historical Area of Exchange, Reception, and Exploration”
(The Lion and the Eagle: Interdisciplinary Essays on German-Spanish Relations over the
Centuries, ed. Conrad Kent, Thomas K. Wolber, and Cameron M. K. He-
witt, 2000, 47–76); “Die Iberische Halbinsel aus der Sicht eines humani-
stischen Nürnberger Gelehrten Hieronymus Münzer: Itinerarium Hispanicum
(1494–1495)” (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung
111.3–4 [2003]: 317–40); “Christoph Weiditz Paints Spain (1529): A German
Artist Discovers the Spanish Peninsula” (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen CV.4
[2004]: 395–406); and “Südwesteuropäische Grenzüberschreitungen aus
deutscher Perspektive: Fremdbegegnung zwischen deutschsprachigen Re-
isenden und der iberischen Welt im Spätmittelalter” (Mitteilungen des Instituts
für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 116.1–2 [2008]: 34–47). On intertextual-
ity in the Germanic romance tradition, see several chapters on the topic in The
Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Medieval
Dutch Literature (ed. W. H. Jackson and Silvia Ranawake, 2000).
More recently, a Routledge series of collaborative “Casebooks” crosses
linguistic borders and temporal lines in a broad comparative study of the
Arthurian tradition, focusing on a particular major literary figure in several
genres and languages over time, including English, French, German, Dutch,
Celtic, and some Middle Eastern material, and extending into popular cul-
ture, including for example: The Grail: A Casebook (ed. Dhira B. Mahoney,
2000); Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook (ed. Lori J. Walters, 2002); Perceval/
Parzival: A Casebook (ed. Arthur Groos, 2002); Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook
(ed. Joan Tasker Grimbert, 2002); Merlin: A Casebook (ed. Peter Goodrich,
2003); Gawain: A Casebook (ed. Raymond H. Thompson, 2005). Other “case-
725 Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature

book” studies include Arthurian material from different language traditions

as well as non-Arthurian texts from a comparative perspective focusing on
a particular theme, such as Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages (ed. Albrecht
Classen, 2002); Violence in Courtly Medieval Literature: A Casebook (ed. id.,
2004); then his Childhood in the Middle Ages (2005), and his volumes in the
series Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Walter de Gruyter):
Old Age in the Middle Ages (2007); Sexuality in the Middle Ages (2008); Urban Space
in the Middle Ages (2009); Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
(2010). Comparative literary studies in the 21st century, such as these case-
books, tend to be collaborative in nature, drawing on scholars from different
languages and disciplines.
Comparative Literature as an academic discipline has long been more in-
clusive of non-Western traditions than have other perspectives. Comparative
or intertextual studies on medieval Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and other lan-
guages have become more numerous in the 1990s and beyond. Numbers of
Arabic-Spanish, Hebrew-Spanish and Hebrew-Arabic comparative studies
and Ph.D. dissertations are also now on the rise globally. One of the first in-
itial studies in the area of Arabic and European intertextuality in epic, song,
music, romance, and lyric poetry was Ramón Menéndez Pidal (known
also for his literary studies on Don Quixote and La Chanson de Roland), Poesía
árabe y poesía europea, conotros estudios de literatura medieval (rpt. 1963), which
opened the doors to scholars of medieval Iberian literature to study Arab
traditions in Spain.
In addition, Menéndez Pidal’s 42-part Historia de España (1935–), and
in particular volumes 4–18 offer a comparative historical and literary study,
which – although it includes Arabic and Hebrew literary and historical texts
and an in-depth exploration of Muslim culture and intellectual production
in medieval Spain – in its analysis remains a conservative, Eurocentric his-
tory and literary history of Spain. The debate between Americo Castro,
La realidad historica de España (1954), and Claudio Sanchez Albornoz, España
un enigma historico (1956, rpt. 1962), continued to bring to light the polemics
of comparative approaches in Iberian Studies revealed by Menéndez
Pidal, with questions on how scholars may approach Arabic, Hebrew, and
other influences in the study of Iberian medieval literature, history, and cul-
ture. Decades later, an example of scholarship which seems to have overcome
this polemic, Spanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arab Literary Tradition: Arabic Themes
in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry (ed. Arie Schippers, 1994), offers a more recent
thematic intertextual study of Iberian literature. Addressing secular and
religious intertextuality between Spanish texts, the Bible, Hebraic poetic
tradition, and Arabic texts through a comparative thematic approach is
Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature 726

the edited collection Wine, Women and Song:Hebrew and Arabic Literature of Medi-
eval Iberia (ed. Michelle Hamilton, Sarah Portnoy, and David Wacks,
2004). See also the numerous articles published in German, English, and
French in the journal arcadia: International Journal for Literary Studies (1966–).
Finally, looking at academic associations may also give insight into
the rise of the comparative perspective in medieval literary scholarship. The
fields of Medieval Studies and Comparative Literature have been long been
allies, and have been linked officially for three decades in the United States
and Canada in academic departments, journals, and scholarly associations.
For example, the official divisions and discussion groups that currently
structure the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) Annual
Convention began meeting at the 1976 convention, and the “Division on
Comparative Studies in Medieval Literature” was one of the original divi-
sions. In the decades to follow, the division (along with allied organizations
also) has sponsored many conference sessions on comparative topics, trans-
lation studies, and intertextuality. The 1976 Division Executive Committee
of Comparative Studies in Medieval Literature, which was the first, was
composed of: R. William Leckie, Jr., Univ. of Toronto (1976 chair); Robert
Kellogg, Univ. of Toronto; Ruth Roberts, New York State Univ. Coll.,
Fredonia (1976 secretary, 1977 chair); and Barbara Sargent, Univ. of Pitts-
burgh (1977 secretary). Before MLA divisions were created, a medieval sec-
tion was created for the 1942 convention (not held because of the war). One of
the original language groups, however, covered medieval literature, and it
was categorized as a Comparative Literature group, thus a primary example
of how medieval literary studies have long been linked in the history of schol-
arship to the academic discipline of Comparative Literature.

Select Bibliography
Special journal issue: “Intertextualités médiévales,” Littérature 41 (1981); Beate
Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from
Chrétien to Froissart (1980, trans. Margaret Middleton and Roger Middleton, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, 2 vols., ed.
Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987–1988);
Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland,
1996); Allen Graham, Intertextuality (New York: Routledge, 2000).

Sarah Gordon
727 Irish Studies

Irish Studies

A. Introduction
The study of medieval Irish language and literature has followed a number of
parameters established early in the first modern efforts to edit a treasure trove
of manuscripts. Old Irish is used of the language of the first written records
from the 8th and 9th centuries. Middle Irish designates the period from the
10th to 12th century, after which early modern and modern Irish are custom-
ary terms. In relative terms, early Ireland offers a huge corpus of vernacular
writings, in part the product of a precocious literacy following the proselyt-
izing efforts of St. Patrick in the 5th century and the introduction of Latin.
The Ogam or Ogham alphabet was chiefly used for epigraphical purposes,
while most Irish was written in a native adaptation of the Roman alphabet.
In this respect, both medieval Irish literature and the scholarly efforts to
transcribe, edit, and explicate it that began in the mid-19th century have
striking parallels with the literature, literary history, and scholarship of
medieval Icelandic language and literature, including an anti- and post-colo-
nial nationalist or nativist ideology that informed efforts to account for the
flourishing state of letters in the Middle Ages. This critical insularism also af-
fected the texts studied, often regarding them, initially, as almost free-stand-
ing entities.
The central medieval Irish literary corpus has traditionally been divided
into a number of relatively discrete “cycles”: the mythological cycle, associ-
ated with relations with the pagan divine; the cycles of the kings, comprising
free-standing tales and some dynastic groupings of the birth, life course, and
death of kings and kingdoms; the Ulster cycle, in which the focus shifts
slightly to address both the Hero and the King; and, finally, the Fenian cycle,
shifting in mode from epic toward romance and concerned with the adven-
tures of Finn mac Cumhail and his band of Fenian warriors, who protected
Ireland from both supernatural and foreign threats. The value attached to
this traditional matter is illustrated by its collection into great codices, some
of the best known among which are the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Leinster,
the Book of Ballymote, and the Yellow Book of Lecan. Drama as a genre is unrepre-
sented, although dialogue is an important feature of both epic and romance.
Nor does satire make an appearance outside poetry until the Middle Irish
period. Native hagiography in both Latin and the Irish vernacular is relatively
self-contained but has important links with the kings’ cycle.
A considerable body of poetry is dispersed throughout these prose tales
but a corpus more organized in terms of content, metrics, conditions of pa-
Irish Studies 728

tronage and reception, often called “bardic poetry”, emerged at the numer-
ous local courts. Another eminent genre was “hermit poetry”, purportedly
lyric effusions by anchorites about their relations with God within the natu-
ral setting of isolated monastic cells.
Medieval Ireland was also deeply interested in topographical legend,
whether deployed in the prose tales, celebrated in poetry, or recorded in the
distinct genre of dindshenchas. There was a similar interest in the Irish lan-
guage itself, resulting in a number of “glossaries”, in which words are ana-
lyzed in an etymologizing process adapted from Isidore of Seville. Gram-
matical and metrical tracts were also produced, as well as a body of wisdom
literature. A large corpus of early Irish law has also been preserved, one in
which modern editors and scholars can discern archaic core passages that
were the object of successive glossing and reinterpretation over the cen-
turies. Chronicles in the modern sense of the term, developing from Church-
sponsored annals, make a relatively late appearance in Ireland. (Irish history,
like archaeology, art history, etc., is not tracked in the following outline; see
Prehistoric and Early Ireland in the multi-volume A New History of Ireland, 2006.)
But running in parallel with this great production of literature in the ver-
nacular was a comparable production of hagiographical, legendary-histori-
cal, and scientific literature in Latin.
In the 12th century and later, British and continental Arthurian literature
made only a slight impact on Irish letters. An impressive heritage of stories,
themes, motifs and even the language of medieval Irish letters was preserved
in largely rural Irish-speaking communities and has been recovered in mod-
ern times through the efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission, founded in
1935.

B. History of Irish Studies

In Ireland scholarly attention was first directed toward medieval Irish lan-
guage and literature in the mid-19th century, at a time when the number of
native speakers of Irish was in precipitous decline but echoes of the long-
standing tradition of native Irish law, as distinct from British law adapted to
Ireland, were still resonating. The great achievement of these first Irish
scholars was the publication of The Ancient Laws of Ireland (1865–1901), edited
by John O’Donovan, Eugene O’Curry, and others. As an instantiation of
incipient Irish nationalism, this edition was later matched by relatively un-
critical adaptations of medieval and later Irish story-telling in serialized
translations, which ultimately led to the incorporation of much medieval
matter in the works of the Irish Literary Revival. In this same nationalist cul-
tural context, Douglas Hyde, later the first president of the Republic of Ire-
729 Irish Studies

land, published The Story of Early Gaelic Literature in 1895. Much of the credit
for scholarly interest in the language, literature, law, and lore of early Ireland
must, however, go to non-Irish scholars.
Soon after the first comparative philological work on Sanskrit, Greek,
and Latin that would have a determinative influence on historical linguistics
for almost two centuries, in that language origins would be favored over lan-
guage evolution and socio-linguistics, Celtic was recognized as an important
and richly documented branch of what was construed as the Indo-European
family of languages. Paired with the first archaeological and historical explo-
rations of the very widespread Celtic presence in the Europe of antiquity,
compilations were made of Celtic personal and place names, and Celtic cog-
nates were listed along with Greek, Indian, Italic, and Slavic reflexes of pur-
ported Indo-European “roots” in the first great lexicographical works. The
best current representative of this tradition is Julius Pokorny’s Indoger-
manisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959). European scholars trained in classi-
cal philology applied this relatively refined methodology, with its focus on
codicology and transmission, text and variants, to the inchoate mass of medi-
eval Irish manuscript materials. Interest focused early on the Irish glosses in-
tercalated in manuscripts of the Latin Bible, often recovered at Irish monastic
foundations in continental Europe, as evidence of the earliest recorded stage
of the Irish language.
Although Irish scholarship produced some noteworthy facsimile and
more critical editions of major codices, a vast amount of lightly critical edi-
ting and translation was also undertaken by a handful of Irish and European
scholars. Many of these contributions were published in the small number
of series and scholarly journals that were founded at this time: Irische Texte
(from 1880), publications of the Irish Texts Society (1898), Revue Celtique
(1870), Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie (1896), Ériu (1904), and continue to be
consulted today as the best, often only, editions and translations of the texts.
Two major initiatives, one personal, one collective, lent a sense of scope
and structure to scholarship on early Irish language and literature. In 1913
Richard Irvine Best (also active as an editor) published the first volume of
his Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Printed Irish Literature. A second volume
would cover the period 1913–41, and a third (Bibliography of Irish Linguistics
and Literature), under new editorship and appearing only in 1986, that from
1942 to 1971. The initial offering summarized a wealth of articles, many
published in non-scholarly venues and, through no fault of their own, scarcely
meeting today’s standards of critical rigor but nonetheless indicative of the
surge of interest in the Ireland of the Middle Ages. The collective venture was
A Dictionary of the Irish Language, although its scope and title would later be
Irish Studies 730

qualified by the addition “based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials”.
Sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy, the dictionary project was initially
led, in practical editorial terms, by the Norwegian scholar C. J. S. Mar-
strander. The exhaustive treatment that characterized his first published
fascicule, D-Degóir (1913), acted as a check on further releases when he left
the editorship. The project stalled but was eventually resumed at a more sus-
tained pace in the 1950s and ’60s and completed in 1976 (now available in
a compact edition and online). Other lexicographical projects, while not
strictly medieval, shored up DIL as it gradually achieved finished form. One
was Patrick S. Dinneen’s Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla: An Irish-English Diction-
ary (1927), which incorporated many meanings and phrases reflective of the
Irish of earlier eras, the other, Tomás de Bhaldraithe’s English-Irish Diction-
ary (1959, reissue 2004, 2006). And also in 1959 the great French Celticist
Joseph Vendryes began Lexique étymologique de l’ancien irlandais, a lexico-
graphical project still not completed under its succeeding editors (at present,
Pierre-Yves Lambert).
Hyde’s history aside, the first great overview of the Irish literary corpus
was Henri Arbois de Jubainville’s Le cycle mythologique irlandais et la mythol-
ogie celtique (1884). An eclectic but most rewarding collection of texts and
(incomparable but now dated) translations by Standish Hayes O’Grady ap-
peared in 1892 as Silva Gadelica. A portion of this material would be examined
with greater critical rigor and more advanced philological knowledge in
Rudolf Thurneysen’s Die irische Helden- und Königssage (1921). A rather dif-
ferent approach is evidenced in Thomas O’Rahilly’s Early Irish History and
Mythology (1946). For the first time, a scholar stood back from the detail of
plots, onomastics, manuscript filiation, textual difficulties and the like, and
attempted to summarize and synthesize early Irish literature and belief in its
cosmographical and ideological dimensions. O’Rahilly’s principal theses
concerning pagan Celtic mythology, theses in which all available evidence
was marshaled under a few major concepts, have not stood the test of time
but must be seen as a milestone in Irish scholarship. Rather less ambitious
but of lasting value is Marie-Louise Sjoestedt-Jonval’s Dieux et héros des
Celtes, which appeared in 1940, with an English translation in 1949.
In 1931 the Mediaeval and Modern Irish series was launched, subsequently
(1941) taken over by the School of Celtic Studies within the recently founded
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. After Ireland’s relative isolation dur-
ing World War II, a number of publications appeared and have since been
judged landmarks in the modern study of early Irish language and literature.
In 1946, the translation of Rudolf Thurneysen’s Handbuch des Altirisches
(from 1909) by D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, both established scholars
731 Irish Studies

in their own right, appeared under the title A Grammar of Old Irish. This com-
prehensive volume has remained the indispensable cornerstone of philologi-
cal inquiry since that time, and is still in print. Similarly enduring, in a rather
different way, is Tom Peete Cross’ Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature from
1952. Its current limitations are those of the original conceptual categories,
where such modern notions as gender, ideology, physical aberrance, the
abject, and the like are absent, and the pre-1952 editions of texts on which it
bases its listings. To Cross and his collaborator, Clark Harris Slover, we
owe the very popular anthology of texts in translation (mostly from earlier
published works), Ancient Irish Tales (1936). In 1954 Myles Dillon published
Early Irish Society, a first synthetic work linking literature and social history.
A year later appeared James Carney’s Studies in Irish Literature and History.
Intentionally iconoclastic, as the author would later concede, it rejected the
nativist view of the insularity and idiosyncrasy of early Irish literature, link-
ing, for example, the tale of Díamait and Gráinne with that of Tristan and
Yseut. This lead was later followed in studies by Raymond Cormier. The in-
fluence of Carney’s collection of essays was far-reaching and revolutionized
the study of the early Irish tradition.
Another highly influential work was Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson’s The
Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age (1964). It demonstrated the ex-
treme conservatism of the Irish literary tradition in its reflection of an earlier
social and material culture, although modern scholars such as J. P. Mallory
have shown that neither an oral nor a literate tradition can preclude the
insertion of later detail and, further, the Iron Age roots, of the literary tradi-
tion at least, are now seriously doubted. A different kind of continuity, the
Irish cultural influence on the European continent, was studied by Tomás
Ó Fiaich. Patrick Henry, in turn, studied the Ireland-Iceland connection.
The same decade saw the publication of volumes of only moderate ambition
but still of a fresh synthesizing nature: a collection of radio broadcasts on the
principal early Irish tales, edited by Myles Dillon as Irish Sagas (1968), and
an overview, Early Irish Literature, published by Eleanor Knott and Gerald
Murphy (1966). Máirín O Daly (née Nic Dhiarmada) contributed numer-
ous articles on the kings’ cycle in these same years. A broader perspective on
early Celtic literature and history had become available a year earlier with the
appearance of The Celtic Realms under the editorship of Myles Dillon and
Nora K. Chadwick. A complementary volume, although never intended as
such, appeared in 1970. This was Proinsias Mac Cana’s lavishly illustrated
Celtic Mythology. Less thesis-driven than O’Rahilly’s pioneering work, it il-
lustrated not only the widely held Celtic conceptions of the organization of
the cosmos, relations with the divine, and just secular rule on earth, but also
Irish Studies 732

the great local variety in cultic practice across generally decentralized Celtic
communities and cultures. Another work of compilation with a sustained
effort at synthesis was Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient
Tradition in Ireland and Wales (1961), which sought to interpret a vast range of
Irish and Welsh evidence for cosmology and basic story types, largely from
the perspective of Georges Dumézil’s theories of a trifunctional organiz-
ation of archaic Indo-European belief and culture. Based in Brittany, Chris-
tian Guyonvarc’h and Françoise Le Roux pursued the accommodation of
the Dumézilian thesis with Celtic materials. However stimulating this work
at the time, the trifunctional paradigm has been little followed since within
mainstream Irish scholarship. Josef Weisweiler also contributed to the
study of the possibly most distant roots of the Irish epic tradition.
From these same decades came two examples of the thoroughness of tex-
tual editing and accuracy of translation that were then achievable but also
the limited concern for critical analysis of content. In 1967 Cecile O’Rahilly
edited and translated the Book of Leinster recension of the great epic Táin
bó Cúailgne (The Cattleraid of Cooley) and in 1976 the Book of the Dun Cow version
appeared. Both are accompanied by notes and glossaries but the introductory
material gives pride of place to manuscript filiation, despite a useful over-
view of theories concerning the Irish heroic saga in the earlier volume. Also
active in manuscript studies were Robin Flower and William O’Sullivan.
Similar editing practices are reflected in titles from the Mediaeval and Modern
Irish Series, while those published by the Irish Texts Society, with its much
greater range of materials, are rather more fully situated in the literary tradi-
tion.
By the close of the 20th century, Irish studies were established and even
flourishing. The best single example is perhaps and appropriately the collec-
tion of essays published to honor James Carney, Sages, Saints and Storytellers
(1989). There were few university chairs in Celtic but medieval Irish lan-
guage, literature and history were represented on a growing number of uni-
versity curricula. Some journals had passed from the scene (Celtica), others
experienced difficulties in keeping to editorial schedules (Études Celtiques).
Prominent among newcomers were Studia Celtica (1966) and Cambridge Medi-
eval Celtic Studies (1981), later relocated and renamed as Cambrian Medieval Cel-
tic Studies, and Peritia (1982).
Scholarship in general may be judged to have continued to be somewhat
introspective; few scholars published in other than traditional venues,
although linguistics may be an exception here. Yet scholarship had clearly
passed from a preoccupation with the editing of texts to a variety of ap-
proaches that would qualify as literary criticism in the modern sense of the
733 Irish Studies

term. Major themes of cosmology, sovereignty, the relation of secular royal

rule with the divine; the territorial integrity of Ireland in the face of invasion;
the fertility of the land; the relations of patron and poet, the ideal vision of
social organization as reflected in law had all been thoroughly explored,
although the tie of Irish literature to Irish history remained understudied,
despite efforts by John V. Kelleher and Donnchadh Ó Corráin. With the
founding of the Early Irish Law series in 1988, facilitated by Daniel Binchy’s
edition of the vast Corpus Iuris Hibernici in 1978, studies of the Irish legal tradi-
tion took a quantum leap forward and now represent some of the most thor-
ough and best scholarship in the field of Irish studies. The most recent vol-
ume is Liam Breatnach’s A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici (2005).
Studies in the Middle Irish period continued to be underrepresented, despite
Kenneth Jackson’s thorough edition of Aislinge Meic Con Glinne (The Vision of
Mac Con Glinne) which ultimately appeared only in 1990.
By this time as well most of the major texts of the medieval Irish corpus
were available in English translation, and a good many in French and Ger-
man as well. Despite some telling analogues, Irish literature seems to have
had, for understandable reasons, far less influence on continental European
literature of the Middle Ages than Welsh, Cornish, and Breton storytelling
and there have been proportionally fewer source, analogue, and comparative
studies. Similarly, Irish matter is more often classified as analogous to, rather
than an influence on, Old English literature (literature in Latin excepted).

C. Milestones
This review of major contributions to the field of Irish Studies and of the
scholars behind them is of necessity selective and unavoidably subjective.
Most often a single work will be called on to characterize what is often schol-
arship across a broad field. Few today will consult the Ancient Laws of Ireland
(1865–1901), yet the monumental work of its chief editors, John O’Dono-
van, Eugene O’Curry, R. Atkinson, and others, is a testimonial to the ear-
nestness which modern studies of the Irish tradition were launched. But
O’Curry in particular is worth a second look for many pieces published in
now rare journals and magazines on texts that not always became part of the
subsequent canon. The first introduction to Old Irish was John Strachan
and Whitley Stokes’s Thesaurus Paleohibernicus (1901), economically ident-
ified by its subtitle, A Collection of Old-Irish Glosses, Scholia, Prose and Verse. Like
Thurneysen’s Grammar of Old Irish, the Thesaurus has proved one of the
longest-lived reference works from the first phase of Irish studies. Like Kuno
Meyer, Stokes edited and translated a staggering range and array of texts
in journals and monographs. Several of the latter are now helpfully being
Irish Studies 734

reprinted. A few representative titles: Meyer, The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal,
to the Land of the Living (1895); Cáin Adammán: An Old Irish Treatise on the Law
of Adamnan (Adomnán in subsequent scholarship); Death-Tales of the Ulster
Heroes; Stokes, a first edition of Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da
Derga’s Hostel, RC [1901]); The Tripartite Life of Patrick (1887); Cormac’s Glossary
(1862); and editions of largely neglected translations from classical Latin.
R. A. S. Macalister is remembered for The Secret Languages of Ireland
(1937, as well as his archaeological work) as is George Calder for his edition
of Auraicept na nÉces: The Scholar’s Primer (1917), both illustrative of the fasci-
nation of the Irish learned class with language, alphabets, cryptology and
explication. Anders Ahlqvist has now examined the latter work under the
title The Early Irish Linguist. E. G. Quin saw the Dictionary of the Irish Language
through difficult years as its general editor (1953–75). Daniel Binchy’s
monumental contribution is the basic editing of the Irish law tracts, al-
though he had earlier edited the celebrated text on social station, Crith Gab-
lach (1941) and given an influential series of lectures on Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon kingship (1970). Wolfgang Meid’s edition of the Ulster cycle tale Táin
bó Fráich first appeared in the MMIS series (1967), but a second German-lan-
guage edition (Die Romanze von Froech und Findabair, 1970) provided a wealth
of linguistic and cultural information, making it an isolated example of an
excellent text for the tyro scholar working in isolation. Other contributions
to the MMIS, distributed across the major tale cycles noted above, were Ruth
Lehmann, Eleanor Knott, A. G. van Hamel, David Greene, Myles Dil-
lon, Lil Nic Dhonnchadha, J. Carmichael Watson, Maud Joynt, J. G.
O’Keefe, Joseph Vendryes, and Rudolf Thurneysen, whose edition of
Scéla mucce meic Dathó (The Tale of Mac Dathó’s Pig, 1935) is still a popular intro-
ductory tale for students, because of its concentration of action and thematic
material. Although not publishing in this series but part of this editorial
tradition is Vernam Hull.
Gerard Murphy’s Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth century (1956), pub-
lished and marketed by Oxford University Press, was instrumental in bring-
ing a most representative selection of verse, with valuable supporting notes,
to a wide readership. Here mention should be made of Brian Ó Cuív’s im-
portant lecture, The Linguistic Training of the Medieval Irish Poet (1973), a com-
plex topic still in need of elucidation. Enrico Campanile and Gearóid Mac
Eoin have also made important contributions to the study of early Irish
verse. Dynastic verse in particular was explored by Sean Mac Airt. Kenneth
Jackson’s anthology in translation, A Celtic Miscellany (1951), and, some-
what later, Jeffrey Gantz’s Early Irish Myths and Sagas (1981) similarly found
wide and appreciative audiences.
735 Irish Studies

Heinrich Wagner, who worked indefatigably as a collector in the field,

and as editor and commentator over a wide range of Irish materials, is re-
membered for both his linguistic atlas and Studies in the Origins of the Celts
and of Early Celtic Civilization (1971). In the cultural context so defined, the
conception of a goddess of territorial sovereignty, who joins with a suitable
candidate for royal rule in a distinctive Celtic hieros gamos, and the attendant
dynamics of a triangle whose corners might be labeled the King, the Hero,
and the Goddess have attracted the interest of several scholars, all also active
in other subject areas, R. A. Breatnach, Máire Bhreatnach, Maartje
Draak, Máire Herbert, Proinsias Mac Cana, Donncha Ó hAodha, Philip
O’Leary (specifically on honor), Yolande de Pontfarcy, Maria Tymoczko
(for the relevance to James Joyce), and most recently (2006) Amy C. Eich-
horn-Mulligan. Tomás Ó Cathasaigh’s The Heroic Biography of Cormac
mac Airt (1977) marks a scholarly milestone in this respect. Tangential topics
are the ‘prince literature’ (Audacht Morainn – The Testament of Morainn, ed. Fer-
gus Kelly), the ‘wild man of the woods’, and the ‘threefold death of kings’
(Pádraig Ó Riain, Joan Radner, Jean-Michel Picard). As traditional tales
were adapted to new ends, contentious Christian clerics became important
players in narrative, upsetting the dynamics between the supernatural and
the secular, between divine power and human rule, between kings and con-
sorts.
A related concern of the medieval Irish learned class was cosmological
speculation and, in its broadest conception, the earliest history of the land of
Ireland, areas in which a synthesis of pagan tradition and Christian doctrine
generated very idiosyncratic productions such as Saltair na Rann, a versified
psalter, and Lebor Gábala Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland). Here import-
ant studies have come from John Carey and Mark R. Scowcroft. Mention
must also be made of Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early
Irish Literature (1990), and Joseph Falaky Nagy, Conversing with Angels and
Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland (1997). The latter study is devoted
to Acallamh na Senórach (often called The Colloquy of the Ancients), now expertly
translated by Ann Dooley and Harry Roe as Tales of the Elders of Ireland
(1999).
Most of the scholars engaged in literary studies have also devoted efforts
to the Irish language, given the myriad textual difficulties. To their names
may be added those of Rolf Baumgarten, Johan Corthals, Eric P. Hamp,
Frederik Kortlandt, Fredrik Lindeman, Damian McManus, Tomás
Ó Máille, Paul Russell, and Peter Schrijver. While historical scholar-
ship has been excluded from this overview, a numbers of historians have
made important contributions to filling in the ecclesiastical, political and
Irish Studies 736

social background in which Irish letters were cultivated: F. J. Byrne (high

kingship), Thomas Charles-Edwards (literacy, kinship and kingship),
David Dumville (the environment of textual production), Donnchadh
Ó Corráin (marriage, kingship, royal prerogative), and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
(Hiberno-Latin literature and computistics). Fine single volume surveys are
Thomas Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland (2000), and Michael
Richter, Medieval Ireland: The Enduring Tradition (2005).
This said, historical overviews of early Irish literature have been few:
James Carney contributed a synthesizing essay to The New History of Ireland,
published posthumously. Patrick Ford edited and translated J. E. Caerwyn
Williams’ history in Welsh as The Irish Literary Tradition (1992), while the
current state of scholarship was summarized in Kim McCone and Katherine
Simms, Progress in Medieval Irish Studies (1996). In 2003 appeared Future Direc-
tions for the Study of Irish, edited by Máire Herbert and Kevin Murray. Most
recent are two fine chapters on medieval Irish literature to about 1200 by
Tomás Ó Cathasaigh and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh in The Cambridge History
of Irish Literature (2006).

D. Scholarship Today
Research in Irish studies in this century is characterized by heightened con-
textualization and the abandon of insularity, and this in two senses. While
the scholarship of an earlier century would be unjustly called “naïve,” it is
now recognized that such tales as The Cattleraid of Cooley are not the products
of collective memory, fortuitously given literate form at an early, opportune,
but still not identifiable moment. Rather, the tale and its congeners, like
those of the kings’, mythological, and Fenian cycles, are products of early
medieval antiquarianism. While a surprising amount of pagan material –
plot, personage, cultural concerns and values – has been preserved in these
tales, the thoroughly Christian environment in which they were redacted has
shorn them of every trace of pagan cult. Myth, legendary history, and topo-
graphical lore have been accommodated with Christian doctrine. Increased
awareness of just how the medieval Irish learned class cherished and culti-
vated their past allows the modern scholar to identify the ideological
purposes such tales served: dynastic politics, enhanced or antagonistic
church-state relations, the claims of monastic establishments, Irish identity.
Even that literature initially produced in the medieval period, such as bardic
poetry, is revealed as having flourished under very complex conditions of
inter- and intra-dynastic conflict, artistic patronage, poetic apprenticeship,
professional rivalries, tensions between tradition and innovation, all seem-
ingly matched by the recognized complexities of Irish metrics.
737 Irish Studies

If this domestic contextualization has been one major shift in scholarly

perspective, situating Irish letters in both the Indo-European and the
broader medieval European context is another. Now comparative studies of
Irish and Indian epic are undertaken; Norse and Irish poetics are juxtaposed,
historically and technically; and fresh avenues for comparative research are
continuously being opened up. Yet fresh editions of major texts are few and
far between.
Newcomers to Irish linguistic and literary studies now have a greatly en-
hanced choice of introductions, among which Kim McCone’s A First Old Irish
Grammar and Reader, including an introduction to Middle Irish (2005) and David
Stifter’s Seangoídelc: Old Irish for Beginners (2006) should be mentioned.
Further, scholars have not been slow to exploit new electronic media. Among
examples are the Celtic Digital Initiative (http://www.ucc.ie/academics/smg/CD/
index.html), CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts (http://www.ucc.ie/celt), Scéla: Cata-
logue of Medieval Irish Narratives and Literary Enumerations (http://www.volny.cz/
enelen), MsOmit: Manuscript Sources to Old and Middle Irish Tales (http://
www.ucc.ie/celt/MS-OMIT/Index.htm), The Ulster Cycle (http://homepage.
ntlworld.com/patrick.brown/ulstercycle/tain.html), The Cycles of the Kings
(http://www.hastings.edu/academic/english/Kings/Sagas.htm), all of these
with useful links to other resources. Old-Irish-L is one of numerous dis-
cussions lists. A continuation to the Bibliography of Irish Linguistics and Litera-
ture is now available in draft form (http://bill.celt.dias.ie/vol4/index2.html).
The annual bibliography of the Celtic Studies Association of America (http://
www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/celtic/csanabib.html) is also a valued com-
plement to the coverage of medieval Irish language and literature in the
Modern Language Association’s International Bibliography. Here may be traced
the work of such presently active scholars as Patrizia de Bernardo Stem-
pel, Dorothy Bray, Doris Edel, Elizabeth Gray, Bart Jaski, Catherine
McKenna, Daniel Melia, Lil Ní Dhonnchadha, Ruairi O Huiginn, Pa-
trick Sims-Williams, Edgar Slotkin, Hildegard Tristram, Calvert Wat-
kins, and Dan Wiley. Charles W. Dunn was instrumental in the founding
of the association and in the promotion of Celtic studies in North America. It
is a wry irony that the Irish epic corpus is so much greater than that of Old
English yet every college has its Anglo-Saxonist. Now, the relatively small
number of scholars working in Medieval Irish Studies – all, outside Ireland,
with other strings to their bows – will be greatly assisted by new technologies
that will offset limited library holdings that reflect the earlier research and
curricular priorities of many institutions.
In terms of critical theory, Irish Studies has been invigorated by new im-
pulses but has fed little back to the study of other literatures. This said, books
Italian Studies 738

that would have been unpublishable – almost inconceivable – two decades

ago, such as Ann Dooley’s Playing the Hero: Reading the Irish Saga Táin bó
Cúailgne (2006) and Robin Chapman Stacey’s Dark Speech: The Performance of
Law in Early Ireland (2007), demonstrate to what immense profit a more open
perspective on, and familiarity with, gender studies, feminist studies, inter-
textuality, ideology, patronage, performative utterances, rhetorical suasion,
and metaphor – to name but a few vital current topics – has been to medieval
Irish Studies. Despite the current vogue for all things Celtic, studies of
specifically Celtic medievalism have been slow to appear. Yet the combined
efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission and of the scholars here passed in
review have ensured that what Daniel Corkery, in a slightly different con-
text, called The Hidden Ireland (1924) is now open to view, preservation, and
just possibly further cultivation.

Select Bibliography
Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Printed Irish Literature, comp. R. I. Best (Dublin: H. M.
Stationery Office, 1913, rpt. 1992); Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Printed Irish Litera-
ture, 1913–41, comp. R. I. Best (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1942,
rpt. 1969); Bibliography of Irish Linguistics and Literature, 1942–71, comp. Rolf Baum-
garten (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Study, 1986); Dictionary of the Irish Lan-
guage, based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials, gen. ed. E. G. Quin (Dublin: Royal
Irish Academy, 1913–76); Prehistoric and Early Ireland, ed. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).

William Sayers

Italian Studies

A. The Diatribe of Philology Against Aesthetics (1890s–1945)

Critical studies on medieval Italian literature began during the second half
of the 19th century, with the work of Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883).
De Sanctis can be considered as the initiator of the critical methodology
now referred to as scuola storica. At the beginning of the 20th century, German
philology influenced the Italian approach to literary criticism. The introduc-
tion in Italy of Lachmann’s theoretical model led to a systematic appli-
cation of the German philological method to medieval texts (Luigi Russo,
La critica letteraria contemporanea, 1977). De Sanctis produced outstanding
critical research on Italian literature, especially on historical figures por-
739 Italian Studies

trayed by Dante Alighieri in the Divina commedia and on Dante’s influence on

Italian writers of all ages. His method, according to the Lachmann stan-
dard, was based on a very detailed historical and philological analysis of
archive documents and various relevant sources of information, which could
provide insight and grounds for discussion on obscure passages of Italian
medieval literature. De Sanctis provided an overview of all literary cur-
rents from the middle ages to his contemporary time, offering also a critical
analysis of Italian masterpieces of all ages (Francesco De Sanctis, Storia della
letteratura italiana, 1870–1871). Although De Sanctis was considered by
Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile as the most important literary
critic of the 19th and early 20th century, his work is not well known outside of
Italy. One English translation dates to 1931, but De Sanctis’s convoluted
and often monotone style at times makes it difficult for the Anglo-Saxon
reader to appreciate it. However, it is possible that his lack of popularity
outside Italy is due to the complexity of his line of thought and to a certain
ambiguity that characterizes his approach. Overall, De Sanctis does not
belong to a school or a stream of thought, but was rather involved in a com-
pletely Italian perspective and in the intellectual and political renaissance of
Italy during the Risorgimento. He was also very much tied to the environ-
ment of Naples, so much so that his thought may be perceived as provincial.
However, his critical synthesis of Italian literature is so unique and relevant
that he deserves a place of honor in the history of Italian Studies.
Having introduced into Italian Studies a methodology that implied
detailed archive research and textual analysis based on both sources and
linguistic exegesis, De Sanctis was revered and his mission was continued
by scholars of great impact such as Alessandro d’Ancona, Pio Rajna, and
Michele Barbi. Each of these scholars imported their original contribution
to the field, which implemented and updated the knowledge and compre-
hension of medieval Italian texts, setting them into a historical framework
and widening the understanding of the value of medieval Italian production.
Domenico Comparetti (1835–1927) can be considered as an exception to
the scuola storica (Roberto Antonelli, “Interpretazione e critica del testo,”
Letteratura italiana: L’interpretazione, 1985, 141–243), in that he followed a
personal approach in the analysis of Italian medieval literature. Compa-
retti’s prolific activity includes studies on Dante and on vernacular literature
(Domenico Comparetti, Virgilio nel Medio Evo, 1872). Alessandro D’An-
cona (1835–1914), an enthusiast of De Sanctis’s historical method,
proved to be a fine pursuer of literary analysis and produced a number of
works of great relevance from the viewpoint of the historical-philological ap-
proach in Italy (Le antiche rime volgari secondo la lezione del Codice Vaticano 3793,
Italian Studies 740

1875–1888). Interested mainly in the origins of Italian popular culture, he

also devoted great attention to Dante (Scritti danteschi, 1912–1913). Michele
Barbi (1867–1941) wrote on the question of the modern Italian philological
tradition. As at the end of the 19th century French scholars were offering a
major contribution to the birth of modern philology, especially Quentin
and Bédier, Barbi introduced an approach that helped clarify the charac-
teristics of the Italian philological school, which followed Lachmann’s
method against variants proposed by Quentin and Bédier, and was based
on the study of the individual manuscript, refusing a real system (Michele
Barbi, La nuova filologia e l’edizione dei nostri scrittori, da Dante al Manzoni, 1938).
When in 1906 Pio Rajna (1847–1930) published his principles of textual
criticism, he established the difference between the new age and the past,
based on method (influence from Lachmann) and dogmatism. The result
was representative of the spirit of the German approach to medieval texts.
Rajna was an active scholar throughout the first half of the 20th century and
focused mainly on the discovery of the sources of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando
Furioso (Pio Rajna, Le fonti dell’Orlando Furioso), a book that was received with
great enthusiasm by the followers of the historical methodology, because it
revealed the contribution to the origin of the Italian chivalric tradition of
texts belonging to the late 14th century, which had never been studied from
this perspective. Rajna viewed the creation of the Italian chivalric poem as a
development of earlier poems that were circulating in the form of songs per-
formed by popular story tellers in market squares, the cantari, short poems in
ottava rima, a metre typically Italian. Thus, he contributed to creating a con-
nection between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Rajna also pub-
lished extensively on Dante Alighieri, devoting particular attention to his-
torical and philological problems related to his works, and edited Dante’s
treatise on the vernacular (Pio Rajna, Il trattato ‘De Vulgari Eloquentia,’ 1896).
The editing of Italian medieval texts and their analysis according to the
precepts of De Sanctis’s theoretical model triggered two different reac-
tions. On the one hand, a great number of scholars were trained under the
aegis of the historical school, who applied the new method to critical editions
of the works of Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, and
to other less known medieval writers. Enormous effort was made at the
beginning of the 20th century to bring back the wealth of medieval Italian
literature to the public. On the other hand, the systematic application of
Lachmann’s method was severely criticized by Benedetto Croce and his
followers, who viewed it as merely an instrument to create good critical edi-
tions and as a theoretical model that served no purpose in literary criticism,
which must be involved with the appreciation of the literary text. Italian
741 Italian Studies

medieval studies were, thus, from the start characterized by a dichotomy be-
tween philology and literary criticism, the former being engaged with the
editing of texts the closest possible to the original version, the latter being
devoted to the reading and awareness of the value of medieval literary cre-
ations. The diatribe of philology versus aesthetics engaged major medieval
scholars at the beginning of the century. Barbi intervened on the question
defending the need of critical editions of works by writers such as Dante and
Manzoni, for the literary critic to access texts the closest possible to the origi-
nal. The diatribe, as far as Italian Medieval Studies are concerned, was never
resolved, as new questions arose that overcame these concerns. Seen with
today’s eyes, the two fields of philology and literary criticism are evidently
concerned with different approaches to literature, as nowadays philologists
rarely if ever engage in discussions on interpretive aspects of a literary text.
The predominance of the historical-philological school triggered
critics concerned with aesthetics to react rather strongly. Benedetto Croce
(1866–1952) is the Italian literary critic who most influenced opinions and
literary evaluations of generations to come. Croce’s interpretation and aes-
thetical theory remained predominant throughout half a century, and be-
came the norm in Italian literary criticism until new currents of thought
were imported from abroad that updated Italian Studies in the 1970s (Bene-
detto Croce, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale, 1902).
Croce maintained that philology is an auxiliary technique, which must not
interfere with an esthetical evaluation of the literary text. In his view, philol-
ogy and literary criticism should work in separate ways. In other words, he
viewed philology as craftsmanship. He criticized severely Rajna’s work on
the sources of the Orlando Furioso, considering the subtle work of reconstruc-
tion as a mere exercise with no relevance to the appreciation of the poetic
value of Ariosto’s original invention. It was Croce’s contention that the
existence of sources from which the poet might have drawn his inspiration
in no way diminished the genius of the artist. Therefore, he viewed Rajna’s
meticulous reconstruction as an effort that added nothing to the beauty of
the poem.
The same line of reasoning applies to Rajna’s work on Dante’s sources,
in that appreciation of the artist’s genius excludes, according to Croce, the
consideration that the external import of sources such as documents, leg-
ends, and classical culture may cast doubt on the originality of his creative
impulse. The founding principle on which Croce’s thought is based is that
art is intuition. His definition of the term “intuition” must be understood as
Anschauung (“representation”), or, as he himself described it “l’unità indiffer-
enziata della percezione del reale e della semplice immagine del possibile.”
Italian Studies 742

Intuition is therefore a wider category of what we normally call art (René

Wellek, “La teoria letteraria e la critica di Benedetto Croce,” Letteratura ita-
liana: L’interpretazione, 1985, 351–391). Croce’s main idea was that poetry
can never be realistic because it belongs to the soul and not to reality as we
know it and consider it (Benedetto Croce, Poeti e scrittori del pieno e tardo Rin-
ascimento, 1945–1952). This summarizes his point of view on archival re-
search on the sources for historical figures in Dante and Renaissance poetry.
In his book La poesia di Dante (1921), he stated that each episode in Inferno
must be identified as a poem in itself independent of the poem’s structure:
according to Croce, “structure” is the non-poetic scaffolding behind the
poetic intuition. Croce’s thought was influential both in Italy and abroad,
particularly in the United Stated where New Criticism gathered several sug-
gestions from the Italian scholar. In Italy, a number of followers dissemi-
nated his teachings, most of whom eventually differentiated themselves
from their master. Among them, Attilio Momigliano (1883–1952) au-
thored important readings of Dante’s works and his language and especially
one edition and commentary of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1945). Natalino
Sapegno (1901–1989) merged Croce’s aesthetics with Gramsci’s position
on art and literature as the expression of freedom of thought. His edition and
commentary of the Divine Comedy (1955–1957) for decades was adopted in
Italian schools as the standard textbook. He also authored a history of Italian
literature (Natalino Sapegno, Storia della letteratura italiana, 1965–1969),
which cast writers and their works within their historical context. This was
also used as the standard handbook in Italian schools throughout the 1960s
and 1970s. Walter Binni (1913–1997) contributed extensively to the exe-
gesis of Dante’s Comedy (Chiara Biagioli, Bibliografia degli scritti di Walter
Binni, 2002).
It was with the critical work of Carlo Dionisotti (1908–1998) that the
attention to a general overview of medieval literature as a whole was im-
ported into Italian critical studies (Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della
letteratura italiana, 1967). He provided critics with an entirely new approach
to Italian literature, which considered the geographical element as a unify-
ing trait, establishing thus a connection between writers of various ages.
Dionisotti opened up Italian literary criticism to the possibility of merg-
ing various approaches: the philological method and the historical approach,
a wholesome aesthetic appreciation of poetry and the sense of its historical
meaning. A collaborator of Natalino Sapegno at the University of Rome, he
then moved to England in 1947, where he taught Italian at the University of
Oxford. He then became professor of Italian at Bedford College in London in
1949. Dionisotti spent the greatest part of his career in England where he
743 Italian Studies

collaborated intensively with the journal Italian Studies. His major field of in-
terest was 15th-century Italian literature, of which he analyzed particularly
the historical and philological aspects and political implications. Dion-
isotti died in 1998, saluted by the community of Italianists as the greatest
literary critic of the century, specifically for the broad vision of Italian litera-
ture as a whole.

B. Marxist Criticism (1945–1960s)

The influence of Marxist criticism in Italian Medieval Studies became par-
ticularly strong during the aftermath of World War II, as a reaction to the
previous fascist cultural hegemony. The question of realism in Italian medi-
eval literature started being explored under the influence of the Hungarian
theorist György Lukács. However, the highest achievement of textual exe-
gesis done from the perspective of the representation of realism can be found
in Erich Auerbach (Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen
Welt, 1946), with two chapters dedicated to the figure of Frate Alberto in Boc-
caccio’s Decameron and the episode of Farinata and Cavalcante in Dante’s Hell.
Marxist criticism aimed at finding a reflection of the economic and social
conditions of the Middle Ages in literature. This stream of thought is repre-
sented by Carlo Salinari (1919–1977) who wrote especially on realism in
Boccaccio (Carlo Salinari, La questione del realismo, 1958), and also published
a commentary to the Decameron (Il Decamerone di Boccaccio, 1963). Among liter-
ary critics in the 1960s who carried further an analysis of medieval literature
according to the canon of neo-realism, Eduardo Sanguineti (born in 1930)
distinguished himself for applying the principles of Marxist criticism to the
study of Dante. Sanguineti was, with Umberto Eco (b. 1932), a member of
the “Gruppo 63,” a circle of progressive writers and critics of a Marxist back-
ground, but not necessarily faithful to the orthodox line of Marxist thought.
Sanguineti’s work explores elements of realism in Dante’s poetry, and
offers a valuable interpretation of the literary production of the Florentine
master (Edoardo Sanguineti, Il realismo in Dante, 1966). An important
contribution to Italian Medieval Studies came from Alberto Asor Rosa
(b. 1933), who dedicated great effort to interpreting the figure of the lay in-
tellectual inaugurated by Dante (Alberto Asor Rosa, “La fondazione del
laico,” Letteratura italiana: Questioni, 1986, 17–121). He edited the collective
volumes of the Letteratura italiana published by Einaudi, which offers an in-
teresting perspective on the medieval period, viewed from an entirely Marx-
ist perspective.
Marxist criticism was demolished by the introduction in Italy of the
writings of the critics belonging to the Frankfurt school, such as Walter Ben-
Italian Studies 744

jamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, and Max Horkheimer,

who aimed at defending the public from mass culture since the 1970s.

C. Philology in the 1960s and Later

In spite of the fact that theories of contemporary criticism started circulating
in Italy in the 1960s, several of the major Italian philologists remained
faithful to the teachings of the Italian historical school of the beginning of
the century, continuing the mission of editing texts according to a detailed
historical and philological analysis, rather than offering interpretations.
The Italian philological school stayed far away from the influence of struc-
turalism. Amongst the major contributors of this current is Umberto Bosco
(1900–1987), an expert on the Italian Trecento, who conceived and directed
the monumental Enciclopedia dantesca (1970), one of the greatest achieve-
ments in Dante Studies. In 1966–1967 Giorgio Petrocchi (1921–1989)
edited a critical edition of the Commedia according to the vernacular tradi-
tion. Both Sapegno’s and Petrocchi’s commentaries to the text remain
standard editions used for the purpose of research and interpretation.
Gianfranco Folena (1920–1992) published mainly in the field of 15th and
16th-century literature, while Vittore Branca (1913–2005) edited and com-
mented Boccaccio’s Decameron and devoted much attention to contextualiz-
ing Boccaccio within the framework of medieval culture, viewed from differ-
ent perspectives (Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron, 1981). Branca
also edited Boccaccio’s opera omnia in ten volumes between 1964 and 1999
and is considered the most respected authority in Boccaccio Studies. His leg-
acy has been taken up by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, who followed in Bran-
ca’s footsteps and has offered major contributions on Boccaccio and on
the culture of Trecento, especially regarding the courtly civilization of inland
Venice. Aurelio Roncaglia (1917–2001) was a romance philologist, who
also devoted some interest to the study of the origins of the Italian literature
and the definition of Franco-Italian (Aurelio Roncaglia, “La letteratura
franco-veneta,” Storia della letteratura italiana, 1965, 727–759).
However, the scholar who most embodies the tendency to follow a
strictly philological approach is Gianfranco Contini (1912–1990), who of-
fered a critical edition of Petrarch’s rhymes (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, 1964).
He has been held responsible for the rebirth of philology, and most of con-
temporary philologists acknowledge their debt to his teaching. His critical
approach, which considered variants both in manuscripts and in earlier edi-
tions as the starting point for reconstructing the genesis of the text, concen-
trated especially on linguistic elements (Varianti e altra linguistica, 1970).
Contini’s main theory is that Dante’s language is characterized by pluri-
745 Italian Studies

linguism, while mono-linguism started with Petrarch’s style. His edition of

Dante’s poems has long been considered the most reliable (Dante Alighieri:
Rime, 1970). Contini published at least two works that are viewed as the
basis of Italian contemporary philology, Poeti del Duecento (1960); and Un’idea
di Dante (1970), two collective volumes that provide a thorough overview of
Italian 13th-century literary culture and a general idea of the style and beliefs
of the author.

D. Structuralism in Italy (1961–1980s)

A sign that Italian Medieval Studies were gradually being enriched with
groundbreaking perspectives came from Russian formalists (Victor Rklov-
skij, Lettura del ‘Decameron’: Dal romanzo d’avventura al romanzo di carattere,
1969; Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du ‘Décaméron,’ 1969). However, it was
only in the 1970s that the reworking of formalist theories and the contribu-
tion of semiotics and structuralism blended with the traditional philological
approach, producing interesting results. A number of critics gradually sub-
scribed to semiotics, for example, Paolo Valesio who followed Jakobson in
his analysis of the various structures of one rhyme by Dante (Roman Jakob-
son and Paolo Valesio, “Vocabulorum Constructio in Dante’s Sonnet Se vedi
li occhi miei,” Studi danteschi 43 [1966]: 7–33). It was Cesare Segre (b. 1928)
who officially introduced structuralism and semiotics into the field of Italian
Medieval Studies (Cesare Segre, I segni e la critica, 1969). Segre, a student
of Gianfranco Contini, started his career as a romance philologist. He
displayed great competence and methodology in his critical edition of the
Chanson de Roland (1971), which remains a fundamental version of the French
epic text. He then became interested in semiotics and displayed the results of
his merging of philology and the new approach in Semiotica filologica (1979).
He produced outstanding research on the 13th century, and a number of
interesting studies on various topics, of which his analysis of medieval folly
deserves special mention (Cesare Segre, Fuori del mondo: I modelli nella follia e
nelle immagini dell’al di là, 1990). Cesare Segre and Maria Corti (1915–2002)
are the major contributors to the dissemination of semiotics in Italy and have
encouraged the fusion of the traditional Italian philological school with the
needs of contemporary interpretation represented by semiotics (Giorgio
Baroni, Storia della critica letteraria in Italia, 1997). Corti’s studies aimed
at defining hidden cultural models and intertextual relationships in Dante
and his contemporary culture (Maria Corti, Metodi e fantasmi, 1969, now in
Scritti su Cavalcanti e Dante, 2003). Corti and Segre produced an interesting
summa of the tendencies of Italian criticism in I metodi attuali della critica in Ita-
lia (ed. C. Segre and M. Corti, 1970). Generally speaking it can be said that
Italian Studies 746

they brought the basic principles of structuralism into the heart of Medieval
Italian Studies (Marin Mincu, La semiotica letteraria italiana, 1982). Literary
interpretation, philology, and semiotics found a perfect balance in the works
of these two critics. Among other critics who obtained interesting results
by adopting this approach, D’Arco Silvio Avalle (1920–2002) was the first
Italian critic to apply narratology and Propp’s morphology to Dante’s Com-
edy (Modelli semiologici nella ‘Commedia’ di Dante; 1975; L’ultimo viaggio di Ulisse,
1966).
The author who systematically researched in Medieval Studies adopt-
ing an entirely semiotic approach is Umberto Eco, whose career is varied
and comprises studies on medieval philosophy (Il problema estetico in San
Tommaso, 1970; Arte e bellezza nell’estetica medievale, 1987). While on the one
hand his name is strictly linked to Medieval Studies because of his back-
ground, Eco became gradually more interested in a general theory on
reception and reader oriented studies. His thought provoking analyses
opened up a new approach in literary criticism (Opera aperta, 1962; Lector in
fabula, 1979).

E. New Approaches (1981–2000s)

Apart from a few scattered incursions in Medieval Italian Studies, postmod-
ern criticism has not been particularly influential in this field. The fusion
of deconstructionism, feminism, and Marxism was applied to Dante in one
instance, where Dante is compared with Yates (Gayatri C. Spivak, In Other
Worlds, 1988). Other experiments were based on the attempt to apply contem-
porary theories of reception to Dante’s Commedia (for example, Teodolinda
Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante, 1992). A post-Lacanian
approach was adopted for a psychoanalytical examination of Petrarch’s
poetry (Stefano Agosti, Per una lettura psicanalitica del Canzoniere di Petrarca,
1993).
However, the most recent developments of literary criticism have in-
fluenced Italian Medieval Studies only marginally in that the last twenty
years have featured a major effort to compile editions of minor works, with
the purpose of allowing for a reconstruction and examination of the historical
and cultural context where the texts were produced. A new edition of Dante’s
Commedia, including a revised commentary that contains interesting inter-
pretations of the text has been published by Tommaso Di Salvo (La ‘Divina
Commedia’ di Dante Alighieri, 1987). One important contribution to the knowl-
edge of the Italian Trecento is focused on Franco-Italian literature, particu-
larly on the Entrée d’Espagne which is placed within the vibrant framework of
northern Italy in the 14th century. A most accurate profile of the historical
747 Italian Studies

circumstances contemporary to the composition of the poem was drawn by

Corrado Bologna, “La letteratura dell’Italia settentrionale nel Trecento,”
(Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, 1987, I: 511–600), while Alberto Li-
mentani (1940–1992) authored a major study on this topic (L’‘Entrée d’Esp-
agne’ e i signori d’Italia, 1992). The field of Franco-Italian and the late medieval
period with particular focus on the genesis and significance of the chivalric
poem have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. For example,
Daniela Delcorno Branca dedicated numerous studies to the tradition of
Buovo d’Antona. In the Unites States, Leslie Zarker Morgan founded and
currently directs the Franco-Italian On-Line Archive (www.italnet.nd.edu/
fiola). Her studies on the omniscient narrator and on questions of style
in Franco-Italian literature, together with a study by Nancy Bradley-
Cromey (Authority and Autonomy in L’Entrée d’Espagne, 1993) opened up new
perspectives on this tradition. Recently, the evaluation of Duecento poets
connected with Dante and technical points of textual editing were made the
object of a critical analysis by Guglielmo Gorni (Dante prima della Commedia,
2001).
British and American scholarship is greatly contributing to the under-
standing of the Italian Trecento. Two translations of the Divine Comedy were
published by Dorothy Sayers (1893–1957) and Charles S. Singleton
(1909–1985), who also worked on Boccaccio. His contribution to the devel-
opment of Dante-Studies in America is of foremost importance (Charles S.
Singleton, An Essay on the Vita Nuova, 1949; id., Commedia: Elements of Struc-
ture, 1954). Attention has especially been devoted to Dante, Petrarch and Boc-
caccio, for example, Robert Hollander published several essays on Dante
and Boccaccio: Dante: A life in works (2001); Boccaccio’s Dante: The Shaping Force
of Satire (1997), and one translation of the Divine Comedy, which initially was
aimed at updating Singleton’s translation, but then evolved in a new ver-
sion. Amongst critics, who contributed to the understanding of Italian medi-
eval literary culture, Peter Armour, Mark Musa, and J. S. Scott offered
studies that made Dante available to a wider audience. John Took’s philo-
sophical approach introduced a new perspective on Dante’s thought (Dante’s
Phenomenology of Being, 2000), while Zygmunt Baranski focused above all
on intertextuality and cultural history (‘Chiosar con altro testo:’ Leggere Dante nel
Trecento, 2001; Zygmunt Baranski and Martin McLaughlin, The Italy’s
Three Crowns: Reading Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, 2006). Different aspects of the
Comedy were explored by Michelangelo Picone (Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi,
1987), while studies on the reception of Dante in contemporary society were
published by Amilcare A. Iannucci (for example, Dante, Cinema and Tele-
vision, 2006).
Italian Studies 748

Computer-aided literary criticism produced interesting results (David

Robey, Sound and Structure in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ 2000), a field which
is now being expanded. Finally, a historical perspective on different aspects
of Italian medieval culture is offered by Chiara Frugoni, whose approach
represents the influence of the Annales on Italian scholarship (Vita di un uomo:
Francesco d’Assisi, 1995). An encyclopedia that gathers together the most re-
cent scholarship on medieval Italy was edited by Christopher Kleinhenz
(Medieval Italy, 2003). Among the journals that publish updates on Italian
medieval literary culture is Studi di filologia italiana, the annual bulletin of the
Accademia della Crusca; Rivista di Studi Danteschi, the biannual journal of the
Centro Pio Rajna; Studi Danteschi, annual journal of the Società Dantesca Ita-
liana; The Italianist, biannual journal of the department of Italian Studies of
the University of Reading; Dante Studies, annual journal of the Dante Society
of America, and the proceedings of the Dante Series organized by John
Barnes at University College Dublin.

Select Bibliography
Letteratura italiana: L’interpretazione, ed. by Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1985);
Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, ed. by Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1987);
Storia della critica letteraria in Italia, ed. by Giorgio Baroni (Turin: UTET, 1997); Alberto
Casadei, La critica letteraria del Novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); Teresa De Laure-
tis, “Semiotic in Italy,” The Sign: Semiotics Around the World, ed. Richard W. Bailey, La-
dislav Matejka, and Peter Steiner (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978),
248–57.

Claudia Boscolo
749 Japan, Medieval

Japan, Medieval

A. Defining the Japanese Middle Ages

Starting in the early modern era, European scholars used the term the
“Middle Ages” (or its Latin equivalent, “medieval”) as a disparaging term to
mark the epoch from the fall of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance,
which supposedly was the time when the Classical world was reborn. Not
only have medievalists actively resisted the misperceptions about the Middle
Ages (solidified with Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
1776–88), but have also explored the possibility that the term “medieval” or
“Middle Ages” can appropriately describe societies outside of Europe. Those
who believe that medieval culture existed in areas outside the West have
turned to Japan more frequently than to any other country. The reason stems
from early Japan’s court culture, reaching its zenith in Heian Japan, which
possessed a striking resemblance to the court culture of medieval Europe;
and especially from the feudalism that flourished during the Kamakura and
Muromachi eras, characterized by a samurai warrior class that followed the
principles of Buddhism in ways comparable to the medieval knights with
their Christian-based chivalry.
However, even those who believe that Japan had a medieval era similar to
that of Europe’s cannot agree upon the same timeline. Traditionally Japan-
ese history is divided into periods that reflect ruling powers and the locations
of their capitals. The Kamakura period (1185–1333) and the Muromachi
period (1333–1573) constitute the Japanese medieval era, according to most
historians, because these are the times when feudalism and the samurai class
flourished. Thus, for Japanese history, the terms “feudalism” and “medieval”
are interchangeable, although this is not the case for some other cultures
labeled as medieval. A few scholars still extend the medieval era into the Edo
period (1615–1868), although typically it is now classified as the beginning
of the Modern era. Literary scholars examining texts cross-culturally often
include the Heian period (794–1185) as part of medieval Japan because its
court literature paralleled European medieval genres in striking ways. How-
ever, there are those who express concern that Eurocentric scholars are pro-
jecting Western historical patterns upon other cultures that have their own
Japan, Medieval 750

distinct historical patterns and that European terms like “medieval” do not
fit other cultures.

B. Historical Overview of Japan and Western Scholarship

Among Europeans it was the Portuguese who first traded and interacted
with the Japanese from the 1540s until the Edo period (1615–1868) when
foreigners were banned from the islands. Westerners did not establish signifi-
cant contact again until Commodore Perry’s 1853 “request” for Japan to
open its doors, a request made from American steamships with artillery
pointed toward Japan. After 1853 Japan rapidly adopted modern Western
practices. This rapid transformation was a characteristic of the Meiji era
(1868–1912) when power shifted from the shogun to the emperor. Europe
and America set up diplomatic relations with Japan, although Japan’s imi-
tation of Western empires, including colonizing territories, proved to be a
significant factor leading to World War II and to temporary suspension of
diplomatic relations with the Allies.
As part of its modernization process, Japan created Keio University,
established in 1858 and modeled after Western institutions of higher learn-
ing. Japanese scholars were eager to describe their history and culture in ways
that paralleled the West. Therefore, in the late 1800s Japanese history was cast
in such Western terms as “medieval,” with the feudal period extending from
the Kamakura era through the Edo (1185–1868). Literature was classified ac-
cording to such Western genres as the novel. Western scholars readily adopted
this familiar terminology (Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity,
and Japanese Literature, eds. Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, 2000).
A small handful of Western diplomats served as the first scholars who in-
troduced North America and Europe to the Japanese. For example, one envoy
was George Sansom, advisor and representative of the United Kingdom to
Japan in 1904, British consular in Japan 1939–1941, and later professor at
Columbia University after World War II. He was one of the first scholars writ-
ing in English to note parallels between feudal Japan and Europe; his studies
included Japan: A Short Cultural History (1931) – in which he dated Japan’s feu-
dal period from the Kamakura era up through the Edo – and a series of history
books that started publication in 1958. W. G. Aston, a British consular and
contributor to Cambridge’s Japanese collection, wrote an early book in Eng-
lish on Japanese literature (A History of Japanese Literature, 1899). Instead of
using the term medieval, Aston referred to the Heian period as the Classical
age, the Kamakura as the era of decline, and the Muromachi as the Dark Ages.
Translations played an important role in encouraging Westerners to
compare their history and culture with that of Japan. For instance, in 1935
751 Japan, Medieval

Arthur Waley produced the first English translation of The Tale of Genji, rec-
ognized by Japan and by the rest of the world as the literary masterpiece of
Japan and as one of the world’s classics. A product of Heian culture and
written by Murasaki Shikibu, Genji has been classified as one of the world’s
greatest novels and as one of the world’s greatest romances on the scale with
the medieval romances of Arthur. In 1918 A. L. Sadler began publishing
translated portions of the Tale of the Heike, which has been compared to West-
ern war epics; it is the narrative account of the fall of the Taira clan to the Mi-
namoto clan, an event which ended the Heian period with its sophisticated
court and ushered in the feudal era of Kamakura (Helen Craig McCol-
lough published a full English translation in 1988).
Hostilities between Japan and the United States during World War II led
to an increase in American interest in its enemy. Hence, English-language
scholarship on Japan expanded. After World War II research would modify
earlier perceptions of medieval Japan. John Whitney Hall, who was born
to American missionaries in Japan and who worked for American naval intel-
ligence during World War II, was the historian who shaped current views on
Japanese periods and their parallels with the West. He was the first to argue
that trends during the Edo period would qualify it as the beginning of
Japan’s modern era. Hall and his student Jeffrey Mass contended that Ka-
makura Japan formed the early Middle Ages (with its seeds sown in the Heian
era that ended with the Gempei War that would establish the power of the
samurai) and the Muromachi era constituted the late Middle Ages. Hall and
Mass edited the first study in English on medieval Japan (Medieval Japan: An
Institutional History, 1974), and Hall became the first editor of the standard
history, Cambridge History of Japan. The standard study that came to define and
periodize Japanese literature was written by Jin’ichi Konishi (translation of
his five-volume study is entitled A History of Japanese Literature). Konishi
placed literature of the Heian period under the Early Middle Ages. Donald
Keene, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer in the Pacific during World War II
and later professor at Columbia, compiled English-translated anthologies of
Japanese literature (1955), in which he identified the literature of the Kama-
kura and Muromachi eras as medieval.

C. Current Trends in Scholarship

There was a global shift in research during late 20th century in response to
profound political events: World War II ended with the dismantling of em-
pires (both English and Japanese, for example) and the rise of postcolonial
nations; the 1960s were marked by civil rights movements and student pro-
tests, leading to interest in feminism and the rights of ethnic/racial minor-
Japan, Medieval 752

ities; the 1980s saw the end of the Cold War and a new emphasis upon area
studies. One feature of these emerging studies has been the increased interest
given to world literature and world history, to an international Middle Ages.
The recent interest in world perspectives was presented, for instance, in
The Longman Anthology of World Literature, which defined the international
Middle Ages as a time that followed the Classical period. A culture’s Classical
time period could vary from area to area; however, these societies produced
foundational texts, often religious in nature – the Bible, Vedas, etc. The sub-
sequent Middle Ages built upon these religious foundational texts and
developed certain institutions connected to religion and government. The
medieval era eventually gave way to the modern, marked by secularization,
nationalism, urbanization, industrialization, and other such trends (Volume B:
The Medieval Era, ed. David Damrosch, 2004, 1–4). Damrosch subtitled
one section as “Lords and Ladies, Knights and Samurai,” thereby explicitly
linking the European Middle Ages with Japan. According to Damrosch,
traits inherent to the medieval era were (1) royal courts that were sites for pa-
tronage of the arts (such as Lady Murasaki who wrote Genji at the court of Em-
press Shoshi), (2) a large peasant population often serving as serfs for feudal
overlords in an agrarian economy, (3) a warrior class that became the subject
for epics and romances and other literary forms, (4) and cultures dominated
by the rise of certain religious beliefs (Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist). Al-
though Damrosch included Heian Japan in the medieval era in the intro-
duction and in the volume itself, for the section specifically on Japan, Haruo
Shirane followed traditional dating and separated the Heian period from
the Japanese medieval era (Kamakura and Muromachi periods).

D. Heian Literature
The Heian period was distinguished for its refined, artistic court culture.
Given its royal courts’ focus upon aesthetics, it is not surprising that the
Heian era is viewed as the Japanese golden age for the arts. The Heian period
marked the epoch in Japanese history extending from 794 to 1186, when the
capital city was located in Heiankyo (modern day Kyoto). This early medieval
period began when the Emperor moved the capital from Nara, and it ended
after the Gempei War, when the victorious Minamoto clan transferred the
capital to Kamakura. We know about the aristocracy through the courtly
writings of its members, but little is known of the lower classes, who would
have formed the majority of the population.
Heian Japan looked back to the Chinese T’ang Dynasty of the 600–900s
as a model, much in the same way that medieval Europe was inspired by the
earlier Roman Empire. Fusing native Japanese characteristics with this bor-
753 Japan, Medieval

rowed Chinese culture, Heian aristocracy devoted itself to what Ivan Mor-
ris called the “cult of beauty in art and nature” (The World of the Shining Prince,
194).
Women writers dominated the Heian literary canon, making it unique
among the world’s traditional literatures: first and foremost is Murasaki
Shikibu, author of Japan’s most treasured classic, The Tale of Genji (Genji Mono-
gatari), classified as the world’s first novel and one of the finest; Sei Shon-
agon, whose Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) is a complex piece of autographical
writing that defies easy categorization and description; and Izumi Shikibu,
Heian Japan’s leading poet. Most Heian writers in Japanese were women be-
cause – as in medieval Europe where men dominated the official language of
Latin – in medieval Japan men tended to write in the official language of Chi-
nese, not in Japanese. Secluded behind screens from the prying eyes of men,
women writers like Murasaki Shikibu would entertain their royal patrons,
like the Empress Shoshi, with romance prose narratives interspersed with
poetry (monogatari), waka poetry reflecting the Shinto appreciation of nature,
and autobiographical writings, such as diaries (nikki).
Because of the rise of women’s studies, a number of scholarly works in re-
cent years have focused upon this corpus of women’s literature: H. Richard
Okada, Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry, and Narrating in The Tale of Genji
and Other Mid-Heian Texts, 1991; Edith Sarra, Fictions of Femininity: Literary In-
ventions of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs,1999; Terry Kawashima,
Writing Margins: The Textual Construction of Gender in Heian and Kamakura Japan,
2001; At the House of Gathered Leaves: Shorter Biographical and Autobiographical
Narratives from Japanese Court Literature, ed. and trans. Joshua S. Mostow,
2004. As some of these scholars have noted, attempts to place genres into
Western categories have proven vexing. For example, it is standard in the
West to differentiate between genres of poetry and prose whereas Japanese
literature traditionally mixes the two modes. Thus, there is resistance among
some literary scholars to pigeonhole Japanese literature into Western genres,
a practice common since the 19th century. In contrast, some studies have at-
tempted to trace parallels between Western and Japanese women’s writing:
Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on European Medieval and Japanese Heian
Women Writers, ed. Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho, 2001; The Female
Autograph, ed. Domna Stanton, 1987; Marilyn Miller, Poetics of Nikki
Bungaku: A Comparison of the Traditions, Conventions, and Structure of Heian Japan’s
Literary Diaries with Western Autobiographical Writings, 1985.
Japan’s most important contribution to world literature, The Tale of Genji
is a romance novel about Genji – a son of the Emperor, his many loves, and
their descendants. Although Genji is nicknamed “the shining one,” Murasa-
Japan, Medieval 754

ki’s careful characterization avoids reducing Genji to an idealistic, stereo-

typical hero, as Genji’s flaws lead to mistakes that he must atone for. The
novel’s detailed descriptions provide insights into life during Heian Japan
and illustrate the power politics of the time (many scholars believe she mo-
deled Genji, other characters, and some episodes after the lives of members of
the powerful Fujiwara clan). Although a voluminous novel with countless
characters, the careful plotting in Genji brings coherence and unity to the
work. The Tale of Genji has proven to be an especially popular topic for West-
ern scholarly studies: Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life
in Ancient Japan, 1969; Norma Field, The Splendor of Longing in The Tale of
Genji, 1987; Haruo Shirane, Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji,
1988; Doris Bargen, A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in The Tale of Genji,
1997.
Aside from the interesting psychology of her characters, Murasaki devel-
ops central themes drawn from her Buddhist beliefs: karma and imperma-
nence are two major ones. The prevalence of religious beliefs was another
marker of medieval culture, according to Damrosch. For medieval Japanese
literature, the prevailing tragic sensibility derived from the Buddhist realiz-
ation of the ephemeral beauty of this world (William Lafleur, The Karma of
Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan, 1983). Although Bud-
dhist ideas were imported from China, they were modified by native Shinto
thought. For instance, the belief in spirits and demons was based in Shinto,
but exorcists were frequently Buddhist clerics. Later, the Spartan ethics of
Zen Buddhism would dominate the ideals of the samurai warrior class that
would ascend at the end of the Heian period and beginning of the Kamakura
(Richard Bowring, The Religious Traditions of Japan, 500–1600, 2005). Relics
formed an important aspect of Buddhist worship (Brian D. Ruppert, Jewel in
the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan, 2000) much as relics
were integral to medieval Christianity. The same was true of the building of
sacred sites and of pilgrimages (Janet Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist
Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan, 1994).

E. Feudal Japan
The Heian period ended when warriors in the Kamakura region empowered
themselves by winning the Gempei War (1180–85), the subject of the Tale
of the Heike, the monogatari that ranks second to the Genji. Because the Kama-
kura and Muromachi eras were dominated by the samurai, there was an
artistic decline from the Heian period, although significant literary master-
pieces were written. Certain literary genres continued, such as the monoga-
tari (Tale of the Heike) and poetry anthologies (Shinkokinshu). The new, striking
755 Japan, Medieval

development was the rise of Noh Drama during the Muromachi era. Zeami
Motokiyo (1363–1443) was the central character in the history of the Noh
drama, a highly stylized, poetic tragic genre featuring song, dance, and
music performed by masked actors. Influenced by Zen Buddhism and Shinto
rituals, Noh drama drew its plots from events from Heian history, such as
the Gempei War that ended the period, as commemorated in Tale of the Heike
(Michele Marra, Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan,
1999; Elizabeth Oyler, Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions: Authoring Warrior
Rule in Medieval Japan, 2006; David Blalock, Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories:
Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from the Chronicles of Japan to the Tale of
the Heike, 2007).
One major focus of scholarly discussion for the medieval era of the Kama-
kura and Muromachi periods has been the nature of Japanese feudalism. The
shogun, the first of which was Minamoto no Yoritomo, replaced the emperor
in authority, although the imperial family was allowed to continue as figure-
heads who oversaw ceremonies. The government, called bakufu, resembled
western feudalism, in that the shogun had loyal retainers, the samurai who
formed a warrior class (bushi) that managed land holdings. The warrior codes
of the samurai owed much to Zen Buddhism, just as western knights fol-
lowed chivalry, which was linked to Christianity. Modern Japan emerged in
the Edo period (1615–1868) with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogu-
nate, located in Tokyo. Karl Friday traced the rise of warriors in Hired Swords
(1992) and Samurai, Warfare, and the State in Early Medieval Japan (2003), noting
that the rise of warriors and feudalism were not synchronous as they were in
Europe; Friday’s work built on Jeffrey Mass’s earlier studies that divided
the Japanese Middle Ages into an early period about the beginnings of the
samurai and the later period about their dominance.
Since Japan and Western Europe are so far apart, why do their historical
cultures seem so similar? Parallels between Western Europe and Japan may
be the result of geography, according to essays written by Tadao Umesao in
the 1950s, but just recently translated into English (An Ecological View of His-
tory: Japanese Civilization in the World Context, trans. Beth Cary, 2003). During
the Middle Ages, parallel cultures evolved because of a temperate zone and
rainfall for agriculture (leading to the establishment of feudalism) and be-
cause of their distance from early centers of civilization (Rome and China).
Historians currently debate the topic of a global feudalism, not confined
just to medieval Europe and Japan. According to R. J. Barendse, “The feudal
process can be perceived as a specific world historic juncture in which peasant
societies were subjugated by an aristocracy of mounted warriors that became
more powerful than any central institution and increasingly appropriated the
Jewish Studies 756

jurisdiction over the peasants, and thus the land revenue” (“The Feudal Mu-
tation: Military and Economic Transformations of the Ethnosphere in the
Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History 14.4 [2003]:
503–29, here 511). In contrast, Stephen Morillo argued that feudalism is a
vexed term and scholars cannot agree upon its meaning; in fact, he claimed,
some historians have begun to avoid using the term because of its vagueness.
Morillo maintained that Barendse was projecting the European concept
of feudalism upon other cultures (“A Feudal Mutation? Conceptual Tools and
Historical Patterns in World History,” Journal of World History 14.4 [2003]:
531–550). This conflict calls attention to a central issue in inter/cross-cultural
studies: when are similarities random, and when do similarities form a mean-
ingful pattern? Was there, in fact, a “feudal” Japan during its “Middle Ages,”
or is Japanese cultural history being forced into Western patterns?

Select Bibliography
Cambridge History of Japan, ed. John W. Hall et al., 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1988–); William Deal, Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan
(New York: Facts on File, 2006); Jin’ichi Konishi, A History of Japanese Literature, trans.
Aileen Gatten and Nicholas Teele, ed. Earl Miner, 5 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984–); Earl Miner et al., The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese
Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Richard Bowring, The Reli-
gious Traditions of Japan, 500–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Barbara Stevenson

Jewish Studies

A. Historical Overview
The medieval period was instrumental in establishing the legitimacy of Jew-
ish Studies as a field of research, teaching and at the center of many debates,
especially concerning periodization. If the “Middle Ages” in general history
is relatively clearly defined – from the collapse of the Roman Empire (476) to
the capture of Constantinople (1453) – the Jewish notion of yemey ha-beynayim
(“Middle Ages” in Hebrew) is open to discussion. In the Rabbinical sources,
the term defines a multiplicity of geo-cultural contexts, the best known
being the division between sefarad (“Iberian Peninsula”) and ashkenaz (“Ger-
many”). But above all, it defines a long period between the conquest of the
Persian Empire by Muslim forces (7th c.) and the beginning of modernity.
757 Jewish Studies

A majority of historians, from Heinrich Graetz (Geschichte der Juden von den
ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 11 vols., 1853–1875) to Jacob Katz (Out of
the Ghetto, 1973) consider that the penetration into Jewish communities of
rationalism, emancipation, and the ideas of the French Revolution go with
the collapse of medieval culture.
The history of Jews in the Middle Ages was always a major topic of
research (Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Middle Ages,” History of the Jewish
People, ed. Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, 1976, 385–723; Irving Abraham Agus,
The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, 1969; id., Urban Civilization in Pre-Crusade
Europe, 2 vols., 1965; Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade,
1987) mostly because of the great significance of Jewish philosophy, com-
mentary or literature, and the leading role of important personalities such
as Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed, trans. by Shlomo Pines, 1963). Its
scholarly study, however, is quite a recent phenomenon. In the second half of
the 19th century, the study of medieval Jewry was treated as the core of the
new scientific platform elaborated by the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Leopold
Zunz, “Grundlinien zu einer künftigen Statistik der Juden,” Zeitschrift für
die Wissenschaft des Judentums [1822]: 523–32, rpt. Gesammelte Schriften, tome I,
134–41). The life and thought of the medieval Jews is analyzed with scien-
tific methods and tools, forsaking the traditional apologetic or “theological”
Rabbinical approach. A clear division is made between the orthodox com-
mentary of the canonical texts and the scientific philological-historical study
of the cultural heritage of the Jews. The social mutation encouraged a better
participation in academic institutions, the desire to investigate the past,
to foster the Jewish identity and to gain the right for Jews, like other citizens,
to teach in academic institutions and universities. Jewish intellectuals and
scholars, especially in Germany, were conscious of the social significance of
academic research (Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context, the Turn to History
in Modern Judaism, 1994). For the Maskilim, the enlightened Jews who sought
the modernization of Jewish life, scientific inquiry into all aspects of the Jew-
ish past, including medieval history and literature, was seen as an object of
study disconnected from religious practices, which could, in a political per-
spective, promote participation in social and academic life. Science served as
a tool for the recognition of the Jewish role in European culture and in the
struggle for the rights of the Jewish minority (Lionel Kochan, The Jew and
History, 1977). If some historians, in their desire to hasten socio-political in-
tegration, emphasize the points of encounter between Jews, Christian or
Muslims (Marcus Jost, Geschichte der Israeliten, 10 vols., 1820–1847), some,
on the contrary, view their academic work as a recognition and promotion of
the Jewish cultural tradition as part of the European heritage. They demon-
Jewish Studies 758

strate the participation of Jews in the building of European or Mediterranean

cultures and analyze the socio-religious autonomy of the kehilot (“Jewish
communities”) in the general framework of medieval societies (Nachman
Krochmal, Moreh nevukhei ha-zeman, ed. by Leopold Zunz, 1851; Shimon
Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 3 vols., 1920–1946). For
Jewish scholars (Guido Kisch, Jew in the Medieval Germany, 1949; Bernhard
Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental 430–1096, 1960; Léon
Poliakov, Histoire de l’antisémitisme, 5 vols., 1955–1994; Jeremy Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism, 1982), it was also
important to rectify the errors, negative stereotypes, and religious prejudices
accumulated for many centuries by theologians and scholars about Jews
in medieval times. Many historians referred to the period as the “dark ages”
characterized by violence and religious intolerance. They presented the Jews
as a passive, alien minority, confined in the cultural insularity of the ghettos
and separated from society by the restrictive codes of laws, rituals, and reli-
gious practices concentrated in the “obscure Talmud,” and enduring an end-
less suffering in exile. The impact on Christian historians of religious preju-
dices and theological debates tended to obliterate the perception of Judaism.
In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, no Jewish scholar wrote a history
of Jews in the Middle Ages, although the period was studied by the major
researchers. Some, like Heinrich Graetz (Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten
Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 11 vols., 1853–1875), emphasized the leading
roles of great personalities in the course of Jewish history. Others, like Shi-
mon Dubnov (Die Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes, vol. 4, Das frühere Mittel-
alter, vol. 5, Das späte Mittelalter, 1926–1927) analyzed specific themes related
to political issues, such as, for example, the positive effect of the creation of
the autonomous community (kehilot) on Jewish continuity. The leading place
that Middle Ages occupy in most general works on Jewish history shows how
central this period is to understand Jewish creativity and cultural specificity
in the context of Christian and Muslim societies.
Other historians chose to focus their studies on more circumscribed
topics in order to initiate a dialogue with the general history of both East and
West. This approach, which combines a comparatistic perspective with an in-
ternal analysis of Jewish societies, has helped to better analyze the specific
traits of the medieval Jewish heritage in fields as varied as literature, philos-
ophy or education. As an oppressed minority in various European countries,
without recognized institutions and with no possibility to learn outside
the communities, the Jews gave great importance to teaching and studying,
either in synagogues (beyt ha-knesset), talmudic academies (yeshivot), or in
houses of study (beyt ha-midrash) (Moritz Guedemann, Die Geschichte des
759 Jewish Studies

Erziehungswesens und der Cultur der abendländischen Juden während des Mittelalters
und der Neueren Zeit, 3 vols., 1880–1888). Historians such as Ephraim Elime-
lech Urbach (Baalei ha-tosafot, 1955) and Abraham Grossman (Hakhmei ash-
kenaz ha-rishonim, 2001; id., Hakhmei tsarfat ha-rishonim, 1995) emphasize the
leading role of a small elite of great rabbis, sages, halakhists, philosophers,
kabbalists and commentators in the preservation of Jewish identity and the
transmission of canonical sources and religious values in learned circles as
well as among the less educated. Several generations of scholars have investi-
gated medieval Jewish thought and philosophy (Julius Guttmann, Die Phi-
losophie des Judentums, 1933, English 1964; Georges Vajda, Introduction à la
pensée juive du Moyen âge, 1947; Shlomo Pines, “Jewish Philosophy,” Encyclo-
pedia of Philosophy, IV, 1967, 261–77; Colette Sirat, La philosophie juive au
Moyen âge, 1983), law (Menahem Elon, Jewish Law, History, Sources, Principles,
4 vols., 1994), or exegesis (Menahem Banitt, Rashi, Interpreter of the Biblical
Letter, 1985; Israel Ta-Shma, Ha-Sifrut ha-parshanit la-Talmud be-eyropah
uvi-tsafon afrikah, 3 vols., 1999–2002), revealing its remarkable richness and
creativity. This broad investigation stimulated the publication of books
and editions of many important texts of the medieval heritage showing the
continuity and innovation of Jewish culture and methods of interpretation
(Solomon Munk, Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe, Paris, 1955). Although
the principal aim of 19th-century scholars was to transmit ethical values, to
disseminate pious interpretations and to investigate God’s word through
Rabbinical techniques and hermeneutical rules of interpretation, this con-
tinuous research and the publication of classical sources paved the way for
contemporary Jewish scholarship (among many publications, see, Maimon-
ide, Mishneh Torah, trans. and ed. by Moses Hyamson, 1937–1949; Harry
Austryn Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle, 1929, with the translation of
the beginning of Or Adonai; Levi ben Gershom, Les guerres du Seigneur, trans.
and ed. by Charles Touati, 1968).
Analyzing the perception of “the other” in Jewish sources and that of
Jews in Christian or Muslim texts became a central point in illustrating how,
contrary to the assertions of theologians and propagandists, Jews con-
tributed to the formation of both Western and Oriental civilization, from an
economic, cultural, and social point of view (Moritz Steinschneider, Die
Juden als Dolmetscher, 1893; Cecil Roth, The Jewish Contribution to Civilisation,
1940). Studying the sources on the origins of the Ashkenazi community –
its organization, legal status and autonomy within the feudal states – is part
of the desire to show that, far from being a “marginal minority,” Jews in
fact contributed to fashioning the features of European history (Bernard S.
Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, 1977). The same per-
Jewish Studies 760

spective applies to the phenomena of cultural porosity and the impact of

Christian values on medieval Jewish culture, leading to the study of ambiva-
lent relations between Jewish communities and their Christian neighbors.
Through this type of study, scholars felt they were doing their part in reduc-
ing the barriers between the Jewish world and the surrounding society, while
at the same time questioning the existence of a “Judeo-Christian symbiosis.”
Historians of the 20th century first questioned, then rejected this concept,
preferring the idea of a minority’s survival by affirming and defending its
difference within a dominant culture (Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and the
Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, 1994; Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and
Muslims in Medieval Spain, 1994; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of
the Jew in Medieval Christianity, 1999). In this context, the “golden age” of
Spain played a major role as a case for studying relations between Jews, Chris-
tians, and Muslims, and is regarded as a social laboratory to measure the in-
terpenetration and mutual enrichment between cultures (Yitzhak Baer, Die
Juden in christlichen Spanien, 2 vols., 1926–36; Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jew-
ish Culture in Transition, 1982). Inversely, this historical period is also a way of
recalling the permanence of persecutions, violence, and expulsions as a con-
stitutive dimension of the history of the Jews in Europe (Simcha Goldin,
Alamut, ahavukha al-mavet ahavukha, 2002). These traumatic ruptures caused
waves of migration to Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, which
served to develop new communities and a rich Jewish culture, notably in Po-
land (Moshe Rosman, The Lord’s Jews, 1990) and in the Ottoman Empire
(Minna Rozen, History of the Jewish Community in Istanbul, the Formative Years
1453–1566, 2002).
The construction of Jewish historiography has always been influenced
by ideological and religious debates. In the 19th century, the leading scholars
of the Wissenschaft des Judentums participated in the cultural emancipation of
the Jewish intelligentsia. Some historians integrated the study of medieval
sources in the political framework of Jewish nationalism, along with the cul-
tural struggle for recognition of political independence. In the following
century, many historians had the premonition of the catastrophe that would
shake Europe. Massacres, persecutions, and suffering are the result of exile,
lack of political sovereignty, and are considered as the consequence of the
status of Jews as an alien minority (Simon Bernfeld, Sefer ha-demaot, 3 vols.,
1923–26; Yitzhak Baer, Galut, 1936). The end of the “valley of tears” pre-
supposes the conquest of political independence and the return to Zion.
Studying the history of persecutions is seen as an intellectual tool to fight
anti-Semitism. It leads to a reflection on the relation between suffering, loss
of political sovereignty, and feelings of alienation. For many historians, such
761 Jewish Studies

as Ben-Zion Dinur (Toldot Israel: Israel ba-golah, tomes 5–6, 1925–1926) only
Jewish independence could bring political redemption and liberation and
put an end to the exile from history.
If we can distinguish a line of continuity between the scholars of the
Wissenschaft des Judentums and most of the Jewish historians of the first half of
the 20th century, the contemporary period reflects a gradual mutation with
some radical changes. The “new history” of medieval Jews shows a renewal
of objects, objectives, methods and the emergence of new fields of research.
It should be recalled, first of all, that the general histories of the Middle Ages
gave little place to Jews. This shadowy presence meant that Jews were as-
signed a subaltern role in the social and economic history of Europe. But
more importantly, it made it difficult to integrate their history into the gen-
eral economy of both East and West. Contemporary historians, inversely,
have worked on re-positioning Jewish society within the general framework
so as to better define the role of Jews in medieval culture. The historians
sought to understand the specificity of their transnational history, to exam-
ine the intercommunity links that united them, and to retrace the genesis of
communities in the body of feudal legal and political structures (The Jewish
Political tradition, ed. Michael Walzer, Menahem Lorberbaum and Noam
J. Zohar, 3 vols., 2000).

B. Rethinking Jewish Medieval History

The questioning of what has been called the “lachrymose conception of Jew-
ish history” (Salon Wittmayer Baron) has also made it possible to rethink
Jewish historiography. The Middle Ages is no longer considered as a period
of darkness that ended at the end of the 18th century by the triumph of the
Enlightenment, an era of reason and progress that eventually gave civil
rights and made the integration into European societies possible. Moreover,
the study of Jews in the medieval period for a long time accentuated the lack
of historical chronicles, political thinking, or Jewish art on a par with those
produced by representatives of the dominant societies. It lends weight to the
idea of an insular culture, focused almost exclusively on religion, and mini-
mized the notion of contacts with surrounding worlds. As for Jewish creativ-
ity, scholars tended to reduce it to a mere appendix of the cultures in which
they lived. Medieval Jewish history was seen as a ramification of European
history, in the same way as Jewish medieval literature was merely a branch
of universal literature. The transformation of medieval Jewish studies also
led to abandoning the vast perspectives and overall explanations of macro-
history, which, like Salo Wittmayer Baron (Social and Religious History of the
Jews, vols. 3–8, High Middle Ages; vols. 9–12, Late Middle Ages, 1952–1993)
Jewish Studies 762

embraced the totality of medieval Judaism in its plural dimensions and its
maximum geographic expansion.
Contemporary historians have abandoned these conceptions, emphasiz-
ing rather the exceptional intellectual creativity of medieval Jews, the phe-
nomena of interaction with the ambient culture and the constant invention
of collective responses to the attacks, prejudices, and violence of Christian
society. Many areas formerly unexplored have now been thoroughly re-
searched. From the second half of the 20th century, the Jewish studies show a
re-centering on micro-history, on more circumscribed themes providing ac-
cess to the dynamic complexity of Jewish society in its plural and contradic-
tory dimensions. Among these themes are economic and cultural history,
particularly the history of education (Ephraim Kanarfogel Jewish Edu-
cation and Society in High Middle Ages, 1992), history of the family (Elisheva
Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family in Medieval Europe, 2004),
women (Abraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, Jewish Women in Medieval
Europe, 2004), sexuality (David Biale, Eros and the Jews, 1992), art, theater,
and music (Cecil Roth, Jewish Art, 1961; Amnon Shiloah, Jewish Musical
Traditions, 1992; Ahuva Belkin, Ha-Purim-shpil, 2002), mentalities, and ma-
terial culture (Ariel Toaff, Love,Work, and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria,
1996), or the links between martyrology, stereotypes, and social violence
(Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism, 1990; Robert Chazan,
Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism, 1997). Intellectual changes have
also been emphasized, including the opposition between Rabbinic thought
and the formation of the scientific spirit (David Ruderman, Jewish Thought
and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, 1995; Yizhak Tzvi Langer-
mann, The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages, 1999). An important field of
research is the study of Rabbinical sources, including the responsa, as an access
to social and economic history (Irving Marcus, Teshuvot baalei ha-tosafot,
1954; Hayim Soloveitchik, “Can Halakhic Texts talk History?,” AJS Review
3 [1978]: 153–96; id., Sheelot u-teshuvot ke-makor histori, 1990). We could also
mention the circulation of persons, property, and knowledge in the dias-
pora, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic (Gérard Nahon, Métropoles et périphéries
séfarades d’Occident: Kairouan, Amsterdam, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Jérusalem, 1993).
One of the major aspects of modern historiography is that it called into ques-
tion the stereotypes of Jewish isolation in communities that were micro-
societies impermeable to outside influences. Jewish society is no longer ana-
lyzed as a world closed into itself, in which only internal dynamics (whether
unification around the canonic texts or creative tensions between comple-
mentary components) enabled preservation and survival. Among the recur-
rent themes we can cite the integration of Jewish history into the general con-
763 Jewish Studies

text of medieval culture and the evaluation of the role of the surrounding
cultures, be they Christian or Muslim, in the formation of medieval Jewish
culture (Albrecht Classen, “Jewish-Christian Relations in the German
Middle Ages – the Exploration of Alternative Voices? The Deconstruction of
a Myth or Factual History? Literary-Historical Investigations,” Amsterdamer
Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 58 [2003]: 123–49; id., “Jewish-Christian
Relations in Medieval Literature,” German Literature Between Faiths: Jew and
Christian at Odds and in Harmony, ed. Peter Meister, 2004, 53–65). Many his-
torians have favored the phenomenon of osmosis between Jewish society and
the modes of thought, beliefs, customs, and symbols of the surrounding cul-
tures. The study of relations between Christian theological thought and the
methods of the Jewish commentators has helped put into perspective the
idea of cultural porosity (Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au
moyen âge, 1990). A good example can be found in the influence of Christian
monastic thought on the social ethics of the Jewish pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz).
Their doctrine, although clearly linked with ancient Jewish magic, mysticism,
and cosmogonies, also appeared to be a non-violent response to the persecu-
tions and discriminations of Christian society (Yitzhak Baer, “Ha-megam-
mah ha-datit ha-hevratit be-Sefer Hasidim,” Zion 3 [1938]: 1–50). Contacts
within educated circles also show intellectual relations between Jews and
Christians. Jewish philosophy in Islamic lands, which served to transmit
concepts, doctrines, and technical vocabulary, attests to the circulation of
texts and manuscripts, and to the role of translation in the formation of
medieval Jewish thought (Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Philos-
ophy, The Transmission of Texts and Ideas, 1977). One can observe similar phe-
nomena in the realm of language practices, linguistic terminology, gram-
matical tradition or literature, both learned and popular (Leo Prijs, Die
grammatikalische Terminologie des Abraham Ibn Ezra, 1950). Other historians
have stressed the dialectic between the dynamic effect of interaction and ac-
culturation on the one hand and the conservative role of the law and the
traditional social framework on the other. A good example is the organiz-
ation of communal power in Spain and the complex social stratification
based on a division between a Jewish “aristocracy” a developing urban bour-
geoisie, and the people, which was simultaneously a factor of stabilization,
tensions and mutation (Yom Tov Assis, The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry:
Communities and Society in the Crown of Arago 1213–1327, 1997). The political
role of the Jews within the local power, or the phenomena of cultural transfer
between Arab, Greek, Latin, and Jewish medicine and sciences (John M.
Efron, Medicine and the German Jews, 2001), as mathematics or astronomy,
are further examples of the circulation of knowledge (Joseph Shatzmiller,
Jewish Studies 764

Jews, Medicine and Medieval Society, 1994; Ron Barkai, A History of Jewish Gynae-
cological Texts in the Middle Ages, 1998; Gad Freudenthal, Science in the Medi-
eval Hebrew and Arabic Traditions, 2005). In the Ashkenazi lands, the emerg-
ence of the major Jewish communities is related to the development of
urbanization, which stimulated Jewish participation in the economic expan-
sion of Europe, notably in international trade and money lending (Michael
Toch, “The Economic Activities of German Jews in the 10th to the 12th Cen-
turies: Between Historiography and History,” Facing the Cross, ed. Yom Tov
Assis et al., 2001, 32–54). Present-day historians tend to reposition this role
in the broader context of the history of cities and “minorities” including the
Lombards. The same is true of the place of Jews in the economic policy of
princes and monarchs. Although Poland is an interesting example of Jewish
participation in the exploitation of properties of the nobility, one should
not overestimate this role, which depends on the amount of social contact
between the peasantry, the Jewish middlemen, and the Christian authorities
(Israel Halperin, Yehudim ve-yahadut be-mizrah eyropah, 1968; Salo Witt-
mayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Poland-Lithuania,
vol. XVI, 1976).
Another essential area of research is to study the phenomena of violence,
tensions, and conflicts. The systematic attacks on Jewish communities dur-
ing the Crusades were the culmination of the long-standing hostility toward
the Jews. Numerous chronicles attest to the scope of the disasters, although
in using them, historians have to distinguish between the commemorative
and the historical, relating martyrdom and documenting history. Faced with
such persecutions, Jews exalted spiritual resistance (as shown, among others,
by the non-violent current of the Sefer hassidim), and advocated death for the
sanctification of the holy name (kiddush ha-shem) rather than conversion (Ivan
Marcus, Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists in Medieval Germany, 1981; Jeremy
Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God, 2004). This violence extends into the
realm of ideas, with the polemic anti-Jewish literature based on a critical
scrutiny of the Torah, refutation of the Talmud, or, on the contrary, search-
ing the Talmudic literature for foundations of Christianity. In the name of
a rational and all-encompassing vision of religion, the theologians con-
demned the Talmud as a receptacle of all the errors and ravings of the Jewish
religion. It is seen as the canonic text par excellence, in which are concen-
trated all the blasphemous heresies of Jews toward Christians. As such, it
must be denounced and criticized but also burned or otherwise destroyed
(Gilbert Dahan, La polémique crétienne contre le judaïsme au Moyen âge, 1991; id.,
ed., Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris, 1242–1244, 1999). Jews are stigmatized for
their pernicious role in society as magicians, sorcerers, and as the vehicle of
765 Jewish Studies

evil forces. Representations of the demonic Jew contribute to the prolifer-

ation of denunciations, culminating in the accusations of ritual murder,
blood libels, and profanations of the host. In most European countries, anti-
Jewish ideology was to have tragic implications (Joshua Trachtenberg,
The Devil and the Jews, 1943; id., Jewish Magic and Superstition, 1939). The his-
tory of both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic worlds are marked by pogroms or
other manifestations of violence to minorities or marginal groups. Social
pressure, exacerbated by theological conflicts, leads to discriminatory legis-
lation and waves of expulsion (Markus J. Wenninger, Man bedarf keiner
Juden mehr, 1981; Michael Toch, Die Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich, 1998).
In Spain and Portugal, voluntary or forced conversions make it necessary to
reconsider the terms of Jewish identity and the religious practice of the con-
versos. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 marks the high point of
antagonism between the royal power, the ecclesiastic authority, and the
Jewish minority. Historiography has attempted to determine the multiple
reasons for this catastrophe, which changed the face of medieval Judaism.
The pressure of the Inquisition, fueled by theological controversies, the pol-
icy of unification of the monarchy around a centralized power, and a single
religion fostered by the urban oligarchy and the resentment of the lower
classes of society led to the eradication of Jewish life in Aragon and Castille
(Benzion Netanyahu, The Marranos in Spain: From the Late 14th Century to the
Early 16th Century According to Contemporary Sources, 1966; Hayyim Beinart,
The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 2 vols., 1994). On the other hand, anti-Jew-
ish violence forced the authorities to separate Jews from the rest of the popu-
lation with the creation of ghettos. Although there are many variations, the
formation of Jewish quarters inscribed legal discrimination and social segre-
gation into the space of the medieval city (Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in the
Renaissance, 1994). In describing the plurality of social ethos of the Marranos,
torn between their loyalty to Judaism and the lure of assimilation, historians
revealed the modernity of the Marrano condition. The religious crisis, the
strategies of re-Judaization in the Netherlands in the 17th century, and the
study of the economic role of the Sephardic Diaspora in the Mediterranean
world, in America, and in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies attest to
the fundamental role of Marranism for the birth of Jewish modernity (Yosef
Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, 1989).
Studies of the Jews in Islamic lands (Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam,
1984; Moshe Gil, Erets Israel ba-tequfah ha-muslimit ha-rishonah, 3 vols., 1983;
Haim Zeev Hirshberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, 2 vols., 1974–
1981; Moshe Gil, Be-malkhut yishmael bi-tequfat ha-geonim, 4 vols., 1997),
made possible in part by the recovering of many sources that had long been
Jewish Studies 766

unavailable, provided a welcome contribution to the renewal of medieval

Jewish studies. The historians of Wissenschaft des Judentums often presented
(in contrast to the situation in Europe) an idealized vision of the Jews living
in Islamic countries, particularly in Spain before the reconquista, while
also seeking to show how Islam drew inspiration from Judaism (Abraham
Geiger, Was hat Muhammad aus dem Judenthume ausgenommen, 1833). As the
tensions were growing in Europe, the ties between Jews, Christians, and
Muslims were magnified as a form of social symbiosis based on tolerance and
recognition (Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, 1973–1984). The his-
toric dramas of the 20th century, especially the conflict between Jews and
Arabs, brought about a revision of this utopia of a “golden age” (Norman A.
Stillman, The Jews in Arab Lands: An History and Source Book, 1979).
At the end of the 19th century, Solomon Schechter’s discovery of the
documents of the Cairo Geniza dating from the 11th to the 13th century and
their study by Shlomo Dov Goitein (A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Com-
munities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols.,
1967–1993) made it possible to recompose a Mediterranean society in which
Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted. This considerable mass of docu-
ments, literary, religious, or related to the economic and social life, furthered
the understanding of Jewish life in relation to Muslims in its most varied
aspects. The status of a “protected” people (dhimmi) shows the legal frame-
work, but also the limits of tolerance, in Islamic territory, based on religious
freedom, protection of the authorities, and payment of taxes (Antoine Fat-
tal, Le statut légal des non-Musulmans en pays d’Islam, 1958). The autonomy of
the communities reveals the combined influence of the Islamic surround-
ings, the leadership of the academies of Babylon and Palestine, and the local
Jewish power, as in Egypt (Yizhak Baer, “The Origins and the Organization
of the Jewish Community in the Middle Ages,” Zion 15 [1950]: 1–41; Mena-
hem Ben-Sasson, Semihat ha-qehilah ha-yehudit be-artsot ha-islam, 1996).

C. Between Traditional Sources and New Perspectives

Some historians have minimized the cultural exchanges, giving more im-
portance to the autonomy of Jewish communities in the framework of the
medieval society. Apart from the main question about external influences on
Jewish medieval culture, much of the major research in the field deals with
the study of the social, political, spiritual development, and with the charac-
terization of the Jewish culture seen from the inside. Important research in
the field of Hebrew codicology and paleography has transformed the knowl-
edge about the production and circulation of the manuscripts (Malachi Beit-
Arie, Hebrew Codicology, 1981). Many sources, critical editions, archives, and
767 Jewish Studies

documents, either from the Jewish communities or from authorities of sur-

rounding societies were also published (Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and
in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs, 2 vols., 1920–1922; id., Texts and Studies in
Jewish History and Literature, 2 vols., 1935–1955). All these achievements gave
a different and broader picture of Jews in the medieval culture, for example
in philosophy (“Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” History of Jewish Philosophy, ed.
by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, vol. II, 1997, 83–573), mysticism
(Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1946; Moshe Idel,
Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 1988; id., Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, 1988), with,
for example, the Zohar (Daniel Matt (trans. and ed.), The Zohar, 5 vols.,
2003–2009), Biblical exegesis (Charles Ber Chavel (trans. and ed.), Nah-
manides Commentary on the Torah, 1971–1976), Jewish literature, especially
folktales and stories (Chone Shmeruk, Sifrut yidish, perakim le-toldotehah,
1988; Jerold Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts 1100–1750, 2004; Jean Baumgar-
ten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, 2005; Vera Moreen, In Queen
Esther’s Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature, 2000; Eli Yassif, Sippu-
rei ben sira bimey ha-beynayim, 1984), or Jewish languages (Max Weinreich,
History of the Yiddish Language, 1973; 2 vols., 2008; David Bunis, Sephardic
Studies, 1981; Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judeo-
Arabic, 1999).
In the reconfiguration of medieval Jewish studies, a central place is occu-
pied by Rabbinic literature, Talmudic commentaries, responsa literature, and
studies of Jewish law (halakha), liturgy, and customs (Israel Ta-Shma, Min-
hag ashkenaz ha-qadmon, 1994; id., Halakhah, minhag u-metsiut be-ashkenaz,
1000–1350, 1996; Jacob Katz, Halakhah ve-kabbalah, 1986). Talmudic tradi-
tion, as a foundation of medieval Jewish communities, created a system of
norms, customs, and ritual observances that pervaded all aspects of Jewish
life. The codes of conduct placed individual life into a strict framework and
assured the survival of the group, though this quickly caused frictions and
tensions with the Christian authorities. Jewish law imposed limits on com-
mercial relations with non-Jews, but it also required constant adjustments in
areas like money lending or wine trade (Haim Soloveitchik, Yeynam, sahar
beyeynam shel goyim, 2003). From the vast domain of Rabbinic literature
emerges the central figure of the medieval commentator Rashi (Binyamin S.
Moore (trans. and ed.), Chumash and Rashi’s Commentary, 2002) along with
his students and disciples, the Tosafists, in the constitution of the vast body
of Biblical and Talmudic commentaries representing the traditions of study
and teaching and the intellectual role of the scholar within Ashkenazi Jewry
of the 12th and 13th centuries (Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, Baalei ha-Tosafot,
1954).
Jewish Studies 768

This type of study provides important access to Rabbinical hermeneutics

and methods of transmission, teaching, and the exegesis of canonic texts.
In addition, beginning with the responsa, including those of Rabbi Jacob Tam
or Meir of Rothenburg (Irving Abraham Agus, R. Meir of Rothenburg, 2 vols.,
1947), it affords a look into social history, concerning such questions as the
autonomy of Jewish communities, relations between Jews and Christians, or
the role of customs (minhag) in the affirmation of Ashkenazi Jewry of the
Middle Ages. In a diachronic perspective, studies have also focused on the
constitution of Ashkenazi law from the 11th century onward in relation to Pa-
lestinian and Babylonian tradition as well as to Roman law. Similar research
in legal literature were undertaken in the Sephardic world in central geo-
graphic areas, including the Provence, Spain, Italy, and North Africa, or
around the great codifiers, such as notably Shmuel ha-naggid, Isaac Alfasi,
Meir Abulafia, Jonah Gerondi, Solomon ibn Adret, Nahmanides or Nathan
ben Yehiel (Neil S. Hecht et al., An Introduction to the History and Sources of
Jewish Law, 1996). Two legal codes, the Mishneh Torah by Maimonides and
the Shullhan arukh by Joseph Caro, which present the classical corpus of the
Jewish law, played an important religious and social role in the Jewish
society up to the contemporary period (Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the
Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah), 1980; Raphael J. Z. Werblowsky, Joseph
Caro, Lawyer and Mystic, 1977). Scholars have begun to compile and publish
multiple sources from this vast corpus, some of which had been unknown,
but more important, they have also focused on the importance of Jewish legal
literature as a zone of transmission of values, preservation of practices, and
ongoing inventiveness (Phyllis Holman Weisbard and David Schonberg,
Jewish Law: Bibliography of Sources and Scholarship in English, 1989; Nahum Rak-
over, A Bibliography of Jewish Law, 1975–1990; id., The Multi-Language Bibli-
ography of Jewish Law, 1990).
An adjacent field is the study of the legal status of Jews. The juxtaposi-
tion and contradictions between Roman and Byzantine legislation and the
laws of Christian Europe, between secular and religious law, and between
royal legislation and common law reveal the astounding diversity of legal
situations specific to the Sephardic and Ashkenazi worlds. In certain periods,
Jews were granted special status and perceived as a tolerated socio-religious
“minority” within kingdoms or empires. But most of the time Judaism, as
a religion close to pagan cults and heresies, called forth discriminatory laws,
which in turn caused a nearly uninterrupted series of persecutions and
expulsions. In Christian society, Jews were treated as deviant subjects, like
Muslims, heretics, lepers, and the insane, to be subjected to special jurisdic-
tion and exiled to the fringes of society (Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Toler-
769 Jewish Studies

ance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times, 1977; Ben-
zion Netanyahu, The Origins of Inquisition, 1995; Shlomo Simonsohn, The
Apostolic See and the Jews: History, 1991; Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority:
The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe, 1992; Ora Limor, Beyn yehudim le-notsrim,
5 vols., 1993; Amnon Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle
Ages, 1997).
Another field that has an important place: Jewish literature and nar-
rative traditions (Moritz Steinschneider, “Jewish Literatur,” Ersch’s
and Gruber’s Allgemeine Enzyklopaedie der Wissenschaften und Kuenste, 1850,
tome 27, 357–471, rpt. 1970; Israel Zinberg, An History of Jewish Literature,
9 vols., 1972–1978). Although it is difficult to separate Biblical and post-
Biblical literature from that of later periods – they are rooted in the same reli-
gious soil and draw on similar sources – the Middle Ages saw a blossoming
and a greater autonomy of narrative traditions. Legends and stories (Maasim,
sippurim, aggadot, shevahim) draw on Rabbinic sources are no more appearing
in all kind of contexts, including commentaries, sermons and ethical treat-
ises, to constitute independent anthologies and narrative collections (Joseph
Dan, Ha-Sippur ha-ivri bimey ha-beynayim, 1974; Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folk-
tale: History, Genre, Meaning, 1999). Beginning with the pioneer generation of
Wissenschaft des Judentums, the narrative traditions had given rise to philologi-
cal and historic studies on the tradition of the Aggadot and Midrashim. This
tradition led to the publication of anthologies and chrestomathies that dem-
onstrate the unity and diversity of Jewish narrative traditions through time
and space, as well as reciprocal influences between Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim traditions (Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 7 vols., 1909–1938;
Moses Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis, 1924; Hayyim Schwarzbaum, The
Mishlei Shualim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berachiah ha-Nakdan, 1979). Research on
Jewish literature which from the late 19th century is done in a political con-
text of affirmation of cultural identity, then of the return of Jews to Palestine,
constitutes the beginning of the collection and scholarly analysis of narrative
traditions. The study of medieval literary texts reveals the creativity of Jews
within European culture and in the Muslim world, but also the interpen-
etration of genres, notably in the numerous studies of comparative stylistics
and poetics (Dan Pagis, Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
1991; Jefim Schirmann, Toldot ha-shirah ha-ivrit, 2 vols., 1995–1997). An-
other example is in secular poetry or religious hymns (piyyutim) created in the
late Middle Ages in the Oriental communities before developing in Europe
(Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, vols. 1–4, 1970; Ezra
Fleischer, Shirat ha-kodesh be-ivrit bimey ha-beynayim, 1975; Raymond P.
Scheindlin, The Gazelle, Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel and the Soul,
Jewish Studies 770

1991). Other investigations of medieval Jewish accounts focus on the anthro-

pological or folkloric dimension, showing porosity between different cul-
tures in whose contact Jews evolved, and the mingling of oral and written
registers (Sarah Zfatman, Beyn ashkenaz le-sefarad, le toldot ha-sipur ha-yehudi
bimey ha-beynayim, 1993). Narrations, aside from their literary interest, are
also considered as means of access to many dimensions of social life, material
culture, and history of mentalities. Some researchers consider stories as cre-
ations of the religious imagination in which the historical base is subject
to the deformations of myth and legend, while others link stories to the so-
ciety and the historical period in which they were invented and transmitted
(David Flusser, Yosippon, 2 vols., 1978–1980; Tamar Alexander-Frizer,
The Pious Sinner: Ethics and Aesthetics in the Medieval Hasidic Narratives, 1991).
Thus, studies of medieval Judaism have, since the 19th century, played a
central role in the consolidation and recognition of Jewish studies as a part of
social sciences and as a laboratory of methods and problems of Jewish histori-
ography. Because of its central position, this field of research has, of course,
gone through a number of evolutions proper to historical scholarship for
nearly two centuries. It has demonstrated nonetheless a continuity and vital-
ity that make it one of the major fields of Jewish studies.

Select Bibliography
Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 11 vols.
(1853–1875; Berlin: Arani, 1998); Shimon Dubnov, Die Weltgeschichte des jüdischen
Volkes, vol. 4: Das frühere Mittelalter, vol. 5: Das späte Mittelalter (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag,
1926–1927); Salo Wittmayer Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vols. 3–8:
High Middle Ages; vols. 9–12: Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press,
1952–1993); Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (1896; New York: Athe-
neum, 1978); Yitzhak Baer, Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel
(Jerusalem: The Historical Society of Israel, 1985); Cecil Roth, An History of the Jews
(New York: Schocken, 1963); Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Middle Ages,” History
of the Jewish People, ed. id. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), 385–723; Ivan G.
Marcus, Medieval Jewish Civilization (New York: Wiener, 1988).

Jean Baumgarten
771 Law in the Middle Ages

Law in the Middle Ages

I. History

A. Legacy of Antiquity
Central to medieval law, indeed, European law generally was the great com-
pilation of Roman law ordered by Justinian, which would be dubbed by early
publishers the Corpus Juris Civilis, and not uncommonly referred to as the “ius
commune” on the argument that it was common to all the peoples once within
the old Roman Empire, and when so used includes as well the canon law, and
occasionally called the “civilis sapientia,” since legists considered the Corpus
to represent the epitome of reason in civil governance. For a full discussion
of this concept of the European common law, the works of Ennio Cortese
(La norma giuridica: spunti teorici nel diritto comune classico, 2 vols., 1962–1964
and Manlio Bellomo (L’Europa del diritto comune, 1989) are indispensable.
The Corpus is divided into the Code itself, consisting of twelve books subdi-
vided into titles, and comprising Imperial decrees originally judicial in na-
ture, but ultimately becoming more quasi-legislative in character towards
the later Empire; the Digest or Pandects, made up of fragments from the jur-
ists and arranged topically, divided into fifty books, subdivided into titles,
and further subdivided into sections frequently referred to by their num-
bered fragments, usually designated laws (leges), or the unnumbered prefa-
tory text, called the principium; the Institutes, essentially a text book of legal
principles, and the only unilingually Latin portion of the Codex, similarly di-
vided into titles and subdivided further into a principium and numbered
“leges” often cited by incipit, or opening words; and the Novellae, the only part
of the collection that remained open, and which originally had 168 laws
promulgated between 535 and 545. In the Middle Ages, this latter portion
was known through unofficial collections of 134 laws, referred to as the Au-
thenticum, or by the Latin High Middle Ages, 96 of those laws, divided into
nine collations; or alternatively, the collection of 122 constitutions, called
the Epitome of Julian.
In truth, much of the West had never been subject to Justinian and his
collations, and Italy itself was made subject to its provisions only by reason of
Law in the Middle Ages 772

Justinian’s decree of 554 following the reconquest from the Ostrogoths. The
latter had deliberately continued Roman law in its earlier presentation, and
in Southern France, it was continued in the “Roman Law of the Visigoths,”
or Alaric’s Breviary, based upon the earlier Theodosian Code, and the Institutes
of Gaius, as well as other anthologies. Within a few years of Justinian’s death,
much of northern Italy would be overrun by the Lombards, including the
Benevento, Lombardy itself, whose capital was Pavia, and Tuscany, including
Florence, Pisa, and Siena, and in these areas Lombard law would predomi-
nate, though by 1000, Lombard law would be generally taught, practiced,
and interpreted through Romanist principles. The remaining areas, includ-
ing Rome itself and Ravenna, maintained an unbroken legacy of courts and
bar in which the Institutes, the first nine Books of the Code, together with Jul-
ian’s Epitome were known and regarded as authoritative. The last three Books
of the Code together with the entire Digest would be forgotten until the late
11th century.
In the area of ecclesiastic law, collections such as the Didache, or Doctrine
of the Twelve Apostles, began to emerge as early as the end of the 1st century.
Sometimes, these works appeared in the guise of apocalyptic visions, such as
the 2nd-century Shepherd of Hermas. Others, such as the 3rd-century Traditio
apostolica ascribed to Hippolytus, are largely devoted to liturgy; while the ex-
panded Didascalia apostolorum appends material on treatment of widows and
orphans, Jewish-Christian relations, and rules for fasting and penance (Jean
Gaudemet, Sources du droit de l’église en Occident du IIe au VIIe siècles, 1985). With
the accession of Constantine and the end of the persecutions, the role of law
within the Church was transformed. In particular, church councils became a
more frequent aspect of ecclesiastic governance, and the decrees and canons
of the councils became the major source of canon law. At the same time,
being essentially incorporated into the imperial bureaucracy, the church in-
evitably became more hierarchical in structure, and by 381 when the First
Council of Constantinople recognized the pentarchy of Alexandria, Antioch,
Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome, had reached the organization of patri-
arch, metropolitan, bishop and priest that dominated medieval mentality.
During this period also arose the earliest claims of Petrine supremacy, and
decretals of the bishops of Rome, which began to appear with greater regu-
larity in canonical collections such as the Dionysiana and the Hispana, the
latter appearing successively as the Collectio hispana chronologica and the Collec-
tio hispana systematica. Finally, from Constantine forward, the emperors spe-
cifically recognized the jurisdiction of bishops over issues involving doctrine
and morals. The audientia episcopalis hence had the status of public courts.
773 Law in the Middle Ages

B. Early Middle Ages

While Roman law by the later imperial period had come to be viewed as a
product, inter alia, of a legis lator, the emperor himself, who since he bore the
law, could in some sense be viewed as legibus solutus, the successor Germanic
kingdoms of the West emphasized the character of law as the immemorial
custom of a people. As a result, law was generally regarded as personal, rather
than territorial: regardless of location, Burgundians were subject to Burgun-
dian law, Romans to Roman law, etc. The primary function of a king was to
uphold the applicable custom, not displace it with new law: the law is “dis-
covered,” not made. Late in the 5th century, kings began to publish written
versions of these laws, beginning with the Visigoths and the Burgundian
laws of King Gundobald.
Should circumstances necessitate a modification of or addendum to the
received body of law, such revisions were subject to the consent of the com-
munity, typically speaking through some form of council or Witengemote,
and in principal, whose approval was to be reinforced by popular acceptance,
either manifest as by Lombard custom reflected in the mid-7th-century Edict
of Rothari; by agreement of local magistrates to enforce them, as with the Ca-
rolingian scabinei; or merely tacitly, as seems to be envisioned in the Edictum
Pistense of 864. Lacking both advisors with sufficient technical expertise and
a bureaucracy to apply enactments at the local level, royal legal innovation
was largely restricted to ad hoc judgments or particular privileges, highlight-
ing the extraordinary nature of the extensive Carolingian capitularies or the
legislative traditions of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
Not surprisingly, although a number of the Germanic kingdoms were
initially hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the Visigothic
and Ostrogothic regimes, the Goths having initially adopted Arianism, once
converted to the Roman faith, despite a desire to retain power within the
warrior elite, the redaction of laws fell to clerics as the literate apparatchiki
of the once barbarian realms, accounting for their memorialization in Latin
and the frequently privileges and immunities extended to the clergy and
ecclesiastic property. On this process generally, consult Wilhelm Watten-
bach and Wilhelm Levison, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter:
Vorzeit und Karolinger, 3 vols. (1952–1957), and the supplement Die Rechts-
quellen by Rudolf Buchner; on the Visigothic kingdom, P. D. King, Law and
Society in the Visigothic Kingdom, Cambridge studies in medieval life and
thought, 3rd ser., vol. 5 (1972). Meanwhile, church governance and canon law
generally followed the same pattern as civil governance in the wake of the
collapse of imperial authority. Monasteries had traditionally viewed them-
selves as self-governing communities, eschewing by in large both episcopal
Law in the Middle Ages 774

and royal authority. The secular clergy adopted practices particular to their
bailiwicks, with local councils and synods assuming the principle role in gen-
erating canons and rules, while at the same time the power of metropolitans
waxed against Rome, but waned against Christian kings who as self-styled
protectors of the Church, undertook to preside over synods, fill clerical vac-
ancies, persecute heretics and enforce Christian morality, leaving bishops as
little more than arbiters of clerical behavior and disputes. During this period,
then, in addition to synodal adoptions, a primary source of law for the faith-
ful was the spate of penitentials that began to appear in the middle of the
6th century. Another new source of law was the compendium now known as
the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. Attributed to “Isidore Mercator,” it contained
a vast number of legitimate canons and papal letters interspersed with
fraudulent canonical material, apparently in an effort to boost episcopal and
papal authority in the archdiocese of Reims sometime in the 9th century. It
became one of the most pervasive canonical collections of the middle ages,
genuine and fraudulent canon being copied and disseminated indiscrimi-
nately until the forgery was unmasked in the 16th century by a protestant
clergyman. The most authoritative work on the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals
is Horst Fuhrmann’s three-volume Einfluß und Verbreitung der pseudoisido-
rischen Fälschungen, von ihrem Auftauchen bis in die neuere Zeit (1972–1974).
A legitimate collection was also compiled in 774 by Pope Adrian I at the re-
quest of Charlemagne, who directed that the new Hadriana, essentially a revi-
sion of the older Dionysiana, would along with the Hispana serve as the funda-
mental legal authority in the bishops’ courts throughout the realm. The
Carolingians likewise issued capitularies for church reform and discipline,
many of which found their way into subsequent canonical collections.
The radical decentralization of power characterizing the 9th and 10th cen-
turies for the church marked the zenith of the Eigenkirchentum, whose practi-
cal realities required new collections, the most significant being the two
books of Abbot Regino of Prium, the Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis
ecclesiasticis, and the early 11th-century Decretum of Burchard of Worms, in
twenty books, the last two of which were circulated separately under the
titles the Corrector and the Speculator. On canonical collections before Gratian,
the fundamental work remains Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, His-
toire des collections, canoniques en Occident depuis les fausses décrétales jusqu’au Décret
de Gratian, 2 vols., 1931–1932; rpt. 1972. Also invaluable is the recent hand-
book by Lotty Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): a
Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature, 1999.
775 Law in the Middle Ages

C. The Reform Papacy and the Legal Palingenesis

The degeneration of clerical discipline frequently characterizing the Eigenkir-
chentum early drew resistance from such establishments as the Burgundian
monastery of Cluny, whose reforming zeal attracted not only clerical atten-
tion, but by the 11th century, the support of like-minded monarchs such
as Otto III and Henry III, the latter appointing Bruno of Toul as Pope Leo IX
in 1048, who brought with him such luminaries as Frederick of Lorraine
(Stephen IX), Humbert of Moyenmoutier, and Hildebrand (Gregory VII). For
these men, law was a principal tool of reform, and, as James A. Brundage
(Medieval Canon Law, 1995) points out, they identified four tactical objectives:
(1) the compilation of fresh collections of law demonstrating the ancient
foundations of their reform efforts; (2) the creation of new laws filling lacu-
nae in the existing corpus; (3) the development of procedural mechanisms;
and (4) the institution of more efficient means of detection and prosecution
of offenders. With regard to the former, a number of new collections ap-
peared in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, including Anselm of Lucca’s
Collectio canonum, the collected canons of Cardinal Deusdedit, and the anony-
mous Collection in Seventy-four Titles. The ambitious reformer, Ivo of Chartres,
compiled a vast compendium entitled the Decretum, as well as the more
compact Panormia. Ivo has also been credited, however doubtfully, with
the Collection tripartita. As to new law, the reform papacy immediately began
the issuance of new canons, reaching a crescendo during the reigns of Gre-
gory VII and Urban II. The mechanisms available to the reforming popes
were somewhat limited. By tradition, the multi-purpose synod acted as
necessary in the role of a court. Less unwieldy, and used increasingly, was the
papal legate, who could serve variously as judge, prosecutor and/or investi-
gator. On the local level, episcopal visitations were the primary tool for detec-
tion and correction of irregularities, but were frustrated by various claims of
exemption.
The search for precedent justifying the reforms impelled Gregory VII to
appoint commissioners to comb the libraries of Italy for legal ammunition
in his efforts to combat lay investiture in particular. It is probable that copies
of the Digest were discovered during this quest. Doubtless, the Pandects
remained undiscovered in the 7th decade of the 11th century, but was cited
in a Tuscan judgment of 1076. It is certain that the papal agents uncovered
the Authenticum. The uncovering of the Codex Iustinianus, however, hardly
signified its comprehension. According to Radulfus Niger, writing in his
Moralis Regum, ca. 1189, a certain Peppone was the rising dawn of the civil law
renaissance subsequently propagated by Irnerius (Warnerius, Guarnerius).
The latter seems to have been self-taught, beginning ca. 1100 to copy and
Law in the Middle Ages 776

edit the lost Codex Secundus, variously called the Littera Bononiensis or Vulgata,
in distinction to the surviving Littera Pisana, referred to as the Florentina since
its capture in 1406. The Codex S. apparently already had the Greek of Book 29
translated: the remainder was either omitted or still in Greek, and Irnerius
did not know them, or those in the Code. He interpolated passages from the
Authenticum into the Code in places where they would have been included
had they not been novellae. Of the Authenticum, he included only 97 “consti-
tutions” as he denominated them. These he grouped into nine “Collations.”
The whole of the corpus he divided into five volumes: The Digest, divided
into the Old Digest, the Infortiatum and the New Digest; the fourth volume,
consisting of the first nine books of the Code; and the Parvum Volumen, con-
taining the Institutes, the Authenticum and eventually the last Tres Libri of
the Code. The Greek passages were eventually translated by Burgundio from
the Littera Pisana, but the Bolognese canon left lacunae until the Renaissance,
with the exception of some older manuscripts which copied them in Greek.
His teaching, if any, seems to have been limited to the Four Doctors, Bulga-
rus Bolgarini, Martin Gosia, Ugo da Porte Ravennata, and Jacobus, and that
largely as a matter of tradition. It is with this generation, ending with the
death of Jacobus in 1178, five years before the Peace of Constance, that the
law school at Bologna began. Concentrating on the academic study of the
Codex Justinianus, with practical training limited largely to the moot court,
the proceedings of which were sometimes reported by students under the ru-
bric Questiones Disputate, to be distinguished from the Questiones Dominorum,
frequently more aptly entitled Dissensiones Dominorum, the majority of which
were between Bulgarus and Martin, whose disagreements included not least
the former’s devotion to strict law, the latter’s critical tendencies which
earned him, and subsequent adherents known as “Gosians,” including in the
third generation Roger and Placentine, a reputation as champions of equity.
In addition to their teaching, the Four Doctors left glosses and distinctions,
as well as apparatus, collections of glosses in the order of the text, but omit-
ting the text itself, occasional summule, commentaries on the subject of a
whole Title, and tractate, being comments on particular subjects. The latter
would become more significant in future generations, but surely these first
baby-steps represent a significant moment in the efforts at legal systemiz-
ation. Ennio Cortese, Il rinascimento giuridico medievale (1992); Hermann
Kantorowicz with William Warwick Buckland, ed., Studies in the Glos-
sators of the Roman Law: Newly Discovered Writings of the Twelfth Century (1938;
rpt. 1969).
The prestige of the law school had a number of repercussions. One was to
spur Tuscan cities from Lombard to Roman law, including Pisa in 1161,
777 Law in the Middle Ages

Siena in 1176. Ca. 1151, Conrad III had directed the exclusive use of Roman
law in Rome itself. A second was the growing prestige of the afforded juris-
periti, with protections for law students away from home by constitution of
Frederick I at Roncaglia, and limitations on serving as judge or consultant
provided by Bolognese statute also of 1158 (without five years law study). But
perhaps no consequence of the legal palilngenesis was more far reaching
than Gratian’s systematic compilation of canon law, the Decretum, or Con-
cordia discordantium canonum, whose very title reveals the dialectical method
employed by the Camaldolese monk in a unique integration of source, dis-
tinction and comment. Completed perhaps as early as 1140, over the next
thirty years copyists added material omitted by Gratian as “Paleae.” Texts
from the civil law were also added as canons, and Gratian’s commentary was
augmented by such civilians as Bulgarus and James. Also added to the Decre-
tum were two theological treatises: De penitentia to Part II, and De consecratione,
constituting Part III. The Decretum was glossed before 1148 by Pocapaglia
and Rolandus published a commentary entitled Stromata between 1143 and
1145. As J. A. Clarence Smith (Medieval Law Teachers and Writers: Civilian and
Canonist, 1975), suggests, Gratian’s approach did for canon law what Irnerius
had done for civil law. As the latter had severed the cord binding civil law to
philosophy and rhetoric, Gratian separated the study of canon law from that
of theology. And while legists and canonists might disagree on the ultimate
imperial supremacy, they would be henceforth regarded as pari generis.

D. The Thirteenth Century: Glossators, Coutumiers, Orleans

The first half of the 13th century represented the heyday of the glossators.
Somewhere between 1208 and 1210, Azzo published his Summa on the Code,
which was never superseded during the middle ages. His plethora of glosses
on the Old Digest, as well as the Code, represent a veritable Apparatus. In
1215, Joannes Teutonicus completed his Apparatus on the Decretum, which
became the Glossa Ordinaria, supplemented circa 1245 by Bartholomew
of Brescia. Around the same time, Tancred completed the standard gloss to
the first three compilations of the Decretales extravagantes. These compi-
lations, ultimately five in number, were displaced in 1234 by the Liber Extra,
promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234. Apparatus on the Liber Extra were
completed circa 1240 by both Goffredus de Trano and Bernard of Parma, that
of the latter becoming the glossa ordinaria. As Sinibald Fieschi, Innocent IV
composed a Commentary on the Liber Extra which was never superseded; while
about the same time, Hostiensis completed his definitive Summa, and nearly
twenty years later his overly long Lectura thereon. By 1230, Accursius had
completed the initial apparatus which was to become the Glossa Ordinaria on
Law in the Middle Ages 778

the Justinian Corpus, and without which the text of the Corpus would scarce be
published before 1627. It was probably he as well who added as a tenth col-
lation of the Authenticum, the Libri Feudorum, a collection of the customary
law made by Oberto dall’Orto, and on which Pillio, a student of Placentine,
had written a Summa in the late 12th century. His son, Francis Accursii, would
compose the standard Casus on the New Digest mid-century, about the same
time as Vivian Toschi composed the standard casus on the Code, the Old Di-
gest and the Infortiatum. In the last half of the century, jurists such as James of
Arena, Martin Sylliman and Dino of Mugello were diligently assembling
additiones to the glossa ordinaria – essentially, glosses on the glosses. These years
saw also the publication of the great procedural treatise, Speculum judiciale
(1st ed., 1271; 2nd ed. 1290), whose medieval ubiquity gained for its author,
William Durand, his sobriquet of the Speculator. Much recent research has
been done on the issue of procedure, including Linda Magerl-fowler,
Ordines, iudiciarii and Libelli de ordine iudiciorum (From the Middle of the Twelfth to
the End of the Fifteenth Century) (1994), and Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudiciarius:
Begriff und Literaturgattung (1984); Wieslaw Litewski, Der römisch-kanonische
Zivilprozeß nach den älteren ordines iudiciarii, 2 vols. (1999); and Susanne Lep-
sius, Die Richter und die Zeugen: Eine Untersuchung anhand des Tractatus testimo-
niorum des Bartolus von Sassoferrato, mit Edition (2002), and Von Zweifeln zur Über-
zeugung: Der Zeugenbeweis im gelehrten Recht ausgehend von der Abhandlung des
Bartolus von Sassoferrato (2003).
Outside Italy, efforts were made to suppress the teaching of civil law. It
was barred at Paris in 1219; in the preceding century, the Angevins had made
every effort to prohibit it altogether. Instead, in England one witnesses the
proliferation of professional manuals emphasizing custom and practice,
such as the treatise generally known as Glanvill, ca. 1187–1189, or the monu-
mental De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae composed by Henry of Bracton
sometime before 1250. In France, too, there was a wave of compilations,
beginning with Le tres ancien coutumier de Normandie, ca. 1199, with French
translation ca. 1250, and a larger compilation, Summa de legibus Normandie in
curia laicali, ca. 1255. Despite its title, the Establissements de Saint Louis, 1273, is
largely a compilation of the Customs of Orléans and the touraine. Mid-cen-
tury also appeared Li Livres de justice et de plet and Le conseil de Pierre de Fontaines.
The most significant of these treatises was the Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Phil-
ippe de Beaumanoir, ca. 1280, which is discussed in length by Georges
Hubrecht, Commentaire historique et juridique (1972), which was published as
volume 3 to the 2 vols. ed. of Am. Salmon, ed., Philippe de Beaumanoir,
Coutumes de Beauvaisis (1970; orig. 1899); and by F. R. P. Akehurst in the in-
troduction to his translation, The Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beauma-
779 Law in the Middle Ages

noir (1992). Early coutumiers were also assembled for Champagne, Bretagne,
and the Lille region.
Simultaneously, across the Alps from its berceau the civil law was finding
expression, first at Orléans and Angers, and in the Midi, following a lull of
almost a century marked by the departure of Placentine ca. 1185, at Montpel-
lier, and another at Toulouse. A number of articles by Edward Mauritz
Meijers on the schools of Roman law at Orléans and Toulouse are collected
in Etudes d’histoire du droit, vol. 3: Le Droit romain au moyen âge (1959). Guy of
Como, a student of James Baldwin, author of the standard casus on the Insti-
tutes and a noted Bolognese “Gosian,” was teaching at Orléans at least
by 1243. This critical approach to the law, combined with dialecticism the
students, all Masters of Arts, brought to analysis, probably accounts for the
reputed Glossa Aurelianensis, though no such apparatus existed per se. Rather
the term was dubbed by Italians contemptuous of Orléans’s lack of reverence
for the glossa ordinaria, inter alia. This general inclination for criticism
reached fruition beginning in the third generation with James of Revigny,
who studied at Orléans with John of Moncy, Guichard of Langres and Simon
of Paris, and then successively, with Peter of Belleperche, a student of James’s
pupil, Ralph of Harcourt. These two would significantly affect the future of
civil law through their influence on Cino of Pistoia, with whom the mos itali-
cus can be said to have begun.

E. The Fourteenth Century: the Commentators and the Mos Italicus

The first quarter of the 14th century witnessed the completion of the corpus
iuris canonici. The Liber sextus was promulgated by Boniface VIII by the bull
Sancrosanctae Romanae ecclesiae in 1298, and dispatched to the students at
Bologna, Padua, the Curia Romana, and significantly, Orléans and Toulouse.
John XXII promulgated the Constitutiones Clementinae by Quoniam nulla in
1317. This closed the medieval canon, though a small private collection of
decretals was assembled between 1325 and 1327 by Zenzelinus de Cassanis.
These Extravagantes Johannis XXII were not published until 1500, since which
time they have been considered part of the Corpus. Giovanni d’Andrea, a stu-
dent of Martin Sylliman, composed the glossa ordinaria on the Sext and the
Clementines in 1304 and 1326, respectively. He also annotated shortly before
his death in 1348 William Durand’s Speculum, which thenceforth rarely ap-
peared without his annotations.
More significant was Cino Sinibuldi of Pistoia. Although he studied with
Dino and Francis Accursii at Bologna, the greatest influence on his great Com-
mentary on the Code was Peter of Belleperche, and from Peter, James of Re-
vigny. With Cino, the commentary became the favored juristic literary form;
Law in the Middle Ages 780

more important, Cino adopted a dialectical approach and an accompanying

critical attitude particularly toward the glossa ordinaria that had characterized
the school of Orléans. His student at Perugia, Bartolo da Sassoferrato,
studied as well with James Buttrigar, a student of Martin Sylliman, and
Rainer of Forli, both adherents of the Accursian tradition of nostri doctores.
With Bartolo, the mos italicus proper emerges as a synthesis of the two tradi-
tions, emphasizing four traits identified by Donald R. Kelly, “Civil Science
in the Renaissance: Jurisprudence in the Italian Manner,” Historical Journal
(1979): 777–94, 784: a methodological concern for history and first causes;
a formalism centered on legal subjectivity; a systematic attempt to compre-
hend and order human nature and experience through equity and interpre-
tation; and a general deference to Romanist tradition and authority. For the
rest of the middle ages, Bartolo’s Commentary on the entirety of the Justinian
Corpus would be accorded an authority approaching that of the Corpus itself.
His students, Baldo and Angelo Ubaldi, would join him in teaching at Peru-
gia. Baldo’s learning was particularly broad, and he commented on the Titles
of the Corpus, composed a lectura on the first three Books of the Extravagantes,
annotations to the Speculum iuris, and the glossa ordinaria on the Libri Feudorum
and the Peace of Constance, as well as annotations to Martin Sylliman’s work
on feudal law.
The last of the great civilian commentators was Bartolomeo da Saliceto
whose uncle and tutor was a student of James Buttrigar. Also at Bologna was
Joannis de Lignano, who despite commenting on the entire Corpus iuris canon-
ici, is best remembered for his treatises, De bello, De represaliis, and De Duello,
which have been credited as precursors of modern international public law.
Of particular note as a canonist, despite being degreed utroque and spending
nearly twenty years as judge and vicarius of the Podesta of Bologna and con-
sultant to the Republic of Venice, was Peter of Ancarano, author inter alia of a
Commentary on the Extravagantes and lectura on the Sext and the Clementines,
who taught at Bologna from 1390 until his death in 1416.

F. The Late Medieval Period: 1400–1550

With the Schism of 1378, many of the leading Italian jurists found them-
selves preoccupied with politics, including Baldo, John of Legnano and Fran-
cis Zabarella. While the latter composed Commentaries on the Extrava-
gantes and the Clementines, the abortive Council of Pisa in 1409 and the
election of John XXIII caused him to give up his chair at Padua, and he was
made Bishop of Florence and Cardinal. He and Peter of Ancarano would both
die during the subsequent Council of Constance, but before the election of
Martin V, against whom Nicolas Todeschi, a student of Zabarella, and author
781 Law in the Middle Ages

of an influential Commentry on the Extravagantes and a Thesaurus singu-

larium in jure canonico decisivorum, would intrigue at Siena (1423–1424), but
then execute Eugenius IV’s mandate to disperse Basel in 1432, failing which
he returned to conciliarism, ultimately receiving the Cardinalate from
Felix V and dying in 1445 before the collapse of Council and anti-pope.
Meanwhile, France was to see a new spate of coutumiers, perhaps spurred
by the Pragmatic sanction of 1438, which in making Parlement the standard-
bearer of Gallicanism (Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One Faith: The Parle-
ment of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century, 1996), would
give impetus to what Vittorio De Caprariis, Propaganda e pensiero politico in
Francia durante le guerre di religione, 1559–1572, 1959, called “juridical national-
ism,” analyzed at length by Donald R. Kelley in Foundations of Modern His-
torical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance, 1970. The
bulk of legal literature consisted of Commentaries on the Customs by legal
practitioners, notably on those of Berry by Nicolas of Bohier (1508), on those
of the Duchy of Burgundy by Bartholomew of Chasseneuz (1517, rev. 1528),
of Poitou by Andrew Tiraqueau (unpublished), of Nivernais by Guy Coquille
(1590), and of Brittany by Bertrand D’Argentre (1568). Literature dealing
with Roman law did so from the perspective of French practice, such as the
Practica Forensis of John le Masuyer (d. 1450), or John Imbert, who in addition
to his four volume Institutiones Forenses Galliae (1542), published an Enchiri-
dion Juris Scripti Galliae Moribus et Consuetudinibus Recepti (1556). The greatest of
these, the so-called “prince of legists,” was Charles Du Moulin, who believed
in the unity of law, albeit not Roman law, but the underlying unity of the
various Customs, as he expressed in Oratio de Concordia et Unione Consuetudi-
num Franciae (Jean-Louis Thireau, Charles De Moulin (1500–1566): Etude sur les
sources, la méthode, les idées politiques et économiques d’un juriste de la Renaissance,
1980). At the same time, he commented extensively on the Roman law, and
in his determination to demonstrate that the text of the law, Roman or cus-
tomary, provided an equitable norm for new circumstances, he was clearly a
Bartolist.

II. Historiography

A. General Considerations
Since World War II, the study of medieval canon law, indeed, of medieval law
generally, has been dominated by Stephan Kuttner, founder of the Insti-
tute of Research and Study in Medieval Canon Law, which attracted dozens
of young scholars since 1955. As a consequence, Kuttner’s standards of rig-
orous textual analysis, and the cosmopolitan nature of the International
Law in the Middle Ages 782

Congresses of Medieval Canon Law, have produced a renaissance in canon

law studies and a truly international historiography that has poured over
into medieval legal studies generally. Nonetheless, contingencies of epoch
and geography frequently impact the selection of research topic as well as the
research method. Not surprisingly have the English shed much ink on the
development of the possessory writ of novel disseissin, the French on cou-
tumes. While the international character of modern scholarship may attenu-
ate such parochial inclinations, given the nature of research opportunities on
one hand, the professional as well as academic character of many researchers
on the other, it is unlikely to obviate them entirely. Similarly, while undeni-
ably an important doctrine, it is difficult to presume that the turbulence of
20th-century Realpolitik spawned no reactive interest in the doctrine of the
just war, or that the changing role of women did not spur interest in such
work as Giovanni Minnucci’s La capacità processuale della donna nel pensiero
canonistico classico da Graziano à Uguccione da Pisa (1989), and 2, Dalle scuole d’ol-
trape à S. Raimondo di Pennaforte (1994), no matter how fine the scholarship.
The ensuing historiographical notes are designed to draw the reader’s at-
tention to general tendencies in approach and subject matter in the English
and in the French-speaking worlds, particularly before the Second World
War, many of which inclinations persist in varying degrees of subtlety des-
pite the aforesaid cosmopolitanism and the flow of scholars from nation to
nation.

B. Anglo-American Research
In many respects, Anglo-American legal history can be seen as a reaction to
prior analytic jurisprudence, whether the natural law theory of Blackstone
or the utilitarianism of Bentham and Austin, and more particularly, the
tendency of both toward positivist emphasis on law as the product of a legis
lator, a variation on the adage “Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem.”
In 1861, Sir Henry Maine published the first edition of Ancient Law, which
introduced historical jurisprudence qua comparative method, to the Vic-
torian intellectual community. Sir Frederick Pollock, who would with
Frederic William Maitland author the classic, the History of English Law Be-
fore the Time of Edward I, 2 vols. (1895, 2nd ed. 1898), who had himself turned to
the study of Roman law in the belief that not only was it a model for system-
ization, but because it improved English lawyers through comparison and
analysis, wholeheartedly embraced Maine’s comparative approach, though
he was as frequently at odds to define it precisely as was Maine. Maine
established no school per se, his principle, if not sole, disciple being Sir Paul
Vinogradoff, Outlines of Historical Jurisprudence, 2 vols. (1920–1922), who
783 Law in the Middle Ages

also authored the monograph Roman Law in Medieval Europe (1909), and with
Pollock was literary editor of the Selden Society for twelve years. As it hap-
pened, Maitland was no admirer of Maine), and had little use for histori-
cal jurisprudence, which remained too much theory, too little history. His
tastes ran more to William Stubbs, whose Constitutional History of England,
3 vols. (1873–1878), dominated Anglo-American constitutional history of
medieval England for more than eighty years, and whose most vocal critics,
H. O. Richardson and George O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval Eng-
land from the Conquest to Magna Carta (1963), nonetheless propound many of
Maitland’s views. Apparently, Maitland could not see in Stubbs or at
least not as clearly, what he saw so clearly in Maine: an intuitive, and hence
faulty, reconstruction of the past in the service of a Whiggish historicism. For
this reason, Maitland disclaimed any a priori relevance to research as an ob-
stacle to reconstructing the legal past true to fact, which required unbiased
analysis of the often voluminous available documentary evidence, which he
attempted to do not only in The History of English Law, but in Domesday Book and
Beyond (1898), his 1901 Rede Lecture, published as English Law and the Renais-
sance, 1901, and the six essays reprinted as Roman Canon Law in the Church of
England (1898), as well as his editions of Bracton’s Notebook, 3 vols. (1987), and
Memorando de Parliament (1893). Nor did he believe law could be examined
outside its social context. Indeed, to interpret the law of an epoch required
one to understand it as though one lived under it. Legal doctrine was not the
mere product of analysis and reasoning in a closed system, but represented
responses to problems and forces within the larger society. For this reason,
Maitland demanded at least implicitly that the legal historian be trained
both as lawyer and historian. With his passing, legal history tended to return
to the former model, as evidenced by Sir William S. Holdsworth’s gargan-
tuan seventeen volume History of English Law (1922–1952). Meanwhile, in the
United States, the pedagogical program of Christopher Columbus Lang-
dell with its emphasis on practical instruction and the case method, tended
to shunt legal history and philosophy from the standard curriculum. For
a succinct, entertaining but perceptive analysis of Maine, Pollock and
Maitland within the context of the Anglo-American legal community, the
reader is directed to Richard A. Cosgrove, Our Lady the Common Law: an
Anglo-American Legal Community, 1870–1930 (1967), and Scholars of the Law: Eng-
lish Jurisprudence from Blackstone to Hart (1996).
Despite his successors’ abandonment of his program, both Maitland’s
reputation and his work – research and conclusions – have held up amaz-
ingly well to the century’s scrutiny following his death in 1906. Arthur Ogle
disputed some of his arguments concerning the authority of Roman canon
Law in the Middle Ages 784

law over English ecclesiastical courts, based largely on the meaning of Wil-
liam Lyndwood’s Provinciale, which Maitland had argued Stubbs had
incorrectly interpreted. Subsequently, H. W. C. Davis, “The Canon Law in
England,” Historical Papers (1933): 123–43, convincingly refuted Ogle.
In The Birth of the Common Law (1973), R. C. von Caenegem took issue with
Maitland’s conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon experience with the grand
jury circa 1000 was temporary, arguing instead that it was a continuing,
albeit local, feature of disperse communities until reinstituted by the Ange-
vins. A more serious challenge was raised by S. F. C. Milsom, Historical Foun-
dations and the Common Law (1969; 2nd ed. 1981); The Legal Framework of English
Feudalism: the Maitland Lectures given in 1972 (1972); Studies in the History of the
Common Law (1985); A Natural History of the Common Law (2003), who argues
that Maitland failed to follow fully his own program. In particular, Mil-
som argues that in the development of land law, Maitland by working
backward from Bracton, over-emphasized the role of the royal courts in the
12th century. According to Milsom, the legal procedures applicable to con-
flicts over realty were the product of several generations of landed families,
barons and their tenants, working out a suitable system of litigation. While
this debate continues, it seems reasonable to ask, inter alia, why procedures,
such as novel disseisin, which seems so obviously based on the Roman (and,
hence, canon) law of spoliation and the Roman interdict Unde vi, with its em-
phasis on trying possessory before petitory actions, should have taken gener-
ations to evolve, or how such actions would ever benefit tenants in capite.
Both Maitland and Milsom are in the last analysis functionalists,
relating the evolution of law to the cultural, social and economic milieu.
An interesting application to the later medieval period is found in Robert C.
Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation
of Governance and Law (1993), which in its emphasis on the role of chancery in
responding to the displacements of the demographic disaster of the 14th cen-
tury by creating new causes of action and issuance of new forms of process,
perhaps is closer to Maitland than Milsom. Another scholar who has em-
phasized the role of professional jurists in the evolution of the English com-
mon law is Paul Anthony Brand, The Making of the Common Law (1992); The
Origins of the English Legal Profession (1992); Kings, Barons and Justices: the Making
and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England (2003). The recently
published tome by James A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal
Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (2008), promises to attain the status
of a classic.
If the line of legal research from Maitland to Milsom can be seen as a
reaction against the Victorian predilection for Whiggish constitutionalism,
785 Law in the Middle Ages

it can also be interpreted as a continuation of the notion of “primacy of law:”

the notion that in many important respects, law preceded and legitimized
government, rather than vice versa. This idea, though separable from corpo-
ratist theses, was certainly implicit in Otto von Gierke’s Das deutsche Genos-
senschaftsrecht, 3 vols. (1868–1881), the third volume of which Maitland
himself translated and published as Political Theories of the Middle Ages (1900).
This work also presumed contrasting Germanic and Roman conceptions of
order that was to provide a focus for important works on medieval kingship
such as Fritz Kern’s Gottesgnadentum und Widerstandsrecht im früheren Mittel-
alter, translated and published under the title, Kingship and Law in the Middle
Ages, 1939. Even more emphatically devoted to legal primacy, but without
the concern for Germanic “exceptionalism” was R. W. and A. J. Carlyle,
A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, 6 vols. (1903–1936). The
dichotomous approach would find new and fertile ground in the work of
Walter Ullman (The Medieval Idea of Law as Represented by Lucas de Penna: A Study
in Fourteenth-Century Legal Scholarship, 1946; The Political Theories of the Medieval
Canonists, 1949), who would identify the conflict of ascending and descend-
ing theories of authority as the key to medieval political theory, although both
could be derived from the learned or common, i. e., Roman and canon law.
For a discussion of the role of primacy of law in twentieth-century research
on medieval politics, and particularly for Walter Ullman and his students,
the reader is directed to the entry Political Theory herein.
As Ullman was a germinal figure in British research on learned law
and political theory, Stephan Kuttner, who had already begun a program
of collecting and publishing surviving but unpublished and inaccessible
canonistic material that was to engender a subfield of textual scholarship
transformative of the modern study of medieval canon law before fleeing
Europe for the United States in 1940, was to act as a major motivating force
in American, indeed, world canon law studies. As a consequence, in addition
to the important work done relating to political theory, the second half of
the 20th century saw considerable research on topics relating to private life,
including sex and marriage: Richard H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in
Medieval England (1974); John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treat-
ment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (1965); James A. Brundage, Law,
Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (1987), and id., Sex, Law and Marriage
in the Middle Ages (1993). Significant work has also been done on economic
theory and the poor: Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical
Theory and its Applications in England (1956); John T. Noonan, Jr., The Scholastic
Analysis of Usury (1957); John W. Baldwin, Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Ro-
manists, Canonists and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (1959);
Law in the Middle Ages 786

John T. Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (1969).
On the jus belli, Maurice Keen, The Law of War in the Late Middle Ages (1965);
James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (1969); Frederick H.
Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (1975); James Muldoon, Popes, Law-
yers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World 1250–1550 (1979).

C. French Historiography
If much 19th-century Anglo-American legal history was characterized by a
Whiggish constitutionalism bespeaking an affection for German exceptional-
ism, French historiography can be seen as the product of tendencies already
evolving in the medieval period toward “juristic nationalism.” Although one
could argue that the English had their Fortescue and his De laudibus legum
Anglie, French jurists such as Etienne Pasquier, a student of Ramus, Hot-
man, Alciato, and Cujas, whose humanist philological and historical her-
meneutical techniques he and Pierre Pithou, inter alia, adapted to medieval
law and institutions, and Antoine Loisel, along with Francois Hotman
himself, protege of Charles du Moulin and polemicist against Romanism
in the universities, established something of an unbroken line of histori-
ography that survived well into the 1800’s, and arguably beyond. This
“school” of practitioner/historians sought the spirit of French law not only
in the provincial customs, which continue to receive much attention even
today among French historians, but as early as Loisel’s Institutes coutumiers,
in proverbs and popular literature as well. Additionally, because they were
practicing avocats, they sought to establish the prerogatives of what they
considered an ancient order. Hence, Loisel’s Pasquier, ou Dialogue des avocats
du Parlement de Paris, is the predecessor of careful but uncritical studies
by practicing lawyers, such as Jean-Francois Fournel, Histoire des avocats au
Parlement de Paris et du barreau de Paris depuis St. Louis jusqu’au 15 octobre 1790,
2 vols. (1813); Joachim-Antoine-Joseph Gaudry, Histoire du barreau de Paris,
depuis son origine jusqu’a 1830, 2 vols. (1864); Charles Bataillard and Ernest
Nusse, Histoire des procureurs et des avoués, 1303–1816, 2 vols. (1882); and Andre
Damien, Les avocats du temps passé (1973). On the politics past and present
of this phenomenon, the reader should consider David A. Bell, Lawyers &
Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (1994).
It was not until 1885 that the archivist, Roland Delachenal (Histoire
des avocats au parlement de Paris 1300–1600) published a more rigorous study of
the subject. During this same period, scholars undertook to collect, edit and
publish the coutumes, among the most notable being the work of Ernst-
Joseph Tardif (Coutumiers de Normandie: Textes critiques publiés avec notes
et éclaircissements, 2 vols., 1881–1903); Paul Viollet (Les établissements de
787 Law in the Middle Ages

St. Louis, 4 vols., 1881–1886); and Amédée Salmon (Coutumes de Beauvaisis,

2 vols., 1899–1900). Spurred by the work of the learned Dominican, Hein-
rich Denifle, and his epoch-making Die Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400
(1885), several French scholars undertook studies of the medieval law fac-
ulties. The first, Marcel Fournier’s three-volume Histoire de la science du droit
en France (1892), was careless and of inferior quality, as was the work of Anto-
nin Deloume, himself of the law faculty of Toulouse, and who borrowed
copiously in composing Aperçu Historique sur la faculté de droit de l’université de
Toulouse: Maîtres et escoliers de l’an 1228 à 1900 (1900), and his subsequent two
volume revision, Histoire sommaire de la faculté de droit de Toulouse fondée en 1229:
centenaire de la réorganization de 1805 (1905). For a discussion and evaluation of
these works, the reader should consult the bibliographic essay by Cyril E.
Smith, The University of Toulouse in the Middle Ages (1958). Of generally higher
quality are the more recent studies by Eduard Mauritz Meijers contained in
the 3rd and 4th volumes of Etudes d’Histoire de Droit (1959), and the work of
André Gouron, La science du droit dans le midi de la France au moyen âge (1984).
These latter works followed, of course, the impact of Lucien Febvre,
Marc Bloch, Ferdinand Braudel and others associated with Annales on
French historiography. In many respects, this effect corresponded to the ef-
fect of Maitland on Anglo-American historiography. Unlike Maitland,
with his functional emphasis, the Annales school, in its Durkheimian concern
for totality and its search for deeply ingrained mentalities developed and
persisting over the long duration, was largely structuralist. Also unlike
Maitland’s functionalism which was by its very nature at loggerheads with
preceding Whiggish constitutionalism, the concerns of the Annales school
were not manifestly incommensurate with, indeed found an echo in, legal
scholarship from the days of Pasquier with its privileging of custom and
authority.
The works of a number of French scholars have become mainstays of schol-
arship, particularly in early canon law, and church-state relations, including
Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques en Occi-
dent depuis les fausses décrétales jusqu’au Décret de Gratien, 2 vols. (1931–1932),
Dictionnaire de Droit canonique, ed. Robert Naz, 7 vols. (1935–1965). Le Bras
is also editor with Jean Gaudemet of the 18-volume series Histoire du Droit et
des Institutions de l’Eglise en Occident, which includes as volume 7 his L’Âge clas-
sique 1140–1378 (1965), authored jointly with Charles Lefebvre and Jacque-
line Rambaud, and as volume 13, Paul Ourliac and Henri Gilles, La Péri-
ode postclassique, 1378–1500, vol. I, La problématique de l’époque (1971). The series
also includes Charles Munier, L’Eglise dans l’empire romain (IIe–IIIe siècles):
Eglise et cité (1979), and Jean Gaudemet, L’Eglise dans l’empire romain (IVe–Ve
Legal Historiography (German) 788

siècles), 2nd ed. (1989, orig. 1958), both of which are useful references on early
canon law. Despite the unquestioned merits of these works, there remains a
hint of that structuralism that characterized the Annales school, as well as
arguably the thought of Pasquier. Gouron, for example, is also author of La
réglementation des métiers en Languedoc au Moyen Âge (1958), as well as a number
of works on coutumes. And just as Loisel sought in proverb and popular litera-
ture what Annales historians would call mentalities underlying the law,
so Ourliac, who in additional to the foregoing work has published with
J. De Malafosse a multi-volume Histoire du droit privé, 1968, has written
extensively on law and medieval French literature, which essays are included
in Etudes d’histoire du droit medieval (1972), as well as authoring two volumes on
Coutumes de L’Agenais (1976 and 1981) and the edition, Fors anciens de Béarn
(1990).

Select Bibliography
Manlio Bellomo, Società ed istituzioni in Italia tra medioevo ed età moderna (Catania: Editrice
Giannotta, 1977); James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London and New York:
Longman, 1955); The History of Medieval Canon Law in the Classical Period, 1140–1234: from
Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pen-
nington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008); J. A. Clarence
Smith, Medieval Law Teachers and Writers, Civilian and Canonist (Ottawa: University of
Ottawa Press, 1975); Francesco Calasso, Medio Evo del Diritto, vol. 1: Le fonti (Milan:
Giuffre, 1954); Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren europäischen Privatrechts-
geschichte, ed. Helmut Coing, vol. 1: Mittelalter (1100–1500) (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1973);
Antonio Garcia Y Garcia, Historia del derecho canonico, vol. 1: El primer milenio (Sala-
manca: University of Salamanca, 1967); Robert Naz, ed., Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique,
7 vols. (Paris: Letourney et Ane, 1935–1965); Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Geschichte des
römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 7 vols. (Heidelberg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1834–1851).

Scott L. Taylor

Legal Historiography (German)

A. Terminology, Boundaries of the Field

Research into medieval law falls primarily into the domain of legal history.
This discipline, on the borders of law and history, is greatly influenced by the
relevant legal culture and the lines of development towards modern law.
European law is not so much a single field as a checkerboard landscape,
characterized by the co-existence of various law communities. Primarily, it
789 Legal Historiography (German)

is divided into the German, Roman, English, and Nordic law communities
(Konrad Zweigert and Hein Kötz, Einführung in die Rechtsvergleichung,
11969, 31996). Legal history is faced with specific problems in each law com-

munity, and despite the suggestive titles of a number of books (Hatten-

hauer; Robinson, Fergus, Gordon; Willoweit, Seif), a genuinely
European legal historiography is at best in its infancy. This article confines
itself to the German law community, and will examine the significance of
medieval law for the changing conditions of development of the history of
law (see also the contribution by Scott Taylor, Law in the Middle Ages).
It must be remembered that modern law in central Europe – more so than
in other law communities – is a product of very diverse roots. In the Middle
Ages, the indigenous customary law was supplemented by the Roman com-
mon law, whose importance for the Holy Roman Empire of the German
Nation so increased from the late 15th century that this process was often
later described as a ‘reception’; this existed in parallel to the legal system of
the (Catholic) church. These very different roots are reflected in the various
sub-disciplines of the history of law, whose emergence is a result of develop-
ments in the 19th century (see below, 2). Roman law, at best including the
‘common law’ into which it had developed in medieval practice (cf. Hermann
Lange, Maximiliane Kriechbaum, Römisches Recht im Mittelalter, vol. I: Die
Glossatoren, 1997; vol. II: Die Kommentatoren, 2007), became the object of study
of the history of Roman law; the law of the Catholic church that of the history
of canon law. The nature and the institutions of native law were studied
by historians of German law, albeit giving increased consideration to those
influences proceeding from other development strands. Thus German legal
history has particular potential as the possible core of an integrative history
of law which unites all factors in the development of law and reaches the
present day, especially given the manner in which the study of Roman law
has to some extent been dehistoricized and developed into a propaedeutic
of civil law. In it, the sub-disciplines which have been maintained since the
19th century (particularly in the field of the history of modern private law;
cf. Wieacker) could potentially merge into one.
A wish to overcome these traditional specializations, which can for
instance be observed in the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte
(ZSRG, first published in 1883; on which most recently: Werner Ogris,
“Zum Erscheinen von Band 125 der Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte,” ZSRG/GA [2008]: XXXI–XLVIII) with its three sections
(German, Roman, canon, the last only since 1911), is frequently voiced even
today (cf. Stolleis 2007). It had been called for as early as the beginning of
the 20th century (Möller, 69); and the Deutsche Rechtshistorikertage, a meeting
Legal Historiography (German) 790

of German legal historians held since 1927, were intended to encourage

a concentration on the “places of contact” between the “individual fields.”
For this reason, the invitation to their first congress distinguished between
“the history of law in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Church,” thus
equating ‘German’ law with the history of medieval law (cf. the facsimile in:
Berthold Sutter, Fünfundzwanzig Deutsche Rechtshistorikertage, Heidelberg
1927-Graz 1984, 1984). The significance of the Middle Ages in the German lan-
guage area within the context of what was formerly called the ‘German’ his-
tory of law will be the focal point of this article.

B. On the History of Legal Historiography

Legal history, as an academic subject within legal studies, emerged from the
‘historical legal school’ (‘Historische Rechtsschule’) of the 19th century, in
reaction to the so-called reasonable law (‘Vernunftrecht’), if one disregards
its forerunners in the 17th and 18th centuries, ‘imperial history’ and ‘German
Private Law.’ Reasonable law, an idea of a secular natural law, was formed
by the Enlightenment. Emancipated from Christian ideas of morality and
characterized by a rational, logical and systematic mode of thought, it had
achieved a special historical importance in lawmaking due to its connections
to political Absolutism. Its most important result was the codification of
(natural) law, resulting in a fundamentally new type of legal text, which
manifested itself as a claim to generate a timelessly reasonable, systematic,
and logically contradiction free summary of the legal order (or important
parts of it). Any loopholes which did become apparent ought to be closable
using the code itself alone, without reference to other legal authorities. Thus
the codes (for example the Prussian ALR of 1794, the French Code Civil of
1804, or the Austrian ABGB of 1812) put an end to the previously dominant
system of a mixed law made up of various elements (Ius Romano-Germanicum).
This rejection of other sources of law, and the premise of an eternal human
reason unbound by the concrete circumstances of its time resulted in a wide-
spread rejection of a historical conception of law as bound to a particular
point in time.
Skepticism towards ‘reasonable law’ had become apparent even in the
18th century. Immanuel Kant criticized it as an ahistoric, artificial construct,
and Johann Gottfried Herder understood every cultural phenomenon as
the mutable result of a historical process. The reasonable law, as fixed by the
codification process to form the judicial code of the establishment, could not
fulfill the expectations of eternal validity placed upon it; partly, too, it ap-
peared compromised by its association with the absolutist law-giver. The dis-
cipline of law, whose considerable importance for the Ius Romano-Germanicum
791 Legal Historiography (German)

had been eroded by the lawgiving of the absolutist state, sought a new role.
Following the spirit of the age of romanticism and historicism, there was a
turn away from the enlightened reasonable law and towards the historical
method. Thus arose the “historical legal school,” founded by Friedrich Carl
von Savigny (1779–1861) and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn (1781–1854),
which gained its first focal point in the journal Zeitschrift für geschichtliche
Rechtswissenschaft, founded in 1815 (Joachim Rückert, “Geschichtlich,
praktisch, deutsch: Die ‘Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft’
[1815–1850], das ‘Archiv für die civilistische Praxis’ [1818–1867] und
die ‘Zeitschrift für deutsches Recht und deutsche Rechtswissenschaft’
[1839–1861],” Juristische Zeitschriften: Die neuen Medien des 18.–20. Jahrhunderts,
ed. Michael Stolleis, 1999, 107–257).
The Historical School, influenced by Herder, believed that law orig-
inated, as part of the general cultural achievement of a people, in their col-
lective beliefs (the Volksgeist, i. e., the spirit of a people). Out of this, the legal
discipline, using a historical and systematic methodology should deduce
the positive legal order (scientific positivism). Savigny and his pupils
(e. g., Georg Friedrich Puchta, 1798–1846) saw the classical Roman law as
suitable material, because of its high dogmatic quality. This close connection
with the Pandects (Digests), the central element of the 6th-century Justinian
law code, gave this method of legal scholarship its name, “Pandectistics.” Its
representatives emphasized the dogmatic aspect of their work, while the his-
torical aspects retreated into the background. That those who, like Savigny
(cf. Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 1815–1831, 21834–1851) – as-
sumed a “denaturing” of classical Roman law by medieval law scholarship,
gave a low importance to the Middle Ages goes without saying.
By contrast, Eichhorn turned to the native German element of law,
founding the ‘Germanist’ branch of the Historical School (Deutsche Staats- und
Rechtsgeschichte, 1808ff; Einleitung in das deutsche Privatrecht mit Einschluß des
Lehnrechts, 1823ff). Under the influence of contemporary political efforts
towards German unity (further references: Gerald Kohl, Deutsche Einheit,
Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, vol. II, ed. Friedrich Jäger, 2005, 934–35), scholars
of that persuasion saw a preoccupation with the learned, Roman law (the
‘academic law’ of the ‘Romanists’) as a contradiction to the genuine national
law which formed the actual spirit of the people (cf. Georg Beseler [1809–
1888], Volksrecht und Juristenrecht, 1843). The ‘Germanist’ and ‘Romanist’
branches of the subject became increasingly separate from around 1840, ac-
tualizing the potential for schism which had been apparent in the diverging
emphases of the two branches since the founding days of the Historical
School.
Legal Historiography (German) 792

While the Pandectists, with their emphasis on classical Roman law, had
little interest in the Middle Ages, the Germanists took as their object the
native law before it was influenced (in their view, negatively) by Roman com-
mon law. The so-called ‘national tragedy’ of the reception of Roman law
directed their attention to the preceding era: this necessarily meant that the
Middle Ages took centre stage. Building on tendencies in the 18th century,
various writers (e. g., Bluntschli, Stobbe, Roth, Gierke) attempted re-
constructions of a general ‘German civil law,’ which was to be based on a wide
variety of native German legal sources (town laws, legal treatises [Rechts-
bücher], collections of rural law [Weistümer], etc.).
This Germanist interest corresponded to the political aims of the Ger-
man nationalist movement which had developed in the Napoleonic Wars.
Recent research has viewed the general turn to history as a compensation for
the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the consequent loss of a
political and constitutional legal framework (Wolfgang Burgdorf, Ein
Weltbild verliert seine Welt: der Untergang des Alten Reiches und die Generation 1806,
2006, esp. 283–318). In this sense, the early meetings of the Germanists
(“Germanistenversammlungen”: 1846 Frankfurt/Main, 1847 Lübeck) acted
not just as an academic, but also as a political forum.
While the Pandectists found the object of their studies in the Justianian
Corpus Iuris civilis, the Germanists had to begin by establishing their basic
sources: thus, editions of legal sources formed the beginnings of Germanist
research and determined its future course – to a certain extent even to this
day. Their numbers are so great and their objects so various that only a few
representative names can be mentioned here. The connections with contem-
porary politics find their expression in the scholars associated with the Monu-
menta Germaniae Historica, founded in 1819 by Karl vom und zum Stein
(1757–1831) and including in particular the editions (reprinted toward the
end of the 20th century) of Germanic folk law in the series Leges or Leges natio-
num Germanicarum (e. g. L[eges etc.]. Alamannorum, L. Baiuwariorum, L. Burgun-
dionum, L. Frisionum, L. Langobardorum, L. Saxonum, L. Thuringorum, L. Ribuaria,
L. Francorum Chamavorum etc.). The collection and edition of the rural custom-
ary law compilations (Weistümer or Taidinge), the records of legal traditions as
manifested in judicial proceedings which were kept by legally experienced
members of various – mostly rural – law communities formed, quanti-
tatively speaking, a main focus (further references: Christiane Birr,
“Weistümer und ‘Ländliche Rechtsquellen’, Quellenkunde der Habsburgermon-
archie, ed. Josef Pauser, Martin Scheutz and Thomas Winkelbauer,
2004, 390–408). The beginnings of this tradition of collection can be found
with Jakob Grimm (1785–1863) and his seven volume edition (Weisthümer,
793 Legal Historiography (German)

1840–1878, rpt. 1957). From 1864 (the year marking the foundation of the
Weistümer- und Urbarkommission, commission on rural customary laws
and urbaria) on, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Humanities col-
lected Weistümer for Austria in its series Österreichische Weistümer (1870–).
A further focus of interest was on the study of legal handbooks or individual
records of customary law, such as work on the Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of the
Saxons; Heiner Lück, Über den Sachsenspiegel, 1999).
Legal history, seen as a form of ‘historical legal studies,’ initially aimed at
the treatment with historical methods of questions concerning the current
legal order. In the late 19th century there was a growing sense that the histori-
cal material was valuable in its own right; legal historians had “spent long
enough patiently acting as a chamberlain to jurisprudence, laboriously col-
lecting stones out of which others built palaces.” (Möller, 68; abbreviated
quotation in Ogorek, 17 fn. 11). An important impulse was given by the
Pandectistic codifications of law (German BGB 1900, Swiss ZGB 1912) which
had been preceded by the replacement of academic positivism with a legal
positivism and the consequent estrangement between the history of law and
the current legal order. This “separation of the dogmatic and the historical
views of law” (Ogorek, 19) forced the history of law into yet another reposi-
tioning and made possible a stronger turn to non-judicial but allied disci-
plines such as philology and general history, from which medieval studies as
a whole was able to benefit. On the other hand, this ‘historicizing,’ which
still marks the subject today, meant that the history of law lost ground
within the faculties of law.
Not a few representatives of the subject assumed that the National
Socialist takeover would open a way out of this imminent marginalization;
thus, research interests shifted to “topics of political interest” (Hans
Thieme, as cited in Rückert, Willoweit, 347). In private law, such hopes
centered above all on the new political masters’ propaganda rejecting Roman
law; in constitutional history on Germanic concepts of community, as well
as the Empire before its alleged decline due to the formation of separate ter-
ritories. In both areas (which in medieval times appeared as a unity: Michael
Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland I, 1988, 63) attention
was concentrated on the Middle Ages or still more remote eras: “even those
who up till then had only been concerned with later epochs began, in accord-
ance with the trend towards the depiction of thousand-year continuities, to
reach back to the distant, Germanic past.” (Anna Lübbe, “Die deutsche Ver-
fassungsgeschichtsschreibung,” Stolleis and Simon, 73–74).
Parallel to this, since the turn of the last century, historians’ increased
interest in constitutional history (cf. the appointment, in 1902, of the his-
Legal Historiography (German) 794

torian Otto Hintze as the first Full Professor of constitutional history in

Germany: Grothe, 54) led to a criticism of the views held by legal historians
that were determined by concepts characteristic of the modern period. This
also influenced the post-war period. It was the historian Otto Brunner
(1898–1982) who broke new ground in replacing modern categories with
closeness to medieval sources. As a discipline, the history of law at first
responded hesitantly to this challenge. After 1945, a questioning of the dis-
cipline’s understanding of itself and its relations with the National Socialist
regime seemed more urgent (cf. Heinrich Mitteis, Vom Lebenswert der Rechts-
geschichte, 1947). On the one hand, its unsubtle attempts at relevance were
criticized for turning legal history into the “whore of the present-day” (Karl
Siegfried Bader, Ursache und Schuld in der geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit, 1946,
34), while on the other it was condemned for a descriptive historicism which
had no values of its own to set against the National Socialists (cf. further
references in Ogorek, 37). The result was that the Germanists of the post
war period not only distanced themselves from 19th-century constitutional
history but also abandoned the intensive interest in the Germanic period.
At the same time there was a tendency to turn toward modern history which
found its expression in the study reform from 1935. Introducing courses in
‘modern constitutional history’ and ‘modern history of private law’, this re-
form was heavily influenced by the legal historian Karl August Eckhardt
(1901–1979).

Literature: Ernst v. Möller, Die Trennung der Deutschen und der Römischen Rechts-
geschichte (1905); Marcel Senn, Rechtshistorisches Selbstverständnis im Wandel: ein Beitrag
zur Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Rechtsgeschichte (1982); Gerhard
Dilcher, Bernd-Rüdiger Kern, “Die juristische Germanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts
und die Fachtradition der Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte,” ZSRG/GA (1984): 1–46;
Dieter Wyduckel, Ius publicum: Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts und der Staatsrechtswis-
senschaft (1984); Frantisek Graus, “Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters,” Histo-
rische Zeitschrift 243 (1986): 529–89; Rechtsgeschichte im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Michael
Stolleis, Dieter Simon (1989); Marcel Senn, “Stand und Zweck der neueren Grund-
lagendiskussion in der Rechtsgeschichtswissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechts-
geschichte (1993): 66–77; Regina Ogorek, “Rechtsgeschichte in der Bundesrepublik
[1945–1990],” Rechtswissenschaft in der Bonner Republik: Studien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
der Jurisprudenz, ed. Dieter Simon (1994), 12–99; Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Die
deutsche verfassungsgeschichtliche Forschung im 19. Jahrhundert (11961, 21995); Joachim
Rückert, Dietmar Willoweit, Die Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte in der NS-Zeit, ihre Vor-
geschichte und ihre Nachwirkungen (1995); Andrea Nunweiler, Das Bild der deutschen
Rechtsvergangenheit und seine Aktualisierung im ‘Dritten Reich,’ (1996); Diethelm Klippel,
“Rechtsgeschichte,” Joachim Eibach and Günther Lottes, Kompass der Geschichtswis-
senschaft (2002), 126–41, 171–73; Anne Christine Nagel, Im Schatten des Dritten Reichs:
Mittelalterforschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1970 (2005); Ewald Grothe,
795 Legal Historiography (German)

Zwischen Geschichte und Recht. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichtsschreibung 1900–1970 (2005);

Ernst Pitz, Verfassungslehre und Einführung in die deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittel-
alters (2006); Michael Stolleis, Rechtsgeschichte, Verfassungsgeschichte, Geschichte. Ein
Grundkurs, ed. Hans-Jürgen Goertz (11998, 32007), 391–412.

C. Focuses of Research in the History of Law

The focal points of research in the last decades have been affected by the
traditions of the subject described above. In this sense, editions of legal
sources remain an important task for the legal historian. In part, this is a
matter of continuing and completing the mammoth projects of the 19th or
early 20th century (e. g. Nikolaus Grass, ed., Tirolische Weistümer: Ergänzungs-
bände Oberinntal, 1994; Karl Schumm and Marianne Schumm, ed., Hohen-
lohische Dorfordnungen, 1985). Reprints, too, testify to this continuity (eg.
Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ed., Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer [by J. Grimm] 1,
11828, 41899, rpt. 1992). However, these are often also new projects in which

the influence of social, urban and regional history can be felt. Interest in law
books remains unbroken, not merely in the famous examples of the genre,
for attention is now being paid to regional or local accounts. Increasingly,
urban legal sources are of interest to researchers: for example Ruth
Schmidt-Wiegand (ed.), Die Wolfenbütteler Bilderhandschrift des Sachsenspie-
gels (1993–1998); Der Oldenburger Sachsenspiegel (2006); Hans Schlosser and
Ingo Schwab, Oberbayerisches Landrecht Kaiser Ludwigs des Bayern von 1346
(2000); Carl August Lückerath and Friedrich Benninghoven (ed.), Das
Kulmer Gerichtsbuch 1330–1430 (1999); Dietrich Poeck (ed.), Das älteste Greifs-
walder Stadtbuch (1291–1332) (2000); Konrad Elmshäuser (ed.), 700 Jahre
Bremer Recht 1303–2003 (2003); Der Kolberger Kodex des Lübischen Rechts von 1297:
Das Kolberger Rechtsbuch (2005); Winfried Irgang (ed.), Das ‘Leobschützer Rechts-
buch,’ (2006).
Institutional support of editorial projects is a significant factor, for
example that of the Kommission für Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs (Commis-
sion for Austrian Legal History) of the Austrian Academy of Science and the
Humanities with its series Fontes rerum austriacarum / Fontes iuris: Wilhelm
Brauneder, Gerhard Jaritz, and Christian Neschwara (ed.), Die Wiener
Stadtbücher 1395–1430. I: 1395–1400 (1989); II: 1401–1405 (1998); III:
1406–1411 (2006); Christa Schillinger-Prassl, Die Rechtsquellen der Stadt
Leoben (1997), Roman Zehetmayer, Das Urbar des Grafen Burkhard III von
Maidburg-Hardegg aus dem Jahre 1363 (2001), Günter Schneider (ed.), Das
Urbar des niederösterreichischen Zisterzienserklosters Zwettl von 1457 (2002); Ingo
Schwab, Das Landrecht von 1346 für Oberbayern und seine Gerichte Kufstein,
Kitzbühel und Rattenberg (2002).
Legal Historiography (German) 796

In the field of constitutional history, the criticism first voiced by histori-

ans in the first half of the 20th century of the unsuitable terminology applied
to the Middle Ages by legal historians, determined the character of the
second half. Many works of conceptual history were written in this spirit,
some of them profiting from links to researches into regional history (e. g. the
terms Personenverbandsstaat, a (feudal) state based on personal alliances and
institutioneller Flächenstaat, ‘institution-based territorial state’ in Theodor
Mayer; cf. Nagel, 156ff, 173). The Vereinigung für Verfassungsgeschichte,
Association of Constitutional History, founded in 1977, attempts to unite
the varying viewpoints of historians, legal historians and constitutional law-
yers; its biannual conferences on broader themes usually also consider their
medieval aspects. The association has repeatedly examined historiographi-
cal questions of constitutional history (1981: Subject and concepts of consti-
tutional history, cf. Der Staat, Beiheft 6, 1983; 2006: Constitutional History
in Europe, cf. Ewald Grothe in forum historiae iuris: http://www.rewi.hu-
berlin.de/FHI/news/Tagungsbericht_Hofgeismar.htm). On the central ques-
tions of ‘Constitution’ and ‘Constitutional History, cf. the bibliography
listed above, under 2.
In addition to this association, the Konstanz Working Group on Medieval
History (Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte) merits mention
as an institutional base for the discipline (on the group: Traute Endemann,
Geschichte des Konstanzer Arbeitskreises, 2001; Peter Moraw, Rudolf Schief-
fer, ed., Die deutschsprachige Mediävistik im 20. Jahrhundert, 2005). In its publi-
cations Vorträge und Forschungen, questions of medieval constitutional history
are frequently examined, e. g. Reinhard Schneider (ed.), Das spätmit-
telalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich (1987); Reinhard Schneider,
Harald Zimmermann (ed.), Wahlen und Wählen im Mittelalter (1990); Peter
Moraw (ed.), Deutscher Königshof, Hoftag und Reichstag im späteren Mittelalter
(2003); Werner Maleczek (ed.), Fragen der politischen Integration im mittelalter-
lichen Europa (2005). Here a noticeable dominance of the historian over the
jurist in the field of the history of the medieval constitution can be observed.
This interest in fundamental conceptual questions, as well as the trend
towards social history in the historical disciplines which has characterized
the last quarter of the 20th century – can also be observed in Otto Brunner,
Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (ed.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: histo-
risches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 1972ff (e. g., the two
articles on “Verfassung” by Heinz Mohnhaupt and Dieter Grimm, vol. VI,
1990, 831–62, 863–99).
If the historians’ interest had initially been in the institutions of terri-
torial rulership [Landesherrschaft] (Brunner; Walter Schlesinger, Die
797 Legal Historiography (German)

Entstehung der Landesherrschaft, 1941, rpt. 1964), then in the following period
that interest was joined by research into manorial rulership [Grundherr-
schaft] and communalism, e. g., Hans Patze (ed.), Die Grundherrschaft im
späten Mittelalter I–II (1983); Peter Blickle, Unruhen in der ständischen Gesell-
schaft 1300–1800 (1988); André Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen:
Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung (800–1800) (1991) Grundherrschaft und bäuer-
liche Gesellschaft im Hochmittelalter, ed. Werner Rösener (1995); Theorien kom-
munaler Ordnung in Europa, ed. Peter Blickle (1996); Gemeinde und Staat im
alten Europa, ed. Peter Blickle (1998; in particular Sibylle Hunziker, “Die
ländliche Gemeinde in der juristischen Literatur 1300–1800,” 397–468)
One of the areas in which research into constitutional history is centered
is regional history; and interests in this field seem to be, given the federal
nature of the states of the German speaking area, politically not unwelcome
(cf., e. g., for the Austrian states, with further references Brauneder, Kohl
in: CPH 2002, especially 23, 28f). Also deserving of mention are works on
public peaces (with further references Landfrieden: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit,
ed. Arno Buschmann and Elmar Wadle, 2002) and on the feudal system
(with further references Karl-Heinz Spiess , Das Lehnswesen in Deutschland im
hohen und späten Mittelalter, 2002).
In addition to a large number of individual monographs, there are now
modern surveys of medieval constitutional history, such as that by Hans K.
Schulze (Grundstrukturen der Verfassung im Mittelalter I, 11985, 42004; II,
11986, 32000; III, 1998; VI, 2005) or Rolf Sprandel (Verfassung und Gesell-

schaft im Mittelalter, 11975, 51994). The comprehensive Handbuch der deutschen

Geschichte also gives the subject thorough consideration (Karl Bosl, Staat, Ge-
sellschaft, Wirtschaft im deutschen Mittelalter, 11970, 101999 [paperback ed.]).
A history of administration, as distinct from the constitution, could only
establish itself in the last quarter of the 20th century. While its emphases lie
in the modern era, the analyses of Kurt G. A. Jeserich, Hans Pohl, and
Georg-Christoph von Unruh, Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, 1983–1988,
begin in vol. 1 with the late Middle Ages. The history of international law is
younger still (Karl-Heinz Ziegler, Völkerrechtsgeschichte, 11994, 22007).
In connection to enquiries into constitutional history, and influenced
by increased interest in social history, research into court procedure, and
the history of justice and the legal process has become significant (cf. Hans
Schlosser, “Situation, Zielsetzung und Perspektiven der rechtshistori-
schen Forschung zum Zivilprozeß,” in: Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte
1982: 42–51). Here, too, emphasis lies on the modern period, as in the central
series in this field, Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im alten
Reich (1973–) makes clear. Of the over fifty volumes which have to date
Legal Historiography (German) 798

appeared, only few are devoted to medieval themes (e. g., Die Protokoll- und
Urteilsbücher des Königlichen Kammergerichts aus den Jahren 1465 bis 1480 I–III, ed.
Friedrich Battenberg, 2004). However, since 1986 Bernhard Diestel-
kamp has been editing a special series, Urkundenregesten zur Tätigkeit des deut-
schen Königs- und Hofgerichts bis 1451 (1986–). Works published outside these
series include, for example, Friedrich Battenberg, Herrschaft und Verfahren:
politische Prozesse im mittelalterlichen Römisch-Deutschen Reich (1995); Heiner
Lück, Die kursächsische Gerichtsverfassung 1423–1550 (1997); Bernd Kannow-
ski, Bürgerkämpfe und Friedebriefe: rechtliche Streitbeilegung in spätmittelalterlichen
Städten (2001); Ignacio Czeguhn, Die kastilische Höchstgerichtsbarkeit 1250–1520
(2002).
In the field of private law, after 1945 the idea of a common ‘European’
development of law replaced the national perspectives. Here, the interests of
Germanist and Romanist historians of law coincided with the political zeit-
geist, which led to the beginnings of a softening of the traditional subject
boundaries. The project on the medieval history of Roman law, under the
working title Der Neue Savigny, and whose results appear in the series Ius
Romanum Medii Aevi (IRMAE, 1963ff) deserves mention. However, the project
petered out after something less than two decades, for which the publication
of Coings’s Handbuch, which is still indispensable for research into the his-
tory of private law today, offered a welcome legitimation.
For that reason, too, the period after 1945 saw a rejection of ‘German
Private Law’, with its pandectistic terminology and dogmatic emphases;
it also vanished from teaching. Instead, as Coings’s Handbuch demonstrates,
scholars turned to the history of the academic discipline and of law-giving
(seminally, Wilhelm Ebel, Geschichte der Gesetzgebung in Deutschland, 11956,
21958; see also the classic study by Wieacker), whose most important result

in terms of content was probably the discovery of the ‘early reception’ of

scholarly law and its spread and influence in the Middle Ages (cf. Winfried
Trusen, Die Anfänge des gelehrten Rechts in Deutschland: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
der Frührezeption, 1962; Winfried Stelzer, Gelehrtes Recht in Österreich: von den
Anfängen bis zum frühen 14. Jahrhundert, 1982).
Interest in native law has centered in particular on its conception of the
law, its manifestation in legal customs, and its relationship to judicial
procedure; cf. for instance Gerhard Köbler, Das Recht im frühen Mittelalter:
Untersuchungen zu Herkunft und Inhalt frühmittelalterlicher Rechtsbegriffe im deut-
schen Sprachgebiet (1971); Gerhard Dilcher, Heiner Lück, Reiner Schulze,
Elmar Wadle, Jürgen Weitzel, and Udo Wolter, Gewohnheitsrecht und
Rechtsgewohnheiten im Mittelalter (1992); Karl Kroeschell, “Recht und
Rechtsbegriff im 12. Jahrhundert,” id., Studien zum frühen und mittelalterlichen
799 Legal Historiography (German)

deutschen Recht (1995); Rechtsbegriffe im Mittelalter, ed. Albrecht Cordes and

Bernd Kannowski (2002). Monographic studies such as Andreas Deutsch,
Der Klagspiegel und sein Autor Conrad Heyden: Ein Rechtsbuch des 15. Jahrhunderts
als Wegbereiter der Rezeption (2004); Bernd Kannowski, Die Umgestaltung des
Sachsenspiegelrechts durch die Buch’sche Glosse (2007); Stephan Dusil, Die Soester
Stadtrechtsfamilie: Mittelalterliche Quellen und neuzeitliche Historiographie (2007)
appeared in parallel to the editions of law books and sources on urban law
(see above).
Further, there has been increasing interest in the history of the legal pro-
fession, which is now reflected in a number of reference works which include
the Middle Ages: Juristen in Österreich. 1200–1980, ed. Wilhelm Brauneder
(1987); Juristen. Ein biographisches Lexikon, ed. Michael Stolleis (11995, 22001);
Deutsche und europäische Juristen aus neun Jahrhunderten: eine biographische Ein-
führung in die Geschichte der Rechtswissenschaft, ed. Gerd Kleinheyer and
Jan Schröder (52008; 1 first ed. 1976 under the title: Deutsche Juristen aus fünf
Jahrhunderten).
Various reference works have become last sanctuaries for the dogmatic
‘German Private Law’ tradition. In them, countless articles are dedicated
to the institutions of private law, which however often merely continue to re-
iterate the work of older scholarship. The second edition of the Reallexikon der
germanischen Altertumskunde (11911–1919; 21973–2007 with various editors,
founded by Johannes Hoops [1865–1949]), the Lexikon des Mittelalters (latest
volume IX, 1998; paperback ed- 2002) and, in particular, the Handwörterbuch
zur Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte are very relevant here.
Thanks to influential research into early modern historical criminology,
medieval criminal law is also enjoying a new boom (for older research, Rudolf
His, Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters, 1920–1935; Hans Hirsch, Die
hohe Gerichtsbarkeit im deutschen Mittelalter, 11922, 21958; more recently, and
with further references, Hinrich Rüping, Günter Jerouschek, Grundriß der
Strafrechtsgeschichte, 11981 [by Rüping], 52007). As a result of the frequent
representation of this field in museums and exhibitions, laypeople often as-
sume this to be the central interest of the history of law (c.f. Justiz in alter Zeit.
Katalog des Mittelalterlichen Kriminalmuseums Rothenburg, no date). Sympto-
matic of this new boom is the series Konflikt, Verbrechen und Sanktion in der
Gesellschaft Alteuropas, which began in 1997, with the subdivisions Fallstudien
(1997ff.) as well as Symposien und Synthesen (1999ff; c.f., e. g., Hoheitliches
Strafen in der Spätantike und im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Jürgen Weitzel, 2002).
Together, work on conceptual history, justice and the history of urban
law have shattered the picture of a “homogenous medieval world of norms”
(thus, with further references, the assessment of Ogorek, 66).
Legal Historiography (German) 800

Various fields of research which have gained in importance in the past dec-
ades crossover between the history of constitutional, criminal and private law.
They include legal ethnology (Rechtliche Volkskunde), legal iconography and the
archaeology of law, whose most important organ of publication has been,
since 1978, Forschungen zur Rechtsarchäologie und Rechtlichen Volkskunde (ed. Louis
Carlen). It regularly publishes reports on the conferences of the Internationale
Gesellschaft für Rechtliche Volkskunde (International Society for Legal Ethnology)
as well as the Arbeitskreis Rechtsikonographie (Working Group on Legal Ico-
nography), which has been expanding in recent years. The latter has produced
a new publication series: Signa Iuris: Beiträge zur Rechtsikonographie, Rechtsarchäo-
logie und Rechtlichen Volkskunde (ed. Gernot Kocher, Heiner Lück, Clausdieter
Schott, 2008ff). In addition to volumes with a general focus, (Gernot
Kocher, Zeichen und Symbole des Rechts, 1992), more narrow subjects, most re-
cently depictions of Roland, are treated as well (Dietlinde Munzel-Ever-
ling, Rolande. Die europäischen Rolanddarstellungen und Rolandfiguren, 2005; Diet-
linde Munzel-Everling, Rolande der Welt. Interaktive CD-ROM, 2004).
Research into the language of law, equally, is not bound by the estab-
lished borders between the various subdivisions of legal history. Here
the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, founded in 1896/1897, merits special mention
(I, 1914–1932, most recently XI 2003–2007); work on it is expected to be
completed by around 2035. A traditional interest of Germanist legal history,
legal proverbs, remains current (e. g., Deutsche Rechtsregeln und Rechtssprich-
wörter, ed. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, 2002).

D. Trends
In a search for tendencies common to the various themes of research, the
overcoming of the rigid barrier between the Middle Ages and modern times
is the most readily apparent. For instance, one of the most important text-
books of recent times (Willoweit, Verfassungsgeschichte) has consciously
abandoned the division between medieval and modern constitutional his-
tory, and devotes around a quarter of the work to the Middle Ages. Also of
significance are the two volumes of essays collected by Hartmut Boock-
mann, Ludger Grenzmann, Bernd Moeller, and Martin Staehelin
(ed.), Recht und Verfassung im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit I: Bericht über
Kolloquien der Kommission zur Erforschung der Kultur des Spätmittelalters 1994 bis
1995 (1998), and II: Bericht über Kolloquien der Kommission zur Erforschung der
Kultur des Spätmittelalters 1996 bis 1997 (2001). An important consequence of
the vanishing barrier between the eras is that the medieval discipline shares
all the tendencies of legal history as a whole. Thus, themes important in the
study of the early modern and modern periods are also examined for the
801 Legal Historiography (German)

Middle Ages. This even leads to anniversaries of modern events affecting

medieval scholarship: the anniversary of the end of the Holy Roman Empire
triggered an interest in its whole history. The publications appearing under
cover of the anniversary included work extending back into the Middle Ages
(cf., with further references, Gerald Kohl, “Altes Reich und modernes
Europa: Literatur zum Jubiläum 1806–2006,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsge-
schichte [2008]: 117–28). Currently fashionable research topics such as gender
studies (c.f. for example Amalie Fössel, Die Königin im mittelalterlichen Reich:
Herrschaftsausübung, Herrschaftsrechte, Handlungsspielräume, 2000), asylum law
(c.f. for example Daniela Fruscione, Das Asyl bei den germanischen Stämmen im
frühen Mittelalter, 2003) or European integration (c.f. for example Fragen der
politischen Integration im mittelalterlichen Europa, ed. Werner Maleczek, 2005)
have been extended to the study of medieval law. Similarly, historical crimi-
nology has discovered the Middle Ages via the Early Modern (see 3, above,
and c.f. for example Herrschaftliches Strafen seit dem Hochmittelalter, ed. Hans
Schlosser, Rolf Sprandel, and Dietmar Willoweit, 2002; Kriminalität
in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Sylvia Kesper-Biermann, Diethelm
Klippel, 2007). This often reduces the Middle Ages to a mere prehistory of
the modern period. See also the contributions to Crime and Punishment in the
Middle Ages, ed. Connie Scarborough (forthcoming).
However, the most remarkable trend is that legal historical research is
(in contrast to general history: Peter Johanek, “Mittelalterforschung in
Deutschland um 2000,” Mediävistik im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans-Werner
Goetz and Jörg Jarnut, 2003, 21–33) experiencing a far-reaching ‘loss
of the Middle Ages.’ This is most immediately apparent in bibliographic
research into publications in Austrian legal history – which is anything
but atypical of the German speaking world – in the last two decades (Braun-
eder, Kohl in CPH 2002; Wilhelm Brauneder, Gerald Kohl, “A jogtörté-
neti kutatás Ausztriában” [Austrian Research into legal historiography],
Jogtörténeti Szemle [History of Law Review] 3 [2006]: 29–35). Exceptions to this
loss of the Middle Ages are confined to the editorial projects and particular
scholars’ research interests, as well as to research into medieval constitu-
tional and regional history, which continues but is now dominated by his-
torians rather than lawyers. This actualizes expectations published in 1991:
in a volume of collected essays on the subject (Die österreichische Rechtsge-
schichte: Standortbestimmung und Zukunftsperspektiven, ed. Hans Constantin
Faussner, Gernot Kocher, and Helfried Valentinitsch, 1991), medi-
eval legal history played a very minor role.
These tendencies, which for Austria are also observable in the relevant
bibliographies, can be confirmed in legal history as a whole. For this pur-
Legal Historiography (German) 802

pose, my research assistant Ramon Pils (to whom thanks) undertook a count
of the relevant articles in the Germanistic section of the Zeitschrift der Savigny-
Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte for the years 1950–1954 and 2003–2007. Compari-
son of the two periods shows remarkable changes. Shortly after the Second
World War, between 60 and 90 % or more of the contributions and miscel-
laneous items were dedicated to medieval themes; at the beginning of
the 21st century they took up between a quarter and somewhat less than half
(with authors who are generally not legally trained). The decline of the
Middle Ages as a subject of research is even more noticeable in the compre-
hensive reviews section of the ZSRG. While between 30 and 40 per cent of the
books discussed after 1950 dealt with medieval questions, in the most recent
volumes they were between 2.5 and a little over 10 %. This drop is even more
remarkable, given that between the two periods studied – in 1979 – an inde-
pendent Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte dealing solely with questions
of modern legal history was founded. Its editors believed the “restriction to
the modern period” to be “necessary, as this period is on the one hand
covered only imperfectly by the classical subjects of legal history, and there-
fore in special need of study, and on the other because the roots of contem-
porary legal and constitutional systems, which are still of importance today,
are undoubtedly to be sought particularly in the modern period” (ZNR
[1979]: 1).
The ZSRG itself was at least occasionally conscious of this development.
In 1961, Hans Thieme noted that “only today is Hugo Böhlau’s wish
of 1861 [becoming true]: a stronger consideration of the dogmatic and aca-
demic history, the reception, and more recent centuries” (Hans Thieme,
“Hundert Jahre Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte,” ZSRG/GA [1961]: XII–XVI,
here: XV). More than two decades later Thieme assumed “certain focuses of
interest [of the journal], such as research into the Leges or the high Middle
Ages.” However, this was, so Thieme, not the result of a programmatic deci-
sion, but reflected “what most pre-occupied the university scholars of the
day.” At least, as he noted, apparently with reference to the newly founded
ZNR, the ZSRG was “by no means closed to […] nineteenth century matters”
(Hans Thieme, “Zum Erscheinen von Band 100 der Savigny-Zeitschrift,
Germanistische Abteilung,” ZSRG/GA [1983]: 1–8, here 3). That is, a quarter
century ago this openness was regarded as still particularly worthy of notice,
although voices had been calling the “legal historiography of the nineteenth
century” a task for the future of the discipline even at the beginning of the
twentieth (Möller, 76).
Equally symptomatic are the contents of the most important reference
work on German legal history, the Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte:
803 Legal Historiography (German)

many of the articles, particularly those of the first years of publication, show
a particular emphasis on the Middle Ages, while modern developments are
treated within a few lines. This is not least a result of the scholarly literature
produced in the preceding century (c.f. for example the articles “Adel”
[nobility], “Alter” [age], “Aussteuer” [dowry], “Geselle” [journeyman],
“Nachbar” [neighbour], “Vieh” [livestock]). By contrast, toward the end
of the process of publishing the first edition, the modern period was almost
always considered. The new edition, begun in 2004, explicitly declared as its
goal “giving stronger consideration to […] modern and recent history of law
than has been the case before.”
A further ‘loss of the Middle Ages’ becomes apparent in an analysis of the
focus of occupation of legal historians, including historians of constitutional
and criminal law, in German-speaking areas, or rather of the departments
and chairs of 42 German, six Swiss and five Austrian universities. Almost
everywhere, publications on matters of medieval legal history were made by
professors emeriti. Only Frankfurt/Main has a chair specifically dedicated to
medieval history of law (Albrecht Cordes). Together with the Max-Planck-
Institute for European Legal History, which it hosts, Frankfurt forms a
center of legal history; although not specifically devoted to the field, a some-
what stronger concern with the Middle Ages can also be observed in Freiburg
i.Br. (c.f., e. g., the collection of essays, which had its origins in a student sem-
inar, Funktion und Form: Quellen- und Methodenprobleme der mittelalterlichen
Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Albrecht Cordes, Karl Kroeschell, 1996; see also
Ph.D. theses, such as Steffen Bressler’s “Schuldknechtschaft und Schuld-
turm: zur Personalexekution im sächsischen Recht des 13.–16. Jahrhun-
derts,” 2004) as well as in Halle, Hamburg, Munich and Würzburg.
As a result, many works of legal history with a focus on the Middle Ages
turn out to be a collection of essays summarizing a life’s work. The recent
publication date obscures the fact that they often contain old (though not
out-dated) research (e. g., Karl Kroeschell, Studien zum frühen und mittel-
alterlichen deutschen Recht, 1995; Winfried Trusen, Gelehrtes Recht im Mittel-
alter und in der frühen Neuzeit, 1997; Elmar Wadle, Landfrieden, Strafe, Recht:
Zwölf Studien zum Mittelalter, 2001; Andreas Fijal, Hans-Jörg Leuchte,
Hans-Jochen Schiewer [ed.], Friedrich Ebel, Unseren fruntlichen grus zuvor:
deutsches Recht des Mittelalters im mittel- und osteuropäischen Raum, 2004).
Although until a few decades ago habilitation theses often covered medi-
eval themes, a vanishing small number have treated the period in recent
years (examples from Viennese habilitations: Werner Ogris, Der mittelalter-
liche Leibrentenvertrag, 1961; Wilhelm Brauneder, Die Entwicklung des Ehe-
güterrechts in Österreich: Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte und Rechtstatsachenfor-
Legal Historiography (German) 804

schung des Spätmittelalters und der Neuzeit, 1973; an exception in recent times is
Christian Neschwara, Geschichte des österreichischen Notariats I: Vom Spätmit-
telalter bis zum Erlaß der Notariatsordnung 1850, 1996). Relevant dissertations
have become rare: in the series Rechtshistorische Reihe, founded in 1978, which
chiefly publishes theses, less than 10 % of the 373 volumes are on medieval
themes; of the roughly 200 which have appeared in the last ten year, less than
6 %.
The loss of the Middle Ages can also be observed in the text-books. Com-
prehensive Germanistic surveys, in which the Middle Ages are given exten-
sive space (c.f. for example Richard Schröder and Eberhard v. Künss-
berg, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 11889 [by Schröder], 71932, in
which of 1000 pages only 160 covered the modern period) are now practically
inexistent. The last significant representative of this genre was Hermann
Conrad (Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte I [Frühzeit und Mittelalter], 11954, 21962,
II [Neuzeit] 1966). While some textbooks with an elaborated section on the
Middle Ages (e. g., Karl Kroeschell, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. I: Bis 1250,
11972, 132008; Karl Kroeschell, Albrecht Cordes, and Karin Nehlsen-

von Stryk, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. II: 1250–1650, 11972 [by Kroe-
schell], 92008) and even new works which do not cover the modern period
at all (Wolfgang Ingenhaeff, Ältere Rechtsgeschichte, 2005) do exist, the
Middle Ages lead a more shadowy existence in the textbooks which are con-
ceived with regard to the current curricula of law faculties (e. g., Thomas
Olechowski, Rechtsgeschichte, 12006, 22008, pp. 19–30 [of 422] contain the
section “Mittelalter”; further isolated remarks e. g. 127–129). The same ten-
dency can also be seen in specialized works, for example those on Austrian
constitutional history: while in Ernst C. Hellbling, Österreichische Verfas-
sungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte (11956, 21974), the Middle Ages took up 41 %
of the work, in Wilhelm Brauneder, Österreichische Verfassungsgeschichte
(11976, 102005), it is only around 13 %.
This touches but on one of the reasons for the “loss of the Middle Ages,”
namely the dwindling importance of the subject of history of law within
legal studies. More important is the low degree of acceptance by modern
jurisprudence of all historical research which is not of immediate benefit to
the subjects dealing with current law. The combination of legal history and
current law subjects in the German faculty structure and the appointment of
lecturers and professors who work in both areas encourage a preoccupation
with modern questions. In any case, measured against the demand for prac-
tical, results-oriented research, legal history looks to the wider public like a
curious, ivory tower subject. A concentration on the Middle Ages would
heighten this impression, and thus tends to be avoided. Highlighting more
805 Legal Historiography (German)

contemporary roots of current conditions by contrast increases the subject’s

social acceptability.
In addition, a simple curiosity about recent legal history, in combination
with a lack of interest in periods which have been extensively treated by ear-
lier generations of scholars probably also entails this loss. The parallel devel-
opment of legal contemporary history (cf., e. g., the Jahrbuch der Juristischen
Zeitgeschichte, 2000–), which in processing the history of law in the GDR has
found a new, broad field of occupation following the end of the division of
Germany, is no coincidence.
Furthermore, there are also pragmatic factors. The decline in knowledge
of Latin, a fear of learning to read antiquated German or manuscript sources
and the effort required for archive work all contribute to the ‘loss of the
Middle Ages’. This tendency is strengthened by a growing need for legitim-
ization in the eyes of the public or published opinion: an evaluation based on
a quantitative assessment of publications forces scholars towards work
which can be finished quickly, to which archive work in general and such
that involves medieval sources in particular is an obstacle! Legal historians
are, due to their institutional home in the faculties of law, held to different
standards than other historians.
Due to the tendencies listed here, the focuses of research listed above
under (3) cannot be generalized, but must rather be seen as reflecting increas-
ingly individual interests. There is no sign of the trend being reversed.

Select Bibliography
Wilhelm Brauneder and Gerald Kohl, “Die rechtshistorische Forschung in Öster-
reich,” Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne (2002): 17–55; Otto Brunner, Land und Herr-
schaft (Baden near Vienna et al.: Rohrer, 11939; Darmstadt: WBG, 51965, rpt. 1973);
Helmut Coing, ed., Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren Europäischen Privat-
rechtsgeschichte I: Mittelalter (1100–1500) (Munich: Beck, 1973); Handwörterbuch zur
Deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Berlin: Schmidt, 1I–V, 1964–1998, ed. Adalbert Erler
and Ekkehard Kaufmann; 22004–, ed. Albrecht Cordes, Heiner Lück and Dieter
Werkmüller); Hans Hattenhauer, Europäische Rechtsgeschichte (Heidelberg:
Müller, 11992, 42004); Alfred Heit and Ernst Voltmer, Bibliographie zur Geschichte des
Mittelalters (Munich: DTV, 1997; esp. 156ff, 209, 283); Heinrich Mitteis, Der Staat des
hohen Mittelalters (Weimar: Böhlau, 11940; Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 111986); Hein-
rich Mitteis and Heinz Lieberich, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (Munich et al.: Bieder-
stein, 11949 [by Mitteis], Munich: Beck, 191992); O. F. Robinson, T. D. Fergus, and
W. M. Gordon, European Legal History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 32000; Abing-
don: Professional Books, 11985 under the title: An Introduction to European Legal History);
Hans Schlosser, Grundzüge der Neueren Privatrechtsgeschichte (Heidelberg: Müller,
102005; Karlsruhe: Müller, 11949 by Erich Molitor); Marcel Senn, Rechtsgeschichte –

ein kulturhistorischer Grundriß (Zurich: Schulthess, 11997, 42007); Uwe Wesel, Geschichte
des Rechts: von den Frühformen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 11997, 22001); Gerhard
Legal Historiography (German) 806

Wesenberg and Gunter Wesener, Neuere deutsche Privatrechtsgeschichte im Rahmen der

europäischen Rechtsentwicklung (Lahr (Baden): Schauenburg, 11954 [by Wesenberg],
Vienna et al.: Böhlau, 41985); Franz Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte der Neuzeit
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 11952, 21967, rpt. 1996 [esp. 26–96: Die mittel-
alterlichen Grundlagen]); Dietmar Willoweit, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (Munich:
Beck, 11990, 52005); Europäische Verfassungsgeschichte, ed. Dietmar Willoweit and
Ulrike Seif (Munich: Beck, 2003; a sourcebook).

Gerald Kohl
807 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

A. Definition
Many specialized repertories of information on the Middle Ages do not treat
manuscripts as a single topic; rather, they provide separate entries on, for
example, “illuminated manuscripts” and the special areas of study which deal
with manuscripts, specifically “paleography,” “codicology,” “diplomatics,”
and textual criticism (ecdotics). This article, on the other hand, aims to syn-
thesize, in an informed yet introductory manner, information about the use
of manuscripts in medieval studies in the broadest sense. While the areas of
study listed just above will be defined further on in this section and their his-
tory will emerge from the selective historical narrative which follows it, this
article is meant to provide in a single entry a somewhat more comprehensive
and general orientation than a series of such entries would. It is intended
for those approaching the study of the Middle Ages who may have seldom
encountered a medieval text or document in its medieval, handwritten form
and thus need to know something of the nature and variety of manuscripts
in Medieval Studies before proceeding to learn about the specialized disci-
plines which make it possible to study these precious and unique documents.
The capital feature of medieval manuscripts that the beginning student
must keep in mind is that each manuscript, or handwritten document, is
absolutely unique; ideas about texts or documents based on the products
of printing, a means of mechanically creating exact duplicate documents,
cannot be applied to the manuscript, which can be studied only as a docu-
ment with a unique content, history and character. (For easy access to some
digital photographs of examples of medieval manuscripts, please see http://
www.hmml.org/).

B. Approaches to medieval manuscripts

By far the largest proportion of the manuscripts from the Middle Ages which
have been intensively studied are written in the Latin alphabet. For the sake
of introductory concision, then, this article will focus almost exclusively
on the study of manuscripts in that alphabet; it should, however, be kept
in mind that the period left many manuscripts in Greek, Arabic, and many
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 808

other languages; some indications pertinent to Byzantine manuscripts are

included in the bibliography at the article’s end.
Manuscripts, ranging from deeds and wills to liturgical or illuminated
codices, have formed the foundation of Medieval Studies from its inception.
(Codices are bound books, with pages or folios which may be turned; they
thus function differently from the rolls characteristic of ancient manuscripts.)
Manuscripts are the primary sources which, first of all, allow scholars to
learn the vernacular languages from the medieval period, which in most
cases differ markedly from modern forms of these languages. Manuscripts
are certainly not the only sources of primary information about the very long
period known as the Middle Ages, for this period left many forms of visual
and symbolic communication, as well as an important archeological record.
Nonetheless, manuscripts containing written language offer a pathway to
the Middle Ages which is especially valuable because of its detail and extent.
Manuscripts are the primary sources of written information about the Middle
Ages.
A mere thirty years ago, the well-known paleographer Gilbert Ouy esti-
mated that only about 10 % of the manuscripts surviving from the European
Middle Ages to the present have been carefully studied. Indeed, many reposi-
tories have large collections of medieval materials which have yet to be cata-
loged, that is, examined and described by a qualified scholar, able to identify
the text or, usually, texts which a given manuscript conveys. The reasons for
this neglect, which may surprise some, will emerge from the discussion of
the history of manuscript study, below. Recent technological advances offer
avenues which can make it possible for increasing numbers of scholars to
participate in such basic investigations of this vast yet understudied manu-
script record. At the same time, awareness among medievalists is also grow-
ing that thorough study of all the manuscripts of the European Middle Ages,
were such a project to be undertaken, funded, and completed, would still
yield only a partial picture of this transformative period in the history of the
world, for the world of the handwritten book or document included conti-
nents other than Europe (see http://idp.bl.uk and http://www.timbuktu-
foundation.org/ for images of manuscripts from China and West Africa, re-
spectively). There is thus a bright and challenging prospect for Manuscript
Studies within Medieval Studies, especially for those who obtain the proper
training in working with manuscripts and engage in projects which are care-
fully and systematically organized, linked to those of other scholars.
The disciplines through which medieval manuscripts must be decip-
hered and studied were long regarded as subsidiary to other “major” disci-
plines (history, literature, and so forth), so that such disciplines were rel-
809 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

egated to “minor” status by generations of scholars. Indeed, paleography,

codicology, diplomatics, and textual criticism have often been assigned the
label of “ancillary,” from the Latin “ancilla,” handmaiden. That is, they have
been deemed to belong to a lower class, the role of which is to serve agendas
set by the major fields of study, which are often supported by entire univer-
sity departments and define the vocations of many scholars. Only in recent
decades have new critical perspectives, along with new technologies, begun
to bring the study of manuscripts back into the center of the field. Now, a stu-
dent of the Middle Ages who knows how to work exclusively with edited,
printed texts, lacking an understanding of and experience in work with
manuscripts, risks excluding him or herself from the most exciting and con-
sequential developments in Medieval Studies in the 21st century.

C. Disciplines
The disciplines essential to the study of medieval manuscripts are:
Paleography, the study of older forms of writing, the history of the
formation of letters, including abbreviations, and punctuation systems. The
discipline of paleography identifies writing styles or sets of letter forms
(scripts) according to historical typologies, that is, names and categories agreed
upon by scholars. With these typologies, scripts and individual scribes can be
dated to a century or even a few years, as well as placed in a geographical area
of origin or perhaps a specific scriptorium (writing center). This dating and
placing of a manuscript, however, must be done not only in reference to
its script but also in conjunction with the study of the manuscript as a whole,
including its physical state (see Codicology, below) and its texts. Hence the
term “paleography” is sometimes loosely employed to cover all of manu-
script studies, since an actual manuscript is best approached holistically,
while the division into specialized disciplines remains a matter of conveni-
ence, as Father Leonard Boyle emphasized in his widely-used bibliographical
guide to manuscript study. Most medievalists need at least a knowledge
of Latin paleography, which includes the study of all medieval languages
written in the Latin alphabet, whether Latin or vernacular. Important for
many areas of medieval study are also the paleography of other alphabets, in-
cluding Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and so forth.
Codicology, the study of the entire codex, or bound group of pages or
documents, as a physical and historical object in its own right, distinct from
the history and character of the text or texts it contains. Codicology, which
can be explored only by those who already have some mastery of relevant pa-
leography, teaches methods to identify and interpret clues to how, when,
and why a codex was assembled. This includes examination of the materials
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 810

used and the physical formats employed in the book’s construction, as well as
determination of physical additions, losses, or damages. It can suggest to the
trained scholar much about how certain texts were used in particular places
and at particular times in the Middle Ages and reveal information about the
audiences for texts, as well as the authors.
Textual criticism (ecdotics), the methods used to determine the most
authentic form of a text. For example, when the form of the text as it was first
created by an author is no longer in existence, it can only be reconstructed
using one or more hand-made copies, which may be presumed to have been
altered from the original form by human error or misunderstanding, physical
damage or fragmentation, and other causes. “Criticism” means, among other
things, scholarly evaluation of the limits of the reliability of each manuscript
which has survived the passage of a millennium (or thereabouts) in convey-
ing the original words and structures of a text. Textual criticism has usually
aimed not only to clarify a text for purposes of interpretation, but also to
establish a version for publication in a printed edition. Now, some textual
critics prefer to exploit the possibilities of digital media to create editions
conveying multiple versions of a text, rather than reconstructing what can
seldom be proved to be the single authentic and original version of the text.
Diplomatics, the study of documents used in law or business. Diplo-
matics can be pursued only by those who have already achieved a certain
mastery of the relevant paleography, codicology, and textual criticism. Its
practitioners study deeds, wills, contracts, registers of acts written by no-
taries, and so forth. The diplomatic practices of a particular chancery or of the
merchants or notaries of a particular region may vary greatly from those
of other chanceries or regions, even if they are geographically near each
other. A specialist in the history of legal or commercial matters in a particular
locality must be well oriented to the diplomatic practices of that locality.
Art history and musicology can also be important to the study of
manuscripts. Illuminations, that is, miniature paintings, as well as histori-
ated initials (initial letters decorated with narrative paintings) and marginal
decorations can provide important indications about the time and place of
production of a particular manuscript. Liturgical manuscripts containing
musical notation likewise offer telling clues about a manuscript’s produc-
tion or use.

C. General History of Research

The organized study of medieval manuscripts in Europe may be said to have
begun late in the 17th century, before there was much interest in the Middle
Ages as a historical period and thus before Medieval Studies as a field began to
811 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

develop. (The Middle Ages were constituted as an historiographical concept,

and named, by those who invented the idea of the following period, the “Re-
naissance,” in part by characterizing the period of their immediate forebears
as a “middle,” something of an interruption, between the enlightened glories
of classical antiquity and their own time.) The scholars who first studied
medieval manuscripts in post-medieval times were generally motivated by
contemporary legal and/or economic interests, rather than an historical in-
terest in understanding the Middle Ages in their own right. The research of
such early manuscript scholars aimed to document, for example, the history
of ownership of a parcel of land, often in the context of an 18th-century dis-
pute about ownership or rights. Nearly all who studied manuscripts at this
period were affiliated with religious societies or orders, which might have
competing claims to properties, differing from those of other ecclesiastical
societies or orders, of a diocese, or of a layperson. The foundation of medieval
manuscript studies in litigation placed the early emphasis of the field on
paleography and diplomatics, which could yield clues as to the authenticity
of legal documents. The detection of forgery, or of the alteration in a later
period of a document written earlier, was an important tool in 18th-century
litigation.
Medieval Studies, as the pursuit of an understanding of the medieval
period itself, for its own sake, began primarily in the early 19th century. This
changed the context for the study of medieval manuscripts. At this time, the
Middle Ages began to be seen as an historical period which was interesting
and valuable in its own right, rather than simply an interruption in the
progress from antiquity to the Renaissance. This revaluation of the Middle
Ages was in part the work of adherents of the Romantic movement in Euro-
pean thought, who found the Enlightenment ideas which were the legacy
of the Renaissance to be too narrow to explain human experience and his-
tory. The birth of Medieval Studies in a context outside litigation was also
strongly motivated by the growth of nationalist movements in many parts
of Europe. These movements envisioned the Middle Ages as the starting
point for the definition of languages, nations, or even “races.” Thus, the
scope of the study of manuscripts, and some of the ends this study was
meant to serve, expanded dramatically. The wills, deeds, and other instru-
ments of legal and economic life which had motivated the study of medieval
manuscripts in the 18th century were no longer the only manuscripts which
seemed valuable. Manuscripts containing poems, narratives, religious
treatises, and so forth were seen as having potential to reveal how languages
were written and spoken in their earliest forms, and this linguistic history
was regarded as a precious clue to “national character” and values. More-
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 812

over, such “literary” texts in themselves became important tools in the

articulation of national difference. Manuscripts of, for example, The Song of
Roland were “discovered” in libraries, lying neglected, and then studied in-
tensively as keys to the character of France and the French. Establishment of
the most authentic text of such national “monuments” as early epic poems
became central to the educational enterprise in some European nation-
states.
In the 19th century, the study of medieval manuscripts at moments
captured at least some portion of the imagination of a wide public, so that
paleographers occasionally became characters in stories (today, a story with
a character described as a “paleographer” would be mysterious to most
readers). Large projects were organized, often with government sponsorship
and funding, to catalog and even transcribe and publish medieval manu-
scripts important to the history of a people, their political structures, and
“culture.” The results of some of these nationalist projects are still heavily
used by many medievalist scholars today. They must keep in mind, nonethe-
less, that the manuscripts represented by these 19th-century editions were
selected within a very particular political context, leaving uncataloged,
untranscribed, and unpublished very large numbers of medieval manu-
scripts which, in the 19th century, did not appear to serve key political goals.
For example, legal (notarial) documents, commercial records, documents of
lay social and benevolent organizations, poems and stories not deemed of the
first rank according to a particular – inevitably politically influenced – aes-
thetic, and many other categories of medieval texts remain outside historical
studies because they do not appear to serve the interests of scholars or the
institutions which support them.
The 20th century brought many changes to the study of medieval manu-
scripts, particularly in the periods immediately preceding and following
the Second World War. Medieval Studies began gradually to free itself of
nationalistic limits to some extent, although the largest projects for the
study of medieval manuscripts were still organized and funded by nation-
states. It must be acknowledged that sometimes nationalistic ends were
replaced with the celebration of a kind of supernationalism: a pan-Euro-
peanism with an emphasis on Europe as a pre-eminent continent with a
shared heritage dating from the Roman Empire. Medieval manuscripts came
to be prized as witnesses to this heritage, which was envisioned as having
vital importance for the entire world because of its long and uninterrupted
documentary history. This unbroken written record was construed as show-
ing commonalities of thought across national and linguistic borders, mark-
ing Europe as a coherent and thus superior place.
813 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

Science and technology also began, arguably more radically than politics,
to change the study of medieval manuscripts in the 20th and into the 21st cen-
tury. Methods and tools became available for dating inks, paper, and parch-
ment (animal skin prepared for the writing of documents and books). These
methods and tools enhanced those offered by paleography. Perhaps even
more important, microfilm and, later, digital photography made possible
the examination of photographic images of manuscripts by scholars unable
to travel to the many locations where medieval manuscripts were stored.
Manuscripts of the same text which are housed all over Europe and even
beyond could be systematically reviewed and compared, using such photo-
graphic images. While scholars realized that the study of a photographic
image could for many purposes not replace study of the actual manuscript
itself, many also learned that, for example, blowing up a photographed de-
tail from a manuscript often helped their work in important ways. Next,
computers made possible the compilation of data bases on medieval manu-
scripts, some containing catalog references to manuscripts and others con-
taining actual photographic images of the manuscripts themselves. At times,
issues about ownership of these images arose, and expertise in navigating
such issues became essential to the training of scholars who studied medieval
manuscripts.
Two reasons make prospects for the study of medieval manuscripts in
the 21st century seem particularly bright and argue for a major investment of
scholarly effort and technological support. First, even when two medieval
manuscripts reside in libraries far distant one from another, digital photo-
graphy not only makes access to their content more widely available; it also
makes it easier, and less perilous to the manuscript, to study very small de-
tails of, for example, letter formation, through enlargement and comparison
of images of one manuscript alongside or superimposed upon images of an-
other. Second, caches of medieval manuscripts of which scholars were largely
or entirely unaware, even some located outside Europe or the United States,
are being digitally recorded and made available for study on the worldwide
web.
Broad access to these unstudied primary materials may well change
many aspects of Medieval Studies in coming decades. From this perspective,
the study of medieval manuscripts emerges, no longer a handmaiden, as a
major key to the future of the field. While a majority of people may fail to rec-
ognize that strongly held cultural attitudes are often rooted in the knowl-
edge produced by Medieval Studies, scholars in the field increasingly know
that their work is not isolated in an ivory tower and that their study of the
primary sources of the period, especially in the form of medieval manu-
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 814

scripts, has consequences for the cultural understanding, or misunderstand-

ings, on which contemporary decisions may be based.

D. Major Contributors to Development of Field

Any brief account of the major figures in the development of the study of
medieval manuscripts must inevitably be indicative rather than comprehen-
sive: the field is vast and has been influenced by many scholars from many
countries. In recent years, important innovations in the field must also be
attributed not only to individual scholars but also to scholarly institutions.
Nonetheless, a review of the following names, ranging through many Euro-
pean countries, and consideration of the achievements of the scholars
selected, who are librarians, historians, art historians, and literary critics,
may provide an introductory orientation to the broad field of medieval
manuscript study and suggest directions for further reading.
Many regard Jean Mabillon as the first paleographer. A member of the
Benedictine monastic order, he became a monk in the northern French city
of Reims, near his birthplace, in 1654. Reims is the traditional site of the
crowning of the kings of France, and consequently ecclesiastical establish-
ments there were closely connected to the traditions and needs of maintain-
ing French legal and political continuity. The Benedictine order, moreover,
has held the copying, protection, and maintenance of written books and
records as a defining obligation since the order was founded by St. Benedict
(6th c. C.E.).
Mabillon was ordained a priest in 1660 at Corbie, a location which had
been famous for its scriptorium, or center for the copying of manuscripts,
in the Middle Ages. In 1664 he moved to Paris, to the prominent Abbey of
St. Germain des Près, and began his life’s work as part of a widespread com-
munity of Benedictine scholars, the Congregation of St. Maur, or Maurists.
This Benedictine Congregation had been founded in 1618 in order to advance
critical historical studies and especially the editing of historical materials,
that is, the scholarly evaluation of existing documents and document frag-
ments which transmitted texts of many kinds in forms that were often dam-
aged, partial, or dubious, possibly even forged.
The Maurists’ goal was to prepare from these old and varying source
manuscripts historically reliable versions of the texts these manuscripts
transmitted. Mabillon, with his Maurist collaborators, published the six-
volume landmark study De re diplomatica in 1681, forming the historical and
conceptual basis for the field of paleography by establishing principles for
dating manuscripts and determining whether they were authentic or forged.
His work was important also for the history of the Church and church prop-
815 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

erties in France, in that it responded to claims by Jesuit scholars that none of

the documents traditionally dated to the Merovingian period (before about
700 C.E.) were authentic.
Lodovico Muratori was trained in northern Italy in the methods of
paleographical analysis pioneered by the Maurists. Born in Modena in 1672,
he studied with Benedictine scholars there and, after his ordination to priest-
hood in 1694, went on to work at the Ambrosian Library in Milan. Returning
to Modena in 1700 to serve the Este family, he was enlisted to work on the
documentary basis of some of that ducal family’s property disputes. He
developed great expertise in Italian medieval law and history, publishing
between 1723 and 1751 the 28-volume series Rerum Italicarum Scriptores.
Through his work, the paleographical principles developed by Mabillon
and his French collaborators were adapted and refined in a country with a
medieval manuscript heritage even more extensive than that of France. Like
other Maurists, he was associated with opposition to Jesuit historical schol-
arship and claims regarding property.
Karl K.F.W. Lachmann, born in Braunschweig in 1793, moved from pa-
leography to an entirely new method of textual criticism, that is, the deter-
mination of a definitive or authoritative text of a work with a complex and
lengthy transmission history. While serving as Professor at the Friedrich Wil-
helm University in Berlin, he developed a definitive commentary on Lucre-
tius’s De rerum Natura. He also published numerous studies on his method of
establishing “stemmata,” or genealogical diagrams, showing the historical
relation among various manuscripts transmitting different versions, or frag-
ments, of what was presumed to have been at one time the same original text.
Built upon the work of several German predecessors, especially in the
field of Biblical studies, the genealogical method of working with manu-
scripts which came to be associated primarily with Lachmann’s name at-
tracted many followers. It established a standard for evaluating and placing
individual manuscripts in an historical framework that could lead to publi-
cation of an edition based on many manuscripts which would then be re-
garded as a definitive representation of the original (author’s) text. Though
much of his work concerned ancient Roman texts, the manuscripts bearing
these texts which he used had usually been made in the Middle Ages. Lach-
mann showed that, whenever a text is copied by hand, variations are intro-
duced, as the result of ignorance, carelessness, or choice. The critic’s task,
then, becomes the correction of these variations, resulting in the “recon-
struction” of a text which no longer exists.
Joseph Bedier, on the other hand, developed a method of textual criti-
cism which was not primarily genealogical in character and did not require
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 816

the construction of stemmata. His interest was primarily medieval, rather

than ancient, texts, and he argued that the stemmatic method was ill-suited
to the circumstances of transmission of the texts of the Middle Ages. Be-
dier, born in Paris in 1864, established his reputation in medieval manu-
script studies with his critical edition of the version of Le Roman de Tristan by
the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas. Bedier published his edition of Thomas’s
Tristan between 1902 and 1905. Appearing in 1922, his edition of La Chanson
de Roland was deemed definitive by the French scholarly public. His argu-
ment for the selection of the “best manuscript” of a text as the sole basis for
an edition was, however, received with skepticism outside French or heavily
French-influenced scholarly circles.
Charles Samaran, born in Armagnac in 1879, became a member of the
staff of the Archives Nationales (Paris) in 1904 and subsequently, over a period
of some forty years of service, became recognized as one of the master pa-
leographers of the century. He moved the discipline forward to a remarkable
degree by initiating a series of photographic facsimile editions of important
manuscripts which, among other things, enabled students in many locations
to begin the study of paleography even when unable to travel to major
archives. He began this project with the very Merovingian documents which
had been at the center of controversy between Maurists and Jesuits in the
days of Mabillon: in 1908, with Philippe Lauer, he published Les diplômes
originaux des Mérovingiens: Fac-similés phototypiques. He then produced, in 1932,
a photographic edition of a manuscript important to the controversy be-
tween the followers of Bedier and those of Lachmann, La Chanson de Roland:
Reproduction phototypique du manuscrit Digby 23 de la Bodleian Library d’Oxford.
At this period, he conceived the important project of reproducing photo-
graphically a set of manuscripts bearing indications of date, that is, manu-
scripts which did not require inferential dating. This demanding project was
completed with the publication between 1959 and 1985, partly in collabor-
ation with Robert Marichal, of seven volumes of such photographic repro-
ductions. The availability of Samaran’s Manuscrits datés definitively changed
the study of medieval manuscripts by providing worldwide access to photo-
graphs of writing from many different periods of the Middle Ages, and many
different places.
In the next generation, Bernard Bischoff’s legendary expertise and
indefatigable labor also had a defining impact on medieval manuscript study
in the 20th century. Born in 1906, Bischoff began in the 1930s an extensive
series of journeys to visit and make notes on medieval manuscripts. His focus
was the paleographic history of the 9th century, a period of great energy, inno-
vation, and influence in the production of manuscripts. In dating and locat-
817 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

ing such Carolingian manuscripts, paleographers had not achieved the preci-
sion that had come to be expected in the study of later medieval manuscripts.
Bischoff studied not only manuscripts originating in German-speak-
ing lands, but also those of France, Italy, England, and Ireland. Among the
new concepts he contributed to paleography was that of the Schriftprovinz
(writing province), an area of the production of a particular style of writing
which certainly did not correspond with modern national boundaries and
only in part mirrored contemporary (medieval) political or ecclesiastical
boundaries. This concept helped shift the attention of students of medieval
manuscripts toward groupings of scriptoria (medieval copying centers), an
approach which has increasingly proved fruitful. Estimating that a compre-
hensive study of the manuscripts of the 9th century would need to include
some 7,200 items, Bischoff was unable to conclude before his death in
1991 publication of the results of the task he had set himself. Nonetheless,
his achievement anchored the study of early medieval primary sources in a
way never previously attempted, clarifying many details and trends in the
development of European document and book production, as well as Carol-
ingian civilization in its broadest sense.
Léon M.J. Delaisse, born in Belgium in 1914, brought to the forefront
of medieval manuscript studies the discipline of codicology, or, more specifi-
cally, what he called the “archeology of the medieval book.” Already a subject
of interest to Samaran and his students, codicology demonstrated its use-
fulness dramatically in Delaisse’s dissertation at the University of Louvain,
published in 1956 as Le manuscrit autographe de Thomas à Kempis et ‘L’imitation
de Jésus-Christ.’ Using codicological or “archeological” arguments, this work
established definitively the manuscript’s authenticity. Delaisse’s work
made clear the importance of the identification and study of the workshops
in which manuscript books had been produced, often over a considerable
period of time, by a team of workers playing different roles, all of them requi-
ring careful historical contextualization before the resulting book could be
fully understood. To this end, he emphasized that scholars must not limit
their studies to luxury books, but must explore in its entirety the manuscript
production of a particular medieval period and place.
Gianfranco Contini, born in 1912 at Domodossola, in a part of Italy
bordered on the East and West by Swiss cantons, divided his teaching career
between Italy and Switzerland. In the mid-thirties, he spent two years at
Paris, studying with Bedier. A student of European literature in a very broad
sense, Contini brought to medieval manuscript studies a new method, based
on the interpretation of variants, the phases a text passes through as its author
revises it over a period of time. Contini compared these variants, especially
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 818

in the manuscripts of Petrarch, developing an editorial technique that, where

applicable, moves beyond the Lachmann-Bedier controversy, opening
new and fruitful directions for research on medieval manuscripts. Variant
criticism was further developed by the French medievalist Bernard Cerquig-
lini in Eloge de la variante. Histoire critique de la philologie, published in 1989.
To this list of key individual contributors to the development of the study
of medieval manuscripts, one must add the contributions of many institu-
tions or organizations, some built around an ambition to edit and publish a
large body of medieval manuscripts, others aiming to preserve photographic
images of them and organize them using the technology offered by com-
puters. The Monumenta Germaniae Historica, begun early in the 19th century, is
a massive undertaking in textual criticism, extending far beyond the bound-
aries of what most scholars would today consider “German” and providing
the stimulus for many important developments in the study of medieval
manuscripts. Another enormous and influential editorial project, the Patro-
logia Latina, begun by J.-P. Migne in the following generation, made available
in printed (and eventually online) form the work of ecclesiastical writers
(Church “Fathers”) from many periods and places.
The Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (Institute for Research
on and History of Texts) was conceived in 1937 as the first laboratory in a
field other than the hard sciences. Its founder, Félix Grat, saw even greater
possibilities for the study of manuscripts through the development of photo-
graphy than had Charles Samaran. Although the Institute’s first task
was the photographing, with microfilm, of manuscripts in the Latin lan-
guage housed in many parts of Europe, Grat envisioned the creation of de-
partments for the preservation and study of manuscripts in Arabic, Greek,
French, Celtic, and so forth. The Institute’s goal was to make it possible for
scholars to compare microfilm images of texts in manuscripts from many
locations, stored in an effectively organized system along with detailed in-
formation about each of the manuscripts thus made available in microfilm.
The Institute has gradually come to serve as an international clearinghouse
for information about manuscripts.
The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (formerly the Hill Monastic
Manuscript Library) was established at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville,
Minnesota (USA), partly because of concern about the destruction of medie-
val manuscripts during World War II (most spectacularly in the bombing
of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, in southern Italy). To ensure the safety of
the sources of medieval European history, and especially the history of the
Church, in an environment outside Europe itself, the monks of St. John’s
chose to continue millennial Benedictine tradition with post-war technol-
819 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

ogy. They began filming manuscript collections, in both monastic and state
libraries, in Austria, then Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal,
and Malta. In 1973, the monks extended their work to Ethiopia and more
recently have gone on to film in the Middle East, in particular manuscript
collections in Lebanon and Syria, including an important collection of Arme-
nian manuscripts. They have also been filming actively in Sweden for a
number of years. Employing digital photography since 2003, HMML has
microfilm and digital collections which are currently approaching 100,000
manuscripts.
The IRHT and HMML collaborated in producing In Principio, an index of
incipits of Latin manuscripts available by subscription on the worldwide web
(incipits are the opening lines of medieval texts and serve as identifiers for
texts, since titles were not assigned to books in the Middle Ages in a consist-
ent manner). In Principio, then, is akin to a title index of Latin texts. It is regu-
larly updated, making it possible to search online the incipits of most major
manuscript collections in Europe, through the joining together of IHRT and
HMML holdings. This is a very significant breakthrough for scholars seeking
to identify an unknown text in a manuscript housed anywhere in the world.
Still more recently, a consortium of universities in the United States has
established Digital Scriptorium. Currently maintained by Columbia Univer-
sity, Digital Scriptorium is an image database bringing together photo-
graphic images and brief descriptions of portions of manuscripts housed
at many universities. It serves the purposes of teaching and research by pro-
viding sample images of parts of many manuscripts, without requiring
libraries to provide extensive cataloging information, or metadata. Digital
Scriptorium emphasizes manuscripts signed and dated by their copyists. Its
website currently samples over 5,000 manuscripts.
Virtual Vellum, the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), and the
White Rose Universities Consortium (WRC) involve British, French, and US
institutions in experimental projects bringing together for comparison on
the web, side-by-side, manuscripts produced at the same medieval workshop
but now housed in locations distant one from another.
While no trained paleographer has suggested that even very large com-
puters are presently capable of paleographic analysis, a project initiated by the
Computer Science and History Departments of the University of Pisa aimed
to assist already-trained paleographers in classifying and identifying medi-
eval scripts. This project created the System for Palaeographic Inspections
(SPI) software suite. Arianna Ciula, research associate at the Centre for Com-
puting in the Humanities, King’s College London, has experimented with
applying SPI to a small corpus of Tuscan manuscripts from the 10th through
Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches 820

12th century now owned by the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati in Siena, in
an attempt to characterize the ideal form of each script in a given manuscript,
comparing the forms of letters made by different scribes, and ultimately de-
fining the relationships among individual scripts and manuscripts.
The study of medieval manuscripts thus continues to seek out new
ways to address old challenges. Moreover, new challenges for the field arise.
In particular, as the public begins to realize that the study of the Middle
Ages, focused by the founders of the field almost exclusively on Europe,
omits the development of knowledge about the rest of the world during the
period of (at least) a crucial millennium, collections of manuscripts from this
period outside Europe have begun to attract attention. The existence of such
collections was, in some cases, not known in the West before the 20th-cen-
tury; some such collections were even neglected, or entirely unknown, in
their own countries for many centuries. Exemplary among these are the Gen-
izah collection (Egypt), the Dun Huang collection (China), and the Timbuktu
collection (Mali).
The Genizah collection contains manuscripts documenting the medieval
Mediterranean world; many, but not all, of them are written in Hebrew. The
existence of an old “genizah,” or library storehouse, associated with the
Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo was known to few in that city, and almost no one
outside it, until two Scots scholars, Dr. Agnes Smith Lewis and Dr. Margaret
Dunlop Gibson, set out in 1890 to research manuscripts in the Sinai penin-
sula and Egypt. They obtained an interesting Hebrew manuscript in 1895 and
consulted Dr. Solomon Schechter, at Cambridge University, regarding it.
Dr. Schechter then traveled to Cairo in pursuit of the source of the docu-
ment and, upon finding it at the Ben Ezra genizah, obtained permission from
the synagogue to transport most of its contents to Cambridge. A research unit
of the Cambridge University Library makes available in the United Kingdom
about 140,000 Genizah manuscripts or manuscript fragments, primarily in
Hebrew or Arabic. An online database (GOLD) offers some 1,200 annotated
images from the collection, together with catalog databases. Parts of the Cairo
Genizah collection are also now housed in New York, Jerusalem, St. Peters-
burg, etc. The Genizah manuscripts are still being classified and studied.
The Dunhuang collection, named for a town near the intersection of the
northern and southern routes of the Silk Road, includes manuscripts from
a “library cave” discovered by a Taoist monk in 1900. The International Dun-
huang Project, housed at the British Library, makes available online items
taken from Dunhuang and now located not only in Beijing but also in the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and other countries.
Dunhuang manuscripts are written in some twenty languages and many
821 Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches

scripts, documenting life at this important cultural and commercial cross-

roads before, during, and after the Middle Ages.
Timbuktu, on important salt and gold trading routes between sub-Saha-
ran Africa and the Mediterranean coast, was a major center of Islamic learning
from the 12th century. It is thought that over 700,000 manuscripts are housed
in various collections in Timbuktu, the largest being that of the Ahmed Baba
Research Center (Centre de documentation et de recherches historiques
Ahmed Baba). Founded by the government of Mali in the 1970s, this Center
had initial support from UNESCO and ongoing collaboration from several
Arabic and Islamic organizations. In 2000, it was transformed by the govern-
ment into the Institut des Hautes Etudes et de Recherche Islamiques Ahmed
Baba or IHERI-AB and continues a program of acquisition, preservation,
research, and education, with a collection reportedly numbering close to
20,000 documents. Due to the initiative of Mamadou Iallo Diam, an organ-
ization was formed and began preserving Timbuktu manuscripts through
photography in 2000. Archivage électronique des manuscrits de Tombouc-
tou (ARELMAT: Electronic Archiving of the Timbuktu Manuscripts) has
drawn to this Malian effort support from Norway, Luxembourg, the Czech
Republic, and the US.

Select Bibliography
Bernard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Daibhi o
Croinin and David Ganz (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990) [orig.: Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters
(Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1979)]; Leonard Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Biblio-
graphic Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984) [updated and exp.
Italian trans.: Paleografia latina medievale: Introduzione bibliografica con supplemento
1982–1998, trans. Maria Elena Bertoldi, ed. Fabio Troncarelli (Roma: Edizioni
Quasar, 1999)]; Charles-Moïse Briquet, Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques
du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 (Amsterdam: Paper Publications
Society, 1968 (orig. Leipzig K. W. Hiersemann 1923) [rpt. Mansfield Centre, Conn.:
Martino Publishing, 2001]; Adriano Cappelli, Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane,
6th ed., anastatic rpt. of ed. of 1929 (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1985); Arianna Ciula and
Francesco Stella, Digital Philology and Medieval Texts (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2007); Elias
Avery Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores; a palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to
the ninth century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–); Brigitte Mondrain, “Paléographie
et codicologie, rapport de la Séance plénière Instrumenta Studiorum,” Pré-actes du XXe
Congrès international des Etudes byzantines, t. 1, Paris, 2001, 321–325; Leighton Durham
Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: a Guide to the Transmission of Greek and
Latin Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Charles Samaran, Catalogue des manu-
scrits en écriture latine portant des indications de date, de lieu ou de copiste, 7 vols. (Paris: Centre
national de la recherche scientifique, 1959–1985).

Susan Noakes
Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies 822

Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies

A. Early Marxist Medievalists

Marxist views of medieval social and cultural history have exploited Karl
Marx’s (1818–1883) descriptions of medieval peasantry and aristocracy in
pre-capitalist feudal structures, have relied on Marxist theories of power and
ideology, and have applied his cyclical views of history. In late 19th-century
Britain, as socialist parties grew in popularity around them, instrumental
figures such as socialist feminist Eleanor Marx (1855–1898), philologist
and editor Frederic James Furnivall (1825–1910, founder of the E.E.T.S.
and O.E.D., see entry in this Handbook), and artist and critic William Mor-
ris (1834–1896) began to combine socialist and utopian socialist ideologies
with Victorian medievalist aesthetics in a nostalgic criticism of modern in-
dustrial society. Subsequent to this earlier vogue, Marxist approaches to
Medieval Studies were most common in the ideologically grounded analyses
published by historians and literary critics through the 1950s. They were
also influenced by 19th-century French historians of the socialist left.
The 1960s and 1970s continued to see the use of or responses to Marxist
terminology and theoretical frameworks in Europe and North America, fo-
cusing on economic and social issues related to power and ideology. Marxist
views of Medieval Studies have been so persistent in part because medieval
dialectic, Hegelian dialectic, and Marxist dialectical materialism were able to
go hand in hand in approaching the history of medieval thought. To simplify,
the social and the economic are often seen as one and the same in a cyclical
view of history in the literary and socio-historical scholarship summarized
below. The discipline of Cultural Studies in history and literature grew out of
Marxist, Historicist, and New Historicist traditions. Today, Cultural Studies
and cultural historians of the Middle Ages continue in the legacy of Marxist
historiography and social theory (with the added theoretical influence of
Max Weber, Jürgen Habermas, Theodor W. Adorno, Louis Althusser,
Mikhail Bakhtin, Terry Eagleton, and other Marxist or post-Marxist the-
orists).
Grandfathers of French Marxist historiography, Marc Bloch (1886–
1944, see entry in this Handbook) and Lucien Febvre (1878–1956, see entry
in this Handbook), founded the journal Annales in 1929, placing emphasis on
social analyses of history, on Marxist interpretations of class power struggles
following medieval feudalism, and on modernist conceptions of progress.
The Annales School of history, ‘L’École des Annales’, though only loosely
organized, has informed the discipline of Medieval Studies for decades, par-
823 Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies

ticularly in political and economic perspectives in criticism of medieval liter-

ary and historiographic texts. The Annales approaches embraced much of
Marxist historiography and models of feudal hierarchy. Prior to this work,
French socialist historicism focused primarily on timelines of reigns and
dates of specific events, battles, or treatises. Heavily influenced by develop-
ments in the growing fields of human geography and sociology in France,
Marc Bloch endeavored to provide instead a “total” socio-economic history
covering the whole socio-economic spectrum in La société féodale (2 vols.,
1939–1940), as part of the series L’évolution de l’humanité, and Les caractères orig-
inaux de l’histoire rurale française (2 vols., 1955–1956), published posthumously.
In response to Marc Bloch and others, French social historian Georges
Duby (1919–1996, see entry in this Handbook) continued class-based social
history and also reintroduced the historical significance of “events.” This
“events” perspective, which tended to focus on a crucial battle or decisive
date that may have “changed” history, became part of Duby’s perspective,
though he remained part of Annales movement of socio-economic histori-
ography, for example in his Le dimanche de Bouvines: 27 juillet 1214 (1973).
Duby’s approach to feudalism through the Marxist lens of the concept of les
trois ordres [the three orders] of society (the clergy, the nobility, and the Third
Estate) remained pervasive in his work for decades and greatly influenced
French historiography. In the next generation of Annales school disciples
is French social and anthropological historian Jacques Le Goff (born 1924,
see entry in this Handbook), who had focused much of his scholarship on no-
tions of work, time, and social class in the Middle Ages. For a consideration
of the full impact and limitations of Le Goff’s work on Medieval Studies
(see the cultural history volume edited by Miri Rubin, The Work of Jacques Le
Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History, 1997, which also contains a review of
Annales scholarship in national historical traditions following in Le Goff’s
footsteps in Spain, the Netherlands, and North America, set within its ideo-
logical context). Jacques Le Goff’s work has concentrated on 12th- and 13th-
century French intellectual and social history with a Marxist and New His-
toricist leaning, working from the background of the Annales-School and
becoming a landmark figure in approaches of the New History, or La Nouvelle
Histoire, by the 1970s. Le Goff’s L’imagination médiévale is a seminal example
of this newer approach; much of his work has been powerful or controversial,
such as his questioning the validity of the term “moyen âge” (Le Goff’s
methodologies are detailed in Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Method-
ology, ed. Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, 1985).
Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies 824

B. Marxist Approaches and Feudalism

Many studies on feudalism were socialist or Marxist-inspired through the
1970s, based on Marx’s and Engels’s arguments about the evolution from
feudal society to capitalism, and more specifically responding to Friedrich
Engels’ (1820–1895) Über den Verfall des Feudalismus und das Aufkommen der
Bourgeoisie [The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie] (1884). Studies
that respond to these influential arguments are too numerous to detail. Also
responding to Marx’s and Engels’ concepts of feudalismus was the general
study of the political and ideological history of feudalism and state building
by Austrian social historian Otto Brunner (1898–1982, see entry in this
Handbook), in his Feudalismus (1959), or best known in English by the trans-
lated book chapter “Feudalism: The History of a Concept” (Lordship and Com-
munity in Medieval Europe, ed. Fredrich Cheyette, 1968, 32–56). His earlier
nationalist study, Land und Herrschaft: Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungs-
geschichte Südostdeutschlands im Mittelalter (1939), became somewhat contro-
versial, given the context of national socialist Germany. A critical review of
Brunner’s work may be found in, Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Sozialgeschichte,
Begriffsgeschichte, Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Anmerkungen zum Werk Otto
Brunners” (VSWG 71 [1983]: 305–41).
A Paris think-tank produced a definitive typology Sur le féodalisme
(ed. Centre d’Études et de recherches marxistes, 1974), while at the same
time a significant North American study called into question the concept of
feudalism and the legacy of Marx, Elizabeth Brown, “The Tyranny of a
Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe” (American Histori-
cal Review 79 [1974]: 1963–88). Maurice Dobb took up the debate of the valid-
ity of Marx’ arguments involving pre-capitalist feudal society in several of
his pieces, beginning with his Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946),
and somewhat redefining his stance on feudalism and historical materialism
in the 1960s, with “From Feudalism to Capitalism” (Marxism Today 6 [1962]:
285–87), and the book Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1963).
In Britain, economic historian Michael Moïssey Postan and others have
focused Marxist analyses on economic aspects of agrarian, labor, and peasant
history in feudal England; see his Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General
Problems of the Medieval Economy (1950), in particular the first chapter therein
on “The Economic Foundations of Medieval Economy” (1–28). Also import-
ant to early 20th-century medieval economic history was Postan’s scholar-
ship on labor services, the rise of a money economy in Europe, and the social
conditions and charters of the villein, in articles originally published from
the 1930s to 1960s, some of which appear in Michael Moïssey Postan, Essays
on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (1973), pro-
825 Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies

viding a cyclical ground-up view of what Postan terms the peasant base of
the medieval economy. This work, as well as his Medieval Trade and Finance
(1973), offers a Marxist-based consideration of the beginnings of capitalism
and new experiments with taxation.
Other notable Marxist cultural historians for the interwar and postwar
period are: Fernand Braudel, Ernst Fischer, and Perry Anderson. Late
20th-century studies have continued to highlight the cycles and progress of
history, for example Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
(1996), which also focuses on the Middle Ages as a “transitional” period and
shows a progression in economic history from nomadism to the absolute
power of monarchies and offers a typology of medieval feudalism. This essay
also subscribes to the cyclical view of history in an attempt to describe the
“fall” of the Roman and Byzantine empires and the end of the “Dark Ages.”
Anderson is also author of Lineages of the Absolutist State: Considerations on
Western Marxism; In the Tracks of Historical Marxism, and other studies in Marx-
ist historicism, and he has served on the board of the New Left Review.
Russian and former Soviet Medieval Studies publications were also char-
acterized by Marxist perspectives through the 1970s; a useful bibliography
and review of scholarship in this area is to be found in O. L. Vainshtein,
Istoriia sovetskoi medievistsiki: 1917–1966. In Asian Studies, a review of Marxist
treatments of medieval Asian social history was provided by R. A. L. H. Gu-
nawardana, “The Analysis of Pre-Colonial Social Formations in Asia in the
Writings of Karl Marx” (The Indian Historical Review 2 [1976]: 365–88), based
on an earlier 1975 article. A more comprehensive view of Eastern feudalism
with a Marxist point of departure is Feudalism and Non-European Societies
(ed., Terrence Byres and Mukhia Harbans, 1985, reprinted by Routledge
from a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies 12 [1985]).
Thus, the application of Marxist political theory to medieval history
is not limited to continental historians or critics. British Marxist social his-
torian Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free (1977), focuses on the role of
peasants and peasant revolts in the social history of feudalism, attempting to
redefine terms such as serfdom, peasantry, and even feudalism. Hilton
picks up where Marx and Engels left off in their models of medieval peas-
antry, beginning with his Freedom and Villeinage in England (1965), and his
edited volume The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (1976). The 1960s
saw the development of Peasant Studies (later termed Subaltern Studies
in the context of postcolonial criticism), spawning the scholarly journals
The Journal of Peasant Studies in Britain and Peasant Studies in the United States
while rehabilitating Marx’s view of the peasant. Post-Marxist interpre-
tations of social and economic history have continued into the 21st-century,
Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies 826

with studies on peasant social history such as: Philipp Schofeld, Peasant
and Community in Medieval England 1200–1500 (2002), which focuses on the
political, economic, and ecclesiastical relationships between peasants and
lords as well as everyday life within the peasant family unit itself; concentrat-
ing on commercial and economic facets of everyday life is Schofeld’s Credit
and Debt in Medieval England c. 1180–c. 1350 (2002).

C. Later Influences of Marxist Thought

The end of the 20th-century and the first decade of the 21st-century have seen
a rise in popularity in post-Marxist studies on peasants, everyday life, com-
modities, urban history, and material culture in medieval and early modern
European history, recalling some of Duby’s work on private life, historical
materialism, and the growth of the economy, such as: D. Vance Smith, Arts
of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary (2003); and social historian
Christopher Dyers’s Everyday Life in Medieval England (2003), which is an-
other example of the focus on aspects of material culture in peasant, sub-aris-
tocratic, or subaltern life. The Greenwood Press’ “Daily Life through His-
tory” series offers several volumes combining scholarly and popular Marxist
perspectives of feudalism and material culture. Christopher Dyers’s An Age
of Transition?: Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (2007),
responds to prior Marxist and post-Marxist historians, presenting the latest
account of economic and commercial growth from 1200–1500, demonstrat-
ing that new conceptions of property, consumption, economic development,
and credit came from the peasantry and eventually led to England becoming
the first industrial nation.
Though skeptical of some Marxist approaches in later years Norman
Cantor (1929–2004, see entry in this Handbook), scholar of comparative
literature, sociology, and history, made an enduring impact on interdisci-
plinary Marxist perspectives of medieval social and intellectual history with
his Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization (1963, updated in 1994
as The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition
of Medieval History, to include more information on the roles of women in
society, religion in society, later medievalism, and other topics). This work
takes a cyclical and class-based approach to medieval historiography and
stresses the need to include the history of those on the margins of society. As a
response to such earlier studies, Marxist perspectives on cultural and social
history have been pervasive in literary criticism through the early 1990s,
often taking a dialectical view of social classes, as demonstrated in, Medieval
Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History (ed. David Aers, 1986). For the Marx-
ist literary critic, literary production and material culture of everyday life
827 Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies

reflect social conflict or class struggle. Studies on literary satire and sites of
resistance also hail from Marxist beginnings. Cultural-historical interpre-
tations appear in literary analysis in the1990s, for example with articles on
resistance and social status in courtly literature, such as Caroline Jewers,
“The Name of the Ruse and the Round Table: Occitan Romance and the Case
for Cultural Resistance” (Neophilologus 8 [1997]: 187–200), or Class and Gender
in Early English Literature (ed. Briton Harwood and Gillian Overing, 1994).
Sheila Delany’s Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (1990), also pro-
poses a Marxist and cultural history approach to literary production. Postco-
lonial criticism is now influencing readings of resistance, class, and gender in
medieval narratives.

D. Marxist and Ideological Approaches Across Disciplines

Marxist and ideological interpretations are not limited to literary and
historical studies; they extend to all modes of cultural production, from art
to architecture to Saint’s Lives. In the 1950s, Marxist studies of medieval
hagiography transformed the field, as with Bernhard Töpfer’s significant
study on material culture, ideology, and the institution of religion: “Reli-
quienkult und Pilgerbewegung zur Zeit der Klosterreform im burgundisch-
aquitanischen Gebiet” (Vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit 65 [1956]: 420–39; trans-
lated as “The Cult of Relics and Pilgrimage in Burgundy and Aquitaine at the
Time of the Monastic Reform,” The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious
Response in France Around the Year 1000, ed. Thomas Head and Richard
Landes, 1992, 41–57). Social class becomes important in work such as
Head’s and Landes’s, which takes into consideration both popular and
elite cultural production in the religious sphere. Leftist Czech medievalist
František Graus (1921–1989; active mostly in Germany) also worked from a
Marxist point of departure to show that hagiographical texts had much to re-
veal about religion in the context of social classes, power, ideology, and state
building in French, German, and Slavic examples (see his Volk, Herrscher und
Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit,
1965; Struktur und Geschichte: 3 Volksaufstände im mittelalterlichen Prag, 1971;
and Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter, 1980). Marxist and post-
Marxist views on ideology related to religious cultural production and state
building are investigated in the sociologic study of The Birth of Ideology: Myths
and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France (ed. Fredrich Cheyette, 1991);
similarly, focusing on Iberian ideology is Jerrilynn Dodds, Architecture and
Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (1990).
Related to such ideologically-based studies, a key perspective in Medi-
eval Studies has been historicism. A review of historicist methodology and
Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies 828

practice contrasted with newer approaches may be found throughout the

important special journal issue “The Ends of Historicism: Medieval English
Literary Study in the New Century” (Texas Studies in Literature and Language,
44.1 [2002]). This entire issue invites scholars to rethink historicism; for
example Elizabeth Scala critiques the theoretical framework of historicism
popular for so long with medievalists, Scala, “Historicists and Their Dis-
contents: Reading Psychoanalytically in Medieval Studies” (108–131). Bruce
Holsinger and Ethan Knapp, “The Marxist Premodern” (The Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34.3 [2004]: 463–71) focus on Marxist and
post-Marxist readings of literature and history, beginning by considering
class-based studies of the Middle Ages as well as the limitations of the Marx-
ist, Hegelian, and pre-Marxist appropriation of the image of the feudal sys-
tem as the precursor to modern bourgeois society. Other challenges to differ-
ent permutations of Marxist views of feudal order preceding capitalist
society include: Robert Brenner, “The Origins of Capitalist Development:
A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism” (New Left Review 104 [1977]: 25–92).
Peter Haidu, The Subject Medieval/Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle
Ages (2003), offers a historicist view of medieval subjectivity, mapping the
cultural development of the subject through historiographic and literary
examples (ranging from the Serments de Strasbourg to Old French epic, from
Marie de France to Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier). In a new reading of
how the individual is created by state ideology as seen in texts ranging from
the Chanson de Roland to the Domesday Book, Haidu attempts to disrupt the
binary opposition of medieval vs. modern subjectivity. He finds modern sub-
jectivity constructed by political ideology and individuals who are defined by
violence, resistance, or institutional subjugation from the 6th century on.

Select Bibliography
Marc Bloch, La société féodale, 2 vols. (Paris: Berr, 1939–1940); Norman Cantor,
The Civilization of the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1963); Miri Rubin, The Work of
Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer,
1997); Bruce Holsinger and Ethan Knapp, “The Marxist Premodern,” The Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34.3 (2004): 463–71.

Sarah Gordon
829 Masculinity Studies

Masculinity Studies

A. Definition
Since the time that Medieval Studies began to treat literary texts as literature
rather than as linguistic expressions of earlier forms of contemporary ver-
nacular languages, literary scholars have been writing about male characters
in texts. Medieval historians – whether social, intellectual, or military – have
also been mining various archives in order to understand the particular ac-
tions and events in which historical persons made an impact. Literary studies
and historical studies were not interested in examining male characters from
the vantage of their gender because from the critical perspective, they did not
have gender. With the rise of feminist criticism, also discussed in this volume,
scholars began to chip away at ideas held about the representation of the femi-
nine through studies of literature and history, but as the new masculinity
studies began to emerge in the early 1990s, there was a sense that the feminist
project was not complete. Some have called this shift in feminist studies the
work of a second generation of feminism – one that tended to see masculinity
as more than an undifferentiated other and one that was monolithic. Such
was the practice in the beginning years of feminist criticism because scholars
were attempted to redress the error of omitting explorations of female experi-
ences in history and literature. The April 1993 issue of Speculum treating the
study of women in the Middle Ages, with essays by Nancy F. Partner, Carol
J. Clover, Kathleen Biddick, and Allen J. Frantzen, influenced by this
second wave of feminist approaches, examined the subtle dance of masculin-
ity and femininity in new ways, drawing heavily on the work of social history
and the studies of sexuality of Michel Foucault. In 1994, Claire A. Lees
edited a volume of essays that would serve as the foundation for future
studies of masculinity that looked at men as possessing gender and as not al-
ways conforming to the notions of hegemonic masculinity (Medieval Masculin-
ities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages). Essays in the collection explore social
history and literary texts, ranging from England and Europe, even with at-
tention of the “other men” of the Muslim world. The breadth of the volume
suggested the vast work that lay ahead with uncovering the male experience.
The expressed idea in the volume is that men had a variety of experiences and
that it is important to recover the range of men’s experiences as men. Jacque-
line Murray’s observation in her essay in the Handbook on Medieval Sexuality
(ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, 1996) suggests that studies
of men as males is important to deconstructing the idea of the “universal
male” as the paradigm for understanding human experience.
Masculinity Studies 830

B. Historical Development
In the early to mid 1990s, historians working with both material culture and
in concert with the growth in the historical study of medicine saw a number
of new developments in scholarship. Joan Cadden’s Meaning of Sex Difference
in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture (2003) examines the nature of
male and female sexuality, countering the reductionist vision of the single
sex model proposed by Thomas Laquer (Making Sex: Body and Gender from the
Greeks to Freud, 1990). Exploring theological and medical texts, she shows a
clear differentiation between the sexes and reveals the binaries as important
elements for structuring civilization and life. In the collection of essays,
Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brund-
age), a number of essays not only reference the Cadden study but also extend
her work. Joyce C. Salisbury (“Gendered Sexuality”) suggests the specific
powers of female sexuality to put in jeopardy male sexuality, thus intro-
ducing gender anxiety. Warren Johansson and William A. Percy (“Homo-
sexuality,” 155–189) suggest the challenges in defining this particularly
oriented male behavior and offer a counter James Boswell who had argued
for an increasing tolerant view of male homosexual behavior during the late
classical and early Middle Ages. Matthew Keufler (“Castration and Eunu-
chism in the Middle Ages,” 279–306) suggests the importance of this topic
in both Christian and Jewish circles in the Middle Ages and the use of the
practice of castration in legal action. The event, however, does create gender
ambiguity. Other essays in the volume bring to light the male experience in
Old Norse society, Islamic culture, and Eastern Roman culture. The empha-
sis in these essays, following the work of Cadden, suggests the strong essen-
tialist nature of masculinity as well as some attempts to being a movement
toward the social construction of identity. Beyond the scope of this essay are a
significant number of studies of homosexual masculinity generated by this
methodological approach also found in this volume.
If biological gender was one area of historical study, there is a sense of
male identity also being socially constructed. Barbara Hanawalt (Growing
Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History, 1993) gives the
sense of personal history through her method of tracing the fortunes of two
apprentices as well as using the more traditional approaches of social history.
She shows the subtly nuanced experience of males in their growth to adult-
hood. Her method clearly attempts to thwart the histories which record a he-
gemonic and unified male experience. In From Boys to Men: Formation of Mascu-
linity in Late Medieval Europe (2003) Ruth Karras expands the work begun
by Hanawalt and considers the variety of masculinities that obtained in
various vocational and social areas. Thus masculinity for knights, university
831 Masculinity Studies

students, and craft workers would differ. Karras notes that knightly mas-
culinity was likely the “hegemonic model,” but that clearly others models
were available as indicated by the varieties males could exist in the world.
Masculinity is tied to a series of social relationships. Her study is keen to re-
focus the study of masculinities so that modern readers do not force onto the
evidence a model of male independence. Shannon McSheffrey (Marriage,
Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London, 2006) applies some of the new
masculinities studies to her analysis of the institution of marriage in London
demonstrates the socially governing constraints on male behavior during ap-
prenticeship.
Many of the new studies relate to masculinity in knightly or middle class
situations, but a collection of essay extends the study of masculinity to the
religious life. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (ed. P. H. Cullum and
Katherine J. Lewis, 2004) examines an area that seems quite traditional
through a new prism. Masculinity in the hegemonic sense was about power,
control, and manipulation of one’s external circumstances. For the religious,
particularly monks, there is some sense of being placed in a position of
gender anxiety through the balance of power relationships. Investigating
historical figures as well as literary texts, this collection also examines the
blurry lines of gendered identity that actually feminizes the representation
of the male in religious contexts. This study brings new light to what many
previously considered an unproblematic area for the representation of mas-
culinity.
Historical studies using court documents and following the influence of
the New Historicism that attempted to locate other histories inscribed in
texts apart from the grand narrative of history reveal a much more subtly
nuanced masculinity than had been appreciated earlier. Anxieties surround-
ing biological function and socialization were dominate forms of imagining
in both the historical record and in literary texts. Studies such as Sodomy,
Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050–1230 (2004)
examine the social anxiety related to definitions of masculinity and the
boundaries that sodomy sets on those definitions. Biological and social func-
tioning at other times was also helpful in defining the differences in gender
roles as well as in establishing social formation. Becky R. Lee (“Men’s Recol-
lections of a Women’s Rite: Medieval English Men’s Recollections Regarding
the Rite of the Purification of Women after Childbirth,” Gender & History 14.2
[August 2002]: 224–41) has shown the role of men in the purification rituals
associated with women after childbirth. Through a study of proof-of-age in-
quests, she demonstrates that the public performance of such rituals were
important to male identity and to larger social formation.
Masculinity Studies 832

As Medieval Studies and Masculinity Studies began to find a common

ground for study in the 1990s, another important dimension developed.
While many of the original studies attempted to show the variety of mascu-
linities that were apparent in medieval life, the collection of essays entitled
Conflicted Masculinities (ed. Jacqueline Murray, 1999) demonstrated that
these various images of masculinity from court, church, and urban society
while conflicting were actually finding points of communication. Many of
the essays, founded upon the work of Judith Butler on gender performance,
tend to demonstrate that various masculinities were marshaled to the reifi-
cation of patriarchy, but there are also elements, including same sex-desire
that operate both within and between the lines of that status. From studies of
gender systems (Jo Ann McNamara, “An Unresolved Syllogism: The Search
for a Christian Gender System,” 1–24) to relational and ambiguous desire
in Old Norse texts (Jenny Jochens, “Triangularity in the Pagan North: The
Case of Bjorn Arngeirsson to Thodor Kolbeissen,” 111–34) to the norms of
masculinity in university settings (Ruth Mazo Karras, “Separating the Men
from the Goats: Masculinity, Civilization and Identity Formation in the
Medieval University” 189–213) to more overt same-sex desire in the medi-
eval court (John Carmi Parsons, “’Loved Him – Hated Her’: Honor and
Shame in the Medieval Court,” 279–98), the intersections of competing de-
sires and representations are drawn more clearly. The volume does more
than set a range of behaviors termed “masculine,” and at the same time sug-
gests the level of uneasiness latent in those presentations.
The hybridity of methodologies between historical and literary studies
has produced a variety of new studies of medieval guilds and urban iden-
tities. Claire Sponsler (“Outlaw Masculinities: Drag, Blackface, and Late-
Medieval Laboring-Class Festivities,” 321–47) examines the way that dress
for dramatic productions enables particular visions of masculinity and at
the same time challenges the hegemonic views of laboring class masculin-
ities (Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie
Wheeler, 1997). Also working in this same area of urban studies is Chris-
tina M. Fitzgerald (The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild
Culture, 2007). Looking particularly at the structure of guild life based on the
records of York and Chester, Fitzgerald argues that the production of drama,
oriented around its subjects and participants, valorizes the notions of medi-
eval urban masculine identity. Both of these studies, typical of a growing
traditions in medieval studies, examines the role of activities themselves to
produce images of identity in the performative sense.
833 Masculinity Studies

C. Literary Development
If historical studies have experienced a Renaissance in the study of masculin-
ity in material cultural practices, literary studies have also seen the develop-
ment of a growing industry of studies. Many of the studies examined in this
selection have been made possible through the historical studies noted in
this article. To date, medieval English literary studies have seen the greatest
number of studies growing out of the new masculinity studies movement
initiated by Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (ed. Claire
Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann Mcnamara, 1994). Among the essays
are several which examine major, canonical texts of medieval literature in in-
structive ways to aid later critical studies. Claire Kinney examines Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight and contends that the poem is not at all clear which ver-
sion of masculinity (Gawain, Bercilak, or the court) is the authorized one, but
probably suggests that medieval courtly society has the ability to reinvent
and reinterpret itself accord to need so that masculinity is hardly static, but
open to change (“The (Dis)Embodied Hero and the Signs of Manhood in
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” 47–57). Harriet Spiegel investigates gender
relationships in Marie de France’s Fables and suggests that while the repre-
sentation does support the traditional views of masculinity, there is still an
ambivalence that suggests the world of the male is not the total experience of
humanity, but is indeed gender-specific (“The Male Animal in the Fables of
Marie de France,” 111–126). Claire Lees’s essay on Beowulf takes on one
of the classic critics of the poem, J. R. R. Tolkien, and suggests that the
poem is actually a critique of masculine aggressiveness (“Men and Beowulf,”
129–148). The poem is seen as a critique of the warrior class as everything
seems to become the victim to this culturally hegemonic view of society.
Another series of essays focused on literary texts examines the concept
of what it must have meant to become a male in society. Becoming Male in
the Middle Ages (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, 1997) This
collection of essays asserts that there is always a sense of “becoming” with re-
spect to the male gender and that it is important to study males and females
as both related and opposites. This collection of essays shows the growing
fluidity between masculinity studies as they are developing as well as femin-
ist and queer studies, which are related. Allen J. Frantzen examines what
maleness means in the context of sexual activity in Anglo-Saxon penitentials
(“Where the Boys Are: Children and Sex in Anglo-Saxon Penitentials,”
43–66). David Townsend examines the problems with hegemonic mascu-
linity which he argues is undercut in Waltharius (“Ironic Intertextuality and
the Reader’s Resistance to Heroic Masculinity in the Waltharius,” 67–86). Es-
says by Martin Irvine (“Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body: Castration,
Masculinity Studies 834

Identity, and Remasculinization,” 87–106) and Bonnie Wheeler (“Origen-

ary Fantasies: Abelard’s Castration and Confession,” 107–28) look at corre-
spondence written by Abelard after his castration and his attempts to recon-
struct a vision of his own masculinity after the removal of those aspects most
essential in nature. Studies of Chaucer by Glenn Berger (“Erotic Discipline …
or ‘Tee Hee, I Like My Boys to be Like Girls: Inventing with the Body in
Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale,” 245–60) and Robert Sturges (“The Pardoner,
Veiled and Unveiled,” 261–77); transvestite knights by Ad Putter (“Trans-
vestite Knights in Medieval Life and Literature,” 279–302); sodomical as-
pects within Mankind by George Epps (“The Vicious Guise: Effeminacy,
Sodomy, and Mankind,” 303–20); drag in dramatic performance by Claire
Sponsler (“Outlaw Masculinities: Drag, Blackface, and Late Medieval
Laboring-Class Festivities,” 321–47); and gender construction in the works
of Sir David Lindsay by James Goldstein suggest the margins and yet per-
meable boundaries of masculine desire and behavior (“Normative Hetero-
sexuality in History and Theory: The Case of Sir David Lindsay of the
Mount,” 349–65). There is a sense always here that masculinity is in flux, not
so much anxious as in other studies, but less clearly defined.
Without question major authors have received a great deal of attention in
the new masculinity studies. This is seen most clearly in studies on the work
of Geoffrey Chaucer. Susan Crane addressed issues of male rivalry in Gender
and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1994) in terms of performative mas-
culinity. The collection of essay, Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness
in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (1998), ed. Peter Beidler, set a
new standard for examining masculine representation in Chaucer’s works.
In seventeen essays, this collection does not speak with a single conclusion
about the nature of masculinity in the individual selections, but there is
actually a free play that readers will find among the articles themselves. The
sense is that these various essays are intended to fill in some gaps in under-
standing that previous feminist works have not examined. Holly Crocker
(Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood, 2007) attempts in an historicist way to look at is-
sues of visibility and invisibility of masculinity encoded in the works of
Chaucer through the interesting dichotomy of Chaucer the poet/Chaucer the
man. Chaucer does not produce a single version of masculinity; in fact his
texts defy such an attempt. All of these studies attempt to position the exam-
ination of one of the major figures of medieval literature against the cultural
norms and beliefs about gender to produce reading of Chaucer’s texts that
show Chaucer’s more than subtle awareness of the complexities of gender,
even as he pressed the margins in representation.
835 Masculinity Studies

D. Current Research
This survey of criticism is by definition only a beginning of sorts. Many of the
articles and books written even in the last five years talk about the reality that
masculinity studies in medieval studies still remains in its early stages. Isbel
Davis has recently moved the study to somewhat lesser known literary texts
by author such as Thomas Usk, William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas
Hoccleve (Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages, 2007). This survey sug-
gests the breadth and depth of these studies, all highly informed by critical
theory and deeply indebted to the methodology of the New Historicism
that attempts to find histories rather than the grand narrative of history. As
this survey also shows, much of the work on masculinity studies to date has
appeared in collections of essay, many a part of the The New Middle Ages series,
edited by Bonnie Wheeler. While feminist studies in the Middle Ages has
a number of important outlets for bibliography, these remain to be written
for masculinity studies and a coherent picture of this scholarly approach is
still developing.

Select Bibliography
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler
(New York: Garland, 1997); William E. Burgwinkle, Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law
in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050–1230 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004); Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science,
and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Susan Crane, Gender
and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994);
Conflicting Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline
Murray (New York: Garland, 1999); Holly A. Crocker, Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood
(New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007); Christina M. Fitzgerald, The Drama of
Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007);
Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L.
Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996); Ruth Mazo Kar-
ras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness
in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Peter G. Beidler (Cambridge:
Brewer, 1998); Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval
London (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Medieval Masculinities:
Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Claire A. Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann
McNamara (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Studying Medieval
Women: Sex, Gender, Feminism, ed. Nancy F. Partner, Speculum 68.2 (April 1993),
special issue; Isbel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007).

Daniel F. Pigg
Material Culture 836

Material Culture

A. Definition
The interdisciplinary field of material culture studies the ways in which
humans manipulate their material environment, the uses to which they put
objects, and the meanings they assign to them. It presumes that any object
constructed, adapted, decorated, or otherwise produced for human use rep-
resents larger cultural dynamics, be they related to social relationships, econ-
omic structure, ritual practice, warfare, or any other dimension of human
activity. From this perspective, there is no hierarchy of artifacts – all objects
related to human life, from spoons to skyscrapers, contribute to our under-
standing of cultural practice and production, though some contribute more
than others.
Clearly, material culture in the Middle Ages encompasses an immense
amount of object types, let alone individual artifacts, each of which is a point
in a larger web of cultural significance. Three fundamental observations are
therefore worth making at the outset. First, despite the vast variety of objects
and practices associated with them in medieval culture, the medieval under-
standing of the material world derived primarily from the Bible (particularly
as it endowed material creation with divine immanence and symbolic mean-
ing), Roman antiquity (ceramics and armor technology, farm implements,
artisanal tools), and the “barbarian” invaders (weapons, the plow, folklore).
Secondly, traditional notions about medieval technological “stasis” should
not blind us to the extraordinary technical achievements of medieval crafts-
men and builders – illuminated manuscripts, enamels, stained-glass
windows, tapestries, and cathedrals would be sophisticated objects in any age.
Moreover, a great many medieval industrial, farming, artisanal, and building
techniques remained standard well after the end of the Middle Ages, which
points up the problems with periodization and with notions of rapid post-
medieval technological progress. In this, as in other ways, material culture
helps explode many myths about the medieval “interruption” in history. Fin-
ally, any generalizations about technology, or about the design, use, or mean-
ing of a given object in the Middle Ages, must be tempered with the caveat
that many historical exceptions and local variations may always be found.

Tools
The majority of people throughout the Middle Ages were peasants engaged
in some form of agricultural production. Fundamental to medieval material
life was the wide array of implements they used, most of which were made of
837 Material Culture

wood and derived from types inherited from the Romans. A notable excep-
tion was the plow, which originated among Germanic and Slavic peoples
in late antiquity. By the 12th century the plow was in general use in Western
and Central Europe, while the older ard, or scratch-plow, was still in use in
Scandinavia and the Mediterranean basin. Another major agricultural inno-
vation of the 9th to 11th centuries was the gear that allowed the harnessing
of horses for harrowing and plowing (iron shoes, rigid collars, shafts and
traces, flexible couplings) (Bibliographia historiae rerum rusticarum inter-
nationalis; Georges Duby, L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’Occident
médiéval, 1962; George E. Fussell, Farming Technique from Prehistoric to Modern
Times, 1966; Getreidebau in Ost- und Mitteleuropa, ed. Iván Balassa, 1972; id.,
“Die Verbreitung der Kehrpflüge in Europa,” In memoriam Antonio Jorge Dias,
II, 1974, 39–59).
Artisans – carpenters, metalsmiths, sculptors, mason –, too, relied on
a great variety of tools that had antecedents in Roman culture. These tools
underwent changes and refinements as they were adapted to new needs and
techniques – hammers acquired new shapes, different types of punches for
impressing metal were invented – but there were no major innovations in
their design during the medieval period (John Harvey, Medieval Craftsmen,
1975).
More than utilitarian objects, these tools could have important symbolic
significance, which is another crucial dimension of their cultural existence.
The agricultural implements depicted on cathedral façades and in the cal-
endars for books of hours express the sacred and ideological connotations of
these objects and of the work they did; goldsmiths were buried with balances
and weights as signs of their social standing and in recognition of the weigh-
ing of souls on Judgment Day (Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice,
and Representation, ed. Del Sweeney, 1995; Paul Freedman, Images of the
Medieval Peasant, 1999).

Domestic Objects
It is likely that for most of the Middle Ages, the vast majority of society had
extremely limited housewares and little if no furniture. While peasants had
buckets, some crockery, wood platters, and other rudimentary articles, the
traditional image of a family sitting at a table while stew boils in a pot is likely
fantasy, since there is almost no archaeological evidence of furniture in poor
households, and large iron implements were prohibitively expensive. Again,
the study of material culture provides a useful reminder of the distortions of
modern stereotypes, as well as evidence of the subsistence economy that pre-
dominated for much of the Middle Ages.
Material Culture 838

The housewares and furnishings that we know most about belonged to

the merchant and noble classes and date to between the 13th and 15th cen-
turies, when population growth, economic stability, expanded trade, and ur-
banization led to the increased production and documentation of domestic
goods. For those who could afford them, standard household items included
chests, benches, long tables, cupboards that doubled as side tables, linens,
rugs, table coverings, and beds covered with hangings or entirely enclosed
(as with the lit-clos of Brittany). The wealthier could afford chairs, open dress-
ers to display tablewares, and buffets to exhibit goldware and other finery.
A noble household with multiple residences would have some furniture
built into the walls to impede theft, other furniture designed for portability
(such as tables on trestles), and many chests in which to put housewares,
linens, and wall hangings. The appearance of joined furniture in the 15th cen-
tury, first in the Low Countries but soon elsewhere in Europe, replaced heavy
panels with solid frames filled in with light panels, greatly reducing the
weight and cost of furniture, and making it more portable (The Secular Spirit:
Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages, ed. Timothy B. Husband and Jane
Hayward, 1975; Penelope Eames, Medieval Furniture, 1977; Histoire de la
vie privée, vol. I and II, ed. Philippe Ariès, Georges Duby, et al., 1985–1987;
Rebecca Martin, Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages, 1985; Geoff Egan,
The Medieval Household: Daily Living c. 1150–c. 1450, 1998; Malcolm Vale,
The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, 1270–1380,
2001; The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850–c. 1550: Managing Power,
Wealth, and the Body, ed. Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic, and Sarah
Rees Jones, 2003; The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective, ed.
Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, 2003; David Alban Hinton,
Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain, 2005).
In addition to these basics, the wealthiest households also had numerous
objects that doubled as both sumptuous forms of decoration and functional
wares. Tapestries beautified interiors and displayed wealth and taste, while
providing insulation and privacy (Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo, Medieval Tapes-
tries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993; Guy Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry,
1999; Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and other Cultural Imagin-
ings, ed. E. Jane Burns, 2004). Costly tablewares of ceramic and glass served
as containers (Rachel Tyson, Medieval Glass Vessels found in England, c. AD
1200–1500, 2000; Karl Hans Wederpohl, Glas in Antike und Mittelalter:
Geschichte eines Werkstoffs, 2000; Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, Une Archéologie
du goût: Céramique et consommation (Moyen-Âge-temps modernes), 2005). Among
the more impressive objects for table service were enamelled gemellions,
shallow bowls used to pour water over the hands, and metalwork aquamani-
839 Material Culture

lia in human and animal form, which served as pitchers (Lions, Dragons, and
other Beasts: Aquamanilia of the Middle Ages, Vessels for Church and Table, ed. Peter
Barnet and Pete Dandridge, 2006).

Military Objects
Few aspects of medieval material culture have had a more enduring appeal
than arms and armor. Many of the accoutrements we associate with the
medieval knight already existed among the mounted warriors of the Alanic
and Germanic tribes of antiquity: helmet; undergarment covering arms,
torso, and legs; body armor; spear; horse armor. This gear, minus the horse
armor and combined with the short-sleeved mail shirt of Roman soldiers,
a sword, a scabbard, and a shield, had become that of the early 9th-century
noble warrior as stated by the Carolingian Lex ripuaria. By the 11th century,
the mounted knight was present across Western Europe; as cavalry warfare
became more common, the round Viking shield was replaced by the elon-
gated “Norman” shield, which covered the rider’s left (jousting) side from
eye to knee (Terence Wise, Saxon, Viking and Norman, 1979; Richard Under-
wood, Anglo-Saxon Weapons and Warfare, 1999; Ulrich Lehnart, Kleidung und
Waffen der Früh- und Hochgotik 1150–1320, 2001; A Companion to Medieval Arms
and Armour, ed. David Nicolle, 2002).
Military conflict within and beyond Europe, along with the codification
of chivalric practices, led to the rapid evolution and refinement of armor in
the final centuries of the Middle Ages. Crusaders took to wearing sleeveless
surcoats over their mail shirts and cloth coverings over their helmets to pro-
tect them from the sun; this became the fashion throughout Europe in the
12th century and long thereafter. During the same period, the appearance
of a new helmet covering the face propelled the development of heraldry
as a means for recognizing knights in tournaments and battles (Michel
Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique, 1979; David Nicolle, Arms and Armour of
the Crusading Era, 1050–1350, 1999). More complete leg armor led to the dim-
inishing of shield sizes in the 13th century, which also saw the introduction of
the padded undergarment (acton), shoulder joint armor (ailettes), and the re-
turn of horse armor (Ewart Oakeshott, A Knight and his Horse, 1998). During
the first half of the 14th century, crossbows became powerful enough to send
bolts through shields and mail, leading to the development of plate armor.
After 1380, when the plate armoring of the arms and torso had become com-
mon, shields were rarely used in the field by mounted knights. Swords-
men continued to use round shields (bucklers), crossbowmen pavises (large
rectangular shields with protruding ridges in the middle) (David Edge and
John Miles Paddock, Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight, 1988; Kelly
Material Culture 840

Devries, Medieval Military Technology, 1992; Jim Bradbury, The Routledge

Companion to Medieval Warfare, 2004). During the final flourishing of armor,
in the 15th and 16th centuries, decorative suits were designed for kings and
emperors by the finest artists of the period, including Leonardo, Mantegna,
and Dürer (Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contem-
poraries, ed. Stuart W. Pyhrr and José-A. Godoy, 1998; Ulrich Lehnart,
Kleidung und Waffen der Spätgotik, 2000).
Beyond their military uses, arms and armor were intimately connected to
chivalric symbolism and social identity. The naming of swords in literature,
their identification with the mythical heroes who bore them, and the attribu-
tion of special powers to them reflected the magical thinking and mytholog-
izing of weaponry that the Middle Ages shared with all warrior cultures.
Kings and nobles were buried with swords, or depicted on tombs in armor, as
a sign of their status, of their personal combat history, and of their member-
ship in a warrior brotherhood. Heraldry, crests, elaborately wrought shields,
and brilliantly shining armor were all means of projecting power and mag-
nifying military charisma. Arms and armor represented a unique marriage
of the material, the imaginary, and the social (Chivalric Literature: Essays on
Relations between Literature and Life in the later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson
and John Leyerle, 1980; Maurice Keen, Chivalry, 1984; Richard Barber,
The Knight and Chivalry, 1995).
Medieval civilization invented or adapted numerous other objects for
military use. Bows and arrows, slings, axes, maces, ball-and-chain whips,
flails, and knives all served as personal weapons along with the sword, lance,
and crossbow. The widespread construction of stone fortresses in the
11th and 12th centuries renewed the need for siege engines such as wheeled
siege towers, catapults (replaced by trebuchets in the late Middle Ages), and
battering rams. The appearance of gunpowder and cannons in the 14th cen-
tury began the slow process by which many kinds of medieval armor and
weaponry became obsolete (Arms, Armies, and Fortifications in the Hundred Years
War, ed. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes, 1994; Kelly Devries, Guns and
Men in Medieval Europe, 1200–1500: Studies in Military History and Technology,
2002; Robert Douglas Smith and Kelly Devries, The Artillery of the Dukes of
Burgundy, 1363–1477, 2005).

Ritual Objects
The greatest number of furnishings to survive from the Middle Ages were
made for liturgical use, a testament both to the Church’s immense invest-
ment in material production and to its preservationist culture. While the
altar was the most sacred such object, many others were needed that were
841 Material Culture

also constructed, used, and destroyed following strict canonical rules (John
B. O’Connell, Church Building and Furnishing: A Study in Liturgical Law, 1955).
Special containers in the shape of pyxes and doves held the consecrated host
and were hung at the altar to safeguard against vermin. These were also
stored in locked cupboards built into the wall of the sanctuary and, during
the last three days of Holy Week, in the receptacle known as the Easter sep-
ulcher (Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, 1987). The altar
space could be enclosed by a ciborium (canopy set on four columns), by balus-
trades surmounted by a pergola, by a choir screen in the form of an arcade
or solid wall, or by an ironwork grille (Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art
Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West,
ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel, 2006). In a cathedral, seating was limited to the
bishop’s throne and to stools or benches for the clergy attending the bishop.
In the late Middle Ages, choir stalls were provided for the lower clergy,
canons, and musicians; seating for the laity did not become common until
the 16th century (Dorothy and Henry Kraus, The Gothic Choirstalls of Spain,
1986; Charles Tracy, English Gothic Choir-Stalls, 1200–1400, 1987). Readings
were performed from raised ambos, pulpits, or from the jube. Many kinds of
illumination, in the form of both lamps and candles, were employed, as were
elaborate metalwork chandeliers and candelabra (David R. Dendy, The Use of
Lights in Christian Worship, 1959). Tapestries and banners might be hung in
the choir, crossing, or nave to celebrate particular saints or display wealth
and prestige (Laura Weigert, Weaving Sacred Stories: French Choir Tapestries and
the Performance of Clerical Identity, 2004). Other ritual objects included special
containers for blessed water and oil, censers, funereal furniture, musical and
signaling devices, and numerous processional objects such as crosses, paint-
ings, umbrellas, and canopies (J. Charles Cox and Alfred Harvey, English
Church Furniture, 1908; Friedrich and Helga Möbius, Ecclesia ornata: Ornament
am mittelalterlichen Kirchenbau, 1974; Margaret English Frazer, Medieval
Church Treasuries, 1986; Enamels of Limoges: 1100–1350, ed. Elisabeth Taburet-
Delahaye and Barbara Drake Boehm, 1996; Objects, Images, and the Word:
Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane, 2003; Justin E.A.
Kroesen and Regnerus Steensma, The Interior of the Medieval Village Church,
2004).
Perhaps the most striking fusion of sacred meaning and material func-
tion was visible in reliquaries. Relics themselves inhabit a liminal zone
between the physical and the spiritual, and the receptacles made for them
inspired goldsmiths, enamelers, sculptors, and painters to achieve some of
the most luminous effects and sophisticated craftsmanship of the medieval
period. Combining wood, copper, silver, gold, enamel, rock crystal, gem
Material Culture 842

stones, intaglios, cameos, and other precious materials, reliquaries simulta-

neously showcased the saint, protected his or her relics, and invited the con-
templation and prayers of the faithful (Marie-Madeleine Gauthier, Les
routes de la foi: Reliques et reliquaires de Jérusalem à Compostelle, 1983; Materielle
Kultur und religiöse Stiftung im Spätmittelalter: Internationales Round-Table-Ges-
präch, Krems an der Donau, 26. September 1988, ed. Gerhard Jaritz, 1990; Luigi
Canetti, Frammenti di eternità: Corpi e reliquie tra antichità e Medioevo, 2002;
Reliquiare im Mittelalter, ed. Bruno Reudenbach and Gia Toussaint,
2005).

Spolia and Foreign Objects

In many cities and regions of medieval Europe, the Roman past remained a
material presence for centuries. Indeed, the notion of a rupture between an-
tiquity and the Middle Ages is belied by the continuous use and upkeep of
Roman infrastructure well after the fall of Rome. Long into the medieval
period, temples, arenas, amphitheaters, bath complexes, cemeteries, fortifi-
cations, roads, and aqueducts still dotted the European landscape, giving
rise to legends about their origins and, often, providing ready sources of
building material. Especially in heavily Romanized areas such as Spain, the
south of France, and Italy, spolia were regularly used to fill foundations,
build houses, and to provide jambs, lintels, window frames, columns, capi-
tals, and altars for churches. Reliquaries and jewelry often employed Roman
intaglios and cameos, perhaps the most famous example being the reliquary
of Sainte Foy at Conques. Spolia certainly appealed to medieval builders and
patrons as ready-made objects of structural integrity and fine craftsmanship,
but their importance was more than practical or decorative. These objects,
often made of the finest material (marble, gem stones), were tangible signs of
wealth and prestige. More importantly, they tied the possessor or object
in which they were reintegrated to the imperial past (like the intaglios reset
in Ottonian brooches) or to the origins of Christianity (like the bas-relief late
antique tombs reused in churches) (Michael Greenhalgh, The Survival of
Roman Antiquities in the Middle Ages, 1989; Ilene Forsyth, “Art with History:
The Role of Spolia in the Cumulative Work of Art,” Byzantine East, Latin West:
Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Christopher Moss and Ka-
therine Kiefer, 1995, 153–62; Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” A
Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Medieval Europe, ed. Conrad
Rudolph, 2006).
Like spolia, objects of foreign manufacture exerted great fascination over
medieval European society and exposed it to unknown materials, artisanal
techniques, and aesthetic vocabularies. Among the most prized of these were
843 Material Culture

silks produced in Asia, Byzantium, and the Islamic kingdoms. While silk had
been known in the West during antiquity, silk production did not reach
Western Europe until the 13th century, and even thereafter foreign silks re-
tained their mystique and value. Moreover, the patterns on these textiles
were copied by Western artists and diffused through pattern books, sculp-
tures, and manuscript illuminations, greatly enriching the medieval visual
repertory. Byzantine icons, enamels, and ivories also provided new modes of
representation to artists all over Europe, and reinforced the Western notion
of a sophisticated and marvelously wealthy empire. It has even been argued
that this contact with the riches of Byzantium and the Islamic realms helped
fuel the Crusades, and especially the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 – a
vivid illustration of how material culture shapes identity (in this case, a sense
of Western inferiority) and spurs behavior (Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain,
ed. Jerilynn D. Dodds, 1992; The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the
Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D.
Wixom, 1997; Adrian J. Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the
Latin East, 1999; Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans,
2004; Philip Ditchfield, La culture matérielle médiévale: L’Italie méridionale by-
zantine et normande, 2007; Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano
Carboni, 2007).

Animal Objects
Medieval people lived in much closer proximity to the animal world and
used animals in many more ways than most in the West do today. Because
most of the medieval population lived on agriculture and animal husbandry
at a subsistence level, every part of a slaughtered or hunted animal was used.
The hide could be made into clothing or bags; rawhide could be cut into
strips and used for laces, straps, loose pouches, and drums, or kept in sheets
and used as vellum; hide hardened through boiling and drying could be used
for book pouches, coffers, shields, or body armor; removed hair could be used
as insulation or for weaving; wool, of course, was the basis of the medieval
textile industry and one of the most important commodities in medieval so-
ciety (Leather and Fur: Aspects of Early Medieval Trade and Technology, ed. Esther
Cameron, 1998). Feathers could be used for insulation, pillow and blanket
stuffing, fletching for arrows, or writing quills. The muscle, brain, ears,
tongue, heart, liver, intestines, kidneys, testicles, and tail could all be eaten;
the fat could be eaten, used as a lubricant, or used to make torches; hooves
could be crushed and made into glue; cleaned intestines could be used as
sausage skins, or dried for instrument cordage or bowstrings; the sinew
could be dried and pounded to make thread, fishline, bowstring, lashing,
Material Culture 844

and snare lines; the bones could be broken and their marrow eaten, or else
carved into fishhooks, awls, or needles; the bladder could be blown up into a
ball. Nor were farm and forest animals the only ones exploited by the medi-
eval population. In northern Europe, walrus tusks were carved into sculp-
tures, and whalebone was used for needles, smoothing boards, combs, and
other tools (Arthur MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn: The Technology
of Skeletal Materials since the Roman Period, 1985; Kathleen Biddick, The Other
Economy: Pastoral Husbandry on a Medieval Estate, 1989; Pam J. Crabtree, West
Stow, Suffolk: Early Anglo-Saxon Animal Husbandry, 1989; Norbert Benecke,
Archäozoologische Studien zur Entwicklung der Haustierhaltung: In Mitteleuropa und
Südskandinavien von den Anfängen bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter, 1994; Eliza-
beth C. Parker and Charles T. Little, The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning,
1994; Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 1994;
Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies: Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages,
ed. Aleksander Pluskowski, 2007; Naomi Jane Sykes, The Norman Conquest:
A Zoological Perspective, 2007).
Other animal parts, though known to medieval society, inhabited a
mythical realm because their source was rarely or never seen. Such was the
case with elephant ivory, a highly prized material with an exotic mystique.
Throughout the Middle Ages, oliphants made from the end of elephant
tusks were decorated with elaborate carvings and kept in noble and ecclesias-
tical treasuries as signs of wealth and as quasi-magical objects (Avinoam
Shalem, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context, 2004). Beginning
in the 13th century, the growth of international trade routes brought great
quantities of raw ivory as far as northern France and England, leading to a
surge in the production of ivory writing tablets, devotional panels, and
statues (Paul Williamson, An Introduction to Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1982;
Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnet, 1997). Of
even greater value were narwhal tusks, commonly denoted in cathedral and
royal inventories as “unicorn horns.” Surviving accounts and examples show
that, skeptical though the learned might have been about the existence of
unicorns, for centuries these horns were carved into cups for kings and em-
perors, ground up for medicinal use, and hung out of reach to prevent theft,
such was the enduring power of the legend about the purifying magic of the
“unicorn’s” horn (Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries, 1976; Fred
Bruemmer, The Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, 1993).
845 Material Culture

Craftsmen
One of the more striking facts about medieval craftsmen is that they inhab-
ited nearly all social spheres – lay and ecclesiastical; rural and urban; peasant,
bourgeois and, in the later Middle Ages, even aristocratic. In an era with no
mass production and little industrialization, every community needed
people with the skills to produce the objects its economy and culture de-
manded. Even so, the urban expansion and population growth that began
in the 11th century led to three important developments in the role of crafts-
men. The first of these, broadly speaking, witnessed the shift of many forms
of expertise from monasteries to towns, particularly as pertained to more
sophisticated arts such as goldsmithing and manuscript making. For example,
Saint Eligius was a goldsmith and cleric who rose to become bishop of Noyon
in 641, while in the later Middle Ages it was Parisian laymen who dominated
the profession in northern France and acquired an international reputation
(Éva Kovács, L’âge d’or de l’orfèvrerie parisienne: Au temps des princes de Valois,
2004). Similarly, while monasteries were the primary centers of book pro-
duction through the high Middle Ages, the rise of universities and of lay
readers brought manuscript making into cities and the hands of lay artisans
and scribes (Christopher Dehamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 1986;
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work,
1992; Richard and Mary Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book
Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2000).
The second development was the increasing specialization and organiz-
ation among craftsmen. Guilds began to reappear in the 11th century in order
to protect craftsmen from the interference of feudal lords, to regulate com-
petition, to ensure quality, and to guard trade secrets. The guild system en-
sured the education of artisans through apprenticeships, but did not ensure
employment; it is important to remember that craft guilds were primarily or-
ganizations for masters, or employers, and not for the many tradesmen who
worked for them. Guilds were also social groups who performed religious
and other services, such as maintaining chapels in local churches or subsidiz-
ing the staging of mystery plays (Clifford Davidson, Technology, Guilds, and
Early English Drama, 1996). Through such organization, craftsmen attained
substantial power in their towns and cities (Artistes, artisans et production artis-
tique au Moyen Âge: Colloque international, Centre national de la recherche scienti-
fique, Université de Rennes II, Haute-Bretagne, 2–6 mai 1983, ed. Xavier Barral I
Altet, 1986–1990; Antony Black, Guilds and Civil Society in European Political
Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present, 1984; Richard MacKenney,
Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250–c. 1650,
1987; Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe, 1991).
Material Culture 846

The third development related to the lives of medieval craftsmen resulted

from this increased power, which led to greater regulation on the part of urban
and royal authorities, and to resentment among workers not protected by
guilds. Thus King John II of France ordered in 1355 that every goldsmith
have a personalized stamp to impress on his wares to regulate quantity and
quality; thus workers allied with the peasants during the 1381 Peasants’ Re-
volt in England, a clear sign that they identified more with the aggrieved
lower class than with the masters they worked for (R.B. Dobson, The Peas-
ants’ Revolt of 1381, 1983; Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Lust for Liberty: The Politics of So-
cial Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425: Italy, France, and Flanders, 2006).

Technology
Medieval technology was marked by rupture and continuity with antiquity.
A great many medieval tools and production techniques descended directly
from the Romans; others were lost in certain parts of Europe but not others,
or lost in Europe but not in Byzantium and north Africa, whence they were
reintroduced to Europe. Glassmaking, metalworking, and textile produc-
tion give a general sense of how technology remained traditional but also
advanced in the Middle Ages. After the fall of Rome, some parts of northern
Europe, like Britain, lost glassmaking technology entirely, while others lost
sophisticated craftsmanship and the ability to make colorless glass; glass-
making was only reestablished in England around 1240 (Five Thousand Years
of Glass, ed. Hugh Tait, 1991). But glassmaking continued in Italy, arriving
in Venice by at least the 7th century, where it appears the art of glass decolor-
izing was never lost; subsequently Venetian glass would become the most
prized and technically advanced of all European glass (Attilia Dorigato,
L’Arte del vetro a Murano, 2002).
The major medieval advances in metalworking were the invention of wi-
redrawing, which had appeared in Scandinavia by the early Viking period;
the use of water to power the drop-hammers that beat iron rods and bars
extracted from the furnace, which began in the 12th century; and the inven-
tion of the blast furnace in the Rhineland in the early 15th century. The inven-
tion of plate armor in the 14th century was a notable addition to the medieval
armory (Alan Williams, The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metal-
lurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, 2002). There is no
evidence that techniques for working with nonferrous metals changed with
the passage from antiquity to the Middle Ages (De re metallica: The Uses of Metal
in the Middle Ages, ed. Robert O. Bork, 2005).
The technological transformations witnessed in textile production were
more profound than in glassmaking and metalworking, and date to the sec-
847 Material Culture

ond half of the Middle Ages, when increased wealth and population led to
sharp increases in demand at the same time that expanded international trade
introduced new machinery. The warp-weighted loom, which was probably
of Chinese origin, appeared in Western Europe in the late 11th century. In the
12th century, another Chinese invention, the reeling drum for spinning large
skeins of yarn, also appeared in the West. The spinning wheel, a device of
ancient origin, appeared in Europe in the twelfth century, as did carding,
a combing process that forces wool fibers to run parallel and thus enhances
lacing and felting. Fullers, like metalworkers, turned to waterpowered drop-
hammers in the twelfth century, so that fulling became the first thoroughly
mechanized process in European industrial history (F. P. Thomson, Tapes-
try: Mirror of History, 1980; John H. Munro, Textiles, Towns and Trade: Essays in
the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries, 1994; Domi-
nique Cardon, La draperie au Moyen Âge: Essor d’une grande industrie européenne,
1999).
Most technical know-how was transmitted orally and by demonstration
in the Middle Ages. We therefore derive most of our knowledge of medieval
technology, especially for the early and high Middle Ages, from artifacts.
An extraordinary exception to this rule is the 12th-century technical treatise
De diversis artibus by the Benedictine monk who called himself Theophilus.
This invaluable document discusses in great detail, among other arts, paint-
ing, glassmaking, metalworking, bone carving, and the working of precious
stones. A rare statement of both aesthetic principles and technical practice,
Theophilus’s treatise provides a trace of the vast body of knowledge, experi-
ence, and lore that had accumulated among medieval craftsmen by the
12th century (Erhard Brepohl, Theophilus Presbyter und die mittelalterliche Gold-
schmiedekunst, 1987; Heinz Horat, Der Glasschmelzofen des Priesters Theophilus:
Interpretiert aufgrund einer Glasofen-Typologie, 1991).
By the end of the Middle Ages, Europe possessed technologies unknown
to the ancient (European) world – clocks, galleys, artillery, paper, printing
equipment, eyeglasses. What this list demonstrates, first of all, is that Euro-
pean technology was never a self-contained sphere. Many of these devices,
like the warp-weighted loom and reeling drum, had come to Europe from
the East, just as many materials – ivory, silk, lapis lazuli – had come from
beyond Europe to transform its art, dress, and economy. This list, then, is
also significant for what it tells us about the material world’s impact on the
world of ideas and actions – about how things shape behavior and history.
The printing press and paper were catalysts for the Reformation; larger ships
and better weaponry enabled the age of exploration and colonialism, which
exploded traditional notions about the Earth’s geography and inhabitants.
Material Culture 848

As just these two examples demonstrate, technology was one of the main
forces that brought an “end” to the Middle Ages – or, seen through the lens of
continuity, one of the forces with which medieval society transformed, and
achieved greater control over, its world (A History of Technology, ed. Charles
Singer et al., 1954–1984; Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social
Change, 1962; Science and Technology in Medieval Society, ed. Pamela O. LONG,
1985; Frances and Joseph Gies, Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and
Invention in the Middle Ages, 1994; Chiara Frugoni, Medioevo sul naso: Occhiali,
bottoni, e altre invenzioni medievali, 2001; Medieval Science, Technology, and Medi-
cine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas F. Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wal-
lis, 2005).

B. History of Scholarship
The rise of the study of material culture over the past thirty years reflects the
dissatisfaction that humanists, social scientists, curators, and conservators
who work with objects have felt as they confronted disciplinary boundaries
and inadequate methodologies. A way was needed to assess artifacts both
in their materiality – as the products of a specific time, place, and technique –
and as expressions of human thought, feeling, behavior, and relationships.
Therefore, at their core, material culture studies unite approaches developed
in archaeology and anthropology, the former providing object-focused
analysis, the latter ways to integrate objects into cultural networks. Just as
material culture studies recognize no hierarchy of artifacts, they also eschew
disciplinary categories. In contemporary journals, studies, and academic
programs devoted to material culture, one finds history, art history, archae-
ology, anthropology, linguistics, decorative arts, crafts, folk art, design, and
a variety of scientific methodologies all brought to bear on the origins and
functions of objects (Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction
to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17/1 [1982]:
1–19; Beth Preston, “The Function of Things: A Philosophic Perspective on
Material Culture,” Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, ed. P. M. Graves-
Brown, 2000, 22–49; Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28.1
[2001]: 1–22; Journal of Material Culture; The Material Culture Program at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison).
To a great extent, the history of Medieval Studies is the history of the
study of medieval artifacts from an interdisciplinary perspective. In other
words, material culture studies have not transformed Medieval Studies;
rather, they apply to all artifacts approaches that have existed for generations
among medievalists, who have had to be creative in their interpretive
methodologies because their evidence is often so scant. Medieval art and
849 Material Culture

architectural historians have long had to consider historical documents, rit-

uals, artisanal and building techniques, and a host of other factors in order
to interpret objects and sites. Philologists and literary historians, who had
to account for the material conditions in which texts were produced and dis-
seminated, developed the science of codicology, which has since moved from
the medievalist domain to the study of all books. Medievalists have also
shown great ingenuity in harnessing the sciences in their analyses of ma-
terial culture. Carbon 14 dating has been used on a vast range of artifacts of
biological origin; dendochronology has aided with the dating of many wood
structures, such as cathedral roof supports; neutron activation analysis has
revealed the provenance of stone sculptures and ceramics; architectural his-
torians rely on laser measuring and computer-aided design to reconstruct
building programs; and conservators have made great strides in determining
the chemical compositions and application techniques of all manner of pig-
ments, dyes, and bonding agents. The Internet has increased exponentially
the presence of medieval material culture, from museum websites to videos
of craftspeople employing medieval techniques, which has led to new under-
standings of materiality and to new opportunities for teaching and research.
In one of history’s great ironies, medieval material culture may be more ac-
cessible to us now than it was to its contemporaries.

Select Bibliography
Material Culture: A Research Guide, ed. Thomas J. Schlereth (Lawrence, KS: University
Press of Kansas, 1985); Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology
of Religious Women, 1994; Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, ed. Daniel Miller
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Material Culture and Medieval Drama, ed.
Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999); Material
Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Curtis Perry
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); The Material Culture of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Pre-
modern Europe, ed. Anne L. McClanan and Karen Rosoff Encarnación (New York:
Palgrave, 2002); A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Medieval Europe,
ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

Mark Cruse
Medievalism 850

Medievalism

A. ”Medievalism”/ “Mittelalter-Rezeption”
“The Middle Ages Are Everywhere” is the title of a monograph published in
1997 by German historian Manfred Fuhrmann (Überall ist Mittelalter: Von der
Gegenwart einer vergangenen Zeit). Fuhrmann argues that the impact of the
Middle Ages on our present world can still be witnessed in all parts of Europe,
the daily life and behavior of many Europeans, as well as the designs of cities
and towns, the many cathedrals and castles, and the rituals of the Catholic
(and of course also the Orthodox) church, are influenced by medieval history.
For example, modern modes of greeting others and performing gallantry
toward women are inherited from the Middle Ages. European emigrants
brought parts of this medieval heritage to the New World. There are, of
course, situations outside Western Europe that are more or less comparable;
for example, in Eastern Europe, Muslim countries, India, Central Asia,
China, and Japan.
During the Renaissance, artists and scholars developed their own con-
cepts of the revival of classical antiquity by judging the former centuries
as “Dark Middle Ages.” Yet as Kurt Flasch (Aufklärung im Mittelalter? Die Ver-
urteilung von 1277: Das Dokument des Bischofs von Paris, 1989) and others have
stressed, many roots of modern Europe, its “Sonderweg” (particular route)
can be traced to the Middle Ages (Der europäische Sonderweg, ed. Rolf Peter Sie-
berle, 2000; Michael Mitterauer, Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grund-
lagen eines Sonderwegs, 2003).
The use of medieval topics, works, and names far beyond the Middle
Ages has always been conscious (German scholars called it “Wirkungsge-
schichte” of the Middle Ages), but academic research on this – and approach
now called “Medievalism” and Mittelalter-Rezeption – was not widespread in
the humanities, and especially in philology, until the 1970s. Both terms,
“Medievalism” and Mittelalter-Rezeption, have dual meanings – one referring
to a tendency to employ the Middle Ages for modern purposes (movies,
novels, music, etc.), and the other referring to academic research of this
process. The English word “Medievalism” dates from the late 19th century,
whereas the German phrase Mittelalter-Rezeption was conceived by Gerard
Kosielek in 1977 (Mittelalterrezeption: Texte zur Aufnahme altdeutscher Literatur
in der Romantik, 1977); both terms primarily now refer to academic research,
but the other meaning is still sometimes applicable.
Systematic research in the U.S., and the UK began with Leslie J. Work-
man (1927–2001) and his scientific group (above all his wife, Kathleen Ver-
851 Medievalism

duin). The first issue of the journal Studies in Medievalism was published in
1979. Several years later, The Year’s Work in Medievalism was founded, and
in 1986, they began with a series of conferences on Medievalism. Workman
identified influential authors for his concept of Medievalism; these included:
Alice Chandler, A Dream of Order (1970); and Norman Cantor, Inventing the
Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth
Century (1991) (see also Richard Utz: “Speaking of ‘Medievalism’: An Inter-
view with Leslie J. Workman,” Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honor
of Leslie Workman, ed. id. and Tom Shippey, 1998), 433–49; and in the same
festschrift: Richard Utz and Tom Shippey, “Medievalism in the Modern
World: Introductory Perspectives,” 1–13).
The first conference on Mittelalter-Rezeption took place in Europe, also in
1979, at the University of Salzburg (Austria), and the proceedings were pub-
lished in the same year: Mittelalter-Rezeption: Gesammelte Vorträge des Salzburger
Symposions “Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher Dichter und ihrer Werke in Literatur,
Bildender Kunst und Musik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts” (ed. Jürgen Kühnel,
Hans-Dieter Mück, and Ulrich Müller, 1979). This was followed by several
conferences in Salzburg, in the beginning organized and edited by Jürgen
Kühnel (University of Siegen), Hans-Dieter Mück (Literaturarchiv Mar-
bach), Ursula and Ulrich Müller (Salzburg): Mittelalter-Rezeption [I] (see
above); Mittelalter-Rezeption II: Gesammelte Vorträge des 2. Salzburger Symposions
“Die Rezeption des Mittelalters in Literatur, Bildender Kunst und Musik des 19.
und 20. Jahrhunderts” (1982); Mittelalter-Rezeption III: Gesammelte Vorträge des
3. Salzburger Symposions “Mittelalter, Massenmedien, Neue Mythen” (1988). The
Salzburg philologists (among them Siegrid Schmidt) also co-organized
conferences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (Mittelalter-Rezeption
IV: Medien, Politik, Ideologie, Ökonomie, ed. Irene Von Burg, Jürgen Kühnel,
Ulrich Müller, and Alexander Schwarz, 1991), in Wetzlar, Germany
(Artus-Mythen und Moderne: Aspekte der Rezeption in Literatur, Kunst, Musik und in
den Medien, ed. Sieglinde Hartmann, Thomas Le Blanc, Ulrich Müller,
and Bettina Twrsinek, 2005), and Schöppenstedt, Germany (Mittelalter-
rezeption im 21. Jahrhundert: Neue Medien, ed. Joachim Behr, with Charlotte
Papendorf, 2006, see Eulenspiegel-Jahrbuch 46 [2006]: 13–183). In 1990,
Kathleen Verduin, Leslie J. Workman, and Ulrich Müller also organized
a joint congress at Kaprun Castle (near Salzburg): Mittelalter-Rezeption V: Ge-
sammelte Vorträge des V. Salzburger Symposions/ Year’s Work in Medievalism 5 (Burg
Kaprun, 1990) / Papers from The Fifth Annual General Conference on Medievalism
1990 (ed. Ulrich Müller and Kathleen Verduin, 1996). There were also
conferences at the University of Odense, Denmark, in 1991 (The Medieval Leg-
acy: A Symposium, ed. Andreas Haarder, Jørn Piø, Reinhold Schröder, and
Medievalism 852

Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, 1982); the University of Greifswald, Ger-

man Democratic Republic, in 1979 (Rezeption deutscher Dichtung des Mittelalters:
Ausgewählte Beiträge von der Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises ‘Deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters’ zum Thema ‘Rezeption mittelalterlicher Dichtung in der Literatur der
DDR,’ 1982); and at the Washington University at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1982
(Das Weiterleben des Mittelalters in der deutschen Literatur (ed. James F. Poag and
Gerlinde Scholz-Williams, 1983). Of great importance was also a congress
in 1983, which was organized by Peter Wapnewski et al. in Berlin (see
below). Prototypes for the European Mittelalter-Rezeption have been the con-
cepts of Wirkungsgeschichte by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (Wahr-
heit und Methode, 1965) and the philologist Hans-Robert Jauss (Literatur-
geschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft, 1969, several reprints).
Medievalism and Mittelalter-Rezeption were born from a rising public
interest in history, especially in medieval and exotic cultures, in the 1960s,
as demonstrated by book publications, exhibitions, medieval markets, and
festivities, movies, and TV-productions. Newspapers in the German-speak-
ing regions invented a new term for this, “Mittelalter-Boom” (‘boom of the
Middle Ages’). Some aspects of this boom are pseudo-medieval or simply
wrong, but they have nevertheless created public interest.
Academic research has partly been a reaction to heated discussions at
the universities about the relevance of the humanities since 1968, above all,
in the philologies; thus many younger scholars were involved in the begin-
ning. This field of research has definitively been accepted as part of the
philologies by a symposion of the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft”
(DFG) in Berlin, organized by Peter Wapnewski, together with Joachim
Bumke, Thomas Cramer, Volker Mertens, Ulrich Müller (‘Kuratoren’),
Ursula Liebertz-Grün, Silvia Schmitz, Anselm Hänsch, Hans-Dieter
Mück, and Irene Erfen-Hänsch (‘Redaktoren’): Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein
Symposion (ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986). Political problems between the two
Germanies and West Berlin instigated the so-called German-German “Ele-
fantentreffen” (meeting of the elephants) in the East Berlin apartment of
Margit and Rolf Bräuer (Professor at the University of Greifswald; see Ul-
rich Müller, Mittelalter-Rezeption IV, 1981, 521–23). There were also many
sessions about Medievalism/Mittelalter-Rezeption at the big medieval confer-
ences in Kalamazoo (Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute; sev-
eral proceedings edited by Sibylle Jefferis) and Leeds (University of Leeds,
Institute for Medieval Studies).
The names of the participants in these world-wide symposiums and
sessions about Medievalism/Mittelalter-Rezeption, and the contents of the
many proceedings, read like an international ‘Who’s Who’ in this academic
853 Medievalism

field (for France there must be added Danielle Buschinger, University of

Amiens, who directed several relevant symposiums) (articles about Mittel-
alter-Rezeption/Medievalism can now be found in recent reference books, for
example: Rüdiger Krohn, “Mittelalterrezeption,” Literaturlexikon: Begriffe,
Realien, Methode [II], ed. Volker Meid, 1993; Literaturlexikon: Autoren und Werke
deutscher Sprache, ed. Walther Killy, vol. XIII, 117–20; and Ulrich Müller,
“Mittelalterrezeption,” Metzler Lexikon Literatur: Begriffe und Definitionen,
ed. Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender, and Burkhard Moennighof,
3rd ed. 2007, 506–07). It seems inexplicable that the term Mittelalter-Rezeption
(just as “New Philology”) is missing in the new edition of the Reallexikon der
deutschen Literaturwissenschaft (1997–2003), not to speak of non-German refer-
ence works, although two medievalists were members of the editorial team
of six scholars.

B. Types of Approaches to Medievalism

According to Ulrich Müller (“Formen der Mittelalter-Rezeption II, Einlei-
tung,” Mittelalter-Rezeption [1986]: 507–10; also “Vorwort,” Mittelalter-Rezep-
tion III [1988]: III–VII) the large field of Medievalism/ Mittelalter-Rezeption can
be subdivided into four parts:

(1) The creative (“schöpferische”) Mittelalter-Rezeption: Topics, works,

themes, and also authors of the Middle Ages, are used for new works in a cre-
ative way;
(2) the reproducing (“reproduktive”) Mittelalter-Rezeption: Medieval
works are reconstructed in a way, which is supposed to be ‘authentic,’ accord-
ing to their medieval context, for example by musical performances or reno-
vations (paintings, buildings etc.);
(3) the scholarly (“wissenschaftliche”) Mittelalter-Rezeption: Medieval
authors, works, events, objects, or concepts are studied and explained using
the methods of the the relevant academic disciplins;
(4) the political-ideological (“politisch-ideologische”) Mittelalter-Rezep-
tion: Works, themes, ‘ideas’ are used for political purposes to legitimate or
denounce (for example: the ideology of ‘crusade’).”
In most cases, several types of “reception” are combined. Depending on
the dominant motifs and goals, different categories of verification must be
used: To divide between “right” or “wrong” is only possible for (2) and (3);
the matter of taste and ideology is decisive in (1) and (4).
Medievalism 854

C. Examples of Medievalism
It is completely impossible to cover the process and research of Medievalism/
Mittelalter-Rezeption in one single article with necessary depth and breadth.
Only some brief outlines and examples can be presented. Much more in-
formation can be found, in detail, in the monographs and proceedings men-
tioned in this article.
Incidents (like battles), or names of historical and literary men and
women from the Middle Ages have never really fallen into oblivion, but they
have lost importance since the periods of Renaissance and Baroque. Until
today there are no profound comparative studies of the diverse and varying
situations and evolutions of Medievalism in individual parts of Western Eu-
rope, but it is easy to realize that there have been differences among develop-
ing nations like England, Scotland, France, Spain on the one hand, and Italy,
and Germany on the other, which were politically dissolved regions until the
end of the 19th century. Interest in the Middle Ages arose and has intensified
since the end of the 18th century as a result of Romanticism and the begin-
nings of European patriotism and nationalism. Rulers and warriors of the
Middle Ages became important for national purposes (for example Charle-
magne, Roland, Jeanne d’Arc, El Cid, King Arthur, and Saladin in the Arab
countries), and even for chauvinistic propaganda (the myth of the Nibelungs
or the defeat of the Serbian kingdom by the Ottoman army at the Kosovo
Polje in 1389).
Medievalism and Mittelalter-Rezeption can be observed in all aspects of
modern culture: literature, music, art, architecture (for example ‘Gothic’
railway stations), etc. The following paragraphs mainly, but not exclusively,
focus on literature, and they only present examples. There is no comprehen-
sive monograph about the modern tradition of medieval epics and novels,
just a brief survey by Ulrich Müller (“Das Nachleben der mittelalter-
lichen Stoffe,” Epische Stoffe des Mittelalters, ed. Volker Mertens and Ulrich
Müller, 1984, 424–48; see also: Elisabeth Frenzel in cooperation with
Sybille Grammetbauer, Stoffe der Weltliteratur, 10th ed. 2005; Elisabeth
Frenzel, Motive der Weltliteratur, 1976; Gegenwart als kulturelles Erbe: Ein Bei-
trag der Germanistik zur Kulturwissenschaft deutschsprachiger Länder, ed. Bernd
Thum, 1985; Medieval German Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Func-
tion of Medieval German Studies for German Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2000;
Lili 38.151 [September 2008], 5–169: “Erfindung des Mittelalters”); but
there are numerous studies about specific medieval myths, legends, and
works, both in book form and articles. Profound studies about Medievalism
in the UK were presented by Mark Girouard (The Return to Camelot: Chivalry
and the English Gentleman, 1981), and Michael Alexander (Medievalism: The
855 Medievalism

Middle Ages in Modern England, 2007), and a broader survey, also including the
US, by Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest for the Middle
Ages (2006).

D. The Nibelungs, the Germans, and the Austrians

The Middle High German Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) was not regarded as a
national work in the Middle Ages; it was just a successful heroic epic among
other tales and novels – unlike the epics of Homer or the Old French chansons
de geste (“songs of actions and battles,” for example about Charlemagne,
Roland, and Guilleaume d’Orange and his clan), which had an early national
significance. The Nibelungenlied fell into oblivion until several important
manuscripts were rediscovered in Vorarlberg (Hohenems Castle, Austria)
and St. Gall (Switzerland). At first, interest in this and other Middle High
German epics was moderate, but during the wars against Napoleon I around
1800, it gradually became a national epic (“Nationalepos”) like Homer’s Iliad
in ancient Greece. This progress is well documentated, above all, by Otfrid
Ehrismann (Das ‘Nibelungenlied’ in Deutschland: Studien zur Rezeption des ‘Nibe-
lungenlieds’ von der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, 1975; id.,
Nibelungenlied 1755–1920: Regesten und Kommentare zu Forschung und Rezeption,
1986), Werner Wunderlich (Der Schatz des Drachentöters: Materialien zur Wir-
kungsgeschichte des Nibelungenlieds, 1977), Joachim Heinzle (Die Nibelungen:
Sage-Epos-Mythos, ed. Joachim Heinzle et al., 2004), and the “Nibelungen
Encyclopedia” (The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed. Frank G. Gen-
try, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich,
2002; see also Ulrich Schulte-Wüwer, Das Nibelungenlied in der deutschen
Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, 1980; and Die Nibelungen: Bilder von Liebe, Ver-
rat und Untergang, ed. Wolfgang Storch, 1987). Scholars and translators like
Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (1807), August Zeune (1814), and Karl
Simrock (1827) promoted its national meaning and politicians used it for
propaganda. The “Nibelungen-Treue” (Nibelungian fidelity) of the German
Empire for the Habsburg Empire before World War I is notorious; after the
empire’s defeat, the so-called ‘Dolchstoss-Legende’ arose (this is the political
fiction that the armies were not defeated in battles, but at home, with a
dagger stabbed into them from behind); and the infamous result was a public
speech by the Nazi leader Hermann Göring who, in 1943, compared the
disastrous defeat of the German army at Stalingrad with the carnage of the
Burgundian Nibelungs, provoked by the excessive revenge of Kriemhilde at
King Etzel’s court – both of them, according to Göring, were “heroic.” After
World War II, the legend of the Nibelungs became ideologically dubious in
the two Germanies and in Austria, but probably not in Switzerland. Since the
Medievalism 856

mid-1960s, scholars have begun to discuss the Nibelungenlied in the context

of politically dominated Mittelalter-Rezeption, and some years later serious re-
search of its problems and and qualities as an epic of the early 13th century as-
sumed center stage, but now without nationalistic tendencies. For a number
of years the Viennese singer Eberhard Kummer has performed the complete
Nibelungenlied, using a medieval ‘Nibelungen’ melody; in 2007 it was pub-
lished by the Chaucer Studio, Provo, UT (2 MP3 discs, ca. 20 hours).

E. Medieval Myths and the Operas of Richard Wagner

That several legends and protagonists of the Middle Ages are still more
or less well-known today is undoubtedly stimulated by the popularity of the
operas of Richard Wagner (1813–1883): The literary legends, myths, and
tales about Tannhäuser and the Contest of the Singers at the Wartburg,
about the Grail, Parzival, and Lohengrin, about Tristan and Isolde, and
above all about Wotan, Brünhilde, Siegfried, and Hagen were revived by
him, and his operas have a world-wide reputation today, although Wagner,
too, was temporarily used for ideological purposes, in spite of the anti-Semit-
ism found in some of Wagner’s essays (but most likely not in the libretti of his
operas). Sources for Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (first perform-
ance: Bayreuth 1876) were only partly the Nibelungenlied, but especially Scan-
dinavian texts: songs of the Edda, and prose-sagas like the Völsunga saga and
Thidreks saga; these have been documented and studied in several mono-
graphs and articles (for example: Peter Wapnewski, Der traurige Gott: Richard
Wagner in seinen Helden, 1978; William O. Cord, The Teutonic Mythology of
Richard Wagner’s ‘The Ring of the Nibelung,’ 3 vols., 1989–1991; Elizabeth
Magee, Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs, 1990; Richard Wagner und sein Mittel-
alter, ed. Ursula and Ulrich Müller, 1989; Ulrich Müller, Oswald Panagl
et al., Ring und Gral: Materialien und Beiträge zu Wagners späten Musikdramen,
2002; Wagner Handbook, ed. Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, trans.
John Deathridge, 1992 [German version: 1986]; Wagner Compendium:
A Guide to Wagner’s Life and Music, ed. Barry Millington, 1992). Unlike in his
late operas about Tristan and Isolde (1865) and Parsifal (1882), Wagner did not
re-interpret the Nibelungen legend radically. Instead, he kept its basic lines,
but combined Germanic and Ancient Greek mythology. In recent years,
Wagner’s Ring has been recorded many times and produced world-wide at
opera houses, not only by the grand ones, but also, often with the same ar-
tistic quality, by smaller and more moderate ones.
Many more opera composers have used medieval material: Henry Purcell
(King Arthur, 1691), Giuseppe Verdi (I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata, 1843),
Claude Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902), Ernest Chausson (Le roi Arthus,
857 Medievalism

1903), Harrison Birtwhistle (Gawain, 1991), Olivier Messiaen (Saint François

d’Assisse, 1975–1983), or Kaija Saariaho (L’amour de loin, 2000); Robert Schu-
mann conceived a list of medieval operas which contains the same topics as
Wagner’s, but he never composed even a single one. Regarding Arthurian
music, Richard Barber edited a collection of papers, King Arthur in Music
(2002). An exhaustive list of musical theatre about the Middle Ages,
composed after 1945, can now be found in Andrea Schindler’s book (Mittel-
alter-Rezeption im zeitgenössischen Misiktheater, 2009).

F. King Arthur, the English, and Americans –

and the European Continent
The Arthurian legends have been and continue to be a patriotic or national
myth in the English-speaking countries, first in England and later in
America. In medieval Europe they were mostly regarded as a “social myth,”
namely the international ideology of the Christan knight. This interpre-
tation, which has been dominant for centuries, was created by an author from
Northern France, Chrétien de Troyes, between 1160 and ca. 1185. His courtly
romances about Erec and Enide, Lancelot and Gueneviève, Ivain, and Perceval
and the Grail became paragons of medieval secular romances, for which,
of course, he used various sources, and which later were frequently retold,
enlarged, merged, and mingled in many European languages. Of utmost im-
portance for the later ‘Medievalism’ and Mittelalter-Rezeption was the prose
compilation of the legends and tales about King Arthur, the Knights of his
Round Table, the magician Merlin, the quest for the Grail, and the disastrous
love stories of Lancelot and Guenevere, and Tristan and Isolde, conceived by
the English Thomas Malory (†1471): His Morte d’Arthur, for which he used
primarily French novels en prose, became the the first secular and most popu-
lar printed book in England (William Caxton, 1469); it is influential and still
widely read today.
The so-called Arthurian Revival and its long-lasting impact in the arts,
literature, and music have been described and examined in numerous mono-
graphs and articles. For the 19th century, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson
deserves to be mentioned above all as “father of the Arthurian Renaissance
in Victorian England” (David Staines, “Tennyson, Alfred Lord,” The New
Arthurian Encyclopedia [1996]: 446–48), as best represented by his poetic cycle
The Idylls of the King (1832–1889). Academic painters like William Dyce, James
Archer, Joseph Noël Paton, Thomas Woolner, John Lyston Byam Shaw,
Frank Dicksee, and John Williams Winterhouse, then Pre-Raphaelite artists
like Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Arthur Hughes,
finally illustrators like Julia Margaret Cameron, Audrey Beardsley (and in
Medievalism 858

France Gustav Doré), did their part (Barbara Tepa Lupack with Alan Lup-
ack, Illustrating Camelot, 2008). Often their works were “medieval only in
superficial details of costume and setting; it reflected instead current taste”
(Debra N. Mancoff, “Arthurian Revival,” The New Arthurian Encyclopedia
[1996]: 22), and – one must add – contemporary ideology (impressive and
appropriately illustrated monographs are: Roger Simpson, Camelot Regained:
The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800–1849, 1989; Muriel Whitaker, The
Legends of King Arthur in Art, 1990; Debra N. Mancoff, The Arthurian Revival in
Victorian Art, 1990). This kind of Arthurian Revival, like Victorian idealism,
came to an end with World War I, but its results can still be seen today. In the
UK and U.S., not dozens but hundreds of books have been published that
translate, retell, modernize, and transpose the ancient legend, above all in
novels, but also in short stories and even in guide books for Arthurian travel-
ing. Beverly Taylor and Elisabeth Brewer (The Return of King Arthur: British
and American Arthurian Literature since 1900 [recte 1800], 1983), Raymond H.
Thompson (The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern
Fiction, 1985), and Veronica Ortenberg (In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest
for the Middle Ages, 2006) presented extensive surveys; Alan and Barbara Tepa
Lupack described the importance of the Arthurian legend in the U.S. (King
Arthur in America, 1999), where John F. Kennedy’s administration very soon
after the president’s assassination was identified with King Arthur’s Ca-
melot, an identification which, according to Alan J. Lerner, was a result of
Kennedy’s love of Lerners’s and Loewes’ s musical, Camelot (1960).
Arthurian names are also often used in popular culture (for example the
“Excalibur,” a huge hotel in Las Vegas, or “Merlin” as a name for PC-shops).
All relevant names associated with medieval myths from all over the world
(not only the US and UK), and even many names of minor importance, can
be found in the exhaustive New Arthurian Encyclopedia (ed. Norris J. Lacy, as-
sociate ed. Geoffrey Ashe, Sandra Ness Ihle, Marianne E. Kalinke, and
Raymond H. Thompson, updated paperback edition 1996 [with separate
updates: Arthurian Literature 18 (2001), 22 (2005), 26 (2009)]).
Only some authors of Arthurian novels can be mentioned here: Mark
Twain, John Steinbeck, T. H. White, Mary Stewart, Marion Zimmer Bradley,
Diana L. Paxson, A. A. Attanasio, Thomas Berger, Gillian Bradshaw, Stephen
R. Lawhead, Sharan Newman, Susan Shwartz, Rosemary Sutcliff, Bernard
Cornwall, Parke Godwin/Kate Hawks, Peter Vansittart, Phyllis Ann Karr,
T. A. Barron, Nancy McKenzie, Rosalind Miles, Sarah Zettel, Anna Elliott.
T. S. Eliot, in his influential poem The Waste Land (1922), used the story of the
wounded Grail King (Fisher King); the American Walker Percy (Lancelot, 1978)
transposed the legend of Lancelot, a sinner, to New Orleans; the British
859 Medievalism

David Lodge (Small World, 1984), the grail quest into the modern world of
travelling scholars. A special case is the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code
(2003) by the American author Dan Brown. It is an “extraordinary publish-
ing phenomenon,” which “brought the Grail back into the public eye” (Ri-
chard Barber, The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend, 2nd ed. 2005, 371–72).
The novel used, some even think plagiarized, the conspiracy theory of a pseu-
do-historical book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent,
Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1980), which is primarily, but erron-
eously, based on a hoax of the French Pierre Plantard and two of his friends
(see also Nickolas Haydock, Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages,
2008).
In a different way, an Arthurian revival can also be discovered in France,
for example the very successful reconstitution of the legend of Tristan and
Iseult by the philologist Joseph Bédier (1900), the play Les chevaliers de la table
ronde (The Knights of the Round Table, 1937) by Jean Cocteau, and the well-
known movie L’éternel retour (1943), based on a screenplay of the same author
which transposes the Tristan legend into the years around 1940. In the Ger-
man-speaking countries Wagner’s operas dominated the reception of the
Arthurian legend, which means there was an “Arthurian tradition without
the King” (Ulrich Müller, “Artus-Rezeption ohne König Artus: Zur deut-
schen Artus-Rezeption unter dem Einfluß von Richard Wagner,” Moderne
Artus-Rezeption, 18.–20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kurt Gamerschlag, 1991, 143–66;
see also Ulrich Müller, “Narrated Europe: ‘Epic Myths’ and Modern Eu-
rope,” The Medieval Text: Methods and Hermeneutics: A Volume of Essays in Honor of
Edelgard E. DuBruck, ed. William C. McDonald and Guy R.Mermier, 1990,
269–79). That means that in German literature, Parzival/Parsifal and the
Grail were important, like in the play Das Spiel vom Fragen by the Austrian
dramatist Peter Handke (1990), especially in the philosophy (Anthropo-
sophy) of Rudolf Steiner (Rudolf Meyer, Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit:
Die Gralsgeschichte, 1980), and the depth-psychology of C. G. Jung (Emma
Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, 1986 [German version
1960]).
The first Arthurian novel in German was written by the Austrian Wil-
helm Kubie (Mummenschanz auf Tintagel, 1946 [‘Masquerade at Tintagel’]; see
the exhaustive and indispensable monograph of Siegrid Schmidt, Mittel-
hochdeutsche Epenstoffe in der deutschsprachigen Literatur nach 1945: Beobachtungen
zur Aufarbeitung des Artus- und Parzival-Stoffes in erzählender Literatur für Jugend-
liche und Erwachsene mit einer Bibliographie der Adaptationen der Stoffkreise Artus,
Parzival, Tristan, Gudrun und Nibelungen 1945–1981, 1989; there Kubie’s novel is
reprinted). The situation changed rapidly when since the 1960s translations
Medievalism 860

of English and American Arthurian novels, and Arthurian movies (see below)
became known in the German-speaking countries. Finally, the monumental
play Merlin oder Das Wüste Land by Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler (1981)
made the Arthurian legend well-known there on the stages, a Baroque profu-
sion of images, unique in its blending of drama, epic storytelling, and song.
It portrays the rise and fall of a civilization, which in contrast to the English
tradition ends in catastrophe and leaves nothing to hope for: Human inad-
equacy destroys the “utopia” of the Round Table (Rüdiger Krohn, “‘Die Ge-
schichte widerlegt die Utopie’? Zur Aktualität von Tankred Dorsts Bühnen-
spektakel ‘Merlin oder Das Wüste Land’,” Euphorion 78 [1984]: 160–79); the
drama instigated the creation of several “sequels,” among them Christoph
Hein’s Die Ritter der Tafelrunde, the so-called “Play of the Political Change” of
1989 (Wende) in the two Germanies.
Last but not least, a completely new Arthurian novel, conceived and
invented by the philologist Tanja Weiss, should be mentioned: the novel
(allegedly by a fictitious Tanja von dem Rübenberge: Bannerträger der Nacht, 2003)
is Arthurian in style, and it tells knightly adventures using the form of
courtly verses and rhymes (but in modern German); the book is a fictional
edition, and probably the brightest parody of philological editing ever
written: there are not only a bibliography and a list of manuscripts included,
but also detailed information about the transmission of the text (“Textkri-
tischer Apparat”) and even facsimiles, and miniatures – everything invented
and fictitious.
The retellings and modernizations of medieval novels and legends be-
came well-known again, and important novels, epics, tales, and short-stories
from the Middle Ages were translated. Siegfried Grosse and Ursula Rau-
tenberg created an exhaustive documentation of translations and adap-
tations in German literature only: Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher deutscher Dich-
tung: Eine Bibliographie ihrer Übersetzungen und Bearbeitungen seit der Mitte des
18. Jahrhunderts (1989). Although the bibliograpy does not list translations
and adaptations of foreign languages, it presents a nearly exhaustive number
of entries. It is noteworthy when a monograph combines lingustic and philo-
logical methods in the field of Medievalism/Mittelalter-Rezeption, as when
Alexander Schwarz presented such a book, in which he analyzes and com-
pares the central love scene of the Tristan and Isolde legend along the cen-
turies: Sprechaktgeschichte: Studien zu den Liebeserklärungen in mittelalterlichen und
modernen Tristandichtungen (1984).
861 Medievalism

G. The Middle Ages and the Movies

The most popular adaptations of medieval stories were realized by the
movies and TV. For a long time, most scholars neglected this area of modern
Medievalism, with only some exceptions, see, for example, Frank Gentry
or John Margetts. Finally, the American scholar Kevin J. Harty published
several impressive books about the Middle Ages in the movies: Cinema Arthu-
riana: Essays on Arthurian Film (1991, rev. ed. 2002), and King Arthur on Film:
New Essays on Arthurian Cinema (1999). An indispensable documentation for
everybody, who deals with ‘medieval movies,’ is Harty’s The Reel Middle Ages:
American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films About
Medieval Europe (1999). More recent publications on this topic are John
Aberth, A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film (2003); The Medieval
Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy (ed. Martha W. Driver and
Sid Ray, 2004); François Amy de la Bretèque, L’Imaginaire médiéval dans
le cinéma occidental (2004); and Nickolas Haydock, Movie Medievalism (2008)
(see also Veronica Ortenberg, “Camelot Goes Celluloid, “In Search of the
Holy Grail, 2006, 193–223).Only a few years earlier, severals scholars had al-
ready published a number of articles about “medieval cinema” in the above-
mentioned series, Studies in Medievalism (in German in Mittelalter-Rezeption,
1–5; in Mittelalterrezeption, ed. Wapnewski, 1986; and in Gamerschlag’s
collection of papers, 1991). The first German book on medieval movies was
published in 2006: Mittelalter im Film (ed. Christian Kiening and Heinrich
Adolf, 2006). Unfortunately, the concept developed here and the list of the
movies described are both partly insufficient.
Some of the medieval movies are of excellent cinematographic quality,
for example Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (in 2 parts: Germany, 1924); L’Eternel
retour by Jean Delannoy, a modern adaption of the Tristan and Isolde legend,
based on a script by Jean Cocteau (France, 1943); The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde
Inseglet: Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1957); The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan,
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1959); Saladin (Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1963);
Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson, France, 1974); Perceval le Gallois (Eric Rohmer,
France, 1978).
Harty (1999) registers altogether 564 movies, some of which deserve to
be mentioned here: Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe, Great Britain, 1952); The Knights
of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, USA/UK, 1953); Camelot (Joshua Logan,
USA, 1967, based on the musical of Frederick Loewe and Alan J. Lerner,
1953); Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, UK, 1968); Parzival (Walter Blank,
tv, Germany, 1980); Excalibur (John Boorman, UK, 1981); Feuer und Schwert
(‘Fire and Sword’ – The legend of Tristan and Isolde: Veith von Fürstenberg,
Germany, 1981); I Paladini, loosely adapted from the Italian epics about
Medievalism 862

Orlando (Giacomo Battiato, Italy, 1983); Ladyhawke [sic], the story of two
lovers temporarily transformed by a jealous bishop and sorcerer into a female
hawk and a male wolf (Richard Donner, USA, 1985); The Name of the Rose /
Der Name der Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, Germany, 1986 – after the bestseller
of Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa, 1980); First Knight – The story of Arthur,
Guenevere and their noblest knight (Jerry Zucker, USA, 1995); Kingdom of
Heaven – About the defeat of Jerusalem against Saladin in 1189 (Ridley Scott,
2005). By far the most popular topic for medieval movies is Robin Hood:
Harty (1999) mentions the first Robin-Hood movie from 1908, and many
famous actors have presented the role of the charming outlaw: Douglas
Fairbanks (Robin Hood, 1922), Errol Flynn (The Adventure of Robin Hood, 1938),
Patrick Barr (The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men, 1952), Kevin Costner
(Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991, with an uncredited appearance of Sean
Connery as King Richard Lionheart); also appaling was the animated version
of Wolfgang Reitherman for the Walt Disney Productions (Robin Hood, 1973).
A real medieval cult movie continues to be Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, UK, 1975), which in 2006 became a successful
Broadway musical (Spamalot). There have also been several tv mini-series about
medieval legends, for example about Merlin, Arthur, Tristan and Isolde, and
the Nibelungs.

H. The Middle Ages, Science Fiction and the Computer Games

Most scholars, even specialists of medieval movies, forget that medieval,
above all Arthurian “structures,” are also used for films about the American
Wild West (for example, Shane, 1953, with Alan Ladd as a cowboy-Lancelot,
arguably one of the best classical Westerns), for fantasy books and films,
and above all for science fiction novels and movies; see J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel
The Lord of the Rings and the three films by Peter Jackson (The Fellowship of the
Ring, 2001; The Two Towers, 2002; The Return of the King, 2003). Tolkien’s
novels are a modern heroic epic, the story of which was invented by a philol-
ogist specialized in medieval languages and heroic epics. Interestingly, re-
cent investigations have unearthed how much modern concerns with race,
gender, and class have informed medieval films (Race, Class, and Gender in
“Medieval” Cinema, ed. Lynn Ramey and Tison Pugh, 2007).
Medieval structures can also be found in movies like those about the Star
Wars (with science fiction knights, riding on space ships, but eventually fight-
ing with swords), Krull (1983), or Dune (1984; TV 2000). One medieval cult
science fiction movie is Zardoz (1974, directed by John Boorman, with Sean
Connery). The medieval quest for the grail was used as a pattern in 2001:
A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Solaris (1972), and Stalker (1979), the
863 Medievalism

latter two by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Stalker, with its medi-
eval structure, can be named one of the most impressive science fiction films
ever made. Until now, no comprehensive study about the medieval tradi-
tions in the fields of fantasy and science fiction (novels and films) was
written, except Karoline Firch’s small book Die Wiederkehr des Mythos: Zur
Renaissance der Artus-Mythen in der modernen Fantasy-Literatur (1998), and the
same can be said about former role-playing-games and modern electronic
games which combine quest and fightin – beloved by young people, but
nearly ignored by scholars; see several articles in the proceedings mentioned
above (Willibald Kraml and Elisabeth Werner, “Computer-Aventiure,”
Mittelalter-Rezeption III [1988]: 609–26; Otto Kölbl, “Das Mittelalter in Vi-
deospielen: Was kann man daraus lernen?” Mittelalterrezeption im 21. Jahrhun-
dert [2006]: 81–96; see also Ulrich Müller, “Moderne Gral-Questen: Vom
Nachleben des ‘Epischen Mythos’ der sinnsuchenden Reise: Fragmenta-
rische Beobachtungen und Bemerkungen zu einigen modernen Dramen
und Romanen sowie zu science fiction-Filmen von Stanley Kubrick und An-
dreij Tarkovskij,” Georg Mayer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Ursula Bieber and Alois
Woldan, 1991, 69–92; and id., “Auf der Suche nach dem Gral? Säkulari-
sierte Filmmythen,” Artus-Mythen und Moderne, 2005, 17–29).

I. Medieval Songwriters: Walther von der Vogelweide, François Villon

and Others
Modern songwriters and also some scholars have emphasized that in some
respects, contemporary popular songs can be compared with medieval songs
of the trobadors, trouvères, and minnesinger. Among others, the French
chansonnier Georges Brassens (“Le moyenageux” 1966) and the German
Wolf Biermann have identified François Villon as one of their predecessors.
Franz Josef Degenhardt and the Italian cantautore Angelo Branduardi re-
wrote Walther von der Vogelweide’s poems. Some scholars have published
a few articles dealing with these relationships, but here also there is no com-
prehensive monograph. The Salzburg doctoral dissertation by Siegrid
Neureiter-Lackner is available only as manuscript (Schöpferische Rezeption
mittelalterlicher Lieder und Dichtersänger in der Gegenwart 1945–1989: Analyse und
Rezeption, 1990); see also several articles in some of the above mentioned pro-
ceedings and collections of essays (Mittelalter-Rezeption II/III, 1982/1988; Das
Weiterleben des Mittelalters in der deutschen Literatur, 1982; Medieval German Voices
in the 21st Century, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2000). Beside countless examples
of creative Medievalism, there is a lot of performative Mittelalter-Rezeption:
medieval music concerts, LPs, and CDs. The monograph by Annette Kreut-
ziger-Herr (Ein Traum vom Mittelalter: Die Wiederentdeckung mittelalter-
Medievalism 864

licher Musik in der Neuzeit, 2003), and the compendium edited by Wolfgang
Gratzer and Hartmut Möller (Übersetzte Zeit: Das Mittelalter und die Musik
der Gegenwart, 2001) deal with both types in detail (regarding performances,
see the articles of Martin Elste and Robert Lug in Übersetzte Zeit, 2001).
A different approach is pursued by Tanja Weiss which finds a concise expla-
nation in the title of her monograph: Minnesang und Rock – Die Kunstgattung
‘Aufgeführtes Lied’ in ihrer Ästhetik & Poetik: Aufführung und ihre Bedingungen für die
Liedinterpretation (2007).
A very special case of creative Mittelalter-Rezeption is the so-called “Preis-
lied” by Walther von der Vogelweide (probably 1203). The German scholar
and poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben took it as a model
for his “Song of the Germans” (“Lied der Deutschen”), written in 1841,
and he used the melody Joseph Haydn had composed for the anthem of the
Habsburg Empire (“Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” [God save Emperor
Franz]). Fallersleben’s song was patriotic, and thus also was the meaning of
the ominous verses, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles / Über alles in der
Welt” (“Germany is [for me] above all,” that is: more important than every-
thing else); Fallersleben wrote these verses when there was still no Deutsch-
land, but just a collection of separate medium and small German-speaking
countries. Several years later, the mentioned verses were understood as
nationalistic announcements of a rising new Empire (since 1871); this song
became the national anthem of Germany only after World War I, and it was
ironically the Social-Democratic German president Friedrich Ebert who
choose the words of Fallersleben, because the poet, who was also a professor
at the university of Breslau, Prussian Silesia, was accused of having been a
revolutionary and was expatriated by the Prussian government. The song
was politically used and mis-used by the Nazis; there were heated discussions
about it subsequently, but with the foundation of the Federal Republic of
Germany only its third stanza (about unity and justice for Germany) became
the national anthem. Since 1990 the old song is again used for the now re-
united country. Information about this extraordinary example of Mittelalter-
Rezeption was presented by Kurt Herbert Halbach and Rolf Ehnert
(“Walther: Lehrer der Deutschen: Zur Rezeption Walthers von der Vogel-
weide in der Dichtung und Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts,” Mittelalter-
Rezeption I [1979]: 225–55; “Walther von der Vogelweide, Hoffmann von
Fallersleben und Schiller/ Hölderlin: Rezeption und Convergenz,” op.cit.,
40–62), Peter Wapnewski (“Die Deutschen und ihr Lied: Eine Nation auf
der Suche nach sich selbst in ihrer Hymne,” Das neue Europa, ed. Margarita
Mathiopoulos, 1992, 290–319, now in Peter Wapnewski, Zusam-
menschreibungen: Gesammelte Schriften, 1994, 477–506), and Ulrich Müller
865 Medievalism

(“‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles’? Walther von der Vogelweide, Hoff-

mann von Fallersleben and the ‘Song of the Germans’: Medievalism,
Nationalism and/ or Fascism,” Medievalism in the Modern World [1998]:
115–29).

I. The Middle Ages, Science Fiction and the Computer Games

Both Leslie J. Workman (Medievalism in the Modern World, 1998: Interview),
and Hans-Joachim Behr (Preface to Mittelalterrezeption im 21. Jahrhundert:
Neue Medien, 2006) remember the academic problems with Medievalism/Mit-
telalter-Rezeption as they experienced them in the beginning. Behr (2006, 14)
reports that, in 1979, older colleagues told him this euphoria would vanish
quickly. “But experience revealed that the prophet had erred, because
‘Rezeptionsforschung’ has probably produced more publications than did
research about editions and topoi in literature together. There is no end in
sight, not only because there are many texts […] still ‘waiting’ to be explored,
but because there is a ‘Medienwandel’ (changing of the media) which could
not have been imagined in 1979 and which evolves more and more supris-
ingly and fast.” And finally: Feminism created new interest in the Middle
Ages, which have also been rediscovered by modern esoteric and alternative
groups.

Select Bibliography
Mittelalter-Rezeption I–V (= Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 296, 358, 479, 550,
630), ed. Ulrich Müller et al. (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1979–1996); Ulrich Müller,
“Das Nachleben der mittelalterlichen Stoffe,” Epische Stoffe des Mittelalters, ed. Volker
Mertens and Ulrich Müller (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1984), 424–48; Mittelalter-Rezeption:
Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986); Siegfried Grosse and
Ursula Rautenberg, Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher deutscher Dichtung: Eine Bibliogra-
phie ihrer Übersetzungen und Bearbeitungen seit der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1989); Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honor of Leslie Workman, ed.
Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Kevin J. Harty, The Reel
Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films About
Medieval Europe (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 1999); Medieval German Voices
in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function of Medieval German Studies for German Studies,
ed. Albrecht Classen (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000); Übersetzte Zeit: Das
Mittelalter und die Musik der Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Gratzer and Hartmut Möller
(Hofheim/Ts.: Wolke, 2001); Annette Kreutziger-Herr, Ein Traum vom Mittelalter:
Die Wiederentdeckung mittelalterlicher Musik in der Neuzeit (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna:
Böhlau, 2003); Elisabeth Frenzel (10th ed. in cooperation with Sybille Grammet-
bauer), Stoffe der Weltliteratur (1962; Stuttgart: Kröner, 2005).

Ulrich Müller
Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature 866

Medievalism in Modern
Children’s Literature

A. Introduction
Modern children’s literature all over the world features nearly all literary
topics of medieval everyday life. This article emphasizes English/American
children’s literature (Christine Bimberg, Perspektiven der englischsprachigen
Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Perspectives on Childrens’s Literature in English, 2000;
Daniel T. Kline, Medieval Literature for Children, 2003) and German children’s
literature (Siegrid Schmidt, Mittelhochdeutsche Epenstoffe in der deutschsprachi-
gen Literatur nach 1945: Artus- und Parzival Stoff in erzählender Literatur für Jugend-
liche und Erwachsene, 1989. This literature can be divided into two genres, fic-
tion and non-fiction.

B. Non-Fictional Children’s Literature

The earliest children’s literature was created for educational purposes. “Dur-
ing the Middle Ages the Venerable Bede […] and St. Anselm all wrote school
texts in Latin […]” (The Columbia Encyclopedia [1952], 1031). These non-fiction
books were used to inform readers about the ways of the world, but they are
not considered school books. They included information about history and
the state of present-day affairs. This content is generally presented as defini-
tions, descriptions and illustrations, meant to address children of various
ages. Information meant for younger children frequently included large pic-
tures and the description of the pictures. Information for older children was
given in explanatory texts.
Today there are two types of non-fiction books on medieval phenomena.
The first type presents a single topic throughout the centuries, with develop-
ments to that topic given chronologically, as on a timeline. One example of
this is Peter Kent’s, A Slice through the City: A Voyage of Discovery from Stone Age to
Nowadays (1995, German translation 1996).
Kent provides 10 two-page chapters about different historical periods.
The fourth and the fifth chapters deal with the early and high Middle Ages.
These chapters show small houses for the farmers, a bigger house for the
noblemen and – in the high Middle Ages – citizens’ houses surrounding a
castle. Further illustrations depict religion, medieval theatre, and the build-
ing methods used at that time. The text teaches the readers about the begin-
ning of the Middle Ages, the growth of the cities, different kinds of build-
ings, trade, and leisure activities. Various layers of the earth are also shown,
providing a view of historical remains from earlier times.
867 Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature

Another example by Kent is Fabulous Feasts (first published in 1998,

German version 1999). Kent describes feast traditions from 8000 B.C.E. to
1951 C.E. He also chooses different geographical locations, including Egypt,
Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, South America and India. Only one of the 11
chapters deals with the Middle Ages, at 1400. The picture (a fictional paint-
ing) shows a great meal at a noble court. The reader can see nobles, servants,
knights and fools, and even some commoners who are observing the event.
There is very little text; there are only two lists that tell the reader what was
available to eat and drink at such feasts. The special quality of this book is
that it is interactive – the reader has to find the meals and drinks in the pic-
ture that are listed.
The second type of non-fiction book presents a single Medieval subject.
Similar topics are presented in both English/American and German
children’s literature of this sort. The favourite topics are castles, knights, the
crusades, a general overview of the Middle Ages, and medieval cities and
food. One example is Pamela White’s Exploration in the World of the Middle
Ages 500–1500 (2005). This book includes extensive information about these
centuries all over the world, from Asia to Europe and even the “New World.”
The book treats geographical, political and cultural aspects of the Middle
Ages while addressing children of about 12 years of age. There are fewer illus-
trations and more textual explanations than in the books previously men-
tioned. In another example, Neil Grant’s The Medieval World (2001), there is
an introduction to inform readers about the structure of the book and how to
use it. One chapter includes maps, fact boxes, illustrations of historical fig-
ures, paintings, and modern depictions and photos of the places described.
As the title predicts, the book seeks to educate readers about the whole world
during the era spanning 500–1500 C.E.
Similar structures can be found in books about knights and castles. For
example, Marie Farré and Dominique Thibault, Stolze Burgen, Edle Ritter
(1998). This book, for children about eight years of age, concentrates on Eu-
rope and presents aspects of building a castle and the cultural environment in-
side a castle. Another example is Christopher Gravett and Brett Breckon’s,
Medieval Knight/Die Welt der Ritter (1996, English with German translation). This
book also concentrates primarily on Europe. It depicts the various equipment
and tasks of a knight, and includes timetables and maps of the crusades. Tony
McAleavy’s Life in a Medieval Castle (2003), concentrates on Great Britain. The
book includes pictures of Medieval manuscripts and castles, and fictional
drawings. This text-heavy book addresses children of about 12 years of age.
Three more examples are important because of their special structure
and/or content: Stephen Biesty’s Cross-Sections: Castle: Inside an Amazing
Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature 868

14th Century Castle (1994) seems at first glance to be a very big picture book, but
the extraordinary cross-section pictures of a castle present much information
about the structure of a castle and its inhabitants, including both realistic
elements and humorous curiosities. A child of six or twelve years could look
at one picture for minutes or more. A second example is Marc Cels’s Arts
and Literature in the Middle Ages (2005). This book contains a historical and
geographical introduction to the Middle Ages, with African, Byzantine, and
Muslim Art as the center of attention. The creation of different types of art,
including architecture, sculptures, stained-glass windows, manuscripts,
literature, and music and musical instruments, are described in text and
depicted through images drawn from manuscripts. There are also photos of
the objects themselves. The final example is Freya Stephan-Kühn’s Viel
Spaß im Mittelalter (1996). This book is partly fiction and partly-non fiction.
Stephan-Kühn treats such historical topics as childhood and learning in
the Middle Ages, social structures, church and religion, living and clothing,
and eating. She does not describe all these, but rather combines the historical
phenomena with a story about two children and a monk living in the Middle
Ages. She tells the story with several types of text, including prose, reports,
letters, comic strips, and pictures of rulers and manuscripts. This is also an
interactive book because there are riddles, recipes and opportunities for
children to color some of the pictures. These few examples demonstrate a
great variety in non-fictional children’s literature dealing with the Middle
Ages. A large number of these books come from the English/American tradi-
tion. This means there is a tendency to leave the European point of view and
include the history and culture of other continents during the same time
period.

C. Fictional Children’s Literature

It is not clear if the first fictional children’s books originated in the Middle
Ages (such as Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, as claimed by the Columbia
Encyclopedia [1952], 1205), or if this form of literature began not before the
early 19th century (Sheila Egoff, Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the
Middle Ages to Today, 1988). In any case, both ideas of the origin of children’s
literature came together in the 19th century (since about 1840), during a
flowering of children’s literature (Columbia Encyclopedia [1952]: 1031) when
Medieval subjects were picked up and retold for children (Barbara T. Lup-
ack, Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, 2004). For example, the tradi-
tion of retelling Geoffrey Chaucer in Great Britain (Velma B. Richmond,
Chaucer as Childrens’s Literature: Retellings from the Victorian and Edwardian Eras.
2004) and retelling the Nibelungenlied in the German-speaking world (Werner
869 Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature

Wunderlich and Andreas Härter, “Nibelungenhelden? Zur Vorbildwir-

kung von Heldensagen auf jugendliche Leser,” Waz sîder da geschach: American-
German Studies on the Nibelungenlied, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wun-
derlich, 1992, 231–47). It is not possible to discuss easily even a fraction of
the copious fictional children’s literature dealing with medieval topics that
has been produced in the last two centuries (Adrienne Gavin and Chris-
topher Routledge, Mystery in Children’s Literature: From Rational to the Super-
natural, 2001). The subjects chosen for children and some methods for retell-
ing historical events are important to note. There are two different methods
to adapt medieval material, themes, and topics for modern children’s litera-
ture. The first is to retell a medieval story in total or in parts. The other
method is to choose figures or objects from medieval literature or life and use
them to create a new fictional narrative (Warum nicht einmal Mittelalter: Lek-
türeempfehlungen für Schule und Freizeit, ed. Maria Dorninger, 2004).
The most frequently treated medieval epic tale in German children’s
literature was, until the 1970s, the Nibelungenlied. Retellings of this epic can
be found in legendary tales (Sagenbücher) of the 19th and 20th century, and
in novels written for young readers. The Nibelungenlied was also created
(or: adapted) for a special type of drama for use in the classroom, mainly in
the 1930s and 1940s. The plot was given in a very conservative manner, con-
structing the figures and events in a conservative old-fashioned manner, for
instance with traditional construction of gender roles in general and with
male heros as the absolute protagonists (Maren Bonacker, “Die Liebe je-
doch war tabu: Kinder- und jugendliterarische Adaptationen des Artus-My-
thos im Viktorianischen England und heute,” Von Mythen und Mären, ed. Gu-
drun Marci-Boehncke, 2006, 110–26). Auguste Lechner, an Austrian
author, retold nearly all well-known medieval stories in a similar way, but
each in its own novel: Nibelungenlied, 1954; Herzog Ernst: Jenseits des Goldenen
Nebels, 1958; Parzival, 1965; Wolfdietrich: Das Königsgrab im gelben Felsen, 1967;
Gudrun: Die geraubte Königstochter, 1968; Die Rolandsage, 1975; König Artus,1985;
Iwein, 1988 (Antonie Schreier-Hornung, “Mittelalter für die Jugend:
Auguste Lechners Nacherzählungen von Nibelungenlied, Rolandslied und
Kudrun” Mittelalter-Rezeption, vol. 3, ed. Ulrich Müller, 1988, 181–98).
Beginning in about the 1960s there was a great change in German
children’s literature. The traditional authorities, such as teacher and priests,
and traditional methods of educating were suddenly discussed in public and
in children’s literature (this begins tendency, however, can already be ob-
served in stories that had been published many years earlier and continue to
be published today, such as Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking, 1946, and
Otfrid Preussler, Die kleine Hexe, 1957; see Margary Hourihan, Decon-
Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature 870

structing the Hero: Children’s Literature, 1998). Heroes changed their gender roles,
specific abilities, and characters (Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children’s Lit-
erature and Culture, 1999, ed. Beverly Clark).
Beside the Nibelungenlied numerous medieval subjects were treated in
different types of literary genres, such as novels, dramas, and narratives,
and religious legends (Jörg füllgrabe, “Dietrich von Bern: Ein alternativer
germanisch-deutscher Heldenentwurf,” Von Mythen und Mären, ed. Gudrun
Marci-Boehncke, 2006, 373–95). For instance, Arthurian subject matter
has gained popularity in various forms. At first it was adapted for books of
legendary tales. The legend is greatly abridged and then retold in these
books. In the 1970s and 1980s many translations from English and American
literature – partly from children’s literature for German speaking children,
partly from novels for adult readers that were adapted for children – were
published. For example, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s
Court was translated in several versions for adults (Lore Krüger 1967 and
1982, Franz H. Link 1981), for children (Katarina Horbatsch 1977, Walter
Widmer 1977, short version of Lore Krüger’s translation in 1984) and for
comic-strips (Hank Morgan am Hofe König Arthurs, 1973, 1976). The adaptation
of Twain’s story includes critical discussion of the Middle Ages, medieval-
ism, and the present times.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s stories about the Arthurian legend were trans-
lated into German in 1979 and 1980. An Austrian adaptation about Arthur
and his knights was published in 1977: W. J. M. Wippersberg, Erik und
Roderik. Erik and Roderik are young knights from the same region who find
themselves in constant, farcical warfare with one another. When the elderly,
impoverished King Arthur and his debased knights want to live at the cost of
the two knights, they form an alliance. Eventually Erik and Roderik prevent
through trickery Arthur’s intended raid on France, which Arthur falsely calls
a holy war (W. McDonald and S. Schmidt, “Wippersberg W. J. M,” The
New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris lacy, 1996, 519). Through examples
like this, readers can see this critical approach to the Middle Ages, primarily
in regard to medievalism and its traditional heroes (These traditional heroes
are mainly very strong, they are good fighters, rigidly regard traditional
hierarchy and some of them are political powerful; the so-called ‘new heroes’
are not physically strong but very intelligent and they prefer to speak to one
another than to fight. The most important point is the discourse about dif-
ferent ways to solve a problem. Similar discussions also take place with the
Nibelungen material, for instance in Ingo Sax’s Das Ding der Nibelungen, 2001.
The Nibelungen figures in this school play make fun of themselves and one
another. Most critical treatment of this material is found in literature for
871 Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature

adults. This making fun of medieval heroes was also popular in 1970s
children’s literature (Siegrid Schmidt, “Die Nibelungen respektlos gesehen?”
Von Mythen und Mären, ed. Gudrun Marci-Boehncke, 2006, 322–40).
Wippersberg’s Erik and Roderik includes another new aspect of retelling
medieval materials: The book includes some traditional figures but adds new
characters and a new plot. This method of combining medieval literary
elements with contemporary ones is also used in the following decades by
English/American and German authors. This ultimately resulted in a con-
nection between different genres, the medieval retellings and fantasy litera-
ture. For example, Gerald Morris’ books were translated by Gabriele
Haefs in 2002. Sir Thomas Malory’s version of King Arthur serves as the
backdrop in Morris’ books, but Morris’ figures and their adventures
build new stories. The most popular example of the connection of a new
story and medieval literary elements is Joanne K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.
Rowling connects her child-magician, Harry, with elements of fantasy litera-
ture like big spiders and other monsters, witches and castles, but she also
mentions concrete medieval literary figures such as Merlin. Rowling also
includes details of modern day life such as school and cars, etc. Rowling cre-
ates a new hero who is, unlike the traditional medieval heroes, not brave,
strong and successful from the beginning. He needs his friends and must
learn a lot before he can reach that point.
In English/American and German children’s literature, also other Medi-
eval subjects have been retold. For instance, in the English speaking world
the retellings of Chaucer and Thomas Malory have a long tradition, as do
various versions of Beowulf. Mark Twain’s adaptation also plays an import-
ant role in the English/American Arthurian tradition. Moreover there is one
medieval topic that can only be found in English versions, not in German
ones: Gawain and the Green Knight (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Miriam
Miller and Jane Chance, 1986).
In the last two decades there has been an increasing number of novels for
children, both in English and in German, that deal with everyday life in the
Middle Ages or with groups of people such as crusaders, witches, monks and
wise women. For example, Karen Cushman, The Midwife’s Apprentice (“Alyce
und keine andere”), 1993/1995; Isolde Heyne, Jerusalem ist weit, 1993; Har-
ald Parigger, Der schwarze Mönch 1994; and Waltraut Lewin and Miriam
Markgraf, Die Hexe, 2002. The dragon is another creature that frequently
comes to mind when people today discuss the Middle Ages. Stories about this
animal, however, have changed in the last 50 years. Until the 1960s, a dragon
was simply a monster that had to be killed by the hero. More recently, the
dragons in children’s literature have become friendly: Hans Baumann,
Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature 872

Die Kinder und der große Drachen, 1979; Jack Kent, There Is No Such a Thing as a
Dragon (“Drachen gibt’s doch gar nicht”), 1975; Walter Schmögner, Das
Drachenbuch, 1972; Franz Sales Sklenitzka, Drachen haben nichts zu lachen,
1979. Dragons have changed in character just as much as human heroes have
inmodern children’s literature. Medieval subjects also have an intercultural
aspect; they are popular almost everywhere in the world and in international
children’s literature (Jack Zipes, Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of
Children’s Literature form Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter, 2002; Evelyn Freeman,
Global Perspectives in Children’s Literature, 2001) In other countries there are
stories about regional folk literature as well as retellings of English, French
and German medieval tales. In Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, for example,
books are published containing retellings of some stories about King Arthur:
Hovardas Pailas, Karalius Arturas ir apvaliojo stalo riteriai, 1999. Pailas tells
the story of King Arthur from his birth until his entrance into Avalon. In
Michel Rio’s Morgana: Bretony Princesé, 2001, Rio tells the story of Morgane al-
most exactly as Marion Zimmer-Bradley does, but in a much shorter version.
These titles prove that some literary subjects are well known internation-
ally. There are also other medieval figures popular around the world, with
Charlemagne as a good example (Siegrid Schmidt, “Intercultural Medieval
Myths,” Translation and Transgression: Formen und Verfahren: Interkulturelle Pro-
bleme und Chancen der Übersetzung, ed. Siegrid Schmidt and Ulrich Mül-
ler, 2008, 255–64). There are many similarities between German and
English fictional children’s literature. Obviously, the same stories appear
when they have been translated from English into German. But there also are
similar developments in the methods of retelling a medieval topic: there are
adaptations of medieval stories and there are stories about medieval figures
and everyday life. The third similarity between English and German
children’s literature is the books’ different types and characters of the heroes
and the social and ethical values conveyed at large (Fred Inglis, Values and
Meaning in Children’s Fiction, 1981).
Both the English and German traditions of retelling medieval stories for
children began with the embedding of the dominant conservative and – to
some extent – nationalistic value system. Approximately 150 years later,
medieval heroes have become democratic and international figures.

D. History of Research and Didactic Approaches

Literary critics have seriously discussed children’s literature for the past 35
years. Before that, children’s literature was only part of a child’s education or
was considered trivial. The didactic aspect of children’s literature, especially
in children’s literature about the Middle Ages, is also important in both lan-
873 Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature

guages today. Günther Bärnthaler and Ulrike Tanzer, Fächerübergreifen-

der Literaturunterricht: Reflexionen und Perspektiven (1999), describe and discuss
several examples for teaching literary texts at school. Four of the examples
deal with medieval topics. The same didactic series “Information zur
Deutschdidaktik” edited a special book by Werner Wintersteiner, Mittel-
alter (2001), presenting medieval topics for use in schools. The general cul-
tural and historical aspects and new media play an important role in this
book. Franz and Martina Mittendorfer produced a book with practical
teaching material, Minne und Mäzene: Neue Materialien zur Literatur des Mittel-
alters, 1999. See also Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, ed. Maureen
Fries and Jeannie Watson, 1992, and Approaches to Teaching World Literature:
Chaucer’s Caterbury Tales, ed. Joseph Gibaldi, 1980. These contain corre-
sponding information and materials for the English speaking world.
Today, children’s literature is also discussed in light of gender construc-
tion, the history of ideas, and critical and literary history. For example, Doro-
thea Markert, Momo, Pippe Rote Zora … und was dann? Leseerziehung, weibliche
Autorität und Geschlechterdemokratie, 1998.

Select Bibliography
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1975); Carmen Bravo-Villasante, Weltgeschichte der
Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung (Hanover: Hermann Schroedel
Verlag, 1977); Swantje Ehlers, “Historisches Erzählen in Kinder- und Jugend-
literatur,” Von Mythen und Mären, ed. Gudrun Marci-Boehncke (Hildesheim and
New York: Olms 2006), 94–109; Bettina Hürlimann, Three Centuries of Children’s Books
in Europe (Zurich: World Publishing Company, 1967); Von Mythen und Mären: Mittelalter-
liche Kulturgeschichte im Spiegel einer Wissenschaftler-Biographie: Festschrift für Otfrid Ehris-
mann (Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 2006); Mittelalter-Rezeption III, ed. Ulrich
Müller, et. al. (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988); John Stephens and Robyn McCal-
lum, Retelling Stories: Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Childrens’s
Literature (New York: Routledge, 1998); Kay Vandergrift, Children’s Literature: Theory,
Research and Teaching (Englwood: Libraries Unlimited, 1990); Geschichte der deutschen
Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, ed. Reiner Wild (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler Verlag,
2002).

Siegrid Schmidt
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 874

Mentalities in Medieval Studies

In the spirit of Marc Bloch’s declaration that “the interrelations, con-

fusions, and infections of human consciousness are, for history, reality
itself,” scholars of mentalité (mentalities, Mentalität, mentalidad, mentalità)
attempt to identify essential patterns in collective attitudes as manifested
in the documents and artifacts of a given period (The Historian’s Craft, 1954,
151). Jacques le goff describes mentalities as “the unitary expression of the
spirit of past societies,” which finds voice in the “mechanical discourse of the
past” (“Mentalities: a history of ambiguities,” Constructing the Past: Essays in
Historical Methodology, ed. Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, 1985, 169). Peter
Dinzelbacher defines mentalité as the “totality of modes and contents con-
tained in the thoughts and feelings that inform a given social collective at a
particular time” (Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte, 1993, xxi). These defini-
tions highlight four presuppositions that most studies in mentalities share:
(1) that social collectives take precedence over the fate of individuals as ob-
jects of analysis; (2) that values and attitudes of collectives receive a higher
priority than chronologies or events; (3) that these values and attitudes re-
main accessible to the historian despite the frequently formulaic language of
sources; (4) and that a totality of knowledge is attainable for a given time
frame. In summary, scholars of mentalité seek nothing less than the incre-
mental mapping of a social collective’s inner landscape.

A. The Annales Tradition

Because most scholars of mentalité employ concepts and methods derived
from the work of annalistes such as Lucien Febvre, Bloch, Fernand Brau-
del, Le Goff and Georges Duby, some of whom specialized in early mod-
ern history, a brief exposition of key terms and methods is essential to our
understanding of the presuppositions that inform research into inner land-
scapes of social collectives. La nouvelle histoire defined itself in opposition to
traditional historiography as embodied in Treitschke’s truism that “men
make history” (Fernand Braudel, On History, 1980, 10). Its goal was to tran-
scend the narrow obsession of traditional historians with great men, individ-
ual events, and political developments. The quest for narrative veracity was
abandoned in favor of a new goal of totality; the narrow range of documen-
tary sources was expanded to include evidence gathered by geologists, arch-
eologists, climatologists, economists, and sociologists, thereby privileging
interdisciplinarity; the chronology of individual events as determined by
causality was subsumed under Braudel’s tripartite model of temporality;
875 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

and the interdependence of historical sources and historiographical practice

found acknowledgement in a more self-conscious, yet still positivist subjec-
tivity.
When Braudel declares unequivocally, “There is no unilateral his-
tory,” he states the precept informing the new-historical notion of totality
(On History, 10). Not only do the Annales historians reject the possibility of an
exact recreation of historical events – not to mention the value of such a prac-
tice – they also deny the ability of a single discipline or theory to do justice to
“the complex, intermeshed reality” in which all individuals necessarily find
themselves. Although individual studies or theories remain by definition
oversimplifications of historical complexity, they “have set us progressively
farther along the path of transcending the individual and the particular
event” (On History, 10). Bloch uses the stages of human life as an analogy:
“Having grown old in embryo as mere narrative, for long encumbered with
legend, and for still longer preoccupied with only the most obvious events,
[the study of history] is still very young as a rational attempt at analysis”
(Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 1954, 13). Achieving totality meant for
the Annales historians not only the necessity of working between and across
disciplines, but also the freedom to consult and analyze sources which pre-
viously had been the exclusive province of other disciplines. In his master-
piece, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (1949; The
Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 1972–3), Braudel drew upon re-
search in climatology and geography, as well as in economic and social his-
tory. Braudel believed that historians were uniquely qualified to collect,
synthesize, and analyze all such data. “For me, history is the total of all pos-
sible histories – an assemblage of professions and points of view, from yester-
day, today, and tomorrow” (On History, 34).
The mass of data required for total history finds interpretive structure in
Braudel’s tripartite model of temporality. In the eyes of Braudel and his
Annales students, “history is … the study of time in all of its manifestations”
(On History, 69). At the basis of all historiography is the “history of man in
his intimate relationship to the earth,” called the longue durée. It is a history
“almost changeless, … slow to alter, often repeating itself and working itself
out in cycles which are endlessly renewed” (On History, 12). Here climate,
geography, landscape, mineral deposits, types of agriculture, flora and fauna
all have their roles to play. Superimposed upon “almost changeless” time, is
a temporal sphere of medium changes and cycles, dominated by the phenom-
enon of conjoncture, in which historical phenomena occur and recur in vast
networks of lateral dependencies. This medium temporal sphere is made up
of economic factors on the one hand – price curves, demographic progres-
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 876

sions, movements of wages, variations in interest rates and productivity – and

social factors on the other hand – political institutions, linguistic change,
religious reforms, and civilizations. The cycles tend to run in decades or gen-
erations. Finally, there is the short time span of “historic events” as a journal-
ist might experience them, the temporal sphere of catastrophes and “the
mediocre accidents of daily life.” Braudel does not deny the significance of
such events, but rejects as superficial the focus of narrative history on chro-
nology, causality, and origins. Braudel’s temporal model transforms his-
tory from a linear series of events and decisions into an infinite nexus of in-
teractions among cycles operating at different frequencies of time.
This universal vision of history requires a new kind of historian. Tradi-
tional historians are for Braudel like landscape painters who attempt to
reproduce every detail of the reality before them even as they suppress their
own roles as observers. The result, Braudel asserts, can only be superficial-
ity with the illusion of objectivity. Instead new historians should, in Bloch’s
view, work like master lute-makers who reshape the raw material of nature
into a beautiful instrument (The Historian’s Craft, 1954, 27). In the process, the
reconstruction of the past achieves a productive reciprocity with the sensibil-
ities of the present (Braudel, On History, 1980, 37). In denying the possibil-
ity of objectivity and historical veracity, Annales historians reject the naïve
positivism of 19th-century historiography. Nevertheless, knowledge of the
past becomes possible through the judicious exercise of proper judgment;
insight remains possible for historians who work in the awareness of their
limitations; and historical inquiry transpires within a dialectic. Despite
greater receptivity to theory in the fourth generation, la nouvelle histoire never
wholly abandoned its positivist roots.

B. Theoretical Approaches to mentalité

Because leading annalistes have resisted engagement with theory, systematic
attempts at developing theoretical constructs for the study of mentalities
have tended to occur outside of France. František Graus, Peter Dinzel-
bacher, and Aaron Gurevich all argue that scholars of mentalities assume
a position analogous to that of a foreign visitor in a contemporary culture.
As Graus notes, “Everyone who spends an extended period of time in an
unknown environment becomes aware that people act and react differently
than what he has been used to” (Frantisek Graus, Mentalitäten im Mittelalter,
1987, 12). The alienation of the foreign visitor from what seems to be a “con-
fusing and contradictory ménage of customs, rituals and reactions” deepens
as his own reactions and responses continue to meet with bewilderment,
criticism or hostility. The foreigner who wishes to assimilate must decipher
877 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

a “code,” the unwritten rules, customs and norms that shape individual
responses to social interaction. Cultural anthropologists can rely upon direct
interaction and observation in their attempts to decipher this code; histori-
ans of mentalité have the more daunting task of working through artifacts
and documents. They look beyond the surface of words and events to dis-
cover the thoughts, feelings, and prejudices of a given collective at a given
time.
Dinzelbacher (1948; Linz, Austria) an historian specializing in legal,
social, and cultural history of the Middle Ages, remains one of the few medi-
evalists to contribute substantially both to the theory and to the practice of
the study of mentalities. Following his studies in Graz und Vienna, Dinzel-
bacher received his doctorate in history from the University of Vienna
in 1973. His Habilitation followed in Stuttgart in 1978, where he has held an
Associate Professorship since 1998. He also holds the position of Honorar-
professor at the University of Vienna. In 1999–2000 he was a visiting fellow
at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton. Dinzelbacher is one of the principal editors of the interdisci-
plinary medieval journal Mediävistik.
In the anthology Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte: Hauptthemen in Einzel-
darstellungen, 1993 (2nd ed. 2008), Dinzelbacher offers a brief and system-
atic introduction to mentalité. Modes of thought (Denkweisen) are the particu-
lar approaches that a given group at a given time devotes to processing
information. This information can originate in the outside world of the
group studied or in the inner world of the group’s psyche. Dinzelbacher
defines objects of thought (Denkinhalte) as the “generally accepted notions
and ideological, political, religious, or aesthetic concepts that inform the
individual areas of religion, culture, and art. They must have the ability to be
verbalized and they must be the object of discursive reflection in the docu-
ments related to the group” (Mentalitätsgeschichte, xxiii). In addition to modes
of thought, there are also modes of feeling (Empfindungsweisen), which consist
of the sometimes subconscious application of values or value judgments to
the routine perceptions of daily life. These also include aesthetic criteria that
the group subconsciously applies to works of art, fashion, technical objects, or
music. Objects of feeling (Empfindungsinhalte) comprise all possible social and
psychological generators of feeling, including objects of prejudice or stereo-
typing. Theoreticians of mentalité define actions in the broadest possible
sense, to include verbal and written communication, including gestures,
many of which may be interpreted in contexts other than those intended by
their authors. Dinzelbacher lists key areas for analysis which I reproduce
here without the accompanying examples: the relationship of body and soul;
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 878

attitudes regarding youth and aging; expressions of fear and hope; notions of
joy, sorrow, and happiness; interpretations of illness and healing; attitudes
and rituals surrounding death; individuality, the family and society; social
values; the meaning of work and festivals; structures of power; attitudes
towards violence, war, and peace; ethics and systems of justice; aesthetic ex-
perience; religiosity; attitudes towards nature and the environment; cosmol-
ogy; notions of time and space; forms of thought and analysis; and modes of
communication. As Dinzelbacher notes, each social collective’s attitudes
towards each example must be exhaustively studied before a “global image
of collective mentality” can emerge for a given period.
Dinzelbacher’s Angst im Mittelalter: Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung:
Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikonographie (1996) surveys one of the primary human
emotions in its cultural context. Important here is the addition of ico-
nography, so that scholars benefit from Dinzelbacher’s analysis of the
depiction of fear in text and image. Here he draws on his earlier research in
the literature of medieval visionaries and mystics. Like Le Goff, Dinzel-
bacher recently tried his hand at a more comprehensive cultural history.
The volume Europa im Hochmittelalter 1050–1250: Eine Kultur- und Mentalitäts-
geschichte, Kultur und Mentalität (2003) contains an insightful and accessible
survey of medieval attitudes designed for the educated lay reader. The vol-
ume opens with a sweeping survey of the social and economic background of
the collectives under discussion, followed by a chapter on the transitions of
feudal structures before turning to notions of individuality, the individual
and society, and the individual and the natural world. (Kristina Wengorz,
review of Angst im Mittelalter, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezen-
sionen/2004–3–101).
František Graus (1921; Brno (Brünn), Czech Republic – 1989; Basel,
Switzerland), a Czech historian specializing in Bohemia and Western Europe
in the later Middle Ages, attempted a more systematic definition of mentalité
in the Konstanz Working Group on Medieval History’s anthology, Mentali-
täten im Mittelalter, 1987. After receiving his school diploma in 1940, Graus
studied history and paleography at the Universities of Brno and Prague.
His university career was interrupted during the Nazi occupation by his ar-
rest and internment in concentration camps. After the defeat of the Nazis,
Graus returned to his studies in Prague, earning his doctorate in 1948/9. He
held an archival post at the Staatliches Historisches Institut in Prague until
1950, where he was awarded his Habilitation. After two years as a lecturer on
medieval history at the Karls-Universität, Graus was called to a professor-
ship at the newly founded Historical Institute of the Czechoslavakian Acad-
emy of Sciences. There he served as Editor in Chief of the journal Ceskosloven-
879 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

sky Casopis historicky. Following the events of the Prague Spring, in 1970
Graus was forced to resign his post and to emigrate to West Germany. He
accepted a position as Ordentlicher Professor at the University of Gießen.
In 1972 he was called to a similar position in Basel, where he remained until
his death in 1989 (Susanna Burghartz ed., Spannungen und Widersprüche:
Gedenkschrift für František Graus, 1992); “Frantisek Graus,” Der Konstanzer
Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte 1951–2001: Die Mitglieder und ihr Werk:
eine bio-bibliographische Dokumentation, vol. 2, ed. Jürgen Petersohn, 2001,
149–57).
In his introduction, Graus rejects any method that relies solely upon
direct description of social behavior or phenomena. Rather, the historian of
mentalité works to decipher the opinions (Meinungen) and attitudes (Verhal-
tensweisen) brought forth by the range of expectations (Erwartungshorizont)
within a given collective (Mentalitäten, 14–16). Mentalities remain one level
of abstraction removed from opinions and attitudes. Opinions and attitudes
may be described, but mentalities can only be tested by the analysis of oppo-
sites within the “bandwidth” of social and moral expectations. Graus seeks
to define mentalité negatively against most other traditions in the context
of historiographical praxis. Thus mentalities are not directly accessible
through ideologies, dogmas or doctrines, which are codified by definition.
They cannot be limited to a social history of ideas, nor can they be articulated
by the members of collectives themselves. They cannot be defined exclus-
ively against cultural notions of “the Other.” Models of national character
and class structure also fail ultimately because of regional and social variants
(Mentalitäten, 17–19). Graus also opposes as untenable past attempts to de-
fine a particular Zeitgeist, even as he rejects the exclusive application of the
longue durée. Instead he prefers the comparative study of differing attitudes
within smaller manifestations of a social collective. As he asserts, “What can
be historically determined is always only a conglomerate of components
with differing temporal dimensions, a ‘contemporaneousness of noncon-
temporary elements’” (Mentalitäten, 23). Graus finally arrives at the follow-
ing definition: “Mentality is the collective voice of long-term attitudes and
opinions articulated by individuals within groups. They are never uniform,
often contradictory, and form specific internalized patterns. Mentalities find
expression both in specific receptivity to certain stimuli as well as in varieties
of reactions. They cannot be articulated by insiders, but they can be tested
and verified” (Mentalitäten, 17). Although the least vulnerable of all theories
of mentality to deconstructive challenges, Graus’s theory becomes prob-
lematical in its application. Indeed, several historians cited in this article
do not meet Graus’s criteria. Nonetheless, Graus’s introduction is useful
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 880

in combating the overgeneralization and unsystematic application of crite-

ria that undercut the effectiveness of earlier mentality studies.
The Russian medievalist Aaron Gurevich’s (1923; Moscow, USSR)
essays on historical anthropology, although hampered by his limited access
to contemporary scholarship during the Cold War, are innovative in their
consistent application of theory to the new historiography (Historical Anthro-
pology of the Middle Ages, 1992). Born in Moscow to a secular Jewish family,
Gurevich overcame anti-semitism and to complete his studies in medieval
history at the University of Moscow, earning his doctorate in 1950. Unable
to find employment in Moscow, he took a position in Kaliningrad at the
provincial university. In Kaliningrad he developed his interests in Old Norse
literature, the subject of his successful postdoctoral dissertation in 1966.
He taught at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy for two years before moving
to Institute of World History at the Moscow Academy of Sciences (Yelena
Mazour-Matusevich, “Writing Medieval History: An Interview with
Aaron Gurevich,” JMEMS 35 [2005]: 122–157; Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz,
Moderne Konturen historischer Anthropologie: Eine vergleichende Studie zu den Arbei-
ten von Jacques Le Goff und Aaron J., 1994).
At the heart of Gurevich’s critical enterprise is the search for mentalité
as Weltanschauung or world view à la Max Weber. This search necessarily
occupies itself with collectives, for “a world-view is not so much possessed
by individuals as it is the possessor of them” (Historical Anthropology, xiii). For
Gurevich, historical anthropology transforms traditional historiography
in three essential areas: the nature of sources, the self-awareness of the his-
torian, and the conscious choice of cultural phenomena. First, sources are
to be evaluated much more broadly, according to the model of semiotics;
they transcend documents to encompass all possible artifacts. Furthermore,
they must be examined “not as inanimate artifacts but as the creation of the
human psyche.” In this way the interdisciplinarity of Bloch and Braudel
finds its complement in the diversity of sources themselves. Second, histori-
ans must never lose sight of their own cultural backgrounds and biases as
they wrestle with medieval alterity. Like Graus, Gurevich aims here to cre-
ate a dialogue between the present subject and its historical subjects which
arises inevitably in the intellectual tensions of misunderstanding. He traces
this reciprocity of past and present back to Huizinga, but locates its theor-
etical exposition in the aesthetic theory of Bakhtin. Third, Gurevich ac-
knowledges the indebtedness of the mentalité-historians to Marxist social
history, especially in their focus on conjoncture and collectives. For Gure-
vich, authentic historiography strives to decipher the world view of popular
culture. At the same time he does not exclude the history of elites from the
881 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

process, preferring a dialectic between elite and popular history. Finally,

gurevich decries the “dehumanization” of history at the hands of both
doctrinaire Marxists and the Annales school. “The entire range of human
moods, beliefs, convictions, values and moral judgments should form part of
the structure of historical explanation” (Historical Anthropology, 12).

C. Landmark Mentalité-Studies within the Annales Tradition

Any discussion of scholarship on mentalité by medieval historians begins with
Marc Bloch (1886; Lyon, France – 1944; Saint-Didier-de-Formans, France),
French historian and co-founder of the Annales school of historiography.
Born in Lyon into an Alsatian family of assimilated Jewish intellectuals,
Bloch grew up in Paris. His superior performance in the elite lycée Louis-le-
Grand won him early entrance to the world-famous Ecole Normale Supér-
ieure. Bloch spent 1908 studying in Berlin and Leipzig before returning
to Paris for three years of dissertation work with Thiers Foundation support.
In 1912 Bloch obtained a one-year appointment to the lycée in Montpellier.
His subsequent assignment to the lycée of Amiens in the Picardy was inter-
rupted by the outbreak of the Great War. In the next four years he saw com-
bat in Champagne and Algeria and was awarded the Legion of Honor. Fol-
lowing the war Bloch took a position as head of the Institute of the Middle
Ages at the French university in Strasbourg. Here he made the acquaintance
of Lucien Febvre. The highlight of their collaboration was the founding
of the Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, in 1929, which would, under
various editors as the Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, transform the
study of history in the 20th century. In 1936 Bloch followed Febvre to
Paris, taking a post at the Sorbonne as professor of economic history. In
World War II Bloch fought on behalf of his country until its defeat and
occupation. Sometime in late 1942 he joined the French resistance and was
captured in Paris and executed by the Gestapo in 1944.
The influence of Bloch’s historiography has been profound and im-
mense. Although his research was limited by his military service, he still pro-
duced major works on royalty and miraculous healing (Les rois thamaturges,
1924; The Royal Touch, 1973); on French rural history (Les caractères originaux de
l’histoire rurale française, 1931; French Rural History, 1966); and on the social
structure of western and central Europe (La societé féodale, 1939/1940; Feudal
Society, 1961). In Les rois thaumaturges, Bloch “incorporated insights from
medicine, psychology, and anthropology into his investigation of the ori-
gins, development, and durability of the gigantic fausse nouvelle, the belief in
the royal miracle of the healing of scrofula” (Fink, Mark Bloch: A Life in History,
1989, 109). “Because of Bloch’s use of the Durkheimian term ‘collective
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 882

consciousness’ and his search for evidence in a wide variety of documents,

Les rois has also been termed a forerunner of what is imprecisely termed the
history of mentalités” (Fink, Marc Bloch, 111). Innovative but controversial in
Les caractères originaux was Bloch’s division of medieval French society into
three rural orders, influenced more by geography and culture than by races
or national origins. His decision to focus almost exclusively on the peasantry,
as well as his use of conditions documented in the recent past as a means of
interpreting medieval conditions have provoked criticism (Norman F. Can-
tor, “The French Jews. Louis Halphen and Marc Bloch,” Inventing the Middle
Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century,
1992, 118–60, here 145–6).
La société féodale, Bloch’s masterful two-volume study of feudalism and
its unifying principles, begins with a portrait of European geopolitics cen-
tered around conditions of disruption and destruction brought about by per-
sistent Moslem, Magyar, and Norse incursions. The chapter on material con-
ditions analyzes in broad strokes the economic conditions of the time. Bloch
then turns to mental landscapes, notions of time and space, varying systems
of justice and inheritance, the oral tradition, the symbiosis of Latinity and
vernaculars, and customs of the family, all of this before examining the
attributes of vassalage and the fief. The second volume concerns itself with
sociopolitical factors, the transformation of the nobility, and the evolution
of political organizations and judicial institutions. The result is a vivid and
yet dynamic portrait of a way of life which evolved in response to social and
economic disruption over several hundred years.
Bloch’s Apologie pour l’histoire, ou, Métier d’historien, 1949 (The Historian’s
Craft, 1980) sets forth with admirable clarity his approach to history and, by
implication, to mentalité. As Norman Cantor reflects, “[The Historian’s] Craft
became the clarion call for a generation of transatlantic historians who gave
free rein to the historical imagination, who used concepts from the social and
behavioral sciences as vehicles of exploration, who disdained narrative his-
tory for structural analysis, and who wrote social history from data – some of
them quantitative – that revealed patterns of human behavior” (Inventing the
Middle Ages, 1991, 141). Bloch borrowed methods from Vidalian geography
and Durkheimian sociology, but with important modifications. “Rather
than examining landscapes to uncover an explanatory enchaînement leading
to geographical laws, he hoped [through reference to geography] to add some
concreteness to his understanding of a particular social reality … Unlike
Durkheimian sociology, he refused to make a strict separation between the
individual and the social and argued that as a study of conscious beings, his-
tory must examine motives.” (Susan W. Friedman, Marc Bloch, Sociology and
883 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

Geography: Encountering Changing Disciplines, 1996, 177–79). Bloch’s endur-

ing legacy is reflected in the interdisciplinary approach to history which
evolved through the work of Febvre’s protégé Braudel and the “third
generation” of annalistes – Le Goff, Duby, and Le Roy Durie – into the
predominate historiography in France and in the United States. Now being
eclipsed by changing demographics, the consolidation of feminist ap-
proaches within the American medieval academy, and the growing interest
in medieval-Byzantine, medieval-Jewish, and medieval-Arabic studies,
Bloch’s legacy helped to shape the course of medieval history during the
last half of the 20th century.
Among the “Third Generation” of annalistes, Jacques Le Goff’s prolific
research on multifarious aspects of medieval life earned him the title “cultural
anthropologist of medieval Europe.” His approach, known as “historical
anthropology,” combines methodologies of the new historiography, econ-
omics, and sociology. Of his own nascent years as a medievalist, Le Goff has
said, “The concept of ‘civilisation’ appealed to me. A cultural approach, the
notion even of civilization, the crossing of disciplines, carried with it a sense
of the living, of bringing people and a social fabric back to life …” (Jacques Le
Goff, My Quest for the Middle Ages, 2003; À la recherche du Moyen Âge, 2006, 10).
The interdisciplinary totality which Le Goff calls “civilisation” becomes
accessible through the modes in which it is represented. “Here is a historian
who has taken the most concrete of medieval realities – time, space, work,
trade, the body, social order, institutions – and studied them as perceived real-
ities, as the products and vehicles of representation” (Stuart Clark, “Le
Goff, Annales, and ‘the Future,’” The Work of Jacques Le Goff, ed. Miri Rubin,
1997, 261). Le Goff’s goal in his researches on medieval mentalities has
been to describe convincingly “the attitudes and sensitivities of a people
as they were shaped by a certain economic and technical conditioning, by a
social structure, and by the antagonism of dominant forces” (Lester little,
review of Le Goff’s Le civilisation,” Speculum 42 [1967]: 175–77, here 176).
Also noteworthy is the transcendent role le goff assumed as “intellectual
authority” and “indispensable cultural touchstone” for France, Italy and a
large segment of the progressive medievalist community in the United States
(André Vauchez, “Le Goff and Italy,” The Work of Jacques Le Goff, ed. Miri
Rubin, 1997, 71–76, here 71).
Born in Toulon to an academic family – his father was professor at a
lycée – , Le Goff took preparatory classes for the Ecole Normale Supérieure
in Marseilles before spending several months with the maquis in the Alps.
After Paris was liberated he enrolled at the lycée Louis-le-Grand, beginning
his studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1945. He studied at the Uni-
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 884

versity of Prague from 1947–48. Still in the process of completing his disser-
tation, Le Goff obtained a one-year appointment to the lycée in Amiens,
studied in Oxford (1951–2) and at the Ecole française in Rome (1952–3) be-
fore occupying a position in the Faculty of Letters at Lille from 1954–1959. In
1962, he took a position at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
in Paris. He succeeded Fernand Braudel as director in 1972 and also served
for many years as editor of the flagship journal of the new historiography, An-
nales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (Miri Rubin, ed., The work of Jacques Le Goff
and the Challenges of Medieval History, 1997; Leonore Scholze-Irrlitz, Mod-
erne Konturen historischer Anthropologie: eine vergleichende Studie zu den Arbeiten von
Jacques Le Goff und Aaron J. Gurjewitsch, 1994).
Le Goff’s wonderfully nuanced portrait of medieval temporality,
“Temps de l’Église et temps du marchand,” Annales. HSS 15 [1960]: 417–33
(“Merchant’s Time and Church Time in the Middle Ages,” Time, Work & Cul-
ture in the Middle Ages, 1980, 29–42), set a standard for studies in mentalities.
Le Goff contrasts the canonical hours of the convent, with their unequal
divisions and variations influenced by the liturgical year and the seasons
with the precise division of the day into hours controlled by the evolving
technology of the clock. At once evocative of the differences in world view the
understanding of time can evoke, Le Goff’s article also achieves a dynamic
aspect of mentalities in conflict and in transition.
Even more influential was Le Goff’s La naissance du Purgatoire, 1981 (The
Birth of Purgatory, 1984) in which he traces the conceptual roots and social im-
plications of the transformation of the Christian cosmos through the emerg-
ence of a new dimension of afterlife. “Le Goff argued that the rise of the idea
of purgatory formed part of ‘the transformation of feudal Christianity,’ that
there were connections between intellectual change and social change. At the
same time he insisted on the ‘mediation’ of ‘mental structures,’ ‘habits of
thought,’ or ‘intellectual apparatus;’ in other words, mentalities, noting the
rise in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of new attitudes to time, space,
and number, including what he called ‘the book-keeping of the after-life’”
(Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution, 1990, 72). Among the problem-
atical aspects of Le Goff’s study remain the rather arbitrary process by which
he arrives at purgatory’s genesis, the paucity of references to the cultural con-
texts from which tales of the afterlife emerged, and the lack of analysis of the
sociological dimensions of purgatory itself (Richard Trexler, review of The
Birth of Purgatory,” AE 13 (1986): 160–61, here 160).
The essays contained in Le Goff’s L’imaginaire médiéval: essais (1985),
provide a number of examples of his “scientific” method: “First, as he him-
self claims, he gives priority to the history of words: “The history of words is
885 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

history itself. When terms appear or disappear or change their meaning,

the movement of history stands revealed … A second element of Le Goff’s
method entails an effort to combine a structuralist’s eye for codes “vestimen-
tary,” alimentary, linguistic) and oppositions (nature and culture; country
and city; left and right; father and son; inside and outside) with a historian’s
eye for change and context” (Sharon Farmer, review of The Medieval Imagin-
ation, AHR [1990]: 473–74, here 474).
In his longer historical surveys of the Middle Ages, such as La civilisation
de l’Occident medieval, 1977, Le Goff has argued for the importance of what
he calls popular culture as an object of historical study. “At the heart of Le
Goff’s … vision is an argument for two distinct cultures, the one clerical
and bookish, the other popular, oral, and customary, the first accessible
through traditional intellectual and spiritual categories, the second mainly
through cultural anthropology and comparative religions” (John van
Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” AHR
91 [1986]: 519–52, here 529). Le Goff’s vision of the Middle Ages has been
attacked mainly on three grounds: He allegedly tries to inject an anachronis-
tically Marxist interpretation into his saga of popular culture; through his
refusal to write about the elites, he paints a one-side, very dark and overly
primitive portrait of the complexity of medieval life; and he assumes that
“folkloric” sources, “despite stereotyping, repetition, and elaboration, pre-
serve a core of authentic experience and belief alien to the Christian estab-
lishment,” something that is essentially unprovable (Van Engen, “The
Christian Middle Ages, 1986, 531).
Certainly the most visible of all medievalists active in the study of men-
talities, the French historian Georges Duby (Paris; 1919 – Provence,
1996), was perhaps the leading practitioner of la nouvelle histoire in post-war
medieval studies. Born in Paris, Duby passed his agrégation in Lyon in 1942.
His doctoral work was done at the Sorbonne, where his thesis was approved
in 1953. He subsequently was appointed to the Chair of Medieval Social
Studies in the History Department at Aix-en-Provence, where he founded
the Center for Study of Mediterranean Societies. In 1970, Duby received a
coveted post at the Collège de France, from which he developed extensive
collaboration and networks of support with colleagues from Belgium, Brit-
ain, the United States, and Eastern Europe. In 1974, he was inducted into
the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and at the height of his fame,
in 1987, to the Académie française. Duby died at his country home in
Provence in 1996 (Claudie Duhamel-Amado and Guy Lobrichon, Georges
Duby, l’écriture de l’histoire, 1996; “Georges Duby,” EH, ed. Kelly Boyd, 1999,
326–28).
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 886

Duby’s research may be said to have proceeded in three phases, all of

which touch upon some aspect of mentalité. His initial research into the so-
ciety of Macon and rural economies (La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région
mâconnaise, 1953; Lineage, nobility, and chivalry in the region of Macon, 1976), and
L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’occident medieval (1962; Rural Econ-
omy and Country Life, 1968), undertook the analysis of traditional historical
sources with the subjective style of his idol Marc Bloch. Duby’s middle
period (Le Dimanche de Bouvines, 1973; The Legend of Bouvines, 1990), and Les trois
ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme, 1978 (The Three Orders, 1980), featured
intensive involvement with the possibilities of mentalité. In his final phase,
Duby moved beyond Bloch to work on the boundaries between mentalité and
the history of ideologies (Le chevalier, la femme et le prître: le mariage dans la France
féodale, 1981; The knight, the lady, and the priest, 1983), and Mâle Moyen Âge
(1988; Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, 1994).
In his contribution to ego-histoire, Duby argues against any access to his-
torical truth through pure objectivity. Instead he sees the obligation of ani-
mation falling to the historian, making connections in order that history
comes alive (Georges Duby, L’histoire continue, 1991; History Continues, 1994,
43–4). Indeed, Duby never shied away from the use of conjecture and specu-
lation to fill in the gaps that documents inevitably leave, a tendency that
caused his work to be questioned by traditional historians. At the same time,
Duby urges historians to strive for as much objectivity as possible in their
work with sources and artifacts (History Continues, 44–5).
Duby’s middle phase was dominated by a methodological trans-
formation from the re-creation of economic and social conditions through
distillation of sources to the exposition of medieval collective attitudes.
“Until then I had expected the documents to instruct me as to the truth of the
facts whose memory it was their mission to preserve. I now realized that this
truth is inaccessible and that the historian can approach it only through
a mediator, the witness, whom he must examine not as to the facts he relates
but as to the manner in which he reports them” (History continues, 82). Through
the evaluation of the narrator’s manner, Duby then would attempt to de-
cipher the attitudes of the collectives that the narrator described. In his book
Li Dimanche Duby focuses not so much on the “battle that made France” itself
as on the reception and depiction of the battle over the centuries. “The ‘new-
ness’ of Duby’s event history is found in the function which Duby attributes
to the event. It certainly does not correspond to the extraordinary, singular,
change-producing event of traditional historical narratives, nor, however,
does it correspond to those iterable ‘elements’ that are the subject matter of
serial history. Duby’s third way, inspired by anthropology, consists in using
887 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

the battle as a ‘révélateur’ in order to learn something about the culture – or

in this concrete example, about feudal society at the beginning of the thir-
teenth century” (Axel Ruth and Jocelyn Holland, “The Battle of Bouvines:
Event History vs. Problem History,” MLN 116 (2001): 816–43). Duby’s par-
ticular focus is the mentalité of knights and soldiers: “I observed them as Mar-
garet Mead had observed the Manus” (History continues, 93).
In his classic study Les trois ordres, Duby sought to “measure the influence
of mental categories on the fate of human societies,” (94) producing “not
simply a history of the idea of trifunctionality,” but rather “an attempt to
trace the ways in which the meaning of the trifunctional model changed ac-
cording to the social location of its user, whereby it came to validate entirely
different sets of propositions about the ideal nature of society” (Gabriele
Spiegel, review of Les trois orders, AHR 87 [1982]: 263). Duby sought to
illuminate “the relations between the material and the mental in the course
of social change” by tracing the evolution of traditional representations of
medieval society in terms of three orders, those who pray, those who fight,
and those who work. Of particular interest to scholars of mentalities is
Duby’s research into how the metaphor of the three orders was continually
rediscovered, reinvented, and employed to justify any number of differing
social and feudal structures. In this way Duby illuminates the dynamic inter-
action between mentalities and ideology and attempts to show how this in-
teraction was exploited to consolidate power relationships. Both studies
stand as landmark achievements of mentalité.
Duby devoted himself in his subsequent research to aristocratic mar-
riage and gender issues. His analysis of aristocratic attitudes towards mar-
riage (Le chevalier, la femme et le prítre, 1981, and Mâle Moyen Age, 1988) focused
more on ideological concerns and less upon the attitudes of larger collectives,
even if the emphasis remained on the representations of the societal and
spiritual functions of marriage as they developed in the High Middle Ages.
Although he rejected pure materialism, Duby nonetheless examined medi-
eval marriage customs through the quasi-Marxist lens of class perceptions.
Hampered by his insistence on traditional sources and by his unwillingness
to accept basic tenets of feminist medieval studies, Duby’s two forays
into the mentalité of gender were less enthusiastically received, (Jo Ann
McNamara, Speculum 74 (1999): 732–3). Nonetheless, Duby’s willingness
to explore the mentalities of medieval women makes him almost unique
among practitioners of mentalité. The five-volume anthology, Histoire des
femmes en occident (1991; A History of Women in the West, 1992) which he co-
edited with Michelle Perrot, includes a number of insightful gender
studies.
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 888

Yet another landmark in the history of mentalité came with the publi-
cation of Philippe Ariès’s L’enfant et la vie familiale (1960; Centuries of Child-
hood, 1962). Although not a study of medieval mentalities, Ariès’s claim that
no true sense of childhood (le sentiment de l’enfance) developed until the 17th
century sparked a world-wide debate regarding medieval and early-modern
mentalities. Scores of books and articles on medieval notions of childhood
and family life have succeeded in refuting Ariès’s generalizations regarding
the Middle Ages, but the influence of his work on medieval studies of child-
hood and death remains unquestioned.
Even a selective survey of mentalité must include Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie’s (1929; Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais, France) innovative reading of
inquisitional interrogation records in the form of a anthropological study of
community. His Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324, 1975 (Montaillou,
1978) greatly accelerated two important trends in the study of mentalities:
the move towards microhistory, that is, towards achieving a totality of data
for a smaller geographical or social area; and the ability to uncover socio-his-
torical data by reading between and against the intentions of the documen-
tary source.
Son of a Norman family of aristocratic landowners – his father served as
Minister of Agriculture under the Vichy regime – Le Roy Ladurie attended
the Collège Saint-Joseph in Caen, the Lycèe Henri-IV in Paris and the Lycée
Lakanal in Sceaux before earning his agrégation in History from the École
Normale Supérieure in Paris. He went on to study history at the Sorbonne,
receiving his doctorate for his thesis on the peasants of Languedoc. Between
1955 and 1963 he occupied a series of secondary and university posts in
Montpellier, as well as an adjunct position at the CNRS (National Center
for Scientific Research). In 1973 Le Roy Ladurie was awarded the Chair for
Modern History at the prestigious Collège de France. He also served as the
Director of the Bibliothèque nationale from 1987 to 1994. Le Roy Ladurie
is not only one of the most influential annalistes of the Third Generation,
he also has become one of the leading intellectuals and commentators of the
Parisian cultural scene.
Le Roy Ladurie concentrated his research on the early modern period,
focusing on the sociological effects of climate change and on the lives of the
peasants, but in Montaillou, he draws on the inquisitional records of Bishop
Jacques Fournier, the future Pope Benedict XII, who kept meticulous and
detailed notes of interviews with 114 residents of Montaillou and the sur-
rounding area of Languedoc. Le Roy Ladurie’s innovation was to read the
records as artifacts of peasant society rather than as documents of the inquisi-
tion. The result is “a fascinating picture of the social and cultural structure
889 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

of a backward, illiterate, unsanitary and rather disagreeable Pyrenean village

society of the early fourteenth century” (P.S. Lewis, Review of Montaillou,
EHR 92 [1977]: 371–73). Categories explored include marriage and love,
death, childhood, social relationships, religion, morality, and magic, set
against the backdrop of the longue durée of geography and climate. Le Roy
Ladurie’s surprising discovery was that the domus, “a domestic group of
co-residents” served as the “unifying concept in social, family, and cultural
life,” more important than social hierarchy, religious affiliation or economic
status (Montaillou, 1978: 25). Three aspects of the book were especially con-
troversial: 1) Le Roy Ladurie’s colloquial, deliberately unscholarly style,
which made the book accessible beyond the narrow community of scholars;
2) his decision to eschew a traditional scholarly apparatus; 3) and his assump-
tion that the villagers’ testimony could be taken largely at face value, even
though it was recorded in a different language by scribes with their own
political and religious agendas (Leonard Boyle, “Montaillou Revisited,” Path-
ways to Medieval Peasants, ed. J. A. Raftis, 1981, 119–40). Nevertheless, Mon-
taillou endures as a classic of medieval microhistory and as a monument to
the insights available through the application of techniques developed for
the study of mentalities.
The Polish historian Bronislaw Geremek made especially significant
contributions to our understanding of marginalized lives in late-medieval
Paris. His book His Ludzie marginesu w âsredniowiecznym Paryçzu XIV–XV wiek
(1971; The Margins of Society in Late-Medieval Paris, 1987) applied Le Roy La-
durie’s microhistorical approach to a single urban environment, a method
also employed with considerable success by early modern historians like Na-
talie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg.
Born in Warsaw, Geremek received his degree in history from the Uni-
versity of Warsaw in 1954. From 1956–1958 he engaged in graduate studies
at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He subsequently earned his
doctorate in medieval history from the Historical Institute of the Polish
Academy of Sciences in 1960. After serving as the Director of the Centre
for the Study of Polish Culture at the Sorbonne between 1960 and 1965,
geremek returned to Warsaw, where he held a number of posts at the His-
torical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences between 1965 and 1985.
In 1985 he resigned his posts to serve the Polish state before returning to the
Historical Institute and being awarded a full professorship in 1990. In
1992–3 he was visiting professor at the Collège de France.
Geremek “uses every possible source to recreate the milieu and the
social topography of the late-medieval Parisian underworld, including its
criminals, clerks and bohemians, beggars, and prostitutes,” suppplement-
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 890

ing late-14th-century judicial registers with “hospital accounts, chronicles,

and literary sources, such as François Villon’s poetry” to weave together
“a coherent picture of the low life of late-medieval Paris … The great
strength of the book is the author’s care in creating the environment in
which the marginals functioned” (Barbara Hanawalt, review of The Margins of
Society, Speculum 64 [1989]: 947–49). As an example of mentalité, Geremek’s
research was groundbreaking in its devotion to marginal collectives, spark-
ing a series of comparable studies such as Michael Mollat’s on the poor of
the Middle Ages, Miri Rubin’s on alms and hospitals of medieval Cam-
bridge, and Leah Otis’ on prostitutes of Languedoc.
If anyone may be said to anchor the fourth generation, it would be Jean-
Claude Schmitt (1946; Colmar, France), a French historian best known
for his researches into popular culture of the Middle Ages as well as for his
championing of historical anthropology. His approach takes some of its
inspiration from mentalité as developed in the work of Bloch and Le Goff.
The Alsatian Schmitt studied at the Sorbonne before pursuing graduate
studies in paleography at the Ecole nationale des Chartes in Paris. He re-
ceived his doctorate in history in 1973 and took a position for two years at the
L’Ecole pratique des hautes études before becoming an assistant at the École
des hautes études en sciences sociales from 1975 to 1983. In 1981 he was a
visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Schmitt
succeeded his mentor Le Goff as head of the EHESS in 1983. Since then
he has accepted visiting professorships at several leading universities of Ger-
many, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Schmitt’s researches into the cult of Sainte Guinefort, Le saint lévrier:
Guinefort (1979; The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, 1983) seek to uncover in
sources compiled by the noble elite the roots and motifs of peasant legend
as an expression of popular culture. To overcome the limitations of the
written sources, schmitt draws upon geography, art, sculpture, architec-
ture and landscape description. Schmitt’s monograph on medieval ghosts,
Les revenants: les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale (1994; Ghosts in
the Middle Ages, 1998) is even more wide-ranging, exploring notions of life
and death, of the body and the soul, of interiority and exteriority and of
kinship.
Schmitt’s most influential and also most controversial claim, advanced
in his books and in his collection of essays, Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps:
essais d’anthropologie médiévale (2001) is on behalf of what he calls “popular cul-
ture,” the solution that he and his mentor le goff proposed for the problem
of Christianization. “At the heart of Le Goff’s and Schmitt’s vision is an
argument for two distinct cultures, the one clerical and bookish, the other
891 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

popular, oral, and customary, the first accessible through traditional intel-
lectual and spiritual categories, the second mainly through cultural anthro-
pology and comparative religions” (John van Engen, “The Christian Middle
Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” AHR 91 [1986]: 519–52, here 529).
As Schmitt argues, “La ‘Religion’ … ne consiste pas en la conviction privée
d’un croyant: c’est un imaginaire social qui contribue, par la représentation
(mentale, rituelle, imagée) d’un ailleurs qu’on peut nommer le divin,
à ordonner et à légitimer les relations des homes entre eux” (Jean-Claude
Schmitt, “Une histoire religieuse du Moyen Âge est-elle possible?,” Le corps,
les rites, les rêves, le temps, 2001, 31–41, here 36). Schmitt prefers a model of
cultural conflict and by reading church documents “against themselves” à la
Marc Bloch , he demonstrates not only how written language constituted
“an extraordinarily powerful tool of control,” but he also wishes to unearth
through the use of sociological, anthropological and psychological models
the “rituals, myths, spatial and temporal structures” of popular culture
which the Christianity was trying to subdue (Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Re-
ligion, Folklore, and Society in the Medieval West,” Debating the Middle Ages:
Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. little and Barbara H. rosenwein, 1998,
376–87).

D. Contributions Outside of the Annales School

It is hard to overestimate the influence of the Dutch historian Johan Hui-
zinga (1872; Groningen, Netherlands – 1945; De Steeg, Netherlands) on
mentalité. Huizinga’s Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, 1919 (The Waning/Autumn of
the Middle Ages, 1924/1996) stands as one of the early classics of medieval men-
talité-studies (Walter Prevenier, “Johan Huizinga en de geschiedschrijving
der 20e eeuw: Dwarsligger of kind van zijn tijd?,” DVG 11 [1973]: 74–82).
Son of a physician and professor at the University of Groningen, Huizinga
studied Indian literature and culture at the University, earning his doctorate
with a thesis on Sanskrit drama. From 1897 to 1905 he taught high school in
Haarlem, where he spent his final two years as an unpaid lecturer in Indiol-
ogy at the University of Amsterdam and published on Sanskrit and Indian
culture. In 1905 he was called to the chair of Netherlands history at the Uni-
versity of Groningen, where he focused his research on the early history of
Haarlem. In 1914 he took the chair in general history at the University of
Leiden. He spent his remaining years in Leiden until the German occupation
closed the Unversity in 1940. In 1942 Huizinga resigned his position and
was subsequently arrested for insubordination and sent to a detention camp.
He was freed in 1942 and spent the final three years of his life in De Steeg near
Arnhem, where he died in 1945.
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 892

Huizinga’s unique approach to history had its roots in three areas: 1) He

approached medieval and early modern history as an Orientalist, having
come to Sanskrit through Arabic, thereby ensuring that his view of culture
and mentalité was cosmopolitan; 2) He was himself a skilled graphic artist,
which meant he approached the Middle Ages with aesthetic sensibility;
3) Through his long friendship with Andre Jolles, he was comfortable with
a proto-structuralist, interdisciplinary approach to cultural history. In his
brief reminisces, “My Path to History,” Dutch Civilisation in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury and Other Essays (1968), 244–76, he downplays his erudition, the depth of
his historical training, and his Latinity.
Huizinga’s masterpiece, the Herfsttij, was originally focused on the art
of the Van Eyks, but evolved into a study of “the entire (chiefly aristocratic
and Francophone) cultural sensibility of much of northwestern Europe”
(Edward Peters and Walter P. Simons, “The New Huizinga and the Old
Middle Ages,” Speculum 74 [1999]: 587–620, here 606). The reader is struck
by the preeminence of the sensual in Huizinga’s world. “Just as the contrast
between summer and winter was stronger then than in our present lives,
so was the difference between light and dark, quiet and noise. The modern
city hardly knows pure darkness or true silence anymore, not does it know
the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout” (Huizinga,
Autumn, 1996, 2). Huizinga’s principal aim was to evoke a culture caught
between the impossibilities of world denial and world reform. “There
remained only the alternative of dreaming – for those who could afford to
dream – in a world ruled by darkness and perceived by its inhabitants only
through an impossibly polarized sensorium and in sharply contrasting co-
lors” (Peters and Simons, “The New Huizinga” [1999]: 608). Huizinga’s use
of vivid anecdotes drawn from a multitude of sources brings behaviors and
attitudes to life which are incomprehensible to modern sensibilities. Huiz-
inga’s analysis of these incongruous actions underscores the otherness of
the later Middle Ages, not only in contrast to modernity but also to the more
rational and ordered interactions of the 12th century. Modern scholars of
mentalities would reject Huizinga’s presupposition that such generaliz-
ation was possible for the collective of all medieval Europeans. They would
also question his selective and sometimes undifferentiated use of biographi-
cal sources. Still, after Huizinga, it was impossible to think about the
Middle Ages or the Renaissance in the same way. The image of the Dark Ages
had been replaced by descriptions of processes of decline and change, focused
largely upon behaviors and attitudes.
The German historian Arno Borst’s (1925; Alzenau, Germany) attempt
to introduce the term Lebensformen (modes of life) into the historiographical
893 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

lexicon resulted in an unsuccessful but nonetheless interesting foray into

the study of mentalité (Lebensformen im Mittelalter, 1973). After serving in the
Wehrmacht during the war, Borst began his university studies in Göttin-
gen, earning his doctorate in 1951 for a thesis on Cathar dualism. Herbert
Grundmann called him to Münster as his Assistent, where his massive study
of attitudes towards language and meaning, Der Turmbau von Babel, won him
his Habilitation in 1961. After a year as a visiting professor in Münster, Borst
was called to a chair at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he
became disillusioned by the political turmoil of the 60’s and moved to the
University of Konstanz in 1968. In 1990 he retired to Emeritus status, con-
tinuing his association with the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the Con-
stance Work Group for Medieval History, and the foundation he had set
up in his own name for the support of the study of history (Arno Borst,
“My Life,” Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics, and Artists in the Middle Ages,
1992, 244–50; in German: Barbaren, Ketzer, und Artisten: Welten des Mittelalters,
1988; “Arno borst,” Der Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte
1951–2001: Die Mitglieder und ihr Werk: Eine bio-bibliographische Dokumentation,
vol. 2, ed. Jürgen petersohn, 2001, 45–54).
Lebensformen find definition in the “attempts of a collective to satisfy
essential needs of existence such as eating and drinking; furthermore they
consist of conventions and institutions of society such as codes of ethics or
family structures; finally they find expression in the behavior of the commu-
nity towards foreigners” (Lebensformen, 1973, 19). Crucial for borst is the
notion that Lebensformen are “not immutable ethical norms, but rather his-
torically determined rules of behavior” within communities which are con-
tinually changing. For each concept or category such as “space,” “rights,”
“death, “teachers,” or “Mohammedans,” Borst provides several brief anec-
dotes or excerpts drawn from a wide variety of documentary sources. Particu-
larly valuable is the open-ended nature of his analysis, in which he highlights
interesting modes of medieval alterity without insisting that on their univer-
sal applicability for the Middle Ages. But Borst’s approach also does not
link his insights to the totality of attitudes within particular communities,
which lessens its applicability in practical terms and runs the risk of his com-
mentaries lapsing into superficiality or irrelevance
With the notable exception of Duby’s five-volume anthology, Histoire des
femmes, 1991, which he co-edited with Michelle Perrot, both the analysis of
women’s collectives and notable contributions by feminist medievalists have
remained on the margins of mentalité-studies. The work of Caroline Walker
Bynum (1941; Atlanta, Georgia), an American historian whose pioneering
research in the 1970’s and 1980’s transformed our understanding of medi-
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 894

eval notions of gender, the body, and their spiritual significance, illustrates
how the methods of mentalité can find useful application in the study of
medieval attitudes towards gender. A product of the Atlanta public schools,
Bynum spent two years at Radcliffe College before receiving her B.A. from
the University of Michigan. She did her Masters and doctoral work at Har-
vard, earning her Ph.D. in 1969. Her first teaching positions were in the
history department at Harvard (1969–1973) and then in the Department of
Church History at the Harvard Divinity School (1973–1974). Bynum then
moved to the University of Washington in Seattle where she was awarded
tenure and a full professorship. Since 1988 she has been Full Professor of His-
tory at Columbia University, holding the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Chair
from 1990 to 1999. A winner of numerous teaching awards, Bynum is a fel-
low of the Medieval Academy of America. She has served as an essential link
between the disciplines of history, art history and women’s studies among
American medievalists.
In Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (1982);
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
(1987); and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body
in Medieval Religion (1991), Bynum “posits a fundamental gender dichotomy
in cultural forms which produces in women a greater bodily sensibility, a
heightened awareness of the flesh, and a privileged attachment to the mean-
ing of food … This dichotomy could be transcended in Christian culture only
by that transcender of all polarities, Christ, who combines human and di-
vine, priestly man and nurturing woman.” (Miri Rubin, “Medieval Bodies,
Why Now and How?” The Work of Jacques Le Goff, ed. Miri Rubin, 1997,
209–219, here 212). Holy Feast and Holy Fast, to cite just one example, “was
in fact an argument against isolating a single aspect of religious practice such
as food abstention both from other food practices (such as the Eucharist, food
multiplication miracles, food distribution, etc.) and from other forms of
denial and celebration (such as extreme asceticism or mystical ecstasy)” (Ca-
rolyn Walker Bynum, “My Life and Works,” Women Medievalists and the Acad-
emy, ed. Jane Chance, 2005, 995–1006, here 997).
The value of Bynum’s research for feminist approaches to mentalité lies
in her productive interaction with the work of Victor Turner in sociology
as well as with traditional art-historical approaches to gender, sexuality, and
the body. She has shown how descriptions and visions of mystical inter-
actions with the Divine were not necessarily gendered, how women’s asceti-
cism could be linked to an innovative women’s spirituality of imitatio, and
how women’s understanding of their own bodies did not necessarily con-
form to modern notions of gender and sexuality. The response of Bynum’s
895 Mentalities in Medieval Studies

feminist-medievalist critics, who argued for more emphasis on feminist

critical sensibility for the analysis of medieval ascetic practices like fasting
and self-mortification, has generated a lively debate as well as productive
studies on the meaning of the body related to mentalité.
Although scholars of mentalities always have drawn extensively from re-
search in sociology, economics, and geography, and more recently from the
history of architecture and archeology, there has been less productive inter-
action with art historians. (Notable exceptions are Huizinga’s Herfsttij der
Middeleeuwen, 1921, and Duby’s Les temps des cathedrals, 1976.) The approach
of Jeffrey Hamburger (1957; London, UK), an American art historian, to
medieval religious life exemplifies a particularly promising path in religious
and cultural history related to mentalité. Hamburger attended the Hopkins
Grammar School in New Haven before spending his undergraduate years at
Yale. He did his Masters and doctoral work in Art History at Yale. His prize-
winning dissertation on the Rothschild Canticles appeared in the Yale Uni-
versity Press and won the John Nicholas Brown Prize for an outstanding first
book from the Medieval Academy of America. Hamburger first taught
at Oberlin College from 1986 to 1997 before moving to the University of To-
ronto for two years, where he became a full professor. Since 2000 he has
taught in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard.
In his book Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent, 1997,
Hamburger attempts to reconstruct the visual repertoire of the Dominican
nuns of Walburga in all of its aspects. For Hamburger’s nuns, images as-
sumed their traditional functions, namely as illuminations, to depict signifi-
cant moments in salvation history and in the classical Gregorian sense as
signa that “spur the memory and the affections of those unable to rely on
words alone.” Small drawings, sculptures and dolls served the nuns as aids to
devotion, as commentaries on devotion, and as spurs to memory and medi-
tation, but they also assumed the function of keepsakes, amulets, and talis-
mans. Hamburger’s book is not only interdisciplinary in its merging of
historical, art historical and literary historical analysis; it also focuses upon
a social collective at the turn of the 15th century in order to map some of the
features of its spiritual sensibility. In 1999 Nuns as Artists won the Jacques
Barzun Prize in Cultural History from the American Philosophical Society as
well as the Otto Gründler Prize from the International Congress on Medieval
Studies. Hamburger’s monumental study of medieval religious icono-
graphy, The Visual and the Visionary. Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval
German (1998) makes an enduring contribution to the interaction of text and
image in fashioning spiritual vocabulary and attitudes in women’s religious
collectives of the later Middle Ages.
Mentalities in Medieval Studies 896

E. The Future of Studies in Mentalities

Fundamental tenets of mentalité such as interdisciplinarity, the integrative
analysis of documents with other artifacts, the focus on collective conscious-
ness, especially outside elite circles, and the self-conscious exercise of recon-
struction against the literal sense of the text have won widespread acceptance
both in medieval and early modern studies. The proliferation of such
methods also has served to highlight their limitations: 1) an over-emphasis
on otherness at the expense of long-term continuity; 2) a tendency to over-
generalize about collective attitudes; 3) an overly simplistic equivocation
of documentary assertions with collective consciousness; and 4) a failure to
develop underlying theoretical constructs and a consistent methodology
(Leonard Boyle, “Montaillou Revisited,” Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed.
J. A. Raftis, 1981, 119–40) and John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle
Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” AHR 91 [1986]: 519–52). In recent
decades Mentalité has evolved into more of a method than a movement, hav-
ing been absorbed largely into historical anthropology for the purpose of
studying popular culture (Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Religion, Folklore, and
Society in the Medieval West,” Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed.
Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, 1998, 376–87). Nonetheless,
the methods of mentalité remain essential tools for medievalists interested in
the archaeology of medieval attitudes.

Select Bibliography
Georges Duby, “L’histoire des mentalités,” L’histoire et ses méthodes: Recherche, conser-
vation et critique des têmoignages, ed. Charles Samaran (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 937–66;
Philipp Ariès, “L’histoire des mentalités,” La nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff,
Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1978), 402–23;
Jacques Le Goff, “Mentalities: a History of Ambiguities,” Constructing the Past: Essays
in Hstorical Methodology, ed. Jacques Le Goff and P. Nora (Cambridge and Paris: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985), 166–80; František Graus, Mentalitäten im Mittelalter:
methodische und inhaltliche Probleme (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1987); Mentalitäten:
Geschichte zur historischen Rekonstruktion geistiger Prozesse, ed. Ulrich Raulff and André
Bruguière (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1989); Aaron Gurevich, Historical Anthropology of the
Middle Ages (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992); Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte: Haupt-
themen in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher, 2nd ed. (1993; Stuttgart: A. Krö-
ner, 2008); Patrick H Hutton,“History of Mentalities,” Encyclopedia of Historians and
Historical Witing, ed. Kelly Boyd (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), 800–02.

David F. Tinsley
897 Metrology

Metrology

A. General Outline
General Definition. Metrology is the study of measurement. Its historical
branch concerns itself with norms and conditions, the objects and methods
of measurement, the conversion of old measures into the metric system, and
measuring systems themselves, especially in the pre-metric period. There is
no independent ‘medieval’ branch of metrology; methodologically, research
into the metrology of the Middle Ages is often grouped with research into the
early modern period, and even up to the introduction of the metric system in
the 19th century, despite significant differences of source material, instru-
ments available and material historical factors.

Objects of Study / Thematic Fields. The objects of study for medieval me-
trologists are the norms and procedures of measurement, as well as the men-
tal systems of order and social practices connected with them. These measure-
ments were used for raw materials, trade goods, and taxable property
(lengths, volumes, weights, amounts). Land surveying and town planning
also belong here, as well as measurement of money-weights, and time. Medi-
eval scholars of the liberal arts working within musica developed their own
theory of measurement. The linguistic expression of the measurement forms
constitutes a separate sub-area of research. The medical measurement of the
human body inspired by the medieval principle of ordo, and the religiously
motivated measurement of acts of piety and fruits of religion, however, con-
stitute a marginal area. Like the ‘measurement’ of literary and musical
monuments, they are essentially characterized by an interpretative scheme
based on number symbolism and number-based composition, and should be
mainly treated from this perspective.

B. Central Research Goals

The Conversion of Medieval Measurements to Metric: A central aspect of
medieval metrology is the conversion of medieval units to metric, with the
aim of facilitating reading of the sources. In this respect, metrology is an aux-
iliary discipline of economic history. Overviews of the medieval and early
modern trading weights and measures in England, France and Italy can be
found in the work of Ronald Edward Zupko (England: A Dictionary of English
Weights and Measures: From Anglo-Saxon Times to the Nineteenth Century, 1968;
British Weights and Measures: A History from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century,
1977; A Dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Isles: The Middle Ages to the
Metrology 898

Twentieth Century, 1985; France: French Weights and Measures before the Revol-
ution: A Dictionary of Provincial and Local Units, 1978; Italy: Italian Weights and
Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, 1981). Zupko explains
each unit of measurement listed with a short history of their developments,
their metric equivalent, a short account of sources and explanation of termi-
nology. Because of the highly summary, concise character, the data must
be checked in individual cases. For Germany, see the works of Harald Witt-
höft (passim), who also always gives metric equivalents. Ulrich Rebstock,
“Weights and Measures in Islam,” Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technol-
ogy and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, 1997, vol. II, 2255–67, provides
information also about medieval traditions in the Islamic world. Reference
works on “old” weights and measures do not, as a rule, discuss medieval
usage, or do so in such general terms that extreme caution must be observed
in using the information they contain.

Reconstruction of Medieval Systems of Measurement: For German

speaking Europe, Harald Witthöft’s monograph Umrisse einer historischen
Metrologie zum Nutzen der wirtschafts- und sozialgeschichtlichen Forschung: Maß und
Gewicht in Stadt und Land Lüneburg, im Hanseraum und im Kurfürstentum/König-
reich Hannover vom 13. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, 2 vols., 1979, is definitive. The
author combines the reconstruction of old trading weights and measures in
the metric system with the development of an integrated theoretical struc-
ture. The positivist conversion of individual instances is accompanied by a
depiction of the intrinsic logic and coherence of north-east European system
of weights and measures. The author sees its basis as lying in the Carolingian
system of money-weight; cf. Harald Witthöft, Münzfuß, Kleingewichte,
ponus caroli und die Grundlegung des nordeuropäischen Mass- und Gewichtswesens in
fränkischer Zeit, 1984. The systematic logic of the historical system of measures
is also emphasized in the introductory volume Introduction à la métrologie his-
torique, ed. Bernard Garnier, Jean-Claude Hocquet, Denis Woronoff,
1989. In this, it is demonstrated by careful analysis that, in French speaking
areas, there were always three ensembles of measures competing in the
pre-metric age. First, the ‘working measures’ found in daily life; second the
measures connected with specific techniques or situations of use; thirdly the
official measure based on the pied du Roi, and the livre poids de marc etc. This is
placed within a comparative framework in Jean-Claude Hocquet, Anciens
systèmes de poids et mesures en Occident, 1992.

Social Historical and Integration of Measuring Customs into Daily

Life: A social historical and ethnographic perspective is offered by Witold
899 Metrology

Kula, Les mesures et les hommes, trans Joanna Ritt, rev. K. Pomian and
J. Revel, 1984, on Polish and French measurements in the 16th and 17th cen-
tury, which is methodologically fundamental for the Middle Ages also.
He considers the social construction of measures, their situational func-
tionality, their objective and symbolic representations as well as the process
of measurement, almost without any interest in metrical conversions. The
aim is the description of measures between variability and stability. With its
concern with how weights and measures were integrated into everyday life,
the study corresponds to the historical-semantic interest in the pre-metric
measurement terms of Karl Menninger, Zahlwort und Ziffer: Eine Kultur-
geschichte der Zahl, 1934 (however, reference has been chiefly made to the sec-
ond, rev. and extended ed. of 1958, rpt. ed. 1979). Research into numerical
words and measurement terminology was last summarized and reviewed by
Georg Schuppener, Die Dinge fassbar machen: Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der
Maßbegriffe im Deutschen, 2002. The study only partly covers the Middle Ages,
and also has no claim to study the sources critically.

Material Remains: Medieval measures only survive in small numbers, and

are often difficult to date and contextualize. Their study has not produced
any coherent scholarly discussion. Most finds and analyses are published
disconnectedly in the relevant journals and series. Especially relevant is a
monograph (summarizing a series of articles which proceeded it) on stone
capicity measures in the French tradition (Germain Darrou, Enquête sur les
mesures de capacité en pierre, 2005) as well as the stock-taking by Harald Witt-
höft, “Das Erfassen der gegenständlichen Überlieferung zur historischen
Metrologie im Gebiet des Deutschen Reiches bis 1871: Ein Forschungsvor-
haben gefördert durch die Stiftung Volkswagenwerk 1980–1985,” Die histo-
rische Metrologie in den Wissenschaften: Philosophie – Architektur und Baugeschichte –
Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften – Geschichte des Münz-,
Maß- und Gewichtswesens, ed. Harald Witthöft, Ivo Schneider, and Albert
Zimmermann 1986, 285–337.

History of Quantification: In contrast to the every-day, practical aspect of

weights and measures, a fifth research interest centers on showing the begin-
nings of modern scholarship. Studies in this field are devoted, above all,
to the development of learned study of measurement. The thesis that the
perception of and emphasis placed on qualitative differences in European
society was replaced by a prioritizing of the formulation of quantitative dif-
ferences in the late Middle Ages is represented by Alfred Crosby, The Measure
of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600, 1997. A source-based
Metrology 900

analysis of musicological writings of the 14th century with a demonstration

of (a) a speculative theory of measures which preceded empirical measure-
ments and (b) the function of music as an epistemological model and be
found in Ulrich Taschow, Nicole Oresme und der Frühling der Moderne: Die Ur-
sprünge unserer modernen quantitativ-metrischen Weltaneignungsstrategien und neu-
zeitlichen Bewusstseins- und Wissenschaftskultur, 2 vols., 2003. Joel Kaye, Economy
and Nature in the Fourteenth Century. Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of
Scientific Thought, 1998 provides a thorough analysis of the medial and metro-
logical function of money in the epistemological context of the 14th century.

Statistically and Digitally-Supported Surveys of the Evidence: Finally,

and bordering on scientific metrology, there is interest in the statistical-
metrological analysis of historic sources. The first volume of the journal His-
toire & mesure (1986ff.) played a foundational role here, especially the opening
article by Jean-Philippe Genet, “Histoire, Informatique, Mesure,” Histoire
& mesure 1 (1986): 7–18, as did the relevant chapter in Alain Guerrau,
À l’avenir d’un passeée incertain: Quelle histoire du moyen âge au XXIe siècle?, 2001,
163–90. Archeometric approaches also belong in this field, cf. Albert Hesse,
“Introduction à l’archéométrie,” Historie et mesure 9 (1994): 209–12. The work
is chiefly applied in the field of the history of architecture, cf. for example
Wolfgang Wiemer, Baugeometrie und Massordnung der Abteikirche Ebrach: Ergeb-
nisse einer Computeranalyse – zugleich Einführung in die Methodik, 1995.

C. Terminological Definition
The colloquial expression ‘measure’ includes – though the distinction is
frequently ignored, either conceptually or explicitly – on the one hand
‘(measurable) quantity’ (‘attribute of a phenomenon, a body or substance,
which may be distinguished qualitatively and determined quantitatively’)
as well as the ‘unit’ (‘particular quantity, defined and adopted by convention,
with which other quantities of the same kind are compared in order to ex-
press their magnitudes relative to that quantity’). The ‘measurement’ is the
‘set of operations having the object of determining a value of a quantity’.
These definitions are taken from the International Vocabulary of Basic and Gen-
eral Terms in Metrology, ed. International Organisation for Standardization,
1984, 4th ed. (English/French); trans. of 2nd ed. of 1993: Internationales Wörter-
buch der Metrologie, ed. Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V., 1994, rpt. 2001
(German/English), a normative publication for scientific-technical usage.
The terms and methodology of modern metrology are ultimately derived
from Hermann von Helmholtz, “Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheore-
tisch betrachtet,” Philosophische Aufsätze, Eduard Zeller zu seinem fünfzigjährigen
901 Metrology

Doctor-Jubiläum gewidmet, 1887, 17–52 (rpt. in Hermann von Helmholtz,

Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie, ed. Moritz Schlick, Paul Hertz, 1921,
99–129, rpt. ed. Ecke Bonk 1998). The instrumental and conceptual differ-
ences of historical measurement have been made only partly the object of
theoretical consideration. Generally, the attempt is made to reconstruct and
reproduce the historical conceptions found in the sources (though normally
neither coherently nor conceptually ordered). This applies particularly to the
work of Harald Witthöft (passim), who historicized the term aequalitas,
connected by Charlemagne with the formation of a measurement system,
and uses it as a key term. Ludolf Kuchenbuch went one stage further back
and, in a series of studies investigated the conceptual achievements of the
early seigneurial administration, which underlie all system formation (most
recently “Ratio vel numerus: Numerische und rechnerische Aspekte der
seigneurialen Güter- und Einkünfteverwaltung im 9. Jahrhundert,” Status
und Poetik der Zahl: Ordnungsangebote, Gebrauchsformen und Erfahrungsmodali-
täten des ‘numerus’ im Mittelalter, ed. Moritz Wedell, 2010, forthcoming). On
the terminological discussion, cf. further Jean-Philippe Massonie, “Intro-
duction à la théorie de la mesure,” Histoire et mesure 3 (1988): 7–18, and the
section on the history of measures in Moritz Wedell, Zeigen, zählen und
erzählen: Semantische und praxeologische Studien zum numerischen Wissen im Mittel-
alter, 2010, forthcoming. Franck Jedrzejewski, Histoire universelle de la
mesure, 2002, 9–43, developed an epistemological framework for measures
from a modern perspective and with the aim of producing a typology.

D. History of Scholarship, Schools of Thought, Approaches

D1. State of Scholarship

a. Literature Reviews
Three literature reviews on historical metrology (focused on Germany) have
been produced by Harald Witthöft. The first, “Sammelbericht – Literatur
zur historischen Metrologie 1945–1982,” VSWG 69 (1982): 515–41, is dee-
pened by an analysis which continues into the middle of the 19th century in
“Zur Entwicklung von Gegenstand und Methode der historischen Metrolo-
gie und zum Stand der Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Acta
Metrologiae Historicae: Travaux du 3e Congrès International de la Métrologie Histo-
rique (Linz 1983), ed. Gustav Otruba 1985, 5–38, and supplemented by the
study “Ökonomie, Währung und Zahl – Wirtschaftgeschichte und histo-
rische Metrologie: Ein Literatur- und Forschungsbericht 1980–2007,” Vier-
teljahrschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 95 (2008): 25–40. The last par-
Metrology 902

ticularly considers monographic research and essentially serves to classify

the author’s publication. From a French perspective comes a progress report
with historical background: Jean-Claude Hocquet, “La Métrologie, voie
nouvelle de la recherche historique,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscrip-
tions et Belles-Lettres, 1990, 59–76.

b. Beginnings – up to 1975
Reception of Antiquity in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Modern research
into the history of metrology begins with the writings which attempt, from a
medical standpoint, to reconstruct antique measures, cf. Georgius Agricola,
Schriften über Maße und Gewichte (Metrologie) [1550], trans. Georg Fraustadt
and Walter Weber (Georgius Agricola – Ausgewählte Werke 5), 1959;
Dominicus Massarius, De ponderibus et mensuris medicinibus libri tres, 1584,
with a discussion by Conradus Gesnerus, Mensurae apud veteres Graecos et
Latinos scriptores usitatae, liquidorum et aridorum, ita dispositae, ut quae wunt maio-
ris ponderis semper praecedant. The medical interest was supplemented by a his-
torical-theological concern (Heinrich Bünting, De monetis et mensuris Sacrae
Scripurae. Das ist/ Ein eigentümliche Ausrechnung und Beschreibung aller Müntz und
Masse in heiliger Schrift. Darin (…) alle Korn und Weinmasse der Hebreer/ Griechen
und Lateiner/ so viel deren im Alten und Newen Testament gedacht (…), 1583 (rpt.
1632) and shortly thereafter by a further-reaching interest in fiscal and econ-
omic history, cf. Rechenbergus Adamus, Historiae rei nummariae veteris scrip-
tores aliquot insigniores ad lectionem sacrarum et profanum scriptorum utiles, 1692,
with discussions by Philippus Labbe, Bibliotheca nummaria ex theologis, iuris
consultis, medicis ac philologis concinnata et in duas partes tributa: I. De antiquis
numismatibus, hebraeis, graecis, armenis, II. De monetis, ponderibus et mensuris,
as well as Johannes Caspar Eisenschmid, De ponderibus et mensuris veterum
Romanorum, Graecorum, Hebraeorum; (…) nec non de valore pecuniae veteris disquisi-
tio nova (…), 1708 (rpt. 1737), and Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville,
Traité des mesures itinéraires anciennes et modernes, Paris 1769 (cf. further the
bibliography compiled by Witthöft, 55–60). Occasionally a critical
methodology for the reconstruction of older measures appears (Matthew
Raper, “Enquiry into the Measure of the Roman Foot,” Philosophical Transac-
tions 51 (1759/60): 774–823).
Trade-Determined Conversion of Measures, 16th–19th Centuries.
Examination of the contemporary measures systems increase into the 18th
and 19th century. This is a result of the growth in trans-regional trade, and
the resulting necessity to convert local units. The merchant handbooks pro-
duced from the late Middle Ages on are a particularly useful source of in-
formation. Cf. John E. Dotson, Merchant Culture in Fourteenth Century Venice:
903 Metrology

The Zibaldone da Canal, 1994, and the data in Ars Mercatoria: Handbücher und
Traktate für den Gebrauch des Kaufmanns/ Manuels et traités à l’usage des marchands,
1470–1820. Eine analytische Bibliographie in 6 Bänden, ed. Jochen Hoock, Pierre
Jeannin, vols. 1–3, 1991, 1993, 2001 have so far appeared.
Conversion to the Metric System and New Interest in History. In the
19th century, the adoption of the metric system in continental Europe was the
occasion of an intensive preoccupation with the conversion of old measures
to new ones (on this cf. supplement 2 of Cahiers de métrologie: Mise en application
du système métrique, ed. Désiré Roncin, 1985, and Genèse et diffusion du système
métrique. Actes du Colloque: La naissance du système métrique. Musée national des tech-
niques (1989), ed. Bernard Garnier, Jean-Claude Hocquet, 1990). French
conversion tables are listed in the library catalogue of Bernard Garnier; on
German-speaking Europe see the bibliography by Witthöft, 105–19, for
Italy Tavole di Ragguaglio fra le nuove e le antiche misure e fra i nuovi e gli antichi pesi
della Repubblica Italiana pubblicate per ordine del Governo, 1803 (Northern Italy)
and Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia ossia misure, pesi e monete in uso
attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli, 1883. At the same time, classical
philology produced differently accented working methods and impressive
results, especially those of August Boeckh, Metrologische Untersuchungen über
Gewichte, Münzfüße und Maße des Alterthums in ihrem Zusammenhange, 1838 (rpt.
1978). Independently of this, Karl Lamprecht’s economic historical source
studies appeared towards the end of the century (Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben
im Mittelalter, 2 vols, 1886 (rpt. 1969), 3–16, 481–512). These were initially
influential within legal historiography, and were used in the debates on the
origins of German town constitutions between Gustav Schmoller and
Georg von Below, which became bitterly polemical (Georg von Below,
Der Ursprung der deutschen Stadtverfassung, 1889, Gustav Schmoller, Die Ver-
waltung des Maß- und Gewichtswesens im Mittelalter, 1893). Further sources, sup-
porting Schmollers were published by Georg Küntzel, Über die Verwal-
tung des Maß- und Gewichtswesens in Deutschland während des Mittelalters, 1894.
Trends up to the Beginning of the 20th Century. The interest of clas-
sical philology in fiscal history continued to influence the classification
of metrology within the sub-discipline of numismatics into the 20th century.
The trend corresponds to the displacement of research into historical
measures from the universities into the local history associations and their
publications. These were partly run by interested laypeople, and were peri-
odically disconnected from the methodological trends of the universities
(Schauinsland, Deutsche Gaue etc.). French scholarship of the 20th century
begins with the work of Paul Guilhiermoz on medieval weights and
measures in the French-speaking world (the last being “Remarques diverses
Metrology 904

sur les poids et mesures du Moyen Âge,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 80
[1919]: 5–100) and from the 1920s on has been chiefly concerned with the
agrarian measure inherited from antiquity, cf. for example Joseph Bour-
rilly, Mesures agraires en Provence, 1928; Henri Navel, Recherches sur les an-
ciennes mesures agraires normandes: Acres, vergées et perches, 1932; Marc Bloch,
“Le témoignage des anciennes mesures agraires,” Annales d’histoire économique
et sociale (1934): 280–82.
The Breadth of Research, 1930s-1970s. Influential work from the mid
twentieth century includes the summary of research into an aspect the his-
tory of surveying by David Hannerberg, Die älteren skandinavischen Acker-
maße: Ein Versuch zu einer zusammenfassenden Theorie, 1955, the studies of tech-
nology and artefact history by Fritz Schmidt, Geschichte der geodätischen
Instrumente und Verfahren im Altertum und Mittelalter, 1935; Armand Macha-
bey, La métrologie dans les musées de province et sa contribution à l’histoire des poids et
mesures en France depuis le XIIIe siècle, 1962, and Nils Sahlgren, Äldre svenska
spannmålsmått: en metrologisk studie, 1968, as well as the ground-breaking his-
tory of the scales by Bruno Kisch, Scales and Weights: A Historical Outline, 1965.
The tabulated, historical-typological survey by Hans-Joachim von Alberti,
Maß und Gewicht: Geschichtliche und tabellarische Darstellung von den Anfängen bis
zur Gegenwart, 1959 is much quoted, but very unsatisfactory for the purposes
of medievalists. Anne-Marie Dubler’s local historical work Masse und Ge-
wichte im Staat Luzern und in der alten Eidgenossenschaft, 1975, locates the terri-
torial distribution of weights in a systematic cartographic representation.
The state of Italian scholarship in the period is described by Alfredo Fer-
raro, Dizionario di metrologia generale, 1965, the Danish by Poul Rasmussen,
Mål og vaegt, 1967, and the Swedish by Sam Owen Jansson, Måttordbok: Sven-
ska måttstermer före metersystemet, 1950. For Southeastern Europe cf. Milan
Vlajinac, Rečnik naših starih mera u toku vekova (Dictionary of our old Measures
and Weights through the Centuries), 4 vols., 1961–1974, Zlatko Herkov, Naše
stare mjere i utezi (Our old Measures and Weights), 1973, Mere na tlu Srbije kroz ve-
kove (Measures on Serbian Soil through the Centuries), 1974. The Islamic tradition
is portrayed by Walther Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, umgerechnet ins
metrische System, 1955. These studies laid the foundations for the develop-
ment of historical metrology from the late seventies on.

c. 1975–1995
The trends of scholarship in the 1970s-90s emerge clearly from the represen-
tative journals and series. They cover, methodologically and thematically, a
very wide spectrum of approaches. Despite this fundamental heterogeneity,
a number of accents can be distinguished among the various programs.
905 Metrology

Proceedings of the Colloquia of the International Committee for

Historical Metrology (Acta Metrologiae Historicae). The beginnings of coor-
dinated communication of research can be found in the series of colloquia
held since 1975 by the International Committee for Historical Metrology
(CIMH), which reveal the stages of the institutionalization of the subject.
(Bibliographic details of the congress proceedings 1975–1992, not published
as a coherent series, can be found, with their tables of content, in the bibli-
ography of Heit/Petry (vol. 2). The colloquia represent the broad field of re-
search in central Europe. The contributions tend to concentrate on the sys-
tems of older weights and measures (in a local and comparative perspective,
including criticism of simple conversion of old measures to new ones), the
description of measuring objects and sources on weights and measures. The
first two volumes are characterized by a stronger presence of Eastern Euro-
pean authors. The papers for the fifth colloquium were dedicated to state ef-
forts to control weights and measures.
Proceedings of the Colloquia of the Centre national de la recherche
scientifique (C.N.R.S.) (Cahiers de métrologie). A second focus of research
was founded in 1981 by a colloquium of the Institut d’Histoire Moderne et
Contemporaine (I.H.M.C.) (Les anciens systèmes de mesures: projet d’enquête métro-
logique [Table ronde du 17 octobre 1981 Caen], ed. Centre national de la recherche
scientifique. Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 1982). The aims
of the loosely allied research group were formulated as: 1. the foundation of a
specialized library, 2. the publication of a comprehensive bibliography, 3. the
generation of a comprehensive atlas of weights and measures and a hand-
book of metrologie. The undertaking led, in 1983, to the foundation of the
Cahiers de métrologie, which are also edited by the I.H.M.C. of the C.N.R.S. and
aim to be a research guide for all researchers concerned with metrological
questions. The journal, which covers all epochs, remains thematically true to
the program detailed in the first volume: “La métrologie, c’est d’abord la re-
cherche de l’objet, de l’instrument, d’est ensuite la quête du document qui
permettra, surtout aux historiens, de calculer une équivalence, c’est infin,
par l’étude des systèmes, le passage à des catégories de pensée et d’action.”
(Bernard Garnier, “En Préambule,” Cahiers de métrologie 1 [1983]: 3).
The Journal Histoire & mesure. Building on the French tradition of his-
toire quantitative, the periodical Histoire & mesure has been published since
1986 (also edited by C.N.R.S.). As well as to the traditional historical metro-
logical research, it is dedicated to digital data-processing and to the newer
archeometric methods for the surveying of surviving artifacts. It aims, via
an integrated field of research, to inform and to begin a discussion about its
perspectives and problems (“Editorial,” Histoire & mesure 1 (1986): 5–6). In
Metrology 906

the course of time, the technological focus of the periodical has shifted to
the application of statistical methods in the subject of history. The journal’s
program entails the subdivision of every issue into (1) Outils et démarches,
(2) Histoire de la mesure, (3) Mesure de l’histoire. The contributions related to
the Middle Ages thus go beyond the depiction of grain, land and building
measures to cover subjects such as the history of coins and money, the statisti-
cal analysis of sources, as well as questions of lexicometrics, prosopography,
and population history questions. Its archeometric sections include history
of ceramics, settlement and nutrition. Tables of content, abstracts and some
full text articles can be found at http://histoiremesure.revues.org (last
accessed on Apr. 21, 2010).
The Series Ordo et Mensura is an addition to the field of general descrip-
tions of projects, finds and analysis. Methodologically speaking, it orients
itself towards the work of the general editors Dieter Ahrens und Rolf A. C.
Rottländer (programmatic: Rolf A. C. Rottländer, Antike Längenmaße:
Untersuchungen über ihre Zusammenhänge, 1979, updated in id., “Fortschritte
bei der Materialsammlung vormetrischer Längenmaße und deren Buchsta-
bencode,” Ordo et Mensura II: 2. Internationaler und interdisziplinärer Kongress für
Historische Metrologie (1991 Trier), ed. Dieter Ahrens, Rolf A. C. Rottländer,
1993, 85–107). This methodology gives positivistic-statistical techniques
precedence over historical or research-history derived contextualizations;
cf. for instance Albrecht Kottmann, “Das Differenzverfahren, ein sicherer
Weg zur Bestimmung von Längen und -gewichtseinheiten,” Ordo et Mensura
VII: 7. Internationaler Interdisziplinärer Kongress für Historische Metrologie (München
2001), ed. Florian Huber, Rolf A. C. Rottländer, 2002, 41–53, and Wolf-
gang Rieger, “Ein Verfahren zur Bestimmung von Maßvermutungen,”
ibid., 54–64. On methodological debates, see for example the controversy
between Rottländer and Witthöft in Ordo et Mensura III: 3. Internationaler
Interdisziplinärer Kongress für Historische Metrologie (1993 Trier), ed. Dieter
Ahrens, Rolf A. C. Rottländer, 1995, 24–35. The series has a particular
focus of interest on architectural measurement.
Other. As well as the journal Bulletin or the Society of Historical Metrology
(Japan, 1979–), which has no geographical or temporal limits, the collectors’
periodicals Maß und Gewicht: Zeitschrift für Metrologie (Germany, 1986–, focus-
ing on the 16th–19th century) as well as Equilibrium, the magazine of the Inter-
national Society of Scale Collectors (Great Britain) as well as Libra, ed. Maurice
Stevenson, London, 1962–, should be mentioned.
907 Metrology

D2. Schools of Thought

Both because of the heterogeneity of approach and the weak institutionaliz-
ation of research into Historical Metrology, one cannot speak of the formation
of schools of thought in the precise sense. Nevertheless a couple of positions
can be distinguished.

a. Trade Measures
Jean-Claude Hocquet. The work from the circle around Hocquets ana-
lyses the measures found in written sources or as material objects in terms of
their place in everyday, practical, institutional or political/ lordship history,
which are always developed and understood from their complex local situ-
ations. Hocquet himself is chiefly concerned with the development of sys-
tems of measures, especially as they were used to manage interregional trade
relations, particularly the salt trade. On those closest to his position, cf. the
work of Pierre Portet and in the wider context the publications of Cahiers de
métrologie, of which Hocquet has been a co-editor since 1988.
Harald Witthöft. Harald Witthöft’s work foregrounds the sys-
tematic aspect of measures, and is intended as a structural theory. The
aequalitas demanded by Charlemagne did not mean a metrical identity of
measures, but that they be readily and mutually convertible. In the medieval
tradition, all trading measures are transferable in that sense, and in particu-
lar can be related back to the weight of money. In Witthöft’s perspective
the measures system shows a stability, which reaches from antiquity to
the 18th century and covers the whole measures system of the north-east
European aerea. It is distinguished from French studies by a larger claim
to geographic and chronological generalization. Closest to this approach
are the source and object historical studies of Heinz Ziegler (collected in
Heinz Ziegler: Studien zum Umgang mit Zahl, Maß und Gewicht in Nordeuropa seit
dem Hohen Mittelalter, ed. Harald Witthöft, 1997) and Elisabeth Pfeiffer
(particularly the monograph, mostly without reference to sources or scholar-
ship, Die alten Längen- und Flächenmaße: ihr Ursprung, geometrische Darstellung
und arithmetische Werte, 2 vols., 1986). Witthöft’s theses have been accepted
in all areas of historical research, mostly without criticism. For an overview
of his diverse work, see the bibliography in ‘Vom rechten Maß der Dinge’: Beiträge
zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Harald Witthöft zum 65. Geburts-
tag, ed. Rainer S. Elkar et al., 2 vols., 1996, 773–804, and the notes in Harald
Witthöft, “Über Korn und Brot – Geld und Münze. Rechte Zahl und
aequalitas als gerechter Preis in Mittelalter und Neuzeit,” Vierteljahrschrift für
Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 93 (2006): 438–79.
Metrology 908

b. Architectural Surveying and Town Planning

Architectural Surveying. In the area of the history of the built environ-
ment, particularly sacred architecture, the older practice, which began with
idealized ground plans and interpreted them allegorically has retreated be-
hind an exact surveying and measuring of the building as it exists. There are
now varying positions with regard to the determination of measurements.
a) research which considers measures in the context of the immediate local
written sources: cf. the volume edited by Philippe Bernardi, Mesurer les bâti-
ments anciens, und the studies of Günther Binding; lastly id. and Susanne
Linscheid-Burdich, Planen und Bauen im frühen und hohen Mittelalter nach
den Schriftquellen bis 1250. Lateinisch und Deutsch, 2002, 101–56. b) the survey
method: this privileges advanced, non-historically oriented, computer aided
processes (Wolfgang Wiemer, Friedrich Balck, Werner Heinz) against the
emphasis given to manual, conceptually historicizing surveying techniques,
for instance in Alain Guerreau. c) Retrieval of the underlying historical
measures: within the framework of the publication series Ordo et mensura the
positivistic, chronologically generalizing branch of historical metrology as-
sociated with Ralf A.C. Rottländer has formed its own school.
Town Planning. The discussions around the surveying and measuring
of towns is largely dictated by discipline. The idea of a stringently planned
and rapidly populated core from which towns developed (as assumed in art
history, historical geography) opposes the thesis that towns developed their
structures in a long, complex process (assumed by urban history, increas-
ingly urban archeology). On the rivalry between the schools, cf. Matthias
Untermann, “Planstadt, Gründungsstadt, Parzelle: Archäologische For-
schung im Spannungsfeld von Urbanistik und Geschichte. Einführungende
Bemerkungen,” Die vermessene Stadt: Mittelalterliche Stadtplanung zwischen
Mythos und Befund, ed. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Archäologie des Mittelalters
und der Neuzeit, 2004, 9–16, and Martina Stercken, “Gebaute Ordnung:
Stadtvorstellungen und Planungen im Mittelalter,” Städteplanung – Planungs-
städte, ed. Bruno Fritzsche, Hans-Jörg Gilomen, and Martina Stercken,
2006, 15–37.

D3. Recent Research

a. Systems
Building on the monographic studies, the following publications have dis-
cussed the matter of the system underlying medieval weights and measures:
programmatically in Jean-Claude Hocquet, “Methodologie de l’histoire
des poids et mesures le commerce maritime entre Alexandrie et Venise dur-
909 Metrology

ant le haut Moyen Age,” Mercati e mercanti nell’Alto Medioevo: L’area euroasiatica
e l’area mediterranea, ed. Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1993,
847–83, and, summarizing older research, Harald Witthöft, “Maß und
Regio. Herrschaft, Wirtschaft und Kultur: Von aequalitas, Einheitlichkeit
und langer Dauer,” Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte 24 (2006): 49–75. Pierre
Portet reflects upon the genesis of the system in the Carolingian period in
“Remarques sur les systèmes métrologiques carolingiens,” Le moyen âge: Revue
d’histoire et de philologie 97 (1991): 5–24, as does Harald Witthöft in “Von
Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer legalen europäischen Metrologie in Mit-
telalter und Neuzeit,” Ordo et Mensura IV/V: Internationaler Interdisziplinärer
Kongress für Historische Metrologie: Ordo et mensura IV (1995 Schloß Hohentübingen),
Ordo et Mensura V (1997 München), 1998, 394–404. Local systems are analyzed
by Jean-Marie Yante, “Poids et mesures dans le pays de Luxembourg-Chiny
(XIIIe-XVIe siècles),” Cahiers de métrologie 11/12 (1994): 13–16, Pierre Portet,
“Le système métrologique de Paris au Moyen-Age,” ibid. 463–88; Markus A.
Denzel, “Münz- und Währungssysteme in der Levante nach Pegolottis
‘Practica della mercatura’,” Ordo et Mensura III: 3. Internationaler Interdisziplinä-
rer Kongress für Historische Metrologie (1993 Trier), 1995, 384–402, as well as John
E. Dotson, and Ulrich Rebstock, Rechnen im islamischen Orient, 1992,
112–29.

b. Objects of Study
Agrarian Surfaces. General methodological preconditions are formulated
by Bruno Andreolli, “Misurare la terra: metrologia altomedievale,” Uomo e
spazio nell’alto Medioevo, ed. Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2003,
151–91, and Gérard Chouquer, “Les formes des paysages médiévaux: dé-
claration d’ouverture de controverse,” Au-delà de l’écrit: Les hommes et leurs vécus
matériels au Moyen Âge à la lumière des sciences et des techniques – Nouvelles perspec-
tives (Actes du Colloque international de Marche-en-Famenne, 16–20 octobre 2002), ed.
René Noël, Isabelle Paquay and Jean-Pierre Sosson, 2003, 167–95. For a
case study, see Cédric Lavigne, Essai sur la planification agraire au Moyen Âge: les
paysages neufs de la Gascogne médiévale (XIIIe–XIVe siècles), 2002. Via the medieval
measuring out of the agrarian field divisions the author develops a method
which connects use of planimetric techniques based on air photography with
topographic maps and field allocation records of the 19th century, as well as
the differentiated study of medieval charters. More general regional studies
are offered by Kenneth P. Witney, “Kentish Land Measurements of the
Thirteenth Century,” Archaeologia Cantiana: Being Contributions to the History
and Archaeology of Kent 109 for 1991 (1992): 29–39, and Jean-Marie Martin,
“La mesure de la terre en Italie méridionale (VIIIe-XIIe siècles),” Histoire & me-
Metrology 910

sure 8 (1993): 285–93, as well as the monograph by Anna Dunin-Wasowicz,

Die Vermessung von Dorf und Flur in den Ländern der polnischen Krone vom 16. bis in
das 19. Jh.: Agrotechnik, Landmessbräuche und metrologische Traditionen, 2000,
whose methodology is based on Hannerberg. The arithmetic practice
of land surveying is reconstructed in Monique Zerner, René Lozi, and
Jean-André Cancellieri, “Quelques réflexions inspirées par un document
cadastral de la fin du XVe siècle: Pratique de l’arithmétique et mesure de la
terre,” Histoire & mesure 8 (1993): 295–312. The practical use of instruments
and the experts who wielded them are approached in the works of Aguiar
Aguilar, Maria Maravillas, “Las aplicaciones del quadrante de senos en
agrimensura através de un tratado árabe oriental del siglo XIV,” Ciencias de la
natureza en Al-Andalus: Textos y estudios IV, ed. Camilo Álvarez de Morales,
1996, 93–113, Manuel Riu Riu, “Reflexions sobre el destre, la cana de destre
i l’agrimensor Jaume de Sanctacília,” Mediaevalia 9 (1990): 191–201, id.,
“Problemas de metrología aplicados a la estructuración del suelo: medidas
lineales y de superficie,” Experimentació arqueològica sobre conreus medievals a
l’Esquerda, 1991–1994: Arqueologia experimental, aplicació a l’Agricultura medieval
mediterrànie, ed. Imma Ollich, 1998, 70–76, as well as Martínez Carrillo,
Maria de los Llanos, “Sobre las medidas agrarias en la Baja Edad Media:
los sogueadores,” Homenaje a la professora Carmen Orcástegui Gros (Arágon en
la Edad Media 14–15), ed. Facultad de Filosofi y Letras, Departamento de
Historia Medieval, Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas y Estudios Arabes e
Islámicos, 1999, 1005–13.
Food. Salt: The fundamental studies are those by Witthöft and
Hocquet, which were developed using the history of salt production and
the salt trade. Marija Zaninovi ć-Rumora analyzes a local Croatian system
in “Solne mjere otoka Paga od 14. do 16. stoljeća (“Salt measures on the
island of Pag from the 14th to 16th centuries”)”, Radovi Zavoda za povijesne zna-
nosti Hazu u Zadru 38, ed. Mate Sui ć, (1996), 97–102, as does Josip Kolan-
ovi ć, “Fibenski metrološki sustav u 15. stoljeću (“The Metrical System of
Fibenik in the 15th Century”)”, Arhivski vjesnik 37 for 1994 (1995): 189–207.
Grain: The origins of the corn measure and its connection to other measures
in the Rhineland is analyzed by Youri L. Bessmertny, “Combien pesait
la maldra de grain? Note sur les rendements du grain dans la Rhénanie
des XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” Histoire & Mesure 5 (1990): 213–20 and for the South
Italian area by Rita Compatangelo, “Unités de mesures agraires et cad-
astres romains: stabilité et variabilité des mesures en Italie méridionale,”
ibid., 221–57. By contrast, questions of morality are at the foreground of the
study by Miguel Ángel Barbero, “‘Blanca la harina, negras las conciencias’:
Acarreadores y fieles de peso en la Baja Edad Media hispánica,” Fundación.
911 Metrology

Fundación para la Historia de España (Argentina) 6 (2004): 207–18. Bread: Alain

Guerreau provides information on bread measures: “Mesures du blé et
du pain à Mâcon (xive-xviiie siècles),” Histoire & mesure 3 (1988): 163–219;
see also James Davis, “Baking for the Common Good: a Reassessment of the
assize of Bread in Medieval England,” Economic History Review 57 (2004):
465–502, and Miguel Ángel Barbero, “De engañifas, trapacerías y otras
transgresiones: Molinos en la Baja Edad Media hispánica,” Sociedad y Memoria
en la Edad Media: Estudios en homenaje de Nilda Guglielmi, ed. Ariel Guiance,
Pablo Ubierna, 2005, 61–70. Wine and beer: Orientation on medieval
wine measures in France and Catalonia can be found in Pierre Portet, “Les
mesures du vin en France aus XIIIe et XIVe siècles d’après les mémoriaux de
la Chambre des comptes de Paris,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 149 (1991):
435–46, and Gaspar Feliu i Montfort, “Les mesures del vi a Catalunya
abans de la reducció de 1585,” Jornados sobre la viticultura de la conca mediterrà-
nia, 1995, 617–25. Kerstin Schukowski and Katrinette Bodarwé examine
beer measures from the point of view of morality “‘Wenn ich je in diesen
Gefäßen falsches Maß gegeben habe, so soll dieses Haus verbrennen’: Von
Professionalität und Geschäftsmoral,” Stadt der Frauen: Szenarien aus spät-
mittelalterlicher Geschichte und zeitgenössischer Kunst, ed. Annette Kuhn and
Marianne Pitzen, 1994, 38–39, and V. T. van Vilsteren, “Niet meer dan
een stampe or twe …,” Zwols Historisch Tijdschrift 8 (1991): 58–62. On the prac-
tical-geometrical preconditions of the calculation of cubic capacity of vessels,
see the important studies by Menso Folkerts, most recently “Die Faßmes-
sung (Visierkunst) im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,” Visier-
und Rechenbücher der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Rainer Gebhardt, 2008, 1–36. Ad
Meskens, Germain Bonte, Jacques De Groote, Mieke De Jonghe, and
David A. King describe an unusual early document in “Wine-Gauging at
Damme: The Evidence of a Late Medieval Manuscript,” Histoire & mesure 14
(1999): 51–77.
Buildings. Research into medieval architectural measures is extraordi-
narily diverse and heterogeneous. The current state of debate is described
in a series of collected essays. The thematic issue Mesurer les bâtiments anciens
of the journal Histoire & mesure 16, issue 3/4 (2001) aims methodologically at
a synthesis of the reconstruction of surveying practices of the object and the
analysis of archival sources. The themes are the origins and use of local units
(buildings/material), the role of costing calculations in measurement prac-
tices, as well as a comprehensive theoretical consideration of the relationship
between measure, representation and social structures. The most recent
methodological relevant publications are Texte et archéologie monumentale.
Approches de l’architecture médiévale (Actes du colloque d’Avignon, 30 nov.-2 déc. 2005),
Metrology 912

ed. Philippe Bernardi et al., “L’atelier: données provençales sur la place

du travail au Moyen Âge,” Cadre de vie et manières d’habiter (XIIe–XVIe siècles),
ed. Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, Françoise Piponnier, and Jean-Michel
Poisson, 2006, 117–24. The thematic volume Ad Quadratum: The Practical Ap-
plication of Geometry in Medieval Architecture, ed. Nancy Wu, 2002, by contrast,
uses various source types (sketch plans and model drawings, surveys of
buildings, measures of buildings, and analysis of proportions), to focus on
the planning of medieval buildings. The reconstructions connect the precise
status of the genuine measurement with the respective state of knowledge of
practical-geometry and arithmetic, its case-by-case implementation in build-
ing practice, and the question of the role of the underlying medieval units
(cf. also Binding). An approach based on the aesthetics of measure, first
rejected by Konrad Hecht and again justifiably criticized by Alain Guer-
reau among others (Konrad Hecht, “Maß und Zahl in der gotischen Bau-
kunst,” Abhandlungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 21
(1969): 215–326; 32 (1970): 105–263; 33 (1971/72): 25–236; Alain Guer-
reau, “L’analyse des dimensions des édifices médiévaux. Notes de méthode
provisoires,” Paray-le-Monial, Brionnais-Charolais: Le renouveau des études romans.
IIe colloque scientifique international de Paray-le-Monial (2–3–4 octobre 1998), ed.
Nicolas Reveyron, 2000, 327–35) has recently been revived by Werner
Heinz, Musik in der Architektur: Von der Antike zum Mittelalter, 2005. On the
wider implications of this issue, also considered from the point of view of the
history of the discipline, cf. Adriano Peroni, “Ordo et mensura nell’architet-
tura altomedievale,” Uomo e spazio nell’alto Medioevo, ed. Centro Italiano di
Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2003, 1055–117.
Towns. Medieval town planning has recently been intensely discussed
from the standpoint of historical metrology. A connection between building
and town measures in the metrological-political framework of the Lombard
communes of the 12th century is reconstructed by Emanuele Lugli,
“A Mathematical Land: measurements in twelfth-century Modena and the
Po valley,” Status und Poetik der Zahl: Ordnungsangebote, Gebrauchsformen und
Erfahrungsmodalitäten des numerus im Mittelalter, ed. Moritz Wedell, forth-
coming. Archaeological, historical and town history research have formed
independent traditions in order to explain the shape of medieval towns, in
which measurement in the metrological sense played an implicit role. On the
state of research cf. Stercken. The generalizing, measurement practice
based approach of Klaus Humpert, Martin Schenk, Entdeckung der mittel-
alterlichen Stadtplanung, 2001, challenged the disciplines of archeology and
history. Though it is now basically disproved, it triggered a far reaching
metrological discussion. Cf. the volume of conference proceedings, Die ver-
913 Metrology

messene Stadt: Mittelalterliche Stadtplanung zwischen Mythos und Befund, ed. Deut-
sche Gesellschaft für Archäologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, 2004.
The Holy, Measures, and Number Symbolism. The transfers between
the metrological and the holy belongs to the margins of measuring. Corre-
sponding studies include Gustav Otruba, “Die Bedeutung ‘heiliger Län-
gen’ im Rahmen der Kulturgeschichte, insbesondere des österreichischen
Raumes,” Acta Metrologiae Historicae III: Das Wiegen und Messen und der Staat, ed.
Jean-Claude Hocquet, with Cornelius Neutsch and Karl Jürgen Roth,
1992, 203–22; Richard Hüttel, “Heilige Maße – Wegstrecken in Jerusalem
und anderswo,” Ordo et Mensura III: 3. Internationaler Interdisziplinärer Kongress
für Historische Metrologie (1993 Trier), 1995, 300–05, as well as Thomas Lentes:
“Die Vermessung des Christus-Körpers,” Glaube – Liebe – Hoffnung – Tod: Aus-
stellung der Kunsthalle Wien/Graphische Sammlung Albertina, ed. Christoph Geis-
mar-Brandi, Eleonora Louis, 1995, 144–47, and the study on the culture
of signs on the measurement of the side wound of Christ in various media
by Christina Lechtermann, “Maßnahmen – Die Wunde zwischen Schrift,
Bild und Zahl”, Vom Körper zur Schrift, ed. Maria Schnitter, Elisabeth
Vavra, and Horst Wenzel, 2007, 231–52. The normed measures found in
church buildings form a borderline area here, especially the question as to
how far the medieval stoups and baptismal fonts were cast and used as
measures (Franz German, “Ein romanischer Weihwasserkessel als zentrales
Weinmaß,” Rheinische Heimatpflege 15 (1978): 283–88; Reinhold Spichal,
Waren mittelalterliche Taufbecken auch verkörperte Raummaße?, 1999. In a meta-
phorical sense, the measuring and allocation of prayer and penance can also
be included in holy measures; cf. Arnold Angenendt, Thomas Braucks,
Rolf Busch, Thomas Lentes, and Hubertus Lutterbach, “Gezählte
Frömmigkeit,” FmSt 29 (1995): 1–71. A further marginal area is formed by
the measurement of the body; on this cf. Faith Wallis, “Counting all the
Bones: Measure, number and weight in early medieval texts about the body,”
Status und Poetik der Zahl. Ordnungsangebote, Gebrauchsformen und Erfahrungsmo-
dalitäten des numerus im Mittelalter, ed. Moritz Wedell, forthcoming. The
problematic area of the role of symbolic, numerically coded measurements in
works of art has not been systematically and seriously developed since the
seventies and the breakdown of the exaggerated interpretative approaches
applied up till then. The current state of art in this research field is repre-
sented in the Lexikon der mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen, ed. Heinz Meyer
and Rudolf Suntrup, 1987, while introductions are provided by Max
Wehrli, “Zahlenallegorese, Zahlenallegorie,” Literatur im deutschen Mittel-
alter: Eine poetologische Einführung, 1984 (2nd ed. 2006), 214–35; “Zahlensym-
bolik,” Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 4, 1972, 560–61; Laurenz Lüt-
Metrology 914

teken, “Zahlensymbolik,” Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol 9, 1998,

2127–36.
Other. Textile measures in France are analyzed by Simonne Abraham-
Thisse, “Les aunes des drapiers au Moyen Age,” Cahiers de métrologie 11/12
(1994): 385–99, and from the perspective of the history of work, Dominique
Cardon, “Arachné Ligotée: la fileuse du Moyen Age face au drapier,”
Médiévales: langue, textes, histoire 30 (1996), 13–22. A brooch incorporating
measures is described by Niamh Whitfield, “Design and Units of Measure
on the Hunterston Brooch,” Northumbria’s Golden Age, ed. Jane Hawkes and
Susan Mills, 1999, 296–314. Objects containing measures from the context
of various churches in the Hessian region are studied by Peter Weyrauch,
“Metrologische Untersuchungen an kleinen Objekten,” Ordo et mensura VII:
7. Internationaler Interdisziplinärer Kongress für Historische Metrologie (München
2001), 2002, 238–54.

c. Measuring Objects
Apart from the interdisciplinary summaries by Darrou and Witthöft,
the description of medieval measuring objects lies above all in the field of
archaeology and is only gradually coming in within the field of interest of
history.

Scales and Weights. The biggest group of objects are fine scales and money
weights. The research is predominantly oriented to the documentation of
the materiality of the objects, reflecting the subject traditions, but also their
condition. A comprehensive summary, particularly concerned with surviv-
ing fine scales, is by Heiko Steuer, Waagen und Gewichte aus dem mittelalter-
lichen Schleswig: Funde des 11. bis 13. Jahrhunderts aus Europa als Quellen zur Han-
dels- und Währungsgeschichte, 1997. Supplementary funds from eastern Europe
are documented by Anna Bogumila Kowalska, “Wczesnośredniowieczne
wagi ze Szczecina” (“Frühmittelalterliche Waagen aus Szczecin”), Przeglad
Archaeologiczny 47 (1999): 141–53; Miroslav Marcinkowski, “Wagi i od-
warniki kupieckie ze Starego Miasta Elbl‰ga” (“Scales and Merchant Weights
From the Old Town of Elbing”), Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej 50
(2002): 44–52, and Ján Hunka, “Vzácny nález miskovitých závaží z Banskej
Bystrice” (“Bowl-Shaped Weights From Banská Bystrica”), Archaeologica
historica 25 (2000): 369–83. A Viking weight and its links to contemporary
Islamic norms is described by Monika Maleszka, “A Viking Age Weight
From Cleat, Westray, Orkney,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scottland
133 (2003): 283–91. A lead pound weight from Prague old town is described
by Zdeněk Dragoun, “Nález olověné Hřivny v Betězové ulici na Starém
915 Metrology

Městě pražském” (“The Find of a Lead Pound Weight in the Prague Old
Town”), Archaeologica historica 26 (2001): 359–64. A comprehensive private
collection with stone weights, which partly reaches into the medieval period
is documented by Gerhard Eiselmayr, “Spätmittelalterliche und neuzeit-
liche Steingewichtsstücke aus Österreich,” Acta Metrologiae Historicae II: Bericht
über den 4. Internationalen Kongress für Historische Metrologie veranstaltet vom Inter-
nationalen Komitee für Historische Metrologie (Linz 1986), ed. Harald Witthöft
with Cornelius Neutsch, 1989, 41–66.
Public Normed Measures. Darrou’s collection has not been supple-
mented by any over-all study on publicly displayed normed measures. Stone
measures from Istria are described in Sena Seculic, “Zur Erforschung
der mittelalterlichen Maße in Istrien,” Acta Metrologiae Historicae II: Bericht über
den 4. Internationalen Kongress für Historische Metrologie veranstaltet vom Inter-
nationalen Komitee für Historische Metrologie (Linz 1968), ed. Harald Witthöft
with Cornelius Neutsch, 1989, 227–38, and id., “‘Kamenica’ – Das Stein-
maß der Burg Medvedgrad bei Zagreb aus dem 13. Jh. Jahrhundert,” Acta
Metrologiae Historicae III: Das Wiegen und Messen und der Staat, ed. Jean-Claude
Hocquet, with Cornelius Neutsch and Karl Jürgen Roth, 1992, 258–67.
Research into the ensemble of measures at the foot of Freiburg Minster is col-
lected in Peter Kalchthaler, “‘Dieser Zuber achtmal aufgehäuft …’: Maße
und Marktinschriften am Fuß des Freiburger Münsterturms,” eichen – wiegen –
messen um den Freiburger Münstermarkt (Ausstellung vom 31. Januar bis 27. April
2003), ed. Augustinermuseum Freiburg, 2003, 45–48. The significance of the
surviving measuring objects in the implementation of civic norms is the sub-
ject of Sven Schütte, “Der archäologische Befund als Quelle der Verwirk-
lichung städtischer Normen,” Die Vielfalt der Dinge: Neue Wege zur Analyse mit-
telalterlicher Sachkultur (Internationaler Kongreß Krems an der Donau 4. bis 7. Oktober
1994), ed. Helmut Hundsbichler, Gerhard Jaritz, and Thomas Küh-
treiber, 1998, 359–73 and Lugli.

E. Medieval Terminology
There is no definitive monograph on medieval terminology in any language
(but cf. Menninger, Zupko, and Schuppener). In a general perspective,
isolated observations are offered in Jean Haudry, “Beobachtungen über die
indogermanische Benennung des Messens,” Ordo et mensura II: 2. Inter-
nationaler und interdisziplinärer Kongress für Historische Metrologie (1991 Trier),
1993, 15–21, and Werner Besch, “… sein Licht (nicht) unter den Scheffel
stellen,” Deutsche Sprache in Raum und Zeit: Festschrift für Peter Wiesinger zum
60. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Ernst, Franz Patocka, 1998, 463–77. On the role
of contact between languages, see Elke Grab-Kempf, “Reflexe von ar. habb
Metrology 916

(Koll.), habba (Nom.un) als Bezeichnungen für Maße, Gewichte, Tribute,

Bruchteile, sowie als Benennung des Kleinsten und Geringsten in den ibe-
roamerikanischen Sprachen,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 115 (1999):
464–71, and on usage in Hebrew or Welsh manuscripts cf. Magdalena Nom
de Déu and Joep Ramon, “Terminología metrológica en los manuscrittos
hebraicos medievales del Archivo General de Navarra,” Las abreviaturas en la
enseñanza medieval y la transmisión del saber (Rubrica: Paleographica et diplomatica
studia 4) 3 (1990), 273–80, and Pierre-Yves Lambert, “The Old-Welsh
Glosses on Weights and Measures,” Yr Hen laith: Studies in Early Welsh, 2003,
103–34.

F. Quantification of Medieval Remains

The digitally supported quantitative-statistical methods do not belong to
the field of historical metrology in the strict sense. Nevertheless they consti-
tute an emerging branch of the relevant research.

Digitally Supported Surveying of Buildings. A range of IT-based instru-

ments have been developed to serve the metrological documentation of older
buildings. Cf. Wiemers’s use of the instrument BMD and the introduction
to the Trigomat system by Friedrich Balck (on the method, Friedrich
Balck, “Computergestützte Vermessung und zeichnerische Dokumen-
tation,” Gebäudeinformationssysteme: Abschlußbericht des DVW-Arbeitskreises 6
(Ingenieurvermessung und FIG-Symposium vom 5. bis 7. April 1995 an der Technischen
Universität Braunschweig. Institut für Geodäsie und Photogrammetrie), ed. Bodo
Schrader, 1995, 175–84; on its use id., “Computergestützte Vermessung
der Domvorhalle in Goslar,” Ordo et Mensura IV/V: Internationaler Interdiszipli-
närer Kongress für Historische Metrologie: Ordo et mensura IV (1995 Schloß Hohen-
tübingen), Ordo et Mensura V (1997 München), ed. Dieter Ahrens and Rolf C.A.
Rottländer, 1998, 329–40). The topometric method, appropriated by
Dieter Dirksen and others from medical techniques, which is particularly
suitable for the exact measurement of surfaces (important in epigraphy)
cf. Dieter Dirksen, Y. Kozlov, Gert von Bally, “Cuneiform surface recon-
struction by optical profilometry,” Optical Technologies in the Humanities (Optics
Within Life Science IV), ed. Dieter Dirksen, Gert von Bally, 1997, 257–59
(on its application, see Maria Shinoto, Zoltán Böröcz, Carsten Thomas,
Dieter Dirksen, Joseph Maran, and Gert von Bally, “Topometrical
Measurements in Tiryns, Greece. Report on a Co-Operate Project Between
Physics and Archaeology,” Archaeological Informatics: Pushing the Envelope. CAA
2001 (Proceedings of the 29th conference, Gotland April 2001), ed. Göran Buren-
hult, Johan Arvidsson, 2002, 181–89).
917 Metrology

Digitally Supported Analysis of Ground Conditions, and Finds of

Ceramics and Bones. The area of archeometric studies also encompasses the
digitally supported methods for the assessment of excavation sites (François
Djindjian, “Nouvelles méthodes pour l’analyse spatiale des sites archéolo-
giques,” Histoire & mesure 5 (1990): 11–34) and the results of geophysical
studies (Michel Magny, “Les fluctuations des lacs jurassiens et subalpins au
Moyen Âge,” Histoire & mesure 8 [1993]: 5–17), as well as, most recently Cédric
Panissod, Michel Dabas, “La reconnaissance des sols historiques urbains
par méthodes géophysiques,” Histoire & mesure 14 [1999]: 221–48). The analy-
sis of ceramic finds has a special place here, cf. Hugo Blake, “Sizes and
measures of later medieval pottery in north central Italy,” Material Culture
in Medieval Europe, ed. Guy de Boe and Frans Verhaeghe, 1997, 221–50,
further Pascal Chareille, Philippe Husi, “Méthode d’analyse quantitative
et statistique de la céramique de Tours,” Histoire & mesure 11 (1996): 19–51,
and Philippe Husi, Richard Tomassone, and Pascal Chareille, “Céram-
ologie et chronologie: De l’analyse factorielle au modèle linéaire: les sites
d’habitats de la ville de Tours,” Histoire & mesure 15 (2000): 3–32. Also of rel-
evance is the nutritional history-based approach of Frédérique Audoin-
Rouzeau, “Compter et mesurer les os animaux: Pour une histoire de l’élev-
age et de l’alimentation en Europe de l’Antiquité aux Temps Modernes,” His-
toire & mesure 10 (1995): 277–312.
Statistical Source Analysis. The theory and methodology of the digit-
ally aided statistical text analysis also forms part of the statistical radicaliz-
ation of perspectives on historical metrology (programmatic: Alain Guer-
reau, “Pourquoi (et comment) l’historien doit-il compter les mots?,” Histoire
& mesure 4 (1989): 81–105), which has been particularly used in research
into the development of social structure, trade and climate (paradigmatic:
the contributions under the rubric Mesure de l’histoire in the journal Histoire &
mesure.)

G. Current Issues and Future Trends

Metrology is integrated into a broad interdisciplinary spectrum of research
interests. For that reason, historical metrological research is and will for the
near future continue to be formed by the various discipline-specific desider-
ata. Three trends may be observed across subject boundaries: first, a stronger
weight given to archeology and the interdisciplinary conversation about the
transferability of archaeological data and historical methods of questioning;
secondly a more precise analysis of the cultural techniques (instruments and
written practices) of measurement and their integration into the history of
rationalization; thirdly, a stronger emphasis on metrological perspectives in
Metrology 918

the commercialization of agrarian and industrial production. In the face of

the increasing density of historical-metrological research, the development
of new forms of chronotopographical synthesis and representation of the
existing scholarship may be expected. An adequate theoretical modeling of
medieval measurement practice has still not been developed, especially with
regard to the spatial and temporal movement of measures.

Select Bibliography
Bibliographies: The first comprehensive bibliography of Historical Metrology, Biblio-
graphia Metrologiae Historicae pro uso interno Instituti historici Academie scientiarum et artium
Slavorum meridionalium, ed. Miroslav Kurelac, Zlatko Herkov, 3 vols. 1971, 1973,
1975, includes both West and East European research, in particular the older metro-
logical literature from the 16th century onwards. Each volume is ordered alphabeti-
cally by author. The volumes of the general selected bibliography, Bibliographie zur
Historischen Metrologie (Wissenschaftliche Arbeitshilfen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters und
der Neuzeit 7 und 7,2), ed. Alfred Heit, Klaus Petry, 2 vols. 1992, 1995, are each
divided into a systematic and a geographic section. The geographically ordered
entries, in turn, are divided into German scholarhip and that of other European coun-
tires. At almost the same time, and as part of his multivolume metrological handbook,
the comprehensive bibliography compiled by Harald Witthöft appeared (Deutsche
Bibliographie zur historischen Metrologie: Das deutsche und deutschsprachige Schrifttum. Erwei-
tert um ausgewählte Arbeiten zur historischen Metrologie europäischer und außereuropäischer
Staaten, ed. Harald Witthöft, with Karl Jürgen Roth and Reinhold Schamberger,
1991). It aims at a complete account of German scholarship, as well as at including
further selected work from other European contexts. The basic structure divides gen-
eral metrology (I) from specific forms (II). The titles relating to specific territorial areas,
lordship or epochs are found in a geographical section sorted, as in Heit/Petry by
country, region and place (III). Further information on the French area can be found
in Olivier Guyotjeannin, “Métrologie française d’ancien régime: Guide bibliograp-
hique sommaire,” Gazette des archives 139 (1987): 233–347, as well as Bernard Garnier,
“La Bibliothèque de l’I.H.M.C,” Cahiers de métrologie 2 (1984): 87–111. A specialized
bibliography on the history of the terminology of measures is found in Georg Schup-
pener, Die Dinge fassbar machen, 2002, 471–506, and the bibliography of accompa-
niying Pierre Portets’ Bertrand-Boysset-Edition deals with the practical-geo-
metric and history of mathematics aspect of medieval metrology http://boysset.
ifrance.com/boysset/introduc.htm (last accessed on Apr. 21, 2010). Selected refer-
ences in the appendix to Jedrzejewski’s typological study guide to epistemological
frameworks (Franck Jedrzejewski, Histoire universelle de la mesure, 2002, 376–414).
The Chinese area is coverd by Ulrich Theobald, Hans Ulrich Vogel, with the assist-
ence of Zhang Lihong, Zhan Xuejun, and Alexei Volkov, Chinese, Japanese und West-
ern Research in Chinese Historical Metrology: A Classified Bibliography (1925–2002), 2004
[http://www.sino.uni-tuebingen.de/index.php?s=file_download&id=4; last accessed
on Apr. 21, 2010].

Literature: Hermann von Helmholtz, “Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheor-

etisch betrachtet,” Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie, ed. Moritz Schlick and Paul Hertz
919 Museums and Exhibitions

(Berlin: Springer, 1921), 99–129 (rpt. ed. Ecke Bonk, Vienna and New York: Springer,
1998); Alltag im Spätmittelalter, ed. Harry Kühnel (Graz and Vienna: Edition Kaleido-
skop, 1984), 29–37; Jean-Claude Hocquet, La métrologie historique: Que sais-je? 2972
(Paris: P.U.F., 1995), 15–40; Harald Witthöft, “Maße und Gewichte,” Reallexikon der
germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd ed., vol. 19 (2001), 398–418; Withold Kula, Les mesures
et les hommes, trans. Joanna Ritt, rev. K. Pomian et J. Revel (Paris: Edition MSH,
1984); Alfred Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Joel Kaye, Economy and Nature in the
Fourteenth Century. Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought, 1998;
Alain Guerreau, “L’analyse des dimensions des édifices médiévaux: Notes de mé-
thode provisoires,” Paray-le-Monial, Brionnais-Charolais: Le renouveau des études romans. IIe
colloque scientifique international de Paray-le-Monial (2–3–4 octobre 1998), ed. Nicolas Revey-
ron, Michel Rocher, and Marie-Térèse Engel (Paray-le-Monial: Amis de la Basil-
ique Romane, 2000), 327–35; Heiko Steuer, Waagen und Gewichte aus dem mittelalter-
lichen Schleswig: Funde des 11. bis 13. Jahrhunderts aus Europa als Quellen zur Handels- und
Währungsgeschichte: Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, supplement 10 (Cologne and
Bonn: Habelt, 1997).

Moritz Wedell

Museums and Exhibitions

A. Introduction
The traditional form of the modern museum begins in the 18th century.
A closer look at that model shows that the roots of the word, “museum,” and
the phenomenon of the museum can be traced to antiquity and ancient
Egypt. Geoffrey Lewis, in his History of Museums (2006), explains the etymol-
ogy of “museum” and traces the word’s development through the centuries:
“The word has classical origins. In its Greek form, mouseion, it meant ‘seat
of the Muses’ and designated a philosophical institution or a place of con-
templation. Use of the Latin derivation, museum, appears to have been re-
stricted in Roman times mainly to places of philosophical discussion” (Geof-
frey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, The History of Museums: Zur Geschichte des
Museums [2007], 9). Stepping forward to the Middle Ages, “The word mu-
seum was received in 15th-century Europe to describe the collection of
Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, but the term conveyed the concept of com-
prehensiveness rather than denoting a building. By the 17th century museum
was being used in Europe to describe collections of curiosity” (ibd. For
example, Ole Worms’ Collection in Copenhagen and John Tradescant’s
Collection in Lambeth/UK – now a London borough – were such institu-
Museums and Exhibitions 920

tions). In 1677, the collection in Lambeth became property of Elias Ash-

mole; it was transferred to the University of Oxford, and a special building,
called Ashmolean Museum, was constructed for it. “Use of the word museum
during the 19th and 20th century (still) denoted a building housing cultural
material to which the public had access” (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried
Fliedl, History of Museums/Geschichte des Museums [2007], 11). Researchers in
the humanities began to deal with the museum phenomenon in the 18th cen-
tury: “Along with the identification of a clear role for museums in society,
there gradually developed a body of theory the study of which is known as
museology” (Geoffrey Lewis, The History of Museums [2006], 2). The particu-
lar applications of that theory – conservation and display, borrowing from
other disciplines and techniques, the general requirement of the museum
and its public – is called museography. It was first used in Caspar Friedrich
Neickelius’s Museographie oder Anleitung zum rechten Begriff und nützlicher An-
legung der Museuorum oder Raritätenkammern (1727). The term museology was
first mentioned by Philipp Leopold Martin in Die Praxis der Naturgeschichte
(1869).
The collections and cabinets themselves varied considerably in their
approaches and concepts over the centuries. “[…] The collection of things
that might have religious, magical, economic, aesthetic or historical value or
that simply might be curiosities were undertaken worldwide by groups as
well as by individuals” (Geoffrey Lewis, The History of Museums, 2006, 3).

B. The Museum in the Middle Ages

There was often a close link between the church and ruling class in the Middle
Ages. “In Medieval Europe collections were mainly the prerogative of
princely houses and the church,” (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl,
The History of Museums [2007], 18). Sea travel between the Italian peninsula,
the Continent and England facilitated the movement of antiquities. “Henry
of Bois, Bishop of Winchester, is reported to have bought ancient statues
during a visit in Rome in 1151 […] Exotic material from other areas entering
Italian ports soon found its way into royal collections, while the Venetian
involvement in the Fourth Crusade early in the 13th century resulted in the
transfer of the famous bronze horses from Constantinople to the San Marco
Basilica in Venice” (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, ibid.). Similar
royal collections were also established elsewhere in Europe: “King Matthias I.
of Hungary maintained his paintings in Buda and kept Roman antiquities at
Szombathely Castle (West Hungary) during the 15th century. Maximilian I.
of Austria acquired a collection for his castle in Vienna” (Geoffrey Lewis, The
History of Museums [2006], 4), in addition to his numerous other cultural activ-
921 Museums and Exhibitions

ities as Emperor. Italian noble families maintained impressive collections, as

well. One of these is Cosimo de Medici’s collection in 15th-century Florence.
“The collection was developed by his descendents until it was bequeathed to
the state in 1743, to be accessible ‘to the people of Tuscany and all Nations’”
(Geoffrey Lewis, ibid.) It is important to note that collections moved out
from behind closed doors and into the public sphere. Yet, not all collections,
cabinets, and museums could be available to the public at the same time.
For example, there were still specialized personal natural history collections
(Luca Ghini at Padua, Conrad Gesner, Felix Platter [Basel, Switzerland] and
John Tradescant [London]), historical collections (Paolo Giovio, Como, Italy),
the archaeological collection of Venice (these collections remained behind
closed doors), and illuminated manuscripts gathered by Sir Robert Cotton
in England (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, The History of Museums
[2007], 20–21). Those collections normally were known as cabinets (Kabi-
nett, Kammer, Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, Rüstungskammer, Natu-
ralienkabinett) (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, ibid.). “For the less
specialized collector, works such as Museographia by Casper F. Neickelius
(1727), were generally available to aid in classification, care of a collection,
and the identification of potential sources from which collections might be
developed […]. Another product of the age was the learned society, many of
which were established to promote corporate discussion, experimentations,
and collecting” (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, ibid.). Better-known
societies date from the 17th century. For example, the Royal Society (London,
1660), Academy of Sciences (Paris, 1666), Society of Antiquaries (London,
1707).

C. The Modern Museum

The idea of the public exhibition was further developed in the late Middle
Ages: The Renaissance collections were mainly open for nobles. The collec-
tions “were symbols of social prestige and served as an important element
in the traditions of the nobility and the ruling families. … The new collec-
tors, concerned with enjoyment and study and the advancement of knowl-
edge …” (Geoffrey Lewis, The History of Museums [2006], 8) wanted to trans-
mit all this into the public domain. There were efforts in Italy in the 16th
century to show private collections to a public audience but the, “first corpor-
ate body to receive a private collection, erect a building to house it, and make
it publicly available was the University of Oxford. The gift was from Elias
Ashmole: containing much of the Tradescant collection … The resulting
building which eventually became known as the Ashmolean Museum
opened in 1683” (ibid.).
Museums and Exhibitions 922

The 18th century was the founding era of the great museums, such as
the British Museum in London in 1759, and the Louvre in Paris in 1793. The
British Museum was based on the collections of Sir Robert Cotton, Robert
Harley (first Earl of Oxford) and Sir Hans Sloane. These great museums
had three basic ideas: to improve the knowledge of a broader public, and to
mediate democratic ideas and national (mainly Diderot’s proposal) ideas.
Consequently these museums were for many years free of charge to enable
a large number of people to visit. Similar efforts can be observed all over Eu-
rope. Especially in Italy, above all Rome, the neoclassical architecture of mu-
seums (such as the Vatican) set the standard for all museums in European
countries for at least half a century.
The idea of national museums spread across the world. “In 1773 in the
United States the Charlton Library Society of South Carolina announced
its intention to form a museum … the Peale Museum was opened in 1786
in Philadelphia by painter Charles Wilson Peale” (Geoffrey Lewis and
Gottfried Fliedl, The History of Museums [2007]: 25). The Peale Museum dis-
played spheres of agriculture, herbal medicine and art. Some 50 years later
museums became intercultural. Asian and African collections became popu-
lar with the advent of colonialism. Some of these museums of art and culture
still exist, for example the Prado in Madrid, Spain, the Alte Pinakothek (art
collection of the dukes of Wittelsbach, designed by Leo von Klenze) in
Munich, Germany and Museumsinsel in Berlin, Germany.
The concept of national identity increased in the 19th century, influenc-
ing museums all over Europe. National and regional museums were founded
from France to Hungary and Austria (Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg 1811–1834).
The most important theme in these museums was the history of the nation
itself. “Increasing interest in antiquities (in connection with the national his-
tory) led to the excavation of local archaeological sites and had an impact
on museum development” (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, The His-
tory of Museums [2007], 34). New museum developments were influenced
by industry and science. In the 19th century, “museums were also viewed as a
vehicle for promoting industrial design and scientific and technical achieve-
ment. Such a promotion was the motivation behind the precursor of the
Victoria and Albert Museum,” in London (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried
Fliedl, ibid.). Museums in the United States were held similar interests in
history, society and art. “James Smithson, an Englishman … wishes to see
established in the US an institution ‘for the increase and diffusion of knowl-
edge among men.’ In 1846 the U.S. Congress accepted his bequest …” (Geof-
frey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, ibid.) and this Smithson’s institution ex-
hibits, “all objects of art and curious research … natural history, plants and
923 Museums and Exhibitions

geological and mineralogical specimens,” (Historical document: Smithso-

nian charta 1846, § 50, 1).
“It was during the second half of the 19th century that museums began
to proliferate in Europe; civic pride and the free education movement were
among the causes of the development. About 100 opened in Britain … while
50 were established in Germany” (Geoffrey Lewis, The History of Museums
[2006], 13). This boom also occurred in South America, Asia and Africa.
This data shows that the development of museums is always connected
with social and cultural developments, both national and international. This
development of museums in quantity and quality increased in the 20th cen-
tury and this development confirmed the relation between social and cultural
processes. The Russian Revolution in 1917 and the end of the central-Euro-
pean monarchies (Germany, Austria) after World War I (1919) substantially
influenced, or rather changed, cultural life. “In some countries new ap-
proaches were developed; in others museums continued to reflect their
diverse ancestry … (In Russia) Not only was much of the country’s artistic,
historic, and scientific heritage brought together in museums, but other
types of museums emerged as well. … In Germany a large number of re-
gional museums were established after World War I to promote the history
and important figures of the homeland, and they undoubtedly encouraged
the nationalistic tendencies that led to the Nazi era” (Geoffrey Lewis and
Gottfried fliedl, The History of Museums [2007], 39). “Encouragement”
might lend too much honor to the museums’ influence, however the mu-
seums surely provided a confirmation of national ideas. These relationships
show that museums also contain a political dimension. In the U.S. in the
early 20th century there was a great desire “to establish a coherent past –
a movement that was widely encouraged through private patronage. In the
industrialized world new types of museums appeared” (Geoffrey Lewis, The
History of Museums [2006], 16). These new museums presented information
about the recent past and everyday-life. Museums about everyday life were
not confined to the U.S. Open-air museums first were founded in Sweden and
in the Netherlands (Netherlands Openluchtmuseum, Arnheim in 1912), fol-
lowed by Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia (1926), and Cardiff (1947). These
tendencies increased after World War II and a third boom began in the 1970s.
After 1945, “Museums became an educational facility, a source of leisure
activity, and a medium of communication. Their strength lay in the fact that
they were repositories of the ‘real thing,’ which – unlike the surrounding
world of plastics, reproduced images, and a deteriorating natural and human
environment – could inspire and invoke a sense of wonder, reality, stability,
and even nostalgia. … in exhibition work, educators developed facilities for
Museums and Exhibitions 924

both students and the public, … There was a perceptible shift from serving
the scholar, as befits an institution holding much of the primacy evidence
of the material world, to providing for a lay public as well,” (Geoffrey Lewis
and Gottfried Fliedl, The History of Museums [2007], 41–42). The result was
an increasing number of visitors. Museums and their teams consequently
could generate, “a better understanding among the inhabitants of the rea-
sons for cultural, social and environmental change,” and so, “Contemporary
museum development has been much influenced by changing policies
in public sector …” (ibid.) and vice versa. This new kind of museum, with its
interactive museum-teaching, influenced consciousness and knowledge of
the inhabitants and was advantageous for all.

D. The Middle Ages in the Modern Museum

The Middle Ages play an important role in the latest developments of mu-
seums, mainly in Europe and in the USA. There were an increased number
of Medieval exhibitions in the 1970s, right when museums generally experi-
enced a great boom. In her article, “Das Mittelalter – ein ideales Ausstel-
lungsobjekt?” (Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski,
1986, 346–53) Elisabeth Werner discusses two of the first great exhibitions
on the Middle Ages, ‘1000 Jahre Babenberger in Österreich’ (1976 in Stift
Lilienfeld, Austria), and ‘Die Kuenringer: Das Werden des Landes Nieder-
österreich’ (1981 in Stift Zwettl, Austria). Before these two exhibitions there
was a major exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1977 that focused on the
Hohenstaufen dynasty (see in the list below), ‘Die Zeit der Staufer’.
In the following decades, many museums and exhibitions treating Medi-
eval topics opened their doors. These exhibits can be divided into historical
and literary exhibitions. In some exhibitions and museums, the Middle Ages
are only part of the whole project, and sometimes only one aspect of the
Middle Ages is treated. The role and tasks of the scientists and scholars who
are involved in creating the exhibitions can be different. The presentations
also can be classified according to architectural aspects if they were organized
in a special museum building or in an original historical building. Architec-
ture can be considered an additional component regarding the general devel-
opment of museums. According to Geoffrey Lewis, “Many buildings of his-
torical significance have been adapted to house museums,” especially since
the 1990s (Geoffrey Lewis and Gottfried Fliedl, The History of Museums
[2007], 44).
For this article it is not possible to provide even an approximately com-
plete list of all museums and exhibitions dealing with the Middle Ages. In-
stead the reader will find a short list of types of Medieval exhibitions and
925 Museums and Exhibitions

some examples of these from recent years, including also a listing of the di-
verse tasks of the scholars and some examples of catalogues and literature.
In general, an exhibit dealing with the Middle Ages is included in vir-
tually all European and American (cultural) history museums, and in some
national and regional art museums, for example the Metropolitan Museum
in New York, the Pinakothek in Munich, the Historical Museum in Vienna,
and the ‘Salzburg Museum’ in Austria. Scholars of art history, history, and
education are involved in these projects to design and mediate the exhibi-
tions. A special method for presenting exhibits about the Middle Ages can
be found in historical or reconstructed castles and monasteries. According to
Lewis, the first museum in a castle was maintained by Princess Izabella
Czartoryska near Warsaw, Poland, in Pulawy Castle-Garden in the early
19th century. In general, a medieval castle itself is a museum and includes
information that presents the history of the castle and its environment
(e. g., the Marienburg/Malbork, in Poland, where the Teutonic Order had its
residence for three centuries). Most of the monasteries are still active, but in
spite of this there are also special kinds of exhibitions in monasteries. For
example, a monastery’s library and history can be presented in an exhibition
area. Two outstanding examples are Castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, Ger-
many, and The Cloisters in New York. The castle of the Bavarian King Lud-
wig II, however, is not medieval, and only includes numerous 19th century
frescoes depicting Medieval myths such as the Nibelungen, Tristan, and Parsifal
(they were painted in connection with and inspired by Richard Wagner’s
operas, therefore the spelling is ‘Parsifal’ instead of the Middle High German
Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s text). Historians and scholars of Ger-
man literature have dealt with these topics in various articles (see: Hans
Dieter Mück, “Das historistische Mittelalter Ludwig II: Die Entwicklung
Neuschwansteins von der Burg Lohengrins und Tannhäusers zum Grals-
tempel Parzivals,” Die Rezeption des Mittelalters in Literatur, bildender Kunst und
Musik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Jürgen Kühnel and Ulrich Müller,
1982, 195–246; Ulrich Müller, “Hohenstaufen,” Mittelalter Mythen, ed.
Werner Wunderlich and Ulrich Müller, 2008, 317–32; Siegrid
Schmidt, “Der Mythos in den Mauern – Zum Beispiel Burg Neuschwan-
stein” op. cit., 671–80; and Martin Schubert, “Disney’s Traumschlösser,”
op. cit., 201–12). The Cloisters as a building, for instance, was transported
from France to the USA; see below in the list of the museums.
Museums and Exhibitions 926

E. Historical Museums
The Metropolitan Museum – Medieval part, New York (reconstructions of
Medieval churches and knighthood).
The Cloisters, New York. Bonnie Young and Malcolm Varon, A Walk
through the Cloisters (1979): “The initial imagination was that of the American
sculptor George Grey Barnard. Before 1914, when he lived in France, Barn-
ard collected much of the architectural material seen in The Cloisters today,
including the columns and capitals of the Saint-Guilem, Cuxa, Bennefont,
and Trie Cloisters […]. The design for their structure was entrusted to
Charles Collens, the architect of the Riverside Church in New York. Collens’s
first consultant in the planning was Joseph Breck, Assistant Director of
the Metropolitan Museum. Upon Breck’s death in 1933, the responsibility
passed to his colleague James J. Rorimer. Collens and Rorimer, architect
and curator, worked closely together throughout the construction period to
determine the final form of the building.” “After four years of construction
beginning in 1934, The Cloisters opened in 1938. It is not a copy of any
particular medieval structure, but an ensemble of rooms and gardens that
suggest, rather than duplicate, the European originals. The rooms and halls
and chapels of the main floor are built around the largest of the four cloisters,
the one from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. On the lower floor … are the Gothic
Chapel, the walls of which rise the height of the two floors, and two garden
cloisters, the Bonnefont and the Trie-en-Bigorre (places in France) […]”
(Geoffrey Lewis, The History of Museums [2006], 4–5).
Die Zeit der Staufer: Geschichte, Kunst, Kultur, Catalogue, ed. Reiner Hauss-
herr, vol. 1–5 (1977); 1000 Jahre Babenberger, Stift Lilienfeld, Austria, 1976,
Catalogue, ed. E. Zöllner and K. Gutkas, Katalog des Niederösterreichi-
schen Landesmuseums Nr. 66. (1976); Die Kuenringer: Das Werden des Landes
Niederösterreich, Stift Zwettl, Austria, 1981, Catalogue, ed. H. Wolfram and
K. Brunner, Katalog des Niederösterreichischen Landesmuseums Nr. 110
(1981); St. Peter in Salzburg: Das älteste Kloster im deutschen Sprachrraum, Salz-
burg, 1982, Catalogue, Schätze europäischer Kunst und Kultur, ed. Amt der
Salzburger Landesregierung (1982); Wehrhafte Stadt: Das Wiener Bürgerliche
Zeughaus im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Catalogue, by Günter Düriegl, 101. Son-
derausstellung Historisches Museum Wien (1986); Die Ritter, Burgendländ-
ische Landesausstellung Burg Güssing, Catalogue, ed. Harald Pricker
(1990); Ritterburg und Fürstenschloss, Catalogue, ed. Herbert Wurster and
Richard Loibl, Archiv des Bistums Passau, vol. 1/2 (1998); Schauplatz Mittel-
alter, Kärntner Landesausstellung, Friesach, Catalogue, ed. Barbara Maier
and Günther Hödl, vol. 1–2 (2001); Kaiser Heinrich II. 1002–1024, Bamberg,
Catalogue ed. Josef Kirmeier, Bernd Scheidmüller et al. (2002); Kaiser
927 Museums and Exhibitions

Maximilian I: Bewahrer und Reformer, Reichskammergerichtsmuseum Wetzlar,

Catalogue, ed. Georg Schmidt-von Rhein (2002).
The following exhibits were of particular importance:
Museum Judenplatz – zum mittelalterlichen Judentum, 2004, Catalogue,
Museum Judenplatz, ed. Gerhard Milchram (2004). The curator commented:
“Als Mitte der 90er Jahre die Wissenschaftler der Wiener Stadtarchäologie
unter Dr. Ortolf Harl die Reste der mittelalterlichen Synagoge auf dem
Judenplatz entdeckten und Zug um Zug freilegten, war dies für die Fachwelt
nicht nur eine große Entdeckung, für manche Mittelalterforscher war es
sogar ein Sensation. Die Funde bestätigten die Vermutungen der Wissen-
schaftler, dass sich auf dem Judenplatz eine bedeutende jüdische Ansied-
lung mit einem wichtigen religiösen Zentrum befunden hat. Einer der
damals bedeutendsten jüdischen Gelehrten, Isaak ben Mose, auch Or Sarua
genannt, ist aufgrund der schriftlichen Quellen, die wir kennen, in Wien ge-
wesen” (6; “When in the middle of the 1990s the scholars of the Viennese
city-archaeology department, under the direction of Dr. Ortolf Harl, dis-
covered the remnants of the Jewish synagogue and excavated them step by
step, this was not only a great discovery for the discipline, but for some
scholars it was a real sensation. These discoveries confirmed the assumption
by some scholars that there had been a Jewish settlement and an important
religious center in the Jewish Square. One of the most important Jewish
scholars, Issak ben Mose, also called Or Sarua, had been in Vienna at that
time, according to the available literary sources”). The basic walls of the syna-
gogue and the reconstruction of the old settlement and its development are
presented.
Im Fluss – Am Fluss, 950 Jahr Stift Lambach, Jubiläumsausstellung, Cata-
logue, ed. Benediktinerstift Lambach (2006);
Maximilian I.: Triumph eines Kaisers: Herrscher mit Europäischen Visionen,
2006; Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation, Berlin and Magdeburg, 2006,
Catalogue: Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation, 962 bis 1806: Von Otto dem
Großen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, ed. Matthias Puhle and Claus-Peter
Hasse, part I, (2006). It includes a list of the most important international
medieval exhibitions (603–59). This exhibition took place in two cities, in
Magdeburg (treating the Middle Ages) and Berlin (treating the 19th century
and the 20th until the end of the monarchy). The catalogue has three parts,
two covering the exhibitions and one containing essays by various scholars:
historians, art historians, architects, and philosophers. There is an addi-
tional collection of the papers that were written for a congress that was or-
ganized just before the opening of the exhibition. The main catalogue shows
the numerous tasks of science and humanities in connection with such
Museums and Exhibitions 928

a great event. Cecilie Hollberg, Martina Junghans, Gabriele Köster,

Heike Pöppelmann, Thilo Reichelt, and Alexander Schubert worked
together on the scholarly organization. There were also educational special-
ists in the exhibitions (Thilo Reichelt, special part: Wolfgang Hugk, Karl-
Hein Kärgling), for public relations specialists, (Alexander Schubert),
specialists for the exhibition’s design and legends (Karin Kanter, Gabriele
Köster, Sabine Liebscher, Alexander Schubert), library specialists
(Helga Schettge), and a large supporting staff. The sheer manpower
needed to run the exhibition provides enough proof that such an exhibition,
of a topic that deals with nearly 1,000 years, is a very complex challenge.

F. Medieval Literature in Musems and Exhibitions

Das Nibelungenlied, Hohenems, Austria, 1979, Elmar Vonban, Nibelungenlied:
Ausstellung zur Erinnerung an die Auffindung der Handschrift A des Nibelungenliedes
im Jahre 1779 im Palast zu Hohenems (1979). The most important scholars deal-
ing with the Nibelungenlied wrote articles for the catalogue (Achim Masser,
Sigrid von Moisy, Hermann Reichert, and Walter Salmen). Sub-
sequently an International Congress with well-known medivalists (Achim
Masser, Ulrich Müller, Alfred Ebenbauer, Klaus Zatloukal, Peter
Stein, Otfrid Ehrismann, and Walter Haug) was organized in the small
town of Hohenems. It was the first time that the reception of the Middle
Ages, or Medievalism, other than the traditional Nibelungen-topics, was in-
cluded in a serious exhibition and in a scholarly congress.
Die Neidhart-Fresken, Vienna, Austria, exhibition since 1982, Catalogue,
Eva-Maria Höhle, Renata Kassal-Mikula et al., Neidhard-Fresken um 1400:
Die ältesten profanen Wandmalereien Wiens (1982). It is not an exhibition in the
traditional sense, insofar as visitors observe only the rooms with the frescos
in the historical house in Vienna, Tuchlauben 1.
Die Nibelungen: Bilder von Liebe, Verrat und Untergang, Catalogue, ed. Wolf-
gang Stock (1987);
Wolfram Museum, Wolframs Eschenbach, Germany, open since 1994
(see the model: Museum Wolfram von Eschenbach: Kann man Literatur ausstellen?
ed. Anton Seitz, 1994). This is one of the first and few museums dedicated to
a single medieval author. The scholarly adviser was one of the most famous
scholars of Middle High German literature of the last decades, Karl Bertau.
The ideas and texts of the exhibition and of the catalogue were created by a
Wolfram von Eschenbach scholar, Dietmar Peschel-Rentsch, supported
by Oskar Geidner and Hartmut Beck. The artificial design for all of Wolf-
ram’s works (Parzival, Titurel, Willehalm, and his songs) was created by Mi-
chael Hoffer with the assistance of Albrecht Gribl and Rainer Köhnlein.
929 Museums and Exhibitions

Der Gral: Artusromantik in der Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts, Catalogue, ed. Re-
inholf Baumsterk and Michael Koch (1996). The exhibition presents
a plethora of information about the Grail, and the catalogue also includes
articles by scholars of Medieval literature and history, such as Ulrich Mül-
ler, Annemarie Eder, Ulrich Rehm, Michael Petzet, Oswald Georg
Bauer, Debora Mancoff, and Johannes Zahlten.
Vom Codex zum Computer: 250 Jahre Universitätsbibliothek Innsbruck, Cata-
logue, ed. Walter Neuhaus and Eva Ramminger, Tiroler Landesmuseum
Ferdinandeum (1996); Schätze der schwarzen Kunst: Wiegendrucke,Catalogue
and Exhibition by Irene Erfen, Landesarchiv Greifswald (1997); Das Buch des
anonymen Dichters, Nibelungen-Museum Worms, open since 2001 (also the
title of the museum guide). This is the second permanent museum in a Ger-
man-speaking country that deals with a single medieval literary text and its
context. The Nibelungenlied is not presented with historical items like manu-
scripts, but mainly by pictures from the 19th and 20th centuries. The literary
material that (re)tells the story of the Nibelungen already comes to life in
Worms with congresses and festivals. New dramas were written for Worms
and were performed there the first time. For example, Moritz Rinkes’ play,
Die Nibelungen, played first onstage at the Nibelungen-Festival in Worms in
2003.
Der Turmbau zu Babel: Ursprung und Vielfalt von Sprache und Schrift, Cata-
logue, ed. Wilfried Seipel, vol. 1–3b (2003). The main, and perhaps un-
usual, topic of this exhibition was the language: presented through art and
discussed with various pictures of The Construction of the Tower of Babylon.
There were also pictures, sounds, texts of various languages, and information
about nearly all known languages on Earth, from ancient Egyptian to mod-
ern languages and dialects. This exhibition filled a huge palace near Graz
and took place in connection with ‘Graz as the Capital of Worldwide Cultural
Heritage’ in 2003. Many linguistic scholars worked for this exhibition and
its catalogue, for example Oswald Panagl and Hubert Haider (Salzburg).
Das Nibelungenlied und seine Welt, Karlsruhe, 2003. This exhibit presented
the Nibelungenlied from its literary origins to its cultural reception in the
20th century with original objects (old weapons, stones, tools of everyday life)
and examples of its original language (i. e., boards with examples of Middle
High German text), with reconstructions and, most notably, with the orig-
inal and most important manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied and of the Klage
(manuscripts A, B, C, D, and fragments). Scholars of the different aspects of
the Nibelungenlied assisted with the exhibit in various capacities. For example,
scholarly literature was displayed in the exhibit, for instance the visitor
could have a look at these books and they could listen to interviews with
Museums and Exhibitions 930

some of theses scholars which were recorded on tapes (the catalogue gave the
whole list of these works from the last 150 years). Mainly Joachim Heinzle,
Lothar Voetz and Johannes Zahlten were responsible for all scholarly
tasks for the exhibition.
Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Catalogue by Ulrich Montag and Karin
Schneider, Bayerischer Staatsbibliothek (2005). The Bavarian State Library
in Munich presents a historical exhibition with valuable manuscripts nearly
every year.

Select Bibliography
Education in Museums: Museums in Education, ed. Timothy Ambrose (Edinburgh:
HMSO/Scottish Museums Council, 1987); Marcel Broodthaers, Musée d’Art Moderne
à Vendre. Département des Aigles, Section Financière (Paris: de Musée d’Art, 1979);
Die Medien der Geschichte, ed. Fabia Crivellaria, Kay Kirchmann et al. (Constance:
UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2004); Je näher man ein Wort ansieht, desto ferner sieht es zurück:
Zur Geschichte des Museums, ed. Gottfried Fliedl (Vienna and Graz: Verlag der Mu-
seumsakademie Joaneum, 2007); Walter Grasskampf, Museumsgründer und Museums-
stürmer: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Kunstmuseums (Munich: C. H Beck, 1981); Diethard
Herber, Das Museum und die Dinge: Wissenschaft – Präsentation – Pädagogik (Frank-
furt a. M. and New York: Campus Verlag, 1996); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museum
and the Shaping of Knowledge (London: The Heritage Care, 1992); Eilean Hooper-
Greenhill, Seeing the Museum Through the Visitor’s Eyes (London: The Council for Mu-
seums and Galeries, 2002); Geoffrey Lewis, “The History of Museums,” Encyclopedia
Britannica (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006) and: http://www.muuseum.ee/
uploads/files/g._lewis_the_history_of_museum s.pdf (last accessed on Jan. 17, 2008);
Thomas D. Meier and Hans R. Reust, Medium Museum: Kommunikation und Ver-
mittlung in Museen für Kunst und Geschichte (Bern, Stuttgart, and Vienna: Verlag Paul
Haupt, 2000).

Bibliographies: Humboldt Universität Berlin: http://www2.hu-berlin.de/museums

paedagogik/studienarchiv/studwerkz (last accessed on Jan. 30, 2009); Museumspäd-
agogik (Teaching Museums) – Literaturliste 1990–2002 (international bibliography
1990–2002), produced by Hildegard Schmid and Ursula Köhler (Verein für Mu-
seumspädagogik Baden-Württemberg e.V., Germany, 2003).

Siegrid Schmidt
931 Music in Medieval Studies

Music in Medieval Studies

A. Introduction
In Medieval Studies music involves various aspects of the discipline, including
the practice of music in medieval institutions, music as an academic and philo-
sophical subject, the practice of music in the church and other venues, and ref-
erences to music in literature. Within those areas, music notation, the written
evidence for executing compositions, has evolved from the various methods
used for chant in late antiquity to more rhythmically oriented styles crucial for
polyphonic compositions of the 14th century and later eras. While notation cap-
tures elements of a work so that it can be reproduced, the execution involves
variables which can result in different interpretation. As one of the perform-
ing arts, the practice of music involves various traditions that have evolved
over the years, and while it is possible to perform music from the Middle Ages,
it is impossible to gauge precisely the resulting sounds. Performing practice,
as it is called, must recreate various situations, so that modern musicians can
arrive at performances that are informed through knowledge of the period.

B. History of Music
From the historical perspective, the medieval period in music exists between
late antiquity and the Renaissance, the era concerning the 8th through 14th
centuries, prior to the style shift that is perceptible between 1450 and 1550.
Among the earliest to recognize the medieval era as an historic period is Fi-
lippo Valini who, in a treatise that dates to 1382, distinguished between the
ancient and modern styles, with a significant era separating the two. Later
commentators pointed to the period for various reasons, and it is also im-
portant to recognize in music the shift in musical style that is audible in the
music itself. While the music of the Renaissance contains intervals of thirds
and sixths, these were allowed less prominently in the medieval era, which
broadly exhibited a preference for the perfect intervals, that is, unisons,
octaves, fifths and fourths. Treatises in music of the time pointed to such
choices when it came to instruction on composition, a topic that was not
necessarily taught in the curriculum of the era, but certainly discussed among
the cognoscenti. Such discussions point to thought more characteristic of the
latter part of this somewhat broad historic period, in contrast to the more
philosophically oriented ideas that emerged earlier in the era, when the in-
fluence of ancient culture is more evident.
In fact, the development of musical thought within the medieval era
bears further consideration from several perspectives. These include the for-
Music in Medieval Studies 932

mal study of music in the university curriculum as part of the seven liberal
arts, as well as the practice of music in both the sacred and secular traditions.
Music had been traditionally included in the academic quadrivium, along
with arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry as the four arts that complement
the trivium, which involve logic, rhetoric, and grammar, the three subjects at
the core of the liberal arts. Understood in this context, music was a compo-
nent in the education of an individual, alongside those other disciplines and,
thus, shows the art to be an important intellectual endeavor. The precision
and exactness of the art emerge when music is juxtaposed to geometry –
music being continuity in motion, while geometry is continuity at rest. At the
same time, the study of music involves the measurement of pitch based
on the monochord and the explication of rhythm as related to poetic modes.
Unlike the approaches to musical study which rely on music literature and
repertoires, as occurs, perhaps, more frequently in the modern era, the orien-
tation of writers on music in the medieval era retains a conceptual orien-
tation.
The discussions in the various treatises were related to theories of mode,
mensuration, and polyphony without necessarily reference to stylistic issues
or matters of affect or expression. Only in the late 19th through 20th centuries
has attention been given to the repertoires of music produced in the middle
ages, which encompass various genres and forms, including chant, orga-
num, and the motet. Secular forms include monophonic and polyphonic
compositions that mirror the poetic forms, as found in the ballade, virelai,
and roundelay, with the element of textual repetition having an influence on
those musical structures.
Beyond the aspects of music that are intrinsically connected to the art is
poetry, both in the verses found in the liturgical chants, including those
found in the sequences, as well as in the secular sphere, where the poetic and
musical forms may be seen to intersect. Of the secular music that emerged in
the Middle Ages, is the Roman de Fauvel, a 14th-century work that involves
verse attributed to Gervais de Bus set by the composer Philippe de Vitry in the
Ars Nova style. At other levels, the links between poetry emerge with some
composers, like Guillaume Machaut, who was respected for both poetic and
musical works. A further aspect of medieval music involves reference to the
art in literature and the graphic arts.
933 Music in Medieval Studies

C. Medieval Musical Practice

At the core of medieval musical practice is liturgical chant, which was the
mode of cantillating texts in the ordinary and proper of the Christian Mass.
While various traditions existed well into the Middle Ages, the efforts of
Pope Gregory the Great to unify practice have conveyed the eponymous term
Gregorian Chant to that body of music from what has been termed the
golden age of chant. In addition to such chant associated with the Mass and
other services, it also involves tropes, prosulas, sequences, Latin song, and is
part of liturgical drama. Those latter kinds of monophonic music are as-
cribed by some to the silver age of chant. Related to chant are some poly-
phonic works derived from chant. Firmly rooted in the tradition and practice
of the time, organum and discant polyphony by necessity used chant as a
point of departure, and chant serves as the cantus firmus in motets, that is,
melodic formulae which are the basis for the more freely composed musical
lines built around it. The corpus of chant encompassed various regional and
local traditions, such that the conception of Gregorian chant, especially with
reference to the Liber usualis as a repository of chant may be understood as a
development of a later time.
While the monophonic texture of chant may be regarded as a pervasive
part of the medieval music, early polyphony emerged in the 12th century,
with Aquitanian manuscripts and also in the well-known Codex Calixtinus.
Polyphony may be found in various urban centers, such as Paris, where the
works of the famous Leonin are found in the Magnus Liber Organi; following
Leonin, Perotin, whose facility was noted in his day. Discant clausulae, that is
self-contained sections of polyphony, demonstrate increasingly intricacy, as
tripla and quadrupla, that is, works respectively in three and four parts were
composed. While these works are part of larger structures, discrete composi-
tions evolved in the form of conductus.
Along with these kinds of works, the motet developed, including the
isorhythmic motet with its intersection of sacred and secular elements that
did not necessarily reflect the arbitrary distinction between such modes of
expression that are more properly associated with later eras. While chant re-
tains hegemony in sacred rites and rituals, such practice is augmented
though the inclusion of the polyphonic music specifically composed and
based on chant repertoire. In this context, polyphonic settings of the Mass
developed, and represent efforts to pursue multi-movement formal struc-
tures, along with the various approaches taken to compose motets, multi-
voice compositions that involve religious texts and subjects. Works like these
differ from traditional chant in being newly composed, that is, music written
by individuals for use on specific occasions and preserved in writing for rep-
Music in Medieval Studies 934

etition later. The practice of writing music involved non-verbal notation that
had to address the challenges of pitch and rhythm to preserve the composers’
conceptions of the sounds that would accompany the given texts. Such com-
position of music was an innovation that exposed the medieval world to the
creation of new works as an artistic effort that stood apart from the almost
spontaneous practice of performing chant as traditionally executed. Such
formalization of musical thought is significant for the way in which it intro-
duced to the Western world the idea of musical works.

D. Music in Manuscripts / Music Notation

The place of music in the culture of the medieval era is apparent in various
ways. Beyond the extant music manuscripts and treatises that provide first-
hand evidence of its presence in that period, references to music occur in the
literature of the time. Beyond literary references to musical works, music-
making, and musical instruments, pictorial allusions to music may be found
in the iconography of the time, with depictions of singing and musical in-
struments. Music notation is also part of some dramatic manuscripts, in-
cluding those associated with liturgical drama.
The performance of music from the medieval period involves re-creating
a tradition that has become discontinuous in modern practice. The effort to
recover the music has involved the Monks of Solesmes, whose publications
reproduced manuscripts that reach back toward antiquity and involve tran-
scriptions that bring those materials into modern notation. By extension,
the transcription involves some decisions that give shape to notation that is
not entirely intelligible, since it is divorced from a continuous tradition of
performance. Laudable as they are, the Solesmes are not necessarily the only
interpretation of the notation, but remain among the best-known modern
versions of early chant.
At the core of the Solesmes efforts is the notational practice of the time,
which involved neumes, a mode of denoting pitches with some aspects of
relative duration. The notation associated with St. Gall gave way to other
modes of notation, including Daseian, with systems of notation becoming
during this period increasingly precise in representing the durations so that
the resulting performances could be more predictably consistent. At the same
time, the notation also lent itself to setting down contrapuntal textures that
could be performed with accuracy. In fact, in the 14th century, the so-called
mannerist composers used color to indicate various mensurations, and thus
arrive at pieces that involved intricate time-values. While color notation (the
second color usually being red) fell out of practice in the late Middle Ages,
some aspects of the practice influenced later practices in notation. Overall,
935 Music in Medieval Studies

though, the kinds of music notation shifted, just as musical values changed,
and modern performers sometimes choose to play the music of the Middle
Ages and Renaissance in facsimile as a means of capturing the style and avoid-
ing the editorial hand which may be part of playing from transcriptions.
Within the context of what followed in the Renaissance, the medieval
era was a crucial time for music, as various concepts took shape, including
the concept of a musical work, systems of notation, and the development of
polyphonic compositional techniques. Most importantly, the use of music
shifted from its ritual use in Christian liturgy to a performing art of its own.
The discipline of music as an academic pursuit also developed as philosophi-
cal stances based on antiquity gave way to increasingly detailed discussions
of mensuration and other ideas essential to the medieval style, and that in-
volved distinctions between sacred and secular styles. Those distinctions
sometimes blurred in motets which used both sacred and secular texts, both
of which might be constructed over a tenor part derived from a liturgical
source. Such complex interactions are not unique to music, but reflect, in a
sense, the culture of the period, which resulted, in part, from the tension be-
tween such perceived differences.

E. History of Research
Recent scholarship has involved various investigations of the conceptualiz-
ations of medieval music, which often may be seen to say as much about the
times in which they emerged as the period that they concern. Katharine
Bergeron’s account of the development of modern conceptions of chant
offers perspectives that can be used in pursuing other kinds of medieval
music. Taking a cue from Bergeron, those familiar with medieval music
can point to the Solesmes efforts which began in the 1880s as a crucial unified
effort to explore a body of medieval music in depth, that is, to identify the
works, examine the sources, delineate the paleographic aspects of those ma-
terials, and to interpret them for modern generations. With the resulting
Solesmes publications, modern culture had a new and bold reexamination of
one of the crucial aspects of medieval music culture, chant, which was at the
core of not just the liturgy practiced, but also the newly composed tropes,
organum, clausulae, and motets. This was an important contribution to
scholarship, by which Dom Guéranger attempted to restore the practice
of plainsong without the accountrements of the late 19th century. Dom
Guéranger was succeeded by various members of his Benedictine commu-
nity, whose efforts also resulted in such practical editions of chant in the first
decades of the 20th century as the Liber Usualis, the Liber Gradualis and other
pre-Vatican II respositories of chant.
Music in Medieval Studies 936

While music of the Middle Ages was not ignored, studies in the first half
of the 20th century were isolated. It would take the groundbreaking work of
Gustav Reese (1899–1977) to shape the study of medieval music. His com-
prehensive study of the period in Music in the Middle Ages, 1940, was at once a
summation of information on the music and conceptions of the literature,
such that any new research would need to refer to Reese’s work. His study of
medieval music not only summarized the entire period conceptually, but it
also inspired further research for generations of musicologists. About fifteen
years later the perspectives of Reese found their way into the New Oxford His-
tory of Music (NOHM, and it is significant that the subject divides between two
volumes in this series. While important as a reference work, the NOHM study
is a collection of articles by specialists and lacks the comprehensive vision
that Reese gave to his study. Nevertheless, the detailed articles in the NOHM
demonstrate the vitality of the subject in their focus on various elements
of medieval music. Reese’s publisher, W. W. Norton & Co., included Reese’s
Music in the Middle Ages in the period histories that were part of its Books that
Live in Music series, and only in 1978 did Norton release a single volume
to succeed Reese, Medieval Music by Richard H. Hoppin (1978), the first in its
series entitled Norton Introduction to Music History. Hoppin’s text repre-
sents the level of scholarship three decades after Reese’s pioneering efforts
and the extensive bibliography in Hoppin’s book is evidence of the flower-
ing of research in this area. While no new repertoires were uncovered, Hop-
pin’s work demonstrated a stronger familiarity with the music at a time when
the performance practice movement in music had some strong proponents
of medieval literature, like David Munrow and others. By extension,
Jeremy Yudkin’s single-volume study of Medieval Music (1989) demonstrates
the importance of musicological study with music analysis with its incorpor-
ation of extensive, anthology-like examples into the text.
Such familiarity may be the result of a deeper knowledge of the music of
the Middle Ages through the work of publication of The Notation of Medieval
Music by Carl Parrish (1957), another Norton effort. While Reese was re-
sponsible for his own examples, Parrish offered tools for scholars to examine
manuscripts of medieval music in order to arrive at their own transcriptions
of the works in modern notation. Parrish distinguished between no-
tational styles, and his concepts were critical for generations of scholars to
study further the sometimes challenging or otherwise ambiguous notation
of the sacred and secular music in various national traditions. Written at a
time when music notation was remarkably precise in giving specific instruc-
tions to performers, The Notation of Medieval Music reflects sensitivity to the
ambiguities that exist with a living tradition that did not require such spe-
937 Music in Medieval Studies

cificity for performance. While most of Parrish’s efforts shed light on

monophonic music, the music of the late Middle Ages benefits from the prin-
ciples found in The Notation of Polyphonic Music (1953; rev. 5th ed., 1961), in
which Willi Apel treats in greater details than Parrish the notation of the
Ars Nova, with its use of varying mensurations and the inclusion of color to
distinguish rhythmic patterns between those layers.
The efforts to decipher and understand the notation of medieval music
resulted in increasingly larger numbers of editions of early music in various
sets and monuments. This made the music referred to in various articles and
studies accessible to scholars and ultimately performers, who found inspira-
tion in music that had lost its currency for generations. A substantial selec-
tion of medieval music was included in the Historical Anthology of Music
(2 vols., ed. Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel, 1946), and this set the
tone for similar efforts by other anthologizers. One of the remarkable publi-
cations of this kind is the Oxford Anthology of Medieval Music selected and
edited by W. Thomas Marocco and Nicholas Sandon (1972) which stands
out because of the detailed commentary which accompanies each piece.
With the foundation offered by Reese and the investigations of notation
by Parrish and also by Apel, modern scholars had the tools for exploring
the literature of the Middle Ages not through editions, as found with music
of the Common Practice era, but firsthand, through a working knowledge
of the materials in facsimile and, for those scholars who pursued it, direct
studies of the sources. In a sense the efforts of musicology allowed those
interested to have access to the subject by making not only the concepts com-
prehensible, but also opened the sources to study. The situation differs from
that which existed in the late 19th century, when this was the domain of
specialists. In contrast, libraries of various sizes owned not only the studies
which included some facsimiles of music, but also entire volumes of medi-
eval music in facsimile. While this was first used for study, eventually such
materials found their ways into the hands of performers who played from
them directly rather than rely on transcriptions.
About a century after the rediscovery of medieval music, Daniel Leech-
Wilkinson offered some sobering insights into the period in the persuasive
study entitled The Modern Invention of Medieval Music (2002). If music culture
by its nature is based on extant and living traditions, the study of medieval
music reflects an act of intellectual recovery, rather than some sort of restora-
tion of a practice. Leech-Wilkinson explores some of the misconceptions
about Medieval practice that reflect more the period in which they were
written than the realities of the Medieval, of which the extant documen-
tation offers relatively few tangible ideas, compared to the more extensive
Music in Medieval Studies 938

documentation associated with later eras. Some of the transcriptions that

circulated in histories of music and surveys of music theory, especially those
of Hugo Riemann, seem closer to arrangements along the lines of Romantic
practice, rather than the more diplomatic treatment of manuscript sources in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Essentially the idea of medieval music
required efforts that place theory into practice, but never actually reflect the
continuity which may be seen in other traditions.
Much of the initiative in studies of medieval music has emerged from the
German and Anglo-American sphere, and those who pursue various topics
within this area of research will also find specific studies of various national
repertoires in what are now Italy, France, Spain, and other areas by scholars in
those countries. Moreover, the bibliographies in the various works cited
below point to the intergenerational dialogue that has occurred between
scholars in various traditions and also to directions that need further explo-
ration. It is also important to consider the unique situation with music in
which performance brings alive certain aspects of research. In addition to the
work of David Munrow in the United Kingdom, various other performers
have made contributed to the recorded history of medieval music. Among
the latter are René Clemencic, who brought to performance the famous
Carmina Burana; the Hilliard Ensemble, which has recorded some of the
music of the Ars Nova; the Ensemble Organum, and other groups, who de-
vote their efforts to this repertoire.
In addition to Leech-Wilkinson’s important study, various other
new perspectives are the result of ethnographic investigations, such as Peter
Jeffrey’s Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study
of Gregorian Chant (1995). Jeffrey’s approach offers some fine insights that
should guide scholars in directions that are necessary and useful for under-
standing this critical period in Western culture. The questions that arise
from such discussions allow for rediscovering the music of the Middle Ages
and the culture in which it was created. The resulting efforts are laudable for
showing the relevance of medieval music in modern culture, which has its
roots in many of the ideas that emerged in this crucial period in Western
civilization.

Select Bibliography
Willi Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Acad-
emy of American, 1953; rev. 5th ed., 1961); Margaret Bent, “The Grammar of Early
Music: Preconditions for Analysis,” Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed. Cristle Collins
Judd (New York: Garland Publishers, 1998), 15–59; Katherine Bergeron, Decadent
Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1998); Heinrich Besseler, Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance
939 Mysticism

(Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1925, rpt. 1931); Richard L.

Crocker, An Introduction to Gregorian Chant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000);
David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993;
rpt. 1995); Richard Hoppin, Medieval Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978); id.,
Medieval Music: An Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978); The New Oxford
History of Music 2: Early Medieval Music up to 1300, ed. Don Anselm Hughes (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1954); The New Oxford History of Music 3: Ars Nova and the Renais-
sance 1300–1540, ed. Don Anselm Hughes and Gerald Abraham (London: Oxford
University Press, 1960); Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, The Modern Invention of Medieval
Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Oxford Anthology of Music:
Medieval Music, ed. W. Thomas Marocco and Nicholas Sandon (London: Oxford
University Press, 1977); Carl Parrish, The Notation of Medieval Music (New York:
W. W. Norton & Co., 1957; rev. ed., 1959); Gustav Reese; Music in the Middle Ages (New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1940); Hugo Riemann, Studien zu Geschichte der Notenschrift
(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1878); Arnold Schering, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte bis
zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914); Jeremy Yudkin,
Music in Medieval Europe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989).

Online Resources: Chant Homepage: http://www.music.princeton.edu/chant_html/

Solesmes (Gregorian Chant): http://www.solesmes.com/GB/gregorien/hist.php?js=1

James L. Zychowicz

Mysticism

A. General Definition
Mysticism is the belief in union with the Divine and the pursuit of such
union; it manifests itself in almost all cultural, religious, and philosophical
traditions (Bruno Borchert, Mysticism: Its History and Challenge, 1994). In its
broadest sense mysticism refers to a belief system that recognizes occult or
supernatural powers. Mircea Eliade relates its earliest manifestations to
shamanism (Shamanism, 1964), and Robert Charles Zaehner posits a type of
mysticism, monistic or nature-based, that is drug-induced (Mysticism: Sacred
and Profane, 1957). Discussion here will focus on theistic mystical experiences
in Western Christianity. Mysticism in early Eastern religions such as Hin-
duism and Buddhism shares features with the Western Christian mystical
tradition, but the primary sources of Christian mysticism of the European
Middle Ages are Greek philosophy, the Jewish tradition, and early Christian-
ity itself (Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition. From
Plato to Denys, 1981; Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, vol. 1: Die
Mysticism 940

Grundlegung durch die Kirchenväter und die Mönchstheologie des 12. Jahrhunderts,
1990; Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, 1991; Otto Langer,
Christliche Mystik im Mittelalter, 2004).
The word “mysticism” derives from the Greek noun
  ‘secret’
or ‘ceremony’ and the verb
 ‘to close one’s eyes (or lips).’ The Greeks
characterize the mystical union as a ritual by which the initiate gains knowl-
edge of the unspeakable secret, namely how the mortal life can unite with the
life of a god. The initiate guards the secret by remaining silent and contem-
plates it by shutting his eyes to the world. The term “mysticism” was intro-
duced into modern scholarship in 17th-century France (Michel de Certeau,
“‘Mystique’ au XVIIe siècle: Le problème du langage ‘mystique,’” L’Homme
devant Dieu: Mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac, 1964, vol. 2, 267–91; Louis
Bouyer, “Mysticism, An Essay on the History of the Word,” Understanding
Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods, 1981, 42–55).
Because of the personal and individualistic nature of mysticism and the
mystical experience, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive, generally ac-
cepted definition (F. Samuel Brainard, “Defining Mystical Experience,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 [1996]: 359–93). William James
identifies four general characteristics of the mystical experience: 1) ineffabil-
ity – it cannot be described or expressed in words; 2) noetic quality – it
involves or reveals knowledge or certain truths; 3) transient nature or short
duration; and 4) passivity – lack or loss of control by the individual involved
(Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, 380). Evelyn Underhill counters with
her own set of attributes, asserting that: 1) mysticism is active and practical,
not passive and theoretical; 2) its aims are transcendental and spiritual; 3) the
driving force behind mysticism is love; and 4) the union is a definite state,
arrived at by a psychological and spiritual process (Mysticism: A Study in Nature
and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, 1911, 70–94). In his description of
extrovertive mystical states of mind, Walter T. Stace presents a more com-
prehensive list of traits: 1) the unifying vision, expressed abstractly by the
formula “All is One”; 2) the One as a living Presence; 3) the sense of objectiv-
ity or reality; 4) such feelings as blessedness, joy, happiness, satisfaction;
5) the feeling that what is apprehended is holy, or sacred, or divine; 6) para-
doxicality, and 7) alleged ineffability (Mysticism and Philosophy, 1960, 79). To
some degree all of the above characteristics manifest themselves in Western
Christian mysticism in the Middle Ages.
Attained through contemplation and love, the mystical union may re-
veal knowledge or ideas that are otherwise inapprehensible; frequently the
experience is characterized at least in part by visual or auditory experiences,
revealed only to the mystic him- or herself. The union sometimes is described
941 Mysticism

in terms of the marriage between a human bride and the Divine bridegroom
or as the emptying of the human self through a turning away from the world
and a focusing on the Divine, so that the self can be filled with the Divine.
The experience frequently is conceived of as a journey, which is accom-
plished in stages: in contemplation the soul rids itself of worldliness; in the
process the soul becomes more attuned to the Divine; ultimately, union is
achieved, an experience frequently characterized as ecstasy or rapture
(Nelson Pike, Mystic Union: An Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism, 1992).
The nature of the mystical union has been the subject of much debate, which
Daniel Merkur summarizes in “Unitive Experience and the State of Trance,”
Mystical Union and Monotheistic Union, 1989, ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard
McGinn, 1989, 125–53 (republished as Mystical Union in Judaism, Christian-
ity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue, 1996).
The challenge of characterizing the mystical experience is compounded
by inherent dichotomies. Speculative mysticism foregrounds the role of the
intellect and knowledge, whereas affective mysticism invokes the frame-
work of emotion and love (affect). Mystical experiences have been viewed
as the intersection between the rational and the emotional (Grace Jantzen,
Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, 1995) as well as the rational and ir-
rational (Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen
und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen, 1917; The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the
Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 1923;
Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism, 1975). For some mystics the experience is
predicated upon a contemplative lifestyle, for others the experience can be
reconciled with the vita activa. Stace distinguishes the extrovertive experi-
ence that seeks the Divine through the physical senses in the external world
from the introvertive experience that is directed inward (The Teachings of
the Mystics, 1960). Some experiences seem to occur spontaneously, whereas
others are the result of an individual’s own efforts. The latter type is a part
of theurgical mysticism (Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism
of Iamblichus, 1995) and is associated more with the kabbalah in the medieval
Jewish mystical tradition than with medieval Christian mysticism (Moshe
Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 1988). Although indwelling, God also is
above and separate from all works of creation – hence the theory of transcen-
dence beside that of immanence. Since the world is created in God’s image,
it must be good, yet one recognizes that the world is evil and ephemeral.
(Rudolf Otto, West-östliche Mystik: Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur Wesensdeu-
tung, 1926; Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysti-
cism, 1932). God may be defined in positive terms – kataphatic mysticism –
but in the Christian tradition the ineffability of the experience more often
Mysticism 942

leads to a discussion of apophatic or negative theology, the describing of God

in terms of what God is not (Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God, The Chris-
tian Contemplative Tradition, 1996). Michael Sells characterizes apophatic
language as “un-saying” or “speaking-away” (Mystical Languages of Unsaying,
1994). Despite their inability to express the inexpressible, many mystics have
given voice to their experiences; William P. Alston raises the question as to
whether their words are to be understood literally (Divine Nature and Human
Language, 1989).
In an attempt to explain the unio mystica, medieval Christian mystics de-
voted much of their energy to resolving the paradoxes above. When success-
ful in the eyes of the Church of Rome, like Thomas Aquinas, their teachings
became doctrine; when considered in conflict with established religious
tenets, they were deemed heretical, like Meister Eckhart, whose idea of an all-
pervasive power in which all things were one led to charges of pantheism.
Whereas some mystical writings emanated from great teachers and preach-
ers of the Middle Ages, others derived from a nun’s or layperson’s commu-
nion with the Divine, which revealed visions or truths the individual felt
compelled to communicate to others. The Church sometimes acknowledged
and accepted such revelations and prophecies, such as those of Hildegard of
Bingen, and sometimes condemned them as heresy, as in the case of Na Prous
Boneta, a Spiritual Franciscan who was burned at the stake. Extreme ascetic
practices and other nonconformist behavior that fostered or accompanied
the unitive experience were at times accepted or even lauded, such as Henry
Suso’s great love and devotion to Christ that led him to inscribe the name
of Jesus on his chest. In other situations such practices and behaviors were
deemed excessive or in violation of acceptable norms: the Beguine Marguer-
ite Porete’s characterization of a love between the soul and the Divine that
necessitated no intermediary, a challenge to the Church’s role as spiritual
conciliator, led to her being burned at the stake (Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff,
“Women, Heresy, and Holiness in Early Fourteenth-Century France,” Medi-
eval Women’s Visionary Literature, 1986, 276–98).
The relationship between religion and magic also manifests itself in
the study of mysticism and has led to the study of the question of the Divine
or diabolical origins of the mystical experience (Marcello Craveri, Sante
e streghe, 1980; Peter Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger
Frauen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, 1995; Richard Kieckhefer, “The Holy
and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft and Magic in Late Medieval Europe,”
Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500,
ed. Scott Waugh and Peter Diehl, 1996, 310–37; Barbara Newman, “Pos-
sessed by the Spirit: Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life
943 Mysticism

in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 73 [1998]: 733–70; Nancy Caciola,

Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages, 2003), as well
as associations between mysticism and other esoteric movements (Arthur
Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esoteric Traditions,
2007).
The unusual nature of the experience often brings into question the
mystic’s psychological state and mental stability. Focusing on the techniques
of meditation and renunciation, Arthur Deikman has posited a psychologi-
cal model of the mystical experience (“Deautomatization and the Mystic
Experience,” Understanding Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods, 1980, 240–69).
The relationship between medieval mystics’ experiences and hysteria has
been studied in general (Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism,
and Gender in European Culture, 1996; Jerome Kroll, Bernard Bachrach, and
Kathleen Carey, “A Reappraisal of Medieval Mysticism and Hysteria,” Men-
tal Health, Religion, and Culture 5 [2002]: 83–98), and with regard to specific
groups, e. g., 13th-century holy women (Amy Hollywood, “Ventriloquiz-
ing Hysteria: Fetishism, Trauma, and Sexual Difference,” Sensible Ecstasy:
Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History, 2002, 236–73 [241–66]),
and individuals (Julia Long, “Mysticism and Hysteria: The Histories of Mar-
gery Kempe and Anna O.,” Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature, ed.
Ruth Evans and Leslie Johnson, 1994, 88–111).
The relationship of the mystical experience to a physiological condition
has been suggested as well. Charles Singer claims that visions of Hildegard
of Bingen exhibit characteristics of scintillating scotoma, a visual aura com-
monly associated with certain kinds of migraines (“The Visions of Hildegard
of Bingen,” From Magic to Science. Essays on the Scientific Twilight, 1958), a theory
revisited by Oliver Sacks (Migraine. The Evolution of a Common Disorder, 1970).

B. Origins and Development of Western Christian Mysticism

1. Origins and Early Development

Although many early religions and philosophies have strong elements of
mysticism, most significant to the development of Western Christian mysti-
cism in the Middle Ages are ideas found in Greek philosophy, Judaism, and
early Christianity itself. The idea of deliberately shutting one’s eyes to exter-
nal things in order to concentrate on the Divine knowledge, which is in reality
within humans themselves, is part of Neoplatonic philosophy, and one that
connects early philosophers such as Plotinus, Proclus, Clement of Alexan-
dria, Origen, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite with later Christian mystics
(William R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, 1899). In order to describe the relation-
Mysticism 944

ship between humans and the Absolute, philosophers first needed to define
the Absolute, i. e., to define God. One description characterized God in terms
of what God is not, the theologia negativa. (Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown
God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena, 1995). Another
invoked the scala perfectionis, the ladder of perfection, by which the soul
attempted to ascend (or less frequently descend) to union with God. Paths or
stages of spiritual life were identified: the via purgativa, illuminativa, and
unitiva; purged from worldliness, the soul is enlightened regarding Divine
truth and thus prepared for union with the Divine. The 5th-century mystical
writer Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite was closely associated with these
descriptions (Andrew Louth, Denys, the Areopagite, 1989; McGinn, The Foun-
dations of Mysticism, 157–82). Philosophers also postulated where recognition
of the Absolute occurred: The Neoplatonists’ intellectus agens gave rise to the
apex mentis or synderesis of Bonaventure and the Fünklein of Meister Eckhart
(Endre von Ivánka, “Apex mentis. Wanderung und Wandlung eines
stoischen Terminus,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 72 [1950]: 129–76).
Subsequent centuries witnessed the continuation and amplification of
inherently Neoplatonic ideas. The most notable and influential proponent
through the Carolingian era was Augustine (354–430) (John J. O’Meara,
“Augustine and Neoplatonism,” Recherches augustiniennes 1 [1958]: 91–111).
His ideas remained in the philosophical foreground, as other great thinkers
such as Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604), Alcuin (735–804), and Rhabanus
Maurus (ca. 780–856) provided commentary on and amplification of his
works (McGinn, “Augustine: The Founding Father,” The Foundations of Mys-
ticism, 228–62). John Scottus Eriugena (ca. 800–ca. 877) translated the works
of Pseudo-Dionysius into Latin and propounded the dialectical Platonic
mysticism that had a profound influence on Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of
Cusa in later centuries (Alois Haas, “Eriugena und die Mystik,” Eriugena
Redivivus: Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang
zur Neuzeit, ed. Werner Beierwaltes, 1987, 254–78; Dermot Moran, The
Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages, 1989;
McGinn, “The Entry of Dialectical Mysticism: John Scottus Eriugena,” The
Growth of Mysticism, 1994, 80–118).
Around the year 1000 fundamentals of Scholasticism began to emerge
(Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode. Nach gedruckten
und ungedruckten Quellen, vol. 1: Die scholastische Methode von ihren ersten Anfän-
gen in der Väterliteratur bis zum Beginn des 12. Jahrhunderts, 1909). In the 12th cen-
tury, the Scholastic method was fostered by Peter Abelard (1079–1142), An-
selm of Canterbury (1033–1109), Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), Richard of
St. Victor (died 1173), and Peter the Lombard (ca. 1100–ca. 1160) (“The Reli-
945 Mysticism

gious World of the Twelfth Century,” Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth
Century, ed. Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, and Jean Leclercq,
1986, 194–228; Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, vol. 1, 1990;
McGinn, “The Victorine Ordering of Mysticism,” The Growth of Mysticism,
1994, 363–418). In the 13th century, the academic method was applied
by Bonaventure (1221–1274), Albertus Magnus (ca. 1206–1280), and most
notably Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) to the question of the relationship
between reason and faith (Bernard McGinn, “Bonaventure,” The Flowering of
Mysticism, 87–112). Bonaventure introduced the concepts of the apex mentis
and the scintilla (synderesis); his writings had a profound influence on later
preachers. Heinrich Suso Denifle successfully propounded a relation be-
tween Scholasticism and medieval German mysticism (Die deutschen Mystiker
des 14. Jahrhunderts: Beitrag zur Deutung ihrer Lehre, ed. Otwin Spiess, 1951).
Scholastic influence began to wane in the mid-14th century, although it was
occasionally still evident, e. g., in the works of John Gerson (1363–1429).

2. Mysticism in Germany and the Low Countries

The greatest number of medieval mystics resided in German-speaking terri-
tories, the first appearing in the Central Rhineland in the 12th century. Con-
centration along the Rhine led some scholars to adopt the term “Rhine-
land mysticism,” albeit in reference to the 13th and 14th centuries (Jeanne
Ancelet-Hustache, Master Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics, 1957; Alain de
Libera, La mystique rhénane d’Albert le Grand à Maitre Eckhart, 1994).
The tradition began with Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179). Religious
thinker, prophet, reformer, correspondent with ecclesiastical and worldly
leaders, healer, composer, dramatist, and poet, the Benedictine abbess was
a renaissance woman in her time (Heinrich Schipperges, Die Welt der Hilde-
gard von Bingen, 1997; The World of Hildegard of Bingen: Her Life, Times, and Visions,
trans. John Cumming, 1998; Barbara Newman, Voice of the Living Light: Hil-
degard of Bingen and Her World, 1998). The sapiential and theological content of
Hildegard’s writings has been examined (Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom.
St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine, 1987); her cosmic perspective explored
(Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen,
1930, rpt. 1964; Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hilde-
gard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” Hildegard of Bingen: The
Context of her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, 1998,
1–16); her poetic texts explicated (Barbara Newman, Symphonia: A Critical
Edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum, 1988, rev. 1998); and
her musical compositions embraced by medieval musicologists as well as
New Age enthusiasts (Richard Souther, Vision: The Music of Hildegard von
Mysticism 946

Bingen, 1994). Hildegard’s contemporary Elisabeth of Schönau (1138–1165)

was known for her visionary experiences as well; Elisabeth’s works include a
collection of her visions, letters, and a version of the St. Ursula legend (Anne
L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary, 1992).
In the 12th century, Christocentric love mysticism emerged in contrast
to the mystical tradition informed by Scholasticism. In his sermons on the
Song of Songs and his treatise On the Love of God (De diligendo deo), Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090–1153) described the Church as the bride of Christ, an image
adopted by many mystics to characterize their own relationship with the Di-
vine. Love mysticism (Minnemystik) or bride mysticism (Brautmystik) enjoyed
particular resonance within the beguine movement (Barbara Newman, “La
mystique courtoise: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love,” From
Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature, 1995,
137–67). The lay urban movement of the beguines and beghards was estab-
lished in the Low Countries and along the Lower Rhine (L. J. M. Philippen,
De Begijnhoven: Oorsprong, Geschiedenis, Inrichting, 1918; Ernest McDonnell,
The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With Special Emphasis on the Belgian
Scene, 1954; Martina Wehrli-Johns and Claudia Opitz, Fromme Frauen
oder Ketzerinnen? Leben und Verfolgung der Beginen im Mittelalter, 1998; Walter
Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries,
1200–1565, 2001). The language of love permeated the writings of women
mystics like Hadewijch of Antwerp (Paul Mommaers, Hadewijch: Writer,
Beguine, Love Mystic, with Elisabeth Dutton, 2004), as well as the religious
women associated with the community of Helfta in Germany.
The Helfta community was a center of learning and piety in the second
half of the 13th century and the home to three religious women whose writ-
ings are extant: Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca. 1210–1282), Mechthild of
Hackeborn (1214–1298), and Gertrud the Great (1256–1301) (Mary Jeremy
Finnegan, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics, 1962, rev. 1991; Carolyn
Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages,
1982, 170–262; Rosalynn Voaden, “All Girls Together: Community, Gender
and Vision at Helfta,” Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. Diane Watt,
1997, 72–91; Michael Bangert, “Die sozio-kulturelle Situation des Klosters
St. Maria in Helfta,” ‘Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht’: Die Mystik der
Frauen von Helfta, ed. Michael Bangert and Hildegund Keul, 1999, 29–47).
A beguine most of her life, Mechthild of Magdeburg spent her final years at
Helfta, where the last part of her Flowing Light of the Godhead (Fließendes Licht der
Gottheit) was recorded; the 1990s witnessed the publication of a new critical
edition (Hans Neumann and Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Mechthild von
Magdeburg, ‘Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit’: nach der Einsiedler Handschrift in kri-
947 Mysticism

tischem Vergleich mit der gesamten Überlieferung, vol. I: Text, 1990, vol. II: Untersu-
chungen, 1993) and new English translations (e. g., Frank Tobin, trans., The
Flowing Light of the Godhead, 1998). The Flowing Light describes Mechthild’s vi-
sionary experiences and characterizes the love relationship between her
and Christ. Replete with love imagery from the chivalric tradition and the
Song of Songs, the work mixes prose and poetry; the content as well as the
evocative and erotic language account for its status as one of the most well-
known mystical texts of the Middle Ages (Frank Tobin, Mechthild von Magde-
burg: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes, 1995; Elizabeth A. Andersen, The
Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg, 2000). The visions of Mechthild of Hackeborn
and her teachings concerning true devotion to God are chronicled in the Book
of Special Grace (Liber specialis gratiae) (Alois M. Haas, “Themen und Aspekte
der Mystik Mechthilds von Hackeborn,” Geistliches Mittelalter, ed. Haas,
1984, 373–91). The Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness (Legatus divinae pietatis)
documents the mystical conversion experience of Gertrud the Great (Gertrud
Jaron Lewis, “Gertrud of Helfta’s Legatus divinae pietatis and ein botte der göt-
lichen miltekeit: A Comparative Study of Major Themes,” Mysticism: Medieval
and Modern, ed. Valerie M. Lagorio, 1986, 58–71); Gertrud’s Spiritual Exer-
cises (Exercitia spiritualia) relate the meditative and liturgically based life she
led at Helfta (Gertrud the Great of Helfta. Spiritual Exercises, trans. Gertrud Jaron
Lewis and Jack Lewis, 1989).
The earliest women mystics were members of traditional orders, e. g., the
Benedictines and the Cistercians. In the Low Countries connections between
the Cistercians and the women’s communities remained in subsequent cen-
turies (Herbert Grundmann, “Zur Geschichte der Beginen im 13. Jahrhun-
dert,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 21 [1931]: 296–320), but in Germany the
greatest number of women mystics belonged to the mendicant orders, es-
pecially the Dominican order. Herbert Grundmann’s study of the develop-
ment of the new orders and their influence on and connection with religious
women remains a useful resource (Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersu-
chungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettel-
orden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die
geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik, 1935; Religious Movements in the
Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the
Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, trans. Steven
Rowan, 1995). The tradition of the Franciscan Armutsmystik was most preva-
lent in the northwest German-speaking territories and the Low Countries,
whereas the Dominican influence was more pervasive further south.
The mendicant influence manifested itself especially in the relationships
that developed between male confessors and their female spiritual charges;
Mysticism 948

friars as well as secular priests guided and supported religious women, and
personal relationships were not infrequent. John B. Freed discusses spiri-
tual supervision of the beguines (“Urban Development and the ‘cura mon-
ialium’ in Thirteenth-Century Germany,” Viator 3 [1972]: 311–27), and John
Coakley considers the bonds between male and female religious in the
mendicant orders (“Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of
Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church
History 69 [1960]: 445–60; “Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval
Dominican Hagiography,” Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, 1991, 222–46).
The new monastic orders profoundly influenced prevalent religious con-
tours and gave rise to the “New Mysticism.” According to McGinn, three
developments are manifest in this movement: “1) new attitudes toward the
relation between world and cloister; 2) a new relationship between men and
women in the mystical path; and, finally, 3) new forms of language and
modes of representation of mystical consciousness” (The Flowering of Mysti-
cism, 12; McGinn, “Men and Women and the Origins of the New Mysti-
cism,” The Flowering of Mysticism, 31–69; Steven Fanning, “The New Mysti-
cism,” Mystics of the Christian Tradition, 2001, 85–94).
The New Mysticism was particularly prevalent along the Rhine, especially
the Upper Rhine, where remarkable mystical activity is documented. Specu-
lation and theories abound regarding why mysticism should have flowered
at this time and in this area: sociologically it allowed for expression by less
educated women, philosophically it represented to some extent the popular-
ization of Scholasticism, and literarily it offered the opportunity to relate un-
usual spiritual experiences in the vernacular (Joseph Bernhard, Die philos-
ophische Mystik des Mittelalters von ihren antiken Ursprüngen bis zur Renaissance,
1922). Ernst Bergmann characterizes the mystical movement in Germany
at this time as the philosophical counterpart to Minnesang, the courtly love
tradition and the apex of medieval German literature (Geschichte der deutschen
Philosophie, vol. I: Die deutsche Mystik, 1926). In her contextualization of the
development, Evelyn Underhill notes that periods of great mystical activ-
ity seem to follow immediately after periods of great artistic, material, and
intellectual civilization (Mysticism, 453). In contrast Josef Quint views the
circumstances in negative terms, citing cultural decline and the desire for
a remedy for disharmony between God and humankind as the setting for the
flowering of German mysticism (“Mystik,” Reallexikon der deutschen Liter-
aturgeschichte, 2nd ed., 1965, vol. 2, 545). Johan Huizinga’s characterization
of the 14th century as the beginning of the “waning” or “autumn” of the
Middle Ages is relevant as well: the aristocratic culture was in a state of de-
949 Mysticism

cline; secular and Church powers were battling for supremacy; natural dis-
asters – earthquakes, the Black Death – were taking their toll. However,
times were no better in other parts of Europe, and thus the question remains
unanswered.
The mystical writings of the 13th and 14th centuries in Germany fre-
quently are divided into two groups: the scholarly, more philosophical
works of Meister Eckhart and other adherents of speculative mysticism, and
the more personal, emotional, and lyrical works, usually by female religious.
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), along with his students John Tauler
(1300–1361), and Henry Suso (ca. 1295–1366) constitute the triumvirate of
“great German mystics” (James M. Clark, The Great German Mystics. Eckhart,
Tauler and Suso, 1949; Josef Quint, ed., Textbuch zur Mystik des deutschen Mittel-
alters: Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Seuse, 1952; Alois M. Haas, Nim
din selbes war: Studien zur Lehre von der Selbsterkenntnis bei Meiser Eckhart, Johannes
Tauler und Heinrich Seuse, 1971). Their extant writings reflect the commonly
perceived personality of each: Eckhart’s intellectually based, theologically
charged tracts and sermons; Tauler’s practical sermons, filled with anecdotes
and advice; and Suso’s florid autohagiography and poetic devotional and
epistolary literature. The writings of the three Dominicans distinguish
themselves not only on the basis of content and genre but also with regard to
language: depending upon his audience, Eckhart wrote in Latin or in Ger-
man; Tauler and Suso, writing primarily for religious women and the laity,
recorded their works almost exclusively in the vernacular.
Meister Eckhart was a teacher and preacher, a philosopher and a mystic
(James M. Clark, Meister Eckhart, 1957; Kurt Ruh, Meister Eckhart: Theologe,
Prediger, Mystiker, 1985; Niklaus Largier, Bibliographie zu Meister Eckhart, 1989).
His theology, grounded in Neoplatonism and Scholasticism, is associated
with the speculative tradition and champions the elevation of the mind and
transcendence through the intellect (John Caputo, “Fundamental Themes
in Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism,” The Thomist 42 [1978]: 197–225; Frank J.
Tobin, Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language, 1986; Richard Woods, Eckhart’s
Way, 1990; Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart, 2001).
Eckhart’s interests lie in studying the mystical union rather than attempting
to attain it. According to Eckhart, humans possess their existence only in and
through God. God is immanent in the soul’s ground, and the Word is born in
the soul. An awareness of this point of contact between mankind and God is
the fúnklin, tolde, or grunt; it is attained through contemplation, and it is the
mystic’s goal to uncover and nurture it, so that God may be revealed.
Eckhart’s writings exemplify the paradoxical expression inherent in the
mystical experience (Cyprian Smith, The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as
Mysticism 950

Taught by Meister Eckhart, 1987; Bruce Milem, The Unspoken Word: Negative
Theology in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons, 2002). Statements in his writings
concerning matters such as the “coeternity” of God and the world, the dis-
tinction between God and the Deity, the divinization of man, and the “no-
thingness” of created things resulted in suspicions of pantheism and charges
of heresy.
Tauler spent most of his life in Strassburg and Basel, preaching to mixed
lay congregations as well as Dominican women (Louise Gnädinger, Johan-
nes Tauler: Lebenswelt und mystische Lehre, 1993; Bernard McGinn, “John
Tauler the Lebmeister,” The Harvest of Mysticism, 2005, 240–96). His sermons
described an experiential and practical mysticism; they inspired through
their down-to-earth language, rich in imagery, and their call to the active life
(Ephrem Filthaut, ed., Johannes Tauler: Ein deutscher Mystiker. Gedenkschrift
zum 600. Todestag, 1961).
Confessor and preacher, Suso produced the most popular meditative
texts of the Middle Ages, employing a style rich in chivalric and love imagery.
His Exemplar includes a third-person narrative of his life – part autobiography
and part autohagiography – devotional tracts, and letters that betray homi-
letic characteristics (Ephrem Filthaut, ed., Heinrich Seuse. Studien zum
600. Todestag, 1366–1966, 1966; Heinrich Seuses Philosophia spiritualis: Quellen,
Konzept, Formen und Rezeption, ed. Rüdiger Blumrich and Philipp Kaiser,
1994; Alois M. Haas, Kunst rechter Gelassenheit: Themen und Schwerpunkte von
Heinrich Seuses Mystik, 1995).
Like many in the Order of Preachers, Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso were
charged with the cura monialium, the care of religious women. In the case
of Eckhart, spiritual guidance extended to the beguines as well (Bernard
McGinn, ed., Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, Hadewijch of Brabant,
Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, 1994; Amy M. Hollywood, The
Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart,
1995). Tauler and Suso also ministered to pious laypersons, the Friends of
God, in the Upper Rhine region.
The mystical ideas and experiences of the Dominican men were comple-
mented by those of the religious women; the women either recorded them-
selves what had been revealed to them or had it recorded by others in their
religious community. Among the extant works are the revelations of Marga-
reta Ebner (1291–1351) and Christina Ebner (1277–1355), as well as nine sis-
terbooks (Schwesternbücher) that chronicle the lives and experiences of numer-
ous women in communities in the Dominican province of Teutonia (Gertrud
Jaron Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women: the Sister-Books of Fourteenth-
Century Germany, 1996; Ruth Meyer, Das ‘St. Katharinentaler Schwesternbuch’:
951 Mysticism

Untersuchung, Edition, Kommentar, 1995; Rebecca L. R. Garber, Feminine

Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women
Writers, 1100–1375, 2003; Albrecht Classen, The Power of a Woman’s Voice,
2007, 231–69).
The tradition of the Rhineland mystics continued with the Friends of
God, a loosely organized group of religious and lay persons strongly in-
fluenced by the Dominican tradition who embraced a pious lifestyle; the most
well-known was Rulman Merswin (1310–1382) (Rufus Jones, The Flowering
of Mysticism: The Friends of God in the Fourteenth Century, 1939). The message of
simple piety and a life of virtue founded on divine grace also was contained in
the Theologia Deutsch, an anonymous tract from the 14th century to which
Martin Luther made references in his writing.
The term deutsche Mystik has been used for more than a century and a half
primarily in reference to the tradition of the 14th century associated with
Eckhart and his followers (Wilhelm Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik
im Mittelalter: Nach den Quellen untersucht und dargestellt, 3 vols., 1874–1893;
Alois M. Haas, “Deutsche Mystik,” Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, III/2:
Die deutsche Literatur im späten Mittelalter 1250–1370, ed. Ingeborg Glier, 1987,
234–305).
The 14th century witnessed renewed interested in mysticism in the Low
Countries. John Ruysbroeck (ca. 1293–1381) provided spiritual counsel and
wrote of unmediated union with God (Oliver Davies, God Within. The Mysti-
cal Tradition of Northern Europe, 1988). The Brethren of the Common Life called
for spiritual renewal; the disciplined life they espoused, set forth by Thomas
à Kempis (1380–1471) in De imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ) and by Gerhard
Groot (1340–1384), attracted religious and laity (Devotio moderna) (Robert E.
Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, 1972; John Van Engen, Sisters and
Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle
Ages, 2008).
The works of several early Renaissance figures continued the mystical
tradition, among them The Vision of God by the canon lawyer Nicholas of Cusa
(Clyde Lee Miller, “Nicholas of Cusa’s The Vision of God,” An Introduction to
the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach, 1984, 293–312; Andrew
Weeks, “The Finite and the Infinite: The Humanistic Mysticism of Nicholas
of Cusa,” in his German Mysticism from Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
A Literary and Intellectual History, 1993, 99–116). Likewise, the spiritual tradi-
tion among women persisted in early modern times (Werner Williams-
Krapp, “Frauenmystik und Ordensreform im 15. Jahrhundert,” Literarische
Interessenbildung im Mittelalter. Mauracher Symposion 1991, ed. Joachim Heinzle,
1993, 301–13).
Mysticism 952

Focusing on the personal relationship between the individual and God,

scholars of mysticism in the late 19th century such as Wilhelm Preger ar-
gued that late medieval German mystics were precursors of the 15th-century
German Reformers (Geschichte der deutschen Mystik), a theory vehemently re-
futed by Heinrich Seuse Denifle (Die deutschen Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts).
The dispute followed confessional lines.

3. The Mystical Tradition in England

The mystical tradition in England flourished beginning in the 13th century
(David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition, 1961; Wolfgang Riehle, Stu-
dien zur englischen Mystik des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer
Metaphorik, 1977, translated as The Middle English Mystics, trans. Bernard
Standring, 1981). Only in England did anchoritic spirituality gain wide-
spread acceptance; rules and guides such as the Ancrene Wisse were produced
for individuals, mostly women, who adopted an eremitic lifestyle (Rotha
Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England, 1914; Ann K. Warren,
Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England, 1985). In the 14th century,
a number of spiritual writings that provided spiritual instruction were
penned by Richard Rolle (ca. 1290–1349), Walter Hilton (ca. 1340–1396),
and the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing (Phyllis Hodgson,
Three Fourteenth-Century English Mystics, 1967). Hope Emily Allen was the
first to draw attention to the writings of Rolle (Writings Ascribed to Richard
Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography, 1927, rpt. 1966);
his works are notable for their style and content, as well as what they reveal
regarding the personality of the author (Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and
the Invention of Authority, 1991). Hilton’s Scale of Perfection describes the soul’s
journey along stages of spiritual development towards perfection through a
life of penance; the work was a very popular piece of devotional literature
among the laity before the Reformation (Joseph E. Milosh, The Scale of Perfec-
tion and the English Mystical Tradition, 1966; Gunnel Cleve, Mystic Themes in
Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Book I, 1989, and Basic Mystic Themes in Walter
Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Book II, 1994). Another spiritual guidebook of the
period, the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing has attracted scholarly attention
with regard to the nature of the mysticism it espouses (William Johnston,
The Mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing, 1967, rpt. 2000), its theological
underpinnings (Rosemary Ann Lees, The Negative Language of the Dionysian
School of Mystical Theology: An Approach to the Cloud of Unknowing, 1983), as well
as questions concerning its authorship (Annie Sutherland, “The Dating
and Authorship of the Cloud Corpus: A Reassessment of the Evidence,”
Medium Aevum 71 [2001]: 82–100).
953 Mysticism

Two of the most well-known figures associated with English mysticism

are products of the 14th and 15th century: Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416)
and Margery Kempe (ca. 1373–1438). Following her visionary experiences,
Dame Julian adopted the life of an anchoress, taking up residence in a cell
attached to the church in Norwich that now bears her name and serving as
a counselor to those who visited her. Her Showings also provided guidance
to others; the text, which survives in two different redactions, is remarkable
for its sensual and allegorical language and its teaching on the motherhood
of God (Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian, 1988; Denise
Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book, 1994;
Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra McEntire, 1998; Frederick
Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic
of Christ, 1999; The Writings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jac-
queline Jenkins, 2005). The Book of Margery Kempe describes the travels and
mystical experiences of the Norfolk laywoman. Margery advocated and her-
self practiced an ascetic lifestyle; her unusual behavior, specifically her weep-
ing, led to accusations of Lollardy and to rejection of her religious experi-
ences as fraudulent – by her contemporaries as well as by scholars and readers
today (Clarissa W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Mar-
gery Kempe, 1983; Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh,
1991; Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra McEntire, 1992; Lynn Sta-
ley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, 1994; Albrecht Classen, The Power of
a Woman’s Voice, 2007, 271–308).
With the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1538 and 1541,
members of religious orders were expelled from England. Nonetheless, writ-
ings of the 14th-century English mystics were copied and distributed on the
continent, especially from the Benedictine communities at Cambrai and Paris.
In England recusants continued to foster the mystical tradition (Neglected
English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th–17th Centuries, ed. Dorothy L.
Latz, 1997).

4. Medieval Mystics in Other Areas of Europe

There are fewer extant records in other European countries to document a
mystical tradition; however, across the continent there were several notable
figures. In her writings Angela of Foligno (ca. 1248–1309) related the stages
in her journal toward God; later in life she became a Franciscan tertiary (Vita
e Spiritualità della Beata Angela de Foligno, ed. Clément Schmitt, 1987). Canon-
ized in the 15th century, Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), a Dominican terti-
ary, received the stigmata and served as a counselor to those in the secular
and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Her letters, prayers, and dialogue with God em-
Mysticism 954

phasized her devotion to the Sacred Heart and her concern with Church re-
form (Suzanne Noffke, Catherine of Siena: Vision Through a Distant Eye, 1996).
Also concerned with reform was St. Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden (1302–1373),
who severed her ties with the Swedish court to take up the challenge of batt-
ling corruption in Rome; her revelations revealed her devotion to and vener-
ation of Christ and Mary (Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of
Prophecy, 2001). The lives and experiences of these and many other mulieres
sanctae have been documented and studied (Brenda Bolton, “Mulieres sanc-
tae,” Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard, 1976, 141–58;
Valerie Lagorio, “The Medieval Continental Women Mystics: An Introduc-
tion,” An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach,
1984, 161–93; Amy Hollywood, “The Religiosity of the Mulieres Sanctae,”
in her The Soul as Virgin Wife, 1995, 26–56). In Spain, Ramon Llull (Raymond
Lull, 1232–1315) abandoned life at the royal court for the religious life;
his philosophical ideas were very popular, although his mystical beliefs were
condemned by the pope (Joaquím Xirau, Vida y obra de Ramón Lull, filosofía
y mística, 1946; Miriam Thérèse Olabarrieta, The Influence of Ramon Lull on
the Style of the Early Spanish Mystics and Santa Teresa, 1963). Spanish mysticism
reached its zenith in the 16th century: the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius
of Loyola (1491–1556), authored his Spiritual Exercises; Teresa of Avila
(1515–1581) described the inward journey toward the Divine in her Interior
Castle (Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica: actas del I Congreso Inter-
nacional sobre Santa Teresa y la Mística Hispánica, ed. Manuel Criado de Val,
1984); and John of the Cross (1545–1591) characterized the search for God
in the Dark Night of the Soul (Poesía y mística: Introducción a la lírica de san Juan
de la Cruz, ed. Emilio Orozco Díaz, 1959). Spanish visionary women such as
Sor Juana de la Cruz first appeared on the scene at the end of the 15th century
and into the 16th century (Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España: Estudios sobre la
historia spiritual del siglo xvi, 1966; Ronald E. Surtz, The Guitar of God: Gender,
Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz [1481–1534],
1990).

5. The Medieval Mystical Tradition in Judaism

The High Middle Ages was a period of diverse developments in Jewish phil-
osophy and spirituality, including the rationalistic philosophy of Moses
Maimonides (1135–1204), the Ashkenazi Hasidic movement, and the kab-
balah (Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1961; Elliot R.
Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines. Vision and Imagination in Medieval
Jewish Mysticism, 1994; Joseph Dan, Jewish Mysticism, vol. II: The Middle Ages,
1998). The collection of essays edited by Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn
955 Mysticism

explores some potential connections between the Jewish and Christian mys-
tical traditions (Mystical Union).

C. History of Research, Schools of Thought, Approaches

An introduction to the concept of mysticism is found in all major reference
works dealing with the Middle Ages (e. g., Dictionary of the Middle Ages and
the Lexikon des Mittelalters) as well as philosophy and religion (e. g., the Diction-
naire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, and The Encyclopedia of Religion). There is even a dictionary of mys-
ticism, which focuses on the European tradition (Peter Dinzelbacher, Wör-
terbuch der Mystik, 1989, 2nd ed., 1998).
A number of useful bibliographies have been published in recent decades.
Umesh D. Sharma and John Arndt offer a listing of general titles in Mysti-
cism:A Select Bibliography (1973). Mary Ann Bowman limits her bibliography
to Western mysticism (Western Mysticism. A Guide to the Basic Works, 1978) but
includes works related to the history, practice, and experience of mysticism
as well as English translations of the writings of Western mystics from
ancient to modern times. Gertrud Jaron Lewis provides comprehensive
documentation of scholarship about German female mystics in the Middle
Ages (Bibliographie zur deutschen Frauenmystik des Mittelalters, 1989). Resources
for the English mystics include: Valerie Lagorio and Ritamary Bradley,
The 14th-Century English Mystics: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography (1981),
and Michael E. Sawyer, A Bibliographical Index of Five English Mystics: Richard
Rolle, Julian of Norwich, the Author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, Walter Hilton, Mar-
gery Kempe (1978).
A number of journals focus on scholarship related to Christian mysti-
cism in the Middle Ages. Founded in 1926, the Jesuit publication Zeitschrift
für Aszese und Mystik became Geist und Leben: Zeitschrift für christliche Spiritualität
in 1947; it maintains its focus on the Christian tradition. Studies in Spiritual-
ity, published since 1991 by the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen, pro-
motes spirituality as a science; multi-disciplinary in its approach, the journal
includes mostly articles concerned with the Judeo-Christian traditions.
The Revue d’ascétique et de mystique appeared from 1920 to 1971; publication
continued as the Revue d’histoire de la spiritualité but was suspended in 1977.
Begun by Valerie Lagorio and Ritamary Bradley in 1974, the 14th Century
English Mystics Newsletter was renamed Mystics Quarterly in 1984 and was re-
launched in 2010 as the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures. Excluding occul-
tism, magic, the esoteric, and the merely mysterious from its definition of
“mystical,” the journal publishes editions as well as articles with a focus on
the Western Middle Ages but broadened its focus with the most recent name
Mysticism 956

change. The annual Studia Mystica, founded in 1978, offers articles on mysti-
cism and visionary literature in any cultural or religious tradition, including
essays that employ interdisciplinary and comparative approaches; publi-
cation ended in 2003. Vox Benedictina by Peregrina Publishing had a broader
scope than its title implies; although it ceased publication in 1994, it was suc-
ceeded by Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History. Spiritus: A Journal
of Christian Spirituality was begun by The Johns Hopkins University Press in
2001 with the goal of encouraging research in the field of Christian spiritual-
ity as well as creative dialogue with other non-Christian traditions. Twenty-
five essays from the journal have appeared in Minding the Spirit. The Study of
Christian Spirituality, ed. Elizabeth Dreyer and Mark Burrows (2005).
Many other useful collections of essays have been published in recent
decades. Altdeutsche und altniederländische Mystik, ed. Kurt Ruh (1964) and
Grundfragen der Mystik, ed. Werner Beierwaltes, Hans Urs von Balthasar,
and Alois M. Haas (1974), shed light on various aspects of Christian mysti-
cism, in particular German medieval mysticism. Christian Spirituality: vol. 1:
Origins to the Twelfth Century and Christian Spirituality: vol 2: High Middle Ages
and Reformation (ed. Jill Raitt, 1987) appear in the series World Spirituality:
An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, ed. Ewert Cousins; the volumes
introduce selected aspects of Western Christian mysticism. Two recent Fest-
schriften for Gotthard Fuchs – Gottesfreundschaft: Christliche Mystik im Zeit-
gespräch (ed. Dietlind Langner, Marco A. Sorace, and Peter Zimmerling,
2008) and Mystik: Herausforderung und Inspiration (ed. Thomas Pröpper,
2008) – include essays on the European Middle Ages, modern mystics, and
non-Christian traditions.
Several monograph series have been introduced in recent decades that
serve as forums for textual editions or critical examinations of mystical texts
from the European Middle Ages. Among them are the Peregrina Translation
Series; the Library of Medieval Women and Studies in Medieval Mysticism,
both by Boydell and Brewer; and Mystik in Geschichte und Gegenwart by
Frommann-Holzboog.
An overview of various mystical traditions is found in: Sidney Spenser,
Mysticism in World Religion (1963), Edward Geoffrey Parrinder, Mysticism in
the World’s Religions (1976), and Bruno Borchert, Mysticism. Its History and
Challenge. Basic surveys of mysticism comparative in nature include those by
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, 1957), Annemarie
Schimmel (Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 1975), Toshihiko Izutsu (Sufism and
Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts, 1983), and Dan and
Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok (Jewish and Christian Mysticism: An Introduction,
1994). The essays in Mysticism and the Mystical Experience: East and West (ed.
957 Mysticism

Donald H. Bishop, 1995) examine various traditions; Bishop’s introduc-

tion (11–37) offers an overview of the 20th-century debate regarding the defi-
nition and nature of mysticism. William Harmless employs a case-study
approach to his studies of six Christian mystics – among whom are four
medieval figures: Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure,
and Meister Eckhart – and explores mystical elements in Islam and Bud-
dhism as well in Mystics (2008).
Latin editions of works of many mystics mentioned above were pub-
lished in the Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana in the 17th century or in the Patrologia
Latina series, edited and published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844
and 1855. Critical editions of writings in Latin and in the vernacular began
to appear in the 19th century. Since the 1980s English translations of key
writings of Christian (and other) mystics have appeared in the Classics of
Western Spirituality series. Text anthologies include those edited by Louis
Dupré and James A. Wiseman (Light from Light: An Anthology of Christian Mys-
ticism, 1988); Harvey Egan (An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, 1991); John R.
Tyson (Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, 1999); and
Bernard McGinn (The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 2006).
Among the earliest comprehensive chronological examinations of Chris-
tian mysticism is the incomplete study by Johann Joseph von Görres
(Die christliche Mystik, vols. 1–4, 1836–1842, and vols. 1–5, 1879). The second
volume of the Histoire de la spiritualité chrétienne is devoted to medieval spiri-
tuality (Jean Leclercq, François Vandenbroucke, and Louis Bouyer,
La spiritualité du moyen âge, 1961). The appendix to Underhill’s Mysticism
provides a brief chronological narrative of Christian mysticism from its be-
ginnings through the 18th century; it remains a popular, readable introduc-
tion in English.
Two multi-volume histories of mysticism have appeared in the past
two decades, one in German and one in English. Kurt Ruh’s Geschichte der
abendländischen Mystik (1990–1999) comprises four volumes: the foundations
of Western mysticism from the Church Fathers through monastic theology
to the 12th century; female mysticism (Frauenmystik) and early Franciscan
mysticism; Dominican mysticism and its Scholastic background; and mysti-
cism in the Low Countries from the 14th through the 16th century. Bernard
McGinn’s series titled The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysti-
cism (1991–2005) includes: The Foundations of Mysticism (1991) from the Jew-
ish, Greek, and Early Christian roots; The Growth of Mysticism (1994) through
the 12th century; The Flowering of Mysticism (1998) from 1200 to 1350; and The
Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (2005) from 1300 to 1500. All four
volumes also have been translated into German.
Mysticism 958

Several histories and anthologies of European mysticism provide a bridge

between medieval and modern times: Friedrich-Wilhelm Wentzlaff-Eg-
gebert, Deutsche Mystik zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (1943); Ray C. Petry,
Late Medieval Mysticism (1957); Andrew Weeks, German Mysticism from Hilde-
gard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Literary and Intellectual History (1993).
Scholars continue to debate the definition of mysticism; Steven Payne
provides an overview of ongoing controversies (“Mysticism, Nature of,”
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig, 1998, vol. 6, 627–34).
The nature of mysticism has been a key issue for the last half century. Peren-
nialists champion the idea of common features to the mystical experience
across cultures and traditions (Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy,
1945; Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy; Robert K. C. Forman, ed., The Problem
of Pure Consciousness, 1997). In contrast, constructivist theory maintains that
the nature of the mystical experience is largely determined, i. e., “con-
structed,” by the individual’s cultural background (Ninian Smart, “Under-
standing Religious Experience,” and Stephen Katz, “Language, Epistemol-
ogy, and Mysticism,” Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Katz, 1978;
and three additional volumes edited by Katz: Mysticism and Religious Tradi-
tions [1983], Mysticism and Language [1992], and Mysticism and Sacred Scripture
[2000]). Wayne Proudfoot maintains that religious experience cannot be
viewed as distinct from either religious beliefs and practices or grammar and
linguistic strictures (Religious Experience, 1985). Identifying Izutsu, McGinn,
Idel, and Sells as a third group in the debate, one that distinguishes between
the mystical experience and the textual account of the experience, F. Samuel
Brainard reviews the issue and offers a representative bibliography (“De-
fining Mystical Experience”).
Summaries of schools of thought, approaches, and recent scholarship
can be found in several recent publications of Bernard McGinn. In “A Brief
Critical Bibliography on Christian Mysticism,” which concludes The Essential
Writings of Christian Mysticism, 553–59, McGinn cites 20 classic interpre-
tations of mysticism from 1880 to 1980 as well as 25 recent studies from 1980
to 2005. In “Theoretical Foundations: The Modern Study of Mysticism,” an
appendix to The Foundations of Mysticism, 265–343, he provides a comprehen-
sive and masterful survey of modern theories of mysticism. Noting that no
general survey of modern theories of mysticism currently exists, McGinn
provides what he characterizes as an eclectic and personal view. The overview
consists of three sections – theological approaches, philosophical ap-
proaches, and comparativist and psychological approaches – supplemented
by copious notes and an extensive bibliography. Lastly, McGinn’s brief
essay on mysticism in The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality
959 Mysticism

(ed. Philip Sheldrake, 2005, 19–25) offers a pithy chronicle of the evol-
ution of mysticism in the Western context into the 18th century and charac-
terizes current debates in the field.

D. Current Issues and Future Trends

With the editing and translating of texts in the late 19th century, interest in
mysticism increased. The final decades of the 20th century witnessed re-
newed attention to mysticism by scholarly and lay audiences and a prolifer-
ation of editions and English translations. Previous studies often examined
lives and texts from a single perspective – historical, linguistic, literary,
philosophical, or theological – but current academic research regarding mys-
ticism has become interdisciplinary and comparative in nature.

1. Women, the Feminine, and Mysticism

The significance of the lives and works of medieval women mystics was re-
evaluated in the second half of the 20th century, and a scholarship boom in
the area occurred in the 1980s, beginning with several notable introductions
by Valerie Lagorio: “The Continental Women Mystics of the Middle Ages:
An Assessment,” The Roots of the Modern Christian Tradition: The Spirituality
of Western Christendom, vol. 2, ed. E. Rozanne Elder, 1984, 71–90, and “The
Medieval Continental Women Mystics: An Introduction,” An Introduction
to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, 161–93. Margaret Wade Labarge devotes a
chapter to women mystics in A Small Sound of the Trumpet (1986), as does Peter
Dronke in Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Per-
petua (†203) to Marguerite Porete (†1310) (1984). Three volumes of Medieval Reli-
gious Women, edited by John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (I: Dis-
tant Echoes, 1984; II: Peaceweavers, 1987; III: Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic
Women, 1995), include essays on women mystics through the 16th century.
Among text anthologies are Shawn Madigan, ed., Mystics, Visionaries, and
Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Writings (1998), and Eliza-
beth Spearing, ed., Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality (2002).
Monographs have examined: female mysticism in general (Frances
Beer, Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages, 1993; Peter Dinzel-
bacher, Mittelalterliche Frauenmystik, 1993); selected women mystics (Emilie
Zum Brunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval
Europe, 1989); specific communities (Leonard P. Hindsley, The Mystics of En-
gelthal: Writings from a Medieval Monastery, 1996; Lewis, By Women, for Women,
about Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany); and women
mystics in early modern times (Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles:
Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, 2004). There
Mysticism 960

is even a bibliography devoted solely to German medieval women mystics

(Gertrud Jaron Lewis, Bibliographie zur deutschen Frauenmystik des Mittelalters,
1989). Conferences, especially in Germany, concerning women and mysti-
cism soon followed and resulted in collections of essays edited by Peter Din-
zelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer (Frauenmystik im Mittelalter. Wissenschaft-
liche Studientagung der Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart 22.–25. Februar
1984 in Weingarten, 1985; and Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmig-
keit im Mittelalter, 1988); Kurt Ruh (Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter. Sympo-
sion Kloster Engelberg 1984, 1986); Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-
Lastin (Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: Neu erschlossene
Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte. Kolloquium Kloster
Fischingen 1998, 2000); and Eva Schlotheuber and Helmut Flachen-
ecker, Nonnen, Kanonissen und Mystikerinnen: Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften in
Süddeutschland: Beiträge zur interdisziplinären Tagung vom 21. bis 23. September
2005 in Frauenchiemsee, 2007).
The writings of women mystics take various forms, but descriptions of
revelations and visions are the most common. Visionary experiences have
been examined from a psychological, phenomenological, as well as a theo-
logical perspective (Peter Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittel-
alter, 1981; Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature,
1986).
The gendered nature of symbols has been examined most extensively in
the works of Hildegard of Bingen (Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom. St. Hil-
degard’s Theology of the Feminine, 1987). More recent studies have identified
feminine aspects of the Divine in portrayals of Mary and allegorical figures
such as Caritas not only in the writings by the Benedictine abbess but also in
those by other mystics (Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry
and Belief in the Middle Ages, 2003; Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Feminine
Symbols in Medieval Religious Literature” in her Goddesses and the Divine
Feminine: A Western Religious History, 2005, 159–66).

2. Male-Female Relationships
The relationship between men and women in the mystical tradition, particu-
larly male confessors and their female spiritual charges, is significant to an
understanding of the lives and writings of the medieval mystics (Elizabeth
Alvilda Petroff, “Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities
for Dialogue,” Body and Soul. Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism, 1994,
139–60; John Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and
their Male Collaborators, 2006). In some cases a genuine friendship evolved
(Margot Schmidt, “An Example of Spiritual Friendship. The Correspon-
961 Mysticism

dence Between Heinrich of Nördlingen and Margaretha Ebner,” Maps of Flesh

and Light. The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics, ed. Ulrike Wiet-
haus, 1993, 74–92). Oftentimes there was a reciprocal influence on lifestyle
and writing (Frank Tobin, “Henry Suso and Elsbeth Stagel: Was the Vita
a Cooperative Effort?” Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters,
ed. Catherine M. Mooney, 1999, 118–35). The male religious visited the
communities in person and communicated with the women via letters,
which sometimes appear as thinly veiled sermons and sometimes as expres-
sions of the personal relationships that evolved (Wilhelm Oehl, Deutsche
Mystikerbriefe des Mittelalters 1100–1550, 1931, rpt. 1972; Debra L. Stoudt,
“The Production and Preservation of Letters by Fourteenth-Century
Dominican Nuns,” Mediaeval Studies 53 [1991]: 309–26). The relationships
also led to the composition of explicitly homiletic and other didactic works
by the men as well as (auto)biographies and visionary literature, primarily by
the women. Differences in writing style and spiritual content predicated
upon gender continue to be examined, e. g., Theresia Heimerl, Frauen-
mystik – Männermystik? Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in der Darstellung
von Gottes- und Menschenbild bei Meister Eckhart, Heinrich Seuse, Marguerite Porete
und Mechthild von Magdeburg (2002), and Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg
and her Book. Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (2004). Poor draws
attention to the term Frauenmystik itself, which has come under scrutiny
(Gabriele L. Strauch, “Mechthild of Magdeburg and the Category of
Frauenmystik,” Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages, ed. Al-
brecht Classen, 1991, 171–86). The traditional dichotomy between specu-
lative and intellectual forms – identified with the masculine – and affective,
visionary, and ecstatic forms of mysticism – identified with the feminine –
has been re-examined by Amy Hollywood in light of theories of 20th-cen-
tury French intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce
Irigaray (Sensible Ecstasy. Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History,
2002).

3. Lifestyles and Practices of the Mystics

Because of the personal nature of the experience, many mystics adopted an
eremitic lifestyle, isolated from society and even from others with similar ex-
periences. Already in the 3rd century religious men and women retreated to
the deserts of North Africa and Asia Minor to pursue a contemplative life.
The experiences of men such as Anthony the Great (ca. 251–356), [Pachomius
(ca. 290–346)], Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, John Cassian
(ca. 360–435), and Augustine of Hippo, as well as women like Matrona and
Syncletica are described by Helen Waddell (The Desert Fathers, 1957), Gra-
Mysticism 962

ham E. Gould (The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, 1993), and Laura
Swan (The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian
Women, 2001). The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers often focus on
the virtues of the monastic life and resonate with later generations of mystics
(Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection,
1975).
Although the cenobitic or monastic lifestyle became the norm in West-
ern Europe, individual mystics throughout the Middle Ages embraced the
life of solitude. Women usually were not permitted isolated confinement;
the anchoresses often lived in a cell attached to a chapel or church (Anneke B.
Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses. The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medi-
eval Europe, trans. Myra Heerspink Scholz, 2005). The practice gained cur-
rency among hermits and anchorites in England from the 12th through the
14th century (Elizabeth Robertson, “An Anchorhold of her Own: Female
Anchoritic Literature in Thirteenth-Century England,” Equally in God’s Image:
Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright,
and Joan Bechtold, 1990, 170–83). The anonymous Ancrene Riwle or Ancrene
Wisse was written as a guide for anchoresses (Linda Georgianna, The Solitary
Self: Individuality in the Ancrene Wisse, 1981; and Anne Savage and Nicholas
Watson, trans., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works,
1991). The debate concerning the extent to which spirituality of the anchor-
ites can be classified as mysticism is summarized by Mary Agnes Edsall
(“True Anchoresses Are Called Birds: Asceticism as Ascent and the Purgative
Mysticism of the Ancrene Wisse,” Viator 34 [2003]: 157–86). The lifestyle
itself is described in the writings of Christina of Markyate (C. H. Talbot,
ed., The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse, 1987) and Julian
of Norwich (Showings, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, 1978).
In solitude or in community, the medieval mystic focused on prayer
and meditation in daily life. The practice of hesychasm began in the first
centuries; in some ways like prayer and meditation practices such as yoga, in
Eastern religion it has as its goal inner stillness. The stillness is achieved
through the repetition of a prayer, accompanied by a certain positioning of
the body or disciplined breathing patterns (Tomás Spidlik, La spiritualité de
l’Orient Chrétien: manuel systématique, 1978; The Spirituality of the Christian East:
A Systematic Handbook, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel, 1986). Some medieval
mystics embraced the practice of prayer repetition, and prayer played a key
role in the contemplative lifestyle, especially among women.
Other practices are informed by recognition of the imitatio Christi and the
centrality of the humanity of Christ among medieval mystics. Caroline
Walker Bynum’s scholarship is pioneering in this regard (“‘… And Woman
963 Mysticism

His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle
Ages,” Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Bynum et al., Bos-
ton, 1986, 257–88). Central to the medieval mystical experience are: asceti-
cism, including mortification of the flesh (Lerne leiden: Leidensbewältigung in der
Mystik, ed. Wolfgang Böhme, 1985; Alois M. Haas, Gottleiden – Gottlieben. Zur
volkssprachlichen Mystik im Mittelalter, 1989) and fasting (Bynum, Holy Feast and
Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, 1987); veneration
of Christ, especially the Sacred Heart; and devotion to the Eucharist (Bynum,
The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336, 1995; and Fragmen-
tation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion,
1991). In their recent study, Jerome Kroll and Bernard Bachrach examine
the lives of medieval holy persons, including a number of mystics, and
suggest that self-injurious behaviors such as laceration of the flesh, sleep
deprivation, and fasting – heroic asceticism – could produce altered states of
consciousness, including the mystical state (The Mystic Mind. The Psychology of
Medieval Mystics and Ascetics, 2005).
The corporeal nature of mystical experiences has been examined in
terms of their sensual and sensory nature (Rosemary Drage Hale, “‘Taste
and See, for God is Sweet’: Sensory Perception and Memory in Medieval
Christian Mystical Experience,” Vox Mystica: Essays on Medieval Mysticism in
Honor of Professor Valerie M. Lagorio, ed. Anne Clark Bartlett et al., 1995,
3–14; Niklas Largier, “Inner Senses-Outer Senses: The Practice of Emo-
tions in Medieval Mysticism,” Codierung von Emotionen im Mittelalter/Emotions
and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten,
2003, 3–15).
Recognition of the physicality of the experience also has led to examin-
ation of medieval (and modern) perceptions of the female body and charac-
terizations of gender in mystical texts (Bynum, “The Female Body and
Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages, Fragmentation and Redemption,
181–238; Elizabeth Robertson, “The Rule of the Body: The Feminine
Spirituality of the Ancrene Wisse,” Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renais-
sance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism, ed. Janet E. Halley and
Sheila Fisher, 1989, 109–34; Karma Lochrie, “The Language of Trans-
gression: Body, Flesh, and Word in Mystical Discourse,” Speaking Two Lan-
guages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed.
Allen J. Frantzen, 1991, 115–40; Ulrike Wiethaus, “Sexuality, Gender,
and the Body in Late Medieval Women’s Spirituality: Cases from Germany
and the Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 [Spring 1991]:
35–52; Rebecca L. R. Garber, Feminine Figurae. Representations of Gender in Re-
ligious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers 1100–1375, 2003).
Mysticism 964

Although contemplation serves as a spiritual focus for most mystics,

the active life is evident through some of the practices noted above. The per-
formative nature of the practices and the significance of ritual have been re-
examined (Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler, Performance and Trans-
formation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, 1999; Niklas Largier,
“Scripture, Vision, Performance: Visionary Texts and Medieval Religious
Drama,” Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Starkey and
Horst Wenzel, 2005, 207–19).

4. The Mystical Text and Context

Frank Tobin summarizes the scholarship on the subject of how the recorded
mystical text has been understood by recent scholars (Mechthild von Magde-
burg: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes, 1995, 110–33). Among Germanists the
more prevalent viewpoint maintains that the texts are literary documents,
written with a specific audience in mind (Siegfried Ringler, Viten- und Offen-
barungsliteratur in Frauenklöstern des Mittelalters: Quellen und Studien, 1980;
id., “Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher Frauenmystik als wissenschaftliches
Problem, dargestellt am Werk der Christine Ebner,” Frauenmystik im Mittel-
alter, 178–200). Historians like Dinzelbacher (Vision und Visionsliteratur im
Mittelalter) posit not only the idea of literary visions (“literarische Visionen”)
but also experienced (“erlebte”) ones that actually occurred. The ensuing
contrast of scholarly positions between Caroline Walker Bynum and Ursula
Peters, discussed by Tobin under the rubric of feminine criticism, may be
viewed as a continuation of the previous debate. Historical contextualization
is central to Bynum’s study Jesus as Mother; it is challenged by Peters, who
questions the validity of the texts (Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum:
Zur Vorgeschichte und Genese frauenmystischer Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts,
1988). The nexus of literature, history, and hagiography will continue to be a
thorny issue for scholars of medieval mysticism.
In addition to historical authenticity, authorship of texts has come under
scrutiny. How are statements of spiritual unworthiness and lack of edu-
cation, especially by female authors, to be understood? Who has the authority
to write? (Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation
and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature, 1995; Rosalynn Voaden,
God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medi-
eval Women Visionaries, 1999; Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and her Book).
The debate regarding the expression of the inexpressible and the para-
doxical nature of mystical language continues as well (Jörg Seelhorst,
Autoreferentialität und Transformation. Zur Funktion mystischen Sprechens bei
Mechthild von Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart und Heinrich Seuse, 2003).
965 Mysticism

5. Art and Mysticism

In the first half of the 20th century Ernst Benz examined the relationship
between mysticism and art (“Christliche Mystik und christliche Kunst [Zur
theologischen Interpretation mittelalterlichen Kunst],” Deutsches Vierteljahrs-
schrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 12 [1934]: 22–48). In a series
of monographs Jeffrey F. Hamburger has investigated: the relationship be-
tween art and mysticism (The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders
and the Rhineland, 1990; Hamburger, ed., The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological
Argument in the Middle Ages, 2005); art produced by religious women (Nuns
as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent, 1997); and art that inspired
religious women (The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in
Late Medieval Germany, 1998). Works of art served as manifestations of and
inspirations for the mystical experience (Walter Blank, “Dominikanische
Frauenmystik und die Entstehung des Andachtsbildes um 1300,” Aleman-
nisches Jahrbuch [1964/65], 57–86; Elisabeth Vavra, “Bildmotiv und Frauen-
mystik – Funktion und Rezeption,” Frauenmystik im Mittelalter, 201–31).

Select Bibliography
Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism serves as a general introduction to the topic, and the
Wörterbuch der Mystik by Peter Dinzelbacher provides additional details. The five-
volume history by Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, and the four vol-
umes by Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism
offer a comprehensive foundation, rich notes, and a wealth of bibliographical refer-
ences.

Debra L. Stoudt
967 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

Narratives of Technological Revolution

in the Middle Ages

A. Introduction
Narratives of technological revolution in the Middle Ages are a distinctively
20th-century phenomenon. First articulated by a handful of influential
French, British and American historians between the 1930s and 1950s, they
can be genealogically linked to narratives of progress across a number of arts
and social science disciplines which have invoked the language of revol-
utionary rupture to characterize a number of notable transformations in
human cultures and societies between the Neolithic and modern periods.
Two kinds of technological revolution have been claimed for the Euro-
pean Middle Ages by 20th-century scholars: an ‘agricultural revolution’ of the
6th to 9th centuries, and an ‘industrial revolution’ of the 11th to 14th centuries.
Scholarly claims for both an industrial revolution and an agricultural revol-
ution in the Middle Ages can be traced back to the 1930s, although they
did not become full-blown narratives until the 1950s. Such claims have a
relatively complex lineage, but are perhaps best understood as part of a west-
ern intellectual tradition going back to the Enlightenment which has sought
to account for the radical social and political changes that have occurred
throughout the world since industrialization with reference to the marriage
of practical and theoretical knowledge characteristic of the modern period.
The term ‘revolution’ gained currency and has been widely deployed
during the modern period to denote a significant change in the politics,
economy or culture of a given society or group of societies over a relatively
short period of time. Generally speaking, revolutionary political changes have
been identified with particular nations or countries, such as the French Rev-
olution of 1789–1799, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, and are of com-
paratively short duration. Revolutionary cultural changes, on the other hand,
such as the Scientific Revolution of ca. 1540–1690 and the Industrial Revol-
ution of c. 1760–1850 transcend national boundaries, are generally held to
be regional in character, and can occur over a period of a century or more.
This essay focuses on the use of a particular style of cultural revolution
narrative – that of technological revolution – in historical writings from the
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 968

20th century about the European Middle Ages. It seeks to explain the social
and political context within which such narratives first arose and how they
appear to be genealogically related. The problems with and difficulties aris-
ing from individual revolutionary narratives are then flagged, with readers
directed to the relevant critical literature. The article concludes with some
generic observations about the use of such narratives in contemporary his-
toriography.

B. Narratives of Cultural Revolution in the History of Science

and Technology
Narratives of cultural revolution, particularly in relation to developments in
science and technology, have been a common feature of western intellectual
discourse since the early 17th century.
The use of titles such as Physiologia Nova De Magnete, Magneticisque Corpori-
bus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure by William Gilbert (1544–1603), and the Novum
Organum and Instauratio Magna by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), were squarely
aimed at distinguishing the intellectual contributions of these early modern
scholars from their scholastic and classical predecessors, and setting them-
selves up as the new authorities on the subjects about which they wrote.
Contemporaries of key figures in the Scientific Revolution, such as
William Harvey (1578–1657) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), were already
describing their contributions to natural philosophy, physiology, and the
mathematical sciences as ‘revolutionary:’ not in the classical sense of an as-
tronomical cycle or periodic return (as invoked by Renaissance humanists to
describe their efforts to return to the Greek and Roman roots of European
knowledge ‘purified’ of Islamic and scholastic influences), but in the sense of
the overturning of traditional knowledge structures and authorities with
long-term consequences. For example, a contemporary of Galileo, Raffaello
Maggiotti (1597–1658), wrote to him in 1637 that Harvey’s work on the
circulation of the blood “will suffice to revolutionize all of medicine, just as
the invention of the telescope has done for astronomy, the compass has done
for commerce, and artillery has done for the whole military art” (Jerome
Bylebyl, “William Harvey: A Conventional Medical Revolutionary,” Journal
of the American Medical Association 239 [1978]: 1295–98). Maggiotti’s argument
was a variation on those made by Bacon and others before him that “printing,
gunpowder and the magnet […] have changed the whole face and state of
things throughout the world” (Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620, Bk. 1,
aphorism 129).
It was not until the Enlightenment, however, that the now widely ac-
cepted modern sense of revolution as the rapid or violent overthrow of existing
969 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

political and cultural norms and institutions came into common usage. Con-
temporary historians of science such as I. Bernard Cohen, David Lindberg,
and H. Floris Cohen have drawn attention to the fact that Enlightenment
figures such as Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783),
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794)
consciously deployed revolutionary rhetoric to distinguish the practical
mathematical and experimental orientation of 17th- and 18th-century natu-
ral philosophers from those of their medieval and even ancient predecessors
(I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science, 1985, 197–261; David Lindberg,
“Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Bacon to Butterfield,” Re-
appraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Lindberg and Robert West-
man, 1990, 6–10; H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical
Inquiry, 1994, 22–27).
19th- and 20th-century proponents of progress and modernity accepted
this rhetoric as an accurate description of the radical social and intellectual
transformations that occurred between the 16th and 17th centuries, repeat-
ing, reinforcing and elaborating on such claims in history, philosophy and
social theory (I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science, 1985, 273–351; David
Lindberg, “Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Bacon to Butter-
field,” Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Lindberg and Robert
Westman, 1990, 10–13; H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution, 1994,
21–121). Major schools of thought from Idealism and Positivism to Marxism
embraced this vision of historical rupture, so much so that the term ‘Indus-
trial Revolution’ had already entered common parlance long before it was
clearly defined by Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) in a series of lectures
between 1878 and 1883 (Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England, 1884),
as had the term ‘Scientific Revolution’ before it was first clearly defined by
the historian of science, Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964), in 1939 (Études Gali-
léennes, 1939–1940).
A common feature of narratives of revolutionary intellectual and techni-
cal change during the modern period is the assumption (usually explicit
but sometimes not) that earlier periods – and, in particular, the Middle
Ages – were marked by intellectual sterility and scientific and technological
stagnation. Indeed, modernist exceptionalists of several philosophical and
political persuasions across a number of disciplines have relied on narrative
forms which sharply distinguish between the modern period and the medi-
eval and ancient periods, emphasizing discontinuity over continuity in the
social, political and intellectual spheres.
Thus, the Scientific Revolution marked a significant transformation in
the aims, methods and techniques of natural philosophy and the physical
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 970

sciences between the medieval and modern periods, while the British Agri-
cultural (or Agrarian) Revolution was characterized by significant improve-
ments in agricultural productivity and output over the essentially medieval
techniques that had continued during the early modern period, thereby lay-
ing the foundations for, or occurring in parallel with, the Industrial Revol-
ution. Likewise, the Industrial Revolution marked a period during the latter
half of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries when significant advances
in agriculture, transport and manufacturing were accompanied by major re-
organizations of the economy and labor force. Historians of the Industrial
Revolution have generally tended to argue that the industry and technology
of the early modern period were in most respects a continuation of medieval
trends (Peter N. Stearns, Interpreting the Industrial Revolution, 1991, chapters
1, 2, and 4).
Whereas many historians and archaeologists of the ancient world ac-
cepted modernist characterizations of their chosen time period as techno-
logically (if not intellectually) stagnant until the late 1970s, medievalists
were not so obliging.
In his efforts to trace the origins of modern science from an anti-positivist
perspective, the French physicist, Pierre Duhem (1861–1916), inadvertently
discovered that some important developments in statics and mechanics had
occurred during the 14th century in the work of Jean Buridan (1300–1358),
Nicole Oresme (1323–1382), and others (Études sur Léonard de Vinci: Ceux qui’il
a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu, 3 vols., 1906, 1909, and 191; rpt. 1955; Le système
du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols.,
1913–1959). Indeed, Duhem went so far as to locate the beginnings of the
still-in-formation concept of the Scientific Revolution in the 14th rather
than the 17th century, although he is one of the few scholars, apart from
Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979), to have done so (The Origins of Modern
Science, 1300–1800, 1949). Although a new generation of professional histori-
ans of science, from Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965) and John H. Randall,
Jr. (1898–1980) to Annaliese Maier (1905–1971), and Alistair Crombie
(1915–1996) tended to stress the continuities between late medieval and
early modern developments and downplay the discontinuities, Duhem’s
work was an important point of departure from which these scholars sought
to reconsider the role of medieval natural philosophy in the development of
the sciences.
971 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

C. An ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Middle Ages

Around the same time as the history of science became professionalized, a
number of medievalists began taking an interest in the history of technology
from a social and economic perspective. In a special issue of the Annales d’his-
toire économique et sociale published in 1935 and titled “Les techniques, l’his-
toire et la vie,” Marc Bloch (1886–1944), and Lucien Febvre (1878–1956)
put together a collection of articles outlining their views on the formation of
a new discipline which they called the history of techniques.
In Febvre’s introductory essay for the special edition, one of the three
approaches that he recommended for the new discipline was to study
the progress of techniques, whether that be slow and incremental, or rapid
and precipitous: both technical ‘evolutions’ and technological ‘revolutions’
should be a focus for scholarly attention (“Réflexions sur l’histoire des tech-
niques,” Annales d’histoire économique et sociale 7 [1935]: 533–34). Febvre’s rec-
ommendations were an expression of the revisionist historiographical aims
of the Annales School, which were to move away from the 19th-century em-
phasis on regnal shifts and diplomatic history to a new form of history that
drew on the insights of multiple disciplines to illuminate cultural mental-
ities, the lives of ordinary people, and medium and long duration historical
processes.
In Bloch’s contribution to this same edition of Annales, titled “Avèn-
ement et conquêtes du moulin à eau,” he sought to establish the origins and
development of the watermill from Roman times to the High Middle Ages.
Apparently in an effort to put Febvre’s proposal into practice about the
need for historians to form empirically-grounded opinions about the relative
progress of different techniques, Bloch made a novel observation: during
the second half of the Middle Ages there was a rapid increase not only in the
number of mills powered by water, but in the range of industrial processes to
which waterpower was applied. He proposed that these developments signi-
fied a medieval revolution in the use of power technology that laid the foun-
dations for the Industrial Revolution and the transformation of European
society during the modern period (“Avènement et conquêtes du moulin
à eau,” Annales d’histoire économique et sociale 7 [1935]: 538–63; trans. “The
Advent and Triumph of the Watermill,” Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe:
Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, 1967, 136–68). It is worth quoting him briefly on
this point:

The generations immediately before ours, as well as our own, have witnessed a tre-
mendous revolution in transport, animal traction giving place to purely mechan-
ical forms of energy. Not very different was the revolution that took place in an-
other sphere with the coming of the watermill […] (141).
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 972

Already convinced that the Romans had made relatively little use of water-
mill technology, Bloch went on to argue that “although the invention of
the watermill took place in ancient times, its real expansion did not come
about until the Middle Ages” (143). The rest of the paper goes on to explain
why the Romans supposedly failed to exploit waterpower, and how and why
this medieval expansion came about.
The idea that revolutionary changes in technology had occurred during
earlier periods than the Industrial Revolution had already been canvassed
by V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957), John Nef (1899–1988), and Richard
Lefebvre des Noëttes (1856–1936) in the 1920s and early 1930s.
In Childe’s case, the concept of a ‘Neolithic Revolution’ was developed
by him to denote the first of a series of major transformations in agricultural
production in the Middle East that occurred roughly 12,000 to 8,000 years
ago, whereas the concept of an ‘Urban Revolution’ was developed to denote
the period following the Neolithic Revolution whereby small, non-literate,
kin-based agricultural villages were transformed into large, literate, hier-
archically-ordered urban centers: the first civilizations (New Light on the Most
Ancient East, 1934; “Changing Aims and Methods in Prehistory,” Proceedings of
the Prehistoric Society 1 [1935]: 1–15; Man Makes Himself, 1936; What Happened in
History, 1942).
In Nef’s case, his proposal involved a reassessment of the role of coal in
the growth of European industry, whereby the first of two ‘industrial revol-
utions’ in Britain was held to have occurred in the period from 1540 to 1640.
Struck by the rapid increase in British coal output that accompanied the de-
cline of the timber industry between the dissolution of the monasteries and
the outbreak of the English Civil War, Nef sought to prove his case that these
parallel developments were not simply a function of population growth. He
argued, to the contrary, that they were the result of “a sharp expansion of
native industrial enterprise”, and that clear evidence for this expansion
could be found in the ship-building, salt, and glass industries (The Rise of the
British Coal Industry, 2 vols., 1932).
In Lefebvre des Noëttes’s case, he proposed that the process of tech-
nological invention proceeds by sudden leaps rather than gradual trans-
formations, and that such ‘revolutions’ are followed by long periods of inac-
tivity. For example, in his two-volume work De la Marine antique à la marine
modern: La révolution du gouvernail, contribution à l’étude de l’esclavage, first pub-
lished in 1935, he proposed that the invention of the hinged sternpost
rudder in the 13th century initiated a revolution in ship design that improved
oceanic navigation, enabled enormous increases in tonnage, and made pos-
sible the later European voyages of discovery. This ‘great technological leap
973 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

forward’ was analogous to the earlier medieval technical revolution which he

believed had been brought about by the invention of the horse harness, to
which he had first drawn attention in La force motrice animale à travers les âges
(1924) and L’attelage: Le cheval de selle à travers les âges, contribution à l’histoire de
l’esclavage (1931). This latter ‘technological revolution’ provided one of the
bases for Lynn White, Jr.’s later articulation of an agricultural revolution in
the Middle Ages (see below).
Thus, we can see how the social milieu in which western scholars were
working during the Interwar Period favored conceptions of revolution and
radical rupture when describing major cultural transformations in history
and prehistory.
Only a year before Bloch’s aforementioned paper appeared in Annales, a
fellow exponent of the new sub-discipline of the history of technology, Lewis
Mumford (1895–1990), had also alluded to the idea that there had been an
industrial revolution in the Middle Ages based primarily upon waterpower.
In his highly influential book Technics and Civilization (1934, rpt. 1963) Mum-
ford argued in the book’s third chapter – titled “New Sources of Power” –
that if power machinery is regarded as one of the primary manifestations of
the new capitalist economy, “the modern industrial revolution began in the
twelfth century and was in full swing by the fifteenth” (112). Like Bloch,
Mumford listed the many industrial processes to which waterpower was
applied in the latter half of the Middle Ages, not only grinding grain and
pumping water, but pulping rags for paper, hammering and cutting iron,
sawing wood, beating hides, spinning silk, felting woolen cloth, sharpening
tools and weapons, pulling wire, crushing ore and powering bellows (114–15).
Mumford argued that parallel developments were taking place in the
application of windpower to agriculture and land reclamation between the
12th and 16th centuries, and that although the “development of wind and
water power did not reach its height in most parts of Europe until the seven-
teenth century […] [p]lainly, the modern industrial revolution would have
come into existence and gone on steadily had not a ton of coal been dug in
England, and had not a new iron mine been opened” (117–18). Mumford’s
views were, therefore, certainly not in agreement with those of his contem-
porary, Nef, for example.
However, Mumford’s and Bloch’s speculations, as suggestive as
they may have been, were (to quote Bloch) but “working hypotheses” (“Les
‘inventions’ médiévales,” Annales 7 [1935]: 642).
In 1941, the English medievalist, Eleanora Carus-Wilson (1897–1977),
provided some empirical evidence to back up Mumford’s and Bloch’s the-
sis. In her widely read paper “An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 974

Century” (The Economic History Review 11 [1941]: 39–60) Carus-Wilson ar-

gued that during the 13th century, woolen cloth production had moved from
the urban cloth manufacturing centers of England to a number of rural wool-
growing centers due to the rapid process of mechanization of the fulling pro-
cess: traditional methods of fulling by hand and foot had been replaced by
waterpowered fulling mills. Although she did not provide any evidence for
the supposed higher profitability of mechanized fulling over manual ful-
ling, she argued that the shift from urban manual production to rural mech-
anical production led to large-scale social and economic changes that were
comparable to those that occurred in the English textile industry during the
18th and 19th centuries (52). She supported these observations with a clear
analogy between the widespread social disruption caused by the mechani-
zation of the English fulling industry in the 13th century, and the adverse
consequences of the mechanization of the English textile industry in the 18th
and 19th centuries:

the [13th] century […] witnessed, in fact, an industrial revolution due to scientific
discoveries and changes in technique: a revolution which brought poverty, unem-
ployment, and discontent to certain old centres of industry, but wealth, oppor-
tunity and prosperity to the country as a whole (39).

In a later paper on the medieval woolen industry, Carus-Wilson wrote that

the mechanization of fulling “was as decisive an event as the mechanization
of spinning and weaving in the eighteenth century” (“The Woollen Indus-
try,” The Cambridge Economic History, vol. II, ed. Edward Miller, Cynthia
Postan, and Michael Postan, 1952, 409). Clearly, this statement was in-
tended as further endorsement of her earlier thesis.
The striking vision of medieval technological progress proposed by
Mumford, Bloch, Lefebvre des Noëttes, and Carus-Wilson ap-
pears to have had a galvanizing influence on a younger generation of scholars
in the emergent field of the history of technology, among the most promi-
nent of whom were Robert J. Forbes (1900–1973), Lynn White, Jr.
(1907–1987), and Bertrand Gille (1920–1980).
Between the 1940s and 1960s, White and Gille articulated the out-
lines of a persuasive narrative about an innovative technical culture that
emerged in the latter half of the European Middle Ages. In his earliest essay
on the topic, the technologies invoked by White ranged across examples
from the domestic and agricultural spheres, the textile industry, shipbuild-
ing and navigation, to military and mechanical innovations, and advances
in architecture and engineering (“Technology and Invention in the Middle
Ages,” Speculum 15 [1940]: 141–59). In his mature work, White developed
975 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

many of the themes and insights of this early essay into a more extended ar-
gument, focusing on advances in agricultural and mechanical technologies:
the stirrup, horseshoe, horse harness, and horse collar; the heavy plough,
open fields, and three-field crop rotation; water- and windpower; and the
cam, crank, and clockwork (Medieval Technology and Social Change, 1962; “The
Medieval Roots of Modern Technology,” Perspectives in Medieval History, ed.
Katherine Drew, and Floyd Lear, 1963, 19–34; “The Expansion of Tech-
nology 500–1500,” The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 1, ed. Carlo
Cippola, 1972, 143–71). Gille’s invocation of medieval technological in-
novations largely mirrored those described by White, and included “the use
of hydraulic energy on a large scale, the practice of iron shoeing as well as
modern harnessing, textile developments, the transformations in iron and
steel making, and […] the appearance of new types of ships” (Bertrand
Gille, Histoire des Techniques l’Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 1978, trans. The History
of Techniques, 2 vols., 1986, 487).
White and Gille were adamant that the technological changes they
described were so profound in their effects that they initiated a revolution in
medieval social and economic conditions. The most compelling evidence for
this medieval technological revolution was, they claimed, the rapid growth
in the use of ‘non-human sources of power’ from the 10th or 11th century on-
ward (Bertrand Gille, “Le moulin à eau: Une révolution technique medi-
eval,” Techniques et civilisations 3 [1954]: 1–15; Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Tech-
nology and Social Change, 1962, 88–89).
Gille developed these ideas in a number of essays between the early
1950s and late 1970s, the earliest of which was a short monograph titled
Esprit et civilisation techniques au moyen âge (1952) which explicitly stated that
there was a mechanical revolution during the latter half of the Middle Ages,
the most striking feature of which was the widespread development and
application of waterpower. White, on the other hand, appears to have first
clearly articulated the notion of an industrial revolution of the Middle Ages
in a 1960 essay titled, “Tibet, India and Malaya as Sources of Western Medi-
eval Technology” (AHR 65 [1960]: 515–26).
By the late 1960s, Gille, White, and their followers had fleshed out a
relatively detailed account of how an ‘industrial revolution of the Middle
Ages’ had unfolded, the basic elements of which appear to have been derived
from Bloch. The first of these elements was that the Romans had not made
any widespread use of waterpower, although they had perfunctorily de-
ployed watermills and water-raising devices for at least half a millennium
before the Empire collapsed. The second was that Christian monasteries
had led the way in the reintroduction of Roman watermilling technology to
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 976

Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The third involved an invocation of
monkish inventiveness as the primary spur to the rapid growth in the use of
water- and windpower from the 10th or 11th century onward. Bloch’s views
on these matters can be found in the English translation of “Avénement et
conquêtes du moulin à eau” titled “The Advent and Triumph of the Water-
mill” (Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe: Selected Papers by Marc Bloch, 1967,
141–42, 143–46, 148, 150–52, 182). Perhaps the clearest expression of this
argument can be found in White’s “Cultural Climates and Technological
Advances in the Middle Ages” (Viator 2 [1971]: 171–201), although it first ap-
pears in “Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered” (The American Scholar Spring
[1958]; rpt. Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered, 1968). Gille’s and White’s nar-
rative appears to have been at least partially informed by the Annaliste in-
sight that the role of longstanding cultural institutions such as the Church in
historical development should receive more attention.
While Bloch’s 1935 paper seems to have provided some of the major
themes for the narrative framework of an industrial revolution in the Middle
Ages, Carus-Wilson’s work was deployed by historians of technology as
an exemplar of rapid medieval industrial development and the new, positive
attitude to technical activities which, they claimed, had clearly emerged by
the 13th century (see, for example, Lynn White Jr., Medieval Religion and Tech-
nology, 1978, 54, 66; Bertrand Gille, “The Problems of Power and Mechani-
zation,” A History of Technology and Invention: Progress Through the Ages, vol. I: The
Origins of Technological Civilization, ed. Maurice Daumas, 1969, 456).
A second key piece of empirical evidence drawn upon by proponents of
an industrial revolution of the Middle Ages to support the idea of revolution-
ary growth in the use of waterpower was Margaret Hodgen’s calculation
that 5,632 watermills are recorded in Domesday Book (“Domesday Water
Mills,” Antiquity 13 [1939]: 261–79). This figure continued to be cited in the
history of technology literature until the early 1990s, despite Reginald Len-
nard having stated that the figure was too low in the late 1950s (Rural Eng-
land: 1086–1135, 1959, 278–80), and H. C. Darby and his colleagues having
calculated the now accepted figure of 6,082 mills in the late 1970s (Domesday
England, 1977, 361).
The third, and perhaps the most widely emulated, supporting strategy
deployed by proponents of an industrial revolution in the Middle Ages was
the creation of long lists of different types of industrial watermill, and where
and when they are recorded in the manuscript sources. The most extensive of
such lists was created by a student of White’s, Bradford Blaine, in his doc-
toral thesis titled “The Application of Water Power to Industry During the
Middle Ages” (UCLA, 1966). Blaine’s work, along with that of the medieval-
977 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

ist, Anne-Marie Bautier, was frequently cited by proponents as crucial evi-

dential support for an industrial revolution in the Middle Ages (Anne-Marie
Bautier, “Les plus anciennes mentions de moulins hydrauliques indus-
triels et de moulins à vent,” Bulletin Philologique et Historique 2 [1960]:
567–626). This strategy, too, appears to be ultimately derived from Bloch.
Thus we can see how a narrative first articulated by Bloch, and to a
lesser extent, Mumford, was developed by Gille and White, and embel-
lished with empirical evidence primarily provided by Carus-Wilson,
Hodgen, Bautier, and Blaine, to create a compelling case for an indus-
trial revolution in the Middle Ages based on waterpower.
In its ‘mature’ form, the argument ran as follows: Although the vertical-
wheeled watermill was invented in the ancient Mediterranean, it was used
exclusively for grinding grain, and then only sporadically due to the preva-
lence of slaves, negative attitudes toward the banausic arts, and insufficient
water resources. It was medieval European ‘engineers’ (trained by, or work-
ing in traditions established by, Christian monasteries) who developed the
‘Roman’ watermill’s full potential through their ingenious incorporation
into the milling apparatus of a variety of mechanical innovations, including
the cam, crank and trip-hammer. The incorporation of these innovations
into medieval watermills allowed them to be applied to a range of industrial
processes, from fulling cloth and crushing bark and hemp, to forging iron
and powering bellows, thus freeing human labor for other purposes, just as
the steam engine had done in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The widespread
mechanization of industry that occurred in the second half of the Middle
Ages led to similar transformations in the medieval economy and society to
those seen in the ‘later’ Industrial Revolution.
Although White’s Medieval Technology and Social Change was instrumen-
tal in popularizing and disseminating the idea that there had been an indus-
trial revolution in medieval Europe, it was given additional impetus by, and
can in some respects be seen as culminating in, a widely read work of popular
history by Jean Gimpel, La Révolution industrielle du moyen âge (first published
in 1976; trans. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages,
1988). Although Gimpel invoked Oswald Spengler’s Der Mensch und die Tech-
nik (1931; trans. Man and Technics, 1932) as his main inspiration for the idea
that “the foundations of our present technologically oriented society were
laid not in the Italian Renaissance or in the English Industrial Revolution, but
in the Middle Ages” (viii), the first three chapters of the book on energy, ag-
riculture, and mining are heavily indebted to the narrative articulated by ear-
lier social and economic historians and historians of technology, although
frequently without adequate acknowledgement of that scholarly debt.
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 978

Two other influential books that either openly or tacitly accepted the
industrial revolution of the Middle Ages thesis are Carlo Cipolla’s Before the
Industrial Revolution (1976; rpt. 1981, 1993), and Terry Reynold’s Stronger
Than A Hundred Men (1985). The popularity and influence of the theory can
still be discerned in recent publications, such as John H. Munro’s “Indus-
trial Energy from Water-Mills in the European Economy, 5th to 18th Cen-
turies: the Limitations of Power” (Economia e Energia, ed. Simonetta Cava-
ciocchi, 2003, 223–69).
While the general scholarly reaction to the thesis appears to have been
generally more positive amongst historians of technology than amongst
medieval historians and archaeologists, there do appear to have been some
national and theoretical divergences. Historians working in the neo-Malthu-
sian tradition most popularly expounded by Michael Postan (1898–1981)
tended to be critical or dismissive of the theory, as their assessment of medi-
eval technological achievements was generally negative. Marxists and neo-
Marxists also tended to be critical of the theory, not because their assess-
ments of medieval technical abilities were negative, but because they reacted
against the theory’s lack of engagement with questions of social class and
power. Perhaps owing to the stronger evidence for technological progress in
medieval France and Italy, French and Italian medievalists appear to have
been more receptive of the theory than were British medievalists (see, for
example, Robert Philippe, “L’église et l’énergie pendant le XIe siècle dans
les pays d’entre Seine et Loire,” Cahiers de Civilisations Médiévale 27 [1989]:
107–17). The more critical reactions to the theory are outlined below.

D. Critiques of the Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages

Despite an apparent reluctance amongst historians of science and technol-
ogy to explore the validity of the thesis that there was an industrial revol-
ution in the Middle Ages until comparatively recently, critical scholarship
that has exposed the weaknesses of its central claims and evidential support
has grown in size and scope over the last two decades.
Amongst the central claims that have been questioned and/or proven to
be incorrect are:

1. technological stagnation was a characteristic of Greco-Roman civili-

zation, along with the associated claim that Roman use of water technol-
ogy was sporadic and infrequent;
2. the technological contributions of the Romans, Chinese, and/or Islamic
societies to medieval European industry were not significant or com-
parable to those originating in Europe;
979 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

3. Christian monasteries were primarily responsible for reintroducing

Roman watermilling technology to Western Europe, and dominated the
industry until well into the Middle Ages; and
4. monastic innovation can account for many of the technical advances that
occurred in industry during the Middle Ages.

Questions surrounding the evidential support used by proponents of an

industrial revolution in the Middle Ages have focused on the following
issues:

a. the piecemeal fashion in which medieval European data on industrial

milling was compiled by proponents, and their lack of systematic analy-
sis of those data;
b. the geographically restricted evidence for a rapid growth in the indus-
trial uses to which waterpower was applied across most of Western Eu-
rope; and
c. the geographically restricted evidence for industrial milling being a
more profitable activity than grain milling.

With respect to argument [1] above that technological stagnation character-

ized the ancient world, there is now a substantial body of evidence compiled
by archaeologists such as Kenneth D. White (Greek and Roman Technology,
1984), Örjan Wikander (Exploitation of Waterpower or Technological Stagnation?
A Reappraisal of the Productive Forces in the Roman Empire, 1984), and Kevin
Greene (“Perspectives on Roman Technology,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology
9 [1990]: 209–17) which supports the revisionist view that the technological
achievements of the Hellenic Greeks and Romans were far more extensive
and impressive than was previously accepted by scholars of the ancient
world, such as Benjamin Farrington (Science in Antiquity, 1936; rpt. 1969),
Moses Finley (“Technology in the Ancient World,” Economic History Review
18 [1959]: 120–25; “Technical Innovation and Economic Progress in the
Ancient World,” Economic History Review 18 [1965]: 29–45), and H.W. Pleket
(“Technology and Society in the Graeco-Roman World,” Acta Historiae
Neerlandica 2 [1967]: 1–25). Greene has further developed these insights
in “Technology and Innovation in Context: the Roman Background to Medi-
eval and Later Developments” (Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 [1994]: 22–33),
and “Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World:
M. I. Finley Re-Considered” (Economic History Review 53 [2000]: 29–59).
Furthermore, Wikander (“The Watermill,” Handbook of Ancient Water
Technology, ed. Örjan Wikander, 2000, 401–12) and the historian of tech-
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 980

nology, Michael J. T. Lewis (Millstone and Hammer: The Origins of Water Power,
1997), have demonstrated that Roman use of waterpower was also far more
widespread and innovative than was previously accepted, and that such use
included factory-scale flour production and almost certainly some industrial
applications in iron mining and stone quarrying.
With respect to argument [2] above, Adam Lucas (“Industrial Milling in
the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial
Revolution in Medieval Europe,” Technology and Culture 46 [2005]: 1–30) has
summarized the manuscript and archaeological evidence for the widespread
use of waterpower by the Romans, Chinese, and Islamic societies, long before
an ‘industrial revolution’ is supposed to have occurred in medieval Europe.
His paper argues not only that the industrial use of waterpower had clear
precedents in earlier civilizations, but that the mechanical innovations
required for industrial milling were almost certainly conveyed from those
cultures to medieval Europe via Islamic Spain or the Byzantine Empire in the
10th or 11th centuries. Lucas’s book, Wind, Water, Work: Ancient and Medieval
Milling Technologies (2006) contains a compilation and analysis of all of the re-
liable manuscript and archaeological evidence for ancient and medieval in-
dustrial mills that he was able to collate at the time of publication.
With respect to argument [3] above, Lucas (“The Role of the Monasteries
in the Development of Medieval Milling,” Wind and Water in the Middle Ages,
ed. Steven A. Walton, 2006, 89–127) has summarized the manuscript and
archaeological evidence for the continuation of Roman watermilling prac-
tices in early medieval Italy and France, and for watermill usage in Ireland
prior to the 7th century. This evidence strongly suggests that Christian mon-
asteries did not, in fact, ‘reintroduce’ the watermill to Western Europe, but
were, to the contrary, very much involved in the process of feudal appropri-
ation of existing lands and watermills from communal interests and less
powerful social groups. The paper also discusses the English manuscript evi-
dence suggesting that while the Church may have held as many mills as the
Crown around the time of the Norman Conquest, that was the peak of its in-
fluence, and it does not appear to have ever dominated the powered milling
sector in medieval England.
With respect to argument [4] above, the two aforementioned papers by
Lucas examine the evidence for Benedictine and Cistercian involvement
in mill innovation, and conclude that there is indeed some evidence that the
Cistercians were innovators in industrial milling, as some previous scholars
such as Gille, White, and Gimpel have claimed. There appears to be very
little systematic research on the topic of medieval monastic innovation, how-
ever.
981 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

The most systematic effort to address the adequacy of the evidential

support used by proponents of an industrial revolution in the Middle Ages
(issues a, b, and c above) is by Lucas in his aforementioned paper on indus-
trial milling, although important research examining the evidence from
medieval England was undertaken by Richard Holt (Mills of Medieval Eng-
land, 1988, chapter 9) and John Langdon (“Water-Mills and Windmills in
the West Midlands, 1086–1500,” Economic History Review 44 [1991]: 424–44;
“Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the Milling Industry of Early Four-
teenth Century England,” Past and Present 145 [1994]: 3–42). Lucas argues
that a detailed examination of the manuscript evidence drawn on by propon-
ents of an industrial revolution in the Middle Ages, even when augmented by
more recent systematic studies, does not warrant the conclusion that a pan-
European industrial revolution ever took place. To the contrary, the most in-
tense areas of industrial milling activity appear to have been certain regions
of what we now call France and Italy between the 13th and 15th centuries. The
main industries to which waterpower was applied in these regions were
cloth, hemp, leather, and timber, as well as some metallurgical processes.
In the later Middle Ages, this extended to forging iron and pulverizing and
polishing ores. The evidence for the relative profitability of grain milling
versus industrial milling appears to have been a factor in determining the
extent to which industrial milling was implemented in different regions.
In England and Wales, for example, where industrial milling was largely re-
stricted to the fulling industry, fulling mill revenues were significantly lower
than those for grain mills, whereas in northern Italy, fulling mill revenues
were higher than those for grain mills, and their share of the overall milling
sector was significantly higher than in Britain. The generic factors which ap-
pear to have made these developments possible included already well-devel-
oped local industries in specific commodities or products which had access to
regional, national and/or international markets, as well as access to plentiful
supplies of running water that could be harnessed for industry.

E. The Agricultural Revolution of the Early Middle Ages

In a further development that was analogous to the intellectual move made
by Toynbee in his invocation of an earlier Agricultural Revolution which
laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution, and of Childe with his
invocation of the ‘Neolithic Revolution’ which laid the foundations for his
‘Urban Revolution,’ Lynn White, Jr. proposed in “Technology and Inno-
vation in the Middle Ages” (1940) that there had been an agricultural revol-
ution in the early Middle Ages which laid the foundations for an industrial
revolution in the later Middle Ages. However, it was not until the publi-
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 982

cation of Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) that he fully developed
this theory, arguing that the revolution had occurred between the 6th and
9th centuries.
The claim that there had been a major transformation, if not a revol-
ution, in early medieval agriculture had been made by a number of medieval-
ists between the 1890s and 1950s, the most notable of whom were August
Meitzen (Siedlung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostergermanen, der
Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slaven, 1895; rpt. 1963), Marc Bloch (Les Charactères
originaux de l’histoire rurale française, 1931; rpt. 1988), and Georges Duby (“La
révolution agricole médiévale,” Revue de géographie de Lyon 29 [1954]: 361–66).
However, according to the medievalist, Michael Toch, it was White who
“presented a theory lucid enough to become part of our understanding of
medieval history and sophisticated enough to explain a very complicated
process spanning at least three centuries” (“Agricultural Progress and Agri-
cultural Technology in Medieval Germany: An Alternative Model,” Technol-
ogy and Resource Use in Medieval Europe, ed. Elizabeth Bradford Smith and
Michael Wolfe, 1997, 158–69).
Amongst the central arguments made by White in support of his theory
of an agricultural revolution in early medieval Europe were:

1. the diffusion of the stirrup throughout Europe from Asia enabled the de-
velopment of ‘mounted shock combat’, which in turn provided the basis
for the development of ‘feudalism’ in Europe;
2. the replacement of the Mediterranean ‘scratch plow’ with the ‘heavy
plow’ in Francia during the 7th century led to the development of the
three-field crop rotation system, as well as open-field, communal agri-
culture;
3. the introduction of horseshoes and the new horse collar and harness,
combined with the growing availability of horse feed, rapidly led to the
replacement of less efficient oxen by horses in plow teams; and
4. the growth in the use of the plow and other farm implements (as well as
weaponry) was made possible by the opening up of new iron mines in Ca-
rolingian times.

White first clearly articulated his theory in the first two chapters of Medieval
Technology and Social Change. Premised on an argument that appears to have
been derived from Lefebvre des Noëttes (“La ‘nuit’ du moyen âge et son
inventaire,” Mercure de France 235 [1932]: 572–99), White contended in the
first chapter of the book that:
983 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

[t]he stirrup, by giving lateral support in addition to the front and back support
offered by pommel and cantle, effectively welded horse and rider into a single
fighting unit capable of a violence without precedent. The fighter’s hand no
longer delivered the blow: it merely guided it […] Immediately, without prepara-
tory steps, it made possible mounted shock combat, a revolutionary new way of
doing battle (2).

Essentially, White argued that the Franks were responsible for a “drastic
shift from infantry to the new mode of mounted shock combat” in the 8th
century (27), and that this transition was made possible by the invention of
the stirrup. According to White, the ‘key’ to feudal institutions was the duty
of knight’s service, and the primary duty of the newly created knightly class
was to defend the realm through mounted shock combat (31).
Apart from the influence of Lefebvre des Noëttes, white’s views
about the significance of knight’s service to the ‘feudal revolution’ were also
partially shaped by earlier medievalists such as H.A. Cronne (“The Origins
of Feudalism,” History 24 [1939]: 251–59). Although the debate about what
constitutes this ‘feudal revolution’ and whether such a revolution occurred
at all, continues in the scholarly literature to this day (Thomas Bisson, “The
‘Feudal Revolution’,” Past and Present 142 [1994]: 6–42; Dominique Barthé-
lemy, “The ‘Feudal Revolution’: I,” Past and Present 152 [1996]: 197–205;
Stephen D. White, “The ‘Feudal Revolution’: II,” Past and Present 152 [1996]:
205–23), few contemporary medievalists would endorse White’s techno-
logically deterministic view of how this revolution first came about. The
reactions of some of the more prominent scholars who were critical of
White’s views are detailed in the section below.
Having laid the foundations, as it were, for his conception of revolution-
ary technological change in the early Middle Ages, White’s second chapter
explores the key technological developments which he identified as consti-
tuting an agricultural revolution in early medieval Europe.
White opens the chapter with an invocation of the notion of the British
Agricultural Revolution as a precursor to the Industrial Revolution before
stating that “northern Europe from the sixth to the ninth century witnessed
an earlier agricultural revolution which was equally decisive in its historical
effects” (40). He goes on to argue that the replacement of the Mediterranean
‘scratch plow’ with what he dubbed the ‘heavy plow’ in Francia during the
7th century led to the development of the three-field crop rotation system as
well as open-field, communal agriculture, vastly improving productivity.
Northern European farmers were subsequently able to plant oats in summer
as well as spring, increasing the supply and reducing the price of horse feed,
thus making horse ownership more widespread. The open-field system
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 984

enabled the pooling of oxen and horses for plowing, increasing communal
solidarity and the need for collective decision-making. The introduction of
horseshoes and the new horse collar and harness, combined with the grow-
ing availability of horse feed, rapidly led to the replacement of less efficient
oxen by horses in plow teams. The growth in the use of the plow and other
farm implements (as well as weaponry) was made possible by the opening up
of new iron mines in Carolingian times. These technical and organizational
innovations vastly improved agricultural productivity and contributed to a
rapid increase in northern Europe’s population, breaking the previous
nexus between low agricultural productivity and low living standards.

F. Critiques of the Agricultural Revolution of the Early Middle Ages

Scholarly reaction to White’s thesis that there had been an agricultural rev-
olution in the early Middle Ages was far swifter and more polarized than it
was to the notion of an industrial revolution of the later Middle Ages. The
less favorable pole of these reactions is represented by the earliest critique of
White’s Medieval Technology and Social Change by the medievalists Peter H.
Sawyer and Rodney H. Hilton in “Technical Determinism: The Stirrup
and the Plough” (Past and Present 24 [1963]: 90–100), while the more favorable
pole can be seen in the assessment of Toch cited above, and in John Lang-
don’s Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation (1986), although both scholars
are far from uncritical in their reassessments of White’s thesis in the light of
recent scholarship. Because Sawyer’s and Hilton’s review and Toch’s
aforementioned paper provide the most cogent criticisms of White’s the-
ory, the following section summarizes the main elements of those criticisms,
using a similar framework of argument to that provided in the section on
critiques of an industrial revolution in the Middle Ages.
In the aforementioned review of White’s book, Sawyer addressed
White’s argument about the impact of the invention of the stirrup on the
development of ‘feudalism’ [argument 1 in the previous section], while Hil-
ton addressed White’s claims for an agricultural revolution of the early
Middle Ages [arguments 2 to 4 above]. Interestingly, neither scholar appears
to have felt qualified to address the case made by White for major advances
in medieval mechanical technology made in Chapter Three.
With respect to argument [1] above, although continental scholars have
drawn attention to the defeat of the Magyars by Otto I in 955 after spending
ten years training his army for mounted shock combat (for the most recent
scholarly reassessment of this literature, see Charles R. Bowlus, The Battle of
Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955: The End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin
West, 2006), Sawyer’s critique centers on the fact that mounted shock com-
985 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

bat did not become a common Western European military tactic until the
12th century: four centuries later than that proposed by White. Amongst the
weaknesses in White’s argument to which Sawyer draws attention is that
although White acknowledged that the Anglo-Saxons were using stirrups
prior to the Norman invasion and did not use them in battle against the Nor-
mans, he failed to account for why their use was so decisive in shaping the
new feudal society on the other side of the Channel. Sawyer also points out
that the Frankish evidence for the adoption of the stirrup is considerably
later than that suggested by White, and that other Germanic peoples may
have used the stirrup earlier, but did not develop feudal societies.
With respect to argument [2] above, Hilton begins by pointing out
that although it had been argued by medievalists such as Georges Duby
(L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’occident médiéval, 1962; trans. Rural
Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, 1968) that the population
growth, urbanization, and commercial expansion of Western Europe be-
tween the 11th and 13th centuries was the result of improvements in agricul-
tural productivity per head, Duby’s “chronology differs substantially from
Mr White’s and his handling of evidence conforms to scholarly standards”
(95). He then goes on to question White’s use of the terminology ‘scratch
plow’ and ‘heavy plow’ to differentiate between Mediterranean and North-
ern European variants, and points out that the Belgic plough (a kind of heavy
plow according to White’s definition) was used as early as the 1st century
B.C.E., long before its supposedly widespread use in the Frankish heartland
in the 7th century.
Hilton also notes that open-field, communal agriculture was practiced
in 7th-century England, and that White’s claim that open-field agriculture
and the heavy plow were introduced to England by the Danes rests on faulty
reasoning and misinterpreted evidence. Hilton argues that there was no
sharp distinction between the two and three field systems, and that both
practices continued simultaneously for some centuries. In support of the
earlier point made by Hilton, Toch notes that the process of reshaping
European agriculture through the spread of three-field rotation, grain
growing, and open fields did not occur until the 11th and 12th centuries,
as Duby had suggested (Rural Economy, 90–9, 103–12). This process occurred
within the economic framework of the manor, and the power of lords to
enforce such changes on their own and tenants’ holdings: a framework
which White tended to minimize or misconstrue. Most of the improve-
ments in productivity which occurred in later medieval agriculture can be
attributed to more intensive applications of labor than to technological im-
provements.
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 986

With respect to argument [3] above, Hilton points out that the Carol-
ingian evidence indicates no significant improvement in crop yields, or that
the large scale sowing of oats was intended to provide fodder for horses.
He also contends that the reduction of the fallow in 13th-century England as a
result of population pressure reduced feed for beasts and therefore their
availability for work and manuring pastures. For example, he cites evidence
from Bedfordshire that the use of oxen as draught animals remained the
preference of lords, while peasants used horses. In his aforementioned paper,
Toch has presented more substantial evidence, partially based on Lang-
don’s research, that the replacement of the ox by the plow-horse in Europe
took considerably longer than three centuries and up to seven centuries in
Germany. As noted previously by Hilton and demonstrated most clearly by
Langdon, different regions and social groups continued to use both ani-
mals in different contexts and for different functions, depending on local
environmental and economic conditions. In England, the increased use of
horse power for plowing was not really evident until the 12th and 13th cen-
turies, although the transition was somewhat quicker with respect to vehicle
hauling.
With respect to argument [4] above, Hilton questions White’s evi-
dence for the opening of ‘great new iron mines’ during Carolingian times,
pointing out that “there is no quantitative evidence cited from archaeologi-
cal research” (96), and that the references which White did cite do not indi-
cate what he claimed. Hilton concludes that the iron used by the Franks
more likely came from the Swedes. Toch adds that there is no evidence that
iron farm implements and weaponry became far more widespread during
Carolingian times, and that the diffusion of improved agricultural imple-
ments did not occur until the later Middle Ages, along with a more abundant
supply of iron.
The current scholarly consensus on these issues is well summarized in a
collection of essays edited by Grenville Astill and John Langdon titled
Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest
Europe (1997).

G. Conclusion
From a historiographical perspective, it now seems clear that both the agri-
cultural revolution and the industrial revolution of the Middle Ages nar-
ratives were squarely aimed at recuperating the technical contributions
of medieval Europe to the modern period. While their proponents accepted
the traditional view that technological stagnation in the ancient world was
due to the institution of slavery and unfavorable attitudes toward technical
987 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

knowledge amongst ancient elites, they argued that technological develop-

ment in the medieval West was enabled by the decline of slavery under Chris-
tianity and the marriage of contemporary practical and classical theoretical
knowledge in the monasteries. In the case of the agricultural revolution of
the Middle Ages thesis, the new feudal system which made improvements in
agricultural production possible was founded on a number of improvements
in military and agricultural technology. In the case of the industrial revol-
ution of the Middle Ages thesis, the harnessing of ‘new sources of power’
(i. e., water, wind, and the tides) during the Middle Ages was analogous to the
harnessing of coal and steam during the Industrial Revolution.
White’s dual theses that an agricultural revolution in the early Middle
Ages had made possible an industrial revolution in the later Middle Ages
provided a complementary explanation to those revolutionary accounts of
discontinuous scientific change popularized by Thomas Kuhn in The Struc-
ture of Scientific Revolutions (1962). White’s account is complementary in the
sense that it provides an explanation for some aspects of the ‘pre-paradigm
phase’ of the scientific disciplines of mechanics and statics, when certain cru-
cial technical attitudes and developments were laid down which provided
some of the foundations for the later Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.
The second thesis in particular provides some evidence for the relative ubi-
quity of semi-automated machinery in late medieval Europe and for the be-
ginnings of factory production.
According to standard accounts of the Scientific Revolution, the social
and economic changes that occurred during the Renaissance (including the
rise of Protestantism, a renewal of interest in classical learning, and the
invention of the printing press) weakened the authority of the Church and
absolute monarchs and enabled the intellectual freedom and social mobil-
ity which led to the Scientific Revolution. A narrative accounting for the
discontinuity between the medieval industrial revolution and the Scien-
tific Revolution was available via the argument that medieval Europe failed
to capitalize on its technical advances owing to the Church’s intolerance of
intellectual debate and dissent, and the irrationalist tendencies of natural
philosophical discourse under scholasticism. The curtailment of ecclesias-
tical power and authority during the early modern period provided a neat
explanation for why the marriage of theory and practice that had begun
under the scholastics did not bear more fruit until the 16th and 17th cen-
turies. Such arguments can be seen as having provided a space within
which it was possible for proponents of the industrial revolution of the
Middle Ages thesis to avoid close scholarly scrutiny by their peers for a
number of years.
Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages 988

In a recent contribution to the Encyclopaedia of the Scientific Revolution, the

historian of early modern science, John Schuster, suggested that evident-
ially challenged modernist narratives about the Scientific Revolution con-
tinue to maintain some credibility in the history of science because their
postmodern competitors have been reluctant to entertain, let alone articu-
late, alternative ‘grand theories’ or metanarratives. To briefly summarize
Schuster’s assessment of what such an alternative might look like, it
would start from the assumption that “knowledge is made in evolving tradi-
tions of practice or subcultures that have their own synchronic density and
diachronic dynamics” (“Internalist/Externalist Historiography,” Encyclo-
paedia of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Wilbur Applebaum, 2000, 334–36). In
the absence of any vigorous scholarly contestation over what might consti-
tute more historically accurate grand narratives about the unfolding of that
period called the Scientific Revolution, the discipline and the wider public
have lacked the conceptual tools to adequately interrogate the plausibility of
these established modernist narratives.
A similar case could certainly be made for the narratives of technological
revolution that have been the topic of this essay. The most commonly circu-
lated and recognized representations of premodern technology continue
to be those provided by a relatively small group of post-War historians of
ancient and medieval technology, despite the emergence of more sophisti-
cated scholarship in recent years. Lewis Mumford, Robert Forbes, Moses
Finley, Lynn White, Jr, Bertrand Gille, and Jean Gimpel have largely
shaped the contours of scholarly awareness about premodern technology in
the history of science and technology, and also to some extent in archaeology
and social and economic history: an observation that can be verified by exam-
ining the work of a number of different scholars working across these disci-
plines during the 1980s and 1990s.
The publications in which these historians’ narratives appear have,
in the words of the archaeologist, Kevin Greene, had “an extraordinary in-
fluence beyond their immediate subject areas, irrespective of their changing
status within academic history and archaeology,” primarily because they
contained ideas that captured the public imagination and could be promoted
in books for a popular or more general readership (“V. Gordon Childe and the
Vocabulary of Revolutionary Change,” Antiquity 73 [1999]: 97–109).
During a period in which radical political positions and revolutionary
rhetoric were both intellectually de rigeur and part of everyday discourse,
it is perhaps not surprising that a number of socially progressive historians
should have embraced and promoted revolutionary narratives in their work.
Considering the intellectual milieu of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, it should also
989 Narratives of Technological Revolution in the Middle Ages

not be too surprising that certain affinities of style, methods of reasoning,

and explanatory schema should characterize this scholarship, and that these
features should parallel developments in the history of science.
At the same time, it seems clear from the previous discussion that the
modernist historians of technology who articulated these narratives of medi-
eval technological revolution were guilty of a sin that is typical of the hu-
manities and social science disciplines: they insulated themselves from other
disciplines with similar or overlapping concerns and developed their own
positions on those concerns. It was left to later generations of scholars with
less investment in disciplinary boundary maintenance and entrenched the-
oretical positions to reassess the relevant arguments and evidence.
On a more general level, while the use of revolutionary terminology to
describe technological change in premodern as well as modern societies has
diminished in contemporary scholarship, the question of what characterizes
genuinely ‘revolutionary’ change in the technological development of a given
society or region, and how it should be characterized, remains as unresolved
in the history of technology as it is in the history of science.
As Schuster (The Scientific Revolution: An Introduction to the History and
Philosophy of Science, 1995, chapter 25) has noted, scholars will bring with
them their linguistic and theoretical baggage when using the terminology of
revolution to describe developments in the history of science: while political
revolutions may be relatively easy to define and to identify, cultural revol-
utions are in the eye of the beholder. It nevertheless remains clear that there
are instances in the history of human cultures when radical transformations
in their ways of being and doing occur over comparatively brief spans of
time, and that our theoretical constructs and language are hard pressed to
the task of adequately describing, let alone explaining them.
The problems for scholars attempting to grapple with these issues re-
volve around such epistemological concerns as the nature and availability of
evidence, standards of proof, and the explanatory adequacy of theories and
narratives that seek to illuminate our understanding of rapid cultural
change. Although none of the key elements of the narratives of medieval
technological revolution which have been examined in this essay have with-
stood the test of time, recent scholarship has revealed that technological de-
velopment in some regions of medieval Europe during certain key periods
was significant, impressive, and perhaps in some instances might even war-
rant the appellation, ‘revolutionary’, if suitably qualified.
Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies 990

Select Bibliography
Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe,
ed. Astill Grenville and John Langdon (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Technology and Resource
Use in Medieval Europe: Cathedrals, Mills and Mines, ed. Elizabeth Bradford Smith and
Michael Wolfe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Adam Lucas, Wind, Water, Work: Ancient
and Medieval Milling Technologies (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Oxford Handbook of Engineering and
Technology in the Classical World, ed. John Peter Oleson (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2008).

Adam Lucas

Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
‘Narratology’ designates the study of narratives according to their formal
structures rather than their themes or values. Modern narratology began
with the Russian formalists as a method for analyzing strictly literary texts,
but scholars since the peak of French structuralism do not restrict its scope
to literary (fictional, aesthetically self-conscious) narratives. Rather, they
understand narrative discourse to include any account of contingent events
and the actions and attitudes of associated agents. In recent decades, narra-
tology has informed the efforts of medievalists studying forms as disparate
as romance, hagiography, chronicle, ballad, and pictorial narratives in books
and plastic arts. Medievalists in the fields of literature and history have also
enriched narratology by challenging the ahistorical assumptions that under-
lie its traditional structuralist mode. In a process of mutual enrichment,
medievalists have fixed cultural and historical horizons constraining sup-
posedly universal narrative structures, while the analytical approach of nar-
ratology illuminates new aspects of medieval texts.

B. Origins and Forerunners: From Aristotle to Russian Formalism

Tzvetan Todorov coined the term “narratology” (Grammaire du Décaméron,
1969), but the field’s intellectual origins go back to such practical observa-
tions in Aristotle’s Poetics as his distinction between “diegesis” (telling, as in
epic) and “mimesis” (showing, as in drama). In the modern period, the first
major precursor of narratology was Russian Formalism, emerging from the
Moscow Linguistic Circle of the 1910s. The Russian Formalists desired (like
North America’s New Critics) to isolate ‘literary’ elements from their socio-
991 Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies

historical, psychological, and philosophical context. Their works contributed

several important ideas to the later development of narratology, such as the
distinction between story and plot: the story comprises the ‘actual’ events in
their natural temporal and causal sequence, while the plot is their artistic or-
dering and arrangement, including chronological displacements and alter-
ations (Viktor Shklovskii, “On the Connection Between Devices of Siuzhet
and General Stylistic Devices,” Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and
Texts in Translation, ed. Stephen Bann, and John E. Bowlt, 1973, 48–72.)
While Shklovskii identified plot as the organizing principle of narrative
prose, Boris Eikhenbaum focused instead on the distinct discourse of the
narrative voice or skaz (“The Illusion of ‘Skaz,’” Russian Literature Triquarterly
11 [1975]: 211–29). Vladimir Propp extended the formalist approach to nar-
rative beyond strictly literary texts by proposing an elemental taxonomy of
thirty-one folktales based on the functions performed by their characters
(Theory and History of Folklore, 1931). Propp’s methods influenced the semioti-
cian A.J. Greimas, who was born in Lithuania but moved to France to study
medieval language and literature as an undergraduate. Greimas sought to
uncover a narrative grammar by which the narrational act transforms the
sign systems constituting the “discourse universe” into a temporal scheme.
Through this temporal scheme, subjects experience story-events as the con-
flicts and transformations of desire (Sémantique structurale: Recherche de mé-
thode, 1966).
Greimas was one conduit between Russian formalism and French
structuralism. Todorov, a Romanian émigré to France, was another. In as-
sociation with Roland Barthes and Gerard Genette, he first made many
Russian formalist works available in the West through translations and edi-
tions (Théorie de la litttérature: Textes des Formalistes Russes, ed. Todorov,
1965). Structuralists in France were receptive to Russian Formalism because
they shared the goal of elucidating structural laws and patterns absolved
from historical contingencies. Like the Russian Formalists, French structu-
ralists adopted the governing premise of Saussurean linguistics – that lan-
guage is a synchronic system of meaning, a network of sign-pairs distin-
guished by minimal differences in sensible features (e. g., the vibration of
vocal chords distinguishing the letter Z from S). Unlike Russian Formalism,
however, French structuralism did not distinguish artistic or literary lan-
guage from other symbolic activity; if we privilege myth as having special
significance, proposed Claude Lévi-Strauss, it is only because myths reveal
and attempt to reconcile fundamental oppositions underwriting the sym-
bolic system of culture (“The Structural Study of Myth,” Journal of American
Folklore 28 [1955]: 428–44). By assimilating all human activity to symbolic
Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies 992

behavior, Lévi-Strauss furnished a mode of anthropological inquiry

furnished out of binary oppositions such as “raw” and “cooked” which he
proposed could account for the apparent superfluities of culture (Le cru et le
cuit, 1964). The ferment of structuralism in the 1960s prompted Roland
Barthes in 1970 to describe the humanities as being “still in awe of the
prestige of linguistics” (S/Z, 1970, 7). Barthes’ own “Introduction to the
Structural Analysis of Narrative” examined how treating a narrative as a
sentence allowed narrative to be analyzed into elementary functions and ac-
tions (trans. Lionel Disuit, New Literary History 6 [1975]: 237–272). While
Barthes himself came to re-evaluate the limits of structuralism, his work,
as well as Todorov’s Grammaire du decameron, inaugurated “narratology” as
a distinct venture in literary theory.

C. Structuralist Narratology
Many of the major works most closely associated with the term ‘narratology’
were written in the milieu of structuralism in the France of the 1960s and
1970s. Narratologists like Gerard Genette (Narrative Discourse, trans. Jane
Lewin, 1973), Gerald Prince (A Dictionary of Narratology, rev. ed. 2003), and
Bieke Mal (Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd ed. 1997) pro-
duced descriptive taxonomies of narrative which focused on textual struc-
tures and the relations of textual elements. These and associated works,
sometimes characterized as ‘classical narratology,’ deliberately bracket con-
tingent elements such as authors, readers, and contexts of production and
reception in order to illuminates features of narrative previously overlooked
or ignored; they aspire to produce an analytic taxonomy of universal applica-
bility. This universality, however, has limits – the taxonomical schemes of
classical narratology were usually developed with reference to the Realist
novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Genette’s Narrative Discourse, for
example, introduced a number of analytical terms of lasting currency (such
as ‘focalization,’ a narrational perspective strictly distinct from the ‘person’
of the narrator) through a tour-de-force reading of Proust’s À la recherche du
temps perdu, intended, in part, to demonstrate that narratological analysis
could be useful for more complex texts than myths and folktales. Gerald
Prince proposed the functional category of the “narratee,” the intended lis-
tener of the narrative – real or notional, present or absent – through his read-
ing of Guy de Maupassant (“Introduction to the Study of the Narratee,”
Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P.
Tompkins, 1980). A notable exception to this emphasis on Realist and Mod-
ernist prose fiction among the major works of structuralist narratology is
Todorov’s Grammaire du Decameron (1969), which distills from Boccaccio’s
993 Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies

story collection an “arch-nouvelle,” a set of rules for generating the stories of

the Decameron.

D. Historicism and Philology

Despite the fact that classical narratology typically focused on Realist and
Modernist novels, its ahistorical formalism was attractive to interpreters of
texts for which the circumstances of production and reception are obscure,
such as the Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus. T.A. Shippey assessed the value of
Propp’s morphology of folktales in accounting for the narrative structure of
Beowulf; others followed suit (T.A. Shippey, “The Fairy Tale Structure of Beo-
wulf,” Notes and Queries 16 [1969]: 2–11; Daniel R. Barnes, “Folktale Mor-
phology and the Structure of Beowulf,” Speculum 45 [1970]: 416–34; Bruce A.
Rosenberg, “Folklore Methodology and Medieval Literature,” Journal of the
Folklore Institute 13 [1976]: 311–25). In her 1988 dissertation at the University
of Arkansas, “Time in Beowulf: An Application of Narratology,” Eril
Hughes challenges traditional thematic readings of Beowulf that sideline its
plot as loose or incoherent. Hughes argues that Genette’s taxonomy of nar-
rative structures allows a full and non-reductive account of “the complexity
of time” in Beowulf (33). Classical narratology also informs Minette Grun-
mann-Gaudet’s article account of a similarly legendary material in “The
Representation of time in the Chanson de Roland,” (The Nature of Medieval
Narrative, ed. M. Grunmann-Gaudet, and R. F. Jones, 1980, 77–98). This
collection of work on Old French literature, including studies by Paul Zum-
thor, Eugene Vance, and John Grigsby, offers a focused survey of some of
the earliest literary criticism to bring the methods and perspectives of struc-
turalist and early post-structuralist literary theory to bear on medieval texts.
The reception of narratology in Medieval Literary Studies, however, was
inflected by methods already prevalent among medievalists for the struc-
tural analysis of narrative, including especially historicist approaches that
read medieval texts through medieval categories of linguistic and aesthetic
analysis derived from, among other things, grammar, rhetoric, and logic
(Adeline C. Bartlett, The Larger Rhetorical Patterns of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,
1939). Disciples of oral-formulaic theory found implicit formal categories in
oral and semi-oral literature beyond those prescribed by ancient and medi-
eval scholars (Constance B. Hieatt, “Envelope Patterns and the Structure of
Beowulf,” English Studies in Canada 1 [1975]: 249–65). In the English-speaking
world, few such advocates of this ‘old’ historicism enjoyed more influence
than D.W. Robertson, who brought the vast apparatus of patristic exegesis
to bear on vernacular medieval texts; Alastair Minnis, exchanging patristic
for scholastic authorities, followed along these lines (D. W. Robertson,
Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies 994

A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives, 1964; Alastair Minnis,

Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages,
1984). More recently, Salwa Shafik-Ghaly brought this approach into
dialogue with narratology, analyzing narratological concerns with time
relations (order, duration, frequency) in terms of medieval dispositio, or rhe-
torical arrangement (“Towards a Medieval Narratology: Discourse and Nar-
ration in Chretien’s Yvain and Chaucer’s Troilus,” Ph. D. diss., University of
Alberta, 1988).
Another main stream of medieval literary criticism during the mid-20th-
century came out of the tradition of German philology. The philologists
Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, although heirs to the diachronic lin-
guistics of the neo-grammarians from which Ferdinand de Saussure so
decisively split, nevertheless anticipated narratology’s attention to narrative’s
discursive matrix. In a manner distinct from Robertson’s exegetical his-
toricism but comparable in scale and sensitivity, Auerbach’s stylistic analy-
sis elaborated the synthetic codes that shaped the production and reception
of narrative in the Middle Ages, anticipating Barthes’ displacement of
the author (Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask, 1953; id., Literary Language and Its Public
in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim, 1993).
Leo Spitzer’s distinction between the ‘textual I’ and ‘empirical I’ antici-
pates Genette’s and Prince’s treatment of the narrator as a function of the
text (“Notes on the Empirical and Poetic ‘I’ in Medieval Authors,” Traditio 4
[1946]: 414–22).

E. Reception Theory and Post-Structuralism

Reception theorists like Wolfgang Iser offered an approach to narrative that
accounts for a text’s historically situated production and use; Iser, Hans
Robert Jauss, and other “reception theorists” privileged the reader’s experi-
ence as a category of analysis, while still allowing for the degree of generality
necessary to criticism by positing an “implied reader […] a counterpart to
Wayne Booth’s concept of the implied author as elaborated in The Rhetoric of
Fiction” (Holub, 84) (Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communi-
cation in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, 1974; Hans Robert Jauss, Toward
an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, 1982; Wayne Booth, The
Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961; Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduc-
tion, 1984).
Structuralism fully reached the attention of medievalists (with excep-
tions like Zumthor) when its methods and tenets were already being chal-
lenged and revised. Critiques of narratology come as part of the more general
995 Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies

critique of structuralism: it is reductionistic and overly divorced from his-

torical context – one cannot finally abstract a ‘grammar’ of narrative from
the discourse in which it is expressed, and that discourse is always implicated
in its historical situation. Many of these critiques have been made by medi-
evalists and by narratologists pointing to the ‘anomalous’ features of medi-
eval texts. Medievalists often mounted these challenges based on peculiar-
ities of medieval texts which resist taxonomies developed largely through
the study of the Realist and Modernist novel. Criticism of narratology came
as part of a two more general critiques of structuralism. The first was that it is
reductionistic. Paul Ricoeur, for example, claims that its notion of story as
a succession of events plotted along a timeline overlooks the way the “fictive
experience of time” schematizes events as they are lived and understood
(Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, and David Pellauer,
vol. 1, 1984, 6). The second criticism was that any effort at an ahistorical and
universal “narrative grammar” is doomed to futility; the practices of nar-
ration are inseparable from sociohistorical context and the communicative
needs of individuals.
Evelyn Birge Vitz’s formulates this critique in a comprehensive study
(Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology: Subjects and Objects of Desire, 1989).
In her reading of diverse medieval texts, including Abelard’s Historia calami-
tatum, both parts of the Roman de la rose, and the Lais of Marie de France, Vitz
challenges the subject/object relation implicit in classical narratology as “ex-
pressions of the worldview of the modern Western – secularized and highly
rationalistic – culture.” (9) In Vitz’s studies, she attempts to account for the
place of a medieval desire operating under different concepts of time and
causality – concepts ultimately dependent on the transcendence of God (10).
For Vitz, the desiring subject at the center of the narrative cannot be fully
identified with its ‘hero’ or ‘protagonist’ (as does Greimas); rather, multiple
desiring subjects intersect in the narrative events, including not only char-
acters within the world of the text, but ‘transcendent’ characters: the saints,
personified concepts and forces like Love or Nature, and especially God. “[…]
We cannot discuss medieval plots as simple watertight units, but must be
willing to encompass in our analyses both those to whom the discourse is ad-
dressed, and transcendent characters.” (3)
Monica Fludernik mounts a more comprehensive and systematic ef-
fort to reformulate narratology in light of the ‘experiential’ turn in the hu-
manities and social sciences, which “proposes to redefine narrativity in terms
of cognitive (‘natural’) parameters, moving beyond formal narratology into
the realm of pragmatics, reception theory, and constructionism” (Toward
a ‘Natural’ Narratology, 1996). This effort provides an overview of medieval
Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies 996

English literature embracing a variety of textual genres, including chron-

icles, saints’ lives, sermons, and verse narrative; it gives an account of ro-
mance’s development from “episodic” to “scenic” patterns, which she sees as
consummated in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (150). Fludernik is not the
first to describe the distinctive features of medieval romance by plotting
medieval narrative on a continuum between the oral and the textual, but her
analysis goes a good deal beyond Millman Parry, Albert Lord, and Walter
J. Ong by drawing from empirical research on the unconscious use of nar-
rative in everyday life (Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, 1960; “Oral Com-
position and ‘Oral Residue’ in the Middle Ages,” Oral Tradition in the Middle
Ages, ed. W. F. H. Nicolaisen, 1995, 7–29; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Liter-
acy: The Technologizing of the Word, 2nd ed. 2002).
The incorporation of discourse analysis into narratology has provided
other medievalists with a way to relate philological details to the larger nar-
rative structures of texts. Suzanne Fleischmann’s analyzes the “seemingly
gratuitous alternation of past and present verb forms” in Old French romance
by making use of the analysis of narrative in everyday conversation advanced
by William Labov, a foundational figure in the discipline of sociolinguistics
(Suzanne Fleischmann, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to
Modern Fiction, 1990). Gary Wayne Shawver’s 1999 University of Toronto
dissertation, “A Chaucerian Narratology: ‘Story’ and ‘Tale’ in Chaucer’s Nar-
rative Practice,” illustrates the longstanding tendency of medievalists to seek
and test analogies between the analytical vocabulary of modern and post-
modern literary theory and those drawn from medieval usage and commen-
tary. Using computerized methods to carry out a lexicological analysis of
Chaucer’s respective uses of ‘storie’ versus ‘tale,’ Shawver finds that “‘sto-
rie’ occurs in contexts foregrounding public memory and authority, ‘tale’ in
those foregrounding private subjectivity” (130). Shawver therefore
cautiously suggests an analogy between Chaucer’s functional distinction
between his uses of ‘storie’ and ‘tale’ and the distinction between story and
discourse posited by Genette; ‘storie’ is ‘content’ – the events, setting,
and persons of a story prior to being communicated – whereas ‘tale’ corre-
sponded to discourse: story as a particular utterance with a particular teller
(131). Suggesting limitations to this analogy without specifying what they
are, Shaw honors the medievalist’s temperamental caution about anachron-
ism; nevertheless, he uses the distinction to make plausible claims about the
differing conceptions of narrative as discourse in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
997 Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies

F. Historiography
Narratology has been adopted by medieval historians with possibly greater
enthusiasm than by literary critics. Historians grew discontented with posi-
tivistic historiography as distorted and inadequate; it deliberately excluded
the medieval chronicler’s free mingling of legendary and other ‘fictional’
material with factual record, and was likewise insensible to the literary self-
referentiality of medieval narrators. An important pioneer in the adoption of
literary modes of analysis by historians was Hayden White; influenced (like
Paul Ricoeur) by Northrop Frye, White argues that “[…] plot is not a
structural component of fictional or mythical stories alone; it is crucial to the
historical representations of events as well” (The Content of the Form, 1987, 51;
Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, 1957). Narratological
paradigms can thus be used to analyze medieval historiography – not just to
mine the ore of historical data from the dross of the ‘merely’ literary, but to
see narration itself as a historical act. In this way, White argues that our
understanding of history is framed both by our narrator’s and our own situ-
ated perspectives. This reflexive turn in the discipline of history continues to
bear fruit. As Brian Stock puts it, “accounting for what actually happened
is now recognized to be only part of the story; the other part is the record
of what individuals thought was happening, and the ways in which their
feelings, perceptions, and narratives of events either influenced or were
influenced by the realities they faced” (“History, Literature, and Medieval
Textuality,” Yale French Studies 70 [1986]: 7–17). Gabrielle M. Spiegel’s Ro-
mancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century
France (1995) brings insights from post-structuralism and Marxism to her
narratological account of the ways in which Old French chronicles constitute
the self-image of a dominant class in partisan and ideologically motivated
ways; R. James Goldstein takes a similar approach to Scottish chronicles
(The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland, 1993). Respond-
ing to the work of Goldstein and Spiegel as well as Evelyn Birge Vitz,
Andrew Galloway provides a useful critical synthesis of the engagement
between Medieval Studies and narratology in the decades since the 1960s
(“Narratology and the Pursuit of Context: Three Recent Studies of Medieval
Narrative,” Medievalia et Humanistica 21 [1994]: 111–126).
Like Spiegel, Monika Otter explores how elite communities repre-
sent themselves when narrating their own origins in 12th-century Anglo-
Latin historiography (Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century
English Historical Writing, 1986). Along similar lines, Narrative and History in the
Early Medieval West (ed. Elizabeth Balzaretti, and Ross Tyler, 2006) col-
lects recent narratological contributions to the study of early medieval his-
Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies 998

toriography; in this collection, “Mixed Modes in Historical Narrative” by

Joaquín Martínez Pizarro offers an especially sustained engagement with
the legacy of narratology and literary theory. This collection follows in the
wake of Walter Goffart’s examination of the situated agendas of four
story-tellers on whom our knowledge of early Europe still greatly depends
(The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede,
and Paul the Deacon, 1988). Another collection, Medieval Concepts of the Past: Rit-
ual, Memory, Historiography (ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick
J. Geary, 2002) links narratology to social-scientific and linguistic study in
examining how language represents the succession of past events over a wide
range of medieval periods and regions. Narratology has also made inroads
into medieval art history, especially book history; Mary C. Olson, for
example, examines how time and sequence are represented in the pictorial
elements of medieval books (“Genesis and Narratology: The Challenge of
Medieval Illustrated Texts,” Mosaic 31 [1998]: 1–24). A comprehensive over-
view of work on narrative in medieval art history can be found in the article
“Narrative” by Suzanne Lewis (A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and
Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph, 2006, 86–105).

Select Bibliography
Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, trans. Christine van Bo-
heemen (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1985); Roland Barthes,
Wolfgang Kayser, Wayne C. Booth, and Philippe Hamon, Poétique du récit (Paris:
Seuil, 1977); Monica Fludernik, Toward a ‘Natural’ Narratology (New York: Routledge,
1996); Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane Lewin
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973); Narratology: An Introduction, ed. Jose Angel Gar-
cia Landa, and Susana Onega (London and New York: Longman, 1996); Gabrielle
Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans.
Richard Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977); Evely Birge Vitz, Medieval Narrative and
Modern Narratology: Subjects and Objects of Desire (New York: New York University Press,
1989); Hayden White, The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).

Jonathan M. Newman
999 New Philology

New Philology

A. Definition
“New Philology” is an umbrella term used to describe a movement or atti-
tude, primarily among American academics, toward the reading, editing,
and interpretation of medieval texts. The major impetus for the New Philol-
ogy was the enormous changes and pressures brought to bear on Medieval
Studies by postmodern literary theory in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as by
the New Historicism. Drawing on the sense of philology as the study not only
of words and language but of learning and culture more broadly, practi-
tioners of the New Philology tend to embrace the challenges which postmod-
ernism poses to the traditional study of texts. Although it has affinities with
deconstruction, reader-response theory and reception theory, the New Phi-
lology is more a general approach than a formal theory or methodology. Sub-
ject to much controversy in the 1990s, the New Philology has since that time
become generally accepted as a significant presence in Medieval Studies.
One of the movement’s founders, Stephen G. Nichols, describes New
Philology as Medieval Studies’ “postmodern return to the origins of Medi-
eval Studies” (“Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum
65.1 [Jan. 1990]: 1–10, here 7). That is, the New Philology concerns a return
to and a re-emphasis on the medieval manuscript as the focal point of study,
with attention to all the elements of the manuscript – not only the text but
also the manuscript’s markings, illustrations, layout, and marginalia, as well
as its transmission history and treatment by readers and writers. A number of
related developments also informed the New Philology, including the New
Medievalism, a larger movement of which New Philology is seen as a part;
the historicist re-examination of nationalist narratives embedded in textual
and interpretive studies; and, particularly, advances in computing.
The term and the movement gained prominence with the appearance of
a special issue of Speculum in January 1990. This issue, edited by Nichols, set
off a sharp debate among academics in the early and mid-nineties. However,
many of the tenets of what is now called New Philology had already been es-
tablished, among both text editors and social scientists, well before the
special issue was published. In many respects, the waning argument between
some New Philologists and their opponents may be attributed to computer-
based studies as a new and increasingly sophisticated line of inquiry. Com-
puter-based editing, as well as the arguments of the New Philology, brought
what Nichols calls the “manuscript matrix” once again to the foreground
in Medieval Studies.
New Philology 1000

B. History and Background

In order to understand the rise of the New Philology, it is necessary to bear in
mind the limitations of editorial practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, and
to recognize how radically such practices were shaken by postmodern
thought. Stemmatic analysis, a 19th-century development associated pri-
marily with the work of Karl Lachmann, sought to establish (or restore) a
text as close to its archetype as possible by means of the examination of
manuscript variants (a process called recensio) and assessment of their orig-
inality (examinatio). Comparison and evaluation of linguistic features and
other manuscript evidence yield a stemma, or tree, of genealogical relation-
ships among various witnesses, with the goal of determining the root of the
tree – the archetype, or first version of the text, which may no longer exist.
Emendatio, or emending the text with the goal of restoring the lost original,
depends on the prior determination of when textual variants were intro-
duced. Because stemmatic analysis seeks to determine whether a given read-
ing is or is not an error, it must assume that every variant is an error; that er-
rors, once introduced, persist; and that no copyist would have altered a
manuscript intentionally.
In a 1928 article on his edition of the Lai du l’ombre, Joseph Bédier re-
pudiated the stemmatic approach, arguing that Lachmannian analysis,
while purporting to be scientific, tended to create a subjective set of binaries
and thus an artificially neat stemma (“La tradition manuscrit du ‘Lai de
l’ombre’: Reflexions sur l’art d’editer les anciens texts,” Romania 54 [1928]:
161–96, 321–56). Bédier propounded instead what has become known as
the best-text method: the editor should select the best witness from among
the extant manuscripts or early printed texts, and make minimal emen-
dations as necessary. Bédierism had its own controversies: if the best text was
determined by prior stemmatic analysis, it could be subject to the same er-
rors as the stemma; and, whether or not a stemma was constructed, the editor
had to depend on his own subjective judgment and taste. Accordingly, “best
texts” have been selected for apparently arbitrary reasons: because they are
the oldest witness, the most regular, or the most beautiful (for example, the
use of the Ellesmere rather than Hengwrt manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales as the base text for the standard edition).
While the approaches of Lachmann and Bédier greatly influenced the
editing of medieval manuscripts, it is also important to note one later ap-
proach, primarily applied to studies of texts from the age of print. Walter W.
Greg and Fredson Bowers argued for an eclectic approach to text editing:
when the original text is lost, the evidence of surviving witnesses may to-
gether create a purer text, one closer to the original, than any single witness.
1001 New Philology

Both the Lachmannian and eclectic approaches have the goal of reconstruct-
ing an ideal text, one which would reflect the original intention of the
author, as contrasted with the best-text approach, which seeks to maximize
the coherence of a single manuscript, selected for its intrinsic worth.
Text editors, both of manuscripts and of printed works, have long been
aware that traditional editorial practices were susceptible to critique. Stem-
matic analysis and eclectic editing were suspect since the era of New Criti-
cism because of their reliance on the idea of authorial intention. In stem-
matic analysis, an editor who made foundational assumptions about errors
and their persistence could find what he was looking for, but the theory
could not be established a priori. For its part, the best-text method had a bias
toward the subjective preferences of the editor, as Bédier himself acknowl-
edged.
The pressures of postmodernism, however, gave greater impetus and
weight to the acknowledged problems of these methods. No complete ac-
count of postmodernism is possible within the confines of a brief article, but
a few examples may illustrate how ripe was manuscript editing for a post-
modern critique. Derridean thought, for example, undercuts the possibility
of a fixed or stable meaning; the sign, unlinked from a signified, has mean-
ing only in the endless succession of différance. Deconstruction examines and
inverts the privileging of one element over another in any binary system (for
example, speech/writing). Given that Lachmannian analysis is predicated on
a manuscript reading being right or wrong, authorial or erroneous, such a
method becomes a tempting target. In inverting and collapsing binary dis-
tinctions, postmodernism prizes the marginal, or the supplemental, over the
center; under its critique, the best-text method seems to revere the wrong el-
ements, and to entrust the text to an elitist arbiter as well. Moreover, post-
modern thought denies determinacy and calls into question the possibility
of a stable text; for editors whose lifework was to establish text, both in the
sense of creating a stable, readable text and in the sense of restoring a lost
original, this element of postmodernism posed a direct challenge. Struc-
turalist and poststructuralist arguments declared the death (or irrelevance)
of the author and thus of authorial intention, a most damaging declaration
for a field which, in Jerome McGann’s phrase, sought to “establish a text
which […] most nearly represents the author’s original (or final) intentions”
(A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism, 1983, 15).
Scholars in the social sciences were also aware of fissures in the tradi-
tional practice of philology. Clifford Geertz, in a 1980 article, cites com-
parative linguist Alton Becker on the “shattering of philology […] into dis-
junct and rivalrous specialties, and most particularly […] a division between
New Philology 1002

those who study individual texts (historians, editors, critics – who like to call
themselves humanists), and those who study the activity of creating texts in
general (linguists, psychologists, ethnographers – who like to call them-
selves scientists)” (“Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought,”
Critical Theory Since 1965, ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, 1986,
514–23, here 521). For his part, Becker’s calls for a “new philology” echo
those of Spanish philologist José Ortega y Gasset (“The Difficulty of
Reading,” Diogenes 28 [1959]: 1–17), whose “paradox of philology,” in
Becker’s phrase, states that “Every utterance is deficient – it says less than it
wishes to say. Every utterance is exuberant – it conveys more than it plans”
(Beyond Translation: Essays toward a Modern Philology, 1995, 370).

C. Major Contributions
Ortega y Gasset’s call for a new philology seems prescient, particularly
when his idea of the “exuberant” utterance is compared with that of the “joy-
ful excess” (33) described in Bernard Cerquiglini’s Éloge de la variante: His-
toire critique de la philologie (1989; English trans., 1999). This work, influenced
by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, gave voice to the postmodern
complaint against traditional editorial and philological practices. For Cer-
quiglini, “the author is not a medieval concept” (8); rather, the scribe is
paramount:
The work copied by hand, manipulated, always open and as good as unfinished,
invited intervention, annotation, and commentary. Confronted with an earlier
piece of writing, it constructed itself and sustained itself simply with the distance
it assumed in relation to the utterance that was its basis. The scribal work was
commentary, paraphrase, supplementary meaning, supplementary language,
brought to bear upon a letter that was essentially unfinished (34).

Cerquiglini deplores the “religion” (1) of positivist optimism concerning

the nature and reliability of text. He traces this optimism to the era of print
and of the author’s proof, the mark of authenticity, in the process of typeset-
ting. A second modern idea which he identifies is that a text, literature itself,
could be property; such ideas, he claims, have little relation to medieval lit-
erature, and he hails the return of the unowned, unsigned, ever-changing
manuscript to the center of scholarly study. Cerquiglini reviews the devel-
opment of a French vernacular in the 12th and 13th centuries, as it broke away
first from Latin and then from orality. French vernacular writing was an ap-
propriation, in Cerquiglini’s term, of the mother tongue, an appropri-
ation which “found expression in an essential variance, which philology,
modern thinking about the text, took to be merely a childhood disease” (21).
For Cerquiglini, philologists who sought to establish a text, or a work,
1003 New Philology

were profoundly mistaken, since the very essence of the work is variation,
change, and instability; the fundamental plurality of many texts (for
example, of Piers Plowman) means that “every manuscript is a revision, a ver-
sion” (38). In contrast, then, to the Lachmannian idea that change in manu-
scripts signals error or decline from a lost original, instead of a single text
whose instantiations contain errors or variants, Cerquiglini proclaims
that the medieval text is, itself, variance, its value lying not in a fixed mean-
ing but in a plenitude of meanings. Traditional medieval philology, there-
fore, is a kind of nostalgic desire; it is “the mourning for a text, the patient
labor of this mourning” (34).
Although Cerquiglini recognizes the “cultural necessity” of reducing
the excess of medieval textuality to the printed form (26), he objects to the
“fantasy” of “the solely documentary project of fidelity to the manuscript”
(22). Such a fantasy, the product of the modern print era, is the Procrustean
bed onto which philologists – Cerquiglini uses the caricature of “Mr. Pro-
crustes, Philologist” (13) – force the medieval text. Cerquiglini reviews the
careers and work of Lachmann, whose methods were introduced to French
Medieval Studies by Gaston Paris, Paris himself, and Bédier, and while
acknowledging the immense body of work achieved by these scholars, he
nontheless refers to these and other philologists as “dinosaurs” (46). Accord-
ing to Cerquiglini their goal of recovering or preserving a single text that
never was should yield to the idea that the medieval manuscript is playful
and dynamic. The computer screen, along with the computer’s ability to
hold vast amounts of data on codices, paleography, and so on, provides the
means of celebrating this mobile, excessive literature. Like the medieval text,
according to Cerquiglini, “Computer inscription is variance” (81).
Nichols’ special edition of Speculum appeared just a year after Cer-
quiglini’s Éloge, and his introduction repeats and amplifies some of Cer-
quiglini’s arguments, augmenting them through a survey of 20th-century
scholars who worked in the wake of Bédier. He agrees with Cerquiglini
that the practices of print culture circumscribed medieval textuality, adding
that medieval philology has been marginalized as a discipline “by contem-
porary cognitive methodologies, on the one side, while within the discipline
itself, a very limited and by now grossly anachronistic conception of it re-
mains far too current” (1). Nichols calls for careful, theoretically informed
study of all aspects, visual and verbal, of medieval manuscripts and their cul-
tures, using the term “manuscript matrix.” Nichols defines this matrix, in
contrast to the assembled, fixed form of the print edition, as “a place of rad-
ical contingencies,” made up of “gaps and interstices, in the form of inter-
ventions in the text made up of visual and verbal insertions which may be
New Philology 1004

conceived, in Jacques Lacan’s terms, as ‘pulsations of the unconscious’ by

which the ‘subject reveals and conceals’ itself” (8). Beginning with Siegfried
Wenzel’s observations on philology’s traditional role as “handmaiden” to
interpretation and to related disciplines (17), the articles in the special issue
range from specific analyses to general claims. Suzanne Fleishmann’s ar-
ticle, “Philology, Linguistics, and the Discourse of the Medieval Text,”
brings “discourse-based linguistics to bear on the textual artifacts of medi-
eval France” (37), building on Cerquiglini’s argument that the medieval
text is not a fossilized artifact but an example of dynamic and communi-
cative language. Two articles, R. Howard Bloch’s “New Philology and Old
French,” and Gabrielle M. Speigel’s “History, Historicism, and the Social
Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” are overtly concerned with poststruc-
turalist themes and positions, while Lee Patterson’s article, “On the Mar-
gin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” places the New
Philology in the context of Medieval Studies as an academic institution.
The Speculum issue, as well as other theoretically-informed treatments
of medieval manuscripts, prompted a series of objections by scholars who
quickly recognized the binary of “new” and “old” philology and saw their
position as the “old.” Wendell Clausen, in his brief 1990 essay “Philology,”
claimed, “Anyone who speaks about philology today must be aware that it
has become, for many, a pejorative term, even a term of abuse” (Special-Focus
Issue: What is Philology? Comparative Literature Studies 27:1 [1990], 13). That
concern also appears in Keith Busby’s collection, Toward a Synthesis? Essays on
the New Philology (1993). This collection of responses to the New Philology,
originally a set of conference papers, retains a flavor of lively debate at a heated
time. According to Busby, the major concerns of traditionalist scholars were

the false sense of crisis in the discipline; attacks made on straw men (in particular
on the illusory ghosts of positivism past); the rise and fall of trends and fads; the
nature and aims of text-editing, particularly the role of the new technology; the
enduring need to master Old French and the dangers of ignoring its syntax, se-
mantics, and phonology; the necessity (and desire) to revise our critical arsenal (2).

While several essays in the collection do indeed move “toward a synthesis,”

others are frankly polemical. Among the strongest reactions to the New Phi-
lology was Barbara N. Sargent-Baur’s “Philology Through the Looking-
Glass,” which objected to Howard R. Bloch’s postmodernist musings on
the Old French lai and on trahir/traïr in his Speculum article and in his 1988
Romanic Review article, “The Medieval Text – ‘Guigemar’ – as a Provocation
to the Discipline of Medieval Studies” (97.1 [1988]: 63–73). Complaining
that few New Philologists were themselves text editors, she declares that the
1005 New Philology

“old-fashioned philologist – the dinosaur – does not look on words as so

many serfs to be bullied or coerced. Nor does he regard texts as resources to be
exploited for corrobative illustrations of a pre-conceived thesis” (114).
Sargent-Baur’s language and tone – the use of masculine pronouns, a
footnote reference to traditionalist E. D. Hirsch, the public scolding of a
prominent scholar – may seem intentionally provocative, as may her term
“agents provocateurs of the New Philology” (116). Yet some arguments put for-
ward in the early 1990s illustrate what prompted this harsh reaction.
Bloch’s Speculum article, for example, repeatedly implies that 19th-century
philologists were childlike (43, 45). In his article “The Return to Philology,”
The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, Patterson declares,
the very term philology conjures up visions of an older, sterner pedagogy, of the
rote learning of linguistic detail, a positivist belief in factoids, a dismissal of inter-
pretation as mere opinion, a celebration of the past for its very pastness, a con-
tempt for innovation – in sum, a conservatism bristling with resentful indig-
nation and shored up with a Luddite contempt for the brave new world of the
contemporary academy (“The Return to Philology,” The Past and Future of Medieval
Studies, ed. John Van Engen, 1994, 231–44, here 231).

Patterson also compares philology to “a dusty closet into which only the
theoretically backward and the critically obtuse are hidden away” (242).
While his overall intention is to bring philological studies out of that dusty
closet and establish it as theory’s “central, constitutive element” (236), it is
not difficult to sympathize with those who saw their intellectual lifework
being relegated to history’s dustbin. Nichols and Bloch followed up on
the Speculum issue with two edited collections, The New Medievalism (1991)
and Medievalism and the Modernist Temper (1996), which was concerned with
professionalism and the preservation of Medieval Studies in the academy.
European responses to the New Philology appeared in the late 1990s, al-
though as Sarah Kay pointed out in 2000, the New Philology seemed “barely
aware of the contemporary European scene. Conversely, responses to the
New Philology have been close to non-existent in Europe” (“Analytical Sur-
vey 3: The New Philology,” New Medieval Literatures, ed. David Lawton,
David, Wendy Scase and Rita Copeland, 1999, vol. III, 306). Kay ignores
much of the continental response, such as Karl Stackmann’s critique of
Cerquiglini in “Neue Philologie?” (Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer
populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle, 1994, 398–427). She does, however,
mention that Martin-Dietrich Glessgen and Franz Lebsanft’s Alte und
neue Philologie (1997) assimilated Cerquiglini’s views without any “breast-
beating or sense of crisis” (307). Other treatments of the New Philology ap-
peared in German, Italian, and Norse studies in the 1990s.
New Philology 1006

D. Current State of Research

The controversy over the New Philology faded within a short time. Partici-
pants on either side of the debate quickly recognized that, as Stephen
Owens put it in “Philology’s Discontents: Response,”
Philology is not opposed to some of the recent movements in literary studies; phi-
lology caused them, and they are responses to that problem that inheres in the very
concept of the discipline: the reflective questioning of the texts that can be at
peace only when it discovers something stable, and therefore will never be at peace
(Comparative Literature Studies, Special-Focus Issue: What is Philology?, 27.1[1990]:
7–87, here 77–78).

This reuniting of the painstaking work of philologists with the creative work
of critics has made the New Philology a significant informing principle of the
discipline of Medieval Studies. Manuscript studies, and particularly explora-
tion of the “manuscript matrix,” now hold a prominent place in the field.
Recent works on the medieval manuscript which reveal a direct Nichols in-
fluence include Andrew Taylor’s Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts
and Their Readers (2002); The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manu-
scripts and Texts (ed. Siân Echard and Stephen Partridge, 2004); and Martha
Rust’s Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix (2007).
Cerquiglini’s prediction that the computer screen and computer tech-
nology would provide an outlet for the “joyful excess” of the medieval manu-
script has been amply fulfilled, especially in the multiform possibilities of
hypertext and quickly accessible databases. Ironically, however, computer
analysis as an arm of philological inquiry and editing has come full circle, to
a kind of neo-Lachmannian analysis. Cladistic analysis, which classifies bio-
logical species in a manner similar to Lachmann’s stemma, has given new
attention to stemmatics. The fruits of this labor can be seen, for example, in
the CD-ROM productions of the Canterbury Tales Project, which produce
not a single stemma but the whole series of variants found in all the Chau-
cerian texts.

Select Bibliography
Toward a Synthesis?: Essays on the New Philology, ed. Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1993); Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris:
Seuil, 1989); Betsy Wing, trans., In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology (Bal-
timore: Johns Hopkins, 1999); Sarah Kay, “Analytical Survey 3: The New Philology,”
New Medieval Literatures, vol. III., ed. David Lawton, Wendy Scase and Rita Cope-
land (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 295–326; The New Philology, ed. Stephen
G. Nichols, Speculum 65.1 (Jan. 1990): 1–108.

Susan Yager
1007 Numismatics

Numismatics

A. Definition
Numismatics is the study of coins and associated items such as tokens, along
with their production, organization and significance. This is based primarily
on close study of the objects themselves: their design, inscription, style,
weight, fineness and other physical features must all be scrutinized care-
fully, and by piecing together information gleaned from them one can gain
some impression of the coinage’s structure and internal chronology. Equally
vital to this process is the provenance of a coin. Although few medieval coins
have retained their provenance, every coin must have been found somewhere
at some point, either as a single-find or as part of a hoard. Both types of find
are important to the numismatist. Single-finds, especially when known in
substantial numbers, can give an indication of coin circulation and perhaps
wider patterns of trade. Hoards, on the other hand, do not always reflect the
circulating medium: certain coins may have been preferred over others, or
the hoard might represent ‘savings’ of parcels amalgamated into one group
at widely spaced intervals. Nevertheless, hoards are contemporary evidence
for which coins could be gathered together at roughly the same point – not-
withstanding collections of coins clearly carried far from home by a pilgrim
or merchant – and can be crucial for constructing a chronology, especially
when inscriptions and other evidence for attribution is lacking on many of
the coins themselves.
At the same time as taking the coinage on its own terms and not being too
eager to force it into any predetermined chronology or pattern derived from
other sources, numismatists must keep one eye firmly on the history of the
period and on any relevant numismatic texts. Ascertaining the chronology
and minting patterns of even an apparently well-structured coinage is not al-
ways easy, and it can be even harder to link a relative chronology to specific
dates. Relatively few medieval coins actually bear specific dates: most Islamic
coins and early Byzantine bronzes do, and some late medieval coins are even
dated to the year of the incarnation. Mintmarks or names were standard in
many but far from all medieval coinages. In certain cases specific types or
variations allow a coin to be attributed to a short period or a particular mint,
but in general the situation is rather more complicated, and numismatists –
working in collaboration with historians and archaeologists – face many
challenges in attributing a date and place of origin to coins before even
coming to address wider questions of use, production and overall signifi-
cance.
Numismatics 1008

For an introduction to the techniques behind numismatics, see Philip

Grierson, Numismatics (1975) (available in a number of languages); Cécile
Morrisson, La Numismatique (1991); and the shorter Philip Grierson,
“Numismatics” (Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James powell, 2nd ed.
1992, 103–36). Detailed guidance to specific techniques can be found in
Philip Grierson’s series of five presidential addresses to the Royal Numis-
matic Society (all reprinted in his Later Medieval Numismatics, 1979): “Numis-
matics and the Historian,” Numismatic Chronicle series 7.2 (1962): i-xiv; “Coin
Wear and the Frequency Table,” Numismatic Chronicle series 7.3 (1963): i–xvi;
“Weight and Coinage,” Numismatic Chronicle series 7.4 (1964), iii–xvii; “The
Interpretation of Coin Finds (1),” Numismatic Chronicle series 7,5 (1965):
i–xiii; and “The Interpretation of Coin Finds (2),” Numismatic Chronicle series
7,6 (1966): i-xv. A very useful handbook focusing on French examples but
with much general discussion of the discipline is Marc Bompaire and Fran-
çoise Dumas, Numismatique médiévale: monnaies et documents d’origine française
(2000); see also Bernd Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelalters (2007); and, from
an Italian perspective, Lucia Travaini, Monete e storia nell’Italia medievale
(2007). General bibliographies include Philip Grierson, Bibliographie numis-
matique (2nd ed., 1979); Elvira Eliza Clain-Stefanelli, Numismatic Bibli-
ography (1984); and specialist terms can be looked up in Richard Doty, The
Macmillan Encyclopedic Dictionary of Numismatics (1982); and Michael North,
Von Aktie bis Zoll: Ein historische Lexikon des Geldes (1995).

B. Monetary History
Closely allied to numismatics is monetary history: the study of the use and
circulation of coinage, which is itself intimately associated with economic
history. Although not always accorded prominence in numismatic publi-
cations, there are many important studies of coinage in its wider historical
and economic contexts. Recent years have seen particular emphasis placed
on the connections between mining and the flow of precious metals around
Europe and into it from West Africa and Central Asia over the course of the
Middle Ages. Of great importance, especially for the high and later Middle
Ages, is Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (1988); with
further development in John Munro, “The Central European Mining Boom,
Mint Outputs and Prices in the Low Countries and England, 1450–1550”
(Money, Coins and Commerce: Essays in the Monetary History of Europe and Asia
from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Eddy H. G. Van Cauwenberghe, 1991,
119–83). Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages
(4 vols., 2001–) is also strong on the relationship between coinage and bul-
lion, though many of his conclusions have been challenged.
1009 Numismatics

There has also been reconsideration of how coins were used in the
Middle Ages. Classics are, again, Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medi-
eval Europe (1988); and also, for the earlier period, Philip Grierson, “Com-
merce in the Dark Ages: a Critique of the Evidence” (Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society series 5, 9 [1959]: 123–40). Richard Hodges, Dark Age Econ-
omics (1982), includes more discussion of coinage than most studies of medi-
eval economic history and has been influential in recent decades. For recent
discussion of early medieval Italy in its wider European setting, see Alessia
Rovelli, “Coins and Trade in Early Medieval Italy” (Early Medieval Europe 17
[2009]: 45–76). The place of early medieval coinage in a bullion-based econ-
omy is considered in James Graham-Campbell, “The Dual Economy of
the Danelaw” (British Numismatic Journal 71 [2001]: 49–59), which includes
comments of general use for other periods as well. Sections of Michael
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce
A. D. 300–900 (2001), integrate coinage into a wider canvas of long-distance
transactions and contacts. For similar treatment of coinage as part of a much
larger later medieval economic context, see James Laurence Bolton, “In-
flation, Economics and Politics in Thirteenth-Century England” (Thirteenth
Century England 4 [1991]: 1–14); and Terence Henry Lloyd, “Overseas Trade
and the English Money Supply in the Fourteenth Century” (Edwardian Mon-
etary Affairs [1279–1344]: A Symposium Held in Oxford, August 1976, ed. Nicholas
Mayhew,1977, 96–124). For a recent view of later medieval coin use paying
particular attention to new coin finds from different segments of society, see
Christopher Dyer, “Peasants and Coins: the Uses of Money in the Middle
Ages” (British Numismatic Journal 67 [1997]: 30–47). Related questions of cir-
culation and the development of a ‘monetary’ economy in the 12th century
and later are discussed in Medieval Money Matters (ed. Diana Wood, 2004). For
further ranges of interesting studies on monetary history, particularly in the
later medieval (13th to 15th centuries) period, see the collections of papers
in John F. Richards, Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern
Worlds, (1983); John Day, Études d’histoire monétaire, XIIe–XIXe siècles (1984),
and Monnaies et marchés au moyen âge (1994); Münzprägung, Geldumlauf und
Wechselkurse/Minting, Monetary Circulation and Exchange Rates (ed. Eddy Van
Cauwenberghe and Franz Irsigler, 1984); and Harry A. Miskimin,
Cash, Credit and Crisis in Europe, 1300–1600 (1989).

C. Chronological Outline
At the outset of the Middle Ages, European coinage was dominated by the
late Roman monetary system, which was still (at least theoretically) trimetal-
lic, with bronze, silver and gold elements. For the late Roman currency and
Numismatics 1010

its organization, see John Philip Cozens Kent, The Roman Imperial Coinage X:
The Divided Empire and the Fall of the Western Parts A. D. 395–491 (1994); Richard
Reece, The Coinage of Roman Britain (2002) (a local but detailed view); Kenneth
W. Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 BC to A.D. 700 (1996); and Andrew
Burnett, Coinage in the Roman World (1987). However, gold dominated the
early currency of the various successor states, and a particular challenge for
numismatists comes in interpreting the many imitative, immobilized or un-
inscribed types. For general discussion of the difficulties of this period, with
important references to previous scholarship, see Philip Grierson and
Mark Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages
(5th–10th Centuries) (1986). In the late 7th century, Gaul, England and other
parts of northern Europe moved onto a silver currency of smaller, thicker
coins widely referred to (in the English, Frisian and Danish context) as sceat-
tas, which have been the subject of extensive research in recent decades: im-
portant discussion comes in David Hill and David Michael Metcalf, Sceat-
tas in England and on the Continent (1984); and the standard discussion is now
David Michael Metcalf, Thrymsas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum, Ox-
ford (3 vols., 1993–1994).
Silver was to dominate western European currency until the 13th cen-
tury, and the broad ‘penny’ format characteristic of the late 8th–13th cen-
turies was achieved after coinage reforms in the time of Pippin III (751–68)
and Charlemagne (768–814). This reform and the coinage of Charlemagne
are discussed by Philip Grierson, “Money and Coinage under Charlem-
agne” (Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, ed. Wolfgang braunfels,
2 vols. 1965, vol. I, 501–36); and important catalogues of Carolingian coins
include Karl Frederick Morrison and Henry Grunthal, Carolingian Coin-
age (1967) (extremely useful for its numerous plates, though the text is often
faulty); Maurice Prou, Les monnaies carolingiennes (Catalogue des monnaies fran-
çaises de la Bibliothèque Nationale) (1896); and Ernest Gariel, Les monnaies
royales sous la race carolingienne (2 vols., 1883–1884). Much important recent
work on several aspects of the subject is collected in Simon Coupland,
Carolingian Coinage and the Vikings: Studies on Power and Trade in the 9th Century
(2007).
Some of the types issued by Carolingian rulers still present thorny ques-
tions of organization and interpretation. The Christiana religio coinage of
Louis the Pious (814–40), for instance, was struck without any mintmarks for
almost twenty years throughout the Carolingian empire and became ‘immo-
bilized’ in use for decades (even centuries) after Louis’ death in some lo-
cations: for an attempt to bring some order, see Simon Coupland, “Money
and Coinage under Louis the Pious” (Francia 17 [1990]: 23–54; rpt. in his
1011 Numismatics

Carolingian Coinage and the Vikings: Studies on Power and Trade in the 9th Century,
2007).
In general, a well-managed royal coinage in the late 8th and 9th centuries
gave way – in France, Italy and parts of Germany – in the tenth and eleventh
to one of poorer quality and often immobilized types, as control over mint-
ing devolved into the hands of local potentates. For the French feudal coins,
key works include Faustin Poey l’Avant, Monnaies féodales de France (3 vols.,
1858); Émile Caron, Monnaies féodales françaises (1882–1884); and Jean
Lafaurie, Les monnaies des rois de France, vol. 1: Hugues Capet à Louis XII (1951).
German coins of this period (up to the early 12th century) are surveyed in Her-
mann Dannenberg, Die deutschen Münzen der sächsischen und fränkischen Kai-
serzeit (4 vols., 1876–1905).
English coinage escaped this fate, remaining closely linked to the crown
and of a relatively high metal standard. After a major reform ca. 973 it
became the most sophisticated coinage in Europe, with a relatively high and
constant metal standard, the name of the mint and moneyer on every coin,
periodic changes of type and at times centralized die production for the
whole kingdom. Although there is still a need for a single detailed account
of the impressive progress made in the study of these coins since the 1950s,
useful introductions include Reginald Hugh Michael Dolley, Anglo-Saxon
Pennies (1964), The Norman Conquest and the English Coinage (1966), and “An
Introduction to the Coinage of Æthelred II” (Ethelred the Unready: Papers from
the Millenary Conference, ed. David Hill, 1978, 115–33); and Bernard Harold
Ian Halley Stewart, “Coinage and Recoinage after Edgar’s Reform” (Studies
in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage in Memory of Bror Emil Hildebrand, ed. Kenneth Jons-
son, 1990, 455–85). The pre-reform coinage of the 10th century is thoroughly
scrutinized in Christopher Evelyn Blunt, Bernard Harold Ian Halley Stew-
art and Colin Stewart Sinclair Lyon, Coinage in Tenth-Century England (1989);
whilst the reform type is equally well examined in Kenneth Jonsson, The
New Era: The Reformation of the Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage (1987). The late Anglo-
Saxon and Norman coins are an important example of the problems associ-
ated with linking a relatively well-understood relative chronology with abso-
lute dates: some of the crucial evidence for dating is reviewed in the articles
above, and in Christopher Evelyn Blunt and Colin Stewart Sinclair Lyon,
“Some Notes on the Mints of Wilton and Salisbury” (Studies in Late Anglo-
Saxon Coinage in Memory of Bror Emil Hildebrand, 1990, 25–34). For surveys of
the development of this system under the Norman rulers, see Mark Black-
burn, “Coinage and Currency under Henry I: a Review” (Anglo-Norman
Studies 13 [1990]: 49–81), and “Coinage and Currency” (The Anarchy of King
Stephen’s Reign, ed. Edmund King, 1994, 145–205).
Numismatics 1012

Meanwhile, massive quantities of central Asian Islamic silver and, after

the decline of this source ca. 970, English and German silver were imported
into Scandinavia and the Baltic, with native production only reaching
substantial levels in the 11th century. Again, this field has been the focus of
considerable study in recent years (see the discussion of Statistics below for
further references), and a good introduction to numismatics in the northern
world can be found in the papers in Viking Age Coinage in the Northern Lands
(ed. Mark Blackburn and David Michael Metcalf, 1981); and in Kenneth
Jonsson and Brita Malmer, Commentationes de nummis saeculorum IX–XI in
Suecia reppertis. Nova series 6: Sigtuna Papers: Proceedings of the Sigtuna Symposium
on Viking Age Coinage 1–4 June 1989 (1990).
The second half of the 12th century saw a considerable upsurge in pro-
duction thanks to the output of new silver mines, well-covered once again in
Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (1988). In much of Ger-
many the 12th and 13th centuries saw the use of large, extremely thin uniface
silver coins known as bracteates (from Latin bractea, ‘leaf’) which gave great
scope for elegant and complex designs, though increased scale of production
in the 13th century saw the bracteates become smaller and of a poorer artistic
standard. There is still a need for a general study of and introduction to brac-
teates, but a good range of them can be seen in Frank Berger, Die mittelalter-
lichen Brakteaten im Kestner-Museum Hannover (2 vols., 1993–1996).
The 13th century also witnessed the introduction in several parts of Eu-
rope of both larger silver denominations (e. g., the grosso in various Italian
states, the French gros tournois and the English groat), fueled by further exploi-
tation of European silver mines, and also of gold coinage: two of the first gold
issues, the florin (1252)of Florence and the ducat of Venice (1284), were par-
ticularly influential (for discussion of these innovations, see Herbert Eugene
Ives, The Venetian Gold Ducat and its Imitations, 1954; Nicholas Julian May-
hew, The Gros Tournois, 1997; and Jean-René De Mey, Le gros tournois et ses imi-
tations, 1982). More denominations and mints appeared in the 14th century,
though serious silver shortages led to reduced production and debasement
from the late fourteenth until well into the 15th century. However, the period
after 1450 saw production pick up again with the discovery of new silver
supplies. At this time (in Venice and Naples from 1472) copper coinage on a
substantial scale reappeared in the west for the first time since the middle
ages. By about 1500, many of the features that would characterize ‘modern’
western European coinage were emerging, including realistic portraiture
and base metal coinage.
By necessity, this survey is very brief and selective, touching on general
trends most directly concerning western Europe: there are a great many
1013 Numismatics

more areas peripheral to western medieval European numismatics. One of

the most fascinating of these ‘peripheral’ coinages was that of the Crusader
states, which was largely inspired by western coinages but also influenced by
Byzantine and Islamic traditions (key accounts and catalogues include David
Michael Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean
Museum, 2nd ed., 1995; and Gustave Schlumberger, Numismatique de
l’Orient Latin, 2 vols., 1954).
Byzantine coinage evolved from the late Roman system, retaining a
strong emphasis on gold and bronze right up to the 13th century, after which
production changed in nature and declined considerably (for a general intro-
duction, see Philip Grierson, Byzantine Coins, 1982. Important catalogues
include Cécile Morrisson, Catalogue des monnaies byzantines de la Bibliothèque
Nationale, 2 vols., 1970; Alfred Raymond Bellinger and Philip Grierson,
Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and the Whitte-
more Collection, 5 vols., 1966–1999; and Wolfgang R. O. Hahn, Moneta imperii
byzantini: Rekonstruktion des Prägeaufbaues auf synoptisch-tabellarischer Grundlage,
3 vols., 1973–1981. There are several surveys of Byzantine monetary history,
including Michael Hendy, Coinage and Money in the Byzantine Empire 1081–1261,
1969, and Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1450, 1985).
Islamic coinage belongs to a quite different tradition, and was for the
most part devoid of images; however, detailed inscriptions normally indicate
the exact date and mint, allowing for detailed study of the circulation of its
mainly gold and silver coins. A general introduction to medieval Islamic
coinage is still lacking, but for guidance see Michael Broome, A Handbook of
Islamic Coins, 1985; Michael L. Bates, Islamic Coins, 1982; and Stephen
Album, A Checklist of Popular Islamic Coins, 2nd ed., 1998. Standard catalogues
in wide usage include Henri Lavoix, Catalogue des monnaies musulmanes de la
Bibliothèque nationale, 3 vols., 1887–1896; the appropriate volumes of Stanley
Lane Poole, Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum, 10 vols.,
1875–1891; and the two multi-volume series Sylloge numorum Arabicorum Tü-
bingen, 1993–; and Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean, 1999–.
Tokens, coin-like weights and jetons (coin-like pieces intended for
counting) also fall within the remit of medieval numismatics, though are
relatively few in number compared to coins. Weights – often made of glass –
were widely used in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, for which see Ugo
Monneret de Villard, “Exagia byzantini in vetro” (Rivista italiana di
numismatica 35 [1922]: 93–106); and George Carpenter Miles, Early Arab
Glass Weights and Stamps (1948). In the West tokens, weights and jetons be-
came widespread in and after the 13th century, and are discussed by Adolphe
Dieudonné, Manuel de poids monétaires (1925); Jacques Labrot, Histoire écon-
Numismatics 1014

omique et populaire du Moyen-âge: Les jetons et les méreaux (1989); Thomas Shep-
pard and John F. Musham, Money Scales and Weights (1923); Francis Pierre-
pont Barnard, The Casting-Counter and the Counting-Board (1916); Henri de
la Tour, Catalogue des jetons de la Bibliothèque Nationale (1897); George Berry,
Medieval English Jetons (1975); Michael Mitchiner and Anne Skinner,
“English Tokens ca. 1200 to 1425” (British Numismatic Journal 53 [1983]:
29–77), and “English Tokens ca. 1425 to 1672” (British Numismatic Journal 54
[1984]: 86–163).

D. Recent Approaches
Studies of medieval numismatics have taken many forms. General studies of
medieval and modern coinage are often on a (usually modern) national basis.
Thus, for England: A New History of the Royal Mint (ed. Christopher Edgar
Challis, 1992); Germany: Arthur Suhle, Deutsche Münz- und Geldgeschichte
von den Anfängen bis zum 15. Jahrhundert (2nd ed., 1964); France: Adrien Blan-
chet and Adolphe Dieudonné, Manuel de numismatique française (4 vols.,
1912–1936); James N. Roberts, The Silver Coins of Medieval France, 476–1610
AD (1996); Italy: Giulio Sambon, Repertorio generale delle monete coniate in Italia
(1912); southern Italy: Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 14:
Italy (3): South Italy, Sicily and Sardinia (1998); the Balkans: David Michael
Metcalf, Coinage in South-Eastern Europe 820–1398 (1979); Portugal: Joaquim
Ferraro Vaz, Numaria medieval portuguesa, 1128–1383 (2 vols., 1960). These
national studies are supplemented by a few more wide-ranging European
surveys. Philip Grierson, Coins of Medieval Europe (1991), is one of the best,
but see also Philip Grierson, Monnaies du moyen âge (1976; available in Ger-
man as Münzen des Mittelalters; an earlier incarnation of his Coins of Medieval
Europe); Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch, Esquisse d’une histoire monétaire de
l’Europe (1954); Arnold Luschin von Ebengreuth, Allgemeine Münzkunde
und Geldgeschichte des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit (1904, 2nd ed., 1926); and
the classic survey is still Arthur Engel and Raymond Serrure, Traité de
numismatique du moyen âge (3 vols., 1891–1905).
However, there are a number of other ways in which numismatists can
and have tackled their material, especially in more recent years. Dedicated
studies have been produced on a number of specific mints, often synthesiz-
ing archaeological and documentary as well as numismatic evidence to pro-
vide a very full view of production at a certain location. Good examples of
this approach include Martin Robert Allen, The Durham Mint (2003); and
Alan M. Stahl, Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages (2000). Because of
fragmented political history, such studies are particularly popular in Italy
and Germany: thus, for just a few examples, Rosaldo Ordano, La zecca di Ver-
1015 Numismatics

celli (1975); Mirco Pezzini, Zecca di Lucca: Monete dal VII al XVIII secolo (2005);
Raymond Weiller, Die Münzen von Trier Erster Teil: Erster Abschnitt: Beschrei-
bung der Münzen: 6. Jahrhundert-1307 (1988); and Walter Hävernick, Die
Münzen und Medaillen von Köln (1935). For general discussion of medieval
minting practices, I luoghi della moneta: Le sedi delle zecche dell’antichità all’età
moderna: Atti del convegno internazionale 22–23 Ottobre 1999, Milano (ed. Rina La
Guardia, 2001); and Later Medieval Mints: Organisation, Administration and
Techniques (ed. Nicholas Mayhew and Peter Spufford, 1988).
Assembling the numismatic remains of a particular period or reign is
another common approach, and some major catalogues of this kind also
contain detailed analysis. Among these catalogues and assessments are Her-
mann Dannenberg, Die deutschen Münzen der sächsischen und fränkischen Kai-
serzeit (4 vols., 1876–1905) (a classic example); Françoise Dumas-Dubourg,
Le monnayage des ducs de Bourgogne (1988); Auguste de Belfort, Description
générale des monnaies mérovingiennes (5 vols., 1892–1895); Philip Grierson
and Mark Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages
(5th–10th Centuries) (1986); and Derek Chick, The Coinage of Offa and his Contem-
poraries (2010).
Often catalogues of this form are based upon substantial individual col-
lections, usually those contained in large museums, such as Charles Francis
Keary, Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum: Anglo-Saxon Series
(2 vols., 1887–93); George Cyril Brooke, Catalogue of English Coins in the Brit-
ish Museum: The Norman Kings (2 vols., 1916); Derek Fortrose Allen, Catalogue
of English Coins in the British Museum: The Cross-and-Crosslets (‘Tealby’) Type
of Henry II (1951); Victor Emmanuel III et al., Corpus Nummorum Italicorum
(20 vols., 1910–1943) (based in large part on the collection of King Victor Em-
manuel III); Maurice Prou, Les monnaies mérovingiennes (1892); and Adolphe
Dieudonné, Catalogue des monnaies françaises de la Bibliothèque Nationale. Les
monnaies capétiennes (2 vols., 1923–32). There are also more detailed, ongoing
publications of numerous smaller collections, such as the Sylloge of Coins of
the British Isles (1958–), which aims to catalogue every substantial public
and private collection of British coins, now running to over sixty volumes.
The Medieval European Coinage (1986–), will ultimately contain authoritative
discussion of all medieval coinage alongside a catalogue of the relevant coins
in the very large collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, mostly
formed by Philip Grierson. A welcome development is the separate and
specialized publication of catalogues of hoards based on areas or periods,
such as Kenneth Jonsson, Viking-Age Hoards and Late Anglo-Saxon Coins (1986);
Clemens Maria Haertle, Karolingische Münzfunde aus dem 9. Jahrhundert (2 vols.,
1997); Brita Malmer and Nils Ludvig Rasmusson, Corpus nummorum saecu-
Numismatics 1016

lorum IX–XI qui in Suecia reperti sunt: Catalogue of Coins from the Viking Age found
in Sweden (1975–); Jean Duplessy, Les Trésors monétaires médiévaux et modernes
decouverts en France, vol. 1: 751–1223 (1985); and the Checklist of Coin Hoards from
the British Isles, c. 450–1180 (an online source: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.
uk/dept/coins/projects/hoards/), Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Perhaps the most revealing numismatic insight is provided by a die-
study, in which every specimen of a particular coinage is tracked down and
compared so as to ascertain the number of obverse and reverse dies repre-
sented in the issue. Studies of this nature are crucial for many types of numis-
matic analysis (see below). Some examples of die-studies include Henry
Richard Mossop, The Lincoln Mint c. 879–1279 (1970) (an ambitious attempt
to cover all the coins of a major medieval English mint); Timothy Crafter,
“A Die-Study of the Cross-and-Crosslets Type of the Ipswich Mint,
c. 1161/2–1180” (Numismatic Chronicle 162 [1997]: 237–51); and Brita Mal-
mer, Anglo-Scandinavian Coinage, c. 995–1020 (1997).
As objects of artistic and historical interest, medieval coins have also fas-
cinated private collectors since the 16th century and continue to fetch con-
siderable sums at auction, though more common varieties can be very afford-
able. Some wealthy and diligent collectors have built up huge and very
important collections, either general or focusing on a particular subject,
which have rivaled even the collections of major institutions and museums.
The catalogues drawn up for the sale of such collections can in themselves be
considerable works of scholarship, and since the late 19th century these cata-
logues have also often contained photographs. In certain cases these cata-
logues are used as common references, or are still useful as unusually well il-
lustrated surveys of a coinage. One example, very important for German
bracteates, was the Sammlung Arthur Löbbecke: Deutsche Brakteaten (ed. Eberhard
Mertens, 1974, 3. 2. 1925). For French royal coinage the Paris, Florange &
Ciani 22. 11. 1927, 21. 5. 1928 and 22. 4. 1929 sales of the Marchéville collec-
tion are very useful, and for medieval English coinage, the sales of the Lockett
collection (London, Glendining’s in thirteen sales 1955–61, some of the most
important for English coins being 6. 6. 1955, 4. 11. 1958, 24. 4. 1960 and
17. 10. 1961) and the Grantley collection (London, Glendining’s in eleven
sales 1943–45: those of English coins include 27. 1. 1944, 22. 3. 1944 and
20. 4. 1944) provide important and wide-ranging surveys. There is a short
guide to important numismatic auctions in Philip Grierson, Bibliographie
numismatique (2nd ed., 1979). Consulting catalogues is often troublesome
because there are relatively few substantial collections and it can be difficult
to track down copies of sought-after volumes. But catalogues can be highly
rewarding: the history of medieval coin collecting is of much importance to
1017 Numismatics

the numismatist, and no serious study can afford to neglect completely coins
in private hands that may have only been recorded in commercial catalogues.

E. Statistical Analysis and Coinage Production

In the 1960s it was realized that statistical calculations could be used to indi-
cate the original size of a medieval coinage. Some early examples of such cal-
culations include David Michael Metcalf, “Offa’s Pence Reconsidered”
(Cunobelin 9 [1963]: 37–52); and Bernard Harold Ian Halley Stewart,
“Medieval Die-Output: Two Calculations for English Mints in the Four-
teenth Century” (Numismatic Chronicle series 7.3 [1963]: 97–106). Estimates of
the number of dies originally used to produce a coinage were based on the
number of coins struck from the same die or dies within a sample, on the
understanding that many surviving coins from the same dies would reflect a
small coinage produced by only a few dies. There are a number of surveys of
the different proposed formulae, such as Giles F. Carter, “Comparison of
Methods for Calculating the Total Number of Dies from Die-Link Statistics”
(Statistics and Numismatics, ed. Charlotte Carcassonne and Tony Hackens,
1981, 204–13); Leandre Villaronga, “De nuevo la estimación del numero
original de cuños de una emission monetaria” (Gaceta Numismatica 85.2
[1987]: 31–36); and Warren W. Esty, “Estimation of the Size of a Coinage:
a Survey and Comparison of Methods” (Numismatic Chronicle 146 [1986]:
185–215). The formula Warren Esty created in this paper and streamlined
in a handout at the International Numismatic Congress in Berlin 1997 is the
formula now most widely used for die estimates, and it and certain others
take into account their own margins of error with upper and lower estimates.
For accounts of attempts by numismatists and monetary historians
to use calculations of this kind in the well-documented case of England, see
Martin Robert Allen, “The Volume of the English Currency, 1158–1470”
(Economic History Review 54 [2001]: 595–611), and “The Volume of the English
Currency, c. 973–1158” (Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. 500–1250:
Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald, ed. Barrie Cook and Gareth Williams,
2006, 487–523). General discussion of the problem can be found in Statistics
and Numismatics (ed. Charlotte Carcassonne and Tony Hackens, 1981);
and Méthodes statistiques en numismatique (ed. Charlotte Carcassonne,
1987).
The estimate of the original number of dies might then be multiplied by
the number of coins one set of dies could be expected to produce – typically
hovering around 10–15,000 per reverse die though often vacillating con-
siderably above and below – to give some idea of the original size of a coinage.
The figures behind this estimate are derived from mint records from the 13th
Numismatics 1018

century and after, discussed in Martin Robert Allen, “Medieval English

Die-Output” (British Numismatic Journal 74 [2004]: 39–49); and Christopher
Edgar Challis, “Appendix I: Mint Output” (A New History of the Royal Mint,
1992, 673–98). Similar figures from the Netherlands are given in Peter
Spufford, “Mint Organisation in the Burgundian Netherlands in the Fif-
teenth Century” (Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson, ed.
Christopher Brooke, 1983, 239–61).
Although potentially of great significance to students of monetary and
economic history as well as numismatists, calculations of this sort have often
been criticised for failing to take into account all the variables which can af-
fect the size of a coinage and its representation in the surviving material: for
instance, coins of different sizes, metals and alloys probably had very differ-
ent rates of production, and dies were not necessarily always used to capacity.
Valuable studies of such problems from an ancient perspective containing
material of general use include Theodore V. Buttrey, “Calculating Ancient
Coin Production II: Why it Cannot Be Done” (Numismatic Chronicle 154
[1994]: 341–52); Adriano Savio, “La numismatica e i problemi quantitativi:
intorno al calcolo del volume delle emissioni” (Rivista Italiana di Numismatica e
Scienze Affini 98 [1997]: 11–48); and François de Callataÿ, “Calculating
Ancient Coin Production: Seeking a Balance” (Numismatic Chronicle 155
[1995]: 289–311). More recent calculations often seek only to provide an in-
dication of the number of dies originally used; attempts to estimate the pro-
duction of each die are far more prone to uncertainty.
It should also be noted that statistical analysis can be used for more than
calculation of original die and coin numbers. Since a number of areas and
coinages are now very well published and researched, it is possible to syn-
thesize the evidence on a larger scale using subtle statistical techniques to as-
certain patterns of circulation and production. The coinages used in Scandi-
navia, Russia and the Baltic region from the 9th to 11th centuries are a
particularly good example: the many hoards and increasing numbers of
single-finds are relatively easily accessible, and are comprised of foreign
coins – mostly Arabic, German and English – that can normally be dated and
localized quite precisely. Numerous scholars have taken advantage of these
conditions to explore the importation and circulation of coinage in the
northern lands in great detail. An important series of studies on coins in early
medieval Scandinavia can be found in the presidential addresses by David
Michael Metcalf in the Numismatic Chronicle ([1995–1998]: 155–58). For
Arabic coins in Russia – with an overall pattern relevant to the rest of the
northern lands – see Thomas Schaub Noonan, “Ninth-Century Dirham
Hoards from European Russia: a Preliminary Analysis” (Viking-Age Coinage in
1019 Numismatics

the Northern Lands, ed. Mark Blackburn and David Michael Metcalf, 1981,
47–117); and two further illuminating studies on the statistics of northern
coin hoards are David Michael Metcalf, “Inflows of Anglo-Saxon and Ger-
man Coins into the Northern Lands c. 997–1024: Discerning the Patterns”
(Coinage and History in the North Sea World c. 500–1250: Essays in Honour of Marion
Archibald, 2006, 349–88); and Jens Christian Moesgaard, “The Import
of English Coins to the Northern Lands: Some Remarks on Coin Circulation
in the Viking Age Based on New Evidence from Denmark” (ibid., 2006,
389–419).

F. Metal Detecting
Numismatists have benefited considerably from the expansion of metal-de-
tecting since the 1970s. However, the degree of metal detecting permitted
and methods of dealing with finds vary considerably across Europe: in much
of Scandinavia and Italy, for instance, there are many restrictions on metal
detecting and most or all finds are supposed to end up in official hands with
little reward to the finder or landowner. In England the Treasure Act of 1996
gives museums first pick of purchasing new finds, but many subsequently
end up on the open market.
Unfortunately, many coins from all over Europe are discovered and sold
under illegal circumstances, and proceed illegally to dealers and auctioneers,
who sell them on to collectors, though use of online auctions such as
www.ebay.com now allows some detectorists to cut out the middleman and
deal directly with collectors. This is problematic for numismatists, since con-
stant vigilance and delicate enquiries are required to prevent important new
finds and their provenances from slipping away unnoticed. Much depends
upon relations between detectorists, dealers, governments and scholars (ar-
chaeologists as well as numismatists). In many areas there are pressures from
several quarters to alter the current system of dealing with metal detectorists
and their finds.
Yet despite debate on the ethics of metal detecting, there is no denying
the large quantity of new numismatic material detectorists have brought to
light. There are several ongoing projects to record these finds. In Britain, for
example, these projects include the annual record of coin hoards in the Nu-
mismatic Chronicle; the single-finds in the Coin Register of the British Numismatic
Journal since 1987; and the online records of the Corpus of Early Medieval Coin
Finds (http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/coins/emc/) based at the Fitzwil-
liam Museum; and the Portable Antiquities Scheme (http://www.finds.org.uk/)
based at the British Museum. A similar project, NUMIS, operates in the Ne-
therlands based at the Geldmuseum in Utrecht (http://www.geldmuseum.nl/
Numismatics 1020

museum/numis), and metal-detector finds are also recorded at the National

Museum in Denmark.
Thanks to the proper recording of new finds, more sophisticated analysis
of circulation has been made possible. Examples can be seen in David Mi-
chael Metcalf, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, 973–1086 (1998);
and Mark Blackburn, “Coin Circulation in Germany during the Early
Middle Ages: The Evidence of the Single-Finds” (Fernhandel und Geldwirt-
schaft, ed. Bernd Kluge, 1993, 37–54), and “‘Productive’ Sites and the Pat-
tern of Coin Loss in England, 600–1180” (Markets in Early Medieval Europe:
Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites, 650–850, ed. Tim Pestell and Katharina Ulm-
schneider, 2003, 20–36). New detector finds have also highlighted a new
category of archaeological site that has produced many coins (and often other
objects) in close proximity but not as a hoard: ‘productive sites’. Full under-
standing of such sites can only come from archaeological excavation, but pro-
ductive sites are already beginning to be viewed as a grey area between hoards
and single-finds proper: Julian D. Richards, “What’s so Special about ‘Pro-
ductive Sites’? Middle Saxon Settlements in Northumbria” (Anglo-Saxon
Studies in Archaeology and History 10 [1999]: 71–80); and Markets in Early Medi-
eval Europe: Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites, 650–850, ed. Tim Pestell and Ka-
tharina Ulmschneider, 2003).
Similarly, the proper identification and publication of coins from ar-
chaeological contexts can reveal much about use and circulation on a more
localised level. For some examples, see Southampton Finds, vol. 1: The Coins and
Pottery from Hamwic (ed. Phil Andrews, 1988); Mark Blackburn, “Finds
from the Anglo-Scandinavian Site of Torksey” (Moneta Mediævalis: Studia
numizmatyczne i historyczne ofiarowane Profesorowi Stanislawowi Suchodolskiemu w
65. rocznice urodzin, 2002, 89–101). General discussion of the issues at stake in
a British context can be found in Coins and the Archaeologist (ed. Patrick John
Casey and Richard Reece, 2nd ed., 1988). Combining these resources with
more traditional study of hoards has already provided valuable new insights
for many places and periods, and will continue to do so as new corpora of ma-
terial are published and placed into context.

G. Other Issues
There are several areas in which numismatics has come into fruitful contact
with other disciplines. Art history has frequently been associated with coin-
age, though certain areas have been overlooked or neglected. Anna Gannon,
The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage (2003), for instance, was the first
full-length study devoted to this important series’ artistic features, and has
had significant impact on views of early English coinage and art history.
1021 Numismatics

Tuukka Talvio, “The Designs of Edward the Confessor’s Coins” (Studies

in Late Anglo-Saxon Coinage in Memory of Bror Emil Hildebrand, ed. Kenneth Jons-
son, 1990, 487–99), similarly touched on new areas.
Those coinages which carry inscriptions sometimes attract the attention
of philologists, and are especially valuable for their reasonably secure date
and origin, and distinction from manuscript evidence. For Merovingian
coinage studies of this kind have included Egon Felder, Germanische Perso-
nennamen auf merowingischen Münzen (1978), and Die Personnennamen auf den
merowingischen Münzen der Bibliothèque nationale de France (2003). For an intro-
duction to philological approaches to 10th- and 11th-century English coinage,
see Veronica Smart, “Scandinavians, Celts and Germans in Anglo-Saxon
England: The Evidence of Moneyers’ Names” (Anglo-Saxon Monetary History,
ed. Mark Blackburn, 1986, 171–84); and Fran Colman, Money Talks: Recon-
structing Old English (1992).
A range of modern scientific analyses can be called upon to supplement
the information supplied by other means, and have proved very valuable in
establishing the metallurgical qualities of coinage and its relationship to
other precious-metal objects. A wide-ranging mix of theoretical and applied
papers can be found in Methods of Chemical and Metallurgical Investigation of
Ancient Coinage: A Symposium Held by the Royal Numismatic Society at Burlington
House, London on 9–11 December 1970 (ed. David Michael Metcalf and Edward
Thomas Hall, 1972); Metallurgy in Numismatics (vol. 1, 1980), Metallurgy in
Numismatics (vol. 2, ed. David Michael Metcalf and William Andrew Oddy,
1988); Metallurgy in Numismatics (vol. 3, ed. Marion M. Archibald and
Michael R. Cowell, 1993); Metallurgy in Numismatics (vol. 4, ed. William
Andrew Oddy and Michael R. Cowell, 1998). Examples of more specific
studies include Sarah E. Kruse, “Metallurgical Evidence of Silver Sources in
the Irish Sea Province” (Viking Treasure from the North West: The Cuerdale Hoard in
its Context, ed. James Graham-Campbell, 1992, 73–88); Emil Kraume and
Vera Hatz, “Silberanalysen deutscher Münzen des 10. Jahrhunderts” (Ham-
burger Beiträge zur Numismatik 7 [1967]: 35–8); David Michael Metcalf and
Jeremy P. Northover, “Carolingian and Viking Coins from the Cuerdale
Hoard: an Interpretation and Comparison of their Metal Contents” (Numis-
matic Chronicle 148 [1988]: 97–116), “Coinage Alloys from the Time of Offa
and Charlemagne to c. 864” (Numismatic Chronicle 149 [1989]: 101–20), and
“Debasement of the Coinage in Southern England in the Age of King Alfred”
(Numismatic Chronicle 145 [1985]: 150–76).
Numismatics 1022

Select Bibliography
Marc Bompaire and Françoise Dumas, Numismatique médiévale: Monnaies et documents
d’origine française (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Catherine Eagleton et al., Money: a His-
tory (London: British Museum Press, 2nd ed. 2007); Arthur Engel and Raymond Ser-
rure, Traité de numismatique du moyen âge (Paris: Leroux, 3 vols. 1891–1905); Philip
Grierson, Numismatics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); id., Dark Age Numis-
matics (London: Ashgate, 1982); id., Later Medieval Numismatics (London: Ashgate,
1979); and id., Coins of Medieval Europe (London: Seaby, 1991); Philip Grierson and
Mark Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th–10th Cen-
turies) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Bernd Kluge, Numismatik des
Mittelalters, 2007; Later Medieval Mints: Organisation, Administration and Techniques, ed.
Nicholas Mayhew and Peter Spufford (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports,
1988); Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).

Rory Naismith
1023 Occitan Studies

Occitan Studies

A. Definition
“Occitan” is the term used to describe the language of the South of France. It
comprises the speakers as well as the literature produced in this language, and
“Occitania” refers to the region in which it is spoken. Although a 19th-century
neologism, Occitan refers to speakers who used “oc” for “yes”, as opposed to
the “oïl” of Northern France. It replaces the earlier scholarly term “provençal,”
which assumed a link only with the region of Provence (the area lying east of
the Rhône river) rather than with the whole of the South of France (including
such regions west and south of the Massif Central as Limousin and Aqui-
taine). Occitan did not die out with the Middle Ages: despite the force of the
centralization of French culture and language, it experienced a rebirth of
sorts in the 19th century, particularly with the poet Frédéric Mistral, and
while there are but few monolingual speakers left, studies of the language
still exists in schools devoted to the teaching of Occitan, and the French gov-
ernment has compiled a bibliographic list of works dedicated to teaching
the language which it promotes on its website (see http://www.culture.gouv.
fr/culture/dglf/lang-reg/methodes-apprentissage/Listes_d_ouvrages_d_
apprentissage/ Occitan.ht m). Standard works on the language of Modern
Occitan are numerous (e. g., Pierre Bec, La langue occitane: Que sais-je?,
vol. 1059, 2nd ed. 1963 [1967]; Max N. Wheeler, “Occitan,” The Romance
Languages, ed. Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent, 1988, 246–77; and Georg
Kremnitz, Das Okzitanische: Sprachgeschichte und Soziologie, 1981), as are
studies of the grammar and orthography of Modern Occitan (see Louis Ali-
bert, Grammatica occitana segon los parlars lengadocians, 1935; José Ramón
Fernández González, Gramática histórica provenzal, 1985; and Jules Ronjat,
Grammaire historique des parlers provençaux modernes, 1930–41). Dictionaries of
Modern Occitan also abound (e. g., Frédéric Mistral, Lou Tresor dóu Felbrige,
1897–87; S. J. Honnorat, Dictionnaire provençal-français: Ou, Dictionnaire de la
langue d’oc, ancienne et moderne, 3 vols., 1846–47; rpt. 1971; and the more re-
cent Jules Coupier, Dictionnaire français-provençal, 1995). The literature of
Modern Occitan is also the subject of scholarly research (see Robert Lafont
and Christian Anatole, Nouvelle histoire de la littérature occitane, 2 vols., 1970).
Occitan Studies 1024

Given that this handbook is devoted to the Middle Ages, this essay will
consider studies in the language and literature of Old Occitan, rather than
Modern Occitan.

B. Language
Old Occitan is, properly speaking, a koiné, a common language that contains
dialectical features of several regional dialects, including Limousin, Gascon,
Languedocian, and Auvergnat as well as Provençal. Although we cannot de-
termine the geographic boundary dividing speakers of “oc” and “oïl” in the
Middle Ages with any precision, roughly speaking, Old Occitan was the lan-
guage of the south of France, somewhat south of the Loire River, and in the
regions between the Atlantic Ocean, the Pyrenees, and the Alps. Old Occitan
can be distinguished from Franco-Provençal (spoken in what are known
today as the Rhône-Alpes), Basque (spoken in the far south-western corner of
France near the Pyrenees in what is known as the Béarn, and in northern
Spain), and Catalan (spoken as far north as Perpignan, and south to Barce-
lona). Old Occitan generally refers to the language in use between 1000 and
1500; however, scholars of the language refer to its use in 1350–1500 as
Middle Occitan, since it shows marked changes from the language used prior
to the 14th century. In addition, old Occitan was in many ways a literary lan-
guage whose influence extended outside its geographic boundaries: poets in
Poitiers, Catalonia, and other parts of Northern Spain in the 12th century,
and in Italy in the 13th century, composed songs in Occitan.
Medieval documents do not refer to this language as “Occitan,” however.
13 -century Latin documents that name the “lingua de oc,” tend to refer
th

to the region rather than the language, and the early troubadour Guilhem IX
(d. 1126) calls it simply “romans.” Writers noting the vernacular also specify
the dialect, using, for example, “lemozin” for the language of Limousin and
“proensa” for the language of Provence.
Although the earliest Occitan document dates from about 1000, Old Oc-
citan grammars appear only in the late 12th century. The earliest, the Catalan
Raimon Vidal’s Razos de trobar (1190?), provides instructions for judging
poetry according in the “parladura de Lemosi” using citations of classical
troubadour lyric as exempla. The Razos de trobar was adapted into verse by
Terramagnino da Pisa in his Doctrina d’acort (ca. 1290), and was extended by
Jofre de Foixà’s Regles de trobar (ca. 1290), written at the command of James II
of Aragon, which also endeavored to provide instructions to a non-Latin
speaking audience. The grammatical instruction in these works is, however,
rather narrow and partial. The first full treatment of Old Occitan grammar
appeared in Uc de Faidit’s Donatz Proensals, written for two Italian noblemen
1025 Occitan Studies

in the middle of the 13th century. The Donatz Proensals is a treatise of the met-
rics and the grammar of Old Occitan, containing a glossary of verbs and a
dictionary of rhymes, and so treats the morphology, phonology, and lexis of
the language. Like Raimon Vidals’s Razos de trobar, the Catalan Berenguer
de Noya’s Mirall de trobar also uses troubadour citations as exempla in his
rhetoric. Regular poetic competitions aiming at preserving the poetics of
troubadour poetry called “Consistori del Gai Saber” were created in Tou-
louse, beginning in the second quarter of the 14th century. From these poetic
competitions come the diverse versions of the Leys d’Amors (the earliest dates
from ca. 1340), an academic codebook of Occitan poetics, which places poetic
composition within the traditional form of a manual on grammar and rhet-
oric. Together, the various versions of the Leys d’Amors comprise: a history
of the founding of the “Consistori”; a treatise on ethics; a grammar; an ars
poetriae; and a manual on rhetoric. Although the Leys d’Amors (and notice that
here “amors” here functions as a synonym for “poetry”) appears to be pre-
scriptive rather than a reflection of contemporary language usage, it never-
theless was very influential: Raimon de Cornet’s Doctrinal de trobar (1324)
presents some of its precepts in verse form, and Joan de Castellnou’s prose
Glosari (1341) emends and expands the Leys. A “Consistori” similar to that of
Toulouse was created in Barcelona in 1393, and from two of its founders
came two important theoretical works on Old Occitan language and rhetoric:
Jaume March’s Diccionari de Rims (1371) and Luid de Averçó’s Torcimany (ca.
1370–1400).

C. Study of the Occitan Language

Formal study of the language of Old Occitan began anew in the 19th century
in the wake of the current of the study systemic philological inquiry, and two
early editions devoted to the works of the troubadours reveal this philologi-
cal interest in Old Occitan: Choix des poésies des troubadours (ed. François-
Just-Marie Raynouard, 1816–21; rpt. 1966), and Le Parnasse occitanien (ed.
Henri-Pascal de Rochegude, 1819). An engagement with Latin underlies
this traditional study of Old Occitan: the 19th- and early 20th-century gramm-
ars of Old Occitan assume that the student has had an extensive training in
Latin morphology, phonology, and syntax (see Joseph Anglade, Grammaire
de l’ancien provençal, 1921; C. H. Grandgent, An Outline of the Phonology and
Morphology of Old Provençal, rev. ed. 1905). Equally historic in their presenta-
tion are grammars of the mid-20th century (C. Cremonesi, Nozioni di gram-
matica storica provenzale, 3rd ed. 1967; Aurelio Roncaglia, La lingua dei trova-
tori, 1965). More recently, however, scholars have been producing grammars
that introduce students to the study of Old Occitan through descriptive mor-
Occitan Studies 1026

phology and historical phonology designed with non-Latinists in mind (Wil-

liam D. Paden, An Introduction to Old Occitan, 1998).
Dictionaries made in the 19th and early 20th centuries remain the foun-
dational research tools. François-Just-Marie Raynouard’s dictionary uses a
diachronic approach to Old Occitan (Lexique roman: Ou, Dictionnaire de la langue
des troubadours comparée avec les autres langues de l’Europe latine, précedé de nouvelles
recherches historiques et philologiques, d’un résumé de la grammaire romane, d’un nou-
veau choix des poésies originales des troubadours, et d’extraits de poèmes divers, 6 vols.,
1844). Emil Levy and Carl Appel’s Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch: Be-
richtigungen und Ergänzungen zu Raynourds Lexique Roman supplemented Ray-
nouard’s work some fifty years later (8 vols., 1894–1924). Levy’s Petit dic-
tionnaire provençal-français, initially published in 1909, is the most accessible
and economic dictionary (4th ed. 1966). 20th-century etymological diction-
aries of the French language contain etymons in Old Occitan (Walther von
Wartburg, Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1925–; Oscar Bloch and
Walther von Wartburg, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 1932;
5th ed. 1968). The drive to create dictionaries of Old Occitan in the late 20th
century has not abated, with the creation of dictionaries devoted solely to Old
Occitan that attempt to compile the work of the earlier 19th-century diction-
aries (Helmut Stimm and Wolf-Dieter Stempel, Dictionnaire de l’occitan médi-
éval (DOM), 1996–). Since 1975, composed dictionaries based on how lan-
guage expresses ideas, or onomasiological dictionaries, have also appeared
for Old Occitan (Kurt Baldinger, Dictionnaire onomasiologique de l’ancien occi-
tan, 1975–; Kurt Baldinger, Dictionnaire onomasiologique de l’ancien gascon,
1975–). More recently, Peter T. Ricketts, in collaboration with Alan Reed,
F.R.P. Akehurst, John Hathaway, and Cornelis van der Horst, has
published all the texts of Medieval Occitan written between 1000 and 1500
on CD-ROM. This concordance, The Concordance of Medieval Occitan/Concord-
ance de l’occitan médiéval (COM) allows researchers electronic access to the com-
plete lexicon of the language and to the meaning of items via their context.
The first part contains the poetry of the troubadours (2001); the second con-
tains narrative verse texts (2005). The scholars envision the forthcoming
publication of two additional parts: prose texts and the texts of the trouba-
dours as contained in the manuscripts. Studies on Old Occitan Language are
numerous (see Simon Gaunt and John Marhsall, “Occitan Grammars and
the Art of Troubadour Poetry,” The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,
vol. 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson, 2005, 472–95;
Frede Jensen, “Language,” A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. R. P. Ake-
hurst and Judith M. Davis, 349–99; William D. Paden, An Introduction to
Old Occitan, 1998; Kathryn Klingebiel, Bibliographie linguistique de l’ancien oc-
1027 Occitan Studies

citan (1960–1982), 1986). The Fall issue of Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX
also regularly includes an updated bibliography on scholarly works on Occi-
tan linguistics.

D. Literature
Old Occitan is used in a wide variety of texts, from lyric to hagiography. The
earliest literary works in Old Occitan appeared in the 11th century, including
the Boeci, some 258 extant verses that loosely paraphrase Boethius’ De consola-
tione philosophiae (ca. 1000), the hagiographic epic Chanson de Sainte-Foy d’Agen
(ca. 1060–1080), and the 11th-century bilingual Latin/Occitan liturgical
drama Sponsus, which also contains musical notation.
Study of the language Old Occitan has been concomitant with study of
the literature, and most often, the study of troubadour songs. Non-lyric texts
in Old Occitan nevertheless make up an important facet of Old Occitan litera-
ture, and appear in a broad variety of texts, including: narrative chivalric ad-
venture and romance stories written in verse (Flamenca, Blandin de Cornualha,
Jaufre, Arnaut Vidal de Castelnaudrary’s Guilhem de la Barra); novas (Raimon
Vidal’s Castia-gilos and Judici d’amor, and Arnaut de Carcassès’ Novas del papa-
gai); epic (Giraut de Rossilho, Daurel e Beto, Ronsavals, Rollan a Saragossa, Canso de
la crozada, Fierabras, the Roman d’Arles, fragments of Aigar e Maurin, and the
Canso d’Antiocha); hagiography (Canso de Sancta Fides, Sancta Doucelina, Santa
Enimia, Sant Frances, Sant Honorat, Barlaam e Josafat); religious drama (Esposalizi
de Nostra Dona, Jeu de Sancta Agnes, and a Passion); didactic literature (Boeci, such
ensenhamens [instructional poems] as Arnaut de Marhuelha’s Razos es e mezura,
Sordel’s Aissi co’l tesaurs es perdutz, Amanieu de Sescars’ En aquel mes de mai, Rai-
mon de Vidal’s Abril issi’ e mays entrava); encyclopedic compilations (Pierre de
Corbian’s Thezaur, Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amor); allegorical nar-
ratives (Chastel d’Amors, and the Cort d’Amor); treatises on the natural world
(Dels auzels cassadors, Aiso son las naturas d’alcus auzels e d’aucunas bestias, Elucidari
de las proprietatz de totas res naturals); and the artes poeticae discussed above (Rai-
mon Vidals’ Razos de trobar, the Donatz proensals, the Leys d’amors, etc.). The ro-
mance texts and Giraut de Rossilho have received perhaps the most scholarly
attention, and these tend to use approaches that are thematic, poetic, or in-
tertextual in nature (e. g., Roger Dragonetti, Le Gai savoir dans la rhétorique
courtoise: Flamenca et Joufroi de Poitiers, 1982; Suzanne Fleishman, “Jaufré or
Chivalry Askew: Social Overtones of Parody in Arthurian Romances,” Viator
12 [1981]: 101–29; Tony Hunt, “Texte et Prétexte: Jaufre et Yvain,” The Legacy
of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby, 1988,
2:125–41; Sarah Kay, “The Contrasting Use of Time in the Romances
of Jaufre and Flamenca,” Medioevo romanzo 6 [1979]: 37–62; Douglas Kelly,
Occitan Studies 1028

“Exaggeration, Abrupt Conversation, and the Uses of Description in Jaufre

and Flamenca,” Studia Occitanica in memoriam Paul Remy, ed. Hans-Erich
Keller, 1986, 2: 107–19; Marie-José Southworth, Étude comparée de quatre
romans médiévaux: Jaufre, Fergus, Durmart, Blancandin, 1973).
The most famous literary works in Old Occitan are the songs composed
by the troubadours in the 12th and 13th centuries. Troubadour lyric is fre-
quently found assembled in collections of lyric poetry called chansonniers, of
which there are some forty extant manuscripts dating from the mid-13th and
14th centuries, many of them produced in Northern Italy. The early scholarly
work on the chansonniers centered on issues of poetics, provenance, and
sources; such scholarship has recently been shown to have tied the linguistic
identity of the chansonniers with strong, 19th- and 20th-century nationalistic
impulses (Laura Kendrick, “The Science of Imposture and the Professional-
ization of Medieval Occitan Literary Studies,” Medievalism and the Modernist
Temper, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols, 1996, 95–126).
Studies on manuscript sources of troubadour lyrics and the chansonniers are
abundant (see D’Arco Silvio Avalle, I manoscritti della letteratura in lingua d’oc,
ed. Lino Leonardi, 1961, 1993; Karl Bartsch, Grundriß zur Geschichte der
provenzalischen Literatur, 1872; Clovis Félix Brunel, Bibliographie des manu-
scrits littéraires en ancien provençal, 1935; William E. Burgwinkle, “Chanson-
niers,” The Troubadours, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, 1999, 246–62;
Alfred Jeanroy, Bibliographie sommaire des chansonniers provençaux, 1916;
István Frank, Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours, 1953–1957, 2:
193–214; François Zufferey, Recherches linguistiques sur les chansonniers prov-
ençaux, 1987). In addition, much scholarly attention has been paid to individ-
ual chansonniers (see Giuseppina D. B. Brunetti, “Sul canzoniere provenzale
T (Parigi, Bibl. Nat. F. fr. 15211),” Cultura Neolatina 50 [1990]: 45–73; Bru-
netti, “Per la storia del manoscritto provenzale T (Parigi, Bibl. Nat. F. fr.
15211),” Cultura Neolatina 51 [1991]: 27–41; Maria Careri, Il canzoniere H:
struttura, contenuto, e fonti, 1990; Elizabeth W. Poe, Compilatio: Lyric Texts and
Prose Commentaries in Troubadour Manuscript H (Vat. Lat. 3207), 2000).
Three distinct periods of troubadour poetry can be determined: an early
period, beginning at the end of the 11th century until ca. 1140, comprising
such early poets as Guilhem IX, Jaufre Rudel, and Marcabru; a second period
from roughly 1140–1250, the period richest in numbers of poets, including
Arnaut Daniel, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, Folquet de Marseille,
Peire Vidal; and a third period, from 1250 to the end of the 13th century,
including Peire Cardenal and Giraut Riquer. Two recent and good introduc-
tions to the troubadours are A Handbook to the Troubadours (ed. F. R. P. Ake-
hurst and Judith M. Davis, 1995), and The Troubadours: An Introduction
1029 Occitan Studies

(ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, 1999). The former offers a comprehen-
sive, practical guide to Occitan literature, while the latter places Occitan lit-
erature within discussions of current literary theories and cultural studies.
Early scholarly treatment of the troubadours resulted in myriad editions of
the songs of the troubadours, as individuals or in anthology form. The stan-
dards anthologies are by Appel and Bartsch, the former of which includes
narrative and didactic poetry and prose texts, the latter who includes 14th-
century texts. Editions of individual troubadour poets have changed con-
siderably, moving from standard editing practices which privilege a certain
manuscript tradition, or even a single manuscript, to editions that reflect the
“mouvance” of troubadour lyric. Rupert Pickens’ landmark edition of
Jaufre Rudel, which presents editions and translations of the myriad ver-
sions of Rudel’s songs without privileging one over another, demonstrates
persuasively that troubadour songs circulated in many diverse forms (The
Songs of Jaufré Rudel, ed. Rupert T. Pickens, 1978). Many good anthologies of
troubadour lyric exist (see Provenzalische Chrestomathie mit Abriss der Formen-
lehre und Glossar, ed. Carl Appel, 1930, 1961; Karl Bartsch, Chrestomathie
provençale (Xe–XVe siècles), 1904, 6th ed. 1973; Frank R. Hamlin, Peter T. Rick-
etts, and John Hathaway, Introduction à l’étude de l’ancien provençal: Textes
d’étude, 1967; Los trovadores: Historia literaria y textos, 3 vols., ed. Martín de
Riquer, 1975; Anthology of the Provençal Troubadours, ed. R. T. Hill and
T.G. Bergin, rev. Thomas G. Bergin et al., 2 vols., 1941, 2nd ed. 1973), even
as bilingual editions (see Fred Goldin, Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères:
An Anthology and a History, 1973; Troubadour Lyrics: A Bilingual Anthology, ed. and
trans. Frede Jensen, 1998; Alan R. Press, Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry,
1971). Scholarship on troubadour poets and their lyrics also includes import-
ant reference works (see Alfred Pillet and Henry Carstens, Bibliographie der
Troubadours, 1933, rpt. 1968; István Frank, Répertoire métrique de la poésie des
troubadours, 1953–1957, 2: 89–192; Frank M. Chambers, Proper Names in the
Lyrics of the Troubadours, 1971, 18–33; François Zufferey, Bibliographie des
poètes provençaux des XIVe et XVe siècles, 1981; Robert A. Taylor, La littérature oc-
citane du Moyen Age: Bibliographie sélective et critique, 1977; and “Bibliography,”
A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. Akehurst and Davis, 467–74].

E. Genres
Troubadour lyric spans a wide variety of genres, and scholarly work in the
20th century reflects an increasing interest in genre-based studies (e. g., Pierre
Bec, “Le problème des genres chez les premiers troubadours,” Cahiers de
civilisation médiévale 25 [1925]: 31–47; John H. Marshall, “Le vers au XIIe
siècle: genre poétique?” Revue de langue et littérature d’Oc 12–13 [1962–63]:
Occitan Studies 1030

55–63; Sarah Spence, “Rhetoric and Hermeneutics,” The Troubadours, ed.

Gaunt and Kay, 164–80). Troubadour songs are alternatively called “vers”
(a term typically in use before 1150) or “cansos” (a term typically in use
chiefly after 1160). Medieval poets make generic distinctions even early on:
in the 12th century they distinguish the planh (lament), pastorela (pastourelle),
and tenso (debate poem) from love songs, and with the generic innovations of
the 13th century, they make further classifications of genre, and include the
sirventes (moralizing or satiric poem), the alba (dawn song), the descort (a song
with irregular stanzas) and the partimen (a debate poem like the tenso) among
the earlier types of songs. Because of the variety of lyric genres, scholars
particularly in the 20th century have attempted to delineate and refine the
parameters defining an individual genre (e. g., Martín de Riquer, Las albas
provenzales, 1944; A. T. Hatto, Eos: An Enquiry Into the Theme of Lovers’ Meetings
and Partings at Dawn in Poetry, 1965; Elizabeth W. Poe, “New Light on the
Alba: A Genre Redefined,” Viator 15 [1984]: 139–50; Carl Appel, “Vom Des-
cort,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie XI [1887]: 212–30; Jean Maiilard,
“Problèmes musicaux et littéraires du descort,” Mélanges de linguistique et de
littérature romanes à la mémoire de d’István Frank, 1957, 399–409; Jean Audiau,
La pastourelle dans la poésie occitane au Moyen Age, 1922; Maurice Delbouille,
Les origines de la pastourelle, 1926; Vincent Pollina, “Word/Music Relations
in the Work of the Troubadour Gaucelm Faidit: Some Preliminary Observa-
tions on the Planh,” Miscellanea di studi in onore di Aurelio Roncaglia a cin-
quant’anni dalla sua laurea, vol. 3 [1989]: 1075–90; Catherine Léglu, Between
Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric, 2000; John David
Jones, La tenson provençale, étude d’un genre poétique, 1934, 1974).
Scholarly interest in other genres related to troubadour poetry, namely
the vidas (prose text recounting the life of the troubadours) and the razos
(prose texts recounting the reasons for composition of an individual song)
has also been manifest in recent publications. If both the vidas and the razos
concern to varying degrees biography, the troubadours themselves do not
make sharp distinctions between them, unlike modern critics (Elizabeth W.
Poe, “At the Boundary Between Vida and Razo: The Biography for Raimon
Jordan,” Neophilologus 72 [1988]: 316–19) Many scholarly treatments of the
vidas and the razos centered on questions of historical accuracy, origins,
authorship, and the transmission of texts (Jean Boutière and Alexander H.
Schutz, Biographies des troubadours: Textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles,
1950, 2nd ed., with I.-M. Cluzel 1973; Guido Favati, Le biografie trobadoriche,
1961; Alfred Jeanroy, “Les biographies des troubadours et les razos: leur
valeur historique,” Archivum romanicum 1 [1917]: 289–306, rpt. La Poésie
lyrique des troubadours, 1934, 1:101–32; Bruno Panvini, Le biografie provanzali,
1031 Occitan Studies

valore e attendibilità, 1952; Le troubadour Folquet de Marseille, édition critique pré-

cédée d’une étude biographique et littéraire et suivie d’une traduction, d’un commentaire
historique, de notes, et d’un glossaire, ed. Stanislaw Strónski, 1910, 1968). More
recently, scholars have studied the vidas and razos for their value as texts that
establish principles of literary criticism for the troubadours, as well as trou-
badour aesthetics and poetics (William E. Burgwinkle, Razos and Trouba-
dour Songs, 1990; Elizabeth W. Poe, “Old Provençal Vidas as Literary Com-
mentary,” Romance Philology 33 [1980]: 510–18; id., “Toward a Balanced View
of the Vidas and Razos,” Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 1/2
[1986]: 18–28). Other scholars, also influenced by modern literary criticism,
have explored the razos using a modern theoretical approach: William E.
Burgwinkle’s Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the Troubadour Razo Corpus
(1997), for example, using an approach drawn from studies in materialist
culture, argues that the razos reflect the changing economic conditions in
medieval Occitania.

F. Themes
Many studies of the troubadours take a thematic approach, studying, for
example, the chief thematic elements of troubadour poetry: fin’amors
(courtly love), mezura (measure, balance), cortezia (courtliness), proeza (prow-
ess, value), solatz (consolation, pleasure), joi (joy) (e. g., Peter Dronke, “Guil-
laume IX and Courtoisie,” Romanische Forschungen 73 [1961]: 327–38; Jean
Frappier, “Vues sur les conceptions courtoises dans les littératures d’oc et
d’oïl au XIIe siècle,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, vol. II [1959]: 135–56;
Erich Köhler, Sociologia della fin’amor, trans. M. Mancini, 1976; Moshé
Lazar, “Les éléments constitutifs de la ‘cortezia’ dans la lyrique des trouba-
dours,” Studi Mediolatini e Volgari 6–7 [1959]: 68–76; Lazar and Norris J.
Lacy, Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, 1989; Leo Pollmann,
“Joi e solatz: Zur Geschichte einer Begriffskontamination,” Zeitschrift für
Romanische Philologie 80 [1964]: 256–68; D. R. Sutherland, “The Love
Meditation in Courtly Literature,” Studies in Medieval French presented to Alfred
Ewert in honor of his seventieth birthday, ed. E.A. Frances, 1961, 165–93; Leslie
T. Topsfield, “Malvestatz versus Proeza and Leautatz in Troubadour Poetry
and the Lancelot of Chretien de Troyes,” L’Esprit Créateur 19:4 [1979]: 37–53;
Topsfield, Troubadours and Love, 1975). Of these themes, the first, fin’amors,
or courtly love, has generated the most scholarly interest. Early studies on
fin’amors tended to read it as allegorical (e. g., C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love,
1936); later scholars, as sensual, erotic, and metaphoric (e. g., Moshé Lazar,
Amour courtois et ‘fin’amors’ dans la littérature du XIIe siècle, 1964). More recently,
scholars have taken approaches to fin’amors that are influenced by feminist
Occitan Studies 1032

theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis (Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The

Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century, 2001; Kay, “Desire and
Subjectivity,” The Troubadours, ed. Gaunt and Kay, 212–27; Marianne
Shapiro, “The Provençal trobaritz and the Limits of Courtly Love,” Signs 3
[1978]: 560–71; Slavoj Mimek, “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing,” The Meta-
stases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Women and Causality, 1994, 89–112). However,
it is clear that fin’amors cannot be reduced to a fixed set of traits, because the
troubadours themselves treat the subject as complex.

G. Metrical Structure and Poetic Style

A related interest in troubadour poetics, poetic style, prosody, and versifi-
cation has similarly spurred scholars in the 20th century. If the metrical struc-
ture of a canso is relatively uniform – a canso typically comprised 5 or 6 stan-
zas, called “coblas,” followed by a shortened stanza (or two), usually
addressed to a patron, lady, or audience, called a “tornada” – the rhyme
scheme can differ wildly: poems may have the same rhyme scheme, and same
rhyme sounds throughout (coblas unissonans); poems may have the same
rhyme scheme but alternating rhyme sounds (coblas alterandas); poems may
have the same rhyme scheme but the rhyme sounds may change every two
stanzas (coblas doblas) or every three stanzas (coblas ternas); poems may have the
same rhyme scheme but different rhyme sounds throughout (coblas singulars);
poems may be composed of single, free-standing stanzas (coblas esparsas);
poems may have a rhyme scheme that changes according to an internal fixed
order or pattern of permutation (coblas retrogradadas); poems may be con-
structed so that the last rhyme sound of the first stanza becomes the first
rhyme sound of the second stanza (coblas capcaudadas), or the first line of each
stanza may contain the last rhyme word of the previous stanza (coblas capfini-
das). Clearly, troubadour poems are intricately made, with great attention
paid to meter and rhyme. Moreover, the style of troubadour lyric also varies
greatly. Troubadours name the style of their poetry but rarely; however, the
meaning of these terms, while contemporary with the troubadours, has be-
come fixed by 20th-century scholarship rather than by the troubadours them-
selves. Such terms as trobar clus (obscure, hermetic style), trobar leu (easy, open
style), trobar ric (rich style), trobar car (precious style), and trobar brau (rough
style) have, then, become somewhat useful terms for modern analyses, al-
though the troubadours themselves treat these terms with some ambiguity.
Modern scholarship has been quite fascinated with the formal composition
and styles of troubadour poetry (e. g., S. C. Aston, “The Troubadours and
the Concept of Style,” Stil- und Formprobleme, ed. Paul Böckmann, 1960,
142–47; Dominique Billy, L’architecture lyrique: Analyse métrique & modéli-
1033 Occitan Studies

sation des structures interstrophiques dans la poésie lyrique des troubadours et des trou-
vères, 1989; Michel-André Bossy, “The trobar clus of Raimbau d’Aurenga,
Giraut de Bornelh, and Arnaut Daniel,” Medievalia 19 [1996]: 203–19; F.J.A.
Davdison, “The Origins of the Sestina,” Modern Language Notes XXV [1910]:
18–20; Costanzo di Girolamo, I trovatori, 1989; Laura Kendrick, The Game
of Love: Troubadour Wordplay, 1988; Alberto del Monte, Studi sulla poesia er-
metica medievale, 1953; Ulrich Mölk, Trobar clus-Trobar leu: Studien zur Dich-
tungstheorie der Trobadors, 1968; Linda Paterson, Troubadours and Eloquence,
1975; Elizabeth W. Poe, “‘Cobleiarai, car mi platz’: The Role of the Cobla in
the Occitan Tradition,” Medieval Lyric: Genres in Historical Context, ed. William
D. Paden, 2000, 68–94; Leo Pollmann, “Trobar clus,” Bibelexegese und his-
pano-arabische Literatur, 1965; Alberto Roncaglia, “Trobar clus: discussione
aperta,” Cultura neolatina 29 [1965]: 5–55) and versification (e. g., Frank M.
Chambers, An introduction to old Provençal versification, 1985; and id., “Versifi-
cation,” A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. Akehurst and Davis, 101–20; Ist-
ván Frank, Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours, 2 vols., 1953–1957;
John H. Marshall, “The Isostrophic Descort in the Poetry of the Trouba-
dours,” Romance Philology 35 [1981]: 130–57, Marshall, “Textual Trans-
mission and Complex Musico-Metrical Form in the Old French Lyric,” Medi-
eval French Textual Studies in Memory of T. B. W. Reid, ed. Ian Short, 1984,
119–84; and id., “Une versification lyrique popularisante en ancien proven-
çal,” Actes du premier Congrès International de l’Association Internationale d’Etudes
Occitanes, ed. Peter T. Ricketts [1987], 35–66; Margaret L. Switten,
“Music and Versification,” The Troubadours, ed. Gaunt and Kay, 141–63).

H. Music
The scholarly interest in poetic style, and particularly in versification, is par-
alleled by an increasing attention to music and Old Occitan literature, and
particularly, the music of the troubadours (see the introductory essays by
Hendrik van der Werk “Music,” A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. Ake-
hurst and Davis, 121–64; and M.L. Switten, “Music and Versification,”
The Troubadours, ed. Gaunt and Kay, 141–63). Only one manuscript contain-
ing songs and musical notation in Old Occitan from the period of the early
troubadours is extant; however, it contains religious rather than secular
songs (BNF lat. MS 1139, from Saint Martial of Limoges). In addition to the
Occitan (or bilingual Latin/Occitan) religious songs (of which there are some
six), there are also a few examples of Occitan songs that appear with musical
notation that are not strictly speaking a part of the canon of troubadour
songs: a lai by Aimeric de Peguilhan, four anonymous lais and descorts, six vire-
lais, four motets, and a 14th-century play on the life of St. Agnes, which also
Occitan Studies 1034

contains several songs with melodies. The first chansonnier (song book) of
troubadour song dates from the 13th century, which means that we do not
know exactly how the songs were performed before their preservation in
writing. Moreover, there are but few melodies (roughly 10 %) preserved: only
four of the many manuscripts that contain troubadour poems also contain
music, including only two of the chansonniers, but not throughout. And to
complicate matters further, in most sources, melodies are preserved in a
square notational style (non-mensural), which conveys pitch but not rhythm;
in other sources, the use of semi-mensural notion is ambiguous concerning
rhythm. For the troubadour songs for which we have melodies, nearly one
quarter of them present various melodic versions, either because there is
more than one melody present in the manuscripts, or because the melody
was used for another song (a contrafact), most often drawn from the reper-
tory of trouvère songs. Nowhere do we have indications about whether in-
struments would have been used, or how, and whereas early scholars and
performances of troubadour song often allowed for the use of instruments,
current scholars suggest that the use of instruments was uncommon (Chris-
topher PAGE, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and
Songs in France, 1100–1300, 1986). It was only in the late 19th century that the
melodies preserved in the chansonniers attracted any scholarly attention, and
20th-century scholars have thus focused on anthologizing them, although
following different interpretations for the transcriptions of the musical no-
tation (see Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta and Robert Lafont, Las cancons
dels trobors, 1979; Friedrich Gennrich, Der musikalische Nachlass der Trouba-
dours, 1958, 1960, 1965; Samuel L. Rosenberg, Margaret L. Switten, and
Gerard L. Vot, Songs of the Troubadours: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies with
accompanying CD, 1998; Hendrik van der Werf, with Gerald A. Bond, The
Extant Troubadour Melodies: Transcriptions and Essays for Performers, 1984). Be-
cause of the dearth of melodies and the ambiguity of the musical notational
system in the Middle Ages, there is great uncertainty about the music of the
troubadours, which has led to intensive scholarly debates. For but one
example, modal theory – the idea that all troubadours songs are in the same
rhythmic modes as motets – has been a staple of controversy for musicol-
ogists in the 19th and 20th centuries (Pierre Aubry, Les plus anciens monuments
de la musique française, 1905; Aubry, Trouvères et troubadours, 1909; Johann
Baptist Beck, Die Melodien der Troubadours nach dem gesamten handschriftlichen
Material zum erstenmal bearbeitet und herausgegeben, nebst einer Untersuchung über
die Entwickelung der Notenschrift (bis um 1250) und das rhythmisch-metrische Prinzip
der mittelalterlich-lyrischen Dichtungen, sowie mit Übertragung in moderne Noten der
Melodien der Troubadours und Trouvères, 1908; Beck, La musique des troubadours,
1035 Occitan Studies

1910; Friedrich Gennrich, Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalterlichen

Liedes als Grundlage einer musikalischen Formenlehre des Liedes, 1932; Hans
Tischler, The Earliest Motets (to circa 1270), 1982; Tischler, The Montpellier
Codex, 1978–1985; Tischler, The Style and Evolution of the Earliest Motets (to
circa 1270), 1985; for alternate views, see Carl Appel, Die Singweisen Bernarts
von Ventadorn, nach den Handschriften mitgeteilt, 1934; Hendrik van der Werf,
The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères: A Study of the Melodies and Their Re-
lation to the Poems, poems trans. F. R. P. Akehurst, 1972). Musicologists
have tended to tackle the troubadour music in terms of manuscripts and the
transmission of songs, as well as its rhythm, style and structure. There have
been two main schools of thought: the first, which saw melodic variants as a
part of some elite literate musical culture, privileging a written trans-
mission; the second, which saw variants as part and parcel with the gaps in-
herent to oral and musical transmission and the relationship between them,
so that the transmission of a song from an author to manuscript would have
undergone several, and especially oral, stages. The latter idea also suggests
that the notion of “authorship” of a song is much more problematic and am-
biguous than for literary texts; even the scribes of the music and the text
would have been different individuals. That composition in the Middle Ages
was essentially notation-free also means that composers and performers
alike had greater freedom of improvising new and existing songs. Recent
scholars have nevertheless made a case for a relationship between the poem
and the melody – the text and the music – of the troubadour songs, and
others treat in a detailed fashion the relationship between form and style
(e. g., Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours [1996]; John Stevens,
Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, 1050–1350
[1986]; Margaret L. Switten, The Cansos of Raimon de Miraval: A Study of Poems
and Melodies, 1985; Switten, Music and Poetry in the Middle Ages: A Guide to
French and Occitan Song, 1100–1400, 1995). And even more recently musicol-
ogists, influenced by reception theory, have been focusing not only on the
medieval reception of troubadour music on its audience and the per-
formative context of troubadour song, but also on the post-medieval recep-
tion of troubadour song (John Dickinson Haines, Eight Centuries of Trouba-
dours and Trouvères: The Changing Identity of Medieval Music, 2004; Daniel
Leech-Wilkonson, The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship, Ideol-
ogy, Performance, 2002).
Occitan Studies 1036

I. Contemporary Trends in Occitan Scholarship

Recent studies on Occitan literature have very much followed trends in con-
temporary literary studies. Rich new avenues of research include studies that
place Old Occitan literature within its social and historical contexts, and the-
oretical approaches drawn from literary and cultural studies, interest in
gender and performance studies, and intertextuality, including non-West-
ern influences on Old Occitan literature.
Scholars have recently drawn from diverse theoretical approaches of lit-
erary and cultural studies, focusing on such subjects as the role of memory,
performance, reception, and subjectivity in troubadour lyric, using psycho-
analysis as a lens through which to view troubadour lyric, and even the role of
urbanization and feudalism in the production of Old Occitan Literature
(e. g., Rouben C. Cholakian, The Troubadour Lyric: A Psychocritical Approach,
1990; Simon Gaunt, Troubadours and Irony, 1990; Sylvia Huot, “Visualiz-
ation and Memory: The Illustration of Troubadour Lyric in a Thirteenth-
Century Manuscript,” Gesta 31 [1992]: 3–14; Sarah Kay, “Desire and Subjec-
tivity,” The Troubadours, ed. Gaunt and Kay, 212–27; Kay, Subjectivity in
Troubadour Poetry, 1990; Maria Luisa Meneghetti, Il pubblico dei trovatori:
Ricezione e riuso dei testi lirici cortesi fina al XIV secolo, 1984, 2nd ed. 1992; Stephen
G. Nichols, “Voice and Writing in Augustine and in the Troubadour
Lyric,” Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. Alger Nicholas
Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack, 1991, 137–61; Linda Paterson,
The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c. 1100–c.1300, 1993;
Dorothy R. Sutherland, “L’élément théâtral dans la canso chez les trouba-
dours de l’époque classique,” Revue de langue et littérature d’Oc 12–13
[1962–63]: 95–101; Amelia van Vleck, Memory and Re-Creation in Troubadour
Lyric, 1991).
20th-century scholars have also been long interested in the intertextual-
ity of Old Occitan literature, and in particular, the inter-cultural relationship
between Old Occitan literature and the literatures of various cultures, in-
cluding Arabic, Catalan, Galician, Italian, Northern French, and Portuguese
(e. g., Stefano Asperti, “Flamenca e dintorno: considerazione sui rapporti
fra Occitania e Catalogna nel XIV secolo,” Cultura Neolatina 45 [1985]:
59–103; Asperti, Carlo I d’Angiò e i trovatori: Componenti ‘provenzale’ e angioine
nella tradizione manoscritta della lirica trobdorica, 1995; G. Bertoni, I trovatori
d’Italia, 1915; A. J. Denomy, “Concerning the Accessibility of Arabic in-
fluences to the earliest Provençal troubadours,” Medieval Studies 15 [1953]:
147–58; Jean-Marie D’Heur, Troubadours d’oc et troubadours galiciens-portugais:
Recherches sur quelques échanges dans la littérature de l’Europe au Moyen-Age, 1973;
A. Vallone, La cortesia dai provenzali a Dante, 1950; F. Alberto Gallo, Musica
1037 Occitan Studies

nel castello: Trovatori, libri, oratori nelle corti italiane dal XIII al XV secolo, 1982;
Maria Luisa Meneghetti, “Intertextuality and Dialogism in the Trouba-
dours,” The Troubadours, ed. Gaunt and Kay, 181–96; María Luisa Meno-
cal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, 1987; A. R.
Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry, and Its Relations with the Old Provencal Troubadours,
1946; Leo Pollmann, “Trobar clus”: Bibelexegese und hispano-arabische Literatur,
1965; Luciano Rossi, “Chrétien de Troyes e i trovatori: Tristan, Linhaura, Ca-
restia,” Vox romanica 46 [1987]: 26–62; Salvatore Santangelo, Dante e i trova-
tori provenzale, 1921, 2nd ed. 1959).
Gender studies and feminist theory have also prompted scholars to
examine Old Occitan literature in terms of gender, and in particular, the
songs of the trobairitz, or women troubadours (e. g., Michel-André Bossy and
Nancy Jones, “Gender and Compilation Patterns in Troubadour Lyric: The
Case of Manuscript ‘N’,” French Forum 21 [1996]: 261–80; Mathilda Tomaryn
Bruckner, Songs of the Women Troubadours, 1995; id., “Fictions of the Female
Voice: The Women Troubadours,” Speculum 67 [1992]: 865–91; E. Jane
Burns, “The Man behind the Lady in Troubadour Lyric,” Romance Notes 25
[1985]: 254–70; Frederic Cheyette, “Women, Poets, and Politics in Occit-
ania,” Aristocratic Women of Twelfth-Century France, ed. Theodore Evergates,
1999; Kathryn Gravdal, “Metaphor, Metonomy, and the Medieval Women
Trobairitz,” Romanic Review 83 [1992]: 411–26; William D Paden, The Voice of
the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, 1989).
One of the current trends in studies on Old Occitan literature concerns
how the medieval appears in the modern: recently, scholars working in his-
tory and literary/cultural studies have focused on exploring how Old Occitan
literature has been received over time, and in particular time periods. The
scholars unveil the ways in which modern society has deployed Old Occitan
poets and religious movements in order to interrogate contemporary issues
of nation, memory, and history (e. g., Emily McCafrey, “Memory and Col-
lective Identity in Occitanie: The Cathars in History and Popular Culture,”
History & Memory 13.1 [2001]: 114–38; Roy Rosenstein, “A Medieval Trou-
badour Mobilized in the French Resistance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59.3
[1998]: 499–520; see also Lynn T. Ramey, “In Praise of Troubadourism: Cre-
ating Community in Occupied France, 1942–1943,” Filming the Other Middle
Ages: Race, Class, and Gender in Medieval Cinema, ed. Lynn Ramey and Tison
Pugh, 2007, 139–53). The Spring issue of Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem
IX also includes regularly an updated bibliography of scholarly works on Oc-
citan literature.
The language and literature of Old Occitan, once regulated to a subset,
even secondary, status within the field of French, thus attests to a vibrant his-
Occitan Studies 1038

tory, which is reflected in the fascinating and interdisciplinary scholarship

produced today.

Select Bibliography
A Handbook to the Troubadours, ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); Joseph Anglade, Grammaire de
l’ancien provençal (Paris: Klincksieck, 1921); Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Trouba-
dours (Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1996); Pierre
Aubry, Trouvères et troubadours (Paris: F. Alcan, 1909); The Troubadours: An Introduction,
ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
Sarah Kay, Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990); Laura Kendrick, The Game of Love: Troubadour Wordplay (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988); Moshé Lazar, Amour courtois et ‘fin’amors’ dans la littérature du
XIIe siècle (Paris, Klincksieck, 1964); William D. Paden, An Introduction to Old Occitan
(New York: MLA, 1998); Linda Paterson, The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan
Society, c.1100–c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Alfred Pillet
and Henry Carstens, Bibliographie der Troubadours (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933, 1968); Los
trovadores: Historia literaria y textos, 3 vols., ed. Martín de Riquer (Barcelona: Planeta,
1975).

Michelle Bolduc
1039 Performance of Medieval Texts

Performance of Medieval Texts

A. Modern Performance of Medieval Texts

This article focuses on modern efforts and attempts to perform medieval texts
today; therefore it does not deal with the problems and principles of “Per-
formance of Medieval Texts” in general, which would be a never-ending story.

B. Philology and Musicology, the Problem of Authenticity

Philologists and musicologists should cooperate to present and analyze
medieval texts which originally were meant to be sung (for the role of music,
see Sabine Mak, Musik als ‘Ehr und Zier’ im mittelalterlichen Reich: Studien zu
Musik im höfischen Leben, Recht und Zeremoniell, 1979; for ‘descriptions’ of music
in Middle High German texts, see Kerstin Bartels, Musik in deutschen Texten
des Mittelalters, 1997). But for decades philologists did their research in a way
which a dictum of the German medievalist Helmut Lomnitzer portrayed as
follows: “Close your eyes if you see musical notes;” and musicologists acted
vice versa (Helmut Lomnitzer, “Liebhard Eghenvelders Liederbuch,”
ZfdPh 90 [1971], Sonderheft: 214). Editions presented either the text or the
melodies, but rarely a full combination of both. Only recently conditions
have been changing. But still musicologists are primarily interested in the
refined polyphony of the Middle Ages or in Gregorian chant, less in sung
poetry whose melodies were mostly, at least for centuries, monophonic. Phil-
ologists nowadays often speak and write about principles of ‘performance,’
but what they really deal with is ‘Performanz’ (as German scholars call it),
namely theory and academic rules applied to the texts of the Middle Ages,
not real ‘performances’ of today. Dealing with modern performances seems
to be hardly rewarding and of very little interest for scholars: Above all they
stress that scientific accuracy and authenticity could not be achieved. But in
general we tend to forget that real authenticity in performing medieval
music cannot be obtained. Firstly, we can never reconstruct the definite
sound of medieval performances. Secondly, we should keep in mind that
there were different regional styles. Even the Gregorian plainchant, which
used the international Latin language, was sung in more or less different
ways during the centuries. Thirdly, circumstances of performing and sing-
Performance of Medieval Texts 1040

ing were rarely the same, and the musicians had to embrace the changing
possibilities and to consider the distinct interest of their audiences. Forthly,
and above all: even if there were original medieval recordings, as presented
by any science fiction technology, today we could never listen to them like
medieval audiences. Our modern listening to music has been trained and
influenced by centuries and epochs of musical history and development,
from Baroque court music to contemporary pop music, from natural voices
and instruments to sounds which are created electronically. Joachim Herz,
one of the leading opera producers of the late 20th century, therefore has been
stressing in his lectures that authenticity can never be accomplished for
music of former times. In the German-speaking countries, for example, only
a few scholars have been doing academic research on real performances of
medieval texts today, and elsewhere conditions do not seem to be much dif-
ferent. Some scholars should be mentioned: Helmut Lomnitzer (see
above), Siegfried Beyschlag, Horst Brunner, Martin Elste, Robert Lug,
Annette Kreutziger-Herr, Marc Lewon (see below). Effective cooper-
ation of scholars with musicians is very rare (e. g., at the Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis, or with scholars like Volker Mertens, Manfred Kaempfert,
Ingrid Bennewitz, Franz Viktor Spechtler, Margarete Springeth, and
Ulrich Müller), and likewise only some musicians can be named (among
others Benjamin Bagby, Thomas Binkley, René Clemencic, Hans Hegner,
Eberhard Kummer, Marc Lewon, Reinhold Wiedenmann, the ensembles
“Alta Musica Berlin,” “Bärengässlin” [Michael Korth, Johannes Heimrath],
“Dulaman’s Vröudenton” [led by Thomas Schallaböck], “Ensemble für alte
Musik Augsburg,” “Unicorn” [led by Michael Posch], and “Tourdion.” Peter
Reidemeister (Historische Aufführungspraxis: Eine Einführung, 1988, 136)
characterized the situation as follows: Often “unsophisticated musicians
without profound knowledge have to work with intellectual scholars who in
turn have no sensibility for the special problems of the artists.” These musi-
cians often have been using old and unreliable editions, and have prepared
their performances ‘by ear,’ i. e., by hearing and imitating performances of
others – a problem that still affects us considerably.

C. Performance and Audience

Medieval poetry was presented to the public, i. e., the auditors, spectators,
and readers, by a combination of oral and written communication. Of course,
today we know medieval poetry only as far as it was written down, under the
auspicies of the poets or by scribes at any time later. We must assume that in
the beginning all kinds of poetry, religious, ritual, and secular, were pres-
ented orally, and written down only later. For a very long time there must
1041 Performance of Medieval Texts

have been a combination of reciting, singing, and reading: Dramas until

today are not only privately read, but staged and listened to. We cannot know
how poetry in former epochs was vocally presented, i. e., how it was sung
and/or recited and spoken because the possibility of technical documen-
tations only began in the late 19th century. Rarely do examples from old and
remote traditions which are still alive today give us a rough idea how it was
done and how it sounded. We do not know how Greek and Latin theater plays
were performed. When in Florence around 1600 intellectuals tried to revital-
ize the performance of classical antique plays they could not succeed, but
instead ‘invented’ the genre of “opera.” Regarding medieval dramas it is
relatively easy to stage and perform them today: Only the question of the
exact pronounciation must be solved, otherwise the spoken parts (“dicit”)
present no specific problems. Most of the religious plays also have texts
which are to be sung (“cantat”); usually melodies of the Gregorian chant are
inserted into the play, and more or less easily can they be taken from the
tradition of liturgical singing.
If we speak of “Performance of Medieval Texts,” we normally mean other
genres of poetry than theater, namely (1) lyrical texts divided into stanzas,
and (2) epics of all kinds, using stichic lines, or groups of rhyming verses
(often couples), or strophic epics, i. e., different types of songs, courtly novels
and tales, and heroic epics.

D. Early “Aufführungsversuche”
The musicologist Johannes Wolf (“Über den Wert der Aufführungspraxis
für die historische Erkenntnis,” Kongressbericht Leipzig, 1925, 199–202; see
also Stefan Kunze, “Musikwissenschaft and musikalische Praxis: Zur Ge-
schichte eines Mißverständnisses,” Alte Musik. Praxis und Reflexion, ed. Peter
Reidemeister and Veronika Gutmann, 1983, 115–24) emphasized how
important modern performances are for the understanding of medieval
music, and he also discussed the basic problems related to this issue. But
nevertheless, until today there are only rare examples of helpful cooperation
between scholars and musicians or of musicians who are also scholars (e. g.,
René Clemencic, Mark Lewon, and Robert Lug).
As Annette Kreutziger-Herr outlines in her important monograph
Ein Traum vom Mittelalter (2003), academic interest and research of ancient
music (“Alte Musik”) began in Europe in the decades after 1800 (see below);
often the term “ancient music” meant music of the Renaissance, not of the
Middle Ages. One of the earliest concerts of medieval music was organized on
November 3, 1849 by the French composer and historian Félix Clément in
the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, dedicated to monophonic music of the Church
Performance of Medieval Texts 1042

(“musique réligieuse”), but arranged polyphonically by Clément. Several

decades later, in 1914, Amédée Gastoué presented French secular music at
the same church, now based on early research of medieval music which had
started around 1900, primarily in France and Germany; the concert was
divided into three categories which are used till today in musicology: “pièce
liturgique” (1), “ars antiqua et les trouvères” (2), and “ars nova” (3). Two
series of concerts which were arranged by Willibald Gurlitt, Professor at the
University of Freiburg, in 1922 and 1924 in Karlsruhe and Hamburg, have
been of eminent importance, just like medieval concerts in Erlangen and
Tübingen (1927, Erlanger Collegium Musicum: Gustav Becking), and in
Vienna (1927, “Musik der Gotik”: Rudolf von Ficker); the detailed programs,
together with the sources which were used by the musicians, can be found in
Kreutziger-Herr’s book.
A surprising and very special case was the French chansonierre Yvette
Guilbert: Around 1900 she was, together with Aristide Bruant, one of the
indisputable champions of the French popular chanson in Paris, Europe and
the USA (Henri Toulouse-Lautrec designed impressive drawings of both of
them); later she specialized in ancient French songs of the trobadors and
trouvères: She presented the songs not only as a singer, but also as an actress,
and she was very successful with several concerts at the New York Columbia
University (see Helmut Hanke, Yvette Guilbert: Die Muse von Montmartre,
1974, 103–34).

E. After the Second World War

The number of concerts of medieval (and Renaissance) music began to grow
rapidly, and the new technologies (LP, CD, MP3) provided increasingly
better possibilities to listen to ancient music. Of course, comparisons with
‘normal’ classical or even popular music would not have been fair, but medi-
eval music reached a steady and dedicated audience, including more and
more younger people looking for musical alternatives. Some medieval
composers have become well-known, even moderately popular among habi-
tués: Hildegard von Bingen, “Perotinus” (see Olav Rossbach, “Alte Musik
und Resakralisierung,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001, Exkurs 204–16), Guillaume
de Machaut, Gregorian chant in toto, several trobadors and trouvères (for
example Jaufre Rudel, Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born,
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, Conon de Béthune, Gace Brulé, Colin Muset, Adam
de la Halle), the Galician cantigas di Santa Maria, German Minnesänger and
song-writers like Walther von der Vogelweide, Neidhart, the Monk of
Salzburg and, above all, Oswald von Wolkenstein, and Italian and French
musicians of the polyphonic “ars nova” (Guillaume Dufay, Francesco Land-
1043 Performance of Medieval Texts

ini etc.); a special case is the collection of primarily medieval Latin poems and
songs, which since the early 19th century is referred to as Carmina Burana
(after the Bavarian abbey of Benediktbeuren where the manuscript was
found: see below).

F. Manuscripts and Medieval Notation

The liturgical manuscripts of the Catholic Church normally transmit the
Latin texts and the melodies. Like in all non-European cultures and in medi-
eval Europe until the 11th century there was no possibility to write down mel-
odies which would enable musicians to sing them by sight. In the early
Middle Ages there were only musical signs or symbols called “neuma/ neu-
mata” (Greek for ‘mark’): Different systems of neumata were used to present
some information about the manner of singing plainchant, but they could
tell nothing about the pitch of the individual musical signs, and therefore
unknown melodies could not be sung by sight. When around 1030 the
Italian monk and musical teacher Guido di Arezzo, living and teaching in the
Benedictine abbey of Pomposa (Ferrara), added horizontal lines and com-
bined them with a clef system, he did nothing less than to create the modern
European notation system as it is used world-wide still today. Different types
of notes were in use in the Middle Ages, and also the number of lines varied,
but the basic pattern of this new notation system has remained the same ever
since (see Ian D. Bent, David Hiley, Margaret Bent, and Geoffrey Chew,
“Notation,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980, 1995, vol. 13,
333–420; Solange Corbin, Milos Velimorovic and Mireille Helffer,
“Neumatic Notations,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980,
1995, vol. 13, 128–54; see also the large article “Notation” in the 2nd ed. of
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, Sachteil
VII [1997], 275–432, written by a group of scholars).
But there is still a problem for modern performers: Medieval notation
does not present any information about different voices, instruments to be
used, dynamics, expression, and tempo, and for monophonic music also no-
thing about rhythm; mensural notation only later became necessary to write
down polyphonic music. That is why modern musicians cannot perform
medieval music just by reading the notes, but they have to look to other
musical traditions, for example in the Arabic and Oriental countries, old
European folklore, or liturgical music and singing. They must learn to im-
provise and to use traditional patterns of performing music. Therefore mod-
ern performances of medieval music often sound quite different, even if the
musicians use the same notations and editions. As Daniel Leech-Wilkin-
son (“Wie überträgt man die Musik des Mittelalters?,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001,
Performance of Medieval Texts 1044

325) pointed out, there have been changing trends, even musical fashions, in
performing ancient music (see also: Bernard D. Sherman, Inside Early Music,
1997; John W. Barker, The Use of Medieval Music and Recordings for the Teaching
About the Middle Ages: A Practical Guide, with Comprehensive Bibliography and Selec-
tive Bibliography, 1988).

G. Voices and Pronounciation

For liturgical purposes, in church only male voices were performing, not
only in the Middle Ages but also in later centuries: tenor, baritone, and basso
by adult men, soprano and alto by boys. We know nothing about castratos in
the Middle Ages, and as far as we know, male altos were used only later;
Christopher Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages, 1986, 138, calls it a
“delicate and (probably unanswerable) question of wether the falsetto voice
was cultivated in the performance of troubadour and trouvère song.” We can
also learn from medieval musical treatises (Johannes de Grocheio) that in the
southern Romance parts of Europe light and higher voices were preferred, in
the northern Germanic parts stronger baritones. Female voices, of course,
could be heard with religious songs only in women’s convents, but some-
times, there might certainly have been female joglars and “spilwîp” for secu-
lar songs.
A special problem for modern singers of medieval texts is pronounci-
ation. Linguists do not agree how to exactly pronounce medieval Latin,
medieval Romance, or Germanic languages. Furthermore, spelling in manu-
scripts was never fixed like in modern times, and the spelling which is used
in academic editions also differs considerably. There have always been re-
gional variations. The ‘guide book’ Singing Early Music – The Pronounciation of
European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (ed. Timothy J.
McGee, A. G. Rigg, and David N. Klausner, 1996) for the first time tried
to offer detailed rules for singers, but these rules are too specific and demand-
ing for musicians who are not trained in philology and linguistics. A basic
rule can be established: On the one hand avoid exaggerated articulation in
pronouncing medieval texts which sounds too strange or exaggerated to lis-
teners of today, but on the other hand approach, but not completely (!), mod-
ern pronounciation. A paradigm for medieval Latin could be a kind of pro-
nounciation as it is used in Italy today or according to the rules which were
proposed by humanist scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536)
The guidelines for Middle High German texts, presented by Peter Fren-
zel (Singing Early Music, 1996, 221–57) are not incorrect, but at least mislead-
ing. At German universities two traditions can be found: To pronounce
Middle High German (1) in a ‘Northern’ and very precise way, or (2) to follow
1045 Performance of Medieval Texts

modern Southern German dialects or the dialects of Austria and Switzer-

land. As Middle High German literature was mainly conceived in the middle
or southern parts of the German-speaking regions, a ‘Southern’ pronounci-
ation will be much more adequate. Therefore Günther Schweikle (Die mit-
telhochdeutsche Minnelyrik, vol. I, 1977, 100–02) proposes the following guide-
lines: Pronounce /sp-/, /st/-, /sl-/ and /sw-/ like in Modern German, also w (not
like an English double-u), the diphthongs /ie/, /uo/, and /üe/ as they are
written, do not differentiate between /ei/ and /ai/, but do so between short
and long vowels (not too expressively); finally keep in mind that /iu/ in medi-
eval manuscripts and modern editions is always (!) the ‘umlaut’ of a long /u/
(like in German “über”), and that /z/ can mean /s/ (like in English “miss”) or
the German affricative /z/ (like in “Zauber”). Schweikle concludes: “Accord-
ing to the mentioned problems all efforts to give the pronounciation of
Middle High German an ancient sound are fruitless;” and he even adds:
“Therefore MHG texts can even be recited like Modern German.”
Pronounciation should always be clear and explicit, but also natural. Of
utmost importance for the singer is that he/ she indicates that he/ she exactly
knows what is sung and he/ she understands precisely the exact meaning of
the words.

H. Musical Instruments
No instruments have been used in plainchant, and probably very rarely for
religious texts. The basic types of medieval instruments are mentioned when
the South Tyrolean singer Oswald von Wolkenstein (1386/1387–1445) enu-
merates his instrumenta qualifications: “I also was able to ‘fidlen, trummen,
pauken, pfeifen’” [= ‘play string instruments, brass, percussion, flute-like
instruments’: poem Klein no. 18 II). Robert Donington (The Interpretation of
Early Music, new rev. ed., 1989; see also Christopher PAGE, Voices and Instru-
ments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France 1100–1300, 1986)
presents a lenghty and elaborate list of medieval and Renaissance musical in-
struments, and often modern musicians try to surprise and impress their
audience by using many different types of old and strange-looking instru-
ments. Some medieval instruments and many from the Renaissance have
been preserved; they can be seen in museums, and might be used for modern
reconstructions. Medieval miniatures also present depictions of musical in-
struments, above all different kinds of string instruments played with a bow
or plucked. They show that singers could accompany themselves with a
string instrument like an Arabic rebec, or rababa, a hurdy-gurdy, or a small
harp (fiddles, i. e., violin-type string instruments, and wind instruments, of
course, were not useful); sometimes a singer is supported by one or two in-
Performance of Medieval Texts 1046

strumentalists. The most common instrument to be combined with a singer

was the fiddle.
The razo, i. e., the medieval commentary of a love-song of the trobador
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (“Kalenda maya,” around 1200) provides the follow-
ing information: “Two joglars from France arrived at the court of margrave
[Boniface of Montserrat] who could play the fiddle very well. One day they
played an estampida [a dance], which the margrave, the knights and the ladies
liked very much. But Raimbaut disliked it strongly, and when the margrave
saw this he said to him: ‘Sir Raimbaut, why do you not sing and enjoy your-
self, when you hear such a fine melody and see such a beautiful lady like my
sister, who has accepted you as her servant and who is one of the finest ladies
in the world.’ And Raimbaut answered that he was not able to do so. The mar-
grave understood the reason and said to his sister [Biatrix]: ‘Lady Biatrix, by
your love for me and and these people I modestly ask you that you will beg
Raimbaut that he should enjoy himself und sing for your love and your grace
as he has done before.’ And Mylady Biatrix was so polite and graceful that she
begged and asked him for her love, that he should again be full of joy and
composed a song for her. And Raimbaut conceived the estampida ‘Kalenda
maya’ – which was presented by him at the margrave’s court, certainly ac-
companied by the two fiddlers” (Ulrich Müller trans.)
But nevertheless, we should keep in mind the argument of Hendrik van
der Werf (The Extant Troubadour Melodies, 1984, 220): “It is not whether
medieval singers ever sang to instrumental accompaniement. In some of the
narrative literature of the Middle Ages we find clear indications that this was
done, but that does not prove that the chansons of the troubadours and trou-
vères were accompanied too […]. We have to reckon with the possibility that
medieval Western Europe […] knew many kinds of songs, popular as well as
esoteric ones; some of these may habitually have been accompanied, but not
necessarily all of them.”
Orchestras, even small ones, were unknown. The miniature of the
Middle High German singer Heinrich von Meissen, called Frauenlob in the
Codex Manesse (fol. 399r; early 14th century) which depicts the singer doing
something like ‘conducting’ instrumentalists is a very rare example.

I. Modern Performance of Medieval Music

a) Plainchant: The different kinds of plainchant, above all the catholic
Gregorian chant, have a tradition extending over centuries. But Gregorian
chant, the most important and nearly dominating kind of plainchant for
medieval catholic Europe, had regional versions, and its style changed more
or less. Its modern style of singing was renewed and modernized at the Be-
1047 Performance of Medieval Texts

nedictine abbey of Solesmes (Northern France) in the 19th century, and an-
nounced as follows: “To raise Gregorian chant from the abject state into
which is has fallen, to pursue the work of its restoration until complete jus-
tice is done, and it has recovered its full ancient beauty which rendered it so
proper for divine worship.” The main principles were: good phrasing of the
Latin text, without any heavy stressing of each note, an “‘orational rhythm’
similar to that of speech, which achieves unification through respect for the
Latin words and their accentuation, and balance through the proportions
existing between the various divisions” (Eugène Cardine, “Solesmes,” The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980, vol. 17, 452–54, here 453).
The question of measure has been disputed: equal pronounciation of the
Latin syllables, or rhythmic patterns, or – as it is performed today – free
rhythm according to the Latin words. The first recordings of Gregorian chant
in Solesmes were registered in 1930 by “His Master’s Voice” (directed by
Dom Joseph Gajard).
Until nowadays, there have been hundreds of recordings, with regional
differences, but most of them more or less follow the Solesmes principles
(see Jerome F. Weber, A Gregorian Chant Discography, 1990). But it is import-
ant to remember: “A historically authentic kind of performing is not pos-
sible” (Helmut Hucke and Hartmut Möller, “Gregorianischer Gesang,”
Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Sachteil III [1995], 1610–22, here 1619).
In 1993, clever marketing, more or less by chance, even created a veritable
Gregorian CD-hit, of which EMI sold more than 5 millions of copies: Canto
Gregoriano (Martin Elste; “Mittelalter aus dem Geiste der kommerziellen
Vermarktung,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001, 309–24): A more than twenty years old
recording by the “Coro de monjes de Monasterio Benedictiono de Santo
Domingo de Silos” (Northern Spain) was re-issued presenting an artistic
quality, which was good, but not spectacular. Hildegard von Bingen has be-
come the most popular author of medieval liturgical music on CDs, which
probably have been bought and listened to not only for musical interest;
instead they have appealed to a lot to feminists and New Age afficiados.
Also some Gregorian crossover-productions have been very successful, for
example Officium (Hilliard Ensemble, together with Jan Garbarek, jazz saxo-
phone; ECM 1994) and a CD by “Enigma” (Virgin Records 1990: MCMXC
a.D.), which present two Gregorian remixes, one of them being the really im-
pressive and revealing “Mea Culpa Part II.”

b) Carmina Burana: This collection of mostly Latin poems and songs, and
some religious dramas was put into writing in the beginning of the 13th cen-
tury, probably in an abbey of South Tyrol or Carinthia. The manuscript was
Performance of Medieval Texts 1048

discovered at the beginning of the 19th century in the Bavarian monastery of

Benediktbeuren, and therefore the first editor of the texts, Andreas Johannes
Schmeller (1847), called it “Poems from (Benedikt-)Beuren” (Latin: “Car-
mina Burana”). The collection contains religious and satirical poems and
songs, texts about love, drinking and gambling, and several religious plays.
Some of the secular songs became extremely popular, when Carl Orff in 1937
presented his oratorio Carmina Burana, with newly composed melodies –
these melodies, written for opera houses and concertos, had drive, even
groove, and they are something like a hit still today. Orff could not have been
inspired by the original medieval melodies: The medieval manuscript has
many musical notes, but only neumata without lines, which cannot be decip-
hered. Only later musicologists and philologists (among them Higino
Anges, Walter Lipphardt, and René Clemencic, Vienna – see below) dis-
covered some of the Carmina-Burana-texts in other manuscripts, where they
come with a readable notation on lines, and they also proposed some possi-
bilities of contrafacturas: In 1979 Clemencic et al. published a collection of
all possible medieval melodies (René Clemencic, Michael Korth, and Ul-
rich Müller, ed., Carmina Burana: Gesamtausgabe der mittelalterlichen Melodien
mit den dazugehörigen Texten, 1979). An ancient melody was even proposed for
the most popular Latin song of the Middle Ages, the so-called “Confession”
by the Archpoet (Archipoeta; see Ulrich Müller, “Beobachtungen zu den
‘Carmina Burana’: 1. Eine Melodie zur Vaganten-Strophe,” Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch XV [1980]: 104–11). Clemencic and his Consort recorded a series
of LPs, which was followed by an LP registered by the Salzburg Ensemble
“Bärengässlin” (Michael Korth and Johannes Heimrath) who had collabor-
ated with Clemencic in publishing the above-mentioned edition. Some years
earlier the Munich “Ensemble für Alte Musik,” founded and directed by
Thomas Binkley, had presented the first LP dedicated to songs and medieval
melodies of the “Carmina Burana,” some of them with such a rhythmical
drive that Robert LUG calls them “nearly Beatles-compatible” (Robert Lug,
“Minnesang: Zwischen Markt und Museum,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001, 148).
These LPs and the edition caused a veritable boom of Carmina-Burana-
recordings on CD; but while the musicians often pretended to base their re-
cordings on own reasearch, they mostly used the above-named edition (with-
out mentioning it) or even did their performances by listening to earlier pro-
ductions.

c) Medieval lyrics: Monophonic songs of the Occitan trobadors, the trou-

vères from Northern France, authors from the Iberian peninsula (Catalan,
Castilian/ Spanish, Galician-Portuguese), and the so-called “minnesinger” of
1049 Performance of Medieval Texts

the German-speaking regions are the majority of modern recordings of secu-

lar medieval music, followed by polyphonic compositions of the “Ars Nova”
and the Renaissance. (It should be mentioned that the German terms “Min-
nesang”/ “Minnesinger”/ “Minnesänger” are used for medieval German
songs in general, for love-songs of all kinds, but also for songs only about “fin
amors,” i. e., unfullfilled longing for a “frouwe,” i.e., lady; the restricted
meaning is the most appropriate one, but musicians prefer the general and
rather inexact understanding). Robert Lug, Martin Elste (both in Übersetzte
Zeit, 2001), and Annette Kreutziger-Herr (Ein Traum vom Mittelalter,
2003) have outlined and discussed the wide field of recordings of medieval
lyrics. There are many ensembles, of international reputation (see also: Harry
Haskell, The Early Music Revival: A History, 1988), but very often just regional
ones, and also a lot of small and private companies; therefore it is impossible
to provide a satisfactory and international survey. Robert Lug (“Minnesang:
Zwischen Markt und Museum,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001; see also: Die Musik des
Mittelalters, ed. Hartmut Möller and Rudolf Stephan, 1991) devised a
rather elaborate system of six paradigms with many subdivisions to categor-
ize and describe such recordings, which will be used here for a brief survey:
(1) types of texts; (2) types of melodies and their interpretations, namely re-
garding (3) rhythm; (4) voices; and (5) ‘character;’ and (6) use of instruments.
Regarding the large number of recordings, it is understandable that Lug can
apply his own system only partly, and not more can be done than mentioning
several ensembles in the following paragraphs.
There has never been any doubt in philology and musicology that medi-
eval songs originally had been sung, performed by the authors themselves or
by a joglar or a spilman. Many Occitan vidas and razos (= medieval biographies
of trobadors and commentaries of their songs) read like short stories about
ancient performances, and often perfomances are mentioned in medieval ro-
mances and novels, but unfortunately not described in detail. Although mel-
odies had been published since the early 19th century (i. e., for the German
minnesingers by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen in his large Minnesing-
er-edition of 1838), until only recently, there was barely any cooperation be-
tween philologists and musicologists, as mentioned above.
According to Lug’s outline the following types of (1) texts for perform-
ances should be distinguished: (a) medieval manuscipts; (b) modern editions;
(c) reconstructions of oral versions; (d) modernized or translated texts; (e-g)
different kinds of new versions of the text; and (h) instrumental variations.
All of these types can be found on LPs, CDs, and in concerts (and only some-
times in printed books), also modern and new versions for example by sev-
eral songwriters like the French ‘chansonnier’ Georges Brassens, the Italian
Performance of Medieval Texts 1050

‘cantautore’ [‘singer and author’] Angelo Branduardi, German ‘Liederm-

acher’ Franz Josef Degenhardt and Joanna, or Peter Blaikner (Austria: see
“Mittelalter-Lieder,” Mittelalter-Rezeption III [1988], 15–31). Types of (2) mel-
odies and music editions are: once again (a) medieval manuscripts and (b)
modern editions of them, but also (c) melodies which could be reconstructed
by means of contrafactura, or even (d) newly composed melodies in a so-
called ‘medieval style’: The later the authors, the more melodies have been
transmitted; contrafacturas are important for performances of the early Ger-
man minnesang, as often French melodies had been used by the authors (see
also above for the Carmina Burana); new melodies in a medieval manner
which are surprisingly good have been invented by the Austrian ensemble
“Dulamans Vröudenton.” A much disputed problem is (3) the rhythmic in-
terpretation: (a) either the usual measures of European music as they can be
found also in folklore was applied to monophonic songs; or (b) different free
rhythms (all syllables or words more or less with the same measure, or ac-
cording to the so-called natural flow of the language); or (c) the early mensu-
ral system of polyphonic music. The use of voices (4) may (a) follow the de-
scription of medieval treatises, or take still living oral traditions from
folklore or from outside of Europe as prototypes. Very important are (5) the
‘character’ and style of singing which are used as models: In the beginning it
was (a) the traditional ‘Lied’ (song); later (b) different kinds of folklore; (c) the
plainchant of the Churches (not only the Gregorian plainchant); (d) material
provided by modern musicethnology; and (e) even modern and pop-like
compositions like Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” The differences between various
modern singers and ensembles are sometimes striking, vacillating between a
rather dry academic style and a very driving and energetic approach accord-
ing to performances where the musicians are supposed to be like those of
wandering medieval joglars. A powerful impression (6) is achieved by how
and which instruments are used: Some ensembles (a) prefer a combination of
various instruments, which sometimes are less authentic, but deliver an
ancient, even exotic sound; others select only one or quite a few instruments
like a fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, small harp, flute, and percussion.
Quite recently (b) solo performances without instruments have become
favorites, not only using the model of liturgical music and religious songs,
but also of some medieval descriptions or the conservative style of the Ger-
man ‘Meistersinger’ (mastersingers), who never used instruments. Both
types can be very impressive, for example if you compare performances of the
pastourelle “Ich waz ein kint so wolgetan” (Carmina Burana, no. 185), sung
either by a man in a raucous, even wild manner (René Zosso and René Clem-
encic; or “Ensemble “Bärengässlin”), or – acccording to the words – by a solo
1051 Performance of Medieval Texts

female voice, half shamefully, half ironically (Ensemble “Dulamans Vröu-

denton”: Marie-Kathrin Melnitzky; see also Sigrid Neureiter-Lackner,
“Die Salzburger Spielleute ‘Dulamans Vröudenton’,” Medievalism 1990/ Mit-
telalter-Rezeption V, ed. Ulrich Müller and Kathleen Verduin, 1996,
420–27).

d) Modern ensembles of medieval songs: It is impossible, even unfair, to

try to establish an exhaustive and international catalog of ensembles which
present medieval songs. In the beginning of LP-recordings some companies
promoted medieval music: Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft (“Archiv-
Produktion”), Teldec (“Das Alte Werk”), EMI (“Reflexe”), Harmonia Mundi.
Probably the first extant recording of a medieval song was made by the French
chansonniere Yvette Guilbert (see above) in 1926 (Anonymous, “Pourquoi me
bat mon mari”: see Robert Lug, “Minnesang zwischen Markt und Museum,”
Übersetzte Zeit, 2001, 117–89, here 144–45, fn. 71). Early LPs were produced
by Hans-Joachim Moser (see: Martin Elste, “Mittelalter auf alten Schall-
platten,” Mittelalter-Rezeption III, 1988, 421–36), Safford Cape (“Ensemble
“Pro Musica Antiqua,” Brussels, 1953), and Karl Wolfram (in the 1960s).
In 1959, Thomas Binkley founded the “Studio der frühen Musik” (“Early
Music Quartet”) in Munich. His numerous recordings (EMI “Reflexe”) pres-
ented an international repertoire (trobadors, trouvères, Minnesang, Carmina
Burana, Oswald von Wolkenstein, such as: “Pop Ago,” 1973), and their vivid,
often Oriental style has been a paragon for several decades; his recording of
the love song “Under der linden” by Walther von der Vogelweide, sung by
Andrea van Ramm became a “classic” (Robert Lug, “Minnesang zwischen
Markt und Museum,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001 2001, 117–89, here 153) – today
this performance sounds over-polished, extremely suave, even misleading.
Binkley (d. 1995) was also a professor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
(a very influential institution until today); in 1979 he founded the “Early
Music Institute” at the University of Indiana (Bloomington). The recordings
of the “Early Music Consort London” (David Munro) have also been influen-
tial, and English ensembles, orchestras, and singers are dominating models
for all performances of ancient music with old instruments until today.
Since 1960, an impressive boom of medieval ensembles and recordings
can be observed which has never stopped. The names and labels sometimes
change, therefore searching the internet is certainly the best way to get more
or less reasonable information. The following survey of ensembles and
singers is taken from Robert Lug, “Minnesang zwischen Markt und Mu-
seum,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001, 117–89, which is here updated using my own ex-
periences:
Performance of Medieval Texts 1052

UK: “New London Consort” (Philip Beckett), “Gothic Voices” (Chris-

topher Page), “Martin Best Medieval Ensemble,” “Hilliard Ensemble” –
France: “Ensemble de Musique Ancienne Polyphonia Antiqua,” “Ensemble
Diabolus in musica,” “Ensemble Gille Binchois,” “Ensemble Perceval”
(Paris), “Ensemble Venance Fortunat,” “Ferrara Ensemble,” “Heliotrope,”
“La Compagnie Médiévale,” “Tre Fontane,” Jan-Maria Carlotti, Jean Luc
Madier, Gérard le Vot – Spain and Portugal: “Hesperion XX,” “Musica
Antigua” (Eduardo Paniagua), “Els Trobadors,” “Vozes Alfonsinas” – Czech
Republic: “Ars Cameralis,” “ella,” “Kvinterna” – “Kalenda Maya” (Nor-
way), “Joculatores Upsalienses” (Sweden) – “Schola Hungarica,” “Fraterni-
tas Musicorum” (Hungary) – “Danceries” (Japan) – “Musica Ficta de Buenos
Aires” (Argentina) – US: Esther Lamandier, Anne Azéma, “The Boston
Camerata” (Joel Cohen), “Folger Consort” – Austria: “Bärengässlin” (Mi-
chael Korth, Johannes Heimrath), “Clemencic Consort” (René Clemencic),
“Dulamans Vröudenton” (Thomas Schallaböck, Marie-Kathrin Melnitzky,
Peter Giesmann, Andreas Gutenthaler), “Ensemble Lyra,” “Les Menestrels,”
“Paul Hofhaimer Consort” (Michael Seywald), “Tandaradrei,” “Unicorn”
(Michael Posch), Eberhard Kummer – Switzerland: “Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis” – Germany: “Cantus Coelln,” “Capella Antiqua Munich” (Kurt
Ruhland), “Capella Antiqua Bambergiensis,” “Collage – Forum für Frühe
Musik Berlin,” “Condwiramurs,” “Ensemble Alta Musica,” “Ensemble für
Frühe Musik Augsburg,” “Ensemble Ony Wytars,” “Estampie,” “I Ciarlat-
ani,” “Minnesangs Fruehling,” “musica mensurata,” “Sarband” (Vladimir
Iwanoff), “Sequentia” (Barbara Thornton/ Benjamin Bagby; the ensemble
began to perform in Germany), “Tourdion,” “Trecento” (Mark Lewon,
Knud Seckel), “Ulsamer Collegium,” “eAm” (= Ensemble Alte Musik),
Hans Hegner, Knud Seckel, Walter Vogel/ Angela Sey (Walther von der
Vogelweide: Würzburg). Further, with a different and more popular style:
“Bluomenrot,” “Corvus Corax,” “Die Ungelichen,” “Freiburger Spielleyt,”
“Fundevogel,” “Kurzweyl,” “Lismore,” “Löffelstilzchen,” “Poeta Magica,”
“spielleut,” “Tanzwut,” “Vogelfrey,” “Vrouwenheide,” “Wildwuchs,” “Wün-
nespil,” Frank Wunderlich, Michael Hoffkamp.
The repertoires, styles, and audiences of these ensembles are very differ-
ent: Some of them present more or less original medieval music, others
perform songs and dances just with a medieval ‘feeling,’ not only in concerts,
but increasingly at so-called ‘medieval markets’ or ‘medieval festivals,’
which have recently become very popular. The repertoires contain music
from religious songs drawn from ‘old,’ sometimes pseudo-ancient and pseu-
do-medieval folklore, and also music combined with world-music, and even
jazz: It must be stressed that such performances more or less mislead the
1053 Performance of Medieval Texts

audience and have nothing to do with authentic performances of medieval

music.
One German company is primarily dedicated to medieval music of
all types, especially to modern joglaresque music: Verlag der Spielleute
(Reichelsheim; www.spielleute.de). In 2007 they published a very special
sample: songs of Walther von der Vogelweide, performed by nearly twenty
different singers and ensembles (Hans Hegner, Michael Hoffkamp, Frank
Wunderlich, “Dulamans Vröudenton” [led by Thomas Schallaböck], “Anno
Domini,” Violetta, “Musiktheater Dingo,” Knud Seckel, “Poeta Magica,”
Jochen Faulhammer, Marcus van Langen, “Ioculatores,” “Ougenweide,”
produced by Lothar Jahn). There are also several LPs and CDs which present
recited MHG texts (of which the melodies are not transmitted), the most re-
cent ones published by “Chaucer Studio” (see below), spoken by Albrecht
Classen (2001), and Ulrich Müller, Margarete Springeth, and Ruth Weichsel-
baumer (2005).
Since the late 1960s, medieval texts have been combined with modern
rock music (‘Gothic rock’): in Germany above all by the Ensemble “Ougen-
weide,” which became extremely popular among students, later on record-
ings of “Elster Silberflug,” and Marcus van Langen, as well as ‘medieval pop’
of groups like “Dead Can Dance” (Australia) and “Medieval Babes” (UK):
Cross-over and ‘World Music’ finally had arrived in the Middle Ages.

e) Medieval epics: Heroic poetry is an important part of oral history: Heroic

poetry of all times and of all parts of the world has been orally transmitted, at
least originally. A singer, sometimes accompanied by one or several instru-
mentalists, tells his story by singing (also by reciting) in front of an audience.
Such performances are depicted already in Homer’s Odyssey, in the Old Eng-
lish Beowulf, and also in medieval heroic epics. In the 1940s, Milman Parry
and Albert Lord collected and recorded heroic songs (ballads and epics) in
the southern parts of Serbia; their oral-poetry-theory stressed that those
epics, like in Homeric times, were created by the singers (“guslars”) just in
the moment of the performance by using tradition formulas (Albert B. Lord,
The Singer of Tales, 1960; John Miles Foley, The Theory of Oral Composition: His-
tory and Methodology, 1988; Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance
and Social Context, 1992; Albert B. Lord, Epic Singers and Oral Tradition, 1995;
see also John Miles Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance, 1995). See also the
entry on Heroic Epics in this Handbook.
Until today the singing of heroic tales and epics can be found primarily
in the Arabic countries, in central Africa, or in central Asia, and even, as relics
from former times, in some remote regions of the Balkan. In the Middle Ages
Performance of Medieval Texts 1054

heroic epics, mostly conceived in stanzas (with regular numbers of verses) or

“laisses” in Northern France (with changing numbers of rhyming verses),
certainly were presented by singers, for example: Scandinavian heroic songs
(like the Edda ballads; dance ballads at the Feroese islands, sung till today),
French heroic epics (“chansons de geste”). In the 15th century, the German
poet Michel Beheim (Buch von den Wienern, Book of the Viennese) explicitely
wrote at the beginning of his autograph that such epics were still sung or re-
cited.
Unfortunately most melodies of medieval epics have not be transmitted;
but there are two exceptions: the melodies of the Feroese dance ballads, and
several melodies of MHG heroic epics (epics in stanzas). Karl (Heinrich)
Bertau, Rudolf Stephan, and Ewald Jammers were the first scholars to
discuss the singing of medieval epics in detail (“Zum sanglichen Vortrag
mhd. strophischer Epen,” ZfdA 87 [1956/1957]: 253–70; see also Karl Ber-
tau, “Epenrezitation im deutschen Mittelalter,” Etudes germaniques 20
[1965]: 1–17; Ewald Jammers, several essays in Schrift, Ordnung, Gestalt: Ges-
ammelte Aufsätze zur älteren Musikgeschichte, 1969). Siegfried Beyschlag
(“Langzeilen-Melodien,” ZfdA 93 [1964]: 157–76), and Horst Brunner pres-
ented altogether eight epic melodies which survived or can be reconstructed
(“Epenmelodien,” Formen mittelalterlicher Literatur: Festschrift für Siegfried
Beyschlag zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Otmar Werner and Bernd Naumann,
1970, 149–78; Id., “Strukturprobleme der Epenmelodien,” Deutsche Helden-
epik in Südtirol, ed. Egon Kühebacher, in cooperation with K. H. Vigl,
1979, 300–28; see also Walter Lipphardt, “Epische Liedweisen des Mittel-
alters in schriftlicher Überlieferung,” Deutsche Heldenepik in Südtirol 1979
[see above], 275–99). The melody of the most important MHG heroic epic,
the Nibelungenlied, can very probably be reconstructed (Siegfried Beyschlag
1964 [see above]; Ulrich Müller, “Überlegungen und Versuche zur Melodie
des ‘Nibelungenliedes,’ zur Kürenberger-Strophe und zur sog. ‘Elegie’
Walthers von der Vogelweide,” Zur gesellschaftlichen Funktionalität mittelalter-
licher deutscher Literatur, 1984; Id., “Das Nibelungenlied: Ein Sangversepos.
Mit einem Postscriptum über Nibelungen-Rezeptionen 1990,” ‘Waz sider do
geschach’. American-German Studies on the Nibelungenlied. Text and Reception. With
Bibliography 1980–1990/91, ed. Werner Wunderlich and Ulrich Müller,
with the assistance of Detlev Scholz, 1992, 249–65). Nevertheless most
philologists still neglect the musical part of this poetry. Today we are used to
read epics, novels, and tales, not to listen to them. Only three modern musi-
cians have tried to reconstruct the singing of medieval epics: Benjamin
Bagby (“‘Beowulf,’ the ‘Edda,’ and the Performance of Medieval Epic: Notes
from the Workshop of a Reconstructed ‘Singer of Tales’,” Performing Medieval
1055 Performance of Medieval Texts

Narrative, ed. Evelyn Birge Vitz, Nancy Freeman Regaldo, and Marilyn
Lawrence, 2005, 181–92), Reinhold Wiedenmann (Titurel [CD], Wart-
burgkrieg, Winsbecke), and above all the Austrian Eberhard Kummer (Nibelun-
genlied, Laurin, Eckenlied, Virginal, Michel Beheim’s Book of the Viennese [all
on CD] – Wiedenmann and Kummer mostly in scholarly cooperation with
Ulrich Müller and Margarete Springeth (see Ulrich Müller, “Auf-
führungsversuche zur mittelhochdeutschen Sangvers-Epik: “Titurel,”
“Wartburgkrieg,” “Winsbecke” – und “Parzival.” Ein Erfahrungsbericht
über die Zusammenarbeitarbeit mit den Musikern Reinhold Wiedenmann
und Osvaldo Parisi,” ‘Von wyßheit würt der mensch geert …’, ed. Ingrid Kühn
and Gotthard Lerchner, 1993, 87–103; Id., “Nibelungenlied, Heldenepik,
höfische Epik – gesungen: Die Aufführungsversuche des Eberhard
Kummer,” Gedenkschrift für Alfred Ebenbauer, ed. Florian Kragl, and
Johannes Keller [2009]. In 2007, a complete recording of the Nibelungenlied,
performed and sung by Eberhard Kummer, was made by the Austrian
Academy of Sciences in Vienna, which was one year later published by the
“Chaucer Studio” on two MP3-CDs (duration roughly 20 hours). The
“Chaucer Studios” is a non-profit organization at Brigham University
(Provo, Utah), which has been publishing recordings on tapes and CDs for
many years, primarily of Old English and Middle English texts.
There are also some reasons to assume that courtly romances by authors
like Chrétien de Troyes or Wolfram von Eschenbach could have been pres-
ented by a singer (Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Ro-
mance, 1999). The question remains: How might it have been done? Perhaps
in the style of lectures (“lectiones”) used in medieval monasteries, as it is pro-
posed by Ewald Jammers (see above). Benjamin Bagby, Reinhold Wieden-
mann, and Eberhard Kummer tried to sing such texts, but until today there
are only recordings of some small excerpts (Eberhard Kummer; “Unicorn”).
An inspiring monograph about “Performance in Early French Romances”
was written by Evelyn Birge Vitz (see also above) (1999); she is also the co-
editor of collected articles about “Performing Medieval Epics,” and co-direc-
tor of an research project at the NYU (New York University: www.nyu.edu/
humanities.council/workshops/storytelling).
There have been many modern efforts to perform and record medieval
texts, lyrics, and epics. But it is still, at least partly, a hidden treasure, and ne-
glected by the majority of scholars.
Pharmacy 1056

Select Bibliography
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 20 vols. (London
et al.: McMillan, 1980, several reprints; paperback ed. 1995); Musik in Geschichte und
Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2nd ed. Ludwig Finscher, 21 vols. with
supplements (Kassel, Weimar, et al.: Bärenreiter and Metzler, 1994 sqq.); Christopher
Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France
1100–1300 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986); Evelyn
Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
1999); Übersetzte Zeit: Das Mittelalter und die Musik der Gegenwart, ed. Wolfgang Gratzer
and Hartmut Möller (Hofheim/Ts.: Wolke, 2001); Robert Lug, “Minnesang:
Zwischen Markt und Museum,” Übersetzte Zeit, 2001 (see above), 117–89; Annette
Kreutziger-Herr, Ein Traum vom Mittelalter: Die Wiederentdeckung mittelalterlicher
Musik in der Neuzeit (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2003); Evelyn Birge Vitz,
Nancy Freeman Regalado, and Marilyn Lawrence, ed., Performing Medieval Nar-
rative (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005).

Ulrich Müller

Pharmacy

A. Periodization
According to the traditional historiography, pharmacy was not an indepen-
dent activity in antiquity, but was included in medicine. It supposedly
became an independent profession and, hence, also a discipline during the
Middle Ages, specifically in the Arabo-Islamic world (see, for example, Sami
Hamarneh, “The Rise of Professional Pharmacy in Islam,” Medical History 6
[1962]: 59–63; Id., “The Climax of Medieval Arabic Professional Pharmacy,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42 [1968]: 450–61; Glenn Sonnedecker,
Kremer and Urdang’s History of Pharmacy, 1963, 27; Sami K. Hamarneh, “De-
velopment of Pharmacy, Ancient Times to Middle Ages,” Studies in History of
Medicine 6 [1982]: 37–42; and, more recently, Rudolf Schmitz, Geschichte der
Pharmazie, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, 1998,
265–73; see also Rhadi Jazi, “Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire de la phar-
macie arabe: Organisation de la profession pharmaceutique, les pharmaco-
pées, la dispensation du médicament,” Medicina nei Secoli 7 [1995]: 191–215).
In the West, the so-called Constitutions of Melfi (identified as Liber Augusta-
lis), promulgated between 1231 and 1240 by Frederick II von Hohenstaufen
(1194–1250), separated the medical and pharmaceutical professions, and
regulated the exercise of the latter, as well as the education in the field, mak-
1057 Pharmacy

ing it necessary for aspirant pharmacists to attend a university training (see

the titles 46 and 47 in Conrad von Hermann, Thea von der Lieck-buyken,
and Wolfgang Wagner, Die Konstitutionen Friedrichs II. von Hohenstaufen für
sein Königreich Sizilien nach einer lateinischen Handschrift des 13. Jahrhunderts he-
rausgegeben und übersetzt, 1973; English trans.: James M. Powell, Liber Augus-
talis, or Constitution of Melfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingom of
Sicily in 1231, 1971. For a specific study, see Wolfgang-Hagen Hein, and Kurt
Sappert, Die Medizinalordnung Friedrich II.: Eine pharmaziehistorische Studie,
1957, especially 48–57 for the Latin text and a German trans.; and Sonne-
decker, Kremer and Urdang’s History … [above], 468–69, for an English trans.
For an analysis, see Id., ibid., 34–5; Clemens Stoll, Apotheker und Gesetzge-
bung: Ein Beitrag zur rechtsgeschichtlichen Entwicklung des Apothekerberufes in Eu-
ropa, 1991; more recently: Rosalia Giovaniello, “La farmacologia medio-
evale, regolamentazione dell’arte farmaceutica di Federico II,” Atti e Memorie
dell’Accademia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 14 [1997]: 29–39; and Ortensio
Zecchino, Medicina e sanità nelle Costituzioni di Federico II di Svevia (1231), 2002).
According to the same historiography, an attempt was made in the West
from the late 15th century to bring to an end the pharmaceutical practices in-
herited from the Middle Ages. The driving force was the Ferrarese humanist
physician Nicolao Leoniceno (1428–1524), who published the booklet
usually identified as De Plinii et aliorum in medicina erroribus (Ferrara, 1492; sev-
eral re-editions, by Leoniceno or posthumous, in his works or in other vol-
umes) in which he denounced the mistakes of the literature on materia
medica (the natural products of vegetal, animal and mineral origin used as
ingredients for the preparation of medicines) used at that time, particularly
the Naturalis Historia by Pliny (23/24–79 C.E.) and the many works of Arabo-
Islamic physicians and therapists known in the West thanks to their trans-
lations into Latin from the end of the 11th century on. To replace these works,
Leoniceno proposed to return to Greek pharmacy, more specifically to the
most important encyclopedia of materia medica of classical Antiquity, De ma-
teria medica by Dioscorides (1st c. C.E.) (below) (from the abundant literature
on Leoniceno and his action, see, for example, Arturo Castiglioni, “The
School of Ferrara and the Controversy on Pliny,” Science, Medicine, and History:
Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice written in Honour
of C. Singer, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood, 2 vols., 1953, vol. 1, 269–79; see
also below). Leoniceno’s criticism of Pliny’s encyclopedia provoked a harsh
polemic (see principally Pandolfo Collenuccio, Pliniana defensio adversus
Nicolai Leoniceni accusationem [1493]; the polemic was studied as early as
1911–1916 by Edward C. Streeter, “Leoniceno and the School of Ferrara,”
Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 1 [1911–1916]: 18–22; more
Pharmacy 1058

recently, see, for example, Roger K. French, “Pliny and Renaissance Medi-
cine,” Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources, and Influence,
ed. Roger K. French, and Frank Greenaway, 1986, 252–81), which ended
after the publication (editio princeps) of Dioscorides’s Greek text in 1499 by the
printer, humanist and publisher Aldo Manuzio (1449–1515), behind which
Leoniceno probably was (on Leoniceno’s activity, see a recent synthesis in
Alain Touwaide, “Leoniceno,” New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. No-
retta Koertge, 2008, vol. 4, 264–67; for an in-depth study of Leoniceno’s
scientific activity based on his library, see Daniela Mugnai Carrara, La bib-
lioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno tra Aristotele e Galeno. Cultura e libri di un medico umani-
sta, 1991).
Almost at the same time, the city council in Florence requested a com-
mission of physicians to review the formulas for medicines prepared by phar-
macists and available on the market at that time. The reason officially put
forth was that many citizens had complained to have been poisoned or in-
jured by medicines bought on the market, when the cases were not worse and
the patients died. Pharmacists were accused of ignorance (mainly because
they did not use the right plants, which they were accused to not know). The
commission of physicians reviewed the formulas in the pharmacies, evalu-
ated them, selected the most reliable and efficacious, and wrote them down.
The collection of selected formulas was published in 1499 (the year 1498 in
the volume is based on the Florentine calendar; see Alfons Lutz below) under
the title Nuovo Receptario composto dal famosissimo chollegio degli eximii doctori della
rte et medicina della inclita cipta di firenze … impresso Nella inclyta Cipta di Firenze
per la compagnia del Dragho adi xxi di Gennaio MDCCCCLXXXXVIII (facsimile re-
production: Ricettario fiorentino 1498: Facsimile dell’esemplare Palatino E.6.1.27
della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze con una nota di Luigi Crocetti, 1968; another
facsimile ed. was published in 1992 by the Institut Mèdico-farmacèutic de
Catalunya), and had to be circulated among pharmacists (on the Receptario,
see Alfons Lutz, “Studien über die pharmazeutische Inkunabel ‘Nuovo
receptario’ von Florenz,” Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Internationalen
Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen Pharma-
ziegeschichtlichen Kongresses in Heidelberg vom 7.–9. Oktober 1957, ed. Georg
Edmund Dann, 1958, 113–28). The Receptario is usually considered by his-
torians of pharmacy as the first pharmacopoeia (in this sense, see Glenn Son-
nedecker, “The Founding Period of the US Pharmacopoeia. 1. European
Antecedents,” Pharmacy in History 35 [1993]: 149–200), even though this title
is claimed for the formulary of Valencia (see Pedro Vernia, La farmacopea val-
enciana, 1981; Id., Historia de la farmacia Valenciana, siglos XII al XVIII, 1990, and
Id., Valencia, cuna de las farmacopoeas oficiales españolas, 1998).
1059 Pharmacy

During the first half of the 16th century, a student of Leoniceno, Antonio
Musa Brasavola (1500–1555), inspected the apothecaries of his time in order
to inventory and check the medicines they were preparing, and to ascertain
their composition and efficacy. As a result, he published a series of volumes
listing the formulas by types (listed here in chronological order of publi-
cation): Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum, quorum in officinis usus
est …, 1536; Examen omnium syroporum, quorum publicus usus est …, 1538; Ex-
amen omnium catapotiorum, vel pilularum, quarum apud pharmacopolas usus est …,
1543; Examen omnium electuariorum pulverum et confectionum, catharcticorum …,
1548; Examen omnium trochiscorum, unguentorum, ceratorum, emplastorum, cata-
plasmatum, et collyriorum, quorum apud Ferrarienses pharmacopolas usus est …,
1551; and Examen omnium loch, id est linctuum, suffuf, id est pulerum, aquarum,
decoctionum, oleorum quorum apud Ferrarienses pharmacopolas usus est …, 1553.
Leoniceno’s influence expanded beyond the Alps and reached Germany,
where it is believed to have contributed to the development of the new treat-
ises of pharmaceutical botany (the so-called herbals) published from 1530
on (Luigi Samoggia, Le ripercussioni in Germania dell’indirizzo filologico-medico
leoniceniano della scuola ferrarese per opera di Leonardo Fuchs, 1964). Furthermore,
Leonhard Fuchs (1501–1566) published in 1530 a work whose title recalls
Leoniceno, De Plinii et aliorum medicorum in medicina erroribus and is entitled Er-
rata recentiorum medicorum LX numero, adjectis eorundem confutationibus, in studio-
sorum gratian …, 1530, with an expanded edition in 1535 under the title Para-
doxorum medicinae libri tres, in quibus sane multa a nemine hactenus prodita, Arabum
aetatisque nostrae medicorum errata non tantum indicantur, sed & probatissimorum
autorum scriptis, firmissimisque rationibus ac argumentis confutantur …
Such clear-cut periodization of the history of pharmacy, with a well
defined time frame of the medieval period, needs to be revised. In antiquity,
indeed, there were root-cutters and providers of raw material for the prep-
aration of medicines (see for example, Theophrastus, Historia plantarum,
Book IX), and also preparers of medicines (Jukka Korpela, Das Medizinper-
sonal im antiken Rom, 1987, and Id., “Aromatarii, Pharmacopolae, Thurarii et ce-
teri: Zur Sozialgeschichte Roms,” Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context.
Papers Read at the Congress Held at Leiden University [13–15 april 1992], ed. Philip
van der Eijk, Hermann F. J. Horstmanshoff, and Piet H. Schrijvers,
2 vols., 1995, vol. 1, 101–18; more recently: Evelyne Samama, “Thaumato-
poioi pharmakopôlai: La singulière image des préparateurs et vendeurs de re-
mèdes dans les textes grecs,” Pharmacopoles et apothicaires: Les ‘pharmaciens’ de
l’Antiquité au Grand Siècle, ed. Franck Collard, and Evelyne Samama, 2006,
7–27). This was particularly the case after the development of multi-ingredi-
ent medicines (especially the theriac) from the 1st century B.C.E./C.E. (on this
Pharmacy 1060

pharmaceutical strategy, see Gilbert Watson, Theriac and Mithridatum:

A Study in Therapeutics, 1966). Also, there certainly was a pharmaceutical
knowledge in classical antiquity. The fundamental work in the field, was
Dioscorides, De materia medica (ed. of the Greek text by Max Wellmann,
Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei, De materia medica libri quinque, 3 vols., 1906–1914
[rpt. 1958]. For an English trans., see the 17th-c. version by John Goodyer
[The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides Illustrated by a Byzantine A.D. 512, Englished by John
Goodyer A.D. 1655. Edited and first Printed A.D. 1933 by Robert T. Gunther, 1934,
with several reprints the most recent of which was published in 1968], can
now be replaced with that by Lilly Y. Beck, De materia medica by Pedanius Dios-
corides, 2005. For a Spanish trans., see: Dioscórides, Plantas y remedios medicinales
(De materia medica). Introducción, traducción y notas de Manuela García
Valdés, 2 vols., 1997. The German trans. made by Julius Berendes [Des Pe-
danios Dioskurides aus Anazarbos Arzneimittellehre in fünf Büchern. Übersetzt und
mit Erklärungen versehen, 1902, with several reprints, the most recent of which
was published in 1988] on the basis of the 1829 edition of the Greek text
by Kurt Sprengel [1766–1833] can be replaced now with Max Aufmesser,
Pedanius Dioscurides aus Anazarba: Fünf Bücher über die Heilkunde, 2002, to be
complemented with Max Aufmesser, Etymologische und wortgeschichtliche Er-
läuterungen zu De materia medica des Pedanius Dioscurides, 2000. No comprehen-
sive study of De materia medica was published until the last decades of the
20th century: John M. Riddle, Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine, 1985, and,
more recently: Alain Touwaide, “La botanique entre science et culture au
Ier siècle de notre ère,” Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in
der Antike, vol. 1: Biologie, ed. Georg Wöhrle, 1999, 219–52. On Dioscorides,
see the recent synthesis by Alain Touwaide, “Pedanius Dioscorides,” Brill’s
New Pauly, vol. 10, 2007, 670–672). In addition, one could mention the vari-
ous pharmaceutical treatises by Galen (129–after [?] 216 C.E.): De compositione
medicamentorum secundum locos and per genera, as well as De antidotis (ed. by
Karl Gottlieb Kühn, Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, vol. 12, 1826, 378–1007, and
vol. 13, 1827, 1–361; vol. 13, 1827, 362–1058; and vol. 14, 1827, 1–209,
respectively. On Galen, see recently: Vivian Nutton, “Galen of Pergamum,”
Brill’s New Pauly, vol. 5, 2004, 654–61). Nevertheless, such pharmaceutical
knowledge did not necessarily translate into a social status of pharmacists
identified as such.
On the other hand, Leoniceno’s action did not necessarily bring an end
to the traditional, that is, medieval, practice of pharmacy, as did not either
the Receptario fiorentino and Brasavola’s publications, even though Leoniceno
contributed greatly to the renewal of pharmaceutical botany. The arrival of
plants and medicines from the New World did not either transform substan-
1061 Pharmacy

tially the practice of pharmacy – and not even the approach to therapeutics –
as the new drugs and medicines were absorbed in the contemporary system
instead of provoking its revision.
Actually, traditional pharmaceutical practice – that is, the practice of
antiquity transmitted to the Middle Ages – was largely pursued until late
in the Western world: until the 19th century according to a traditional inter-
pretation, but perhaps as late as the early 20th century. This in spite of the
development of new medicines of a pre-chemical nature by Paracelsus
(1493–1541) (in fact Philip von Hohenheim, or Philippus Theophrastus Au-
reolus Bombastus von Hohenheim), his followers and others, and in spite of
the fact that the actual therapeutic action of plants became increasingly
better known and, hence, the composition of medicines was gradually trans-
formed. After the discovery by the English physician William Withering
(1741–1799) that a medicine used by a traditional healer to treat dropsy owed
its efficacy to digitalis, medicines traditionally prescribed by healers were
analyzed, and the plants responsible for their action were identified, as were
also their active principles thanks to the development of chemical methods
at that time. Even though the form of medicines changed dramatically (in-
stead of infusions, decoctions or any other form of the plants themselves,
medicines were crystallized products and other chemical extracts), the prac-
tice of pharmacy did not change substantially, and even at such a point that,
late in the 19th century, Friedrich August Fluckiger (1828–1894) and Dan-
iel Hanbury (1825–1875) published a manual of therapeutics which, in
fact, was mainly devoted to the plants traditionally used for the preparation
of medicines: Pharmacographia: A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin
Met with in Great Britain and British India, 1874 (in this sense, see also Henry E.
Sigerist, “The Latin Medical Literature of the Early Middle Ages,” Journal of
the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 13 [1958]: 127–46; particularly 127:
“Until the 19th century ancient medicine was still alive”). It was Paul Ehr-
lich (1854–1915) in the early 20th century, who proposed a new approach to
pharmaceuticals that put an end to the practice inherited from the most re-
mote past and had continued to his time under one or another form.
Since no clear-cut periodization of pharmacy can be done, from either
a conceptual or a practical viewpoint, the period of medieval pharmacy has to
be defined conventionally. The foundation of Constantinople provides an
easy and frequently accepted starting point (in the same sense, Sigerist, The
Latin Medical Literature … [above], 130: “The terminus post quem is about the
beginning of the 4th century”), and the period from 1492 to 1530, during
which were published the first works that submitted the practice of phar-
macy of that time to a critical analysis, seems to be an appropriate terminus
Pharmacy 1062

ante quem (on this question of periodization in the history of pharmacy, see
Die Probleme der Periodisierung in der Pharmaziegeschichte. Die “Georg-Urdang-Ge-
dächtnistagung” im August 1960 mit dem Wortlaut der Vorträge von Otto Bessler, ed.
Wolfgang Schneider, 1962).

B. Creation and Organization of the History of Pharmacy

Pharmacy became a field of historical enquiry almost as the same time as
traditional practice was replaced by new approaches. Although some precur-
sory essays were published as early as mid-19th century (see, for example,
Paul Antoine Cap [1788–1877], Histoire de la pharmacie et de la matière médicale
depuis les temps les plus reculés, tome 1, fascicule 1, 1850), the founding works
were not published until the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by German-
speaking scholars. Julius Berendes (1837–1914) came first with Die
Pharmacie bei den alten Kulturvölkern: Historisch-kritische Studien, 2 vols., 1891
(rpt. 1989), followed by Das Apothekenwesen, seine Entstehung und geschichtliche
Entwicklung bis zum XX. Jahrhundert, 1907 (rpt. 1967). He also translated into
German several classical and Byzantine pharmaceutical and medical works:
Dioscorides, De materia medica (Des Pedanios Dioskurides aus Anazarbos Arzneimit-
tellehre … [above]); the two treatises on venoms and on poisons ascribed to Dios-
corides (“I. Des Pedanios Dioskurides Schrift über die Gifte und Gegengifte –
II. Des Pedanios Dioskurides Schrift über die giftigen Tiere und den tollen
Hund,” Apotheker Zeitung 20 [1905]: 908–11, 918, 926–28, 933–35, 945–46,
952–54); the treatise on simple medicines attributed to Dioscorides (“Die Haus-
mittel des Pedanios Dioskurides, übersetzt und mit Erklärungen versehen,”
Janus 12 [1907]: 10–33, 79–102, 140–63, 203–24, 268–92, 340–50, 401–12),
and Paul of Egina (“Des Paulos von Aegina Abriss der gesammten Medizin in
sieben Büchern, übersetzt und mit Erklärungen versehen,” Janus 13 [1908]:
417–32, 515–31, 538–600, 654–69; 14 [1909]: 33–49, 124–39, 602–24,
689–707, 754–74; 15 [1910]: 9–40, 73–111, 143–73, 229–60, 462–83,
534–62, 622–49; 16 [1911]: 153–68, 381–89, 492–511, 548–65; 17 [1912]:
20–44, 93–116, 233–61, 316–47, 368–99, 448–79, 557–72, 593–609;
18 [1913]: 24–55, 121–51, 210–14, 282–97, 380–401; this translation
was further reproduced in a monographic form under a new title: Paulos’ von
Aegina des besten Arztes, Sieben Bücher übersetzt und mit Erläuterungen versehen,
1914). During the period covered by Berendes’s activity, Hermann Sche-
lenz (1848–1922) published the first comprehensive history of pharmacy
(Geschichte der Pharmazie, 1904 [rpt. 1962]) and, in 1910 the Swiss pharmacol-
ogist Alexander Tschirch (1856–1939) published in the second volume
(1910) of his monumental and epoch-making Handbuch der Pharmakognosie,
4 vols., 1909–1925, a series of in-depth analyses of ancient, medieval, and
1063 Pharmacy

Renaissance pharmaceutical treatises, including the list, identification, and

therapeutic uses of medicinal plants and other pharmaceuticals. A bit later,
but not less important and significant, the toxicologist Louis Lewin
(1850–1929) published his still useful history of toxicology (Die Gifte in der
Weltgeschichte: Toxikologische, allgemeinverständliche Untersuchungen der histori-
schen Quellen, 1920).
Once the history of pharmacy had become a scientific discipline and was
recognized, numerous publications came to light. All such volumes (be they
general or devoted to a specific area) included more or less detailed in-
formation on the Middle Ages. See, in chronological order of publication:
Louis Reutter de Rosemont, Histoire de la pharmacie à travers les âges, 2 vols.,
1931; Edward Kremers, and Georg Urdang, History of Pharmacy: A Guide
and a Survey, 1940 (with a reedition in 1951); Patrice Boussel, Histoire illustrée
de la pharmacie, 1949; Glenn Sonnedecker, Kremers and Urdang’s History …
(above) (with several reeditions); René Fabre, and Georges Dillemann, His-
toire de la pharmacie, 1963; Lydia Mez-mangold, De l’histoire du médicament,
1971; Louis Dulieu, La pharmacie à Montpellier de ses origines à nos jours, 1973;
Georg Edmund Dann, Einführung in die Pharmaziegeschichte, 1975; Patrice
Boussel, and Henri Bonnemain, Histoire de la pharmacie, ou 7000 ans pour
soigner l’homme, 1977; Leo Vandewiele, Geschiedenis van de farmacie in België
met een inleiding tot de algemene geschiedenis van de farmacie, 1981; Jean-François
Angenot, La pharmacie et l’art de guérir au pays de Liège des origines à nos jours,
1983; Jean-Claude Dousset, Histoire des médicaments des origines à nos jours,
1985; David L. Cowen, and William H. Helfand, Pharmacy: An Illustrated
History, 1990; Leonardo Colapinto, and Giacomo Leopardi, L’arte degli
speziali italiani, 1991; Georges Dillemann, Henri Bonnemain, and André
Boucherle, La pharmacie française: Ses origines, son histoire, son évolution, 1992;
Franco Voltaggio, L’arte della guarigione nelle culture umane, 1992. However,
the history of medieval pharmacy and medicines became a specific object of
research only in recent times. This transformation is probably best repre-
sented by such work as Jean-Pierre Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament en Médi-
terranée occidentale (XIIIe–XVIe siècles), 1999.
Also, the history of pharmacy became quickly organized with national
and international societies, scientific journals, research institutes, teaching
programs, and scientific prizes. As early as 1913 the first national society for
the history of pharmacy was created in France (Henri Bonnemain, “La So-
ciété d’Histoire de la Pharmacie, sa création, son développement, ses acti-
vités,” Die Vorträge des Internationalen Pharmaziehistorischen Kongresses Innsbruck
1977, ed. Kurt Ganzinger, 1979, 81–90), in 1926 an international society
(which regroups the several national societies) was created, and in 1952 the
Pharmacy 1064

Académie Internationale d’Histoire de la Pharmacie was founded (as a scien-

tific society whose members are elected on the basis of their contribution to
the field). Among the many national societies currently active, one could
mention here, in addition to the French society (above), the Deutsche Gesell-
schaft für die Geschichte der Pharmazie, the Cercle Benelux d’Histoire de la
Pharmacie, the Accademia Italiana per la Storia della Farmacia (which is the
only national society identified as an academy), the Société Suisse d’Histoire
de la Pharmacie, and the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy
founded in 1941 by George Urdang (1882–1960) and hosted in the School
of Pharmacy of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Many of these societies
organize periodical meetings (monthly, for example, for the French society,
quarterly for the Cercle Benelux, and yearly for the Swiss society) and the
International Society holds every other year (odd numbers) a large meeting,
the proceedings of which have been published for years in the form of a series
under the standardized title Die Vorträge des Internationalen Pharmaziehisto-
rischen Kongresses … (with the name of the place and the dates of the confer-
ence), in the series Veröffentlichungen der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Ge-
schichte der Pharmazie e. V. (with a first series and a Neue Folge). Now, however,
such proceedings are usually published by the institution that organizes the
conference.
Several journals of history of pharmacy are published, mainly by the
national societies. The oldest is the French Revue d’Histoire de la Pharmacie. One
could mention also Pharmacy in History (published by the American Institute
for the History of Pharmacy), the Atti e Memorie della Accademia Italiana di Storia
della Farmacia, the Pharmaceutical Historian (published by the British Society
for the History of Pharmacy), and the Bulletin du Cercle Benelux d’Histoire de la
Pharmacie. Journals of history of science with a broader scope (chronological
or disciplinary) include the history of pharmacy in the range of topics they
are interested in. This is particularly the case of Sudhoffs Archiv, where the his-
tory of medieval pharmacy has been traditionally present. Also, there are
some series specifically devoted to the publication of monographs in the field
of history of pharmacy: the Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie
(which published mainly the Ph.D. theses of graduate students of the insti-
tute in Marburg [Germany] [below]), the Publications de la Société Suisse d’His-
toire de la Pharmacie, the Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen, and the
Würzburger medizinhistorische Forschungen (published by the institute in
Würzburg, where medieval medicine and pharmacy have been particularly
represented in the last decades of the 20th century).
After the history of pharmacy expanded in an unprecedented way in the
decades 1960–1970 (with the creation of several university chairs, research
1065 Pharmacy

institutes, and, more recently, even compulsory courses in the pharmaceuti-

cal curriculum), it is currently undergoing a reduction. The centers most
interested in the medieval period were those of Marburg (particularly under
the leadership of Fritz Krafft and with the collaboration of Peter Dilg),
and Würzburg (under the direction of Gundolf Keil), which edited the series
mentioned above (for the history of the Marburg Institute, for example,
see 25 Jahre Institut für Geschichte der Pharmazie der Philipps-Universität Marburg/
Lahn, 1965–1990: ein Bericht, ed. Fritz Krafft and Ulrich Stoll, 1990). Two
important centers were also the Institute for the History of Arabic Science
in Aleppo (Syria) and the Hamdard Foundation in Karachi (India), which
publish the Journal for the History of Arabic Science and Hamdard Medicus, respect-
ively. New centers are currently emerging, as, for example, the Institute for
the History of Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Istanbul
(Faculty of Cerrahpaşa), where much research is done on the Seldjuk and
Ottoman worlds during the 13th to 15th century under the direction of Nil
Sari, including an atelier of miniature painting where artists pursue the ac-
tivity of the late Süheyl Ünver (1898–1986) and reproduce the illustrations
of medieval manuscripts preserved in Turkish collections, and the Depart-
ment of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithso-
nian Institution in Washington, DC (U.S.A.).
Several professional historians worldwide specialized in medieval phar-
macy, pharmaceutical botany, and such other related topics as toxicology,
particularly Martin Levey (1913–1970), Jerry Stannard (1926–1988), and
John Riddle in the USA; Pang. G. Kritikos, and Skevos Philianos in
Greece; Sami K. Harmaneh, who has been in the USA, Malaysia, and Jor-
dan; and Gundolf Keil, Peter Dilg, and Albert Dietrich in Germany. Also,
many non-academic historians of pharmacy have been particularly active.
One could mention here Pierre Julien in France; Ramon Jordi in Spain; Leo
J. Vandewiele in Belgium; and Willem Daems, from the Netherlands,
among many others who would deserve to be cited.
Now that the history of pharmacy has gained wider recognition, even
though such recognition does not translate any longer in academic struc-
tures, new researchers are entering the field and work on the medieval his-
tory of pharmacy taking advantage of the activity of the previous gener-
ation(s). Given the current decline in the place of history of pharmacy in
university programs, such new-comers conduct their research on a personal
basis, often in departments of philology (particularly classical, English, Ger-
man, and Romance philology) and history (medieval history, if there are such
departments) (for a recent example of the production by such young scholars,
see the several essays in Pharmacopoles et apothicaires: Les ‘pharmaciens’ de l’An-
Pharmacy 1066

tiquité au Grand Siècle, ed. Franck Collard, and Evelyne Samama, 2006).
Also, this new generation collaborates in international programs for which
they are associated in a virtual global research center thanks to the develop-
ment of communications technologies (see, for example, the Scuola medica sa-
lernitana project, consisting in editing the texts produced in, or related with,
the supposed school of Salerno, many of which were about pharmacy, and to
be edited in the so-called Edizione nazionale dei classici, published by the Ac-
cademia dei Lincei in Rome. On the project, see already the several contribu-
tions to the volume La Scuola Medica Salernitana: Gli autori e i testi, ed. Danielle
Jacquart, and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, 2007).
In addition to the repositories of primary sources (manuscripts) as the
Biblioteca Vaticana in Rome, the British Library in London, the Bibliothèque
nationale de France in Paris, and many others worldwide, and the collections
of secondary literature of which the Wellcome Library of the Wellcome Trust
in London, and the History of Medicine Division in the National Library of
Medicine of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, are the most
important, collections specialized in the history of pharmacy include the
Ecole de Pharmacie in Paris, the American Institute for the History of Phar-
macy in Wisconsin, Madison, and the Historia Plantarum collection specially
devoted to the history of pharmacy in the Eastern Mediterranean from An-
tiquity to the Renaissance and currently located in the Department of Bot-
any, at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion, in Washington, DC.
Primary sources for the history of medieval pharmacy also include arte-
facts, drug jars, mortars and all the instrumentarium of ancient druggists, and
even the furniture of apothecaries and their architectural setting. Such pieces
are often preserved in historical pharmacies and hospitals, such as the Hôtel-
Dieu of Beaûne in Bourgogne, the pharmacy of Saint-John’s hospital in
Bruges, or the Hospital de Santa Creu in Barcelona, to quote a few. Many
of these museums, whatever their type and size, are listed in the guide by
Daniela Mohr, Alte Apotheken und pharmaziehistorische Sammlungen, 1992.
Guides of such museums and collections include (selection, alphabetical
order of modern place names): (Barcelona) Ramon Jordi Gonzalez,
Historia de una botica: La ‘Farmacia-Museo’ del Pueblo Español, 1973; (Bern)
Ingrid Müller-landgraf, and François Ledermann, Medizin und Phar-
mazie in Bern: Eine Zeitreise, no date; (Cracow) Zdislaw Gajda, The Museum
of the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University, 2000; (Florence) Mara
Miniati, Museo di Storia della Scienza, Firenze: Catalogo, 1991; (Heidelberg)
Wolf-Dieter Müller-jahncke, Deutsches Apotheken-Museum im Heidelberger
Schloss, 1991.
1067 Pharmacy

Excellence in research on the history of pharmacy is recognized by some

prizes, the most prestigious of which are the Kremers Award and the Urdang
medal, both awarded by the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy
and named in memory of Edward Kremers (1865–1941) and Georg Urd-
ang, who were instrumental in the development of the history of pharmacy
in the USA and created the institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Since 1905, the German society for the history of pharmacy (Deutsche Ge-
sellschaft für die Geschichte der Pharmazie) awards the Schelenz-Plakette
named after Hermann Schelenz (for the recipients of the Plakette from
1973 to 2003, see Die Schelenz-Stiftung III: 1973 bis 1988, ed. Kurt Ganzinger,
and Wolfgang-Hagen Hein, 1989; and Die Schelenz-Stiftung IV: 1989 bis 2003,
ed. Klaus Meyer, 2004). Young scholars are eligible for the Jerry Stannard
Memorial Award for an “outstanding scholarly study in the fields that Pro-
fessor Stannard made his own: the history of materia medica, medical bot-
any, pharmacy, and folklore of drug therapy before the year 1700.” Finally,
the International Society for the History of Pharmacy awards every other year
(actually the odd number years) a two-year research fellowship. In recent
times, the recipients of such fellowship submitted research programs de-
voted to the medieval history of pharmacy.

C. 20th-Century Research: An Overview

Several encyclopedias or encyclopedic works were published during the
20th century, all of which included – though at different degrees – the history
of pharmacy, pharmaceutical botany, and related topics. Thanks to an
encyclopedic impetus in the 1920s two major projects were launched, whose
publication was not achieved, however, until late in the 1940s-1950s: Lynn
Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., 1923–1958,
and George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols., 1927–1948
(rpt. 1975). Encyclopedism was continuous during the century (see, for
example, the Encyclopedia of Islam [2nd ed.; the 3rd ed. is currently in prepara-
tion] and the Encyclopaedia Iranica [now also available on the Internet in open
access]), and was particularly productive toward the end of the century, with
the following realizations, specifically devoted to the history of science or
including it (in chronological order of publication): Oxford Dictionary of Byzan-
tium, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan et al., 3 vols., 1991; the Neue Pauly, 13 vols.
with an index and 5 supplements, 1996–2003, and its English translation
Brill’s New Pauly, 16 vols. and 1 supplement (published from 2002); Medieval
Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas Glick, Steven J.
Livesey, and Faith Wallis, 2005; Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclo-
pedia, ed. Josef W. Meri, 2006; and last, but far from the least: Encyclopedia
Pharmacy 1068

of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs, ed. Paul
Keyser, and Georgia Irby-massie, 2008.
In the field of the history of medieval pharmacy specifically, the several
studies by such specialist as Jerry Stannard (above) have been reproduced
in two volumes of collected studies edited by Katherine E. Stannard and
Richard Kay and published in 1999 under the title of: Pristina Medicamenta;
Ancient and Medieval Medical Botany, and Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle
Age and the Renaissance. Also, John M. Riddle has regrouped some of his many
works in a similar volume entitled Quid pro quo: Studies in the History of Drugs,
1992.
Academic research on the history of pharmacy has been and still is –
mostly based on the study of texts, while research activity by historians of
pharmacy in national societies, for example, or in any other context is more
often based on archives, and/or focused on material and techniques to be
used for the preparation of medicines. These two complementary – rather
than opposed – viewpoints are based on different methodologies and pro-
duce different results.
In the field of textual studies, historians still need to rely in many cases
on ancient editions and Latin translation dating back to the Renaissance,
that is, on material that is not necessarily reliable for a source-based research.
Many texts being still unedited and even unknown, textual studies often
consist in locating still unedited texts in manuscripts and in editing them ac-
cording to the best philological standards. The development of codicology
during the second half of the 20th century has transformed this kind of study
by introducing into history – be it of pharmacy or of any other field – the data
resulting from the analysis of manuscripts themselves (for the application of
this to the history of medical sciences, including pharmacy, in Byzantium,
see Pedro Badenas de la Peña, “Byzantine Medical Book and the Diffusion
of Byzantine Medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Medicina nei Secoli 11
[1999]: 461–76, and David Bennett, “Medical Practice and Manuscripts in
Byzantium,” Social History of Medicine 13 [2000]: 279–91). The major problem
of this type of study is to determine if and, if so, how they make it possible to
trace the practice of pharmacy. Theoretical essays have been written on this
point: John Marion Riddle, “Methodology of Historical Drug Research,” in
Quid pro quo … (above), no. XV, with a reply in Alain Touwaide, “Historical
Drug Research: Reflexion pour une épistemologie de la recherche sur l’his-
toire du médicament ancien,” Nuncius 11 (1996): 319–36. More recently, see:
John M. Riddle, “Research Procedures in Evaluating Medieval Medicine”
and Alain Touwaide, “Byzantine Hospital Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source
for the Study of Therapeutics,” The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice,
1069 Pharmacy

ed. Barbara S. Bowers, 2007, 3–17 and 147–73, respectively; see also
Alain Touwaide, “The Jujube-Tree in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Case
Study in the Methodology of Textual Archaeobotany,” Health and Healing
from the Medieval Garden, ed. Peter Dendle, and Alain Touwaide, 2008,
72–100.
As for archival research, its potential has been recently illustrated by
Jean-Pierre Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament … (above). Documents taken
into consideration are those traditionally used by historians, and also nota-
rial archives, testaments, and any other form of report on the setting of
apothecaries, their furnitures, instruments, or therapeutic substances, for
example. To yield significant results, research on this type of material is
usually made on a vast quantity of material.
A question of particular interest is how the therapeutic properties of
plants and other natural materia medica were discovered. Although this is
out of the scope of this survey (as it is more an ethno-pharmacological topic),
one essay on it has to be mentioned here as it relies among others on medieval
literature: Michael McVaugh, “Foxglove, Digitalis, and the Limits of Em-
piricism,” Natura, scienze e società medievali: Studi in onore di Agostino Paravicini
Bagliani, ed. Claudo Leonardi and Francesco Santi, 2008, 1–17, particu-
larly because the author refers to several medieval texts.
The primary sources for the history of medieval pharmacy (often ident-
ified as herbals; on the genre, see Gundolf Keil, “Arzneibücher,” Lexikon
des Mittelalters 1, 1979, 1091–94) have been listed and described by Jakob
Büchi, Die Entwicklung der Rezept- und Arzneibuchliteratur, vol. 1: Altertum und
Mittelalter, 1982, and partially also in Michael H. P. Freyer, Europäische
Heilkräuterkunde: Ein Erfahrungsschatz aus Jahrthausenden, 1998.

C. Byzantium
For the Byzantine world, the authoritative history of Byzantine literature
by the late Herbert Hunger (1914–2000) (Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur
der Byzantiner, 2 vols., 1978, vol. 2, 287–320) did not devote much attention
to pharmaceutical literature, although it lists some works and provides some
useful bibliographical references. The most recent history of medicine by Pli-
nio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine, vol. 4: Byzantine and Islamic Medicine,
2001, 147–150, is not more detailed. There is, however, a rather exhaustive,
though not always philologically and historically reliable, inventory and
description of the many written sources, which is largely ignored in contem-
porary literature on Byzantine pharmacy and medicine (perhaps because of
its rarity): Pang. G. Kritikos and Stella N. Papadaki, Contribution à l’histoire
de la pharmacie chez les Byzantins: Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Inter-
Pharmacy 1070

nationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen

Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses in Athen vom 8. bis 14. April 1967, ed. Georg
Edmund Dann, 1969, 13–78. Though often ignored and extremely difficult
to find, also, but very useful in spite of its lack of critical method, is Aristo-
teles Eftychiades, Eisagôgê eis tên byzantinên therapeutikên, 1983, which lists
and analyzes in detail the primary sources, by categories of medical special-
ties.
The bibliography in Hunger (above) can be completed with the follow-
ing specific notes (chronological order of publication): John Scarborough,
“Texts and Sources in Ancient Pharmacy,” Pharmacy in History 29 (1987):
81–4, 133–39; Id., “Classical Antiquity: Medicine and Allied Sciences,” His-
tory of Medicine, ed. Rebecca Greene, 1988 (first published in Trends in History
4 [1988]): 5–36 (see especially 23–32 for Byzantium, and 29–32 for phar-
macy); Alain Touwaide, “Manuscrits, histoire du texte et édition de traités
médicaux et pharmaceutiques grecs et byzantins (1900–1992),” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, Supplementum bibliographicum I (1994): 310–31; and John Scarbor-
ough, “New Texts in Byzantine and Arabic Toxicology and Pharmacy,”
Pharmacy in History 38 (1996): 96–99. Current bibliography is regularly in-
cluded in the lists published in each of the two yearly issues of the Byzantin-
ische Zeitschrift (see the section 11. Fachwissenschaften, subsection C. Medizin,
Pharmazie; see also the editions of texts [including scientific ones] listed in the
section 1 A. Hochsprachliche Literatur, with its several subdivisions: b. Literatur-
gattungen; c. Fortleben antiker Autoren; d. byzantinische Autoren [Ausgaben, Überset-
zungen, Sekundärlitertur]).
Given the limitations of the works above, the inventory of primary
sources still needs to rely on the catalogue of Greek medical manuscripts
edited by Hermann Diels, mainly devoted to classical and late-antique auth-
ors and not so much to Byzantine authors: Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte,
vol. 2: Die übrigen griechischen Ärzte ausser Hippokrates und Galenos, 1906 (with a
reed. the same year under a slightly different title: Die Handschriften der antiken
Ärzte: Griechische Abteilung, ed. Hermann Diels, 1906). The catalogue was fol-
lowed by a supplement: Bericht über den Stand des interakadmischen Corpus Medi-
corum Antiquorum und Erster Nachtrag zu den in den Abhandlungen 1905 and 1906
veröffentlichten Katalogen: Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte. I. und II. Teil, ed.
Hermann Diels, 1908 (the 2nd ed. of 1906 has been reprinted together with
the supplement: Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte, vol. I: Hippokrates und Gale-
nos, vol. II: Die übrigen griechischen Ärzte, vol. III: Nachtrag, ed. Hermann Diels,
with a preface by Fridolf Kudklien, 1970). This inventory can be usefully
complemented with: Mariarosa Formentin, I codici greci di medicina nelle Tre
Venezie, 1978, and Anna Maria Ieraci Bio, “La trasmissione della letteratura
1071 Pharmacy

medica greca nell’Italia meridionale fra X e XV secolo,” Contributi alla cultura

greca nell’Italia meridionale I, ed. Antonio Garzya, 1989, 133–257, in both of
which Byzantine literature is well represented.
As for the analysis of the primary sources, Hunger (above) considered
(304; trans. is mine) that “nobody would spend months in reading poorly
written Byzantine medical manuscripts to extract one more recipe from the
darkness of iatrosophia” (sic). The history by Prioreschi (above) is not much
more positive, though not so negative.
Despite the abundance of primary material, research on the history of
pharmacy in Byzantium is still scant. The works below can be mentioned
(chronological order of the Byzantine authors, and, for each one, chronologi-
cal order of publication of the works quoted here [selection]): (Aetios, 6th c.)
Jean Theodorides, “Sur le 13e livre du traité d’Aetios d’Amida, médecin
Byzantin du VIe siècle,” Janus 47 (1958): 221–37; Gian Piero Della
Capanna, Alcune ricette di Aezio d’Amida e l’ambiente superstizioso del V–VII secolo,
1969; Skevos Philianos , and H. Skaltsa-Diamantidis, “Sur les mor-
sures et les venins d’animaux: 13ème discours d’Aetius d’Amide,” Atti e mem-
orie della Accademia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 10 (1993): 30–9; (Alexander
of Tralles, 6th c.) Félix Brunet, Médecine et thérapeutique byzantines: Oeuvres
médicales d’Alexandre de Tralles, le dernier auteur classique des grands médecins grecs
de l’Antiquité, 4 vols., 1933–1937 (French translation of the Greek text edited
by Theodor Puschmann, Alexander von Tralles: Original-Text und Übersetzung
nebst einer einleitenden Abhandlung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Medicin, 2 vols.,
1878–1879); (Stephanos of Athens or Alexandria, 6th c.) on his identity
and biography, see: Wanda Wolska-Conus, “Stephanos d’Athènes et
Stephanos d’Alexandrie: Essai d’identification et de biographie,” Revue des
études byzantines 47 (1989): 5–89; see also the articles by the same in Revue des
études byzantines 50 (1992): 5–86, and 52 (1994): 5–68; Maria Papathanas-
siou, “Stephanus of Alexandria: Pharmaceutical notions and cosmology
in his alchemical work,” Ambix 37 (1990): 121–33; (Paul of Nicea [between
the 7th and the 9th/10th c.?]) Anna Maria Ieraci Bio, Paolo di Nicea, Manuale
medico: Testo edito per la prima volta, con introduzione e note, 1996; (Psellos, 11th c.)
Robert Volk, Der medizinische Inhalt der Schriften des Michael Psellos, 1990;
(anonymous, 14th c.?) Edouard Jeanselme, “Sur un aide-mémoire de
thérapeutique byzantin contenu dans un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque
Nationale de Paris (Supplément grec 764),” Mélanges Charles Diehl, vol. 1,
1930, 147–70; (translations from Arabic, mainly 13th–14th c.) Alain Tou-
waide, Medicinalia Arabo-Byzantina, vol. 1: Manuscrits et textes, 1997; Id.,
“Arabic Materia Medica in Byzantium during the 11th Century A.D. and the
Problems of Transfer of Knowledge in Medieval Science,” Science and Technol-
Pharmacy 1072

ogy in the Islamic World, ed. S. M. Razaullah Ansari, 2002, 223–47; Id.,
“Arabic Medicine in Greek Translation: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the
International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine 1 (2002): 45–53; Id.,
“Magna Graecia iterata: Greek Medicine in Southern Italy in the 11th and 12th
Centuries,” Medicina in Magna Graecia: The Roots of our Knowledge, ed. Alfredo
Musajo Somma, 2004, 85–101; id. “Arabic Urology in Byzantium,” The
History of Nephrology, New Series, vol. 1, ed. Natale G. De Santo, Luigi Iorio,
Spyros G. Marketos, Shaul G. Massry, and Garabed Eknoyan, 2004,
167–73; and Id., “Medicina Bizantina e Araba alla Corte di Palermo,”
Medicina, Scienza e Politica al Tempo di Federico II: Conferenza Internazionale, Cas-
tello Utveggio, Palermo, 4–5 ottobre 2007, ed. Natale Gaspare De Santo and
Guido Bellinghieri, 2008, 39–55; (anonymous, 14th c.) John Marion
Riddle, “Byzantine Commentaries on Dioscorides,” Symposium on Byzantine
Medicine, ed. John Scarborough, 1985, 95–102; (lexica of medicinal
plant names, mainly 14th c.) Alain Touwaide, “Lexica medico-botanica
byzantina: Prolégomènes à une étude,” Tês filiês tade dôra. Miscelánea léxica en
memoria de Conchita Serrano, 1999, 211–28. Also, two authors of uncertain
time period: (Demetrius Pepagomenos, 15th c.) Maria Capone Ciollaro,
Demetrio Pepagomeno, Prontuario medico: Testo edito per la prima volta, con introdu-
zione, apparato critico e indice, 2003.
Some thematic studies have been made, such as: John Scarborough,
“Early Byzantine pharmacology,” Symposium … (above), 213–32; and Evange-
lia A. Varella, “Orientalische Elemente in der Byzantinischen Heilkunde,”
Medicina nei secoli 7 (1995): 29–40.

D. The Arabic World

The history of pharmacy in the Arabic world has been much more investi-
gated. Primary sources have been inventoried, with their manuscripts world-
wide and the possible editions, by Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen
Schrifttums, vol. 3: Medizin, Pharmazie, Zoologie, Tierheilkunde bis ca. 430 H., and 4:
Alchimie, Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur bis ca. 430 H., 1971; and Manfred Ull-
mann, Die Medizin im Islam, 1970, and Id., Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften
im Islam, 1972.
Primary sources and secondary literature have also been listed in the
following bibliographies (in chronological order of publication): Sami Ham-
arneh, Bibliography on Medicine and Pharmacy in Medieval Islam. Mit einer Ein-
führung “Arabismus in der Geschichte der Pharmazie” von Rudolf Schmitz,
1964; Otto Spies, “Beiträge zur medizinisch-pharmazeutischen Bibliogra-
phie des Islam,” Der Islam 44 (1968): 138–73; Rifaat Y. Ebied, Bibliography
of Mediaeval Arabic and Jewish Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1971; and Francisca
1073 Pharmacy

Segura Pérez, and Indalecio Lozano Cámara, Índices bibliográficos sobre

historia de la ciencia árabo-islámica: metodología y manual de uso, 1992.
A much researched topic is the translation of Greek pharmacological and
pharmaceutical treatises into Arabic. Manuscripts of such translations are
listed in Die Handschriften … ed. Diels (above), passim, as well as in Sezgin,
Geschichte … (above), and Ullmann, Die Medizin …, and Id., Die Natur-
und Geheimwissenschaften … (both above). The list of Arabic manuscripts in
Istanbul provided by Diels has been revised in 1934 by Hellmut Ritter
(1892–1971) and Richard Walzer (1900–1975): Arabische Übersetzungen grie-
chischer Ärzte in Stambuler Bibliotheken, 1934. An Arabic version of the Materia
medica by Dioscorides was edited by César E. Dubler and Elias Terés in the
2nd volume of the work by the former, La ‘Materia Medica’ de Dioscórides, 6 vols.,
1953–1957 (the 2nd volume was published in Tetuan in 1952, and in Barce-
lona in 1957). Also, a manuscript (Leiden, or. 289) has been studied in detail:
Mahmoud M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia Medica of Dioscorides, 1983. For a sur-
vey of the several translations of Greek pharmacological literature (including
Dioscorides), see also Alain Touwaide, “L’intégration de la pharmacologie
grecque dans le monde arabe,” Medicina nei secoli 7 (1995): 259–89. For Galen,
more specifically, see Penelope Johnstone, “Galen in Arabic: The Trans-
formation of Galenic Pharmacology,” Galen: Problems and Prospects. A Collection
of Papers submitted at the 1979 Cambridge Conference, ed. Vivian Nutton, 1981,
197–212.
Primary sources have been abundantly studied. See, for example (alpha-
betical list of Arabic authors according to the spelling in the publications):
(abu-s-Salt) Pedro Vernia Martinez, Abu-S-Salt Umayya, 1068–1134, Tra-
tado de los medicamentos simples, 1999; (al-Biruni) Hakim Mohammed Said,
al-Biruni’s Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica, 2 vols., 1973 (vol. 1: Text
edited with English Translation by Hakim Mohammed Said; vol. 2: Intro-
duction, Commentary and Evaluation by Sami K. Hamarneh); Rana M. H.
Ehsan Elahie, “Sources of Kitab al-Saidana of al-Biruni,” Studies in History
of Medicine 1 (1977): 118–21; Max Meyerhof, Das Vorwort zur Drogenkunde des
Beruni, 1932; Kamal Muhammad Habib, “The Kitab al-Saidana: Structure and
Approach,” Studies in History of Medicine 1 (1977): 63–79; (al-Ghafiqi) Max
Meyerhof, Über die Pharmakologie und Botanik des Ahmad al-Ghafiqi, 1930;
Max Meyerhof, and George P. Sobhy, The Abridged Version of “The Book
of Simple Drugs” of Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Al-Ghafiqi, by Gregorius Abu-l-Farag
(Barhebraeus) Edited from the Only Known Manuscript with an English Translation,
Commentary and Indices, 1932, and Id., The Abridged Version of “The Book of Simple
Drugs” of Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Al-Ghafiqi, by Gregorius Abu-l-Farag (Barhebraeus)
Edited from the Only Two Known Manuscripts with an English Translation, Commen-
Pharmacy 1074

tary and Indices, Fasc. II: Letters BA’ and GIM, 1937 (both works have been re-
printed as vols. 51 and 57 [1996] in the series Islamic Medicine of the Publi-
cations of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, published
under the direction of Fuat Sezgin at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univer-
sity in Frankfurt). Three previously published studies have been reproduced
in the same series under the title Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Ghâfiqî (d. c. 1165).
Texts and Studies Collected and Reprinted, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1996: Moritz Stein-
schneider, “Gafiki’s Verzeichniss einfacher Heilmittel (1873 and 1881);”
Max Meyerhof, “Über die Pharmakologie und Botanik des Ahmad al-Ghâ-
fiqî (1930);” and Id., “Deux manuscrits illustrés du Livre des Simples d’Ahmad
al-Gâfiqî (1940–41)”; (al-Ghazzi) Sami K. Hamarneh, “Medicinal Plants,
Therapy and Ecology in Al-Ghazzi’s Book on Agriculture,” Studies in History of
Medicine 2 (1978): 223–63; (’Ali b. Ridwan) Jacques Grand’ Henry, Le livre
de la méthode du médecin de ’Ali B. Ridwan (998–1067): Texte arabe édité, traduit et
commenté, Tome I: Introduction-Thérapeutique, 1979, and Tome II: Diagnostic-
Glossaire, 1984; (al-Kindi) Martin Levey, The Medical Formulary or Aqrabadhin
of Al-Kindi: Translated with a Study of its Materia Medica, 1966; (al-Samarqandi)
Martin Levey, and Noury Al-khaledy, The Medical Formulary of al-Samar-
qandi and the Relation of Early Arabic Simples to those Found in the Indigenous Medi-
cine of the Near East and India, 1967; (al-Zahrawi) Sami K. Hamarneh, and
Glenn Sonnedecker, A Pharmaceutical View of Abulcasis Al-Zahrawi in Moorish
Spain, 1963; Marianne Engeser, Der ‘Liber servitoris’ des Albukasis (936–1013):
Übersetzung, Kommentar und Nachdruck der Textfassung von 1471, 1986; Luisa
Maria Arvide Cambra, Un tratado de polvos medicinales en Al-Zahrawi, 1994;
Ead., Tratado de pastillas medicinales según Abulcasis, 1996; (ibn abi l-bayan)
José Luis Valverde, and Carmen Peña Muñoz, El formulario de los hospitales
de Ibn Abi L-Bayan: Introducción, traducción española y comentarios, con glosarios,
1981; (ibn al-Baitar) Ibrahim Ben Mrad, Ibn al-Baytar (m. 646 H./1248 J.C.):
Commentaire de la ‘Materia Medica’ de Dioscoride, 1990; Ana María Cabo Gon-
zález, Ibn Al-Baytar al-Malaqi (m. 646–1248), Kitab al-Yami li-mufradat al-adwiya
wa-l-agdiya, Colección de Medicamentos y Alimentos: Introducción, edición crítica, tra-
ducción e índices de las letras sad y dad, 2002. Also the French trans. by Lucien Le-
clerc (1816–1893) published under the title ibn al Beithar, Traité des simples,
3 vols., 1877–1883, was reprinted twice: by the Institut du Monde Arabe in
Paris [1992], and by Fuat Sezgin, at the Institut für Geschichte der arabisch-
islamischen Wissenschaften at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in
Frankfurt am Main (Germany) in 1996. For some studies, see Rainer Degen,
“Al-safarjal: A Marginal Note to Ibn al-Baytar,” Journal for the History of Arabic
Science 2 (1978): 143–48; Juan Luís Carrillo, and Maria Paz Torres, Ibn al-
Baytar y el arabismo español del XVIII: Edición trilingue del prologo de su ‘Kitab al-
1075 Pharmacy

chami,’ 1982; S. M. Imamuddin, and S. M. Pervaiz Imam, “Impact of the

Spanish Muslim Pharmacologist Ibn al-Baitar,” Hamdard medicus 36 (1993):
116–18; Esin Koahya, “Ibn Baitar and his Influence on the Eastern Medi-
cine,” Actas del XXXIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Medicina: Granada-
Sevilla, 1–6 septiembre, 1992, ed. Juan Luís Carrillo, and Guillermo Olagüe
de Ros, 1994, 401–07; (Ibn al-Nafis) Emilie Savage-Smith, “Drug Ther-
apy in Trachoma and its Sequel as Presented by Ibn al-Nafis,” Pharmacy in His-
tory 14 (1972): 95–110; Samir Yahia El-Gammal, “Therapy and Medic-
aments by Ibn al-Nafis,” Bulletin of the Indian Institute of History of Medicine 2
(1992): 111–20; (ibn at-Tilmid) Oliver Kahl, The Dispensatory of Ibn at-Til-
mid: Arabic Text, English Translation, Study and Glossaries, 2007; (ibn Buklaris)
Ana Labarta, “La farmacología de Ibn Buklaris: sus fuentes,” Actas del IV
Coloquio Hispano-Tunecino, Palma de Mallorca, 1979, 1983, 163–74; most re-
cently: Ibn Baklarish’s Book of Simples. Medical Remedies between three Faiths in
Twelfth-century Spain, ed. Charles Burnett, 2008; (ibn Butlan) Hosam Elk-
hadem, Le Taqwim al-Sihha (Tacuini Sanitatis) d’Ibn Butlan: Un traité médical du
XIe siècle. Histoire du Texe, Edition Critique, Traduction, Commentaire, 1990; (ibn
Sina) Tazimuddin Siddiqi, “Ibn Sina on Materia Medica,” Studies in History
of Medicine 5 (1981): 243–77; Javed Ahmad, and Ahmet H. Farooqui,
“Some Controversial Drugs from Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’: an Apprai-
sal,” Hamdard Medicus 34 (1991): 81–87; Floréal Sanagustin, “Ibn Sina, ou
la raison médicale maîtrisée,” Medicina nei Secoli 6 (1994): 393–406; (ibn
Wafid) Luis Faraudo de Saint-Germain, El ‘Libre de les medicines particu-
lars’, versión catalana trescentista del texto árabe del tratado de los medicamentos
simples de Ibn Wafid, autor médico toledano del siglo XI: Transcripción, estudio
proemial y glosarios, 1943; Luisa Fernanda Aguirre de Cárcer, Ibn Wafid
(m. 460/1067), Kitab Al-Adwiya Al-Mufrada (Libro de los medicamentos simples),
vol. 1: Edición, traducción, notas y glosarios, 1995; (Maimonides) Max
Meyerhof, “Sur un glossaire de matière médicale composé par Maïmon-
ide,” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte 17 (1935): 223–35 (reproduced in Mûsâ ibn
Maymûn / Maimonides (d. 1204). Texts and Studies. Collected and Reprinted, vol. 4,
ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1996); Id., Sarh asma’ al-‘uqqar (l’Explication des noms
de drogues), un glossaire de matière médicale composé par Maïmonide: Texte publié pour
la première fois d’après un manuscrit unique, avec traduction, commentaire et index,
1940 (English trans.: Fred Rosner, Moses Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names:
Translated from Max Meyerhof ’s French, 1979); Suessman Muntner, Treatise on
Poisons and their Antidotes, 1966; (Razi) Naimuddin Zubairy, Saftab Saeed,
and Afzal Rizvi, “Razi’s Treatise ‘Bar-us-sa’ah’ on First Aid and Some
Medicinal Plants Used to Assist Such Conditions,” Bulletin of the Indian Insti-
tute of History of Medicine 22 (1992): 121–34; (Sabur ibn-Sahl) Oliver Kahl,
Pharmacy 1076

Dispensatorium parvuum: al-Aqrabadhin al-.saghir. Sabur ibn Sahl, 1994; Id., Sabur
Ibn-sahl, The Small Dispensatory: Translated from the Arabic Together with a Study
and Glossaries, 2003; (Sérapion) Pierre Guigues, “Les noms arabes dans Sé-
rapion, ‘liber de simplici medicina’: Essai de restitution et d’identification de
noms arabes de médicaments utilisités au Moyen Âge,” Journal Asiatique 10e
série, 4 (1905): 473–546; 6 (1905): 49–112 (also published as a monograph
under the same title, 1905, and reproduced in Texts and Studies on Islamic Medi-
cine: Collected and Reprinted, vol. 5, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 1997; (Suwaidi) Albert
Dietrich, “Aus dem Drogenbuch des Suwaidi,” Mélanges d’Islamologie: Vol-
ume dédié à la mémoire de Armand Abel par ses collègues, ses élèves et ses amis, ed.
Pierre Salmon, 1974, 91–107; (Tabari) Werner Schmucker, “Die pflanz-
liche und mineralische Materia Medica im Firdaus al-Hikma des Tabari,”
Ph.D. thesis, University of Bonn, 1969.
Several analyses of the history of pharmacy in the Arabic world have been
published, including the following (in chronological order of publication):
Eric John Holmyard, “Medieval Arabic Pharmacology,” Proceedings of the
Royal Society of Medicine, Section of the History of Medicine 29 (1935–1936): 1–10;
Max Meyerhof, “The Background and Origins of Arabian Pharmacology”;
“Pharmacology During the Golden Age of Arabian Medicine”; and “Arabian
Pharmacology in North Africa, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula,” Ciba Sym-
posia 6 (1944): 1847–56; 1857–1867, and 1868–1872 respectively; Sami
Hamarneh, “Origins of Arabic Drug and Diet Therapy,” Physis 11 (1969):
267–86; Id., “A History of Arabic Pharmacy,” Physis 14 (1972): 5–54; Id.,
Origins of Pharmacy and Therapy in the Near East, 1973; Martin Levey, Early
Arabic Pharmacology: An Introduction based on Ancient and Medieval Sources, 1973;
A. H. Israili, “Arab Pharmacology,” Studies in History of Medicine 1 (1977):
193–201; Sami Hamarneh, “Development of Pharmacy, Ancient Times to
Middle Ages,” Studies in History of Medicine 6 (1982): 37–42; Hakim Mo-
hammed Said, “Islamic Medicine and the Art of Drug-Making: a Historical
Perspective,” Hamdard Medicus 33 (1990): 43–57.
Arabo-Muslim Spain is a special case, which has been abundantly inves-
tigated. In addition to the editions and analyses of texts mentioned above,
see, for example Max Meyerhof, “Esquisse d’Histoire de la Pharmacologie
et Botanique chez les Musulmans d’Espagne,” Al-Andalus, 3 (1935): 1–41, and
also, more recently, the several essays in Ciencias de la naturaleza en Al-Andaluz,
Textos y Estudios, vols. 1–3, ed. Expiración García Sanchez, 1990–1994,
and vols. 4–6, ed. Camilo Alvarez De Morales, 1996–2001.
1077 Pharmacy

E. Late Antiquity
For the Western Middle Ages, the production should be divided in a some-
what artificial way in three different periods: Late-antiquity, early Middle
Ages (or Pre-Salernitan period), and Salernitan and Post-Salernitan period.
For late-antiquity, the many extant texts have been listed with the refer-
ences of their editions in Bibliographie des textes médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut
moyen âge, ed. Guy Sabbah, Pierre-Paul Corsetti, and Klaus-Dietrich Fi-
scher, 1987, with a supplement by Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Bibliographie des
textes médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut moyen âge. Premier Supplément 1986–1999,
2000.
Many texts have been edited, on whose authors the entries to the Neue
Pauly/Brill’s New Pauly and Keyser and Irby-Massie (above) should be con-
sulted. A major publication was the edition of what could be called the Late-
Antique Corpus of pharmacy, which includes Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica;
the herbal attributed to Apuleius; Sextus Placitus; and the anonymous De ta-
xone: Ernst Howald, and Henry E. Sigerist, Antonii Musae De herba vettonica
liber: Pseudoapulei Herbarius, Anonymi De taxone liber. Sexti Placiti liber Medicinae ex
animalibus, 1927. The whole text of the corpus as it appears in the manuscript
296 of Lucca (Italy), Biblioteca Statale, has been reproduced and translated
into Spanish (with a study) in the volume of commentary that accompanies
the recent facsimile reproduction of the manuscript under the title Her-
bolarium et materia medica (Biblioteca Statale de Lucca, ms. 296), 2007. After its
edition by Howald and Sigerist, the Pseudo-Apuleius has been repeatedly
investigated during the 20th century in such works as Friedrich W. T. Hun-
ger, The Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius: From the Ninth-Century Manuscript in the
Abbey of Monte Cassino (Codex casinensis 97) together with the First Printed Edition of
John Phil. de Lignamine (Editio princeps Romae 1481), 1935; Erminio Caprotti,
and William T. Stearn, Herbarium apulei (1481) – Herbolario volgare (1522).
Introduction by E. Caprotti with an essay by W. T. Stearn, 1979; and,
more recently, in the volume of commentary that accompanies the facsimile
reproduction of the manuscript 296 of Lucca (above), see a pharmaceutical
discussion by Alain Touwaide, “Enfermadad y curación,” 155–66.
For the editions, translations, and/or studies of relevant texts, see (alpha-
betical order of ancient authors’ name): (alfabetum Galieni) Carmélia Hal-
leux-opsomer, “Un Herbier médical du haut moyen âge: l’Alfabetum Ga-
lieni,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 4 (1982): 65–97; (Cassius Felix)
Anne Fraisse, Cassius Félix, De la médecine: Texte établi, traduit et annoté, 2002;
see also Brigitte Maire, and Anne Fraisse, Cassii Felicis libri de medicina Con-
cordantiae … Accedunt numeri, voces Graecae Graecis Latinisque litteris scriptae, index
nominum notabiliorum, index frequentiae decrescentis formarum, 2003; (Diosco-
Pharmacy 1078

rides, De materia medica) the “old” Latin trans. identified as Dioscorides Long-
obardus has been edited by Konrad Hofmann and Theodor M. Auracher,
“Der Longobardische Dioskorides des Marcellus Virgilius,” Romanische For-
schungen 1 (1883): 49–105 (Book I); Hermann Stadler, “Dioscorides Long-
obardus (Cod. Lat. Monacensis 337. Aus T. M. Aurachers Nachlass heraus-
gegeben und ergänzt,” Romanische Forschungen 10 (1899): 181–247 (Book II),
and 369–446 (Book III); 11 (1901): 1–121 (Book IV); Hermann Stadler,
“Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod. Lat. Monacensis 337),” Romanische Forschun-
gen 13 (1902): 161–243 (Book V); and Id., “Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod.
Lat. Monacensis 337). Index der Sachnamen und der wichtigeren Wörter,”
Romanische Forschungen 14 (1903): 601–36. Book I has been reedited by Haral-
ambie Mihaescu, Dioscoride Latino, Materia medica, Libro primo, 1938; (Dios-
corides [Pseudo-]) Hermann Kästner, “Pseudo-Dioskorides de herbis fe-
mininis,” Hermes 31 (1896): 578–636; John M. Riddle, “Pseudo-Dioscorides’
Ex herbis feminis and Early Medieval Medical Botany,” Journal of the History of
Biology 14 (1981): 43–81 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above], no.
IX); (Epistula de vulture) Rainer Möhler, ‘Epistula de vulture’: Untersuchungen
zu einer organotherapeutischen Drogenmonographie des Frühmittelalters, 1990;
(Gargilius Martialis) John M. Riddle, “Gargilius Martialis as Medical
Writer,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 39 (1984): 408–29
(reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo … [above], no. X); Brigitte Maire, Gar-
gilius Martialis, Les remèdes tirés des légumes et des fruits: Texte établi, traduit et com-
menté, 2002; Ead., Concordantiae Gargilianae, 2002; (Marcellus of Bordeaux)
Max Niedermann, Marcelli De medicamentis liber – Marcellus über Heilmittel,
2nd ed. by Eduard Liechtenhan, trans. by Jutta Kollesch, and Diethard
Nickel, 2 vols., 1968 (includes a German trans.); (Medicina Plinii) Alf
Önnerfors, Plinii Secundi Iunioris qui feruntur de medicina libri tres, 1964, with
a German trans. and a study in Hans Gertler, “Über die Bedeutung der
Medicina Plinii Secundi Iunioris unter Berücksichtigung ihrer hauptsäch-
lichen Auswirkungen und ihrer Tradition, zugleich mit einer modernen
deutschen Übersetzung nach der Edition von Önnerfors,” habilitation the-
sis, University of Erfurt, 1966; for a study, see also Alf Önnerfors, In medici-
nam Plinii studia philologica: De memoria et uerborum contextu opusculi, de elocutione
et aetate deque iis operibus, quibus medio aeuo conceptum est, 1963.
For the inventory of the materia medica in these and other works, see
Carmélia Opsomer, Index de la pharmacopée du Ier au Xe siècle, 2 vols., 1989, with
a short historical and bibliographical notice for each of the treatises included
in the index.
1079 Pharmacy

F. Early Middle Ages

For the early-medieval or Pre-Salernitan period, Saint-Gall activity has been
the object of a certain number of studies. See first Johannes Duft, Notker der
Arzt: Klostermedizin und Möncharzt im frühmittelalterlichen St. Gallen, 1972. The
most interesting aspect here is the herbal. The so-called Botanicus Sangallensis,
which was known as early as 1928 (Erhard Landgraf, “Ein frühmittelalter-
licher Botanicus,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Leipzig, 1928 [reproduced in
Kyklos 1 [1928]: 114–46]), remained unpublished, however, until recently:
Monica Niederer, Der St. Galler ‘Botanicus’: Ein frühmittelalterliches Herbar.
Kritische Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar, 2005. The study of the garden for
medicinal plants is included in the research program conducted at the Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Virginia, and con-
sisting, among others, in producing a virtual tri-dimensional reconstruction
of the monastery; see Walter Horn, and Ernest Born, The Plan of St Gall:
A Study of the Architecture & Economy of, & Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monas-
tery, 3 vols., 1979 (see vol. 2, 175–209, and 300–13 for the garden, and the
pharmacy, respectively).
The rediscovery of the so-called Lorscher Arzneibuch (dating back to ca. 795)
was a major event in the history of medieval pharmacy, as its text makes evi-
dent the continuity from antiquity and late antiquity to the Pre-Salernitan
period, as well as the exchanges between East (that is, Byzantium) and West.
In 1989, Ulrich Stoll presented a first report on the discovery of the manu-
script, and a first approach to its history: “Das ‘Lorscher Arzneibuch’:
Ein Arbeitsbericht”; and “Das ‘Lorscher Arzneibuch’: Ein Überblick über
Herkunft, Inhalt und Anspruch des ältesten Arzneibuchs deutscher Prove-
nienz,” Das Lorscher Arzneibuch und die frühmittelalterliche Medizin: Verhandlun-
gen des medizinhistorischen Symposiums in September 1989 in Lorsch, ed. Gundolf
Keil, and Paul Schnitzer, 1991, 29–59 and 61–80, respectively. The same
year, a facsimile of the manuscript was published, with a volume of commen-
tary: Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Faksimile der Handschrift Msc. Med. 1 der Staatsbiblio-
thek Bamberg, ed. Gundolf Keil, 1989. The volume of commentary contains
an introduction and the translation of the text: Ulrich Stoll, and Gundolf
Keil, in collaboration with Albert Ohlmeyer, Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Über-
setzung der Handschrift Msc. med. 1 der Staatsbibliothek Bamberg. Three years later,
Ulrich Stoll authored a critical edition of the text, with a German translation,
and all the necessary indices and critical apparatus: Ulrich Stoll, Das ‘Lor-
scher Arzneibuch’: Ein medizinisches Kompendium des 8. Jahrhunderts (Codex Bamber-
gensis medicinalis 1). Text, Übersetzung und Fachglossar, 1992.
This rediscovery led to a reexamination of Carolingian medicine and
pharmacy, particularly monastic medicine. The symposium held in 1989
Pharmacy 1080

(above) contextualized the Lorscher Arzneibuch: Das Lorscher Arzneibuch …,

ed. Keil and Schnitzer (above). Among the contributions to this volume
(in addition to the two by Stoll above), we can mention: (87–108) Heinrich
Schipperges, “Die Medizin im abendländische Mittelalter”; (109–14) Al-
bert Ohlmeyer, “Krankenpflege und Gesundheitsregeln nach der Weisung
St. Benedikt”; (115–22) Robert Halleux, “Die frühmittelalterliche Rezept-
literatur”; (123–28) Bernhard Bischoff, “Reste einer vorkarolingischen
volkstümlichen Rezeptsammlung.” Another volume published on the occa-
sion of the rediscovery of the manuscript focused more specifically on
the materia medica: Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Klostermedizin in der Karolingerzeit.
Ausgewählte Texte und Beiträge, 1989. Among the original contributions, the
following are relevant here: (129–47) Peter Dilg, “Materia medica medievalis:
Die Arzneimittelverse des Otho von Cremona (um 1200)”; (149–218) Clem-
ens Stoll, “Arznei und Arzneiversorgung in frühmittelalterlichen Klös-
tern”; (196–98) inventory and identification of the plants mentioned in the
Hortulus by Walhafrid Strabo; (199–202) inventory of the plants in Würzburg
collection, dating back to 840 circa.
The De rerum natura by Hraban Maur was the object of history of health
research with such essays as Frederick S. Paxton, “Curing Bodies – Curing
Souls: Hrabanus Maurus, Medical Education, and the Clergy in Ninth-Cen-
tury France,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995):
230–52, and a study of some of its sources: Maria Rissel, Rezeption antiker und
patristischer Wissenschaft bei Hrabanus Maurus: Studien zur karolingischen Geistes-
geschichte, 1976.
Also, the Hortulus by Walahfrid Strabo has been approached as a docu-
ment for the history of pharmacy (in chronological order of publication):
Karl Sudhoff, Des Walahfrid von der Reichenau Hortulus: Gedichte über die Kräu-
ter seines Klostergartens vom Jahre 827, Wiedergabe des ersten Wiener Druckes vom
Jahre 1510, eingeleitet und medizinisch, botanisch und druckgeschichtlich gewürdigt,
1926; Walahfrid Strabo, Hortulus, trans. by Raef Payne, and commentary by
Wilfrid Blunt, 1966; or, more recently, Hans-Dieter Stoffler, Der hortulus
des Walahfrid Strabo: Aus dem Kräutergarten des Klosters Reichenau, 1978 (6th ed.
2000).
Similarly, the Liber simplicis medicinae by Hildegard of Bingen was the
object of a certain number of studies, particularly during the 1990s. It will
suffice to mention some aspects of this production: Irmgard Müller, Die
pflanzlichen Heilmittel bei Hildegard von Bingen, 1982 (re-ed. in 1993); Laurence
Moulinier, “Hildegarde de Bingen, les plantes médicinales et le jugement
de la postérité: Pour une mise in perspective,” Scientiarum historia 20 (1994):
77–95; Melitta Weiss Adamson, “Der deutsche Anhang zu Hildegard
1081 Pharmacy

von Bingens ‘Liber simplicis medicinae’ in Codex 6952 der Bibliothèque

Nationale in Paris (fol. 232v-238v),” Sudhoffs Archiv 79 (1995): 173–92; more
recently: Victoria Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of
Bingen and Premodern Medicine, 2006.
From this period also date the many antidote and recipe books (on the
notion of which, see Jean Barbaud, “Les formulaires médicaux du Moyen
Age: médecines savantes et médecines populaires,” Revue d’histoire de la phar-
macie 277 [1988]: 138–53; and Robert Halleux, “Die frühmittelalterliche
Rezeptliteratur,” Das Lorscher Arzneibuch …, ed. Keil and Schnitzer
[above], 115–22) published by Julius Jörimann, Frühmittelalterliche Rezepta-
rien, 1925, and Henry E. Sigerist, Studien und Texte zur frühmittelalterlichen
Rezeptliteratur, 1923, of which the list follows (antidote and recipe books are
identified by the name of the place they are usually attributed to): (Bamberg)
Jörimann, 61–77; (Bamberg [2]) Sigerist, 21–39; (Berlin) Sigerist,
65–77; (Cambridge) Sigerist, 160–67; (Glasgow) Sigerist, 99–160;
(London) Sigerist, 17–21; (Reichenau) Sigerist, 39–64; (Saint-Gall) Jö-
rimann, 10–37, and Sigerist, 78–99; (Saint Gall [2]) Jörimann, 37–61.
Two important contributions are Patricia Skinner, Health & Medicine in
Early Medieval Southern Italy,1997, where the author analyzes the circulation
of medico-pharmaceutical knowledge in Italy between the end of antiquity
(if any) and the rise of Salerno, and the so-called THEOREMA program, con-
sisting in inventorying all the terms of materia medica in the pharmaceutical
literature prior to the 10th century, on which, see, in chronological order of
publication: Carmélia Halleux-Opsomer, and Louis Delatte, “Ancient
Medical Recipes and the Computer: The THEOREMA Project,” Pharmacy
in History 23 (1981): 87–9; Carmélia Halleux-Opsomer, “Le traitement
informatique des recettes médicales du haut moyen âge,” Actes du Congrès
International Informatique et Sciences Humaines, 1981, 649–67; and Ead., “Une
banque informatisée de pharmacopée ancienne: Pour une histoire quanti-
tative du médicament,” Actes du XXVIIIe Congrès International d’Histoire de la
Médecine, 1982, vol. 2, 215–19. As a result, Carmélia Opsomer published the
Index de la pharmacopée … (above), which provides references according to the
system created by the author, and is thus difficult to use.

G. The Late Middle Ages

During the next period, medicine and, even more, pharmacy were trans-
formed as a result of the translation activity supposedly started in Salerno,
with Constantine the African but most probably already started earlier,
among the multi-lingual milieu of physicians in Southern Italy, on the main-
land or in Sicily. The medical and pharmaceutical literature of this period is
Pharmacy 1082

probably best known, possibly because of the abundance of manuscripts,

their lavish illustration that catch the eye, and also the increasing presence of
the vernacular. Nevertheless, manuscripts are still insufficiently inventoried
in spite of the availability of such reference works as the catalogue of incipit of
Latin medieval texts by Lynn Thorndike, and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of In-
cipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin, 1963 (the work is now available in
an expanded and updated digital version identified as ETK, which is accom-
panied by the so-called eVK, that is, the updated version by Linda Ersham
Voigts, and Patricia Deery Kurts, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and
Middle English: An Electronic Reference, CD-Rom, 2000). Discoveries are still
possible, as was shown by the antidotarius magnus, supposedly lost: Alfonz
Lutz, “Der verschollene frühsalernitanische Antidotarius magnus in einer
Basler Handschrift aus dem 12. Jahrhundert und das Antidotarium Nicolai,”
Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte
der Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses
in Dubrovnik vom 26–31 August 1960, ed. Georg Edmumd Dann, 1960, 97–133.
For a research program on the manuscripts of Salernitan texts, see, La Scuola
Medica Salernitana …, ed. Jacquart, and Paravicini Bagliani (above).
Among the treatises that have been researched, one could quote the fol-
lowing (alphabetical order of names or titles): (antidotarium Nicolai) Diet-
linde Goltz, Mittelalterliche Pharmazie und Medizin dargestellt an Geschichte und
Inhalt des Antidotarium Nicolai, mit einem Nachdruck der Druckfassung von 1471,
1976; Gundolf Keil, “Zur Datierung des Antidotarium Nicolai,” Sudhoffs Archiv
62 (1978): 190–96; Willem F. Daems, “De Middelnederlandse Vertalingen
van het Antidotarium Nicolaï,” Scientiarum Historia 3 (1961): 1–20; Pierre Boey-
naems, “Een Onbekende Middelnederlandse Vertaling van het Antidotarium
Nicolaï,” Scientiarum Historia 5 (1963): 118–19; (Arnau de Vilanova) Arnaldi
de Villanova, Opera medica omnia, vol. 2: Aphorismi de gradibus, ed. and trans.
Michael McVaugh, 1975; Arnau de Vilanova, Antidotario, ed. Pedro Vernia,
2 vols., 1994 (vol. 1 contains a facsimile of the old ed of the Antidotario, and
vol. 2 a Spanish trans with a study); Arnaldi de Villanova, Opera Medica Omnia,
vol. 17: Translatio libri albuzale de medicinis simplicibus, ed. José Martínez
Gázquez, and Michael R. McVaugh; Abu-l-Salt umayya, Kitab al-Adwiya, ed.
Ana Labarta; Llibre d’albumesar de simples medecines, ed. Luis Cifuente,
2004. See also Michael R. McVaugh, “Arnald of Villanova’s regimen almarie
(regimen castra sequentium) and Medieval Military Medicine,” Viator 23 (1992):
201–13; and Michael R. McVaugh, and Luis García Ballester, “Thera-
peutic Method in the Later Middle Ages: Arnau de Vilanova on Medical
Contingency,” Caduceus 11 (1995): 73–86; W. Braekman, “A Middle Dutch
Version of Arnald of Villanova’s Liber de Vinis,” Janus 55 (1968): 96–133; (circa
1083 Pharmacy

instans) Carmélia Opsomer, Livre des simples medecines: Codex Bruxellensis IV

1024, 2 vols., 1980; and Ead., Book of Simple Medicines. With a Preface by Wil-
liam T. STEARN, 2 vols., 1984; Le livre des Simples Médecines d’après le manuscrit
français 12322 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, 1986; Nigel F. Palmer, and
Klaus Speckenbach, Träume und Kräuter: Studien zur Petroneller Circa instans-
Handschrift und zu den deutschen Traumbüchern des Mittelalters, 1990; Leo J. Van-
dewiele, Een middelnederlandse versie van de ‘Circa instans’ van Platearius naar
de hss Portland, British Museum ms. Loan 29/332, XIVe eeuw en Universiteitsbiblioteek
te Gent Hs. 1457, XVe eeuw. Uitgegeven en gecommentarieerd, [1970]; (Gilbertus
anglicus) Gundolf Keil, ‘magister giselbertus de villa parisiensi’: Beobach-
tungen zu den Kranewittbeeren und Gilberts pharmakologischen Renom-
mae,” Sudhoff Archiv 78 (1994): 80–9; Marie Getz Faye, “The Pharmaceuti-
cal Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus,” Pharmacy in History 34 (1992): 17–25;
(Marbode of Rennes) John M. Riddle, Marbode of Renne’s (1035–1123) De
lapidibus Considered as a Medical Treatise, with Text, Commentary, and C. W. King’s
Translation, together with Text and Translation of Marbode’s Minor Works on Stones,
1977; (Mesue) Ulrike Heuken, Der achte, neunte und zehnte Abschnitt des Anti-
dotarium Mesuë in der Druckfassung Venedig 1561 (Trochisci, Pulver, Suffuf, Pillen):
Übersetzung, Kommentar und Nachdruck der Textfassung von 1561, 1990; (Nico-
laus praepositus) Alfons Lutz, “Das ‘Dispensarium ad aromatarios’ des
Nicolaus Praepositus (richtig Prepositi) um 1490 und seine Bedeutung für
die Geschichte der Pharmazie,” Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Inter-
nationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen
Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses in Rotterdam vom 17.–21. September 1960, ed.
Georg Edmund Dann, 1965, 87–103; (receptaries) Maria Sofia Corradini
Bozzi, Ricettari medico-farmaceutici medievali nella Francia meridionale, vol. 1,
1997; Anna Martellotti, I ricettari di Federico II: Dal ‘Meridionale’ al ‘Liber de
coquina,’ 2005; (Roccabonella) Francesco Paganelli, and Elsa M. Cappel-
letti, “Il codice erbario Roccabonella (sec. XV) e suo contributo alla storia
della farmacia,” Atti e Memorie della Accademia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 13
(1996): 111–17 (tacuinum sanitatis) Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval
Health Book Tacuinum Sanitatis, 1976 (first published in Italian, 1973); Tacui-
num Sanitatis: Vollständige Faksimile Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex 2396 der
Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, with a volume of commentary by Heinrich
Konrad, and Joachim Rössl, 1984; L’art de vivre au Moyen Age: Codex Vindobo-
nensis serie nova 2644 conservé à la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche, ed. Daniel
Poirion, and Claude Thomasset, 1995.
Pharmacy 1084

H. Topics
In addition to studies on the texts and their manuscripts, research also dealt
with aspects of the history of pharmacy, be they drugs, specific medicines,
treatments for specific medical conditions or any other relevant element
(works below are listed by topic, in alphabetical order of topics): (amber)
John Marion Riddle, “Amber in Ancient Pharmacy: The Transmission of
Information about a Single Drug: a Case Study,” Pharmacy in History 15 (1973):
3–17 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo …, no. V); (ambergris) John M.
Riddle, “Pomum ambrae: Amber and Ambergris in Plague Remedies,” Sud-
hoffs Archiv 48 (1964): 111–22 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo …, no. I);
(analgesics) G. Kalantzis, C. Trompoukis, C. Tsiamis, and J. Lascara-
tos, “The Use of Analgesics and Hypnotics in the Ancient Greece and Byzan-
tine Era,” The History of Anaesthesia Society, Proceedings 32 (2003): 27–31; (anes-
thesia) Gundolf Keil, “Spongia somnifera: Mittelalterliche Meilensteine auf
dem Weg zur Voll- und Lokalnarkose,” Anaesthesist 38 (1989): 643–48; (apos-
tolicum) Erhart Kahle, “Das Apostolicum in der arabischen medizinischen
Literatur,” Licht der Natur: Medizin in Fachliteratur und Dichtung. Festschrift
für Gundolf Keil zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Josef Domes, Werner G. Gerabek,
Bernhard D. Haage, Christoph Weisser, and Wolker Zimmermann,
1994, 239–50; (apoteca and apotecarius) Willem F. Daems, “Die Termini
apoteca and apotecarius im Mittelalter,” Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der
Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während des Inter-
nationalen Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kongresses in Rom vom 6.–10. September 1954,
ed. Georg Edmund Dann, 1956, 39–52; (Arabic materia medica in the
West) Peter Dilg, “Materia Medica und therapeutische Praxis um 1500:
Zum Einfluss der arabischen Heilkunde auf den europäischen Arznei-
schatz,” Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten: Kongressakten des 4 Symposion
des Mediävistenverbandes in Köln 1991 aus Anlass des 1000. Todesjahres der Kaiserin
Theophanu, ed. Odilo Engels, and Peter Schreiner, 1993, 353–77; (Ayur-
veda and Arabic medicine) Abdul Wahid, and Hefazat Husain Siddiqui ,
A Survey of Drugs: With Particular Reference to the Arab (Unani) Medicine and Ayur-
veda, 1961; (balsam) Marcus Milwright, “Balsam in the Mediaeval Medi-
terranean: A Case Study of Information and Commodity Exchange,” Journal
of Mediterranean Archaeology 14 (2001): 3–23; Id., “The Balsam of Matariyya:
An Exploration of a Medieval Panacea,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 66 (2003): 193–209; (calendar for health management) Karl
Sudhoof, “Medizinische Monatsregeln für Aderlass, Schröpfen, Baden,
Arzneigebrauch und Auswahl der Speisen und Getränke aus einer Pariser
Handschrift des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 2 (1909):
136–39; Hans-Rudolf Fehlmann, “Diätetische Monatsregeln in einem
1085 Pharmacy

“Handbuch der Heilkunde” aus der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Orbis Pictus:
Kultur- und pharmaziehistorische Studien. Festschrift für Wolfgang-Hagen Hein zum
65. Geburtstag, ed. Werner Dressendörfer, and Wolf-Dieter Müller-
Jahncke, 1985, 103–17; Ortrun Riha, “Die diätetischen Vorschriften der
mittelalterlichen Monatsregeln,” Licht der Natur …, ed. Domes, Gerabek,
Haage, Weisser, and Zimmermann (above), 339–64; (cancer) John M.
Riddle, “Ancient and Medieval Chemotherapy for Cancer,” Isis 76 (1985):
319–30 (reproduced in Riddle, Quid pro quo …, no. XII); (contraception)
John Marion Riddle, “Oral Contraceptives and Early-Term Abortifacients
during Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” Past and Present 132 (1991):
3–32; Id., Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance,
1992; Id., Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, 1997;
(Cosmas and Damianos) Marie-Louise David Danel, Iconographie des saints
Côme et Damien, 1958; Pierre Julien, Saint Côme et Saint Damien patrons des
médecins chirurgiens et pharmaciens, with illustrations by Alvaro Garzon,
1980; Gerhard Fichtner, “Das verpflanzte Mohrenbein: Zur Interpreta-
tion der Kosmas-und-Damian-Legende,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 3 (1968):
87–100 (reproduced in Medizin im mittelalterlichen Abendland, ed. Gerhard
Baader, and Gundolf Keil, 1982); Pierre Julien, François Ledermann,
and Alain Touwaide, Cosma e Damiano dal culto popolare alla protezione di chi-
rurghi, medici e farmacisti Aspetti e immagini, 1993; (cosmetics) John Lascara-
tos, Constantine Tsiamis, Gerasimos Lascaratos, and Nicholas G. Stav-
riameas, “The Roots of Cosmetic Medicine: Hair Cosmetics in Byzantine
Times (AD 324–1453),” International Journal of Dermatology 43 (2004):
397–401; (dental drugs) Effi Poulakou-rebelakou, M. Stavrou,
Costas Tsiamis, and M. Prokopidi, “Dental Drugs during the Byzantine
Times (330–1453 AD),” Program Abstracts of the XXth Nordic Medical History
Congress, Reyklavik, Iceland, August 10–13, 2005, no pagination; (dietetics) Luis
García-ballester, “Dietetic and Pharmacological Therapy: A Dilemma
Among Fourteenth-Century Jewish Practitioners in the Montpellier Area,”
Clio Medica 22 (1991): 23–37; Thomas Richter and Gundolf Keil, “‘Ain bi-
schoff und … sin bös gelüst’ : Untersuchungen zum Einfluss der Phytotherapie
auf die mittelalterliche Gastronomie, dargestellt am ‘Konstanzer Kochbuch’
von 1460,” Würzburger Diözesangeschichteblätter 56 (1994): 59–66; Melitta
Weiss Adamson, “Unus theutonicus plus bibit quam duo latini: Food and Drink
in Late Medieval Germany,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 33 (1995): 8–20;
Ead., Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800 to
1400, 1995; (East-West relations) Albert Dietrich, “Islamic Sciences and
the Medieval West: Pharmacology,” Islam and the Medieval West: Aspects of Inter-
cultural Relations. Papers Presented at the Ninth Annual Conference of the Center for
Pharmacy 1086

Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton,
ed. Khalil I. Semaan, 50–63; (England) Gösta Frisk, A Middle English Trans-
lation of Macer Floridus De viribus herbarum, 1949; Linda E. Voigts, “Anglo-
Saxon Plant Remedies and the Anglo-Saxons,” Isis 70 (1979): 250–68; Maria
Amalia D’Aronco, and Margaret L. Cameron, The Old English Illustrated
Pharmacopoeia. British Library Cotton Vitellius C III, 1998; Tony Hunt, and Mi-
chael Benskin, Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Language of Medicine
in the Fourteenth Century, 2001; Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies;
The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine, 2002; (falsifications)
Ottilia De Marco, “Le frodi e le sofisticazioni nell’Antichità classica e nel
medioevo,” Atti e Memorie della Accademia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 13
(1996): 139–50; (Fathers of the Church) Giorgio Rialdi, Introduzione allo
studio della medicina nei Padri della Chiesa, 1968; (Genizah) Efraim Lev, and
Zohar Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean ac-
cording to the Cairo Genizah, 2008; (gender) Sandra Sabatini, “Women, Medi-
cine and Life in the Middle Ages (500–1500 AD),” American Journal of Nephrol-
ogy 14 (1994): 391–98; (headache) Cesare Colucci D’amato, “Headache
and Migraine in the Scientific Traditions of the Salerno Medical School,” Acta
Neurologica 14 (1992): 270–74; (khôl) M. Faure, “Le Khôl, médicament et
fard oculaire, de l’Antiquité à nos jours,” Revue d’Histoire de la Pharmacie 295
(1992): 441–44; (lexicon, pharmaceutical) Martin Levey, “Some Aspects
of the Nomenclature of Arabic Materia Medica,” Bulletin of the History of Medi-
cine 37 (1963): 130–38; Cristoforo Masino, Voci di spezierie dei secoli XIV–XVIII,
Part 1, [1979]; Part 2 edited by Dantina Talmelli, and Giuseppe Mag-
gioni, [1988]; Willem F. Daems, Nomina simplicium medicinarum ex synonyma-
riis Medii Aevi collecta: Semantische Untersuchungen zum Fachwortschatz hoch- und
spätmittelalterlicher Drogenkunde, 1993; Sabine Bunsmann-Hopf, Zur Sprache
in Kochbüchern des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit: Ein fachkundliches
Wörterbuch, 2003; (materia medica) Henry E. Sigerist, “Materia Medica in
the Middle Ages,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 7 (1939): 417–23; Jerry
Stannard, “Marcellus of Bordeaux and the Beginnings of Medieval Ma-
teria Medica,” Pharmacy in History 15 (1973): 47–53 (reproduced in Stann-
ard, Pristina medicamenta …, no. VI); Id., “Aspects of Byzantine Materia
Medica,” Symposium …, ed. Scarborough (above), 205–11 (reproduced
ibid., IX); (materia medica, mineral) Dietlinde Goltz, Studien zur Ge-
schichte der Mineralnamen in Pharmazie, Chemie und Medizin von den Anfängen bis
Paracelsus, 1972; Marcelino V. Amasuno, La materia médica de Dioscórides en el
Lapidario de Alfonso X el Sabio: Literatura y ciencia en la Castilla del siglo XIII, 1987;
(opium) Selma Tibi, The Medicinal Use of Opium in Ninth-Century Baghdad,
2006; (Petrarch) Klaus Bergdolt, Arzt, Krankheit und Therapie bei Petrarca:
1087 Pharmacy

Die Kritik an Medizin und Naturwissenschaft im italienischen Frühhuman«mus,

1992; (pharmaceutical forms) Liliane Plouvier, “L’électuaire, un médica-
ment plusieurs fois millénaire,” Scientiarum historia 19 (1993): 97–112; Cris-
tina De La Puente, Avenzoar, averroes, ibn-al-jatib, médicos de al-ándalus:
Perfumes, ungüentos y jarabes, Madrid, 2003; (phytotherapy) Gundolf Keil,
“Phytotherapie im Mittelalter,” Scientiarum historia 20 (1994): 7–38; (placebo
effect) Judith Wilcox, and John Marion Riddle, “Qusta ibn Luqa’s ‘Physi-
cal Ligatures’ and the Recognition of the Placebo Effect, with an Edition and
Translation,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Con-
fluence and Dialogue 1 (1995): 1–50; (Salerno) Andrea Russo, “La Scuola
Medica di Salerno e la farmacia: nota preliminare,” Atti e Memorie della Accade-
mia Italiana di Storia della Farmacia 12 (1995): 145–54; (social status) Rudolf
Schmitz, and Mikulas Simon, “Mittelalterliche Grosshandelsaktivitäten
als Determinante der sozialen Stellung Zürcher Apotheker,” Festschrift für
A. Lutz und J. Büchi, ed. Hans-Rudolf Fehlmann, and François Ledermann,
1983, 7–38; (spices) Sami H. Hamarneh, “Spices in Medieval Islam:
A Perspective,” Hamdard medicus 35 (1992): 82–90; (substitution) Martin
Levey, Substitute Drugs in Early Arabic Medicine: With Special Reference to the Texts
of Masarjawaih, al-Razi, and Pythagoras, 1971; (tax tables) Irmgard Müller,
“Eine unbeachtete Speyerer Arzneitaxe des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Orbis Pictus …,
ed. Dressendörfer, and Müller-Jahncke (above), 187–215; (theriac)
Thomas Holste, Der Theriakkramer: Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Arzneimit-
telwerbung, 1976; Annette I. Bierman, “Medical Fiction and Pharmaceutical
Facts about Theriac,” Pharmaceutical Historian 24 (1994): 5–8; (toxicology)
Moritz Steinschneider, Die toxicologischen Schriften der Araber bis Ende des
XII. Jahrhunderts: Ein bibliographischer Versuch, grossentheils aus handschriftlichen
Quellen, 1871; Julius Ruska, “Arabische Giftbücher: III Die Gifte im Kanon
des Avicenna,” Fortschritte der Medizin 50 (1932): 794–95 (reproduced in
Studies on Ibn Sina (d. 1037) and His Medical Works: Collected and reprinted, ed. Fuat
Sezgin et al., 1996); Alfred Siggel, Das Buch der Gifte des Gabir ibn Hayyan:
Arabischer Text in Faksimile (HS. Taymur, tibb. 393, Kairo), 1958; Martin Levey,
Medieval Arabic Toxicology: The Book on Poisons of Ibn Wahshiya and Its Relation
to Early Indian and Greek Texts, 1966; Suessman Muntner, Maimonide: Treatise
on Poisons and their Antidotes, 1966; Alain Touwaide, “Les poisons dans le
monde antique et byzantin: introduction à une étude systémique,” Revue
d’Histoire de la Pharmacie 290 (1991): 265–81; Id., “Recherches en histoire de la
médecine intéressant la toxicologie depuis 1970,” Centre Jean-Palerne, Lettre
d’information, 19 (1991): 8–26, with a revised English trans.: “Studies in the
History of Medicine Concerning Toxicology after 1970,” Society of Ancient
Medicine-Newsletter 20 (1992): 8–33; Gerrit Bos, “The Treatise of Ahrun on
Pharmacy 1088

Lethal Drugs: The Arabic Text Edited with Commentary, Indices, and Trans-
lation into English,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissen-
schaften 7 (1991–1992): 136–71; Geneviève Sodigne-costes, “Un Traité
de toxicologie médiévale: Le Liber de venenis de Pietro d’Abano (traduction
française du début du XVe siècle”), Revue d’Histoire de la Pharmacie 305 (1995):
125–36; (trade) Albert Dietrich, Zum Drogenhandel im islamischen Ägypten:
Eine Studie über die arabische Handschrift Nr. 912 der Heidelberger Papyrus-Samm-
lung, 1954; (translation) Henri Van Hoof, “Notes pour une histoire de
la traduction pharmaceutique,” Meta 46 (2001): 154–75; (Venice) Richard
Palmer, “Pharmacy in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century,”
The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Andrew Wear, Roger K.
French, and Iain M. Lonie, 1985, 100–312.

I. Pharmaceutical Instruments
A special topic is pharmaceutical material. It has been intensively researched
during the last decades of the 20th century as a result of an unprecedented
increase in the antiquarian market, combined with a typical interest, among
the historians of sciences, in scientific instruments and the practical exercise
of science. Henry E. Sigerist had already studied the question of weights and
measures in medicine in 1930 (“Masse und Gewichte in den medizinischen
Texten des frühen Mittelalters,” Kyklos 3 [1930]: 440–44). In 1989, not only
pharmaceutical weights, but also the history of metrology became the object
of specific research (see also the contribution to this Handbook by Moritz
Wedell): Bernard Garnier, Jean-Claude Hocquet, and Denis Woro-
noff, Introduction à la métrologie historique, 1989; and Daniel Vangroen-
weghe, and Tillo Geldof, Pondera Medicinalia: Apothecaries’ Weights, 1989.
For Byzantium specifically, see also: Erich Schilbach, Byzantinische Metrolo-
gische Quellen, 1970; Id., Byzantinische Metrologie, 1970.
Drug jars were abundant on the antiquarian market during this period,
and were particularly studied by the Parisian pharmacist transformed into
an archaeologist of pharmacy, Robert Montagut, who organized several ex-
hibitions (in his gallery in Paris, at antiquarian fairs, or in collaboration with
other antiquarians in Europe). His catalogues, lavishly illustrated and with
a full description of the pieces, are reference works for any further research
on the topic (references follow, in chronological order of the exhibitions):
Robert Montagut, Faiences de pharmacie: Catalogue d’une collection provisoire,
1986; Galerie Robert Montagut, XIV Biennale des Antiquaires, 22 septembre – 9 oct-
obre 1988, Grand Palais à Paris, 1988; Jan Dirven, and Robert Montagut,
Pharmaceutica, 1989; Robert Montagut, Faiences: La Biennale della ceramica
a Faenza, 15–23 septembre 1990, Faenza, Palazzo Esposizioni, 1990. His collection
1089 Pharmacy

was sold at auction in Paris in 1992: Etude Daussy-Ricqlès, Collection Robert

Montagut, Drouot-Richelieu, salle 5, Jeudi 4 juin et Vendredi 5 juin 1992. He also
catalogued other collections, in collaboration with local specialists, as, for
example: Anna M. Carmona Cornet, and Robert Montagut, Collecció de
ceràmica de l’antiga farmàcia de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu, 1990.
Other specialists included Lydia Mez-Mangold, who catalogued the
collection of the pharmaceutical company Roche, in Basel (Lydia Mez-Man-
gold, Apotheken-Keramik-Sammlung ‘Roche,’ 1990; and Ead., Apotheken-Gefäss-
Sammlung Roche in Grenzach-Wyhlen, 1992), as well as the Barcelona anti-
quarian Artur Ramon, who organized several exhibitions from 1988 to 1996,
alone and in collaboration with Robert Montagut: Sala d’art Artur Ramon,
El món de la farmàcia. In collaboration with Robert Montagut, 1988; Artur
Ramon, and Robert Montagut, El món de la farmàcia, 1990; Sala d’art Artur
Ramon, El món de la farmàcia (3), 1991; Sala d’art Artur Ramon, El món de la far-
màcia (IV), 1993; Sala d’art Artur Ramon, El món de la farmàcia (5), 1996.
Important auctions were held in Paris and New York. Their catalogues
are illustrated as well and documented as those above, and constitute indis-
pensable reference works for further research: Etude Daussy-Ricqlès, Collec-
tion de Faïences Européennes, Drouot-Richelieu, salle 3, Vendredi 18 mai 1990; Etude
Daussy-Ricqlès, Pharmacie, Objets de Collection et de Curiosité, Drouot-Richelieu,
salle 4, Mercredi 2 décembre 1992; Briest-guérin, Collection Louis Cotinat, Drouot
Montaigne, Vendredi 20 juin 1997; in New York, the Arthur M. Sackler collection
was sold: Christie’s New York, Important Italian Maiolica from the Arthur M.
Sackler Collections (Part I), Wednesday, January 13, 1993 (the auction was post-
poned; the catalogue was published again: Christie’s New York, Important
Italian Maiolica from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Part I), Wednesday, October 6,
1993); Christie’s New York, Important Italian Maiolica from the Arthur M.
Sackler Collections (Part II), Wednesday, June 1, 1994).
Pharmaceutical mortars constitute a category in itself. Some pieces
appeared on the market (Robert Montagut, Mortiers, 1984), and the whole
genre was the object of scientific studies, with the identification of the types,
the producers, their marks, and the collections: Dirk Arnold Wittop Kon-
ing, Nederlandse vijzels, 1953, with a new edition in 1989; and, particularly:
Edmund Launert, Der Mörser: Geschichte und Erscheinungsbild eines Apotheken-
gerätes, Materialien-Formen-Typen, 1990.
Last but not least, the representations of pharmacies, pharmacists in
their apothecaries, and pharmaceutical material are a source for the study of
the practice of pharmacy and the use of the material. Illustrated medical
manuscripts have been listed in Loren Mackinney, Medical Illustrations in
Medieval Manuscripts, 1965. Some representations of pharmacies have been
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1090

collected and reproduced in Wolfgang-Hagen Hein, and Dirk Arnold Wit-

top Koning, Die Apotheke in der Buchmalerei, 1981.

Select Bibliography
Jean-Pierre Bénézet, Pharmacie et médicament en Méditerranée occidentale (XIIIe–XVIe
siècles) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999); Julius Berendes, Die Pharmacie bei den alten
Kulturvölkern: Historisch-kritische Studien, 2 vols. (1891; Hildesheim, Zurich, and New
York: Georg Olms, 1989]); Pharmacopoles et apothicaires: Les ‘Pharmaciens’ de l’Antiquité au
Grand Siècle, ed. Franck Collard, and Evelyne Samama (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006);
Pang. G. Kritikos, and Stella N. Papadaki, “Contribution à l’histoire de la Pharma-
cie chez les Byzantins,” Die Vorträge der Hauptversammlung der Internationalen Gesellschaft
für Geschichte der Pharmazie e. V. während des Internationalen Pharmaziegeschichtlichen Kon-
gresses in Athen vom 8. bis 14. April 1967, ed. Georg Edmund Dann (Stuttgart: Wissen-
schaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1969), 13–78; John M. Riddle, Quid pro quo: Studies
in the History of Drugs (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, VT: Variorium, 1992);
Bibliographie des textes médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut moyen âge, ed. Guy Sabbah, Pierre-
Paul Corsetti, and Klaus-Dietrich Fischer (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Uni-
versité, 1987), with a supplement by Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Bibliographie des textes
médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut moyen âge. Premier Supplément 1986–1999 (Saint-Etienne:
Publications de l’Université, 2000); George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science,
3 vols. (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1927–1948); Rudolf Schmitz, Geschichte
der Pharmazie, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Eschborn: Govi-
Verlag, 1998); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 3: Medizin, Pharma-
zie, Zoologie, Tierheilkunde bis ca. 430 H., and vol. 4: Alchimie, Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur
bis ca. 430 H. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); Jerry Stannard, Pristina medicamenta: Ancient
and Medieval Medical Botany, and Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Age and the Renaissance
(Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate,1999); Ulrich Stoll, Das “Lor-
scher Arzneibuch”: Ein medizinisches Kompendium des 8. Jahrhunderts (Codex Bambergensis
medicinalis 1). Text, Übersetzung und Fachglossar (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992); Lynn
Thorndike, and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings
in Latin (Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1963); Manfred Ull-
mann, Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), and Die Natur- und Geheimwissen-
schaften im Islam (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1972).

Alain Touwaide

Philosophy in Medieval Studies

A. General Definition
Medieval philosophy did not fashion itself as a coherent, autonomous
science, and where the term philosophia is used in medieval educational litera-
ture it generally embraces a broader and more diverse array of intellectual
1091 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

fields than its present-day English counterpart (see Jorge J. E. Gracia, “Phil-
osophy in the Middle Ages: An Introduction,” A Companion to Philosophy in the
Middle Ages, ed. id and Timothy B. Noone [2003], 1–11). Isidore, the 7th-cen-
tury Bishop of Seville, offered a convenient definition in his influential
encyclopedia, the Etymologiae: “Philosophy,” he suggested, “is the under-
standing of human and divine things joined with the pursuit of living well”
(“Philosophia est rerum humanarum divinarumque cognitio cum studio
bene vivendi”) (Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX,
ed. W. M. Lindsay, 1911, 2.24; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans.
Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, 2005,
79). The reference to divine things is significant: theological knowledge was
the usual object of medieval philosophical enquiry, and most of the work
that would today be recognized as “philosophical” would have been done
by theologians, usually in monasteries, cathedral schools or universities.
Philosophy itself had no formal place within the trivium and quadrivium of
the medieval educational system; the seven liberal arts served as routes or
prerequisites to the attainment of philosophical wisdom, but were not con-
terminous with it (G. Bernt, L. Hödl, and H. Schipperges, “Artes lib-
erales,” LexMa, 1977–1999, vol. 1, cols. 1058–63; Michele Lemoine, “Arts
Libéraux,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvart, Alain de Libera,
and Michel Zink, 2002, 93–96). Following the rise of the universities across
Europe in the 12th century, theology became one of the three arts towards
which an education in the liberal arts would ultimately lead, and philos-
ophy, as an analytical accessory, necessarily accompanied it (see Ralph McI-
nerny, “Beyond the Liberal Arts,” The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages, ed.
David Wagner, 1983, 248–72, who also usefully discusses Thomas Aqui-
nas’s treatment of the relationship between philosophia and the artes liberales).
The relationship between philosophia and theologia, as terms and as academic
disciplines, has been discussed at length in the recent literature. Especially
insightful is Stephen Brown’s “Theology and Philosophy,” Medieval Latin:
An Introduction and Bibliographic Guide, ed. Frank A. C. Mantello and A.
George Rigg (1996), 267–87, which offers a concise discussion of the differ-
ent meanings of philosophia, theologia and the related label, ancilla (“hand-
maiden,” a term introduced by Peter Damian to characterize philosophy’s
properly ancillary relation to theological wisdom), in medieval Latin docu-
ments.
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1092

B. Philosophy in the Christian West

Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period

Medieval European philosophy finds its origins in antiquity, yet the ideas of
the philosophers of ancient Greece were transmitted to medieval readers
only in a fragmentary, sporadic and often oblique manner. Plato was known
initially only through the incomplete Latin translation of his late dialogue,
the Timaeus, which was produced, together with a commentary, by the
Roman author Calcidius (fl. 5th c. C.E.). The translation extended as far as
53c, just over half way through the original text (see Timaeus a Calcidio Trans-
latus Commentarioque Instructus, ed. J.H, Waszink, 1962, for the Latin Ti-
maeus). In the 12th century, this translation was joined by Henry Aristippus’s
Latin versions of the the Phaedo (1156) and the Meno (1154–1160). Henry was
a scholar of some renown in Greece (though not demonstrably of Greek
birth), who also produced a translation of Aristotle’s Meteorologica. Though
these translations are known to have circulated quite widely, and to have
been known by a number of prominent philosophers, their influence
throughout the period was seemingly minimal (Paul Vincent Spade, “Medi-
eval Philosophy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, fall 2004 edition, ed.
Edward N. Zalta, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/entries/
medieval-philosophy/>; Peter Dronke, “Introduction,” Twelfth-Century
Western Philosophy, ed. id., 1988, 1–18, here 2). Writers of the early Christian
period therefore relied principally upon the Calcidian Timaeus for their Plato,
together with the version of Platonism that was inscribed in the work of the
Neoplatonists and earlier Platonic thinkers (Apuleius and Macrobius, among
others). As Raymond Klibansky pointed out in his brief introductory vol-
ume to the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi (4 vols, 1940–1962), medieval concep-
tions of Plato and of Platonic thought possibly relied more heavily upon
these latter sources than upon any of the Latin translations of the primary
texts themselves (The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages
(1939; rev. ed. 1981, 22).
Of the Aristotelian corpus more was known from the beginning, and so
profound was Aristotle’s influence on the development of medieval logic, in
particular, that its history has often been gauged according to the successive
phases by which his logical works, known collectively as the Organon, were
rendered into Latin. His two most fundamental logical texts, the Categoriae
and the De Interpretatione, were translated into Latin by the 5th-century gram-
marian, rhetorician and philosopher, Marius Victorinus (fl. mid-late 5th
c. C.E.). Latin translations of these texts were also produced by one of the
most prodigious of late-Roman scholars, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boe-
1093 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

thius, who also translated all, or most, of the remaining texts of the Organon,
together with Porphry’s Isagoge (“Introduction”), a student’s guide to the
Categoriae. His translation of the Isagoge circulated with the Categoriae and the
De Interpretatione throughout the Middle Ages, but his translations of the
remaining logical works by Aristotle seem not to have been widely available,
and these texts were effectively unknown in Europe until the 12th century.
Aristotle’s two texts, together with Porphyry’s introductory commentary,
therefore provided the basic metalanguage of the first evolutionary phase
of medieval logic, what 12th-century thinkers would look back upon as the
Logica Vetus (“Old Logic”).
The partial Latin text of the Timaeus offered the medieval reader a basic
cosmological plan that contrasted the physical universe, an entity of per-
petual change or “becoming,” with the realm of pure being, the only domain
of philosophical enquiry to which certainty and permanence could be
attributed. This fundamental scheme was developed in the writing of the
3rd-century Neoplatonic thinker, Plotinus, for whom the permanent pla-
tonic reality of being was located uniquely in the One (Greek tò ‘én; Latin
unum). In its simplicity, the One was incapable of division or change, which
meant that the eternal forms postulated by Plato had to be relegated to an in-
ferior but closely related level of being. Plotinus identified this as the Intel-
lect, or Mind (Greek noûs, from noós; Latin mens). The bridging element be-
tween the physical world and the Intellect was the Soul, immediately inferior
to it in metaphysical terms. These three different realities were identified by
Plotinus as hypostases, which he connected together using the principle of
emanation: from the One emanated the Intellect, and from the Intellect, the
Soul. The work of Plotinus was edited as the Enneads (“Nines”) by his student,
Porphyry, in the 3rd century, but the text was unknown in the early medieval
period. Porphyry was known at first hand only through Boethius’s Latin
translation of his Isagogue, an introduction to the Categoriae of Aristotle that
circulated widely with this text (see below). The important influence of Neo-
platonism on medieval philosophy must therefore be explained principally
through mediating influences, the works of scholars who were known in the
Middle Ages and who had themselves had access to Plotinus or Porphyry.
Calcidius’s commentary on the Timaeus shows clear Neoplatonic influence,
and is in itself a significant philosophical document. Likewise, the earlier
commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis produced by Macrobius (fl. late 4th
c. C.E.), who possibly drew on a lost Porphyrian source, enjoyed wide circu-
lation. The commentary included detailed expositions of the Neoplatonic
concepts of the One, the Mind and the Soul, as well as of the significance of
numbers and the motions of the heavenly spheres. Macrobius refers exten-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1094

sively to the Timaeus, and ranges beyond the limits of Calcidius’ partial Latin
translation of this text.
Among early Christian thinkers the most notable to have been in-
fluenced by Neoplatonic teaching were Boethius and Augustine. Boethius’s
De Consolatione Philosophiae draws on both Plato and the Neoplatonists (es-
pecially Porphyry and Proclus) in its representation of good, evil, divine and
human knowledge and the relationship between time and eternity. John
Marenbon, in his recent philosophical study, Boethius (2003), lists Greek
Neoplatonism as one of the four “main traditions” of thought upon which
Boethius drew, alongside the Latin philosophical writings, Greek Christian
literature, and the writing of the Latin Church Fathers (11). Neoplatonic in-
fluence is also evident in his Opuscula Sacra. Henry Chadwick has suggested
that Neoplatonic logic enables Boethius to make sense of the Trinity in the
first treatise of the Opuscula, De Trinitate (“Introduction,” Boethius: His Life,
Thought and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson, 1981, 1–12; Boethius: The Conso-
lations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, 1981, 211–19). Chadwick’s
book remains the most authoritative study of Boethius and his work. On the
reception of Boethius and the work of influential medieval commentators
such as Nicholas Trevet, see Chaucer’s ‘Boece’ and the Medieval Tradition of Boe-
thius, ed. A. J. Minnis (1993), and Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacu-
lar Traditions of the ‘Consolatio philosophiae’, ed. Maarten J. F.M. Hoenen and
Lodi Nauta (1997).
St. Augustine, who had little knowledge of Greek (he speaks of his con-
tempt for the language and its literature in the Confessiones, chap. 13–14),
was familiar with the Latin translation of the Enneads produced by Marius
Victorinus, which he studied under the guidance of the Christian scholar
Simplicianus in Milan. For him, Plotinus and the Neoplatonists occupied
a privileged intellectual position, and in the eighth book of De Civitate Dei he
suggests that no other pagan philosophers come closer to our own Christian
teaching than they (“Nulli nobis quam isti [Platonici] propius accesserunt”).
Christianity, however, had already been embraced by some Middle and Neo-
platonic thinkers of the Eastern Empire before Augustine’s time, but they
remained largely unknown in the west until the 9th century, when they
were brought into Latin by the Irish philosopher John Scotus Eriugena (see
below). The leading biographical study is Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, by
Peter Brown (1967, rev. ed. 2000), which also serves as a valuable explora-
tion of the history of his thinking. The revised edition contains appendices
on newly-discovered manuscript sources (the Divjak letters and the Dolbeau
sermons) and on recent developments in research (which contains valuable
bibliographic information). Étienne Gilson’s Introduction a l’étude de Saint
1095 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

Augustine (1921), published in English as The Christian Philosophy of St Augus-

tine (trans. L. E. M. Lynch, 1961) remains an indispensable guide to Augus-
tine’s thought. Henry Chadwick’s concise introductory study, Augustine
(1986), offers an accurate and readable introduction to Augustine’s life and
ideas, and contains a brief bibliography. Among the most impressive recent
scholarly accounts of Augustine’s life and work is Augustine: A New Biography
(2005) by James J. O’Donnell. As its title suggests, O’Donnell’s biography
is a properly revisionist study, which raises provocative questions about
Augustine’s ideas and affiliations. A short and more accessible biography,
which seeks to challenge popular misconceptions about Augustine, is Garry
Wills’s Saint Augustine (2005).
The Hellenized Jews of Alexandria and Antioch, key intellectual centers
that grew up in the east in the wake of the Jewish Diaspora, were ideally
equipped to study Platonic texts in the original language. By far the most im-
portant and influential was Philo Judaeus (fl. 1st c. B.C.E.-1st c. C.E.), a gifted
Alexandrine exegete whose commentaries on the Septuagint succeeded in
bringing Jewish doctrine and Platonic thought into harmony. Nevertheless,
he was, as the familiar epithet so often appended to his name suggests, a Ju-
daic thinker and theologian first and foremost, who was keen to understand
Greek philosophy as a derivative of, rather than as a supplement to, Jewish
thinking (E.R. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, 1st ed. 1940;
2nd ed. 1962, 97–118). Philo produced a small number of Platonically-in-
flected texts on metaphysics, physics and epistemology, drawing principally
upon the Timaeus and the Phaedrus. His later sources are relatively obscure,
but have been traced to Antiochus and (speculatively) to Eudorus of Alexan-
dria (John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism 80 B.C. to A.D. 220,
1980, 114–83). He has been celebrated as a philosophical innovator, one
of the first to bring Platonic ideas into the mind of God, and as a formative
influence on early Christian exegesis (Henry Chadwick, “Philo,” The Cam-
bridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, 1967, 137–57; Henri
de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de L’écriture, 1959, 1.1, 203–07;
trans. Mark Sebanc, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, 1998, 1,
147–50; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 1st ed. 1941; 3rd
ed., 1983, 3–8). Philo’s early Christian successors in Alexandria, Clement (d.
early 2nd c. C.E.) and Origen (185–253/254 C.E.) further propagated his ideas,
as well as making their own contributions to the synthesis of Christian and
Middle-Platonic thinking. Chief among these Christian Greeks was the
thinker mistakenly identified throughout the Middle Ages with the biblical
Dionysius the Areopagite, who was reputedly converted to Christianity by St
Paul (Acts 17:34). He is generally described today as Pseudo-Dionysius the
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1096

Areopagite, or as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. His close acquaintance

with Proclus makes his equation with the Biblical figure impossible (Pseudo-
Dionysius is now thought to have been writing in the 5th or early 6th c.), but
for most medieval European readers the two men were one and the same, and
the philosopher was therefore held in the highest esteem. Four of Diony-
sius’s works survive, of which three – On the Divine Names (Peri Theion Onoma-
ton), The Celestial Hierarchy (Peri tes Ouranias Hierarchias) and The Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy (Peri tes Ekklestiastikes Hierarchias) – are substantial treatises, and one,
The Mystical Theology (Peri Mystikes Theologias), a short essay. A fifth, The Theo-
logical Representations, is mentioned by Dionysius at the beginning of On the
Divine Names, and some of its contents are summarized elsewhere in this text,
as well as in The Mystical Theology, but no text survives.
The earliest Latin translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius’s four Greek
texts were made by Hilduin of St.-Denis early in the 9th century, but they
were generally of a very poor quality and were not widely circulated. It was
therefore upon the slightly later Latin renderings of John Scotus Eriugena
that most European readers relied throughout the high and later Middle
Ages. Eriugena had translated the three longest Dionysian texts freshly into
Latin at the behest of Charles the Bald, King of the Western Franks, in 858.
It was to the first of these, On the Divine Names, that he devoted particular
attention as a philosopher and a theologian. Here, he found Dionysius’s de-
scription of the necessarily negative (“apophatic”) nature of properties predi-
cated of God, whose infinite nature meant that positive qualities could not be
predicated of him literally. Eriugena’s Periphyseon is a vast cosmological
study which, alongside Pseudo-Dionysius, also draws upon a range of Greek
Neoplatonic authorities that were known to its author, such as Maximus the
Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa (from both of whom he had produced trans-
lations). Together with these, Eriugena also looked to some of the standard
texts available in the Latin west, such as the writings of Boethius and Augus-
tine, but was influenced especially by Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philol-
ogiae et Mercurii (before 439). His fundamentally Neoplatonic metaphysical
system envisaged the universe as an emanation from, and ultimately a return
to, the One. This model predictably gave rise to charges of pantheism, which
lost him favour among some Christian readers. In spite of this, his influence
in his own time was not insignificant, and he is known to have had close fol-
lowers. See the final chapter of John O’Meara’s Eriugena (1988), which con-
siders the Irishman’s immediate influence in detail (198–212). See also John
Marenbon’s earlier study, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic,
Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (1981). Eriugena’s influence in
the longer term was seemingly far more limited, especially following the
1097 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

condemnation of his writings by Pope Honorius III in 1225. Eriugena has at-
tracted relatively little attention from Anglophone scholars until recently.
Notable early studies by continental historians include Johannes Huber, Jo-
hannes Scotus Erigena: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie im
Mittelalter (1861) and Maïeul Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène: Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre, Sa
Pensée (1933). These volumes are now relatively difficult to obtain, and are of
limited use to the non-specialist. A convenient guide to more recent scholar-
ship is Mary Brennan’s Guide to Eriugenian Studies: A Survey of Publications,
1930–87, which replaces her two earlier, shorter bibliographic studies pub-
lished in Studi Medievali (1977 and 1986, respectively). Recent studies in Eng-
lish include John J. O’Meara, Eriugena (1988), a revised version of his earlier
study by the same name (1969), Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus
Eriugena (1989), Deidre Carabine, John Scotus Eriugena (2000), a new addition
to the Great Medieval Thinkers series.

The 10th and 11th Centuries

Historians of philosophy have generally had little to say about the period
of roughly a century that separated Eriugena from St Anselm. Writing in
the fifties, Frederick Copleston was content to describe the 10th century as
the new “Dark Age” into which the Carolingian Empire had been plunged,
largely by external forces such as the Nordic invasions (Medieval Philosophy
(1950), 136). Almost two decades later, the same expression was used by
H. Liebeschütz in an essay in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early
Medieval Philosophy (1967), 587. Whilst it is certainly true that the unified
political infrastructure that had been provided by Charlemagne’s kingdom
was becoming progressively fragmented at the hands of his Frankish
successors, and whilst the military campaigns of the Vikings in the British
Isles and Western Europe were far from inconsequential, the period was not
marked by anything approaching uniform philosophical stasis or regression.
The monasteries and cathedral schools played a fundamental role in the
copying and translation of philosophical texts, but whilst their reputation
for preservation and consolidation was well earned, they also contributed
significantly to the development of logic and to the progressive centraliz-
ation of philosophy as an educational discipline. Among the most distin-
guished logicians of the period was Gerbert of Aurillac (945–1003), who be-
came Pope Sylvester II in 999. He taught at the cathedral school at Rheims for
almost twenty years, serving as its master from 972 until 989, and estab-
lished a reputation as a gifted scholar and teacher. His logic was modeled
on that of Boethius, but travel to Spain also brought him into contact with
Moslem scholarship. The impact of Islamic learning on Gerbert’s thinking
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1098

has been the subject of debate, and will continue to fuel controversy. Of the
quality of his scholarship, in whatever way it might have been molded,
however, there has been little room for doubt. One of the few Anglophone
scholars to study him seriously has suggested that he must be ranked
“among the great teachers of all times” (O. G. Darlington, “Gerbert the
Teacher,” AHR 52.3 [1947]: 456–76, here 456–57). On the period generally,
and its place within the broader history of monastic culture, see J. Le-
clercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir de dieu: Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du
Moyen-âge (1957), now better known through its English translation, The Love
of Learning and the Desire for God (trans. Catharine Misrahi, 1961).
Many of the philosophical debates and advances that emerged out of the
11th century did so as consequence of curricular changes relating to the study
of logic, which were only gradual and piecemeal. At the beginning of the
11th century, knowledge of Aristotle’s logical works was still confined to
Latin translations of the Categoriae and the De Interpretatione. However, the
question that was to loom largest both in logical and metaphysical debates
among schoolmen had its apparent origins in Boethius, or rather, in Boe-
thius’s commentary on Porphry’s Isagoge. This question related to the mean-
ing of the categories themselves, and more specifically, to the reality of the
substantive categories of genera and species. To declare that such categories
were real was to adopt the position associated most famously with St Anselm
(d. 1109), a student of Lanfranc at the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, and later
his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury (see Richard W. Southern, St An-
selm and his Biographer (1963), 3–26 for biographical details of Anselm’s early
years and his monastic life at Bec, and 122–193 for his life as Archbishop).
Anselm’s insistence on the reality of universal categories such as “human” or
“man” arose out of, and was possibly exaggerated by, his opposition to the
extreme opinions of Roscelin of Compiègne (an opponent he encountered
relatively late in his philosophical career).
Roscelin had championed an extreme form of philosophical nominalism
that had reduced universals to the status of flatus vocis, the mere “puffs of air”
through which spoken words were realized. He had extended his metaphys-
ical arguments to the substance of the Trinity, suggesting that the three per-
sons of the Godhead were necessarily identical with three separate Gods, an
argument that Anselm felt to be logically inadmissible, as well as theologi-
cally fatuous. Anselm’s skills as a logician and metaphysician equipped him
well to respond Roscelin’s heterodox theology, but also enabled him to for-
mulate his most celebrated and controversial argument for the existence of
God (the “ontological argument”). See Yves Cattin, La preuve de dieu: Intro-
duction à la lecture du Proslogion d’Anselme de Canterbury (1986) for a detailed
1099 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

introductory study of Anselm’s Proslogion and its ontological argument. On

Anselm’s philosophy and theology more generally, see G. R. Evans, Anselm
(1989); R.W. Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1997).

The 12th and 13th Centuries

The spirit of revival that pervaded the study of logic throughout the 11th cen-
tury was given new impetus in the 12th, during which the remaining texts of
the Aristotelian logical corpus gradually became available. Latin translations
of the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics and the Sophistici Elenchi began to
circulate by the middle of the century, and were widely known by its con-
clusion. These texts represented what became known as the Logica Nova
(“New Logic”), and fuelled rapid developments in philosophical enquiry.
Alongside them, there appeared other important texts such as the Cicero-
nian Topica and the De Definitionibus of Marius Victorinus, but most notable
were the Boethian commentaries on Aristotle (A. van de Vyver, “Les étapes
du développement philosophique du Haut Moyen-Age,” Revue Belge de la Phil-
ologie et d’Histoire 7.2 (1929): 425–52; Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, “Nuovi
impulsi allo studio della logica: La seconda fase della riscoperta di Aristotele
e di Boezio,” Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 19
(1972): 743–66.) Though knowledge of Plato, by contrast, was still confined
largely to the Latin Timaeus, Platonic scholarship flourished throughout the
century in the celebrated cathedral school in Chartres. Among its distin-
guished line of scholars were Bernard of Chartres (d. 1125), Gilbert of Poitiers
(ca. 1076–ca. 1154), Thierry of Chartres (d. ca. 1150), William of Conches
(fl. mid-12th c.) and Bernard Sylvester (fl. mid-12th c.). Chartres was also the
final dwelling-place of the great humanist scholar John of Salisbury, who
had studied there earlier under Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches
after leaving Paris. See Clement C. J. Webb’s John of Salisbury (1932), which
offers a biographical account of the development of John’s philosophy,
devoting particular attention to his political ideas. It has yet to be supplanted
as the definitive single-volume introduction to this neglected medieval
thinker, though it now inevitably shows its age.
Peter Abelard (1079–1142), perhaps the most brilliant mind of 12th-cen-
tury Europe, was born just a little too early to benefit from the availability
of the new Aristotelian translations, but established an early reputation as
a gifted logician. He was a student first of Roscelin and then of William of
Champeaux, himself a former a student of Anselm, at the cathedral school in
Paris. William is remembered for his philosophical realism, but Abelard,
though he rejected the extreme nominalism of his earlier mentor, finally em-
braced what might be regarded as an attenuated form of Roscelin’s meta-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1100

physical position. Though evidently a quarrelsome student, Abelard later

enjoyed unrivalled popularity as a teacher. Some of his teaching relating
to the Trinity was condemned as heretical, and he was branded an Arian by
St Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Sens in 1140. Kathleen Starnes de-
votes a chapter of her brief biographical study, Peter Abelard: His Place in History
(1982), to Abelard’s philosophy. Among the most important recent authori-
tative studies of Abelard’s philosophy is John Marenbon’s The Philosophy of
Peter Abelard (1997), which also gives ample attention to Abelard’s theology.
The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, ed. Jeffrey E. Brower and Kevin Guil-
foy (2004), contains chapters by an impressive cast of scholars on most of the
key domains of philosophical enquiry (metaphysics, epistemology, philo-
sophy of language, and ethics), as well as on selected aspects of Abelard’s
theology and his life and influence.
The burgeoning of philosophical activity in 13th-century Europe owed
its greatest debt to the rise of the universities, and to that of the University of
Paris in particular. Though it did not receive its charter until the beginning
of the century, Paris had existed as a centre of learning, first as a cathedral
school centered at Notre Dame and later as a nascent scholarly corporation,
for several centuries. Among its greatest teachers was the German Domini-
can friar Albertus Magnus, who had studied mainly at the University of
Padua, then a new institution. St Albert was indulgently Aristotelian, and
eagerly took advantage of the newly-available translations; his enthusiasm
was shared by many of his students, including Thomas Aquinas, who studied
under his direction in Paris and then Cologne. He produced lengthy com-
mentaries on many of the Aristotelian texts that he had scrutinized, and
readily embraced insights drawn from Arabian scholarship. He did much
to facilitate the assimilation of many of the new texts, both of Aristotle and
of others, and it is upon this, chiefly, that his reputation rests. See the three
important recent monograph studies by Alain de Libera: Albert le Grand et la
Philosophie (1990), La mystique rhenane: d’Albert le Grand à Maître Eckhart (1994),
and Métaphysique et noétique: Albert le Grand (2005); see also Maarten Hoenen
and Alain de Libera, Albertus Magnus und der Albertismus: Deutsche philosop-
hische Kultur des Mittelalters (1995). Albert’s younger contemporary, the Italian
St. Bonaventure, treated Aristotle with greater caution. All of Bonaventure’s
work was motivated by theological questions, and unlike Albert he produced
no dedicated Aristotelian commentaries. Alongside Aristotle, he also drew
heavily upon Augustine, and the relationship between the two authorities in
his writing has been the subject of much discussion. In his metaphysics, he
was a Platonist, readily embracing the doctrine of extra-temporal forms; yet
in his hylomorphic account of the soul, he was very strictly Aristotelian.
1101 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

The most renowned thinker of the later medieval period is St Thomas

Aquinas (1224–1274/75). Though his status as a philosopher has been much
debated, most notably by no less a figure than Bertrand Russell, the place
of Aquinas’s writings within the western philosophical canon seems never-
theless secure (Brian Davies, “Thomas Aquinas,” Medieval Philosophy, ed.
John Marenbon, 1998, 241–68, here 242; Bertrand Russell, History of West-
ern Philosophy, 1946; 2006, 247). Like his teacher Albert the Great, Aquinas
was a dedicated Aristotelian, and produced comprehensive commentaries on
a number of Aristotle’s works. He wrote as a theologian, and the vast major-
ity of philosophical questions he examined emerged out of the context of
theological enquiry. His longest surviving works were his two theological
summae, the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae (which was unfin-
ished at his death), each of which yields important insights into his philo-
sophical method. But Aquinas also produced a highly original treatise on
the nature of being: De Ente et Essentia. His metaphysical system was funda-
mentally theocentric, and was informed by principles that were respectively
Aristotelian and Platonic: God was the primary efficient cause of all
aspects of creation, but the effects of this creative cause were also seen to par-
ticipate metaphysically within it by virtue of their place on an ontological con-
tinuum. Though the qualities of divine being and created being were funda-
mentally different, therefore, they could be described analogically using
the same terms (“good,” “merciful,” “loving,” etc). Of the many influential
studies of Thomas Aquinas and of Thomism that have appeared over the last
century, a number deserve particular attention. Étienne Gilson authored
several authoritative studies, including Le Thomisme: Introduction au système de
Saint Thomas (1919), Saint Thomas d’Aquin (1925), Saint Thomas, moraliste (1974)
and La philosophie chrétienne de la St. Thomas Aquinas et l’unité d’une expérience phil-
osophique (1956), which was later published in English as The Christian Philos-
ophy of St Thomas Aquinas. F. C. Copleston produced his Aquinas, one of the
earliest and most widely-used philosophical studies, in 1955. Introductory
studies include G. K. Chesterton, St Thomas Aquinas (1933), a modest but
highly readable text whose stated aim is merely to persuade readers to move
on towards more advanced studies of the thinker. James Weisheipl’s Friar
Thomas d’Aquino: His Thought, Life and Works (1974) is a detailed biographical
review of the Dominican thinker’s ideas, which has yet to be supplanted by
any comparable account of Aquinas’ career as a philosopher and theologian.
Anthony Kenny’s Aquinas (1980) is an accessible introduction to Aquinas’
ideas, which are presented from a philosophical perspective. It says relatively
little about his theology, or about the theological applications of his philos-
ophy. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas by Brian Davies (1993) offers a good sur-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1102

vey of Aquinas’s ideas, but is framed in theological rather than philosophical

terms. The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (1993), edited by Norman Kretz-
mann and Eleonore Stump, brings together essays on Thomistic meta-
physics, epistemology, ethics, and legal philosophy by a group of leading
scholars.

The 14th Century

The two most prominent names in historical accounts of medieval philos-
ophy after Aquinas have generally been those of John Duns Scotus (d. 1308)
and William of Ockham (d. 1347). Both owed a debt to Aquinas, though
Scotus opposed him fundamentally in respect of his approach to theological
language, arguing that predicates could be applied to divine and to human
subjects univocally (rather than merely analogically). An accessible and auth-
oritative short introduction to Scotus’s ideas is Richard Cross, Duns Scotus
(1999), in the Great Medieval Thinkers series. Cross presents Scotus as a theolo-
gian, but gives particular emphasis to his natural theology, thereby offering
a valuable insight into his philosophical method. Of similar length is Effrem
Bettoni’s book of the same name (1961), a highly readable introductory
study that is more accessible to the general reader than Cross’s. The first five
and the last five chapters of The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus (2003) are
devoted to philosophical questions, making this among the best resources
for students seeking a comprehensive scholarly guide to Scotus the philos-
opher. Welcome attention is devoted here, too, to Scotus’s ethics and moral
philosophy. Marilyn McCord Adams’s magisterial two-volume mono-
graph, William Ockham (1987), is the most detailed study to date of Ockham’s
ideas. It is written with the philosopher, rather than the historian, in mind,
and includes only a very brief discussion of Ockham’s life and career.
After Ockham, philosophical debate was dominated by such figures as
Walter Burley (1274/5–1344), Richard Fitzralph (d. 1360), and John Wyclif
(d. 1384). Both Burley and Wyclif opposed Ockham in respect of certain logi-
cal and metaphysical issues, and were committed fundamentally to the real-
ity of universals. On intellectual life in England during the 14th century see
William J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England
(1987); From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (1987).

C. Islamic and Jewish Philosophy

Like their Christian contemporaries, medieval Jewish and Islamic philos-
ophers entered readily into dialogue with the Latin and Greek texts of
ancient Europe, and, through a painstaking process of translation and com-
mentary, made philosophical advances that would benefit all three religious
1103 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

communities. Islamic philosophy (al-falsafa) was effectively defined by its

ancient Greek sources, and placed reason, the guiding principle of Aristote-
lian enquiry, at the heart of its program. Philosophical treatises were trans-
lated from Arabic into Latin from the 10th century onwards, largely by
scholars who lived or had settled in Spain during the middle stages of the
Christian Reconquista. An important centre of learning during the Recon-
quest period was Toledo, where many of the Latin translations were pro-
duced. When the remaining texts of the Organon were translated into Latin in
12th-century Europe, therefore, the Islamic scholarship of the Arabian near
east was very readily embraced by western scholars. It included a wealth of
scholarly commentaries on Aristotle’s writings, and served as a new model
for western philosophical enquiry. Like Islamic texts, many of the philo-
sophical and theological writings of medieval Judaism were originally pre-
pared in Arabic, a fact that led to some confusion as to their origins among
medieval and later readers. Moses Maimonedes (1135–1204), probably the
most distinguished medieval Jewish thinker, wrote his Guide for the Perplexed
in this language, but it was subsequently translated into Hebrew, and
thence, in Toledo in the mid-13th century, into Latin. This epistolary guide,
addressed to a student, draws on both Platonic and Aristotelian traditions in
its exploration of scriptural terms and related theological and philosophical
questions.
Islamic theology (‘ilm al-kalam) originated as a discipline distinct from
philosophy, yet it was methodologically often highly philosophical. The
teaching of the Mu’talizite theologians, for example, rested fundamentally
on reason and on precepts derived deductively from Koranic teaching. The
two great Islamic thinkers Avicenna (Ibn Rushd, d. 1037) and Averroes (Ibn
Sina, d. 1198) were probably the most widely known in medieval Europe,
though some of the work of the earlier Islamic scholars Al-Kindi and Al-Fa-
rabi was also translated into Latin. Avicenna, a Persian, was a prolific scholar,
whose writings on medicine and the natural world remained influential for
centuries after his death. Though his philosophy derives heavily from Aris-
totle, it bears a distinctive platonic inflection, a property that Averroes, one
of his most diligent students, abhorred. Averroes himself worked in Islamic
Spain for much of his life, and earned the sobriquet “the Commentator” in
recognition of his scholarly commentaries on Aristotle. Muslim scholarship
was held in the highest regard by medieval Christian scholars who, if con-
scious of alterity of Islamic culture (a culture that they often deemed
“pagan”), were impressed by the merits of rational argumentation. Avicen-
na’s Kitab al-Shifa (“Book of Healing”) appeared in Latin at the beginning of
the 13th century, the product of a collaborative effort by Dominicus Gundis-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1104

salinus and other translators in Toledo, and circulated widely among Chris-
tian scholars. The text derives heavily from Aristotle, but its distinctive Neo-
platonic properties were as attractive to western Christians as they would
have been repulsive to Averroes. Many of Averroes’s own commentaries,
most of which preserved substantial portions of Aristotle’s original texts,
were translated into Latin in the 13th century. The most prolific of his trans-
lators was Michael Scotus, who translated many of the commentaries into
Latin whilst living in Toledo at the beginning of the 13th century. Another
Toledo scholar, Hermannus Alemannus, often known as “Hermann the Ger-
man” in English translation, was responsible for an incomplete Latin trans-
lation of Averroes’ “Middle Commentary” on Aristotle’s Poetics (1256) and an
earlier translation of a similar commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (1240).
For a comparative account of the three main philosophical traditions see
Medieval Philosophy: The Christian, Islamic and Jewish Traditions, ed. Arthur
Hyman and James J. Walsh (1967; 2nd ed. 1983). On medieval Jewish phil-
osophy, see Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Medieval Jewish Philosophy: An Introduction
(1996). See also The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed.
Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (2003). A good collection of recent
essays on Arabic Philosophy, in the same series, is The Cambridge Companion
to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard Taylor. Especially
relevant are the chapters on Arabic Neoplatonism (by Christina d’Ancona),
Al-Kindi, Avicenna and Averroes (by Peter Adamson, Robert Wisnovsky
and Richard Taylor, respectively), and the translation of Arabic texts into
Latin (by Charles Burnett). For a concise survey of the different phases of
translation from Arabic into Latin and from Hebrew into Latin, see Deborah
L. Black’s “Medieval Translations: Latin and Arabic” and Charles H. Mane-
kin’s, “Medieval Translations: Latin and Hebrew,” Medieval Latin: An Intro-
duction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F. A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg
(1996), 723–27 and 713–17, respectively.

D. Texts and Editions of Philosophical Works

The study of medieval philosophy owes its greatest debt to the science of
diplomatics, the systematic scrutiny of ancient documents that was given its
name by the 17th-century French scholar, Jean Mabillon (1632–1707). It
was Mabillon who coined the phrase res diplomatica, but though it was he who
established systematic procedures for the analysis of manuscript records, his
own work owes a great debt to his Maurist peers. In 1664, Mabillon became
a disciple of Lucas d’Achéry, himself a prodigious scholar, in the Abbey of St-
Germain-des-Prés, where he produced many of the scholarly editions for
which he is remembered. Though none of these editions was specifically
1105 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

philosophical in character, Mabillon’s robust and precise editorial method

paved the way for the later collation and editing of philosophical manu-
scripts. He is remembered for what was and is his most influential work,
De Re Diplomatica Libri Sex (1681; 2nd ed. 1709), which contained valuable in-
formation about the nascent field of diplomantics, as well as detailed notes
on closely related areas such as paleography. Though Mabillon could not
easily have known it, his work made possible much of the scholarly editing
of philosophical texts that took place later in the century of his death, at the
hands of such skilled scholars as Victor Cousin. The French Revolution of
1789 had an important if ambiguous influence on the study of the history of
philosophy in France and elsewhere. French philosophy in general, guided
at least in part by the Enlightenment politics of the philosophes, a self-styled
group of intellectuals dedicated to rational enquiry, became less dependent
upon church teaching, devoting itself instead to a new kind of natural theol-
ogy. But as Edward Synan has pointed out, the revolutionary political vigor
of the 18th and early 19th centuries did not quell the French patriotic pride in
its medieval philosophical inheritance (“Latin Philosophies of the Middle
Ages,” Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James M. Powell (2nd ed. 1992).
Born shortly after the Revolution, the scholar Jacques-Paul Migne
(1800–1875) is probably the most renowned editor to have emerged from
France. His monumental Patrologia Latina, which runs to 217 volumes, con-
tains editions of theological and ecclesiastical texts dating from the 5th cen-
tury until the early 13th. The importance of Migne’s editions can be gauged
by the fact that a very significant number of them are still used by scholars
of the present day, and by the recent decision of the publisher Chadwyk-
Healey to make them available, by subscription, in full-text electronic form
(http://pld.chadwyck.com/). Though Migne’s editions of the writings of major
figures such as Augustine and Peter Lombard have since been supplanted by
more recent, fully critical ones, and though the quality of Migne’s editing is
not always reliable, the Patrologia Latina remains a valuable resource.
The 19th century witnessed a frenzy of editorial activity in Germany in
particular, culminating in the publication, in 1826, of the first volume in the
Monumenta Germaniae Historia series, which continues to produce scholarly
editions of medieval German texts – both in Latin and the vernacular – to the
present day. The Monumenta were one of the products of post-Enlightenment
historicism (historismus), which gave rise to a renewed interest in the history
and evolution of the German nation, its language and its historical records
and literary products. Fundamental to German historical method was its or-
ganicism, a guiding assumption that the languages and texts of a nation, like
members of a family or race, might be traced organically to their ancestors.
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1106

The organic metaphor was prevalent in linguistic and philological research,

as well as in the emergent science of stemmatics, which played a fundamen-
tal role in German and European textual critcism from the early 19th century
onwards. Alongside the Monumenta editions, which range across a number of
fictional and non-fictional genres, and some of whose texts are of significant
interest to the historian of philosophy, the 19th century saw the publication
of the first edition in the important series Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie
des Mittelalters (“Contributions to the History of Medieval Philosophy”) in
1892. Like the Monumenta, this series includes editions of a number of im-
portant philosophical texts, as well as scholarly studies of medieval themes
and figures. Unlike the Monumenta, however, as their name suggests, the Bei-
träge are dedicated solely to philosophical material.
The early 20th century saw the publication of several significant scholarly
editions of medieval philosophical texts and translations, many not pre-
viously edited. The Bibliothéque des Textes Philosophiques, established in 1932,
contains some editions of Latin philosophical texts within its series, as does
the slightly earlier Études de Philosophie Médiévale (begun in 1922). The Corpus
Philosophorum Medii Aevi (1939–) was the earliest attempt to make available
the Latin translations of Plato and Aristotle that were used by medieval
scholars (Aristoteles Latinus, ed. Georges Lacombe et al., 1939–); Plato Latinus,
ed. Raymond Klibansky et al., 1940–). Franciscan Institute Publications intro-
duced its Text Series in 1951, and has published editions of the works of
some important medieval thinkers. Shortly afterwards, in Germany, there
emerged Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, which began publishing editions
of medieval Latin texts and scholarly essays in 1965. The appearance of the
first volumes of the Corpus Christianorum in 1953 (the Series Latina), and the ex-
tension of the series into the medieval period shortly afterwards (the Continu-
atio Mediaevalis, 1966–), made available new editions of many of the patristic
and medieval Latin texts originally edited by Migne, as well as many others
(the chronological scope of the Corpus extends as far as the 15th century).
(M. Lamberigts, “Corpus Christianorum (1947–1955): The Laborious Jour-
ney from Dream to Reality,” Sacris Erudiri 38 [1998]: 47–73). Editions from
the Corpus Christianorum are now available on line via the Library of Latin Texts
(Brepols).

E. Histories of Medieval Philosophy

The synoptic study of medieval philosophy finds its origins in a small
number of highly detailed studies dating from the first quarter of the
20th century. Widely regarded as one of the foundation stones of medieval
philosophical historiography is Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode by
1107 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

Martin Grabmann, published in two volumes between 1909 and 1911. This
was the first of Grabmann’s many major publications on medieval philos-
ophy, and was followed by two further contributions to intellectual histori-
ography (Geistesgeschichte): Die Philosophie des Mittelelaters (1921) and Mittel-
alterliches Geistesleben (1926–1956). The most important early survey in
English, roughly contemporary with Grabmann’s German text, was Henry
Osborn Taylor’s The Medieval Mind (1st ed. 1911; 4th ed. 1938), a two-volume
study that established many of the narrative paradigms of Anglophone
medieval intellectual historiography. Though ranging beyond the narrow
focus of medieval philosophy, Taylor’s study offers a compelling and ac-
cessible introduction to many of its major themes and personalities.
In the second half of the 20th century, many highly influential single-
volume and multi-volume studies appeared, some by historians of medieval
philosophy, and others by philosophers. The existential philosopher Karl
Jaspers (1883–1969) published the first of a projected four volumes of
Die großen Philosophen, an introductory portrait of the leaders and founders of
western and eastern philosophical thinking, in 1957. When he died in 1969,
he had completed the second volume, but had left notes relating to the other
two. The narrative that runs through the first two volumes is not a strictly
chronological one, but proceeds rather as a sequence of vignettes, organized
into three thematic sections. Listed alongside Plato and Augustine as a fort-
zeugende Gründer des Philosophierens, therefore, we find a much later figure, Im-
manuel Kant. Jaspers’s two volumes were translated into English as The Great
Philosophers by Ralph Mannheim in 1966. In France, Étienne Gilson pub-
lished numerous general introductions to medieval philosophy, alongside
more specific studies and studies of particular philosophers, many of which
remain in use today. La philosophie au Moyen-âge, he suggests in his introduc-
tion to the text, was not written with the specialist reader in mind. Yet this
lengthy study, originally running to two volumes (1922), and in its second
edition occupying a single volume of almost 800 pages (1944), has something
to offer specialists and non-specialists alike. In 1931 and 1932, Gilson was in-
vited to deliver the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland,
and these were published as a monograph, L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale
(1932), shortly afterwards. The first English translation was published four
years later. In attempting to arrive at the “spirit” of medieval philosophical
thought, Gilson here concludes by highlighting its Christian purpose (some-
thing that clearly distinguished it from the philosophy of the ancients).
In his later study, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (published in
English in 1955), which was based on a course he convened at the Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, he explores the relationship be-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1108

tween western philosophy and Christianity more extensively, and this book,
though some of the ideas within it have been deemed eccentric, remains an
important resource for scholars working in this area. The same is true of Gil-
son’s Introduction à la philosophie chrétienne (1960). A recent, highly readable
history in French is Alain de Libera’s La philosophie médiévale (1993). Among
single-volume studies, this offers the most detailed analysis of Islamic phil-
osophy (in the west as well as the orient), Jewish philosophy, and the ne-
glected philosophy of Byzantium. It also contains a helpful political and
philosophical chronology.
Gordon Leff’s Medieval Thought: St Augustine to Ockham (1957) is a very
concise study of a very long episode in European intellectual history. Its divi-
sion into three parts, relating respectively to European thought after the fall
of the Roman Empire, the “triumph” of scholasticism between the begin-
ning of the 11th and the end of the 13th century, and to 14th-century scepti-
cism, attracted predictable charges of over-simplification following its pub-
lication. Moreover, subsequent research has rendered questionable some
of Leff’s broad conclusions (e. g. about the prevalence of “scepticism” in
14th-century thinking). Yet this remains a very readable and compelling in-
troduction to medieval philosophy. In the United States in 1946, the English
scholar Father Frederick Copleston produced the first volume of his
History of Philosophy. Twenty-eight years later, he completed the eleventh and
final volume in the series. Medieval philosophy is the province of his second
and third volumes, and is afforded a very comprehensive treatment. Though
some of Copleston’s broad conclusions might today appear rather mis-
guided (as subsequent research has revealed), his subtle, and at times pro-
vocative discussion of the relationship between philosophy and theology is
highly engaging. Published shortly after Copleston’s two volumes, again
in the United States, was Armand Maurer’s Medieval Philosophy (the second
volume in a four-part series edited by Étienne Gilson). This detailed and
scholarly survey has become a classic of its kind. Dom. David Knowles pub-
lished his widely-used Evolution of Medieval Thought in 1962. Acknowledging
his debt to Ehrle, Bauemker, Grabmann, and Gilson, Knowles offers
an analysis of what he perceives to be the “main currents” of medieval phil-
osophy (ix). However problematic his guiding biological metaphor may ap-
pear today, this remains an authoritative and highly readable study.
Recent philosophical studies are very numerous, and it must suffice
to mention only the most significant here. The Cambridge History of Later Greek
and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong (1967), and The
Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. by Norman Kretzmann,
Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (1982), are each indispensable reference
1109 Philosophy in Medieval Studies

works. The former offers detailed studies of the development of Neoplaton-

ism, Augustinian thought, Christian thinkers from Boethius to Anselm, and
has an especially useful section on early Islamic philosophy. The latter works
primarily with sub-disciplines of philosophy rather than with authors or
schools (though an appendix offers summary biographical details of over
140 late-medieval thinkers), and is confined principally to western philos-
ophy. There are extensive chapters on logic and its development, meta-
physics and epistemology, political philosophy, ethics and natural philos-
ophy. Each of the volumes has a very distinguished array of contributors, and
will remain a resource of the first resort. Peter Dronke’s edited volume,
A History of Twelfth-Century Philosophy (1988; paperback, 1992), addresses a
period in the history of philosophy that its editor perceives to have been
largely neglected. Historians from Geyer and Gilson to the contributors to
The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, as Dronke rightly suggests,
have paid scant attention to the 12th century.
John Marenbon’s two companion volumes, Early Medieval Philosophy
(480–1150): An Introduction (1983; 2nd ed. 1988) and Later Medieval Philosophy
(1150–1350): An Introduction (1988) have established themselves as reliable
scholarly guides, and range far beyond the level of an introduction. They
have recently been rewritten and published as a single-volume history, Medi-
eval Philosophy: An Historical and Philosophical Introduction (2006). This new
guide incorporates changes in approach and perspective that occurred in the
preparation of the second volume (such as a radical reassessment of the cat-
egory “philosophy”), and to which Marenbon also gestured in his introduc-
tion to the second edition of the first volume. It contains a lengthy chapter on
philosophy outside the universities, a neglected area to which the original
volumes devoted little attention.
Michael Haren’s Medieval Thought: The Western Intellectual Tradition from
Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century (1985; 2nd ed. 1992) is the most detailed and
the most challenging single-volume survey in English, and his extensive an-
notated bibliographies (revised and updated for the 2nd ed.) are excellent.
B. B. Price’s Medieval Thought: An Introduction (1992) is presented in an at-
tractive and innovative way, but has been criticized by reviewers for factual
errors and inaccuracies. The most conspicuous of these are mistranslations of
Latin and grammatical infelicities in the reproduction of titles of Latin texts
(the number that appear in Appendix 7 alone is nothing less than alarming).
This is unfortunate, as this volume otherwise has much to recommend it.
Two more recent single-volume studies are C. J. F. Martin’s An Introduc-
tion to Medieval Philosophy (1996) and David Luscombe’s Medieval Thought
(1997). The former begins at a very basic level, but includes helpful dis-
Philosophy in Medieval Studies 1110

cussions of key concepts such as authority and tradition, and of analytical

procedures and conventions such as the quaestio. Nevertheless, Martin’s
crude characterization of the 14th century as a period of philosophical decline
that followed from the celebrated Thomistic synthesis of faith and reason has
attracted justified criticism. Luscombe’s study is more advanced, but does
not assume any prior acquaintance with medieval culture, and helpfully
deters its reader, at the outset, from identifying “medieval thought” with an
ordered, homogeneous body of concepts or writings.
Two newer and more substantial edited volumes are From Aristotle to
Augustine, edited by David Furley (1997; paperback ed. 2003) and Medieval
Philosophy, edited by John Marenbon (1998; paperback ed. 2003), which
respectively constitute volumes 2 and 3 of the Routledge History of Philosophy.
The two volumes, which contain detailed essays by established, principally
philosophical scholars, address themselves, as the series editor’s introduc-
tion suggest, both to the specialist and the general reader. Each volume con-
tains a helpful glossary of technical terms, as well as a chronology. The most
recent single-authored synoptic account of medieval philosophy is volume 2
of Anthony Kenny’s four-volume A New History of Western Philosophy (2005;
paperback ed. 2007). Kenny, a philosopher who enjoyed the patronage
of Frederick Copleston as a student in Rome, shares his mentor’s commit-
ment to a belief in the significance of medieval philosophy within the
broader history of the discipline. This volume, like the three others in the
series, ambitiously seeks to combine an historical with a thematic approach
to the development of philosophical ideas, offering concise historical surveys
of approaches to central areas of philosophical enquiry: logic and language,
knowledge, physics, metaphysics, mind and soul, ethics and God.

Select Bibliography
The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967; rpt. 1970); Michael Haren, Medieval
Thought: The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century (London:
Macmillan, 1985; 2nd ed. 1992); The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy,
ed. Norman Kretzman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982); L. M. de Rijk, La philosophie au Moyen Age (Leiden: Brill, 1985);
Alain de Libera, La philosophie médiévale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1993); John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy: 480–1150 (London: Routledge,
1983; 2nd ed. 1988); id., Later Medieval Philosophy: 1150–1350 (London: Routledge, 1991);
G. R. Evans, Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers (London: Routledge, 2002); Jorge J. E. Gracia
and Timothy B. Noone, A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell,
2003)

Stephen Penn
1111 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

Political Theory in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
As J. H. Burns has suggested in his introduction to The Cambridge History
of Medieval Political Thought c. 250–c. 1450 (1998) within the medieval context
discussion of “political theory” is problematic for at least two reasons. First,
not only was the term “political” in its original Greek sense irrelevant and,
indeed, foreign to the experience of virtually all medieval commentators and
thinkers, but it is at best debatable to attribute to any medieval writer a
political theory even in its broader sense of a theory of the “state.” Second,
medieval authors were disinclined to view the “political” as a sphere separate
and apart from morals, religion, or natural philosophy. Hence, even the most
illustrious contributors to the Western tradition of political theory, such as
Aquinas, Ockham, Marsilius, directed themselves to issues that were only at
best tangentially related to the modern notion of “political,” and few writers,
particularly in the early middle ages, explicitly addressed issues political in
nature at all. Nonetheless, if one accepts a definition of political as compris-
ing those manipulable interrelationships in a particular area of life involving
power, authority or influence, it is clear that even in the early Middle Ages
theory was implicit in the institutions and procedures of society.

B. Heritage of Late Antiquity

The 4th and 5th centuries provided the West with two contrasting and yet
equally influential interpretations of history with significant repercussions
for political theory. The first of these was the Eusebian vision of a Christian
Roman Empire as God’s providential plan for the regnum Christi through the
person of the emperor. This view would predominate in the writings of Am-
brose of Milan, who continued to equate pax Augusta with pax Christi. Despite
his conflicts with Valentinian and Theodosius I, most notably disciplining
the latter as filius ecclesiae, Ambrose’s end was the final triumph of Christian-
ity in the Roman Empire, as described twenty years later in the Contra Symma-
chum of Prudentius. If this were not clear enough from his episcopal actions,
his clerical enchiridion, De officiis ministrorum, modeled after Cicero’s De offi-
ciis, manifests clearly Ambrose’s equation of the classical res publica with the
Corpus Christi, the congregatio fidelis: indeed, the bona fides Cicero described as
the very foundation of justice, Ambrose turns to faith in Christ. Along these
same lines, the commentaries on the Pauline epistles attributed to Ambro-
siaster are notable for their attribution of political authority to divine and
natural law, the latter already losing some of its stoic character in favor of an
Political Theory in Medieval Studies 1112

increased Biblicism, and the insistence on the emperor as God’s earthly vicar.
Ambrosiaster also equates rule with the image of God, the emperor being
most possessed of this quality, woman, lacking rule altogether, being totally
devoid of the image of God. Leo the Great in mid-5th century took for granted
the equation of plebs romana and plebs Dei, characterizing Peter and Paul as the
Romulus and Remus of a Roman palingenesis. The issue addressed by the
predecessors of Gelasius I, therefore, was the proper distribution of power
and authority within a Christian Rome. Gelasius’ famously ambiguous sen-
tentia, Duo est, in its definition of the spheres of auctoritas sacrata pontificum
and regalis potestas, while directed at disabusing the notion of sacral kingship,
left open to future debate whether these two powers were separate and com-
plimentary, or whether the secular was subordinate to the clerical. In either
case, all these authors presupposed a single political-religious structure.
The major dissenting voice from this vision of a unified church and em-
pire was that of Augustine of Hippo whose reappraisal, along with the dis-
pensationalism of Orosius, was stimulated by the reversal of Roman fortunes
circa 400. In the City of God, Augustine defined all human social structures as
a mixture of those faithful to the City of God with those whose loyalties be-
longed to the earthly City. Hence, Augustine rejected the Ciceronian formu-
lation of the res publica because true justice or righteousness was beyond the
capacities of any human society. Rather, social arrangements between these
two groups was possible only in achieving intermediate goals such as secur-
ity, material necessities, and internal order, elements of “earthly peace”,
none of which are abrogated by the heavenly city so long as they do not im-
pede true religion. The purpose of government was to facilitate such earthly
peace by mitigating at least some of the consequences of sin. While the Em-
pire is open to both groups, the Church, even though in the present dispen-
sation comprising both elect and reprobate, was not. Hence, coercion of
members by the Church was considered indispensable to the pastoral func-
tion, even though civil authorities qua members of the Church imposed that
coercion. Outside the Church, coercion was justified internally or externally
in terms of the maintenance of minimal order necessary to preserve “earthly
peace” (for a fuller discussion, see Robert Austin Markus, Saeculum: History
and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, 1970, which retains a place of distinc-
tion amid the plethora of Augustinian literature.)
Through most of the Middle Ages, Augustine’s mature views on the na-
ture of civil society would prove the less influential of the two perspectives.
Indeed, Gregory the Great in his Moralia would redefine Augustine’s two
cities in terms of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. For Gregory, ecclesi-
astic and secular sphere have melded, and according to the Regula pastoralis,
1113 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

rule in either sphere was a ministry designed to profit the subordinates, as

it was in the Benedictine Regula monachorum. This same position is reflected
in the writings of Isidore of Seville, but without any presumption of political
universalism; a universalism which though belied by the existence of
multiple barbarian kingdoms, nonetheless, at least outside the Visigothic
kingdom, maintained currency if only “imaginarie” as Jordanes would say in
his Romana.

C. Formative Period (750–1160)

During the formative period, the foregoing authors, in addition of course to
the Old and New Testaments, and pre-Justinian Roman law, were the best
and most widely known works of political relevance. The Republics of Plato
and of Cicero were not available, and of Aristotle’s Politics was known only his
division of practical philosophy through Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidore.
Yet, wanting models for systematic and speculative political theory, this
period saw a rash of didactic literature and instructive correspondence by
such clerics as Agobard of Lyons, Jonas of Orléans, Hincmar of Rheims, Rab-
anus Maurus, Florus Magister of Lyons, Smargardus, and Sedulius Scotus,
who in addressing practical issues likewise concerned themselves with the
nature and extent of authority, the relations of sacerdotium and saeculum, and
the meaning of law.
The problems addressed by these clerics were, naturally, much affected
by the historical contingencies and the peculiar institutions of the period.
First among these was the displacement of the enfeebled Merovingian dyn-
asty by its majores domo, and the establishment of the Carolingian dynasty
by Pippin III with the blessing of Popes Zacharias and Stephen II, who
sought protection from the Lombards and subsequently, the Byzantines; an
arrangement of mutual legitimization culminating in Charlemagne’s coron-
ation by Leo III signaling renovatio romani imperii, a concept of empire that was
henceforth to share the stage with the notion from the barbarian kingdoms
of empire as rule or hegemony over kings. Second was the collapse of that
same system as public authority fragmented and devolved into the hands of
large landholders.
The third was a medieval tendency, already apparent before the collapse
but gaining momentum thereafter, to control real property and its occu-
pants by retaining title, restricting alienability and conferring only ususfruc-
tus upon recipients. This tendency is manifest in the evolution of seigneurie
fonciere into seigneurie banale and/or justiciere; the less universal development
of feudalism; and the notion of the Eigenkirche.
Political Theory in Medieval Studies 1114

The consequence of these developments was a power-sharing in which

rulers were compelled to seek accommodation with aristocracy and Church,
and failure to govern by concensus commonly resulted in breaches of the
peace. Indeed, it is during this period that the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals ap-
peared, exalting the papacy in the interest of suffragan bishops as against the
power of metropolitan, synod or secular ruler. For nearly three hundred
years, from the late ninth to the mid-12th century, these false decretals would
be freely borrowed by polemicists and canonists for their own purposes and
collections, some four hundred finding their way into Gratian’s Decretum.
In particular, the reformists of the 11th century would reinterpret these to
accord with a definition of privilegium Romanae ecclesiae hinging on papal
supremacy and obedience to Rome, and further reinterpreting the Gelasian
formula to assert the supremacy of sacerdotium over regnum or as the Decretum
would phrase it: Regum et principum patres et magistri sacerdotes esse censentur.
Although the investiture controversy spurred the palingenesis of Roman
law and corresponding efforts to compile and digest canon law, as well as to
distill the feudal law, the pamphleteering on the relations of regnum and sac-
erdotium began to wane in the 12th century, and as suggested by Charles
Homer Haskins in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1927), failed to keep
abreast of praxis. Although many officials continued in the earlier genre of
didactic treatises, specula principis, including Walter Map, Peter of Blois, Ger-
ald of Wales, inter alia, the most notable efforts at political theory were the
Policraticus of John of Salisbury and De consideratione of Bernard of Clairvaux.
The former, a rambling didactic treatise directed to courtiers and rulers urg-
ing them to reject Epicureanism in favor of law, education and Christian
philosophy, adopts an organic view of the state and justifies in principle tyr-
annicide. The latter was a letter in five books written over a decade to Euge-
nius III, from his election in 1145 to the failure of the Second Crusade, ex-
pressing at once an ambidexterity reminiscent of Gregory’s Regula pastoralis,
and simultaneously asserting with vigor the Hildebrandine agenda of papal
plenitudo potestatis (Elizabeth T. Kennan, “The De Consideratione of St. Bern-
ard of Clairvaux and the Papacy in the Mid-Twelfth Century: A Review of
Scholarship,” Traditio 23 [1967]: 73–115).
Despite the scarcity of specifically theoretical treatises, the 12th century
witnessed developments that significantly tilled the ground for subsequent
political exposition and speculation. Not least among these was the increas-
ing complexity of society. Carolingian authors could describe a simple so-
ciety of three orders: a military nobility, the clergy and the peasantry. Gratian
could describe in the Decretum a society composed simply of two orders:
clergy and laity. Hugh of St. Victor and Alan of Lille sought correspondence
1115 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

between the more numerous orders of angels and earthly professions. Al-
ready in the 11th century in his Elucidarium, Honorius Augustodunensis adds
to the “three orders” townsmen, and the growth of semi-autonomous cities
and towns, would, with other new associations, spur the growth of corporate
theories in law and government.
Likewise, both the importation of Arabic and Greek science and the
study of classical sources, particularly Cicero and Seneca, as well as Calci-
dius’s translation and commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, proved an impetus to
view nature as normative: or in Seneca’s words: propositum nostrum est secun-
dum naturam vivere. This nature of William of Conches, Bernard Silvestris,
Alan of Lille, John of Salisbury, and so many other writers of the period, was a
creative nature, advised by divine reason; and hence, it was with little effort
that Gratian could equate natural and divine law. But this view of nature also
permitted the conceptualization of a res publica as a natural entity shaped by
the ius positivum, the rational regulation of human affairs cooperatively with
nature and consistent with nature’s law.

D. High and Late Middle Ages (1160–1450)

The tendencies already noted toward burgeoning complexity of social and
governmental relationships, the growing importance of Roman law and
those trained therein, from the 12th century onward increasingly in univer-
sities which were themselves an example of the growing sophistication of
Roman-law corporate concepts, combined with the political realities of
emerging territorial states and the availability of Latin translations of Aris-
totle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Robert Grosseteste, ca. 1246 and the Politics by
William of Moebeke, ca. 1260, on which Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas,
Peter of Auvergne, and Bartholomew of Bruges would write commentaries
(Pavel Bla žek, Die mittelalterliche Rezeption der aristotelischen Philosophie der Ehe,
2007) to engender a theoretical multifariousness previously unknown in the
West. For while states were emerging, they were not states in the modern
sense of possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, but continued
to share jurisdiction with church, and to various degrees depending on lo-
cation, with aristocratic feudatories, communes, etc., as a consequence of
which theocratic, hierocratic and feudal theories maintained currency. Fur-
thermore, the Aristotelean naturalistic approach itself insofar as seen in con-
flict with Christian revelation, would give rise to both opposition and efforts
at synthesis, some Thomistic attempts at which would be condemned along
with Averroism in 1277 at both Paris and Oxford. Hence, the 13th and 14th
centuries represent a period of extended debate on approaches and underly-
ing assumptions, in addition to practical concerns. Indeed, some authors can
Political Theory in Medieval Studies 1116

be found to take different positions in different treatises, such as Giles of

Rome who adopts an Aristotelian approach based on regnum mixtum in De
regimine principum and a hierocratic approach in De ecclesiastica potestate; while
William Durant the Younger supported princely sovereignty in the paréage
of Mende, but republicanism in the Tractatus Maior, advocating transfer of
supreme legislative authority in the Church to general councils (Constantin
Fasolt, Council & Hierarchy: The Political Thought of William Durant the Younger,
1991).
The Aristotelian logical approach also greatly influenced legal scholars,
beginning at Orleans with notables such as Jacobus de Ravannis and Petrus
de Bellapertica, and thence to Montpellier and Toulouse. This method char-
acteristic of the so-called Commentators, or Post-glossators, would be carried
to Italy by Cynus de Pistoia, who taught Bartolus of Sassoferrato, who taught
Baldus de Ubaldis, and which late scholastic style would become identified
with the mos italicus in jurisprudence. The methodological advances of the
civilians likewise influenced the canonists, and commentators on the canon
law in the 14th and 15th centuries including Johannes Andraea, Baldus him-
self on the Liber extra, Franciscus Zabarella on the Liber extra and the Clementi-
nae and Nicholas de Tudeschis, known as Panormitanus, on the entire Corpus
Iuris Canonici.
Indeed, for the jurists Aristoteleanism was largely a question of method
rather than substance, although the canonist Johannes Monachus cites Aris-
totle more than once in his gloss to Rem non novam, a decretalis extravagans of
Boniface VIII (Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law 1200–1600: Sover-
eignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition, 1993). And while Aristotelean-
ism from the Politics and the Ethics could lead to a notion of popular sover-
eignty, no case being more famous than that of Marsilius and the Defensor
Pacis, although interpretations of Marsilius vary considerably (cf., Alan
Gewirth, Marsilius of Padua – The Defender of Peace, 2 vols., 1951, 1956; Jean-
ine Quillet, La philosophie politique de Marsile de Padoue, 1970; Cary J. NEDER-
MAN, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padus’s
‘Defensor Pacis’, 1995; Georges De Lagarde, La naissance de l’ésprit laïque au dé-
clin du moyen âge, vol. 2: Marsile de Padoue ou le premier theoricien de l’Etat laïque,
1934, 2nd ed. 1948), Roman law could provide a separate avenue to a similar
result, as it did for Bartolo and Baldo (Cecil N. Sidney Woolf, Bartolus of Sas-
soferrato: His Position in the History of Medieval Political Thought, 1912; Joseph
Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis, 1987). And it was always
possible to interpret Aristotle in a manner leading not to representative insti-
tutions, but single universal monarchy, as did Dante in the Convivio and the
Monarchia.
1117 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

Other thinkers wrote treatises adopting the language of regnum mixtum:

John of Paris, De regia potestate; Pierre d’Ailly, De materia, comparing the Pope
and council to King and parliament. But D’Ailly at heart believed that the law
proceeded from will, not reason, and the constitutional role of council or col-
lege as but an institutional brake on the Pope’s abuse of discretion, as de-
tailed by Francis Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist
Tradition (1964). D’Ailly’s exemplum is borrowed by Jean Gerson for much
the same point. Avowedly hierarchical in his view of the Church, and no
Marsilian or Ockhamist, his concern was that the Pope together with other
members of the hierarchy protect divine truth in the world, and should Pope
refuse the advice of a general council, then that council may lawfully correct
or act against him. The indispensable work on Gerson’s Ecclesiology remains
Guillaume H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, Jean Gerson – Apostle of Unity: His
Church Politics and Ecclesiology (1999). For these writers, as subsequently for Ni-
cholas of Cusa, author of De concordantia catholica, the issue was never popular
sovereignty, but a strong executive in conjunction with a corporate council
as the agent for reform of the Church in head and members. Hence, Cusanus,
who witnessed the degeneration of the Council of Basel into a populist body
lacking the unity, will or resources to carry out a program of reform within
an orthodox framework, could shift from a posture of conciliarism to an ad-
vocate of papal absolutism (Paul F. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval
Political Thought, 1963). In fact, one justification for 1450 as an ending date, as
artificial as all periodization may be, is the 1449 vote dissolving the rump
session of the council of Basel, following the decision in 1448 of the Reich-
stag and princes to support the papal side which Cusa himself argued.
The waning of conciliarism within the Church is explainable in part be-
cause Marsilius in his view of the General Council as representative of the con-
gregatio fidelium is distinctly in the minority. The majority of conciliarist
churchmen, far from this republican position, view the council as in fact con-
stitutive of the Church; or in the case of Gerson and to some extent Cusa,
given their pseudo-Dionysian affinities, the council is a mimesis of the mys-
tical body constituting the true church. On the other hand, Nicole Oresme,
much impressed by Marsilius and his republican views, brought Aristotle to
the French vernacular in Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote, and after Marsilius,
maintained that the legislative power was vested in the people as a whole,
since they alone could judge the final good. The same point could be arrived
at by John Fortescue in De laudibus legum Anglie without resort to either
Roman law or Aristotle, based upon the practice of law and government, and
a social contract that made England dominium politicum et regale superior to
the French dominium regale.
Political Theory in Medieval Studies 1118

Finally, mention need be made of those thinkers owing little to Aristote-

lianism. Foremost among these are the Franciscans, John Duns Scotus and
William of Ockham. The former in particular harks back to an Augustinian-
ism in which government is remedium peccati, and the state is essentially a pact
to live in the least bad circumstances by combining their separate dominia.
They are not, however, constituent parts of a greater whole, but personalities
of which the community is an aggregate: Ad personalitatem requiritur ultima
solitudo, sive negatio dependentiae actualis et aptitudinalis ad personam alterius natu-
rae. Ockham continues in this vein when he recognizes: Aliquid est unum
improprie et large, sicut regnum dicitur unum, vel populus unum et mundus unum.
On the other hand, the result of this approach, which would suggest that
election and consent are the raison d’etre of political community, is interpre-
table in a fashion seemingly consistent with Marsiglian theory. Thus, from
1940–1960, Ockham has been interpreted variously as a radical reformer, a
constitutional liberal and a non-political theorist, which analytic fashions
are discussed by Takashi Shogimen in Ockham and Political Discourse in the
Late Middle Ages (2007).
Also reaching Marsiglian conclusions, particularly on the issue of subor-
dination of clergy to king, was John Wyclif. Wyclif presumed a natural com-
munism, all post-lapsarian dominium being remedium peccati conditioned
upon grace, the latter being a doctrine derived from the Augustinian Richard
Fitzralph in De pauperie salvatoris, directed against the mendicants (Gordon
Leff, Richard Fitzralph Commentator of the Sentences: A Study in Theological Ortho-
doxy, 1963). But since only God knows who is in a state of grace, all dominium
is ultimately in the disposition of the civil authorities, i. e., the king, earthly
rulers being unquestionably ordained of God. Tractatus de civili dominion;
Tractatus de officio regis; De dominio divino libri tres. Wyclif’s posture justified a re-
form of the Church from above, although its implications for legal reform were
broader, as detailed at length in W. Farr, John Wyclif as Legal Reformer (1974).

E. Historiography
Two tendencies can be identified in the modern systematic study of medieval
political theory. The first is a heavy emphasis on law, and the reader is en-
couraged to consider the entries in this volume on Law in the Middle Ages
to garner a more complete appreciation of this topic. Let the preliminary ob-
servation suffice that a disproportionate number of the scholars producing
classic seminal works in the field were trained in the law, including von
Gierke, Maitland, Lagarde, and Ullman. The second trend, visible
particularly in the work of German scholars and their English cousins, but
accepted however tacitly by many other scholars of the first half of the 20th
1119 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

century such as Lagarde, was the dichotomization of political thought,

usually into some opposing categories such as “corporate” vs. “individual,”
or “ascending” vs. “descending,” but which even the most superficial read-
ing readily reveals to be thinly veiled shorthand for “Germanic” vs. “Roman-
ist,” perhaps not surprising for work rooted in the social and intellectual
concerns of late 19th-century Europe.
Indeed, it can be argued that the modern study of medieval political
thought begins with Otto von Gierke and his Das deutsche Genossenschafts-
recht (3 vols., 1868–1881). Concerned with the law of “associations,” and
hence transcending the middle ages, the third volume in particular so struck
F.W. Maitland that he translated and published it under the title Political
Theories of the Middle Age (1900). While its corporatist thesis has been increas-
ingly questioned, the argument of the third volume that Roman concepts of
Herrschaft ultimately displaced traditional and more “democratic” notions of
German Genossenschaft influenced several generations of medieval scholars,
while its scholarship introducing a wealth of primary sources reflective of
social thought in the middle ages proved attractive to functionalists such as
Maitland.
At about the same time as Maitland’s translation of Gierke appeared,
Robert Warrand and Alexander James Carlyle completed the first of what
stretched to six volumes of A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West
(1903–1936). Periodically reprinted, this work remains a valuable reference
partly due to its copious notes with extensive Latin quotations, partly due to
its consistent topical framework, e. g., “The source of law,” “The source and
nature of the authority of the ruler,” “Representative institutions,” etc. Fin-
ally, the Carlyles emphasized what might be considered the “primacy of
law” in medieval thought: the notion that in many important respects, law
preceded and legitimized government, rather than vice versa.
The corporatist sympathies of the foregoing works were not without in-
fluence on Georges de Lagarde, who in 1932 commenced work on what
would become his six-volume La naissance de l’ésprit laïque au declin du Moyen
Age (1932–1946). In his search for the roots of the modern “lay spirit” in the
theological literature of the Middle Ages, Lagarde, however, embraced the
very tendencies toward individualism that von Gierke lamented. While
some of Lagarde’s conclusions have been questioned by subsequent
scholars, particularly the location of the notion of subjective rights in the
early moral theories of Ockham, his detailed discussions of Ockham and
Marsilius, as well as his discussion of their 13th-century predecessors, con-
tinue to hold value for scholars of intellectual opposition to the medieval
institutional Church.
Political Theory in Medieval Studies 1120

Ernst H. Kantorowicz, who hardly began his academic career at

Frankfurt in 1930, then found himself a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, on
the other hand celebrated the organic wholeness he found in medieval politi-
cal thought, as evidenced in his Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations
and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (1946). In 1957, he published the classic work
of Staatstheorie, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (see
also the entry on “Kantorowicz” in this Handbook). In that work, really for-
mally a set of interrelated studies on kingship and corporate theory, the
author locates the foundation of the modern secular state in the political
theology of the king’s mystical body. This was undoubtedly the most im-
portant work on medieval kingship since Fritz Kern’s Gottesgnadentum und
Widerstandsrecht im früheren Mittelalter, translated and published as Kingship
and Law in the Middle Ages (1939), which focused on contrasting Germanic and
ecclesiastic conceptions of order.
This latter dichotomy, running through so many of the classics, particu-
larly those of German authorship, became the central frame of reference for
Walter Ullman, beginning at least with his Medieval Papalism: The Political
Theories of the Medieval Canonists (1949). As he would say concerning the theory
of “ascending” and “descending” theories of authority, the former deriving
from the “people”, the second proceeding from God: “The history of political
ideas in the Middle Ages is to a very large extent a history of the conflicts
between these two theories of government” (A History of Political Thought:
The Middle Ages, 1975 [1965], 13). Although overly simplistic sounding,
Ullmann understood this theme within a juridical context from his earliest
work, The Medieval Idea of Law as Represented by Lucas de Penna: A Study in Four-
teenth-Century Legal Scholarship (1946), and fully understood that both popu-
list and theocratic theories could be derived from the common, i. e., Roman
and canon, law (Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages, 1961).
Therefore, while some of Ullmann’s most prominent students may
have broken with his framework, it is not difficult to see a continuity with
Ullmann’s primacy of law. In particular, Brian Tierney has variously
located within canon law, long prior to Ockham and Marsilius, the source of
conciliarism, in Foundation of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medi-
eval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (1955; rev. 1998); and individual
rights, in The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and
Church Law, 1150–1625 (1997). And Ullmann’s concern with the evolution
of “papalism” as a political idea was continued by Tierney in Origins of Papal
Infallibility 1150–1350: A Study on the concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradi-
tion in the Middle Ages (1972); and another student, Anthony J. Black, in Mon-
archy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy 1430–1450
1121 Political Theory in Medieval Studies

(1970). The latter is also the author of Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450
(1992), that treats political theory thematically and in terms of polyvocality:
i. e., theological, native, juristic, Ciceronian and Aristotelian. Still a third stu-
dent of Ullman, Joseph Canning, has written A History of Medieval Politcal
Thought 300–1450 (1996), which, while short, gives particular attention to the
history of the jus commune.
In addition to these latter general works the Cambridge History of Medieval
Political Thought, c. 350 – c. 1450 (ed. J. H. Burns, 1988), comprised of 19 articles
by leading scholars, contains in addition to a biographical appendix pres-
enting notes on the principle medieval authors, excellent bibliographies. As
a departure from either typical constitutional history or Roman and canon
law approaches to governance in the middle ages, particularly with respect to
governance in stateless societies, Otto Brunner’s controversial 1939 classic
Land und Herrschaft: Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs
im Mittelalter, translated by Howard Kaminsky, and James Van Horn
Melton as Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria (1992),
remains thought provoking in its conception of the Land as Genossenschaft,
albeit not Gierke’s imperfect forerunner of the “corporation.” Some of his
themes have been addressed recently by Benjamin Arnold in Count and
Bishop in Medieval Germany: A Study of Regional Power, 1100–1350 (1992) and
Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (1991).
While the foregoing represents the mainstream of modern research into
medieval political theory in the purest sense of the term, another approach of
considerable significance has been to study the social basis of power, and how
that power is reflected in social thought or symbolic expression. In particu-
lar, the classic work by John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants:
The Social Views of Peter the Chanter & his Circle (1970), provides insight into the
medieval political milieu. From the standpoint of the Annales school and
mentalities as relates to kingship, Marc Bloch’s 1924 classic Les rois thauma-
turges: Etude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale, particulièrement
en France et en Angleterre, translated by J. E. Anderson as the Royal Touch: Sacred
Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (1973), is valuable for its insights
into the contemporary understanding of sacral kingship. A more recent work
dealing with mentalities is Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual
and Political Order in Early Medieval France (1992). Finally, the collection of ar-
ticles included in Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century
Europe (ed. Thomas N. Bisson, 1995), approaches the issue from the stand-
point of power and power relationships, and their actual and symbolic mani-
festations. More, the conference engendering the papers brought together
the prominent Annales historian George Duby, Les trois ordres ou l’imaginaire
Popes and Papacy 1122

du feodalisme (1978), with Benjamin Arnold, whose roots lay in part at least
with Gierke by way of Brunner, suggesting the intersectional nature of
these two lines of inquiry.

Select Bibliography
Anthony Black, Political Thought in Europe 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1992); Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 1996); The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought,
ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Robert Warrand and
Alexander James Carlyle, A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West (London: Wil-
liam Blackwood and Sons, 6 vols., 1903–1936); Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two
Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1957); Walter Ullman, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages: An Introduction to the Sources
of Medieval Political Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) and Medieval
Papalism: The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London: Methuen, 1949).

Scott L. Taylor

Popes and Papacy

A. Introduction
The pope is the bishop of Rome, and the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
The word pope comes from the Latin papa for ‘father’ and the term ‘papacy’
denotes the office of the pope. The first bishop of Rome was St. Peter, the
foremost of the twelve Apostles. Peter is thought to have travelled to the city,
and to have been martyred in the Vatican circus together with St. Paul some-
time in the mid-60s AD during the persecutions of the Christians under the
Emperor Nero (54–68). He is believed to be buried under the altar of St.
Peter’s basilica in the Vatican, one of the four cathedral churches of Rome. Al-
though the details of Peter’s earliest successors remain uncertain, the Church
claims an unbroken succession of popes covering two thousand years, from
St. Peter to the present pope, Benedict XVI (2005–). The papacy is thus the
longest running surviving institution in history.
The pope’s precedence over the Church is based on Rome’s link to the
body and heritage of St. Peter. St. Matthew’s Gospel records that Christ gave
Peter a special mission, granting him the keys of heaven and making him the
head of the Christian Church. The relevant text is written around the inside
of the dome of St. Peter’s, above the main altar and the apostle’s body; “Tu es
1123 Popes and Papacy

Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni caelo-
rum” (“Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church and I will
give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven” Matthew 16:18–19). As
bishop of Rome, the pope is thus the heir of St. Peter and the Petrine office,
the Vicar of Christ and ruler of the entire Church.
During the medieval period, the universal jurisdiction and authority of
the papacy, advanced as early as the 2nd century, was deeply contested and the
pope’s claim to precedence was secured only very gradually. The Church suf-
fered extensive persecutions during the 3rd century, and many early popes
were martyred. The conversion of the Emperor Constantine (306–337) to
Christianity, along with his construction of several great basilicas in and
around Rome and immense donations of land, gave the Roman church a new
wealth and security, and lent the popes a new prominence in the city. The
pope’s metropolitan authority over Italy was secure; less so over other parts
of the West. Beyond Italy, the pope had to struggle to assert his moral auth-
ority over the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and especially
Constantinople or ‘New Rome’, who directly administered the church in
their own regions. An extremely significant figure in papal history, Pope Leo
the Great (440–461) consistently reinforced Roman primacy through the di-
rect identification of the pope with St. Peter.
During the late 5th and 6th centuries, with Italy under the control of the
Arian Gothic kings, the popes steadfastly insisted upon their pre-eminent
position as heads of the Church and protectors of orthodoxy. Pope Gelasius
(492–496), in what would become with hindsight an extremely significant
letter, asserted his divine authority over the eastern emperor as a secular
ruler. As the period progressed relations with Constantinople began to fray.
Theological disagreements divided east and west, and relations were deeply
strained by the Monophysite debate on the nature of Christ. The Gothic wars
and the imperial re-conquest of Italy in the second half of the 6th century,
closely followed by Lombard invasions, brought death and plague to the
peninsula, and poverty to Rome. Gregory the Great (590–604), considered
the greatest of the early medieval popes, devoted boundless energy to his
office, bringing new life to the papacy during this period of immense need.
He expanded the papacy’s pastoral role, reorganized the papal adminis-
tration and landholdings, and steadily upheld Roman primacy. Relations
with Constantinople declined further under Gregory’s successors during
the 7th century, as Byzantine control over Italy decreased. Over the course of
the 8th century, the threatening increase in Lombard power in the peninsula,
coupled with imperial weakness and further doctrinal dispute over the issue
of Iconoclasm, encouraged the papacy to shift its focus away from the east
Popes and Papacy 1124

and towards the west, to the Frankish empire. Papal appeals for aid to the
Frankish Carolingian rulers resulted in the conquest of the Lombard king-
dom of Italy by Charlemagne (768–814) in 774, and the initiation of a dra-
matic but close and respectful alliance between the papacy and the Caroling-
ian dynasty. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III (795–816)
in St. Peter’s in the year 800, and his successors remained closely linked to
the papacy.
The second half of the 9th century is sometimes erroneously regarded as
the start of an especially bleak period of papal history, covering the 10th and
11th centuries. The Carolingian Empire came to an end, the Italian peninsula
was subjected to attacks from Saracen pirates, and the bishopric of Rome
was mercilessly exploited by the city’s aristocratic factions. A particularly
low moment was the exhumation and post-mortem trial of Pope Formosus
(891–896) by his successor Pope Stephen VI (896–897) in 897. This was cer-
tainly a challenging time for the papacy, but this ‘dark’ phase has often been
over-simplified and under-estimated by historians.
The papacy was to emerge from this period, however, fuelled by an en-
thusiasm for reform. Alongside the Clunaic reform of the monasteries, from
the mid-11th century onwards the popes undertook the reform of not only
the papal office but also the western Church. Especially under the energetic
Pope Leo IX (1049–1054), the papacy actively condemned lay investiture,
simony, and clerical marriage in an effort to lessen secular control over the
Church, and to ensure the purity of those that served in it.
Toward the end of the century, papal aspirations reached their height
under Gregory VII (1073–1085) with the Investiture Controversy. Gregory’s
explosive papal memorandum, the Dictatus Papae, asserted that the pope
could depose emperors, and involved Gregory in a bitter struggle with the
German Emperor Henry IV (1084–1105). At the end of the century, Urban II
(1088–1099) preached the First Crusade, promising remission of sin to all
participants. Papal prestige increased, and the 12th century witnessed the
steady growth of papal monarchy. During this period, the papacy began to
identify itself as the direct Vicar of Christ, rather than of St. Peter. The inter-
national character of the Church was stressed as the papacy increased its ad-
ministrative and financial potential, and emphasized its role as a European
court of appeal. Simultaneously, however, the papacy began to lose the tradi-
tional loyalty of the Romans themselves. The power of the cardinals grew, as
did the study and significance of canon law together with the involvement of
monks in the developing papal Curia. The medieval papacy reached a peak
under Innocent III (1198–1216) both in terms of papal reform initiatives and
international power and influence.
1125 Popes and Papacy

Throughout the course of the 13th century, the papacy struggled against
the secular powers of Europe for the right to control both ecclesiastical and
imperial appointments. The end of the imperial Hohenstaufen dynasty saw
the papacy shift toward a French orbit. Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) an-
nounced a Jubilee year in 1300, and Rome was flooded with pilgrims, but his
involvement in higher secular politics was less successful. The increasing gap
between the theory and reality of papal claims came to a head in the 1303
‘Outrage of Anagni’ when Boniface VIII was mobbed in his papal palace at
Anagni by the soldiers of Philip the Fair (1285–1314), king of France. For the
majority of the 14th century the papacy resided at Avignon. Clement V
(1305–1314) elected by a pro-French party, keen to promote his relationship
with Philip and wary of Roman and Italian politics, moved the papacy to
Avignon in 1305. The Avignon papacy lasted until 1377 and developed a
strong French identity. It stressed its centrality to international canon law
rather than its association with St. Peter. An attempted move back to Rome in
1378 resulted in the Great Schism, with two popes being elected, one resid-
ing at Rome, the other at Avignon. The split would last until the Council of
Constance in 1414–1418, which deposed the rival popes, elected an alter-
native candidate, Martin V (1417–1431), and declared that even the pope
himself could thus be judged. The 15th-century papacy had been greatly
weakened, and the claims to papal supremacy were ended. The resulting age
of Conciliarism argued that the supreme power lay in the Church as a whole,
not in the individual person of the pope (Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners,
1997; Walter Ullmann, A Short History of the Papacy, 1972; Geoffrey Barra-
clough, The Medieval Papacy, 1968).

B. History of the Popes

The literature on the popes is vast. From the 19th century onwards, German,
French, Italian and British scholars have consistently studied all aspects of
the medieval papacy. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, Horace
Mann’s great 18-volume Lives of the Popes (1906–1932) was the first of the
great modern general histories of the papacy, beginning with St. Peter and
finishing in 1304. This was followed by two important mid-century German
histories, Franz Seppelt’s Geschichte der Päpste (1954–1950) and Johannes
Haller’s Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit (1965), and more recently, by
Horst Fuhrmann’s Von Petrus zu Johannes Paul II (1984). Richard Krau-
theimer’s magisterial study Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 appeared in
1980, and studies the art and architecture of the Roman See in the context of
papal history. Significant recent general contributions include Eamon
Duffy’s popular and learned Saints and Sinners (1997), John Kelly’s Oxford
Popes and Papacy 1126

Dictionary of the Popes (1986), and Phillipe Levillain’s The Papacy: An Encyclo-
pedia (2002). The theology of the papacy has also long been a major subject of
papal historiography. 19th-century studies began with Robert Carlyle’s
great six-volume A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West (1903–1936).
Later important contributions include Trevor Jalland’s The Church and the
Papacy (1944); Friedrich Kempf’s Sacerdozio e Regno da Gregorio VII a Bonifacio
VIII (1954); Walter Ullmann’s The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle
Ages (1955); and more recently, Klaus Schatz’s Der päpstliche Primat (1990).
Studies of the early Church have often focused on the early history of the
papacy. Louis Duchesne, one of the foremost scholars on the papacy, pub-
lished his seminal Histoire ancienne de l’Eglise in 1906–1910. Considered too
modernist by the Church itself, the work is nonetheless a crucial study (Du-
chesne also produced the standard edition of the Liber Pontificalis, a collec-
tion of papal biographies and one of the most important papal sources, in
1886–1892). This was followed by Erich Caspar’s seven-volume Geschichte
des Papsttums (1930–1933), and together with Duchesne’s, the two studies
are standard works on the early papal period. Important contributions in
English include Hector Burn-Murdoch’s The Development of the Papacy
(1954); Robert Markus’s Christianity in the Roman World (1974); and Henry
Chadwick’s The Early Church (1993). Peter Brown’s work on the context of
Christianity and the Roman Empire has been extremely influential, includ-
ing The World of Late Antiquity (1971) and The Rise of Western Christendom (1996).
Peter Lampe’s recent study From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the
First Two Centuries (2003) is the most significant recent contribution to the
genre. Constantine’s relationship with Christianity and the early popes has
also received a great amount of scholarly attention, with significant con-
tributions including Norman Baynes’ Constantine the Great and the Christian
Church (1929); Arnold Jones’ Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (1962);
and Ramsey Macmullen’s Constantine (1970). Leo I, the great late antique
pope, is the subject of Trevor Jalland’s key biography The Life and Times of
Leo the Great (1941).
General histories on the early medieval papacy again begin with Louis
Duchesne and his Les premiers temps de l’état pontifical (1904). Other import-
ant early contributions include Hans Von Schubert’s Geschichte der christ-
lichen Kirche im Frühmittelalter (1921); and Henry Moss’ The Birth of the Middle
Ages (1935). Later eminent general histories include The Medieval Papacy
(1968) by Geoffrey Barraclough; A Short History of the Papacy (1974) by
Walter Ullmann; The Popes and the Papacy (1979) by Jeffrey Richards; and
more recently The Papacy (1992) by Bernhard Schimmelpfennig; and Rome
in the Dark Ages (1993) by Peter Llewellyn. Relations with Byzantium and
1127 Popes and Papacy

theological disputes are popular aspects of the early medieval papacy,

studied by Duchesne and others. Gregory the Great has received a great
amount of scholarly attention, beginning with Frederick Dudden’s Gregory
the Great: His Place in History and Thought (1905); and more recently, Robert
Markus’ From Augustine to Gregory the Great (1983) and Gregory the Great and
His World (1997). Franco-papal relations have also been much studied. Sig-
nificant early contributions included Erich Caspar’s Pippin und die römische
Kirche (1914); Das Papsttum unter fränkischer Herrschaft (1956); and Thomas
Noble’s 1984 work on the development of the papal state The Republic of
St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680–825 remains outstanding. Herman
Geertman’s More Veterum: Il Liber Pontificalis e gli edifice ecclesiastici di Roma
(1975) studies the 8th- and 9th-century papal administration and its building
activity.
The principal early work on the period of the reform papacy, Gregory
VII, and the Investiture Controversy is that of Augustin Fliche, La Réforme
grégorienne published in three volumes from 1924 to 1937. Gerd Tellen-
bach ’s Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest
(1936) and The Church in Western Europe From the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Cen-
turies (1993) established him as one of the foremost medieval scholars. Other
principal works include Richard Southern’s Western Society and the Church
in the Middle Ages (1970); Ian Robinson’s The Papacy 1073–1198 (1990) and
Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Controversy (1978); Colin Morris’ The
Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (1989); and Herbert Cow-
drey’s recent Pope Gregory VII (1998). The principal scholars on the 12th- and
13th-century papacy begin with the great German Johannes Haller, whose
Papsttum und Kirchenreform appeared in 1903. Important studies also include
Robert Bretano’s Rome before Avignon (1974); Agostino Bagliani’s Il trono di
Pietro: L’universalità del papato da Alessandro III a Bonifacio VIII (1996); and Keith
Pennington’s Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries (1984). Anders Winroth’s recent book The Making of Gratian’s Decre-
tum (2000) provides a fundamental re-appraisal of 12th-century Canon Law.
Innocent III is the focus of several critical works beginning with Achille Lu-
chaire’s six-volume Innocent III (1905–08); and Friedrich Kempf’s Papsttum
und Kaisertum bei Innocenz III (1954). He is the subject of a recent modern
biography by Helene Tillmann, Pope Innocent III (1980). The major works on
the Avignon papacy are in French, including Yves Renouard’s La papauté
a Avignon (1954); and Bernard Guillemain’s La cour pontificale d’Avignon
1309–1376 (1962); followed by Guillaume Mollat’s The Popes at Avignon
1305–1378 (1963). Similarly, the essential early works on the Great Schism
and the Conciliar Movement are also in French, by Noël Valois, including
Popes and Papacy 1128

La France et le grand schisme (1896–1902) and Le pape et le concile, 1418–1450

(1909). Later eminent works on the subject include Ernest Jacob’s Essays in
the Conciliar Epoch (1943); Walter Ullmann’s The Origins of the Great Schism
(1948); Étienne Delaruelle’s L’église au temps du grand schisme et la crise conci-
liaire (1952–1955); Brian Tierney’s Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (1955);
and John Smith’s The Great Schism, 1378 (1970).
Other areas of papal historiography include the papal state, covered in
Louis Duchesne’s The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes AD
754–1073 (1908); Peter Partner’s The Lands of St. Peter (1972); and Thomas
Noble’s above-mentioned The Republic of St. Peter (1984). The fundamental
early works on canon law include Johann Von Schulte’s Geschichte und Li-
teratur des canonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die Gegenwart (1875); and Paul
Fournier’s and Gabriel Le Bras’s Histoire des collections canonique en occident
(1931–1932). Papal finances are studied by William Lunt in works such as
Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages (1934). Studies of the papal chancery include
Reginald Poole’s Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery (1915); and Chris-
topher Cheney’s The Study of the Medieval Papal Chancery (1966). A major
area of future study will be the letters of the medieval popes, of which there is
no full or satisfactory edition. In addition, there is a growing attraction to
and re-interpretation of early medieval Italian history in general, which will
stimulate interest in the corresponding often misinterpreted ‘dark’ period of
papal history.

Select Bibliography
Erich Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der Weltherrschaft
(Tübingen: Mohr, 1930–1933); Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997); Louis Duchesne, Histoire an-
cienne de l’église (Paris: Fontemoing & Co, 1906–1910); John Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary
of the Popes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Richard Krautheimer, Rome:
Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Peter Lampe,
From Paul to Valentius: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (London: T & T Clark,
2003); The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Philippe Levillain (New York and London:
Routledge, 2002); Peter Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages (London: Faber, 1971); Gerd
Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe From the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Centuries,
trans. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Walter Ull-
mann, A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1972)

Frances Parton
1129 Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies

Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
Studying popular religion and/or spirituality in Medieval Studies is ren-
dered more difficult by the lack of a cohesive or all-encompassing definition.
In the Middle Ages, sources for spirituality were often the same as for philos-
ophy and for what is now termed literature in the modern sense of the word.
In the middle of the 20th century, however, a proper discipline called “history
of spirituality” came into being, thanks to the scholars mentioned below.
The problem is exacerbated when the qualifier “popular” is applied, since we
often lack sources of “popular” practice: most surviving documents belong
to official circles, i. e., monasteries, cathedral schools, and the like. Because
one could extend the study of such a field into dozens, perhaps hundreds of
directions, it might be prudent to review the general literature before ad-
dressing one area that has seen the some of the most energetic work in the
last few decades: medieval women’s spirituality.

B. General Writings on Popular Religion and Spirituality

Under the heading of popular religious and general spirituality, one might
include anything from liturgies, liturgical commentaries, Biblical exegesis,
and Latin hymnody. Of course, this would include material from hundreds,
if not thousands, of medieval codices and modern publications. A good
primer might be Rosalind and Christopher Brooke’s Popular Religion in the
Middle Ages: Western Europe 1000–1300 (1984) and their excellent bibliographi-
cal note at the end of the work. After that, of course, one can always have re-
course to the Lexikon des Mittelalters and the entries under “Geistliche Dich-
tung,” and, for primary sources, the Corpus Christianorum (1954ff.).
Much early work was published in German, including that of Theodor
Kolde, Die deutsche Augustiner-Congregation und Johann von Staupitz (1879)
and Das religiöse Leben in Erfurt beim Ausgange des Mittelalters (1898). Georg
Kaufmann then published his two-volume (which contained the material
he had originally intended for three) Deutsche Geschichte bis auf Karl den Grossen,
1880–1881, as well as his Von dem römischen Weltreiche zu der geistlich-weltlichen
Universalmonarchie des Mittelalters: 419–814, 1881. Shortly thereafter, Robert
Stroppel contributed to the field his Liturgie und geistliche Dichtung zwischen
1050 und 1300: mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mess- und Tagzeitenliturgie
(1927, rpt. 1973). Because for these early scholars, spirituality was often
impossible to divorce from more philosophical tendencies, one finds early
around the same time in the 20th century works such as Bernhard Geyer, Die
Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies 1130

patristische und scholastische Philosophie (1928), and Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Philosophie des Mittelalters, the first volume of which was edited and published
by Clemens Bäumker and Georg von Hertling beginning in 1891.
Upon the work of these early sources, both European and American
scholars have made many contributions at a time when the field was still inti-
mately linked with philosophy. Sydney Herbert Mellone published West-
ern Christian Thought in the Middle Ages in 1935, for which he relied on the
philosophical work of Etienne Gilson and also The Legacy of the Middle Ages,
ed. Charles G. Crump and Ernest Fraser Jacob (1916), and John Arnott
MacCulloch’s Medieval Faith and Fable (1931). Shortly thereafter, Gilson,
in addition to his many philosophical works, published, La théologie mystique
de saint Bernard (1934) and Théologie et histoire de la spiritualité (1943). In that
same year, he and André Combes co-founded the scholarly journal, Études de
théologie et d’histoire de la spiritualité. Furthermore, upon assuming the chair of
the History of Spirituality at the Institute Catholique in Paris, he delivered
and published an inaugural lecture entitled, Théologie et histoire de la spiritual-
ité (1943). In 1958, he published La philosophie franciscaine.
In the 1950s, two eminent scholars in the field, one on the continent and
one in Anglo-American circles, began their work upon spirituality proper, no
longer linking it absolutely with philosophy. The former was that paragon of
scholarship in medieval spirituality: Jean Leclercq. Any study of spiritual-
ity must begin (some might say end) with La spiritualité du Moyen Age (1961),
co-authored by Jean Leclercq, François Vandenbroucke, and Louis
Bouyer. This volume is the second in the multi-volume compendium, His-
toire de la spiritualité chrétienne. The tome is divided into three unequal parts:
the first, by Leclercq, is entitled “De Saint Grégoire à Saint Bernard, du
VIe au XIIe siècle” and treats by and large monastic spirituality. Vanden-
broucke contributes the second part, “Nouveaux milieux, nouveaux prob-
lèmes, du XIIe au XVIe siècle,” which begins with Scholasticism, runs
through the mendicant orders as well as the rise of lay orders in the Late
Middle Ages, and into the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-
Reformation. Finally, Louis Bouyer offers a short appendix, “La spiritualité
byzantine.”
In addition to his editorial collaboration noted above, Leclercq has
made several fundamental contributions to the field. His work, L’amour des
lettres et le désir de Dieu: Initiation aux auteurs monastiques de moyen âge (1957),
is a classic in the field of medieval spirituality. Besides introducing readers to
the great monastic figures of the Middle Ages – Benedict, Gregory, inter alia –
he provides very useful comments on monastic textual genres, the poetics of
the liturgy, and an epilogue on “Literature and the Mystical Life.” After this
1131 Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies

early work, he penned L’idée de la royauté du Christ au Moyen Age (1959); Monks
and Love in Twelfth-Century France: Psycho-historical Essays (1979); Aspects of Mon-
asticism (1978); A Second Look at Bernard of Clairvaux (1990); as well as many ar-
ticles in journals and collections such as the one he co-edited with Bernard
McGinn and John Meyendorff: Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth
Century (1985).
While Leclerc was working in French, another scholar in the Anglo-
American arena, Giles Constable, began his career with Monastic Tithes:
From their Origins to the Twelfth Century, a two-volume edition begun in 1952
and published in 1964. The publication sparked a brilliant career in medi-
eval religious thought and spirituality. In 1967, he offered readers The Letters
of Peter the Venerable, and then Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus et Professionibus Qui
Sunt in Aecclesia (1972), Religious Life and thought (11th–12th centuries) (1979), and
Renaissance and Renewal in the Tweflth Century (ed. with Robert L. Benson and
with the aid of Carol D. Lanham in 1982). In Three Studies in Medieval Religious
and Social Thought (1995), Constable reflects on “The Interpretation of Mary
and Martha,” “The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ,” and, returning to fam-
iliar territory for this historian, “The Orders of Society.” The volume in-
cludes a 43-page bibliography of secondary works, something that comple-
ments an earlier bibliographical effort on his part: Medieval Monasticism: A
Select Bibliography (1976). Then, in 1996 appeared Culture and Spirituality in
Medieval Europe, a collection of essays previously from 1983 to 1994 across the
globe on such varied topics as preaching, ceremonies and symbolism of en-
tering religious life, and liturgical prayer.
Beside these monographs and multi-volume tomes, other collections of
essays appeared, such as the one edited by E. Rozanne Elder (introduction
by Leclercq) entitled Spirituality of Christendom (1976). This collection con-
tains essays focused by and large, but not exclusively, on spiritual personal-
ities of the Middle Ages and early modern period from Augustine to Calvin.
These essays are built largely on primary sources but also on secondary works
such as W. A. Schumacher, Spiritus and Spiritual (1957); Vernon J. Burke,
Augustine’s View of Reality (1964); Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish
Christendom (1964); and Marjory Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later
Middle Ages (1969).
André Vauché wishes to take a step beyond a simply typological view of
medieval spirituality in his La spiritualité du Moyen Age occidental: VIIIe–XIIe
siècles (1975; revised in 1994). Vauché seeks to measure the impact of these
systems had on society at large. As a result, he must rely less on primary docu-
ments than on the synthetic studies of scholars who published before him.
In particular, he relies on the work of Etienne Delaruelle, La piété populaire
Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies 1132

au Moyen Age (1975) and L’idée de croisade au Moyen Age (1980); volume one of
the Histoire de la France religieuse, completed under the direction of Jacques Le
Goff and R. Rémond and entitled, Des dieux de la Gaule à la papauté d’Avignon
(1988); Georges Duby, Le temps des cathédrales. L’art et la société, 980–1420 (1976),
L’an Mil (1967), and Saint Bernard: L’art cistercien (Paris, 1976); and on his own
previously published works, notably, volumes four and five of the Histoire du
christianisme, the first of which he edited with G. Dagron and Pierre Riché
and entitled Evêques, moines et empereurs, 610–1054 and Apogée de la papauté et
expansion de la chrétienté, 1054–1274 (1993), respectively Les laïcs au Moyen Age.
Pratiques et expériences religieuses (1987); and La sainteté en Occident aux derniers
siècles du Moyen Age (1994).
Around the same time that Vauché was working, other European
scholars were active in the field. Raoul Manselli delivered a number of lec-
tures under the auspices of the Conférence Albert-le-Grand at the Institut
d’études médiévales de Montréal. These lectures were then published as La
Religion populaire au moyen âge: Problèmes de méthode et d’histoire and were built
upon Manselli’s previous thirty years of research in popular religious move-
ments, both orthodox and heretical. These include his collaboration with
Paolo Lamma and Alfred Haverkamp on Beiträge zur Geschichte Italiens im
12. Jahrhundert (1971); Studi sulle eresi del secolo XII (1953); La ‘Lectura super Apoca-
lipsim’ di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi; ricerche sull’escatologismo medioevale (1955); and
Spirituali e Beghini in Provenza (1959). Since the publication of those lectures in
Montreal, he has published St. Francis of Assisi (1988). Meanwhile, Peter Din-
zelbacher published Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter, an important
monograph on visionary literature in 1981, the same year that his shorter
monograph appeared entitled Revelationes. In each of these books, Dinzel-
bacher covers previous scholarship, puts forth a definition of the field, and
extensively discusses themes, types, and subgenres in vision literature. Then
in 1990, he edited a series of articles entitled Volksreligion im hohen und späten
Mittelalter, and in 1998 he published a very extensive biography of Bernard
de Clairvaux and an analysis of his religious thought: Bernhard von Clairvaux:
Leben und Werk des berühmten Zisterziensers.
More specific contributions to the field continued to appear in both
North America and Europe, especially on the theme of death. In 1994, pro-
ceedings of a conference held at the Universidad de Zaragoza in 1990 were
published as Muerte, religiosidad y cultura popular, siglos XIII–XVIII, ed. Eliseo
Serrano Martín. The 26 contributions to the tome are organized themati-
cally by session: “Muerte, religiosidad y cultura popular: encrucijadas”; “Re-
tazos de religiosidad”; “El sueño eterno: actitudes, ritos y sentimentos”; and
“La muerte representada: Imagen, verso, ‘tempo’.” As contributions to the
1133 Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies

study of popular culture, the individual essays discuss attitudes and beliefs
related to death in the high to late Middle Ages and build upon Roger Char-
tier, El mundo como representación. Historia cultural: entre práctica y representación
(1992); Keith Thomas Religion and the Decline of Magic (1991); Philippe Ariés,
L’homme devant la mort (1977); and the collaborative three-volume work en-
titled La religiosidad popular (1989) ed. Álvarez Santalo, Carlos León, and
Maria Jesús Buxó Rey. Most recently in Germany, Bettina Spoerri has of-
fered Der Tod als Text und Signum: der literarische Todesdiskurs in geistlich-didak-
tischen Texten des Mittelalters (1999).
Last, but by all means not least, one must recognize the current work of
Bernard McGinn, who may be the leading historian of Christian spirituality
at this time. He has authored the multi-volume work, The Presence of God: A
History of Western Christian Mysticism. In volume 1, The Foundations of Mysticism:
Origins to the Fifth Century (1991), McGinn offers suggestions on how to read
and interpret mystics’ theological endeavors. Volume two, entitled The
Growth of Mysticism: 500 to 1200 A.D. (1996) includes careful studies of Gregory
the Great and Bernard de Clairvaux while the third volume, The Flowering of
Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350 (1998), focuses on
Francis of Assisi.

C. Medieval Women’s Spirituality

When discussing medieval women’s spirituality, one must include works
that address the common or popular experience of women in their spiritual
lives, including works on medieval women’s religious orders. However, of
course, readers must also look to the extraordinary women of medieval spiri-
tuality: the mystics.
Although an economic historian, Eileen Powers must be credited with
some of the earliest work in women’s spirituality and recognized as the
driving force behind so much later work in the field. She published a three-
part article very early on in her career, “The Cult of the Virgin in the Middle
Ages” (Cambridge Magazine 28 April, 5 May, 9 June 1917; rpt. in Medieval
Women, ed. Michael Mohissey Postan, 1975) and then a book not long after-
ward: Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (1922). From her own interest
in medieval women, an entire avenue of scholarship on medieval women’s
spirituality could continue.
Scholarship on medieval women’s spirituality just before and after
World War II continued, but one particular event marked an upswing in in-
terest in one particular medieval woman’s spirituality. The Book of Margery
Kempe was made widely available in 1940 thanks to the editorial efforts of
Sanford B. Meech and Hope Emily Allen in The Book of Margery Kempe: the
Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies 1134

Text from the Unique Ms. Owned by Colonel W. Butler-Bowdon. Once the text was
available, studies began appearing regularly in scholarly journals as well as
in monograph form as in Martin Thornton’s 1960 Margery Kempe: an
Example in the English Pastoral Tradition and the very influential book by Louise
Collis, Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: the Life and Times of Margery Kempe (1964;
rpt. in 1983). Soon more and more books focused on mysticism and women’s
voices as examples of feminine agency began to appear in, for example, Cla-
rissa W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: the Book and the World of Margery Kempe
(1983); John C. Hirsh, The Revelations of Margery Kempe: Paramystical Practices
in Late Medieval England (1989); Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Trans-
lations of the Flesh (1991); Sandra J. McEntire, Margery Kempe: a Book of Essays
(1992); and Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (1994).
Feminist scholarship during this time studied more than just this one
figure. Building upon important work such as that of Eileen Power and Mi-
chelline de Fontette, Les religieuses à l’âge classique du droit du droit canon, re-
cherches sur les structures juridiques de branches féminines des ordres (1967), scholars
began to uncover hitherto unexplored avenues of women’s spiritual history
and women’s spiritual writings – one of the only spheres in which women’s
thoughts survive in such abundance. In 1973, a significant book was pub-
lished that spurred on feminist critics in their investigations: Joan Morris,
The Lady Was a Bishop: The Hidden History of Women with Clerical Ordination and
the Jurisdiction of Bishops. By uncovering evidence that women played import-
ant pastoral and spiritual functions in the first centuries of Christianity,
Morris encouraged scholars, especially women scholars, saw new avenues of
research in the history of female spirituality.
A particularly important scholar of general and female spirituality was
undergoing her training at Harvard University and beginning her career
when this research was being accomplished: Caroline Walker Bynum. In
1979, she offered her first monograph, Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of
Twelfth-Century Spirituality, before publishing her groundbreaking Jesus as
Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (1982). She continued to
focus on women and gender studies in her career in publications such as
Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (ed. with Stevan Harrell and
Paula Richman in 1986); Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of
Food to Medieval Women (1987); Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender
and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (l991); The Resurrection of the Body in
Western Christianity, 200–1336 (l995); and Body-Part Reliquaries (ed. with Paula
Gerson as a special isssue of Gesta in l997). Through her work in body
politics, she became increasingly interested in blood, especially that of Jesus:
Metamorphosis and Identity (2001); “Das Blut und die Körper Christi im Mittel-
1135 Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies

alter: Eine Asymmetrie,” Vorträge aus dem Warburg Haus 5 (2001): 75–119; “Vi-
olent Imagery in Late Medieval Piety,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute
30 (Spring, 2002): 3–36; “The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages,”
Church History 71.4 (2002), 685–715; “The Power in the Blood: Sacrifice, Sat-
isfaction and Substitution in Late Medieval Soteriology,” The Redemption: An
Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel
Kendall, SJ, and Gerald O’Collins, SJ, (2004), 177–204; and “Bleeding
Hosts and Their Contact Relics in Late Medieval Northern Germany,” The
Medieval History Journal (2004): 227–41. With the publication of this last ar-
ticle, she continued to work on Northern Germany: “A Matter of Matter: Two
Cases of Blood Cult in the North of Germany in the Later Middle Ages,” Medi-
eval Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Jeremy du Quesnay Adams, ed. Stephanie
Hayes, 2 vols. (2005), vol. 2, 181–210; “Formen weiblicher Frömmigkeit im
späteren Mittelalter,” Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklös-
tern, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger and Robert Suckale (2005), 118–29; and es-
pecially Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany
and Beyond (2007).
Using the work of critics like Bynum Walker, scholars then began to
mine primary sources in order to conceive of a feminine or proto-feminist
spiritual discourse. In 1979, a collection of some of the best female and fem-
inist Church historians and theologians appeared, entitled Women of Spirit: Fe-
male Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford
Reuther and Eleanor McLaughlin. The very same year, the same two edi-
tors offered Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age. In 1985
Peter Dinzelbacher presented a collection of essays that he had edited, en-
titled Frauenmystik in Mittelalter, and Barbara J. MacHaffie published Her
Story: Women in Christian Tradition a year later. Then, in 1988 a very important
collaborative enterprise between Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P.
Zinsser was published: the two-volume A History of their Own: Women in Eu-
rope from Prehistory to the Present. In volume I, Anderson and Zinsser cover
women’s spirituality in a number of sections, including goddess religions in
the first section, “Traditions Inherited: Attitudes about Women from the
Centuries before 800 A.D.” In their third section, “Women of the Churches:
The Power of the Faithful,” the co-authors address the role of women’s spiri-
tual authority within and outside of the institutional church. Later scholars
have built upon this work, such as Jo Ann Kay McNamara, who published
Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia in 1996. Beverly Mayne
Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker co-edited Women Preachers and Prophets
through Two Millennia of Christianity in 1998, the same year that saw the publi-
cation of Patricia Ranft’s Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition.
Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies 1136

During these years, in addition to these more general works, more

specialized studies began to appear, notably, Andrea Lebers’ study of En-
gelhard von Langheim, ‘Eine Frau war dieser Mann’: die Geschichte der Hildegund
von Schönau, 1989; Angela Muñoz Fernández, Las mujeres en el cristianismo
medieval: imágenes teóricas y cauces de actuación religiosa, 1989; the collaborative
work of Daniel Ethan Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, Mistiche e devote
nell’Italia tardomedievale in 1992; Elizabeth Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on
Medieval Women and Mysticism, 1994; Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to
Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature, 1995; Ronald E.
Surtz, Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of
Saint Teresa of Avila, 1995; Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late
Medieval and Early Modern England, 1997; The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena,
translated with introduction, notes, and interpretive essay by Dayle Seiden-
spinner-Núñez, 1998; and Georges Didi-Huberman, Die Ordnung des Ma-
terials (Vorträge aus dem Warburg-Haus), 1999.
Of course, where there were female mystics and visionaries, there were
accusations of witchcraft and heresy. Much of the groundwork for this field
was laid by Lynn Thorndike in her 8-volume The History of Magic and Experi-
mental Science published from 1923 to 1958. During that same period, Fran-
cophone readers could turn to Robert-Léon Wagner’s ‘Sorcier’ et ‘magicien’:
Contribution à l’histoire de la magie (1939). In the 1970s, scholarly work on the
subject flourished in wide-sweeping contributions such as Jeffrey Burton
Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (1972); Norman Cohn’s Europe’s Inner
Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom (1973; rpt. 1993;
revised 2000); David Carroll, The Magic Makers: Magic and Sorcery Through the
Ages; Richard Cavendish, A History of Magic (1977); and Franco Cardini,
Magia, stregoneria, superstizioni nell’Occidente medievale (1979). More recently,
interested readers have found the work of Richard Kieckhefer particularly
rich. His 1989 publication, Magic in the Middle Ages, is quickly becoming a
seminal work in the field, and his Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the
Fifteenth Century (1997) brings forth an edition of a little studied Latin text
preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Finally, in the 21st cen-
tury, Michael D. Bailey’s Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the
Late Middle Ages (2003) ensures that work will continue apace in the field in
the foreseeable future.
As scholars made their way into the third millennium, contributions on
female spirituality as a distinct field of study make clear that field’s fertility.
In 2000, Katherine Ludwig Jansen published The Making of the Magdalen:
Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. A year later, in 2001, C.J.
Mews offered Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Re-
1137 Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies

ligious Women in the Middle Ages, and Shulamith Shahar, Women in a Medieval
Heretical Sect: Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians. Having come a long way from
its roots in economic history and the history of philosophy, the study of spiri-
tuality, especially women’s spirituality, continues to be a thriving discipline
in many branches of the humanities, including cultural studies (now see
Albrecht Classen, The Power of a Woman’s Voice, 2007).

Select Bibliography
Louis Bouyer, Jean Leclercq, and FrançoisVandenbroucke, La Spiritualité du
Moyen Age (Paris: Aubier, 1961); Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the
Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982);
Etienne Gilson, La théologie mystique de saint Bernard (Paris: J. Vrin, 1934); id., Théologie
et histoire de la spiritualité (Paris: J. Vrin, 1943); Jean Leclercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir
de Dieu: Initiation aux auteurs monastiques de moyen âge (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1957);
Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Rad-
ford Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).

Daniel E. O’Sullivan

Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
The interaction of two or more cultures often produces a literary response
in which the encountered culture is fictionalized according to its perceived
differences. This fictionalization enforces simultaneous perceptions of self-
superiority and idealized alterity – a process clearly visible and first noted
in the literatures of the early modern colonial period. Inevitably, a period of
assimilation occurs in which this literature of colonization gives way to the
rising voices of the colonized who have appropriated to a lesser or greater de-
gree the literature of the colonizer and its implicit conceptions of inferiority
and disenfranchisement. The term ‘Post-Colonial’ pertains expressly to this
subsequent literature in which the colonizer and the colonized have come
together in an uncomfortable relationship of mutual appropriation in the
person of the writer. The study of how differing literatures portray alterity
and exclude necessarily the voices of the ‘Other’ thus pertains closely to post-
colonialism, but the delimited scope of the term itself remains under scru-
tiny (Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge, “What is Post(-)Colonialism?,” Textual
Practice 5 [1991]: 399–414; Anne McClintock, “The Angel of Progress: Pit-
Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies 1138

falls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism’,” Social Text 31–32 [1992]: 84–98). Post-
colonial theory primarily focuses on identity and the production of literature
in the context of conflicted cultural perceptions (Patrick Hogan, Colonialism
and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa,
and the Caribbean, 2000). The post-colonial writer must attempt some kind of
reconciliation of the dominant fiction of the colonizer with the resistant, but
compromised voice of the colonized. Such a reconciliation, as Georg Gugel-
burger points out in “Postcolonial Cultural Studies” (The Johns Hopkins
Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, 1994), entails a rearrangement of percep-
tions which, based on constituent ideas of social and cultural majority estab-
lished by the dominant fiction, do not reflect that society’s reality but never-
theless inform the writer’s work and identity.

B. Post-Colonial Theory and the Middle Ages

For current writers working in post-colonial countries like the United States,
Canada, Ireland, India, and Africa, the question is immediately pertinent
to the resolution of very real and continuing social conflict, but the question
has a different set of subsequent problems for the medievalist. On the one
hand, the medievalist must appropriately position particular authors in
their proper context and according to the record of their extant literary
voices in order to properly recount how the interactions of their cultural
particulars define the conflicts, however subtle, present to them. Suzanne
Akbari, for example, gives an overview of the specific literary moments that
define a medieval perception of an alien, pagan East and the resulting self-
perception of “a cold (because northerly) European West,” (“From Due East
to True North: Orientalism and Orientation,” The Post-Colonial Middle Ages,
ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 2000). On the other hand, the medievalist must
also be consistently aware of modern perceptions which may inhibit an ap-
propriate analysis and subsequent representation of the authors and scribes
who produced the surviving textual record. If not, the modern academic
essentially ‘colonizes’ the past and establishes yet a further fictionalization
of the medieval period and its inhabitants. To some degree, the medievalist
has always been aware of the problems addressed by post-colonial theory,
through the continued influence and absence of imperial Roman culture and
authority. Both Edward Gibbon’s (The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, 1788) and R. W. Southern’s (The Making of the Middle Ages,
1965) foundational works recognize the legacy of the Roman Empire as a
defining characteristic of the Middle Ages with its various implications for
linguistics, literature, art and politics. The advent of post-colonial theory in
literary analysis provided a set of defined terms and paradigms with which
1139 Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies

scholars like Michael Warren (“Making Contact: Post-Colonial Perspec-

tives through Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittanie,” Arthuriana
8.4 [1998]: 115–34) could continue and refine their work.

C. Said’s Orientalism
The seminal work on post-colonial literature was Edward Said’s Orientalism:
Western Conceptions of the Orient (1978), which sought to illuminate the way in
which Near/Middle Eastern and Western literatures perpetuated a process of
mutual fictionalization. Said’s model and approach have since undergone
considerable scrutiny, but his description of how cultures fictionalize one
another remains central to the work of post-colonial analysis. Despite the sig-
nificance of Orientalism, post-colonial theory and analysis did not gain wide-
spread academic popularity until after 1989, when Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths, and Helen Tifflin defined and established the analysis of post-
colonial literatures by publishing The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial Literatures. In subsequent years, the field of post-colonial analy-
sis gained momentum with the work of Homi Babha (“DissemiNation:
Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” Nation and Nar-
ration, 1990; The Location of Culture, 1994) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, ed. Sarah Harasym, 1987; A Critique
of Postcolonial Reason, 1999; Death of a Discipline, 2003). The literary theory ap-
propriate to problems of post-colonial identity proved appropriate also to
the study of gender, particularly in a post-imperial context (Gillian Whit-
lock, The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography, 2000; Women and the
Colonial Gaze, ed. Tamara Hunt and Micheline Lessard, 2002), and in Caro-
line Vander Stichele and Todd Pender’s Her Master’s Tools: Feminist and
Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse (2005), feminist and
post-colonial theory were unified in a re-evaluation of Biblical scholarship
and the academy. Changing political circumstances and pressure from in-
creasingly theory – rather than text – driven scholarship necessitated, as Igor
Maver states in his “Post-Colonial Literatures in English ab origine as futu-
rum” (Critics and Writers Speak: Revisioning Post-Colonial Studies, ed. Igor Maver,
2006, 11), a redefined “academic theoretical discourse analyzing the practice
of post-colonial literary representation, that is, the process of construction of
the cultural Other” with an increasing degree of interdisciplinary analysis.
Post-Colonial Theory Among Medievalists: The call for a redefined
discourse, characterized by an increased degree of interdisciplinary scholar-
ship, had already been made and answered to some degree by the community
of medievalists by the year 2000. In that year, the question of how post-colo-
nialism specifically related to scholarship on the Middle Ages was addressed
Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies 1140

expressly in The Post-Colonial Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,

with a resulting insistence on rethinking appropriate terms (such as ‘race,’
‘nation,’ ‘translation,’ and even terms central to the discipline itself, e. g.,
‘middle,’ and ‘period’). The book also demanded a re-evaluation of the divi-
sions between disciplines and likewise the determinants of identity, increas-
ing focus on non-Christian groups, and otherwise removing the boundaries
set on medieval Europe – temporally as well as geographically – by the mod-
ern academic community. The destabilization of the “middleness” of the
Middle Ages through terms and methods defined by post-colonial theory
was further undertaken by the contributing scholars of Patricia Ingham and
Michelle Warren’s Postcolonial Moves: Medieval through Modern (2003); and
John Ganim in his Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Archi-
tecture, and Cultural Identity (2005). Over the twenty-five years prior to these
books, the question of colonialism during the Middle Ages had been dis-
cussed by scholars like Joshuah Prawer (The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem:
European Colonization in the Middle Ages, 1972); Benedict Anderson (Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1983); Kathleen
Biddick (“The ABC of Ptolemy: Mapping the World with the Alphabet,”
Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, ed. Sylvia
Tomasch and Sealy Gilles, 1998, 268–93); and Kathleen Davis (“National
Writing in the Ninth Century: A Reminder for Postcolonial Thinking about
the Nation,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28.3 [1998]: 611–37),
the debate steadily appropriating post-colonial terms and methods. If medi-
evalists had already been dealing unconsciously with the issues inherent to
post-colonialism prior to The Empire Writes Back, they gained from post-colo-
nial discourse a further dimension in the critical examination of the politics
and difficulties inherent to medievalism itself in the process of, as Stephen
Nichols put it in his introduction to Medievalism and the Modernist Temper
(ed. R. Howard Bloch and Nichols, 1996), “wallowing in the question of
its origins.” Kathleen Biddick further treated this question in The Shock of
Medievalism (1998) as did Paul Freedman and Gabrielle Speigel in “Medi-
evalisms Old and New: The rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medi-
eval Studies” (AHR 103 [June 1998]: 677–704) through the examination of
late 20th-century interest in the medieval “grotesque.” Approaching the
issue more broadly, Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translat-
ing Cultures (ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams, 2005) drew
from the extensive interdisciplinarity of both Medieval Studies and post-co-
lonialism in order to target specifically the post-colonial moments of medi-
eval Europe’s ever shifting contexts of cultural production and interpre-
tation.
1141 Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies

Select Bibliography
Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995); The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, ed. Neil
Lazarus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); The Encyclopedia of Post-Colo-
nial Literatures in English, ed. Eugene Benson, and L.W. Conolly (London and
New York: Routledge, 1994); Post-Colonial Literatures in English: General, Theoretical, and
Comparative 1970–1993, ed. Alan Lawson, Leigh Dale, Helen Tiffin, and Shane Row-
lands (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1997); The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (Abingdon, Oxford and New York:
Routledge, 2006); John Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2001).

James Tindal Acken

Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1142

Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

A. Definition
Queer Studies developed in part from the feminism movement but came
into its own during the late 1980s and early 1990s especially with the works
of Judith Butler. It is still a growing school of thought in relation to mod-
ern literature, and therefore few theorists have applied much of this critical
approach to Medieval Studies. However, this is not to say Queer Studies has
not begun finding ground in its concern over identity formation and identity
politics during the Middle Ages. The aim is less about discerning an author’s
meaning or intention behind the manner that certain characters or situations
are represented, but instead, to show how these characters or situations
exemplify the social formation of identity and the interactions between the
different identity roles during that period. Identifying texts that demon-
strate how society molds and enforces these various identity roles and rela-
tionships therefore reinforces the argument of many queer theorists over
the artificiality of identity as opposed to any sort of natural or inherent
gender and sexuality. Because this is still a developing field, there are many
facets of Queer Studies still emerging, however, the primary focus of this
selection will be that of how it relates to identity formation and identity
politics.

B. Terminology
Queer Studies finds its roots in post-structuralism, and its primary purpose
is to open the discourse to the needs and interests of the lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, and transgender communities. Because these needs and interests con-
tinue to change and grow, this field of studies is still in a state of self-deter-
mination. Michel Foucault (“Lecture 7 Jan 1976,” Michel Foucault: Society
Must Be Defended, 2003, 1–24) describes an “insurrection of the subjugated
knowledges,” and Queer Studies is certainly one example of where a margi-
nalized population has is made itself known (6–12). Queer Studies centers
itself in identity formation and attempts to explore the methods by which
individuals are labeled as men and women, masculine and feminine, as well
as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. It acts as a force of resistance
1143 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

against essentialist views as it explores the ways socially constructed beings

interact with one another. Not surprisingly, Queer Studies has much in com-
mon with other forms of identity theory such as Feminism and Gender The-
ory from which it developed. The writings of feminists, gender theorists, and
pioneering Queer theorists Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler
provide much of Queer Studies’ understanding of identity formation.
Eve Sedgwick (“Epistomology of the Closet,” Epistomology of the Closet,
1990, 27–35) makes the distinction between “sex, gender, and sexuality […]
three terms whose usage relations and analytical relations are almost irre-
mediably slippery” (27). She contends these words are often equated when in
fact they possess distinct meanings. According to Sedgwick, each person
born has one of two biological possibilities for sex – male or female. She
refers to this binary option of sex as chromosomal sex, viewing it as “immut-
able, immanent in the individual, and biologically based” (28). Generally,
chromosomal sex is “the relatively minimal raw material on which is then
based the social construction of gender” (27). That is, society places the indi-
vidual into a given gender, masculine or feminine, based on an examination
of the individual’s physical body in Sedgwick’s account, correlated with
chromosomal sex, and not an examination that individual’s behaviors.
Having demonstrated that gender is not the same as biological sex,
Sedgwick next clarifies gender “as [being] culturally mutable and variable,
[and] highly relational” (28). The dominant culture is informed by the in-
dividual’s chromosomal sex when determining that person’s gender. This
same culture is also responsible for constructing the codes of masculine and
feminine gender-behaviors the individual performs. In this sense, gender is
not a flexible aspect of one’s identity – one is either masculine or feminine.
The individual achieves self-definition “primarily by its relations to the
other” as part of this binary relationship of the masculine male and feminine
female (28). Each member of society defines their conception of self based
upon the reactions of those around them. A man knows he is a masculine
based on his reception and acceptance by other men. This same man rein-
forces his self-conception of manhood through the same validation by
women through their desire of him. Failure to achieve this validation can
call the man’s gender identity into question. This relational method of self-
conceptualization links gender and sexuality as influencing aspects of iden-
tity formation. The groundwork for understanding the social construction
of identity arises from recognizing society’s inflexible method of gender
identification forced upon each individual from birth.
As difficult as it is to untangle our understanding of “sex” and “gender,”
sexuality “is virtually impossible to set on a map” (Sedgwick, 29). Never-
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1144

theless, Sedgwick still provides such preliminary boundaries as starting

with the procreative sexual act and those actions associated with it. The dif-
ference lies in sexuality having a far greater potential for rearrangement
when compared to chromosomal sex and gender. One could both be geneti-
cally male and demonstrate a masculine gender yet still possess a sexual de-
sire for a variety of other chromosomal and gender types. Sedgwick asserts
that while biology dictates one of two possible chromosomal sexes, and so-
ciety prescribes one of two possible genders, there is less basis for determin-
ing sexuality despite the procreative preliminaries she initially establishes.
For simplicity’s sake, however, we can narrow the conception of sexuality
down to three classifications: heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexual-
ity, which account for the multiple sexualities possible.
Judith Butler (“Subversive Bodily Acts,” Gender Trouble, 79–141) refines
this idea of gender identity performance when she describes those behaviors
that “produce the effect of an internal core or substance […] on the surface of
the body” (136). These behaviors constitute a performance as the body pro-
ducing these signs conveys a message to society about itself. Creating and act-
ing out these signs expresses particular facets of the body’s identity, high-
lighting the performative aspects of identity. There is no natural or inherent
self the individual discovers through self-examination or any other means.
These actions inscribed upon the body serve as externalized signs of the self
that the individual wants to present publicly (136–38).
Butler continues to explore the meaning of gender by applying a simi-
lar argument that Sedgwick uses to describe the problem of demarcating
the boundaries of sexuality. She argues the performance of gender, as one as-
pect of the individual’s identity, also proves difficult to map. Because lan-
guage and physical actions allow individuals to represent themselves in ways
they want, there is room in this paradigm for the possibility of self-determi-
nation. For example, a person can possess the body of a male and yet desire to
represent himself in a feminine manner. It is possible through communicat-
ing (orally and physically) the learned language of feminine behaviors for any
person to perform a feminine gender script. In this way, neither chromoso-
mal sex or social determination dictates the individual’s gender; instead the
individual manufactures and enacts gender (Butler, 139–41).

C. History of Research, Schools of Thought, Approaches

Jacques Derrida’s post-structural writings from the 1970s (“Structure,
Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Twentieth-Century Lit-
erary Theory, 1997, 115–20) provide a foundation for Queer Studies in the dec-
ades to follow. Thus, the deferment of meaning in language parallels Queer
1145 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

Studies’ assertions that gender and sexuality are never fully present in the in-
dividual, but exist only in varying degrees at different times and therefore
cannot be fixed (Derrida, 112). In the same way a word’s meaning will in-
variably change with time and context, the concepts of gender and sexuality
are never wholly emblemized by any one individual, and here we see Derri-
da’s fingerprint on Queer Studies. During the 1980s, Foucault (“The Re-
pressive Hypothesis” The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, 1978, 15–50) also helped
set the stage for the development of Queer Studies in The History of Sexuality
with his notion of how institutions exercise power through individuals
thereby making them subjects to those establishments. The individual acted
in accordance to the rules and guidelines of their specific role, and he later ex-
plains how sodomites had only been temporary in nature until they were
broken down into various categories such as homosexuals clearly illustrating
identity as a preconceived notion and society fitting its members into rigid
and often fixed roles (Foucault, 15). Only in recent times were individuals
who performed acts of sodomy labeled as homosexuals, and it raises the
question of the artificiality and need for labels such as heterosexual and
homosexual.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, critical theorists such as Adrienne
Rich, Bonnie Zimmerman, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick began
their work in Queer Studies branching out from the feminist movement, as a
result of the rising awareness of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
communities as well as the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The term “Queer
Studies” actually came about during this time period in the writings of
Teresa de Laurentis. During the early 1980s, there was a public miscon-
ception that this disease originated from within the homosexual commu-
nity, and critics from outside the community began crying out that homo-
sexuality was a leading source of the disease pointing to its supposed
fatalistic nature that lead one to eventually contract HIV/AIDS. These critics
failed to focus on the unsafe actions performed by individuals (including
heterosexuals) as a cause for this disease, instead of labeling certain groups of
individuals as being responsible for the epidemic. This further margina-
lization and misunderstanding of the LGBT communities lead to the rise in
these individuals’ need to speak out against such unfair treatment especially
when it became clear that there were other behaviors responsible for the dis-
ease and that it was not limited only to the LGBT community.
In the 1990s, Judith Butler focused on this notion of self-realization as
key to understanding an individual’s identity. Like Sedgwick, she contends
that gender is mutable and not a fixed concept determined by genetics.
Butler initially concerns herself with challenging the accepted binary ap-
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1146

proach to gender, that is, the socially normative convention of being only
masculine or only feminine, along with the accompanying system of thought
that allows only these two gender choices (109–11). She argues against so-
ciety’s use of chromosomal sex in its determination of gender and sexuality
of the individual. The problem with this system can be seen, for example,
when a male child slowly develops a sexual preference for other males (that
is, a manifestation of sexuality) and demonstrates behaviors characteristic of
femininity (emblematic of his gender preference). This presents only one of
many possible variations in sexuality and gender. The individual possesses
the genetic makeup of a man, yet he displays gender and sexual preferences
outside the framework aligning male chromosomes with masculine gender
and heterosexual preference. In similar fashion, how does one label a woman
who does not adhere to feminine tastes and opts for more masculine beha-
viors? This illustrates the possibility for the rearrangement of gender and
sexuality not taken into account by the hegemonic construction of gender
identity.
Looking closely at cross-dressers, or drag queens, we can see begin to see
this rearrangement of gender and sexuality. Butler uses the example of Di-
vine (born Harris Glenn Milstead), a 300-pound cross-dresser who per-
formed in a number of John Waters’ movies, such as Hairspray (Butler,
X–XI). Butler makes a compelling argument when she posits the ways
“drag [is] the imitation of gender,” or it highlights the performative aspects
to those “signifying gestures through which gender itself is established” (X).
Drag queens demonstrate one of two possibilities: first, that they are simply
imitating the socially traditional understandings of gender, or secondly,
they illustrate the possibility that all methods of self-identification are per-
formances. If we believe the second claim, as Butler does, then we must ac-
cept that the idea of any sort of natural, inherent gender is a fantasy. Drag
replicates and mocks the gender role being performed, thereby exemplifying
the continued deconstruction of the binary system of gender. In revealing
the performative nature of gender, drag underscores the performative and
non-inherent aspects of identity as a whole (X–XI).
One of the significant problems of socially constructed identities lies at
the margins of the social group, with those individuals whose behaviors do
not fit in perfectly with the mainstream. Because we see “all social systems
are vulnerable at their margins, and that all margins are considered danger-
ous,” Butler (“Interiority to Gender Performatives,” The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism) argues societies tend to label those individuals as margi-
nal and polluted since they no longer fit into the mainstream (Douglas
quoted in Butler, 2493). Taking Mary Douglas’s idea of the marginal
1147 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

being, Butler links this socially polluted individual to homosexuality.

Anal and oral sex create “certain kinds of bodily permeabilities unsanctioned
by the hegemonic order” which identifies individuals participating in these
marginal activities as dangerous and polluted (2493). Those homosexual
bodies found on the margins deviate from the sanctioned norm of male-
female sexual orientation. The appearance and behaviors of these marginal
members disqualifies them from the mainstream, and the majority of society
drives them from the social group to these outer boundaries.
Preceding Sedgwick and Butler, Monique Wittig (“One Is Not
Born A Woman,” The Straight Mind, 1992, 9–20) discusses the relationship
between identity construction and identity oppression. Although Wittig
does not specify gender as a qualifier of identity, she contextualizes her
argument with gender-specific arguments. For this reason, this specifi-
cation has been made when representing her arguments. Wittig argues
that the lesbian community should refuse to participate in the heterosexual
construction of gender. As she explains, the dominant paradigms construct
women according to a particular social relationship with a man, a relation-
ship that “we have previously called servitude,” citing marriage, child pro-
duction, and other domestic activities traditionally delegated to women
(20). Accordingly, when society labels individuals with certain gender roles,
a form of oppression has taken place because those labels force the individ-
uals into roles with these expectations of performance. Thus, Wittig
rejects the notion of a natural gender identity, saying, “we have been com-
pelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond feature by feature, with
the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an ex-
tent that our deformed body is what they call ‘natural’” (9). It can be inferred
from Wittig that there is no natural or original gender identity; “man” and
“woman” are socially constructed identities pushed upon each person
throughout history.
Recognizing oppression is important to Wittig, “for once one has ac-
knowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one
can constitute oneself as a subject […] that one can become someone in spite
of oppression, that one has ones own identity” (15). Simple recognition of
this method of oppressing identity does not equate to freedom of self-con-
ceptualization. Individuals must actively cast aside those signs used in their
previous portrayals of self, through their actions and clothing, and must cre-
ate new signs to define themselves. Although Wittig calls for the outright
destruction of the masculine, heterosexually generated signs, her idea of
self-reinterpretations opens the door to Marvin Carlson’s notion of the
management of signs nearly twenty years later.
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1148

Additional insight into Queer Studies can be gained through an examin-

ation of how its understanding of identity performance relates to the theater
and the performing arts. In the late 1990s, Marvin Carlson (Performance:
A Critical Introduction, 1998) provided a three-part working definition of per-
formance that involves the public display of a “recognized and culturally
coded pattern of behaviors” where the “success of the activity” is judged in
view of “some standard of achievement” (4–5). An act taking place on stage
is considered performed and the same action off-stage is “merely done,” yet
both are presented to the public (4). Every performance is public requiring
recognition and validation of the performer by the audience. Carlson
diverges from most gender performance theorists, however, when he argues
that the “recognition that our lives are structured according to repeated and
socially sanctioned modes of behavior raises the possibility that human activ-
ity could potentially be considered ‘performance’” (4). He further clarifies
the focus of the argument by suggesting “at least all activity carried out with
a consciousness of itself […] when we think about them […] gives them the
quality of performance” (4). While most Queer theorists would not argue
against the first part of his argument, the concept of performance only taking
place when the individual is aware of it places him in opposition to many. He
does seem willing to commit to the conscious construction of identity, but
does not address how unconscious behaviors relate to performance. This fails
to take into account either those behaviors individuals may not be aware
of what they are doing or the reasons individuals act in ways that contribute
to the performance of identity. Carlson’s point is worth considering, how-
ever, because sometimes the individual makes a decision to carry out an act
and the performed behavior may eventually become an unconscious repeti-
tion. Carlson’s argument for the conscious decision to perform is still valid
despite appearing to overlook the unconscious aspects of performance.
There is an interesting addition to Butler’s dialogue about drag in
Carlson’s discussion of the 1970s “Roberta Breitmore” character. Actress
Lynn Hershman embodies Queer Studies’ notion of identity performance in
her portrayal of a female exploring various aspects of real life, from joining a
mundane Weight Watchers group to participation in a prostitution ring.
“Roberta” had her own bank account, a driver’s license, fictional back-
ground, as well as a therapist she regularly saw until her eventual “death”
when Hershman completed her experiment in 1978 (Carlson, 152). This
suggests that drag, as Butler discussed it, is simply an extension of the very
theatrical performance Carlson discusses. Hershman’s drag accomplishes
two things: first, it doesn’t necessarily mock those presented aspects of iden-
tity Butler asserted were characteristic of drag, but it does illustrate the
1149 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

performative nature of identity. Secondly, it shows that individuals can con-

duct a drag performance of characters of the same sex with purpose of explor-
ing “many of the personal/ daily conflicts […] faced” in day-to-day experi-
ence (152).
There is also the issue of the individual’s deliberate manipulation of
these signs – those acts and behaviors indicative of a specific script – that il-
lustrate the performative aspect of identity. Some signs considered emblem-
atic of one stigmatized script can be associated with a second script of a dif-
ferent sort:

Those attempting to direct attention from their stigma may present the sign of
their stigmatized failing as the signs of another stigma […] [Oscar Wilde] man-
aged the stigma of homosexuality through claiming an identity built upon sec-
ondary signs (Carlson, 154).

Carlson draws the comparison of Oscar Wilde’s public claim to be a dandy –

the foppish socialite sharing some feminine characteristics – as a means to
avoid the stigma of homosexuality. There were certain signs of Wilde’s beha-
vior indicative of either a homosexual or a dandy. Individuals can demon-
strate both awareness of the public’s perception of themselves as well as their
ability to manipulate that public perception through the management of
their identity signs. Wilde illustrates this point as his awareness of how the
public perceived him allowed him to redirect this perception from the stig-
matized homosexual to that of the less stigmatized dandy.

D. Current Issues and Future Trends

Although Queer Studies originated at the end of the 20th century, one can
still apply this contemporary critical approach to older texts without falling
into anachronism. Robert Sturges (Chaucer’s Pardoner and Gender Theory:
Bodies of Discourse, 2001) uses identity performance theory to better analyze
medieval characters, such as the Pardoner from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Without going in significant detail, Sturges implements this notion of in-
dividuals behaving in ways both masculine and feminine. He points to the
Pardoner’s male and female bodily descriptions, masculine and feminine be-
haviors, and ambiguous sexual preferences in relation to his relationship
with the Summoner. These clues give credibility to the case for applying
Queer Studies to centuries-old texts to better understand identity formation.
In his examination of the problematic gender of Chaucer’s Pardoner,
Sturges reinforces Sedgwick’s notions of sex, gender, and sexuality in
differentiating between what he calls “sex acts […] anatomical sex […] and
gender performances” (27). Sturges agrees with Sedgwick’s point of not
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1150

addressing the individual’s gender by chromosomal sex as well as ruling out

the adherence to the binary choices of labeling someone as only one gender
or another. Borrowing heavily from Judith Butler, Sturges advocates
blending the two gender identities where the vehicle for this hybridization
of the genders is performance. No individual demonstrates wholly mascu-
line or wholly feminine behaviors, thereby making the binary relationship
Sedgwick questions even more problematic. The contemporary example
of the “metrosexual” illustrates this point. These individuals are hetero-
sexual males, and yet do not wholly demonstrate behaviors commonly be-
lieved characteristic of the heterosexual male demographic in contemporary
America. This particular group of people display interests in activities stereo-
typically seen as feminine, such as participating in spa treatments, dressing
in the latest fashions, and being overly attentive to personal appearance. This
highlights the difficulty in mainstream America’s (and by extension, con-
temporary culture) use of the binary concept of gender.
Susan Crane (The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the
Hundred Years War, 2002) continues bridging the gap between this 20th- and
21st-century discussion of identity performance theory and 15th-century
England. Crane adds both to Butler’s concepts of identity performance
and inscriptions on the body as well as to the larger discussion of Queer
Studies. She explores the use of clothing and personal accessories as exten-
sions of the body in identity performance contemporary to Malory. Crane
defines performance in her work as “the heightened and deliberately com-
municative behaviors, public displays, that use visual as well as rhetorical
resources” (3). She continues to say that “public appearance and behavior are
thought not to falsify personal identity, but on the contrary, to establish and
maintain it,” thereby demonstrating the means by which clothing and other
accessories serve to aid in identity performance (3). This places Crane within
the same scope of thought as Butler in her understanding of the per-
formative construction and maintenance of identity. While Butler focuses
on more modern manifestations in her critical approach, Crane examines
the 15th century with her understanding of performance theory, paying par-
ticular attention to the role clothing played in the body’s presentation of self.
Performance-driven identity found its basis “in social performance,”
and was widely accepted as “the conviction of medieval elites” (Crane, 5).
Referring to the poem “Roman de Fauve” which makes use of the social per-
formance of self, Crane supports this argument by showing how “courtiers
wear masks of peasants, fools, and animals but also take care to remain recog-
nizable to one another. Rather than concealing a prior identity, they seek
a dynamic simultaneity, between that prior self and the supplementary iden-
1151 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

tity of their costume” (6). The mask represents a desired signification or cos-
metic representation different from that of the noble’s physical body freeing
the body from social expectations otherwise placed on the unmasked body.
The body is the vehicle for communicating signs, but for Crane (and unlike
Butler) “clothing, not the skin, is the frontier of the self,” acting as the sign
that communicates the different meanings or characteristics of identity.
Crane supports her argument by stating that “clothing mark[s] social posi-
tion, age, gender, season, and even time of the day” (6). Only knights were
found wearing armor astride a horse, and nobility were easily identified by
the family coat of arms they wore. Both upper and lower classes lived under
“sumptuary legislation [that] assigned clothing significant social weight […]
[and] restricted various fabrics, furs, and ornaments to the use of specific
ranks and income levels” (11). These examples provide concrete evidence of
the significance of clothing in the social construction of identity in 15th-cen-
tury England. In this way, Crane demonstrates how Queer Studies’ contem-
porary understanding of identity performance applies to the late medieval
period in a relevant manner.
Dorsey Armstrong (Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte
d’Arthur, 2003) breaks new ground when she ties Queer Studies and identity
performance to Le Morte d’Arthur – a text previously unexamined by other
Queer theorists. Taking Judith Butler’s understanding of drag as a per-
formance of self, Armstrong makes the argument that knighthood is itself
a form of drag. The individual puts on an identity through the adherence to a
rigid code of conduct and wearing such accoutrements such as armor and a
coat of arms (Armstrong, 68). Drag often serves as a disruptive force among
socially expected gender roles in modern society. Since Lancelot adopts the
script of the madman and causes a significant disruption wherever he goes,
Armstrong’s connection of this contemporary theory to Malory’s text ap-
pears to be a logical one.
One of the most clear-cut examples of identity’s social formation is seen
in “The Book of King Arthur” when the Knightly Code is established. Arm-
strong notes how Arthur helps create a society that imprints upon each in-
dividual an identity script dependent such factors as gender and the socio-
economic class. Once the individual is properly identified, there is a cultural
expectation that the individual performs this role to a satisfactory degree.
She points out Arthur’s establishment of Knight’s Code from “The Tale of
King Arthur” as an example of such societal identity formation:
“[…] than the kynge stablysshed all the knyghtes and gaff them rychesse and lon-
dys; and charged them never to do outerage nothir mourthir, and allwayes to
fle treson, and to gyff mercy unto hym that askith mercy, upon payne of forfiture
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1152

[or their] worship and lordship of kynge Arthure for evermore; and allwayes to do
ladyes, damsels, and jantilwomen and wydowes [socour:] strengthe hem in hir
ryghtes, and never to enforce them, upon payne of dethe. Also, that no man take
no batalyes in a wrongefull quarell for no love ne for no worldis goodis. So unto
thys were all knyghtis sworne of the Table Rounde, both olde and younge, and
every yere so were the[y] sworne at the hyghe feste of Pentecoste” (Malory 75–6).

This code serves as an excellent example of a society constructing and enfor-

cing the performance of identity – at least, the identity of those who would
claim knighthood. Arthur’s code clearly establishes the knight’s role and
identity. There is little ambiguity with Arthur’s expectations for the members
of his court as he defines his vision for the interactions between his knights
and ladies, damsels, gentlewomen, widows, and with each other. Arthur
classifies each of the different roles of men and women at this time in relation
to their class and specific to women, their marital status. This code provides
individual nobles with a clearly laid out set of social expectations to uphold.
Malory depicts a society where identity is both constructed and enforced.
Because failure on the part of a knight to adhere to this identity code would
call Arthur’s authority into question, it would directly violate the king’s
command. Likewise, failure to enforce this rule would call Arthur’s role as
king into question. To emphasize the significance of these sorts of crimes as-
sociated with the Knightly Code, the code prescribes penalties for violations
ranging from the loss of the king’s favor (to include the “rychesse and lon-
dys”) to death. Lancelot and the other knights affirm their identity through
“the repetition of the behavior itself” rather than a “masculine knightly be-
havior” indicating some sort of “inherent masculinity” (Armstrong, 73).
Malory clearly lays out the guidelines for the way he envisions how culture
shapes an individual’s identity.
In addition to Malory, other texts reinforce our sense that the efficacy of
identity performance was recognized during the Middle Ages. For instance,
many guidebooks or “speculum principis” detail the offices of knight-
hood and nobility during Malory’s day (Armstrong, 76). These guidebooks
served as a means for public discourse where writers commented on “the con-
cerns of the times” and the need for reinforcement of social behaviors and ex-
pectations (77). From the 15th century, Lull’s Libre laid out expectations that
all knights maintain and defend the holy catholic faith, and secondly, main-
tain and defend women, widows, orphans, and sick men (80). In the 14th cen-
tury, Geoffrey de Charney’s Livre de Chevalrie emphasized the knight’s
obligation to religious devotion, providing alms to those in need, as well as
bringing together the “concepts of courtesy, loyalty, and prowess with piety”
(80). What makes Malory unique from these didactic texts, according to
1153 Queer Theories in Medieval Studies

Armstrong, is that he presents these knightly scripts over an extended

period of time, so that their “sustained deployment and exploration […]
eventually makes clear the structured failings of the code” and by extension
the tensions within any socially imposed identity (78). While Malory is not
alone in depicting some of the ways society has acted in the creation of the
identity roles, the lasting endurance of Le Morte d’Arthur speaks to the level of
his contribution to the discourse of identity formation.
The last difference Armstrong makes between Malory and his prede-
cessors is his inclination to depict a culture of chivalry where the masculine is
completely subservient to the feminine: knights were tasked to aid all
women of every social station. This is a drastic change from Lull and de Char-
ney who both advocated courtly relationships of mutual benefit to both the
man and woman (84). Malory’s reinterpretation of courtly love carries an
underlying implication that all women need the aid of a man in all matters.
This implication suggests when the woman does not need the man’s aid, the
man’s identity is called into question. Armstrong states “the feminine rep-
resents the perpetual opportunity for positive construction and refinement
[…] [and] to admit the possibility that the feminine need not always be help-
less and vulnerable would be to admit to a potential threat to the idealized
stable gender system” (82). Men repeatedly performing masculine behaviors
reinforce both their roles as men and the women’s place in society. Women
who are able to help themselves leave little for men to accomplish. For this
reason, we see a further breakdown of Malory’s vision of the chivalric com-
munity when women act outside of their given roles.

E. Summary
Every individual has various identity scripts written on their bodies that help
determine whether the body can be identified as masculine or feminine, het-
erosexual or homosexual, aristocratic or peasant. The body performs these
signs through performing actions or clothing itself with accessories. Cul-
tures imprint these identity scripts on the body of every individual through
the ages, leading to the misconception that this established practice is a natu-
ral and real standard for the individual to meet. Queer Studies shows that
each person forms a composite of these various scripted identities, with the
end result the construction of an individual public persona. When individ-
uals act out these respective scripts be they male or female, masculine or
feminine, or some differing form of sexual orientation, they demonstrate
both a conscious and an unconscious performance. When the individual per-
forms consciously, this demonstrates the notion of performance and is as
close to self-representation as is possible.
Queer Theories in Medieval Studies 1154

Select Bibliography
Elizabeth Allen, “The Pardoner in the ‘Dogges Bour’: Early Reception of the Canter-
bury Tales,” False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature (New York:
MacMillan, 2005), 111–32; Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,”
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), 307–20; Teresa de
Lauretis, “Queer Studies: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction,” Differences
3.2 (1991): III–XVIII; Carolyn Dinshaw, “Got Medieval,” Journal of the History of Sexual-
ity 10.2 (2001): 202–12; Lisa Duggan, “The Discipline Problem: Queer Studies Meets
Lesbian and Gay History,” GLQ 2.3 (1995): 179–91; Tison Pugh, “Queering Harry
Bailey: Gendered Carnival, Social Ideologies, and Masculinity Under Duress in the
Canterbury Tales,” The Chaucer Review 41.1 (2006): 39–69; Adrienne Rich, “Compul-
sory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 5 (1980): 631–60; James Schultz, “Heterosexuality as a Threat to Medieval
Studies,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15.1 (2006): 14–29.

Forrest C. Helvie
1155 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

A. Introduction
Several factors have influenced the relatively recent interest in applying con-
cepts of race and ethnicity to the study of the Middle Ages. Conceptualized
by anthropologists beginning with Franz Boas (Race, Language and Culture,
1940) and utilized in postcolonial studies, use of these concepts by medieval-
ists has also been influenced by an abiding interest in the status of the margi-
nalized other in the Middle Ages and the relationship between the culturally
marginalized and the center. Study of the other itself arose from feminist
and queer theory that has transformed Medieval Studies over the last thirty
years or so. The interest in applying concepts of race and ethnicity to the
Middle Ages, however, is also strongly tied to the often catastrophic dissen-
sion arising from ethnic and/or racial confrontations in the modern world.
Since these issues are so dominant in modern culture, it is necessary to be
cautious of our assumptions about and obsessions with nationality and
physical traits in regard to the delineation of cultural difference, especially
when seeking the origins of our own problems in the past.
The transformations of Europe brought about by the rise of nationalism
in the 19th century, the aftermath of two world wars, the dissolution of
the U.S.S.R, and modern patterns of immigration have given rise to ethnic
unrest (Robert Bartlett, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe,
2002), As discreet ethnic and/or religious groups came to find themselves
trapped within nation states in which the majority group, in an attempt to
achieve a mythical purity, works to suppress or even eliminate the identity of
minority groups, scholars, journalists and others have attempted to trace the
origins of modern ethnic groups and of the modern phenomenon of racism
as far as possible into the past. These origins have been sought particularly
in the Middle Ages which has often been portrayed idealistically as an era of
racial and religious purity (John Ganim, “Native Studies: Orientalism and
Medievalism,” The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jeremy Cohen, 2000).
Such attempts to link past and present on the part of modern and early mod-
ern scholars (for example: Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the
West, 1996; and Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1156

Color, 2000) have thus led to distortion of the medieval context (Lisa Lam-
pert, “Race, Periodicity, and the (Neo) Middle Ages,” Modern Language
Quarterly 65.3 [2004]: 391–421). Some medievalists have questioned the wis-
dom of exploring issues of race and ethnicity in studies of the Middle Ages,
considering them to be intrusive or irrelevant, while others welcome these
concepts not only for their potential ability to bring new insights to their
own field, but also for the hope that studies of medieval concepts of cultural
and religious difference will serve to remind their modernist colleagues that
such concepts are always historically constructed and eminently mutable
(Thomas Hahn, “The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race Be-
fore the Modern World,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 20 [2001]:
1–37).
The following article will be concerned with how these two categories of
inquiry have been applied by medievalists solely to the Middle Ages and how
their use has already called into question traditional assumptions regarding
the mechanisms of cultural, and even individual, interaction in the medieval
period.

B. Definition
Race has long been thought of as somatic, a natural and immutable collection
of physical characteristics that categorize human difference. Recently, how-
ever, geneticists have denied the validity of racial categories claiming not
only that race is useless for categorization of human difference as there is
more difference between individuals than between so-called races, but also
that biological races do not exist at all (Joseph L. Graves, Jr., The Emperor’s
New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the New Millennium, 2001). From the
19th century, however, cultural characteristics have been assigned to various
groups of people based on the assumption of the reality of race that has per-
sisted in the public mind despite scientific denials. Investigation into the
malleable representations of race in the Middle Ages may help disseminate
the findings that race is indeed a cultural and historical construction and not
a biological imperative.
Ethnicity, a term used more commonly with regard to the early Middle
Ages than race, has a somewhat different history. It is applied particularly to
the migration period and was first introduced to Medieval Studies by Rein-
hard Wenskus (Stammesbildung und Verfassung, 1961). The concept has been
used increasingly by medieval scholars such as Herwig Wolfram (The His-
tory of the Goths, 1988; The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. Thomas
Dunlap, 1997, from Das Reich und die Germanen, 1990); Ian Wood (The Mero-
vingian Kingdoms, 450–750, 1984); Walter Goffart (Barbarians and Romans,
1157 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

AD 415–585, 1980); Walter POHL and Helmut Reinitz (The Strategies of

Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, 1998), and Walter
POHL (“Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies,” Debating the
Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, 1998, 15–24), Peter Heather (The Goths,
1996); and Patrick Geary (Before France and Germany, the Creation and Trans-
formation of the Merovingian World, 1988).
Defining ethnicity is not an easy task. More often it is easier to say what it
is not than what it is. Patrick Geary calls ethnicity a “situational construct”
(“Ethnicity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages,” Mitteilungen
der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 113 [1983]: 15–26). Of the many
ethnic affiliations available to the people of early medieval Europe, the
one or two or three with which an individual chose to identify depended
on the circumstances of their own particular situation. Such choices could
be influenced by many factors: for example, in resisting an invading force an
individual or a group of individuals might adhere to their pre-invasion iden-
tity as a symbol of their attempt, or intent, to subvert the new order; on the
other hand, someone who desired to be successful in the new society of the
conquerors would adopt the characteristic rituals, traditions, and myths of
the conquering group. It is likely, however, that many people would end up
affiliated with both cultural groups, the conqueror and the conquered, and
with other smaller subgroups as well. Ethnicity is also historically con-
structed; whole groups can be born and can come to an end; they can change
their composition, and are influenced by political, cultural, and economic
factors in the context of their time and place (Walter Pohl, “Conceptions of
Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies,” Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Read-
ings, 1998, 15–24; Peter Heather, “Signs of Ethnic Identity: Disappearing
and Reappearing Tribes,” Kingdoms of the Empire, ed. Walter Pohl, 1996,
95–111).
Although there is an ongoing debate among anthropologists about
whether ethnic identities are part of an individual’s nature or are culturally
constructed, most scholars today believe that “social and cultural traits and
identities respond to the contingencies of everyday life and entire categories
of people become submerged or transmute into something new” (Hal B. Le-
vine, “Reconstructing Ethnicity,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2
[1999]: 165–80). There are two approaches within this new understanding
of ethnicity. The first is the instrumentalist point of view according to which
the ethnic identities of large groups were chosen and accepted by the individ-
uals within them. These identities are not inherent and immutable, but sub-
ject to change: Sometimes, they spring from ideologies deliberately promoted
by elites in order to bind together disparate groups by instilling a sense of
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1158

solidarity in order to achieve the goals, particularly military goals, of those

elites (Peter Heather, The Goths, 1996).
The second approach posits that cultural differences such as language,
values, history, and practice can solidify, denying individuals the choice
of changing their identity over the course of time. Along with this comes the
proposition that cultural characteristics such as those mentioned above
mold the behavior of the individual because they are programmed into the
unconscious in early childhood (Peter Heather, The Goths, 1996). Peter
Heather believes these two approaches to be compatible as both stress that
identity is based on perception and that the identity of the group is composed
of individuals who believe the narrative of that group’s history and accept
the group’s traditional social norms (Peter Heather, The Goths, 1996, 5).
These latter two elements are known in anthropological jargon as the myth/
symbol complex. In addition, Peter Heather sees these two approaches as
“… opposite ends of a spectrum of possibilities” (Peter Heather, The Goths,
1996, 5–6) within which an individual can assume a variety of positions sim-
ultaneously as well as individually. He concludes that both lines of inquiry
define identity as based on who an individual claims to be, according to his
or her life experiences, especially childhood experiences, and the willingness
of others to support and recognize the individual’s claim. An important el-
ement of an individual’s claim to ethnic identity is always the validation of
that identity by others.
Both terms, race and ethnicity, can define common identities based
on cultural elements such as language, law, custom, and religion that had
meaning to and bore identifying information for the peoples of the Middle
Ages in ways that modern markers, such as skin color and hair type, could
not, therefore the terms can be considered synonymous (Robert Bartlett,
“Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 39–56). In medieval sources, however,
scholars must deal with different terminology: peoples, gens, tribes, the Irish
túathe, stock, family, and even natio can all express concepts that can be trans-
lated as race or ethnicity, but have nuanced meanings that complicate such
straightforward interpretations (Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern
Concepts of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31
[2001]: 39–56). How the people of the Middle Ages conceived of these terms
in specific instances, how they would have identified themselves in an ethnic
or racial context, and how these identifications affected interaction between
cultures and individuals are all legitimate questions with which to explore
the past in order to understand it and not to feed the discontent of the restless
tribes of modern Europe.
1159 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

C. Early Middle Ages/Migration Period

The Continent
Much of the work that’s been done on early medieval ethnicity has focused
on the barbarian peoples of the migration period on the continent. Large
amorphous groups such as Goths, Franks, and Huns were created from coali-
tions of small ethnic groups in what is called ethnogenesis, the study
of which has engaged a number of modern scholars (Typen der Ethnogenese
unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bayern, ed. Herwig WOLFRAM and Walter
POHL,1990, in which see particularly: Ian N. WOOD, “Ethnicity and the
Ethnogenesis of the Burgundians” (53–69); Walter POHL, “Verlaufsformen
der Ethnogenese – Awaren und Bulgaren” (113–24); Fritz Losek, “Eth-
nische und politische Terminologie bei Jordanes und Einhard” (147–52);
and Michel ROUCHE, “Peut-on parler d’une ethnogenése des Aquitans?”
(45–51). Also see, Wilhelm Muhlmann, “Ethnogonie und Ethnogenese,”
Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 72 [1985]:
9–38; Peter Kivisto, The Ethnic Enigma: The Salience of Ethnicity for European
Origin Groups, 1989; Eugene E. Roosens, Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Eth-
nogenesis, 1989.) It is interesting that, despite the fact that it has been demon-
strated that ethnicity is an historical construct, such seemingly biological
terms as ethnogenesis continue to be used (Walter Pohl “Conceptions of
Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies,” Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Read-
ings, ed. Barbara H Rosenwein and Lester K. Little, 1998, 39–56). Possibly
this is an indication of the imprecise nature of the concept itself as well as the
relative newness of the application of this concept to the medieval field (see
also Walter Pohl, Die Völkerwanderungszeit: Eroberung und Integration, 2002).
Our sources of information about the ethnicity of the barbarians of the
migration period are mainly textual, archaeological, and linguistic. These
sources have not changed in the recent past, but our interpretation of them
has. The textual sources are from Greek and Roman ethnographers, such as
Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Pliny, and from barbarian scholars such as the Goth
Jordanes who wrote his history of the Goths, Getica, in the 6th century. In the
past, such accounts that confidently classified ethnic groups and their char-
acteristics were accepted at face value, but it has become evident that the
Greek and Roman scholars were describing barbarians in accordance with
their own categories of social practice and understanding and not that of the
peoples they were describing. These authors were firmly rooted in their own
experience and imposed their cultural norms on the peoples they studied
distorting their findings. Their descriptions of different barbarian groups
thus tended to sound very much alike (Patrick Geary, Before France and
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1160

Germany: the Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World, 1988). More-
over, ethnographers like Tacitus obtained much of their information from
the peoples themselves and therefore repeated origin myths and cultural
ideologies that also misrepresented the history and ethnic makeup of these
groups. Jordanes, for example, perpetuated the ‘myth/symbol complex’ of
the Goths. In this way, he was participating in the creation of an ethnic iden-
tity rather than describing the reality of the multi-ethnic history of his
people. Such repetition of a ‘history’ that emphasizes the cohesion and
shared traditions and values of a large group was often in the best interests of
the elites whose aim was usually to create a large band of ethnically mixed
warriors and their followers who would help the ruling classes acquire more
land and wealth (Anthony D. Smith, “War and Ethnicity: The Role of War-
fare in the Formation, Self-images and Cohesion of Ethnic Communities,”
Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 [1981]: 375–97). It is only the elites who cared about
creating such overarching ethnicities. The ethnic identity of the common
people was based on local and/or familial or cultic affiliations. Therefore,
forming a band of mixed warriors “… always meant setting off an ethnogen-
esis; only ethnic bonds, supported by traditional myths and rites, could be
strong enough to hold such a group together, to give it a structure that could
resist failure” (Walter Pohl, “Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval
Studies,” Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little
and Barbara H. Rosenwein, 1998, 15–24). Ethnic solidarity was created
through the constant repetition of myths and symbols, a constant reproduc-
tion of the commonality that would hold the group together, or, in Walter
Pohl’s term, “ethnic practice … in the political sphere, this means political
actions and strategies that we can partly reconstruct from literary sources, on
a cultural level, it denotes a rich variety of objects and habits that serve as ex-
pressions of ethnic identity” (Walter Pohl “Conceptions of Ethnicity in
Early Medieval Studies,” Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, 1998,
15–24). In addition to Roman and Greek authors and to works such as Getica,
ethnic information can sometimes be obtained from laws, place names, and
naming patterns (Patrick Amory, “The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Ter-
minology in the Burgundian Laws,” Early Medieval Europe 2 [1993]: 1–28;
Patrick Amory, “Names, Ethnic Identity and Community in Fifth- and
Sixth-Century Burgundy,” Viator 25 [1994]: 1–30; Margaret Gelling, Sign-
posts to the Past: Place Names and the History of England, 1978).
The archaeological interpretation of cultural artifacts has also under-
gone tremendous changes in the wake of new theories of ethnicity. Tradi-
tionally, artifacts have been grouped according to certain correspondences of
style which in turn were thought to correspond to particular cultures. It is
1161 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

now believed, however, that elements of one material culture were trans-
mitted to other cultures through trade, borrowing, imitation, or through par-
ticipation in shared religious/cultic ritual by those who did not necessarily
also share an ethnic bond. Migration is one element in the spread of particular
styles, but it can no longer be said that a particular style is the hallmark of a
specific culture. Archaeological remains, however, can in some cases be associ-
ated with the “… spread of customs expressing social norms … and even be-
lief systems …” (Peter Heather, The Goths, 1996, 23). Language, too, has
been used as an identifier of ethnic boundaries (John Hines, “The Becoming
of the English: Identity, Material Culture and Language in Early Anglo-Saxon
England,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 7 [1994]: 49–59; Marga-
ret Gelling “Why aren’t we speaking Welsh?” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeol-
ogy and History 6 [1993]: 51–6). Germanic peoples were so called because it was
thought they spoke a Germanic language. It has been shown, however, that
peoples grouped under such large linguistic headings actually spoke a variety
of often mutually unintelligible languages (Herwig Wolfram, The Roman
Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. Thomas Dunlap, from Das Reich und die
Germanen, 1997). Therefore, much of what we thought we knew about the
identity of the peoples of early medieval Europe has been called into question
(now see Lynette Olson, The Early Middle Ages: The Birth of Europe, 2007,
11–26). Misapplication of ethnic names to the wrong groups also added to the
confusion (Roland Steinacher, “Studien zur vandalischen Geschichte: Die
Gleichsetzung der Ethnonyme Wenden, Slawen, und Vandalen vom Mittel-
alter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert,” Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 2002).
What we are left with is a great variety and multiplicity of ethnic iden-
tities whose relationship to each other and to supergroups, such as the
Goths, is often unclear. The Romans have provided us with a plethora of
tribal names, but no other really useful information about them. The Franks,
as Patrick Geary tells us, have been called a ‘tribal swarm;’ small tribal units
that sometimes came together for military purposes, both offensive and
defensive, and, when they did so, called themselves Franks (Patrick Geary,
Before France and Germany, the Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian
World, 1988). These coalitions represent the ethnogenesis of the Frankish
people, a process that was repeated throughout the barbarian world. The role
of the Roman Empire in these ethnogeneses was extensive. Through military
service and alliances, many barbarians were introduced to Roman wealth and
culture through which the barbarian elites realized the benefits of creating
kingships by unifying ethnicities and ideologies in order to exercise power
over large groups of multi-ethnic people. Others formed alliances among
the various tribes in resistance to Roman aggression or in attempts, some-
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1162

times successful, to take Rome and all it stood for by force (Walter Goffart,
Barbarians and Romans, AD 415–585, 1980). The work that has been done on
these continental barbarian groups has greatly increased our understanding
of the nature of ethnicity and the process of ethnogenesis. The people of the
British Isles underwent similar changes during this same period and the
transformation that took place there also owes much to Rome.

The British Isles

The many invasions, raids, and settlements that took place in the British Isles
during the early Middle Ages have long been thought to have caused massive
disruptions and dislocations with large groups moving in and displacing
other groups entirely. However, archaeologists have recently argued that
their evidence demonstrates that the history of the British Isles in this period
is more one of continuity than disruption, invasion, and displacement of
peoples, thus adding to the complexity of the ethnic picture (Simon James,
“Celts, Politics, and Motivation in Archaeology,” Antiquity 72 [1998]:
200–09). In accordance with what has been learned about the barbarian cul-
tures on the continent, it is probable that individual ethnicity would have a
similar pattern in that it would be rooted in complex local regional or fam-
ilial groups, but that, when need arose, the individual might identify with a
larger group defined in opposition to another invading or otherwise antag-
onistic group. In his description of the new view of early medieval Britain,
Simon James states that “emphasis is, then, increasingly placed on a multi-
plicity of strongly distinctive regional traditions, or better complex hier-
archies of local and regional variation with an almost fractal quality, prob-
ably reflecting a mosaic of identities and ethnicities.” He concludes that this
has been the condition in the British Isles from Roman times to the present
(Simon James, “Celts, Politics, and Motivation in Archaeology,” Antiquity 72
[1998]: 200–09). A group of major importance in the early medieval British
Isles is classified under the broad label of Celts: a term fraught with ambi-
guity and contention. Although most scholars agree that the Celtic paradigm
is no longer useful in examining the ethnic make-up of the British Isles, no-
thing has been found to replace it as yet (Simon James, as above). The Celts
may have been a small group of warrior elites who came to Britain and Ire-
land, divided the land, the people, and the power amongst themselves, and,
eventually, imposed their language on the indigenous population (Donn-
chad O’Corráin, “Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland,” The Oxford Illus-
trated History of Ireland, ed. R. F. Foster, 1989, 1–43). While they may have
dominated militarily and linguistically, they were rapidly assimilated to the
pre-existing material culture (Barry Raftery, “The Early Iron Age,” Irish
1163 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

Archaeology Illustrated, ed. Michael Ryan, 1994, 1–35). Despite seemingly

similar elements among the Celtic peoples of the Isles, such as their agrarian
and/or pastoral way of life, their hierarchical social structure, and their com-
plex legal systems, the designation ‘Celtic” depends entirely on language
(Charles Thomas, Celtic Britain, 1986; Helmut Birkhan, Kelten, 1999). Both
the linguistic and ethnic history of these areas are far more complex than pre-
viously assumed even though the Celts are one of the most relentlessly
studied population groups (Patrick Sims-Williams, “Genetics, Linguistics,
and Prehistory: Thinking Big and Thinking Straight,” Antiquity 72 [1998]:
505–27). Some of this ethnic complexity is explored in an article on “Ancient
Celts and Modern Ethnicity,” by J. V. S. and M. R. Megaw who define ethnic-
ity as a landscape of the mind both of the individual and of the others whom
that individual encounters (“Ancient Celts and Modern Ethnicity,” Antiquity
70 [1996]: 175–81). In this article, too, the authors claim that English archae-
ologists deny that Celts ever existed anywhere in Europe, a stance that is
countered by Simon James (as above), demonstrating the volatility of this
field at the present time when conclusions drawn from new findings are
challenging long-held beliefs.
Hal B. Levine states that ethnicity should be sought in the “… active
interface between the mind, society and culture” (167) His basic definition of
ethnicity, however, is that “… ethnicity is that method of classifying people
(both self and other) that uses origin (socially constructed) as its primary
reference” (Hal B. Levine, “Reconstructing Ethnicity,” Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 5 [1999]: 165–80). As groups of people moved and re-
settled around the Irish Sea, concepts of what we would call ethnic identities
were constantly being redefined around the base of beliefs regarding origin
or familial ties, although that base was constantly being manipulated to fit
new circumstances. For example, the coming of Christianity elicited a group
of texts, such as the 12th-century Irish Book of the Taking of Ireland (Lebor Gabála
Érin) that created Biblical origins for whole peoples.
Encounters with other groups also played a large part in establishing eth-
nic identities. The Picts are a case in point. Ptolemy, the Roman geographer
who accompanied Agricola in his 1st-century campaign against Scotland,
estimated that there were thirteen separate Pictish peoples at that time
(Charles Thomas, Celtic Britain, 1986). In the 2nd century, Dio Cassius
claimed that the peoples north of the Forth Clyde line, i. e., the Picts, were
called the Caledonii and the Maeatae; two groups that probably represent con-
federations of the smaller tribes formed to defend the Pictish frontier. In 368,
Ammianus Marcellinus identified these groups as the Dicalydones and the
Verturiones. These tribal federations undoubtedly came together to form what
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1164

outsiders saw as the ‘Picts’ in order to combat first the Romans, later the Scots
and Angles as well (Charles Thomas, Celtic Britain, 1986). This scenario is
reminiscent of Frankish ethnogenesis and demonstrates the role of Rome in
creating the identity of the Picts who vehemently fought against the Roman
threat to the south. Caledonii is itself a tribal name, but Verturiones is probably
a forerunner of the name for the later Scottish kingdom of Fortriu, a desig-
nation that could be applied to areas of northern Scotland, but could also
indicate various larger areas including Pictland as a whole (Alfred P. Smyth,
Warlords and Holy Men, Scotland AD 80–1000, 1984). An individual Pict, there-
fore, undoubtedly espoused multiple identities some of which had been pro-
vided by outsiders.
Another challenge to previously accepted ethnic evaluations comes from
what is now Argyll where Dál Riada, a kingdom of Irish Gaelic-speaking,
immigrant Scotti, was located. It has long been believed that Dál Riada had
been founded by an Irish dynast from the east coast of Ulster in Ireland who
had invaded and settled in Scotland with his family and retainers sometime
between 450 and 500 (John Bannerman, Studies in the History of Dalriada,
1974). This dynasty managed to maintain control of both its Irish and
Scottish territories until the 8th century when they had to let go of their Irish
lands. Nevertheless, they remained in control of their land on the east coast
of the Irish Sea until their 9th-century king conquered the Picts and founded
the kingdom of Scotland. This scenario has been turned on its head recently,
as, based on a lack of typically Irish archaeological remains, Ewan Campbell
has suggested that the migration and settlement actually went the other
way; from Scotland to Ireland (Ewan Campbell, “Were the Scots Irish?”
Antiquity 75 [2001]: 285–92). So we may conclude that, despite the fact that
archaeology and language have proven to be inadequate ethnic identifiers,
they are still being used to trace ethnic origins as we have nothing to replace
them.
The British/Celtic inhabitants of the area we think of as England, Wales,
and Cornwall, were heavily influenced by the Roman Empire which occu-
pied most of its territory for over three centuries. Hugh Kearney, however,
posits a division along ethnic and geographic lines within this territory into
northern Britain which retained many so-called Celtic characteristics and
southern Britain which was heavily Romanized (Hugh Kearney, The British
Isles: a History of Four Nations, 1989). The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the
5th and 6th centuries makes it even harder to delineate ethnic boundaries. It
has become evident that earlier models claiming that the coming of the
Anglo-Saxons constituted a massive and traumatic invasion are not sup-
ported by the evidence (Dominick Powlesland, “Early Anglo-Saxon Settle-
1165 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

ments, Structures, Form and Layout,” The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration
Period to the Eighth Century, ed. John Hines, 1997, 101–24). The ethnic model
of the Anglo-Saxons themselves is changing as well. Ian Wood has sug-
gested that the migration probably included more Germanic tribes than just
the traditional Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. He states that the fluidity of such
tribal identities in the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries makes it difficult to distin-
guish among them. However, Franks, Frisians, Thuringians, and Danes had
both the opportunity and the motive, provided by rising sea levels, to cross
the channel. He also reminds us that there would have been a good many
British of all types within the Germanic settlements (Ian Wood, “Before and
After the Migration to Britain,” The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the
Eighth Century, ed. John Hines, 1997, 41–54). It is interesting to note that,
while the British Christian church seems to have disappeared during this
period, Lucas Quensel-von-Kalben contends that Christianity surviving
in the western and northern portions of England may have served as a focus
for the identities of those involved in the British resistance to the Anglo-
Saxon invasion (Lucas Quensel-von-Kalben, “The British Church and the
Emergence of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and
History 10 [1999]: 89–97). This may be an example of how religion partici-
pates in the formation of ethnicity as well as of a failed attempt on the part of
a few, possibly elites, to create a unifying British identity in opposition to the
Saxon presence.
The next group to raid and settle in the British Isles was the Vikings
whose activities met with varying degrees of resistance and assimilation in
the various regions of the islands. Previous studies of Scandinavian settle-
ment have focused on the scale of settlement and not its context (Dawn M.
Hadley, “Viking and Native: Re-Thinking Identity in the Danelaw,” Medi-
eval Europe 11 [2002]: 45–70). Recently scholars of the Viking era have called
for the modernizing of Viking studies especially with regard to the kind of
focus on ethnicity that has informed and transformed Anglo-Saxon studies
(Simon Trafford, “Ethnicity, Migration Theory, and the Historiography
of the Scandinavian Settlement of England,” Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian
Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. Dawn M. Hadley and
Julian D. Richards, 2000, 17–39). Dawn M. Hadley points out that the im-
pact of Scandinavian settlement on England was not uniform and issues
of ethnic identity only came up sporadically. She urges, therefore, that other
contextual elements such as politics, gender, and lordship be considered
along with ethnicity (Dawn M. Hadley, “Viking and Native: re-thinking
identity in the Danelaw,” Medieval Europe 11 [2002]: 45–70). The two sides of
the argument as to the severity or lack thereof of the Norse impact on Ireland
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1166

is discussed by Harold Mytum. He states that ethnicity played an important

role in relations between Vikings and natives in Ireland, pointing out that
“there are three interrelated aspects of the definition of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that
are relevant for group identity: ethnicity, kinship, and religion” (Harold
Mytum, “The Vikings and Ireland: Ethnicity, Identity, and Culture Change,”
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: the Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic, 2003,
113–37). He states that the Scandinavians who came to Ireland were them-
selves ethnically mixed, being composed of groups from both Norway and
Denmark, but that they were all called Norse due to the ethnicity of their
rulers. Once the Norse had settled on the coasts of Ireland, assimilated to the
customs, laws, and language, married into the population, and converted to
Christianity, those same three elements mentioned above that marked group
difference also served to facilitate integration (Harold Mytum, “The Vikings
and Ireland: ethnicity, identity, and culture change,” Contact, Continuity,
and Collapse: the Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic, 2003, 113–37). In Eng-
land, integration also resulted from cultural interaction as Northumbrians,
Angles, and Danes fused into one group which Robert Bartlett has called
an ethnogenesis (“Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity,”
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 39–56). This group had
barely completed their integration when the Normans arrived and instigated
a new ethnic/cultural conflict. According to Hugh Thomas, the English and
the Normans were each acutely aware of their own ethnicity and, although
the English and the Normans had much in common, the differences were of
sufficient import to seriously complicate acculturation. He cites these differ-
ences as: first, and most basic, their homeland or place of origin, a difference
that translated over time into a difference in ancestry; second is what Tho-
mas calls political affiliation determined by ethnicity which formed a basis
for rebellions; third, the fact that the Normans were elites, for the most part,
and that many Anglo-Saxon elites had been destroyed, displaced, or reduced
to impotence, allowing the Normans to take over the political, financial, and
legal infrastructure was a major cause of friction; and last, differences of lan-
guage and customs played a large part (Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the
Normans; Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–1220, 2003). The event-
ual assimilation of English and Norman was aided by shared elements such
as Christianity, but the process often took strange turns (Diane Peters Aus-
lander, “Victims or Martyrs: Children, Anti-Semitism, and the Stress of
Change in Medieval England,” Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance:
The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen,
2005, 104–34).
1167 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

D. The High and Later Middle Ages

In dealing with the time period following the Norman Conquest in 1066 and
the First Crusade to North Africa in 1095, we find the term race used more
frequently by scholars of the Middle Ages. Race also becomes more securely
entangled with religion as, for the peoples of medieval Europe, concepts of
biological origins stem from the singular figure of Adam, thus all concepts of
racial difference were based on the belief that all humans shared a common
descent and that difference constitutes an historic development. In addition,
the multiplicity of human languages was thought to have been divinely or-
dained at Babylon. For this reason, Henry of Huntingdon in the 12th century
was more dismayed at the loss of the Pictish language than of the Picts as a
population group (Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Concepts of
Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]:
39–56). Yet, according to Len Scales, “all the strongest impulses in medi-
eval culture were towards the view that the mixing of races was dangerous,
and their segregation natural and desirable.” The origin myths of this period
describe the taking of land for settlement by means of violent conflict with
other ethnic groups thus tying ethnicity to land in medieval minds, although
it was evident that the policies of rulers and the exigencies of time and viol-
ence could change the relationship of particular groups with their territories
(Len Scales, “Medieval Barbarism? (ethnic strife in the Middle Ages),” His-
tory Today 10 [1999]: 21–46). Len Scales states that medieval doctrine and
biases with regard to ethnicity had more in common with the 20th century
than many believe, but other considerations of race in a variety of medieval
sources provide a more nuanced view.
We return to the Normans for examples of encounters between differ-
ent cultures in more than one area of Europe. Their takeover of Southern
Italy and Sicily has heretofore been thought to have resulted in the absorp-
tion of the many smaller ethnic groups of the region. New work, however,
shows that the multiple ethnic identities of the area were maintained
through resistance to such cultural absorption (Joanna H. Drell, “Cul-
tural Syncretism and Ethnic Identity: the Norman ‘conquest’ of Southern
Italy and Sicily,” Journal of Medieval History 25 [1999]: 187–202). Due to the
nature of Italy’s particular development, however, many Italian scholars
focus their exploration of these issues on an identity extrapolated from evi-
dence of civic pride and the city state as incipient nation (Maria Orselli,
L’idea e il culto del Santo Patrono Cittadino, 1965; Federico Chabod, Scritti sul
Rinascimento, 1967; Paolo Brezzi “La coscienza civica nei comuni medi-
evali italiani,” Il ‘Registrum Magnum’ del comune di Piacenza, ed. Ettore Fal-
cone and Roberta Peveri, 1985, 169–83; Gina Fasoli, “La coscienza civica
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1168

nelle laudes civitatum,” La coscienza cittadina nei comuni italiani del Duecento,
1972, 35–51).
Returning to the Normans in England, Thomas Hahn cites texts
composed in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest that indicate awareness
of multiple ethnicities; not just English and Norman, as we saw above, but
French and Danish as well, all enclosed within the borders of England.
Hahn states that the privileged position of the Norman race was upheld by
laws. As mentioned earlier, blood and descent were believed to be the funda-
mental mark of difference and the Normans were heavily committed to such
a belief (Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and
Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 39–56).Yet
within three generations, one medieval author is able to write that intermar-
riage had effectively equalized the races (Thomas Hahn, “The Difference the
Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race Before the Modern World,” Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 1–37). As noted, however, religion
played a part as well. In accordance with Norman policy, from the very begin-
ning of Norman occupation, Anglo-Saxon saints and religious history were
idealized by authors of the post-conquest period and manipulated to form
part of both state-wide and local identities (Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea
of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, 2005). In the 12th century,
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and Gerald of Wales’s
texts on Ireland and Wales create what Thomas Hahn calls “a powerful
myth and a critical framework for racial discourse” (“The Difference the
Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race Before the Modern World,” Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 1–37). Gerald of Wales in particu-
lar provided a framework for rhetoric denigrating the Irish both for their
social customs and their practice of Christianity. His work is a fascinating
example of the way in which textually manipulated identities can support
hierarchical relationships between cultures as well as of the beginnings of co-
lonial attitudes toward cultural difference (Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales
1146–1223, 1982; R. R. Davies, The First English Empire, Power and Identities in
the British Isles 1093–1343, 2000). These colonial attitudes undoubtedly helped
fuse the English and Normans in opposition to others such as the Irish or the
Scots.
Contact with the Muslims of North Africa raised issues of ‘the Other’
in both religious and racial terms and created new attitudes toward Jews
who were the most accessible racial and religious others to Europeans (Jeffrey
Jeremy Cohen, The Postcolonial Middle Ages, 2000). As in the 20th century, Jews
were forced to wear badges in the 12th and 13th which Thomas Hahn relates
to the discrimination against the English in the laws of Norman England
1169 Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

(“The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern
World,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 1–37). Skin color
and physical features also begin to play a role in this period. Lisa Lampert
examines encounters between blacks and whites in Wolfram von Eschen-
bach’s Parzival and the early 14th-century King of Tars. She finds that biological
or racial differences are bound up in ideas about religious difference, white
being the color of salvation while black signifies pagans and demons. She
asserts that Christian use of color in denoting difference between Christian
and pagan, good and evil, has contributed to the “image of normative, Chris-
tian whiteness that is an integral part of the imaginative ‘making of Europe’”
(“Race, Periodicity, and the (Neo) Middle Ages,” Modern Language Quarterly
65.3 [2004]: 391–421. See also Albrecht Classen, “Multiculturalism in
the German Middle Ages? The Rediscovery of a Modern Concept in the Past:
The Case of Herzog Ernst,” Multiculturalism and Representation, ed. John
Rieder and Larry E. Smith, 1996, 198–219; Peter Hoppenbrouwers
“Such Stuff as People are Made on,” The Medieval History Journal 9 (2006):
195–242; Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden, “Black and White: Contact with
the Mediterranean World in Medieval German Narrative,” The Medieval Medi-
terranean: Cross Cultural Contacts, ed. Marily Joyce Segal Chiat and Kather-
ine L. Ryerson (1988), 112–18; and Sharon Kinoshita “The Romance of
Miscegenation: Negotiating Identities in La fille du Comte de Pontieu,” Postcolo-
nial Moves: Medieval through Modern, ed. Patricia Clare Ingham and Michelle
Warren, 2003, 111–31). Thomas Hahn points out that visual images of
Africans in medieval texts denote the exotic, but he also notes the strong ties
between racial difference and religion, demonstrating that conversion can
turn a black person white both figuratively and physically. He encourages
further exploration of these issues in works by authors such as Peter Abelard
and Bernard of Clairvaux (“The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and
Race before the Modern World,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31
[2001]: 1–37). These medieval concepts of race appear to be fluid, cultural
constructs; malleable and responsive to historical and cultural circumstances
(Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe; Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural
Change, 950–1350, 1993). Jeffrey Jeremy Cohen protests that the conclusions
of Robert Bartlett and others are flawed due to their focus on Christianity
as a mark of physical identity. He focuses instead on what he sees as rigid
categories of identities assigned to the body of European Christians versus
the body of African pagans by white Christian ideology. These categories
amount to what we would call racial stereotypes akin to those we see devel-
oping in the work of Gerald of Wales (Jeffrey Jeremy Cohen, “On Saracen
Enjoyment; Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England,”
Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages 1170

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 113–46). The varying
views of both medieval authors and visual artists on racial difference seems to
indicate that they were still trying to fit visible cultural difference, so much
more apparent in the later Middle Ages than in the early period when ethnic
differences were based more on language, law, and custom than on physical
appearance, into both their cultural map and their Christian history. See the
following articles in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Clas-
sen, 2002: Albrecht Classen, “Introduction: The Self, the Other and
Everything in Between; Xenological Phenomenology of the Middle Ages”
(xi–xxvi); Lisa Weston, “The Saracen and the Martyr: Embracing the
Foreign in Hrotsvit’s Pelagius” (1–10); Michael Goodich, “Foreigner, Foe,
and Neighbor: The Religious Cult as a Forum for Political Reconciliation”
(11–26).
Later medieval literature has also been used by French scholars who,
while not heavily engaged in the use of ethnicity as a tool of inquiry, have
published some interesting studies on the origins of the French state (Colette
Beaune, Naissance de la Nation France, 1985; Colette Beaune, “L’utilisation
politique du mythe des origines troyennes en France a la fin du Moyen Âge,”
Lectures Médiévales de Virgile, Actes du colloque organisé par l’École Francaişe de Rome,
1982, 331–55; Patrick Gilli, “L’histoire de France vue par les Italiens à la fin
du quattrocento,” Histoires de France, historiens de la France, 1994, 4–90).
This overview of work that has been done on issues of race and ethnicity
in the Middle Ages is heavily weighted toward the early medieval period, es-
pecially in the British Isles. This reflects not only my own scholarly interests,
but also the fact that the use of these issues as tool of inquiry into the Middle
Ages is relatively new.

Select Bibliography
Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Culture, 950–1359
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey
Jeremy Cohen (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Patrick Geary, The Myth of Nations: the
Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Journal of Medi-
eval and Early Modern Studies 31, special issue, “Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages,”
ed. Thomas Hahn, 2001; The Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Commu-
nities, 300–800, ed. Walter Pohl and Helmut Reinitz (New York: Brill, 1998); Walter
Pohl, “Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies,” Debating the Middle Ages:
Issues and Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 15–24.

Diane Auslander
1171 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

(Late 18th Century / Turn of the Century)

A. General Definition
The interest in the Middle Ages around 1800 (also called the ‘classical roman-
tic period’) has often been described as a ‘Rediscovery.’ This, if taken literally,
seems to imply that there had previously been a discovery, or, in this case,
that something had been buried and unrecognized for a long period,
and then rediscovered. However, this is misleading. The Middle Ages
were never forgotten or repressed in the previous eras (16th to 18th centuries)
(summarized in Johannes Janota, “Zur Rezeption mittelalterlicher Lite-
ratur zwischen dem 16. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Das Weiterleben des Mittelalters
in der deutschen Literatur, ed. James F. Poag und Gerhild Scholz-Williams,
1983, 37–46; see also Albrecht Classen, “Literarhistorische Reflexionen in
der Barockliteratur: Interesse an und Widerstand gegen das Mittelalter als
Medium der poetischen Selbstidentifikation im Werk von Lohenstein und
Hoffmannswaldau,” Etudes Germaniques 63.3 [2008]: 551–70). Nevertheless,
it cannot be denied that at the end of the 18th century, a definite change took
place in attitudes to the intellectual phenomena of the Middle Ages, whether
of literary, cultural, or artistic nature. This new kind of approach consisted,
first of all, of an effort to win back the so-called ‘old German’ (altdeutsch) past
for various purposes: as an attempt to show the present a different view of the
world, which offered an alternative or parallel refuge to antiquity (Ernst
Behler, “Gesellschaftskritische Motive in der romantischen Zuwendung
zum Mittelalter,” Das Weiterleben des Mittelalters in der deutschen Literatur,
ed. James F. Poag and Gerhild Scholz-Williams, 1983, 47–60); or as
method and assistance in the formation of a new national literature (Gerard
Koziełek, “Ideologische Aspekte der Mittelalterrezeption zu Beginn des
19. Jahrhunderts,” Mittelalter-Rezeption Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski,
1986, 119–32); or in a dehistoricized reappraisal which gave medieval litera-
ture and art an autonomous aesthetic dimension which totally misunder-
stood its real character. Different to the 18th century, in this case, is the differ-
entiation and division of approaches to the Middle Ages into various areas,
which were clearly defined by the end of the century (art history, historical-
philosophical, poetic and academic).

B. Chronological Definition
In the introduction (by Joachim Bumke) to the section ‘Phases of Reception
of the Middle Ages’ in the conference volume Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Sympo-
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1172

sion (1986), the Romantic period forms one of the chronological foci in the
description of the recovery. In the same volume, however, Gerard Kozie ek
stresses that a foundational periodization of the reception of the Middle Ages
still needs to be achieved by scholars. In any case, it is advisable to take as the
‘turn of the century’ not the whole Romantic period – the late period almost
imperceptibly blending in to Biedermeier and early Realism – but to concen-
trate on the time from the middle of the 1790s (Wilhelm H. Wackenroder’s
Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders appeared in 1796/1797)
until around 1815 (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s edition of Hartmann’s Der
arme Heinrich). This restriction seems reasonable not merely because it covers
the early and high Romantic period, but because with the end of the Napo-
leonic era came the disappointment of the patriotic movements for German
unification, after which the general interest in the Middle Ages perceptibly
ebbed away, to be replaced by an academic interest which reached its first
high point in 1826/1827 when Lachmann’s revolutionary editions (the Nibe-
lungenlied, Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein, Walther von der Vogelweide’s poetry)
signaled the beginning of a new age.

C. The Term ‘Middle Ages’ Around 1800

Several expressions existed in German around 1800 for the modern term
‘Middle Ages:’ ‘old German period’ or ‘German antiquity,’ ‘middle time’ or
‘middle times,’ with German often actually meaning an ill defined ‘Ger-
manic’ or ‘Nordic’ in all its vagueness, and the temporal spectrum broader
than that used today. Indeed, the first beginnings of the romantic reception
of the Middle Ages was an interest in the so-called ‘Dürerzeit,’ which would
not be counted as medieval today. The two variations on German middle
times also betray a double conception: on the one hand, ‘German Antiquity’
was imagined as an other, non-classical antiquity, with the accent on the
national past. On the other, the ‘middle time’ bears witness to a view of his-
tory inherited from the renaissance, positing a (less valuable) period of tran-
sition between antiquity and the present. This middle period, however, was
no longer judged dismissively, but viewed either as a middle kingdom, the
dawn of a new age (Novalis), or even as a integral epoch of world history
(Friedrich Schlegel). Occasionally the term ‘Swabian period’ was used, an ex-
pression inherited from Bodmer, which related to the era of the Hohen-
staufen emperors. The language use of the early romantic period even went
as far as to describe the literature of this ‘Swabian period’ as the “flowering of
romantic poetry” (Ludwig Tieck).
1173 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

D. History of Philosophy and the Middle Ages

The poetical rhetoric of Novalis’ Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799) has often
been taken as evidence of a paradigm shift (Helmut Schanze, “‘Es waren
schöne glänzende Zeiten …’ Zur Genese des ‘romantischen’ Mittelalterbil-
des,” Studien zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Rudolf Schützeichel,
1979, 760–71). This was not published at the time, first appearing in a post-
humous edition in 1826, but nevertheless had a decisive influence on the
other early romantics. What earlier critics (beginning with Rudolf Haym
[1870], continuing with Claus Träger [1961] until roughly Hannelore
Link [1971]) condemned as a one-sided glorification of the Middle Ages was
in fact a political utopia which conjured up the united, Christian Europe
of the “truly Catholic” ages as a model for the future; they were drawing
an idealized picture, a society in which religion, art and science formed
a unity (Kasperowski, 1994). In Novalis’s novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen
(published posthumously in 1802), the period of transition between the
raw, barbarian times and our present age was described as a “profound
and romantic time,” a fermentation in which renewal was brewing; a triadic
scheme of history pointing to the coming of a new golden age. The emphasis
changes in Friedrich Schlegel’s middle period (Reise nach Frankreich, 1803),
to the point that the present is viewed as the real Middle Ages (in the sense
of a period of transition) whereas the actual Middle Ages (from Charlemagne
to Frederick II) were possessed of an individuated, fixed character. Later,
Jacob Grimm depicted the Middle Ages as a process of increasing decadence,
from a German-heathen paradise to a state of clerical alienation. (Wilhelm G.
Busse, “Jacob Grimms Konstruktion des Mittelalters,” Mittelalter und Mo-
derne: Entdeckung und Rekonstruktion der mittelalterlichen Welt: Kongressakten des
6. Symposions des Mediävistenverbands in Bayreuth 1995, ed. Peter Segl, 1997,
243–51).

E. Art History
Following the precedent set by the positive reappraisal of “old German” or
Gothic art in Sturm and Drang from the Enlightenment reproach of barbar-
ism, and the various ways in which the English Gothic Revival influenced
Germany, the new turn toward the Middle Ages began, chronologically, in
the field of art history. Wilhelm H. Wackenroder’s essay Herzensergiessungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (1796/97, expanded by Tieck 1814), written
under the influence of impressions from a study trip to South Germany
(Bamberg, Nuremberg), raised art to the language of God, developed an anti-
classicism based on Christian religiosity, and claimed to have discovered
in the so-called ‘Dürer period’ an epoch in which art was distinguished by
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1174

simplicity, piety, self-sufficiency and independence from commerce. Similar

views can be found in Ludwig Tieck’s “Bildungsroman” Franz Sternbalds Wan-
derungen. Eine altdeutsche Geschichte (1798). A direct line can be drawn between
this idealization of an allegedly deeply Christian, disinterested school of
painting and Friedrich Schlegel’s glorification of Gothic as the epitome of
Christian-medieval architecture (Briefe auf einer Reise durch die Niederlande,
Rheingegenden, die Schweiz und einen Teil von Frankreich, 1806), which had been
prefigured by the Jacobist Georg Forster (Ansichten vom Niederrhein, 1790).
Even Goethe went through a period, from 1810 to 1815, of renewed interest
in the Gothic (Berta Raposo, “Bajo el signo de la contradicción: Goethe y
la Edad Media en el espejo de la arquitectura gótica,” Encuentros con Goethe,
ed. Luis A. Acosta 2001, 389–400), inspired by the activities of the brothers
Boisserée (to whom F. Schlegel had given private lectures in Paris in 1802/
1803), which in the long term led to the reconstruction of Cologne Cathedral
and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Berlin Neo-Gothic. Wackenroder and Tieck’s
ideas were largely realized in artistic practice by the “Society of Luke” (Luk-
asbund), an emphatically Catholic art group named after the patron saint of
painters, and who – after their move to Rome – became known as the “Naze-
renes” (among their number: Friedrich Overbeck, Peter Cornelius, Philipp
Veit and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld). The Protestants Otto Runge and Cas-
par David Friedrich kept their confessional ties in the background, (Carsten-
Peter Warncke, “Die deutsche Malerei der Romantik,” Romantik-Handbuch,
ed. Helmut Schanze, 1994, 392–406), although the latter often made use of
Christian-medieval elements (Kreuz und Kathedrale im Gebirge, Die Kathedrale,
Kreuz im Walde, Das Kreuz im Gebirge, Winterlandschaft mit Kirche, Abtei im Eich-
wald, Klosterruine Oybin).

F. Literature
According to Friederich Schlegel’s poetological conceptions (chiefly formu-
lated in the Athenäums-Fragmente, 1799–1800, and also in the Gespräch über die
Poesie, 1800), romantic literary ideals were prefigured in the Middle Ages and
its depiction of ‘chivalry’ and love. Despite this, the actual reception and re-
working of texts and matter by romantic writers was relatively insignificant
in comparison to the theoretical interest. While it should not be overlooked
that a positive conception of the Middle Ages had already appeared in the
18th century, thanks to Ossian and the Gothic novel, which the romantics
could build on, this remained for the most part restricted to popular litera-
ture, where many medieval traditions subliminally continued (Markus Rei-
senleitner, Die Produktion historischen Sinnes: Mittelalterrezeption im deutsch-
sprachigen historischen Trivialroman vor 1848, 1992). Ludwig Tieck’s Minnelieder
1175 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

aus dem Schwäbischen Zeitalter (1803) took the middle way between populism
and scholarship; he modernized poems from Bodmer’s collection as far as
was necessary for a minimal understanding of the language of the texts, but
kept, thanks to the preservation of the lyric form, a patina of antiquity and an
alienating effect of artifice (Brinker-Gabler, 1980). His version of Ulrich
von Lichtenstein’s Frauendienst (1812), took a similar approach, but met with
greater success from the public. His so-called Heldenbuch project remained
fragmentary (a revision of parts of the Nibelungenlied and König Rother), and his
methods were not uncontroversial (Brinker-Gabler, 1980; see also Ingrid
García-Wistädt, “Ludwig Tieck y sus intentos de renovación de la liter-
atura medieval alemana,” Estudios Filológicos Alemanes 13 [2007]: 329–36).
It is open to question whether Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano’s
folk song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806) can be counted as reception
of the Middle Ages (it mostly contains material from the 16th and 17th cen-
turies), but in any case Arnim’s essay Von Volksliedern, which was attached to
the collection, was included by Gerard Koziełek in his anthology Mittel-
alterrezeption as a witness to the same mass pedagogical ambition which can
be seen in Görres’ introduction to Die teutschen Volksbücher (1807); the demo-
cratization of culture which both aspired to was only possible with a revival
of ‘old German’ literature. The Zeitung für Einsiedler (1807/1808), edited by
Achim von Arnim, was intended to act as the organ and the medium of this
democratization (Renate Moering, “Die Zeitung für Einsiedler: Programm
und Realisierung einer romantischen Zeitschrift,” Romantik und Volksliter-
atur: Beiträge des Wuppertaler Colloquiums zu Ehren von Heinz Rölleke, ed. Lothar
Bluhm, Euphorion-Beihefte 33 [1999]: 31–48). The controversy about the rela-
tionship between the minnesingers and the mastersingers fought by Jacob
Grimm on the one side and von der Hagen, Bernhard Joseph Docen, and
Johann Gustav Büsching on the other is particularly illuminating for the
Heidelberg Romantics’ concept of ‘folk poetry.’ Although von der Hagen and
Docen saw a fundamental difference, based on the very different socio-cul-
tural background, between the two forms, Grimm viewed them as both
identical in their artificiality and formality and in having their ultimate ori-
gin in folksong, (Koziełek, 1977) like the folk tale and the saga, both of
which he and his brother Wilhelm published in famous collections shortly
thereafter (Kinder- und Hausmärchen 1812; Deutsche Sagen 1816/1818).

G. Academy
A differentiation between the literary and the scholarly approach is one of
the chief characteristics of the romantic rediscovery of the Middle Ages, and
also the foundation on which modern German studies, the scholarship of
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1176

German language and literature, was erected. In the 18th century the medi-
eval editions of Bodmer, Myller etc. had met with no success worth the name
(Bernd Neumann, “Die verhinderte Wissenschaft: Zur Erforschung alt-
deutscher Sprache und Literatur in der ‘vorwissenschaftlichen’ Phase,” Mit-
telalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986, 105–18), and in
consequence, poets and scholars like Ludwig Tieck, von der Hagen, and,
later, Ludwig Uhland attempted to popularize ‘old German’ texts with a
new conception for their edition and treatment; it was, as a consequence of
the politically volatile situation of the Napoleonic occupation, connected to
a program of popular education. On the other hand, a strict scholarly line
developed around George Friedrich Benecke, the brothers Grimm and
Karl Lachmann, which won the public debate because it attributed a quasi-
religious importance to old language and old texts, and could thus justify
the soundness of its scholarly treatment (Lothar Bluhm, “Anmerkungen
zur Entstehung einer Wissenschaft: Zur Deutschen Philologie im frühen
19. Jahrhundert. Eine Skizze,” Metapher und Modell. Ein Wuppertaler Collo-
quium zu literarischen und wisenschaftlichen Formen der Wirklichkeitskonstruktion,
ed. Wolfgang Bergen et al., 1996, 161–72). However, that led to a sharp
division between the academy and the wider public which was to have con-
siderable consequences for the future, not to speak of the vulnerability of
such a concept of scholarship to ideological takeover (Rüdiger Krohn,
‘… daß Alles Allen verständlich sey …’ Die Altgermanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts und
ihre Wege in die Öffentlichkeit,” Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik im 19. Jahr-
hundert, ed. Jürgen Fohrmann und Wilhelm Vosskamp, 1994, 264–333).
Between the two extremes lay the activity of August Wilhelm Schlegel, who
had argued for ‘old German’ studies on the model of classical philology, but
in his Berlin lectures in 1803 he enriched its scholarly claims with the tools of
critical investigations, without which any fruitful development of national
literature would be impossible. This ideal of scholarship is based on the triad
of grammar, criticism, and hermeneutics. The addition of criticism, i. e. criti-
cal interpretation, makes the cross-fertilization of poetry and philology pos-
sible, as his brother Friedrich also stressed (Edith Höltenschmidt, Die Mit-
telalterrezeption der Brüder Schlegel, 2000), which would be impossible for the
dry philology of a Lachmann.

H. Individual Authors and Works

The Nibelungenlied, for both literary and socio-political reasons, was the favo-
rite subject and figurehead of the romantic reception of the Middle Ages.
All the famous scholar-poets of the period (August Wilhelm Schlegel, Tieck,
Hagen, Zeune, Jacob Grimm) attempted translations or reworkings (collec-
1177 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

tion of source material in Otfrid Ehrismann, 1986; cf. ‘Waz sider da geschach’:
American-German Studies on the Nibelungenlied, ed. Werner Wunderlich and
Ulrich Müller, 1992). Compared with this, the works of Wolfram von
Eschenbach and the Arthurian epics played a less important role, as they
offered little nationalist-political ammunition (cf. Claudia Wasielewski-
Knecht, Studien zur deutschen Parzival-Rezeption in Epos und Drama des 18.–20.
Jahrhunderts, 1993). Ursula Schulze (“Stationen der Parzival-Rezeption:
Strukturveränderung und ihre Folgen,” Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion,
ed. Peter Wapnewski, 1986) and Ulrich Müller (“Mittelalter-Rezeption in
Europe and America: Perceval, Parzival, Parsifal,” Mittelalter-Rezeption V.
Year’s Work in Medievalism 5: Gesammelte Vorträge des V. Salzburger Symposions
[1990], ed. Ulrich Müller und Kathleen Verduin, 1996, 24–45) begin
their overviews of the Parzival reception with Wagner. The most up-to-date
overview of the reception of the Arthur material is given by Albrecht
Classen (“History of Scholarship on Medieval German Arthurian Litera-
ture,” History of Arthurian Scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy, 2002, 122–39), who
stresses the role of the Schlegel brothers in the appreciation of the ideals and
fantasy of this genre. According to Ursula Rautenberg (Das ‘Volksbuch vom
armen Heinrich’: Studien zur Rezeption Hartmanns von Aue im 19. Jahrhundert
und zur Wirkungsgeschichte der Übersetzung Wilhelm Grimms, 1985), Hartmann
von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich forms a special case, having been edited by Jakob
and Wilhelm Grimm in 1815 in patriotic enthusiasm and in a pre-scholarly
manner. Brinker-Gabler shows how unbroken and strong the interest in
minnesang was (1980); however, attention was only paid to Walther von der
Vogelweide after Ludwig Uhland’s monograph Walther von der Vogelweide, ein
altdeutscher Dichter (1822; see Roland Richter, Wie Walther von der Vogelweide
ein ‘Sänger des Reiches’ wurde, 1988). Additionally, the complex around the
‘Sängerkrieg’ (battle of the bards) was particularly popular because of the
connection to themes of poetry and the existential struggle for life and death,
and was the subject of stories of dramas from such varied authors as the
‘unmedieval’ E. T. A. Hoffmann (Der Kampf der Sänger, 1819) and the chivalry-
obsessed Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué (Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, 1828)
(see Johannes Rettelsbach, “Heinrich von Ofterdingen zwischen Dich-
tung und Philologie,” Archiv für das Studium der neuen Sprachen und Literaturen
236, 151. Jg., [1999, 1. Halbjahresband]: 33–52). From the Sturm und Drang
period on, not only the German but also the Nordic Middle Ages had
exercised the strongest fascination. The Brothers Grimm and von der Hagen
were rivals in the edition of the lyrical Edda (Lothar Bluhm, “compilierende
oberflächlichkeit gegen gernrezensierende Vornehmheit: Der Wissenschaftskrieg
zwischen Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen und den Brüdern Grimm,” Ro-
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1178

mantik und Volksliteratur: Beiträge des Wuppertaler Colloquiums zu Ehren von Heinz
Rölleke, ed. Lothar Bluhm, Euphorion-Beihefte 33 [1999]: 49–70), and in the
same period Wilhelm Grimm published Altdänische Hedenlieder, Balladen und
Märchen (1811). Siegfried Grosse and Ursula Rautenberg have compiled a
comprehensive bibliography of witnesses to the reception of the Middle Ages
in German literature from the mid-18th century on (Die Rezeption mittelalter-
licher deutscher Dichtung, 1989).

I. Other Countries
The turn toward the Middle Ages in France was different to that in German
speaking lands, both in character and in volume, for which both literary
and non-literary factors were responsible. Despite Chateaubriand’s apology
for the Christian Middle Ages in Génie du Christianisme (1802) and Les Martyrs
(1809), classical tastes and a negative reaction to the Middle Ages lasted par-
ticularly long in France, until around 1830 (Michel Olsen, “Gibt es eine Mit-
telalterrezeption in der französischen Romantik?,” The Medieval Legacy:
A Symposium, ed. Andreas Haarder et al., 1982, 133–48). Disregarding a few
exceptions, such as Jean-Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi De la littéra-
ture du Midi de l’Europe (1813) and Jean Baptiste Bonaventure de Roquefort’s
Glossaire de la langue romane (1808) or the editions Fabliaux et contes (1808) and
the Roman de la Rose (1814) by M. Méon, editorial activity concerning medi-
eval texts only began their decisive development late in the 19th century
(Robert Baudry, “Avatars du Gral en littérature française des XVIIIe et XIXe
siècles,” Moderne Artus-Rezeption 18.–20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kurt Gamerschlag,
1991, 23–50). Interest in medieval literature, where it existed at all, arose
rather around Italian and Spanish texts. The existential meaning which the
national past had for the German speaking lands was lacking in France,
which had never felt its national identity threatened, even after the defeat of
Napoleon.
The situation in Britain was different as the society there had never quite
shaken off its medieval characteristics in the time following the end of
the medieval period proper. (Leslie J. Workman, “Modern Medievalism
in England and America,” Mittelalter-Rezeption V. Year’s work in medievalism 5.
Gesammelte Vorträge des V. Salzburger Symposions [1990], ed. Ulrich Müller and
Kathleen Verduin, 1996, 1–21; The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages in the Eng-
lish-Speaking World, ed. Marie-Françoise Alamichel and Derek Brewer,
1997). Reprints and reworkings of Thomas Malorys Le Morte Darthur (particu-
larly from 1816) and the historical novels of Walter Scott formed the foun-
dations of British ‘medievalism,’ which, as Workman emphasizes, was gen-
erally equated with Romanticism.
1179 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

In North America, on the other hand, medieval literature, especially the

myths of King Arthur and of the Grail, have had a tremendous influence,
both in literature and in the arts, both in the modern film industry and in
popular culture (Andrew E. Mathis, The King Arthur Myth in Modern American
Literature, 2002). The heroic, that is, the Nordic, tradition has also exerted
deep influence, as numerous entries in The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclo-
pedia, ed. Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, et al., 2002, 267–76,
attest. Winder McConnell has repeatedly emphasized the significant role
of the author Robinson Jeffers in the reception of the Nibelungenlied in North
America (see his entry here, and also in Von Mythen und Mären, ed. Gudrun
Marci-Boehncke and Jörg Riecke, 2006). In fact, this epic enjoyed tre-
mendous respect and since 1848 has been constantly translated and retrans-
lated into English (Albrecht Classen, “Das Nibelungenlied in Amerika,”
ibid., 307–21). The number of modern films based on medieval themes is
legion, as Kevin J. Harty’s survey (The Reel Middle Ages, 1999) indicates (see
also John Aberth, A Knight at the Movies, 2003; Mittelalter im Film, ed. Chris-
tian Kiening and Heinrich Adolf, 2006).
Though for entirely different reasons compared to England, Spain too
had remained largely ‘medieval,’ for which reason an interest in the Middle
Ages is hardly present in the beginnings of the 19th century, and only began as
Spanish romanticism – later than else where in Europe – became established.
The meager Spanish reception of the Middle Ages thereafter is connected to
the conservative tendencies of this variety of romanticism. Agustín Durán
published single volumes of a collection of romances between 1828 and
1833; between 1849 and 1850 it appeared in full under the title Romancero
general. This was partly based on the collection Floresta de rimas antiguas castel-
lanas (Hamburg, 1821–1825), made by a German resident in Spain, Nikolaus
Böhl von Faber, who himself had been inspired by Jacob Grimm’s Silva de
romances viejos (1815). On Durán and the Spanish Romantics see Ermanno
Caldera (Primi manifesti del romanticismo spagnuolo, 1962) and David T. Gie,
(Agustín Durán: A Biography and Literary Appreciation, 1975).

J. Looking Ahead
From 1815 onwards, literary interest in “old German” literature dropped off
perceptibly. The prolific work of a writer like Fouqué, more popular than lit-
erary in character, was exemplary here (Berta Raposo, “Spätromantisches
in Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqués Parcival: Ein Rittergedicht,” Estudios Filológicos
Alemanes 2 [2003]: 301–11). He wrote a myriad of chivalric novels and
dramas, which met with short-lived success in the first two decades of the
19th century, only to fall prey to oblivion or the mockery of contemporaries.
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1180

Because of the material he chose (the Nibelung trilogy Der Held des Nordens,
1808, based on Nordic rather than Middle High German sources; Eine rheini-
sche Sage in Balladen on Lohengrin, 1816; Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, 1828;
Der Parcival: Ein Rittergedicht, 1833) he has often been regarded as a precursor
of Richard Wagner (first by Friedrich Panzer, “Richard Wagner und
Fouqué,” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstiftes [1907]: 157–94; most re-
cently by Wolf Gerhard Schmidt, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqués Nibelungentrilo-
gie ‘Der Held des Nordens’: Studien zu Stoff, Struktur und Rezeption, 2000). Ludwig
Uhland achieved a much more solid degree of popularity, working on songs
and ballads along similar poetic-scholarly lines to Tieck, and with the same
mass educational ambition as the Heidelberg Romantics in the ‘restoration
period’ after the fall of Napoleon; Hans-Joachim Behr describes his work as
a dramatist (“Das alte gute Recht: Das Idealbild mittelalterlicher Reichs-
gewalt und die Realität des Württembergischen Verfassungsstreites in Lud-
wig Uhlands Ernst Herzog von Schwaben,” Mittelalterrezeption [I]: Gesammelte
Vorträge des Salzburger Symposions ‘Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher Dichter und ihrer
Werke in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts’, ed.
Jürgen Kühnel et al., 1979, 213–24) and Jürgen Schröder, “Die Freiheit
Württembergs: Uhlands Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818): Geschichtsdrama –
politisches Drama – Psychodrama,” Ludwig Uhland: Dichter, Gelehrter, Politiker,
ed. Hermann Bausinger, 1988, 107–33). In the field of academic history,
this period saw the beginnings of the source-critical study of the German
Middle Ages in the series Monumenta Germaniae historica, founded by Freiherr
vom Stein, as well as the emergence of the genre of the historical saga with
Arnims Die Kronenwächter (1817); cf. Paul Michael Lützeler (“Die Kaiser-
sage bei den Romantikern der Napoleonischen Ära,” Das Weiterleben des Mit-
telalters in der deutschen Literatur, ed. James F. Poag und Gerhild Scholz-
Williams, 1983, 74–86).

K. History of Scholarship
Although, since the beginning of the 20th century, countless investigations
have been made into the so-called revival of the Middle Ages in the Romantic
period (Rudolf Sokolowsky, Der altdeutsche Minnesang im Zeitalter der deut-
schen Klassiker und Romantiker, 1906; Gottfried Salomon, Das Mittelalter als
Ideal in der Romantik, 1922), research into the reception of the Middle Ages
only began on a large scale in the 1970s, i. e., shortly after the reception the-
ory of the Constance school came to prominence. Hans Robert Jauss (Alteri-
tät und Modernität der mittelalterlichen Literatur: Gesammelte Aufsätze 1956–1976,
1977) saw the alterity of medieval literature as its “possible meaning(s)” for
us today; the history of its transmission, which is also the history of its recep-
1181 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

tion, provides an example of the process of the formation, reformation, con-

solidation and renewal of the aesthetic canon. The meaning discovered
through aesthetic experience is the result of this process. Helmut Brackert
was one of the first to use the term ‘reception of the Middle Ages,’ in connec-
tion with the reception of the Nibelungenlied around 1800 and Goethe’s
rejection of the nationalist appropriation of older literature by some of the
Romantics (“Die ‘Bildungsstufe der Nation’ und der Begriff der Weltliter-
atur: Ein Beispiel Goethescher Mittelalter-Rezeption,” Goethe und die Tradi-
tion, ed. Hans Reiss, 1972). However, the ambitious research was particu-
larly inspired by the so-called medieval renaissance or nostalgia of the 1970s,
(shown, among other things, by the epoch-making success of the Hohen-
staufen exhibition in Stuttgart in 1977) and gave itself the task of document-
ing and exploring the presence of the Middle Ages in all its forms of appear-
ance (literature, art, music, film, the new media). This was to a great extent
self-justification on the part of German medievalists, who had been very un-
settled by the theoretical discussions arising from the revolutionary move-
ments of 1968, and were determined to show their subject as anything but
anachronistic and socially irrelevant, but rather as important and fundamen-
tal to the development of European culture. The conference volumes of the
Salzburg symposia published by Ulrich Müller et al. (1979, 1982, 1986),
the Symposia in Lausanne 1989 (ed. Irene von Burg et al., 1961) and at Burg
Kaprun 1990 (ed. Ulrich Müller and Kathleen Verduin, 1996), the three
collected volumes edited by Rüdiger Krohn, Forum: Materialien und Beiträge
zur Mittelalterrezeption (1986, 1992), as well as Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Sympo-
sion, ed. Peter Wapnewski (1986) also pursue this line of research (see also
Ulrich Müller’s contribution to this Handbook, “Middle Ages Today”). On
further conference reports and essay collections, cf. Ulrich Müller (“Mittel-
alter-Rezeption in Europe and America: Perceval, Parzival, Parsifal,” Mittel-
alter-Rezeption V: Year’s Work in Medievalism 5. Gesammelte Vorträge des V. Salzbur-
ger Symposions [1990], ed. Ulrich Müller and Kathleen Verduin, 1996,
24–45). These are all characterized by an interdisciplinary approach. On col-
lections of source material, see the previously mentioned volume by Grosse
and Rautenberg (1989).

L. Conclusion
This all relates to medieval reception on a large scale, from the early modern
period to the 20th century. Recently there has been a dearth of larger works
taking an overview of the period around 1800, although, as described above,
a number of larger monographs had appeared at the beginning of the
20th century, and Wolfram von den Steinen (“Mittelalter und Goethezeit,”
Rediscovery of the Middle Ages 1182

Historische Zeitschrift 183 [1957]: 249–302) dedicated an essay to this topic.

One sign of this lack of interest is the fact that in the standard work, Mittel-
alter-Rezeption. Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski (1986), only one essay (Ko-
zie ek) deals with the treatment of the Middle Ages by the Romantics. Larger
works of a recent date deal with the medieval interests of individual authors.
Thus Gisela Brinker-Gabler writes about Luwig Tieck’s activities as edi-
tor and re-worker of “old German” literature, and the intended function
of the reception, but forgoes an analysis of the socio-historical and cultural
circumstances of the romantic “apotheosis of the Middle Ages” (though she
admits its necessity), and confines herself to illuminating Tieck’s contribu-
tion in “a consolidatory re-working” and thereby finds a “regressive turn”
which wins relevance for the “function of reception;” because of its broken
relationship to the present, the Middle Ages is given an exemplary function.
Ira Kasperowski starts with Novalis’s philosophic and poetological pro-
gram, and embeds it in the early Romantic reception of the Middle Ages,
which still needs to be separated from the prejudices surrounding it. On the
basis of sources used by Novalis, she shows how strongly his interest in the
Middle Ages was influenced by an approach from the history of mentality in-
fluenced by Herder. According to Edith Höltenschmidt, the Schlegel
brothers’ interest in the Middle Ages is a result of their universal poetic per-
spective, and not vice versa (XXI); they were equally interested in the litera-
ture of Classical antiquity, the (early) modern (Shakespeare and Goethe), and
even of the Orient.
As far as the assessment of the whole period is concerned, it has appar-
ently taken an extremely long time to neutralize Heinrich Heine’s fatal
equation, Romanticism = a return to the Middle Ages (Die romantische Schule,
1835). Most researchers felt, and sometimes still feel, obliged to stress that
the discovery of the Middle Ages and an interest in it did not begin in 1800.
While this consensus has dominated for a significant period, opposing
points of view are not rare in the appraisal of Romantic reception of the
Middle Ages. Gerard Koziełek sees it not as escapism, but as a recovery of
German literature with the aim of democratizing literature (“Einleitung,”
Mittelalterrezeption. Texte zur Aufnahme altdeutscher Literatur in der Romantik,
ed. id., 1977, 1–43), which can be seen, above all, in the Heidelberg Romanti-
cism of Arnim, Brentano and Görres. Rüdiger Krohn casts doubt on the
alleged medieval enthusiasm of the Romantic period and points to the low
enthusiasm of the public for medieval editions and adaptations, as is shown
in sales figures. (“Die Wirklichkeit der Legende. Widersprüchliches zur so-
genannten Mittelalter-’Begeisterung’ der Romantik,” Mittelalterrezeption II.
Gesammelte Vorträge des 2. Salzburger Symposions, ed. Jürgen Kühnel et al.,
1183 Rediscovery of the Middle Ages

1982, 1–29). Previously, he had pointed to the socio-historical, that is, early
bourgeois background, to the ‘ur-German virtues’ which the early Roman-
tics valued in the Hans Sachs and Dürer period (Rüdiger Krohn, “Die Rück-
kehr des Bürgerpoeten: Aspekte der Hans-Sachs-Rezeption in der literari-
schen Frühromantik,” Mittelalterrezeption [I]. Gesammelte Vorträge des Salzburger
Symposions ‘Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher Dichter und ihrer Werke in Literatur,
bildender Kunst und Musik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts,’ ed. Jürgen Kühnel et al.,
1979, 80–106), i. e., a period which has not been regarded as medieval
for some considerable time. Christoph Schmid (Die Mittelalterrezeption des
18. Jahrhunderts zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, 1979) argues that the af-
firmative medieval reception from the beginning of the Middle Ages meant
a narrowing of the ideological view compared with the open horizon of the
Enlightenment and the Pre-romantic period; this affirmative reception
turned into a ferment of nationalist and reactionary pedagogical policy.
Ernst Behler (1983) instead places stress on the elements of social criticism
intended to create a counterweight to the present time, pessimistically
viewed by Tieck and Wackenroder, but progressively viewed by the Schlegel
brothers. Wolfgang Beutin (“Contraria contrariis curantur? Über die Inter-
dependenzen von Mittelalter-Rezeption und Renaissance-Rezeption von
der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart,” Mittelalter-Rezeption, ed. Ulrich Müller
et al., 1996, 46–61) sees medieval reception in a dialectic relationship with
the Renaissance reception and views the use which the Romantics put the
Middle Ages to as a small-bore weapon against modernization and for the
restoration of the old order. Dietz-Rüdiger Moser (“Mittelalter als Wissen-
schaftskonstruktion und Fiktion der Moderne,” Mittelalter und Moderne: Ent-
deckung und Rekonstruktion der mittelalterlichen Welt: Kongressakten des 6. Sympo-
sions des Mediävistenverbands in Bayreuth 1995, ed. Peter Segl, 1997, 237–41)
stresses the “enormously broad effect” of a construction of the Middle
Ages at the beginning of the 19th century, which – like all descriptions of an
epoch – has fictional characteristics. Most recently Edith Höltenschmidt
(2000) once again dismantled the apparently ineradicable identification of
the Romantic period with an enthusiasm for the Middle Ages by showing
that the Romantics were not solely, or even chiefly, interested in the Middle
Ages.

Select Bibliography
Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Poetisch-wissenschaftliche Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ludwig Tiecks
Erneuerung altdeutscher Literatur (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1980); Otfrid Ehrismann,
Nibelungenlied 1755–1920: Regesten und Kommentare zu Forschung und Rezeption (Giessen:
Schmitz, 1986); Siegfried Grosse und Ursula Rautenberg, Die Rezeption mittelalter-
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1184

licher deutscher Dichtung: Eine Bibliographie ihrer Übersetzungen und Bearbeitungen seit der
Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989); Ira Kasperowski, Mittelalter-
rezeption im Werk des Novalis (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994); Edith Höltenschmidt, Die
Mittelalterrezeption der Brüder Schlegel (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000).

Berta Raposo

Religious Studies (The Latin West)

A. Introduction
Although I am convinced that very often the really substantial standard
works on the varieties of medieval religion, orthodox and otherwise, have
already been written during the 19th and earlier 20th century, and although I
know from experience that many recent studies are rather modernistic adap-
tations of already well known historical facts and conditions so as to fashion
‘post- etc. theories,’ I will deal here almost exclusively with some of the latest
trends in the field in question. Nevertheless, I will begin with a brief dis-
cussion of some of the fundamental older studies, which have simply not
been superseded until today because of their authors’ extensive knowledge
of the sources. Notwithstanding many newer local histories of the Church,
there is no fuller analysis of the history of Christianity in medieval Germany
than Albert Hauck’s six-volume Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (1887–1920).
An institution of considerably more importance for the formation of a Chris-
tian people than even experts are often aware of, were the synodi parochiales
(Sendgerichte), the function of which was to punish all deviations from the
Church’s norms, based on the enforced denunciations by members of the
same parish. Here we still rely mostly on Albert Michael Koeniger, Die Send-
gerichte in Deutschland, vol. I (1907). Most recently, cf. Wilfried Hartmann,
“‘Sozialdisziplinierung’ und ‘Sündenzucht’ im frühen Mittelalter? Das
bischöfliche Sendgericht in der Zeit um 900,” Jahrbuch des historischen Kollegs
(2005): 95–119. Koeniger also wrote Die Militärseelsorge der Karolingerzeit,
1918, which is still the only monograph on this today nearly completely ne-
glected subject. Finally, the four volumes of G[eorge] G. Coulton’s Fife Cen-
turies of Religion (1923–1950) are completely indispensable for anyone who
wants to gain a real understanding of how the monasteries, this central reli-
gious, cultural, and political institution of the Papacy worked in practice
(and this perhaps in contrast to countless pious medieval authors of treatises
and to apologetic chronicle-writers who until today determine our views of
1185 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

monasticism). Coulton is perhaps more often belying than confirming the

idealized picture regularly transmitted by ecclesiastical chroniclers.
Only a very few publishing houses have realized the importance of these
older but seminal studies and have made available reprints (e. g., the 11 vol-
umes of Christian W. F. Walch, Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Kezere-
ien [sic!], Spaltungen und Religionsstreitigkeiten, bis auf die Zeiten der Reformation,
1762–1785, rpt. 2003–2007, which is the fullest treatment of heresies in late
antiquity and the early Middle Ages up to date).
It is impossible to cover in these pages monographs on historical person-
alities or on individual places (churches, monasteries) of importance for medi-
eval Christianity; they are legion, and not few of them have hardly added any-
thing substantial to our knowledge, as can easily be illustrated by the wave of
publications on the occasion of certain more recent jubilees, such as of Con-
stantine I and Charlemagne. Although publications of a more comprehensive
character, belonging to other disciplines, such as those focusing on the his-
tory of Latin and vernacular literatures and on the history of medieval art and
music, contain much information on sources important for the religious
mentalities, I will mostly disregarded them for practical purposes. Given that
theology, based primarily on Biblical Exegesis, is treated in another entry
here, I will not consider it either in this article.
More innovative than many recent ecclesiastical histories of a certain
region (e. g., Walter Brandmüller, ed., Handbuch der bayerischen Kirchenge-
schichte, I, 1999; Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, ed., Handbuch der Mainzer Kir-
chengeschichte, I, 2000), which repeat a lot of already well known material,
would be investigations of the “religion vécue” of the Middle Ages à la Jean
Delumeau (ed., Histoire vécue du peuple chrétien, 1979). Though in that age,
religion undoubtedly was not only one sector of life, but an all-pervasive life-
style, for the purpose of the analytical description the methodological
approach of religious phenomenology still seems to be the most lucid one
(see the Handbuch by Dinzelbacher in the bibliography). Certainly, the
division between popular and learned piety being not so obsolete as some
would have it, the introduction of the concept of “religion prescrite” vs. “re-
ligion vécue” promises a clearer picture (Dinzelbacher, Mentalität, 2003).
Also, ‘domestic religion’ as contrasted with official and collective rites,
might be considered a more useful terminology (cf. the Quaderni di storia relig-
iosa 8 [2001], dedicated to Religione domestica).
It deserves mention that also in our field (as generally in recent histori-
ography) a certain revival of the narrative discourse can be observed in the
vein of storytelling, increasingly putting aside the critical analysis. Many im-
portant questions thus remain unanswered.
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1186

How, for example, did the so often retold Gregorian reform movement
influence concretely the lives of women? (Peter Dinzelbacher, “Kirchen-
reform und Frauenleben im Hohen Mittelalter,” MIÖG 113 [2005]: 20–40).
What did, for instance, a late-medieval cardinal really do in order to guaran-
tee that he would escape Hell in his afterlife? (see, e. g., for instance, Kerstin
Merkel, Jenseits-Sicherung: Kardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg und seine Grab-
denkmäler, 2004).
As we have to deal with newer currents in our field only, we will not con-
sider the lot of publications which, often in a very qualified way, are continu-
ing traditional efforts, such as – of primary importance, of course – the edi-
ting of medieval texts (it is astonishing how many works even of the 12th
century still are unprinted or can be used only in less than satisfactory critical
editions, like those in the Patrologia Latina; see, e. g., the autobiographical
meditations of Reinerus of Liège, etc.). But most often the real interest of
the editors especially of texts in the vernaculars lies in the philological work,
not in the texts’ religio-historical significance. The understanding of the
sources, however, will always require both an intensive knowledge of the lan-
guage and sufficient familiarity with the history of the subject in question,
thus combining a linguistic-literary approach with a specialized historical
one (see the articles on Prayer Books and Religious Lyrics in this handbook).
And sometimes a study of écriture and reécriture, often but a methodological
exercise, can indeed open a new understanding (Florence Chave-Mahir
and Olivier Legendre, “Les possédées de Lodi: Parcours de deux témoig-
nages exceptionnels sur l’exorcisme au XIIe siècle,” Revue Mabillon NS 18
[2007]: 133–61).

B. Ecclesiastical Law
It does not need to be repeated that the study of ecclesiastical law remains of
utmost importance – not only of the norms, but rather of the practices (Sas-
cha Ragg, Ketzer und Recht, 2006; Lotte Kéry, Gottesfurcht und irdische Strafe:
Der Beitrag des mittelalterlichen Kirchenrechts zur Entstehung des öffentlichen Straf-
rechts, 2006). This is quite true for other disciplines as well; in Religious
Studies it is of more relevance to occupy oneself with, say, the use of the
psalterium (Klaus Schreiner, “Psalmen in Liturgie, Frömmigkeit und All-
tag des Mittelalters,” in id., Der Landgrafenpsalter: Kommentarband, ed. Felix
Heinzer, 1992, 141–83) than with the textual variations of its trans-
mission. The juridical norms and usages of any society tell us more about its
mentality than the non-specialist would suspect. Strange to notice that in the
very same 13th century which saw the abandonment of ordeals (a Germanic
institution practiced with the help of the Christian priest), the first animal
1187 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

trials (mostly brought to ecclesiastical courts) are documented (Peter Din-

zelbacher, Das fremde Mittelalter: Gottesurteil und Tierprozess, 2006).

C. Sociological Approaches
Many scholars pursue rather traditional sociological analyses of the clergy,
regional structures of the Church, biographies of more or less important
prelates, and so on. They are helpful, but there is neither need nor room for
quoting several examples, even if they are models of painstaking, highly
specialized and scholarly work like the studies by Giles Constable (Three
Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought, 1995), a must for everyone deal-
ing with our subject. It is, however, regrettable that promising attempts to
explain the socially relevant sides of religion, developed by scholars adhering
to Historical Materialism, have been neglected after the fall of the corre-
sponding political systems (especially the Soviet Union), given that religion
is undoubtedly, beneath everything else it may be, an extremely strong
instrument for social control and for privileging one class of society, that of
ecclesiastical functionaries. Once we have put aside, of course, the purely
ideological parts of such publications, they still can be read with profit by
those interested in the more earth-bound aspects of a transcendental weltbild
(Ernst Werner and Martin Erbstösser, Ketzer und Heilige: Das religiöse Leben
im Hochmittelalter, 1986). But questions of that couleur seem to have rather
faded out of fashion today. Nonetheless, an interesting analysis of the inex-
tricable combination of belief and economy deserves to be mentioned, viz.
Robert B. Ekelund et al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm,
1996. All justified criticism of singular points set aside, the authors are right
in their assumption that it is important to understand the Catholic Church as
an institution that sold “insurances” for a secure place in the other world in
exchange for mundane money and gifts of land. It was this construction, or
rather its rejection, which initiated, among other causes, the Protestant Ref-
ormation.

D. Central Topics
Turning to the core of our essay, we need to examine some selected themes
in Religious Studies in the narrower sense of the term. Several items seem to
be of special interest nowadays, depending, on the one hand, on the curiosity
of the general public (as it is the case with magic and witchcraft), and on
the other on certain academic schools which dominate the field even if their
preferred subject is already dealt with excessively (paradigmatically: the
memoria of the dead, e. g., Roland Rappmann and Alfons Zettler, Die Rei-
chenauer Mönchsgemeinschaft und ihr Totengedenken im frühen Mittelalter, 1998).
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1188

Considering the highlight of the “saecula spiritualia,” viz. mysticism (cf. also
the articles Sisterbooks and Visionary Texts), one will be confronted with legions
of literary-historical publications (indispensable, however: Kurt Ruh, Ge-
schichte der abendländischen Mystik, 1990–1999; From a theological standpoint,
see also Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian
Mysticism, 1991ff., which focuses, however, mostly on well-known individ-
uals of great fame).
Given that both most of the medieval mystics and the medievalists inter-
ested in them today are females, feminist statements about them enjoy para-
digmatic function; there is, on the contrary, not much done to understand
mysticism as a historical phenomenon coming into existence in the post-an-
tique Latin Church not before the end of the 11th century (Peter Dinzel-
bacher, Christliche Mystik im Abendland: Ihre Geschichte von den Anfängen bis zum
Ausgang des Mittelalters, 1994). Whence the late-medieval blossoming of this
form of religious ‘peak experiences’? Why the prevalence of the female faith-
ful? The pious answer “spiritus flat ubi vult” will not do; instead there are in-
vestigable socio-historical conditions (Peter Dinzelbacher, “Zur Sozialge-
schichte der christlichen Erlebnismystik im westlichen Mittelalter,” Wege
mystischer Gotteserfahrung, ed. Peter Schäfer, 2006, 113–28). In fact, it is not
only not impossible, but rather necessary to analyze the asceticism and unify-
ing ecstasies of these individuals via modern psychological explanations
(Ralph Frenken, Kindheit und Mystik im Mittelalter, 2002. Cf. also Wolfgang
Beutin, Anima, 3 vols., 1997–1999).

E. Magic and Miracles

Magic and superstition (the latter a term used only reluctantly today) attract
not only academic investigators, but also the general public, and one finds
sufficient literature for both of them (see Christa Habiger-Tuczay, Magie
und Magier im Mittelalter, 1992; and Franco Cardini, Demoni e Meraviglie:.
Magia e stregoneria nella società medievale, 1995, who offer the basic evaluation;
specialized publications are, e. g., Valerie Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early
Medieval Europe, 1991, or Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necro-
mancer’s Manual of the 15th Century, 1998). There is no longer any doubt that
miracles and magic events are but variants of the same complex (Lothar
Kolmer, “Heilige als magische Helfer,” Mediaevistik 6 [1993]: 153–75;
Torsten Fremer, “Wunder und Magie: Zur Funktion der Heiligen im
frühmittelalterlichen Christianisierungsprozeß,” Hagiographica 3 [1996]:
15–88; J.-M. Sansterre, “Attitudes occidentales à l’égard des miracles
d’image dans le Haut Moyen Âge,” Annales E.S.C. 53 [1998]: 1219–241), and
that some characteristics of the saints (like ecstatic experiences, too, as rec-
1189 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

orded by Bridget of Sweden, Francesca Romana, Dionys the Carthusian, and

many others) are not so far away from shamanism. Scholars have sensed a cer-
tain ambivalence regarding female mystics: were they God’s flutes or the
fiend’s trumpets? Consequently ecclesiastics could call the same woman to
trial, condemn her, and later sanctify here (or the other way around; see Peter
Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger Frauen, 1995, last. ed.
2004). The same structural ambivalence may be observed when reading
benedictions, incantations, and similar formulae (see Wolfgang Beck, Die
Merseburger Zaubersprüche, 2003; Elena Cianci, Incantesimi e benedizioni nella
letteratura tedesca medievale (IX–XIII sec.), 2004; Don C. Skemer, Binding Words,
2006).
But there are also quite different approaches as in the study of saints’
miracles and their sanctuaries according to the social-geographical distribu-
tion (see the collection of articles in Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico 29
[2003]: 213–386), in the analysis of the saints, and their relics (Arnold
Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien, 1994; Anton Legner, Reliquien in Kunst
und Kult zwischen Antike und Aufklärung, 1995; ‘Ich armer sundiger mensch’: Hei-
ligen- und Reliquienkult am Übergang zum konfessionellen Zeitalter, ed. Andreas
Tacke, 2006), then of the psychology of those who beg for supernatural help
(Maria-Elisabeth Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel, Miracula:
Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter, 2004), and finally of the learned hagiography
(the most recent studies are Guy Philippart and Michel Trigalet, Latin
Hagiography before the Ninth Century: The Long Morning of Medieval Europe,
ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormck, 2008, 111–30; Th. Head, “The
Early Medieval Transformation of Piety,” ibid., 155–62; Hagiographies, ed.
Guy Philippart, 1994, still in progress, provides the fullest overview), etc.
Of course, today the non-purely spiritual dimensions of this complex often
stand in the foreground (E. Bozóky, La politique des reliques de Constantin à
Saint Louis, 2006). As the fascinosum of evil – correctly – forms part of our
image of those centuries, also devils and demons defend their places in the
publishers’ book lists (Claude Lecouteux, Démons et génies du terroir au Moyen
Age, 1995; Demons: Communicating with the Spirits, ed. Gabor Klaniczay and
Edith Pócs, 2005) – as do the otherworldly regions of eschatology. It does
not come as a surprise that their angelic counterparts are not forgotten either
(Andrea Schaller, Der Erzengel Michael im frühen Mittelalter, 2006).

F. Monasticism
Certainly the virtuosi of religion, monks and nuns, shaped the ‘epoch of
faith’ to a high degree, but let us set aside their importance for the general
history of Western culture (Kulturgeschichte der christlichen Orden, ed. Peter
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1190

Dinzelbacher and James Hogg, 1997; a valuable publication series, titled

“Vita regularis,” also deserves to be mentioned here). It is remarkable how
many secular historians nowadays deal with this institution beside the
official historians of the individual orders. There are whole libraries on the
origin (García M. Colombás, El monacato primitivo, 1998), blossoming, and
decay of the anachoretic and communitarian ways of retirement from the
bad ‘saeculum.’ Of all medieval communities, the Cistercians represent the
one monastic order, in whom the general public is obviously most interested
in. Think, e. g., of the exhibition “Saint Bernard et le monde cistercien” in
1990/1991 (with a splendid publication with the same title by Léon Pres-
souyre and Terryl N. Kinder, 1990).

G. Children
A rather recent topic of investigation is the role of children within reli-
gious organizations, the main item being, of course, the oblation (Valerie L.
Garver, “The Influence of Monastic Ideals upon Carolingian Conceptions
of Childhood,” Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht
Classen, 2005, 67–85; Joachim Wollasch, “Anmerkungen zum Thema:
Kinder im Kloster,” Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft – Mentalitäten im Mittelalter:
Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Rolf Sprandel, ed. Hans-Peter Baum, 2006,
659–82). Though the relevant studies belong more to the history of child-
hood, they are most important for our understanding of the pious mentality
of the adults who sacrificed their offspring, forcing them into an inescapable
and life-long existence behind the walls of a monastery. One should not for-
get, however, the importance of indoctrination in that age, the teaching of
Christian norms being a must in the education both at home and at school
(Eugen Paul, Geschichte der christlichen Erziehung, vol. I, 1993). The theories
of psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870–1937), who describe the formation of a
life-long weltbild in the earliest years of childhood, should be applied in this
regard.

H. Deviance of Faith
Of course, also deviances of faith continue to be studied, mostly by secular
historians and in the sphere of local historians (cf. especially the dissertations
by pupils of Agostino Paravicini Bagliani printed in the Cahiers lausannois
d’histoire médiévale). It goes without saying that the problem of the deforma-
tions and one-sidedness of the sources remains especially grave here (a good
example is presented by the impressively researched book by Romedio
Schmitz-Esser, Arnold von Brescia im Spiegel von acht Jahrhunderten Rezeption,
2007).
1191 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

Anthropological studies: The inexactness of the term “anthropological”

as a discipline within cultural studies, we will subsume here those publi-
cations that come from an academic area background that some years ago
would have been called folklore, ethnology, and science of extra-European
religions, combined with religious sociology (though the question of how to
discriminate diverse styles of piety does not seem to have been very success-
fully answered, cf. the volume Frömmigkeitsstile im Mittelalter, ed. Wolfgang
Haubrichs, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 20.80 (1990).
The analysis of medieval faith and faith-based practice not by the confes-
sionally committed church-historian, but by an anthropologist who ex profes-
sione would not put dogmatics or spiritual valuations in the foreground, has
proved to be fed by the most innovative access to our field. The history of
mentalities, as introduced by Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Claude Schmitt, and
Aaron Gurjevitch, has demonstrated how much religion and magic in
traditional or archaic societies must be regarded as part of the fundamentally
inherent belief and value system, and not just as one sector among many com-
ponents of life (others being economy, law, education etc., see Jean-Claude
Schmitt, “Plädoyer für eine historische Anthropologie des Mittelalters,”
Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38 [2004]: 1–16). Much interest focuses on rituals
of all kinds (see De betovering van het middeleeuwse christendom: Studies over ritueel
en magie in de Middeleeuwen, ed. Marco Mostert and A. Demyttenaere,
1995), even if there is a marked tendency to exaggerate their weight.
Generally these impulses from France were received with much interest
in the Dutch-speaking world and Italy, and with some interest in the Anglo-
phone world as well, but they did not develop many roots in Germany and
Scandinavia (dominated by their unbroken preponderance of traditional
political history).

I. The Body and Feminism

Studies on the body in religion are en vogue, see my introduction to Körper und
Frömmigkeit (see the bibliography). As an eternal topic of interest within this
subject one must consider the relations of the holy with sexuality. The crav-
ing for a sacrality unstained by blood and sperm was, of course, an ideal de-
rived from Biblical Judaism, very intensive during the early Middle Ages,
but later as well, e. g., in the visions of Hildegard of Bingen (Annette Höing,
‘Gott, der ganz Reine, will keine Unreinheit’: Die Reinheitsvorstellungen Hildegards
von Bingen aus religionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive, 2000). This craving went so
far that even wedlock with its Biblical task of producing offspring could
be idealized as an institution of sexual abstinence (Dyan Elliott, Spiritual
Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock, 1993).
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1192

Logically, heretics used to be accused exactly of the contrary, which is

why the few descriptions of orgies that we have from that period put them
into a religious context and come from authors who deliberately regarded
some group or other as deviants from Catholicism (Peter Dinzelbacher,
“Gruppensex im Untergrund: Chaotische Ketzer und kirchliche Keuschheit
im Mittelalter,” Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Albrecht
Classen, 2008, 405–28). The inclusion of the norms from the Old Testament
concerning the interdiction of several types of food into the penitentials,
would be another example for the craving for holy cleanness (Josephus Maria
Dominicus de Waardt, Voedselvoorschriften in boeteboeken: motieven voor het
hanteren van voedselvoorschriften in vroeg-middeleeuwse Ierse boeteboeken 500–1100,
1996), as are the rites that had to be fulfilled during the atonement (Robert
Meens, “The Frequency and Nature of Early Medieval Penance,” Handling
Sin, ed. Peter Biller, 1998, 36–61; Cyrill Vogel, En rémission des péchés: Re-
cherches sur les systèmes pénitentiels dans l’eglise latine, 1994).
Innovative strength in scholarship focused on the humanities is often
credited in our days to Feminist Studies, and often rightly so. The intensified
attention women in history generally enjoy nowadays has shown how one-
sided the picture created by older mediaevalists used to be (which would be a
certain qualification of the initial statement, see above). Consequently much
important serious work has been done recently on religious (and by analogy
semi-religious, i. e., Beguines, penitents, and similar groups) women in the
Middle Ages, too. High standards have been set in this field, among others,
by Italian scholars such as Anna Benvenuti (In ‘castro penitentiae’: Santità e so-
cietà femminile nell’Italia medievale, 1990). I will turn to mysticism below. Fol-
lowing in the wake of this research orientation, also other figures mentioned
not seldom within the ecclesiastical radius but unexplored until recently
find interest, even if being male, such as the forerunners of the sexton, e. g.
(Alfredo Lucioni, “… inservit huic ecclesiae …,” Quaderni di storia religiosa
14 [2007]: 61–95).
But replacing history by ‘herstory,’ instead of considering both genders
equally, cannot lead to more authentic views of the past phases of Christian-
ity. There is a very problematic tendency in ‘feminizing’ that epoch when a
growing number of not so few modern scholars try to adapt the medieval
sources to their feminist theories, seeing their subject rather in an isolated
perspective, ignoring other moments, thus repeating – this time the other
way round – the lack of balance of the older studies who had nearly nothing
to say about the female conditions in that time. If, e. g., an otherwise compet-
ent portrayal of the female believers in the Cathar society of Southern France
intentionally gives the impression that they had their own independent
1193 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

ways, then this is just a projection of present-day ideals into the medieval
world (see, for example, Daniela Müller, ‘Ketzerinnen’ – Frauen gehen ihren
eigenen Weg, 2004). Actually their faith depended as much on the teachings
of the male “perfecti” as did the faith of Catholic women on the teachings of
the priests. Such narrow and erroneous perspectives can as easily be proven
wrong as the ideal of a general sisterhood between all females is presented
as an allegedly historical fact. Not even the women saints gave somehow
preference to read their own gender when working miracles (Hans-Werner
Goetz, “Heiligenkult und Geschlecht: Geschlechtsspezifisches Wunder-
wirken in frühmittelalterlichen Mirakelberichten?,” Das Mittelalter 1 [1996]:
89–112).

J. Practical Mysticism
Today the notion of practical mysticism is nearly identical with that of fe-
male mysticism, a topic which attracts many writers. Since the mystics have
been treated elsewhere in this handbook, suffice it here to hint at the impres-
sive scholarship of Bardo Weiss who in a very few years published about
2500 pages on the German visionaries of the 12th and 13th centuries which are
the indispensable basis for all further efforts in this field (his most recent
book is the publication Die deutschen Mystikerinnen und ihr Gottesbild, 3 vols.,
2004). After the mystics, the Beguines (Peter Dinzelbacher, “Religiöse
Frauenbewegung und städtisches Leben im Mittelalter,” Id., Körper, cit.
225–58), are often regarded as examples of female strength. It is, however,
neither true that they were independent because they were all, without ex-
ception, under the observance of male priests, nor that their main interest
was to form an exclusively one-gendered circle. The sources prove that their
first aim was a devotional life, and later, also an economically acceptable life.
Thus the main motivational drive for this movement originating in the 12th
century was a religious one, not somehow feminist.

K. Queer Studies and Religion

Queer studies have done much to unearth the history of homosexuality, but
have not had much impact on religious history (see, however, Albrecht
Diem, “Organisierte Keuschheit: Sexualprävention im Mönchtum der Spät-
antike und des frühen Mittelalters,” Invertito – Jahrbuch für die Geschichte der
Homosexualitäten 3 [2001]: 8–37), with the exception of that of heresy insofar
as sodomy was punished sometimes as a deviation from the Catholic faith.
Fortunately, because this research orientation is one simply reflecting an ac-
tual ideology, playing with elements from the Middle Ages to construct a
completely ‘unmedieval’ history, but certainly not employing a serious his-
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1194

torical method, there are, until now, no attempts worthwhile to mention to

‘queer’ medieval religion.

L. Art and Religion

But perhaps some art-historical works ought to be mentioned in this context
which, sensitized by Leo Steinberg’s attempt to project modern ideas of
sexuality into Gothic and Renaissance objects of cult and devotion (The Sex-
uality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 1983, 2nd ed. 1997),
underscore the subconscious sexual function that religious art might have
had for male believers. For them, the side-wound of Jesus is said to have
triggered via its vagina-shaped form the wish to make Him a sexual object
(e. g., Michael Camille, “Mimetic Identification and Passion Devotion in
the Late Middle Ages: A Double-Sided Panel by Meister Francke,” The Broken
Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, ed. Alasdair A. Macdonald,
Bernhard Ridderbos, and Rita M. Schlusemann, 1998, 183–210). But
occasionally female artists in the Middle Ages focused on that wound as well
and sometimes projected it as the orifice through which they could climb
into Christ’s body (Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 1997).
Especially fruitful seems to be, however, a combination of art-historical
methods with the study of the liturgy, as the analysis of the sacrality of space
in the perception of medieval people suggests. Following several studies
by Friedrich Möbius (“Zur Anthropologie des mittelalterlichen Kirchen-
raums,” Mediaevistik 6 [1993]: 189–200), an overview was recently offered by
Michele Bacci, Lo spazio dell’anima: Vita di una chiesa medievale, 2005 (cf. also
Gabriella Signori, Räume, Gesten, Andachtsformen: Geschlecht, Konflikt und
religiöse Kultur im europäischen Mittelalter, 2005). There is also a recent volume
on the secular uses or abuses of sacred rooms, The Use and Abuse of Sacred Places
in Late Medieval Towns, ed. Paul Trio and Marjan De Smet, 2006; cf. also
Sandra Viek, “Der mittelalterliche Altar als Rechtsstätte,” Mediaevistik 17
[2004]: 95–183). Ecclesiastical buildings thus are studied not only from
the perspective of art history, but also from that of their functions for the
faithful, their emotional associations, giving new insights into “la religion
vécue.” Seeing the objects of figural art not primarily as stylistic expressions,
but understanding their raison d’être as Kult- and Andachtsbilder in their orig-
inally pious context, as Hans Belting proposed some 20 years ago (Bild und
Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, 1990), is equally wel-
come (see, e. g., Images of Cult and Devotion, ed. Sören Kaspersen, 2004) – and
we should not forget the function of pious paintings as apotropaia which can
still be found on some late medieval houses in the Alpine districts (S. Bos-
cani Leoni, Essor et fonctions des images religieuses dans les Alpes, 2008).
1195 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

Iconography, however, is not a matter of artistic traditions extending

from antiquity and Byzantium to the western Middle Ages only, especially
if we consider the many innovative configurations characteristic of Gothic
art. The late-medieval reactivation of the Old Testament imagery of the Lord
killing his creatures by arrows and sword, the so-called Pestbilder, e. g., must
be understood as a consequence of the crisis of that period, especially the
Black Death. The same is true of the creation of a “religion and art of Death”
with the invention of the macabre. As these motives stress the moment of
dying here and now – and not the life in the other world – they prove at the
same time how the secular existence came into the foreground subconsciously,
hinting at the rise of a Renaissance mentality (Peter Dinzelbacher, Angst
im Mittelalter: Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung: Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikono-
graphie, 1996). All that notwithstanding, at the end of the Middle Ages these
images kept their function for devout meditations on the ‘memento mori.’
Though rather underestimated or not admitted by traditional histori-
ans, psychological explanations of human behavior in former times, reli-
gious and otherwise, are needed very much and seem to be the only really in-
novative approach discussed here. It is not very satisfying to read a whole
volume on medieval emotions (Émotions médiévales, Critique 63, 716/717 Jan.-
Fév. [2007]) when the contributors claim to understand them without the
methods of modern depth psychology. However, most of the few studies of
this couleur published until now have been written by psychoanalysts (the
best-known of whom is Lloyd deMause, The History of Childhood, 1974) and
usually show, promising as they are nonetheless, grave historical lacunae
and misunderstandings. Therefore, only the collaboration of professional
medievalists with professional psychologists will proffer serious results
(Peter Dinzelbacher, “Psychohistorie aus der Sicht des Historikers,” Id.,
Körper, cit. 335–47). The peculiarities of medieval mentalities can be under-
stood only, I believe, if we know enough about the ways people were treated
during the first years of their lives (Ralph Frenken, ‘Da fing ich an zu er-
innern …’: die Psychohistorie der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung in den frühesten deutschen
Autobiographien (1200–1700), 2003). Would it be imaginable, for instance, that
the discovery of erotic love around 1100, both between men and women, in
lyric poetry and romances, and the sentimental love shown synchronically
toward Jesus in the writings of the mystics, should have developed ex nihil –
or rather as the consequence of a new relationship between parents and
children? To find out whether the handling of babies changed at that time,
which could be done by comparing synchronically the information con-
tained in hagiography (not all are topoi!), might be of special value for the
history of religious and mundane mentalities.
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1196

M. Conclusion
As a conclusion, some indications of the latest newer tendencies in the
three traditional chronological fields of Medieval Studies, presented from a
bird’s eye’s view, may be helpful. For the early Middle Ages, in Religious
Studies the unrivalled central topic remains the conversion of the continent
to Christianity (for introductions, see Richard E. Sullivan, Christian
Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages, 1994; Ian Wood, The Missionary
Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050, 2001; Lutz von Pad-
berg, Christianisierung im Mittelalter, 2006). A matter of much importance
already for the ‘grandfathers’ of medieval Religious Studies, such as Jacob
Grimm, was the persistence of older belief systems after the Christianiz-
ation (the pagan survival; see, for instance, Pierre Boglioni, “Le sopravvi-
venze pagane nel medioevo,” Traditions in Contact and Change, ed. Peter
Slater and Donald Wiebe, 1983, 347–59; above all, Bernadette Filotas,
Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral
Literature, 2005, is to be recommended). Though not limited to the Middle
Ages only, Erika Timm’s thoughtful combination of philological and other
evidence concerning the ‘goddesses’ Frau Holle and Frau Percht should
be mentioned here because of her highly methodological approach and
religious-historical results (Frau Holle, Frau Percht und verwandte Gestalten,
2003). Though often not accepted by recent scholars for ideological reasons
(because this term was abused also by Germanophile propagandists before
1945), there seems to have occurred a kind of ‘Germanization’ of the
new faith during that period (as there had been a Romanization of the Celtic
belief systems before, etc.). Ignorant of the use of this expression in the
19th and early 20th centuries, unsuspecting Anglophone scholars now have
rediscovered that process (see, for example, G. Ronald Murphy, The Saxon
Savior. The Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand, 1989;
James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, 1994).
Also, we cannot deny a priori the influence of ideas and convictions dating
back to the Celtic culture on the Christian practices of medieval France and
Britain (Philippe Walter, Mythologie chrétienne: Rites et mythes du Moyen Age,
1992). Much better documented is of course the Christianization of older
rites, such as those pertaining to the life-cycle, which had to be made into
ceremonies of the new religion (e. g., Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in
the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early
Medieval Periods, 1994). Whereas the religiosity of the Merovingian epoch
was treated in an extremely optimistic way by Yitzak Hen (Culture and Reli-
gion in Merovingian Gaul, 1995), who excessively minimized the pre-Chris-
tian influences, we are most obliged to Jean Chélini for his excellent and
1197 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

balanced overview of the following centuries (L’aube du Moyen Age: Naissance

de la chrétienté occidentale, 1991).
A correlated subject is that of syncretism (Rudi Künzel, “Paganisme,
syncrétisme et culture religieuse populaire au Haut Moyen Age,” Annales
E.S.C. 47 [1992]: 1055–69). Despite its title, we don’t find much information
about this topic in Ludo Milis et al., De heidense middeleeuwen, 1992), which
the aggressive methods of the Christian missionaries did not tolerate,
though this phenomenon did not simply disappear altogether (e. g., in the
Scandinavian viks). The fact that there were more people than we might as-
sume today who espoused a faith which merged two religions, should not
only be studied for Scandinavia alone (Torsten Capelle, Heidenchristen im
Norden, 2005). There were practically no heretics after the age of Migration
and before the 11th century, though we know of some cases, apart from the
notorious Gottschalk the Saxon (De Constantino a Carlomagno: Disidentes, het-
erodeoxos, marginados, ed. Francisco Javier Lomas Salmonte and Federico
Devos Márquez, 1992).
For modern scholars, the absolutely preferred type of sources elucidat-
ing the early Middle Ages remains the written text; so a truly productive way
to scrutinize religious mentalities consists of analyzing religious vocabulary,
which is much too often disregarded by generalists, although a new synopsis
of the religious vocabulary of the ancient German dialects is available
(Martin Fuss, Die religiöse Lexik des Althochdeutschen und Altsächsischen, 2000).
But the visual arts must also be considered in this regard, and likewise
the archaeological evidence (Bernd Thier, “Religiöse Praktiken des Alltags
im archäologischen Befund,” Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich 14
[1998]: 85–104). Fortunately, it is unnecessary to underline the ever growing
importance of that kind of data (Franz Glaser, Frühes Christentum im Alpen-
raum, 1997; Paul Gleirscher, “Frühmittelalterlicher Kirchenbau zwi-
schen Salzburg und Aquileia,” Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich 22
[2006]: 61–80), and in this context we should keep in mind some of the most
interesting works written not by mediaevalists, but by experts of ancient his-
tory (e. g., Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to
Eighth Centuries, 1997). The fashionable word ‘acculturation’ has found its
way from the specialists of the Great Migration to scholars of the Middle
Ages, appearing now in publications on post-antique subjects, too (Hein-
rich Schmidt, “Heidnisch-christliche Akkulturation im frühmittelalter-
lichen Sachsen und Friesland,” Tätigkeitsfelder und Erfahrungshorizonte des länd-
lichen Menschen in der frühmittelalterlichen Grundherrschaft, ed. Brigitte Kasten,
2006, 217–32). This aspect is still much discussed in Scandinavian Studies,
with the impact of archaeological evidence growing steadily (see, for in-
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1198

stance, Møtet mellom hedendom og kristendom i Norge, ed. Hans Emil Lidén,
1995).
Another prominent issue precisely concerning that period, which has
created much interest proves to be the by now very well examined function
of “memoria,” a field dominated by Patrick J. Geary’s important research
(Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, 1994) and Gerd Althoff (“König Kon-
rad I. in der ottonischen Memoria,” Konrad I.: Auf dem Weg zum ‘Deutschen
Reich’, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz, 2006, 317–28). By contrast, only few
scholars focus on the religiosity of women of that period as there do not seem
to be examples of proto-feministic thinking or behavior. The didactic man-
ual of Dhuoda in which she completely concentrates on her son and his edu-
cation, or the religious plays and legends by Hrotsvita of Gandersheim (with
their literary motifs borrowed from earlier religious narratives), have some-
times been read as early indications of radical women’s struggle for indepen-
dence already in the early Middle Ages. But the piety of noble ladies was
usually so much in conformity with the ecclesiastical norms of their days that
it seems not too attractive to modern feminist investigators either.
The spirituality of the High Middle Ages has been examined thoroughly
so far; it has more in common with that of the following periods than with
that of the earlier generations. If we call the time from the late 11th to the
early 13th century an achsenzeit of European history, we would only repeat a
communis opinio that is today no longer questioned. From the growth of the
economy and population to the most subtle innovations in the intellectual
area, everywhere the situation experienced a thorough transformation (Peter
Dinzelbacher, Europa im Hochmittelalter, 2003).
The development of prayers focusing on Jesus and the Virgin Mary and
corresponding devotion (Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to
Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200, 2002) which was much more personal
than in the preceding centuries, but then also the personification of death, to
quote some examples, can be acknowledged as keys to understand momen-
tous aspects of the emotional condition of that time, viz. fear and compassion
(Peter Dinzelbacher, Angst im Mittelalter: Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung.
Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikonographie, 1996). As important works of Greek and
Roman philosophers became accessible during the so-called Renaissance of
the 12th century, not only orthodox scholasticism emerged, but also deviant
teachings based on the rational analysis of the dogmas of the Church leading
to the discovery of some of their inner contradictions. This brought about,
at least occasionally, a form of radical pantheism approaching atheism
(Olaf Pluta, “Atheismus im Mittelalter,” Umbrüche: Historische Wendepunkte
der Philosophie von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Klaus Kahnert and Burkhart
1199 Religious Studies (The Latin West)

Mojsisch, 2001, 113–30; Peter Dinzelbacher, Unglaube im Zeitalter des

Glaubens, 2009).
The new ideal of poverty, a protest reaction to the immense wealth of
churches and monasteries, created both new orders, such as the mendicants
(Franciscans and Dominicans), and new deviating groups, such as the Wal-
densians (Peter Dinzelbacher, “Die Achsenzeit des Hohen Mittelalters
und die Ketzergeschichte,” Id., Körper, cit. 197–224). One of the most spec-
tacular new developments of that time were the holy wars, i. e., the crusades,
deeply inspiring and motivating both the great lords and the common
people (of more interest than the endlessly repetitive histories of the crusades
are some new readings by Scandinavian scholars, see, for instance, from
the North: Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology, ed. Tuomas M. S.
Lehtonen et. al., 2005) and the less known conversion by sword in the
North-East about 1200 (Barbara Bombi, Novella plantatio fidei: Missione e croci-
ata nel Nord Europa, 2007). See now the new journal Crusades, launched by Ash-
gate Publishing in 2002. In that connection, knights created military orders
based on the ideal of fighting and achieving thereby martyrdom – extremely
different both from the passive martyrdom of the Old Church and from
the typical Benedictine monk who was not even allowed to touch a weapon
(Alan John Forey, “The Emergence of the Military Orders in the Twelfth
Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 [1985]: 175–95).
Even if during the late Middle Ages we see so much continuation in the
institutions, the practices, and the overall belief-system, there is, on the
other hand, also much evidence that from the late 13th to the 15th century the
unity of Europe’s religion increasingly experienced a disintegration process,
which, without favoring any teleological standpoint, led to the division
of the continent into several different confessions. Suffice here to mention
the papal Schisms, the conflicts between a monarchical and an oligarchic
ideal manifesting itself in Conciliarism, the growing of many heresies as well
as the quietist tendencies of mysticism. A new aspect of the papal Schism
from 1378 to1417 was unearthed by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets,
Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 2006, who analyzed the positions
of individual poets and mystics who disseminated with their writings the
praise of one or the other of the competing popes.
Movements of popular devotion, not all of them completely determined
and supervised sufficiently by the clergy, multiplied (see, e. g., the increasing
number of pilgrimages, cf. Wallfahrt und Alltag in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit,
ed. by Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-histo-
rische Klasse, SB 592, 1992). The legion of late-medieval heresies, too, has
offered many an occasion for more extensive investigations, beginning
Religious Studies (The Latin West) 1200

with the questions how censure at the universities worked, such as in 1277
and beyond (Kurt Flasch, Aufklärung im Mittelalter? Die Verurteilung von 1277,
1989; Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris
1200–1400, 1998), and ending with how radical and aggressive movements
like the Bohemian Adamites functioned. Since the times of Henry Charles
Lea (A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols., 1887). Scholars study-
ing papal inquisition, explicitly established against such deviants, have con-
centrated on the Ordo Praedicatorum (Dominicans), which indeed provided
the gross of its executors (cf. Emil van der Vekene, Bibliotheca bibliographica
historiae sanctae inquisitionis: Bibliographisches Verzeichnis des gedruckten Schrift-
tums zur Geschichte und Literatur der Inquisition, vols. 1–3, 1982–1992), Lately
also the contribution of the Ordo Minorum has found due attention, cf. Frati
Minori e inquisizione, 2006.
Finally, I would like to recommend three books which do not deal di-
rectly with the Middle Ages, but which are, as I believe, nonetheless of basic
importance for everyone devoting him/herself to the scholarly study of
religion. One is the work of a famous, but too little read philosopher, the
other that of a pastor and psychoanalyst, the third that of a specialist of
ancient history. Among the publications of Ludwig Feuerbach, his Vor-
lesungen über das Wesen der Religion, ed. Wilhelm Bolin, 1908, is probably the
most readable, containing nonetheless the core of his still most valuable
analysis of that phenomenon. In Das Christentum und die Angst, 1985, the theo-
logian Oskar Pfister tells us very much about that main concern of this
religion especially in the 16th century, which can be applied convincingly to
medieval religiosity, too. An explanation why religion has been developed by
mankind and what its social and psychic functions are, is given by Walter
Burkert, using ancient sources, which find many parallels and continu-
ations in the later epochs: Kulte des Altertums: Die biologischen Grundlagen der
Religion, 1998. That is certainly a personal choice, but based on nearly four
decades of studying medieval religiosity.

Select Bibliography
Arnold Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter: Die abendländische Christenheit von 400 bis 900
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990); Id., Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997); Antonio Blasucci et al., La spiritualità
del medioevo (Rome: Borla, 1988); Guseppe Cremascoli and C. Claudio Leopardi,
ed., La bibbia nel Medio Evo (Bologna: Dehoniane, 1996); Peter Dinzelbacher, Hand-
buch der Religionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum, 2 vols. (Paderborn: Schöningh,
2000–2010 [Frühmittelalter and Hoch- und Spätmittelalter respectively]; Id., Körper und
Frömmigkeit in der mittelalterlichen Mentalitätsgeschichte (Paderborn: Schöning, 2007); Id.,
Mentalität und Religiosität des Mittelalters (Klagenfurt: Kitab, 2003); Id., Von der Welt durch
1201 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

die Hölle zum Paradies – das mittelalterliche Jenseits (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008); Laurent
Feller, Église et société en Occident, VIIe–XIe siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004); Domi-
nique Iogna-Prat, La Maison Dieu: Une histoire monumentale de l’Eglise au Moyen Age
(v. 800–v. 1200) (Paris: Seuil, 2006); Jean-Marie Mayeur, ed., Die Geschichte des Christen-
tums (1990; Freiburg i. Br.: Herder 1994 sqq.); Francesca Sautman, La religion du quoti-
dien: Rites et croyance populaires de la fin du Moyen Age (Florence: Olschki, 1995); Robert N.
Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1995); François Vandenbroucke, La spiritualità del medioevo (Bologna:
EDB 1991); André Vauchez, Les laïcs au Moyen Age: Pratiques et expériences reli-
gieuses (Paris: Cerf, 1987).

Peter Dinzelbacher

[The colleague who had committed to write this article withdrew his collabor-
ation in the last minute, so there was not enough time to find a scholar willing
to provide a more substantial substitution. The subject, however, was too im-
portant to neglect it in our Handbook. As editor, I am most grateful to Peter
Dinzelbacher for his heroic and outstanding efforts to fill this lacuna to the
best of his ability in the shortness of time.]

Research Institutes, Archives,

and Libraries for the Middle Ages

A. Introduction
In Europe most non-university academic research institutions are called
“Academies of Sciences.” These academies were generally founded in the 17th
and 18th centuries. The oldest still existing society is the Accademia dei Lincei,
founded in 1603 in Rome. The society was split into the Pontificia Academia
Scientiarum and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1870. The German Academy
of Sciences Leopoldina (Schweinfurt, Germany), the Royal Society, the Académie
Française, and the Académie des Sciences, all still existing today, were founded
in the second half of the 17th century as places for scholars and scientists to
exchange ideas and carry out joint research projects.
Unfortunately, there is no national academy in Germany today. The Ber-
lin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Berlin-Brandenburgische Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften, BBAW) in Berlin was founded in 1700 as the Prussian
Academy of Sciences (Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften); the Bavarian Acad-
emy of Sciences and Humanities (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, BADW)
was founded in Munich in 1759; other Academies were founded in Göttin-
gen in 1751; in Leipzig in 1846; in Heidelberg in 1909; in Mainz in 1949; and
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1202

the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy was established in Düsseldorf in

1970. An academy was founded in Hamburg in 2004, but it is currently still
in status nascendi (http://www.akademienunion.de).
The institution of the academy originally consisted of two divisions, the
Class for History (Historische Klasse) and the Class for Philosophy (Philosophi-
sche Klasse); natural sciences, including mathematics and physics, were thought
of as part of the Class for Philosophy. Today the academies are still divided
into two classes, but the classes now comprise the Class for Philosophy and
History (which also includes the humanities and social sciences) and the
Class for Mathematics and the Natural Sciences. Academies of sciences and
humanities offer institutional fellowships to scholars who are elected for dis-
tinction and achievement in their disciplines. The academies have always
been committed to a founding idea of assembling the country’s most emi-
nent scientists and scholars for the purpose of interdisciplinary discussion
and independent research. Academies have been both scholarly societies
in the traditional sense and modern non-university research establishments
to this day. They organize conferences and public lecture series, and they
promote young scientists through special programs. An academy’s legal
status is that of a public corporation.
The Academies have established commissions and committees that
are in charge of long-term editing of sources (for an excerpt, see http://
www.badw.de). Academies also have ordinary, corresponding and honorary
fellows. Ordinary fellows of the academies must have attained distinction
in their branches of scientific study to hold a title. The academies appoint
scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of
knowledge within their subject areas.

B. Individual Academies Today

The following overview focuses on research facilities which aim to accom-
plish remarkable achievements in Medieval Studies. It seems most reason-
able to allow the individual institutes to speak for themselves for introduc-
tory purposes, hence relevant descriptions from the institutions’ websites
are given here along with their corresponding URLs.

Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, BADW (Bavarian Academy of Sciences

and Humanities). In the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities modern
research in Medieval Studies is carried out in the Class for Philosophy and
History, mainly in “The Historical Sciences” and “Philology and Literature.”
Again, the brief descriptions of the research goals of each Committee will be
borrowed from their own Websites (http://www.badw.de).
1203 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

One of the most important historical research institutions is the Commit-

tee for the Publication of the Documents of Emperor Friedrich II, focusing on the
“edition of the documents of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa which has now
been completed in Vienna. Its materials are scattered from Malta to Stock-
holm, from London to Moscow. The project will contribute to legal and con-
stitutional history, particularly that of Germany – in the sense of the old Em-
pire – Italy and southern France, and also to general history, and the history
of chancellery and administrative systems in the first half of the 13th cen-
tury”
The Committee for the Publication of the Corpus of Greek Documents of the Middle
Ages and the Recent Period: was set up by the founder of Byzantine studies, Karl
Krumbacher. “Since 1900 it has been collecting and interpreting Greek
documents of the Middle Ages (C.E. 330–1453). From the outset the Com-
mission has devoted its “attention to imperial documents as the most im-
portant category. These were dealt with systematically in five volumes of re-
gesta (1924–1995; some parts have appeared in a second, corrected edition).
At present this stage of the work is being completed with a revision of the
first volume of regesta. The Commission possesses a unique photographic
archive containing, as well as imperial documents, a wealth of diplomas of
clerical and lay officials and even private papers” (http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for the Repertorium Fontium Historiae Medii Aevi “participates
in the edition of a research guide for medieval studies which has been devel-
oped in international cooperation and has been published in Rome since
1964: the Repertorium Fontium Historiae Medii Aevi, a comprehensive directory
of sources concerning mediaeval history. The project, established in 1954 by
agreement of learned institutions from nearly all European countries, re-
vises and renews an originally German publication: the Bibliotheca Historica
Medii Aevi, published by August Potthast (1824–1898) in 1896, which is a
guide to narrative sources of the European Middle Ages from 375–1500.
For each work and author, the ‘Repertorium’, also referred to as the ‘New
Potthast’, provides the dates of textual transmission, publication history
and critical modern editions, followed by further items such as translations,
facsimiles and current research literature. The ‘Repertorium’ is published in
Latin. While the printed ‘Repertorium’ includes all-European data up to the
date of publication (2007 completed up to the letter “T”), some countries
with extensive historical sources have set up an accompanying computer-
based service which updates information on the respective country’s own
historical sources and is published in the national language. The German
subproject of the ‘Repertorium’ which is supervised by the committee pre-
pares an up-to-date version and is currently working at the electronic publi-
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1204

cation of historical sources from the German Middle Ages (‘Geschichts-

quellen des deutschen Mittelalters’). Since March 2006 this project is being
published on the committee’s own website: www.repfont.badw.de.
The Committee for the Study of the Ancient City “studies the archaeology of
city life in Greek and Roman antiquity. Its main aim is to reconstruct cultural
relationships; the ancient city is understood in all its visible forms as a reflec-
tion but also as an element of political and social structures and processes.
With this purpose in mind, the Commission supports research projects and
publications which seek answers to these questions through excavation, the
cataloguing of monuments and experimentation with interdisciplinary
methods. It also arranges colloquia on particular research projects, which
bring together specialists from the various disciplines of ancient studies”
(http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for the Comparative Archaeology of the Roman Alpine and Danube
Regions “does research on the beginning and close of Roman government in
the Alpine and Danube regions which were focal points of ethnic contacts
and mutual exchanges of ideas. Apart from written testimonies, there are
sources such as material findings which, in field studies, can be gathered in
rural settlements, urban areas, military estates, religious institutions, and
tombs, and analyzed for their cultural historical meaning. The publications
of the Committee appear in the book series Münchner Beiträge zur Vor- und
Frühgeschichte (abbreviated MBV, 55 volumes up to date). A second series, en-
titled Frühgeschichtliche und provinzialrömische Archäologie. Materialien und For-
schungen (abbreviated FPA, 7 volumes up to date) publishes editions of his-
torical sources and research on adjoining cultural regions and ages.”
The Committee for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA) began its work in
1921. It publishes the holdings of ancient Greek and Italian pottery vessels in
German museums. “Vessels illustrated with scenes taken from everyday life,
myth, religious observance, the theater, or historical events are important
sources for the history of religion, society, art, popular beliefs and other
aspects of the ancient world. The vessels themselves, irrespective of their
illustration, form a material basis for research into the history of trade and
technology as well as archaeometry”.
The Committee for the History of Music supervises, the Lexicon Musicum Lati-
num, “a dictionary of Latin technical terms used in music during the Middle
Ages down to the end of the 15th century. It encompasses the broad litera-
ture of medieval music theory, which is a central source for the understand-
ing of medieval culture and the development of Western music. The vocabu-
lary of these works has to some extent been preserved in musical terminology
down to the present day. In contrast to general dictionaries, the articles of the
1205 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

Lexicon Musicum Latinum place greatest emphasis on factual explanation and

the establishment of the sense of a word in various contexts of musical the-
ory. Supplementary studies and editions of medieval treatises on music ap-
pear in a series of their own” (http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for the Publication of German Inscriptions of the Middle Ages
and Early Modern Period “has the task of recording and preparing scholarly edi-
tions of the inscriptions found in Bavaria. The material, published in numer-
ous registers, comprises all writings older than 1650 on durable materials,
such as stone, metal, wood, glass, leather, etc. having a generally monumen-
tal character in form and content. The aims of the project are principally
philological, the establishment and publication of critical texts with com-
mentary as source-materials for almost all branches of history, ethnography,
and many other subjects. It is of value in the conservation of historical monu-
ments; it also contributes to a better understanding of the development of
epigraphic styles, which may one day be reflected in a textbook of German
epigraphy or, in the more distant future, of European epigraphy in general.
[…] Inscriptions are a cultural asset particularly threatened by environ-
mental factors. By undertaking photographic documentation as part of the
recording process the Commission is performing an increasingly important
role in their protection and preservation” (http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for the Publication of the Medieval Library Catalogues of Germany
and Switzerland works with medieval manuscripts, “the most important car-
riers of the literary, religious, and scholarly production of the Middle Ages
and of the ancient and early Christian foundations of European learning.
Extant manuscripts, however, represent only a fraction of what once existed
and are very unevenly distributed. Therefore medieval library catalogues
and similar documents are extremely valuable as an extra source of in-
formation. For countless places they provide a direct insight into the accessi-
bility of education and intellectual training as well as the range and intensity
of study; they illustrate different phases in the development of thought; and
they help to solve problems of literary history. The collection and publi-
cation of such first-class sources is an indispensable step toward quantifying
and evaluating the cultural significance of the medieval intellectual heri-
tage” (http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for the Publication of the Works of Johannes Kepler, founded
in 1935 as part of Physics and Engineering Sciences,”is responsible for the
annotated historical and critical edition of the printed works, correspon-
dence, and most of the scientific manuscripts of the astronomer Johannes
Kepler (1571–1630). The edition includes a general index and a catalogue
of the manuscripts. Up to 2000, 22 volumes have been published; two vol-
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1206

umes with editions of manuscripts and the index volume are still to come”
(http://www.badw.de).
The Commission for Dialect Research “publishes a Bayerisches Wörterbuch
(Bavarian Dictionary) covering the vocabulary of the Bavarian dialects from the
early Middle Ages down to the present day. While past forms of speech are at-
tested by literary sources, present-day Bavarian usage is ascertained largely
by putting written questions to dialect speakers. In an operation designed to
supplement and correct material gathered between the two World Wars,
about 500 dialect speakers in Upper and Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palat-
inate are at present supplying information on the use, meaning and cultural
background of words and phrases. The first fascicule of the dictionary ap-
peared in 1995” (http://www.badw.de).
The Commission for Semitic Philology supports the Wörterbuch der Klassischen
Arabischen Sprache (Dictionary of Classical Arabic), published by the Deutsche
Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) and by the Commission for
Semitic Philology, which registers and presents in the form of a thesaurus the
vocabulary of classical Arabic from pre-Islamic times to the early Islamic
Middle Ages. The Commission also publishes Beiträge zur Lexikographie des
Klassischen Arabisch, which appear as “Reports of the Philosophical and His-
torical Class of the Bavarian Academy” (http://www.badw.de).
The task of the Committee for Medieval German Literature “is to survey the
transmission of German medieval literature. A series entitled “Münchener
Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters,” in
which more than 110 volumes have appeared since 1960, makes available edi-
tions and studies of texts, genres and topics which up to now have received
too little attention or none at all. There are research projects dealing with
general themes and bodies of texts: a catalogue of religious plays and the
Laments of the Virgin Mary in the German language, published in 1986;
a catalogue of all illustrated medieval manuscripts written in German, ar-
ranged by subject matter, of which two volumes and three further fascicles
have appeared since 1986; and medieval poetry. Until now ninety texts have
been published, more than 10 percent are accessible as online-texts (http://
www.badw.de). Another important task is the edition of Middle High German
Literature in the series Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters” (http://www.badw.de).
The Committee for Research into Cuneiform Writing and the Archaeology of West-
ern Asia: The Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA)
“is dedicated to the cultures and peoples of the ancient Near East – the
Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Urartians, Elamites and many
others – who have left us hundreds of thousands of texts written in cunei-
form on clay tablets. Geographically the area of ‘cuneiform culture’ effec-
1207 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

tively embraces the whole of the Near East from Anatolia and Syria, through
modern Iraq into Iran and the region of the Persian Gulf. Ancient Mesopota-
mian culture begins before 3000 BC with the invention of writing, and ends
with the conquest of Mesopotamia by Alexander the Great, around 330 BC”
(http://www.badw.de).
Committee for the Publication of a Dictionary of Old Occitan: In the Middle Ages
Old Occitan (formerly known as Old Provençal) was a language of literature
and culture influential far beyond its geographical boundaries in southern
France (see the entry for Occitan Studies here in this Handbook). It was also
the language of the troubadours, whose songs were decisive in shaping the
love lyric of the great medieval European literatures. The only existing work
which gives a comprehensive view of the vocabulary of Old Occitan, François
Raynouard’s Lexique Roman in six volumes, was written in the first half of
the 19th century (1834–1845). Between 1894 and 1924, it was supplemented
by Emil Levy’s Provenzalisches Supplementwörterbuch in eight volumes. For a
long time linguists, literary scholars, and historians throughout the world
have felt the need for a dictionary of Old Occitan which would satisfy modern
standards and reflect the advances in scholarship made during the last
hundred years. Publication of the new Dictionnaire de l’occitan médiéval (DOM)
began at the end of 1996 and has been supervised since 1997 by the Commis-
sion for the Publication of a Dictionary of Old Occitan” (http://www.badw.de).
Committee for the Publication of German Inscriptions of the Middle Ages and Early
Modern Period – Munich Section: “The aims of the project are principally philo-
logical, the establishment and publication of critical texts with commentary
as source-materials for almost all branches of history, ethnography and many
other subjects. It is of value in the conservation of historical monuments;
it also contributes to a better understanding of the development of epi-
graphic styles, which may one day be reflected in a textbook of German epi-
graphy or, in the more distant future, of European epigraphy in general”
(http://www.badw.de).

Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, BBAW (Berlin-Bran-

denburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities). Reconstituted after the Ger-
man re-unification in 1992, BBAW originates from the Kurfürstlich Branden-
burgische Sozietät der Wissenschaften (Electoral Brandenburg Society of Sciences and
Humanities), founded by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1700. The BBAW’s
main focus is on research projects reconstructing cultural heritage through
long-term ventures rich in tradition, such as dictionary projects, editions,
documentations, and bibliographies; on interdisciplinary and trans-disci-
plinary projects devoted to the identification and tackling of scientific and
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1208

social problems of the future; and on promoting the dialogue between the
scientific community and the general public. Together with the German Acad-
emy of Sciences Leopoldina, the BBAW has founded the Junge Akademie, which
provides unique support to excellent junior scientists, even compared to in-
ternational standards.
“A major contribution in the fields of Medieval Studies is the compi-
lation of the inventory of medieval glass paintings, the Corpus Vitrearum Medii
Aevi, in the ‘new’ federal states of Germany in cooperation with the Academy
of Science and Literature in Mainz (Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften, ADWM).
The Research Center’s work is dedicated to the study of medieval stained
glass preserved in German churches and museums of the former Federal
Republic of Germany. These monuments of art, endangered by natural decay
and pollution, are documented in photographs as well as drawings and pub-
lished according to the guidelines of the international CORPUS VITREARUM /
CORPUS VITREARUM MEDII AEVI (CVMA). Founded in 1952, the inter-
national CORPUS VITREARUM was the first research enterprise of art history
to be formed at an international level. It was placed under the patronage of
the Comitée International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA), the UNESCO, and the Union
Académique International (UAI). Its goal is to support the totality of research
work, the edition of all medieval stained glass in one complete work, and
scientific exchanges across national borders. Today, the CVMA has thirteen
member countries in Europe, the United States, and Canada, united in the
International Board. Since 1975, the Research Center in Freiburg has been
placed under the administrative authority of the Akademie der Wissenschaften
und der Literatur Mainz. The Center has a specialized library containing a great
number of books on medieval stained glass and photo archives with approxi-
mately 33000 large-sized black and white negatives and 60000 color trans-
parencies of stained glass located in Germany and parts of France (Alsace
and Lorraine). At present, the Research Center’s team is comprised of four art
historians, a photographer, a draughtsman, and a secretary” (excerpt, cp.
http://www.bbaw.de).

Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, HAW (Heidelberg Academy of

Sciences and Humanities). The HAW was created in 1909 in the tradition of
the Electoral Palatine Academy of Sciences, which had been founded by Elector
Carl Theodor in 1763 (http://www.haw.baden-wuerttemberg.de). The
Heidelberg academy is home to a broad range of research projects. Under the
supervision of the Philosophical-Historical Section is for example, the publi-
cation of dictionaries. The Historical German Legal Dictionary is concerned with
the compilation of an historical dictionary of the legally relevant vocabulary
1209 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

of western German language varieties and their different historical stages

from the beginning of written records to about 1800, based on an archive
of some 2.5 million references. At the same time it provides full-text access to
the entire dictionary in database form and a series of machine-readable
sources.” Other dictionaries are: Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, Etymologi-
cal Dictionary of Old French, Dictionary of Old Gascon, and Old Occitan.
The Research Project dealing with the Edition of Reuchlin’s Correspon-
dence was established in 1994 to produce a complete critical edition of
Johann Reuchlin’s correspondence (1455–1522) (http://www.haw.baden-
wuerttemberg.de). The aim of the Melanchthon Edition is a complete critical,
annotated edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. “With a total of 9,722
items, the correspondence of the Humanist and Reformer Philipp Melanch-
thon (1497–1560) is one of the most extensive in the European history of
ideas” (http://www.bbaw.de).
“The edition of Martin Bucer’s writings in German is the German branch
of an international project designed to produce the first complete historical-
critical edition of the works of Martin Bucer (1491–1551). The other two
sections of the edition (Bucer’s works in Latin and his correspondence) are
taking shape at the Universities of Strasbourg (with the assistance of an inter-
national team of editors) and Erlangen. The edition of Martin Bucer’s writ-
ings in German is one of the most important ongoing projects relating to the
entire Reformation period” (http://www.bbaw.de).
“The Luther Index: Both in scale and significance, the writings of Martin
Luther assembled in the 70 text volumes of the Weimar Edition represent the
most important oeuvre produced by a German author prior to Goethe. Their
national and international impact extends far beyond ecclesiastical and theo-
logical history and has a major bearing on the history of ideas and culture.
No writer before or after Luther has had a comparable influence on the devel-
opment of the German language. However, the scope and diversity of his
work makes it difficult to obtain an overall view of it. The indexes provide
access to the abundance of texts by this highly prolific author both for theo-
logians and for philologists, philosophers, historians, experts in legal, social,
literary, scientific and art history and not least for representatives of ecclesi-
astical, cultural and political life and other sectors of the public domain.
After the index of place names (1986) and personal names (1987) the five vol-
umes comprising the Latin subject index appeared between 1990 and 1999.
The German subject index, of which two volumes have already been pub-
lished (2001/2003), will also extend to five volumes” (http://www.bbaw.de).
The German Inscriptions of the Middle Ages (Epigraphic Database
Heidelberg, EDH) prepares basic research in antique and medieval times:
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1210

“The aim of the project EDH is to integrate Latin inscriptions from all parts
of the Roman Empire into an extensive database. Since 2004 Greek inscrip-
tions from the same chronological period are also being entered. It consists of
three databases: the Epigraphic database, the Epigraphic Bibliography, and the
Photographic Database. It exists at an international level alongside other data-
base projects, which serve as a working tool for the swift and simple collec-
tion, viewing, supplementing, and interdisciplinary analysis of epigraphic
material. Furthermore it is possible to create KWIC indices and to combine
the stored information as freely as possible. At present, the Epigraphic data-
base contains over 40000 inscriptions and thus includes most of the es-
pecially noteworthy inscriptions published outside the main editions. The
database presents revised and often corrected versions. It is not confined to
the mere texts, but links them to all the available bibliographical data and in-
formation on the inscriptions proper and on the monuments or objects they
are inscribed upon. The revision of the inscriptions proceeds from a card-
index in which the relevant literature is collected. The bibliography is stored
in a separate database, the Epigraphic Bibliography. The existence of draw-
ings and photographic documentation, e. g., from the collection of the
Photographic Library, widens the source of information, which may be made
use of. In many cases autopsy offered a direct approach to the original monu-
ment and its inscription. With the help of other similar projects, which are
supported by Heidelberg, a basis for this has already been created. There is,
for instance, the new edition of the inscriptions from the Hispanic provinces:
CIL II2: fasc. 5 Conventus Astigitanus; fasc. 7 Conventus Cordubensis (both
volumes are mainly the work of Dr. Armin U. Stylow [Kommission für Alte
Geschichte und Epigraphik des DAI München]); fasc. 14 Pars meridionalis
conventus Tarraconensis) and the supplements to the main collection of
inscriptions from Rome (CIL VI: fasc. 8,2 Tituli imperatorum domusque
eorum; fasc. 8,3 Tituli magistratuum populi Romani). Since September 2002
the Epigraphic Database, the complete contents of database including all
available information on the monuments or on the inscriptions forming part
of them, is accessible online at: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/
sonst/adw/edh/index.h tml.en” (see also the entry on “Epigraphy” here in
this Handbook).

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften ÖAW (Austrian Academy of

Sciences). The Austrian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1847. It is remark-
able that the academy in Vienna was one of the latest foundations of the
former empire. Earlier foundations were in Brussels (1769), Prague (1776),
Budapest (1825), and Zagreb (1836).
1211 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz suggested an Academy of Sciences be

established in Vienna in 1713 on the model of the Royal Society in England and
the Académie des Sciences in France. Several further attempts were made under
Empress Maria Theresa to establish an academy (inter alia by J. C. Gott-
sched in 1750), but only in 1837 did 12 scholars file a petition to initiate the
long negotiations that finally led to the foundation of the Kaiserliche Akademie
der Wissenschaften in Wien by Imperial Patent on May 14, 1847. The academy,
which represented as a “learned society,” a stronghold of scientific freedom,
was granted the use of the old university in the center of Vienna in 1857 as its
permanent headquarters.
The academy soon produced initial research achievements in the hu-
manities and natural sciences. In the humanities, the academy began research-
ing and publishing important historical sources about Austrian history (e. g.,
the Archive of Austrian History, the source edition Fontes rerum Austriacarum
(from 1849 onwards), or the Biographisches Lexicon des Kaisertums Österreichs [by
C. Wurzbach]). The Austrian Academy of Sciences edited the Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica in cooperation with the academies in Munich and Berlin start-
ing in 1875. Research trips were conducted to Asia Minor, Southern Arabia,
and Nubia. Archaeologists started to investigate the Roman border fortifi-
cations (limes) along the Danube in Upper and Lower Austria (Carnuntum,
Mautern), and began excavations in Egypt and Turkey around the turn of the
century. Linguistic research was also undertaken in the Balkans and Near East.
The humanities and social sciences were newly constructed in 2006; the
center’s formation induced various synergistic effects. The newly created
Center for Medieval Studies at first consisted of the Institute for Realia of the Middle
Ages and the Early Modern Period” (Krems, Lower Austria). The aim of the insti-
tute was to conduct research into the everyday life of the Middle Ages and
early modern period (until c. 1630), based on aspects of material culture. This
research interest is connected with the term Realia and follows a concept of
materiality, in which objects by themselves do not constitute any meaning
but are only perceived as meaningful in the course of the communication
processes that allowed them to become Realia. In that way, Realia are also
given their functions, values, and meanings. A Realia is to be seen as a com-
munication medium in any everyday performances “in the midst of things.”
The research field of Realienkunde includes multilevel networks of relations
between humans and objects, and the patterns of meanings that are con-
structed in those relations. Archaeological evidence and other material
objects, as well as images and texts, represent the source corpora that are ana-
lyzed. Such a variety of sources (for example, panel paintings, poetry, non-
literary prose, and archaeological findings) makes interdisciplinary ap-
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1212

proaches necessary (at the moment, archaeology, German studies, history,

and art history are studied by scholars at the institute). A central aim of the
Institute is the systematic documentation of past societies’ material traces of
the life. A principal focus of this documentation is a concentration on the
photographic collection of visual sources and artefacts. The source analysis is
determined by the interest in object- and space-related structures as well as
patterns of signs and actions in everyday life.
One of the main activities of the Institute is the quantitative and quali-
tative extension of the image database REALonline by the regular addition
of new images and the improvement of their digital presentation. In the
years 1998–2000 a database for literary texts was generated. The base texts
were the songs of Neidhart, manuscript c (mgf 779). In 2002 the “Veilchen-
schwank” (Sterzinger Neidhartspiele) at St. Stephen Cathedral in Vienna was
performed publicly (direction: Gertrud Blaschitz; see also Neidhartrezeption
in Wort und Bild, ed. ead., 2000). In 2004, the experiences with web-based re-
search led to the beginning of the international and interdisciplinary inter-
net-project “Medieval Animal Database” (MAD) in cooperation with scholars
at ELTE and CEU (Budapest), and at the universities of Cambridge and
Durham. The aim of the project is the use of the internet for the creation of
networks of expert knowledge concerning the multiplicity of source in-
formation about animals (archaeo-zoological evidence, different texts,
images). Thus, the comparative approach to the variety of medieval animal
worlds should be facilitated. Along those lines, Peter Dinzelbacher pub-
lished a collection of articles dealing with animals in the European history of
mentality (Mensch und Tier in der Geschichte Europas, 2000). See now also Tiere als
Freunde im Mittelalter, selected and trans. by Gabriela Kompatscher to-
gether with Albrecht Classen und Peter Dinzelbacher (2010). In the ar-
chaeological research field, the sensational thirteenth-century “Hoard of
Fuchsenhof” (Upper Austria) – the discovery of a medieval treasure (coins,
jewelry, buttons, etc.) in 1997 – was analyzed in cooperation with the Upper
Austrian Landesmuseum” (www. schatzfund-fuchsenhof.at).
In the field of Castle Studies, comprehensive source material concerning
the daily life in castles has been collected and analyzed. In the framework
of the EU-program “Culture 2000” the castles in the Rhine/Danube-area
(Germany, Austria, Hungary) have been examined.
In cooperation with the Medieval Center at the University of Bergen and
the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University (Buda-
pest) the analysis of the supplications to the Apostolic Penitentiary with
regard to the history of daily life was started (the edition of the material for the
germanophone areas of medieval Europe has already reached volume 6). The
1213 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

main interest lies in the role of the Penitentiary in local contexts and in prob-
lems of clerical mobility. Literary and iconographic constructions of reality
are the topic of two book projects that are analyzing the spatial and social re-
lations of phenomena dealt with in these sources to medieval everyday life.
The project “The Road” is dealing with patterns of mobility in German
literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Those patterns had mainly
symbolic and didactic function. They used the daily situations on the road but
certainly did not mirror them. The project “Gender Encounters” led to simi-
lar results concerning everyday reality. The focus of the project is on friend-
ship, love, power, and violence in visual and textual sources. New activities
of the Institute were also established in 2003/04 with the development
of virtual possibilities for the dissemination of historical information in
schools and museums: The multimedia-presentation of regional history in
the Lower Austrian Landesmuseum was further developed, and eLearning-
modules for Austrian schools were created (http://www.imareal.oeaw.ac.at).
The Commission for Paleography and Codicology of Medieval Manuscripts in Aus-
tria (Kommission für Schrift- und Buchwesen des Mittelalters) is involved in nearly
all manuscript cataloguing projects in most libraries in Austria. Special cata-
logue types were created to cover the special and individual research goals:
the project groups “illuminated manuscripts” or “manuscripts in German
in Austrian Libraries,” as well as the “Generalkataloge” (general catalogues)
giving detailed information about content, codicology, history and illumi-
nation of all manuscripts in a collection (project group is “Manuscripts
in Austrian Libraries”). Additionally monographs have the goal to allow
the publication of more detailed research on particular questions. Com-
pleted research results are usually published in the printed series “Veröffent-
lichungen der Kommission für Schrift- und Buchwesen des Mittelalters,”
but more and more the internet is used as the medium of publication
especially to house broad databases of images of medieval manuscripts”
(http://www.ksbm.oeaw.ac.at).
The Institute of Byzantine Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is en-
gaged in basic and advanced Byzantine studies, concerning the systematic
research of the historical geography of the Byzantine Empire, research on
manuscripts, texts and small objects as well as the evaluation of these objects
and texts, and is editing the results in studies, catalogues, lexicons and edi-
tions. The scientific focal points are:
An atlas of the Byzantine Empire (TIB) for the period between the begin-
ning of the 4th century and the 15th century, in other words from late an-
tiquity up to the Turkish conquest in 1453, with main maps for all regions
drawn to a scale 1:800000.
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1214

A critical edition of the Registrum Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani from

the manuscripts Cod. Vind. Hist. gr. 47 and 48 (1315–1402) with translation,
short commentary and diplomatic glossary.
The Repertorium of Greek Scribes, which records all Greek manuscripts in
the libraries of Europe from 800 to 1600.
A project on Byzantine Lead Seals in Austria with detailed descriptions of
lead seals and with (cultural) historical comments.
A Dictionary of Byzantine Greek, which is published in fascicles at intervals
of about two years.
A project on Byzantine Epigrams in Non Literary Transmission with an edi-
tion and analysis.
A research unit on Diplomacy, which examines and reexamines docu-
ments of the Byzantine imperial chancellery and other groups of documents
(http://www.oeaw.ac.at/byzanz).
The Institute for Medieval Research (Vienna): In accordance with the research
strategy employed by the Institute, it combines long-term projects to docu-
ment, edit, and analyze sources of medieval history with new approaches
to interpreting these sources and answering the methodological challenges
of the day. Thus, the Institute combines two strengths, namely a long experi-
ence in the technicalities of dealing with the sources, and a vibrant inter-
national network involved in current debates and methodologies. Since its
foundation in 1998, the Institute has been the home to three major edition
projects which proceed at a considerable pace. The Viennese branch of Diplo-
mata edition of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica is in charge of the diplomas
of King Philippe of Swabia, a key source for his much-contested reign at the
beginning of the 13th century. The second large-scale program is the Aus-
trian section of the Corpus of Medieval and Early Modern Inscriptions. The third
long-term program are the Regesta Imperii, edited by the Austrian Academy
in collaboration with the Academy at Mainz and offering well-documented
short summaries of all charters and acts of government by the medieval em-
perors. Edition projects are also run by the Early Medieval Research Group.
One of them is the facsimile edition of the 9th-century charters of St Gall,
a unique corpus of hundreds of early-medieval originals, for the Chartae
Latiniae Antiquiores. In 2006, the first of 12 planned volumes has come out.
Work has also progressed on the comparative electronic edition of three
manuscript books of Frankish history from the ninth century and on the
study of the manuscript transmission of the Annales Fuldenses.
The question of early medieval ethnic identities is central to the insti-
tute’s early medieval research. Such research has far-reaching implications,
even for the problems of nations and nationalism in the contemporary
1215 Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages

world. The significance of this research was recognized by the awarding of

the Wittgenstein Prize to Walter Pohl in 2004; the prize money has allowed
to start a large-scale project that delved deeper into the meaning of ethnicity
and the construction of identities in early medieval Europe and beyond.
At the core of the project is the relationship between Christian and ethnic
discourse, between the establishment of ethnically-defined states and the
institutional growth of the Church, sketching a new paradigm for the under-
standing of the Occident. This conceptual frame has so far been presented
at several occasions, in Vienna, Leeds, Leipzig, Padua, and Glasgow, and is
being attended to by several young researchers who work, among other
things, on hagiography, sermons, exegesis, inscriptions, perceptions of
time, and monastic communities.
Research at the Institute is conducted in the context of an international
network, which is reflected, among others, in a number of conferences and
workshops, and the resulting conference proceedings (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/
gema).

C. Research Institutes Outside of the Academy

Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). In the group of non-university-
research institutes, the MGH, based in Munich, deserves particular mention.
The MGH is a collection of medieval documents which were assembled
by the concerted efforts of notable historians and form the principal source of
our knowledge of German medieval history. The idea of this documentation
originated with Freiherr vom Stein, who to this end founded the Gesell-
schaft für Deutschlands ältere Geschichtskunde in 1819. The enterprise was
planned in detail by G. H. Pertz, who had directed its extensive publi-
cations until 1873. The Society was 1937 integrated into the Reichsinstitut
für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde. A further reorganization took place in
1946, taking the title Monumenta Germaniae Historica since 1959 (http://
www.mgh.de/geschichte/geschichte-allgemeines/).
Nowadays most of the projects mentioned above are supervised by free-
lancers (“freie” Mitarbeiter), who are engaged mostly at universities.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, MPG (Max Planck Society). The MPG was founded

on February 26, 1948, and is the successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the
Advancement of Science. The society defined itself as a research organization
that enjoys autonomy to perform basic research at a high international stan-
dard. The first president was Otto Hahn, who received the Nobel Prize
for Chemistry in 1944. The Max Planck Society had 25 institutes and a budget
of approximately DM 7 million (3 3.6 million) in 1948. The number of
Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages 1216

research institutes increased to 52 in 1966. At the start of the 1970s the MPG
employed 8,000 people, including roughly 2,000 scientists. The budget
of the MPG grew to more than DM 400 million (3 204.5 million) in 1970.
As a result of the growth, consolidation and quality management that oc-
curred in the 1990s after the German Reunification, a new program ran from
1990–1996 and pursued the goal of strengthening the universities in the
eastern states by establishing 27 working groups, two branches of institutes
as well as the supervision of seven centers for the humanities. At the same
time there was a long-term program to found new institutes: 18 institutes,
one sub institute as well as a research unit were established in the eastern
states in 1998, which also meant that the pressure to save money grew in
the western states. In the summer of 1996 a simultaneous build-up and cut-
back began, which led to an intensified consolidation in the western states;
four institutes were closed (cell biology, the Gmelin Institute, behavioral
physiology, and biology) and astronomy was partially closed. The states
in eastern Germany were generously supported during this reorganization
process. (http://www.mpg.de/english/aboutTheSociety/aboutUs/history/
index.html).
In March 2007, the famous Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen
(Max Planck-Institut für Geschichte zu Göttingen, MPI für Geschichte) was closed
and reestablished as the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic
Diversity (MPI zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften).
The book series of the MPI für Geschichte are: Veröffentlichungen des Max-
Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, Germania Sacra, Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichts-
wissenschaft, Neue Richtungen der Geschichtswissenschaft (in Russian), Sovre
menn«e napravleniѕ v istoriљesko“ nauke (na russkom ѕz«ke)

Gertrud Blaschitz
1217 Scripts

Scripts

A. Definition
Writing throughout history has taken on many different forms. It includes
alphabets, syllabaries, and pictograms; it can be produced with a chisel, a
brush, or a pen; it can be written on stone, paper, parchment, wax, or bark.
And, of course, it can be written with and on many other things as well. In the
context of the Medieval West, writing constitutes the communication of in-
formation using an alphabet and was normally produced with a pen and ink,
or by scratching into a surface such as wax with a stylus, or by inscribing
stone with a chisel or something similar. However, writing is not an innate
activity: it must be learned and therefore must be taught. One important
consequence of this is that methods of writing are transmitted from teacher
to student, and innovations by a master were often adopted by his or her pu-
pils. In this way, different styles of writing developed at different dates and at
different places, and these different ways of writing are broadly classified
into scripts. Furthermore, as Stanley Morison (Politics and Script, 1972) and
others have emphasized, different scripts were also developed for different
purposes at the same time and place. Terminology differs, but the discussion
here will follow that articulated by Malcolm Parkes: script is “the model
which the scribe has in mind’s eye when he writes,” and hand “what he ac-
tually puts down on the page” (English Cursive Book Hands, 1969, xxvi). Scripts
are therefore defined to be the styles of writing, with more or less formalized
principles in the formation of letters and the range of letterforms available to
a scribe or writer. A script is a somewhat abstract concept, whereas a (scribal)
hand is the physical manifestation of that script by a human writer. Thus a
scribe in England toward the end of the 10th century may have tried to write
the script which scholars today call Caroline minuscule, but his hand might
show features of another script, for example Square minuscule.

B. Writing-Systems
Most writing-systems in the world can loosely be classified as alphabetic, syl-
labic, or logogrammatic (but see Peter T. Daniels “The Study of Writing
Systems,” The World’s Writing Systems, ed. id. and William Bright, 1996,
Scripts 1218

3–10). A syllabary is a system where each symbol represents a distinct syl-

lable, although some additional symbols are often allowed to modify the
sounds involved; the best-known examples are the katakana and hiragana in
modern Japanese. In logogrammatic systems each symbol represents a dis-
tinct word or morpheme without necessarily reflecting the sound in any way;
the best-known example is Chinese, although not all Chinese writing is
strictly logogrammatic. Alphabets, in contrast, typically employ far fewer
symbols but allow combinations of symbols to represent a given sound. Such
systems were used almost universally throughout the medieval and modern
West and include the Greek, Cyrillic, Latin, Runic, Ogham, Semitic, and
Arabic alphabets. Systems of shorthand or abbreviations, such as the Tiro-
nian nota, fall slightly outside this scheme, insofar as these symbols often
represented syllables and often could not be combined to produce new
sounds (an important characteristic of an alphabet not true of a syllabary). Of
the alphabets, the Latin came eventually to dominate writing in all the lan-
guages of Western Europe, although some letters from other systems were
sometimes retained for writing in the vernacular (for example the 6 and q in
both Old English and Modern Icelandic). This article is limited to the scripts
used to write the Latin alphabet throughout the Middle Ages in Western Eu-
rope, although some of the principles are equally applicable to other forms of
writing.

C. Paleography
The study of medieval handwriting is known as paleography, but the precise
meaning of this term is itself contentious. In the narrow sense, paleography
is the study of “old” writing, namely the handwriting of the Classical and
Medieval periods, and it has been concerned primarily with the identifica-
tion of scribal hands, and especially the dating and localization of such
hands. It is also often restricted to writing with ink or paint, or scratching
into wax, and specifically not encompassing inscriptions, the study of which
is known as epigraphy. Sometimes also writing on papyrus has been separ-
ated off into a different study known as papyrology. However, particularly in
the 20th century, some scholars have argued that one cannot study script in
isolation, and therefore that paleography should encompass all aspects of
writing and book-production: not only the script but also decoration, page-
layout, binding-structures, materials, and provenance; not only writing with
pen and ink but also inscriptions. This has resulted in debate about the na-
ture of manuscript-studies and its various specializations (Jean Mallon,
“Qu’est ce que la paléographie?,” Paläographie 1981, ed. Gabriel Silagi, 1982,
47–52; Albert Derolez, “Codicologie ou archéologie du livre?,” Scriptorium
1219 Scripts

27 [1973]: 47–49, responding to Albert Gruijs, “Codicology or the Archae-

ology of the Book? A False Dilemma,” Quaerendo 2 [1972]: 87–108; see also
Pavel Spunar, “Définition de la paléographie,” Scriptorium 12 [1958]:
108–10). Some scholars have take this even further to argue that study
should focus on the social element of script-history and therefore not on
writing itself (Attilio B. Langeli, “Ancora su paleografia e storia della scrit-
tura,” Scrittura e Civiltà 2 [1978]: 275–94; Alessandro Pratesi, “Paleografia
in crisi?,” Scrittura e Civiltà 3 [1979]: 329–37). However, most scholars now
tend to use paleography to mean the study of scripts, and codicology or ar-
chaeology of the book to describe study of the physical book including its
manufacture and construction, and to use book history or manuscript
studies to refer to the field as a whole. This more clearly delineated terminol-
ogy will be used throughout this discussion.

D. Script-Systems
Writing in Western Europe is almost universally based on the Latin alphabet
which was spread by the Romans until the fall of the Roman Empire. The
scripts have been classified into broad groups based on the periods during
which they were written. The earliest of these is the Late Antique script-sys-
tem which was written until the fall of the Roman Empire. These scripts have
received a good deal of scholarly attention, despite the fact that relatively few
examples survive. This attention is at least partly because of their historical
position as the basis on which all later Western writing developed. Discus-
sions of the Late Antique script-system can be found in many manuals of
Latin paleography (Edward M. Thompson, Introduction to Greek and Latin
Palaeography, 1912; Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 1990). Late An-
tique scripts have been divided into two groups, majuscule and minuscule.
The exact definitions of these terms vary, but majuscule scripts are formal,
normally carefully written, and with the letters falling between two (theor-
etical) horizontal lines; they therefore lack ascenders and descenders, that is,
strokes which extend above and below the body of the letters (like that of d
and p in modern type). Minuscule writing is often (but not necessarily) more
rapid and less formal than majuscule, with more joins between different
strokes, and the script is “four-line” in that ascenders and descenders rise
above and below the bodies of letters. These definitions of majuscule and
minuscule are somewhat problematic: majuscule letter-forms can be written
with cursive elements, and Elias A. Lowe referred consistently to the four-
line Insular Half-uncial script as “majuscule” (Codices Latini Antiquiores II, 2nd
ed. 1972, esp. xv-xvi; for criticism see T. Julian Brown, A Palaeographer’s View,
1993, 201). The main majuscule scripts of the Late Antique period have been
Scripts 1220

classified as Square Capitals (capitalis quadrata), Rustic Capitals (capitalis rus-

tica), and Uncial (uncialis). Examples of minuscule script from the same
period are Old Roman cursive, New Roman cursive, and Half-uncial. The
“Old” and “New” systems of Roman script have been the subject of extensive
discussion, most notably by Jean Mallon (see especially his Paléographie
romaine, 1952), who overturned the received view by arguing that the New
Roman system did not develop directly from the Old but rather from a
change of writing-angle in bookhand. Mallon’s work was extremely in-
fluential; he has been described as a “pioneer” whose work “has been uni-
versally recognized as revolutionizing the study of early Latin writing” (Alan
Bowman and David Thomas, Vindolanda: The Latin Writing Tablets, 1983, 55),
and he and Robert Marichal between them largely represent the so-called
“French School” of paleography (Pavel Spunar, op. cit., 108; for the term
compare also Emanuele Casamassima and Elena Staraz, “Varianti e cam-
bio grafico nella scrittura dei papiri latini: Note paleografiche,” Scrittura e
Civiltà 1 [1977]: 9; and Jan-Olof Tjäder, “Die Forschungen Jean Mallons zur
römischen Paläographie,” MIÖG 61 [1953]: 385–96). Some of Mallon’s con-
clusions were challenged by Giorgio Cencetti (“Ricerche sulla scrittura
latina nell’età arcaica I: Il filone corsivo,” Bullettino dell’‘Archivio paleografico
italiano’ new series 2–3, pt. 1 [1956–57]: 175–205), who emphasized the im-
portance of “everyday writing” (scrittura usuale) and hypothesized an other-
wise unknown “unofficial cursive” (scrittura normale) to explain the develop-
ment, an explanation which has since proved popular in Italian scholarship.
The debate has been continued since with important contributions from Jan-
Olof Tjäder (op. cit.), Emanuele Casamassima and Elena Staraz (op. cit.),
and others.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, different parts of Latin Europe con-
tinued to use majuscule scripts but developed their own distinct styles of
minuscule which are known collectively as pre-Caroline or National scripts.
These emerged out of the Late Antique script-system and are probably based
primarily on New Roman Cursive but with admixture of forms from other
scripts. The most important of these pre-Caroline scripts are the Insular, Me-
rovingian, Luxeuil, Corbie “ab”, Visigothic, and Beneventan minuscules.
The Insular system of scripts incorporated the full range of writing from
formal majuscule to current minuscule and included the first use of minus-
cule as a formal bookhand. The script-system has been characterized most
fully by T. Julian Brown (A Palaeographer’s View, 1993, esp. 201–20). He used
this term to refer to writing in the British Isles up until the first Viking Age in
England circa A.D. 850; he identified five distinct grades of Insular script, and
his classification has received wide acceptance (ibid.; compare also Michelle P.
1221 Scripts

Brown, A Guide to Western Scripts, 1990; David N. Dumville, Palaeographer’s

Review, 1999; Jane Roberts, Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500,
2005). Nevertheless, many details of Brown’s argument have been con-
tested by David Dumville (op. cit.), and both positions in turn draw on
work by Elias A. Lowe (Codices Latini Antiquiores II, 2nd ed. 1972) and Ludwig
Bieler (“Insular Palaeography, Present State and Problems,” Scriptorium 3
[1949]: 267–94), amongst others.
The next minuscule to develop as a formal bookhand was probably Lu-
xeuil minuscule. Its place of origin had been debated, despite the name, until
Elias A. Lowe’s seminal article in which he demonstrated the script’s origin
and practice at Luxeuil and not Northern Italy (Palaeographical Papers II, 1972,
389–98). Although Lowe argued for the influence of local charter-scripts,
he also acknowledged features of Insular script in the Luxeuil type, and since
him scholars have debated aspects of the script including its relationship to
the Insular minuscules; this debate was intensified by a fragment now in
Durham which was written in an early Insular script but which contains a
section, probably by the same scribe, in what appears to be a variant of Lu-
xeuil minuscule (William O’Sullivan, “The Palaeographical Background
to the Book of Kells,” The Book of Kells, ed. Felicity O’Mahony, 1994, 181;
id., “Insular Calligraphy: Current State and Problems,” Peritia 4 [1985]: 352;
David Dumville, Palaeographer’s Review, 1999, 29–31). Elias A. Lowe and
Bernhard Bischoff have considered Merovingian scripts and particularly a
group of manuscripts with important parallels to the so-called Corbie “ab”
script (Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien I, 1966, 31–34; Elias A.
Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores VI, 1953, xxi–xxvi). Lowe was also the first
to comprehensively treat Visigothic minuscule, a script which was practiced
in Spain from the 8th to the 13th century and which has since been the subject
of more extensive discussion (Elias A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers I, 1972,
2–65, and II, 459–65; Agustin Millares Carlo, Tratado de paleografía españ-
ola, 3rd ed. with José Manuel Ruiz Asencio, 1983). Indeed, Elias A. Lowe
remains one of the primary authorities on Visigothic script, although some
of his conclusions have since been questioned (Bernhard Bischoff, Latin
Palaeography, 1990 [German original 1979], 100 n. 29). One debate surround-
ing Visigothic script is its origin: it is usually thought to have developed di-
rectly and exclusively from changes in local writing (Luigi Schiaparelli,
“Intorno all’origine della scrittura visigotica,” Archivio storico italiano, 7th ser.
12 [1929]: 165–207), but the discovery of closely related script apparently
produced on Mount Sinai prompted Bernhard Bischoff to suggest in-
fluence through North Africa (op. cit., 97–98; referring to material previously
discussed by Elias A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers II, 1972, 417–40 and
Scripts 1222

520–74). This view has by no means always been accepted (Jan-Olof Tjäder,
“Latin Palaeography, 1977–79,” Eranos 78 [1980]: 74). Particularly closely as-
sociated with Elias A. Lowe and subsequently Virginia Brown is the Benev-
entan script of southern Italy which was practiced from the eighth until the
early 13th century. Lowe’s comprehensive study has been updated in some of
its detail but it remains the primary authority on this script (The Beneventan
Script, 1914; 2nd ed., 2 vols., prepared and enlarged by Virginia Brown, 1980;
see also Virginia Brown, “A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts,”
Medieval Studies 40 [1978]: 239–89 and 50 [1988]: 584–625).
The next major phase of writing in Western Europe is the Caroline, a
script which is associated with the court of Charlemagne. Leopold Delisle,
amongst others, emphasized the script’s origin in Antique Half-uncial and
cursive (“Memoire sur l’école calligraphique de Tours au IXe siècle,” Memoires
de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres 32/1 [1885]: 29–56); Elias A Lowe
tended to emphasise the so-called “Maudramnus” script of Corbie (Codices
Latini Antiquiores VI, 1953, xxiv); but the most authoritative argument today
is probably that of Bernhard Bischoff who identified different stages of de-
velopment. According to his account, the first stage occurred simultaneously
in different centers from about the 780s; these developments spread first
through the Carolingian heartland and then, from about the second decade
of the 9th century, throughout the rest of the empire (Mittelalterliche Studien
III, 1981, 1–4; Latin Palaeography, 1990 [German original 1979], 112–18).
In addition to Bischoff’s scholarship, an important earlier synthesis of Ca-
roline script was produced by Giorgio Cencetti (“Postilla nuova a un prob-
lema vecchio,” Nova Historia 7 [1955]: 1–24), and a useful historiography and
analysis has been published by David Ganz (“The Preconditions for Caroline
Minuscule,” Viator 18 [1987]: 23–43). Caroline minuscule represents a new
approach to writing in its attempts to improve legibility by eliminating most
abbreviations and ligatures, by changing some of the letter-forms, and by
standardizing the script. The spread of this script was rapid, both because of
its practical virtues and because of Charlemagne’s political influence, and it
moved into most areas of Western Europe by the mid-9th century. There were
exceptions, however. T. Alan Bishop (English Caroline Minuscule, 1971) and
David Dumville (English Caroline Script, 1993) have treated the introduction
of Caroline script into England, an introduction which did not occur until
the late 10th century. As noted above, Beneventan and Visigothic minuscules
were practiced until the 13th century, and the papal chancery did not adopt
Caroline script until the 12th century. The letter-forms of the Insular script-
system were retained in Ireland with only minimal change until the 20th cen-
tury; this script still awaits thorough treatment but discussions include
1223 Scripts

those by Ludwig Bieler (id. and James Carney, “The Lambeth Commen-
tary,” Ériu 23 [1972]: 1–55; id. and Gearóid Mac Niocaill, “Fragment of an
Irish double psalter with glosses,” Celtica 5 [1960]: 28–39) and William
O’Sullivan (“Notes on the Scripts and Make-Up of the Book of Leinster,”
Celtica 7 [1966]: 1–31; “Manuscripts and Palaeography,” A New History of Ire-
land I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland, ed. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, 2005, 511–48).
Caroline script underwent a significant change from the late 11th cen-
tury, with the most obvious difference being greater angularity and lateral
compression. The precise reasons for this change have been debated at some
length. Olga Dobiache-Rojdestvenskaja had argued that the script-sys-
tem resulted from Beneventan influence (“Quelques considérations sur les
origines de l’écriture dite gothique,” Mélanges d’histoire du moyen âge offert à
Ferdinand Lot, 1926, 691–721); her work was influential at the time but is no
longer accepted (Luigi Schiaparelli, Note paleografiche, 1969, 437–62).
Other prominent suggestions include a change in the cut or type of pen,
economic constraints, legibility, or aesthetic taste, but none of these sugges-
tions is now widely supported (Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic
Manuscript Books, 2003, 68–70). Whatever the cause, it is now generally ac-
cepted that this change began in the late 11th century, starting probably in
England and Northern France but under Anglo-Saxon influence. The most
authoritative discussion of this Anglo-Norman script in England, and there-
fore by implication the origin of Gothic script, is that by Neil R. Ker, English
Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (1960). Neil Ker did not
refer explicitly to Gothic script as such; indeed the change in writing-style
took place over some two hundred years, and this gradual process has also
lead to difficulties in terminology (T. Alan Bishop, Nomenclature des écritures
livresques, 1954, 7–14), but the eventual outcome is universally recognized.
Perhaps the best-known and most characteristic phenomenon in the
Gothic script-system is that of ‘biting curves’ which arose toward the end of
the 12th century and which were first characterized by Wilhelm Meyer (Die
Buchstabenverbindungen der sogenannten gotischen Schrift, 1897). More recently
this script-system has become associated with Gerard Lieftinck and his
students, particularly J. Peter Gumbert. Gerard Lieftinck argued for a de-
liberate system of scripts of varying degrees of formality which he classified
largely on the basis of stylistic features such as the treatment of serifs and the
use of loops (Manuscrits datés conservés dans les Pays-Bas I, 1964, xiii-xvii; Nomen-
clature des écritures livresques, 1954, 15–34). This classification has been largely
accepted, although many minor alterations and refinements can be found in
the literature (for two see Michelle P. Brown, A Guide to Western Scripts, 1990,
80–81, and Albert Derolez, op. cit., 20–27). Perhaps the most substantial
Scripts 1224

contribution to our understanding of lower-grade English Gothic scripts is

that by Malcolm Parkes with his characterization of Anglicana (English Cur-
sive Book Hands, 1969; compare also T. Alan Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 1961).
Most recently, the script-system as a whole has been treated in depth by Albert
Derolez in a book which is already proving influential (The Palaeography of
Gothic Manuscript Books, 2003). Albert Derolez has largely preserved Gerard
Lieftinck’s classification but has included a fairly detailed review of it and
its reception and has surveyed some of its more widely accepted modifica-
tions.
In 14th-century Italy, Humanism was underway, and with it an interest
in Classical texts and their transmission. Along with this is evident an intol-
erance for the Gothic script which by this time was often very difficult to
read, mostly because of its compression and extensive abbreviations. Poggio
Bracciolini therefore developed a new script in Florence toward the end of
the 13th century for the benefit of Coluccio Salutati, the Chancellor of this city
who had himself experimented with new styles of writing, and Bracciolini’s
script spread further when he became a papal scriptor in 1404 and retained
this post for half a century. Similarly, Niccolo Niccoli also contributed to the
development of the book script at this time and invented Humanistic cursive
(also known as Italic script). Important studies of Humanistic script include
Berthold L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanist Script (1960);
James Wardrop, The Script of Humanism (1963); A. C. de la Mare,
“Humanistic Script” (Das Verhältnis der Humanisten zum Buch, ed. Fritz
Krafft and Dieter Wuttke, 1977, 89–110); S. Zamponi, “La scrittura
umanistica” (Archiv für Diplomatik 50 [2004]: 467–503). The cursive script
spread from Italy, gradually replacing the informal secretary hands, while
the higher-grade Humanist bookhands were themselves replaced by print.

E. History of Research
The detailed study of script began in the context of diplomatics as the need
arose to establish the authenticity or otherwise of documents or charters. The
person credited with first doing so and described as the “father of palaeo-
graphy” is Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), a Benedictine of the congregation
of St Maur at the abbey of St-Germain-des-Pres. Mabillon’s palaeographi-
cal work was published as De re diplomatica in 1681 with a second edition in
1709; it included not only a discussion and characterization of scripts but
also a large number of reproductions of extant documents.
Approximately contemporary with Mabillon was Humfrey Wanley
(1672–1726) who was active at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and later as
Keeper of the Library for Robert Harley and then Robert’s son Edward.
1225 Scripts

Wanley sought to bring a more scientific approach by systematically study-

ing and cataloguing many hundreds of manuscripts, an approach most evi-
dent in his catalogue of ancient Western manuscripts (Librorum Veterum Sep-
tentrionalium Catalogus, 1705). He is also credited with the principle of dating
by comparing an unknown hand with similar examples of known date and
especially the surviving documents (for his methods see especially the Letters
of Humfrey Wanley, ed. Peter Heyworth, 1989; and The Diary of Humfrey Wan-
ley, ed. Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 1966).
Other early important figures of the 18th century include Scipione Maf-
fei (Istoria diplomatica, 1727), René Prosper Tassin, and Charles François
Toustain (Nouveau traité de diplomatique, 1750–65). The 19th century saw im-
portant figures in English paleography such as Edward A. Bond and Edward
M. Thompson, joint founders of the Palaeographical Society and producers
of important facsimiles and handbooks (Edward A. Bond et al., Palaeographi-
cal Society Facsimiles of Manuscripts and Inscriptions, 2 series, 1873–94; Edward
M. Thompson et al., New Palaeographical Society Facsimiles of Manuscripts and In-
scriptions, 2 series, 1903–1930; Edward M. Thompson, Introduction to Greek
and Latin Palaeography, 1912).

F. The “New Paleography”

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, paleography was considered a Hilfs-
wissenschaft, a “helper-study” which was auxiliary to history, philology and
diplomatic, and which was best suited to people who were incapable of so-
called “higher” pursuits. This began to change with the work of Leopold De-
lisle and continued with Ludwig Traube and the “New Palaeography.” In
Julian Brown’s terms, Traube brought new methods and new purpose to
the field (“Latin Palaeography since Traube,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bib-
liographical Society 3 [1959–63]: 361–81). By incorporating the study of scripts
into the broader study of language and culture, Ludwig Traube demon-
strated that this study was a valid end in itself. In addition, he also brought
new standards of comprehensive and objective analysis. He recognized the
need to study all examples of a particular script, and he emphasized Mabil-
lon’s principle that all aspects of a book must be considered together, not just
its script. This more scientific approach was continued by his pupil, Elias A.
Lowe (spelled Loew until 1918). Lowe began his doctoral work in philol-
ogy but recognized that such work was impossible until the manuscripts
were fully understood, and so he began work which resulted in the first sys-
tematic study of all surviving script from Benvento (The Beneventan Script,
1914; 2nd ed., 2 vols., prepared and enlarged by Virginia Brown, 1980). This
study has since been heralded as a landmark in paleography for its compre-
Scripts 1226

hensiveness and attention to detail. Indeed, such was the combined effect of
Traube and Lowe that William Lindsay described the former as having
“made a new epoch in Latin Palaeography,” and one of the latter’s books
as “the first fruits of the New Palaeography” (“The New Palaeography,”
The Classical Review 28 [1914]: 209–10). Indeed, William Lindsay himself
was to follow a similar vein. Ludwig Traube had demonstrated the import-
ance of abbreviations in paleographical study in a book which Julian Brown
described as “the greatest single advance in technique that has been made
since the discipline of palaeography was founded,” and Lindsay took this
approach yet further in a monumental study of his own (T. Julian Brown,
“Latin Palaeography since Traube,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographi-
cal Society 3 [1959–63]: 361–81, referring to Ludwig Traube, Nomina Sacra,
1907; William M. Lindsay, Notae Latinae, 1915, suppl. by Doris Bains,
1936). Lowe also continued to apply the new method in his later work
on Uncial script which revealed a pre-existing lack of objective criteria for the
dating and localization of such hands, a lack which he sought to fill (see es-
pecially his English Uncial, 1960, as well several of his Palaeographical Papers,
1972). His systematic approach then culminated in Codices Latini Antiquiores,
published in eleven volumes and a supplement from 1934 to 1971 with a se-
cond edition of volume 2 published in 1972. These volumes contain photo-
graphs and descriptions of some 1811 manuscripts, the objective being to in-
clude all surviving Latin literary manuscripts from before A.D. 800.

G. Models of Script-Development
Another recurring question in paleography is what model best represents
the development of new scripts. Indeed, an important component of script-
history is the way in which writing changes and in which one script emerges
out of another, and perhaps the best-known voice in this field is that of
Jean Mallon. Mallon has been credited with giving the study of scripts
even greater importance than Ludwig Traube did, the latter viewing
paleography as a discipline within the context of philology, but the former
recognizing the need not only to describe scripts but also to explain them
(Pavel Spunar, “Définition de la paléographie,” Scriptorium 12 [1958]:
108–9). In this way Jean Mallon and Robert Marichal, as representatives
of the so-called “French School” of paleography, produced a series of import-
ant and influential studies which show almost more interest in the process
of writing than in the product (see especially Jean Mallon, Paléographie
romaine, 1952; and Jean Mallon, Robert Marichal, and Charles Perrat,
L’écriture latine de la capitale romaine à la minuscule, 1939). These scholars fo-
cused on the development of the New Roman script-system, as discussed
1227 Scripts

above. However, although each script is the product of the unique historical
and cultural circumstances in which it is born, nevertheless certain common
factors can be identified in the models for their development, and these fac-
tors can often be applied to different scripts from very different times. One
such model is based on the interaction between formal bookhands and infor-
mal cursive scripts. Thus Bernhard Bischoff suggested that innovations in
formal script, particularly for Roman and early (pre-Caroline) medieval writ-
ing, often result from scribes’ efforts to minimize the differences between
those scripts and informal writing, and that new features which had been in-
troduced into the informal scripts were later canonized in the formal writing
(see especially Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 1990 [German origi-
nal 1979], 52–53; Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books,
2003, 5). Similar in direction, although different in detail, is the suggestion
that cursive scripts were sometimes formalized and “upgraded” into book-
hands. This “bottom up” movement, or ones similar to it, have been sug-
gested to explain several scripts including the entire Insular script-system
(T. Julian Brown, A Palaeographer’s View, 1993), the development of Uncial
(Bernhard Bischoff, op. cit., 66), and Anglicana Formata (Malcolm B.
Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, 1969, xvi–xviii). However, in at least
some of these cases, an alternative model has been suggested. In this scenario
the development is from higher grade scripts “down” to lower-grade ones.
Thus Elias A. Lowe and Bernhard Bischoff both argued that the Insular
minuscule scripts developed out of late Antique Half-uncial (Codices Latini
Antiquiores II, 2nd ed. 1972, xv; Bernhard Bischoff, op. cit., 84), and Jan-Olof
Tjäder suggested that Uncial developed from capital scripts (“Latin Palaeo-
graphy, 1977–79,” Eranos 78 [1980]: 73). Related is the model of a “debased”
script which is reformed back “up” by a prominent individual; scripts con-
sidered in this way include Roman Revived Uncial (Armando Petrucci,
“L’onciale romana,” Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 12 [1971]: 75–134), and Hu-
manistic minuscule (Berthold L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of
Humanist Script, 1960); in these cases a significant element was also the desire
to recover elements from earlier writing. Elias A. Lowe also emphasized
the role of prominent scribes, arguing that “style is invariably the creation of
a single master” and that this style then becomes a type, or script, if that
master has sufficient followers (Palaeographical Papers II, 1972, 389–90); simi-
lar models have been suggested or demonstrated for the origin of a late style
of English Caroline minuscule (T. Alan Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule,
1971; David Dumville, English Caroline Script, 1993), as well as Humanist
script as just noted.
Scripts 1228

H. Aspect, Ductus, and Morphology

Just as there are competing (and complementary) models for script-develop-
ment, so are there for the analysis and discussion of particular scripts. Mon-
tague R. James declared that he depended on the aspect, or general impres-
sion, of a page more than its minutiae (Richard W. Pfaff, “M.R. James on the
Cataloguing of Manuscripts,” Scriptorium 31 [1977]: 104). Related to this
is the notion that paleography is an “art” which must be acquired by experi-
ence, rather than a science which can be taught: the former view was also
articulated by James (ibid.) and other highly respected paleographers
(Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 1990 [German original 1979], 3;
Françoise Gasparri, Introduction à l’histoire de l’écriture, 1994, 96). Others
have questioned this view (Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manu-
script Books, 2003, 1–2) but disagree as to the preferred alternative. One such
alternative is to consider writing as a physical process and therefore that the
basic element in handwriting is the sequence of strokes used to construct a
letter. This sequence of strokes is usually called ductus, although the term is
problematic and “structure” or “tratteggio” have been used instead (cf. Jean
Mallon, Paléografie romaine, 1952, 22–25; Léon Gilissen, L’expertise des écri-
tures médiévales, 1973, 40–1; Armando Petrucci, Breve storia della scrittura
latina, 1989, 22–23; Bernhard Bischoff, op. cit., 51 n. 4; Michelle P.
Brown, A Guide to Western Scripts, 1990, 3; for discussion of these see Albert
Derolez, op. cit., 6–7). Although ductus is generally recognized as import-
ant when establishing the development of handwriting, some have ques-
tioned its usefulness in describing scripts (Léon Gilissen, “Analyse et évol-
ution des formes graphiques,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 21 [1992]:
323–46, supported in this respect by Jan-Olof Tjäder, “Latin Palaeography,
1975–77,” Eranos 75 [1977]: 157–58). An alternative to ductus is therefore
morphology, the examination of the shapes of letters independently of their
construction, and this has been used both to describe hands and also to estab-
lish typologies of script (Albert Derolez, op. cit., esp. 6–9; J. Peter Gum-
bert, “A Proposal for a Cartesian Nomenclature,” Miniatures, Scripts, Collec-
tions: Essays presented to G. I. Lieftinck IV, ed. J. Peter Gumbert and Max J. M.
de Haan, 1976, 45–52; Gerard Lieftinck and J. Peter Gumbert, Manu-
scrits datés conservés dans les Pays-Bas II, 1988, 22–35; Neil R. Ker, Catalogue
of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, 1957; David N. Dumville, English
Caroline Script, 1993). However, this approach has itself been criticized for ig-
noring the physical processes which underlie writing and which themselves
influence script, and the study both of ductus and of morphology is beset with
problems of inconsistent nomenclature and subjective analyses.
1229 Scripts

I. Nomenclature
This difficulty of inconsistent nomenclature has been the subject of dis-
cussion almost since the beginning of the discipline itself, with that pro-
posed by Jean Mabillon (De re diplomatica, 1681, 2nd ed. 1709) being criti-
cized by Scipione Maffei (Istoria diplomatica, 1727), and with a so-called
“Linnaean” system proposed instead by René Prosper Tassin and Charles
François Toustain (Nouveau traité de diplomatique, 1750–1765). Much vari-
ance is still evident in the literature today despite many calls for and propos-
als of uniform systems (as well as those cited below see also Giorgio Cen-
cetti, “Vecchi e nuovi orientamenti nello studio della paleografia,” La
Bibliofilia 50 [1948]: 4–23; Franco Bartoloni, “Paleografia e diplomatica
III,” Relazioni del X Congresso internazionale di scienze storiche I, 1955, 434–43;
Françoise Gasparri, “Pour une terminologie des écritures latines,” Codices
Manuscripti 2 [1976]: 16–25). This difficulty is all the greater when crossing
language barriers as an established term in one language may receive differ-
ent translations in another. It is partly for this reason that the Comité Inter-
national de Paléographie was founded in 1953, seeking to establish an authori-
tative standard terminology and classification (Bernhard Bischoff,
Gerard I. Lieftinck, and Giulio Battelli, Nomenclature des écritures liv-
resques, 1954). In practice the Comité has enjoyed only limited success so far, as
the difficulties are considerable, but some classifications of script are now
widely accepted (some responses to Nomenclature are by L. M. J. Delaissé,
Scriptorium 9 [1955]: 290–93; Georges Despy, Revue belge de philologie et d’his-
toire 34 [1956]: 174–81; Alessandro Pratesi, La Bibliofilia 58 [1956]: 44–47;
Pavel Spunar, Eunomia 1 [1957]: 35–40, and 95–97; Emmanuel Poulle,
Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes 123 [1965]: 558–61; for further comment on
the book and its reception see also Albert Derolez, op. cit., 22). Perhaps the
most successful of these classifications is that of the Gothic script-system.
This is most closely associated with Gerard I. Lieftinck (Nomenclature des
écritures livresques, 1954, 7–14; Manuscrits datés conservés dans le Pays-Bas I, 1964,
xiii–xvii) and has been accepted by most scholars, although sometimes with
modification. Also fairly well established is the system of scripts used in the
late Antique period, as is Caroline minuscule and the broad categories of the
so-called national or early medieval scripts of Western Europe. However,
finer distinctions within those categories are much less widely accepted.
Some scholars have used descriptive terms which incorporate elements of
geography (Ernst Crous and Joachim Kirchner, Die gotischen Schriftarten,
1928, described as a “trend-setter” in this respect by Derolez, op. cit., 16);
some have used chronology (David N. Dumville, “English Square Minus-
cule Script,” Anglo-Saxon England 16 [1987]: 147–79; and 23 [1994]: 133–64);
Scripts 1230

some “extra-paleographical” features; and many have used national desig-

nations; but others have rejected all of these as overly prescriptive except in
particular and unusual cases (Derolez, op. cit., 13–17). Similarly, some
scholars have striven for very precise terminology with many narrow cat-
egories (for example David Dumville, op. cit.), whereas others have used far
fewer and much looser categories for the same material (for example Jane
Roberts, Guide to Scripts Used in English Writing Up To 1500, 2005).

J. Reproductions and Facsimiles

An important development in the study of scripts, particularly from the
mid-19th century onwards, has been a steady improvement and increase in
photographic reproductions. Such reproductions have been used in pa-
leography since the field’s inception, as demonstrated by the engravings in
the fifth book of Jean Mabillon’s De re diplomatica (1681; 2nd ed. 1709), and
by those prepared by Humphrey Wanley for his Librorum Veterum Septen-
trionalium Catalogus, 1705. However, such engravings were expensive to pro-
duce and were dependent on the accuracy or otherwise of the engraver. Since
the mid-19th century, entire volumes and even series of facsimiles have been
issued (Leonard Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography, 1984, 23–66). The im-
portance of such facsimiles both for teaching and research is hard to overstate
as they allow access to a large quantity of material, thereby allowing students
to gain experience with a variety of different manuscripts (for the import-
ance of which see Montague R. James, in Richard W. Pfaff, op. cit.), allow-
ing scholars to view otherwise inaccessible collections (Elias A. Lowe, Palaeo-
graphical Papers II, 1972, 575–76), or allowing the study of entire corpora of
widely dispersed material (Elias A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols.
plus supplement, 1934–71; Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, ed. Albert Bruckner
et al., 1954–; and the many different volumes of the Dated and Datable Manu-
scripts [Manuscrits datés] produced under the auspices of the Comité Inter-
nationale). As well as a steady increase in the quantity of material thus repro-
duced, so there is also an increase in the quality as new technologies are
developed. Engravings were replaced by photographic reproductions and in
some cases by full color. Microfilm, although poorer in quality than a good
printed facsimile, has nonetheless resulted in great improvements by way of
reduced cost and improved portability (one example among many is the
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile series, 1994–). Most recently,
manuscripts are also being digitalized and published electronically. One
of the earliest and perhaps the best-known of these is Kevin Kiernan’s
Electronic Beowulf (2000); this was very influential in its time but was pro-
duced before the technology was sufficiently mature (Manfred Thaller, re-
1231 Scripts

view of Electronic Beowulf, The Medieval Review 01.02.09 [2001], online). Photo-
graphic and display technology is now much improved and much cheaper,
and so a large number of manuscripts are now available as CD-ROM editions
with integrated text, commentary, and images (the Bodleian Digital Texts
series; the Scholarly Digital Editions series), and libraries are increasingly
publishing on-line photographs of entire manuscripts or even collections
with minimal or no annotation (Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis,
www.ceec.uni-koeln.de; Codices Electronici Sangallenses, www.cesg.unifr.ch;
Irish Script on Screen www.ibos.ie). Indeed, this has led to discussion of the the-
ory and practice of representing text and image on the screen (for example
the Occasional Papers of the Canterbury Tales project, edited by Norman
Blake and Peter Robinson). Facsimiles in any format certainly open
up what was once a rather closed and specialized field (Raymond I. Page,
“On the Feasibility of a Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Glosses: The View from the
Library,” Anglo-Saxon Glossography, ed. René Derolez, 1992, 77–96) by
granting wide access to high-quality images, but they do come with some
risks. Both scholars and librarians are sometimes guilty of treating a facsim-
ile as an adequate substitute for the original manuscript: scholars to avoid
the trouble of seeing the original, and librarians as an excuse to restrict access
to the same. However, photographic reproductions capture only limited
codicological information about a given manuscript, and finer details of the
script – including ink color – are lost in all but the very best photographs.
Thus tension remains between the need to preserve manuscripts and the
desire to consult them, and it seems unlikely that this difficulty will be fully
resolved for some time yet.

K. Quantitative Methods
The increase in reproductions, and particularly digital images, alongside the
difficulties in nomenclature and in subjective responses to script has led to
debate over the role of quantitative methods in the field. One of the first and
best-known proponents of purely quantitative analysis is Léon Gilissen
who constructed a “typical” alphabet on the basis of extensive measurements
of scribal hands (L’expertise des écritures médiévales, 1973). His method was
largely rejected as impractical and flawed and has generally fallen out of
favour (Alessandro Pratesi, “A proposito di tecniche di laboratorio e storia
della scrittura,” Scrittura e Civiltà 1 [1977]: 199–209; Bernhard Bischoff,
op. cit., 44[–45] n. 48; J. Peter Gumbert, “Commentare ‘Commentare Bi-
schoff’,” Scrittura e Civiltà, 22 [1998]: 402–03). However, the movement to-
ward more objective measures had begun, as Bernhard Bischoff noted in
1979 (op. cit., 3). Bischoff’s comments sparked a furious debate over the
Scripts 1232

role of objective measurement in modern paleography. On the one side are

Bischoff, Alessandro Pratesi and others who argued against the appli-
cation of rigid mechanical methods to a fluid, “human” process (Alessandro
Pratesi, op. cit., 199–209; see also the debate by Giorgio Costamagna et
al., “Commentare Bischoff,” Scrittura e Civiltà 19 [1995]: 325–48; 20 [1996]:
401–07; and 22 [1998]: 405–08). On the other hand are Gilissen, J. Peter
Gumbert, and others; these include Albert Derolez who has criticized the
tendency of paleographers to make subjective assertions and thereby pro-
duce “an authoritarian discipline, the pertinence of which depends on the
authority of the author and the faith of the reader” (op. cit., 9; see also J. Peter
Gumbert, op. cit.; and rebuttal by Alessandro Pratesi, “Commentare Bis-
choff: un secondo intervento,” Scrittura e Civiltà 22 [1998]: 405–08). Neverthe-
less, it is still unclear even among proponents of the quantitative approach
how best to implement such a procedure. One possibility, used by Gumbert
amongst others, is to count the frequencies of different letter-forms, to
compare which letter-forms were used by which scribes, and to use this
information to group like hands with one another on a statistical basis (see
especially Anscari M. Mundó, “Méthode comparative-statistique pour la
datation des manuscrits non datés,” Paläographie 1981, ed. Gabriel Silagi,
1982, 53–58; and compare J. Peter Gumbert, “A Proposal for a Cartesian
Nomenclature,” Miniatures, Scripts, Collections: Essays presented to G. I. Lieftinck
IV, ed. J. Peter Gumbert and Max J. M. de Haan, 1976, 45–52; Gerard
Lieftinck and J. Peter Gumbert, Manuscrits datés conservés dans les Pays-Bas
II, 1988, 22–35; Bernard J. Muir, “A Preliminary Report,” Scriptorium 3
[1989]: 273–88). However, a statistical approach requires a large volume of
data taken from a large set of samples, and this in turn demands much tedi-
ous effort from the paleographer. This tedious effort could in principle be
obviated by feeding digital images into a computer for analysis, and it seems
likely that such methods will prove valuable provided that sufficient caution
is exercised in interpreting the results. Such approaches are presently in their
infancy, but are now beginning to receive increased attention (Arianna
Ciula, “Digital Palaeography,” Digital Medievalist 1 [2005], online; Peter A.
Stokes, “Palaeography and Image Processing: Some Solutions and Prob-
lems,” Digital Medievalist 3 [2007/8], online; M. Rehbein et al., eds., Kodikolo-
gie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter, 2009).
1233 Semiotics of Culture

Select Bibliography
Elias A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. plus supplement (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1934–71; 2nd ed. of vol. 2, 1972); Jean Mallon, Robert Marichal, and Charles
Perrat, L’écriture latine de la capitale romaine à la minuscule (Paris: Arts et métiers, 1939);
Giorgio Cencetti, “Vecchi e nuovi orientamenti nello studio della paleografia,”
La Bibliofilia 50 (1948): 4–23; Bernhard Bischoff, Gerard I. Lieftinck, and Giulio
Battelli, Nomenclature des écritures livresques du IXe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique, 1954); T. Julian Brown, “Latin Palaeography since
Traube,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 3 (1959–63): 361–81; Bert-
hold L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanist Script (Rome: Edizioni di storia
e letteratura, 1960); Elias A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers 1907–1965, 2 vols., ed. Ludwig
Bieler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin
Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984);
Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. by Daíbhí
Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990; rev.
imp. 1991; German original 1979); T. Julian Brown, A Palaeographer’s View: Selected
Writings of Julian Brown, ed. Janet M. Bately, Michelle P. Brown, and Jane Roberts
(London: Harvey Miller, 1993); Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript
Books: From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).

Peter A. Stokes

Semiotics of Culture

A. Definition
Modern semiotics, sometimes called sign theory, has had a transformative
impact on linguistic, literary, and cultural studies through the 20th century,
despite resisting clear definition or forming a truly coherent discipline. For
Medieval Studies in the 21st century, its lasting effect has been on the shape
and methodology of research orientation: as the profession has shifted from
the recovery and editing of texts and artifacts to the interpretation of those
materials, semiotics has influenced the development of a critical attitude
focused on investigating how symbols, images, cultural details, and social
situations signify together in a text through networks of references and
associations that may no longer be obvious to readers removed in time and
place. This essay will survey briefly some of the key terms and models associ-
ated with modern semiotics, examine some modifications by medievalists,
and then look to the sign theories espoused by medieval writers themselves
and how they have been utilized in connection with trends in critical theory.
Semiotics of Culture 1234

The second half surveys some examples of recent studies in medieval culture
employing semiotic methods.
Semiotic analysis has been applied to such fields as linguistics, philos-
ophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and literary, aesthetic, and media
theory. In Medieval Studies, it has been utilized in textual, philosophical,
artistic, and codicological analyses, all of which contribute to the study of
medieval culture in different ways. Semiotics has not been widely institu-
tionalized as an academic field in its own right. Umberto Eco at the Univer-
sity of Bologna could be cited as a rare exception, holding a chair in Semiotics
there since 1971 (following a stint as Professor of Semiotics at Milan begin-
ning in 1966). Lund University in Sweden has a Department of Semiotics, as
does the University of Tartu in Estonia.
Semiotics could be defined briefly as the study of “semes” or signs, the
smallest units of meaning, deriving from the Greek 
« (semeiotikos)
signifying an interpreter of signs. However, semioticians have not come to
universal agreement in defining exactly what constitute “signs,” nor in
adopting a single specific theoretical orientation or methodology. Many
simply recognize “signs” intuitively, and concentrate on the complex ways
that signs interact in order to produce meaning in a society.
The earliest use of the term, “techne semieotike,” connoting medical
symptomatology or “the craft of signs,” dates to at least five centuries B.C.E
in Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. The term “semeiotics” (synonymously “se-
meiology” and “symptomology”) became associated with the fields of medi-
cine, chemistry and physics in the 16th century in Latin and French texts,
describing the diagnostic branch of medicine and the interpretation of
symptoms. In English, Henry Stubbes first employed the term in 1670 in
a treatise on the science of interpreting signs. John Locke then treated “se-
meiotic” as one of three categories in the compass of human understanding,
calling it the “doctrine of signs” that links knowledge of the nature of things
and rational actions that must be taken in the pursuit of any ends (An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, 1690, book 4, chapter 21).
The founding of modern semiotics is generally attributed to two thinkers
working independently of one other in the late 19th century. The Swiss lin-
guist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) defined what he called “semiol-
ogy” as a “science which studies the role of signs as part of social life” (Course
in General Linguistics [manuscript dated 1894, published posthumously
1916], trans. Roy Harris, 1983, 15–16). He is considered the founder of
modern linguistics as well as co-founder of semiotics. The American pragma-
tist philosopher and logician Charles Saunders Peirce (1839–1914) defined
“semiotic,” using Locke’s term, as the “formal doctrine of signs” (Collected
1235 Semiotics of Culture

Writings, ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks,

1931–1958, 2.227). The rather fragmented reflections of these two thinkers
have been much elucidated and adapted by subsequent theorists.
From Peirce and Saussure, modern semiotic inquiry branches out
along numerous different lines. Establishing the “Copenhagen School,”
Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1966) was most influenced by Saussure, and in
turn influenced the Lithuanian-French linguist Algirdas Julien Greimas
(1917–1992) who established the “Parisian School” of semiotics, which
included Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and film critic Christian Metz
(1931–1993) (Greimas, incidentally, also authored several dictionaries of
Old and Middle French). Semiotics was coupled with structuralism for many
French theorists and those who followed them. It was also important for the
Russian linguist Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), who subscribed more to
the Peircean line of thought. He helped found the “Moscow School” in the
1910s and the “Prague School” in the 1920s, and was involved with the Co-
penhagen School during the 1940s. His structuralism influenced the Belgian
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–1990), and also French psycho-
analyst, psychiatrist and theorist Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), whose
“post-structuralist” work impacted French theorists such as Gilles Deleuze
(1925–1995), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), Jacques Derrida (1930–
2004), the Bulgarian-French psychoanalayst and feminist Julia Kristeva
(1941–), as well as the American feminists Judith Butler (1956–) and Jane
Gallop (1952–), and many others. Other Peircean semioticians include the
American philosopher Charles William Morris (1903–1979), whose start-
ing point was pragmatism, and who later engaged in the movement of logi-
cal positivism; the Englishmen Ivor A. Richards (1893–1979), and Charles
Kay Ogden (1889–1957) whose jointly published The Meaning of Meaning
(1925) was one of the founding documents of the New Criticism in literary
studies; and Hungarian-American Thomas Sebeok (1920–2001), who
coined the terms “zoosemiotics” and “biosemiotics,” examining non-
human use of signs. The Italian medievalist and semiotician Umberto Eco
(1932–) is noteworthy for bridging the structuralist and Jakobsonian tradi-
tions in his work.

B. Theoretical Models of the Sign, Its Value and Functions

The beginning point of semiotic analysis for both Saussure and Peirce is a
model of the sign. Saussure’s dyadic model hypothesizes two components
of any sign: the “signifier” (French signifiant), or the “sound pattern” (image
acoustique) or, more precisely, the hearer’s psychological impression of the
sound, given by the evidence of the senses; and the “signified” (signifié), the
Semiotics of Culture 1236

concept, the more “abstract” (or “immaterial,” as Saussure preferred)

element. It is the association of both signifier and signified that produces the
sign. The sign results from the combination of the whole; it does not func-
tion if the signifier is meaningless, or the signified formless. Saussure
emphasized that this conception of meaning was structural and above all re-
lational, rather than referential: the sign has no absolute “value” indepen-
dent of context, but rather depends on the whole system of interrelated
signs, what he called “language” (langue). In this conception, signs do not
“stand for” or “reflect” reality: they are arbitrary with respect to reality, and
indeed “construct” reality. This caveat has been integrated into the critical
theory of the later 20th and 21st centuries, in Medieval Studies particularly
with recent trends in philology in which the complexities of semiosis take
precedence over the notion of a more transparent “mimesis,” a methodology
that treats texts as reflecting the reality of a “people.” This stance was es-
poused by many 19th-century medievalists such as Gaston Paris, and to
some degree persists in the discipline (see the series of articles in Speculum
65.1 [1990]).
Lévi-Strauss nuanced this notion of the arbitrariness of the sign not-
ing that while the sign is arbitrary a priori, it ceases to be so a posteriori: once
the sign comes into historical existence it cannot be changed arbitrarily
(Structural Anthropology, 1972, 91). This distinction is important for scholars
such as medievalists studying historical sign systems, in contrast to modern
media scholars studying signs in the context where they are being produced
and received.
Peirce, meanwhile, was formulating a triadic model of the sign: 1) the
“representamen,” being the form which the sign takes, i. e. the material or
immaterial thing that “addresses” someone to stand for something, creating
2) the “interpretant,” the sense made of the sign; and finally 3) the “object” to
which the sign refers. Peirce emphasizes, like Saussure, that it is not these
components alone that matter but rather their interaction, which is what he
specifically called “semiosis.” Peirce’s “representamen” is akin to Saus-
sure’s “signifier,” but his “interpretant” diverges from the “signified,”
being itself a sign in the addressee’s mind. Peirce emphasized that semiosis
was a process, a view that contrasts with Saussure’s presentation of semiol-
ogy as structural. Saussure has been criticized for being too synchronic
in this regard, not allowing interpretation over time into his equations.
Peirce’s model comprises a notion of “unlimited semiosis,” basically the
idea that a sign could lead to an infinite number of successive interpretants,
as each representation of a sign can itself be nothing but a representation, a
notion elaborated by Eco (see Opera Aperta, 1962) and also critiqued as ulti-
1237 Semiotics of Culture

mately having limits (The Limits of Interpretation, 1990). For later theorists
such as Eco and the founder of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, Yuri
Lotman (Universe of the Mind, 1990), it follows that semiotics confirms inde-
terminacy of meaning by privileging interpretation, at the same time that it
seeks to reduce indeterminacy (one might even use the term “relativity,” as
so much modern theory developed alongside the popularization of Ein-
stein’s revolutionary notions of physics) through the activity of explanation.
Another important model is the “semiotic square” (Greimas’s term) or
chiasmus, adapted from the “logical square” of scholastic philosophy and
from Jakobson’s notions of contradiction and contrariety in language, with
important contributions from Fredric Jameson’s ideological criticism.
The procedure takes a set of binary opposites, such as light/dark or public/
private, and to make the square opposes each term to its “absence”: i. e. not
light/not dark. Aristotle’s Metaphysics presents several such pairs, adopted as
canonical opposites in the later commentary tradition: form/matter, natural/
unnatural, active/passive, whole/part, unity/variety, before/after and being/
not-being. The four elements and humors of ancient and medieval medicine
are also treated as pairs set in a square, and also expanded in the twelve-point
circle of the zodiac: fire/air/earth/water, sanguine/choleric/melancholic/
phlegmatic. One can then examine the choices made: what is present in the
text, what has been omitted, and what “goes without saying”? The square
has been used to analyze the “superficial” structures (“syntagms”) of lan-
guage that compose texts, as well as the “deep structures” of narrative (“para-
digmatic analysis”).
F. R. P. Akehurst applied the semiotic square to the troubadour’s
traditional position of supplication towards the “Domna” (lady) in “The Bot-
tom Line of Love: A Semiotic Analysis of the Lover’s Position” (Courtly Litera-
ture: Culture and Context, Proceedings of the 5th Triennial Congress of the International
Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 1986, ed. Keith Busby and
Erik Kooper, 1990, 1–10). Observing that the troubadour normally remains
poised between hope and fear, Akehurst found that the semiotic square
added another dimension: instead of the polarity of love-hate (for example),
the four poles could shade the lady’s indifference: love – not hate – not-love –
hate. He critiqued this model, however, for remaining completely static,
illustrating only a status quo. For that further dimension of movement, he
found in analyzing the lyric lexicon that the frequently used term “merce”
(mercy) offered “the way off the bottom line” of “not hate – not-love.” The se-
miotic square thus offered an appealingly clear and teachable tool for analy-
sis, but one that presented distinct limitations in its neatness.
Semiotics of Culture 1238

C. Signs, Texts, and Media

Signs can take such forms as words, images, sounds, and other sensory ex-
periences such as odors, textures, and flavors. All thoughts are signs; but no-
thing is a sign until it is interpreted as “signifying something” other than
itself, according to Peirce. This is the crux of the work of semiotics: how are
signs interpreted meaningfully? Modern semiotics has concentrated most on
“texts,” which can be verbal or non-verbal and can exist in any “medium,”
but in general they are understood to be recorded in some way.
The term “medium” refers to the way signs and texts are communicated:
they way they are recorded (print, manuscript, email, film, painting), the way
they are transmitted (live performance, telephone, newspaper, taped record-
ing …), or the sensory “channels” employed (visual, aural, oral, tactile …).
Every medium imposes its own constraints on expression, being uniquely
suited to communicating certain information, and inherently failing to com-
municate other things. The facilities and constraints of different media may
be studied under the rubric of genre theory, which often shares some of the
concerns of semiotics, but remains a distinct methodology.
Media studies has become its own branch of modern semiotics,
championed by theorists such as Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan
(1911–1980). In works such as Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
(1964), and The Medium is the Message (1967) he argued that the means by
which people have communicated through history have determined their
thoughts, actions, and lives. He located a major shift in human conscious-
ness with Gutenberg and the invention of print technology, leading ulti-
mately to the even greater shift of the advent of the electronic age in the 20th
century. He was not a historian per se, but rather drew much of the historical
basis for his arguments from Eric Havelock (1903–1988), a British classi-
cist who broke from standard views of Greek antiquity as a continuous tradi-
tion to argue there was a radical shift between the 6th and 4th centuries B.C.E.,
with the transition from oral to literate culture. With McLuhan’s student
Walter J. Ong (1912–2003), Havelock is credited with foundational work
in orality studies, which have been important for medievalists, who like clas-
sicists deal with fragmentary texts that hint at oral forerunners, and who
have been concerned with finding authentic “original” versions through
webs of intertextuality. Mary J. Carruthers (1941–) refutes Ong and
McLuhan’s notion that “post-Gutenberg” culture organizes language and
memory visually in a way that “pre-Gutenberg” culture did not, demonstrat-
ing that antique and medieval models of the mind’s organization were spa-
tial and visual, and indeed that the lay-out of the memory was a chief concern
of medieval education (The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Cul-
1239 Semiotics of Culture

ture, 1990, 32). This contradicts the notion that language is oral, rather than
written, an idea that became canonical with the work of Saussure, Lévi-
Strauss, and others. This is an example of how medievalists’ careful exam-
ination of texts can offer necessary nuance and revision to the universalizing
tendencies of theorists (particularly such as Saussure, Greimas, and many
of the structuralists).

D. Symbols and Other Modes

Saussure differentiated between linguistic signs, which he considered ar-
bitrary, and “symbols,” never wholly arbitrary. Peirce, in contrast, defines
symbols as signs that refer to the object they denote by an association of gen-
eral ideas, which is then interpreted according to a rule or habitual connec-
tion (Collected Writings, 2.292–97). He classified words, sentences, and books
as “symbols,” because they are constructions based in convention.
The symbolic mode is one of three modes of interpretation of signs dis-
cussed by Peirce. In the “iconic” mode a sign represents its object “by its
similarity.” Icons are not necessarily visual, although he said that all pictures
are icons: they resemble what they represent, but never in every respect. In
the “indexical” mode, an index “indicates” something, generally with a real,
contiguous, or direct physical connection. Examples include a clock indicat-
ing the time, or a photograph being used as forensic evidence. The index is
neither defined by similarity or analogy nor by an intellectual operation.
Peirce observed that a sign can be simultaneously a symbol, an icon, and an
index, or any combination thereof, depending on how the sign is used. His-
torical evidence shows a tendency for signs to progress over time from in-
dexical and iconic forms to symbolic forms. Lévi-Strauss expressed this in
terms of progression from motivation to arbitrariness in the conceptual
schemes of a given culture.
Among medievalists, Michel Pastoureau has distinguished himself
as scholar of symbols, going so far as to propose that the history of symbols
should be one of the disciplines of the future. He has studied a broad range of
categories, from colors (notably in Bleu: Histoire d’une couleur, 2000), clothing
(particularly with his case study of stripes, L’étoffe du diable, 1991), and heral-
dry (e. g., his thesis Le bestiaire héraldique médiéval, École des Chartes, 1972;
Figures de l’héraldique, 1996, and other works) to flora and fauna, to literary
characters. In his Une histoire symbolique du Moyen-Age occidental (2004, 11–25),
he reflects that the symbolic sensibility was so habitual for medieval authors
that they hardly experienced the need to alert readers of their semantic or
didactic intentions, or indeed to define the terms they use. This presents lexi-
cal problems for historians of symbols: modern languages lack the precision,
Semiotics of Culture 1240

diversity, and subtlety for rendering effectively symbolic vocabulary of Latin

and the medieval vernaculars. The modern term “symbol” collapses the dif-
ferent Latin terms signum, figura, exemplum, memoria, similitudo; the modern
“signify” similarly can correspond to the Latin array of denotare, depingere,
figurare, monstrare, representare, and indeed significare, each of which has its
own nuanced sense.
Pastoureau argues that for medieval thinkers Saussure’s concept
of the arbitrary sign would be utterly foreign: for them, all signs were moti-
vated. He proposes three codes or processes by which signs were produced
and interpreted in the European Middle Ages: 1) etymology, 2) analogy,
and 3) certain types of what could be called semiology. Etymology is pos-
sibly the most important as well as easiest point of entry for defining and
characterizing medieval signs. “Ontological truth” was understood as
expressed by words, as words. Medieval practices of etymology often clash
with more modern humanist conceptions of an evolution of languages:
Pastoureau notes that one must keep in mind that the medieval etymo-
logical exercise was often speculative, ignorant, inane, or even humorous,
as in the case of Isidore of Seville, who sometimes amused himself at the
exercise, but whose work was nonetheless generally accepted as authori-
tative. Knowing the origin of a word was seen as permitting a deep under-
standing of the nature of the thing it signified. Analogy was the main form
of medieval sign construction, based on the resemblance between two ob-
jects, notions, or words. Whether in medieval theology, mirabilia, or daily
life, such correspondences are frequently drawn between deceptive appear-
ances and hidden truths, and they are often understood to function on
multiple levels and through different modes. Modern science and beliefs
often impede comprehension of the original logic and meaning of medieval
signs. He gives the example of colors, which modern readers generally in-
terpret through the rules of the color spectrum. But whereas the spectrum
indicates that blue is a cold color, in medieval culture blue was hot, being
the color of the sky. Pastoureau divides the semiological sign processes
into three subcategories. In “divergence” (écart), a character, object or ani-
mal exactly resembles all the others in its group, with the exception of a
single detail, and it is precisely that detail which imparts its signification.
Examples include Moses, whose horns (originating in the mistranslation
of the Hebrew) make him all the more holy because horns are normally as-
sociated with things bestial and diabolical. Another example is vermillion
(red) clothing and arms, generally worn by challenging or upsetting
knights, who appear from another world to provoke the hero; yet in Chré-
tien de Troyes’ telling, when young Perceval defeats the Vermeil Knight
1241 Semiotics of Culture

and seizes his arms, he himself becomes a red knight: the inversion of the
code sets him apart as an extraordinary hero. Related to this kind of diver-
gence is the “meeting of extremes”: for instance, in many painted represen-
tations, Judas is shown with red hair, a sign of his treachery; but in scenes of
the kiss of betrayal, Christ is shown with a red beard. The executioner and
his victim are symbolically united by color. The third semiological sym-
bolic process is what Pastoureau calls “pars pro toto,” the part for the
whole. This is based on the understanding of relations between macrocosm
and microcosm, and the scholastic principle that the human realm is a
model of the celestial realm in miniature. A prime example of the pars
pro toto process is the cult of relics: a bone fragment represents the saint.
This is not merely abstract: the lord’s seal was accepted as the lord’s person,
and the castle WAS the land conceded as fief. Pastoureau underlines the
importance how the medieval symbol was stronger and more real than the
person or notion it was designed to represent because truth was situated
outside of reality, and superior to it.
Pastoureau posits that medieval symbols are better characterized
as “modes of intervention” than as having a particular, static signification.
His examples of how to interpret colors are particularly useful. Red should
not be treated as a consistent signifier of passion or sin, but rather as an
indicator of violent intervention: red means sudden change, for better or for
worse. Green is not automatically envy, springtime, or decay, but rather
cause of rupture and disorder, to be followed by rebirth. He argues that the
current methods of analyzing medieval symbols are often anachronistic be-
cause they are too “rational,” dependent on our own constructs of truth and
logic. He argues, contrary to the hopes of the structuralists, that there are no
universal symbols.
It should be noted that Kristeva used the term “semiotic” (without
the ‘-s’) in a unique application, set in opposition to what she calls the “sym-
bolic” to characterize two constituents of the signifying process of language.
The two forces are in constant dialectic, theoretically, and it is this that deter-
mines the type of discourse produced (e. g. narrative, theory, poetry); the sub-
ject would be always both semiotic and symbolic. She associated the “sym-
bolic” with patriarchy, God, and the Law of the Father, and the “semiotic”
with the pre-Oedipal drive, the drives and pulsions of the mother’s body,
rhythms and flows, contradiction, and heterogeneity. She proposed that the
semiotic was potentially revolutionary because it could disrupt the symbolic
order, and thereby the patriarchy (La révolution du langage poétique, 1974; Desire
in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, 1980). Others such as
Butler have challenged this treatment of the term as subversive for privi-
Semiotics of Culture 1242

leging the patriarchy as bound to permanent dominance (Gender Trouble: Fem-

inism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990).

E. Semiotics in Medieval Studies

The early 1960s saw a rise in popularity of semiotics and general linguistics
among scholars across the disciplines and specialities. Eugene Vance has
analyzed this trend as a response to students’ need to challenge dominant
models of historicism, whose teleological views of historical progress could
not be disassociated from the horrors of recent events such as World War II.
The semiotic approach was exciting in that it was novel, sophisticatedly tech-
nical, and also transhistorical and transcultural, offering the possibility of
eluding the determinations of national language and culture. By the 1970s
and 80s, the optimism for the transhistorical potential of semiotic discourse
had waned, although to some degree Greimas’s principle of antihistoricism
endured as one of the movement’s legacies (“Chaucer’s Pardoner: Relics, Dis-
course, and Frames of Propriety,” New Literary History 20.3 [1989]: 723–24).
By the late 1970s and 1980s, a generation of medieval scholars trained in
the close reading methods of the New Criticism was coming of age, and con-
sciously seeking to apply new critical methodologies such as semiotics to a
variety of texts and problems. In these years Hans Robert Jauss remarked
that older interpretive methodologies such as positivism or the idealistic ap-
proach that treated texts as directly mirroring medieval life were exhausted,
but that the “highly touted modern methods” of structural linguistics, se-
miotics, and phenomenological or sociological literary theory had not yet
gelled into paradigms (“The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature,”
New Literary History 10.2 [1979]: 181–229, 182; orig. German in Alterität und
Modernität der mittelalterlichen Literatur, 1977). The use of semiotic approaches
met with debate and resistance. Some traditional philologists viewed the
imposition of modern theories on medieval documents with skepticism,
critiquing it as anachronistic. Semiotic methods involved a cumbersome
baggage of neologisms, such that articles and papers seeking to apply se-
miotic argument were heavily front-loaded with theory and definitions
of terms, leaving little space to discuss the texts in question themselves.
Jonathan Evans (whose 1984 Indiana University dissertation was A Semiotic
of the Old English Dragon) characterized this period of the 1980s as a “pre-para-
digm phase,” marked by debates concerning legitimate methods serving to
define a new school of thought rather than produce agreement (“A Consider-
ation of the Role of Semiotics in Redefining Medieval Manuscripts as Texts,”
Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, ed. Mikle Dave Ledgerwood, 1998,
3–38).
1243 Semiotics of Culture

By the beginning of the new millennium, the paradigm shift would ap-
pear to have been effectuated. Explicit reference to semiotic or structuralist
apparatus is now rarely foregrounded. It can be said, however, that numer-
ous scholarly efforts now devote themselves to exploring the complex ways
medieval objects and symbols signify as systems.

F. Medieval Semiotics
In his 1978 presidential address to the Medieval Academy, Gerhart B. Lad-
ner addressed how advances in the study of signs over the preceding
hundred years might be related to the study of medieval symbols. Like many
medievalists of these decades, spurred by the institutional pressures to
“modernize” by adopting the critical theories of structuralism, Ladner
turned instead to antique and medieval theories of the nature and function-
ing of symbols rather than directly apply the structures posited by Saus-
sure, Peirce, or one of their epigones: he saw that a medieval sign theory
already existed. He discussed the classical Greek notion of the “symbolon” as
literally a “drawing together,” such as the contributions of different persons
to a shared meal or a contract. The two main meanings attached to symbols as
they are now understood date to the Church Fathers. Symbols were a “draw-
ing together” of the main truths and doctrines of Christianity, enunciated
through the Symbols and Creeds of the Apostles of the Councils of Nicaea
and Constantinople, which would become the basis of theology and liturgy.
Another sense of “symbol” brought it closer to that of the sign, connoting a
sign with deeply spiritual and even mystical meaning. Origen uses the term
to discuss the problems of Biblical exegesis: whatever happens in an unex-
pected or strange way in Holy Scripture is a sign or symbol. The writer known
as Dionysius the Areopagite explained that the divine and the heavenly
appear in the guise of such symbols in his treatise On the Heavenly Hierarchy
(c. 500). Hugh of Saint-Victor in the 12th century explained similarly, “a sym-
bol is a collecting of visible forms for the demonstration of invisible things.”
From these mysterious symbols, medieval culture created “signa data:” fixed
insignia, objects that signified rulership or office (e. g. crowns, scepters,
or mantles). Augustine distinguished between signa propria, such as words,
and more complex signa translata, which combined primary and secondary
significations to function more like tropes (e. g. the ox who toils and should
therefore be fed, which signifies the spiritual man who deserves to be sup-
ported for his labors). To illustrate the “overwhelming richness of medieval
symbolism” Ladner offered a case study of trees, looking at the mythology
of Tree of Life in various cultures, and then the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil of Genesis and Revelations, which furnished wood for the
Semiotics of Culture 1244

Holy Cross, and which furnished a model for consanguinity trees in legal
documents.
Ladner observed, following Michel Foucault (The Order of Things,
1970), that much of the medieval attitude toward signs continued into
modern times, only becoming problematic in the later 19th century when the
old signs had gradually lost their validity as developments in industry and
science transformed modes of thinking. Ladner hypothesized that the
Symbolist movement in art and poetry punctuated the new sense of the alter-
ity of medieval symbols, even as it sought to revive them. He critiqued Saus-
sure’s arbitrary model of the sign for representing language as a structure
of differences, “yes-no” decisions, which reduced language to a system of bi-
nary opposites. For the Christian Middle Ages, the universe was exemplarist
and anagogical as well as analogical, hierarchical as well as gradualist: it
was in no way a structure of irreducible opposites. (“Medieval and Modern
Understanding of Symbolism: A Comparison,” Speculum 65.2 [1979]: 223–56).
Stephan Meier-Oeser has traced “Medieval Semiotics” through the
patristic and scholastic commentary traditions. While he cautions that there
was no unified, precisely defined discipline of semiotics in the Middle Ages,
there was certainly a complex field of elaborate reflections on the concept of
sign, its nature, function, and classification. Much of it took the form of the
commentary tradition, beginning principally with Aristotle’s introductory
chapter of On Interpretation. Highly influential were Augustine’s De Dialectica,
which modified the abstract Stoic concept of the sign, defining a sign instead
as “something that shows itself to the senses and something other than itself
to the mind”; and Boethius’ 6th-century commentaries on Aristotle’s Peri
Hermaneias which study the interrelations between the four elements of lin-
guistic semeiosis mentioned by Aristotle: external objects or things (res),
mental concepts or representations (passiones, intellectus), spoken words
(voces), and written words (scripta), which compose what Boethius called the
“order of speaking” (ordo orandi) (see John Magee, Boethius on signification
and mind, 1989). In the late 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)
revived the Aristotelian idea of “mental words” (verbum mentis) which are
identical for all humans, and “similitudes” of mental things. Peter Abelard
(1079–1142) was a major theorist of logic and linguistic signification, which
he recognized as unable to account for all the different kinds of sign produc-
tion in his De Dialectica. As the university of Paris and other schools grew in
the 13th century, teachers of the “trivium,” the first three of the seven tradi-
tional Liberal Arts (grammar, logic or dialectic, and rhetoric) were concerned
with developing a science of grammar either starting from the general con-
cept of sign, as was the case for Roger Bacon (ca. 1214–1293, the most import-
1245 Semiotics of Culture

ant medieval sign theorist) and the unknown author now known as Ps.-Kil-
wardby (active 1250–1280); or taking grammar as a theory reflecting on the
fundamental structure of sign systems (the grammatica speculativa of the Uni-
versity of Paris, ca. 1270; and Thomas Erhart, ca. 1300). In the theologico-
philosophical tradition, semiotic discussions are most prominently featured
in the Commentaries on the Book of Sentences (Liber Sententiarum) of Peter
Lombard, particularly those on book 1, distinctions 1, 3, and 27 on signs as
subjects in general, and book 2.10 and 4.1 on angelic and sacramental
signs. (“Medieval Semiotics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003, ed.
Edward N. Zalta, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/
entries/semio tics-medieval/>).
The volume Archéologie du signe (ed. Lucie Brind’amour, and Eugene
Vance, 1983) assembled articles originally presented in 1977 at a collo-
quium on theories of language and signification from Augustine to the
scholastic thinkers. The volume represents an effort among medievalists
typical of a number of such initiatives of that time to reconnect semiotics
with its intellectual heritage, generally neglected by contemporary theorists.
The articles focus for instance on medieval theorists of meaning such as
Roger Bacon (Thomas Maloney, “Roger Bacon on the Significatum of words,”
187–211, and “The Sumule dialectices of Roger Bacon and the Summulist
form,” 235–49), and William of Ockham (Claude Panaccio, “Guillaume
d’Occam: Signification et supposition,” 265–86). Another center of both
medieval and modern semiotic debate was the problem of falsehood and dis-
simulation (Marcia Colish, “The Stoic Theory of Verbal Signification and
the Problem of Lies and False Statement from Antiquity to St. Anselm,”
17–43; François Recanati, “Une solution médiévale du paradoxe du Men-
teur et son interêt pour la sémantique contemporaine,” 251–64), and also
judicial proof (R. Howard Bloch, “Merlin and the Modes of Medieval Legal
Meaning,” 127–44). Also discussed is the problem of meaning (“sens”) for
vernacular authors such as Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume
de Lorris, and particularly developed in Jean de Meun’s continuation of the
Roman de la Rose, a dream vision whose “senefiance” the authors promise to
gloss, and in which figures such as Reason, Nature, and Genius argue over
the split between words and their meanings (Daniel Poirion, “De La Sig-
nification selon Jean de Meun,” 165–85) (it is worth observing that “sene-
fiance” became a by-word for Romance language medievalists, notably be-
coming the title of the journal published by the Center for Medieval Studies
at Aix-en-Provence).
Jonathan Evans, in an article arising from a 1987 colloquium on se-
miotics and medieval textuality, expresses the obligation of medieval se-
Semiotics of Culture 1246

miotics as threefold: 1) to search for explicit theories of the sign and signifi-
cation in medieval learning itself; 2) to extricate implied or embedded
theories from medieval cultural materials; 3) to apply modern semiotic the-
ory to the analysis and criticism of cultural artifacts from the Middle Ages.
(“A Consideration of the Role of Semiotics …,” 7–8). These goals have been
realized at least to some degree. However, critical theory, semiotics included,
continues to be a point of tension between medievalists and their modernist
colleagues. As Stephen G. Nichols has observed, medievalists are fre-
quently viewed by modernists as hostile or indifferent to contemporary the-
ory, as medievalists have claimed that modern theories are anachronistic, or
superfluous to the theories employed by medieval thinkers (“The New Phil-
ology, Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65.1
[1990]: 1–10). Conversely, it might be ventured that contributions by medi-
evalists to discussions of modern theory have often been ignored. Certain
theorists have performed readings of medieval texts (for instance Lotman’s
Universe of the Mind looks at the semiotics of Dante’s Divine Comedy; Eco’s
Opera Aperta examines Dante’s Thirteenth Epistle; Kristeva muses on the
meaning of love for Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, the troubadours,
and in medieval representations of the Virgin in Tales of Love, 1987), but these
have not made it into the mainstream academic bibliographies on these fig-
ures. In short, a divide remains, and likely will persist.

G. Medieval Aesthetics and Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco deserves a special place of his own in the discussion of se-
miotics and Medieval Studies. He began his career as a medievalist philos-
opher, with his 1954 dissertation at the University of Turin dealing with the
problem of esthetics in Thomas Aquinas. Although he was initially inspired
by spiritual aspects of Aquinas’ work, as he wrote he gradually removed
himself from them, finding himself left with a formation in the scholastic
methodology. His many subsequent projects have been heterogeneous, to
the point of playfulness, a mark of his approach, but have often incorporated
medieval topics in unexpected ways. He studied the medieval features of
James Joyce’s esthetics (The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, 1982; trans. Ellen Estrock,
1989), a study also ranging to the logic of symbols of 15th-century thinker
Nicholas of Cusa and Renaissance writer Giordano Bruno. In his analysis of
how different texts create a system of reading instructions intended for col-
laboration by “model readers” in The Limits of Interpretation, he observed that
medieval interpreters looked for a plurality of meanings while always main-
taining an identity principle (tending toward unified meaning, with no
contradiction possible), while for the Renaissance reader the ideal text would
1247 Semiotics of Culture

allow the most possible contradictory readings (coincidentia oppositorum). Two

of his best-selling novels have medieval settings: The Name of the Rose (1980;
trans. William Weaver, 1983) plays on medieval rose imagery with its title.
The wit and philosophy of William of Ockham appear in its Franciscan-de-
tective hero William of Baskerville. Its plot centers on a lost (hypothetical)
text of Aristotle on comedy, repressed by a monk who fears that laughter
would open the holy orders to derision. This weaves in theological debate
over humor in the 13th century, in which Aquinas distinguished good dis-
position to happiness (eutrapelia) from the immoral bolomachia. Baudolino
(2000; trans. William Weaver, 2002) takes place in the 12th century at the
court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Its hero is the clever
polyglot and renowned liar Baudolino, who narrates his own story, which in-
cludes fabrication of travels to the Orient, a journey in search of the mythical
Prester John, and encounters with the monsters featured on maps at the
edges of the world, all themes tying medieval and post-modern concerns. Eco
is a remarkable figure for his successful bridging of many binary terms:
medieval/modern, academic/popular, erudite/playful.

H. The Semiotics of Gender, Genre, and the Body

While semiotics has largely failed to become institutionalized in its own
right, its influence on the successfully institutionalized Feminist, Gender,
and Queer Studies has been marked. The contributions are too numerous to
be listed comprehensively here, but of note are the works of Caroline Walker
Bynum, which study how gender and the human body signify through
medieval religious and literary representations (see Gender and Religion: On
the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrel, and
Paula Richman, 1986; Fragmentation and Redemption, 1991; Metamorphosis and
Identity, 2001). Some studies of representation of gender by number of lead-
ing scholars are collected in Constructing Medieval Sexuality (ed. Karma
Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and James A. Schultz, 1997). Simon Gaunt
deals in Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (1995) with some medi-
evalists’ concerns in adopting semiotic and structuralist theory and applying
a constructionist concept such as “gender” to medieval texts where it is ab-
sent, but agrees with Carolyn Dinshaw that it is important for post-modern
literary scholars to ask the questions of their generation of literary texts, and
also that “our present-day critical concerns turn out to be quite medieval”
(Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, 1989, 17). Like Gaunt and others mentioned here,
Sarah Kay has studied how constructions of literary genres and gender are in-
tertwined, and represent semiotic explorations of problems of status and
power (e. g., in The Chansons de Geste in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions, 1995).
Semiotics of Culture 1248

I. From Feminism to Material Culture

In the 1980s, Georges Duby assembled the work of a number of cultural his-
torians in the multi-volume History of Private Life (see particularly vol. 2, Revel-
ations of the Medieval World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 1988). This project
typifies an emerging approach: amid a recognition that much historical evi-
dence was the product of limited group of educated men in the service of men
in power, feminist scholars were interested in other voices, those neglected
or repressed in the dominant types of records. One approach to reconstitut-
ing that neglected history was to turn away from the “public life” repre-
sented in official chronicles to examine “private life,” such as it might be
gleaned from details in literature, art, and the archeological record. Danielle
Régnier-Bohler surveyed topics such as the meaning of the use of space
(solitude, sociability), types of architecture (tower, orchard, hall, chamber),
dining and feasting, games and courtly activities, lovers’ secret signs (gifts,
messages, mirrors, purses, combs, rings), courtly love (gossip and jealousy),
family relations, women and marriage, hygiene, and clothing (“Imagining
the Self: Exploring Literature,” 312–93). Another important study of how
objects and notions in courtly culture create complex meaning is Joachim
Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages (trans.
Thomas Dunlap, 1991; orig. German, 1985). The topics listed here remain
of strong interest to medieval scholars, and continue to generate studies that
both openly and implicitly employ semiotic strategies.
Kathryn Gravdal’s Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Medieval Texts:
A Study of Parody in French Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (1989)
explicitly proposed a semiotic theory of transgressive medieval parody, rede-
fining the parodic genre in terms of a triple mode of textual production (text,
intertext, and interpretant), and using that formal model to show that the
representation of upheaval in social classes does not necessarily constitute a
direct commentary on medieval society. Her work Ravishing Maidens: Writing
Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (1991) moved away from explicit
formal semiotic models, but ultimately asked a semiotic question: what do
representations of rape signify? Indicative of the newer direction in scholar-
ship is the approach extending the study of meaning from the confines of
one type of text (i.e. vernacular fiction) to law, moralists’ sermons, and other
types of discourses.
E. Jane Burns’ notion of “Bodytalk” proposed a strategy for interpre-
ting the female body as it has been encoded within male-authored medieval
literary texts, and a way of hearing medieval heroines speak within and
against the social and rhetorical conventions used to construct them (Body-
talk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature, 1993). She further extends
1249 Semiotics of Culture

the enquiry to women’s clothing and needlework in Courtly Love Undressed:

Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Literature (2002). The key word
is “through:” to appreciate the signs constituted by representations of
women’s bodies and garments, one must read through the many filters and
mutations wrought by stereotypes, fetishes, fantasies, social norms and mis-
ogynist traditions. Burns did not use explicitly semiotic or structuralist ap-
paratus, but draws on feminist theorists such as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth
Grosz, and Kristeva.

J. Semiotics of Clothing and Material Culture

Certain works from the heyday of the trend in modern semiotic theory dem-
onstrate the unique utility of sign theory for “decoding” the complex lan-
guage of dress, but also show the limitations of that application. An early
structural ethnographic attempt to “catalogue” the costume of a particular
culture, Petr Bogatyrev’s The Function of Folk Costume in Moravian Slovakia
(1937; trans. Richard G. Crum, 1991), was influential for folklorists, structu-
ralists such as Lévi-Strauss, and semioticians such as Sebeok, Barthes,
and Jakobson with whom he collaborated on other publications. Bogaty-
rev establishes costume’s function as the expression of the attitudes of its
wearers, a key assumption in later work on dress and consumption. In sort-
ing through the vast and often contradictory data on Moravian folk dress, he
discovered not so much clear rules as a number of unconscious patterned
regularities, which moreover were highly unstable over time. This estab-
lished the fundamental complexity and ambiguity of studying the meaning
of costume.
Barthes, in the preface to his Système de la Mode (1967), called his work
a relic from the era of the discovery of semiology, already dated at the time
of its publication. The semiological project the book describes, a study of the
relation between real clothing and “written” clothing, was modified at mid-
course, as the author realized that while clothing does constitute a code,
it remains an ambiguous object, resisting attempts to document and classify
it by both linguistics (verbal signs) and semiology (objectal signs). Barthes
uses the term “shifters” to describe the discontinuous, elliptical movement
from real garment to fashionable description, by way of technical patterns
and specifications, with much information lost along the way (what type
of zipper? How does it look from the back?), and only key details retained,
leaving a fashionable proclamation, e. g. “polka dots for spring.” One of the
lasting lessons that remains from this study is that in the cultural system that
is fashion, it is not the clothing itself that matters, but how words exchanged
regarding the item make it desirable or undesirable. For historians of cul-
Semiotics of Culture 1250

ture, this equates to an imperative to privilege texts as records of attitudes

and desires, rather than treat them as mere descriptions, or use to attempt to
correlate them to contemporary images to create constructions resembling
modern fashion magazine plates and commentaries (see Sarah-Grace
Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 2007).
In The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred
Years War (2002) Susan Crane probes how Maytime and Charivari costumes,
chivalric insignia, and the cross-dressing of Joan of Arc manipulate complex
cultural codes of gender, social status, rhetoric, and morality to both create
and disrupt courtly decorum.
In 2005, Robin Netherton, and Gale Owen-Crocker began publish-
ing the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles in response to the increasing in-
terest in these aspects of material culture at the annual medieval congresses.
Clothing, once dismissed as a frivolous topic not worthy of serious study, rel-
egated to the realm of antiquarian curiosities and the “minor arts”, had come
of age. Articles include strictly descriptive and technical studies, as well as
some that could be classified as descendants of the semiotic approach which
look at how particular garments, colors, dyes, textiles or styles “signified,”
whether in textual or artistic representations or artifacts, and often a combi-
nation thereof. The assemblage of studies from many disciplines – history,
art history, literary studies, fashion technology – effectively mirrors the
cross-disciplinary impact of semiotics.
In an editor’s essay, drawing together the diverse articles in an anthology
titled Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture (2001), “Robes, Kings,
and Semiotic Ambiguity” (379–85), Stewart Gordon addressed the complex
array of meanings that could be associated with gifts of clothing, a practice in
Semitic, Persian and Central Asian tradition (termed khil’at in Arabic) and
practiced with some similarities and many differences in the medieval West.
He used the term “rich semiotic ambiguity” comfortably, without recourse
to definitions or theoretical apparatus, to conclude that robing might have
been part of a larger ceremonial metalanguage in use from Eastern Europe to
China and Japan employed in political diplomacy, and certainly not to be dis-
missed as “mere spectacle,” as well as to underline that its use remains com-
plex and problematic.

K. Semiotics of Other Aspects of Medieval Culture

The paradigm of semiotic ambiguity can be observed in many types of
studies that involve the rethinking of the historical meaning of objects and
how they are used in texts. David Cowling addresses the question of why
nearly all medieval and early modern descriptions of buildings and architec-
1251 Semiotics of Culture

ture read more like the jeweled city of the New Jerusalem in the Book of
Revelations than realistic depictions of contemporary Gothic structures,
concluding that such descriptions are not meant to be mimetic, but rather a
signal to the reader to read allegorically (Architecture as Metaphor in Late Medi-
eval and Early Modern France, 1998). Cowling’s approach is primarily rhetori-
cal; there is nothing explicitly semiotic in it. The broader impulse is to
open up the interpretation of an object to a range of possible, complexly ref-
erential significations, drawing on the tools of a variety of disciplines and
methodologies. Further examples could be drawn from recent interest in
medieval and early modern medicine. Heather Webb attempts to transcend
modern reader’s assumptions about the organ called the “heart” to better in-
terpret how that term signifies complexly in “Catherine of Siena’s Heart”
(Speculum 80.3 [2005]: 802–17), as the saint brings the technical medico-theo-
logical debate of the encyclopedists of her time to the service of her own dis-
course of sanctity.
Debra Higgs Hassig (later, Strickland) took a semiotic approach to
the shifts in meaning between images and texts in medieval bestiaries (Medi-
eval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology, 1995). She uses semiotic methods to un-
cover ideologically oriented meaning generated by the images, looking par-
ticularly at the signifying potential of the aesthetic code (e. g., color, line,
composition, spatial arrangement, size, framing elements and other non-
mimetic devices). She applied a similar approach to representations of hu-
mans, marginal to European society in Saracens, Demons, & Jews: Making
Monsters in Medieval Art (2003). Deriving in part from gender and “queer”
studies, monsters as creatures at the limits of human signification has been a
prominent topic of late, notably in the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Medi-
eval Identity Machines, 2003; see the contributions in his edited volume,
Monster Theory: Reading Culture, 1996).
The medieval drama is fruitful area for the application of semiotic
methods, as Sunhee Kim Gertz has observed, particularly for analyzing
how performance creates meaning. The evidence regarding medieval per-
formance is sketchy, and medievalists must rely on texts more than scholars
of later periods, so semiotics offers an approach to what fragments are ex-
tant. Gertz argues that semiotic density informs basic framework of the
play, examining the case of the Digby Magdalene play in which the epony-
mous heroine is a sign signifying Everyperson. The staging itself is a synec-
doche of the world. Rather than offering a purely modern semiotic reading,
Gertz integrates antique and medieval theory into her interpretative strat-
egy, saying readers must respond to the play in Augustinian terms: the world
is God the Author’s text; humans are instances of God’s words, and they
Semiotics of Culture 1252

can be redeemed through redirection to God. The staging of the active Chris-
tian life as pilgrimage through perspective of Augustinian semiotics should
neither be read as merely figurative nor entirely literal: mortals are instances
of God’s words. In this medieval semiotic system, what is figurative to mort-
als is literal to God. The wine scenes during banquets demonstrate the abuse
of God’s formerly univalent signs by worldly uses and mortal language, but
also the possibility of redemption by the return to God. Mortal commands in
the play are weak, but Christ’s word “revertere” is all-powerful. (“The Drama
of the Sign: The Signs of the Drama,” in Studies on Themes and Motifs in Litera-
ture, ed. Mikle Dave Ledgerwood, 1998, 85–104). Early 21st-century disser-
tations explicitly applying semiotic methods to medieval drama include
Andrea R. Harbin, Space and Movement on the Medieval English Religious Stage
(Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 2006) and Brian Conin,
‘With seven sadde beset’: The Iconography of the Deadly Sins and the Medieval Stage
(2005).

L. Directions
As the reader may sense from this survey, semiotics are everywhere and no-
where in 21st-century Medieval Studies. The terminology of Peircean, Saus-
surean, and Greimassian semiotics, heavy with neologisms and definitions,
is hard to find, and may indeed doom a piece to obscurity, rejected as anach-
ronistic, theory-bound, or outmoded. The notion that objects and ideas must
be handled with a careful respect for their ambiguity in the context of a broad
social matrix of meaning has, in contrast, been assimilated, and characterizes
the best of recent scholarship. It is difficult to find a study dating any
later than the 1980s featuring a purely semiotic approach. However, many
scholars have come to view studies that do not incorporate notions of signifi-
cation and representation as inferior. In an attempt to define the semiotic
approach to textual analysis, Daniel Chandler contrasts it with rhetorical
analysis, discourse analysis, and content analysis (Semiotics: The Basics, 8). In
Medieval Studies, unlike modern media studies perhaps, the four types of
analysis he distinguishes often overlap and complement one another, par-
ticularly in more sophisticated and developed work. Broad undertakings
such as “a semiotics of medieval dress” are not the order of the day; more
promising are closely focused studies that examine a single topic or a cat-
egory in as many types of sources as are available – and that examine absence
as well, when the item is not represented.
1253 Slavic Studies

Selected Bibliography
Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2002), an evolving online
version of the text is available at: http://www.aber.ac.uk/Documents/S4B/; History
of Semiotics, ed. Achim Eschbach and Jürgen Trabant (Amsterdam: John Benja-
mins, 1983); Christina Farronato, Eco’s Chaosmos: From the Middle Ages to Modernity
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003); A. J. Greimas and François Rastier,
“The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints,” Yale French Studies 41 (1968): 86–105; Ger-
hard Ladner, “Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism: A Comparison,”
Speculum 65.2 (1979): 223–56; Michel Pastoureau, Une histoire symbolique du Moyen
Âge occidental (Paris: Seuil, 2004).

Sarah-Grace Heller

Slavic Studies

A. Definition
One of the defining aspects of Slavic medieval scholarship is its division into
two areas of research: Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Romana. These terms were
coined by the philologist Riccardo Picchio in the middle of the 20th century
to create a framework for understanding the distinctive cultures of the Slavs
(Aspects of the Slavic Language Question, 1984). The word “Slav” was first used by
chroniclers in the 6th century to refer to the tribes with whom the Byzantine
Empire came into contact in Southeastern Europe. The late documentation
of the history of these peoples is due in part to the fact that the Slavs were
migratory tribes, who had an oral, rather than written, culture. As a result
of the lack of a recorded history, evidence of a “medieval period” of Slavic
history appears far later than it does in the West. It is uncertain where the
geographical homeland of the Slavs was, but it is assumed that the Slavs were
ethnically related tribes that migrated from Central Asia sometime between
the 2nd and 6th centuries A.D. and settled in the Danube region of Europe
before dispersing north into Russia and south into the Balkan lands in the
early Middle Ages. The original Indo-European language from which all
Slavic languages descend is Proto-Slavic. This in turn developed into Com-
mon Slavic, the language of the early Middle Ages, and finally into the
individual Slavic languages around the 12th century (Terence R. Carlton,
The Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, 1991).
By the 6th century, the Slavs encompassed an enormous swath of terri-
tory, extending from Russia in the north to Macedonia in the South and from
Slavic Studies 1254

portions of what is today modern Germany in the West and to Ukraine in the
East. There is evidence of a large community of Slavs in Bithynia (in Asia
Minor) as well. These Slavs were forcibly resettled by the Emperor Justi-
nian II in the 7th century, and, it is presumed, played a role in the cultural
exchanges that took place in the 9th and 10th century between monasteries
and scriptoria in Byzantium and Bulgaria. Because of this vast geographic
territory, the Slavs fell under the political influence of either the Byzantine
Empire (Slavia Orthodoxa) or the Latin West (Slavia Romana).
Those Slavs who lived in Eastern Europe (the Russians, Eastern Ukrai-
nians, Bulgarians, and Serbs) adopted the Cyrillic alphabet and after the
schism of 1054 became part of the Eastern Orthodox Christian church; the
Slavs in the West (the Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, and Western
Ukrainians), often under intense pressure from Rome, adopted the Latin al-
phabet in place of the Slavic Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts and became part of
the Roman Catholic Church. The history of Slavia Romana is intertwined with
that of Western Europe, whereas that of Slavia Orthodoxa runs parallel to that
of the Byzantine Empire. The educated poets, scientists and scholars of the
Western Slavic territories were often bilingual, with Neo-Latin serving as the
language for intellectual discourse. There are many Slavic Latinists (among
them Marko Marulić, Cosmas of Prague, and Nicholas Copernicus) whose
works played an important role in the development of Western European
culture. These Slavs had a distinctively Western intellectual tradition as well.
Prague University in the Czech Republic was founded in 1348, Krakow’s
Jagiellonian University in Poland in 1364, and Zadar University in Croatia
in 1396. These institutions were closely tied to the Western European idea
of the “universitas.” For the Slavs of Slavia Orthodoxa, however, the primary
literary language was Old Slavic and, in the earliest stages of the Middle Ages,
Byzantine Greek. The orientation of these scholars was towards monastic
centers such as Mt. Athos. Indeed, monasteries, particularly in Bulgaria,
were involved in vast translation projects from Greek. This transference of
intellectual knowledge has led medieval Slavia Orthodoxa to be viewed as a
“Graeco-Slavic” culture. After the fall of Constantinople, Moscow, in fact,
was regarded as a successor to the Byzantine Empire and referred to as the
“Third Rome.” An important focus of Byzantine-Slavic research, thus, is on
shared hagiographical and other texts, the development of Bulgarian he-
sychasm, and the influence of South Slavic stylistics (the Second South Slavic
Influence) on Russian literature and language (Handbook of Russian Literature,
ed. Victor Terras).
1255 Slavic Studies

B. The Development of the Slavic Literary Culture

The study of Slavic medieval culture is further complicated by the fact that
these ethnic groups shared a pan-national literary tradition as well as their
own tribal folklore. Thus, although there are folk works that are specific to
an individual culture (for example, the circa 12th century Ukrainian-Russian
epic the Igor’ Tale and the 14th-century Serbian epic of Prince Marko), there are
many works that are transnational. Unlike other ethnic groups in Europe,
the Slavs did not have their own written language until the late 9th century
A.D. Slavic Medieval Studies only really begins with the start of that literary
culture in 863; the other evidence of their existence has been determined
largely through either archaeological or secondary (non-Slavic) sources, such
as the Vita Constantini cum translatione s. Clementis. 863 A.D. was the year in
which the Byzantine missionaries, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, created the first
Slavic alphabet and translated portions of Greek Biblical literature into a lan-
guage that is known today as Old Church Slavic, the Macedonian dialect of
Slavic with which they were familiar. Because Slavic literature originated
from this same ecclesiastical literature, all of the national literatures have
common antecedents. Slavic medieval national literatures are commonly re-
ferred to as Church Slavonic or Church Slavic, and all look to the founding of
their cultural heritage in the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition.
The Slavic languages fall into three language groups: eastern (Russian,
Ukrainian and Belarusian), Western (Polish, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, and
various extinct languages), and South Slavic (Serbian, Croatian, Slovene,
Macedonian, and Bulgarian) (see Terence R. Carlton, Introduction to the Pho-
nological History of the Slavic Languages, 1991). In the early and mid-20th cen-
tury, the French scholars Antoine Meillet and André Vaillant codified
their research into the shared origins of these languages in the brilliant work
Le Slave commun (1934). Much of the reconstruction of Common Slavic has
been done using 10th- and 11th-century manuscripts that constitute the
oldest Glagolitic and Cyrillic manuscripts, the Marianus, Zographensis, As-
semanianus, and Suprasliensis Codices, and the Savvina Kniga (Carlton,
Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic languages, 40). This rigorous
early scholarship is perhaps one for the reasons why a major approach to lit-
erary scholarship even today is textual and employs a historical-philological
method. Other texts that medieval Slavs share are narratives that recount
the deeds of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who are credited with establishing
a native Slavic literary tradition. These works form the basis of one of the ear-
liest and most fruitful branches of Medieval Slavic scholarship, Cyrillo-
Methodian Studies.
Slavic Studies 1256

C. What Constitutes Slavic Medieval Studies?

Equally distinctive to Slavic Medieval Studies (again due to the broad geo-
graphical regions that the Slavic territories encompassed) is the disagree-
ment among historians as to what constitutes the Middle Ages. In Slavia Ro-
mana the Middle Ages generally are seen as beginning in the 5th century and
ending in the late 14th century, an approach favored by medievalists in West-
ern European Studies. In the Eastern Slavic lands, in particular Russia, the
Middle Ages are seen as lasting until the eighteenth century. The Medieval
period encompasses the founding of the early Russian states and principal-
ities, among them, Kievan Rus’ and Novgorod, the rise of Muscovy, and the
emergence of imperial Russia – a far later chronology of events than in the
West.
Lastly, Medieval Studies is approached very differently as a discipline in
Slavic countries than in non-Slavic ones. Slavic nations obviously regard
their own Middle Ages as a historical continuum – art, culture, literature,
music, and so forth are taught as part of a national curriculum. At the same
time, for much of the 20th century, research in the communist countries of
the Eastern Bloc, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union used a Marxist methodol-
ogy; it was only after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the politi-
cal changes in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, that scholarship was free to
develop in a more organic manner. In the West, Slavic Medieval Studies are
largely the domain of two academic departments, Slavic Languages and Lit-
eratures and History. Because of the emphasis on Russian history, literature,
and culture (Russia is largest of all the Slavic nations), much of the attention
focuses on this region of the world, and, as a result, Slavic scholarship often
assumes a Russo-centric approach.

D. History of Scholarship
The discipline of Slavic Medieval Studies can be said genuinely to have begun
in the mid-19th century. The previous century had seen the publication of im-
portant national works, but these were largely descriptive in their nature.
Bishop Adam Stanisław Naruszewicz (1733–1796) wrote the first medi-
eval history of Poland; Václav Fortunát Durych (1735–1802), a Czech Latin-
ist, published his investigations into Slavic (Czech) philology and cultural
history; and Mikhail Shcherbatov (1733–1790) published a monumental
work, The Russian History from the Most Ancient Times. However, the mid-19th
century coincided with the discovery and analysis of the earliest Slavic manu-
scripts and the collection and publication of oral folk tales from the rural
regions of Russia and Eastern Europe. These discoveries opened up a new,
historical-cultural avenue for research, which held much promise for such
1257 Slavic Studies

fields as anthropology and ethnology. Vasilii Tatishchev (1686–1750),

perhaps the most important early ethnographer, wrote Russian History Dating
Back to the Most Ancient Times. In the early 19th century August Ludwig von
Schlözer (1735–1809) published a five-volume study of the first Russian
Chronicles.
The early 19th century saw the first publications of anthologies of folk lit-
erature. The Kirsha Danilov collection of byliny (epic folk songs) was pub-
lished first in 1806 and then in a more complete edition by Kalaidovich in
1818. In the 1860s P. N. Rybnikov published his massive collection of Rus-
sian epic folk songs, which was supplemented in 1873 by A. F. Gil’ferding
(Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Terras, 66). These byliny may date to as
early as the 10th and 11th century and are an important source for multidisci-
plinary research. This interest in early Slavic cultures was not confined to
Russia alone. The Serbian philologist Vuk Karadzi ć (1787–1864) collected
South Slavic folksongs and folklore that are found in the four-volume Srpske
Narodne Pjesme. Nearly 150 years later, the American scholars Albert Bates
LORD (1912–1991) and Milman Parry (1902–1935) would prepare their
own compilations of South Slavic epics and examine the connection of these
works to an older Homeric tradition, pointing to the continuing importance
of field work within the discipline.
Also of significance for Russian Medieval Studies was the publication of
the Slovo o polku Igoreve (the Igor’ Tale) in 1800 in Moscow. The Igor’ Tale is
perhaps the most controversial of all the early Slavic texts and one of the most
studied. The original manuscript was destroyed in a fire in 1812 during the
Napoleonic invasion of Russia, and throughout its history its origins have
been source of great contention. The latest contribution to this debate is
Edward L. Keenan’s monograph Josef Dobrovský and the Origins of the Igor’ Tale
(2004), which suggests that Dobrovsk ý, a well-known Bohemian philol-
ogist, invented the tale himself. Dobrovsk ý (1753–1829) who helped estab-
lish the field of comparative Slavic linguistics, systematized early scholar-
ship on Czech and Old Church Slavonic literature. Keenan’s viewpoint,
while in the minority, points to the volatility within the field concerning the
“canon” of Slavic medieval literature. There is, in fact, a disagreement within
the field as to whether a core group of common texts actually exists and if
they can be studied as such. This skepticism has been applied to another well
known and equally controversial text, the Vita Constantini (the Life of St. Cyril
of the Slavs). The hagiography, which at one time was thought to have little
historical significance, was eventually proven, through the pioneering work
of the historian Francis Dvorník, to contain important factual data, and is,
in fact, used today as a primary document in Photian Studies.
Slavic Studies 1258

The growth of medieval scholarship coincided with the emergence in the

early 19th century of Pan-Slavism in the South Slavic and Western Slavic lands
and what is called Slavophilia in Russia. Pan-Slavism, which arose as a re-
sponse to the Slavs’ position as subjugated ethnic minorities within the
Austrian and Ottoman Empires, was essentially a Romantic movement that
harkened back to the transnational heritage that the Slavs shared. In much
the same manner, Slavophilia focused on the distinctiveness of Russian cul-
ture and its independence from Western civilization. The early 19th century
also was dominated by the vision of a national revival, in particular among
the South Slavs. This cultural reawakening was accompanied by an interest
in “native” literature, folklore, and culture. Important medievalists from the
19th century include Vatroslav Jagi ć (1838–1923), who investigated the
early grammar and morphology of the Slavs and contributed to the emerging
field of Slavic linguistics; Marin Drinov (1838–1906), who established the
field of Bulgarian historiography; František Palack ý (1798–1887) who
wrote Dějiny národu ceského, a monumental history of the Czech lands; Pavel
Fafa řík (1795–1861), a philologist who published Slovanské starožitnosti
(1837), and Geschichte der südslawischen Literatur (1864); Aleksei Shakhmatov
(1864–1920), whose work led to a reconstruction of the Rus’ Primary Chron-
icle; and Vasilii Vasil’evskii (1838–1899), a prominent historian, who
shaped the direction of Byzantine Studies in Russia.
The onset of the 20th century and the massive disruptions caused by the
Russian Revolution, the two world wars, and the establishment of an “East-
ern Bloc” determined the direction of Slavic medieval literary scholarship,
and, in particular, its internationalization. Many prominent Slavic scholars
left their countries of origin or, if they stayed, were compelled to use a Marx-
ist theoretical framework. A prime example of this is the career of Roman
Jakobson (1896–1982), who spent the mid-portion of the century as a
political refugee. Born in Russia, Jakobson helped found the Moscow Lin-
guistic Circle, which was associated with the literary movement known as
Russian Formalism. In the 1920s he left for Prague, where he received his
doctorate and contributed to the Prague Linguistic Circle. He spent much of
the war in Scandinavia and in 1941 immigrated to the United States, where
he held joint positions at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology. The breadth of his medieval scholarship, which was only
one of his interests, included extensive work on the Igor’ Tale, Cyrillo-Metho-
diana, Slavic morphology, medieval hymnody, and Czech medieval litera-
ture. His research, which sits on the cusp of literary theory and linguistics,
heavily influenced the post-World-War scholars who followed him (Hand-
book of Russian Literature, ed. Terras, 207–210). Equally representative is the
1259 Slavic Studies

career of Dmitrii Likhachev (1906–1999). Likhachev, who was perhaps

the most important scholar of Old Russian literature and culture in the 20th
century, spent four years in a labor camp before becoming a professor of his-
tory at Leningrad State University. He was the author of many books, among
them, The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, Poetics of Old Russian Literature, and Develop-
ment of Old Russian Literature: Epochs and Styles.

E. Modern Literary Theory and Slavic Studies

In general, literary theory of the 20th century, including formalism, post-
structuralism, and semiotics, had an enormous impact in shaping how medi-
eval literature and culture were taught in Western Europe and in the United
States. In the Soviet Union, however, much of the theoretical underpinnings
of this research was generated at home. While ostensibly a work of formalist
analysis, Vladimir Propp’s 1928 Morphology of the Folktale dramatically in-
fluenced cultural anthropology and the study of folklore. In the 1960s, Iurii
Lotman (1922–1993), Vyacheslav Ivanov (b. 1929), and Vladimir Topo-
rov (1928–2005) founded the Tartu-Moscow School in Estonia. These theor-
eticians used the then new field of semiotics, or the study of sign systems, as
their overarching theoretical model, and examined the broad interconnec-
tions among all aspects of human civilization. “Culturology” has had an im-
pact on subsequent medieval scholarship. For example, works of Boris Us-
penskii such as Linguistic Situation in Kievan Rus’ and Its Importance for the Study
of the Russian Literary Language and The Semiotics of the Russian Icon are informed
by this literary approach. By the late-1980s, as the Soviet Union began to col-
lapse, semiotics and cultural history became established frameworks for re-
search.
The field of medieval Slavic history was equally affected by the post-
World-War-II migration of Slavic (often Russian) scholars to the West. These
scholars contributed to the prestige and growth of the academic departments
they became associated with. Dimitri Obolensky (1918–2001), who was
born in St. Petersburg, went on to a career at Oxford and Cambridge Univer-
sities. His most important work, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe,
500–1453, focuses on the Byzantine Slavic cultural inheritance. Another
émigré, the Moravian priest Francis Dvorník (1893–1975), who was affili-
ated for much of his career with Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., also
focused on the “Graeco-Slavic” world, in particular on the historical and re-
ligious significance of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission. George Vernadsky
(1887–1973), who emigrated after the Russian revolution to Prague and later
to the United States, was a specialist in Kievan Rus’ at Yale University.
Slavic Studies 1260

F. Archeology and Slavic Studies

Archaeological research has had an impact as well on the development of the
field. The 1951 discovery of birch-bark letters in Novgorod, Russia and the
surrounding area that dated from the 11th to the 15th century substantially
have changed the way medievalists view early literacy and family life. These
letters, which number in the thousands, are still being analyzed for their
cultural and linguistic value. Equally important are excavations of early
Rus’ settlements, Muscovite monasteries, and archaeological digs at Lake
Lednica, Poland, Brno, Czech Republic, Nin and Galovac, Croatia and else-
where that have added to our physical knowledge of the Slavic Middle Ages.
A number of investigative studies into the culture of medieval Rus’ were
published in 1974 in Kultura srednevekovoi Rusi: Posviashchaetsia 70-letiiu M. K.
Kargera.

G. Centers of Medieval Slavic Studies

Perhaps one of the most striking observations about Medieval Slavic Studies
is that there is no one research community, a situation that may change in the
coming years with the maturation of the Internet, the building of large elec-
tronic national textual databases, and improved communication among all
scholars through the use of email, the newsletters of the Early Slavic Studies
Association (ESSA) and Slavonic and East European Mediaeval Studies
Group (SEEMSG), and the listserve, H-EarlySlavic, affiliated with the H-Net
project (http://www.h-net.org/ess/). Of most promise is the work being done
with computer imagining: for example, the Repertorium of Old Bulgarian
Literature and Letters (a joint project of David J. Birnbaum of the University
of Pittsburg and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), the optic-electronic
research and modeling of Greek, Slavonic and Russian (Denis Tsypkin of
the Laboratory for Codicological Research and Scientific Expertise of the
Manuscript Department at National Library of Russia), and online reposi-
tories such as the Croatian National Corpus. These developments are only
just beginning, however, to shape the direction of future research in the
field.

H. Key Journals
Much of the research in Medieval Slavic Studies continues to be published in
two traditional formats: the peer-reviewed journal and the monograph. A re-
view of citations in the International Medieval Bibliography for the past twenty-
five years show the key journals indexed in Slavic Studies for this period.
These journals are in alphabetical order, the Slavic publications, Acta Poloniae
Historica, Byzantinoslavica, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, Kritika, Otechestvennaia
1261 Slavic Studies

istoriia, Przegl‰d Historyczny, Rossiskaia arkheologiia, Srednie veka, Trudy otdela

drevnerusskoi literatury, Voprosy istorii; and the Western European and U.S.
publications, Analecta Bollandiana, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Canadian
American Slavic Studies, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Journal des savants, Onomas-
tica, Oxford Slavonic Papers, Russian History, Russian Review, Revue des Études
Slaves, Scando-Slavica, Slavic Review, Social History, Ukrainian Quarterly, Ukrai-
nian Review, and Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
A review of the last twenty-five years of journal articles and conference
proceedings indexed in the International Medieval Bibliography shows that
the focus of this scholarship has been overwhelmingly on medieval Russia.
The six broad areas of research – anthropology, archaeology/architecture,
economics, history, literature, and religion – are rooted in disciplinary
norms, and if they have changed over time, they have done so in tandem with
scholarly developments in the respective fields. Traditional Slavic medieval
scholarship has always been to a large degree cross-disciplinary; 20th- and
21st-century trends, thus, have focused on the application of current literary,
historical, and political theory to current problems of interest.

I. Current Research
Historical research has focused on Russian expansion during the early to late
Middle Ages, its relationship to the other civilizations and peoples – the
Mongols, the Vikings, the Byzantines, the Poles, and so forth, historiography
based on the chronicles and other quasi-literary documents, and works about
the rulers and statesmen of the period.
Of particular interest is the work that has been done in terms of what can
be called “economics and cultural anthropology.” Research has focused on
taxation in Russia, Old Russian monetary markets of the 10th century, land
ownership, property patterns, the formation of urban centers, and trading
and commercial relationships. Diverse anthropological topics include the
life of women, family, settlement studies, and fertility cults.
The fields of “linguistics and literature” have focused largely on key
medieval texts, often viewed in a cross-disciplinary context. Research has
focused on the Russian chronicles, epics, folktales, and hagiographies, devo-
tional literature, the relationship of St. Stephen of Perm, and national lan-
guages, the impact of the Greek language on the culture of Rus’, travel ac-
counts, and scribal activities.
Scholars in the related fields of “architecture and archaeology” have
written on urban studies, the archaeological reconstructions of medieval
towns, chamber graves and their objects, and wall paintings, icon painting,
and church architecture.
Slavic Studies 1262

Lastly, scholars of “religion” have examined the relationship between

secular and canon law, the impact of the Bulgarian Church on the Russian
Church, paganism, the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, heresies such
as the Strigol’niki, and the Russian reception of Christianity.
A sampling of English language monographic titles of the late 20th cen-
tury shows an equal diversity of subject matter. Titles that address religious
studies include Paul Bushkovitch’s Religion and Society in Russia: The
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992); Paul Meyendorff’s Russia, Ritual
and Reform: the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the Seventeenth Century (1991); and
Samuel H. Baron’s and Nancy Shields Kollmann’s Religion and Culture in
Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (1997). In historical and economic studies one
can include Thomas S. Noonan’s The Islamic World, Russia and the Vikings,
750–900: The Numismatic Evidence (1998); George P. Majeska’s Russian Travel-
ers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1984); Donald
Ostrowski’s Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe
Frontier, 1304–1589 (1998); and Richard Hellie’s The Economy and Material
Culture of Russia 1600–1735 (1999). In linguistics and literature one can place
Terence Carlton’s Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavs (1991);
Alexander M. Schenker’s The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology
(1995); and Gail Lenhoff’s The Martyred Princes Boris and Gleb: A Social-Cultural
Study of the Cult and the Texts (1989). Lastly, in Cultural Studies, we can find
Henrik Birnbaum’s and Michael Flier’s Medieval Russian Culture (1984);
and Eve Levin’s Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700
(1989).

J. Conclusion
While this brief overview gives only a glimpse of the wide variety of topics
that have been addressed by late 20th-century scholarship, it is perhaps
instructive to look at the focus of some of the most recent work being
produced. In the 21st century, philologists are studying cross-cultural text
transmission, with Ruthenia (Ukraine/Belarus) as the place of contact for a
number of traditions. Moshe Taube of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
has been reconstructing the transmission of a Jewish Aristotelian corpus to
the East Slavs, and Julia Verkholantsev of the University of Pennsylvania
works on the transmission of a western Catholic corpus into East Slavic via
Bohemian channels. Both scholars are represented in Speculum Slaviae Orien-
talis (UCLA Slavic Studies IV, ed. Vyacheslav Ivanov and J. Verkholant-
sev, 2005).
Scholars have been reevaluating the impact of Byzantine learning on the
organization of text and knowledge in Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy, and offer-
1263 Slavic Studies

ing a more nuanced assessment. Ingunn Lunde’s Verbal Celebrations: Kirill

of Turov’s Homiletic Rhetoric and its Byzantine Sources (2001) demonstrated the
learnedness of Kirill of Turov’s rhetoric, and the forthcoming annotated
translation of Nil Sorskii’s writings by David Goldfrank (Georgetown)
shows that Nil assimilated a sophisticated body of ascetic-philosophical
thought. The history of private life has found a response in Serbian scholar-
ship in the recent Privatni život u srpskim zemljama srednjeg veka (2004). Priscilla
Hunt’s work on the Novgorod Wisdom icon, opens up new paths for read-
ing and understanding the icon.
The western discipline of the history of the book is starting to make in-
roads into the field as well. Contributions include Simon Franklin’s Writ-
ing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300 (2002), which is informed by
orality-literacy theory and the history of material texts, and Robert Roman-
chuk’s Byzantine Hermeneutics and Pedagogy in the Russian North (2007), which
is positioned within the history of reading and textual interpretation. The
recent publication of P. M. Barford’s The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in
Early Medieval Eastern Europe (2001) is another notable inclusion, as is Mar-
shall Poe’s ethnographic study A People Born to Slavery: Russia in Early Modern
European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (2001).
Recent scholarship on Muscovite history has focused on four broad areas:
social elites and court and administrative life, social groups and their inter-
actions, the application of theoretical models such as semiotics to a wide var-
iety of social and cultural activities, and popular culture (Robert O. Crum-
mey, “The Latest from Muscovy,” The Russian Review 60.4 [October 2001]:
474–86).

Select Bibliography
P. M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Terence R. Carlton, Introduction to the
Phonological History of the Slavic Languages (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1991);
Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1962); D. S. Mirsky and Francis J. Whitfield, A History
of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1999); Reader’s Encyclopedia of Eastern European Literature, ed. Robert B. Pynsent
and S. I. Kanikowa (New York: Harper Collins, 1993); Riccardo Picchio and Harvey
Goldblatt, Aspects of the Slavic Language Question, vol. 1 (New Haven, CT, and Colum-
bus, OH: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies; Distributed by Slavica
Publishers, 1984); Slavonic Encyclopaedia, ed. Joseph S. Rou ček (New York: Philosophi-
cal Library, 1949); Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1985).

Marta Deyrup
Social Constructionism 1264

Social Constructionism

A. Definition
Many scholars credit the notion of social constructionism to the work of
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality
(1966). In their work, the authors looked at the way individuals acting in cer-
tain roles form systems and then those systems in turn become part of an in-
stitutional structure or paradigm. Reality itself becomes a social construct
over time, and as such, often moves to the level of the unconscious to the ex-
tent that it becomes naturalized. In essence, people do not see reality as a so-
cial construct, but social constructionists argue that indeed it is.
From the 1970s and 1980s to the present, scholars in the humanities,
drawing on the works of Foucault, Derrida, and sociologists in particu-
lar, have begun to critique the master narratives of history and culture. They
have found in these discourses, emblems of social construction that were
previously understood to be “natural” or a product of biology, theology, or
law. In a real sense, social constructionism treated in any period of scholarly
inquiry reflects an attempt to raise questions about the “natural versus the
unnatural” and “essentialism versus constructionism.” In Essentially Speak-
ing: Feminism, Nature and Difference (1989) Diana Fuss observes that “Con-
structionism, articulated in opposition to essentialism and concerned with
its philosophical refutation, insists that essence is itself a historical con-
struct. Constructionists take the refusal of essence as the inaugural moment
of their project and proceed to demonstrate the way previously assumed self-
evident kinds (like ‘man’ and ‘woman’) are in fact the effects of complicated
discursive practices” (2). Even in the Middle Ages, where the concept of biol-
ogy as destiny was the clear assumption, Joyce Salisbury (“Gendered Sex-
uality”) has shown that biology turned into an ideology by a body of texts
from physicians, philosophers, and theologians, who actually created that
notion of biology as essential (Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bul-
lough and James A. Brundage, 1996). Thus social constructionist critics
assume that deep-seated ideologies drive hegemonic discourse that scholar-
ship must unpack.

B. Historical Developments/Trends in Scholarship

With respect to Medieval Studies, the notions of social constructionism are
so pervasive in scholarship on history and literature that a survey of the
topics explored across the disciplines would be almost impossible. At the
same time, the most significant work in social constructionism has been its
1265 Social Constructionism

challenges to the established domains of gender and sexuality, race/ethnic-

ity, and the definition of humanity itself. This volume includes a survey
of scholarship on feminism and masculinity studies in Medieval Studies.
Clearly these studies look at the way gender roles were constructed by par-
ticular social classes and in light of geographical location. At the same time,
some of these studies also focus on the notion that even gender is not a fixed
element, an aspect particularly noted in masculinity studies that examine
the hegemonic paradigms that were certainly in place in the larger medieval
culture. Studies of sexuality, including those that have used queer theory,
have noted that even sexuality itself, while certainly rooted in the materiality
of body, is also a construct. Originally the attempt in queer studies was to
find a space for same-sex desire in cultural and literary practices. More
recently, queer studies has challenged the constructed quality of heterosex-
uality in medieval literature. With respect to race/ethnicity, studies have
examined the way in which the West, the East, Jewishness, Muslims, and the
geographical other have been constructed. Postcolonialist studies have con-
tributed much to uncovering the surface and latent colonial ideologies pres-
ent in medieval texts. Finally, even the concept of what it means to be human
has been the focus on social constructionist scholarship. In a very real way,
social constructionism has challenged the current and future academy by
questioning older historical and literary paradigms.

C. Social Constructionism and Topics in Medieval Studies

C.1. Gender and Sexuality

Perhaps no area of Medieval Studies has seen a more significant output of
scholarly production than have gender and sexuality. In this volume, there
are essays on the scholarship particularly devoted to feminism, masculinity,
and queer studies. Here the purpose is to examine how social construction
is functional in medieval conceptions of gender and sexuality in broad terms.
Joan Cadden (Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and
Culture, 1993) sets out in great detail the medical and theological texts that
were used to construct particular notions of the body, including its manage-
ment. Central to her argument is the importance of particular characteristics
of each sex. She calls into question the work of Thomas Laqueur and the
single-sex notion of the body (Making Sex: The Body and Gender from the Greeks
to Freud, 1990). In keeping with Cadden’s study is the Handbook of Medieval
Sexuality (ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, 1996). In addi-
tion to defining “norms” of sexual behavior and gender awareness among
males and females, some of the essays also examine variances from those
Social Constructionism 1266

norms. The intention of the essays is to draw questions relative to natural/

unnatural boundaries, based on evidence of practice. While biology is cer-
tainly important, biology or sex itself is also a social construct.
The first and second wave of feminism whose implicit message was that
the relationship between men and women was more a matter of social condi-
tioning than biology had an impact on the study of women in medieval liter-
ary texts and history. Implicit in these studies is a point made in the “Intro-
duction” by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski in their edited volume
Women and Power in the Middle Ages (1988). They write that “We read a series
of texts – social and written – to gain an understanding of experience. Litera-
ture shapes a culture’s sense of itself; similarly, history, in being filtered
through individual consciousnesses, is created by them and cannot accu-
rately be described as objective” (13). Thus texts are themselves construc-
tions of social environments and even those social circumstances are social
constructs. The April 1993 issue on feminism in Speculum, a very traditional
medieval journal, has been hailed as a significant defining moment for social
constructionism in Medieval Studies, not just because it identifies and chal-
lenges the hegemonic versions of masculinity, but because it introduces a
greater sense that even the literary critic is a social construction. Building
on all of these ideas was Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages
(ed. Claire Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann McNamara, 1994). In
the “Introduction,” Claire Lees notes that “There are, of course, many ways
of studying men and many different male experiences that still need to be
recovered” (xvi). The volume sees the study of men and women as being di-
rectly connected, thus offering a correction to earlier versions of feminism
that treated maleness in a monolithic way and all males as spokesmen for
patriarchy.
If both the categories of sexuality and gender and of males and females
were understood as social constructs in scholarship, it is only natural that
once the boundaries had been established that scholars would look for the
blurring of sexuality. Queer studies of medieval texts began to surface and
challenge the dominant versions of the historical and literary narrative, even
those that were treated as social constructions along natural/unnatural lines
by previous scholars. Premodern Sexualities (ed. Louise Fradenburg and
Carla Freccero, 1996) draws heavily on the sexual constructions of Michel
Foucault and examines a number of medieval texts for sexual expressions
that prefigure the modern and in some way provide evidence for critique of
modern practices and prejudices. Carolyn Dinshaw, in Getting Medieval: Sex-
ualities and Communities, Pre-and Postmodern (1999), contends with the master
narratives of history and beings the task of writing a queer history – a project
1267 Social Constructionism

that just begins with this book. Queering the Middle Ages (ed. Glenn Burger
and Steven F. Kruger, 2001) continues Dinshaw’s intention and specifi-
cally challenge heteronormative readings of texts that are themselves the
product of social constructionism of medieval times as well as the modern
critic. Tison Pugh’s Sexuality and its Queer Discontents in Middle English Litera-
ture: The New Middle Ages (2008) provides a study of medieval texts with an
eye to challenging the representation of heterosexual masculinity. Similar
studies of the constructedness of heterosexuality can be found in the medi-
eval romance. Louise M. Sylvester, in Medieval Romance and the Construction
of Heterosexuality (2008), challenges the very fabric of gendered fiction of
males and females in the romance genre and suggests that our quest for para-
digms is illusive. Heterosexual relations in the romance itself are a construct.
Social construction in studies of gender and sexuality has moved from
identifying what those particular constructions were to an examination of
the underlying assumptions that were a part of the constructions. Without
question, studies of gender and sexuality have been highly impacted by the
ideology of social construction. In fact, it is omnipresent.

C.2. Race and Ethnicity

Most of the studies that have been fostered by the notion of social construc-
tion have been keenly focused on the attempts of a medieval European world
to define itself against the backdrop of what was known about other parts of
the world. Among the earliest studies that became foundational in this effort
to examine the creation of master narratives of race and ethnicity is Robert
Bartlett’s The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change,
950–1350 (1993). Central to his examination is the notion of how race is
linked to matters of linguistic, legal, and social relations to define a cultural
group. His study examines the way that Europe itself was viewed as a con-
structed identity. The postcolonial turn has itself provided some intriguing
studies of the notion of race and ethnicity. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s edited
collection entitled The Postcolonial Middle Ages (2000), a part of The New
Middle Ages Series, provided an important gathering point of scholarly
foment on these topics as well as suggesting important departures to follow.
In his introductory essay, he suggests five key areas of departure undertaken
in the study: a continual reexamination of the vocabulary for describing ex-
perience; the connections between history and “truth;” questioning hegem-
ony relative to race, nationality, gender, etc.; the role of Christian and its con-
nection with pre-Christian elements; and a “decentering” of Europe as the
locus of attention (“Introduction: Midcolonial,” op.cit., 1–17). Essays in the
collection examine concepts such as racial purity and the reality of West/East
Social Constructionism 1268

interactions, the connections between borders and identities, the Jewish

presence in England and Europe, and the presence of the “alien” among the
European. All of these essays assert that medieval Europeans were attempt-
ing to socially construct themselves. Perhaps more important as an attempt
to examine the white-black dichotomy in the Middle Ages is the work of Tho-
mas Hahn (“The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before
the Modern World,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31.1 [Winter
2001]: 1–37). Avoiding potential charges of “presentism” in his method,
Hahn demonstrates the continual shifting of racial identity across a variety
of literary texts and artistic spectrums in the high and late Middle Ages
relative to earlier mythic topoi. Lisa Lomparis (“Race, Periodicity, and the
(Neo-) Middle Ages,” Modern Language Quarterly 65.3 [2004]: 391–421) pro-
vides a critique of the methodologies used by both medievalists and non-
medievalists relative to race and argues that studies must go beyond the con-
struction of prejudice. Her call might strike some readers as usual because
she is connecting the world of scholarly endeavor to social action.
While studies of ethnicity have tended to focus on Europe as a construct,
much of the scholarship, growing out of English studies, has actually been in
studies of English/British literature. In Cultural Diversity in the British Middle
Ages: Archipaelago, Island, England (ed. by Jeffery Jerome Cohen, 2008; a part
of The New Middle Ages series) the authors attempt to look at the social con-
struction of identity through a different lens. They examine the use of other
identities to form an English cultural identity in texts. Thus rather than
identifying English identities – or European ones – as self-contained, the
essays attempt to examine the role of the “subterranean” of other cultures
within England. There is no question that England has a unique place in
Western Europe and that its particular status as malleable to other cultural
voices changes the perception of the construction of race and ethnicity in a
variety of canonical and non-canonical medieval texts.
All studies of race and ethnicity as a social construction reveal important
elements about the national and ethnocentric status of Europe, but in more
recent studies, there has been less of a tendency to see the binaries noted in
earlier studies, but now to examine the influences and borrowings that seem
to undercut what can be seen as racial and ethnic stereotyping.

C.3. Defining Humanness

In a sense, it may be somewhat surprising to view humanness as a social con-
struct, but as a number of scholars have shown, the body was itself a social
construct in the Middle Ages that connected the male body and the undiffer-
entiated body with the cosmos. Without question, there are a number of
1269 Social Constructionism

medieval texts that treat the conflation of human and animal forms, and
historical-critical scholarship has investigated those along with medieval
attempts to describe the human-like creatures that lived beyond the bonds
of Western Europe. Using the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Jeffrey Jerome
Cohen provided one of the most significant reexaminations of the medieval
body ever undertaken (Medieval Identity Machines, 2003). In this study,
Cohen examines the way in which chivalry invests the body with meaning,
particularly with the fusion of horse and man, with each contributing to the
identity of the other. He also challenges traditional understandings of the
body and boundaries in his examination of Lancelot and the negotiation of
dominance and submission in Chretien’s romance, the embodied voice of
Margery Kempe, and the racial body.
Many later studies credit this work by Cohen as the genesis of a new
approach to the human body and to the meaning of humanness. Since the
world of the monstrous and the human are so closely related in medieval
texts, a number of scholars have taken their departure from Cohen’s work.
The Monstrous Middle Ages (ed. Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills, 2003)
contains a series of essays, drawing of the work of Cohen, John Friedman,
and Caroline Walker Bynum, that examine the way in which the monstrous
was constructed with respect to non-Western, hence non-Christian cultures.
Since the traditional association of the monstrous have been destructive
and prejudicial, essays is this collection attempt to reclaim the monstrous as
not the fearful other. A study more historical in nature, The Epistemology of
the Monstrous in the Middle Ages (2005), by Lisa Verner, presents a historical
assessment of the topic beginning with thinking of the ancient world, par-
ticularly Aristotle, and moves into the Middle Ages with a close examination
of texts. Most revealing is the role of the monstrous as a divine agent early on
and its subsequent transformation into a more fluid status. In “Cryptozool-
ogy in the Medieval and Modern Worlds” (Folklore 117.2 [2006]: 190–206)
Peter Dendle suggests that there is a bridge between modern attempts to
find existing species that are not known and the medieval attempt to catalog
such images in bestiaries and in the Old English Wonders of the East. Most in-
teresting is his assertion that more that simply the moral lessons that besti-
aries were to present, they were to provides images of human behavior that
has been rejected, and as such, they held in check certain “sublimated
anxieties” (194). The monstrous thus served an important element in con-
structing humanity.
This study provides a survey of the range of studies that are the out-
growths of social constructionism. From these studies, several key principles
emerge. First, all aspects of life in the Middle Ages were subject to a socially
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1270

constructed vision of reality. In fact, there is no reality apart from a socially

constructed one. Second, social construction trumps the kind of thinking
about humanity that was present even in medieval times. The extent to
which destiny was determined by biology is one of the medieval period’s
clearest examples of the social construction of reality. Third, social construc-
tionism, both as a practice of medieval writers and thinkers as well as their
modern critical investigators, permeates the entire enterprise in such a way
that to critique medieval constructionism is also to critique its modern off-
spring.

Select Bibliography
Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New
York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996); Joan Cadden, Meaning of Sex Difference
in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003); The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome
Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sex-
ualities and Communities, Pre-and Postmodern (London: Duke University Press, 1999);
Louise M. Sylvester, Medieval Romance and the Construction of Heterosexuality (New York
and London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008).

Daniel F. Pigg

Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

A. The Debate on the Dynamics and Crisis of Feudalism

The first major debate regarding the economic and social forces that shaped
the dynamic of the feudal system was initiated with an article by Robert
Brenner (“Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-
Industrial Europe,” Past and Present 70 [1976]: 30–75). It presented an argu-
ment that was inspired by Marxist theory and came to challenge Michael
M. Postan’s population-resources or Neo-Malthusian argument. Postan
responded, with John Hatcher (“Population and Class Relations in Feudal
Society,” Past and Present 78 [1978]: 24–37) follow this model. The interest
sparked by this exchange continued with a number of additional contribu-
tions, including a final response by Brenner (“The Agrarian Roots of Euro-
pean Capitalism,” Past and Present 97 [1982]: 16–113). The latter, along with
the two original articles, were published as a collection of essays (The Brenner
1271 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,

ed. Trevor H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin, 1987). A third interpretation
was formulated by Bruce Campbell in a series of publications, beginning
in the 1990s, that came to be known as the Commercialist or Thunenesque
approach. The review that follows will provide a critical summary of these
three competing theoretical paradigms by contrasting their claims against
the existing empirical evidence.

B. The Neo-Malthusian Argument

Certain themes of what came to be known as the Neo-Malthusian argument
were stressed by earlier historians (William Denton, England in the Fifteenth
Century, 1888; Lord Ernle [formerly R. Prothero], English Farming, Past
and Present, 1912). But it was Michael M. Postan and some of his pupils and
followers that developed the argument in a comprehensive analytical frame-
work. (The best representation of Postan’s argument is his “Medieval
Agrarian Society in its Prime: England,” The Cambridge Economic History of Eng-
land, vol. 1: The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages, ed. Michael M. Postan, 2nd ed.
1966, 549–632; also Michael M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society,
1972).
This argument bears a striking intellectual affinity to the Malthusian
theory of population, as modified by the Ricardian theory of differential fer-
tility and diminishing returns (David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political
Economy and Taxation, ed., Piero Sraffa, 1951; Robert Thomas Malthus,
First Essay on Population, 1926. The two works were first published in 1817
and 1798 respectively. A comprehensive outline of these theories can be
found in Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 1962).
In the Ricardian model land is treated as a productive factor that is fixed
in supply, containing many plots with a wide range of output capacities and
locational characteristics that provide limited choices for alternative uses;
perhaps most important of all, land is considered a non-reproducible factor.
In essence, this is a theory of marginal productivity; it claims that economic
agents will push the intensive and extensive margins of cultivation to the
point where the value of the marginal product will be equal to the marginal
cost, at which point the next plot will come into use. The least fertile land,
whose product determines the market price does not generate any rent and
thus rent is not one of the components of market price; rent is generated pro-
portionately in land of higher fertility, and takes the form of a residual. For
Malthus it was an easy step to conclude, although it took more the form of
an implicit assumption than a full-blown analytical scheme, that unchecked
population growth would lead to the cultivation of additional, and poorer,
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1272

pieces of land. Needless to say, this process is self-defeating because the

supply of land is fixed.
Ricardo and Malthus presented to Postan and his followers an irre-
sistible conceptual framework for interpreting the empirical evidence con-
cerning the state of medieval technology and the overall crisis of feudalism,
its English version in particular. By the end of the 13th century population
reached an unprecedented plateau facing increasing constraints with regard
to its food supply, which was reflected in static or even declining yields. The
“truly historical, time conditioned” cause of this chain of events, Postan sug-
gests, was the exhaustion of the soil after the centuries-long process of unin-
terrupted cultivation, especially within the heartland of English manorial-
ism, that is, in the midlands and the southern counties. In this context, a
prominent role was played by the inferior responses that producers used in
addressing basic technical needs, as manifested in the “low quality of seed,
the shallow plowing, the absence of proper underdraining of the heavier and
more fertile soils, the inability of the fallowing routine to deal properly with
weeds, and […] the insufficiency of manure” (Michael M. Postan, The Medi-
eval Economy and Society, 1973, both quotes from p. 62). The extension of the
margin of cultivation was the only viable response left, a fact that Postan
was the first to point out and systematically describe.
But what precise role does technological change play in these narratives?
For Ricardo, along with Malthus and other contemporary writers such as
West and Torrens (Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 1962), the
answer was an obvious one: the progress of technology in agriculture could
not compare with the impressive achievements of the division of labor and
the use of machinery in industry, and thus it was incapable of reversing the
progressive deterioration of land fertility. Technical change in their model is
nearly static and, in essence, is merely an assumption, a given, playing no role
in determining the direction of systemic dynamics and the end result of the
accumulation process.
Notwithstanding the complex details of late feudal England, Postan’s
theoretical account is strikingly similar to its classical predecessors, especially
when it comes to the absence of a cumulative process of invention; in his
words, this absence was reflected in the “insufficient supply of new techno-
logical possibilities” (Postan and Hatcher, “Population and Class
Relations,” The Brenner Debate, ed. Aston and Philpin, 1987, 77). The devel-
opment of new techniques “remained remarkably static for the whole of the
Middle Ages,” and he adds that, throughout the period, their importance
was “not quite so fundamental as it is sometimes assumed” (Michael. M.
Postan, Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Econ-
1273 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

omy, 1973, 17). The lack of inventions can be amply clarified by the invest-
ment behavior of the upper classes (Postan’s, along with Hatcher’s, view
on the investment behavior of landlords is summarized in their “Population
and Class Relations” [1978]). Landlords spent modest portions of their rev-
enues on building barns or adding to their livestock wherever the territorial
balance of arable land and pasture allowed and, at best, supplemented these
small investments with administrative innovations, better marketing of the
produce, and slight alterations in the rotation patterns of crops. Efforts like
these would increase the output of individual manors, but could provide
little leverage in reversing the imbalance between demographic growth and
static food supplies for the country as a whole.
Those limited investments suggested to Postan not only a qualitatively
poor technical base, but also the failure to utilize already existing tech-
niques, that, is, an imperfect process of technical diffusion. Drawing his
evidence again from the behavior of the ruling class, he noted the inevitable
extension of the margin of cultivation, as demonstrated by the large reclama-
tion movement, a form of investment that adds precious little to the long-
term productive capacity of a society. Postan observes that this apparent
miscalculation made sense from the point of view of landlords because
the size of their holdings was the main indicator of their hierarchical status
and could lead to a series of privileges such as the acquisition of a standing
army, religious salvation through land endowments, and powerful alliances
with other members of the baronial class through the marriage of family
members.
In general, Postan’s account points to the lack of any new independent
inventions and the underutilization of existing technology, attributing these
to the value system of the ruling class. The impression we are left with is that
medieval technological changes were external and minor “injections,” caus-
ing only temporary disturbances in production functions and, in the end,
failing to lead England on a path of dynamic and cumulative adjustment.
The pace of technological change failed to catch up with population growth,
thus leading to the unfolding of the Malthusian scenario.
There is one last point that needs to be emphasized. From the Ricardian
proposition that rent does not enter into price, it follows that the existence of
landlords is entirely irrelevant to the outcome of his gloomy scenario. Even if
landlords had decided suddenly to give up their property rights over the
land, and withdraw into the realm of social irrelevance, the mechanism that
reproduces the unequal race between human procreation and food supplies
would still be left intact; the price of agricultural products and the marginal
cost would remain the same, as well as the pattern of demand (since Ri-
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1274

cardo considered the demand of grains to be inelastic). The key element in

this scheme is the insufficient generation of inventions. It follows that the
law of diminishing returns would have worked with iron necessity regard-
less of any considerations about the class structure of a society.
Following the Ricardian logic, income distribution in Postan’s argu-
ment is determined by the relative scarcity of land vs. labor and the extent to
which diminishing returns have crept into agricultural production; in other
words, it depends on economic-biological factors. This thesis was stated in
the most unambiguous terms by Le Roy Ladurie, another prominent sup-
porter of this argument: “it is in the economy, in social relations and, even
more fundamentally, in biological facts, rather than in the class struggle,
that we must seek the motive force of history” (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,
“L’ Histoire immobile,” Annales E.S.C. 29 [1974]: 673–92; see also his Les pay-
sans de Languedoc, 1966, published later on as The Peasants of Languedoc, trans.
J. Day, 1974). An illustration, according to Postan (and Hatcher), of the
powerful role of market forces was the fact that entry fines (charged upon
taking up of land by a new tenant) fluctuated based on the scarcity of land un-
less restrained by customary law; but even in this case it was the vilain that
was able to benefit from the inflexibility of this, and other, charges particu-
larly when land values were rising during the 13th century (Postan and
Hatcher, “Population and Class Relations” [1978]).
Overall, there is a compelling simplicity in this Neo-Malthusian model,
with its mechanistic logic, which apparently succeeds in encompassing and
simultaneously determining a whole array of variables. Based on the un-
equal rates of growth between output and population, and assuming techni-
cal change to be almost static, it explains the declining productivity of the
land and leads to the two most basic predictions of the Ricardian model:
a) the rapid rise in food prices during the century preceding the Black Death;
and b) the proportional increase in rents and entry fines. Furthermore, if we
extend our scope to the middle of the 14th century and thereafter, the model
provides us with a reason for the onset of the crisis and disruption, and also
the reversal of the pre-plague trends as reflected in stagnating or falling rents
and food prices due to the alteration of the ratio between land and labor.
A closer examination of the Neo-Malthusian model, however, reveals
certain weaknesses in its treatment of medieval technology and its, by and
large, failure to negate the impact of demographic forces (Harry Kitsiko-
poulos, “Technological Change in Medieval England: A Critique of the
Neo-Malthusian Argument,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
144 [2000]: 397–449; John Hatcher and Mark Bailey, Modelling the Middle
Ages: The History and Theory of England’s Economic Development, 2001, 21–65).
1275 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

Technological change becomes implicitly a critical variable both in the

classical account and in Postan’s because, in the absence of a significant role
played by foreign trade, it provides the only mechanism that can keep margi-
nal revenue above marginal cost and thus prevent an economy from reaching
its Malthusian ceiling. Nevertheless, this theory fails to draw a sharp distinc-
tion between the innovation of new technologies and the diffusion of exist-
ing ones; the absence of the former during the crucial period 1200–1500 led
Postan and his followers to largely disregard the latter. It was a small step,
therefore, to accept the Ricardian proposition that technical change in agri-
culture cannot match the equivalent process in industry. Having excluded
technology from its theoretical framework, the research agenda of the Neo-
Malthusian school was bound to ignore both the temporal and regional
manifestations of technological diffusion.
Virtually every student of the period will agree with Postan that the
performance of late feudal England, and Europe in general, in generating
new technologies was very poor. But he never seriously asked: what pre-
vented the rapid and universal diffusion of already existing technologies?
The law of diminishing returns in agriculture has a logical appeal when we
consider the case of two variable factors (capital and labor) exploiting a fixed
quantity of a constant factor (land) under conditions of static technology. But
there is no good reason why technological diffusion should operate under an
equivalent law of diminishing or even constant returns, especially in the con-
text of the economies of medieval Europe.
A second issue that needs to be addressed is the failure of this model to
discern regional differences in terms of technological responses, particularly
when it comes to manorial estates, to the growing scarcity of resources. The
majority of manorial estates did behave according to the Neo-Malthusian
account, but there was also a progressive segment that did not conform to the
norm. In terms of the former, it is true that the members of the ruling class
shared a set of values that favored the ever-increasing acquisition of land and
territorial expansion for the reasons Postan had cited. But why should this
aim be promoted to the exclusion of investment “in depth?” Are these two
ways of increasing wealth necessarily contradictory? The Neo-Malthusian
historians did not provide a link between regional differences in the power
of seigneurial prerogatives and the pace of technological diffusion and thus
did not probe the potential of a cause-and-effect relationship between the
two.
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1276

C. The Marxist Argument

It was this crucial but still unexplained failure of technology to lift Europe
from the Malthusian trap that prompted Marxist historians to challenge the
existing orthodoxy. In the words of the main figure promoting this alter-
native argument “the problem […] was not, as Postan and Hatcher con-
tend, the ‘insufficient supply of new technological possibilities,’ but rather
the feudal economy’s inability to make use of possibilities which existed”
(Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]: 33).
The central element of the Marxist argument is the thesis that medieval
peasants were not free agents and their relationship to landlords was not
strictly economic but political. It was the latter element that was the pri-
mary determinant of the distribution of income and wealth, and the pres-
ence of seigneurial prerogatives that acted as the main impediment to econ-
omic growth. Such prerogatives diminished the incentives on the part of
landlords to adopt innovative responses to the growing scarcity of resources
during the pre-plague period, instead focusing on extravagant levels of
consumption; and the same prerogatives diminished the ability of peasants
to act likewise. It is this fact that explains the low levels of capital
formation and the slow process of technological diffusion, especially before
the Black Death, which led to attempts in dealing with the demographic
upswing by pushing the extensive, as opposed to the intensive, margin of
cultivation.
One method used by Marxist historians to prove the validity of this
hypothesis was to engage in a regional contrast exploring the relationship
between seigneurial prerogatives and the type of production choices made
by manorial estates. One region where the manorial element established
a strong foothold were the southern and eastern counties of England, up to
a line drawn from Boston to Gloucester. In a seminal study of over 900 estates
(both secular and monastic) spread throughout the country, Howard. L.
Gray concluded that labor services, the most notable indicator of seigneur-
ial power, were the least commuted within this region, with Kent and some
pockets along the southeastern coastline providing some exceptional cases.
Gray’s study referred to the early 14th century and came a few years later
to be supplemented by an analysis of the Hundred Rolls from the late thir-
teenth century undertaken by Evegnii A. Kosminsky. Kosminsky’s analy-
sis drew a sharp distinction between this part of England and the rest of the
country by concluding that vilain labor services accounted for approximately
24 % of total tenant payments in certain southern counties, reaching all the
way up to forty percent in large parts of the East Midlands, the Home Coun-
ties, and East Anglia (Evgenii A. Kosminsky, “Services and Money Rents in
1277 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

the Thirteenth Century,” Essays in Economic History, vol. 2, ed. Eleanora M.

Carus-Wilson, 1966, 21–48; Howard. L. Gray, “The Commutation of Vil-
lein Services in England Before the Black Death,” English Historical Review 116
[1914]: 625–56).
The significance of these findings is that, as Kosminsky’s research
implies, the level of labor services is an excellent indicator of the size of total
payments since the two were locked in a direct relationship. Regional studies
have established the fact that this classic model of seigneurial power was
widely duplicated across the channel, from areas north and east of Paris
where seigneurial obligations were well-entrenched by the late Middle Ages
but intensified during the 13th century, to countries like Bohemia, Hungary
and Poland where feudalism failed to establish in its classic form until the
thirteenth century; once it did, however, it came to resemble western forms
of feudalism with each manor consisting of a network of tenancies for the
distinct purpose of collecting rents. And increasingly this power came to be
concentrated to the point that by ca. 1440 around forty percent of Hungarian
villages were owned by the sixty most powerful landlords (Zsigmond P.
Pach, “The Development of Feudal Rent in Hungary in the Fifteenth
Century,” Economic History Review 19 [1966]: 1–14; Marian Malowist, “The
Problem of the Inequality of Economic Development in Europe in the Later
Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 19 [1966]: 15–28; Brenner, “Agrarian
Class Structure,” [1976]).
Using political power as an instrument of wealth appropriation, this
type of estates lacked any strong incentives towards increasing their levels of
productive efficiency and thus “feudal development tended to take inward-
looking forms – forms of redistribution of wealth, rather than its creation”
(Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]: 37). The well-documented case of
the manors belonging to the bishopric of Winchester exemplify the classic
picture of medieval economic stagnation by adopting extensive forms of
field systems, low ratios of livestock per arable acre, lack of integration of the
two forms of husbandry for the maximum utilization of manure, and li-
mited quantities of leguminous crops. Values of arable land in southeastern
England suggest that despite the demographic pressures of the 13th century
extensive forms of husbandry remained the norm, notwithstanding isolated
parts of Norfolk and Kent, coastal Sussex, and the Soke of Peterborough. In
an age lacking an experimental philosophy used in the validation of knowl-
edge, inefficient methods of production may be partly attributed to ignor-
ance. But multiple instances of pure indifference can also be documented.
As an illustration, experts such as Walter of Henley urged manorial officials
to buy seed in order to avoid the risk of crop diseases. Nevertheless, there
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1278

are only intermittent examples of estates engaging in the exchange of seeds

and of some resorting to the market for its purchase, the majority using their
own supplies. This indifference towards productive improvements is also
reflected on the fact that “there was no idea of increase or profit-directed
investment in the economic ideology of that period,” as Bois and other econ-
omic historians have pointed out (Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, 1984;
Bruce M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450, 2000; Jan Z.
Titow, Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agrarian Productivity, 1972; Jan Z.
Titow, English Rural Society, 1200–1350, 1969).
But the most sinister reason for seigneurial prerogatives acting as an im-
pediment to growth was the diversion of funds away from productive invest-
ment among peasant holdings (e. g., purchase of livestock and thus access to
more manure) towards military adventures and conspicuous consumption.
The draining of peasants’ monetary and labor resources could be potentially
large and hinged mainly on the legal status of the tenant. Despite Postan’s
and Hatcher’s attempts in emphasizing the importance of customary
law in preventing the rise of money rents during the 13th century, the fact
remains that vilain rents were three to four time higher compared to those of
free tenants and could absorb up to fifty percent of the value of a serf’s annual
output, according to Postan’s own admission. Discussions of the material
aspects of peasants’ lives and detailed reconstructions of their annual
budgets have shown that during the century leading to the Black Death half
of the English peasantry lived at or below the brink of subsistence (Evgenii A.
Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century,
1956; Robert Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]; Harry Kitsikopou-
los, “Standards of Living and Capital Formation in Pre-Plague England:
A Peasant Budget Model,” Economic History Review 53 [2000]: 237–61; Chris-
topher C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in Eng-
land c.1200–1500, 1989).
Seigneurial prerogatives were responsible not only for weakening the
diffusion of individual technologies in regions of strong manorialism but
also in the formation of field systems that combined techniques in a subopti-
mal fashion. In an account that is sympathetic to the Marxist argument, par-
ticularly Bois’s version of it (see below), Kitsikopoulos has provided a syn-
thesis of various interpretations about the evolution of rigid common-fields
which is based on three factors: ecological profiles, demographic growth,
and the power of manorialism. The starting point of this argument, dating
back to the early Middle Ages, is the presence of consolidated holdings culti-
vated under an infield-outfield arrangement. As population grew during
the centuries leading to the Black Death and land resources became scarce,
1279 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

powerful landlords, particularly ecclesiastical estates, led an effort to reor-

ganize fields from flexible and irregular rotations toward geometrical and
functional symmetry in the context of common and subdivided fields to
rationalize the use of grazing grounds and control the recycling of manure.
This type of scenario, particularly noticeable in regions of fertile soils such
as the southeastern part of England, led eventually to rigid rules locked into
the system and limited the scope for innovation due to the lack of flexibility
regarding the roles of tillage and animal husbandry. Campbell noted that
“regular commonfield systems inhibited adoption of the more flexible and
intensive mixed-farming systems, especially those practicing a form of con-
vertible husbandry” (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 2000, 179;
Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Urban Demand and Agrarian Productivity in Pre-
Plague England: Reassessing the Relevancy of von Thunen’s Model,” Agricul-
tural History 77 [2003]: 506–11).
This conjectural interpretation regarding the evolution of common-
fields may be plausible but is still missing a comprehensive explanation of
the attitudes of lords and peasants towards this system as it went through its
evolutionary formation. Such an account was provided by Richard C. Hoff-
mann. According to him, the formation of rigid common-fields was a re-
sponse to population growth by attempting to impose and formalize social
control. The enforcement of seigneurial prerogatives relied on the discipline
and conformity of the peasantry which is precisely the sort of behavior com-
mon-fields perpetuate. Any deviation from the existing common routine
was bound to play havoc on the functionality of the system; for instance,
when a peasant decides to graze his beasts in the midst of unfenced strips
belonging to his neighbors who choose to crop at that time. But by enforcing
these rules, landlords opted for social conservatism at the expense of inno-
vation. Hoffmann provided also an excellent account of how resource
constraints faced by peasants shaped their behavioral patterns and attitudes
towards the system. The presence of limited resources and static technology
forces a peasant to seek the maximum output out of his holding even at the
point the labor of his family members face substantial diminishing returns.
In trying to maximize output, however, the goal was to maximize it not
based on its cash value but in terms of producing a bundle of products that
would ensure the greatest possible degree of self-sufficiency. It is from this
point of view that we can appreciate the presence of common-fields as an in-
stitution aimed at minimizing risk, the orientation of the system towards
crop production, as opposed to animal husbandry (since the former provides
more calories per unit of land compared to the latter), and the poor inte-
gration of animal husbandry within the overall production routine (Richard
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1280

C. Hoffmann, “Medieval Origins of the Common Fields,” European Peasants

and their Markets, ed. William N. Parker and Eric L. Jones, 1975, 23–72).
In contrast to regions of Europe where the manorial element was deeply
entrenched, there were others in which serfdom was never introduced (e. g.,
Sweden), made only partial inroads (e. g., some areas of England along the
southeastern coastline and others in the north and west of the country), or
was in a process of retreat during the 12th and 13th centuries as was the case in
large parts of Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Zealand, Normandy, Picardy and
Denmark). There was a considerable amount of freedom in these regions
coupled with a low level of seigneurial extractions. In the western and north-
ern counties of England commutation of labor services was quite advanced
and the value of the remaining ones comprised twenty percent of total pay-
ments in the former and considerably less than ten percent in the latter. Des-
pite some regional exceptions, French serfs had to surrender, on average,
only about ten percent of the value of their annual output (according to an es-
timate by Bois), whereas the various types of seigneurial dues in the Flemish
royal estates are estimated to have absorbed about a third of the tenants’
gross grain yields. Marxist historians have pointed out the causal relation-
ship between the lack of an effective appropriation mechanism in these cases
and the incentives it provided to manorial estates in seeking wealth by elev-
ating their efficiency, with Flemish estates exemplifying this argument the
best.
Freedom from heavy extractions also afforded to peasants greater flexi-
bility in production decisions. Under such conditions of relative prosperity it
became much easier to deal with the epidemics of the 14th century. Far from
creating a social crisis, the Black Death gave the final blow to demesnial far-
ming in Denmark and the subsequent transformation of tenures led to com-
mercially oriented peasant farming, especially in the western regions, expor-
ting both grains and livestock to the Dutch and the German Hansa towns
(Kosminsky, “Services and Money Rents,” Essays in Economic History, ed.
Eleanor M. Carus-Wilson, vol. 2, 1962, 31–48; Rodney H. Hilton, A Medi-
eval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century, 1966; Gray,
“The Commutation of Villein Services in England Before the Black Death,”
The English Historical Review 29.16 [1914]: 625–56; Jan A. van houtte,
An Economic History of the Low Countries, 800–1800, 1977; Janken Myrdal, “The
Agricultural Transformation of Sweden,” Medieval Farming and Technology:
The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe, ed., Grenville astill and
John L. langdon, 1997, 147–71; Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,”
[1976]; brenner, “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]; Eddy van Cauwen-
berghe and Herman van der Wee, “Productivity, Evolution of Rents and
1281 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

Farm Size in the Southern Netherlands Agriculture from the Fourteenth to

the Seventeenth Century,” Productivity of Land and Agricultural Innovation in the
Low Countries, 1250–1800, ed., id., 1978, 125–62; Erik Thoen, “The Birth of
‘the Flemish Husbandry’: Agricultural Technology in Medieval Flanders”
Medieval Farming and Technology, ed. Astill and Langdon, 1997, 69–88;
Bjorn Poulsen, “Agricultural Technology in Medieval Denmark,” Medieval
Farming and Technology, ed. Astill and Langdon, 1997, 115–46).
One of the main elements that allowed these progressive areas to achieve
higher levels of efficiency was their differentiation in terms of field systems.
According to the aforementioned explanation pertaining to England, the
prevalence of flexible field systems was either due to poor ecological profiles
which induced lower levels of population growth and hence rendered land-
lords indifferent towards regularizing existing land resources (e. g., large
areas in the northern and western counties); or, ecological conditions may
have been favorable supporting high population densities, nevertheless,
landlords failed to impose a scheme of regular common-fields and/or heavy
extractions (e. g., in parts of Norfolk, Kent and Sussex). Demesnes and peas-
ant holdings in these cases were either consolidated and enclosed or, if sub-
divided, there was still a considerable amount of individualistic practices by
placing temporary hurdles which allowed tillage to take place in severalty,
removing them after the harvest to allow collective grazing (e. g., in Sussex).
Depending on local population densities, such arrangements could accom-
modate a flexible but extensive form of land use, such as an infield-outfield
system, or more sophisticated forms such as convertible husbandry and
the “round-course” system (Kitsikopoulos, “Urban Demand,” [2003]:
506–11; Bruce M. S. Campbell, “Land, Labour, Livestock, and Productivity
Trends in English Seignorial Agriculture, 1208–1450,” Land, Labour and Live-
stock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity, ed. id. and Mark
overton, 1991, 144–82).
In the end, by emphasizing the role of class relations, the Marxist inter-
pretation provided the missing explanation of developments taking place
during the late Middle Ages that the Neo-Malthusian argument was simply
describing. According to Brenner, “reproduction by the lords through sur-
plus extraction by means of extra-economic compulsion and by peasants
through production for subsistence precluded any widespread tendencies to
thorough specialization of productive units, systematic reinvestment of sur-
pluses, or to regular technical innovation” (Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots
of European Capitalism,” [1982]: 17). By analyzing the role of this factor in
terms of determining medieval economic growth, Marxist historians pro-
vided a more meaningful context in terms of analyzing the impact of extra-
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1282

economic factors, such as the epidemics of the 14th century. “Let us not deny
the ‘accidental’ aspect inherent in any such phenomenon of contamination
or pollution […] But the effects of external attack are generally a function of
the condition of the attacked so the consequences of a cyclone are less disas-
trous in Florida than in Bengal” (Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, 1984, 288).
It is important to emphasize, however, that there is a deep disagreement
among Marxist historians about the extent to which elements of the Neo-
Malthusian argument ought to be incorporated into their analysis in ex-
plaining the crisis of feudalism. The disagreement stems from two traditions
within Marxism when it comes to explaining historical change. One tradi-
tion emphasizes class struggle as the dominant instrument of historical
change and rejects the relevance of demographic and commercial factors. Ac-
cording to this view, exemplified by Robert Brenner, “changes in relative
factor scarcities consequent upon demographic changes exerted an effect on
the distribution of income in medieval Europe only as they were, so to speak,
refracted through the prism of changing social-property relations and fluc-
tuating balances of class forces.” Such property relations “once established,
tend to impose rather strict limits and possibilities, indeed rather specific
long-term patterns, on a society’s economic development; […] as a rule, they
are not shaped by, or alterable in terms of changes in demographic or com-
mercial trends” (Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” [1976]: 31; id., “The
Agrarian Roots,” [1982]: 21).
In referring, for instance, to the different paths taken by eastern and
western Europe during the post-plague period (i. e., growing enserfment in
the former vs. emancipation in the latter), Brenner argues that there was a
certain degree of indeterminacy in terms of these outcomes conditioned by
relative levels of “power, indeed of force.” A series of factors unique to each
country played a role such as different levels of solidarity among peasants,
their organizational skills, their ability to build alliances with urban groups
and the state (i. e., whether the latter developed as a competitor to landhold-
ing elites in terms of appropriating peasant surpluses); and, finally, the ex-
tent to which seigneurial power was fragmented at the local level allowing
peasants to resist more effectively, as was the case in the newly colonized re-
gions of eastern Europe. The convergence of all these unique factors shaped
particular class struggles and made the difference between the early retreat
or absence of serfdom in places like the Low Countries and Scandinavia, the
abolition of its most onerous obligations by the late 15th century in England
or Catalonia, and its survival well into the 18th century in Bohemia and other
parts of eastern Europe (Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,” [1976];
Arnold Klima, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in
1283 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

Pre-Industrial Bohemia,” The Brenner Debate, ed. Aston and Philpin, 1987,
192–212; Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]).
The second tradition within Marxist theory looks at the concept of the
mode of production and emphasizes the friction that occurs at some point in
the history of a system between the relations and the forces of production.
According to this view, exemplified by Guy Bois, another participant in the
Brenner debate, Brenner’s approach, by focusing on class struggle, disas-
sociates the analysis from all other objective contingencies, in the end pres-
enting a “voluntarist vision of history.” Referring to the emphasis of the
Neo-Malthusians on the demographic cycle, Bois asks: “By what strange
perversion of Marxism is it possible to refuse to take such firm data into ac-
count on the absurd pretext that another theoretical construction rests upon
it? […] Postan or Le Roy Ladurie should not be criticized for giving too
much importance to the demographic factor. They should on the contrary be
criticized for stopping themselves in mid-stream and for not integrating the
demographic factor into the all-embracing whole that is the socio-economic
system” (Guy Bois, “Against the Neo-Malthusian Orthodoxy,” The Brenner
Debate, ed. Aston and Philpin, 1987, 116–17). Bois’s comment raises a
legitimate point of criticism. For an interpretation that uses the single factor
of class struggle to explain events from 13th-century England to 18th-century
Bohemia, Brenner’s account seems to lack analytical sophistication. Did an
English serf of the pre-plague period exhibit a sense of class consciousness
when he performed labor services inefficiently? If so, why his reaction to-
ward seigneurial power fell short of the peasant revolts of the post-plague
period? The crucial intervening event was obviously the Black Death and the
radical transformation it brought to the land:labor ratio. Accepting the sig-
nificance of this extra-economic and accidental event, something that
Brenner rejects, in terms of altering the balance of power between land-
lords and peasants is not to deny the crux of Marxist argument, i. e., that class
relations were at the heart of the feudal crisis.
In conclusion, Marxist historians have the potential of offering a more
credible account compared to the Neo-Malthusian argument in terms of in-
corporating into their analysis economic and demographic factors, as well as
extra-economic events, while retaining the primacy of class relations. In fact,
the argument will acquire even more analytical sophistication if it extends
to taking into account the role of ecological variations in shaping regional
patterns of technological diffusion and economic growth. To provide an
illustration, the Marxist interpretation has argued that the absence of strong
seigneurial prerogatives in some parts of Europe induced local landlords to
innovate and allowed peasants to do the same. That was clearly the case in the
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1284

adoption of flexible field systems. Nevertheless, at least in the case of Eng-

land, there was not always a direct correlation between these flexible ar-
rangements and productivity, measured by grain yields, despite the fact they
achieved a better integration of the two husbandries and thus a more effi-
cient utilization of manure.
According to a study that compared two large samples of manors both
before and after the Black Death, convertible husbandry demesnes achieved,
on average, about the same level of productivity compared to common-
fields. Two reasons were mainly responsible for this surprising result. First,
the fact that convertible husbandry was adopted primarily on light/sandy
soils prone to excessive leaching and poor retention of nutrients; the second
reason applies particularly to the pre-plague period and relates to population
growth and the need to raise grain calories, resulting at extending the length
of tillage at the expense of leys and hence compromising the beneficial effect
of the latter in terms of nitrogen injections. Nevertheless, if other things
were equal, that is, if landlords did not impede the diffusion of convertible
husbandry in regions with more favorable ecological profiles, it has been es-
timated that this system had the capacity to raise output net of seed to 10–15
bushels per acre, from nine bushels which was the norm in England. The sig-
nificance of ecological factors in allowing flexible systems to raise the level of
yields has also been documented in the case of Flanders. Flexible arrange-
ments were widespread throughout the country and practices such as stall-
feeding and spreading farmyard manure allowed leaseholders to achieve a
more balanced agrosystem to the benefit of cereal yields; nevertheless, the
level of yields improved progressively from the coastal areas with access to
poor soils towards the southern region which was located on very fertile soils
(Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Convertible Husbandry vs. Regular Common
Fields: A Model on the Relative Efficiency of Medieval Field Systems,” Journal
of Economic History 64 [2004]: 462–99; Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish
Husbandry’”). It becomes apparent that it was variations in seigneurial
power that played the primary role in determining the regional distribution
of convertible husbandry and other such flexible systems; at the same time,
it was the impact of demography on existing land resources and ecological
factors which explain the failure of such systems in reaching their full pro-
ductive potential in some regions, especially during the pre-plague period.

D. The Commercialist Argument

The last interpretation regarding economic growth in the late Middle Ages
appeared since the 1990s, and is mainly the brainchild of a single individual,
Bruce Campbell, although some of his work is the product of collaborative
1285 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

efforts with other historians. It is different compared to previous inter-

pretations in two important respects: first, unlike the Neo-Malthusian and
Marxist arguments that emphasize the primacy of supply-side factors,
Campbell’s thesis adds to them the role of markets and aggregate demand
and, in fact, assigns the primary role to them; and, second, it adopts an opti-
mistic approach by denying the notion of a structural crisis during the pre-
plague decades, instead attributing the eventual demise of the system to ex-
ogenous factors, that is, adverse weather conditions and the Black Death.
The starting point of Campbell’s thesis, which focuses exclusively on
England, is the expansion of population during the century leading to the
Black Death and the parallel rise of the urbanization rate which he estimates
it to have been about one-fifth of the population by ca. 1300. These develop-
ments, however, were mostly limited to the southeastern arc of the country
where London, with a population of 60,000–80,000 souls, dominated
raising a substantial level of demand for grains and livestock products. A few
other provincial towns within this arc generated a similar, albeit smaller,
effect on their hinterlands. Echoeing Adam Smith’s theory of economic
growth which emphasizes the role of the “extent of the market,” Campbell
(along with Britnell) argued that the ensuing “commercialization was not
merely an aspect of growth, it helped to make expansion possible in the first
place” (Richard H. Britnell and Bruce M. S. Campbell, “Introduction,”
A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300, ed. id., 1995, 4). Several
benefits, including institutional changes, sprang out of these developments:
the growth of freedom and the transformation of feudal socio-property re-
lations; the growth of commodity markets; and the establishment of factor
markets in land, labor, and capital that helped bring down transaction costs.
Persson, an economic historian with views sympathetic to Campbell’s,
added to the list certain benefits referring to technological changes: “1) sub-
stitution of labor, implements (capital), and manuring for land, 2) techno-
logical changes with a land-saving bias such as the suppression of the fallow,
intensified land use by means of irrigation and improved quality of land by
means of leguminous crops (adding nitrogen), improved rotation schemes,
better strains, new plants and an improved match between crops, soils and
climate induced by trade and regional specialization, and 3) technological
changes with a labour-saving bias embodied in new implements, such as
spades and ploughs” (Karl G. Persson, Pre-Industrial Economic Growth: Social
Organisation and Technological Progress in Europe, 1988, 78). This sort of develop-
ments, which can be documented to one degree or another for other parts
of Europe (e. g., around the urban cluster of Ypres, Bruges and Ghent) led,
according to Campbell, to raising the productivity of medieval agriculture,
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1286

to the growth of output which was able to sustain population growth, and
even raised GDP per capita (Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’”
[1997]).
In elaborating his analysis, Campbell (and some of his collaborators) ar-
gued that London’s concentrated demand generated certain production pat-
terns that followed the logic of a model developed in the early 19th century by
the German agricultural economist Johann von Thunen. Treating trans-
portation cost as the only variable and holding everything else constant, the
model argues that economic rent (the difference between the price of a prod-
uct and the total amount of payments made to the various factors of produc-
tion) is the main determinant of production decisions, resulting specifically
in the following patterns: 1) the degree of commercialization increases
among producers as the location of farms is closer to the town; 2) the choice of
crops is affected by distance and transportation cost with crops generating
the highest economic rent being located at a distance and those with lower
one being closer to the town; 3) the intensity of cultivation, manifested on
the cost of individual technologies, diminishes as one moves away from the
town, and 4) field systems alternate, with the more intensive ones being
closer to the town, specifically following the sequence of round-course, con-
vertible husbandry, three-field system (Johann von Thunen, The Isolated
State, ed. P. Hall, 1966; Bruce M. S. Campbell et al., A Medieval Capital and its
Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region c. 1300,
1993, 4–8).
Campbell acknowledges that these patterns did not acquire in the Lon-
don region the same degree of clarity evident in von Thunen’s model be-
cause the metropolis was still fairly small by later standards and thus in the
process of raising economic rent; in this sense, production patterns in its hin-
terland simply anticipated more radical changes when London’s population
reached 400,000 souls in the 17th century raising the level of economic rent to
the point of justifying high factor costs, intensification of farming, and wide-
spread adoption of individual technologies. Nevertheless, the level of aggre-
gate demand in the London region was still well above that prevailing
in northern and western counties where population and urbanization rates
were lower. Producers in the latter regions had to cope with higher transpor-
tation costs and lower economic rents given the more anemic size and
thinner distribution of urban markets (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agricul-
ture, 2000, 275, 302–03, 364, and 425–27).
Overall, it was not the lack of technological opportunities that led to the
demise of feudalism, according to Campbell. To a limited extent the prob-
lem lied with the ignorance of producers in dealing effectively with pests and
1287 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

pathogens and the backwardness of some manorial officials given a wide var-
iety of managerial responses to particular challenges. Certain supply-side
factors, relating mainly to ecological and institutional aspects, also acted as
impediments to growth: the prevalence of communal property rights, as op-
posed to enclosures that would have promoted a more intensified type of
husbandry through greater inputs of labor and capital per unit of land; the
low productive potential of seed and livestock; the presence of heavy clays in
many parts of the country which presented difficult problems in terms of til-
ling and drainage; the nature of seigneurial prerogatives which determined
the composition of labor supply in terms of using the more productive hired
labor vs. the indifferently performed customary labor. The influence of some
of these factors in affecting the diffusion of individual technologies could
not have been altered; for example, the adoption of horses vs. oxen was site-
specific conditioned by local ecological profiles, particularly soil types. But
the impediments imposed by some other supply-side factors could have been
overcome if urbanization rates and aggregate demand were more robust and
more uniform across the country. “The central problem of medieval agricul-
tural production was therefore as much a deficiency of demand as an inelas-
ticity of supply;” nevertheless, in the sense that the growth of demand had
the potential of removing impediments on the supply side, it played the pri-
mary role in shaping growth patterns. In the end, the crisis of the 14th cen-
tury was not an inevitable event, according to Campbell. The growth of
trade in London’s hinterland was in the process of promoting specialization
and raising efficiency standards and it was a matter of time before these bene-
fits would spread to the rest of the country. But even if commercial expan-
sion was more robust “it could not have withstood the massive demand
shock inflicted by the succession of exogenous environmental setbacks
which began with the Great European Famine and culminated with the
Black Death” (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 2000, 428, and 440).
Campbell’s participation to the ongoing debate has resulted in two very
important contributions: first, his decades-long research projects have pro-
duced a very extensive and organized analysis of primary sources referring
to the economic behavior of manorial estates; second, his interpretation of
economic growth in the late Middle Ages has encompassed a wider variety of
factors and, in this sense, has provided a more sophisticated basis for dis-
cussion. His account, however, is not free of criticism.
Despite the admission of one of his associates that markets in London’s
hinterland were “partially or imperfectly integrated,” Campbell has argued
that the degree of commercialization around the metropolis was quite
substantial in light of the fact that 38 percent of grain output (net of tithe
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1288

and seed) was sold during the period 1288–1315, based on a sample of 190
manors. His figure, however, is somewhat exaggerated because his sample
includes a disproportionately high number of the most commercialized es-
tates. If the figure was lower in the most commercialized part of the country
(and certainly even lower elsewhere) and if we account for the fact that half of
the peasantry, managing four-fifths of the land, were living at or below the
subsistence level, then the degree of commercialization of English agricul-
ture c. 1300 does not appear terribly impressive (Campbell, English Seign-
iorial Agriculture, 2000; Bruce M. S. Campbell, “Measuring the Commercial-
isation of Seigneurial Agriculture c. 1300,” A Commercialising Economy, ed.
Britnell and Campbell, 1995, 132–93; James A. Galloway, “One Mar-
ket or Many? London and the Grain Trade of England,” Trade, Urban Hinter-
lands and Market Integration c. 1300–1600, ed. James A. Galloway, 2000, 36).
But aside of the degree of commercial activity in the London region, the
most controversial aspect of Campbell’s argument is his statement that the
expansion of markets was the primary factor, among a host of others (includ-
ing institutions, ecological profiles, etc.), in determining economic growth
and that it played a corrosive role in removing certain impediments to
growth imposed by feudal institutions. This claim runs into two kinds of
problems. The first one is that it contradicts the empirical record. Postan’s
research concluded, based on the study of a very large manorial sample that
the rise of a money economy, commercialization and growing urbanization
during the 13th century coincided with an intensification of labor services, as
opposed to a reversal of this trend. Kosminsky’s classic study also con-
cluded along similar lines, that is, “the feudal exploitation of the unfree
peasant is heaviest in the regions of the greatest development of money-com-
modity relations.” According to Postan, this trend came about because
as demesnial cultivation expanded in the age of high farming there was not
a concomitant increase of tenancies subject to vilain labor, hence the effort
to fully utilize labor obligations of existing unfree tenancies (Michael M.
Postan, “The Chronology of Labour Services,” Transactions of the Royal His-
torical Society 20 [1937]: 169–93; id., “The Rise of a Money Economy,” Econ-
omic History Review 14 [1944]: 123–34; Evgenii A. Kosminsky, Studies in the
Agrarian History of England, 1956; Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle
Ages, 2001, 121–73).
The second problem with Campbell’s argument is of a conceptual na-
ture. Demographic growth during the pre-plague period brought a growing
demand for foodstuffs. In a capitalist economy, this growth of demand
would have created backward pressures that, through a Smithian scenario,
would have resulted in revolutionizing the forces of production, although
1289 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

the degree may have differed in regional terms based on particular ecological
endowments. But in medieval England it was impossible for such a scenario
to unfold in its full potential. “Since the essence of serfdom was the lord’s
ability to bring extra-market pressure to bear upon the peasants in determin-
ing the level of rent […] it is hardly surprising that fluctuations in trade, in-
deed of market forces of any type, were not in themselves enough to deter-
mine the dissolution of serfdom.” Consequently, feudal property relations
stifled innovation “by making direct producers, both lords and peasants, in-
dependent, to an important degree, from the imperative to respond to mar-
ket opportunities by maximizing returns from exchange […] In general, peasant
producers possessed (more or less) direct, non-market access to their means of
subsistence (land, tools). This meant that they were not compelled to sell on the
market to acquire the means to buy what they needed to subsist and to pro-
duce. In consequence, they did not have to deploy their means of production
so as to compete most effectively with other producers […] Similarly, since
the lords had immediate access to their peasants’ surplus, thus direct access
to their means of reproduction, they were under no direct economic compul-
sion to produce competitively on the market and therefore were relieved
of the direct pressure to cut costs” (Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure,”
[1976]: 44; id., “The Agrarian Roots,” [1982]: 34). This viewpoint should not
be interpreted as to suggest that lords and peasants were completely indiffer-
ent to market opportunities, particularly the former who had access to sub-
stantial surpluses and thus the need to dispose them. Instead, it is meant to
imply that the expansion of these surpluses did not have to rely on maximiz-
ing productive efficiency but on intensifying the level of extractions. The
growth of population and demand could have had a long-lasting impact only
in the context of a mechanism of wealth distribution that allowed tenants to
retain a larger portion of their annual output and, simultaneously, forced
landlords to innovate in order to expand their wealth. But for something like
this to have taken place, landlords would have had to surrender their pre-
rogative over the land and its output; that is, they would have had to give up
their preeminent source of power and prestige.
Of course, Campbell has never argued that feudal lords acted as proto-
capitalists, in fact, he clearly stated that “lords certainly do not appear to have
been so consciously entrepreneurial, for in managing their estates they were
as much concerned with considerations of status and patronage as they were
with profit” (Campbell, “Measuring the Commercialization of Seigneurial
Agriculture,” [1995]: 191). But if the profit motive does not emerge as the pri-
mary determinant of production and disposal decisions, in fact the notori-
ously meticulous manorial accounts reveal a nearly complete absence of such
Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies 1290

notions, then Campbell’s attempt to use von Thunen’s model to explain

certain production patterns in London’s hinterland appears to be mis-
guided. Von Thunen’s notion of economic rent presupposes a clear notion
of profit, the ability on the part of producers to engage in fairly sophisticated
calculations of it, and an entirely different institutional setting.
Kitsikopoulos has raised several objections in this regard. For in-
stance, cropping choices among manorial estates in the London region did
not follow a profit-maximization principle as dictated by von Thunen’s
model. Also, contrary to the expectation that patterns of intensity are sup-
posed to be stronger as one comes closer to an urban center, the level of inten-
sity of land use remained low both in the London region and the country as a
whole with only sixty percent of the arable being sown leading Campbell to
admit that “early fourteenth century England remained a country more ex-
tensive than intensive and more conservative than innovative in its demesne
cropping systems,” a fact reflected on low to moderate grain yields. Manors
practicing intensive forms of husbandry were often at considerable distance
from London (e. g., eastern Norfolk), whereas others closer to the metropolis
exhibited low levels of productive intensity. Moreover, commercial orien-
tation and productive intensity (reflected on operating costs per sown acre)
do not always correlate, nor the provisioning of a central household necess-
arily implies low intensity. Data suggest that investment in capital and labor
inputs in manors that acted as home farms were often high, as opposed to
manors that were highly commercialized but failed to invest adequately.
Similar doubts have been raised when it comes to the location of field sys-
tems which, according to von Thunen’s model, ought to start with a
“round-course” system closer to an urban center, followed by convertible
husbandry and the three-field system. Instead, the first two systems were
found mostly at some distance from London (e. g., Sussex, Kent, and East
Anglia), whereas the two- and three-course variations of common-fields pre-
dominated everywhere else in the region and particularly close to the me-
tropolis (Kitsikopoulos, “Convertible Husbandry vs. Regular Common
Fields,” [2004]; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 2000, 274; Kitsi-
kopoulos, “Urban Demand,” [2003]; Kitsikopoulos, “Manorial Estates
as Business Firms: the Relevance of Economic Rent in Determining Crop
Choices in London’s Hinterland c. 1300,” Agricultural History Review 56
[2008]: 142–66).
“The stock of knowledge only represents a potential for technological
progress while realized technological progress is determined by how much
and how fast the stock of knowledge is put into practice, i. e., the rate of
diffusion […] The rate of diffusion is […] linked with the social relations of
1291 Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies

production. It is important that the direct producers, who discern and record
the new knowledge, have incentives to remember it as well as power and op-
portunities to implement it” (Karl Persson, Pre-Industrial Economic Growth,
1988, 127–28). This remark, made by someone who is actually sympathetic
to Campbell’s argument, lies at the very heart of the criticism against the
latter’s account of medieval economic growth. It was the lack of incentives on
the part of landlords and of opportunities on the part of peasants in adopting
existing technologies that brought feudalism into a phase of crisis; the fam-
ines and the epidemics of the 14th century exposed and over-determined this
crisis but did not cause it in the first place. Campbell’s optimistic percep-
tion of events springs from the fact that he spends little time and effort in
considering the role of social relations in imposing disincentives to the pro-
cess of technological diffusion. Market expansion stimulated by population
growth, his main explanatory tool, does have the potential of acting as an en-
gine of economic growth. But it does so only after the removal of such supply-
side disincentives. In medieval Flanders, a society characterized by freedom,
low seigneurial extractions, and a minimum of institutional impediments
in the utilization of land, regional specialization and economic growth com-
menced prior to the growth of urbanization in the second half of the 11th cen-
tury. Urbanization accelerated the process of specializing in animal hus-
bandry along the coast, in the production of ale made of oats in the sandy
soils of central Flanders, and wheat production on the loamy soils of the
south. But the benefits of specialization were already visible prior to the
growth of urban centers precisely because Flanders was exceptional due to
the weakness of the manorial element compared to other parts of Europe
(Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’,” [1997]).

Select Bibliography
The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial
Europe, ed. Trevor H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985); Bruce M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Bruce M. S. Campbell et al., A Medieval
Capital and its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and its Distribution in the London Region
c. 1300 (Lancaster, UK: Historical Geography Research Series 30, 1993); Christopher C.
Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c. 1200–1500
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); John Hatcher and Mark Bailey,
Modelling the Middle Ages: the History and Theory of England’s Economic Development
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Standards of Liv-
ing and Capital Formation in Pre-Plague England: A Peasant Budget Model,” Economic
History Review 53 (2000): 237–61; Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Convertible Husbandry
vs. Regular Common Fields: A Model on the Relative Efficiency of Medieval Field Sys-
tems,” Journal of Economic History 64 (2004): 462–99; Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Manorial
Social History and Medieval Studies 1292

Estates as Business Firms: the Role of Economic Rent in Determining Crop Choices in
London’s Hinterland c. 1300,” Agricultural History Review 56 (2008): 142–66; Evgenii A.
Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century (New York:
Kelley & Millman, 1956); The Cambridge Economic History of England, vol. 1: The Agrarian
Life of the Middle Ages, ed. Michael M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2nd ed. 1966); Michael M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History
of Britain in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Michael M.
Postan, Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

Harry Kitsikopoulos

Social History and Medieval Studies

A. Sources
There are three types of limitations regarding sources about economic and
social life in the Middle Ages. The first one is chronological in that the first
systematic records appear in the 13th century. A second problem emanates
from the fact that the bulk of the records comes from demesnial accounts,
few peasants having left any written evidence. That imposes a serious limi-
tation since in the case of England, to cite an example, only between a quarter
and a third of the land was demesnial and after accounting for leasing parts
of it, the true figure is about one-fifth; these figures are typical of the pre-
plague period and become even lower after the great epidemic (Bruce M. S.
Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450, 2000, 26–54). The final
limitation is of a geographical nature. England offers the best documentary
evidence with the first demesnial accounts dating back to the very beginning
of the 13th century. However, other countries lack the extent and continuity
of the English series. In Flanders, for example, demesnial accounts start in
the 13th century but due to a wave of leases by the end of it, few accounts sur-
vive until the late 14th century. To compensate somewhat for the scarcity of
manorial evidence, there is more information on small farms, the evidence
coming from, among other sources, short-term contracts entered by institu-
tions taking care of the inheritances of orphans and lessees (Erik Thoen,
“The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’: Agricultural Technology in Medieval
Flanders,” Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in
Northwest Europe, ed. Grenville Astill and John Langdon, 1997, 69–71).
Other countries have even more limited records. In Denmark and Sweden de-
1293 Social History and Medieval Studies

mesnial accounts are few because this practice was slow to develop there,
whereas peasant inventories appear in the post-medieval period. Because
of these problems, other sources have been used, like archeological finds and
illustrations, despite their own limitations (Bjorn Poulsen, “Agricultural
Technology in Medieval Denmark,” Medieval Farming and Technology, ed.
Astill and Langdon, 1997, 118–19; Janken Myrdal, “The Agricultural
transformation of Sweden, 1000–1300,” Medieval Farming and Technology, ed.
Astill and Langdon, 1997, 148–51).

B. The Early Middle Ages

Economic growth through Roman times is thought to have reached its apo-
gee during the 2nd century A.D., followed by a subsequent contraction car-
ried well into the Middle Ages reaching its nadir between the 8th and 10th cen-
turies. It was during this period of commercial stagnation and political
instability that the institution of the manor takes its classic form and lords
succeed in establishing their economic and political prerogatives: “For cen-
turies kings, great nobles and abbeys had owned vast lands, and the struggle
among Charlemagne’s descendants, like the Norman invasion, allowed the
large owners to acquire more because their less powerful neighbors had to
cede their land in exchange for protection. The peasants themselves lived
mostly in a state of personal subjugation which required them to render
their lord various services” (Jan. A. Van Houtte, An Economic History of the
Low Countries, 800–1800, 1977, 9). It was also during this period that the dis-
tinction between free tenants and serfs emerges, with the latter’s lineage
being traced back to the time when slavery was practiced. Seigneurial obli-
gations, particularly among serfs, developed in a diverse mosaic of manifes-
tations contributing to this diversity: the distance of a manor from an urban
center which offered a potential refuge to a serf; the proximity of a manor to a
household (the closer it was, the more various obligations, particularly labor
services, were safeguarded); and the degree of willingness on the part of mon-
archies to help solidify the institution of serfdom, often not forthcoming
since the prerogatives of landlords and the king were in a clashing trajectory.
Not only the judicial and political outlines of the manorial system are
shaped during these centuries of stagnation, but also the economic structure
of the manorial system through the emergence of common-fields. The sys-
tem was established initially in the core of the oldest-settled areas of feudal-
ism (the Allemannic region along the upper Rhine and the Frankish lands of
the northern French-Flemish area), a process that can be documented for the
early 8th century, although it was most certainly earlier. The system diffused
towards the periphery during the 9th and 10th centuries, particularly in areas
Social History and Medieval Studies 1294

of Franconia, Hesse, Dijonnais, Artois, the Paris basin, and eventually came
into England through the Norman invasion. In the last stage of the system’s
diffusion, beginning in the 12th century or somewhat earlier, waves of
migration brought it into Ireland, Poland, Bohemia, and Scandinavia. For
instance, common-field arrangements (particularly the two-field system)
spread into the eastern parts of Denmark and Sweden between 1000 and
1200–1300, with the infield-outfield system and convertible husbandry pre-
dominating in the western parts of Jutland and Norway and the northern
and southern parts of Sweden. By that time, common-fields came to domi-
nate the northern European landscape. The process was driven by popu-
lation growth and mediated through cultural exchanges. By the time its dif-
fusion was fairly complete it had pushed more individualistic forms of
husbandry to the fringe of marshes, forests and other “marginal” areas. It is
important to point out that, at least in the case of England, it was landlords
that took the initiative in regulating practices in the context of the system
(Richard C. hoffmann, “Medieval Origins of the Common Fields,” Euro-
pean Peasants and their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History, ed. William
N. parker and Eric L. jones, 1975, 23–72; Poulsen, “Agricultural Tech-
nology in Medieval Denmark,” 1997, 119–20; Myrdal, “The Agricultural
Transformation of Sweden,” 1997, 148–51; Mats Widgren, “Fields and
Field Systems in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages,” Medieval Farming and
Technology, ed. astill and langdon, 1997, 173–92).
At the level of individual technologies, no spectacular improvements
are recorded during this phase of economic stagnation. Better designs in re-
lation to harvesting and plowing implements takes place (e. g., the longer
scythe), and the use of iron parts becomes more common. These develop-
ments resulted in improvements in labor productivity and may have been
triggered by a speculated decline of population in the 6th century.

C. The Late Middle Ages: the Pre-Plague Period

There is general consensus that the medieval economy entered a period of re-
covery driven by population growth at the beginning of the 11th century. Pre-
cise figures regarding the demographic profiles of various countries are ob-
viously impossible to come by but the most reliable, albeit still speculative,
estimate suggests that the English population increased from 2.0–2.25 mil.
in 1086 to 4.0–4.25 mil. in ca. 1300, a 94 percent increase. Population growth
was also evident in Normandy during the 13th century, adding ten percent
during the second half of it, and similar developments have been docu-
mented for Sweden. The most typical response to this trend was the well-
documented process of land reclamation through the utilization of marginal
1295 Social History and Medieval Studies

areas. The combination of declining real wages and transport costs along
with rising grain prices led to a shift away from animal husbandry towards
cereal production. This process made sense not only in terms of economics
but also in terms of calorific output since the latter provides more calories per
unit of land compared to the former. Study after study (referring to England,
Sweden, Normandy, and Flanders, among others) has documented the
shrinkage of grazing grounds and of the fallow within arable areas, the de-
cline of livestock ratios, and the rising values of grassland and meadowland.
The scarcity of pastures was particularly pronounced in the English mid-
lands, especially the eastern section, whereas nationally the value of meadow
was four- and five-fold that of arable. These developments involved the util-
ization of the extensive margin of cultivation. Intensification practices are
also recorded in some places such as scattered areas along the southeastern
coastline of England and parts of Flanders. Such practices took the form of
stall-feeding of cattle, systematic application of fertilizers, thorough weed-
ing, high seeding rates, and the reduction or even elimination of the fallow
and its substitution with legume cultivation; from a sample of manors in
Flanders, albeit small, it appears that legumes occupied proportionally more
acreage there compared to the most innovative region of England, eastern
Norfolk (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture; Guy Bois, The Crisis of
Feudalism, 1984, 20–133; Janken Myrdal, Medieval Farming in Sweden: Tech-
nical Change AD 1000–1520, 1986; Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish Hus-
bandry’,” 1997).
The exceptional cases of few innovators could not have had a decisive
weight in determining the overall pattern of economic growth which en-
tailed a number of contradictions and limitations. The increasing utilization
of marginal lands and the expansion of arable at the expense of pastoral hus-
bandry which diminished the supply of manure and thereby of nitrogen, was
bound to have negative repercussions for the level of yields and mean output
per worker. Lack of exact data on aggregate output and labor force partici-
pation rates does not allow us to calculate the latter, but there is enough
documentation when it comes to land productivity which is measured in two
ways: seed/yield ratios and bushels per acre. English manorial estates, having
generated records unmatched in their extent and continuity in the rest of
Europe, reveal that seed/yield ratios were about 1:4 and output per acre net
of seed was close to nine bushels. This level of productivity, not much cause
for envy, established a norm that was repeated in the majority of cases across
the European landscape. Swedish agriculture was somewhat less productive
with seed/yield ratios around 1:3, according to some estimates, whereas
France matched the performance of English agriculture, although some ex-
Social History and Medieval Studies 1296

ceptional deviations from the norm (up to 1:13 for wheat and 1:6.7 for oats)
have been recorded. There were only two countries that succeeded in moving
away from the norm. The first one was Netherlands where the typical yield
was about 11 bushels per acre (with seed/yield ratios of 1:8–13 for wheat and
1:4–7 for oats). But it was Flanders that achieved the most remarkable record:
winter grains recorded ratios of 1:20–30 and yields per acre in the range of
13–33 bushels (Myrdal, Medieval Farming in Sweden; Eddy van cauwen-
berghe and Herman van der wee, “Productivity, Evolution of Rents and
Farm Size in the Southern Netherlands Agriculture from the Fourteenth
to the Seventeenth Century,” Productivity of Land and Agricultural Innovation in
the Low Countries, 1250–1800, ed. Herman van der wee and Eddy cauwen-
berghe, 1978, 125–39; Georges Comet, “Technology and Agricultural Ex-
pansion in the Middle Ages: The Example of France North of the Loire,”
Medieval Farming and Technology, ed. Grenville astill and John langdon,
1997, 15–20; Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’,” 1997, 79–81).
It becomes apparent that medieval economies responded to demo-
graphic growth in a conservative way and this is reflected in only minor
modifications of their technological infrastructures. The reclamation move-
ment that began in the 11th century brought with it a horizontal expansion
of existing technologies, albeit with some variations given differences in cli-
matic and ecological factors. Swedish agriculture, for instance, witnessed the
adoption and spread of the two-field system, the introduction of watermills
and windmills, horse-shoes, and the use of the heavy plough in its western
regions (with ards and spades still being prominent in eastern parts of the
country). Improvements on existing technologies are also recorded but they
were limited to the few progressive parts of Europe. In Flanders, for instance,
the faster horse was increasingly used since the 12th century; the Flemish
hook or “pick” and the scythe superseded the sickle and the cultivation
of cereals in narrow, high-backed ridges facilitated drainage. Most import-
antly, Flanders was at the forefront of innovations when it comes to field sys-
tems. In the southern part of the country a nominally open-field system,
known as Flurzwang, was practiced but without a rigid form of management.
Fields were fragmented based on a number of natural boundaries, such as
brooks and roads, creating a patchwork that gave producers a substantial
degree of flexibility. In central Flanders the infield-outfield system was
prevalent with the inner core organized under a three-field system. Most im-
portantly, convertible husbandry, the most efficient field system known in
the Middle Ages, was also practiced in enclosed farms, appearing mainly in
areas of recent reclamations. But these were exceptions that verified the rule.
In England, for instance, flexible field systems exhibited a pattern of spor-
1297 Social History and Medieval Studies

adic diffusion but with rigid forms of open-fields prevailing in the heartland
of English manorialism, the southeastern parts of the country (Widgren,
“Fields and Field Systems in Scandinavia,” 1997; van houtte, An Economic
History of the Low Countries; Myrdal, Medieval Farming in Sweden; Thoen,
“The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’,” 1997, 74–81; Myrdal, “The Agri-
cultural Transformation of Sweden,” 1997; Harry kitsikopoulos, “Con-
vertible Husbandry vs. Regular Common Fields: A Model on the Relative Ef-
ficiency of Medieval Field Systems,” The Journal of Economic History 64 [2004]:
462–99).
It is very difficult to come up with precise generalizations in terms of
how these events played out at the aggregate level. Campbell estimates that
the size of arable land in England increased from 5.75–6.0 to 10.5 mil acres
between 1086 and c.1300. These figures amount to a 79 percent increase in
the size of arable, compared to his own estimate of 94 percent in terms of
population growth. Campbell believes that the levels of consumption did
not suffer as much as these figures suggest based on his speculation that
grain output grew marginally faster than the arable area. He concedes some
decline in living standards, although the extent of it was likely to have been
more severe than he claims, given the static nature of technology and the in-
creasing utilization of marginal lands (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agricul-
ture, 2000, 386–410).
There is a substantial amount of literature suggesting that a sizeable por-
tion of the population, particularly the peasantry, found itself in a state of
crisis as the 13th century progressed. According to a study that combines
existing empirical evidence with some reasonable extrapolations and
assumptions, the minimum size of holding in England needed to sustain a
minimum level of subsistence was 18 arable acres. Contrasting this figure
with Kosminsky’s study of 35,000 peasant holdings in southern England
(1279), which finds the average size of holding at only 14.8 acres, and extend-
ing this sample to other parts of the country, leads to the conclusion that ap-
proximately half of the peasant population was at or below the threshold of
18 acres. Having access to supplementary sources of income, hired employ-
ment being the most common one, was the key for the survival of this seg-
ment of the population. We can only speculate on peasant diets that were
probably inadequate and lacking diversity but there are records testifying to
the lack of basic resources such as animals and basic implements and tools.
Bois portrays an almost identical picture in Normandy. “Demographic
saturation and land division had been taken to their limit. M. M. Postan’s
terrible diagnosis of the English case can be applied to Normandy without
the slightest hesitation: half the peasantry lacked the bare minimum needed
Social History and Medieval Studies 1298

to support a family.” As noted, smallholders could hire themselves out and

buy the extra grains they needed but real wages were low and grain prices
high. It is not clear what the condition was of the peasantry in other parts of
the continent. In the rest of France, the Low Countries, and West Germany
the typical size of holdings during the three centuries leading to the Black
Death was oscillating in the range of 10–15 acres, that is, somewhat below
English figures. In the Low Countries, given the smaller size of families and
the higher productivity of the arable sector, the aforementioned figures may
have been sufficient to ensure subsistence for a sizeable portion of the popu-
lation but these relatively favorable parameters were not shared by the peas-
antry elsewhere (Harry Kitsikopoulos, “Standards of Living and Capital
Formation in Pre-plague England: A Peasant Budget Model” Economic History
Review 53 [2000]: 237–61; Christopher C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later
Middle Ages: Social Change in England c. 1200–1500, 1989; Mark Bailey, “Peasant
Welfare in England, 1290–1348” Economic History Review 51 [1998]: 223–51;
Evgenii A. kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thir-
teenth Century, 1956; Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, 1984, 162–63; Van Cau-
wenberghe and Van Der Wee, “Productivity, Evolution of Rents and
Farm Size in the Southern Netherlands Agriculture”).
Landlords, on the other hand, were able to take advantage of the shift-
ing demographic and economic configurations. The value of money rents
dwindled and the reevaluation of rents in kind did not fully compensate for
this loss. Landlords reacted to this revenue loss in two different ways. Some,
notably those in Normandy and England, became actively involved in the
direct management of their demesnes in light of high grain prices and low
wages. In a second possible reaction, observed in a limited number of cases
(particularly in Flanders), landlords opted to engage in extensive leasing of
their lands, a process that started in the 12th century, accelerating thereafter,
leading eventually to a social structure that was characterized by a consider-
able amount of freedom. Flexible tenurial arrangements rendered this strat-
egy a viable alternative in the case of Flanders since it allowed the adjustment
of rent based on market forces and, at the same time, provided landlords with
some flexibility in terms of provisioning their households with basic prod-
ucts and luxuries (Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, 1984, 215–37; Thoen, “The
Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’”).
The aforementioned developments in Western Europe were duplicated,
granted local particularities, in Eastern Europe. Between the 10th and 13th
centuries economic development was uneven, at best, with Bohemia and
south-western Russia achieving the best results. Urban centers did exist but
the majority of them were small in size and the functional role of their inhab-
1299 Social History and Medieval Studies

itants, craftsmen and traders, was to cater to the needs of the ruling elite. As a
result, use of money was quite limited and the role of trade in boosting agrar-
ian growth was very marginal, evident in the lack of the widespread use of
techniques such as triennial rotation and iron ploughs. During this time
serfdom was not particularly prevalent. The fluid situation caused by exter-
nal invasions allowed peasants the opportunity to flee the lands of overde-
manding lords. But the growth of population, coupled with the presence of
rich mineral deposits and the infusion of this region with German merchants
and artisans, created a premium on the exploitation of existing resources
and initiated a phase of economic growth, especially in Bohemia, Hungary,
and Poland. The benefits of this growth, however, were not distributed
evenly across the population. Instead, it triggered a seigneurial reaction in
the 13th century which led to the imposition of feudal norms similar to those
in western Europe to the detriment of the local peasantry (Marian Malow-
ist, “The Problem of the Inequality of Economic Development in Europe in
the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 19 [1966]: 15–28).
Medieval Europe ushered the 14th century resembling a train bound for
derailment in a seemingly triumphant verification of Malthusian dynamics.
The demographic factor may have produced growth at the aggregate level
but, given the merely horizontal expansion of existing technologies coupled
with their incomplete process of diffusion, it was bound to result in the
unfolding of the law of diminishing returns and a decline of land and labor
productivity. Furthermore, growth was unbalanced with the majority of
the population lacking the ability to cope effectively with the growing scar-
city or resources. Europe was in a fragile state when adverse weather condi-
tions, beginning in 1315, brought about a couple of successive famines. The
population of Ypres declined by 10 percent during those famines and large
number of deaths were recorded at Bruges, Louvain, Brussels, and elsewhere
(Van Houtte, An Economic History of the Low Countries, 1977, 60–61). And
then the Black Death came and gave the final blow. But it is very important to
stress that microbes simply exaggerated a crisis that was already underway
but they did not create it in the first place.

D. The Late Middle Ages – The Post-Plague Period

The great epidemic was an event of unparalleled proportions. Campbell esti-
mates that the English population declined from 4.0–4.25 mil. ca. 1300
to 2.25–2.5 mil. by the 1370s when successive epidemics came to a halt. The
degree of devastation was even more severe in Normandy where half of the
population was decimated due to the epidemics but economic life was
further disrupted due to the looting, pillage, and heavy taxes associated with
Social History and Medieval Studies 1300

the English occupation. At the trough of the crisis population was brought
down to one quarter of its level in the early 14th century both due to the death
toll and the fleeing of peasants (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture,
2000, 402; Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism).
In terms of its economic impact, the demographic catastrophe brought
about a devastating blow to the interests of the ruling class. The death of
tenants translated to a sharp decline in seigneurial dues. Total seigneurial re-
ceipts in the county of Tancarville (Normandy) declined in the order of 70–75
percent during the period 1315–1460 and started recovering only at the
latter date. But, in addition, manorial estates were affected in terms of their
role as production units given adverse developments in factor and product
markets. The decline in the demand for grains brought a proportional de-
cline in supply and led to a stagnation of prices. Wages, on the other hand,
were kept at steady levels due to state regulation (Statute of Laborers in Eng-
land), but not for long. Peasant discontent, culminating in the revolt of 1381,
lifted artificial controls in the labor market leading to a marked increase of
wages that lasted throughout the 15th century (Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism,
1984, 256; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 2000, 3–10; Van Cau-
wenberghe and Van Der Wee, “Productivity, Evolution of Rents and
Farm Size in the Southern Netherlands Agriculture”).
Manorial estates attempted to react to these adverse conditions in a
number of ways. Those with access to heavy labor services attempted to hold
on to practices of the past, albeit at a reduced level of intensity. Customary
labor services, however, were performed at a notoriously low level of produc-
tivity. This widely held, but unsubstantiated until recently, belief was finally
empirically verified in the case of Wisbech Barton manor: customary tenants
performing labor services took 37 percent more time to weed one acre and
11 percent more time to reap and bind grains compared to hired labor. In ad-
dition, labor services were not entirely cost-free given the custom or provid-
ing meals to customary tenants. But the alternative of utilizing hired labor
was an even less desirable option. In the very same manor of Wisbech Barton
the proportion of hired labor used in mowing/haymaking fell from an aver-
age of 30 percent of the labor force before the epidemic to virtually nothing
subsequently. Manorial estates were faced with only two viable alternatives.
The first one was to convert from corn to horn. The decision made sense on
the supply side because it avoided high wage bills but it was an equally sen-
sible decision when viewed from the demand side of the market given the
stagnation of grain prices and the shifting dietary habits of the population,
from pottage and grains to ale and meat. The mean sown acreage in a large
sample of manors across England fell from 189 acres during the second half
1301 Social History and Medieval Studies

of the 13th century to 143 acres by the first half of the 15th century. The second
viable alternative was to give up production altogether and engage in a mass-
ive leasing of demesnial land, an option many estates chose to take up. The
combined effect of these developments was a drastic decline in the size of ar-
able land; in the case of England it has been estimated that about a quarter of
the arable land was given up by ca. 1375, that is, from 10.5 mil acres ca. 1300,
down to 8.0 mil. acres shortly after the great epidemic (Myrdal, Medieval
Farming in Sweden; campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture; David stone,
“The Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour: Evidence from Wis-
bech Barton in the Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review 50 [1997]:
640–56).
There is fairly little doubt that the adverse economic conditions of the
post-plague period failed to impact negatively the peasant sector of the econ-
omy given its self-sufficient nature. In fact, quite the contrary – demographic
factors relating to the decline in the size of families and political ones relat-
ing to the decline of seigneurial dues most likely led to a considerable im-
provement in the standard of living of the peasantry. A comprehensive re-
construction of the annual budget of a typical English peasant has shown
that the size of the holding necessary to ensure subsistence declined from 18
arable acres down to half-virgate (15 acres). Given the abundance of land and
scarcity of tenants, it would seem reasonable to assume that a sizeable major-
ity of the population reached this threshold. Peasants had three interrelated
options in terms of disposing their ensuing gains: improve their diets, ac-
cumulate land, and build up their animal resources. It is impossible to docu-
ment peasant diets for this period but related evidence supports the specu-
lation of considerable improvement. Transaction records of the land market,
as well as evidence regarding stints for grazing grounds, heriots (a death tax
in the form of the best beast), and a few surviving peasant inventories clearly
indicate an augmentation of land and animal resources. It is very important
to stress, however, that the limited scope of markets and familial labor
supplies, coupled with the high price of hired labor, were bound to impose
limits on the process of land accumulation, whereas the supply of good graz-
ing grounds created similar limitations when it comes to animal resources.
Nevertheless, it is very likely that these developments led to improvements
in land productivity, particularly due to increased quantities of manure.
Labor productivity also improved in contrast to the pre-plague period when
larger families in the context of fragmented holdings did not allow an effi-
cient use of labor; it has been estimated that agricultural output per head
doubled in Aliermont between 1397 and 1467. These developments were not
a uniquely English phenomenon. Bois’s research, for instance, has produced
Social History and Medieval Studies 1302

identical conclusions for Normandy, although in this case the full realization
of these benefits were postponed until the middle of the 15th century due to
the economic havoc played by the English occupation (Harry Kitsikopou-
los, “The Impact of the Black Death on Peasant Economy in England,
1350–1500,” Journal of Peasant Studies 29 [2002]: 71–90; Bois, The Crisis of Feu-
dalism, 1984, 138–59).
All in all, it becomes apparent that the demographic changes and their
impact on economic variables had quite different effects across the social
ladder and that makes it difficult to provide an assessment about how overall
productivity was affected during this period; geographical limitations in
terms of surviving records coupled with the retrieval of estates from the
direct management of their demesnes translate to a more limited manorial
database. Despite these caveats, the existing evidence points to no significant
changes compared to the pre-plague period when it comes to the level of
yields. In the better documented case of England different methodologies
have led some economic historians to argue for a decline of yields per seed
and per acre (e. g., Campbell), while others have argued in favor of a stag-
nation thesis (e. g., Kitsikopoulos). Records on Danish yields are very poor
but the existing ones point to a seed:yield ratio of 1:3.5, as was the case in
a manor in southwest Jutland (1388), and in line with the English level of
productivity. Somewhat more extensive data, but still quite intermittent,
suggest that productivity in the Low Countries remained above average,
with seed:yield ratios ranging from 4.3–8 for wheat, 6.64–9.7 for rye, and 8.4
for oats. At the top of the productivity pyramid, Flanders still comprised an
exceptional case (e. g., with yields per acre for oats reaching the spectacular
level of 28–34 bushels) (Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 2000,
370–85; Kitsikopoulos, “Convertible Husbandry vs. Regular Common-
Fields;” Van Houtte, An Economic History of the Low Countries, 1977, 69–72;
Thoen, “The Birth of ‘the Flemish Husbandry’;” Poulsen, “Agricultural
Technology in Medieval Denmark”). Poorer, compared to the pre-plague
period, as the manorial record on yields may be, it is still preferable to the vir-
tually non-existent evidence on peasant holdings. That is a truly serious ca-
veat given the retrieval of demesnial cultivation to the benefit of peasant
holdings. It is very likely that land productivity among peasant holdings im-
proved given the greater access to animal resources and the more efficient
utilization of labor supplies in the context of larger holdings but this is more
of a reasonable speculation rather than a documented conclusion.
If rising yields among peasant holdings did lift the overall level of post-
plague productivity it was certainly not due to any radical transformation of
the “technological paradigm” of medieval agriculture since no new technol-
1303 Social History and Medieval Studies

ogies appear after the epidemic. Instead, it must have been the more efficient
utilization of existing technologies, especially on the part of peasants. In
some cases, like the Netherlands, there is a continuation of past practices
such as the adoption of convertible husbandry, the substitution of fallow
with legumes, the stall-feeding of livestock and the spread of their manure
along with the waste of urban areas. If the Netherlands, along with Flanders,
were the ideal types, other countries in the economic periphery of Europe
were trying to close the gap. Laggards like Sweden, however, had still a way
to go, despite the slow progress made in the diffusion of basic technologies
such as the use of ploughs which started spreading from western Sweden to
other parts of the country and the inroads made by 1500 in the use of iron
harrows (Myrdal, Medieval Farming in Sweden; Peter Hoppenbrouwers,
“Agricultural Production and Technology in the Netherlands,” Medieval Far-
ming and Technology, ed. Astill and Langdon, 1997, 89–114).
In the end, social and economic life may not have been radically different
for those that were resilient enough to survive the devastating blow of
microbes across the European continent. But it was not the same either. The
lifting of the enormous pressure on existing resources allowed a sizeable
portion of the population to enjoy basic material comforts that lacked in
previous decades. The erosion of seigneurial power contributed also to this
improvement in material prosperity but, most importantly, signified the
beginning of more revolutionary changes which, however, lied well into the
future. The preconditions for growth were in place, although, if economic
progress is path dependent, regional particularities were relevant in terms of
the timing factor. The triad of plagues, famines, and the Anglo-French con-
flict postponed the recovery in France until the second half of the 15th cen-
tury. But elsewhere, in Flanders and Brabant most notably, the heritage
of innovation and the stimulus provided by the rise of the textile industry
by the 1420s, both in agrarian and urban settings (e. g., Bruges), brought the
recovery earlier (Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, 1984, 261–368; Van Cauwen-
berghe and Van Der Wee, “Productivity, Evolution of Rents and Farm
Size in the Southern Netherlands Agriculture”).

Select Bibliography
Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe, ed.
Grenville Astill and John L. Langdon (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Mark Bailey, “Peasant
Welfare in England, 1290–1348,” Economic History Review 51 (1998): 223–51; Guy Bois,
The Crisis of Feudalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Bruce M. S.
Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); Christopher C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social
Change in England, c. 1200–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Harry
Social History and Medieval Studies 1304

Kitsikopoulos, “Standards of Living and Capital Formation in Pre-plague England:

A Peasant Budget Model,” Economic History Review 53 (2000): 237–61; Harry Kitsi-
kopoulos, “Convertible Husbandry vs. Regular Common Fields: A Model on the
Relative Efficiency of Medieval Field Systems,” Journal of Economic History 64 (2004):
462–99; Evgenii A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth
Century, trans. R. Kisch, ed. Rodney H. Hilton (New York: Kelley & Millman, 1956);
Marian Malowist, “The Problem of the Inequality of Economic Development in
Europe in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 19 (1966): 15–28; Jan. A. Van
Houtte, An Economic History of the Low Countries, 800–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1977); Productivity of Land and Agricultural Innovation in the Low Countries, 1250–1800,
ed. Herman Van Der Wee and Eddy Van Cauwenberghe (Leuven: Leuven Univer-
sity Press, 1978).

Harry Kitsikopoulos
1305 Technology in the Middle Ages

Technology in the Middle Ages

A. Definition
Technology is defined as tools and concepts that are utilized in the trans-
formation of natural resources. It is a mental process, not a mechanical one.
Medieval historians of technology have been interested primary in technol-
ogies of agriculture and construction, energy-converting devices (in par-
ticular, watermills), craft technologies, and military technology. The most
critical methodological problem confronting the history of medieval tech-
nology is the extreme dispersion of sources. There is comparatively little
in the way of treatises devoted to any one technique. Rather the method of
research usually consists in reading through masses of documents that are
likely to present some evidence of a technique in use. The problem then is
to be able to draw inferences from instances of practice about the nature of
the implement or application described. Archeological evidence is useful
although comparatively infrequent except in specific instances such as pot-
tery or the building trades, where the remains are extremely long lasting.
Some techniques in particular lend themselves to typological organization.
Pottery is one; another is agricultural implements (e. g., the tendency of
common instrument like plows, hoes, shovels, scythes, etc., to present them-
selves in graded series, which may or not correspond to an identifiable
historical or geographical sequence: Frantisek Sach, “Proposal for the Clas-
sification of Pre-Industrial Tilling Implements,” Tools and Tillage 1 [1968]:
3–27).

B. Historical Development
There is a long tradition of descriptive and historical accounts of machines,
for example, Jacob Leupold, Theatrum Machinarum Generale (1724); José
María Lanz and Agustín de Betancourt, Ensayo sobre la composición de la má-
quinas (1808) (a precocious attempt to present a typology of machines); and
Thomas Ewbank (1792–1870), A Descriptive and Historical Account of Hydraulic
and Other Machines for Raising Water (1842). Abbott Payson Usher (A History
of Mechanical Inventions, 1929) may have been the first modern economist to
write in this vein.
Technology in the Middle Ages 1306

The proximate roots of the contemporary historiography of medieval

technology came not from mechanical technology, however, but from rural
economic history and agrarian technology, the locus classicus being Richard
Lefebvre des Noëttes, L’attelage et le cheval de selle à travers les ages (1931),
whose subject was the inefficiency of Roman harnessing compared to medi-
eval practice based on the horse-collar. Lefebvre’s solution was only
partially correct, but his study demonstrated how a multiplicity of sources,
particularly iconographical ones, could lead to new proposals towards the so-
lution of old conundrums. Directly in this line was Lynn White, Jr., who, in
1940, adumbrated a new approach to medieval technology, based on bring-
ing the widest range of evidence to bear on hypotheses developed to explain
central issues of medieval history: “Technology and Invention in the Middle
Ages” (Speculum 15[1940]: 141–59). A comparative view of harnessing in Eu-
rope and the Islamic world is Richard Bulliett, The Camel and the Wheel
(1975) (a particularly successful use of a typological method).
White investigated three problems: first, the technological roots of the
agricultural revolution of the middle ages; second, the possibility of a medi-
eval industrial revolution based on water power; third, the relationship of
feudalism and military technology, in particular the stirrup. The first argu-
ment was based on the arrival in western Europe around the year 1000 of dis-
parate elements of agrarian technology, including the padded horse collar,
the nailed horseshoe, and the discovery of springcorn (oats, peas, beans, and
barley) which led to a shift from two to three-course rotations. The main
problem with the hypothesis is the uneven adoption of the techniques, both
spatially and chronologically (John Langdon, Horses, Oxen and technological
Innovation, 1986), but the overall dynamic has stood the test of time and has
been immensely successful in generating new research.
The most controversial of White’s proposals was that regarding the stir-
rup and the origins of feudalism. The foot stirrup, which reached Latin Eu-
rope from Central Asia sometime in the 7th century, made it possible for a
rider to deliver a lance thrust with the power of the horse joined to that of his
own body. This innovation set off an arms race that led to heavy armor,
which required capital investment on the part of knights that was supplied
via the granting of fiefs. The thesis is still attacked (Bernard S. Bachrach,
“Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism,”
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 [1970]: 49–75), and defended (Alex
Roland, “Once More into the Stirrup,” Technology and Culture 44 [2003]:
574–85), but, from a historiographical perspective the centering of the de-
bate on the processes of technological adaptation transcends the specific
issue of the emergence of feudalism.
1307 Technology in the Middle Ages

Feudalism is also at the center of the wider debate over water mills. Guy
Bois (La mutation de l’an mil, 1989; Eng. trans. 1992) contends that the emerg-
ence of a class of comparatively affluent peasant farmers, who built and
owned water-driven grist mills collectively, created the wealth that incipient
feudal lords found worth seizing in the first place. The obligation of peasants
to grind their wheat at the lord’s mill became the key feudal monopoly.
Watermills are also the focal point of the notion of a medieval industrial rev-
olution, first argued by Eleanora Carus-Wilson in “An Industrial Revol-
ution of the Thirteenth Century” (English Historical Review 11 [1941]: 39–60),
and later taken up by Jean Gimpel in The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Rev-
olution of the Middle Ages (1977). The success or failure of the argument is viti-
ated by an inability to arrive either at a definition of the phenomenon or an
effective economic standard for evaluating it.

C. Watermills
Marc Bloch had proposed that although the Romans were familiar with
watermill technology, they did not use such mills owing to the plentiful
supply of slave labor and that, therefore, they only appeard in Europe in great
numbers (8th century) after rural slavery had ceased to exist (“Avènement
et conquêtes du moulin à eau,” Annales ESC, 7 [1935]: 538–63; Eng. trans. in
Bloch, Land and Work in Medieval Europe, 1967, 1935). Classical archeologists,
however, by focusing on household space rather than that of work, failed to
turn up remains of Roman mills until relatively recently, when the number
of known sites increased considerable (Orjan Wikander, Handbook of Ancient
Water Technology, 2000).
Watermills were the most important sources of industrial power in the
Middle Ages. Northern European mills were of two types, known as horizon-
tal and vertical. The horizontal mill where water is delivered under pressure to
a paddlewheel, has a vertical axle joining the waterwheel to the runner stone;
it required no gearing, and could be built by a village carpenter. The vertical
mill which has a horizontal axle sometimes driving cam-mounted hammers,
required gearing and was more costly to build. In Castilian documents, hori-
zontal mills were called molendinum, molino, vertical mills, azeña, aceña, etc
from Arabic saniya, water wheel, making it possible to identify the machine by
the word used to represent it. Elsewhere in Europe, however, both types were
called molendinum in Latin; therefore identifying the mill type requires addi-
tional information. In Mediterranean Europe and the Arab world there was a
third type: a horizontal mill powered up by a vertical storage tank that de-
livered water under pressure, called arubah in Arabic, molino de cubo in Casti-
lian), molí de cup in Catalan, and so forth, in romance vernacular languages.
Technology in the Middle Ages 1308

The vertical mill (called “Vitruvian” because it had been described by

Vitruvius, De arquitectura, ca. 30 C.E.), originated in the Near East around
the 2nd century B.C.E. and then diffused westward to Europe and eastward to
China simultaneously. In China, the device was used for a variety of manu-
facturing procedures, whenever a raw material had to be milled before it
could be made into a finished project: thus rice-husking mills, paper mills,
sugar-cane mills, and fulling mills all diffused from China westward as
discrete technological packages, the paper mill arriving in eastern Persia in
the late 8th century along with techniques of paper-making themselves.
Paper and sugar processing were completely new industries in the Arab
world. The sugarcane package also included irrigation techniques, necessary
to water the cane under semi-arid conditions. The irrigation package in-
cluded a number of Indian (rice, sugarcane, old world cotton, watermelon,
oranges and lemons) and Persian (eggplant, artichoke) cultivars, which dif-
fused along with the know-how associated with their cultivation, such as the
qanat (filtration gallery) and the noria (water-lifting wheel). The entire pack-
age was known as Indian agriculture (Arabic, filaha hindiyya) (Andrew Wat-
son, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and
Farming Technique, 1983).

D. Military Technology
In the course of the Middle Ages, weapons tended to become larger and more
powerful, which in turn required an augmentation of defensive emplace-
ments. The English were famous for their longbowmen, but hundreds were
needed to breach enemy infantry lines. Siege engines, such as trebuchets and
ballistas, based on Roman designs, grew larger and there was a tendency for
crank-operated gears to replace human power. The crossbow, a modified bal-
lista, was unrelated technically to the longbow and much more powerful.
Medieval military technology was metallurgical in nature, whose central
problems were dealing with the impure ore that made iron implements
brittle and breakable and the difficulty of making steel (Alan Williams, The
Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages
and early Modern Period, 2003).
True guns emerged in China from the fire-lance, a flame-throwing
device, in the second half of the 13th century. The Arabs certainly knew of the
fire-lance around this time. The first European visual representations of
guns date to 1326. The army of Nasrid Granada apparently had guns at the
siege of Elche in 1331, after which bombards became a common siege
weapon in western Europe. The diffusion of the technique was so rapid that
it may be that guns were brought directly from China to Europe by travelers.
1309 Technology in the Middle Ages

Bombards were iron instruments, made by blacksmiths using wrought iron.

Later, forged iron was used and the bombards grew in size but then hit a tech-
nological dead end in the mid-15th century, replaced by cast bronze canons
and smaller handguns (see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China,
vol. V, part VII: The Gunpowder Epic, 1986; David Ayalon, Gunpowder and
Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom, 1956; Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in
Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics, 1997). Whether trebu-
chets or canons were used, parabolic ballistics was not understood till the
17th century.

E. Diffusion
Technological diffusion is one of the primary motors of economic growth.
In medieval historiography of technology, however, to illustrate it presents
numerous methodological challenges. Robert Creswell has shown that it
is impossible to trace historical genealogies of diffusion based on physical
and design characteristics only; thus, neither traditional Moroccan water-
mills nor the blades of horizontal waterwheels in the Mediterranean basin,
display any “grouping that could explain their historical or geographical
background” (“Of Mills and Waterwheels: The Hidden Parameters of Tech-
nological Choice,” Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture since
the Neolithic, ed. Pierre Lemmonnier, 1993, 181–210).
Needham, whose multi-volume work on Science and Civilisation in China
(1954–) is in fact as much about technology as it is about science, was able to
see similar artifacts in operation both in China and Europe and to infer a his-
torical connection between them, especially when corroborated by docu-
mentation. Whenever artifacts and ideas traverse linguistic boundaries, ety-
mologies are frequently helpful; but this method means being able to control
the languages involved.
Two examples of diffusion-based studies are Bulliet’s account of the
bimodal diffusion of two styles of equine and camel harnessing, whose typol-
ogy he established by structural features of the equipment, and studies by
numerous historians and archeologists on the diffusion of filtration galleries
(qanats) as an appurtenance of irrigation from a Persian hearth, across North
Africa, into al-Andalus, and then across the Atlantic to Mexico and Peru. The
old world origin of Mexican galerías and Peruvian puquios was resisted by
New World archeologists until a combination of historical, archeological,
linguistic and design factors established their provenance.
There was also a distinctive genre of mechanical engineering treatises
which diffused from the Islamic world to the Latin west. The Arabic genre of
‘ilm al-hiyal (science of devices), exemplified by The Book of Knowledge of Ingeni-
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ 1310

ous Mechanical Devices by al-Jazari (1136–1206), presented complex ma-

chinery with segmental gears, crankshafts, escapements, and so forth, whose
purpose, however, was to illustrate points of theoretical mechanics, not to
build machines. The tradition continued in Alfonso the Wise’s Libro de relojes
(book of clocks).

Select Bibliography
Ahmad al-Hassan and Donald Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History (Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Medieval Farming and Technol-
ogy: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe, ed. Grenville Astill and John
Langdon (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1997); Miquel Barceló, “The Missing Water-
Mill: A Question of Technological Diffusion in the High Middle Ages,” The Making of
Feudal Agricultures?, ed. M. Barceló and François Sigaut (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2004), 255–314; Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 1992); John Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 1300–1540
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Adam Lucas, Wind, Water, Work: Ancient and
Medieval Milling Technology (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Paolo Squatriti, Working with Water
in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource-Use (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000); Lynn
White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1962).

Thomas F. Glick

The Term ‘Middle Ages’

A. Time

A.1. Time I: Discussing the Period

As any other historical period, the time span called “the Middle Ages” is
designated by certain dates of beginning and end created by historians and
common historical sense. The literature discussing the arbitrariness of
(any) periodization is huge, but hardly any scholar will seriously confute its
basic heuristic usefulness (for a broad set of specialized perspectives cf. The
Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, ed. Lawrence L.
Besserman, 1996; for a broad overview, see Johan Hendrik Jacob van der
Pot, Sinndeutung und Periodisierung der Geschichte: Eine systematische Übersicht
der Theorien und Auffassungen, 1999). The Middle Ages, however, being a com-
paratively large time span which comprises a wide set of characteristics
attached to it affirmed “medieval,” are more easily subject to discussion than
1311 The Term ‘Middle Ages’

shorter periods arising from more definitive historical sub-disciplines or

perspectives, such as “the Cold War” or “the Industrialization.”
Most scholars consent on defining the Middle Ages as the time period
between ca. 500 and 1500 CE. But when it comes to the very marking points
of beginning and end, temporal limits can vary broadly (a useful collection
of essays – in German language – still is: Zur Frage der Periodengrenze zwischen
Altertum und Mittelalter, ed. Paul Egon Hübinger, 1969; a useful overview
is provided by Michael Kulikowski, “Drawing a Line Under Antiquity:
Archaeological and Historical Categories of Evidence in the Transition from
the Ancient World to the Middle Ages,” Paradigms and Methods in Early Medi-
eval Studies, ed. Celia Martin Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz, 2007, 248–70).
This is especially true for the line between antiquity and the Middle Ages
which is as bold as roughly two hundred years. Some dates suggested are:

x the rule of Constantine the Great, sole reign since 324 (“Edict of Toler-
ance,” 311)
x the beginning of the barbarian migration, beginning with the Huns in
375/76
x the division of the Roman Empire in 395
x the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, hence the end of the Roman Em-
pire, in 476
x the founding of Montecassino, the first Christian monastery, in 529
x the closing of the Platonic Academy in Athens, also in 529

Hence, this line is especially permeable for a variety of cultural, political, and
economic phenomena which scholars of both antiquity and the Middle Ages
claim as their field – or sometimes collectively neglect, claiming not to be
responsible for it (for the troubles scholars of ancient history have in concep-
tualizing the border to the early Middle Ages cf. Arnaldo Marcone, “La
tarda antichità o della difficoltà delle periodizzazioni,” Studi storici 45 [2004]:
25–36).
Though more or less condensed within a span of only one hundred years,
the same is basically true for fixing points that mark the end of the Middle
Ages, including dates such as:

x the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453

x the invention of movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg ca. 1450
x the discovery of America in 1492
x Luther’s 95 theses, published in 1517
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ 1312

However, historians have come to accept appointing an epochal change once

a variety of incisive events or trends culminate within a certain time frame
(cf. Josef Fleckenstein, “Ortsbestimmung des Mittelalters: Das Problem
der Periodisierung,” Mittelalterforschung, ed. Ruprecht Kurzrock, 1981,
9–21; Leonida Pandimiglio, “‘L’idea di Medio Evo’ e la periodizzazione,”
Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Cagliari 57 [2002]:
301–46; William A. Green, “Periodization in European and World History,”
Journal of World History 3 [1992]: 13–53; Christian van Kieft, “La periodiz-
ation de l’histoire du Moyen Âge,” Les categories en histoire, ed. Chaïm Perel-
mann, 1969, 41–56; Hans-Werner Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik: Stand und Per-
spektiven der Mittelalterforschung, 1999, 36–46). And so have medievalists. That
is why the conventional marker “ca. 500–1500 CE” (with a range of ca. one
hundred years plus and minus) still dominates in academe.
Tendencies to prolong the Middle Ages until far into what is commonly
perceived as “the early modern period,” though getting louder within the
last decades, still rather remain at the margins of historiographic discourse.
However, scholars of French Annales historiography, namely Jacques
LeGoff (“Pour un long moyen âge,” L’imaginaire médiévale: Essais, 1985,
7–13; also cf. Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Das Andere, die Unterschiede, das
Ganze: Jacques Le Goffs Bild des europäischen Mittelalters,” Francia 17.1
[1990]: 141–58), have argued for long, indeed “very long” (LeGoff, L’imagi-
naire médiévale, loc. cit., XII), Middle Ages, comprising a period of roughly the
3rd to the late 18th or even early 19th century (the latter being commensurable
with Reinhard Koselleck’s concept of a “Sattelzeit”; cf. “Einleitung,” Ge-
schichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 1, ed. Otto Brunner et al., 1979, XV).
LeGoff’s concept shares certain vertexes with those of Dietrich
Gerhard (Old Europe: A Study of Continuity 1000–1800, 1981), Otto Brunner
(“Das ‘ganze Haus’ und die alteuropäische ‘Ökonomik’,” Neue Wege der Verfas-
sungs- und Sozialgeschichte, 3rd ed. 1980, 1st ed. 1968, 103–27), and Peter
Blickle (Das Alte Europa: Vom Hochmittelalter bis zur Moderne, 2008) who have –
though with differing time spans – brought up the idea of an “old European”
epoch, bonding the Middle Ages (or at least parts of) with the early modern
era – and even Mediterranean antiquity, as is the case with Brunner.
Though the interdisciplinary exchange between scholars of the Middle Ages
and those of early modern times is at its heights since the last decades
(cf., amongst others, Continuities and Disruptions Between the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, ed. Charles Burnett et al., 2008), these epochal cross-over is
still observed with reservation in large parts of the academe.
1313 The Term ‘Middle Ages’

A.2. Excursus on Periodization: The Pierenne-Thesis

Still, some debates touch more than general accounts towards the signifi-
cation of epochal terms but rather eminent issues of historical interpre-
tation. Closely attached to the question about the end of the ancient period
and the beginning of the Middle Ages is one of the probably most discussed
historical theories of the 20th century, known as “the Pirenne thesis” (for an
overview cf. Carl August Lückerath, “Die Diskussion über die Pirenne-
These,” Historische Debatten und Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed.
Jürgen Elvert and Susanne Krauss, 2003, 55–69; Georges Despy, La for-
tune historiographique des thèses d’Henri Pirenne, 1986; Adriaan Verhulst,
“Conclusion: l’actualité de Pirenne,” Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, spec.
no., 28 [1986]: 149–53; The Pirenne Thesis: Analysis, Criticism, and Revision,
ed. Alfred F. Havighurst, 1969). It traces back to Belgian historian Henri
Pirenne’s study Mahomet et Charlemagne, posthumously published in 1937
(first deployments of his thesis: “Mahomed et Charlemagne,” RBPh 1 [1922]:
77–86; and “Un contraste économique: Mérovingiens et Carolingiens,” RBPh
2 [1923]: 223–35). In this book, Pirenne confutes the thitherto common as-
sertion that the cultural and economic unity of the ancient Mediterranean
was destroyed by the migration of barbarian tribes. Rather, he argued, it col-
lapsed only in the 7th and 8th centuries with a deep depression, the break-
down of orient trade and of credit economy alongside with the expansion
of the Islam. Already soon after the publication of Mahomet et Charlemagne,
Pirenne’s thesis was heavily debated. Scholars such as Amelio Taglia-
ferri, Eliyahu Ashtor, and Heinrich Dannenbauer advocated his find-
ings, while the most prominent among his earlier opponents were Hermann
Aubin, Erna Patzelt, and Maurice Lombard. Still today debates have not
settled, including voices from all diverse disciplines, such as history (Cinzio
Violante, Uno storico europeo tra guerra e dopoguerra, Henri Pirenne (1914–1923),
1998; Bernard S. Bachrach, “Pirenne and Charlemagne,” After Rome’s Fall:
Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. Alexander Callander
Murray, 1998, 214–31), archaeology (Richard Hodges and David White-
house, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the
Pirenne Thesis, 1983; Richard Hodges, “Henri Pirenne and the Question
of Demand in the sixth century,” The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution
and Demand, ed. Richard Hodges and William Bowden, 1998, 3–14), and
Oriental studies (cf. Andrew S. Ehrenkreutz, “Another Orientalist’s Re-
marks Concerning the Pirenne Thesis,” The Expansion of the Early Islamic State,
ed. by Fred M. Donner, 2008, 101–12). Some aspects seem commonly ac-
cepted by now, namely the economic depression of the 7th century which Pi-
renne had diagnosed, although scholars tend to put it into perspective
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ 1314

today (cf. Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communi-

cations and Commerce, A.D. 300–900, 2001, 118–19). Still, the highlighted role
of the Islam as a reason for the collapse of the ancient world seems widely re-
jected today, even though John Moorhead has stated lately that “the Pi-
renne thesis largely works” (The Roman Empire Divided, 400–700, 2001, 255).
For a variety of more recent perspectives on a “long early medieval
period” cf. the papers edited by Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick
(The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies,
2008).

A.3. Time II: Sub-Periodization

Discussing the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages can also be per-
formed in national, regional or disciplinary terms (cf. Hermann Heimpel,
“Über die Epochen der mittelalterlichen Geschichte,” Die Sammlung 2
[1946/47]: 245–62; Ángel A. Castellán, “Proposiciones para un análisis
crítico del problema de la periodización histórica,” Anales de historia antigua y
medieval 9 [1957/58]: 7–48; Sentimento del tempo e periodizzazione della storia nel
Medioevo, ed. Ovidio Capitani, 2000).
In disciplinary terms, this seems most evident for the different periodi-
zations of scholars of history and those of literary history (cf., for instance,
Hermann Heimpel, “Das Wesen des deutschen Spätmittelalters,” Archiv für
Kulturgeschichte 35 [1953]: 29–51; Joachim Heinzle, “Wann beginnt das
Spätmittelalter?,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 112 [1983]: 207–23; Erich
Meuthen, “Gab es ein spätes Mittelalter?,” Spätzeit: Studien zu den Problemen
eines historischen Epochenbegriffs, ed. Johannes Kunisch, 1990, 91–135; or
from a hispanist’s perspective: Francisco Abad Nebot, “Problemas de peri-
odización y caracterización en Historia de la lengua literaria española,” Epos:
Revista de Filología 14 [1998]: 493–513), but it is true for most historical disci-
plines, such as legal (cf. Hans Hattenhauer, Europäische Rechtsgeschichte,
3rd ed. 1999, 1st ed. 1992) or economic history (cf. Herbert Heaton, “Criteria
of periodization in economic history,” The Journal of Economic History 15
[1955]: 267–72) as well.
In geographical terms, certain events or developments may be ascribed
the quality of “turning points” in national or regional history. German his-
toriography, for instance, tends to see the administrative, legal, and military
reform projects of Maximilian I. (“Reichsreform,” at its heights in 1495) as
an important marker (amongst others) for the transformation of the medi-
eval into the early modern Holy Roman Empire. The same project, of course,
seems evanescently relevant for the periodization of English, French or East-
ern European history (cf. Stephan M. Horak, “Periodization and Terminol-
1315 The Term ‘Middle Ages’

ogy of the History of Eastern Slavi: Observations and Analyses,” Slavic Review
31 [1972]: 852–62). On the other hand, the “great turning point” (Eduard A.
Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, vol. 1, 1867, 1) of
1066 is an important, even epochal, date for English and French history, but
it is not even noticed in many contemporary German chronicles (cf. Michaela
Pastors, “1066 – ein ‘großer Wendepunkte in der Geschichte Englands?’,”
Quodlibet: Bochumer Arbeiten zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte, ed. Hiram Kümper
and Michaela Pastors, 2005, 7–29).
The latter also indicates that what seems evident for the beginning and
end of the period, is even more relevant for the respective subdivisions of the
roughly one thousand years the Middle Ages comprise. The dates given here
vary even more between and even within different national historiographies
or historiographic cultures.
This table shows a selection of a number of such different subdivisions
compiled from textbooks and internet resources of the respective nation or
language area:

Anglo- early Middle Ages high Middle Ages late Middle Ages
american (ca. 400–1000) (ca. 1100–1300) (ca. 1300–1500)
Island armiqaldir hámiqaldir síqmiqaldir
(ca. 470–1066) (1066–ca. 1300) (ca. 1300–1550)
Denmark tidlig middelalder højmiddelalder senmiddelalder
(ca. 500–1000) (ca. 1000–1300) (ca. 1300–1500)
Sweden tidig medeltid högmedeltid senmedeltid
(ca. 500–1000) (ca. 1000–1300) (ca. 1300–1500)
Norway tidleg mellomalder høgmellomalderen seinmellomalderen
(ca. 500–1000) (ca. 1000–1300) (ca. 1270–1500)
Nether- vroege hoge middeleeuwen late middeleeuwen
lands middeleeuwen (ca. 950–1270) (ca. 1270–1500)
(ca. 330–950)
German Frühmittelalter Hochmittelalter Spätmittelalter
speaking (ca. 500–1050) (ca. 1050–1250) (ca. 1250–1500)
French haut moyen âge moyen âge moyen bas moyen âge
speaking (ca. 500–750) inférieur âge superieur (ca. 1250–1500)
(ca. 750–1000) (ca. 1000–1250)
Italy alto medioevo basso medioevo/ tardo medioevo
(ca. 400–1100) (ca. 1100–1500)
Spain alta edad media baja edad media
(ca. 400–1100) (ca. 1100–1500)
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ 1316

It is far from being comprehensive. Even within national historiography we

will find an abundance of divisions and differentiations, even though mostly
different in details only. Some, however, have become more commonly ac-
cepted. Traditional French historiography, for instance, does also know a
twofold division between “haut moyen âge” and “bas moyen âge” in accord-
ance to those common in Spanish or Italian scholarship.

B. Space
The core of the common concept of “the Middle Ages” is deeply Eurocentric,
with a specific focus on Western and Central Europe (with, incidentally,
medieval roots; cf. Piotr Kochanek, Die Vorstellung vom Norden und der Eurozen-
trismus: Eine Auswertung der patristischen und mittelalterlichen Literatur, 2004;
Jerold C. Frakes, “Vikings, Vínland and the discourse of Eurocentrism,”
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100 [2001]: 157–99). Though last dec-
ade’s boom of intercultural and/or interreligious studies has broaden our
knowledge of non-Christian societies immensely, this had only little effect on
the basic definitions of the Middle Ages still enrooted in historical develop-
ments, structures, and phenomena drawn from what is labeled as “Occident,”
“Latin Christianity” – or mostly “Europe.” With good reason Timothy
Reuter has argued that Europe – a notion in itself as problematic as “the
Middle Ages” – is too conventionalized “to be of much use in any dialogue be-
tween medievalist of different parts of the globe” (“Medieval: Another Tyran-
nous Construct?” The Medieval History Journal 1 [1998]: 25–45, here 25; also
cf. the lucid preliminary research survey by Klaus Oschema (“Europa in der
mediävistischen Forschung – eine Skizze,” Europa im späten Mittelalter: Politik –
Gesellschaft – Kultur, ed. Rainer C. Schwinges et al., 2006, 12–32). Since
Max Weber’s theses on the development of occidental societies the latest, it
has been a vital branch of 20th-century historiography to trace the European
“Sonderweg” and its early paths (amongst others cf. Michael Mitterauer,
Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, 2005; and the critical
statements of Michel Pauly, “Quelle Europe est née au Moyen Âge?” Francia
32.1 [2005]: 157–65; also cf. Michael Borgolte, “Die Anfänge des mittel-
alterlichen Europa, oder Europas Anfänge im Mittelalter?,” Zeitschrift für Ge-
schichtswissenschaft 55 [2007]: 205–19). Especially post-war-historiography
had developed a strong interest in the political implications of a common
European past (Michael Borgolte, “Europa im Bann des Mittelalters: Wie
Geschichte und Gegenwart unserer Lebenswelt die Perspektiven der Mediä-
vistik verändern,” Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 6 [2005]: 117–35). More
recent research has elaborated both the intractable interdependences of Cen-
tral European Christian societies with Muslim, Jewish, and Byzantine cul-
1317 The Term ‘Middle Ages’

tures (cf., for instance, Michael Borgolte, Christen, Juden, Muselmanen: Die
Erben der Antike und der Aufstieg des Abendlandes, 300–1400 n. Chr., 2006; Unaufheb-
bare Pluralität der Kulturen? Zur Dekonstruktion und Konstruktion des mittelalter-
lichen Europa, ed. Michael Borgolte, 2001; The Other Europe in the Middle Ages:
Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans, ed. Florin Curta, 2007) as well as some-
times profound regional differences in development.

C. Unity?
Hence, the alleged unity of the epoch, both diachronically and synchroni-
cally, is largely a question of structural presumptions. For long, one of these
structural umbrella terms has been “feudalism.” Only in the second half of
the 20th century, the reduction of the concept “feudalism” within non-Marx-
ist medievalists from a holistic label for the occidental medieval societies to
a rather small bundle of phenomena (military organization, certain power
delegation etc.) became largely accepted. Some following this direction, such
as Elizabeth A. R. Brown (“The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and His-
torians of Medieval Europe,” AHR 79 [1974]: 1063–88]), even argued against
the general consistency of such very basic patterns across time and space com-
monly labeled as “medieval.” This argument has more recently been taken
up again by Susan Reynolds’ widely recognized study Fiefs and Vassals: The
Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (1994). Lately, American medievalist Kathleen
Davis (Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization
Govern the Politics of Time, 2008) has proposed that the historical construction
of the concept “feudalism” mediated the conceptualization of sovereignty
and the social contract, hence also of its defacements, such as colonialism and
slavery.
Feudalism is but one example for conceptual criticism towards the al-
leged unity of the medieval period (for a wider range cf. Misconceptions about
the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen Harris, 2008). Critics recruit especially from the
newly emerging fields of Medieval Studies informed by the humanities’ the-
oretical developments within the last decades. Feminist scholarship, for in-
stance, has indicated that medieval history not only in practice but foremost
in its structural and theoretical presumptions is profoundly men’s history
and that a periodization of women’s history might look fairly different (cf.
Silvana Seidel Menchi, “The Girl and the Hourglass: Periodization of
Women’s Lives in Western Preindustrial Societies,” ed. Anne Jacobson
Schuette et al., Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, 2001,
41–74; also cf. the entry on “Gender Studies” in this Handbook).
After all, the prior question towards the justification of the traditional
concept of the epoch remains: What is so medieval about the Middle Ages?
The Term ‘Middle Ages’ 1318

D. History
When taking into account its emergence and early history (cf. Peter Schaef-
fer, “The Emergence of the Concept ‘Medieval’ in Central European Hu-
manism,” Sixteenth Century Journal 7 [1976]: 21–30; Nathan Edelman, “The
Early Uses of Medium Aevum, Moyen Age, Middle Ages,” RR 29 [1938]:
3–25; Ingrid Kasten, “Eine europäische Erfindung: Das Mittelalter,” Estu-
dios Filológicos Alemanes 8 [2005]: 73–88) it is no wonder the construction of
the Middle Ages is a Eurocentric one. Medieval people surely did not think of
themselves as living in some “Middle Ages” between an epochally distinct
past and a more or less distinct future. But as soon as in the 14th century, with
Renaissance humanism on its rise, growing groups of intellectuals and cul-
tural elites began to see themselves reaching a new era that was both familiar
with the ancient cultures of Rome and Greece and distinct from the younger
past – a dark past which they believed had interposed between themselves
and the antiquity they so much admired. That is why the term “Middle Ages”
from its early beginning on also had, and still has today, a pejorative dimen-
sion to it (cf. Arnold Esch, “Das ‘finstere’ Mittelalter: Zur Genese und Phä-
nomenologie eines Fehlurteils,” Saeculum 32 [1981]: 287–300; in 2008, web-
icon Marina Orlova has broadcasted a four-minute-video on the proposed
etymological origin of “medieval” in “middle” and “evil” at http://www.hot-
forwords.com/).
One of the first to articulate this idea was Francesco Petrarch (1340–1374).
What makes him different from the 15th-century humanists to follow was
that he felt his own time to be a sort of middle age (“medium aevum”) of
chaos (“turpia tempus”) between a fortunate age (“felicius aevum”) and a
hopefully also fortunate future. But soon the object of depreciation moved
from contemporary times to the nearer past. Already in 1469 a tribute to
Nicolaus of Cusa printed as a preface to the Roman edition of Apuleius says
that “This man, unexpectedly versed in Latin eloquence to the extent that
one rarely encounters among Germans, knew by heart all the histories not
only of ancient times but of the intervening period [“medie tempestatis”],
the older as well as the more recent, down to our present age.” (cit. Schae-
ffer, Emergence, 1976, 26). Though quotations of the term proliferate in the
following centuries, it still oscillated in different geographic and thematic
contexts so much that it is hard to purport a reasonably fixed concept of “the
Middle Ages” before the age of “Enlightenment (see the entry in this Hand-
book) The nowadays common tripartite scheme of époques was introduced in
1688 by Christoph Cellarius with his three-volume “Historia tripartita.” But
even that was still far from inventing the Middle Ages as a common term
in historiographic chronology which for the most part stuck to the epochal
1319 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

scheme of the four biblical monarchies or the more pragmatic annalistic

orientation alongside rulers, popes, and events until far into the 17th cen-
tury. For France (Jürgen Voss, Das Mittelalter im historischen Denken Frankre-
ichs: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalterbegriffs und der Mittelalterbewer-
tungen von der zweiten Hälfte des 16. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1972) and for
Germany (Uwe Neddermeyer, Das Mittelalter in der deutschen Historiographie
vom 15. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert: Geschichtsgliederung und Epochenverständnis in der
frühen Neuzeit, 1988) there are book-length studies in the history and use of
the term and concept “Middle Ages.” A more general European approach is
followed by Giorgio Falco (La poelmica sul medioevo, 1974; also cf. Usages et Mé-
susages du Moyen Age du XIXe au XXIe siècle, ed. János M. Bak et al., 2009).

Select Bibliography
Sentimento del tempo e periodizzazione della storia nel Medioevo, ed. Ovidio Capitani
(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2000); Giorgio Falco, La poel-
mica sul medioevo (Naples: Guida, 1974); L’imaginaire et les conceptions modernes de la société
médiévale, ed. Natalie Fryde (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Jacques
LeGoff, “Pour un long moyen âge,” L’imaginaire médiévale: Essais (Paris: Fayard, 1985),
7–13; Christian van Kieft, “La periodisation de l’histoire du Moyen Âge,” Les
categories en histoire, ed. Chaïm Perelmann (Brussels: Edition Université libre de Bru-
xelles, 1969), 41–56; Timothy Reuter, “Medieval: Another Tyrannous Construct?”
The Medieval History Journal 1 (1998): 25–45.

Hiram Kümper

Text and Image in Medieval Literature

A. General Outline
The study of the verbal arts – texts – has generally been separate from the
study of the visual arts – images – as far back as either art has been studied.
Even in the modern, contemporary academy, where considerable attention is
given to the idea of interdisciplinarity, art historical and literary scholarship
have generally maintained their separateness, each sometimes interested in
the other, but the two rarely really working together. However, sporadic ef-
forts over the last century, and especially over the last half century or so, have
coalesced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries into a field variously labeled
“Bild und Text,” “word and image,” “text and image,” and the like. The field
has attracted an increasing number of medievalists, but still often enjoys – or
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1320

suffers from – a sort of outsider status vis-à-vis both literary studies and art
history. Nonetheless, the field has already become difficult to delineate in a
short article, not least because of the diversity of approaches. The present ar-
ticle cannot hope to account exhaustively for everything done in the field,
but will attempt to develop a working definition and provide an overview
and introduction.
For a start, we may say very generally that the scholarly approaches to be
discussed here represent the endeavor to bring the study of visual materials
together with the study of verbal materials in order to deepen our under-
standing of medieval culture. A definition this broad can only be a starting
point. Attempts have been made to be more precise. Michael Curschmann,
one of the pioneers in the field, has recently suggested that “word and
image” – in North America, at least – designates research that involves more
general issues, such as the semiotics of various media, the philosophical
discussion of pictures as the “literature of the laity,” the possibility of visual
narrative, and the relationships between the media in general terms, while
“text and picture” means the study of more specific, concrete relationships
among particular images and particular texts (“Wolfgang Stammler und die
Folgen,” Das Mittelalter und die Germanisten: Zur neueren Methodengeschichte der
Germanischen Philologie: Freiburger Colloquium 1997, ed. Eckart Conrad Lutz,
1998, 115–37, here 119). Whether or not these definitions are universally
understood or accepted throughout the very broad field of text and image
studies, the proposal certainly reflects an ongoing concern within the field
that the field itself has not been properly defined. Norbert Ott, another
pioneer, expresses this concern acutely in a recent article, “Word and Image
as a Field of Research: Sound Methodologies or Just a Fashionable Trend?
A Polemic from a European Perspective” (in Starkey and Wenzel, 15–32).
As is clear from the title, Ott is concerned that much work in the field indeed
invokes fashionable labels while investigating certain text-image connec-
tions in “hazily defined” and methodologically unsound ways (esp. 18).
For present purposes, however, we must be concerned more with what
is done in the field than what should be done, and we must employ a rather
broad definition, one that encompasses both “word and image” and “text
and picture.”

B. Definition
At first glance, it may sometimes appear that the types of things done under
the rubrics of “text and image” and the like are so diverse and the ways in
which the field defines itself so varied, that the field, as a method susceptible
of precise definition, might seem not to exist at all. Nonetheless, it would
1321 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

appear, on a purely phenomenological level, that the field of “text and image
studies” must exist, because, after all, quite a lot of work is done that involves
medieval texts and images and calls itself something like “text and image
studies.”
The field certainly does not have a single controlling methodology.
Maybe there is no reason to think it should. Literary studies does not: per-
haps it once did, in some prelapsarian phase of philology before the New
Criticism, Structuralism, etc. In art history, any such original unity has long
since been shattered by the various “new art histories” (see Jonathan Har-
ris, The New Art History: A Critical Introduction, 2001). So why should “text and
image” have a unifying methodology if its older sibling disciplines do not?
If the field has no single dominant method, it also has no single history.
If we say, for a working definition, that “text and image studies” exists be-
tween traditional art history and traditional literary studies, and tries to find
ways to study relationships between texts and images in medieval culture,
then we may say that the field has several points of origin.

C. History of Research
One starting point for text and image studies is the exploration of “wech-
selseitige Erhellung” or “reciprocal illumination of the arts”. Beginning
around 1900, a number of scholars – mostly German – began to consider
whether and to what extent concepts and terminology developed for one art
might be transferable to the study of another. Oskar Walzel, for example,
argued that literary history had much to learn from the art history of the day,
especially Wölfflin’s “principles of art history.” These efforts had signifi-
cant consequences, including the concept of a Baroque period in German lit-
erature, developed by Fritz Strich, Walzel, and others, through the appli-
cation of Wölfflinian principles to literature. However, these efforts did
not generally explore relationships between verbal and visual versions of one
material, and did not lead in any direct way to the “text and image” research
of several decades later, although they did help to open the door to such in-
terdisciplinary research. (On “reciprocal illumination,” see Oskar Walzel,
“Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste: Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung kunst-
geschichtlicher Begriffe,” Philosophische Vorträge 15 [1917]: 5–92. For a brief
discussion, fuller than is possible here, see Rushing, Images of Adventure 5–6.
A full account of these efforts is provided by Jost Hermand, Literaturwissen-
schaft und Kunstwissenschaft: Methodische Wechselbeziehungen seit 1900, 1965, 2nd
ed., 1971).
More recent, and at the exegetical level more productive, have been vari-
ous efforts to use texts to explain pictures (such as Panofskian iconology) or
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1322

pictures to explain texts, two examples being the extensive use of images to
support exegetical positions in D. W. Robertson, Jr.’s A Preface to Chaucer:
Studies in Medieval Perspectives, 1962) and among the Robertsonians who fol-
lowed; across the Atlantic, the school of studies in medieval “Bedeutungsfor-
schung” around Friedrich Ohly. (On these developments, see Rushing,
Images of Adventure, 4; Curschmann, “Wolfgang Stammler,” 123–24). Some
such endeavors have been extremely important, but at this point, like the
best insights of the “wechselseitige Erhellung” efforts, they may be to some
extent taken for granted. It is no longer controversial, and it is perhaps sur-
prising today that it was ever controversial, that many analytical tools can be
applied to multiple arts, or that the various arts of a given epoch reflect
broadly similar concerns and attitudes. Still, early 20th-century efforts in
“reciprocal illumination” and mid-century attempts to explain pictures
through texts and texts through pictures provided, in a way, the general jus-
tification for more recent work in “image and text.” Wolfgang Stammler
is often regarded as the founder of the modern “school” of text and image
studies, at least where German scholars are concerned (see Curschmann,
“Wolfgang Stammler”), but his essay “Schrifttum und Kunst im deutschen
Mittelalter” failed to anticipate the longer term future of the discipline when
it outlined three ways in which art history and literary history could con-
tribute to each other: texts to explain pictures, pictures to explain texts, and
“reciprocal illumination” (Stammler, “Schrifttum und Kunst im deut-
schen Mittelalter,” Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss, ed. Stammler, vol. 3, 2nd ed.,
1962; orig. 3 vols., 1952–57, 613–98, here 689).
Indeed, Stammler’s importance, as described by Curschmann in the
historical essay “Wolfgang Stammler und die Folgen,” was primarily to
make text and image studies “presentable” (“hoffähig”) within medieval
German Studies (119). That interdisciplinary work on texts and pictures had
to be made “presentable,” and that it continues to exist in a sometimes inhos-
pitable border region has to do with the degree to which academic borders
have always been defended. We have come a long way from statements like
that of Ernst Robert Curtius that “die Literatur [ist] Träger von Gedanken,
die Kunst nicht” (“literature is the medium of ideas, art [is] not”) (Europäische
Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, 1948/1954, 24; European Literature and
the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard Trask, 1973, 14) or Erwin Panofksy’s
remark to Curschmann that art history was represented at the Institute1 for
Advanced Study while literary studies were not “because we have a method
and you don’t” (quoted, along with Curtius, in “Wolfgang Stammler,” 116).
The general problem today is not such arrogance or simple turf defense,
but that scholars approach the “text and image” area from so many different
1323 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

directions. The methodological models and scholarly forerunners that will

influence a “text and image” scholar may differ significantly depending on
whether the scholar’s primary training has been as a Germanist, a Romanist,
an Art Historian, etc., as well as the scholar’s country of origin and even his or
her university. This is a problem insofar as it may lead people to feel that they
have to “reinvent the wheel” because they are unaware of work done in some
other corner of the text and image world, and because it may mean that im-
portant work does not always have the impact that it should across the field
as a whole. Curschmann discusses, for example, how long it took the work
of the Loomises to become known in Germany, and how ignorant the Ohly-
ians and the Roberstonians were of each other (“Wolfgang Stammler,”
119–20 and 124). That national and disciplinary – and indeed linguistic –
border fences remain high today is reflected, for example, in the fact that
although Michael Camille and Curschmann both contributed seminal
articles to the text and image field in the mid-1980s, Camille is cited
much more frequently by North American art historians, who seldom cite
Curschmann, while text and image scholars rooted in German Studies, es-
pecially those trained in Germany, cite Curschmann and rarely Camille.
Such examples could be expanded indefinitely.
The multiplicity of approaches and the impossibility of seeing the entire
field from any one vantage point do not make text and image studies differ-
ent from art history or literary studies themselves, as noted above. In fact,
it might be better to regard the bewildering diversity of approaches to “text
and image” not as a problem (except for those who try to write the field’s his-
tory!), but as a strength. Many different types of questions can be meaning-
fully asked about medieval text-image connections, and thus there are
multiple methods and multiple histories of text and image studies.
One particularly important starting point for text and image studies has
been the discussion of orality and literacy. This branch of text and image
scholarship begins with the recognition that, at the beginning of the Middle
Ages, literacy in the West was highly limited and exclusively Latin, and ver-
nacular culture was more or less exclusively oral. Early medieval thinkers
themselves defined a great cultural divide, as one sees in the oft-quoted letter
of Pope Gregory the Great, opposing the “legentibus” (“those who read”) and
the “idiotis” (“the illiterate”), who are assumed to be identical with the
“gentibus” (“the common people”) (Pope Gregory I, Registrum Epistolarum
[=MGH: Epistolarum 2], ed. Ludwig Hartmann, 1899, 270). A slightly dif-
ferent description of roughly the same opposition is that of Alcuin, who
urges that the clerics of Lindisfarne should not indulge their interest in Ger-
manic heroes (“Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?” – “What is Ingeld [a now little-
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1324

known Germanic hero] to Christ?”), and should listen to the “lectorem”

(“reader”) not the “citharistam” (“harpist”) (Alcuin, “Epistola 124” in
MGH: Epistolae 4, Karolini Aevi 2, ed. Ernst Duemmler, 1895, 181–84,
here 183). From Gregory, Alcuin, and similar sources, we get the sharp op-
position between two cultures, one literate, Latinate; the other oral and ver-
nacular. Alcuin warned the monks against dabbling in vernacular culture –
“Angusta est domus: utrosque tenere non poterit” (“The house is narrow,
and there is not room for both”). But it is clear that from an early medieval be-
ginning where the two cultures existed side by side but not together, they
quickly began to interact. Not long after Alcuin had scolded the monks of
Lindisfarne for their interest in Germanic heroic songs, two monks in Fulda
were interested enough in that genre that they wrote or copied one of their
own, the Hildebrandslied. Over the next hundred years or so came phenomena
like Otfrid’s German gospel book and Ekkehard’s Latin Walther epic. For the
rest of the Middle Ages, one of the most important narratives in medieval
cultural history was that of the competition, interaction, and eventual merg-
ing of these two cultures. That the visual arts would have a role to play in this
merging was predicted, in a sense, by Gregory (as cited above), who defended
church art against the iconoclastic bishop of Marseilles by arguing that what
books are for the literate, pictures are for the illiterate, “Aliud est enim pictu-
ram adorare” – “for it is one thing to adore a picture” (which would be for-
bidden by the first commandment), “aliud picturae historia, quod sit ador-
andum, addiscere” – “and another thing to learn from the story in a picture
what is to be adored” (of the considerable literature on Gregory’s formu-
lation, see Michael Curschmann, “Pictura laicorum litteratura?”: Über-
legungen zum Verhältnis von Bild und volkssprachlicher Schriftlichkeit im
Hoch- und Spätmittelalter bis zum Codex Manesse,” Pragmatische Schrift-
lichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen, ed. Hagen
Keller, et al., 1992, 211–29; Lawrence Duggan, “Was Art Really the ‘Book
of the Illiterate’?” Word and Image 5 [1989], 227–51). According to Gregory,
pictures can mediate between the two spheres, and the role of images in this
merging of the two cultures has been one of major topics of text and image
studies since at least the mid-1980s, when a cluster of seminal works ap-
peared, most notably Curschmann’s “Hören – Lesen – Sehen” (1984), and
Michael Camille’s “Seeing and Reading” (1985). Around the same time,
Brian Stock’s The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Inter-
pretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (1983), though not specifically
dealing with images, made its own contribution to the discussion by describ-
ing medieval culture as neither oral nor literate but “textual,” meaning that
written texts are crucially important in the culture, but very few people have
1325 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

direct access to them. Also around the same time, Stephen Nichols dis-
cussed the symbolic value of narratives, including images, in Romanesque
Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (1983). Not long after, Mary
Carruthers (The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (1990)
described medieval culture as neither oral nor literate but “memorative,”
and stressed that in that culture “Looking at pictures is an act exactly like
reading … because it is a rhetorical activity” (222, Carruthers’s emphasis).
Carruthers’s work is less useful as a model for how to study specific
images or their relation to specific texts, than it is as a contribution to the
general recognition of the importance of images in a culture that was neither
oral like its Germanic and Celtic antecedents nor literate like its classical
antecedents and its modern descendants.
What emerges from all these works and becomes fundamental to a cer-
tain type of text and image studies is the recognition that the scholarly and
aesthetic values and assumptions of the high print era are not applicable to
the Middle Ages. By “high print era” I mean that period running from
around 1500 to some time in the later 20th century, during which literate
people assumed more or less without question that the printed word was the
most privileged mode of communication. The printed book was seen as the
goal of the creative process and the beginning of the interpretive process, as
well as an object of value in and of itself. All other forms in which a text, a
story, or a character may exist – manuscripts, typescripts, serial versions of
novels, illustrations, film adaptations, operas, and so forth, are seen as sub-
servient to and / or derivative from the printed text – perhaps sometimes of
great scholarly interest or entertainment value, but in every case less import-
ant – in some sense less valuable – than the printed text. The recognition
growing out of the works of Curschmann, Camille, and others, was that
this assumption – whatever its value and validity for the print era – is neither
valuable nor valid for the eras before printing. For the Middle Ages, for
any given literary material, written texts, oral performances, primary and
secondary oral traditions, and various depictions in the visual arts may all
be equally valid, equally important manifestations. Thus Curschmann
speaks of “das um 1300 noch ganz selbstverständliche In- und Neben-
einander von Bild und gesprochenem Wort als primäre Vermittler sinnlicher
Wahrnehmung von Bildungsinhalten und der Schrift, des geschriebenen
Wortes, als einer dritten, nach beiden Richtungen hin wirksamer Kraft”
(“the co-existence and interaction – still taken for granted around 1300 – of
the image and the spoken word as the primary means of conveying intellec-
tual materials to the senses, and of writing, the written word, as a third
power, reaching out in both directions”) (“Hören – Lesen – Sehen,” 219). And
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1326

Camille argues that “much of the visual art of the twelfth century was not
so much an expression of the visual world, as of the spoken word in a still pre-
dominantly oral society” (27), that “text and image are secondary represen-
tations, external to, but always referring back to the spontaneous springs of
speech” (31–32).
The essential general point emerging from these works of the 1980s – the
non-privileging of the written word – remains among the crucial bases for
text and image studies. A narrower point, the role and importance of images
in the medieval merging of cultures and the creation of a vernacular litera-
ture, has been the subject of important works such as Sylvia Huot’s From
Song to Book, which traces “a series of developments in Old French literature
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,” culminating in “the establish-
ment of a writerly poetics” in which “songs destined for performance [and a
genre originally consisting almost entirely of oral performance] are written
down, and books are compiled and treated as unified works of art” (328) –
a development in which images, as Huot extensively demonstrates, play a
crucial role. Curschmann has traced with great erudition “die Rolle,
welche die bildende Kunst in einer Vielzahl von Gattungen und Medien bei
der Konstitution eines deutsch-volkssprachigen Schrifttums spielt” (“the
role played by the visual arts in a number of genres and media in the creation
of a German vernacular literature”) (378) in the long essay “Wort – Schrift –
Bild” (1999) and contributed numerous other articles on the topic. Rush-
ing’s Images of Adventure attempted to show, with reference to the visual
forms of the Ywain material, not only the frequently astonishing indepen-
dence of images from “their” texts in high medieval culture, but also the role
of such images as “participant[s] in the literarization of vernacular nar-
rative,” with each image or image cycle “embodying an independent attitude
toward the story, the character, and the idea of romance adventure” (264).
Rushing’s Images of Adventure appeared in 1995, the same year as at least
two other important text and image books: Suzanne Lewis’s Reading Images:
Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse
(1995) and Susan Smith’s The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Lit-
erature (1995). What these efforts of the early 1990s all had in common was
the recognition that visual materials were not mere appendages to texts,
but independent participants in the development of medieval culture. Lewis
sets out to consider not “questions of how an image might reflect or even
represent a text but … how it constructs a new ‘text,’ often subverting and
diverting meaning into alternative channels of comprehension or cognitive
exchange” (xxi-xxii). Smith, writing about the relationship between texts
about gender and the images that she studies, notes that texts “illuminate
1327 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

the manner in which their analogues in visual art acquired meaning, though
not through any one-to-one correspondence between text and image that a
traditional iconographer might expect” – instead, “visual images in the
Middle Ages played their own role in the process of communication …
and … artists were remarkably inventive about manipulating the resources
peculiar to their medium to communicate their own meanings” (xiii). The
recognition thus grew that images participated in medieval culture in ways
often strikingly independent of the texts to which they were related. Estab-
lishing the independence – but also the interdependence – of text and pic-
ture has been and remains one of the main tasks of text and image studies.
To discuss one example, the diversity of approaches within the relatively
small set of art works related to the story of the Arthurian knight Ywain
(Yvain, Iwein) reveals fundamental aspects of how medieval visual artists and
their audiences related to materials that modern readers and scholars tend to
define in terms of texts. The story takes its canonical textual form in the
works of Chrétien de Troyes (Yvain) and Hartman von Aue (Iwein). It also
exists in four narrative picture cycles and a number of non-narrative images.
The early 13th-century mural cycle at Rodenegg in the South Tyrol, for
example, focuses exclusively on the first part of the Ywein story, in which
the hero kills Ascalon / Esclados. (Four scenes from the Rodenegg cycle are
viewable at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwein.) In its scene selection, its
iconography, and its layout, the cycle seems to oppose the apparent glory of
knightly adventure to the death and grief that such adventure causes. The
central scene in the cycle is the death of Ascalon in his wife’s arms, a scene
strikingly reminiscent of Lamentation iconography. The cycle thus at
least sharply questions the gloriousness of knightly adventure. On the other
hand, the roughly contemporaneous, more extensive cycle of wall paintings
at Schmalkalden in Thuringia presents knightly adventure as a sort of
game, the subject of courtly leisure and perhaps, indeed, of courtly narrative
(one scene is viewable at http://www.thueringen-tourismus.de/files/
images/ObjekteLandkreisSchmalkalden_Meiningen/Iwein_Malereien_rdax_
286x200.jpg). (On Rodenegg and Schmalkalden, see Rushing, Images of
Adventure, 30–132; on Rodenegg also Volker Schupp and Hans Szklenar,
Ywain auf Schloß Rodenegg: Eine Bildergeschichte nach dem “Iwein” Hartmanns von
Aue, 1996, with excellent color photographs; Michael Curschmann, Vom
Wandel im bildlichen Umgang mit literarischen Gegenständen: Rodengg, Wildenstein
und das Flaarsche Haus in Stein am Rhein, 1997.)
The two sets of illuminations in manuscripts of Chrétien’s Yvain also
reflect nearly opposite concerns. Like the Schmalkalden paintings, the illus-
trations of Princeton, University Library, Garrett 125 (viewable online
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1328

through the Index of Christian Art) deproblematize the story, presenting it

as a simple set of courtly adventures undertaken in the service of a wife, while
the illuminations of Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 1433 (viewable at
the library website; search for “Yvain” at http://images.bnf.fr/jsp/index.jsp)
reflect the bipartite structure of the story as we know it from Chrétien and
Hartmann. Though not reproducing that structure in detail, they generally
reflect the idea that Yvain’s early success is ethically flawed, and his true hap-
piness is not possible until he has undertaken a second, ethically superior set
of adventures. (On the two Yvain manuscripts, see Rushing, Images of Adven-
ture, 133–197; all images are reproduced in Busby, et al., Les manuscrits de
Chrétien de Troyes / The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, 2 vols., 1993]; on BN fr.
1433, see also Lori Walters, “The Creation of a ‘Super Romance’: Paris, Bib-
liothèque Nationale, fr. 1433,” Arthurian Yearbook 1 [1991]: 3–26). Although
these particular interpretations may all be debated, it is clear that none of the
artists creating visual narrative based on the Ywain material have attempted
to recreate a text in pictures. Instead, they have all pursued their own artistic
and thematic goals – inspired by the canonical story, but ultimately indepen-
dent of any particular version of it.
This applies even to the pictures that are embedded in texts. These,
of course, could be viewed differently by different audiences – by skilled
readers who would encounter the pictures in the course of private reading,
by those who would see the pictures in the course of hearing the text read
aloud, or by those who would look at the pictures as a substitute for reading
the text. These are the general possibilities for pictures in medieval books,
and one of the major tasks for text and image studies is developing a clearer
understanding of which illustration types match which needs, and how the
various uses of illustration evolved in connection with the evolution of medi-
eval literacy and reading (one of the most comprehensive efforts is Cursch-
mann, “Wort – Schrift – Bild”). The point to be made about the Yvain illumi-
nations is that even though both the illustrated manuscripts follow the
pattern most strongly associated with private reading – the scattering of
a relatively small number of illuminations through the text – both display
marked independence from the text in determining which thematic aspects
to stress, and both thus have the potential to guide a reader’s thematic under-
standing of the text. A reader of Garrett 125 will be steered toward regarding
Yvain’s story as an ethically uncomplicated example of knightly adventure;
a reader of fr. 1433 will be guided toward understanding the story as an ethi-
cally more complicated example of how a knight cannot achieve true happi-
ness until he has undertaken more selfless adventures. By showing Yvain’s
despair, but not his wedding, in the middle of the story, and not showing
1329 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

him with his wife until the very end, the pictorial narrative of fr. 1433 ac-
tually stresses this point more heavily than the text (Rushing, Images of Ad-
venture, esp. 193–194). That neither the Yvain illuminations nor Rushing’s
interpretation of them are unique or idiosyncratic emerges, for example,
from Walworth’s careful study of the Munich Tristan illuminations (Mu-
nich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cgm 51), which shows that this picture
cycle (much more extensive and independently narrative than either of the
French Yvains) sets markedly different thematic emphases from either
Gottfried von Strassburg’s text or Ulrich von Türheim’s continuation, gen-
erally treating the lovers’ frequent success in duping Mark and besting their
enemies as “a series of Schwank- [fabliau-]like adventures,” presenting a nar-
rative that “differs markedly from Gottfried’s self-consciously sophisticated
work and from Ulrich’s more critical attitude towards the lovers” (48–49).
Non-cyclical, non-narrative visual responses to the Ywain material re-
flect other aspects of the medieval culture of images. Both the Ywain scenes
of the early 14th-century Malterer embroidery (Freiburg, Augustinermu-
seum; one scene viewable at http://wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at/kultdoku/kataloge/
06/html/610.htm) and the Ywain figures at Castle Runkelstein near Bozen/
Bolzano (http://www.runkelstein.info/runkelstein_en/triades.asp) reflect the
power of the topoi to remake materials that they incorporate. The Malterer
embroidery brings Ywain into the topos variously known as “slaves of love”
or “power of women,” which catalogs men who, despite wisdom, strength,
virtue, etc., were disgraced or destroyed by women. Based on the texts of
Chrétien and Hartmann, Ywain does not really seem to belong here, in the
company of Samson, destroyed by Delilah despite being strong enough to
kill a lion with his bare hands, along with Aristotle and Virgil, who despite
their wisdom were humiliated by women in well-known medieval stories.
And yet here he is, first, at the height of his powers, defeating Ascalon, then
kneeling before Laudine, the knight brought down by love or by woman.
Early interpreters of the embroidery were puzzled by the Ywain scenes, be-
cause the second one, in particular, did not seem to fit very well with a spe-
cific moment in the text and because efforts to associate it with a textual mo-
ment led to enormous difficulties in fitting it into the topos. However, the
problems disappear when one realizes that it is not necessary to match the
scene precisely with a moment in a text, nor to force the canonical Ywain
story in its entirety into the topos. The topos is Procrustes: it thoughtlessly
eliminates the parts of the story that it does not need. (On the Malterer em-
broidery, see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 219–44, and Smith, 152–68.)
Similarly, at Runkelstein, the entire story of Ywain is reduced to a single
image of a knight, one of the “three greatest knights of the Round Table” in
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1330

the Runkelstein “triads,” a massive expansion of the Nine Worthies topos

(see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 245–56).
Another group of Ywain images attests to the power of visual traditions
to develop and exist independently. Five misericord carvings in English
churches show the scene in which Ywain’s horse is caught and cut in half by
the falling portcullis, as the knight pursues Ascalon into the castle (Rush-
ing, Images of Adventure, 198–218). With slight variations, all five show the
scene from behind, so that the viewer sees perhaps a foot or part of the leg of
the knight, but primarily the rear end of the horse. The image seems to be a
visual joke: superficially out of place in the choir stalls of a church, but not
really surprising among the great variety of motives carved on English mis-
ericords. The interesting point, from the “text and image” perspective, is
how completely this visual tradition seems detached from the texts and even
the story of Ywain. It seems to exist on its own, completely separate from its
origins.
An additional example of the potential independence of a visual tradi-
tion is the so-called Orchard Scene from the Tristan story. In Gottfried von
Strassburg’s Tristan (14583–14940), the story is that King Mark, led, as so
often, to suspect that Tristan and Isolde are betraying him, hides in a tree
with the dwarf Melot to catch the adulterers, who are expected to meet there.
However, Tristan notices the men’s shadows on the ground and manages
to alert Isolde to the danger, so that the lovers only talk about the terrible
rumors and lament that Mark does not trust them. Mark is again convinced
that his wife and nephew are faithful. In the visual arts, the scene is enor-
mously popular as a stand-alone image, appearing some thirty times in non-
cyclical works. Tristan and Isolde stand or sit on opposite sides of a pool or
fountain, separated by a tree, in which the head or face of Mark (and often the
dwarf) is visible. The scene appears in a variety of media, including textiles,
boxes, combs, mirrors, shoes, misericords and other wood carvings, and so
forth, usually either alone or with other pairs of lovers.
The standard depiction of the scene, and also its popularity, are clearly
influenced by the iconography of the Fall of Man. But the functional contexts
in which the scene appears – generally the personal affects of ladies, the types
of objects that might be given as gifts from husbands or lovers, even, most
intriguingly, shoes from the Low Countries, of a type often given as wedding
gifts from grooms to brides – suggests that the scene is not being understood
as an icon of undetected adultery but as an icon of love. It is an excellent
example of the independence of pictorial traditions from textual ones, but
also of the way in which a pictorial tradition can take on new, independent
meanings and a life of its own (on the orchard scene, see especially Michael
1331 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

Curschmann, “Images of Tristan,” in Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval

Tristan Legend, ed. Adrian Stevens and Roy Wisbey, 1990, 1–17).
The general, and crucial, point at the heart of text and image studies is
that images must be understood in substantive independence from the texts
that they are associated with, that images could function independently,
could narrate independently, could develop lives of their own as visual topoi.
This is, probably more than anything else, what separates text and image
from art history that uses texts or literary history that uses images.

D. Current Issues and Future Trends

More than twenty years after the seminal works of the mid 1980s, some 50
years after the path-breaking work of Wolfgang Stammler, around a century
after the main activity of the “wechselseitige Erhellung” scholars, the field of
text and image studies still seems in many ways a young, emerging field.
For one thing, a great need still exists for basic cataloging and publi-
cation of the primary materials. For the study of texts, the medieval canon
is well established, and scholars can rely on some two centuries of editorial
efforts, as well as extensive catalogs of the manuscript holdings of libraries.
For Christian art, scholars can turn to the great Index of Christian Art, with
its 28,000 subject terms and its 80,000 work of art records searchable online
(see http://ica.princeton.edu/). For secular subjects in the visual arts, nothing
of the sort exists (although the Index can be of some value in searching for
secular topics).
The difficulty of cataloging a particular theme is inherent both in
the nature of the medieval evidence, and the history of modern scholarship.
The images associated with a given material may appear in a wide variety of
media – not only manuscripts and early printed books, but also in wall paint-
ings, sculptures, stained glass, textiles, and a great variety of decorative arts.
Moreover, philologists have traditionally been rather uninterested even in
manuscript illuminations: library catalogs and manuscript descriptions in
editions cannot be counted on to mention illustrations or to describe them in
any detail even if they are mentioned. At the same time, art historians have
traditionally been rather uninterested in most of the art works depicting mo-
tives from secular literature, either because the works are regarded as being
of inferior quality or because they are found in the decorative arts, or both.
Thus medieval images, especially those associated with vernacular and secu-
lar literary materials, are very far from being well studied even at the most
basic level.
Some materials, to be sure, are relatively well cataloged. The pioneering
research of Roger Sherman Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis produced
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1332

Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (1938), still a model work for its broad cover-
age, detailed descriptions, and extensive reproductions of images, but
markedly dated in its approach to understanding the images (which is not
surprising after more than 70 years). However, it can no longer be considered
a complete catalog of the visual responses to the various tales of Arthur and
Arthurian romance. Alison Stones (“Arthurian Art Since Loomis,” Arturus
Rex, ed. Willy Van Hoecke, et al., 1991, 21–78) offers a useful update; see
also, for images from the German-speaking regions, Rushing, “The Pic-
torial Evidence,” (in Silvia Ranawake and Harry Jackson, ed., The Arthur of the
Germans, 2000, 257–279). Another of the best catalogued subjects is the vast
material associated with Roland, brought together in the appropriately
massive work of Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, La légende de Roland
dans l’art du Moyen Âge. Likewise, the Tristan material – though only that
which does not appear in books – is well catalogued by Ott (“Katalog
der Tristan-Bildzeugnisse,” Hella Frühmorgen-Voss, Text und Illustration
im Mittelalter: Aufsätze zu den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Literatur und bildender
Kunst, ed. Norbert H. Ott, 1975, 140–171). (For illustrations from the French
prose Tristan, see Jacqueline Thibault Schaeffer, “The Discourse of the
Figural Narrative in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Tristan [ca. 1230–1475],”
Word and Image in Arthurian Literature, ed. Keith Busby, 1996, 174–202.) Space
does not permit me to mention all the materials that have been more or less
well catalogued, but the critical point is that so many have not.
Another approach is to catalogue a definable and manageable corpus of
works in a certain medium, regardless of subject. For example, German-lan-
guage manuscripts with pictures in them are slowly and massively being
cataloged in the Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mit-
telalters. The project was begun by the late Hella Frühmorgen-Voss in
1963 and taken over after her death by Norbert H. Ott; its first fascicle
appeared in 1986, and publication of the catalog, organized into 141 “Stoff-
gruppen” (“subject groups”), has now reached the letter H. Some 3500
manuscripts will eventually be included. But such projects are long-term,
to say the least. A similar example is Raymond Köchlin’s catalogue of medi-
eval ivories, though it is naturally no longer up to date (Les ivoires gothiques
français, 1924). Moreover, such medium-specific catalogues do not solve
the fundamental problem faced by anyone who sets out to study the visual
manifestations of a particular subject: the subject may appear in any of
a number of media, from book illustration to wall painting to all sorts of dec-
orative arts. Sometimes a work of art is known to specialists in a particular
medium, but not to the broader community of text and image scholars.
Studying visual materials related to Ywain in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
1333 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

for one example, led to the discovery that one misericord carving (at Enville),
though known to specialists in English wood carving, was not included in
any lists of Ywain images (see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 200 and 205–208).
The rather mysterious Tristan illuminations in the miscellany that is British
Library Add. 11619 had been mentioned in the library’s catalog (http://
www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/DESC0010.ASP), but scholars studying
Tristan images were unaware of them until Tony Hunt’s publication (“The
Tristan Illuminations in Ms. London B.L. Add. 11619,” in Rewards and Punish-
ments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry of Mediaeval France: Essays Pres-
ented to Kenneth Varty on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Peter V. Davies
and Angus J. Kennedy, 1987, 45–60).
Yet another approach is to catalogue the illuminated manuscripts of one
particular work or one particular author, as has now been done for Chrétien
de Troyes, with publication of all the images and full discussions of all the
manuscripts in Busby, et al., Les Manuscrits (cited above).
Works of medieval visual art continue to be discovered and identified.
Art historians knew, for example, that a room in the castle at Rodenegg
contained fragmentarily visible medieval wall paintings. The nature of the
visible fragments led to the room being identified as the castle chapel and the
paintings being assumed to have a religious theme. Restoration in 1972–73,
however, revealed the stunning early 13th-century Ywain cycle, and the
painting that had been thought to be a crucifixion turned out to be the death
of Ascalon, though clearly influenced by Lamentation iconography (see
Rushing, Images of Adventure, 30). The rather sensational discovery of the
Rodenegg paintings provided considerable impetus, at least among Ger-
manists and German-speaking art historians, for the broader study of
text and image. Other relatively recent discoveries include the Tristan shoes
from the Low Countries (Herbert Sarfatij, “Tristan op vrijersoeten? een
bijzonder versieringsmotief op Laat-Middeleeuws schoeisel uit de Lage
Landen,” Ad fontes: opstellen aangeboden aan prof. dr. C. van der Kieft, 1984,
371–400), and the Erec crown (see Joanna Mühlemann, “Die ‘Erec’ Rezep-
tion auf dem Krakauer Kronenkreuz,” PBB 122 [2000]: 76–101).
One problem for text and image studies is that it is not always obvious
what certain images are meant to represent. The main figures at Rodenegg
are labeled “YWAIN, LAVDINA” and so forth, and even if they were not,
the topic would be rather easily identifiable by canonical scenes such as the
encounter with the wild man, the portcullis falling on the horse, the presen-
tation of the magic ring. But it is not always so obvious what an image
was meant to mean. The couple on the “Forrer casket,” an early 13th-century
ivory work probably from Cologne, now in the British Museum, has long
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1334

been identified as Tristan and Isolde (for example, by Loomis and Loomis,
43), but Ott very reasonably places question marks after almost all the
scene identifications (“Katalog der Tristan-Bildzeugnisse,” 158–159; the
British Musuem currently identifies only the scene on the lid with Tristan
and Isolde – see http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/high-
light_objects/pe_mla/c/carved_bone_casket_with_romanc.aspx). Some of
the earliest “Roland” images may be identified as such “only with a good deal
of wishful thinking” (Rushing, “Images at the Interface,” 123), such as the
hornblowers and knights at Conques (claimed as the beginning of Roland
iconography by Lejeunne and Stiennon [70], persuasively rejected as
Roland by D. J. A. Ross, “The Iconography of Roland,” MAevum 27 [1968]:
46–65, here 46). Such examples could be multiplied, and the general trend is
probably that the earlier scholars were more aggressive in their identifica-
tions, while more recent scholars are more cautious. Uncertainty will surely
always remain in some cases.
In addition to the need for basic research and cataloguing, there is still
a great need for careful analysis of individual works and small groups of
works, which is probably where some of the best work is being done at this
stage. Analysis of pictorial narrative, for example, or of text-picture relation-
ships within medieval books, must be approached through close readings of
actual works, before further theoretical generalizations may be attempted.
Some important recent works include the following – the list has no preten-
sion to completeness. Manuela Niesner’s Das Speculum Humanae Salvationis
der Stiftsbibliothek Kremsmünster (1995) is both an edition of the German verse
translation of the Speculum and a careful, detailed study of the relationships
among the Latin text, the German text, and the extensive picture cycle
in Stiftsbibliothek Kremsmünster Codex 243, a 14th-century manuscript.
Kathryn Starkey’s Reading the Medieval Book (2004) carefully examines not
only the picture cycle but also the entire (reconstructed) manuscript and its
version of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm text, from the point of view
of studying oral performance, medieval reading, and image-text relations in
the highly unusual Munich/Nuremberg Willehalm manuscript. Julia Wal-
worth studies two related manuscripts, primarily using the Willehalm von
Orlens manuscript (cgm 63) as a “foil” (xxii) to the primary manuscript of her
study, the Tristan manuscript cgm 51 (see above). An exemplary study of a
small group of works is Sarah Randles’s dissertation, The Medieval Tristan
Legend in Medieval Narrative Embroidery (Australian National University, 2007),
surely the best work yet on the Tristan embroideries.
Moving beyond such close studies, some of the broader questions for text
and image studies in the realm that Curschmann would call “word and
1335 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

image” include the nature and possibility of visual narrative, the role of
images in the history of medieval and early modern literacy and reading
(as already discussed above), and the often intriguing question of why some
materials seem more attractive to the visual arts than others.
As far as pictorial narrative is concerned, the study of whether and how
images can narrate is at the same time a part of text and image studies and
also a broader field with its own long history and literature. The most basic
question is “can pictures tell stories without either using words or relying on
spectators to have learned certain crucial information from words in order
that they may understand the pictures?” And the answer given is often
“no” (see Lewis, “Narrative,” 87). The negative answer comes from scholars
like Duggan, who asked “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?”
(see above), and answered that it could not really have been, because, quoting
E. H. Gombrich “language can form propositions, pictures cannot.” Avril
Henry, in a study of the “paupers’ bibles,” likewise noted that “two self-
consciously naked people picking fruit” will be understood as “apple-
gathering nature worshippers” unless viewers have already learned from
written or spoken words that these are Adam and Eve (Henry, Biblia Paupe-
rum: A Facsimile and Edition, 1987). Against such statements it may be pointed
out that the statement “Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit” will be essen-
tially meaningless to people who can understand it as an English sentence,
but have not learned who Adam and Eve were and why it matters that they
ate from a certain tree, yet no one asserts that this proves that language can-
not communicate complex ideas (see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 9–10). In
practice, it seems clear that some picture cycles, such as the Rodenegg Ywain,
do succeed in telling stories without words, although a viewer who brings
language-based knowledge to the viewing may certainly understand the nar-
rative somewhat differently from one who does not. At the same time, it is
clearly the case that not all “narrative” cycles narrate with equal indepen-
dence: some narrate “actions,” in Wolfgang Kemp’s term – that is, what Ro-
land Barthes calls “sequences” – while others depict what Kemp calls
“acts,” in other words, isolated moments that might not connect to each
other very clearly if a viewer did not know the story in advance (Wolfgang
Kemp, Sermo Corporeus: Die Erzählung der mittelalterlichen Glasfenster, 1987;
Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,”
Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath; rpt. in A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan
Sontag, 1982, 251–95; see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 66–78, for analysis
of the Rodenegg cycle along these lines, also 122). Highly independent nar-
ratives like the Rodenegg Ywain may be somewhat exceptional, or may be
limited mainly to certain periods. Kemp (146) found that the greatest period
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1336

for independent pictorial narrative in French stained glass was about

1160–1220, which was also the period of the greatest expansion of vernacu-
lar poetry in France (Kemp 146; see also Rushing, Images of Adventure, 19).
On the other hand, as Marilyn Lavin pointed out in a study of wall painting
in Italian churches, even when pictures are telling a story that is well known
from texts, they do not necessarily tell it in the same way that it is told in
texts; they may well create new meanings, even for viewers who know the
story in advance and know it well (Marilyn Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural
Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600, 1990; see Rushing, Images of Adven-
ture, 18 and 14). This certainly appears to be true for the Ywain narratives
studied in Images of Adventure: some narrate more independently than others,
but all, even those embedded in texts of Yvain, create their own emphases, re-
flect their own independent understandings of the story and the character.
For text and image studies, the works of Kemp, Lavin, and others – includ-
ing Otto Pächt (The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England,
1962) – who have grappled with the ways in which visual narratives create
meaning, remain of more immediate importance than oft-quoted historical
pathbreakers like Wickhoff or Weitzmann, who attempted to establish
a typology of visual narrative, but whose analysis was highly formal
(see Rushing, Images of Adventure, 17; Lewis, “Narrative,” 88), and far too
reliant on the assumed primacy of the text (Franz Wickhoff, “Der Stil der
Genesisbilder und die Geschichte seiner Entwicklung,” Die Wiener Genesis,
ed. Wilhelm Ritter von Hartel and Franz Wickhoff, 1895, 1–96; Kurt
Weitzmann, Illustration in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin und Method of
Text Illustration, 1947, 2nd ed., 1970). The works of classical art historians like
Richard Brilliant on pictorial narrative, on the other hand, are probably
not brought into the medievalist discussion often enough (e. g., Brilliant,
Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art, 1984). The question for
text and image studies is no longer so much “can pictures narrate?” as “how
do images narrate, often in interaction with, but also often in substantive in-
dependence from their texts?”
As to the question of which materials are adopted into visual media, cer-
tain patterns do seem to exist. For example, in the early and high Middle
Ages, works like heroic epics that belong very strongly to the “oral” culture,
and likewise works that belong very strongly to the literate culture are rarely
illustrated. It appears to be at the “interface” between the oral/vernacular
and the literate/Latinate that images are created most often. We see this, for
example, with the Charlemagne / Roland material, where the pseudo-oral
Chanson de Roland is never illustrated, and the Latin Pseudo-Turpin very
rarely is, but the German Rolandslied, which seeks to make literature out of
1337 Text and Image in Medieval Literature

the French oral epic, and stresses its own bookishness in various ways, was
elaborately illustrated very early in its manuscript tradition, probably from
the very beginning. Likewise, vernacular translations / adaptations of the
Pseudo-Turpin are illustrated about ten times as often as the Latin text.
(See James A. Rushing, Jr., “Images at the Interface: Orality, Literacy, and
the Pictorialization of the Roland Material,” in Starkey and Wenzel,
115–134.) Curschmann makes a similar point with regard to a variety of
texts in the 14th and 15th centuries, when texts from the Latinate sphere are
generally illustrated only when they are translated (“Wort – Schrift – Bild,”
444). One textual tradition that needs considerable further study is that of
the Aeneid: before the 14th century, the Latin text is very rarely illustrated, but
its vernacular adaptations are illustrated early and often and elaborately.
(For preliminary findings on the Aeneid material, see Rushing, “More
Images at the Interface,” Kulturen des Manuskriptzeitalters, ed. Arthur Gross
and Hans-Jochen Schiewer, 2004, 299–320.) The questions of what gets
into pictures, and why, and how that changes over time, will remain an im-
portant subject for text and image studies.
Since text and image studies exists in the interdisciplinary space be-
tween studies of texts and studies of images, it is perhaps inevitable that
it should frequently involve itself with other interdisciplinary endeavors. In-
deed, as we have already seen, the history of one of the main lines of text and
image research emerged from the study of orality and literacy, and has been
inextricably linked to the study of the history of the book. Recently, the line
has sometimes become blurry between text and image studies and other,
broader endeavors such as the study of visual culture. For some practitioners,
such as Starkey, the term “image” no longer means just works of visual art,
but also metaphorical images, ekphrasis and other evocations of image in
texts, spatiality in literature, performance, and so forth (Reading the Medieval
Book, 13–15). For others, such as Jeffery Hamburger (e. g., in Nuns as Artists:
The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent, 1997), the emphasis is less on relation-
ships between specific books and specific texts than on the idea of a culture of
images. Here text and image studies merges with the relatively new field –
newer, in some ways, than text and image studies itself – of visual culture or
visual studies, a field that may be defined as a very broad study of “images,
objects, and performance and the processes of visually perceiving them”
(Starkey, “Visual Culture of the German Middle Ages,” 3; for a fuller intro-
duction, see Margaret Dikovitskaya, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual
after the Cultural Turn, 2005). The study of visual culture has the advantage
of recognizing that, as Hamburger establishes in great detail for the late
medieval nuns of St. Walburg in Eichstätt, “the conventional categories of
Text and Image in Medieval Literature 1338

art history and the fine arts … were not those of the [medieval makers and
users of images] themselves” (Nuns as Artists, 20). In the case of the nuns Ham-
burger studies, the images were “organized according to overarching pat-
terns of piety and paraliturgical performance, [and …] images interacted
with one another in a larger theater of devotion” (Nuns as Artists, 20). Similar
conclusions can be drawn about many medieval images.
Works that study images as part of visual culture or that define image
to include metaphors, performances, and depictions of space in literary texts
may, for all their richness, no longer belong to “text and image studies” as
that field has been defined up until now. When “text and image” merges
with “visual culture,” it may lose its identity. Saying that is not meant to
question the validity or importance of such studies, but only as an attempt to
establish the definitional boundaries of “text and image.” It is to the defini-
tional question that we must return, by way of summary.

E. Summary
If the field of “text and image” can be defined at all, perhaps we might say
that “text and image” refers to the study of actual images, concrete works
of visual art, which depict characters, stories, or ideas that originated in the
verbal arts. It focuses on works of visual art, but it is not traditional art his-
tory: it is not focused on tracing the development of styles, or in assigning
dates and places and artists to works of art. These things may be important
for a “text and image” approach, but they are not the primary goals. Like-
wise, “text and image” involves texts, but it is not traditional literary history:
it is not primarily concerned with making arguments about the meanings
of texts (although such arguments may certainly be part of the background
to a “text and image” approach). It is not a form of art history that uses texts
to explain pictures, nor a form of literary history that uses pictures to explain
texts. “Text and image” recognizes and respects both the interdependence
and the independence of text and image. Medieval artists and viewers, in cre-
ating and consuming works of art that we today might regard as “based on” a
text, did not necessarily have the same knowledge of the text in question that
a modern scholar would take for granted. They may have read or heard the
text, but in many cases, they may have not known the text at all, but known
the story or the character from secondary oral traditions, from hearsay. But
even if they did know the text directly, they did not necessarily base their cre-
ation or their understanding of their images directly on the text as a modern
philologist might. “Text and image” understands this, and seeks to under-
stand what was done with texts and pictures in the medieval contexts within
which they were produced and consumed.
1339 Theology (Christian)

Select Bibliography
Michael Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Liter-
acy and Illiteracy,” Art History 8 (1985): 26–49; Michael Curschmann, “Hören –
Lesen – Sehen: Buch und Schriftlichkeit im Selbstverständnis der volksprachlichen
literarischen Kultur Deutschlands um 1200,” PBB 106 (1984): 218–57; Michael
Curschmann, “Wort – Schrift – Bild: Zum Verhältnis von volkssprachigem Schrift-
tum und bildender Kunst vom 12. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert,” Mittelalter und frühe
Neuzeit: Übergänge, Umbrüche und Neuansätze, ed. Walther Haug (=Fortuna Vitrea 16)
(Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1999), 378–470; Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics
of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1987); Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, La légende de Roland dans l’art du Moyen
Age (Brussels: Arcade, 1966); Roger Sherman Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis,
Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York: Modern Language Association, 1938);
James A. Rushing, Jr., Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Kathryn Starkey, Reading the Medieval Book: Word,
Image, and Performance in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ‘Willehalm’ (Notre Dame, IN: Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press, 2004); Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn
Starkey and Horst Wenzel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Julia C. Wal-
worth, Parallel Narratives: Function and Form in the Munich Illustrated Manuscripts of ‘Tris-
tan’ & ‘Willehalm von Orlens’ (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique &
Medieval Studies, 2007).

James Rushing

Theology (Christian)

A. General Definition
Etymologically, “theology” is discourse about God, sometimes construed
as the “science” of God (scientia Dei). The most influential definition of Chris-
tian theology is the phrase of Anselm of Canterbury: fides quaerens intellectum,
faith seeking understanding, i.e., reflection on the meaning and truth of
Christian faith in relation to God, human existence, and the cosmos. Ancient
and medieval usage of the term “theologia” often differed from modern uses.
Greek patristic writers understood theologia to refer to the inner triune mys-
tery of God, in contrast to economia, the action of God in the history of sal-
vation; this usage influenced Byzantine Orthodox theologians throughout
the medieval period. Augustine understood theologia, as used by the pagan
author Varro, to refer to the various accounts of the gods, mythological,
physical (i.e., philosophical) and civil (De Civitate Dei 6.5). For his own pro-
grammatic work on interpreting the Christian scriptures in relation to clas-
Theology (Christian) 1340

sical culture, Augustine chose the title, De Doctrina Christiana, which has been
variously translated as On Christian Doctrine or Teaching Christianity (Saint
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr., 1958; Saint
Augustine, Teaching Christianity: De Doctrina Christiana, trans. Edmund Hill,
ed. John E. Rotelle, 1996). This book was the decisive influence shaping
early medieval approaches to theology in the West until the 12th century
(the classic work on this topic is Henri Irénée Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin
de la culture antique [1938; 2nd ed., enlarged with a Retractatio, 1949]). Aristotle
had used the term theologia as a synonym for metaphysics or first philosophy,
which proceeds through the power of reason alone (Metaphysics 1026 a
19–22). Thomas Aquinas accepted this usage as legitimate, and he distin-
guished it from the theologia that is part of sacra doctrina (sacred doctrine
or teaching), proceeding from divine revelation (Summa Theologica 1.1.1.2).
For Aquinas, the theologia of sacra doctrina is a subalternate science that takes
its principles from revelation and uses philosophy as a handmaid to develop
a coherent understanding of what is believed through faith (ST 1.1.2; 1.1.3;
1.1.5.2); even though humans cannot define God conceptually, theology
uses the effects of God, both in nature and in supernatural grace, in place of a
definition. Earlier scholarship on medieval Christian theology often focused
its attention on the technical discourses of the Latin scholastics; contempor-
ary scholarship understands theology to include not only scholastic theol-
ogy, but also the writings of medieval monks, women, and mystics, who
wrote in a variety of literary genres.

B. Monastic Theology
Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., wrote the classic portrait of the theological style
of the monastic writers, who dominated theology from the beginning of the
Middle Ages until the twelfth century (L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: Initi-
ation aux auteurs monastiques du moyen âge, 1957; trans. The Love of Learning
and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi,
1961, 2nd rev. ed., 1977). In addition to the Bible, the early church fathers and
church councils, monastic theologians drew inspiration from the literary
heritage of Latin antiquity, especially Cicero and Ovid. Writing in the literary
genres of sermon, public letter, dialogue, and scriptural commentary, the
monks sought to enrich their experience of faith by exploring the soul in re-
lation to God, sacred history, and the mystery of Jesus Christ. The distinction
between monastic and scholastic theology should not be applied too rigidly,
since the monk Anselm prepared the way for scholasticism and Peter Abelard
combined elements of both worlds; nonetheless, it remains an important
reminder of the varied contexts in which theology was done.
1341 Theology (Christian)

The two most influential monastic theologians were Anselm of Canter-

bury and Bernard of Clairvaux. Richard William Southern wrote a major
study of Anselm’s theology in light of his monastic context (Saint Anselm:
Portrait in a Landscape, 1990); and Étienne Gilson wrote a classic study of the
very influential Cistercian theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux (La Théologie mys-
tique de Saint Bernard, 1934; trans., The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans.
A. H. C. Downes, 1940; rpt., 1990). For more recent studies of Bernard’s
theology, see La dottrina della vita spirituale nelle opera di San Bernardo di Clair-
vaux, Atti del Convegno Internazionale. Rome, 11–15 settembre 1990, Analecta Cister-
ciensia 46 (1990); Gillian Rosemary Evans, The Mind of St. Bernard (1983);
and John R. Sommerfeldt, ed., Bernardus Magister: Papers Presented at the Non-
acentenary Celebration of the Birth of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1992).

C. Scholastic Theology
A new form of theological reflection developed in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries in the urban context of the cathedral schools established by
bishops and in the new universities. In contrast to the literary approach of
the monastics, scholastic theology sought a more technical understanding of
Christian faith as scientia through the application of abstract principles of
logic, often coming from Aristotle. Scholastics cultivated the art of making
careful distinctions in order to unite different projects, categories and levels
of being, e. g., distinguishing various theological tasks in order to do each in
a more adequate manner. Marie-Dominique Chenu presented the classic
study of the growth of scholastic theology in relation to the broader changes
in society and culture, especially the growth of cities, in the 12th and 13th cen-
turies (“La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle,” Archives d’histoire doc-
trinale et littéraire du moyen âge 2 [1927]: 31–71; 2nd ed., rev., 1942; 3rd ed., rev.
and expanded, 1957]; see also Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der Scholasti-
schen Methode, 2 vols. (1909); Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der katholischen
Theologie seit dem Ausgang der Väterzeit (1933); and Richard William South-
ern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (1995; rpt. 1997). In
a very influential essay, Bernard Lonergan argued that the key develop-
ment in the growth of scholasticism was the clear distinction between the
natural and the supernatural orders by Philip the Chancellor between 1218
and 1230 (Bernard Lonergan, “St. Thomas’s Thought on Gratia Operans,”
TS 2/3 [1941]: 289–324).
Theology (Christian) 1342

D. Theology by Women
There are relatively few writings by Christian women before the twelfth cen-
tury, and earlier scholarship largely neglected women’s voices in favor of
male scholastic theologians. Recent years have seen fresh translations and
studies of figures such as Hildegard of Bingen (Barbara Newman, Sister of
Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine, 1987), Hadewijch (The Complete
Works, trans. with introduction by Mother Columba Hart, 1980), Marguer-
ite Poreta (Le mirouer des simples âmes, ed. Romana Guarnieri and Paul
Verdeyn, 1986; trans. The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. with introduction by
Ellen L. Babinsky, 1993), and the Beguines (Peter Dronke, Women Writers
of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua [d. 203] to Marguerite Porete
[d. 1310], 1984; Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Litera-
ture, 1986; Andrew Kadel, Matrology: A Bibliography of Writings by Christian
Women from the First to the Fifteenth Centuries, 1995; Gertrud Jaron Lewis,
Bibliographie zur deutschen Frauenmystik des Mittelalters: Mit einem Anhang zu
Beatrijs van Nazareth und Hadewijch von Frank Willaert und Marie José Govers,
1989).

E. Mystical Theology
Early in the 20th century, Joseph Maréchal published an important study
of mystics (Études sur la psychologie des mystiques, 2 vols., 1924–1937; partial
trans.: Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, trans. Algar Thorold, 1964),
in which he argued that mystics have a direct, unmediated experience of
the Absolute. Bernard McGinn is presenting a major, multi-volume history
of Christian mysticism, with four volumes published to date covering the pa-
tristic and medieval period (The Presence of God: A History of Christian Mysticism,
vol. 1, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, vol. 2, The Growth
of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, vol. 3, The Flowering
of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. 4, The Harvest
of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300–1500), 1991, 1994, 1998, 2005). The
meaning of “mysticism” has been much debated; for McGinn, “the mystical
element in Christianity is that part of its belief and practices that concerns
the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be de-
scribed as the immediate or direct presence of God” (Foundations, xvii). Peter
Dinzelbacher has also studied medieval mysticism, as well as medieval
claims of special revelations received through visions, dreams, appearances,
and auditions (Christliche Mystik im Abendland: Ihre Geschichte von den Anfängen
bis zum Ende des Mittelalters, 1994; id., Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter,
1981; id., ‘Revelationes’. Typologie des sources du Moyen Age Occidental 57, ed.
L. Genicot, 1991).
1343 Theology (Christian)

F. Byzantine Orthodox Theology

For Byzantine Orthodox theology in the Middle Ages and beyond, theologia
was inseparable from theoria (contemplation), finding its origin in the vision-
ary experiences of the saints and its climax in theiosis, the experience of be-
coming one with God (Vladimir Lossky, Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Ég-
lise de l’Orient, 1944; trans.: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 1957;
rpt., 1976). Orthodox theology developed in a style very different from
the Latin scholastics. John Meyendorff wrote the classic study of Byzan-
tine theology (Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 1st ed.
1974; 2nd ed. 1979; 3rd rpt. 1983; see also John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern
Christian Thought, 1975, 2nd printing 1987). Earlier Protestant and Catholic
scholars in Western Europe and North America traditionally neglected or
ignored medieval developments in Orthodox theology, frequently deprecat-
ing Eastern Christians for not developing creatively beyond the patristic
period. Deliberately challenging this assumption, Jaroslav Pelikan dedi-
cated one volume of his magisterial history of Christian doctrine to Eastern
Christian theology (The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doc-
trine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700), 1974; Phoenix edition,
1977). Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote an important study of Maximus
the Confessor (Kosmische Liturgie: das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners, 1941; 2nd
ed. 1961). For a survey and bibliography, see Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und
theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (1959).

G. Christian Theology in Asia

Scholarship of the medieval period has largely ignored the developments in
the Church of the East (inaccurately called the “Nestorian” Church – Nes-
torius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was not even a member of the
Church of the East), which developed in the Sassanid Empire, spread across
Central Asia along the Silk Road and entered China at the latest in 635 C.E.
Central and East Asian Christians wrote a number of works presenting Jesus
in images and terms derived from Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. The
monk, and possibly bishop, Alopen, brought these documents to Tang Dyn-
asty China in 635 C.E., where he received a warm welcome from the Chinese
Emperor. Japanese scholar P. Yoshiro Saeki translated these documents into
English (The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 1937; 2nd ed., rev., 1951;
see also Arthur Christopher Moule, Christians in China Before the Year 1550,
1930; rpt. 1977). More recently, a UNESCO team led by Martin Palmer has
published a new translation of these texts as the “Jesus Sutras,” with exten-
sive commentary on the background (Martin Palmer, with Eva Wong,
Tjalling Halbertsma, Zhao Xiao Min, Li Rong Rong, and James Palmer,
Theology (Christian) 1344

The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity, 2001); Samuel
Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 1, Beginnings to 1500,
1992; rev. and corrected ed. 1998; Li Tang, A Study of the History of Nestorian
Christianity in China and Its Literature in Chinese: Together with a New English
Translation of the Dunhuang Nestorian Documents, 2002; 2nd ed., rev. 2004).

H. Dissent and Heretical Theology

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to understand sym-
pathetically Christian movements that were judged heretical in their time.
See Robert Ian Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (1977); Jeffrey Burton
Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages (1965; rpt. with a new
preface, 1982); Richard Kieckhefer, Repression of Heresy in Medieval Germany
(1979); James Fearns, ed., Ketzer und Ketzerbekämpfung im Hochmittelalter
(1968); Gordon Leff, Heresy, Philosophy, and Religion in the Medieval West
(2002); and Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller, ed., Texts and the Repression
of Medieval Heresy (2003). For bibliography, see Carl T. Berkhout and Jeffrey
B. Russell, Medieval Heresies: A Bibliography 1960–1979 (1981); and Herbert
Grundmann, Bibliographie zur Ketzergeschichte des Mittelalters, 1900–1966
(1967).

I. History of Research
For most of the last two centuries, the study of Christian theology in the
medieval period has been closely related to contemporary theological de-
bates, often linked to partisan, doctrinal feuds between Roman Catholics
who idealized the period, finding the 13th to be “the greatest of centuries”
(James Joseph Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries, 1907; rpt. 1952),
and Protestants, who sharply criticized Catholic and Orthodox theology
and looked for proto-Protestant figures who prepared the way for Martin
Luther and John Calvin (e. g., Ferdinand Christian Baur, Martin Werner,
and Adolph Harnack, discussed below; more recently, Heiko Augustinus
Obermann, ed., Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval
Thought, Illustrated by Key Documents, 1966). Roman Catholic and Byzantine
Orthodox scholars usually studied the period with an eye to developing their
contemporary theological positions; Protestants often studied the period
looking for fatal errors in the development of the Catholic and Orthodox
Churches or for anticipations of the Reformation.
1345 Theology (Christian)

a. Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Protestant Scholarship

19th- and early 20th-century Protestant scholarship on medieval theology was
often shaped by broad, overarching theories of the development of Christian
doctrine, which were polemically oriented against the Catholic Church and
the Byzantine Orthodox family of churches. Ferdinand Christian Baur, one
of the first scholars to apply the historical critical method to the development
of Christian theology, rejected both traditional Christian supernaturalism
and Enlightenment rationalism. He took inspiration from Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy and interpreted the development of Chris-
tian theology as the exposition of the idea of God, the completion of the
self-evolution of the divine Spirit. Baur was immensely influential on later
Protestant scholars both positively for introducing historical critical scholar-
ship and interpreting Christianity as an historical phenomenon, but also
negatively as an example of a speculative hermeneutic to be rejected. He
strongly influenced later Protestant historians by claiming that the central
problem of early church development is the rise of the Catholic Church
(Die christliche Kirche des Mittelalters in den Hauptmomenten ihrer Entwicklung,
ed. F. F. Baur, 1861; 2nd ed.: Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, vol. 3, 1869; rpt.
1969; Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtsschreibung, 1852; rpt. 1962; trans.
Ferdinand Christian Baur on The Writing of Church History, ed. and trans. Peter C.
Hodgson, 1968). Martin Werner interpreted the history of Christian
theology in light of the theory of “Thoroughgoing Eschatology” of Albert
Schweitzer, for whom Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who expected a
radical transformation of the world in the near future; when Jesus failed to
return on the clouds of heaven, the church “de-eschatologized” the earliest
Christian teachings, rejected the teaching of Paul, and developed a new
theology in light of Hellenistic religious philosophy. For Werner, this
transformation shaped the entire medieval period in a negative manner
(Martin Werner, Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas; trans., The Formation of
Christian Dogma, 1957). The extremely influential Adolph Harnack wrote a
landmark study of the History of Dogma, proposing the famous thesis that
Catholic dogma and theology represent a gradual Hellenization of the gospel
of Jesus and are a fundamental betrayal of the Gospel of Jesus; for Harnack,
the medieval period is an extension of the fateful decisions of the early
church, which must be rejected by modern Protestants. He argued that medi-
eval Catholic theology was at root mystical, leading to pantheism and divin-
ization of the self (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 5 vols., 1885–1890; trans.:
History of Dogma, trans. from 3rd German ed., Neil Buchanan, 7 vols., 1899,
1900; rpt. in 4 vols., 1961; for his critique of medieval Catholic theology,
see esp. vol. 6: 100–106; see also the influential Protestant scholar Reinhold
Theology (Christian) 1346

Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1st ed., 2 vols., 1895, 1898; 2nd ed.,
1920; 3rd ed. 5 vols. published 4, 1930–33; trans. Textbook of the History of
Doctrines, trans. Charles E. Hay, 1956).

b. Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Catholic Scholarship

From the beginning of the 19th century until well into the 20th century, Cath-
olic scholarship on the topic largely continued the abstract, neo-scholastic
approaches that had been developed in the Baroque period in polemical
response to the Reformation. Sharply challenging this approach in a land-
mark work in 1812, Johann Sebastian Drey called for a revision of Catholic
theology through a return to the mystical theology of the Middle Ages;
he was inspired in part by the Romantic appreciation of the medieval period
and was also aware of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s call to accept historical
criticism into Protestant theology. In opposition to the reigning neo-scholas-
ticism, Drey insisted upon the necessity of interpreting medieval theology
in terms of its own time and culture (“Revision des gegenwärtigen Zustan-
des der Theologie,” Archive für die Pastoralkonferenzen in den Landkapiteln des
Bistums Konstanz 1 [1812]: 3–26; rpt., Geist des Christentums und des Katholi-
zismus: ausgewählte Schriften katholischer Theologie im Zeitalter des deutschen Idea-
lismus und der Romantik, ed. Joseph Rupert Geiselmann, 1940, 85–97; id.,
Kurze Einleitung in das Studium der Theologie mit Rücksicht auf den wissenschaft-
lichen Standpunkt und das katholische System, ed. F. Schupp, 1819; rpt. 1971;
trans.: Brief Introduction to the Study of Theology: With Reference to the Scientific
Standpoint and the Catholic System, trans. Michael J. Himes, 1994). His call,
however, was not widely heeded in Catholic circles until the beginning of the
20th century.
Pope Leo XIII gave a major impetus to Catholic study of medieval theol-
ogy in his 1879 encyclical, Aeterni Patris (“Encyclical Letter on the Restoration
of Christian Philosophy according to the Mind of St. Thomas Aquinas,
the Angelic Doctor,” trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Pref-
ace to St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1947, vii-xvi; see James Hen-
nessey, “Leo XIII’s Thomistic Revival: A Political and Philosophical Event,”
Journal of Religion 58, supplement [1978]: 185–197). Faced with the challenges
of modern atheism, rationalism, and materialism on the one hand and
the option of fideism on the other, Pope Leo urged Catholics to follow the
wisdom of Thomas Aquinas, who carefully distinguished and related the
boundaries and roles of faith and reason so that they could work together in
harmony. This led to a substantial concentration on Thomas in Catholic
circles, which in turn spurred Franciscan scholars to study their own patron,
Bonaventure, in greater detail.
1347 Theology (Christian)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the dominant Catholic under-

standing of medieval theology was still an abstract neo-scholastic model that
was detached from the concrete movement of history; Reginald Garrigou-
Lagrange, who would mentor the doctoral dissertation of the future Pope
John Paul II, was a major representative of this approach (La synthèse thom-
iste, 1946). In contrast, French Dominican scholars, Ambroise Gardeil and
Pierre Mandonnet, pioneered in introducing historical critical methodol-
ogy into Catholic scholarship (André Duval, “Aux origines de l’Institut His-
torique d’Études Thomistes du Saulchoir (1920 et ss.),” Revue des sciences philo-
sophiques et théologiques 75 [1991]: 423–448; Saint Thomas au XXe siècle: colloque
du centenaire de la ‘revue thomiste’ (1893–1992), 1994). Their work was continued
and developed further by Marie-Dominique Chenu, who was influenced by
the French Annales School and who would become a leader in applying his-
torical critical methodology to Catholic theology. He insisted on examining
medieval theologians and their use of langue in light of their social contexts
(Marie-Dominique Chenu, Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 1950;
2nd ed., 1954; trans.: Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. of the original ed.
with Authorized Corrections and Bibliographical Additions, A.-M. Landry,
O. P. and D. Hughes, O. P., 1964; id., St. Thomas d’Aquin et la théologie, 1959;
trans.: Aquinas and His Role in Theology, trans. Paul Philibert, O.P., 2002).
Chenu also pioneered in the study of the twelfth century, exploring its sym-
bolic mentality and its sense of history (La théologie an douzième siècle, 1957;
partial trans: Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theo-
logical Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K.
Little, 1968). Even though he was censured by Vatican authorities in 1942,
in time Catholic historical scholarship would more and more follow his lead
and would demonstrate the diversity and variety of medieval Christian
theology. These developments contributed to the demise of the abstract neo-
scholastic synthesis.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the major
counterpoint to the model of Aquinas in Catholic medieval studies was the
Augustinian tradition represented by Bonaventure (for an overview of his
works and their context, see Jacques Guy Bougerol, Introduction à l’étude de
Saint Bonaventure, 1961; trans.: Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure, trans.
José de Vinck, 1963; San Bonaventura 1274–1974, 5 vols., 1974; Francisco de
Asis Chavero Blanco, ed., Bonaventuriana: Miscellanea in onore di Jacques Guy
Bougerol, ofm, 2 vols., 1988). Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict
XVI) published an important study of Bonaventure’s perspectives on history
(Die Geschichtstheologie des heiligen Bonaventura, 1959; trans.: The Theology of
History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes, 1971, 1989; on Bonaven-
Theology (Christian) 1348

ture’s Christology, see Zachary Hayes, The Hidden Center: Spirituality and
Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure, 1981, and Werner Hülsbusch, El-
emente einer Kreuzestheologie in den Spätschriften Bonaventuras, 1968).
A number of French scholars, known as the movement “La nouvelle
théologie,” turned to patristic and pre-Thomistic medieval theologians
for fresh resources for addressing contemporary concerns. One of the most
important was Henri de Lubac, who was eventually named a Cardinal in the
Catholic Church. He authored a monumental study of medieval interpre-
tations of the Bible (Exégèse médiévale, 4 vols., 1959–63). On medieval biblical
interpretation, see also Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages
(1952; rpt. 1983).

J. Current Research
Since the Second Vatican council (1962–1965), the ecumenical climate be-
tween Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians improved consider-
ably; the partisan reading of medieval theology declined and was progres-
sively more discredited; and sympathetic studies across ecumenical lines
increasingly appeared. Jaroslav Pelikan set a new standard for histories of
Christian doctrine through his ecumenical tone, by acknowledging the con-
tinuing importance of Eastern Christian theology throughout the Middle
Ages and beyond, and also by proposing that the major shift in the periods of
Christian doctrine should be placed at 1300 rather than 1500 (The Christian
Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Cath-
olic Tradition (100–600), vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700); vol. 3,
The Growth of Medieval Theology (600–1300); vol. 4, Reformation of Church and
Dogma (1300–1700); vol. 5, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (Since 1700),
1971, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1989; Pelikan was a Lutheran at the time he wrote
the history of doctrine; he later converted to Orthodox Christianity). Protes-
tant historian Justo L. Gonzalez published a multi-volume history of
Christian thought that is also much more sympathetic to Catholic and By-
zantine Orthodox developments than most earlier Protestant discussions
had been (A History of Christian Thought, 3 vols., 1970–1975; rev. 2nd ed., 1987;
id., Christian Thought Revisited: Three Types of Theology, 1989; rev. 2nd ed., 1999).
In the Catholic world after Vatican II, Thomas Aquinas ceased being the
dominant model of medieval theology and become one respected mentor
alongside of others. In a very influential book, David Burrell interpreted
Aquinas through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s analysis of the use of
language, stressing the apophatic dimension of Thomas’s approach (Aquinas:
God and Action [1979]). Here Aquinas appears not as the constructor of a meta-
physical doctrine of God based on an intuition of being but rather as the good
1349 Theology (Christian)

language-user who offers a philosophical grammar of divinity, seeking to ar-

ticulate “what God is not,” while remaining faithful to biblical revelation.
Burrell has also studied Aquinas in the context of medieval interreligious
exchanges, as a dialogue partner with Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moses) and
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aqui-
nas, 1986).
Accompanying the development of more positive interreligious rela-
tionships among the Abrahamic traditions, there have been conversations
comparing Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theological perspectives during
the Middle Ages (David B. Burrell and Bernard McGinn, ed., God and Cre-
ation: An Ecumenical Symposium, 1990; Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, ed.,
Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, 1989).
With Thomas Aquinas no longer dominating the field of medieval theol-
ogy, recent years have seen a fresh appreciation for the neo-Platonic tradi-
tion, from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Andrew Louth, Dionysius the
Areopagite, 1989) to John Scotus Eriugena (Werner Beierwaltes, Eriugena:
Grundzüge seines Denkens, 1994; Paul Rorem, Eriugena’s Commentary on
the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy, 2005, Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John
Scottus Eriugena; A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages, 1989, Willemien Otten,
The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, 1991); to Meister Eckhart (Frank
Tobin, Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language, 1986; Bernard McGinn, The
Mystical Theology of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing, 2001);
and Nicholas of Cusa (Johannes Wolter, Apparitio Dei: Der theophanische Cha-
rakter der Schöpfung nach Nikolaus von Cues, 2004; Inigo Bocken, ed., Conflict
and Reconciliation: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa, 2004). Alan B. Wolter did
important work on the achievement of John Duns Scotus (The Philosophical
Achievement of John Duns Scotus, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams, 1990).
There has also been new interest in the theology of the later Middle Ages,
freed from the neo-scholastic negative stereotype of a “fall” from the achieve-
ment of Aquinas and inspired by fresh awareness of the many continuities
between late medieval, Reformation, and early modern theology (Heiko
Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late
Medieval Nominalism, 1963; rpt. 1983; id., The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays
in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought, 1985; Steven E. Ozmont, ed.,
Reformation in Medieval Perspective, 1971; Steven E. Ozmont, The Age of Reform
(1250–1550): An Intellectual and Religious History Late Medieval and Reformation Eu-
rope, 1980). In a very influential work, Louis Dupré argued that the decisive
shift in the development of modernity came not in the Enlightenment but
with the intellectual revolution of the late medieval period (Passage to Modern-
ity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture, 1993).
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1350

Select Bibliography
Primary sources
Jacques-Paul Migne published a vast array of patristic and medieval theological texts,
though not in critical editions (Patrologia cursus completus. Series Latina, 221 vols., ed.
J. P. Migne [Paris: Jacques-Paul Migne, 1844–1855; many subsequent rpts., including
Paris: Garnier Frères, 1958–]; Series Graeca, 161 vols., ed. Jacques-Paul Migne
[1857–1866]). For a critical evaluation of the authenticity of these texts, see Palémon
Glorieux, Pour revaloriser Migne [Cahier supplémentaire of Mélanges de science réligieuse,
1952]. Sources chrétiennes, originally edited by Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou,
presents a series of nearly 500 critical editions of patristic and medieval texts, with
French translations and notes; it remains a standard reference point (1941–). Since
1953, Corpus Christianorum has been publishing excellent critical editions of Christian
texts from late antiquity with notes and supplements; in 1966 it launched Continuatio
Mediaevalis to extend its range to include the medieval period.

Secondary sources
For a bibliographical survey of earlier developments, see Bulletin de théologie ancienne et
médiévale 1 (Louvain: Abbaye de César, 1929–1932); Rassegna di Letteratura tomistica
[Naples: Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, 1969–]. For an overview of various approaches
to historical theology, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Historical Theology: Continuity and Change in
Christian Doctrine New York: Corpus/Philadelphia: Westminster/ London: Hutchinson,
1971). For extensive bibliographies on the development of medieval Christian
doctrine and mystical theology, see Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vols. 1–4 (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971, 1974, 1978, 1984, 1989); and
McGinn, The Presence of God, vols. 1–4 (New York: Crossroad, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2005).

Leo D. Lefebure

Time Measurement and Chronology

in Medieval Studies

A. General Definition
In a field itself defined by periodization, research on time and chronology
in the middle ages concerns nearly all aspects of medieval history. Modern
scholarship on time and chronology has extended into religious, cultural,
and economic contexts, reflecting the breadth of interest and approaches
taken to the subject in recent years. The wide-ranging body of scholarship
itself reflects the diversity of medieval sources related to time and chrono-
logy. Writers in both periods have produced a particularly concentrated body
of work on the computi, or calculation tables used for determining the date of
the moveable feast of Easter. Modern studies on the medieval computus reveal
1351 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

a dating system central not only to the liturgical calendar, but to mathemat-
ics, astronomy, and the medieval sense of temporality (Arno Borst, Compu-
tus: Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas, 1990).
In general terms, medieval time reflected a shift from cyclical concep-
tions of time in the classical period to an idea of linear, Christian time, which
featured distinct creation and end points (Bernard Guenée, “Temps de
l’histoire et temps de la mémoire au Moyen Âge,” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société
de l’histoire de France 1976–1977 [1978]: 25–35; Charles Pietri, Gilbert
Dagron, and Jacques Le Goff, ed., Le temps chrétien de la fin de l’Antiquité
au Moyen Âge, 1984; Robert Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions
of Time in the Classical World, 2005). Within the lived experience of medieval
culture, though, a plurality of “times” existed. Sources reveal not only con-
temporary consciousness of a linear, Christian cosmology, but also a diver-
sity of temporal cycles, such as the liturgical calendar and the agricultural
seasons (Emmanuèle Baumgartner, “Temps linéaire, temps circulaire et
écriture Romanesque, XXIIe–XIIIe siècles,” Le temps et la durée dans la littérature
au Moyen Âge [1976]: 7–21; Anne Higgins, “Medieval Notions of the Struc-
ture of Time,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 19 [1989]: 227–50;
Stephen Russell, “Sub specie aeternitas: Time, Sequence, and Cycle in Medi-
eval Popular Literature,” MedPers 3 [1991]: 200–10). In addition to ecclesias-
tical and agricultural time, Jacques Le Goff, Jean Leclerq and others have
identified monastic time, political time, feudal time, historical time, legal
time, time of the body, rhythmic time of life and natural cycles, urban and
merchant’s time, and times of labor and rest. These categories themselves
share fluid boundaries, such as the seasonal cycles of sowing and harvesting,
and penitence and celebration (Le Goff, “Le temps du travail dans la ‘crise’
du XIVème siècle,” Le Moyen Age LXIX [1963]: 597–613; Le Goff, Pour un autre
Moyen Age: temps, travail et culture en Occident, 18 essais, 1978; “Au Moyen Age:
Temps de l’église et temps du marchand,” Annales ESC [1960]: 417–33; Horst
Wenzel, “Zur Mehrdimensionalität der Zeit im hohen und im späten Mit-
telalter: Von Bauern und Geistlichen, Rittern und Händlern,” Zeitschrift für
Germanistik 6 [1996]: 9–20; Le Goff, “Temps,” Dictionnaire Raisonné de l’Occi-
dent Médieval [1999], 1113–22).
These categories of temporality presuppose research on the medieval
notion of time itself, and the ways in which individuals and communities
experienced time (Wesley M. Stevens, “A Present Sense of Things Past:
“Quid est enim tempus?” Time and Eternity: the Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard
Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, 2000, 9–28). Underlying his argu-
ment for a shift in the perception of time from the high to the late Middle
Ages, Jean Leclerq characterized time in the former period as imprecise,
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1352

sacred, clerical, natural, rural, and subjective, and in the latter as precise, pro-
fane, popular, mechanical, urban, and objective (Jean Leclerq, “Experience
of Time and its Interpretation in the Early Middle Ages,” Studies in Medieval
Culture V [1972]: 9–20; Leclerq, “The Experience of Time and Its Interpre-
tation in the Late Middle Ages,” Studies in Medieval Culture 8–9 [1976]:
137–50). The characterization of medieval time as imprecise remains a point
subject to debate within recent historiography. While certain aspects of
medieval conceptions of time were distinct from our own, we cannot dismiss
them as entirely inconsistent with modern temporality. Several constructs of
time found in German literary sources, for example, challenge the argument
that the medieval sense of time would be foreign and unrecognizable to indi-
viduals in the modern world (Albrecht Classen, “The Experience of and At-
titude Towards Time in Medieval German Literature from the Early Middle
Ages to the Fifteenth Centuries,” Neohelicon XXXVI [1999]: 135–54). Because
our own sense of time informs our perception of history, historians must
diligently avoid reading modern temporality into their sources. As Ad Putter
has advised, “Since time also passes in the fictional worlds of medieval litera-
ture, literary critics risk making comparable mistakes when they impose
their own sense of time on that implied by the medieval text” (Ad Putter,
“In Search of Lost Time: Missing Days in Sir Cleges and Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight,” Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and William.
M. Ormrod, 2001, 119–36).
Although several scholars have addressed medieval time measurement
and chronology in broad contexts, research has more frequently focused on
narrower subtopics, including methods of calculating dates, representations
of time in literary sources, and scholastic discussions of time and eternity.
Further specialization has followed, according to interest in religious,
monastic, agricultural, legal, economic, political, or regnal “time.” Follow-
ing historiographical trends in other fields, scholars have increasingly ap-
proached time and chronology as human, cultural, and social constructs, and
let the sources themselves define their concepts of time without anachronis-
tically imposing modern categorizations (Aron J. Gurevich, Categories of
Medieval Culture, orig. 1972, trans. G. L. Campbell, 1985). As historians have
more closely examined time within social and cultural contexts, their work
has understandably overlapped with research on medieval technology, ur-
banization, and memory.

B. Background and Status of the Field

The study of time measurement and chronology is not, of course, peculiar to
medievalists nor to the disciplines of history, literature, language, or history
1353 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

of science. A survey of research on medieval time measurement must take

into account several works by philosophers, cultural anthropologists, and
others on time in the context of being, temporality, and subjective human
consciousness (Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 1927; Richard Swin-
burne, Space and Time, 1968; W. H. Newton-Smith, The Structure of Time,
1980; Julius T. Fraser, The Voices of Time: A Cooperative Survey of Man’s Views of
Time as Expressed by the Sciences and by the Humanities, 1st ed. 1966, 2nd ed., 1981;
Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit, 1983–1985; Norbert Elias, Über die Zeit, 1984;
Christopher Gosden, Social Being and Time, 1994; David Cockburn, Other
Times: Philosophical Perspectives on Past, Present, and Future, 1997).
Several general works on the history of time and horology cover medieval
timekeeping technology and systems of dating (Eric Bruton, Clocks and
Watches 1400–1900, 1967; Carlo Cipolla, Clocks and Culture, 1300–1700, 1967;
Rudolf Wendorff, Zeit und Kultur: Geschichte des Zeitbewußtseins in Europa,
1980; David Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern
World, 1983; Philippe Ariès, Le temps de l’histoire, 1st ed., 1954, 2nd ed., 1986;
Gerhard Dohrn-Van Rossum, L’histoire de l’heure: L’horlogerie et l’organisation
moderne du temps, 1992; Francesco Maiello, Storia del calendario: la misurazione
del tempo, 1450–1800, 1994; Trude Ehlert, ed., Zeitkonzeptionen, Zeiterfahrung,
Zeitmessung: Stationen ihres Wandels von Mittelalter zur Moderne, 1997; Bonnie
Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Stevens, The Oxford Companion to
the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning, 1999; Peter
Burke, “Reflections on the Cultural History of Time,” Viator 35 [2004]:
617–26).
As the second millennium approached, the field benefited from several con-
ferences and lecture series on medieval time. The breadth of material covered
by each reflects the increasing diversity of approaches taken by historians
from a variety of backgrounds (Carol Poster and Richard Utz, ed., Disputa-
tio Vol. II: Constructions of Time in the Late Middle Ages, 1997; Ricardo Capasso
and Paulo Piccari, ed., Il tempo nel Medioevo: Rappresentazioni storiche e conce-
zioni filosofiche. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Roma, 26–28 novembre 1998,
2000; Tempus aevum aeternitas. La concettualizzazione del tempo nel pensiero tardo-
medievale. Atti del Colloquio Internazionale, Trieste 4–6 Marzo 1999, 2000; Time in
the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and William M. Ormrod, 2001;
Pasquale Porro, ed., The Medieval Concept of Time: The Scholastic Debate and
Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, 2001; Robert N. Swanson, ed., The Use
and Abuse of Time in Christian History: Papers Read at the 1999 Summer Meeting and
the 2000 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, 2002; Gerhard Jaritz
and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, ed., Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse,
2003).
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1354

C. Surveys and Reference Works

Several works offer introductions or overviews of medieval time measure-
ment and chronology, including a number of early but fundamental surveys
(Reginald L. Poole, Medieval Reckonings of Time, 1918; Poole, Studies in Chro-
nology and History, ed. Austin L. Poole, 1934; Bruno Krusch, Studien zur
christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie, 1938; Henri Platelle, “La mesure du
temps au Moyen Âge: techniques et mentalités,” Bulletin de la Commission
historique du département du Nord 39 [1975]: 5–25; Anne Higgins, “Medieval
Notions of the Structure of Time,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies 19 [1989]: 227–50; Bernard Ribemont, ed., Le temps: Sa mesure et sa per-
ception au Moyen Âge, 1991; R. Dean Ware, “Medieval Chronology: Theory
and Practice,” Medieval Studies: An Introduction, 1st ed. 1976, 2nd ed. 1992, ed.
James M. Powell, 252–77; John Hines, Karen Høilund Nielsen, and
Frank Siegmund, ed., The Pace of Change: Studies in Early – Medieval Chronology,
1998; Robert Favreau, “La datation dans les inscriptions médiévales fran-
çaises,” Construire le temps. Normes et Usages chronologiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque
contemporaine, ed. Marie-Clotilde Hubert, 2000, 11–39; Anna-Dorothee
Von Den Brincken, Historische Chronologie des Abendlandes: Kalenderreform,
und Jahrtausendrechnungen, 2000; Katherine Barker, “Anni Domini compu-
tati or Counting the Years of the Lord 998–1998: The Sherborne Benedictine
Millennium,” St. Wulfsige and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Millennium of the
Benedictine Abbey, 998–1998, ed. Katherine Barker, David Hinton, and Alan
Hunt [2005], 40–52).
Entries in reference works range from concise overviews (“Chronologie”
[1189–92], “Zeit” [1334–34], “Zeitberechnung im Kirche” [1334–35], and
“Zeitrechnung” [1338–39], Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Josef Hofer
and Karl Rahner, 1965; “Chronologie” [II, 2035–48], “Zeit” [IX, 500–514],
and “Zeitmessung, Zeitmeßgeräte,” LexMA, vol. IX, 1993, 515–17; “Temps,”
Dictionnaire Raisonné de l’Occident Médiévale, ed. Jacques Le Goff et al., 1999,
1113–21) to brief definitions of terms related to medieval time and chrono-
logy, including entries on the computus, indiction, calendars, etc. (“Chron-
icle” [192], “Chronology, Christian” [193], “Clock” [201]; “Computus” [209],
and “Indiction” [382], Joseph H. Dahmus, ed., Dictionary of Medieval
Civilization, 1984; “Calendars” [67], “Easter, Date of,” “Chronicles” [87–88],
“Clocks” [94], Henry R. Loyn, ed., The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopedia,
1989; “comput” [57], “epacte” [75], Vocabulaire historique du Moyen Âge, ed.
François-Olivier Touati, 1995; “Computus,” Medieval Wordbook, ed. Mad-
eleine Pelner Cosman, 1996; “Calendar” [223], “Calends” [223–24], “Compu-
tus, Ecclesiastical” (347), “Indiction,” “Time” (1441), “Time, Measurement
of” [1442], Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, ed. André Vauchez, 2000; “Calend-
1355 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

rier” [207–8], “Comput” [320], “Datation” [389–390], “Horlage” [691], and

“Temps” [1370–71], Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard et al.,
2002).

D. Calendars and Date-Reckoning

Translation and paleography notwithstanding, foremost among the chal-
lenges presented by medieval texts are the plurality of complex dating sys-
tems and calendars. The Julian calendar remained in use until 1582, but co-
existed with the Christian liturgical calendar, as well as with systems of
political and notarial date-reckoning and varying local customs throughout
Europe. Fortunately, an extensive body of secondary literature exists to aid
in navigating medieval calendars and dating controversies. These works
focus on technical chronology, defined as being “not concerned with dates,
per se, but rather with theoretical constructs by which dating is effected,”
(R. Dean Ware “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice,” Medieval
Studies, ed. James Powell [1992]: 252–77).

Computus: The most immediate concern for the Christian calendar was the
dating of Easter, a moveable lunar feast set by the Council of Nicea to fall on
the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox (Faith Wallis,
“Images of Order in the Medieval computus,” Ideas of Order in the Middle Ages,
ed. Warren Ginsberg, Acta 15 [1990 for 1988]: 45–68; Werner Bergmann,
“Easter and the Calendar: the Mathematics of Determining a Formula for the
Easter Festival to Medieval Computing,” Journal of General Philosophy of Science:
Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 22 [1991]: 15–41; Benoît-Michel
Tock, “Calendrier,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, 2002,
207–08). Works on the computus paschalis, or calculation table for determin-
ing the date of Easter and the rest of the church’s calendar, often begin with
Dionysius Exiguus, his Easter tables, and the introduction of the Anno Domini
system (Emmanuel Poulle, “Deux mille ans, environ,” Académie des inscrip-
tions et belles-lettres: Comptes-rendus des séances, 1999, 1225–38; Georges
Declercq, Anno Domini: The Origins of the Christian Era, 2000; Daniel P.
McCarthy, “The Emergence of Anno Domini,” Time and Eternity: the Medieval
Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, 2000, 31–53).
Bede’s texts on time and dating, the Liber de temporibus and De temporum ra-
tione, adopted and built on Dionyius’ work (Charles W. Jones, ed., Bedae
Opera de Temporibus, 1943; Bede, The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis,
1999; Masako Ohashi, “Sexta aetas continet annos praeteritos DCCVIIII:
Bede, De temporibus, 22: a Scribal Error?,” Time and Eternity: the Medieval Dis-
course; ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, 2000, 55–61).
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1356

Arno Borst has written prolifically on the history of the computus, par-
ticularly in the Carolingian era where, among other developments, he cites
the integration of late antique philosophical and scientific texts into compu-
tus studies (Arno Borst, Computus: Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas, 1990;
Borst, Die karolingische Kalenderreform, 1998; id., Der Streit um den karoling-
ischen Kalender, 2004).
A significant number of medieval texts on computi and treatises on
calendars have survived, allowing research on several individual figures’
contributions, primarily from the early middle ages through the 11th cen-
tury, including the works of Cassiodorus, Rabanus Maurus, Eric of Auxerre,
Abbo of Fleury, Gerbert of Aurillac, Robert Grosseteste, and Alexander de
Villa Dei (The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn, ed. Sigmund Eisner and Gary
Maceoin, 1980; Borst, Computus: Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas,
1990; Laurel Braswell-Means, “‘Ffor as moche as yche man may not haue
6e astrolabe’: Popular Middle English Variations on the Computus,” Speculum
67 [1992]: 595–623; The Kalendarium of John Somer, ed. Linne R. Mooney,
1998; Peter Verbist, “Abbo of Fleury and the Computational Accuracy
of the Christian Era,” Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Ja-
ritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, 2003, 63–80). Debate exists over computi
attributed to Robert Grossete (Richard Dales, “The Computistical Works
Ascribed to Robert Grosseteste,” Isis 80 [1989]: 74–79; Jennifer Moreton,
“Robert Grosseteste and the Calendar,” Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on
His Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy, 1995, 77–88). Chaucer also
wrote a treatise on astrolabes, arguably one amenable to popular audiences
(George Ovitt, Jr., “History, Technical Style, and Chaucer’s Treatise on the
Astrolabe,” Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the
Twentieth-Century, ed. Mark Amsler, 1987, 34–58).

E. Calendars and Date-Reckoning

Although much of the scholarship concerning medieval calendars specifi-
cally addresses the liturgical calendar (see “Ecclesiastical and Liturgical Time
Measurement” below), a number of key works approach calendars broadly
(Calendriers: leurs enjeux dans l’espace et dans le temps, colloque de Cerisy, du 1er au 8
juillet 2000, ed. Jacques Le Goff, Jean Lefort, and Perrine Mane, 2002;
Diana Greenway, “Dates in History: Chronology and Memory,” Historical
Research 72 [1999]: 127–39; Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, “Year-Dates in
the Early Middle Ages,” Time in the Medieval World,” 2001, 5–22). Related
work has examined reform and control of the calendar (Jennifer Moreton,
“Before Grossseteste: Roger of Hereford and Calendar Reform in Eleventh-
and Twelfth-Century England,” Isis 86 [1995]: 562–86; Borst, Die karolingi-
1357 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

sche Kalenderreform, 1998). Though at the end of the medieval period, much of
the literature covering the Gregorian calendar reform addresses date-reckon-
ing in the medieval period as background (Peter Archer, The Christian Calen-
dar and the Gregorian Reform, 1941; Robert Poole, Time’s Alteration: Calendar
Reform in Early Modern England, 1998).
Along with the Julian calendar, the Roman tradition of dating according
to calends, nones, and ides continued into the medieval period, as did dating
according to regnal years, and also according to indiction, a system of fifteen-
year cycles beginning in 312 (Olivier Guyotjeannin, “Indiction,” Encyclo-
pedia of the Middle Ages, ed. André Vauchez, 2001, vol. 1, 722–23).

F. Time Indicators and Markers

Medieval timekeeping devices included water clocks, sundials, astrolabes,
and mechanical clocks. By the late Middle Ages, the latter varied in form from
public town clocks to private clocks and watches. Several means of tracking
time remained in use from the ancient period; technological improvements
on water clocks, for example, continued throughout the medieval period.
While older scholarship traced the development of clocks, astrolabes, and
other timekeeping devices, more recently scholars have examined these
objects within their broader social contexts, clarifying misconceptions and
revisiting traditional assumptions about their use. Sandglasses were used
to keep time for specific events (Anthony J. Turner, “The Accomplishment
of Many Years: Three Notes Towards a History of the Sand-Glass,” Annals of
Science [1982]: 161–72; Gerhard Dohrn-Van Rossum, L’histoire de l’heure:
L’horlogerie et l’organisation moderne du temps, 1992). The astrolabe offered addi-
tional uses beyond timekeeping; scholars have approached its complex
history from within the context of monastic and intellectual traditions, and
as evidence of the transmission of technology from east to west (Marcel Des-
tombes, “Un astrolabe carolingien et l’origine de nos chiffres arabes,”
Archives internationales d’histoire des science 15 [1962]: 3–45; Arno Borst, Astro-
lab und Klosterreform an der Jahrtausendwende, 1989; Edgar Laird, “Astrolabes
and the Construction of Time in the Late Middle Ages,” Disputatio 2 [1997]:
51–69). Both the astrolabe and clock were of primary use in measuring the
liturgical day and marking the monastic hours. Scholarship on the origins of
the clock has accordingly examined the use and development of timekeeping
technology within monastic communities (John D. North, “Monasticism
and the First Mechanical Clocks,” The Study of Time II, ed. Julius T. Fraser
and Nathaniel M. Lawrence [1975], 381–98; Stephen C. McCluskey,
“Gregory of Tours, Monastic Timekeeping, and Early Christian Attitudes to
Astronomy,” Isis 81 [1990]: 8–22). The mechanical clock emerged during the
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1358

late 13th and early 14th century and miniature timekeeping devices appeared
at the end of the medieval period, making timekeeping portable (Lynn
White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change, 1962; David Landes, Revol-
ution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, 1983). As part of his
comprehensive study of the reciprocal significance of clocks for the develop-
ment of Christian western culture, David Landes has argued that the “minia-
turization” of turret clocks into watches and other personal timekeeping de-
vices represented the privatization and personalization of time (Landes,
Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, 1983). Landes also
discusses clocks as cultural symbols, including memento mori.

G. Urban and Economic Time

Modern scholarship on medieval clocks as physical, mechanical timekeeping
objects is strongly tied to the historiography of urbanization, medieval city
life, and the medieval economy. Technological developments in medieval
timekeeping are often most effectively surveyed within the context of corre-
sponding social change (Gerhard Dohrn-Van Rossum, Die Geschichte der
Stunde: Uhren und moderne Zeitordnung, 1992; Pre-Industrial Cities and Technology,
ed. Colin Chant and David Goodman, 1999; Chris Humphrey, “Time
and Urban Culture in Late Medieval England,” Time in the Medieval World, ed.
Chris Humphrey and Mark Ormrod, 2001, 105–17).
The mechanical clock made possible the division of time into equal units,
independent of measurement according to daylight. Clocks accordingly
measured not only time, but periods of labor; clocks thus tied time to income
and pay, and clock-measured units of time to the growth of the money econ-
omy (Le Goff, “Au Moyen Âge: temps de l’église et temps du marchand,”
Annales ESC [1960]: 417–433). These connections have prompted scholars to
ask if perceptions of time shifted according to the structure of local econ-
omies (Alexander Callander, “Time and Money,” The Work of Jacques Le Goff
and the Challenges of Medieval History, ed. Miri Rubin, 1997, 3–27).
While scholars have argued the mechanical clock transformed the struc-
ture and rhythm of daily life (Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making
of the Modern World, 1983; Helmut Flachenecker, “Mechanische Uhren,”
Euopäische Technik im Mittelalter, 800 bis 1400: Tradition und Innovation, ed.
Uta Lindgren, 1996, 391–98), they have also nuanced the clock’s influence
on the establishment of a system of equal hours (Emmanuel Poulle, “L’hor-
logerie a-t-elle tué les heures inégales?,” Construire le temps: Normes et usages
chronologiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, ed. Marie-Clotilde Hu-
bert, 2000, 137–56). Clocks, and clock bells, were significant not only as
technological developments, but as evidence of urban communities’ interest
1359 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

in standardizing the structure and measurement of time in their daily lives

(Chris Humphrey, “Time and Urban Culture in Late Medieval England,”
Time in the Medieval World, 2001, 105–18).
A correlation has also been suggested between the development of pro-
portional units of time and currency and shifts in 14th-century scholastic dis-
cussions of natural philosophy (Joel Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Four-
teenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought,
1998).

H. Ecclesiastical and Liturgical Time Measurement

The months, days, and hours of medieval time were marked according to the
customs and rituals of the church, aspects of which nevertheless varied by lo-
cation and tradition (Irénée Henri Dalmais, Pierre Jounel, Aimé Georges
Martimort, La liturgie et le temps, 1983). In 664, the Synod of Whitby con-
firmed the orthodoxy of the Roman liturgical calendar over the Celtic, al-
though local liturgical customs, including the later Sarum rite, complicate
modern scholars’ picture of the liturgical year in Britain and on the continent
(Thomas Talley, “Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church: The State of Re-
search,” Studia Liturgica [1982]: 34–51; Nigel Morgan, “The Introduction of
the Sarum Calendar into the Dioceses of England in the Thirteenth Cen-
tury,” Thirteenth Century England, VIII: Proceedings of the Durham Conference, 1999,
ed. Michael Prestwich, Richard H. Britnell, and Robin Frame, 2001,
179–206).
The monastic hours marked the passage of time each day, both within
and beyond monastic communities (Leclerq, “Prayer at Cluny,” Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 51 [1983]: 651–65). Saints’ and other feast
days marked the passage of the months (Christopher R. Cheney, “Rules for
the Observance of Feast-Days in Medieval England,” Bulletin of the Institute
of Historical Research 34 [1961]: 117–47; Jean-Michel Matz, “Le calendrier et
le culte des saints: l’Abbaye Saint-Aubin d’Angers, XIIe-début XVI siècle,”
Revue Mabillon 7 [1996]: 127–55). Similar to feast days, the church’s cel-
ebration of jubilee years traced its origins to earlier traditions of commemor-
ation (Diana Greenway, “Dates in History: Chronology and Memory,” His-
torical Research 72 [1999]: 127–39).
In addition to liturgical texts, scholars have depended heavily on medi-
eval literary sources to communicate the ways in which time was measured
within religious space. References to, and descriptions of, feast days and
other events offer a more dynamic picture of the calendar in medieval daily
life and thought than liturgical sources (Philippe Walter, La mémoire du
temps: fêtes et calendriers de Chrétien de Troyes à ‘La Mort Artu,’” 1989; Ute Lim-
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1360

acher-Riebold, “L’importance du calendrier dans le roman de Flamenca,”

Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson
Moreno-Riaño, 2003, 109–126).

I. Agricultural and Domestic Time

At the most physical level, time was marked and measured according to
cycles of daylight, the agricultural seasons, and the labors and pastimes
associated with each. Iconic representations of the “Labors of the Months”
frequently appear in texts of the central and late middle ages (Bridget Ann
Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year, 1999). Medieval books of hours fea-
tured images of domestic and agricultural activities as representations of the
passing year, such as those in the Très Riches Heures (Frederick P. Pickering,
The Calendar Pages of Medieval Service Books: An Introductory Note for Art Historians,
1980; Povl Skårup and Erik Dal, The Ages of Man and the Months of the Year:
Poetry, Prose and Pictures Outlining the Douze Mois Figurés Motif Mainly Found
in Shepherds’ Calendars and in Livres d’Heures (14th to 17th Century), 1980; Georges
Comet, “Le temps agricole d’après les calendriers illustrés,” Temps, mémoire,
tradition au Moyen-Âge, ed. Bernard Guillemain, 1983, 7–18). Depictions
of daily activities and occupations in imagery and sculpture not only reveal
contemporary representations of time and the seasons, but offer case studies
of artistic innovations and developments within these themes over time
(Time in the Medieval World: Occupations of the Months and Signs of the Zodiac in
the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane, 2007). The natural cycles
and stages of life, including birth and death, were themselves interpreted as
markers of time, both real and symbolic (Philippe Ariès, L’ homme devant la
mort, 1977).

J. Legal Time
The connections between time and memory are perhaps most explicitly
stated in scholarship on time measurement in the context of medieval law. In
the sense that legal claims and legal jurisdiction often depended on collective
community memory, legal rights existed in a temporal context. Rights
themselves could be defined as memory, when memory of how long a claim
had been held was measured in time, or time immemorial (Paul Brand,
“’Time out of Mind:’ the Knowledge and Use of the Eleventh and Twelfth-
Century Past in Thirteenth-Century Litigation,” Anglo-Norman Studies XVI
[1994]: 37–54; Brand, “Lawyers’ Time in England in the Later Middle
Ages,” Time in the Medieval World, 2001, 73–104).
1361 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

K. Christian Chronology, Apocalypticism and Eschatology

In the Confessions and the City of God, Augustine set human time and chrono-
logy within the broader scope of linear Christian history and cosmology, and
in so doing distinguished between human and divine time (Henri-Irénée
Marrou, L’ambivalence du temps de l’histoire chez saint Augustin, 1950; Robert
Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine, 1970;
Richard Landes, “The Fear of an Apocalyptic Year 1000: Augustinian His-
toriography, Medieval and Modern,” Speculum 75 [2000]: 97–145). Augus-
tine shaped not only later medieval understanding of the Christian past and
future, but also the sense and experience of time (Oscar Cullmann, Christus
und die Zeit, 1st ed. 1946, 3rd ed. 1962; Henri Bourgeois, Pierre Gibert, and
Maurice Jourjon, L’expérience chrétienne du temps, 1987; The Use and Abuse of
Time in Christian History: Papers Read at the 1999 Summer Meeting and the 2000
Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed., Robert N. Swanson,
2002). Time itself represented the medium through which scriptural proph-
ecies would be fulfilled. Within the early church, tension arose between
scripture and what the passage of time revealed. Robert Markus (“Living
within Sight of the End,” Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey
[2001], 23–34) looks at the ways in which Augustine, Bede, Gregory
the Great, and others spoke of the apocalypse, and the ways in which each
addressed the sense of imminence surrounding the end times, as well as the
uncertainty and indifference that arose as time passed without evidence of
prophesied events. Modern scholarship on apocalypticism, eschatology,
and on figures and texts associated with apocalypticism and millenarianism
has thus overlapped considerably with discussions of medieval chronology
(Claude Carozzi and Huguette Taviani-Carozzi, La fin des temps: Terreurs
et prophètes au Moyen Âge, 1982; Richard Landes, “Lest the Millennium
be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chro-
nography 100–800 CE,” The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed.
Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, 1988,
137–211; Claude Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-delà. Recherches sur l’Apocalypse de
Paul, 1994).

L. Scholastic Discussions of Time

Medieval theological and philosophical discussions of time focused on sev-
eral questions arising from Aristotelian and Augustinian thought, notably
questions concerning divine time, the continuum, infinity, duration, the eter-
nity of the world, related questions on time with regard to motion and on the
characteristics of time’s existence (Piero Ariotti, “Celestial Reductionism
of Time. On the Scholastic Conception of Time from Albert the Great and
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1362

Thomas Aquinas to the End of the Sixteenth-Century,” Studi internazionali di

filosofia 4 [1972]: 91–120; Norman Kretzmann, “Incipit/Desinit,” Motion
and Time, Space and Matter: Interrelations in the History of Philosophy and Science, ed.
Peter K. Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull, 1976, 101–36; Infinity and
Continuity in Ancient and Medieval Thought, ed. Norman Kretzmann, 1982;
Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the
Early Middle Ages, 1983; Richard C. Dales, “Time and Eternity in the Thir-
teenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas XLIX [1988]: 27–45; Dales,
Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas
and his Contemporaries, 1990; The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas
Aquinas and His Contemporaries, ed. Jozef B. M. Wissink, 1990; Pasquale
Porro, Forme et modelli di durata nel pensiero medievale. L’aevum, il tempo discreto,
la categoria ‘quando,’ 1996; Cecilia Trifogli, Oxford Physics in the Thirteenth-
Century (ca. 1250–1270): Motion, Infinity, Place, and Time, 2000; John North,
Time and the Scholastic Universe, 2003; Rory Fox, Time and Eternity in Mid-Thir-
teenth-Century Thought, 2006). In the Physics, Aristotle defined time as the
measure of motion. Augustine’s body of work was informed by his thought
on time and eternity (Jean Guitton, Le temps et l’éternité chez Plotin et Saint
Augustin, 1st ed. 1933, 3rd ed. 1959) and without exception, his discussion of
the human soul (Kurt Flasch, Was ist Zeit? Augustinus von Hippo, das XI. Buch
der Confessiones, 1993). Scholastic writers consequently addressed the tension
between Aristotelian and Augustinian conceptions of time with regard to
movement and the soul (Udo Reinhold Jeck, Aristoteles contra Augustinum: Zur
Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele bei den antiken Aristoteleskommenta-
toren, im arabischen Aristotelismus und im 13. Jahrhundert, 1994; Ruedi Imbach,
“Temps,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, 2002, 1370–71).
Earlier historiography includes fundamental contributions by Anneliese
Maier, Pierre Duhem, and Augustin Mansion, as well as several works on
general topics in scholastic thought that include research on time (Augustin
Mansion, “La théorie aristotélicienne du temps chez les péripathéticiens
médiévaux: Averroès, Albert le Grand, Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Néoscolastique
de Philosophie 36 [1934]: 275–307; Anneliese Maier, “Scholastische Diskus-
sionen über die Wesenbestimmung der Zeit,” Scholastik 26 [1951]: 361–98;
Anneliese Maier, Metaphysische Hintergründe der Spätscholastischen Naturphi-
losophie, 1955; Pierre Duhem, Le système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmolo-
giques de Platon à Copernic, VII, 1956; Anneliese Maier, Zwischen Philosophie und
Mechanik: Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik, 1958; Marie-Domi-
nique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle, 1968).
Building on these studies, several scholars have set the medieval philo-
sophical discourse on time within broader contexts, both thematically and
1363 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

chronologically (Horst Günther, Le temps de l’histoire. Expérience du monde

et categories temporelles en philosophie de l’histoire de saint Augustin à Petrarque
de Dante à Rousseau, 1995; Il tempo in questione. Paradigmi della temporalità nel pen-
siero occidentale, ed. Luigi Ruggiu, 1997; Filosofia del tempo, ed. Luigi Ruggiu
and Luigi Alici, 1998; Il tempo nel Medioevo: Rappresentazioni storiche e concezioni
filosofiche. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Roma, 26–28 novembre 1998, ed. Ri-
cardo Capasso and Paulo Piccari, 2000; Tempus aevum aeternitas. La concet-
tualizzazione del tempo nel pensiero tardomedievale. Atti del Colloquio Internazionale,
Trieste 4–6 Marzo 1999, 2000). One of the most wide-ranging studies, The Medi-
eval Concept of Time: The Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philos-
ophy, ed. Pasquale Porro, 2001, for example, resulted from a conference
encompassing all aspects of the medieval scholastic discourse on time, rang-
ing from its Neoplatonic inheritance to its influence on early modern dis-
cussions of time.
Scholastic interest in time also included questions on usury and concerns
over the selling of time (Jacques Legoff, “Au Moyen Âge: temps de l’église et
temps du marchand,” Annales ESC [1960]: 417–433; Odd Langholm, Econ-
omics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money, and Usury According
to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200–1350, 1992; Joel Kaye, Economy and Na-
ture in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scien-
tific Thought, 1998).
Recent scholarship on individual 13th and 14th-century authors is vast,
but a sampling of work would include key studies on Peter of John Olivi,
Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Kilwardby, Giles of Rome, Wil-
liam of Alnwick, William of Ockham, Thomas Wylton, Peter Auriol, Jean
Buridan, and others (John M. Quinn, “The Concept of Time in Giles of
Rome,” Augustiniana 29 [1979]: 5–42; Robert Kilwardby, On Time and Im-
agination: ‘De Tempore.’ ‘De Spiritu Fantastico,’ ed. P. Osmund Lewry, 1987;
Niklaus Largier, Zeit, Zeitlichkeit, Ewigkeit: Ein Aufriss des Zeitproblems bei Die-
trich von Freiberg und Meister Eckhart, 1989; Tiziana Suarez-Nani, Tempo et es-
sere nell’autunno del medioevo: Il ‘De tempore’ di Nicola di Strasburgo e il dibattito sulla
natura ed il senso del tempo agli inizi del XIV secolo, 1989; Cecilia Trifogli, “Il
problema dello statuto ontologico del tempo nelle Quaestiones super Physicam
di Thomas Wylton e di Giovanni di Jandun,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione
filosofica medievale 1 [1990]: 491–548; François X. Putallaz and Ruedi
Imbach, “Olivi et le temps,” Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298): pensée scolastique,
dissidence spirituelle et société, ed. Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron, 1999;
Roland J. Teske, “William of Auvergne on Time and Eternity,” Traditio 55
[2000]: 125–41; Henryk Anzulewicz, “Aeternitas-Aevum-Tempus: The Con-
cept of Time in the System of Albert the Great,” The Medieval Concept of Time:
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1364

The Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pasquale
Porro, 2001, 83–129; Dirk-Jan Dekker, “Buridan’s Concept of Time:
Time, Motion, and the Soul in John Buridan’s Questions on Aristotle’s
Physics,” The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan, ed. Johannes
M.M.H. Thijssen, 2001; Guido Alliney, Time and Soul in Fourteenth-Century
Theology: Three Questions of William of Alnwick on the Existence, the Ontological
Status, and the Unity of Time, 2002; Chris Schabel, “Philosophy and Theology
across Cultures: Gersonides and Auriol on Divine Foreknowledge,” Speculum
81 [2006]: 1092–117).

M. Time Measurement and Chronology in Chronicles

and Literary Sources Chronicles
Several genres of medieval writing dealt explicitly with time and chrono-
logy. Of foremost relevance were the treatises on calendars and computi. In
addition, works on political, monastic, and world chronicles have offered
scholars a more contextualized view of medieval attitudes towards chrono-
logy, record-keeping, and documentation of past events (Louis Green,
Chronicle into History: an Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Four-
teenth-century Chronicles, 1972; Joëlle Beaucamp, “La chronique pascale: le
temps approprié,” Le temps chrétien de a fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge IIIe–XIIIe
siècle, ed. Jean-Marie Leroux, 1984; La chronique et l’histoire au Moyen Âge,
1984; J. W. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought,
1986). The temporal structure of chronicles speak to contemporary con-
sciousness of time (Hans-Werner Goetz, “The Concept of Time in the His-
toriography of the Eleventh and the Twelfth Centuries,” Medieval Concepts of
the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried,
and Patrick J. Geary, 2002, 139–65).
The passage of time was also marked in necrologies, cartularies, and mar-
tyrologies (Jean Becquet, “Le commencement de l’année en Limousin au
XIIe siècle,” Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartres [1993]: 161–69; Peter Verbist,
‘Reconstructing the Past: The Chronicle of Marianus Scottus, Peritia 16
[2002]: 284–334). Medieval chroniclers’ and historians’ temporal unity with
the past distinguishes the medieval sense of history from the modern (Bern-
ard Guenée, “Temps de l’histoire et temps de la mémoire au Moyen Âge,”
Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France [1976–1977]: 25–35; id.,
Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval, 1980; Anthony Kemp, The
Estrangement of the Past: A Study in the Origins of Modern Historical Consciousness,
1991). Distinctions between chronicles and histories notwithstanding,
scholarship on history in the Middle Ages directly pertains to studies of time
and chronology (Matthew Innes and Rosamund McKitterick, “The Writ-
1365 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

ing of History,” Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamund

McKitterick,1994, 193–220; McKitterick, “Constructing the Past in
the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal Frankish Annals,” Transactions of
the Royal Historical Society [1997]: 101–30; Gerd Althoff et al., ed., Medieval
Concepts of the Past, 2002), notably the ways in which individuals and commu-
nities associated people, events, and circumstances from the past with the
present (Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past, 1969; and id., “The Sense
of Anachronism from Petrarch to Poussin,” Time in the Medieval World, 2001).
For medieval chroniclers and historians, the time of modernity was the
time informed by memory, arguably the memory of time within their own
century (Bernard Guenée, “Temps de l’histoire et temps de la mémoire au
Moyen Âge,” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France [1976–1977]:
25–35). For this reason, much work done in the subfield of memory in the
middle ages (see entry on “Memory” in this volume) complements studies on
time (Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories. Studies in the Reconstruc-
tion of the Past, 1992; Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory
in Medieval Culture, 1990; Legoff, Histoire et mémoire, 1988; Bernard Guille-
main, ed., Temps, mémoire, tradition au Moyen Age, 1983; Michael Clanchy,
From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 1st ed. 1979, 2nd ed. 1993;
Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the
First Millennium, 1994).

N. Time in Medieval Literature

Analysis of the way time was conceptualized and employed in literary
sources has led to broader understanding of time as a cultural reference
(Le temps et la durée dans la littérature au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Yvonne
Bellenger, 1985; Richard Lock, Aspects of Time in Medieval Literature, 1985;
Peter W. Travis, “Chaucer’s Chronographiae, the Confounded Reader, and
Fourteenth-Century Measurements of Time,” Disputatio 2 [1987]: 1–34;
Stephen Russell, “Sub specie aeternitas: Time, Sequence, and Cycle in
Medieval Popular Literature,” MedPers 3 [1991]: 200–10; Linne R. Mooney,
“The Cock and the Clock: Telling Time in Chaucer’s Day,” Studies in the Age
of Chaucer: Yearbook of the New Chaucer Society 15 [1993]: 91–109; Albrecht
Classen, “The Experience of and Attitude Towards Time in Medieval
German Literature from the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Centuries,”
Neohelicon XXXVI [1999]: 135–54; John D. Grosskopf, “Time and Eternity
in the Anglo-Saxon Elegies,” Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed.
Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño [2003], 323–30). Research ap-
proaches include representations of time in specific texts (Janet M. Bateley,
“Time and the Passing of Time in The Wanderer and Related OE Texts,” Essays
Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies 1366

and Studies 37 [1984]: 1–13), as well as the conceptualization of time charac-

teristic of individual writers (Philippe Ménard, “Le temps et la durée dans
les romans de Chrétien de Troyes,” Le Moyen âge 73 [1967]: 375–401; Italo
Sciuto, “Eternità e tempo in Dante,” Tempus aevum aeternitas: La concettualiz-
zazione del tempo nel pensiero tardomedievale, ed. Guido Alliney and Luciano
Cova, 1999, 1–20; Solveig Malatrait, “Zeitlose Märchen? Anmerkungen
zur Zeit in den Lais der Marie de France,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 51 [2000]:
108–27). Interest has extended to time and timekeeping in several genres of
literary work, including the study of dates in late medieval riddles (Marjolein
Kool, “Raden of rekenen?” Hoort wonder Opstellen voor W.P. Gerritsen bij zijn
emeeritaat, ed. Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma, and Dieuwke Van Der
Poel, 2000; Martin Camargo, “Time as Rhetorical Topos in Chaucer’s
Poetry,” Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook, ed. Scott D. Troyan, 2004, 91–107).

O. Imagery of Time in Medieval Art

Scholars have also examined temporality and representations of time and
chronology in medieval art (Peter Nesteruk, “When Space is Time: The
Rhetoric of Eternity: Hierarchy and Narrative in Medieval and Renaissance
Art,” Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson
Moreno-Riaño [2003], 403–25). Beyond discussing the imagery and sym-
bolism of time, scholars have considered how images and objects functioned
as chronological and commemorative markers (Kim Bowes, “Ivory Lists:
Consular Diptychs, Christian Appropriation and Polemics of Time in Late
Antiquity,” Art History 24 [2001]: 338–57). Similarly, clocks and other time-
keeping instruments themselves functioned as symbols of order in the late
medieval and early modern period (Samuel L. Macey, Clocks and the Cosmos:
Time in Western Life and Thought, 1980; Otto Mayr, “Die Uhr als Symbol für
Ordnung, Autorität und Determinismus,” Die Welt als Uhr: Deutsche Uhren und
Automaten, ed. Klaus Maurice and Otto Mayr, 1980, 1–9).

P. Time and Chronology in Medieval Judaism and Islam

Although much of the research within the broad category of medieval time
and chronology in the west includes references to, and in several cases, exten-
sive coverage of these themes within medieval Judaism and Islam, differ-
ences among the religious calendars in each tradition necessitate specialized
studies. The Hebrew calendar depends on both lunar and solar cycles, and
dates years according to the traditional date of creation. The Muslim lunar
calendar dates from the year of the Hijra, or 622 in the western calendar
(Greville S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The Muslim and Christian Calendars,
1st ed., 1963, 2nd ed., 1977; Steven L. Goldman, “On the Beginnings and
1367 Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies

Endings of Time in Medieval Judaism and Islam,” The Study of Time, vol. IV,
ed. Julius T. Fraser, 1981; David A. King, “Time and Space in Islam,” The
Story of Time, ed. Kristen Lippincott [1999], 56–59; “The Rabbinic Concept
of Time from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” Time and Eternity: The Medi-
eval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, 2003,
129–45).
One of the most prolific scholars of medieval Islamic technology, David
King, has argued for the study of Islamic astronomy, timekeeping, and
other aspects of scientific thought within the context of Islamic history,
beyond earlier studies which privileged the West’s reception of Eastern tech-
nology (David A. King, Islamic Astronomical Instruments, 1987; Edward S.
Kennedy, “Two Medieval Approaches to the Equation of Time,” Centaurus
31 [1988]: 1–8; King, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, 1993; King, In Synchrony
with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medi-
eval Islamic Civilization, vol. 1: The Call of the Muezzin, 2004; vol. 2: Instruments of
Mass Calculation, 2005). As one example of incongruity, Western clocks were
traded within the Islamic world, although they were valued more as luxury
gifts and status symbols than functional timekeeping devices (Otto Kurz,
European Clocks and Watches in the Near East, 1975). Despite differences between
Christian and Islamic methods of date-reckoning and timekeeping, though,
research on astronomical timekeeping frequently encompasses both cul-
tures, particularly with regard to the development of horological technology
(Donald Hill, “Islamic Fine Technology and its Influence on the Develop-
ment of European Horology,” Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology, ed. David
A. King, 1998, 9–28).
Historiographical overlap occurs more frequently within treatments
of medieval philosophical works on time. Jewish and Islamic scholars, in-
cluding Maimonides, Gersonides, al-Ghazali, and Averroes, addressed many
of the same tensions in Aristotelian thought as Christian writers over the
nature of time and the eternity of the world (Tamar M. Rudavsky, Time
Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 2000;
Rudavsky, “Time and Cosmology in Late Medieval Jewish Philosophy,”
Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson
Moreno-Riaño, 2003, 147–62). As with the history of medieval law and
technology, the transmission of Islamic philosophical texts into the West in
the central Middle Ages greatly influenced thought in the West, particularly
the work of Thomas Aquinas and other late 13th-century and 14th-century
writers (Cecilia Trifogli, “Averroes’s Doctrine of Time and Its Reception in
the Scholastic Debate,” The Medieval Concept of Time, ed. Pasquale Porro,
2001, 57–82; Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy,
Transfer of Knowledge 1368

1st ed., 1985, 2nd ed., 2002; Oliver Leaman and Daniel H. Frank, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 2003; Muhammad Ali
Khalidi ed., Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writing, 2005). (See works listed in
“Scholastic Discussions of Time” above).

Select Bibliography
Bernard Ribemont, ed., Le temps: Sa mesure et sa perception au Moyen Âge (Caen: Para-
digme, 1992); R. Dean Ware, “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice,” Medieval
Studies: An Introduction, 1st ed. 1976, 2nd ed., 1992, ed. James M. Powell (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1992), 252–77; Horst Wenzel, “Zur Mehrdimensionalität
der Zeit im hohen und im späten Mittelalter: Von Bauern und Geistlichen, Rittern und
Händlern,” Zeitschrift für Germanistik 6 [1996]: 9–20; Carol Poster and Richard Utz,
ed., Disputatio, vol. 2: Constructions of Time in the Late Middle Ages (Evanston, IL: North-
western University Press, 1997); Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and
W. M. Ormrod (Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press, 2001); The Medieval Concept
of Time: The Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pasquale
Porro, 2001; Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson
Moreno-Riaño (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2003); Anne Higgins, “Medieval
Notions of the Structure of Time,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 19
[1989]: 227–50; Jacques Legoff, Pour un autre Moyen Age: temps, travail et culture en Occi-
dent, 18 essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1977); and Construire le temps: Normes et usages chronolo-
giques du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, ed. Marie-Clotilde Hubert (Paris: Cham-
pion, 2000).

Camarin M. Porter

Transfer of Knowledge

A. Classical vs. Multi-Cultural

Transfer of knowledge played a fundamental role in the construction of
medieval science and culture, with exchanges that were not limited to the
translation of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic from the 9th century,
and of Arabic science into Latin from the 11th century, but also included the
translation of Greek philosophical and scientific literature into Latin in late
antiquity, and of Arabic medical and astronomical treatises into Greek in
Byzantium, perhaps as early as the 10th century and certainly during the late
13th century and the 14th, as well as transfers of techniques, products, and
other goods between the several groups of different origins, languages, and
religions who inhabited the Mediterranean and European areas during the
Middle Ages. The assimilation of allogen elements (whatever their nature
1369 Transfer of Knowledge

and origin) was not always free of problems, starting with the development
of a new lexicon, had different consequences on the receiving culture, and
generated different dynamics according to the places and periods, the sources
and destinations of these exchanges, or the groups and, within them, the sev-
eral strata of populations that received these new elements.
As a field of scientific research, transfer of knowledge was slow to emerge
in Western scientific and scholarly circles. As early as the late 15th century, in-
deed, the effects of the transfer of data from the Arabic World to the West
were vigorously opposed by the physician, philologist and humanist Nicolao
Leoniceo (1428–1524) (on him, see recently Alain Touwaide, “Leoniceno,”
New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Noretta Koertge, 2008, vol. 4,
264–67). In a small book usually identified in current scholarship as De Plinii
et aliorum in medicina erroribus (Ferrara, 1492; several re-editions, in Leonice-
no’s own life time or posthumously, in his works or in other volumes), Leo-
niceno denounced the mistakes in the literature on materia medica used at
that time, not only the Naturalis Historia by Pliny (23/24–79 C.E.), as often
claimed in contemporary literature (from the abundant literature on this
question, see, for example, Arturo Castiglioni (1874–1952), “The School
of Ferrara and the Controversy on Pliny,” Science, Medicine, and History: Essays
on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice written in Honour of
C. Singer, ed. E. Ashworth Underwood, 2 vols., 1953, vol. 1, 269–79), but
also if not more the many works by Arabo-Islamic physicians and pharma-
cists that had been translated into Latin and were more or less assimilated
into Western science from the 11th century on. To replace these works, Leo-
niceno proposed to return to Greek scientific literature (for an in-depth study
of Leoniceno’s scientific thinking based on his library, see Daniela Mugnai
Carrara, La biblioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno tra Aristotele e Galeno. Cultura e libri di
un medico umanista, 1991).
Leoniceno’s program was embraced by the publishers and printers of
that time who contributed to the reintroduction of classical, that is, Greek,
philosophical and scientific literature. After a corpus of treatises by Galen
(129–after [?] 216 C.E.) was published in Latin translation in 1490, the whole
collection of treatises by Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) then available in the West
was published in Greek in five massive volumes (1495–1497) in Venice by
Aldo Manuzio (1449–1515), including Theophrastus (372/370–ca. 288/286
B.C.E.), Historia Plantarum and De Causis Plantarum (of which a Latin trans-
lation had already been published by Theodoros of Gaza [1400–ca. 1476] in
1483 [Treviso]). In 1498, a Latin translation of a corpus of Greek philosophi-
cal and scientific works was published by Giorgio Valla (ca. 1447–1500)
in Rome, and, the following year, De materia medica by the Greek Dioscorides
Transfer of Knowledge 1370

(1st c. C.E.) came out of Aldo Manuzio’s printing press. In 1501, the immense
encyclopedia of science compiled by Giorgio Valla and containing the Latin
translation of a whole range of Greek scientific treatises from mathematic to
medicine and botany was published in Venice (Aldo Manuzio) under the title
De expetendis et fugiendis rebus. In 1516–1518, several editions, translations,
and commentaries on Dioscorides’s De materia medica were published in Ve-
nice, Florence, and Paris, and, to quote just a few, in 1525 and 1526 the heirs
of Aldo Manuzio published the Greek text of the treatises by Galen and Hip-
pocrates (465–between 375 and 350 B.C.E.) known at that time.
Such massive transfer of knowledge was not seen as the introduction of
allogen elements into Western science and culture, but rather as a re-appro-
priation of the knowledge that created Western identity in Antiquity and
that had been further overshadowed by the subsequent assimilation of het-
erogeneous elements, namely Arabic science and culture. This movement
received a theoretical justification with the French Symphorien Champier
(1471–1538), according to whom the diseases of French people had to be
cured with plants growing in France, and with the German Paracelsus
(1493–1541) (in fact, Philip von Hohenheim, or Philippus Theophrastus
Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim), who made a similar consideration,
applying the principle to the Germans. In this view and in the context of this
movement of reappropriation of the body of knowledge supposedly at the
origin of Western science, 16th century botanists, the so-called German Fathers
of modern Botany (among others Otto Brunfels [ca. 1488–1534] and Leonhart
Fuchs [1501–1566]), tried to identify the local species corresponding to the
plants mentioned in the works by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen.
Apparently contradicting this return to the sources of Western identity,
Giorgio Valla published in his 1498 volume above a Latin translation of the
treatise On Smallpox and Measles by the Arabic physician Razi (865–925 C.E.).
Significantly, however, he did not translate the original Arabic text, but
its Byzantine translation, attributed in 20th-century scholarly literature to
the 11th-century Byzantine Symeon Seth (Marie-Hélène Congourdeau,
“Le traducteur grec du traité de Rhazès sur la variole,” Storia e ecdotica dei testi
medici greci: Atti del II Convegno Internazionale Paris 24–26 maggio 1994, ed. Anto-
nio Garzya, and Jacques Jounanna, 1996, 99–111). This translation was
neither a programmatic, nor an ideological reaction to Leoniceno’s proposal,
but rather a response to the medical situation of that time, characterized by
the diffusion of syphilis, as the remedies prescribed by Razi to treat smallpox
seemed to be applicable to this apparently new medical condition. Fifty years
later, the French humanist physician Jacques Goupyl (ca. 1525–1564) edited
the treatise of Razi, On Smallpox and Measles, together with the much larger
1371 Transfer of Knowledge

medical encyclopedia of the Byzantine physician Alexander of Tralles (6th c.)

(Paris, 1548, editio princeps for both works). The version of Razi’s treatise that
was edited was not the original Arabic text or a Medieval Latin translation,
but the Byzantine one that had already been translated into Latin by Giorgio
Valla. This edition did not necessarily result from a deliberate choice or a
special interest in Arabic medicine, the treatment of syphilis, or the transfer
of knowledge, but may have been made for the simple reason that the text of
the Byzantine translation of Razi’s work was included in the manuscripts
containing Alexander of Tralles’s encyclopedia that were used as sources for
the edition of this treatise (on these manuscripts, see Christian Förstel,
“Alexandre de Tralles, Thérapeutique,” Byzance retrouvée. Erudits et voyageurs
français (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), Chapelle de la Sorbonne-Paris, 13 août-2 septembre 2001,
2001, 27–30).
While humanist scientists rejected Arabic science, their contemporaries
were both interested in, and curious about the polity that replaced the Arabic
World, that is, the Ottoman Empire. Fear was also intertwined in their inter-
est, as Soliman the Magnificent (1494–1566) was expanding the territory of
his empire and besieged Vienna as early as 1529, with a renewed attack in
1532. Western ambassadors to Istanbul had a multifacetted mission: not
only representing their country to the Sultan, but also if not above all observ-
ing, and reporting about, the military forces of the Sultan, their equipment,
and movements. Even though Ottomans were felt as a threat, such an ambas-
sador of Charles V (1500–1558) as Ogier Ghislan of Busbeq (1532–1592) was
seduced by them, and described their uses in the letters he sent to Western
addressees (first edition of the first letter in 1581, Anvers; first edition of his
four letters in 1589, Paris; English translation: Edward Seymour Forster
(1897–1950), The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador
in Constantinople 1554–1562: Translated from the Latin of the Elzevier Edition of
1633, 1927). If he acquired books in the Ottoman Empire, these were not
Arabic or Turkish ones documenting any aspect of life, culture or science of
the Arabic or Ottoman worlds, however, but Greek manuscripts that were
among the holdings of libraries in Constantinople when the Ottomans took
the city on 29th of May 1453.
By eliminating the data introduced by means of a process of transfer of
knowledge out of its culture, the West altered the image of the role that the
Arabic World had in its history. Instead of a major contributor to its science,
medicine, philosophy, and culture, it reduced it to a geographical area,
which was then a source of antiquities from, and curiosities about, the cul-
tures from which the West wanted to be considered an heir. Nevertheless,
Arabic medicine was applied in contemporary practice during the 18th cen-
Transfer of Knowledge 1372

tury. The therapeutic methods described by Razi were used by such English
physicians as John Freind (1675–1728) and John Mead (1673–1754) to
treat smallpox. After a long scientific polemic, the Arabic text of Razi was
edited and translated into Latin in 1766, and into French in 1768, and the
Latin version was included in the Artis medica principes of Albrecht Haller
(1708–1777) published in 1772 (vol. 7, 211–70).
During the same period, a first approach to the process of transfer of
knowledge was made by the philologist Johannes Stephanus Bernard
(1718–1793). In 1749, Bernard published in Amsterdam and Leiden a
Greek text entitled De febribus, which he attributed to a Synesius who was
not the homonym author of Cyrene (ca. 370–ca. 413) (Johannes Stephanus
Bernardus, Synesius de febribus, quem nunc primum ex codice MS. Bibliothecae
Lugduno Batavae edidit, vertit, notisque illustravit. Accedit Viatici Constantino Afri-
cano interprete lib. VII, 1749). In the same volume, Bernard included a Latin
text that was very similar to the Greek one and came from the Viaticum by
Constantine the African (d. before 1098–99), as he saw the similarity between
the two texts. Bernard suspected that they went back to a common source.
With the help of the Arabist Johann Jacob Reiske (1716–1774) he was able to
identify that shared source as the zâd al musâfir wa qût al hâdir of the Arabic
physician ibn al-Jazzâr (d. 979/980 or 1010), on whom he wrote a long
chapter in the De febribus. However meticulous he was in his analysis, Ber-
nard does not seem to have understood that what he thought to be a text by
a Synesius based on ibn al-Jazzâr’s work was in fact a chapter extracted from
the Byzantine translation of ibn al-Jazzâr’s work, that is, the so-called Efodia
tou apodêmountos made in Sicily probably in the 11th century. It was the merit
of the French historian of medicine Charles Daremberg (1817–1872) to
better investigate the Greek text first studied by Bernard, to compare its
Greek and Arabic versions in order to show that the former was a translation
of the latter, and to bring to light in this way a process of transfer of knowl-
edge from Arabic to Greek (Daremberg’s work was first published in the
Archives des Missions scientifiques et littéraires VII, VIII, and IX, 1851, and I, 1852,
under the title Notices et extraits des manuscrits médicaux d’Angleterre; then it was
published as a monograph under a new title: Notices et extraits des manuscrits
médicaux grecs, latins et français, des principales bibliothèques de l’Europe, vol. 1:
Manuscrits grecs d’Angleterre suivis d’un fragment de Gilles de Corbeil et de scolies in-
édites sur Hippocrate, 1853).
In the growing field of Oriental studies and particularly in Germany,
Arabic medicine was properly studied (see Ferdinand Wüstenfeld
[1808–1899], Geschichte der arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher nach den Quellen
bearbeitet, 1840 [rpt. 1978), including the translation of Greek medical and
1373 Transfer of Knowledge

scientific texts into Oriental languages. In response to the question posed

by the Academy of sciences in Göttingen, Joannes Georgius Wenrich
(1787–1847) published in 1842 an essay entitled De auctorum graecorum ver-
sionibus et commentariis, Syriacis, Arabicis, Armeniacis, Persicisque commentatio
quam proposita per Regiam scientiarum societatem quae Gottingae floret quaestione.
French Orientalism was also rising, and included the history of medicine in
its program. Among others, Gustave Dugat (1824–1894) studied the Arabic
treatise of which the Efodia are a translation (“Etudes sur le traité de méde-
cine d’Abou Djafar Ahmad, intitulé Zad al Moçafir (“la provision du voya-
geur”),” Journal asiatique série V, no.1 [1853]: 289–353). Slightly later, the
French physician and historian of medicine Lucien Leclerc (1816–1893)
paid great attention to the process of transfer in his history of Arabic medi-
cine, as the title announces (Histoire de la médecine arabe: Exposé complet des tra-
ductions du grec. Les sciences en Orient, leur transmission à l’Occident par les traduc-
tions latines, 2 vols., 1876). In the introduction, he immediately set the tone,
with considerations that are the direct reflection of the epoch:
(2–3) Ce peuple [that is, the Arabo-Islamic World] que le fanatisme fit le conqué-
rant de la moitié du monde, prit aussitôt pour maîtres les chrétiens ses vaincus.
Il mit à s’assimiler leur science un tel enthousiasme et une promptitude si mer-
veilleuse, déployant des aptitudes qui semblaient étrangères à la race, qu’il eut
bientôt dépassés … il rendit à ses antagonistes barbares [= the West] les services
qu’il avait reçus … il leur transmit les sciences … Pendant la seconde moitié du
moyen-âge, la science arabe défraya l’Occident. Quand vint la Renaissance, l’admi-
ration fit place à l’ingratitude et au dénigrement …

(13) … nous ferons l’histoire de la médecine arabe en Occident, c’est-à-dire que

nous parlerons des traductions qui se sont faites de l’arabe dans les langues mo-
dernes et surtout en latin, en même temps que nous signalerons l’influence de la
science arabe sur le développement de la science européenne au moyen-âge. Nous
donnerons la biographie des traducteurs, et pour être complet, nous étendrons
nos investigations sur les traductions ayant trait non seulement à la medecine,
mais à toutes les branches de la science … L’Orient rendit ainsi aux chrétiens
d’Europe le serrvice qu’il avait reçu des chrétiens d’Asie …

Leclerc concluded the introduction (14) with the announcement of a more

general work on Arabic science in the West for which he had already gathered
all the necessary data, but which he does not seem to have published, however.
The border-crossing approach that was developing among Orientalists
was paralleled in the history of Greek medicine. The Athenian physician and
historian of Greek medical texts Georgios Costomiris (1849–1902) listed,
indeed, the manuscripts of the Greek version of ibn al-Jazzar’s work in
the Etudes sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs that he published in
several issues of the French Revue des Etudes Grecques from 1889 on (Georges A.
Transfer of Knowledge 1374

Costomiris, “Études sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs, Troi-
sième série: Alexandre (Sophiste et Roi), Timothée, Léon le Philosophe,
Théophane Nonnos, les Ephodes,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 4 [1891]: 97–110).
Also, the Italian Arabist Giuseppe Gabrieli (1872–1942) devoted a long ar-
ticle to a copy of the Greek text of the Efodia (Giuseppe Gabrieli, “Il ‘Zâd al
Musâfir’ di Ibn al Gazzâr in un ms. greco Corsiniano (EFODIA TOU APODÊ-
MOUNTOS),” Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali,
storiche e filologiche series V, no. 14 [1905]: 29–50). In the same vein, but on a
different text, Vilhelm Lundström (1869–1940) published as early as 1904
the lexicon of the 14th-century Constantinopolitan monk, philosopher and
probably physician Neophytos Prodromenos that contains Arabic plant
names transliterated into Greek alphabet (“Neophytos Prodromenos’ botan-
iska namnförteckning,” Eranos 5 [1903–1904]: 129–155).
A setback followed, however: neither the Efodia nor all the Byzantine
works that resulted from the translation of Arabic medical treatises into
Greek or were influenced by Arabic science such as Neophytos’ lexicon were
included in the catalogue of Greek medical works and manuscripts pub-
lished in 1906 by the German Academy of Sciences under the direction of
Hermann Diels (1848–1922) (Die Handschriften der antiken Ärzte, vol. 2: Die
übrigen griechischen Ärzte ausser Hippokrates und Galenos, ed. Hermann Diels,
1906, with a second edition the same year under a slightly different title: Die
Handschriften der antiken Ärzte: Griechische Abteilung, ed. Hermann Diels, 1906.
A supplement was published in 1908: Bericht über den Stand des interakade-
mischen Corpus Medicorum Antiquorum und Erster Nachtrag zu den in den Abhand-
lungen 1905 und 1906 veröffentlichten Katalogen: Die Handschriften der antiken
Ärzte, I. und II. Teil, ed. Hermann Diels, 1908. The second edition of 1906 was
reprinted together with the 1908 supplement under the following title: Die
Handschriften der antiken Ärzte. I. Hippokrates und Galenos; II. Die übrigen grie-
chischen Ärzte; III. Nachtrag, ed. Hermann Diels, with a preface by Fridolf
Kudlien, 1970). This omission reveals a classicizing approach, further con-
firmed by the fact that many Byzantine treatises were not included in the
catalogue. The translations of the treatises by – or attributed to – Hippo-
crates and Galen into Oriental languages – that is, into Syriac, Arabic, and
Hebrew – and into Latin were mentioned, however, in the first part of the
catalogue (devoted to Hippocrates and Galen), together with their manu-
scripts. They were not the object of a specific interest in the process of
transfer of knowledge, but were included as they complemented the range of
the sources to be used to edit classical texts. In some cases, they were even the
only available version of works of which the Greek original text had not been
preserved because of the accidents of textual tradition and book history.
1375 Transfer of Knowledge

Innovative work in the field of transfer of knowledge did not come out
until 1930. The Belgian philologist Armand Delatte (1886–1964) edited
a Byzantine lexicon containing Arabic plant names transliterated in Greek
alphabet (Armand Delatte, “Le lexique de botanique du Parisinus Graecus
2419,” Serta Leodensia ad celebrandam patriae libertatem iam centesimum annum
recuperatam composuerunt philologi leodenses, 1930, 59–101). Then, in 1939,
he edited other similar lexica (Anecdota Atheniensia et alia, vol. 2: Textes grecs
relatifs à l’histoire des sciences, 1939, passim), and the Greek physician and
historian of Byzantine medicine Aristoteles Kouzes (1872–1961) published
a pioneering article on the Greek translations of Arabic medical treatises
(“Quelques considérations sur les traductions en grec des oeuvres médicales
orientales,” Praktika tês Akadêmias Athênôn 14 [1939]: 205–20). World War II
interrupted scholarly activity, and it was not until 1952 that another original
contribution was made. The Belgian classical philologist and historian
of Greek astronomy Joseph Mogenet (1913–1980) identified, indeed, in a
marginal note in manuscript Vaticanus graecus 1594 (Ptolemy, Almagest, 9th c.)
the most ancient trace of an Arabic influence on Byzantine astronomy
(Joseph Mogenet, “Une scolie inédite du Vat. gr. 1594 sur les rapports entre
l’astronomie arabe et Byzance,” Osiris 14 [1952]: 198–221). Although the
note was written in the 12th century, it reproduced a model dating back to
ca. 1030.

B. Major 20th-Century Research Programs

Since then, the transfer of knowledge in the Middle Ages has been an increas-
ingly growing field of research (not only from Greek to Arabic and con-
versely, but also from Greek into Latin and from Latin into Greek, although
the latter was rarer), which evolved in different directions, from an ancillary
role – explicitly stated and even theorized – for classical philology in the edi-
tion of Greek scientific texts (see for example: Jacques Jouanna, “Remar-
ques sur la valeur relative des traductions latines pour l’édition des textes
hippocratiques,” Le latin médical: La constitution d’un langage scientifique. Réa-
lités et langage de la médecine dans le monde romain. Actes du IIIe Colloque inter-
national ‘Textes médicaux latins,’ Saint-Etienne, 11–13 septembre 1989, ed. Guy
Sabbah, 1991, 11–26; and, more recently: Rita Masullo, “Il contributo
della letteratura medica araba al testo di Filagrio,” Koinonia 23 [1999]: 5–13),
to globalization and post-modernist deconstructivism, also including the
analysis of the transformations undergone by philosophical concepts in the
process of translation (together with misunderstandings and the non-trans-
lations represented by transliterations), and the theory of “Clash of Civili-
zations” defended by Samuel P. Huntington in 1992, for example.
Transfer of Knowledge 1376

Encyclopedic literature evolved from a static presentation of the differ-

ent cultural areas in such a panoramic work as George Sarton, Introduction
to the History of Science, 3 vols., 1927–1948 (rpt. 1975) to a more dynamic
vision, including specific entries on translation, in the Dictionary of the
Middle Ages, vol. 12 (1989), 126–42, where different linguistic areas are dis-
tinguished: Robert Browning (1914–1997), “Translation and Trans-
lators, Byzantine,” 126–27; George Saliba, “Translation and Translators,
Islamic,” 127–33; Benjamin Z. Richler, “Translation and Translators,
Jewish,” 133–36; and Charles S. F. Burnett, “Translation and Trans-
lators, Western European,” 136–42. This is also the case of the more recent
volume Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas
Glick, Steven J. Livesey, and Faith Wallis, 2005, in which known trans-
lators are the object of a specific entry (on translators, see mainly the entries
on Alfred of Sareshel, Arnau of Vilanova, Bartolomeo de Messina, Burgun-
dio of Pisa, Domingo Gundisalvo, Gerard of Cremona, Hunayn ibn Ishaq,
James of Venice, Mark of Toledo, Michael Scot, Niccolò da Reggio, Pietro
d’Abano, Robert Grosseteste, Sergius of Ra’s al-‘Ayn, and William of Moer-
beke), as well as the translation itself (with such entries as Arabic, Astronomy,
Bayt al-Hikma, Cultural Exchange, Libraries, Mathematics, Medical literature
[with the different languages], Scholars, Science, Syriac, and Translation). In
this view, see also the Neue Pauly, 13 vols. with a volume of index and
5 supplements, 1996–2003, and its English translation Brill’s New Pauly,
15 vols. (+ 5 vols. on the Classical Tradition) and 3 supplements (published
from 2002), both of which also include The Classical Tradition; more recently
see also Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols., ed. Josef W.
Meri, 2006. Increasingly frequent also, publications on the process of
transmission of which the following is just an example: Tradition, Trans-
mission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science held
at the University of Oklahoma, ed. Jamil F. Ragep, Sally P. Ragep, and Steven
Livesey, 1996.
Scientific journals have been created on the specific topic of inter-
cultural relationships between medieval communities: Medieval Encounters
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue, devoted,
according to its explicit presentation, to “… the period from the fourth
through the sixteenth C.E. … exploration of more indirect interactions
and influences … to permit examination … on a comparative basis”; Jews,
Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain, which is much more focused; and,
more general instead, Early Science and Medicine. A Journal for the Study
of Science, Technoloy and Medicine in the Pre-Modern Period, whose objective is
defined as follows:
1377 Transfer of Knowledge

… continued importance of ancient sources throughout the Middle Ages … low

degree of specialization and the high degree of disciplinary interdependence
characterizing the period before the professionalization of science … the West-
ern, Byzantine and Arabic traditions … particularly … emphasizing these el-
ements of continuity and interconnectedness …

Major research projects were launched during the 20th century, mainly on
philosophy, from the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi (with two series, Plato Lati-
nus and Plato Arabus) started in the 1930s, to the most recent Avicenna Latinus
(undertaken in the 1960s), passing through the Aristoteles Latinus (which also
began in the 1930s) and the Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, which was initially a
part of the former and was separated from it in 1971.
The volumes published in the Corpus Platonicum are the following
(by series [Latinus et Arabus] and by number within each series) (I reproduce
the actual titles of the volumes, in Latin, as they define with great exactness
the contributions of the possible several authors to each volume): Victor
Kordeuter (edidit), and Carlotta Labowsky (1905–1991) (recognovit et
praefatione instruxit), Meno, interprete Henrico Aristippo (Plato Latinus, 1), 1940;
Laurentius Minio-Paluello (1907–1986), Phaedo, interprete Henrico Aristippo
(Plato Latinus, 2), 1950; Raymundus Klibansky (1905–2005), and Carlotta
Labowsky (ediderunt et praefatione et adnotationibus instruxerunt), Par-
menides usque ad finem primae hypothesis nec non Procli commentarium in Parmeni-
dem pars ultima adhuc inedita interprete Guillelmo de Moerbeka (Plato Latinus, 3),
1953; Jan Hendrik Waszink (1908–1990), and Paul Johannes Jensen,
Timaeus, a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus (Plato Latinus, 4), 1962;
Paulus Kraus (1904–1944), and Richardus Walzer (1900–1975) (edide-
runt), Galeni compendium Timaei aliorumque dialogorum synopsis quae extant
fragmenta (Plato Arabus, 1), 1951; Franciscus Rosenthal (1904–2003), and
Richardus Walzer, Alfarabius de Platonis Philosophia (Plato Arabus, 2), 1943;
Franciscus Gabrieli (1904–1996) (edidit et Latine vertit), Alfarabius compen-
dium legum Platonis (Plato Arabus, 3), 1951.
The volumes in the Aristoteles Latinus series are the following (in chro-
nological order of publication; I reproduce the actual titles as above): Lorenzo
Minio-Paluello (edidit), Categoriae vel Praedicamenta: Translatio Boethii, Editio
Composite, Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, Lemmata e Simplicii commentario de-
cerpta, Pseudo-Augustini Paraphrasis Themistiana (Aristoteles Latinus, I, 1–5), 1961;
Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (edidit), and Bernard Geoffrey Dod (adiuvante),
Categoriarum supplementa: Porphyrii Isagoge, Translatio Boethii, et Anonymi Fragmen-
tum vulgo vocatum “Liber sex principiorum” (Aristoteles Latinus, I, 6–7), 1966 (the
Liber sex principiorum is a 12th-century anonymous Latin writing); Lorenzo
Minio-Paluello (edidit), De interpretatione vel Periermenias: Translatio Boethii.
Transfer of Knowledge 1378

Gérard Verbeke (1910–2001) (edidit), and Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (revi-

sit), Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka (Aristoteles Latinus, II,1–2), 1965; Lorenzo
Minio-Paluello (edidit), Analytica priora: Translatio Boethii (recensiones duae),
Translatio anonyma, Pseudo-Philoponi aliorumque Scholia (Aristoteles Latinus, III,
1–4), 1962 (reprinted with a supplement by James Shiel, 1998) (includes
an anonymous 12th-century trans. of Aristotle’s logic); Lorenzo Minio-
Paluello, and Bernard Geoffrey Dod, ed., Analytica posteriora: Translationes
Iacobi, Anonymi sive ‘Ioannis’, Gerardi et Recensio Guillelmi de Moerbeka (Aristo-
teles Latinus, IV, 1–4), 1968 (parts IV, 2 and IV, 3 were originally edited by
L. Minio-Paluello in 1953 and 1954 respectively) (contains the trans. by
Jacobus de Venetiis [floruit 1128–1136]; an anonymous 12th-century trans-
lation attributed to a certain “Ioannes”; the Arabo-Latin version by Gerard of
Cremona [below]; and the revision of Jacobus de Venetiis by William of Moer-
beke [below]); Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (edidit), and Bernard Geoffrey Dod
(adiuvante), Topica: Translatio Boethii, Fragmentum Recensionis Alterius et Translatio
Anonyma (Aristoteles Latinus, V, 1–3), 1969 (the anonymous trans. is a 12th-cen-
tury version); Bernard Geoffrey Dod (edidit), De sophisticis elenchis: Translatio
Boethii, Fragmenta Translationis Iacobi et Recensio Guillelmi de Moerbeke (Aristoteles
Latinus, VI, 1–3), 1975 (the vulgate text is by Boethius; the fragments have
been attributed to Jacobus de Venetiis [above]; William of Moerbeke revised
Boethius’ translation); Fernand Bossier (d. 2006), and Jozef Brams
(1937–2003), ed., Physica: Translatio Vetus. Auguste Mansion, Translatio Vati-
cana, 2 vols. (Aristoteles Latinus, VII, 1–2), 1990 (VII, 2 was first published in
1957) (trans. by Jacobus de Venetiis [above], and the so-called Translatio Vati-
cana, which might have had its origins in the circle of Stephen of Antioch [early
12th c.]); Joanna Judycka, ed., De generatione et corruptione: Translatio Vetus (Aris-
toteles Latinus, IX, 1), 1986 (the two versions in the same text are probably by
Burgundio of Pisa [below], who read the Greek text in manuscript Laurentianus
graecus 87.7); William Laughton Lorimer, ed., and Lorenzo Minio-
Paluello (revisit), De mundo: Translationes Bartholomaei et Nicholai (Aristoteles
Latinus, XI, 1–2), 1965 (first published by William Laughton Lorimer
(1885–1967), 1951) (two medieval translations whose chronology is unclear:
one by Bartholomeo at the court of Palermo; one by Nicholas of Sicily, who
probably helped Robert Grosseteste with his translations of Greek texts);
Pieter Beullens, and Fernand Bossier, De historia animalium: Translatio Guil-
lelmi de Morbeka, vol. 1: lib. I–V (Aristoteles Latinus, XVII, 2, I, 1), 2000; Hendrik J.
Drossaart-Lulofs (1906–1998) (edidit), De generatione animalium: Translatio
Guillelmi de Moerbeka (Aristoteles Latinus, XVII. 2. V), 1966; Gudrun Vuillemin-
Diem (edidit), Metaphysica, lib. I–IV.4: Translatio Iacobi sive ‘Vetustissima’ cum Scho-
liis et Translatio Composita sive ‘Vetus’ (Aristoteles Latinus, XXV, 1–1a), 1970 (the so-
1379 Transfer of Knowledge

called Translatio Vetustissima is ascribed to Jacobus de Venetiis [above], and the

Translatio Vetus is a revision of the former); Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem (edidit),
Metaphysica, lib. I–X, XII–XIV: Translatio Anonyma sive ‘Media’ (Aristoteles Latinus,
XXV, 2), 1976 (trans. by the same author as the Translatio Vaticana of the
Physics); Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem (edidit), Metaphysica, lib. I–XIV: Recensio et
Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, 2 vols. (Aristoteles Latinus, XXV, 3), 1995 (trans.
by William of Moerbeke [below] on the basis of manuscript Vindobonensis grae-
cus 100); René Antoine Gauthier (1913[?]–1999) (edidit), Ethica Nicomachea:
Translatio Antiquissima libr. II–III sive ‘Ethica Vetus’, Translationis Antiquioris quae
supersunt sive ‘Ethica Nova’, ‘Hoferiana’, ‘Borghesiana’, Translatio Roberti Grosseteste
Lincolniensis sive ‘Liber Ethicorum’ (Recensio Pura et Recensio Recognita), 5 vols. (Aris-
toteles Latinus, XXVI, 1–3), 1972–1974 (contains among others two early ver-
sions by Burgundio of Pisa [below] made on the basis of manuscript Laurentia-
nus graecus 81.18, and a revision of Grosseteste’s translation by William of
Moerbeke [below]); Pierre Michaud-Quantin (d. 1972), ed., Politica (libri
I–II.11): Translatio prior imperfecta interprete Guillelmo de Moerbeka (Aristoteles Lati-
nus, XXIX, 1), 1961 (first, partial trans. by William of Moerbeke, who further
revised and completed it when he came across a copy of the entire text); Bernd
Schneider, ed., Rhetorica: Translatio Anonyma sive Vetus et Translatio Guillelmi de
Moerbeka (Aristoteles Latinus, XXXI, 1–2), 1978 (the anonymous Translatio Vetus
was made by a scholar belonging to the circle of Bartholomeo of Messina, and
the most widespread trans. is by William of Moerbeke [below], who made two
chronologically distinct versions); Lorenzo Minio-Paluello (edidit), De arte
poetica: Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka (Aristoteles Latinus, XXXIII), 1968 (the
text was first ed. by Erse Valgimigli (1909–1940) with a revision by Aetio
Franceschini (1906–1983), and Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, 1953). The
volumes in the Avicenna Latinus are mentioned loco opportuno.

C. Greek into Latin

In chronological order of the processes under study, the transition from
Classical Antiquity to the late-antique World has been much investigated.
As early as 1942, the late Joseph Thomas Muckle (1887–1967) published
a first inventory of Greek works translated into Latin (“Greek Works Trans-
lated Directly into Latin before 1350. Part I: Before 1000,” Mediaeval Studies 4
[1942]: 33–42, and 5 [1943]: 102–14). Conversely, Elizabeth Fisher studied
the Greek translations of Latin works made during the 4th century (“Greek
Translations of Latin Literature in the Fourth Century A.D.,” Yale Classical
Studies 27 [1982]: 173–216.).
Several translations by Boethius have been published in the Aristoteles
Latinus (above). Also to be mentioned here, the “old” Latin translation of
Transfer of Knowledge 1380

Dioscorides, De materia medica, identified as Dioscorides Longobardus, which was

edited by Konrad Hofmann and Theodor M. Auracher, “Der Longobar-
dische Dioskorides des Marcellus Virgilius,” Romanische Forschungen 1 (1882),
49–105 (Book I); Hermann Stadler, “Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod. Lat.
Monancensis 337. Aus T. M. Aurachers Nachlass herausgegeben und er-
gänzt,” Romanische Forschungen 10 (1897), 181–247 (Book II), and 369–446
(Book III); 11 (1899), 1–121 (Book IV); Hermann Stadler, “Dioscorides
Longobardus (Cod. Lat. Monacensis 337),” Romanische Forschungen 13 (1902):
161–243 (Book V); and Id., “Dioscorides Longobardus (Cod. Lat. Monacensis
337). Index der Sachnamen und der wichtigeren Wörter,” Romanische For-
schungen 14 (1903): 601–36. Book I has been reedited by Haralambie Mi-
haescu (1907–1985), Dioscoride Latino, Materia medica, Libro primo, 1938.
Particular attention was devoted to medicine, with a first general study
in 1930 (Walter Puhlmann, “Die lateinische medizinische Literatur des
frühen Mittelalters,” Kyklos 3 [1930]: 395–416), and more specific studies
later on, especially on the Corpus Hippocraticum. Pearl Kibre (1900–1985)
listed the manucripts of its Latin translations in several issues of the journal
Traditio (“Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the
Latin Middle Ages,” Traditio 31 [1975]: 99–126; 32 [1976]: 257–92; 33 [1977]:
253–95; 34 [1978]: 193–226; 35 [1979]: 273–302; 36 [1980]: 347–72; and 37
[1981]: 267–89; 38 [1982]: 165–92; later published as a monograph under
the title Hippocrates latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic writings in the Latin Middle
Ages. Revised edition, 1985). Also more punctual studies were made, on specific
treatises (Manuel Enrique Vázquez Buján, “La antigua traducción latina
del tratado De natura humana del Corpus hippocraticum,” Revue d’Histoire des
Textes 12–13 [1982–1983]: 387–96) or on the whole corpus of Hippocratic
treatises translated into Latin (Innocenzo Mazzini, “Caratteri comuni a
tutto l’Ippocrate latino tardo-antico e considerazioni su alcuni emendamenti
al testo,” I testi di medicina latini antichi: Problemi filologici e storici, ed. Innocenzo
Mazzini, and Franca Fuso, 1985, 63–74; and, more recently: Klaus-Diet-
rich Fischer, “Zu des Hippokrates Reich gedeckter Tafel sind alle einge-
laden: Bemerkungen zu den beiden vorsalernitanischen lateinischen Apho-
rismenkommentaren,” Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter: Beiträge zu
seiner Erforschung, ed. Wilhelm Geerlings, and Christian Schulze, 2002,
275–313). Special attention was devoted to lexical issues (Manuel Enrique
Vázquez Buján, “Aspectos lexicos de los textos médicos tardolatinos: La
traducción de los ‘Aforismos’ hipocráticos y su comentario altomedieval,”
Voces 4 [1993]: 9–20), including the process of adaptation (Manuel Enrique
Vázquez Buján, “Compréhension, traduction, adaptation: De Caelius
Aurélianus aux traductions littérales du VIe siècle,” Le Latin médical …, ed.
1381 Transfer of Knowledge

Sabbah [above], 1991, 87–97), and influence on later production (Maria

Franca Buffa Giolito, “Tracce di medicina pseudoippocratica in due trat-
tati fitoterapici tardolatini: Polibo di Kos,” Koinonia 23 [1999]: 39–54).
The institutional context of early Latin translation was investigated. Al-
ready in 1932 Henning Mørland identified Ravenna as a translation center
(“Die lateinischen Oribasiusübersetzungen,” Symbolae Osloenses Suppl. 5
[1932]: 43–51). In 1958, Henry E. Sigerist (1891–1957) defined the city as a
“Western Roman Alexandria” (see “The Latin Medical Literature of the Early
Middle Ages,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 13 [1958]:
127–46; see especially 135 for the quotation), and Augusto Beccaria
studied Hippocratic and Galenic texts in relation with Ravenna (“Sulle tracce
di un antico canone latino di Ippocrate e Galeno,” Italia Medioevale e Umanis-
tica 2 [1959]: 1–56; 4 [1961]: 1–75, and 14 [1971]: 1–24). In 1981, Leendert
Gerrit Westerink (1913–1990) and Nicoletta Palmieri returned to this
question independently from each other (Leendert Gerrit Westerink et al.,
Agnellus of Ravenna, Lectures on Galen’s De sectis, 1981, and Nicoletta Palmieri,
“Un antico commento a Galeno della scuola medica di Ravenna,” Physis 23
[1981]: 197–296). Five years later, Nicoletta Palmieri and Innocenzo
Mazzini summarized the data available at that time about this supposed
school in Ravenna (Innocenzo Mazzini, and Nicoletta Palmieri, “L’école
médicale de Ravenne: Programmes et méthodes d’enseignement, langue,
hommes,” Les écoles médicales à Rome: Actes du 2e Colloque international sur les
textes médicaux latins antiques (Lausanne, septembre 1986), ed. Philippe Mudry,
and Jackie Pigeaud, 1991, 285–310). In 1989, Nicoletta Palmieri edited
the text of the ancient Latin translation of Galen, De sectis (L’antica versione
latina del ‘De sectis’ di Galeno (Pal. Lat. 1090, 1989); in 1990, Manuel Enrique
Vázquez Buján examined the commentaries on Hippocrates attributed
to the school (“El Hipócrates de los comentarios atribuidos al Círculo de
Rávena,” Tratados hipocráticos: Estudios acerca de su contenico, forma y influencia.
Actas del VIIe Colloque international hippocratique (Madrid, 24–29 septembre 1990),
ed. Jose Antonio Lopez Ferez, 1992, 675–85), and, in 1994, Nicoletta Pal-
mieri analyzed a Ravenna commentary on Galen (“Il commento latino-ra-
vennate all’Ars medica di Galeno e la tradizione alessandrina,” Tradición e inno-
vación de la medicina latina de la Antiguëdad y de la Alta Edad Media, ed. Manuel
Enrique Vázquez Buján, 1994, 57–75).
The relations between Byzantium and the West were explored in 1964 by
Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965), (“Relation between Byzantine and Western
Science and Pseudo-science before 1350,” Janus 51 [1964]: 1–48), and later
by Gerhard Baader (“Early Medieval Latin Adaptations of Byzantine Medi-
cine in Western Europe,” Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, ed. John Scar-
Transfer of Knowledge 1382

borough, 1985, 251–59). The historian Michael McCormick analyzed the

economy of early medieval Europe, particularly the exchanges between the
several polities overlooking the Mediterranean, and he proposed an inter-
pretation fairly different from the theory of rupture between East and West
proposed by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) (“Byzan-
tium and the Early Medieval West: Problems and Opportunities,” Europa
Medievale e Mondo Bizantino: Contatti effettivi e possibilità di studi comparati (Ta-
vola rotonda del XVIII Congresso del CISH – Montréal, 29 agosto 1995), ed. Girolamo
Arnaldi, and Guglielmo Cavallo, 1997, 1–17, and, more recently: Origins
of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900, 2002). A
further sign of the contacts and transfer of knowledge between the two em-
pires East and West of the Mediterranean was provided by the so-called Lor-
scher Arzneibuch (of the late 8th c.) recently rediscovered, reproduced and
edited, in which Greek medicine is present, including the new patrons of
medicine, the Saints Cosmas and Damianos (Das Lorscher Arzneibuch: Faksimile
der Handschrift Msc. Med. 1 der Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, ed. Gundolf Keil, 1989.
The volume of commentary contains an introduction and the translation of
the text by Ulrich Stoll, and Gundolf Keil, in collaboration with Albert
Ohlmeyer; see also the critical edition of the text, with a German trans-
lation, and all the necessary indices and critical apparatus: Ulrich Stoll, Das
‘Lorscher Arzneibuch’: Ein medizinisches Kompendium des 8. Jahrhunderts (Codex
Bambergensis medicinalis 1). Text, Übersetzung und Fachglossar, 1992).
Greek was not absent in the world of Charlemagne as the following works
show: Bernice M. Kaczynski, Greek in the Carolingian Age: The St. Gall Manu-
scripts (1988); and Walter Berschin, “Griechisches in der Klosterschule des
alten St. Gallen,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 84/85 (1991/1992): 329–40.

D. Oriental Languages
In the Eastern Mediterranean, exchanges with the many local populations
have been long studied. It will suffice to mention here some more recent
works: Henri Hugonnard-Roche, “Les traductions du Grec au Syriaque et
du Syriaque à l’Arabe,” Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale: Tra-
ductions et traducteurs de l’Antiquité tardive au XIVe siècle. Actes du Colloque inter-
national de Cassino 15–17 juin 1989 organisé par la Société Internationale pour
l’étude de la philosophie médiévale et l’Università degli Studi di Cassino, ed. Jacque-
line Hamesse, and Marta Fattori, 1990, 131–47; Gotthard Strohmaier,
“Der syrische und der arabische Galen,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rö-
mischen Welt, II, vol. 37/2, ed. Wolfgang Haase, 1994, 1987–2017, and Siam
Bhayro, “Syriac Medical Terminology: Sergius and Galen’s Pharmacopia,”
Aramaic Studies 3 (2005): 147–65.
1383 Transfer of Knowledge

The transfer of Greek science to the Arabic World has been the object of
a thesis by Max Meyerhof (1874–1945) according to which Greek philos-
ophy and science migrated from Alexandria to Baghdad passing through
Antiochia and Harran (“Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte des philosophischen und medizinischen Unterrichts bei den Ara-
bern,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-
historische Klasse, 1930, 389–429). The thesis has been recently reexamined:
Joep Lameer, “From Alexandria to Baghdad: Reflections on the Genesis of
a Problematical Tradition,” The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hel-
lenism: Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences, dedicated to
H. J. Drossaart Lulofs on his ninetieth Birthday, ed. Gerhard Endress, and Remke
Kruk, 1997, 181–91. Also the supposed existence of an academy in Gon-
dishapur (see Heinz Herbert Schöfler (1921–2003), Die Akademie von Gon-
dishapur: Aristoteles auf dem Wege in den Orient 1979, and Id., “Zur Frühzeit von
Gondischapur,” Gêlerter der arzeniê, ouch apotêker: Beiträge zur Wissenschafts-
geschichte. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Willem F. Daems, ed. Gundolf Keil,
1982, 35–50) has been revised and might result from an incorrect inter-
pretation of textual evidence (see Vivian Nutton, “Jundîshâbûr,” À l’ombre
d’Avicenne: La médecine au temps des califes. Exposition présentée du 18 novembre 1996
au 2 mars 1997, Institut du monde arabe, 1997, 22).
Much literature has been devoted to the translation of Greek science and
philosophy into Arabic. The list of manuscripts containing Arabic translations
of treatises from the Corpus Hippocraticum, and of Galen provided by Diels
(above) has been revised for Istanbul by Helmut Ritter (1892–1971), and Ri-
chard Walzer, Arabische Übersetzungen griechischer Ärzte in Stambuler Bibliotheken,
1934. The primary sources for science have been listed, together with their
manuscripts in Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 3: Medizin,
Pharmazie, Zoologie, Thierheilkunde bis ca. 430 H., 1970, and vol. 4: Alchimie, Che-
mie, Botanik, Agrikultur bis ca. 430 H., 1971; also: Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin
im Islam, 1970, and Id., Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, 1972.
Among the many analyses of this transfer of knowledge, Dimitri Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad
and Early cAbbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries), 1998, stressed the Persian
component in the rise of Arabic culture, whereas Gotthard Strohmaier,
“La ricezione e la tradizione: La medicina nel mondo bizantino e arabo,” Sto-
ria del pensiero medico occidentale, ed. Mirko D. Grmek (1924–2000), vol. 1: Anti-
chità e medioevo, 1993, 167–215 (English trans.: “Reception and Tradition:
Medicine in the Byzantine and Arab World,” Western Medical Thought from An-
tiquity to the Middle Ages, ed. Mirko D. Grmek, 1998, 139–69), characterizes
both Byzantine and Arabic science as lacking originality. More recently,
Transfer of Knowledge 1384

George Saliba opposed what he called the traditional narrative about the rise of
Arabic science, and proposed a new reading of the development of the trans-
lation activity, in which the desire to secure a job – or to keep it in a time when
it was threatened by a change in the administration – was an important factor
(Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, 2007). The culture re-
sulting from this movement of transfer of knowledge had a textual character
that was fundamentally Greek (Alain Touwaide, “Le paradigme culturel et
épistémologique grec dans la science arabe à la lumière de l’histoire de la ma-
tière médicale,” REMMM 77–78 [1995]: 247–73) and this Greek imprint con-
tributed to the self-identity of the Arabic empire until late (Id., “Persistance
de l’hellénisme à Baghdad au début du XIIIeme siècle: Le manuscrit Ayasofia
3703 et la Renaissance Abbasside,” Erytheia 18 [1997]: 49–74).
Many Arabic (or Hebrew) translations of Greek scientific texts have been
published, principally in the Arabic Technical and Scientific Texts series, the
Supplementum Orientale of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, and the Aristoteles
Semitico-latinus (including the edition of a work originally written in Greek
[Galen, On my Own Opinions] in which all the current known fragments of the
so-called Oriental translations of the text are included, whereas the Greek
original text has not been entirely preserved) (works below are listed in chro-
nological order of publication; title of series [if any] is included for clarity;
titles here reproduce actual titles in the volumes as they clearly indicate the
work performed by the author[s]): Malcolm C. Lyons, Galeni in Hippocratis De
officina medici commentariorum versionem arabicam, quod exstat, ex codice Scorial-
iensi et excerpta, quae ‘Ali ibn Ridwan ex eis sumpsit, ex codice Cantabrigensi edidit et
in linguam Anglicam vertit (Corpus medicorum graecorum, Supplementum orientale,
1), 1963; Malcolm C. Lyons, Kitab tadbir al-amrad al-hadda li-buqrat (Hippo-
crates, Regimen in Acute Diseases). Edited and Translated with Introductions, Notes
and Glossary (Arabic Technical and Scientific Texts, 1), 1966; John Nicolas Mat-
tock, Maqala tashtamil ‘ala fusul min kitab al-hayawan li-Aristu (Tract Comprising
Excerpts from Aristotle’s Book of Animals), Attributed to Musa b.‘Ubaid Allah al-Qur-
tubi al-Isra’ili. Edited and Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary (Arabic
Technical and Scientific Texts, 2), 1967; John Nicolas Mattock, Kitab buqrat fi
habl ’ala habl (Hippocrates, On superfoetation). Edited and Translated with Introduc-
tion, Notes, and Glossary. Malcolm C. Lyons, Kitab buqrat al-ma’ruf biqatitriun
ay hanut al-tabib (Hippocrates, In the Surgery). Edited and Translated with Intro-
duction, Notes and Glossary (Arabic Technical and Scientific Texts, 3), 1968; John
Nicolas Mattock, and Malcolm C. Lyons, Kitab buqrat fi tabi‘at al-insan
(On the Nature of Man). Edited and Translated, with Introduction, Notes and Gloss-
ary (Arabic Technical and Scientific Texts, 4), 1968; John Nicolas Mattock,
and Malcolm C. Lyons, Kitab buqrat fi’l-amrad al-biladiyya. Hippocrates, On
1385 Transfer of Knowledge

Endemic Diseases (Airs, Waters and Places). Edited and Translated with Introduction,
Notes and Glossary (Arabic Technical and Scientific Texts, 5), 1969; Galen, On the
Parts of Medicine; On Cohesive Causes; On Regimen in Acute Diseases with the Theories
of Hippocrates. First Edition of the Arabic Versions by Malcolm C. Lyons;
the Latin Versions of On the Parts of Medicine edited by Hermann Schoene,
and On Cohesive Causes edited by Karl Kalbfleisch (1868–1921), reedited by
Juta Kollesch, Diethard Nickel, and Gotthard Strohmaier (Corpus medi-
corum graecorum, Supplementum orientale, 2), 1969; Gotthard Strohmaier,
Galen, Über die Verschiedenheit der homoiomeren Körperteile in arabischer Überset-
zung, zum erstenmal herausgegeben, übersetzt und erläutert (Corpus medicorum graeco-
rum, Supplementum orientale, 3), 1970; John Nicolas Mattock, Kitab Buqrat
fi’l-akhlat (Hippocrates, On Humours); and Kitab al-ghidha’ li-Buqrat (Hipocrates, On
Nutriment). Edited and Translated with Introduction, Notes and Glossary (Arabic
Technical and Scientific Texts, 6), 1971; Malcolm C. Lyons, An Arabic Trans-
lation of Themistius Commentary on Aristoteles De anima (Oriental Studies, 2), 1973;
Hans Daiber, Ein Kompendium der aristotelischen Meteorologie in der Fassung
des Hunain Ibn Ishaq (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, Prolegomena et Parerga, 1),
1975; Malcolm C. Lyons, and John Nicolas Mattock, Kitab al-ajinna
li-Buqrat. Hippocrates, On Embyros (On Sperm and On the Nature of the Child).
Edited and Translated with Introduction, Commentry and Glossary (Arabic Technical
and Scientific Texts, 7), 1978; Remke Kruk, The Arabic Version of Aristotle’s Pars of
Animals, Book XI–XIV of the Kitab al-Hayawan. A Critical Edition with Introduction
and Selected Glossary (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus), 1978; Malcolm C. Lyons,
Aristotle’s Ars rhetorica. The Arabic Version. A New Edition with Commentary and
Glossary, 2 vols., 1982; Albert Z. Iskandar, Galen, On Examinations by which
the Best Physicians are Recognized. Edition of the Arabic Version with English Trans-
lation and Commentary (Corpus medicorum graecorum, Supplementum orientale,
4), 1988; Hendrik J. Drossart Lulofs, and E. L. J. Poortman, Nicolaus
Damascenus “De plantis”. Five Translations (Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus) 1989;
Gerrit Bos, Aristotle’s De anima Translated into Hebrew by Zerahyah ben Isaac
ben Shealtiel Hen. A Critical Edition with an Introduction & Index (Aristoteles Se-
mitico-latinus, 6), 1994; Paul Lettinck, Aristotle’s Physics and its Reception in the
Arabic World, with an Edition of the Unpublished Parts of Ibn Bajia’s Commentary on
the Physics (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, 7), 1994; Resiane Fontaine, Otot ha-
Shamayim Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Version of Aristotles’ Meteorology. A Critical
Edition, with Introduction, Translation, & Index (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, 8),
1995; Rüdiger Arnzen, Aristotle’s De anima: Eine verlorene spätantike Paraphrase
in arabischer & persischer Überlieferung. Arabischer Text nebst Kommentar, quellenge-
schichtlichen Studien & Glossaren, 1997; Vivian Nutton, Galen, On my Own
Opinions (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V, 3, 2), 1999; Paul Lettinck, Aristotle’s
Transfer of Knowledge 1386

Meteorology and its Reception in the Arab World. With an Edition and Translation of
Ibn Suwar’s Treatise on Meteorological Phenomena and Ibn Bajja’s Commentary on the
Meteorology, 1999; Lou S. Filius, The Problemata Physica Attributed to Aristotle.
The Arabic Version of Hunain ibn Ishaq and the Hebrew Version of Moses ibn Tibbon,
1999; Hidemi Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Buty-
rum sapientiae, Books of Mineralogy and Meteorology, 2004; N. Peter Joosse, A Sy-
riac Encyclopaedia of Aristotelian Philosophy. Barhebraeus (13th c.), Butyrum sapien-
tiae, Books of Ethics, Economy, and Politics. A critical Edition, with Introduction,
Translation, Commentary, and Glossaries (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, 16), 2004;
Anna A. Akasoy, and Alexander Fidora, The Arabic Version of the Nicomachean
Ethics. Edited, with an introduction and annotated translation by Douglas M.
Dunlop, 2005; John W. Watt with assistance of Daniel Isaac, Julian
faultless, and Ayman Shihadeh, Aristotelian Rhetoric in Syriac: Barhebraeus,
Butyrum sapientiae, Book of Rhetoric, 2005.
A much studied question is the so-called Alexandrian Summary, that is,
the summary of Galenic medicine made in late-antique Alexandria, which
is known only through Arabic sources. An important study was Albert Z.
Iskandar, “An Attempted Reconstruction of the Late Alexandrian Curricu-
lum” Medical History 20 (1976): 235–58, and the most recent approach is by
Peter E. Pormann, “The Alexandrian Summary (Jawamic) of Galen’s On
the Sects for Beginners: Commentary or Abridgment?” Philosophy, Science and
Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, ed. Peter Adamson, Han Bal-
tussen, and Martin W. F. Stone, 2 vols., 2004, vol. 2, 11–33.

E. Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus is a special case in the medieval process of transfer of knowledge,
as it received material from both the Eastern part of the Arabic empire and
from Byzantium. The Andalusian botanical tradition dates back to the early
time of the Arabo-islamic presence in the peninsula, which included the
transfer and naturalization of Eastern plants. Also, in the 10th century, local
scientists who had received the Arabic translation(s) of Dioscorides, De ma-
teria medica, made in Baghdad in the 9th century, as well as a Greek manu-
script offered to the Sultan by a Byzantine emperor not necessarily well
identified, worked in collaboration with a Byzantine in order to improve the
Arabic text (on this, see Juan Vernet, La cultura hispanoárabe en Oriente y Occi-
dente, 1978 [French translation referred to here: Ce que la culture doit aux Arabes
d’Espagne, 1985, 81–85], and, more recently, Julio Samsó, Las ciencias de los
antiguos en Al-Andalus, 1992, 20–22 and 110–16).
Among the abundant scientific publications on the topic of Andalusian
Arabic transfer of knowledge and culture, we shall cite only the following
1387 Transfer of Knowledge

titles here as we shall return below to the translation from Arabic to Latin. For
a synthesis on Andalusian Arabic culture, there has been: The legacy of Muslim
Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 2 vols., 1994. For the several populations
in the Iberian Peninsula and the processes of interaction between them, see
(in chronological order of publication): Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths, and Mus-
lims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict, 1994, and, more recently: María
Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Cre-
ated a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2002. For medicine, specifically, see
the many publications by Luis García Ballester (1936–2000) some of
which have been gathered in the following volume: Luis García-Bal-
lester, Medicine in a Multicultural Society: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Practi-
tioners in the Spanish Kingdoms, 1222–1610, 2001. Particularly significant, for
example: Luis García-Ballester , and Concepción Vazquez de Benito,
“Los médicos judios castellanos del siglo XIV y el Galenismo árabe: El Kitab al-
tibb al-astali al-maluki (Libro de medicina castellana regia) (c. 1312),” Dynamis 42
(1990): 119–147, and Luis García-Ballester, “The Circulation and Use of
Medical Manuscripts in Arabic in 16th Century Spain,” Journal for the History of
Arabic Science 3 (1979): 183–199. For a more philologically oriented analysis,
see Concepción García-Ballester, and Maria Teresa Herrera, Los arabis-
mos de los textos médicos latinos y castellanos de la Edad Media y de la Modernidad,
1989.

F. From Arabic to Greek

As I have mentioned, a reverse process of transfer of knowledge took place
from the Arabic world to Byzantium. The circumstances, motivations, and
actors differed according to the places and periods. In Sicily, it resulted from
the multi-ethnic nature of the population as the examples of alphabet
transfer from on language to another suggests. For a case, see the recent con-
tribution by Barbara Zipser, “Griechische Schrift, arabische Sprache und
graeco-arabische Medizin: Ein neues Fragment aus dem mittelalterlichen
Sizilien,” Mediterranean Language Review 15 (2003/2004): 154–66. On the
Greek translation of ibn al-Jazzâr, zâd al musâfir wa qût al hâdir, which was
most probably made in Sicily or in the South of the mainland, see, in addition
to the literature above: Charles Daremberg (1817–1872), and Charles-
Emille Ruelle (1833–1912), Oeuvres de Rufus d’Ephèse: Texte collationné sur les
manuscrits, traduit pour la première fois en français, 1879, 582–96, and, more
recently, for the manuscripts of Italian provenance: Anna Maria Ieraci Bio,
“La trasmissione della letteratura medica greca nell’Italia meridionale fra X e
XV secolo,”Contributi alla cultura greca nell’Italia meridionale I, ed. Antonio
Garzya, 1989, 133–257 (see especially 221–23).
Transfer of Knowledge 1388

In the Byzantine Empire, theology was the field in which the transfer
of knowledge from the Arabo-islamic world was most important. It has
been constantly present in Western theological literature after the Fall of
Constantinople from, for example, the Letter to Muhammad by pope Pius II
(1405–1464) (Aeneaus Sylvius Piccolomini) (the Letter was printed as early as
1470 and critically edited several times; see recently: Reinhold F. Glei, and
Markus Köher, in collaboration with Beate Kobush, Pius II. Papa, Epistola ad
Mahumetem: Einleitung, kritische Edition, Übersetzung, 2001) to the major syn-
theses by Adel-Théodore Khoury, Der theologische Streit der Byzantiner mit dem
Islam, 1969; Id., Les théologiens byzantins et l’Islam: Textes et auteurs (VIIIe–
XIIIe s.), 1969, and Polémique byzantine contre l’Islam (VIIIe–XIIIe s.), 1972. In the
sciences, the German historian of medicine Georg Harig (1935–1989)
studied in 1967 the Arabic sources of the treatise on the dietetic properties of
food (De alimentorum facultatibus) by the 11th-century Byzantine physician
Symeon Seth: Georg Harig, “Von den arabischen Quellen des Simeon Seth,”
Medizinhistorisches Journal 2 (1967): 248–68. More recently, a first survey of the
Arabic medical literature in Byzantium was made by Alain Touwaide,
Medicinalia Arabo-Byzantina, vol. 1: Manuscrits et textes, 1997, with a first
attempt for a synthesis in Id., “Arabic Medicine in Greek Translation:
A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic
Medicine 1 (2002): 45–53. More specifically on botany, see recently Id., “The
Jujube-Tree in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Case Study in the Methodology
of Textual Archaeobotany,” Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed.
Peter Dendle, and Alain Touwaide, 2008, 72–100; on materia medica: Id.
“Un manuscrit athonite du Traité de matière médicale de Dioscoride: L’Athous
Magnae Laurae  75,” Scriptorium 45 (1991): 122–27; and Id., “Arabic Materia
Medica in Byzantium during the 11th Century A.D. and the Problems of
Transfer of Knowledge in Medieval Science, Science and Technology in the Islamic
World,” ed. S. M. Razaullah Ansari, 2002, 223–47; for urology, see Id.,
“Arabic Urology in Byzantium,” The History of Nephrology New Series, vol. 1,
ed. Natale G. De Santo, Luigi Iorio, Spyros G. marketos, Shaul G.
Massry, and Garabed Eknoyan, 2004, 167–73 (the works by Mario Lam-
agna, “La recensio amplior inedita del De urinis di Avicenna,” Trasmissione e
ecdotica dei testi medici greci: Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale, Parigi 17–19 maggio
2001, ed. Antonio Garzya, and Jacques Jouanna, 2003, 271–80, and “La re-
censio amplior del De urinis di Avicenna: Lo stato della tradizione manos-
critta,” Ecdotica e ricezione dei testi medici greci: Atti del V Convegno Internazionale
Napoli, 1–2 ottobre, ed. Véronique Boudon-Millot, Antonio Garzya, Jac-
ques Jouanna, and Amneris Roselli, 2006, 321–44, are of a strictly philo-
logical nature and are interested only in the Greek text [without comparing it
1389 Transfer of Knowledge

to the Arabic original] and its manuscript tradition; they are not interested in
the process of transfer of knowledge and do not provide any material for such
a study of the text under study). Finally, on Sicily – most probably Palermo – ,
see Alain Touwaide, “Magna Graecia iterata: Greek medicine in Southern
Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries,” Medicina in Magna Graecia: The Roots of our
Knowledge, ed. Alfredo Musajo Somma, 2004, 85–101; Id., “Medicina Bi-
zantina e Araba alla Corte di Palermo,” Medicina, Scienza e Politica al Tempo di
Federico II: Conferenza Internazionale, Castello Utveggio, Palermo, 4–5 ottobre 2007,
ed. Natale Gaspare De Santo, and Guido Bellinghieri, 2008, 39–55.
The sector of scientific activity in Byzantium in which the transfer of
knowledge has been most studied recently is astronomy. As I have men-
tioned above, Joseph Mogenet made ground-breaking work. He was followed
by Paul Kunitzsch, “Das Fixsternverzeichnis in der “Persischen Syntaxis”
des Georgios Chrysokokkes,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 57 (1964): 382–411;
David Pingree (1933–2005), The Astronomical Work of Gregory Chioniades,
vol. 1 (in two parts): The Zij al-‘Ala’i, 1985–1986, and particularly Anne Tihon,
who published several essays on this specific topic: Anne Tihon, “Les tables
astronomiques persanes à Constantinople dans la première moitié du XIVe
siècle,” Byzantion 57 (1987): 471–87; Ead., “Tables islamiques à Byzance,”
Organon 24 (1988), 89–108; Ead., “Sur l’identité de l’astronome Alim,”
Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 39 (1989): 3–21; Ead., “Les textes
astronomiques arabes importés à Byzance aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” Occident et
Proche-Orient: Contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades. Actes du colloque de Lou-
vain-la-Neuve, 24 et 25 mars, ed. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon, and Bau-
douin Van Den Abeele, 2000, 313–24; and Ead., “Un texte byzantin inédit
sur une horloge persane,” Festschrift für den Arabisten Paul Kunitzsch zum 70. Ge-
burtstag, ed. Menso Folkerts, and Richard Lorch, 2000, 523–35 (many of
her works above are reproduced in Anne Tihon, Études d’astronomie byzantine,
1994). See also Anne Tihon, Régine Leurquin, and Claudy Scheuren,
La version grecque du Traité sur l’astrolabe du Pseudo-Messahalla, 1998.
In the field of mathematics, see for example André Allard, “Le premier
traité byzantin de calcul indien: Classement des manuscrits et édition
critique du texte,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 7 (1977): 57–107, and Paul
Kunitzsch, Astronomy and Mathematics in the Medieval Arab and Western
Worlds, 2004, which reproduces several studies by the author on topics re-
lated to transfer of knowledge in the field of astronomy and mathematics.
Of interest also here, the Byzantine translation of the Book of Dream in-
terpretation by Achmet, whose Greek text was editied by Franciscus Drexl,
Achmetis Oneirocriticon, 1925, and has been translated into German by Karl
Brackertz, Der Traumbuch des Achmet ben Sirin. Übersetzt und erläutert, 1986,
Transfer of Knowledge 1390

and into English by Steven M. Oberhelman, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet:

A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams, 1991. A study
was made by Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The
Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, 2002

G. Arabic to Latin
Transfer of knowledge from the Arabic world was mostly done toward the
Medieval West. The relations between the Arabic and Medieval worlds is too
vast a question to be specifically dealt with here. Nevertheless, in addition to
the rupture theory of the Mediterranean by Pirenne, we need to mention
Braudel’s work (Fernand Braudel [1902–1985]) or the recent revision of
Pirenne’s thesis on the economy, trade, and circulation in the Mediterranean
by McCormick, Origins of the European Economy … (above). We can also men-
tion Claude Dahen, “Commercial Relations Between the Near East and
Western Europe from the VIIth to the XIth Century,” Islam and the Medieval
West: Aspects of Intercultural Relations. Papers Presented at the Ninth Annual Confer-
ence of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New
York at Binghamton, ed. Khalil I. Semaan, 1980, 1–25, and, more recently and
of a broader scope (in chronological order of publication): Aslauddin Samar-
rai, “Arabs and Latins in the Middle Ages: Enemies, Partners, and Scholars,”
Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Perception of Other, ed.
David R. Blanks, and Michael Frassetto, 1999, 137–45; Christopher J.
Walker, Islam and the West: A Dissonant Harmony of Civilisations, 2005, and
Stephen O’Shea, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterra-
nean World, 2006.
The question of the relations between the West and the Arabo-Islamic
world needs to be framed in a wider context, and not necessarily bipolarized.
Such a broader study is Patricia Skinner, Health & Medicine in Early Medieval
Southern, 1997, which considers the multiple elements – among others the
several linguistic groups – that were involved in the transmission of classical
medicine in Southern Italy. Among the phenomena that contributed to the
transfer of knowledge, there were the embassies (Telemachos C. Lounghis,
“Die byzantinischen Gesandten als Vermittler materieller Kultur vom 5. bis
ins 11. Jahrhundert,” Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten: Kongressakten
des 4. Symposions des Mediävistenverbandes in Köln 1991 aus Anlass des 1000. Todes-
jahers der Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. Odilo Engels, and Peter Schreiner, 1993,
49–67), travels (Krijnie N. Cigaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The
West & Byzantium, 962–1204, 1996), and the Crusades (for example, East and
West in the Crusader States: Context-Contacts-Confrontations, II. Acts of the congress
held at Hernen Castle in May 1997, ed. Krijnie Ciggaar, and Herman Teule,
1391 Transfer of Knowledge

1999; Sophia Menache, “The Crusades and their Impact on the Develop-
ment of Medieval Communication,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzi-
dent, Alltag und Sachkultur: Internationaler Kongress Krems an der Donau, 6–9 Ok-
tober 1992, ed. Helmut Hundsbichler, 1994, 69–90), and, following the
Crusades, the long-term presence of foreign groups in the East (for example,
the Venetians on whom see recently Eric R. Dursteller, Venetians in Con-
stantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean,
2006). Politics played also an important role in the transfer of knowledge as
the case of Frederick II von Hohenstaufen (1194–1250) shows. Among the
many studies on him and the process of transfer of culture, see Le scienze alla
corte di Federico II, 1994; Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II, ed. William
Tronzo, 1994; and Federico II e le nuove culture: Atti del XXXI Convegno storico in-
ternazionale, Todi, 9–12 ottobre 1994, 1995.
For the religious and cultural components of transfer of knowledge, see
the studies on the knowledge of Islam and the Coran in the West by Marie-
Thérèse d’Alverny (1903–1991), “Deux traductions latines du Coran au
Moyen Age,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 16 (1948):
69–131 (reproduced in Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, La connaissance de l’Islam
dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Charles Burnett, 1994, no. I); Ead., “La con-
naissance de l’Islam en Occident du IXe au milieu du XIIe siècle,” Settimane di
studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioeveo, 12: L’occidente e l’Islam nell’alto
medioevo, Spoleto, 2–8 aprile 1964, 1965, vol. 2, 577–602 (reproduced in Ead., La
Connaissance de l’Islam … [above], no. V); and Ead., “La connaissance de
l’Islam au temps de saint Louis,” Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis:
Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Pais, 21–27 mai, 1970, 1976, 235–46 (repro-
duced in Ead. , La connaissance de l’Islam …, VI). More recently, see Thomas E.
Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560, 2007. For philoso-
phy, the two major scholars were Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny (some of her
numerous contributions were collected in the volume Avicenne en Occident,
1993) and Simone Van Riet (1919–1993), the major author of the Avicenna
Latinus (for the several volumes, see [I reproduce the actual titles of the several
volumes in their original language, as they clearly indicate the work done by
the possible several authors]: Avicenna Latinus: Codices. Codices descripsit
Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny. Addenda collegerunt Simone Van Riet et
Pierre Jodogne [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 9], 1994, and the following editions
[chronological order of publication]: Simone Van Riet, Avicenna Latinus.
Liber de Anima seu Sextus de Naturalibus. Edition critique de la traduction latine
médiévale. Introduction sur la doctrine psychologique d’Avicenne par Gé-
rard Verbeke, Partes I–III [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 1], 1972; Ead., Avicenna Lati-
nus. Liber de Anima seu Sextus de Naturalibus. Edition critique de la traduction
Transfer of Knowledge 1392

latine médiévale. Introduction sur la doctrine psychologique d’Avicenne par

Gérard Verbeke, Partes IV–V [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 2], 1968; Ead., Avicenna
Latinus: Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina. Edition critique de la tra-
duction latine médiévale. Introduction doctrinale par Gérard Verbeke,
Tractatus V–X [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 4], 1980; Ead., Avicenna Latinus. Liber de
philosophia prima sive scientia divina. Edition critique de la traduction latine
médiévale. Introduction doctrinale par Gérard Verbeke, Tractatus I–X
[Avicenna Latinus, 1, 5], 1983; Ead., Avicenna latinus. Liber tertius naturalium de
generatione et corruptione. Edition critique de la traduction latine médiévale.
Introduction doctrinale par Gérard Verbeke [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 6], 1987;
Ead., Avicenna Latinus. Liber quartus naturalium de actionibus et passionibus quali-
tatum primarum. Edition critique de la traduction latine médiévale et le-
xiques. Introduction doctrinale par Gérard Verbeke [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 7],
1989; Ead., Avicenna Latinus. Liber primus naturalium de causis et principiis natu-
ralium. Edition critique de la traduction latine médiévale. Introduction doc-
trinale par Gérard Verbeke [Avicenna Latinus, 1, 8], 1992; Simone Van Riet,
Jules Janssens, André Allard, Avicenna Latinus, Liber primus naturalium.
Tractatus secundus de motu et de consimilibus. Edition critique. Introduction doc-
trinale par Gérard Verbeke [Avicenna latinus, 1, 10], 2006.
The most studied field has been science. A synthesis was proposed by Der-
rick Melville Dunlop (1902–1980), Arabic Science in the West, 1958; see also
Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Translations and Translators,” Renaissance and
Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson (1925–1996), and Giles
Constable, 1982, 421–62. For specific programs, see the series Aristoteles
Semitico-latinus of which I have mentioned above the volumes on the trans-
lation from Greek into Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew. Others contain editions
from Arabic into Latin (chronological order of publication; exact reproduction
of the actual titles [above]): Aafke M. I. Van Oppenraaij, Aristotle, De animal-
ibus. Michael Scot’s Arabic-Latin translation, 3 vols. (Aristoteles Semitico-latinus, 5),
1992–1998; Pieter L. Schoonheim, Aristotle’s Meteorology in the Arabo-Latin
tradition. Critical Edition of the Texts, with Introduction and Indices (Aristoteles Semiti-
co-latinus, 12), 2000; E. L. J. Poortman, Petrus de Alvernia, Sententia super librum
‘De vegetabilibus et plantis’, 2003; Oliver Gutman, Pseudo-Avicenna, Liber Celi et
Mundi. A Critical Edition with Introduction, 2003. Among the many other fields
and works, one could mention here mathematics and, among others: Menso
Folkerts, “Arabische Mathematik im Abendland unter besonderer Berück-
sichtigung der Euklid-Tradition,” Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten …,
ed. Engels and Schreiner (above), 319–31; or, more recently: Roshdi
Rashed, “Fibonacci et les mathématiques arabes,” Le scienze alla corte di Federico
II (above), 145–60; astronomy and such work as David A. King, “Astronomical
1393 Transfer of Knowledge

Instruments between East and West,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzi-
dent …, ed. Hundsbichler (above), 143–51; or agriculture and the analysis
by Andrew M. Watson, “The Imperfect Transmission of Arab Agriculture
into Christian Europe,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzident …, ed.
Hundsbichler (above), 199–212. See also below, on the major translators.
Medicine has probably been more studied than any other field of science,
and the supposed school of Salerno has been considered as a major factor in
the process of transfer of knowledge from the Arabic world to the West. Trans-
lation activity in the area may have continued the practice of trans-
cultural contact in the multi-ethnic society present in Southern Italy, on
the mainland as well as in Sicily, as the activity of bishop Salerno Alfanus of
Salerno (d. 1085) (on whom see Anselmo Lentini, “Alfano,” Dizionario Bio-
grafico degli Italiani, vol. 2 [1960], 253–57) may suggest (for his translation of
Nemesius from the Greek, see Carolus Burkhard, Alfanus, Nemesii Episcopi
Premnon Physicon Peri fuseôs anthrôpou liber a N. Alfano achiepiscopo Salerni in Lati-
num translatus, 1917; for the Greek text of Nemesius, see Moreno Morani,
Nemesius, De natura hominis, 1987). In spite of this, the starting of the trans-
lation activity from Arabic into Latin in the West has often been – and still is –
attributed to Constantine known as the African (d. before 1098/99). For his bi-
ography, see the elements recently brought to light and/or summarized by
Raphaela Veit, “Quellen zu Leben und Werk von Constantine the Africa,”
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 59 (2003): 121–52, and Monica H.
Green, “Constantine the African,” Medieval Science …, ed. Glick, Livesey,
and Wallis (above), 145–47. Whereas Constantine has always been con-
sidered to have been interested in Arabic medicine in itself, Danielle Jac-
quart, “Le sens donné par Constantin l’Africain à son oeuvre: Les chapitres
introductifs en arabe et en latin,” Constantine the African and cAli ibn al-cAbbas al-
Magusi: The Pantegni and Related Texts, ed. Charles Burnett, and Danielle Jac-
quart, 1994, 71–98, has shown that he was actually interested in recovering
Greek medicine through its Arabic translations. The chapter On fever from
Constantine’s Viaticum was edited in 1749 by Johannes Stephanus Bernard
(above). More recently, some of his works have been edited and/or translated
(in chronological order of publication): Marco Tullio Malato, and Umberto
De martini, L’arte universale della medicina, Pantegni, parte I, libro I: Traduzione
italiana e commento, 1961; Eugenio Fontana, Il libro delle urine di Isacco l’Ebreo
tradotto dall’arabo in latino da Costantino Africano: Testo latino e traduzione italiana,
1966; Karl Garbers, Maqala fi l-malihuliya (Abhandlung über die Melancholie),
Ishaq ibn ‘Imran und Constantini Africani libri duo de melancholia: Vergleichende kri-
tische arabisch-lateinische Parallelausgabe, deutsche Übersetzung des arabischen Textes,
ausführliche Einleitung und arabischer wie lateinischer drogenkundlicher Apparat,
Transfer of Knowledge 1394

1977. For 20th-century analyses of Constantine’s activity, see for example

(chronological order of publication): Karl Sudhoff (1853–1938), “Die medi-
zinischen Schriften, welche Bischof Bruno von Hildesheim 1161 in seiner
Bibliothek besaß, und die Bedeutung des Konstantin von Afrika im 12. Jahr-
hundert,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 9 (1916): 13–198; Charles Singer
(1876–1960), “A Legend of Salerno: How Constantin the African brought the
Art of Medicine to the Christians,” Johns Hopkins Bulletin 28 (1917): 64–69;
Rudolf Creutz, “Der Arzt Constantinus Africanus von Monte Cassino,” Stu-
dien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens 47 (1929): 1–44; Her-
mann Lehmann, “Die Arbeitsweise des Constantinus Afrikanus und des Jo-
hannes Afflacius im Verhältnis zueinander,” Archeion 12 (1930): 272–81; Karl
Sudhoff, “Konstantin der Afrikaner und die Medizinschule von Salerno,”
Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 23 (1930): 113–98; Hermann Lehmann. “Zu
Constantinus Africanus,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 24 (1931): 263–68;
Rudolf Creutz, “Addimenta zu Constantinus Africanus und seinen Schü-
lern Johannes und Atto,” Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-
ordens 50 (1932): 420–42; Karl Sudhoff, “Constantin, der erste Vermittler
muslimischer Wissenschaft ins Abendland und die beiden Salernitaner
Frühscholastiker Maurus und Urso, als Exponenten dieser Vermittlung,”
Archeion 14 (1932): 359–69; Boubaker Ben Yahia, “Les origines arabes du
De melancholia de Constantin l’Africain,” Revue d’histoire des sciences 7 (1954):
156–62; Gerhard Baader, “Zur Terminologie des Constantinus Africanus,”
Medizinhistorisches Journal 2 (1967): 36–53; and, more recently, the contribu-
tions to the volume Constantine the African … , ed. Burnett, and Jacquart
(above); Raphaela Veit, “Al-Magusi’s Kitab al-Malaki and its Latin Translation
ascribed to Constantine the African: The Reconstruction of Pantegni, Practica,
Liber III,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 16 (2006): 133–68.
The process of transfer of medicine from the Arabic to the Latin world
has been analyzed in detail by Heinrich Schipperges (1918–2003) in three
publications (in chronological order of publication): “Die frühen Übersetzer
der arabischen Medizin in chronologischer Sicht,” Sudhoffs Archiv 39 (1955):
53–93; Die Assimilation der arabischen Medizin durch das lateinische Mittelalter,
1964; Arabische Medizin im lateinischer Mittelalter, 1976; and, more recently, by
Danielle Jacquart, and Françoise Micheau, La médecine arabe et l’occident
médiéval, 1990.
For some works translated from Arabic into Latin, see Arnaldi de Villa-
nova, Opera medica omnia, vol. 2: Aphorismi de gradibus, ed. and transl. Michael
McVaugh 1975; Ulrike Heuken, Der achte, neunte und zehnte Abschnitt des
Antidotarium Mesuë in der Druckfassung Venedig 1561 (Trochisci, Pulver, Suffuf, Pil-
len): Übersetzung, Kommentar und Nachdruck der Textfassung von 1561. Mit einem
1395 Transfer of Knowledge

Geleitwort von Rudolf Schmitz (1918–1992), 1990; and Raphaela Veit, Das
Buch der Fieber des Isaac Israeli und seine Bedeutung im lateinischen Westen: Ein Bei-
trag zur Rezeption arabischer Wissenschaft im Abendland, 2003.
For some aspects of the transfer of knowledge from the Arabic world to
the West, see, for instance (alphabetic order of topics): (etiology) Danielle
Jacquart, “The Introduction of Arabic Medicine into the West: The Ques-
tion of Etiology,” Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Sheila
Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner, 1991, 186–95; (pharmacol-
ogy) Albert Dietrich (1913–2001), “Islamic Sciences and the Medieval
West: Pharmacology,” Islam and the Medieval West: Aspects of Intercultural Re-
lations. Papers Presented at the Ninth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and
Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, ed. Khalil I.
Semaan, 1980, 50–63; (pharmacy) Peter Dilg, “Arabische Pharmazie im
lateinischer Mittelalter,” Die Begegnung des Westens mit dem Osten …, ed. En-
gels, and Schreiner (above), 299–317; (surgery) Friedrun R. Hau, “Die
Chirurgie und ihre Istrumente in Orient und Okzident vom 10. bis 16. Jahr-
hundert,” Kommunikation zwischen Orient und Okzident …, ed. Hunds-
bichler (above), 307–31.

H. Schools and Translators

For the several schools and translators, see, for Palermo, Roshdi Rashed, “Les
traducteurs,” Palerme 1070–1492: Mosaïque de peuples, nation rebelle. La naissance
violente de l’identité, ed. Henri Bresc, and Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, 1993,
110–19. For Michael Scot (ca. 1175–ca. 1234), see Lynn Thorndike, Michael
Scot, 1965; Charles Burnett, “Michael Scot and the Transmission of the
Scientific Culture from Toledo to Bologna via the Court of Frederick II
Hohenstaufen,” Le scienze alla corte di Federico II (above), 101–26; Danielle
Jacquart, “La physiognomie à l’époque de Frédéric II: Le traité de Michel
Scot,” Ibid., 19–37. For Toledo, see Charles S. F. Burnett, “The Institu-
tional Context of Arabic-Latin Translations of the Middle Ages: A Reassess-
ment of the School of Toledo,” Vocabulary of Teaching and Research between Middle
Ages and Renaissance: Proceedings of the Colloquium London, Warburg Institute, 11–12
March 1994, ed. Olga Weijers, 1995, 214–35; and Id., “The Coherence of the
Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century,” Science
in Context 14 (2001): 249–88. On Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187), see Karl
Sudhoffs, “Die kurze ‘Vita’ und das Verzeichnis der Arbeiten Gerhards von
Cremona,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 8 (1914): 73–82; Paul Kunitzsch,
“Gerhard von Cremona und seine Übersetzung des Almagest,” Die Begegnung
des Westens mit dem Osten …, ed. Engels, and Schreiner (above), 333–40;
Hubertus L. L. Busard, The Latin Translation of the Arabic Version of Euclid’s
Transfer of Knowledge 1396

Elements Commonly Ascribed to Gerard of Cremona, 1984. On Marc of Toledo

(documented between 1193–1216), see Heinrich Schipperges, “Zur Re-
zeption und Assimilation arabischer Medizin im frühen Toledo,” Sudhoffs
Archiv 39 (1955): 261–83 (reproduced in Medizin im Mittelalterlichen Abendland ,
ed. Gerhard Baader, and Gundolf Keil 1982, 151–76); Marie-Thérèse
d’Alverny, “Marc de Tolède,” Estudios sobre Alfonso VI y la reconquista de
Toledo 3: Actas del II Congreso Internacional de Estudios Mozárabes, Toledo 20–26
Mayo 1985, 1989, 25–50 (reproduced in Ead., La Connaissance de l’Islam …
[above], no. VII); and Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, and Georges Vajda
(1908–1981), “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tumart,” Al Andalus 16
(1951): 109–15; 259–307; 7 (1952): 1–56 (reproduced in Marie-Thérèse
d’Alverny, La connaissance de l’Islam … [above], no. II). On Alfred of Sareshel
(12th/13th century), who was in contact with the Toledan school, if he did not
spend some time there, see Clemens Baeumker (1853–1924), Des Alfred von
Sareshel (Alfredus Anglicus) Schrift De motu cordis zum ersten Male vollständig heraus-
gegeben und mit kritischen und erklärenden Anmerkungen versehen, 1923; James K.
Otte, Alfred of Sareshel’s Commentary on the Metheora of Aristotle: Critical Edition,
Introduction, and Notes, 1988; R. James Long, “Alfred of Sareshel’s Commen-
tary on the Pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis: A Critical Edition,” Mediaeval
Studies 47 (1985): 125–67; Elizabeth A. Fisher, “Manuel Holobolos, Alfred of
Sareshel, and the Greek Translator of Ps.-Aristole’s De Plantis,” Classica et Me-
diaevalia 57 (2006): 189–211. On Barthelemy of Messina (activ 1258–1266),
see Elisabeth Dévière, “Barthélémy de Messine, traducteur d’Aristote: Les
mots de la famille de pneuma et leurs équivalents latins,” Filologia mediolatina:
Studies in Medieval Latin Texts and their Transmission 14 (1007): 221–244.

I. Greek into Latin

An important translation activity consisted in Latinizing Greek works
directly from the original text. A major translator was the judge Burgundio
of Pisa (ca. 1110–1193), on whose biography see Peter Classen (1924–1980),
Burgundio von Pisa: Richter, Gesandter, Übersetzer, 1974. A much debated ques-
tion is his relation with the Greek copyist Iôannikios, whose manuscripts
Burgundio annotated and used for his translations; on this point, see the
following two essays by Nigel W. Wilson, “New Light on Burgundio of
Pisa,” Studi italiani di filologia classica Terza serie, 1 (1986): 113–18; and “Ioan-
nikios and Burgundio: A Survey of the Problem,” Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree
provinciali di Bisanzio: Atti del seminario di Erice (18–25 settembre 1988), ed. Gug-
lielgmo Cavallo, Gisuseppe De Gregorio, and Marilena Maniaci, 1991,
447–55. New material was brought to light by Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem,
and Marwan Rashed, “Burgundio de Pise et ses manuscrits d’Aristote: Laur.
1397 Transfer of Knowledge

87.7 et Laur. 81.18,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 64 (1997):

136–98. For a critical edition of scientific translations by Burgundio, see
Richard J. Durling (1932–1999), Burgundio of Pisa’s Translatio of Galen’s PERI
KRASEÔN ‘De complexionibus.’ Edited with Introduction and Indices, 1976; and Id.,
Burgundio of Pisa’s Translatio of Galen’s PERI TÔN PEPONTHOTÔN TOPÔN ‘De in-
terioribus.’ Edited with Introduction and Indices, 2 vols., 1992. For his translations
of philosophical treatises, see the Aristoteles Latinus above. Many studies have
been devoted to a philological analysis of Burgundio’s translations; for a re-
cent synthesis and a bibliography, see for example Pieter Beullens, Me-
dieval Science …, ed. Glick, Livesey, and Wallis (above), 104–05.
Guillaume de Moerbeke (ca. 1215–1286) is better known. For his trans-
lations, see, in addition to the Aristoteles Latinus above, Marschall Clagett
(1916–2005), Archimedes in the Middle Ages, vol. 2: The Translations from the Greek
by William of Moerbeke, 1976; and recently: Fernand Bossier, in collaboration
with Christine Vande Veire, and Guy Guldentops, Simplicius, Commen-
taire sur le traité du ciel d’Aristote. Traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke, vol. 1, 2004.
Similarly, Pietro d’Abano (1257–ca. 1315) has been pretty much studied.
On his translations, see the two following articles: Lynn Thorndike,
“Translations of works of Galen from the Greek by Peter of Abano,” Isis 33
(1942): 649–53; and Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Pietro d’Abano traducteur
de Galien,” Medioevo 11 (1985): 19–64.
On Niccolò da Reggio (ca. 1280–ca. 1350), see Lynn Thorndike,
“Translations of Works of Galen from the Greek by Niccolo da Reggio
(c. 1308–1345),” Byzantia Metabyzantina 1 (1946): 213–35; Robert Weiss,
“The Translators from the Greek of the Angevin Court of Naples,” Rinasci-
mento 1 (1950): 195–226 (reproduced in: Id., Medieval and Humanist Greek,
1977, 108–33); Carlos J. Larrain, “Galen, De motibus dubiis: Die lateinische
Übersetzung des Niccolò da Reggio,” Traditio 49 (1994): 171–233; Michael
McVaugh, “Niccolò da Reggio’s Translations of Galen and their Reception
in France,” Early Science and Medicine 11 (2006): 275–301; and, for a recent syn-
thesis with the previous literature, see Alain Touwaide, “Niccolò da Reg-
gio,” Medieval science …, ed. Glick, Livesey, and Wallis (above), 367–68.
The Crusades led to scientific exchanges, as some recent works have
shown; see, for instance, the several contributions in Occident et Proche-
Orient …, ed. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon, and Baudouin Van Den
Abeele (above), 2000. Such exchanges may have taken very different forms,
from oriental physicians to the court of Westerners (Françoise Micheau,
“Les médecins orientaux au service des princes latins,” Occident et Proche-
Orient … , ed. Draelants, Tihon, and Van Den Abeele [above], 95–115)
to the copy of manuscripts preserved in Constantinopolitan libraries made
Transfer of Knowledge 1398

by, or for, Westerners during the Latin occupation of the city (see Alain Tou-
waide, “Latin Crusaders, Byzantine Herbals,” Visualizing Medieval Medicine
and Natural History, 1200–1500, ed. Jean Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain
Touwaide, 2007, 147–73).

J. The Vernacular
Though mainly made into Latin, transfer of knowledge was also made into
the vernacular, among others French, Dutch, English, and German. For
some studies, see the following examples for French: Colette Jeudy, “Tra-
ductions françaises d’oeuvres latines et traductions médicales à la biblio-
thèque cathédrale de Reims d’après l’inventaire de 1456/1479,” Scriptorium
47 (1993): 173–85; and An Smets, “Les compétences linguistiques des tra-
ducteurs des traités de fauconnerie: Etude des traces latines dans les textes en
ancien et en moyen français,” La traduction vers le moyen français: Actes du IIe
colloque de l’AIEMF, Poitiers, 27–29 avril 2006, ed. Claudio Galderisi, and Cin-
zia Pignatelli, 2007, 337–52; for Dutch: Leo J. Vandewiele (1910–2004),
De Grabadin van Pseudo-Mesues (XIe-XIIe eeuw), en zijn invloed op de ontwikkeling
van de farmacie in de zuidelijke nederlanden, 1962; and Willem F. Daems
(1911–1994), Boec van Medicinen in dietsche: Een middelnederlandse compilatie van
medisch-farmaceutische literatuur, 1967; for German: Mechtild Habermann,
Deutsche Fachtexte der frühen Neuzeit: Naturkundlich-medizinische Wissenver-
mittlung im Spannungsfeld von Latein und Volkssprache, 2001.
The transfer of knowledge to the English-speaking world has been – and
still is – much studied. It will suffice to single out here four publications,
each of which illustrates an aspect of the research made – or being made – on
the topic. For a synthesis on translation, see Robert Stanton, The Culture
of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England, 2002; for a specific work coming from
Classical Antiquity, see Maria Teresa tavormina, “The Middle English
Letter of Ipocras,” English Studies 88 (2007): 632–52; for a study of the inter-
mediaries between Classical Antiquity and England, see Maria Amalia
d’Aronco, “Le conoscenze mediche nell’Inghilterra anglosassone: Il ruolo
del mondo carolingio,” International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Mem-
ory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. Michele Dallapiazza, Olaf Hansen, Preben
Meulengracht Sørensen, and Yvonne S. Bonnetain, 2000, 129–46;
and, for an evaluation of the importance of the material tranferred to, and in-
tegrated into, English scientific culture, see Maria Amalia d’Aronco, “How
‘English’ is Anglo-Saxon Medicine? The Latin Sources for Anglo-Saxon
Medical Texts,” Britannia Latina. Latin in the Culture of Great Britain from the
Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Burnett, and Nicholas
Mann, 2005, 27–41.
1399 Transfer of Knowledge

Whereas only rare studies have been devoted to the process of translation
as a specific field of scientific activity (see, for example and recently: Henri
Van Hoof, “Notes pour une histoire de la traduction pharmaceutique,”
Meta 46 [2001]: 154–75), there is an increasing number of analyses of the
methods of translation (for instance, see the several contributions to the vol-
ume Les traducteurs au travail: Leurs manuscrits et leurs méthodes. Actes du Colloque
international organisé par le “Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture” (Erice, 30
septembre-6 octobre 1999, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse, 2001), including the ques-
tion of the repeated translations of a work by the same translator (for some
examples, see above the translations by William of Moerbeke, Aristotle,
Politica [Aristoteles Latinus, XXIX, 1], 1961, and Aristotle, Rhetorica [Aristoteles
Latinus, XXXI, 1–2], 1978). On this question, see for example Farid Sami
Haddad, “Latin Translations of Arabic Medical Texts That Went Through
More Than One Edition,” Proceedings of the XXXIInd International Congress on the
History of Medicine, Antwerp, 3–7 September 1990, ed. Eric Fierens, Jean-Pierre
Tricot, Thierry Appelboom, and Michel Thiery, 1991, 697–706).

Select Bibliography
Bibliographie des textes médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut moyen âge, ed. Guy Sabbah, Pierre-
Paul Corsetti, and Klaus-Dietrich Fischer (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Uni-
versité, 1987) with a supplement by Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Bibliographie des textes
médicaux latins: Antiquité et haut moyen âge. Premier Supplément 1986–1999 (Saint-Etienne:
Publications de l’Université, 2000); Danielle Jacquart, and Françoise Micheau,
La médecine arabe et l’occident médiéval (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1990); Heinrich
Schipperges, Die Assimilation der arabischen Medizin durch das Lateinische (Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1964); Id., Arabische Medizin im lateinischen Mittelalter (Berlin,
Heidelberg, and New York: Springer, 1976); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen
Schrifttums, vol. 3: Medizin, Pharmazie, Zoologie, Tierheilkunde bis ca. 430 H., and vol. 4:
Alchimie, Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur bis ca. 430 H. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); Alain Tou-
waide, Medicinalia Arabo-Byzantina, vol. 1: Manuscrits et textes (Madrid: The Author,
1997); Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, and Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften
im Islam (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1970 and 1972).

Alain Touwaide
Utopias / Utopian Thought 1400

Utopias / Utopian Thought

A. Definition
Utopias are literary, philosophical or political designs for a better world,
in particular of the perfect state. They each construct, in their own way,
an ideal society and way of life, in which all people may equally enjoy
prosperity, health, justice, liberty and happiness. Many utopias locate their
plans for society in another time or a special place, such as an ideal city or a
distant island. By contrast to religious visions of the future (‘the new Jerusa-
lem,’ etc.), utopias are this-worldly constructs based on reason, which are
imagined to arise without the assumption of a world to come, or divine inter-
vention in the course of history. Utopias are the expression of a feeling
of lack. They transcend reality by transforming that in it which is perceived
as negative and unfulfilled into the positive, wish-fulfilling dreams of a
better, happier, existence. Utopias create visions of a harmonic, peaceful
world free from suffering, in which everything which only exists in potential
in the real world comes to fulfillment. Their appellative character cuts
against the grain of the real circumstances in society, and thus indirectly con-
tributes to its alteration. They depart from the world as it is for an ideal, fu-
ture goal, and thus can give impulse to the reform of contemporary societies
and political states.
The term ‘Utopia’ was coined by Thomas More, whose work De optimo
reipublica statu, deque nova insula Utopia (1516) developed the blueprint from
an ideal state, influenced by Plato’s Politeia without private property or war.
Etymologically, it is a compound of the Greek words ou (‘no, not’) and topos
(‘place’). A utopia, then, describes a (ideal) place which does not (yet) exist.
Works such as Johann Valentin Andreae’s Reipublicae Christianopolitanae
Descriptio (1619), Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis (1623) and Francis
Bacon’s Nova Atlantis (1627) laid the foundations of the genre in the 17th cen-
tury. It continues – if often in its negative form, the dystopia – until today in
science fiction and the novel of the future. Utopian thought, however, can
become manifest not only in literature and philosophy, but also in art, music,
and architecture. It is expressed in all technical and artistic plans for other
ways of life, which arise from the longing for a better, fulfilled life.
1401 Utopias / Utopian Thought

German philosophers and sociologists have been particularly interested

in developing a comprehensive theory of the utopia (cf. Ernst Bloch, Das
Prinzip Hoffnung, 1959; Norbert Elias, Thomas Morus’ Staatskritik, 1982;
Max Horkheimer, Anfänge der bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, 1930; Karl
Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 1952).

B. History of Research
Older scholars, e. g., Johan Huizinga in his seminal Herfsttij der middeleeuwen
(1919, Engl. Waning of the Middle Ages), denied the Middle Ages a utopian con-
sciousness altogether. They still assumed that utopias could only arise in a
dynamic social structure and on the basis of a developed, progress-oriented
conception of history. The medieval estates, with their social stasis, their de-
pendence on authorities of the past and their belief in ordo, was, historians
judged, hostile to utopia. Medieval society had not innovation and change
but tradition and steadfastness for its core values, and in any case the only
prospect of fulfillment, after the Fall and the Expulsion from Paradise was
the fulfillment of salvation history in the Second Coming of Christ at the end
of days. It is telling that summaries of the history of Utopia generally begin
with the authors of the 16th and 17th centuries. Even the comprehensive
article on utopia in the Theologische Realenzyklopädie (vol. 34, 2002, 464–85)
totally ignores the Middle Ages. The lemma ‘Utopia’ does not appear in the
Dictionary of the Middle Ages (ed. Strayer) at all.
The widespread scholarly opinion that utopias were an invention of the
early modern is now viewed as out-dated. For medieval society was far more
dynamic, both socially and economically, than older scholars assumed, and it
has since become plain that even the prevalent assumption of an inescapable,
closed Christian worldview of medieval intellectuals, under the all-pervad-
ing dominance of the church is too absolute to do justice to the historical
reality. Modern scholarship sees the social, academic and artistic culture
of the Middle Ages as indeed heterogeneous, dynamic and complex, and
“wishful spaces” and “wishful times” (Alfred Doren, Wunschräume und
Wunschzeiten, 1927) had their places as counterpoints to an imperfect reality.
The medieval philosophers and poets were already dreaming beyond their
epoch, and created – independent of Christian eschatology – earthly realms
of fulfillment and happiness. Modern scholarship, then, does not date the
emergence of utopian thought in cultural history from Thomas More’s Insula
Utopia, but credits the Middle Ages with the capacity to a way of thinking
which leaves reality in the direction of a longed-for, ideal world.
In the last decades of the 20th century, historians and philosophers have
paid increasing attention to this mode of thought. They were able to show
Utopias / Utopian Thought 1402

that the Middle Ages was already rich in utopian worlds. These, admittedly,
are based on a different kind of rationality compared to that of the Early
Modern utopian and, despite their secular content, often remain linked to
the religious, particularly to Biblical depictions of paradise and the imagery
of the Apocalypse. These utopian designs include the fabulous empire of the
Indian priest-king, Prester John, or the Grail Company in Wolfram von
Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1200/10) (cf. Marie-Paule Caire-Jabinet, “La
lettre du prêtre Jean,” En quête d’utopies, 2005, 111–33). These are ideal com-
monwealths, under the special grace of God, and exemplary in their richness
and moral values. The medieval Brendan legends tell of islands where a state
of paradise exists. The Tristan complex, above all in the famous version of
Gottfried von Strassburg (ca.1210) constructs a code of love, which – in the
utopian spirit – attempts to reconcile the individual lover’s desires with so-
cial norms. The “wishful place” in Tristan is the minnegrotte, the lovers’ grotto.
Arthurian romance, too, contains a utopian moment, inasmuch as it not only
depicts the court around King Arthur as an ideal society, but also describes
the maturation of an individual knight, which results in a higher, better situ-
ation for the world, in which all conflicts and crises with which the novel
began are resolved. The expansive descriptions of feasting in high medieval
romance may be interpreted as utopian, as they imagine a state of general joy
and happiness. The French poet Christine de Pizan created a fictional city of
women (Le Livre de la cité des dames, 1404/05). And the Italian Cistercian Abbot
Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1135–1202) uses his Dispositio novi ordinis to develop a
perfect order, whose goal is this-worldly perfection and resembles the New
Jerusalem. Many other “visions of an optimal form of life” (Tomas Toma-
sek, Zur Poetik des Utopischen im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter, 2001/2002, 190) are
viewed by modern medievalists as the medieval form of utopianism.
However, a systemization and documentation of the utopian texts of
the Middle Ages and their individual wishes and ideals, which always say
something about contemporary perceptions of the deficits of the real world,
remains a task for future scholars.

C. Major Contributors
Alfred Doren deserves the credit for developing the terminological tools
which made it possible to investigate the Middle Ages, rather than merely
the modern, with regard to forms of utopian thought. He describes utopias
in general terms as “wishful spaces” and “wishful times” in which all suffer-
ing and contradictions of the current world order are removed, and a stable
time of general happiness, justice, and freedom begins (Doren 1927). This
allowed him to free the term ‘utopia’ from the classical utopian states of the
1403 Utopias / Utopian Thought

Early Modern, and opened it to broader concepts of ideal worlds which can
also be found in earlier epochs. He found utopias already existent in Greek
antiquity (Plato), the hope for redemption of the Old Testament prophets
(the hope of the Messiah) and Dante (the coming of an emperor of peace)
in the form of a forthcoming eschatological period of happiness and good
fortune.
Besides Doren, Ferdinand Seibt was one of the first to allow the
Middle Ages a concept of utopia. He showed that the classical utopia à la Tho-
mas More had its roots in medieval thought, and that the dream of an earthly
paradise was by no means an invention of the Renaissance and the humanists
(Ferdinand Seibt, Utopica: Modelle totaler Sozialplanung, 1972; id., Utopie als
Funktion abendländischen Denkens, 1982). He even held the culture of the
monasteries, planned in every detail, the rational power structures of Char-
lemagne, the idea of an ideal emperor chosen by God, the functional town
architecture to be manifestations of utopian thought in the sense of a perfect
organization of life. The impulse towards planning which arises in the High
Middle Ages hid, so Seibt, strongly utopian tendencies, in that it changed
reality with the goal of order and based on historical optimism, and saw itself
as moving towards a better future. Joachim of Fiore’s expectation of a third
era of the Holy Spirit, which would replace the earlier periods of the Old and
New Testament, and, he thought, would bring in a time of peace and sal-
vation within his lifetime (Concordia novi et veteris Testamenti), ought, accord-
ing to Seibt, to be viewed as a three-stage utopian model of history, even
though it is clearly rooted in Christian spirituality and was thus labeled by
him as a “monkish utopia” (Seibt 1972, 47).
Janet Coleman (The Continuity of Utopian Thought in the Middle Ages: A Reas-
sessment, 1982) joined Seibt in ascribing a utopian dimension to medieval
monastic culture, in particular the Benedictine Rule, as it aimed to realize a
perfect common life in the context of Christian millenarianism, and which
promised its members the reward of “citizenship with Christ in the eternal
city” (7). She read Odo of Cluny’s Occupatio mentis (924) as the manifesto for a
perfect monastic life, which offered a foretaste of the eternal link to Christ in
heaven. She counts both Joachim of Fiore with his projected Third Age and
St. Francis, with his radical concept of the imitatio Christi in “poverty, simplic-
ity and humility” (18) as utopians.
Jean Servier pointed to the utopian content of the Augustinian ‘city of
God’ (Jean Servier, Histoire de l’utopie, 1967). In De Civitate Dei (ca. 413/426)
Augustine developed a conception of history in which the next-worldly city
of God and the this-worldly city of the world stand in antithesis to each other.
In earthly reality, the two cities are still involved in each other, and will only
Utopias / Utopian Thought 1404

be permanently separated at the Last Judgment. The goal of history is eternal

peace. Servier described the city of God as a medieval utopia: a pacified
world filled with brotherhood, justice and love, from which evil has been
banned for ever.
The best overview of forms of utopian thought in the Middle Ages
currently available is that by Tomas Tomasek (Zur Poetik des Utopischen im
Hoch- und Spätmittelalter, 2001/2002). He was able to show that while there
was undoubtedly utopian thought in the Middle Ages, it was characterized
by a specific combination of rational concept and mythic or salvation-history
oriented symbolism. The sources for medieval utopias were, among others
the Old Testament’s depictions of paradise, the classical idea of a coming
‘Age of Gold’ (Vergil) and the Revelation of John with its vision of a thousand
years of a peaceful empire. Tomasek added a third category to Doren’s
“wishful space” and “wishful time,” that of the “wishful person.” For him
the Middle Ages had an ideal conception of a new, perfect human (Alanus ab
Insulis), who would revive the ‘paradisiacal’ nature of Adam and Eve before
the Fall. Tomasek’s overview, which included saints’ lives and garden alle-
gories as well as travel reports and love- and classical romances, showed that
medieval literature had already developed a rich stock of images of an ideal
form of life, which, even though it consists of motifs from salvation history,
used its utopian other-worlds as a way to aim at improvements in this world.
Tomasek’s valuable sketch could form a basis for further specialist studies.
The current start of the discussion of the theme is concisely described
in the Lexikon des Mittelalters in the article “Utopie” by Otto Gerhard Oexle
(vol. 8, 1345–48). Oexle points out, correctly, that the answer to any ques-
tion regarding a medieval utopian consciousness will depend on the respect-
ive definition of utopia used, as well as the definition of ‘the Middle Ages’, as
an epoch, and its relation to the Modern. Following Mannheim, Seibt and
Doren Oexle postulates a broad definition of utopia, which makes it pos-
sible, for example, to describe the medieval conception of distant islands of
good fortune (insulae fortunatae) or Arcadian landscapes in the bucolic poetry
of the Middle Ages as utopias. Oexle, too, describes the adequate study of
the various forms of European medieval utopias as a task which scholars have
yet to complete. His essay “Utopisches Denken im Mittelalter: Pierre Du-
bois” (1977) is itself an important step in that direction. In it, Oexle picked
up Doren’s concept of the “wishful space” and with its help analyzed De re-
cuperatione et reformatione et conservatione Terre Sancte (1306) by the royal jurist
Pierre Dubois (ca. †1321). In it, Dubois reflects on the reconquest and social
restructuring of the Holy Land. In particular, he was interested in questions
of education and law, and he suggested a new social order for the Holy
1405 Utopias / Utopian Thought

Land. For this reason, Oexle described Pierre Dubois’ work as a remarkable
example of a medieval social utopia.
Michael Winter has produced a comprehensive repertorium of utopian
texts from antiquity to the 18th century (Compendium Utopiarum: Typologie und
Bibliographie literarischer Utopien, 1978). His catalogue offers an overview of
central texts with utopian content – in the broadest sense – from antiquity
on. The articles give information on sources and editions of individual key
texts, describe the content of individual utopias and place them in the con-
text of intellectual history. Winter lists many medieval authors, including
Augustine, Al-Farabi, Presbyter Johannes, Joachim of Fiore, Alanus ab Insu-
lis, Ramon Llull, Pierre Dubois, Johannes von Winterthur, the Taborites,
Leon Battista Alberti, and Hans Böhm. In the late Middle Ages in particular,
utopian thought was often linked to chiliastic ideas and to the expectations
that the thousand years of the Kingdom of God promised in the Revelation to
John would soon begin.

D. Current Research
Interdisciplinary medievalist inquiry into utopias can hardly be said to seri-
ously exist at present. There has been a notable decline of interest in the re-
construction of historical utopias, following a number of innovative research
projects in the nineteen seventies and eighties. It appears that, after the end
of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist states in Eastern Europe,
the longing for counter-worlds to a dangerous reality has died away, and
with it the impetus of researchers to concern themselves with documenting
and analyzing utopian thought in the earlier phases of cultural history.
Medievalists currently generally concern themselves only with the utopian
as it impinges on the margins of their various projects, though a group of
French scholars recently explored the meaning of utopian thinking in the
Middle Ages (En quête d’utopies, ed. Claude Thomasset and Danièle James-
Raoul, 2005). With a few exceptions, however, most contributors stretch
the notion of a utopia to apply to all kinds of ideas about otherness (giants,
Mongols, wild men, etc.). Globally speaking, there are five thematic areas
within which medieval forms of utopian thought may be discussed:

1. Cartography
Many researchers claim a utopian dimension for the medieval mappae mundi.
For the maps locate paradise within contemporary geography, and draw it,
in the Far East, as part of the real world. Although humanity, according to
the account in Genesis, had been driven from Paradise, medieval scholars be-
lieved that the Garden of Eden continued to exist, and was a “wishful space”
Utopias / Utopian Thought 1406

of salvation, which remained part of the world as a kind of mythic place, and
whose recovery was longed for (Paul D. A. Harvey, Medieval Maps, 1991,
19–37; Oexle 1999, 1347; Tomasek 2001/02, 181–82; Ingrid Baumgärt-
ner, “Visualisierte Weltenräume: Tradition und Innovation in den Welt-
karten der Beatustradition des 10. bis 13. Jahrhunderts,” Tradition, Inno-
vation, Invention: Fortschrittsverweigerung und Fortschrittsbewusstsein im
Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Joachim Schmidt, 2005, 231–76).

2. Urban Planning
Researchers have also considered late medieval area and town planning as
an aspect of utopian thought. In the designs of Leon Battista Alberti
(1404–1472) and Antonio Filarete (* ca. 1400) for ideal urban spaces, they
glimpse the forerunners of utopia. Alberti and Filarete designed fictitious
ideal towns, for which they planned not only architectural forms, but also a
specific way of life and the manner of government (Seibt 1972, 17; Hubertus
Günther, “Sforzinda: Eine Idealstadt der Renaissance,” Alternative Welten
in Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. Ludwig Schrader, 1988, 231–58; Virgilio
Vercelloni, Atlante storico dell’idea europea della città ideale, 1994; Oexle
1999, 1347).

3. Gardens
Medieval gardens, especially those of monasteries and the late medieval
courts, maybe viewed as utopian inasmuch as the choice of plants and forms
often attempted to imitate paradise. They are “wishful spaces” for a life of
beauty, security, and harmony, images of a redeemed world. The symbolic
power of imaginary, paradisiacal gardens is attested not merely by the love-
gardens (loci amoeni) in courtly romance, but also the countless depictions of
gardens or garden allegories in medieval art (Dietrich Schmidtke, Studien
zur dingallegorischen Erbauungsliteratur des Spätmittelalters: Am Beispiel der Garten-
allegorie, 1982; Medieval Gardens, ed. Elisabeth B. Macdougall, 1986; To-
masek 2001/02, 184).

4. Philosophy of History
Questions of utopian thought keep arising in conjunction with research into
medieval apocalypses and eschatology (Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the
Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle
Ages, 1957, 2nd ed. 1970; Reinhold R. Grimm, Paradisus Coelestis – Paradisus
Terrestris: Zur Auslegungsgeschichte des Paradieses im Abendland bis um 1200, 1977;
Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages,
1979; Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A.
1407 Utopias / Utopian Thought

Aertsen and Martin Pickavé, 2002; see also the contribution on “Escha-
tology” to this handbook by Peter Dinzelbacher). The fear of the coming
end of the world, the expectation of a thousand year empire of peace, the
hope of entry into the Heavenly Jerusalem etc., is seen by many scholars as
not merely elements of a religious, next-worldly eschatology, but also as a
stimulus to secular and political fantasies. For these apocalyptic ideas also
provided content for conceptions of a better earthly life, and gave revolution-
ary movements (Jan Hus, Thomas Müntzer) powerful images of a redeemed
future. To this extent, even Christian depictions of the end and perfection of
the world at the Last Judgment have a utopian quality, for they partly moti-
vated and strengthened concrete social upheaval in the Middle Ages. But the
ideal type of government, in a utopian setting, had already been outlined by
the philosophers and theologians Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon (Isa-
belle Vidrenne-Fajolles, “Du régime idéal selon Thomas d’Aquin et Roger
Bacon,” En quête d’utopies, 2005, 15–58).

5. Courtly Society
Medieval literary scholarship has been able to show that the social concepts
which appear in the Arthurian and Grail romances often depict utopias of an
idealized aristocratic way of life. Literature is of course per se a medium of
fantasy which transcends reality. Courtly romances continually produce
images of a harmonic life, ultimately freed from social conflict, in which the
tension between God and the world, knighthood and courtly love, individ-
ual and society, is largely resolved. In this context we must place the Arthu-
rian and Grail worlds, but also those which are finally redeemed and liber-
ated after struggle and battle in the Alexander and Aeneas romances. The
idealized figures who appear in them (Arthur, Charlemagne, Gawain, Wille-
halm, etc.) may be viewed as literary utopias of ideal princes and knights,
through whom the medieval nobility was supposed to receive a leadership
ethic which would guide their behavior. (Joachim Bumke, “Die Utopie des
Grals: Eine Gesellschaft ohne Liebe?,” Literarische Utopie-Entwürfe, ed. Hil-
trud Gnüg, 1982, 70–79; Tomas Tomasek, Die Utopie im ‘Tristan’ Gotfrids von
Straßburg, 1985; Gert Kaiser, “Alternative Lebenswelten in der deutschen
Literatur des Mittelalters,” Alternative Welten in Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed.
Ludwig Schrader, 1988, 161–75; Walter Blank, “Die positive Utopie des
Grals: Zu Wolframs Graldarstellung und ihrer Nachwirkung im Mittel-
alter,” Sprache – Literatur – Kultur: Festschrift für Wolfgang Kleiber, ed. Albrecht
Greule and Uwe Ruberg, 1989, 337–53; Albrecht Classen, “Die Suche
nach der Utopie in der Gralswelt: Albrechts (von Scharfenberg) Der jüngere
Titurel,” Parzival: Reescritura y Transformación, ed. Berta Raposo Fernández,
Utopias / Utopian Thought 1408

2000, 133–56; id., “The Crusader as Lover and Tourist: Utopian Elements in
Late Medieval German Literature: From Herzog Ernst to Reinfried von Braun-
schweig and Fortunatus,” Current Topics in Medieval German Literature: Texts and
Analyses, ed. Sibylle Jefferis, 2008, 83–102).

Select Bibliography
Alternative Welten in Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. Ludwig Schrader (Düsseldorf:
Droste, 1988); Wolfgang Biesterfeld, Die literarische Utopie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974,
2nd ed. 1982); Janet Coleman, “The Continuity of Utopian Thought in the Middle
Ages: A Reassessment,” Vivarium 20 (1982): 1–23; Dictionary of Literary Utopias, ed. Vita
Fortunati and Raymond Trousson (Paris: Editions Champion, 2000); Alfred
Doren, “Wunschräume und Wunschzeiten,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924/25
(Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner, 1927), 158–205; Götz Müller, Gegenwelten: Die Utopie in der
deutschen Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989); Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Utopie,” LexMA,
vol. 8 (1999), 1345–48; id., “Utopisches Denken im Mittelalter: Pierre Dubois,” HZ 224
(1977): 293–339; Ferdinand Seibt, “Utopie im Mittelalter,” HZ 208 (1969): 555–94;
id., Utopica: Modelle totaler Sozialplanung (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1972); id., “Utopie als
Funktion abendländischen Denkens,” Utopieforschung 1982, vol. 1, 254–79; Jean Ser-
vier, Histoire de l’utopie (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1967); Tomas Tomasek, “Zur Poe-
tik des Utopischen im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter,” Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein
Gesellschaft 13 (2001/02): 179–93; Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel
(Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1966); Utopie: Begriff und Phänomen des Utopischen, ed.
Arnhelm Neusüss (Frankfurt, New York: Campus, 1968, 3rd ed. 1986); Utopiefor-
schung: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie, ed. Wilhelm Vosskamp, 3 vols.
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982); Michael Winter, Compendium Utopiarum: Typologie und Bib-
liographie literarischer Utopien, vol. 1: Von der Antike bis zur deutschen Frühaufklärung (Stutt-
gart: Metzler, 1978).

Heiko Hartmann
1409 Welsh Studies

Welsh Studies

A. Definition
Welsh is a Celtic language. It is most closely related to Breton, Cornish, and
Cumbric; more distant relatives are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. The
last of these died out in the 20th century, Cornish in the 18th, and Cumbric
(spoken in what is now northwestern England and southern Scotland) in the
12th; yet Cumbric is here of special importance, since the oldest surviving
‘Welsh’ poetry was composed in north Britain by bards like Taliesin and An-
eirin, active about the year 600, whose verse was originally in Cumbric but
survives only in much later Welsh copies.

B. Outline of the Subject

Medieval Wales had a rich and varied literature. The poetry includes heroic
verse and eulogies by Taliesin and Aneirin, and (in the 14th century) lyrics of
love and nature by Dafydd ap Gwilym. For prose there are narrative, reli-
gious, historical, legal, geographical, medical, and even scientific texts; but
the high point is the collection of tales, dating from the 11th century to the
13th, which are known as the Mabinogion. Research has, with reason, concen-
trated mainly on poetry and the eleven stories in the Mabinogion, and what
has been discovered on them may interest even those who care little for Celtic
Studies. The recovery of a whole literature from the past is a remarkable
achievement by any reckoning, since it is a story of industry, cogent reason-
ing, and scholarly integrity.

C. The Major Scholars

More than for most literatures, a convenient approach is provided by con-
sideration of the academics, mostly Welsh but with some from elsewhere,
who have made advances possible. Amongst the most significant are Sir John
Rh ŷs, Sir John Morris-Jones, W. J. Gruffydd, Sir Ifor Williams, Pro-
fessor Henry Lewis, R. S. Loomis, Sir Thomas Parry, Kenneth Jackson,
Sir Idris Foster, J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Rachel Bromwich, and, in our
own time, Thomas Charles-Edwards, David Dumville, Patrick Sims-
Williams, Oliver Padel, Sioned Davies, Dafydd Johnston, and John T.
Welsh Studies 1410

Koch. Their writings take in most of what has been considered worth think-
ing about medieval Welsh literature.
Before them, like a preface to a book, is the figure of Matthew Arnold
(1822–1888), the English poet, critic, and inspector of schools. He did not
know the Celtic languages and cheerfully admitted his ignorance of them;
yet his Oxford lectures on their literatures, published as On the Study of Celtic
Literature (1867), sent out shock-waves that can still be felt. By the time his
book appeared the Celtic nations had felt the potent charms of romantic
nationalism, begetting a new interest in and discovery of the medieval past.
Of the political consequences of that for Ireland nothing need be said here.
But for Wales it led to new perceptions of Welsh poetry and legend, particu-
larly the Mabinogion. These tales had been made known thanks to Charlotte,
Lady Guest (1812–1895), daughter of an earl, wife of a millionaire, and
gifted writer, whose edition and translation (the latter often reprinted) ap-
peared as The Mabinogion (1838–1849). Her attitude to the tales was pre-Ro-
mantic, unlike that of Arnold himself, a poet who saw in them (or thought
he saw) the obscure images of mythologies almost hidden by the mists of
transmission. In a passage too famous not to quote, Arnold said of their
protagonists:

These are no medieval personages; they belong to an older, pagan, mythological

world. The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the Mabinogion, is how evi-
dently the medieval storyteller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully
possess the secret; he is like a peasant building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus,
or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows
not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely – stones ‘not of this
building,’ but of an older architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical. In the
medieval stories of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in those of
the Welsh.

Arnold’s lectures have had long-lasting effects. In 1877, they included the
founding of the chair of Celtic Studies at Oxford, first held by John Rh ŷs
(1840–1915), a schoolmaster from near Aberystwyth who had attended
Arnold’s lectures. He is the first modern scholar of Welsh. Apart from pub-
lications on Welsh and Gaulish philology and Celtic folklore, Rh ŷs’s import-
ance lay in two directions: the editing of early Welsh manuscripts, and the
training of young scholars. In the first he was aided by a troublesome genius,
the palaeographer John Gwenogvryn Evans (1852–1930), whose gifts were
unfortunately blighted by a passion for the wildly illogical on matters liter-
ary, philological, and historical. However, this did little damage to Evans’s
substantial catalogues of Welsh material at London, Oxford, Cardiff,
and elsewhere, published as Reports on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language
1411 Welsh Studies

(1898–1910), or to his equally substantial editions of Wales’s oldest manu-

scripts. The latter (all privately printed) include, from the Red Book of Her-
gest, The Text of the Mabinogion (1887); The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv (1893); The
Black Book of Carmarthen (1906); The White Book Mabinogion (1907); The Text of the
Book of Aneirin (1908); The Text of the Book of Taliesin (1910); and The Poetry in the
Red Book of Hergest (1911). Thanks to Evans’s painstaking toil (in part aided
by Rh ŷs), philologists and literary historians had accurate and reliable texts
at their disposal.
Amongst Rh ŷs’s pupils were John Morris-Jones (1864–1929), later
Professor of Welsh at Bangor in North Wales, and W. J. Gruffydd (1881–
1954), later Professor of Welsh at Cardiff. Morris-Jones was a good poet
and a good scholar; Gruffydd was a good poet and a bad scholar. With the
former, Rh ŷs produced The Elucidarium and Other Tracts in Welsh (1894), an
edition of religious texts in the Book of the Anchorite, a manuscript copied in
1346 at Llanddewifrewi (in south-west Wales), and including mystical works
and the Welsh life of St David. Morris-Jones went on to publish A Welsh
Grammar (1913), which is still the main work on the literary language, al-
though professional linguists tend to be curt on its Indo-European aspects.
Morris-Jones then dropped a bombshell with his monograph Taliesin,
published as volume 22 of Y Cymmrodor (1918). In it he argued that (together
with much later religious and legendary material) a few poems in the 14th-
century Book of Taliesin really are by Taliesin, writing in north Britain be-
fore the year 600. Some scholars are cautious even now about accepting the
authenticity of those poems, as also the elegies attributed to the slightly later
Aneirin; though others think the case for their being genuine is strong.
W. J. Gruffydd was a talented writer and major figure in Welsh cul-
tural life, at least; and in his last years he was Member of Parliament for the
University of Wales (a seat long abolished). Yet his work on the Mabinogion,
particularly on the sequence of tales called the Four Branches of the Mabinogi,
shows the perils of romanticism: for poetry, a good servant; for scholarship, a
bad master. Gruffydd swallowed hook, line and sinker the hypothesis on
mythological origins so coaxingly peddled by Matthew Arnold. It led him
to make the most magnificent speculations on the myths supposedly behind
the Four Branches, which are embodied (perhaps not the right word for no-
tions so wispy and elusive) in his Math vab Mathonwy (1928) and Rhiannon
(1953). Even at the time of publication there were those, like Sir Ifor Wil-
liams, who thought the volumes useless, since what they claimed could not
be proved. We shall see below how Gruffydd’s work came under riddling
fire from Kenneth Jackson in 1961. Yet their tendency to vague surmise still
has unfortunate effects. Amongst those affected was the American scholar
Welsh Studies 1412

Roger Sherman Loomis, who showed himself all too ready a disciple of
Gruffydd in his Wales and the Arthurian Legend (1956), but who left a truer
memorial by editing Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (1959), where he di-
rected an international team to provide a survey that remains valuable.
After W. J. Gruffydd, we come to a very fine scholar indeed: Professor
Sir Ifor Williams (1881–1965), who spent his whole life in or near Bangor,
and his entire career in its university department of Welsh. Yet there was al-
most nothing provincial about his talents. Williams devoted himself to the
investigation of the vocabulary of early Welsh, and to superb editions of early
texts, casting broad beams of light on what had been obscure. So much does
Williams stand above most Celticists that it is possible to think he was too
good a scholar, so that more recent writers have difficulty in persuading the
Welsh that he was neither omniscient nor infallible. His warm patriotism
and love of his native tongue impelled him to write mainly in Welsh. His
most important publications are: Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi (1930), an edition of
the Four Branches; Canu Llywarch Hen (1935), containing tragic saga-poems
from the 9th or 10th century, in which Llywarch figures as a senile militarist;
Canu Aneirin (1938), elegies by Aneirin on heroes of the Gododdin (of south-
east Scotland) and their gallant but doomed 7th-century raid on the English
at Catterick (in modern Yorkshire); Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry (1944); Armes
Prydein (1955), the Prophecy of Britain, a poem written in the year 940 and
calling for an international final onslaught on the English (it never oc-
curred); and Canu Taliesin (1960), editing the handful of poems taken as the
work of this 6th-century bard.
Williams produced wonderfully full and clear editions of medieval
Welsh texts. Not their least virtue is that their comprehensive analysis of
early Welsh vocabulary means that they can, even now, be used as a research
tool for that language. Williams wrote one important work in English, Lec-
tures on Early Welsh Poetry, setting out in lucid and eloquent prose the fruits of
his investigations into Welsh heroic and elegiac verse. However, many of his
other books can now be read in English versions. Canu Taliesin thus appears
as The Poems of Taliesin (1968), effectively a translation by J. E. Caerwyn Wil-
liams (1912–1999). In 1969, Kenneth Jackson’s The Gododdin (discussed
below) gave the substance of Canu Aneirin. In 1972 Armes Prydein was re-edited
by Rachel Bromwich, who also published Williams’s collected papers as
The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry (1972). His Canu Llywarch Hen appears, greatly
amplified, in Jenny Rowland, Early Welsh Saga Poetry (1990). Sir Ifor Wil-
liams dominates the study of early Welsh literature. His understanding of it
will be an everlasting influence, like that of Scaliger or Bentley, even where
later generations may correct him.
1413 Welsh Studies

Under the cloak of Sir Ifor Williams may be mentioned two pupils from
Cambridge University, Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson and Rachel Bromwich,
and one from Bangor, Sir Idris Llywelyn Foster. Jackson (1909–1991)
trained as a classicist when A. E. Housman was still to be seen in Cambridge.
Like him, Jackson was a man of penetrating and caustic intellect, who did
not love the company of fools. Amongst his many publications are Studies in
Early Celtic Nature Poetry (1935); A Celtic Miscellany (1951); Language and History
in Early Britain (1953), well described as a ‘national monument’ of British
scholarship that has never quite had its due; The International Popular Tale and
Early Welsh Tradition (1961); and The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem (1969),
the subtitle of which brought protests from Professor David Ellis Evans
(born 1930) of Oxford and other Welshmen on what they had always patrioti-
cally taken as a Welsh poem. The penultimate volume demolishes almost
everything said by W. J. Gruffydd on the Four Branches of the Mabinogi;
the last one, however, got Jackson into hot water by maintaining that the
Gododdin as we have it is substantially the 7th-century work of Aneirin, when
it survives (heavily modernized) in two versions in the 13th-century Book of
Aneirin at Cardiff. Nevertheless, many agree with Jackson, if only because
it is hard to see why any later bard should want to eulogize the heroes listed
in this collection, when almost all of them are otherwise unknown. As for Ra-
chel Bromwich (born 1915), her most useful publications are two editions:
the indispensable Who’s Who of medieval Welsh tradition in Trioedd Ynys
Prydein: The Welsh Triads (3rd ed. 2006); and, with D. Simon Evans (1921–98),
Culhwch and Olwen (1992), the earliest Arthurian tale and oldest tale of the
Mabinogion.
With the third of Ifor Williams’s pupils we have a problem. Sir Idris
Foster was Professor of Celtic at Oxford from 1947 to 1978. He authored no
book; he never completed his edition of Culhwch and Olwen; and his teaching,
as students found to their cost, was worthless. Yet on the centennial of the
Jesus Chair of Celtic in 1977 he was dubbed knight: an instance of the British
establishment’s superstitious regard for the decimal system, and disregard
for actual research. With glorious incongruity, Foster was presented with
a Festschrift, Astudiaethau ar yr Hengerdd: Studies in Old Welsh Poetry, ed. Rachel
Bromwich and R. Brinley Jones (1978), which contains important papers
by R. Geraint Gruffydd, T. M. Charles-Edwards, and Brynley F. Ro-
berts. The minimal nature of his real contribution to the subject is proved
by Early Welsh Poetry: Studies in the Book of Aneirin, ed. Brynley F. Roberts
(1988), where (despite a slavish dedication to him) his work is mentioned,
once, in one sentence, in a paper by David N. Dumville. Foster was a
Dickensian character – like the employer of Tom Pinch.
Welsh Studies 1414

Fortunately, there remained scholars of caliber in Wales and elsewhere.

Here is a magnificent seven of them. At Dublin was Professor John Lloyd-
Jones (1885–1956), who compiled single-handedly Geirfa Barddoniaeth
Gynnar Gymraeg (1931–1963), a massive (though still incomplete) glossary of
early Welsh poetry and beyond. At Swansea was Professor Henry Lewis
(1889–1968), author of Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg (1931), and editor of Brut
Dingestow (1942), a medieval Welsh translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Historia Regum Britanniae. Lewis’s writing is always useful, but he has suf-
fered in Welsh nationalistic ideology by allowing the sacking from his depart-
ment of Saunders Lewis (1893–1985), poet, dramatist, romantic nationalist,
and erratic literary historian. (Saunders Lewis had in 1936 set fire to a Brit-
ish military bombing school in north-west Wales, after which he was im-
prisoned for nine months.) At Cardiff was G. J. Williams (1889–1963), who
in 1926 unmasked the inventions of the notorious literary forger Edward
Williams (1747–1826), alias ‘Iolo Morganwg’. Williams’s methodical re-
searches on the poetry and prose of Glamorgan are summarized in Ceri W.
Lewis, ‘The Literary Tradition of Morgannwg,’ Glamorgan County History:
The Middle Ages, ed. T. B. Pugh (1971), 449–554. At Bangor and then Aber-
ystwyth was Sir Thomas Parry (1904–1985), who served many Welsh insti-
tutions, amongst them the National Library of Wales, of which in 1953 he be-
came Librarian (= Director). He was the editor of Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym
(1952), an epoch-making edition of Wales’s greatest poet. It gave for the first
time a critical text of all Dafydd’s poems and separated the authentic ones
from those by later imitators (some of them as brilliant as the real thing).
Parry also wrote (in Welsh) the standard history of Welsh literature, usually
read as A History of Welsh Literature (1955), translated by Sir Harold Idris Bell
(1879–1967), who had been keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum.
At Aberystwyth was Thomas Jones (1910–1972), who produced admir-
able editions of Welsh historical literature, such as Brut y Tywysogyon: or The
Chronicle of the Princes (1952). With Professor Gwyn Jones (1907–1999) of
Aberystwyth, Thomas Jones brought out an excellent translation of the
Mabinogion (1949). At Cardiff was A. O. H. Jarman (1911–1998), who knew
more of the legend of Merlin than anyone else. His ‘The Legend of Merlin
and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy’ is republished in Merlin: A Casebook, ed.
Peter H. Goodrich and Raymond H. Thompson (2003), 105–30. At Lam-
peter was D. Simon Evans (1921–1998), whose A Grammar of Middle Welsh
(1964) is the authority on the medieval language. Yet perhaps the most use-
ful aspect of scholarship in Wales at this period is Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru:
A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (1950–2002), in four volumes and 3897
pages. Wales once had gold mines, providing wedding rings for British
1415 Welsh Studies

royalty. The mines have long gone. Yet Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru is another
Welsh gold mine, which yields endless profits and will never close.
After the spectacular achievements of between the 1890s and the 1960s,
there have been changes of direction. The age of heroes is past. It has been
followed by an era of consolidation, with emphasis on re-editing, critical
studies, and works of reference. Here a prominent organ for research is the
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, estab-
lished in 1985 at Aberystwyth. Amongst other projects it has produced
(in Welsh) an edition in many volumes of the ‘Poets of the Princes,’ active
from the 12th century to the early 14th. A team there is now (re-)editing their
successors, the ‘Poets of the Gentry’ writing from the 14th century to the early
16th. The first director of the Centre was J. E. Caerwyn Williams, whose
most lasting benefit for medieval Welsh was the dull but necessary one of
providing editions of religious prose. The investigation at Aberystwyth
is complemented on the other side of the Atlantic by the Harvard Celtic Col-
loquium and UCLA. In summing up the researches of recent years, eight
scholars may be mentioned: Patrick Sims-Williams, Helen Fulton,
Marged Haycock, Oliver Padel, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Dafydd R.
Johnston, John T. Koch (from the USA), and Sioned Davies. Professor
Sims-Williams of Aberystwyth is the founder of Cambridge Medieval Celtic
Studies (founded 1981), now Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, which maintains
high standards. Professor Helen Fulton of Swansea has published Dafydd ap
Gwilym and the European Context (1989); an educational volume, as it shows
how not to write a book on this poet. Dr Marged Haycock of Aberystwyth
has edited Blodeugerdd o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar (1994) and Legendary Poems
from the Book of Taliesin (2007), both important collections. Oliver Padel
has produced a sober account of the Arthurian legend, Arthur in Medieval
Welsh Literature (2000). It provides reasons for believing that Arthur, like
Paul Bunyan, never existed at all. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, formerly of
the National Library of Wales, has written much on medieval prose. Her
‘Gender and Violence in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi,’ in 150 Jahre ‘Mabino-
gion’: Deutsche-Walisische Kulturbeziehungen, ed. Bernhard Maier and Stefan
Zimmer (2001), 67–78, appearing with contributions by T. M. Charles-
Edwards, Sioned Davies, Ian Hughes of Aberystwyth, and Patrick Sims-
Williams, discusses a fashionable subject; although to informed observers
the book in which it figures will have the spooky look of a 1960s symposium
on Minoan scripts, in which no contributor ever mentions Michael Ventris,
or the proposition that Linear B is Greek. Dr Lloyd-Morgan has in addi-
tion edited Arthurian Literature XXI: Celtic Arthurian Material (2004), a revealing
collection. It (rightly) decries R. S. Loomis’s theories of origins, myths that
Welsh Studies 1416

are a long time a-dying. Less desirably, it brings out the inward-looking na-
ture of much recent research in Wales, because much of it says nothing at all.
In contrast is the imposing Llên yr Uchewyr: Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gym-
raeg 1300–1525 (2005), a monograph of some 500 pages by Professor Dafydd
Johnston, a Yorkshireman who has Celticized his first name and now
directs the Aberystwyth Centre. John T. Koch has organized contributors
to bring out, in California, Celtic Culture (2006), a sizeable volume in which
American publishing technology sets out an admirable diversity of in-
formation. With her The Mabinogion (2007), Professor Sioned Davies of Car-
diff offers a major translation. It sums up progress made on these tales by
United States scholars, particularly Patrick K. Ford, Andrew Welsh, John
Bollard, and Catherine A. McKenna (now Professor of Celtic at Harvard).
They, together with Brynley F. Roberts and others, emphasize the qualities
of artistry in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, a collection which is properly
seen, not as the ruins of old mythologies, but as an outstanding series of nar-
ratives by a writer of genius.

D. The Future
We may be optimistic. Wales has a rich medieval literature: the possibilities
for researchers, especially in the United States, are thus almost infinite,
where they will be aided by the penchant of the Welsh for hiding lights under
bushels by publishing in their native tongue. Merely assembling and making
this secondary material known in a global language is thus a task for investi-
gators. As regards primary material, Wales has wealth of poetry of which
only a tiny amount has been translated. For prose the most exhilarating chal-
lenge is in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. These await an editor who can take
on board advances made since Ifor Williams’s edition of 1930. He or she
may also provide answers to the debate (still raging in Wales) on whether
these tales really are the work of a woman of royal blood, who was born in
northwestern Wales in the late 11th century, and who in January 1136, in a
field some miles from Carmarthen, died a violent death at the hands of the
Norman invaders.

Select Bibliography
The Arthur of the Welsh, ed. Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Ro-
berts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991); Andrew Breeze, Medieval Welsh Lit-
erature (Portland: Four Courts, 1997), id., The Origins of the ‘Four Branches of the Mabinogi’
(Leominster: Gracewing, 2009); Celtic Culture, ed. John T. Koch (Santa Barbara: ABC-
Clio, 2006); Kenneth H. Jackson, The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961), id, The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish Poem
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969); The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davies
1417 Welsh Studies

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed.
Rachel Bromwich (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 3rd ed. 2006); The Welsh Academy
Encyclopedia of Wales, ed. John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines, and Peredur I.
Lynch (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008); Ifor Williams, Lectures on Early
Welsh Poetry (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1944), id., The Beginnings
of Welsh Poetry (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1972).

Andrew Breeze
1418
1419

Important Terms in Today’s

Medieval Studies
1420
1421 Aesthetics

Aesthetics

A. General Definition
As has often been noted, the Middle Ages had no concept of “aesthetics” nor of
“fine art” (Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study
in the History of Aesthetics (Part I),” Journal of the History of Ideas 12.4 [1951]:
496–527; id., “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aes-
thetics (Part II),” Journal of the History of Ideas 13.1 [1952]: 17–46; Larry Shiner,
The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, 2001). Modern aesthetics began with the
18th-century application of secular and scientific approaches to the nature and
perception of beauty, problems that during the Middle Ages belonged to the
realm of theological speculation. “Art” in the Middle Ages referred to any
body of knowledge or set of rules for intellectual or physical making, as op-
posed to the modern notion of ars gratia artis. Nonetheless, there is a substan-
tial corpus on beauty from the Middle Ages, and though integrally bound
with religious thought, this corpus is far from rigidly doctrinal or concep-
tually monotonous. Whereas modern theorists often treat aesthetics as an ab-
straction or detached form of experience, concepts about aesthetics and art in
the Middle Ages were essentially applied philosophy, since their raison ’être
was to help articulate the relationship between man and God. As a result,
medieval civilization offers many examples of the interplay between aesthetic
theory and its practical expression in objects, texts, and social experience.

B. Aesthetics in Theory
Aesthetic problems – How does God’s beauty manifest itself in the visible
universe? Can humanity even perceive and understand this beauty? – recur
throughout medieval philosophy, and the answers that philosophers found
in the Greco-Roman and Biblical traditions were often difficult to harmon-
ize. Genesis says that God made the world, but how should this be squared
with the Platonic notion – highly respected for its mystical quality – that cre-
ation was but a pale reflection of the Ideal? Medieval theologians faced a
seeming paradox when writing about creation as a manifestation of divine
beauty, since this same creation was inferior to the spiritual realm, and ulti-
mately to be eschewed and transcended; its beauty was illusory, and yet it was
Aesthetics 1422

a necessary starting point for any attempt to attain union with God. There
was also the aesthetic problem of intellect: how could we trust our percep-
tions, mediated as they were by the senses? Was the mind even capable of
grasping the ordering principles of the universe?
Underlying medieval aesthetic thought were ancient ideas that divine
beauty was perceptible in proportion and in light. Numerous Biblical pas-
sages (the order of creation in Genesis, the construction in Exodus, Wisdom
11:21) demonstrated that God had structured the universe according to
number. These passages fused with Pythagorean notions about the music of
the spheres, which echoed visibly in the cycles of the seasons and rhythms of
life; and with Platonic ideas about the soul’s pleasure at perceiving right pro-
portions when contemplating the cosmos. Boethius’ disquisitions on musical
congruence provided an important link between Greco-Roman aesthetic
thought and that of the Middle Ages, as did Augustine’s recurring discus-
sions of proportion and number as keys to understanding the material world
(De ordine), music (De musica), and the Trinity (De Trinitate).
Medieval aesthetics also emphasized the importance of luminosity,
which is a principal sign of divinity and of God’s connection to mankind in
the Bible. Equally important was the Platonic theory of the Forms as trans-
mitted by Plotinus, for whom light became the essential substance by which
the human intellect may contemplate the Nous (universal spirit or intelli-
gence) (André Grabar, Les origines de l’esthétique médiévale, 1992). The Platonic
aesthetics of light was Christianized in the late 5th-century work of Pseudo-
Dionysius, for whom the cosmos results from the outpouring of divine light
by the Christian God. This emphasis on light – and thus on the visible – pro-
foundly shaped the Western medieval appreciation of art objects.
The 9th century witnessed the first appearance of sustained inquiry into
the nature of beauty in the medieval West, as is evidenced by the translations
of Pseudo-Dionysius made by Hilduin (832) and John Scottus Eriugena (ca.
862). Eriugena’s treatises are particularly noteworthy, for he attempted to
take abstract and mystical ideas about divine beauty and transpose them into
a rationalist account of creation and human nature. For Eriugena, humanity
is blinded to its true nature as the image of God by the physical universe and
the senses. Yet even this fallen world manifests God’s love and beauty, which
may be perceived through intellectual contemplation and spiritual illumi-
nation. Eriugena’s work was condemned in the 13th century for its overly
close association of God with creation, but it anticipated later medieval the-
orists who focused on cognition as necessary to apprehending divine order.
The rise of the schools in the 12th century marked the next major chapter
in medieval aesthetic theory. Hugh of Saint-Victor was emblematic of his
1423 Aesthetics

time in emphasizing the symbolic essence of physical creation, which was

“referable to invisible significations and statements,” therefore, “visible
beauty is an image of invisible beauty” (In Hierarchiam Coelestem [PL, 175,
col. 949]). Aesthetics was also deeply implicated in the 12th-century debates
between Nominalists and Realists, since they revolved around the degree
to which mental images corresponded to things in nature. If the mind were
capable of forming universal concepts from its experience of individual
things, as Realists such as Abelard contended, it would mean the intellect
was designed to know divine beauty and not merely imagine it.
In the 13th century, several phenomena gave a new impetus to the study
of divine beauty and human perception of it. Alexander of Hales, expressing
new concerns with individual intentionality and sin, insisted upon the
distinction between the good, which concerned a thing’s purpose, and the
beautiful, which concerned how its form was perceived. Robert Grosseteste,
influenced by the fight against dualist heresies and the newly available Aris-
totelian corpus, melded Platonic and Aristotelian ideas into a theory of cor-
poreal light. For Grosseteste, matter resulted from the mathematical order-
ing of divine light rather than, as the Cathars claimed, an absence of light.
Albertus Magnus argued for a divine “organizing activity” expressed in
beautiful form, thus rejecting Hales’s notion that perception was necessary
to beauty. Most important in this era was the work of Aquinas, whose notion
of visio, or disinterested judgment of beauty undisturbed by affect or the
senses, laid the foundations for the scientific method and, ultimately, mod-
ern aesthetics.
Late-medieval aesthetics witnessed a reaction against Scholastic rational-
ism and categorization. William of Ockham returned to a Nominalist posi-
tion that rejected the existence of universal order and insisted upon the
need to evaluate entities individually. Nicholas d’Autrecourt, who was con-
demned by the Church in 1347, held that there was no objective hierarchy by
which to judge perfection in things. And mystics, writing in the vernacular
and refusing learned discourse and analysis, evoked intensely personal vi-
sions of divine beauty that made it seem accessible to anyone. Yet they often
insisted on the need to follow a specific revelatory praxis, thereby perpetuat-
ing the ancient notion that mystical contemplation had aesthetic structure
(Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysti-
cism [1200–1350], 1998).
Aesthetics 1424

C. Aesthetics in Practice
For Augustine, art is “imitatio cum ratione” (De musica, 1.1.4); for Theophilus
too, the “useful occupation of the hands” is a product of reason, a gift from
God that allows us to avoid idleness and sin (An Essay Upon Diverse Arts, Book
I); for Aquinas, “art operates on material furnished by nature” (De anima, II,
1 218). Encompassing a vast semantic field in the Middle Ages, the word ars,
at its core, signified the application of knowledge to a task, whether manual,
mental, or spiritual. Significantly, ars also evoked the conceptual union of
aesthetics and ethics, since one should always strive to make something
beautiful, i.e. pleasing to God and in accordance with the principles regulat-
ing creation. Art in the Middle Ages therefore carried a heavy moral charge
and intersected in manifold ways with theological and social concerns (The
Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey F. Ham-
burger and Anne-Marie Bouché, 2005).
The centuries-long aesthetic and ethical debates over art largely arose
from the Western medieval tradition’s insistence upon art’s didactic and
devotional functions. Plotinus’ philosophy justified the work of art insofar
as it was an instrument for projecting deeper realities into the mind. Over the
centuries, a chorus of luminaries – Gregory the Great, the Council of Nicea,
Walafrid Strabo, the Synod of Arras, Honorius of Autun, Durandus – af-
firmed the role of the image in education and devotion with striking consist-
ency (Herbert L. Kessler, “Gregory the Great and Image Theory in North-
ern Europe during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” A Companion to
Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph,
2006; Jean-Claude Schmitt, “La Culture de l’imago,” Annales 51.1 [1996]:
3–36). This emphasis on visual didacticism explains the importance of im-
agery in ecclesiastical settings (Madeline Harrison Caviness, Stained Glass
Windows, 1996; Thomas E. A. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities and
Phantasms in the Cloister of Saint-Michel de Cuxa,” Art Bulletin 83.3 [2001]:
402–36; Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval
Convent, 1997; Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon: Making a Contract with the
Mother of God, Saint Mary of Amiens, 2004). It also explains why images were so
prominent in devotional books made for the laity, or even for those with
clerical training (Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and
the Making of Medieval England, 1998; Cynthia J. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart:
Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of the Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth
Century, 2001; Jonathan Harthan, Books of Hours and their Owners, 1977;
Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England:
Three Women and their Books of Hours, 2003; Roger Wieck, Time Sanctified: The
Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, 1988).
1425 Aesthetics

The application of number and proportion to art is another example

of the overlap between aesthetic theory and practice in the Middle Ages.
Following Pythagoras, certain musical intervals were understood to reflect
universal ratios, which gave music special status both in the quadrivium
and as the matrix for the liturgy (Herbert M. Schueller, The Idea of Music:
An Introduction to Musical Aesthetics in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 1988; Leo
Treitler, Music and the Historical Imagination, 1989). The writings of Vitru-
vius and Vincent of Beauvais, the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, and
the layout of Gothic cathedrals reveal a similar attentiveness to meaningful
proportion in graphic and architectural design (Carl F. Barnes, Jr., The Port-
folio of Villard de Honnecourt: A New Critical Edition and Color Facsimile, 2008;
Nigel Hiscock, The Wise Master Builder: Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval
Abbeys and Cathedrals, 2000; Stephen Murray, Notre-Dame, Cathedral of
Amiens: The Power of Change in Gothic, 1996; Charles M. Radding and William
W. Clark, Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning: Builders and Masters in the
Age of Romanesque and Gothic, 1992; Otto Von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral:
Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, 1956; Marie-
Thérèse Zenner, “Architectural Layout: Design, Structure, and Construc-
tion in Northern Europe,” A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic
in Northern Europe, 2006, 531–56). The treatises of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Poetria
Nova) and Eustache Deschamps (Art de dictier) show that this concern with
number also applied to the use of poetic form (Rüdiger Brandt, Kleine Ein-
führung in die mittelalterliche Poetik und Rhetorik, 1986; Douglas Kelly, The Arts
of Poetry and Prose, 1991; Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition: Five English artes
dictandi and Their Tradition, ed. Martin Camargo, 1995).
Like that of proportion, the aesthetics of light and color straddled theory
and practice in significant ways. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the
accounts of Abbot Suger about the building of Saint-Denis, which suggest a
direct relationship between the Neo-Platonic preoccupation with divine
light and the expanded glazing of Gothic architecture (Abbot Suger and Saint-
Denis: A Symposium, ed. Paula Gerson, 1986; Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church
of Saint-Denis and its Art Treasures, ed. and trans. Erwin Panofsky, 1946).
In literature one finds the constant evocation of bright and primary colors, a
preference materialized in heraldry, manuscript illumination, tapestry,
murals, metallic vessels for court and church, and painted sculpture (Michel
Pastoureau, Figures et couleurs: Etudes sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médi-
évales, 1986). It is important to note that an opposite tendency also existed:
the mystical conception of God dwelling in darkness found artistic expres-
sion in texts and images that employed obscurity to impel contemplation
(Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 1998; Douglas Kelly, “Obscurity
Aesthetics 1426

and Memory: Sources for Invention in Medieval French Literature,” Vernacu-

lar Poetics in the Middle Ages, ed. Lois Ebin, 1984, 33–56).
Several aesthetic theories and practices came together in the arts of mem-
ory. Following Quintilian, numerous medieval writers exhorted the use
of well-lit architectural frames for the placement of memory images, thereby
combining the fundamental aesthetic categories of light and proportion.
Others suggested using bizarre, violent, or monstrous images, thus applying
theories about the efficacy of mental impressions made by dissimilarity (Mary
Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 1990). An aesthetic approach to mne-
monics was also visible in manuscript design, with the ordinatio of the page
understood as contributing to legibility and memorability (M. B. Parkes,
“The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Develop-
ment of the Book,” Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard
William Hunt, ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson, 1976, 115–41).
Though aesthetics was primarily explored by theologians, aesthetic con-
cerns were also a central factor of secular court life. Theology may even have
influenced the ethos of courtly love, since the cult of the Virgin – the most
perfect, and therefore beautiful, human – and the concept of fin’amors
appeared at roughly the same time and fed off of each other (Reto R. Bez-
zola, Les origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en Occident [500–1200],
1944–1963). Of course, court life itself was highly aestheticized. Décor and
material culture were integral to the aesthetic fashioning of noble identity:
from monumental objects such as tapestries and murals, to personal items
such as mirrors and combs, the physical environment of the court was an
extension and reflection of noble superiority (Joachim Bumke, Höfische Kul-
tur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter, 1986; Paris 1400: Les arts sous
Charles VI, ed. Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, avec la contribution de Fran-
çois Avril, 2004; Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court, 2001). Even the noble
body was understood as a work of art to be crafted and displayed in dance,
song, dress, speech, and combat (The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text,
Context, and Translation, ed. and trans. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth
Kennedy, 1996; Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and
Identity during the Hundred Years War, 2002).
The nobility’s emphasis on personal appearance was one aspect of a cen-
tral aesthetic issue throughout the Middle Ages – how to represent the
human body. Crucifixion imagery demonstrates a gradual movement from
highly stylized and impassive to anatomically accurate and psychologically
expressive figures (Paul Thoby, Le crucifix, des origines au Concile de Trente:
Etude iconographique, 1959). This trend mirrors that leading from the Vitru-
vian notion of the homo quadratus, according to which the human form is a
1427 Aesthetics

mirror of universal order, to the late medieval emphasis on bodily excretion

and putrefaction as expressed in the danse macabre, sermons, and visionary lit-
erature. Among the many factors underlying these developments, two major
ones were the aforementioned privileging of perception by theologians
and of personal devotion by mystics, which led to increasingly intimate
and individualized representations of Christ, the Virgin, and the deceased
(Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation, 1996; James Midgley
Clark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 1950; Elina
Gertsman, “Pleyinge and Peyntinge: Performing the Dance of Death,” Studies
in Iconography 27 [2006]: 1–43; Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong, Une
histoire du corps au moyen âge, 2003). As with proportion and light, corporeal
representation shows how aesthetic theory and practice overlapped in the
Middle Ages.
The application of medieval aesthetic values to art objects was not the
only force that determined how objects looked. Indigenous styles going back
to antiquity – such as Celtic interlace patterns in the British Isles, France, and
Spain – held on for centuries in many parts of Europe (Ruth and Vincent
Megaw, Celtic Art: From its Beginnings to the Book of Kells, 2001). Occasional re-
nascences of ancient art – during the Carolingian period, in the 12th century
in Italy, in the early 13th century in France – led to new visual vocabularies
(Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, 1960; Veronika
Wiegartz, Antike Bildwerke im Urteil mittelalterlicher Zeitgenossen, 2004).
Then there was the influence of “foreign” art – from Byzantium, the Islamic
realms, and Slavic lands (The Art of Medieval Spain, A.D. 500–1200, ed. Jerilynn
Dodds, 1993; Byzantinischer Kunstexport: Seine gesellschaftliche und künstlerische
Bedeutung für die Länder Mittel- und Osteuropas, ed. Heinrich L. Nickel, 1978;
The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261,
ed. Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom, 1997). Stylistic choices, far from
being made unreflectively, were often motivated by clear aesthetic and ideo-
logical designs. This is clearly true of objects that imitate Roman art, and
thus evoke the legitimacy of imperial heritage; and of Byzantine-inspired
art, which signified the Holy Land and the origins of Christianity (Carolingian
Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond McKitterick, 1994).
One last point should be made: paradoxical though it may seem, unease
with and outright resistance to art was also an important aspect of medieval
aesthetic thought and practice. Though the medieval West never experi-
enced iconoclasm on the scale that the East did, there was a long western
tradition against art that, like other aesthetic concepts, derived from both
the Bible and Greco-Roman philosophy. In the Middle Ages, Old Testament
injunctions against idolatry combined with Platonic and Stoic traditions
Aesthetics 1428

exhorting detachment from worldly objects. As a result, there developed an

extensive literature against the negative effects of curiosity, in the etymo-
logical sense of an excessive care for or attentiveness to materiality and sen-
sual pleasure (Curiositas: Welterfahrung und ästhetische Neugierde in Mittelalter
und früher Neuzeit, ed. Klaus Krüger, 2002; Richard Newhauser, Sin: Essays
on the Moral Tradition in the Western Middle Ages, 2007). The most forceful medi-
eval statement against art was Saint Bernard’s Apologia, in which he decried
the size of monastic churches and the use of images in monasteries (Conrad
Rudolph, The ‘Things of Greater Importance’: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and
the Medieval Attitude Toward Art, 1990). Bernard’s attack had important artistic
implications, as it led the Cistercians to privilege non-figurative art and con-
tributed greatly to the widespread use of grisaille. But concerns about exces-
sive display, curiosity, and the sins they lead to were far from restricted to the
monastic sphere. Sumptuary laws, manuscript illumination, architectural
design, and numerous other medieval activities all bear the marks of this dis-
trust of the image.

D. History of Scholarship
The study of medieval aesthetics can be said to begin during the blurry tran-
sition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The very idea of the medium
aevum as an interruption in history represents an aesthetic evaluation of
the period – it is the product of a differentiating analysis, the same one that
produced notions of “barbarian” invasions and “Gothic” architecture. In
this sense, figures such as Du Bellay (with his famous dismissal of medieval
literature in the Défense et illustration de la langue française) and Vasari (with his
references to “the almost forgotten art of painting” in the time of Cimabue
and to other medieval artistic failings in his Vite) may be counted among the
first students of medieval aesthetics, since they were crucial to establishing
the Middle Ages/Renaissance dichotomy (Jacques Heers, Le Moyen Âge, une
imposture, 1992).
The modern interest in medieval art dates to the 18th century, when
nationalistic impulses inspired rediscovery of the native past, and Romanti-
cism fueled fascination with an age deemed innocent, spontaneous, and mys-
terious. In the 19th century, medievalism bloomed as numerous architects,
artists, writers, and scholars all over Europe devoted their careers to unear-
thing, studying, copying, and publicizing medieval art. The first two gener-
ations of medieval art specialists sprang from and reacted against this
culture. The work of Alois Riegl, Emile Mâle, Johan Huizinga, Henri Fo-
cillon, and Erwin Panofsky, all of whom were born before 1900, signaled
a new, scientific approach that paid greater attention to the contemporary at-
1429 Aesthetics

titudes and conditions that had shaped medieval art than had their prede-
cessors.
Yet the work of these art historians was not focused solely on aesthetics.
Indeed, while medievalism until the mid-20th century – whether practiced
by specialists or non-specialists – necessarily implied a consideration of
medieval aesthetic attitudes, the study of medieval aesthetics per se, as a
phenomenon independent of medieval art, has a relatively short history.
The first comprehensive work devoted to the topic was Edgar De Bruyne’s
Etudes d’esthétique médiévale (3 vols., 1946). Though it had been preceded by
studies that had treated narrower issues in medieval aesthetics, De Bruyne’s
study established the subject as a legitimate field of inquiry and launched a
wave of research that continues to this day. Umberto Eco began his academic
career with a dissertation on aesthetics in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas
(Il problema estetico in Tommaso d’Aquino, 1956), which he followed with Svi-
luppo dell’estetica medievale (1959; translated as Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages,
1986). Other early proponents of the study of medieval aesthetics were Wla-
dyslaw Tatarkiewicz (Historia estetyki, 1960–67; translated as History of Aes-
thetics, 1970–1974), and Rosario Assunto (La critica d’arte nel pensiero medio-
evale [1961]; Die Theorie des Schönen in Mittelalter [1963]). Since the 1960’s, as
the preceding overview demonstrates, scholars have pursued a wide variety
of topics in medieval aesthetics both theoretical and applied, establishing
this as a major field in Medieval Studies.

Select Bibliography
Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age: Colloque international, Centre national
de la recherche scientifique, Université de Rennes II, Haute-Bretagne, 2–6 mai 1983, ed. Xavier
Barral i Altet (Paris: Picard, 1986–1990); Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings,
ed. Virginia Chieffo Raguin et al. (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press,
1995); Moshe Barasch, Theories of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann (New York: New York
University Press, 1985); Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem
Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich: Beck, 1990); Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996); Jèssica Jacques Pi, La estética del románico y el gótico
(Madrid: Antonio Machado Libros, 2003).

Mark Cruse
Allegory 1430

Allegory

A. A Protean Subject
Since the late 1950s and 1960s, when concern with hermeneutics saw a
“rehabilitation of allegory” – it is a figure for the transmission of tradition in
Hans-Georg Gadamer – and when the status of rhetoric was enhanced in
post-structuralist circles, leading to the interest in allegory especially in Paul
de Man, research on allegory remains of abiding relevance. Today, there are
wide-ranging studies of relevant texts and of the allegorical mode in medi-
eval theology, literature, and art. However, one fundamental methodologi-
cal problem seems to remain unsolved: instead of providing a precise set of
heuristic tools, every consideration of medieval allegory requires not just
care in order to preserve its specificity which delimits it to modern theories;
difficulties are also caused by the historically determined fuzziness of the
terminology as well as the heterogeneity and complexity of the field of inves-
tigation, which make attempts at systematization intricate, but also con-
tinue to raise new questions.
A survey of medieval sources reveals a remarkably rich variety of differ-
ent allegorical concepts and functions. The technique is used – to name only
a few central fields of interest – in the context of Biblical exegesis, with re-
gard to the interpretation of pagan authors and myths, in philosophy and lit-
erary aesthetics, and is also discussed in relation to the appropriate modes of
Christian interpretation of the world and medieval sign theory in general.
Allegory, according to its formal definition, means in the first instance a rhe-
torical figure, by which the literal level of meaning of a word or discourse
is transformed into a second meaning, aut aliud verbis aliud sensu ostendit,
aut etiam interim contrarium, as the influential statement of Quintilian (Inst.
VIII 6,44) or that of the Auctor ad Herennium, oratio aliud verbis aliud sententia
demonstrans (IV 46), put it. The idea that a text possesses further dimensions
of meaning beyond the literal is pursued by medieval rhetorical schemes,
where allegory, along with metaphor, irony, and the riddle is classed as a
trope. However, allegory is taken beyond that, and became a comprehensive
technique by which linguistic, visual or material signs were used to point to
a second, often hidden, spiritual sense, as well as a mode by which abstract
figures of thought, which were otherwise impossible to put into words,
could be imagined, such as ethic models like the struggle between the virtues
and the vices, the divine plan for salvation and redemption, or the doctrines
of courtly love. Allegory, in its rhetorical-expressive form, which illustrates
intellectual concepts which are in themselves resistant to visualization, runs
1431 Allegory

in parallel and in mutual dependency with the exegetical-hermeneutic prac-

tice of allegoresis. Medieval allegoresis, the working out of multiple layers of
meaning, was initially applied to the interpretation of the Scripture, then to
secular texts and finally expanded to make creation ‘readable.’ Thus, not
only texts and pictures, but also things belonging to the visible world and
their qualities are given meanings which point to a metaphysical reality.
Allegory, with its particular referential structure, which sets a distance,
requiring interpretation, between the literal and spiritual sense, between the
level of image and meaning, is a specific expression of Christian understand-
ing of language and the world, which is interested in the relationship be-
tween Scripture or the visible world and the invisible, transcendent dimen-
sions of reality, between time and eternity, earthly life and salvation history.
The interrelation between the sign and the sphere of religious entities is
never direct, but has to be made accessible indirectly, which resulted in alle-
gory gaining its over-arching status as the leading thought- and art-form of
the Middle Ages. Thanks to its status as the fundamental method of seeking
the truth, the embodying of spiritually abstract ideas, of gaining understand-
ing and communicating faith, but also thanks to its creative, imaginative po-
tential, which results from the multilayered references of the signs and the
imagery of the literal level, allegory became a point of convergence for vary-
ing discourses and kinds of knowledge. The term ‘allegory’ thus designates a
net of complex relationships, which changes according to period or to the
theological, philosophical and literary context. There is much interaction be-
tween diverse terminologies and traditions in the theoretical writings and al-
legorical practice of the Middle Ages. New approaches were continually being
made and picked up, combined with other approaches, played off against
each other in controversial discussions and changed by fine adjustments.
The difficulties arising from these conditions have been repeatedly
treated in studies of allegory, which have sought possible methods of system-
atization and categorization. In terms of current positions in scholarship
and its ability to inspire further research, an essay by Christel Meier, “Über-
legungen zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Allegorie-Forschung: Mit beson-
derer Berücksichtigung der Mischformen,” FMSt 10 (1976): 1–69, is of great
significance. Meier demanded careful attention to historical differences,
and to the variety of forms and functions of allegorical discourse and under-
standing. She showed, through the critical exploration of modern, antitheti-
cal categories of distinction, of which the opposition hermeneutics and illus-
tration is the most productive, that the sources contain no homogenous
fields which would allow a distinction between, for example, religious ver-
sus secular allegory, or theology versus poetry. Instead, there is usually intel-
Allegory 1432

lectual, conceptual and pragmatic interpenetration, overlap, and transition.

Meier argued that it is precisely this process of ‘mixing’ (‘Vermischung’)
which constantly renews the poetic potential of allegory, which decisively
contributed to its great prevalence and diversification. A survey of current
research with the aim of developing a new concept of allegory can be found in
the monumental essay collection edited by Walter Haug, based on a Wolfen-
büttel symposium, Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, 1979. Excellent con-
tributions, which reassess the historical terminology and explore the various
types of allegory, their modifications and the tendencies of their develop-
ment in the context of contemporary horizons of knowledge and expec-
tation, stress the aesthetic potential of allegorical forms. The essays are not
confined to one epoch, and resist the assumption of a caesura at the Reforma-
tion, thus paying attention to the continuity of medieval allegorical forms as
an important basis of early modern formulation and decoding. Armand
Strubel has recently published a monograph which is intended as an over-
view of medieval concepts and the various research approaches of the 20th
century, “Grant senefiance a”: Allégorie et littérature au Moyen-Âge, 2002. Rhetori-
cal definitions, philosophical, theological and poetological approaches are
discussed, and above all the origins of a “forme littéraire” in French litera-
ture, with the aim of a new classification of allegorical writing. Synoptic
tables of allegorical works from the 13th to the 15th century accompany the
volume, as does a comprehensive bibliography.

B. History of Research
Academic interest in allegory, which had existed sporadically in the 1930s
and 1940s, became strongly present from the 1950s. Biblical hermeneutics
formed a first important field of research. An early special case, which was
not merely of importance to literary critics, can be found in Erich Auer-
bach’s essay “Figura” (Archivum Romanicum 22 [1939]: 436–89, rpt. Gesam-
melte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie, 1967, 55–92), to which scholars are
indebted for a new understanding of the figural structure in medieval litera-
ture. Auerbach is, here, close to the typological or figural mode originating
in St. Paul’s method of relating persons and events of the Old and New
Testament to each other in a scheme of prophecy and fulfillment, imago and
veritas, which can be contrasted to the tendency of radical spiritualization of
the Biblical text. The latter was characteristic first for the Alexandrine school
around Philo, and then above all for the allegorical techniques developed by
Origin. In distinction to a spiritualized, mysticizing allegory, which neglects
the literal sense in favor of arbitrary interpretations, the cultural-historical
importance of which is relativized by Auerbach, he sees figuralism, in its
1433 Allegory

concentration on historical and reality-based dimensions of meaning, as not

merely providing the basis for medieval interpretations of history, but also as
the precondition for the comprehension and depiction of concrete, this-
worldly, everyday realities in European literature. Although the sharp
distinction between typology and allegory, though reviving patristic and
medieval controversies, cannot be maintained today, Auerbach’s essay in
literary history retains its relevance, and not merely for the interpretation
of Dante’s Commedia. Shortly after, the problem of typology was discussed
with theological focus by, on the Protestant side, Gerhard von Rad, and
then by Jean Daniélou in the context of the Nouvelle Théologie (see Sacra-
mentum futuri: Études sur les origines de la typologie biblique, 1950; From Shadows
to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers, 1960). Important studies
on Biblical exegesis appeared with Beryl Smalley’s The Study of the Bible in
the Middle Ages, 1941, or Ceslas Spicq’s Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine
au moyen-âge, 1944. However, for the understanding of the history of spiri-
tual exegesis Henri de Lubac’s studies, which were rich in material, are of
particular relevance (see Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l’Écriture, 4 vols.,
1959–1964). Lubac, for whom typology and allegory interact, dealt with
the beginnings of Christian biblical interpretation. He analyzed St. Paul’s in-
terpretation of Old Testament words and events, but above all proved the
elaboration of multiple layers of meaning and typological relationships in
the patristic writers, whose interpretative practice he considered as exem-
plary. He traced the further development in the Middle Ages in its most
subtle branches and transformations, and followed vestiges of allegory in
less well known authors as well. Exegetical theory and practice as a whole is,
for Lubac, the centre of Christian spirituality; it synthesizes all the moments
of Christian self-reflectivity on the basis of revelation, and goes beyond
simple exegesis to dogmatics, Christian ethics and moral theology, eschatol-
ogy and ecclesiology (further studies on this field of sholarship: Marie-Domi-
nique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle, 1957; Hans-Jörg Spitz, Die Meta-
phorik des geistigen Schriftsinns: Ein Beitrag zur allegorischen Bibelauslegung des
ersten christlichen Jahrtausends, 1972; Hans-Joseph Klauck, Allegorie und Allego-
rese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten, 1978; Neue Richtungen in der hoch- und spätmit-
telalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E. Lerner, 1996; Gilbert Dahan, L’ex-
égèse chrétienne de la bible en Occident médiévale: XIIe–XIVe siècle, 1999).
While Lubac stressed the specificity of Christian exegesis, and clearly
distinguished it from the interpretative traditions of pagan antiquity, Jean
Pépin pointed to a process of transition and adaptation, in which Christian
allegory took over important elements of the pagan interpretation of my-
thology (see Mythe et allégorie: Les origines grecques et les contestations judéo-chré-
Allegory 1434

tiennes, 21976 [11958]; La tradition de l’allégorie de Philon d’Alexandrie à Dante:

Études historiques, 1987). Pépin investigated the response of Christian theolo-
gians of the first centuries to the models of interpretation of mythology
which were known to the Greek philosophers and were received in Alexan-
drine-Jewish cultural circles. Thanks to this, allegorical techniques devel-
oped by the Stoics and Neo-Platonist influenced early interpretations of
the Holy Scripture. To transfer the technique was easy, among other reasons,
because myths and biblical texts, which equally require interpretation,
are linked by the mystery of religious truth, whose clear understanding is
hindered by ambiguity and resists attempts to fix it. Pépin’s comparative
analyses revealed analogies in the methodology and conceptualization of al-
legoresis, for example in the early Christian treatment of Moses and the
manner in which Greek philosophers down to Porphyry dealt with Homer,
or using the writings of Philo, who compared reading the Bible to celebra-
ting the Mysteries.
Allegory has gained a prominent place since the sixties, and still more
since the seventies, in the field of medieval ‘significs,’ which Friedrich Ohly
conceived as a central area of mediaevalism and an inter-disciplinary re-
search task. Significs, which aims to determine a comprehensive medieval
system of signs, directed its attention to the whole field of the allegorical-
spiritually interpreted and identified the hermeneutic process of the spiri-
tual interpretation of the world, the Bible, and history as a fundamental
mode of understanding which applied to all areas of knowledge. The method
of allegoresis, in this perspective, was the precondition for every kind of
mimesis in literature and art, accompanying the illustrative allegory and al-
ways connected to it. Ohly, who worked on the exegetical tradition of the
Song of Songs early in his career (Hohelied-Studien: Grundzüge einer Geschichte
der Hoheliedauslegung des Abendlandes bis um 1200, 1958), first defined the area
of significs in his inaugural lecture in Kiel in 1958 “Vom geistigen Sinn des
Wortes im Mittelalter,” then, in a preliminary survey, in the introduction
to his collected essays Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung, 21983
[11977]. In his publications, which showed among other fields of interest,
how the figural interpretative scheme of biblical exegesis was made produc-
tive in secular literature from the early Middle Ages on, Ohly stressed that
the understanding of historic significs is a necessary prelude to every reading
of medieval texts. The project inspired congresses (“Probleme mittelalter-
licher Bedeutungsforschung,” FMSt 6 [1972]: 67–492; particularly impor-
tant Verbum et Signum: Beiträge zur mediävistischen Bedeutungsforschung, ed. Hans
Fromm, Wolfgang Harms, and Uwe Ruberg, 2 vols., 1975; Bildhafte Rede in
Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit: Probleme ihrer Legitimation und ihrer Funktion, ed.
1435 Allegory

Wolfgang Harms and Klaus Speckenbach, 1992) and series of individual

projects with broad thematic concerns. Among Ohly’s pupils, but also
independently and beyond, contributions appeared on the allegoresis of
numbers, things, and qualities (Heinz Meyer, Die Zahlenallegorese im Mittel-
alter: Methode und Gebrauch, 1975; Lexikon der mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeu-
tungen, ed. id. and Rudolf Suntrup, 1987; Ulrich Ernst, “Kontinuität
und Transformation der mittelalterlichen Zahlensymbolik in der Renais-
sance: Die ‘Numerorum mystica’ des Petrus Bungus,” Euphorion 77 [1983]:
247–325; Mensura: Maß, Zahl, Zahlensymbolik im Mittelalter, 2 vols., ed. Albert
Zimmermann, 1983/84; Christel Meier, “Das Problem der Qualitätenalle-
gorese,” FMSt 8 [1974]: 385–435; ead., Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch
der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert, vol. 1, 1977;
ead. and Rudolf Suntrup, “Zum Lexikon der Farbenbedeutungen im Mit-
telalter: Einführung zu Gegenstand und Methoden sowie Probeartikel aus
dem Farbenbereich ‘Rot’,” FMSt 21 [1987]: 390–478; Lexikon der Farbenbedeu-
tungen im Mittelalter, ed. Christel Meier-Staubach and Rudolf Suntrup,
forthcoming), on the meaning given to natural processes (Ohly, Diamant
und Bocksblut: Zur Tradition und Auslegungsgeschichte eines Naturvorgangs von der
Antike bis in die Moderne, 1976), to animals (Dietrich Schmidtke, Geistliche
Tierinterpretation in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des Mittelalters (1100–1500),
1968), liturgical gestures (Rudolf Suntrup, Die Bedeutung der liturgischen Ge-
bärden und Bewegungen in lateinischen und deutschen Auslegungen des 9. bis 13. Jahr-
hunderts, 1978), and on the encyclopedias and dictionaries in which the
Middle Ages preserved its knowledge of the various dimensions of meaning
(Reinildis Hartmann, Allegorisches Wörterbuch zu Otfrieds von Weißenburg
Evangeliendichtung, 1975; Heinz Meyer, “Zum Verhältnis von Enzyklopädik
und Allegorese im Mittelalter,” FMSt 24 [1990]: 290–313). A concise over-
view of the various areas of medieval significs, rich in contemporary material
and insightful analysis, can be found in Hennig Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche
Hermeneutik, 1980.
While significs tries to locate an all-embracing medieval horizon of
thought and knowledge in allegory, a central field of research focused on the
role of allegory in the literary aesthetics and artistic self-understanding of
the Middle Ages. In addition to the fundamental question, to what extent –
if at all – secular and religious allegory differ from each other, and in which
reciprocal relation theology, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts stand
in which historical and intellectual constellations, scholars have investi-
gated, for example, the development and spread of allegorical personifica-
tion, the development of allegorical poetry in various genres and the theory
of the integumentum, i.e., the assumption that the veil of fiction conceals a
Allegory 1436

Christian truth. C. S. Lewis’s study The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval

Tradition (1936) was groundbreaking, and is frequently reprinted. Lewis,
working from the perspective of intellectual history, showed how the alle-
gorical mode became the dominant form of expression in vernacular poetry.
He traced how the allegorical mode, which made the immaterial-abstract
visually imaginable, began with the active personifications in Roman epic,
for instance in Statius, was then adapted in late antiquity especially in the
concept of the psychomachia which was formed by Prudentius, as well as in the
pagan epithalamia. Hans H. Glunz, too, produced an early work in the field,
Die Literarästhetik des europäischen Mittelalters: Wolfram, Rosenroman, Chaucer,
Dante, 1937 (rpt. 1963) showing the importance of allegory for medieval lit-
erature, while Edgar de Bruyne, Études d’esthétique médiévale (3 vols., 1946,
rpt. 1998) placed it in the wider context of medieval aesthetics. The funda-
mental aesthetic reassessment of allegory since the beginning of the 1960s
has been chiefly indebted to Hans Robert Jauss. Jauss appreciated the con-
tributions that recent research on Christian theological allegory as the basis
of new beginnings in literary scholarship had produced.
He reflected the particular valences of secular allegorical forms, which
constituted themselves by taking over and developing theological ideas of al-
legory, and in a dialogue with them which took different forms in different
historical contexts. Thus the allegorical modus dicendi is uniquely able to
make invisible things visually comprehensible. This still leaves open the
question if and to what extent allegory as a literary depiction of the non-vis-
ual, which in the Middle Ages primarily belonged to the religious category,
began to make possible a subject-oriented mode of reception, which Jauss
later called aesthetic experience. Important studies examined individual
areas of the increasingly literary nature of allegory: Jauss investigated, for
example, the influence of the Christian allegory of the bellum intestinum, the
striking visualization of invisible powers and ethical ideas, as exemplified in
the writings of Prudentius (“Form und Auffassung der Allegorie in der
Tradition der ‘Psychomachia’,” Medium Aevum Vivum: Festschrift für Walther
Bulst, ed. id. and Dieter Schaller, 1960, 179–206; cf. Reinhart Herzog,
Die allegorische Dichtkunst des Prudentius, 1960; on representative modes of pic-
torial art cf. Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in
Medieval Art: From Early Christian Times to the 13th Century, 1939, rpt. 1968); he
showed the transition from the allegorical appropriation of classical myths
and fables to a remythologization of internal psychological forces, such as
erotic passion, which eventually resulted in a new mythology, e.g. the depic-
tion of the otherworldly kingdom of Amor, and considered the particular
characteristics of the allegorical poetry of Brunetto Latini and its possible
1437 Allegory

influence on Dante’s Commedia. Beside the ‘serious’ didactic-moral form of-

medieval allegory, Jauss demonstrated that a tendency to humor and com-
edy can also be found in allegory, which, according to him, does not so much
satirize Christian doctrine but the claim to reveal a higher truth (“Allegorese,
Remythisierung und neuer Mythos”; “Brunetto Latini als allegorischer
Dichter”; “Ernst und Scherz in mittelalterlicher Literatur” – essays collected
and rpt. in Jauss, Alterität und Modernität der mittelalterlichen Literatur: Gesam-
melte Aufsätze 1956–1976, 1977; on the allegorical-mythic representation of
love, cf. also Doris Ruhe, ‘Le Dieu d’Amours avec son paradis’: Untersuchungen zur
Mythenbildung um Amor in Spätantike und Mittelalter, 1974, as well as the criti-
cism and re-determination of the function of various personifications of love
in Rüdiger Schnell, Causa amoris: Liebeskonzepte und Liebesdarstellung in der
mittelalterlichen Literatur, 1985). A preliminary synthesis, rich documentary
sources, and a systematic approach can be found in the ambitiously con-
ceived chapter on allegorical literature which Jauss and Uda Ebel wrote
for the Grundriss der Romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (Jauss, “Entste-
hung und Strukturwandel der allegorischen Dichtung,” GRLMA VI,1 [1968]:
146–81; 215–44; Ebel, “Die literarischen Formen der Jenseits- und Endzeit-
visionen,” GRLMA VI,1 [1968]: 181–215; Ebel, “Didaktische und allego-
rische Literatur der Dante-Zeit,” GRLMA X,2 [1989]: 129–78).
As a result of this tendency, apparent since the 1970s, to give allegory a
heightened importance, there has been a remarkable profusion of special-
ized investigations of allegory in particular authors, in individual works, in
various genres, as well as in the developments of allegorical literature in
France, Germany, Italy, England, and Spain (cf., e. g., Walter Blank, Die deut-
sche Minneallegorie, 1970; Marc-René Jung, Études sur le poème allégorique en
France au Moyen Age, 1971; Ulrich Ernst, “Gottfried von Straßburg in kom-
paratistischer Sicht: Form und Funktion der Allegorese im Tristanepos,”
Euphorion 70 [1976]: 1–72; Hartmut Freytag, Die Theorie der allegorischen
Schriftdeutung und die Allegorie in deutschen Texten besonders des 11. und 12. Jahrhun-
derts, 1982; Ingeborg Glier, “Allegorien,” Epische Stoffe des Mittelalters, ed.
Volker Mertens and Ulrich Müller, 1984, 205–28). One important field
of research is, like the French Roman de la Rose (cf. the bibliography in: Stru-
bel, op. cit. 374–95), Dante’s concept of allegory. Dante allegorizes his own-
poetry in form of a narrative – as in the Vita nova – or in form of a commen-
tary – as in the interpretation of individual canzones in the Convivio –,
discusses the relationship between poetic and theological allegory (cf. Conv.
II,1) and, in the letter to Cangrande della Scala, whose authenticity is ad-
mittedly questioned today, and which has been recently attributed to Boc-
caccio, expounds the technique of multiple levels of meaning as an adequate
Allegory 1438

method of understanding the Commedia. Inspired by Dante’s own state-

ments, a differentiated debate has evolved among researchers (Charles S.
Singleton, Dante Studies, 2 vols., 1954/1958; John Freccero, Dante: Poetics
of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff, 1986; Robert Hollander, Allegory in
Dante’s ‘Commedia’, 1969; id., Dante’s Epistel to Cangrande, 1994; Jean Pépin,
Dante et la tradition allégorique, 1970; Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the
Desert: History and Allegory in the ‘Divine Commedy’, 1979; Klaus W. Hempfer,
“Allegorie und Erzählstruktur in Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova’,” DDJb 57 [1982]:
7–39; Dante e le forme dell’allegoresi, ed. Michelangelo Picone, 1987; Otfried
Lieberknecht, Allegorese und Philologie: Überlegungen zum Problem des mehr-
fachen Schriftsinns in Dante’s ‘Commedia’, 1999; Andreas Kablitz, “Poetik der
Erlösung: Dante’s ‘Commedia’ als Verwandlung und Neubegründung mit-
telalterlicher Allegorese,” Commentaries – Kommentare, ed. Glenn W. Most,
1999, 353–79; see further the chapter on “Ästhetisierung des vierfachen
Schriftsinns bei Dante,” Patricia Oster, Der Schleier im Text: Funktions-
geschichte eines Bildes für die neuzeitliche Erfahrung des Imaginären, 2002). The cen-
tral debate between those who view Dante under the aspect of medieval alter-
ity and those who claim a ground-breaking (pre-)modernity, is still
undecided. The crucial question whether, or to what extent, the complex sys-
tem of reference in the text plays theological and literary allegory off against
each other and what level of reference each allegorical sign points to refuses a
straight answer.
One discussion that is at the heart both of the history of allegory itself
and of the history of research into it, and which seeks to deal with the transi-
tions between an integration into theology and the relative autonomy of the
apparently fictive, deals with the so-called integumentum theory, that is, the
question whether it is possible to communicate Christian truth under a veil
of pictures and fiction – sub integumento or sub involucro – and, generally, what
place should be given to the classical authors and pagan myths, as well
as secular imaginative literature in terms of theories of cognition and ethics
(see Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik, op. cit., 169–98). Besides
specialist studies on the allegoresis of mythology, which can only be men-
tioned here in passing (Die Allegorese des antiken Mythos, ed. Hans-Jürgen
Horn and Hermann Walter, 1997; Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski,
Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Litera-
ture, 1997; Luca Marcozzi, La biblioteca di Febo: Mitologia e allegoria in Petrarca,
2002), the use of the terminology and interpretative concepts have been
investigated (Édouard Jeaneau, “L’usage de la notion d’integumentum
à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et lit-
téraire du Moyen Age 24 [1957]: 35–100), as have the literary forms and tech-
1439 Allegory

niques associated with the idea of integumentum (Hennig Brinkmann, “Ver-

hüllung (‘integumentum’) als literarische Darstellungsform,” Der Begriff
der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter: Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild, ed. Albert
Zimmermann, 1971, 314–39). A precise distinction between the integu-
mentum model and the Biblical-hermeneutic theory of the multiple senses
of scripture can, however, only be found in a few sources; rather, there are
productive transitions (see Meier, “Überlegungen,” op. cit.). The assump-
tion that the implications of the integumentum theory were chiefly literary,
as it allows literature an independent way to truth and thus legitimates it,
has been relativized by Frank Bezner’s intellectual-historical study, Vela
Veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der ‘intellectual history’ des 12. Jahr-
hunderts, 2005. Bezner attempted to show the complex ‘genealogy’ of the
concept of the ‘veiled truth’ in different fields of discourse which were, how-
ever, in dialogue with each other. According to him, in the 12th century the
thought-figure of ‘integumental hermeneutics’ can only be understood in
the context of a wider discussion, which was concerned with the need to
order and clarify threatened cognition perspectives and with the ambivalent
role of language as a medium of knowledge.
In considering current research trends, the most prominent appears to
be a further diversification of areas which have already been defined. A need
remains for further discussion on various fields as shown by the most re-
cently published volumes of essays (L’allégorie de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed.
Brigitte Pérez-Jean and Patricia Eichel-Lojkine, 2004; Allégorie des poètes,
allégorie des philosophes: Études sur la poétique et l’herméneutique de l’allégorie de
l’Antiquité à la Reforme, ed. Gilbert Dahan and Richard Goulet, 2005). The
shape which allegory took, and its functions are understood as indicators of
cultural change and alterations of semiotic systems, and questions of cul-
tural transfer as they relate to medieval Islamic and Jewish allegoresis are
considered (Interpretation and allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period, ed. Jon
Whitman, 2000). However, in place of a concern with single problems
across various periods, to which essay collections tend in general – as, unfor-
tunately, the particular examples referenced above do to varying extents – a
stronger conceptual concentration and a clearer but narrower focus would be
desirable. Changed investigative techniques and new problematizations of
allegory may, as, for instance, Bezner’s book shows, take the form of cul-
tural or intellectual history. Equally relevant is the neighboring area of topoi
research, but also the varying field of research into the role of ritual and sym-
bolism in the Middle Ages. Interest in allegory regarding questions about the
specificity of medieval aesthetics has remained strong, and related research
into religious drama should be noted, where in addition to the allegorical-
The Author in the Middle Ages 1440

liturgical function to illustrate salvation history, there is a new focus on the

aesthetic attraction of the plays. However, the most promising area, opening
the widest perspectives, is the concern with the theory, perception, and func-
tion of the image in the Middle Ages, which is currently a prominent subject
of academic discourse. In this domain, continuities and alterations in the
configuration and reference of signs into the modern period can be observed,
above all in the field of emblematics.

Select Bibliography
Richard Glasser, “Abstractum agens und Allegorie im älteren Französisch,” ZRPh 69
(1953): 43–122; Reinhart Hahn, “Die Allegorie in der antiken Rhetorik,” Ph.D. diss.
Tübingen 1967; Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Pos-
terity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously
Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970); Wolfgang Harms, Homo
viator in bivio: Studien zur Bildlichkeit des Weges (Munich: Fink, 1970); Ulrich Krewitt,
Metapher und tropische Rede in der Auffassung des Mittelalters (Ratingen et al.: Henn, 1971);
Dietrich Schmidtke, Studien zur dingallegorischen Erbauungsliteratur des Spätmittelalters
am Beispiel der Gartenallegorie (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982); Jon Whitman, Allegory:
The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Paul
Michel, Alieniloquium: Elemente einer Grammatik der Bildrede (Bern et al.: Lang, 1987);
Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature, ed. J. Stephen Russell (New York
and London: Garland, 1988); Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100–c. 1375: The
Commentary Tradition, ed. Alastair J. Minnis and A. B. Scott (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1988); Walter Haug, Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter: Von den Anfängen bis
zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts (1985; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1992); Wiebke Freytag, “Allegorie, Allegorese,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik I,
ed. Gert Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992), 330–93; Rita Copeland and Peter T.
Struck, The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University
Press, 2010).

Bettina Full

The Author in the Middle Ages

A. Introduction
Broadly speaking, there is a diachronic development in the conception of the
author in the Middle Ages. Beginning with the hermeneutic tradition of the
study of Latin auctores in the academic prologues written to introduce auth-
oritative works (scriptural and secular) in the early Middle Ages, the human
1441 The Author in the Middle Ages

aspect of authorship is increasingly studied in the 12th century. In the 13th

century, the introduction of the Aristotelian prologue leads to a multiple
conception of authorship. And finally, these Latin notions of authorship are
transferred to vernacular writers in the 13th and 14th centuries. The concep-
tion of the author in the Middle Ages is while derived from patristic sources,
fluid rather than fixed.
Even the etymological development of the word manifests the flexibility
of the notions underlying its terminology (see Marie-Dominique Chenu,
“Auctor, Actor, Autor,” Bulletin du Cange: Archivium Latinitatis Medii Aevi 3
[1927]: 81–86, and his Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry
and D. Hughes [1963], 126–55). The term “author” in Latin (sg. auctor, pl.
auctores) derives from the interrelated terms auctor, actor, and author. For the
Romans, an actor (from the verb ago, to do or perform), like an auctor (from
augeo, to produce), was a person who took the initiative in a juridic act such as
selling property, or someone who simply produced something. While the
term auctor was broad enough to encompass any human activity, actor, on the
other hand, referred specifically to someone who had produced a book.

B. Author and Authority

In the Middle Ages, auctor became etymologically and figuratively linked to
two important ideas: authenticity and authority. The significance of the first
in authorship can be seen in the development of the third term author, which
was used along with auctor and actor to denote authorship. With its clear ety-
mological links to authenticity (authenticus), author highlights the believabil-
ity and trustworthiness of the author and his work. Despite what may seem
to us to be simple and arbitrary variations in spelling, medieval grammarians
were quite intentional in their use of the terms auctor, author, and actor
(Chenu, “Auctor, Actor, Autor”).
The second foundational idea, authority (auctoritas), is also noteworthy
for understanding the conception of the author in the Middle Ages. Like auc-
tor, the etymology of the term auctoritas also develops in a metonymic fashion.
Deriving from the juridic act described above, auctoritas initially stands for
the guarantee – the mark of trust – between the respective parties. An auctori-
tas is technically a specific quotation from the work of an auctor; in the larger
sense, it is the quality of authoritativeness which imbues the writings of an
individual auctor. The dignity ascribed to auctoritas, infused in the Middle
Ages with theological ideals and language, soon extends first to the person
himself and then to his actions, and thus to his writing and the text itself.
This early transposition of legitimacy from the person to the written
text in the etymological development of both auctor and auctoritas reveals a
The Author in the Middle Ages 1442

blurring of the two, so that auctores possess both authority and authenticity;
they were, by traditional definition, the ancient and trusted authorities. The
auctores were, then, ancient rather than contemporary; indeed, in the 13th
century Roger Bacon was outraged at the authoritative status accorded to
his contemporaries Albert the Great and Alexander of Hales (Gérard Paré, Le
Roman de la Rose et la scolastique courtoise [1941] 23–25). Moreover, the term auc-
tores itself referred as much to authoritative writers as to their writings (and
the commentary tradition associated with them). As a result, the most auth-
oritative writings are Scriptural, the first and principal author, God himself.
For Bonaventure (d. 1275), for example, God was the source of authority and
inspiration for the human author (Bonaventure in Friedrich Stegmüller,
Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi [1950–; hereafter RBMA], t. 2, 1777).

C. The Canon of Authors

The typical course of study required the study of the auctores, even in the early
Middle Ages (Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: ‘Grammatica’ and
Literary Theory, 350–1100 [1994]). Each area of study had auctores specific to
their discipline: Priscian and Donatus for grammar; Cicero for rhetoric;
Galen for medicine, for example (Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of
Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages [1984], 13). While
scholars have identified three paradigmatic types of academic prologue ana-
lyzing the auctores (R. W. Hunt, “Introduction to the Artes in the Twelfth
Century,” Studia medievalia in honorem R.M. Martin, O.P. [1948], 85–112; Min-
nis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 15–28), it is clear that one (identified by
Hunt as “C”), predominated. In this type of prologue, the student or com-
mentator would treat, sequentially, the title of the work, the author’s name
and his intention, the subject-matter of the work as well as its methodology,
organization, and utility, and finally, the discipline to which the work be-
longed. Faced with Scriptural texts, this type of prologue had to be modified
somewhat: the human auctor was clearly less important than the Biblical
truth and authority he related (Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 40–72).
Nevertheless, the commentary tradition of the accessus ad auctores in the 12th
century did entail the study of authorial intention, which anticipates the
increasing interest in the multiple roles inherent to authorship later in the
Middle Ages.
In the 13th century, the Aristotelian scheme of the four “causes” created
different, more complex levels of authorship. As a result, it is not uncommon
to see a doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled understanding of “author” in
the High Middle Ages (Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages,
3rd ed. [1941; 1983], 296–98; id. “A Commentary on Isaias by Guerric of St.
1443 The Author in the Middle Ages

Quentin, O. P.,” Studi e Testi 121 [1946]: 383–97. See also Minnis, Medieval
Theory of Authorship, 75–84). To take but one example: the duplex causa efficiens
ascribes two levels of authorship: divine (moving) and human (operating), so
that such a writer as Robert Holcot (d. 1349) views the author of the Book of
Wisdom as dual: firstly Wisdom itself (i. e. God), and secondly the wise Solo-
mon; Nicholas of Lyre (d. 1349) too names God and Hieronymus as the first
and second authors of Ecclesiastes (See Robert Holcot in RBMA, t. 5, 7416; Ni-
cholas of Lyre in RBMA, t. 4, 5871).
If human authorial activity was secondary relative to God, medieval ex-
egetes nevertheless found the myriad human facets of textual production
noteworthy. Medieval commentators analyzed both the literary and moral
activity of the human author (Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 94–112).
Indeed, although Bonaventure saw God as the foremost author, his descrip-
tion of the four ways to make a book, contained in the prologue to his com-
mentary of Peter Lombard’s Libri sententiarum, clearly distinguishes multiple
authorial roles in the production of the text: he names author, scribe, com-
piler, and commentator (Bonaventure, Commentaria in IV libros sententiarum
magistri Petri Lombardi Proemio 4, Quest. 4 in Opera Theologica Selecta, ed. L.M.
Bello [1934–1964], vol. 1, 12).
The multiplying of authors apparent in Bonaventure’s prologue also
suggests that medieval authorship can be considered as a collation of author-
ial identities. In fact, for Bonaventure an author was someone who, while
incorporating others’ words as confirmation, used primarily his own words
(Bonaventure, Commentaria Proemio 4, Quest. 4). This notion of an authorial
collatio of material had the practical function of blurring the boundaries be-
tween authors, allowing a medieval exegete to construct his authorship from
the reworking of others’ works, which he collated into a new composition
(Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
[1990], 199).
In addition, the authorship of an individual writer was also determined
by the generic and disciplinary categories attributed to his work. In other
words, a medieval author drew authority from the type of text he composed,
rather than simply the materia he collated Bernard of Utrecht (ca. 1080), for
example, categorizes authorship according to the different types of writing
and texts, distinguishing authors from poets, prophets, and commentators
(Bernard d’Utrecht, Commentum in Theodolum, in Accessus ad auctores; Bernard
d’Utrecht; Conrad d’Hirsau, ed. R. B. C. Huygens [1970], 27–37). Similarly,
Conrad of Hirsau (d. 1150) begins his Dialogus super auctores with the different
categorizations of literature, indicating how different types of writing had
different kinds of authors (Conrad of Hirsau, Dialogus super auctores, in Accessus
The Author in the Middle Ages 1444

ad auctores; Bernard d’Utrecht; Conrad d’Hirsau, ed. R. B. C. Huygens [1970],

44–59, 133–49).

D. The Author in the Later Middle Ages

In the later Middle Ages, the transposition of legitimacy from the person to
the written text offered writers an elastic definition of literary authority. Be-
cause authority could be attributed to a literary text as well as to the person
responsible for its composition, in the later medieval period we see the possi-
bility that auctoritas, whether person or text, at times resided outside the
standard, exegetical conception. Indeed, even theological citations of auth-
ority were heterogeneous, and at times dialectical or simply ornamental
(Chenu, Toward Understanding, 133). As Alan de Lille so vividly describes, “an
authority has a wax nose, which means that it can be bent into taking on dif-
ferent meanings” (Alan de Lille, De fide catholica, li. I, c. 30 in PL 210, 333A).
The flexibility in the citation of authorities is yet another indication of the
inherent elasticity in the medieval concept of authorship.
The medieval definition of author was, then, even for the Latin exegeti-
cal author, pliable, and vernacular authors of the 13th and 14th centuries
make good use of the malleability and elasticity of the Latin conception of
authorship. Translation becomes an important site and concept for vernacu-
lar authorship. Indeed, translatio literally and figuratively provokes a power-
ful shift, so that a vernacular translation, and its vernacular author, may dis-
place and appropriate the authority of its Latin model (Rita Copeland,
Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and
Vernacular Texts [1991]). If translatio, auctoritas, and conjointure appear as criti-
cal modes of cultural transmission, they become the tools by which auctoritas
may itself be transferred (Daniel Poirion, “Ecriture et ré-écriture au moyen
âge,” Littérature 41 [Feb. 1941]: 109–18). The prose vidas (lives of the trouba-
dours) and razos (reasons for composing specific songs), which provide bio-
graphical and often legendary details of the lives of the troubadours, serve
as vernacular counterparts to the Latin accessus ad auctores (William E. Burg-
winkle, Razos and troubadour songs [1990]). Similarly, Boccaccio posits such a
contemporary writer as Dante (secular, contemporary, writing often in the
vernacular), as an auctor: his short treatise in praise of Dante in the 14th cen-
tury clearly draws on the model of Latin authorship, but translates this con-
cept for a contemporary and vernacular audience (Trattatello in laude di Dante
in Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci, vol. 3 [1965]).
The idea that vernacular writers can attain auctoritas is an important and
influential shift in the development of medieval authorship. Increasingly
in the High Middle Ages, vernacular writers are considered to be auctores
1445 The Author in the Middle Ages

(Michelle Bolduc, The Medieval Poetics of Contraries [2006]). The troubadours,

for example, are frequently cited as authoritative authors in numerous ver-
nacular prose works (Françoise Veilliard, “Auteur et autorité dans la litté-
rature occitane médiévale non lyrique,” Auctor et auctoritas, 375–89; Michelle
Bolduc, “Naming Names: Matfre Ermengaud’s Use of Troubadour Quo-
tations,” Tenso: Bulletin de la société Guilhem IX 22:1–2 [2007]: 41–74). In fact,
vernacular writers of the later Middle Ages often turn to other vernacular
writers as models of authorship, a relationship that has been described as
a literary genealogy by more than a few scholars. Christine de Pizan, for
example, legitimizes her authorial voice by placing it within a literary gen-
ealogy which derives, but which is also demarcated, from Jean de Meun and
Dante (Kevin Brownlee, “Le moi lyrique et la généalogie littéraire: Chris-
tine de Pizan et Dante dans le Chemin de long estude,” Musique naturele: Interpre-
tationen zur französischen Lyrik des Spätmittelalters, ed. Wolf-Dieter Stempel
[1995], 105–39). This type of authoritative vernacular genealogy also pro-
duces the concomitant notion of vernacular authorship as continuation: nu-
merous writers continue “unfinished” vernacular works, and thus create the
innovative identity of the author-continuator: witness Jean de Meun as the
author-continuator of Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose (David F. Hult,
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority in the First Roman de la Rose
[1986]).

E. Visualizing the Author

Throughout the Middle Ages, authorship has a strong visual aspect. Por-
traits of the evangelists as authors at work appear in even early manuscripts
of the Gospels, such as the Lindesfarne Gospels, and portraits of later auth-
ors, and particularly of Dante holding the Commedia, appear with singular
frequency. Painting an author surrounded by books becomes in the Middle
Ages a favorite iconographic trope; indeed, the image of a table of books itself
becomes a visual marker of medieval authorship, just as the lily functions as
an attribute of the Virgin Mary (Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading
Public in Late Medieval England and France [1996], 103). Strikingly, author por-
traits appear regularly in vernacular codices, even in works composed by
authors utterly unknown to us: the portrait of one Heldris of Cornüalle,
“author” of the late 13th-century Roman de Silence, appears at the beginning of
this unusual romance, and numerous portraits of Chaillou de Pesstain, auth-
or-continuator of the Roman de Fauvel, appear in the celebrated early 14th-cen-
tury manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale de France fr. 146.
The Author in the Middle Ages 1446

F. History of Research
Research on the medieval conception of authorship has been heavily in-
fluenced by trends in literary theory. In its definitions of “author”, modern-
ity swings between two poles, moving from a perspective privileging the
biographical, even autobiographical, influence of the author on the text, to
a post-structuralist notion that the author is textually non-existent. Not
surprisingly, scholarship on medieval authorship reflects these changing
notions.
In the first half of the 20th century, under the influence of the Saussurian
textual web, scholars tended to deemphasize medieval authorship: certain
scholars saw an author’s self-naming as simply an aspect of the humility
topos, a gesture of intercession in which the author prays readers and God
for forgiveness (Julius Schwietering, “The Origins of the Humility For-
mula,” PMLA 69.5 [December 1954]: 1279–91). Others viewed the use of the
narrative first person “I” as an expression of a universal rather than individ-
ual subject (Leo Spitzer, “Note on the Poetic and Empirical ‘I’ in Medieval
Authors,” Traditio 4 (1946): 414–22). Others still considered authorial self-
naming as dependent upon genre, and enumerated numerous appearances
of the author’s name appearing in medieval texts, especially those of the 12th
century (Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
trans. Willard R. Trask [1948; 1953], 515–18).
More recently, postmodern schools of thought have had widespread in-
fluence on scholarship of authorship in the Middle Ages. Certain postmod-
ern theories have pushed the author from a linguistic figure to a trace, or for
Barthes, a non-existent entity. Foucault’s famous essay, “What is an
Author?” posits, for example, that medieval authorship was discursive, and
thus unnamed and absent; he sees traces of a pre-modern but still dialogic
authorial agent only in scientific texts (Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-ce qu’un
auteur?” Dits et écrits, ed. Daniel Defert et al. [1994], vol. 1. 789–821).
Despite Barthes’s claim that the author is dead, postmodern theories
of authorship and the nature of texts have nevertheless been fruitful lenses
through which to view authorship in medieval literature. Postmodern
theories have easily lent themselves to the creation of the idea of author as
textual figure. For example, the influence of Barthesian and Derridean
thought – that the meaning(s) of a text extends beyond any authorial inten-
tion, the importance of which is denied (Roland Barthes, “La Mort de l’aut-
eur” Le bruissement de la langue, [1984]; trans. Richard Howard as “The Death
of the Author” in The Rustle of Language [1986], 49–55; Jacques Derrida,
L’écriture et la difference, [1967]; trans. Alan Bass as Writing and Difference [1978]) –
finds a counterpart in Paul Zumthor’s seminal concept of “mouvance”
1447 The Author in the Middle Ages

(Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale [1972]; “De la circularité du

chant,” Poétique 2 [1970]: 129–40). “Mouvance” describes the understanding
of the fluidity of meaning compelled by the myriad and often disparate ver-
sions of medieval texts in a manuscript world. Further, the deconstructive
notions of the trace and the signature have had influence on recent scholar-
ship on medieval authorship (Laura Kendrick, Animating the Letter: The
Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance [1999];
Laurence De Looze, “Signing off in the Middle Ages: Medieval Textuality
and Strategies of Authorial Self-Naming,” Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality
in the Middle Ages, ed. Alger N. Doane and Carol B. Pasternack [1991],
162–82; Stephanie Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to
Postmodern [2002], 40–73).
The postmodern idea that the meaning of any particular text derives not
from the author but rather from the ever-changing relationship between
text and reader has also found expression in the many new semantic terms
to describe the reader of a medieval text as its re-creator, including Car-
ruthers’ “re-author” and Cerquiglini’s “récriture” (Carruthers, Book
of Memory; Jacqueline Cerquiglini, ‘Un engin si soutil’: Guillaume de Machaut
et l’écriture au XIVe siècle [1985]; John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manu-
script Culture: Glossing the Libro de buen amor [1994], 22–24; see also Roger
Chartier, “Texts, Printing, Readings,” The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn
Hunt [1989], 154–75; and id. Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and
Audiences from Codex to Computer [1995]).
Despite the influence of various theories and the plethora of disparate
ideas, there are two seminal works on the author in the Middle Ages: Marie-
Dominique Chenu’s relatively brief but foundational “Auctor, Actor, Autor,”
and Alastair Minnis’s comprehensive The Medieval Theory of Authorship.
Chenu’s work argues for an etymological understanding of the root word
“author,” and provides a lexical history of the use of the related terms
“author,” “authority,” and “authentic” from the Romans through the
Middle Ages. Minnis, on the other hand, examines the glosses and com-
mentaries on the authoritative Latin writers studied in medieval schools and
universities. Minnis argues that these prologues are useful for understand-
ing medieval literary theory, particularly, the literary theory particular to the
Middle Ages that was based on the related notions of auctor and auctoritas.
Other scholarship has taken a generic approach to medieval authorship.
Although the term ‘autobiography’ itself is a 19th-century neologism,
autobiography has been a useful generic category for understanding medi-
eval narratives and lyrics that utilize the first-person personal pronoun “I,”
and thus, such related notions as authorship and subjectivity. Despite the
The Author in the Middle Ages 1448

weight of historical uncertainty which, as Paul Zumthor claims, prevents

most medieval narratives from being considered autobiographical (Paul
Zumthor, “Autobiography in the Middle Ages?” Genre 6.1 [March 1973]:
29–48), scholars have nevertheless used autobiography as a model to under-
score medieval subjectivity, both grammatical and psychological (Eugene
Vance, “Augustine’s Confesssions and the Grammar of Selfhood,” Genre 6.1
[March 1973]: 1–28; Albrecht Classen, “Autobiography as a Late Medieval
Phenomenon,” Medieval Perspectives 3.1 [Spring 1988]: 89–104; see also his
monograph Autobiographische Lyrik des europäischen Spätmittelalters [1991]; Eve-
lyn Birge Vitz, “Type et individu dans l’autobiographie médiévale,” Poétique
24 [1975]: 426–45). Others, developing a new category based on autobi-
ography, namely the pseudo-autobiography, have usefully explored the am-
biguity and conflation of authorial and narrative voices (Lawrence De
Looze, Pseudo-autobiography in the fourteenth century: Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de
Machaut, and Geoffrey Chaucer [1997]). In addition, many scholars in the last
two decades have made compelling arguments for the association between
authorship and subjectivity, most especially in terms of medieval lyric (Peter
Haidu, The Subject Medieval/Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle Ages
[2004]; Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour
Song to Italian Poetry Book [2000]; Sarah Kay, Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry
[1990]; Michel Zink, La subjectivité littéraire autour du siècle de St. Louis [1985]).
Just as the medieval notion of the auctores expanded in the High Middle
Ages to include new categories of authorship, many recent studies of medi-
eval literature propose expanding the modern canon of revered authors, so as
to include women and spiritual and mystic writers alongside such icons as
Jean de Meun and Dante (e. g., Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her
Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority [2004]; Julia Dietrich,
“Women and Authority in the Rhetorical Economy of the Late Middle Ages,”
Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations, ed. Hildy Miller and Lillian
Bridwell-Bowles [2005], 21–43; Maureen Quilligan, “The Name of the
Author: Self-Representation in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cité des dames,”
Exemplaria 4:1 [Spring 1992]: 201–28; Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the
invention of authority [1991]) even when the relationship between subjectivity,
agency, and authority is shown to be problematic (Sara Beckwith, “Prob-
lems of Authority in Late Medieval Mysticism: Language, Agency, and Auth-
ority in The Book of Margery Kempe,” Exemplaria 4:1 [Spring 1992]: 171–99).
Queer theory has also invited new perspectives on medieval authorship:
in one instance suggesting that the influence of Aristotelian causality on the
accessus ad auctores instituted a heterosexual normativity on the concept of
authorial activity (Susan Schibanoff, “Sodomy’s Mark: Alan of Lille, Jean
1449 The Author in the Middle Ages

de Meun, and the Medieval Theory of Authorship, in Queering the Middle Ages,
ed. Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger [2001], 28–56).
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the notion of the author as
textual has compelled an increasing awareness of the importance of consult-
ing manuscripts rather than relying upon editions. Scholars of medieval
literature now often focus on authorship in terms of manuscript codicology,
especially compilation and rubrication (John Dagenais, The Ethics of Read-
ing; David Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies; Sylvia Huot, “‘Ci parle l’aucteur’:
The Rubrication of Voice and Authorship in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts,”
Substance 56 [1988]: 42–48; Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old
French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry [1987], among others).
Our understanding of the author in the Middle Ages is, as we have seen,
often influenced by contemporary notions of authorship and textuality. The
recent attention to codicological evidence seems to be a very fruitful avenue
of current research on the topic. For in the Middle Ages, writers and book
makers were intensely interested in the creation, preservation, and reception
of authorship: the auctores represented not only tradition, authority, and
Truth, but also, because of the inherent malleability of the paradigm, a flex-
ible model for innovative types of literary authority, secular and vernacular.

Select Bibliography
Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Auctor, Actor, Autor,” Bulletin du Cange: Archivium Latin-
itatis Medii Aevi 3 (1927): 81–86; Alastair J. Minnis, “The Author’s Two Bodies? Auth-
ority and Fallibility in Late-Medieval Textual Theory,” Of the Making of Books: Medieval
Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. P. R. Robinson
and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot: Scolar, 1997), 259–79; Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory
of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar, 1984);
Marjorie Reeves, “The Bible and Literary Authorship in the Middle Ages,” Reading
the Text: Biblical Criticism and Literary Theory, ed. Stephen Prickett (Oxford and
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 12–63; the essays in Auctor et auctoritas: Invention et
conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale. Actes du colloque tenu à l’Université de Versailles-Saint-
Quentin en Yvelines, 14–16 juin 1999, ed. Michel Zimmermann (Paris: Ecole des chartes,
2001); and the essays in Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed.
Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover, NH: Published for Dartmouth
College by University Press of New England, 1989).

Michelle Bolduc
The Body 1450

The Body

A. General Definition
Defined narrowly, the body is the material organism, parts, and physical
properties that comprise the human physical form. But a definition of the
body should also include how cultural, social, political, and historical in-
fluences control, restrict, and define the physical body. The body is socially
constructed through a variety of media such as language and images, making
it a product of discourse. As a cultural construct, the body can be interpreted,
which means it is not a singular concept, but a plural one, reflecting an end-
less array of bodies at any given point in history. The body is a historical ob-
ject, subject, and process; it represents a source of knowledge about the ever-
changing image of the self and society (Fragments for a History of the Human Body,
3 vols., ed. Michel Feher et al., 1989; The Body, ed. Mariam Fraser and
Monica Greco, 2005, 1–42). This aspect of the body includes the Middle
Ages insofar as the depiction of the body is found in a wide variety of sources
such as literary and non-literary texts, images, coins, seals, sculptures, and
tapestries. Documents from the Middle Ages offer a glimpse into medieval
perceptions of the body as compared to and in continuity with today, reveal-
ing how central the body is to identity, whether as the site for cultural norms
or the marginalized Other on the basis of age, race, class, sexuality, or gender
(Fremdkörper, Fremde Körper, Körperfremde, ed. Burkhardt Krause, 1992). The
medieval court and church, for instance, used the symbolic and metaphorical
function of the body to maintain their social authority (Joachim Bumke,
“Höfischer Körper – Höfische Kultur,” Modernes Mittelalter, ed. Joachim
Heinzle, 1994, 67–102; Harald Kleinschmidt, “The Body,” Understand-
ing the Middle Ages, 2000, 62–88). The medieval body was communicative and
performative; it was an important medium of cultural and ideological ex-
pression. By analyzing the depiction of medieval bodies, one can gain insight
into medieval social mores, customs, rituals, behavior, gestures, sexuality,
gender roles, physical ideals, religious beliefs, ethics, and attitudes towards
health and disease (Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin,
1994; The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. Darryll Grantley
and Nina Taunton, 2000).
1451 The Body

B. Seminal Research
Reference works like the Lexikon des Mittelalters and Dictionary of the Middle Ages
do not offer entries on the “body,” although both do discuss a central theo-
logical issue of the Middle Ages, the relationship between the body and soul
(see also Karen Gloy, “Leib und Seele,” TRE, vol. 20, ed. Gerhard Müller,
1990, 643–49). Early studies deal with body-related issues such as emotions,
gestures, and social customs (Carol K. Bang, “Emotions and Attitudes in
Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide and Hartmann von Aue’s Êrec der Wunderaere,”
PMLA 57 [1942]: 297–326; Arno Borst, Lebensformen im Mittelalter, 1973;
Dietmar Peil, Die Gebärde bei Chrétien, Hartmann und Wolfram, 1975; A History
of Private Life, vol. 2, ed. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, 1988 [1985]), but
it was not until the 1980s that the body became a specialized topic in Medi-
eval Studies. Influential to the proliferation of body studies at this time was
the pioneering work by Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish, 1979 [1975];
The History of Sexuality, 1976–1984) and Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger,
2002 [1966]; Natural Symbols, 1970). Research on the body in the Middle Ages
became popular when Caroline W. Bynum (Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 1987),
Peter Brown (The Body and Society, 1988), and Jacques Le Goff (“The Body,”
The Medieval Imagination, 1988 [1985], 83–103) published their seminal
studies.

C. Rhetorical Tradition
Scholars of rhetoric were the first to focus on the body. As Hennig Brink-
mann showed in Zu Wesen und Form mittelalterlicher Dichtung (1928), the medi-
eval poets of the high to late Middle Ages productively used the rhetorical
strategies for describing the body developed in late antiquity (see also Ernst
Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 1990 [1948]).
This type of descriptio includes the formal portrait tradition, which typically
depicts the body from head to toe, often with the aid of rhetorical devices
such as simile, metonymy, or synecdoche (Alice Colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-
Century French Literature, 1965). In this tradition the body became a medium
by which the medieval poets portrayed social types and propagated cultural
ideals, often exalting the nobility, particularly through the beauty of the
courtly lady (Puella bella, ed. Rüdiger Krüger, 1986; Helmut Tervooren,
“Schönheitsbeschreibung und Gattungsethik,” Schöne Frauen – Schöne Män-
ner, ed. Theo Stemmler, 1988, 171–98). But descriptions of the body were
not limited to beautiful bodies. The ideal medieval body was often con-
trasted with other less-valued bodies, thereby highlighting its societal worth
(Henrik Specht, “The Beautiful, the Handsome, and the Ugly: Some As-
pects of Character Portrayal in Medieval Literature,” Studia Neophilologica 56
The Body 1452

[1984]: 129–46; Wolfgang Brandt, “Die Beschreibung häßlicher Men-

schen,” GRM 35 [1985]: 257–78; Shulamith Shahar, “The Old Body in
Medieval Culture,” Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin,
1994, 160–86).

D. Metaphorical Function
In the Middle Ages the physical body was a productive metaphor for social,
political, religious, and cosmic order. Both the medieval church and state
turned to the physical body to legitimate political and cultural power. As
Ernst H. Kantorowicz demonstrates (The King’s Two Bodies, 1957), each cul-
tural institution created body politics by transferring the Pauline notion of
Christ’s two bodies to the pontiff or king, with the pope’s or king’s natural
body embodying the church or state (see also Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body,
1993). John of Salisbury formulates this idea in his Policraticus (1159), describ-
ing medieval social hierarchy in anthropomorphic terms, whereby higher
body parts are designated “noble” and lower limbs “common” members of
the social body (Jacques Le Goff, “Head or Heart? The Political Use of Body
Metaphors in the Middle Ages,” Fragments for a History, vol. 3, ed. Michel
Feher et al., 1989, 13–26). Echoes of the body politic metaphor are also found
in literary texts, often underscoring the importance of medieval ordo to the
wellbeing of society (Scott E. Pincikowski, Bodies of Pain, 2002, 133–56),
highlighting the significance of territory to the nobility’s sovereignty (Burk-
hardt Krause, “‘er enpfienc diu lant unt ouch die magt,’ die Frau, der Leib, das
Land: Herrschaft und body politic im Mittelalter,” Verleiblichungen, ed. id. and
Ulrich Scheck, 1996, 31–82), or emphasizing the role of the male body in
the preservation of the body politic (D. Vance Smith, “Body Doubles: Pro-
ducing the Masculine,” Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen
and Bonnie Wheeler, 1997, 3–19). The body as metaphor extended well
beyond social bodies, and was commonly used in medieval cosmology and
theology to explain the relationship of man to the universe and God (Leonard
Barkan, Nature’s Work of Art, 1975; Michael Camille, “The Image and the
Self: Unwriting Late Medieval Bodies,” Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah
Kay and Miri Rubin, 1994, 62–99).

E. Demonstrative Function
The body in medieval culture was an important medium for communicating
social status and identity. As the contributors to Höfische Repräsentation (ed.
Horst Wenzel and Hedda Ragotzky, 1990) and Gerd Althoff (“Demon-
stration und Inzenierung,” Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter, 1997 [1993];
id., Die Inszenierte Herrschaft, 2003) have demonstrated, non-verbal com-
1453 The Body

municative strategies were integral to medieval self-representation, political

authority, and rule of law (Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, “Gebärdensprache im
mittelalterlichen Recht,” FMSt 16 [1982]: 363–79). These strategies were
symbolic in nature, requiring the courtly individual to master a wide range
of performative behaviors such as gestures and rituals (Dietmar Peil, Die
Gebärde bei Chrétien, Hartmann und Wolfram, 1975; Jean-Claude Schmitt,
La raison de gestes dans l’Occident médiéval, 1990; Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der
Rituale, 2003), which were important to ceremony but also communicated
emotions such as anger, love, mourning, and happiness (A Cultural History of
Gesture, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 1991; Anger’s Past,
ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein, 1998). Whatever the context, however, the
members of the court scrutinized the courtly individual’s outward appear-
ance, behavior, and visibility in the public sphere, which explains the im-
portance of visual and audio perception to the maintenance of the nobility’s
political hegemony (Horst Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, 1995; for a more gen-
eral study on vision and the body see Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodi-
ment, 2002). The sociologist Norbert Elias also deserves mention here. In
his Civilizing Process (1997 [1939]), he posits that civilized societies require the
refined and disciplined training of the body (for critical reevaluations of
Elias’s work see Norbert Elias und die Menschenwissenschaften, ed. Karl-Siegbert
Rehberg, 1996; Jonathan Fletcher, Violence and Civilization, 1997; Mi-
chael Hinz, Der Zivilisationsprozess: Mythos oder Realität?, 2002).
A number of studies have deciphered the signification system of the
courtly individual’s body, showing that its demonstrative function also in-
cluded its physical extensions and outlining how the nobility set themselves
apart from other social groups through hair style, weaponry, coat of arms,
and clothing (Evan J. Jones, Medieval Heraldry, 1983 [1943]; Gabriele Rauds-
zus, Die Zeichensprache der Kleidung, 1985; Jane E. Burns, Courtly Love
Undressed, 2002). Central to this methodology is the idea that medieval so-
ciety was transitioning from an oral- to a written-based culture in the high
Middle Ages. This idea explains why the demonstrative function of the
physical body and the audio-visual strategies of noble representation were
recreated in a large number of chronicles, courtly romances, love lyrics, and
heroic epics (see the essays in ‘Aufführung’ und ‘Schrift,’ ed. Jan-Dirk Müller,
1994, 141–316). The noble body, therefore, existed in a multimedial cultural
matrix that relied on the staging of its representational authority in speech,
texts, and images (Haiko Wandhoff, Der epische Blick, 1996; Horst Wenzel,
Höfische Repräsentation, 2005).
The Body 1454

F. Religious Function
The physical body is as communicative in the religious context as it is in the
secular, possessing symbolism that underscores medieval religious beliefs
regarding damnation and salvation. According to theology of the high to
late Middle Ages, the individual consisted of two bodies, a physical one and a
second “soul body” that occupied the first. Moreover, the condition of the
physical body closely reflected the condition of the soul, with physical suffer-
ing and disease indicating sin and moral decay (Peter Dinzelbacher and
Rolf Sprandel, “Körper und Seele: Mittelalter,” Europäische Mentalitäts-
geschichte, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher, 1993, 159–79), an idea that also
found resonance in the spectacle of medieval punishment (Gepeinigt, begehrt,
vergessen, ed. Klaus Schreiner and Norbert Schnitzler, 1992; Mitchell B.
Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel, 1999). Paradoxically, physical
pain was also considered a productive means by which the sinner could pur-
sue repentance and redemption of the soul. For instance, Job’s patient
embrace of his leprous suffering held a prominent position in the medieval
cultural imagination (Saul N. Brody, The Disease of the Soul, 1974; Lawrence
L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages, 1979). Indeed, as Giles
Constable (Attitudes toward Self-inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages, 1982), Ca-
roline W. Bynum (Holy Feast, 1987), and Piero Camporesi (The Incorruptible
Flesh, 1988) have shown, ascetics, mystics, and martyrs turned to physical
pain to express devotion to God, expiate sins, and express spiritual joy in the
search for salvation. Hagiography attests to the medieval belief that the pain-
ful discipline of the body, including fasting, flagellation, hermitage, and pil-
grimage, purified the corrupt body of the sinner. Central to this belief was
the veneration of Christ through self-mortification, the practice of imitatio
Christi (Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, 1984). The medieval belief in the
power of the body to redeem the sinner also finds expression in the cult of
relics. In this tradition, the body parts of saints were enshrined in reliquaries
so that the religious community could profit from the saints’ supernatural
power after death (Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints, 1975;
Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra, 1990 [1978]; Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und
Reliquien, 1994).
The fundamental reason for the immense amount of cultural energy
medieval society spent on the body and pain was the overriding concern with
the individual’s fate at death and in the afterlife (Caroline W. Bynum, “Why
all the Fuss about the Body?: A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 22
[1995]: 1–33). As the contributors to Last Things (ed. Caroline W. Bynum and
Paul Freedman, 2000) have illustrated, medieval imaginations of the resur-
rection, the Last Judgment, and the afterlife were realized in physical terms.
1455 The Body

The medieval individual’s concerns and hopes were explored through a wide
variety of texts and images, all offering the Christian three different eschato-
logical choices for the somatomorphic soul: the cathartic suffering of purga-
tory, the fiery torments of hell, or the eternal bliss of heaven (see also Jacques
Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 1984 [1981]; Colleen McDannell and Bern-
hard Lang, Heaven, 1988, 69–110; Caroline W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the
Body, 1995).

G. Gendering the Body

Medieval society considered woman to be an imperfect man. This belief was
grounded in theology and science, which associated women with the irrational
weaknesses of the flesh and men with the rational strength of the soul (Vern
L. Bullough, “Medieval Medical and Scientific Views toward Women,”
Viator 4 [1973]: 485–501; Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex, 1990; Joan Cad-
den, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, 1993). Medieval images and
texts often construct an image of the female body as Other, a means by which
male identity could be fashioned by contrasting it to the inferior woman.
Because of this othering, female identity was essentialized, whether as a
beautiful and exalted object of desire or as a site of male anxieties, as Joan M.
Ferrante (Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, 1975), Margaret R. Miles
(Carnal Knowing, 1989) and the contributors to Feminist Approaches to the Body in
Medieval Literature (ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury, 1993) have
shown. But even with essentializing views of medieval women that propa-
gated limited female gender roles such as mother, wife, healer, and mourner
(Marty N. Williams and Anne Echols, Between Pit and Pedestal, 1994),
the female body could communicate other things that at least appeared to
conform to how the male gaze wanted to perceive it. Caroline W. Bynum, for
instance, has shown how female ascetics created body symbolism that ad-
hered to their gender roles, affording them enough agency to show devotion
physically and imitate Christ on their own terms (Holy Feast, 1987; id., “The
Female Body and Religious Practice in the later Middle Ages,” Fragments for a
History, vol. 1, ed. Michel Feher et al., 1989, 174–219; id., Fragmentation and
Redemption, 1991). Kathleen Biddick has criticized Bynum’s approach as
naturalizing in itself (“Genders, Bodies, Borders: Technologies of the Vis-
ible,” Speculum 68 [1993]: 389–418; see also Elizabeth Robertson, “Medi-
eval Views of Women and Female Spirituality in Ancrene Wisse and Julian of
Norwich’s Showings”, Feminist Approaches, ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah
Stanbury, 1993, 142–67), which has led to more radical readings of the
female body. As E. Jane Burns (Bodytalk, 1993) has argued, the female body
may actually “talk” out of turn, creating bodily subtexts that break female
The Body 1456

silence within patriarchal-dominated narratives (also see the essays in Gender

and Text, “Speaking the Body,” ed. Jane Chance, 1996, 237–330).
The study of masculinity is essential to rethinking female gender and
fully understanding medieval gender, a point Allen J. Frantzen has argued
(“When Women Aren’t Enough,” Speculum 68 [1993]: 445–71). Research on
medieval manhood in literature has not, like earlier studies, simply focused
on masculinity in isolation, but has explored how the relationship between
male and female gender fashions male identity (Masculinity in Medieval Europe,
ed. D. M. Hadley, 1999). This focus has reconfirmed male gender attributes
such as aggression and heroism, while recovering other, less-studied images
of medieval masculinity: the bachelor, castrate, confessor, and husband
(Medieval Masculinities, ed. Clare A. Lees et al., 1994; Susan Tuchel, Kastra-
tion im Mittelalter, 1998). Moreover, as the essays in Becoming Male in the Middle
Ages (ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, 1997) have highlighted,
medieval masculinity is not singular or static, but represents a process of be-
coming predicated upon changing notions of male sexuality, social status,
and the Other, whether that otherness is based upon gender, race, ethnicity,
religion, or homosexuality (also see the essays in “The Construction of Man-
hood in Arthurian Literature,” The Arthurian Yearbook 3 [1993]: 173–225; Con-
flicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities, ed. Jacqueline Murray, 1999; Ruth
M. Karras, From Boys to Men, 2003).
Approaches that emphasize the instability of either masculinity or femi-
ninity were made possible by Judith Butler’s seminal study, Gender Trouble
(1990), which introduced the idea that gender is not fixed to the sexed body,
but rather is something individuals “perform,” consisting of behavior that
adheres to or subverts cultural notions of masculinity and femininity (for
a groundbreaking work on this process in courtly literature see James A.
Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality, 2006).
Indeed, many studies have shown how medieval gender roles were variable
and unstable (see Genderdiskurse und Körperbilder: Eine Bilanzierung nach Butler
und Laqueur, ed. Ingrid Bennewitz and Ingrid Kasten, 2002), revealing
that what is publicly seen is often planned in private or secretly staged (Joan
Ferrante, “Public Postures, Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women
Play,” Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Ko-
waleski, 1988, 213–29; Horst Wenzel, “Geheimnis und Gender,” Höfische
Repräsentation, 2005, 246–92). The frequency of cross-dressing in medieval
texts attests to the fact that medieval society, in literature at least, considered
the possibilities that gender performance afforded both men and women
(Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, “Cross Dressing and Social
Status in the Middle Ages,” Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, 1993, 45–73;
1457 The Body

Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man, 1996; Manlîchiu wîp, wîplîch man,
ed. Ingrid Bennewitz and Helmut Tervooren, Beihefte zur ZfdPh 9 [1999];
Erika E. Hess, Literary Hybrids, 2004).

H. Queering the Body

Similar concerns inform the queer study of the body. As the essays in Queering
the Middle Ages (ed. Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger, 2001) demon-
strate, queer theory reacts against the heteronormative bias of traditional
scholarship, attempting to recover excluded bodies that existed outside of
accepted medieval and modern sexual categories. For example, in the same
volume Michael Camille (57–86) examined how past scholarship “erased”
the homosexual body in Dante’s work. Whether as a result of intolerant
research or not, part of the difficulty of analyzing medieval homosexuality is
that it was not recognized as a concept in the Middle Ages and was desig-
nated a “silent” and heretical sin against nature (Mark D. Jordan, The Inven-
tion of Sodomy, 1997; Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Sodom und Gomorrha, 2001
[1998]). Queer scholarship therefore locates moments in which homoeroti-
cism and same-sex desire, ranging from affection to sexual acts, might be dis-
cernible in texts and images. This interpretative move has opened up read-
ings of texts and images that resist the heteronormative view of the Middle
Ages (Bruce W. Holsinger, “Sodomy and Resurrection: The Homoerotic
Subject of the Divine Comedy,” Premodern Sexualities, ed. Louise Fradenburg
and Carla Freccero, 1996, 243–74; for a critical response to such ap-
proaches see Allen J. Frantzen, Before the Closet, 1998). As Richard E. Zeiko-
witz has shown, homoerotic desire is often an integral component of chiv-
alry in late medieval literature (Homoeroticism and Chivalry, 2003). For his part,
Tison Pugh (Queering Medieval Genres, 2004) has argued that the queer, al-
though not disruptive to the dominant ideology of medieval Christianity, is
often found just under the surface of narratives in medieval genres like lyric,
the fabliaux, tragedy, and Arthurian romance (see also Anna Kłosowska,
Queer Love, 2005). And for Carolyn Dinshaw queer theory endeavors to col-
lapse historical difference, partially connecting medieval and modern homo-
sexuals (“Chaucer’s Queer Touches/A Queer Touches Chaucer,” Exemplaria 7
[1995]: 75–92; id., Getting Medieval, 1999). As Robert Mills argues (Suspended
Animation, 2005), this involves studying unorthodox body-related topics like
hanging, flaying, and sodomy through modern concepts such as pornography
and masochism. He emphasizes that, like gender, the concept of the Middle
Ages may be unstable and plural and could include subversive forms of
medieval queer identities (see also Carolyn Dinshaw, “Getting Medieval:
Pulp Fiction, Gawain, Foucault,” The Book and the Body, ed. Dolores W. Frese
The Body 1458

and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, 1997, 116–63; Rhonda Knight, “Pro-

creative Sodomy: Textuality and the Construction of Ethnicities in Gerald of
Wale’s Descriptio Kambriae,” Exemplaria 14 [2002]: 47–77).

Select Bibliography
Caroline W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Fragments for a History of the
Human Body, 3 vols., ed. Michel Feher et al. (New York: Zone Books, 1989); Framing
Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1994); The Body: A Reader, ed. Mariam Fraser and Monica Greco (London and
New York: Routledge, 2005).

Scott Pincikowski
1459 Chivalry

Chivalry

A. Definition and Usage

Although the French term for knight (chevalier) is quite tangible, the abstrac-
tion “chevalerie” and its English counterpart, “chivalry”, belong to that cat-
egory of medieval constructs that were, and remain, nebulous in meaning.
Modern scholarship has tended to adopt three relatively specific definitions
of “chivalry” from medieval sources. Thus, the word can refer to 1) the mar-
tial skills necessary for mounted combat, 2) the social group possessing these
skills (“those who fight,” or the bellatores of Gerard of Cambrai), or 3) the rules
and ideals governing the behavior of that social group. “Chevalerie,” which
overlaps but does not occupy the semantic space of the English term, has tra-
ditionally tended towards the second definition. Many scholars working on
the subject tend to focus on the third definition of chivalry, the ideal, as a
means of understanding the motivations of the group to whom those ideals
belonged.

B. The 18th and 19th Centuries

Studies of chivalry in the 18th and 19th centuries tended to possess three sep-
arate traits. Firstly, they were often produced by writers, poets, or translators.
Secondly, they would romanticize the subject, using the imagined ethos of
the Christian warrior as a yardstick against which to measure the failures of
the contemporary world. Finally, early scholarship was traditionally divided
along national or contemporary political lines. In one of the earliest British
examples, Richard Hurd (“Letters on Chivalry and Romance,” Moral and
Political Dialogues with Letters on Chivalry and Romance, vol. 3 [1788]) set the
birth of chivalry in 1066 in France. Hurd described chivalry as a European
social system necessitated by the violence of the feudal state and character-
ized by “the splendour of equipages” and “the pride they took in redressing
wrongs” to name but two traits (203–04). An exception to the general stan-
dards of early scholarship, Sir Walter Scott’s well-known “An Essay on
Chivalry” (first published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1818; also found
in On Chivalry, Romance, and the Drama [1834]: 1–126), is both wide-ranging in
its treatment of Continental sources, and relatively objective in its analysis
Chivalry 1460

(cf. Peter D. Garside, “Scott, the Romantic Past, and the Nineteenth Cen-
tury,” The Review of English Studies 6 [1972]: 147–61; for a general analysis of
early conceptions of chivalry, see Michèle Cohen, “‘Manners’ Make the
Man: Politeness, Chivalry, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1750–1830,”
Journal of British Studies 44 [2005]: 312–29). More in line with national studies
is William P. Ker’s Epic and Romance (1896), who saw chivalry as a creation
born of romance’s supplanting of epic. Like Hurd, Ker argued that the
romance as a genre did not exist before the Battle of Hastings. One of the ear-
liest voices to criticize chivalry was that of Charles Plummer, who, in his
edition of Sir John Fortescue’s The Governance of England (1885), referred to the
late Middle Ages as a period of “pseudo-chivalry” (15) which adopted chival-
ric ritual and code to mask a darker brutality. Despite Plummer’s work, the
romantic vision of chivalry remained quite popular in England until after
the First World War.
France’s greatest contribution to the field in the 19th century was Léon
Gautier’s La Chevalerie (1884), a text that contributed greatly to the popular
modern conception of chivalry. Although a work which provides a wide-
ranging appraisal of earlier scholarship, Gautier’s work has also been rec-
ognized for its failure to consider the historical record objectively despite
the author’s background as a paleographer and editor of medieval texts.
Gautier explicitly discounts much of the Arthurian canon as well as any
discussion of courtly love, preferring to focus on what he saw as pure expres-
sions of chivalry, the chansons de geste and Germanic warrior ethos. According
to his thesis, the foundations of chivalry were the Germanic heroes of old, an
ancient and noble warrior class. Additionally, Gautier stressed an egalitar-
ianism and holiness within chivalry that was not based on any historical ma-
terial, but rather on his own impressions of the period. This bias is most clear
in his systemization of chivalry, a unified ethos that he believed spanned
cultures and centuries, as in his “La Code de Chevalerie” (For a further dis-
cussion of Gautier’s biases, see Jeremy duQuesnay Adams, “Modern
Views of Medieval Chivalry,” The Study of Chivalry, ed. Howell Chickering
and Thomas H. Seiler, 1988, 41–89). In opposition to Gautier’s theory of
an ancient chivalric lineage, Paul Guihiermoz (Essai sur l’Origine de la
Noblesse en France au Moyen Age, 1902) traced the origins of the knightly class to
Roman roots rather than Germanic ones, seeing the barbarian mercenaries to
the emperor, the body of men surrounding the Merovingian kings, and the
cavalrymen and vassals of the Carolingians as predecessors to the knightly
nobility of the High and Late Middle Ages. Guihiermoz’s theory was quite
influential, with adherents such as Maurice Powicke (“The Angevin Ad-
ministration of Normandy,” EHR 21 [1906]: 625–49 and 22 [1907]: 15–42)
1461 Chivalry

and Charles H. Haskins (“Knight-Service in Normandy in the Eleventh Cen-

tury,” EHR 22 [1907]: 636–49, among others).
Germany and Italy, both of which experienced the codification of a chiv-
alric ethos somewhat later than either France or England, also produced
comparatively less on the subject in the 19th century. Franz Kottenkamp
(Der Rittersaal: Eine Geschichte des Ritterthums, seines Entstehens und Fortgangs,
seiner Gebräuche und Sitten, 1842), a scholar of English literature, produced one
of the first German-language studies of chivalry and, much like his French
and British counterparts, tended to focus on evidence of tournaments and
other ritualized performances to create a highly organized evolution of the
ideal. In 1878, the Italian poet and scholar Giosuè Carducci (“I trovatori e
la cavalleria,” Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Giosuè Carducci, vol. 9, ed. id.,
1943, 19–47) had begun his own systemization of chivalry, tending to criti-
cize what he saw as a harmful Germanic individualism contrary to the Italian
communal ideal (cf. Julius Giuntoni, “The Reaction of Giosuè Carducci to
Romanticism,” Italica 8 [1931]: 9–12). Unlike Gautier, Carducci was in-
terested in the themes of courtly love and the romance tradition, a theme he
developed in “Galanterie cavalleresche del secolo XII e XIII” (Nuova Antologia
di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2 [1885], 5–24).

C. The First and Second World Wars

The interwar period produced a number of notable studies on chivalry, in-
cluding a collection edited by Edgar Prestage, Chivalry: A Series of Studies to
Illustrate its Historical Significance and Civilizing Influence (1928), which still
serves as an excellent primer to the critical debates of the period, discussing
both historical and literary records from across Europe, as well as addressing
the conclusions of Gautier and Ker.
The most influential study by far of this period was Johan Huizinga’s
Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen [1919] (translated into English as The Waning of the
Middle Ages by Frederick Hopman in 1924; see the entry under Figures). Per-
haps influenced by the high-minded attitudes of war and battle he witnessed
in his own time, Huizinga was highly critical of not only the chivalric ideal,
but indeed many of the formalized structures of the later Middle Ages, which
he argued were designed to mask the pessimism and fierce violence of the
period (for a fuller analysis of Huizinga and his works see Edward Peters
and Walter P. Simons “The New Huizinga and the Old Middle Ages,” Specu-
lum 74 [1999]: 587–620). Although such practices seemed to be signs of a
despairing civilization to Huizinga, his research, which viewed chivalry
through an art-historical lens, set the pace for much of the scholarship to
come after him. Huizinga accepted Gautier’s thesis that chivalry evolved
Chivalry 1462

from earlier heroic ideals, but also stressed that this warrior ideals like chiv-
alry were not exclusive to Europe, but could be found throughout the world,
the Japanese bushido being one example among many. Huizinga’s tendency
towards the general came under criticism: he tended neither to differenti-
ate between the Early and Late Middle Ages, nor between various cultures,
and preferred description over explanation (cf. Robert Anchor, “History as
Play: Johan Huizinga and His Critics,” History and Theory 17 [1978]: 63–93).
Huizinga’s theory of decline was supported by Raymond L. Kilgour (The
Decline of Chivalry as Shown in the French Literature of the Late Middle Ages, 1937).
Kilgour, in a slightly more romantic view, brought into the mainstream
the idea that a 12th- and 13th-century golden age of chivalry was supplanted
by a 14th- and 15th-century decline (cf. Sidney Painter’s review of Kilgour’s
text in Speculum 12 [1937]: 526–27). This line of scholarship was continued
on into the Second World War by Kenneth Bruce McFarlane (“Bastard
Feudalism,” BIHR 20 [1945]: 161–80), who, like his countrymen Plummer
and Kilgour, argued that any chivalric ideal had faded by the 14th and 15th
centuries, replaced by a capitalistic and mercenary attitude towards social
bonds.
While the situation was presented in rather bleak terms in the Low Coun-
tries and only slightly better in Britain, there were optimistic voices during
this period as well. In Germany, Hans Naumann (Höfische Kultur, 1929; Deut-
sche Kultur im Zeitalter des Rittertums, 1938) insisted that a study of ideals need
not require a record of failures to achieve them, and that chivalry was in
many ways a unifying system that transcended the dualism inherent in spiri-
tual and mundane goals. Meanwhile, the application of sociological method
to historical study was promoted by Norbert Elias’s study Über den Prozess der
Zivilisation (1939, translated into English as The Civilizing Process by Edmund
Jephcott in 1978). By tracing the history of etiquette and arguing for a gen-
eral shift from outside influences on behavior (Fremdzwang) to interior self-
control (Selbstzwang), Elias’s work proved to be particularly important to the
study of chivalry; Elias himself touched on the subject in describing an evol-
ution of behavior through the Middle Ages. In his view, whereas in earlier
times, knights determined social standing through individual combat, in
later periods, the importance of social relations grew and the sanction of vi-
olent retribution reduced, thus leaving a courtier, dependent on a lord’s
graces, battling verbally. Marc Bloch’s groundbreaking La société féodale
(1939–1940) came out in the same year, and supported the theory that
the noble class was created in the 11th and 12th centuries, and agreed with
Guihiermoz in giving it Romanic, rather than Germanic, origins. As well,
Bloch supported Elias’s conception of the Middle Ages as one lacking
1463 Chivalry

emotional restraint (for a further discussion of Bloch’s ideas see Stephen D.

White, “The Politics of Anger,” Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the
Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein, 1998, 127–31).
However, Elias’s work has found some criticism not fully addressing
the limiting effects of chivalry, royal authority, and nationalistic pride, all of
which were thought to be representative of growing attempts to channel ag-
gression and emphasize self-control (see George Mosse’s review of Elias’s
text in New German Critique 15 [1978]: 178–83, for one example). Addition-
ally, in his efforts to trace an evolution of civility, Elias has been accused of
not noting the many cases in which civility and violence can co-exist easily.
Stephen Jaeger (The Origins of Courtliness, 1985), although an adherent to the
construction of the civilizing process, has argued that the “mannering” of
society took place in the late 10th and early 11th centuries; this view uninten-
tionally rejects Elias’s evolutionary thesis by leaving the violence of the later
medieval period unexplained. Daniela Romagnoli (“La courtoisie dans la
ville: Un modèle complexe,” La ville et la cour: Des bonnes et des mauvaises mani-
ères, ed. Romagnoli, 1995, 25–87) argued against Elias’s theories by iden-
tifying courtly and mannered literature in the 6th century, and claimed that
far from following a pattern of evolution, increases in civility of cultures fol-
low a discontinuous path. The scholarly response to Elias’s work has been
reviewed by Barbara Rosenwein (“Worrying about Emotions in History,”
AHR 107 [2002]: 821–45), who, while identifying some of its problems, par-
ticularly its use of a rather simplistic timeline maintained that it was still
useful for literary historians, who are more comfortable dealing with grand
narrative generalities. Gerd Schwerhoff (“Zivilisationsprozeß und Ge-
schichtswissenschaft: Norbert Elias’ Forschungsparadigma in historischer
Sicht,” Historische Zeitschrift 266 [1998]: 561–605) has also written a longer
study on the reaction to Elias; Schwerhoff provides a critical approach of
his own, insisting on a critique of Elias through comparison with various
historical social constructs, including chivalry, and observing that Elias
was unable to see beyond his own negative view of the Middle Ages. Finally,
Martin Dinges (“Formenwandel der Gewalt in der Neuzeit: Zur Kritik der
Zivilisationstheorie von Norbert Elias,” Kulturen der Gewalt, ed. Rolf Peter
Sieferle and Helga Breuninger, 1998, 171–91), while agreeing on the
datedness of his theory, also identified the importance of it in light of both
the questions Elias raised, and the research he inspired.
One of the first American contributions to the study of chivalry, Sidney
Painter’s French Chivalry (1940), came out the next year. Painter’s text
acted in many ways as an amalgam of the previous sixty years of scholarship.
He followed in the footsteps of Gautier in producing a list of five virtues
Chivalry 1464

central to chivalry, and tending to portray a universal chivalric ideal across

various cultures. He adopted some of the pessimism of Huizinga, claiming
(antecedent to McFarlane) that the knight was often motivated by material
gain, and that the later Middle Ages witnessed a tarnishing of a once golden
ideal. Finally, in tracing an evolution through feudal, religious, and courtly
chivalries, he accepted (though perhaps not directly) Elias’s theory on the
development of external to internal social controls.

D. Scholarship Following the Second World War

Through the 1950s, little was produced to advance the study of chivalry,
leaving the sense of a period of assimilation in light of the previous twenty
years of scholarship. The subject was revisited only in 1960, with the publi-
cation of Arthur Ferguson’s The Indian Summer of English Chivalry. Fergu-
son expanded on Kilgour’s golden age thesis by claiming that 14th- and
15th-century criticisms of contemporary knighthood, particularly those of
Malory and Caxton, were evidence not only of an earlier period of true chiv-
alry, but also of an attempt to restore the ideal in their own time for the bene-
fit of the English Commonwealth. Although Ferguson concluded that that
these attempts to better society ultimately failed, his work remains in many
ways a challenge of Huizinga’s theory of a pessimistic society.
Shortly after, Joachim Bumke (Studien zum Ritterbegriff im 12. und 13. Jahr-
hundert, 1964; translated into English as The Concept of Knighthood in the Middle
Ages, 1982) produced one of the best-known German works on chivalry,
which took special care to analyze German chivalric terms (principally Höf-
lichkeit and Rittertum) whose meanings differed significantly from their
French and English counterparts, and which had until this point remained
relatively opaque to non-German speakers. This study is also notable for its
efforts to understand chivalry purely as a social construct by avoiding dis-
cussion of the ideal. This methodology, which until the 1960s had often been
overshadowed by literary analyses, was strikingly influential, and encour-
aged the work of Georges Duby, who remains until today one of the most
significant scholars of chivalry.
Duby had first entered the field of study with his 1964 article “Au XIIe
siècle: les ‘jeunes’ dans la société aristocratique dans la France de nord-ouest”
(Annales 19: 835–46; translated into English as “The ‘Youth’ in Aristocratic
Society” by Frederic Cheyette, in his Lordship and Community, 1968,
198–209). In this early work, Duby presented a synthetic analysis on the ori-
gins of knighthood, accepting both the theories of Guihiermoz and Bloch
of a Roman lineage, but also providing support of Gautier’s theories of
a Germanic conception of ancient nobility. Duby went on to refine his ideas
1465 Chivalry

by tracing the lineage of thirty-four Mâconnais families in his “Lignage,

noblesse, et chivalerie dans la région mâconnaise” (Annales 27 [1972]: 803–23).
His research was finally fully compiled and recast in Les trois ordres ou l’imagin-
aire du féodalisme (1978; translated into English as The Three Orders: Feudal
Society Imagined by Arthur Goldhammer in 1980). In this study, he argued
that the knighthood was consciously promoted as one (noble) part of the
tripartite division of society as part of an Angevin propaganda campaign
designed to sway the lower French aristocracy from Capetian royal authority
to an independent nobility. Duby’s theory was nothing less than command-
ing in the study of chivalry, and the scholarly tradition it founded cannot
adequately be covered here (for some indication of his influence see, how-
ever, Jean-François Lemarignier, La France médiévale: institutions et société,
1970; Erich Köhler’s Marxist interpretations of Duby’s system in Ideal und
Wirklichkeit in der höfischen Epik, 1970; Franco Cardini, Alle radici dela cavalle-
ria medievale, 1981; Jean Flori, L’essor de la chevalerie, XIe–XIIe siècles, 1986).
German scholarship on the origins of the knightly class continued in this
period through the efforts of Karl Schmid (“Über die Struktur des Adels
im früheren Mittelalter,” Jahrbuch für fränkischen Landesforschung 19 [1959]:
1–23), Karl Werner (“Bedeutende Adelsfamilien im Reich Karls des
Großen,” Karl der Große, ed. Helmut Beumann, 1965; among others), and
Franz Irsigler (Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der frühfränkischen Adels, 1969;
see also John B. Freed’s review of German scholarship, “Reflections on the
Medieval German Nobility,” American Historical Review 91 [1986]: 553–75).
Arno Borst’s Das Rittertum im Mittelalter (1976) also provided a much-
needed synthesis of the new scholarship that had appeared up to that point.
In a consideration of the knightly class in the Low Countries, Johanna Maria
van Winter (“De middeleeuwse ridderschap als ‘classe sociale’,” Tijdschrift
voor Geschiedenis 83 [1970]: 262–75), while agreeing with much of Duby’s
general thesis, questioned the seeming rigidity of social classes and class
identity for the medieval knighthood.

E. Studies in Chivalry from the 1980s until Today

The frenzy of scholarship inspired by the works of Ferguson, Bumke, and
Duby had set a new tone, and the 1980s were a period of reassessment and re-
evaluation of these new schools of thought. Whereas much of the 1970s had
been devoted to a study of the knightly class as a social group, the 1980s her-
alded a return to an examination of the ideals of that class. British scholars
in particular began a synthesis of older studies through new theories, begin-
ning with Malcolm Vale’s War and Chivalry (1981), which reconsidered
Huizinga’s premise of a late medieval decline in light of Ferguson’s more
Chivalry 1466

optimistic and contended that chivalric ideals were in touch with reality
until the end of the Middle Ages. Juliet Vale’s Edward III and Chivalry (1982),
by considering a wide array of interdisciplinary material including historical
records as well as literary and artistic works, similarly argued for a continuity
of chivalric behavior through the Middle Ages. Larry Benson and John
Leyerle’s collection of essays by North American scholars, Chivalric Litera-
ture (1980), provided a number of different appraisals of the scholarship of
the 1970s, and were organized thematically around Leyerle’s thesis that
chivalry blossomed in the 14th and 15th centuries, a challenge to the long-
standing assumptions of Huizinga and Ferguson.
The most prominent English-language study of chivalry of the decade
was Maurice Keen’s Chivalry (1984), which is notable for its far-reaching con-
sideration of all the major scholarship of the previous century. Among many
conclusions, Keen explicitly confronted Duby’s notion of a specific knightly
class, arguing that knights likely had no class identity, particularly in the
later Middle Ages. Additionally, Keen maintained that chivalric ideals were
both sincerely valued and pursued in the 14th and 15th centuries, effectively
dismissing Huizinga’s conclusions. Finally, Keen insisted that chivalry
was centered on the preparation of knights for battle, and that the centrality
of war to chivalry was a source of tension within the ideal, both constraining
and encouraging chivalric behavior. This final hypothesis of Keen has faced
some challenges in its assumption that war is an accidental state that comes
into being without choice by human participants (see Lee Patterson,
Chaucer and the Subject of History, 1991, chapter 3; “The Knight’s Tale and the
Crisis of Chivalric Identity,” 165–179).
Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler’s collection of essays, The
Study of Chivalry (1988) also addressed new approaches to chivalry in view of
Keen’s signal text. In the same year, Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth
Harvey published another collection, The Ideals and Practice of Medieval
Knighthood (1988). The topics are interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in their
topics and assessment of earlier scholarship, Jane Martindale’s “‘Cavala-
ria et Orgueill’: Duke William IX of Aquitaine and the Historian” (87–116),
which supports Leyerle’s thesis on the later medieval golden age of chiv-
alry, being but one example.
The 1990s produced an even greater number of studies of chivalry both
as an ideal and as a reality. Thorough the decade, Richard Barber’s works
(Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages,1989 [with Juliet
Barker]; The Knight and Chivalry, 1995; and “Chivalry and the Morte Darthur,”
A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald, 1996) not only considered
chivalry within literary and ritual contexts, but also presented a synthesis of
1467 Chivalry

prior scholarship in a very accessible fashion. John Gillingham (“1066 and

the Introduction of Chivalry into England,” Law and Government in Medieval
England and Normandy, ed. George Garnet and John Hudson, 1996, 31–55)
returned in a roundabout fashion to the thesis of Richard Hurd in discuss-
ing the birth of English chivalry following the Battle of Hastings. In the same
year, Richard Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy produced an edition and
translation of a chivalric book of instruction (The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de
Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, 1996); in the introduction to the text,
Kaeuper discussed the biography of Charny and looked to the knight’s life
for evidence into his reception of the chivalric ideal. Shortly thereafter,
Kaeuper looked deeper into chivalric romances and other contemporary
examinations of the chivalric ideal in his Chivalry and Violence in Medieval
Europe (1999). Drawing in part on the traditions of Huizinga and Elias,
as well as Keen, Kaeuper concluded that despite a recent swing towards a
more romantic vision of the chivalry, the period was still a violent one as
identified by Huizinga. From this, he argued that the brutality of the later
Middle Ages and the lofty ideals of chivalry could only be reconciled if one as-
sumes that a glorification of ritualized violence and brutality (or, more gen-
tly “prowess”) was one of the paramount features of the chivalric ideal.
Work on continental chivalry also continued through the late 1990s,
with an English-language contribution by Constance Brittain Bouchard
(Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France, 1998)
providing a view of knightly social networks though literary sources and an
assessment of new scholarship through the lens of Duby by Jean Flori
(Chevaliers et chevalerie au Moyen Age, 1998). Josef Fleckenstein (Vom Ritter-
tum im Mittelalter: Perspektiven und Probleme, 1997) provided a similar and
much-needed analysis on the study of chivalry from a German perspective,
while Will Hasty (Art of Arms: Studies of Aggression and Dominance in Medieval
German Court Poetry, 1999) used German literary sources to identify, in line
with Kaeuper’s theories, a complicit relationship between courtliness and
violence.
Recent years reveal continued signs of re-evaluation of older scholarship,
a trend that will likely continue: Craig Taylor will respond to both the
romanticism of Kilgour and the exaltation of violence seen by Kaeuper in
his forthcoming Chivalry and Martial Culture in France During the Hundred Years
War. At the same time, a multiplicity of new paths for and approaches to
study of chivalry have appeared, ranging across multiple disciplines with a
variety of new theoretical approaches. The following list cannot hope, there-
fore, to provide a full description of these paths that have yet to be proven,
but instead can only give some idea of the vast breadth of new scholarship.
Comic 1468

Alex Davis (Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance, 2003) has re-exam-
ined the conclusion that chivalry as a defining ethos was moribund by the
Early Modern period, and argued instead for a continued vitality in the
chivalric ideal into the 18th century. Eva Belén Carro Carbajal, Laura
Puerto Moro, and María Sánchez Pérez’s collection Libros de caballe-
rías (de ‘Amadís’ al ‘Quijote’) (2002) provides a concise appraisal of scholarship
on Spanish chivalric literature. Katie Stevenson has studied the role of
chivalry in relationships between the Stewart kings and the knightly class
in Scotland (Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland, 1424–1513, 2006). Amedeo
Quondam has meanwhile produced a study of Renaissance chivalry through
the study of armor (avallo e cavaliere: l’armatura come seconda pelle del gentiluomo
moderno, 2003). Finally, Alan J. Frantzen (Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and
the Great War, 2003) studies the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War to dis-
cuss the origins of the chivalric ideal and how that ideal was used through the
First World War as consolation for grieving survivors.

Select Bibliography
Joachim Bumke, Studien zum Ritterbegriff im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg:
C. Winter, 1964; The Concept of Knighthood in the Middle Ages, trans. W.T.H. Jackson
and Erika Jackson [New York: AMS Press, 1982]); Georges Duby, Les trois ordres ou l’im-
aginaire du feodalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978; The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980]); Johan
Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk, 1919; The Waning of the
Middle Ages, trans. Frederik Hopman [London: E. Arnold Press, 1924]); Richard
Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999); Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); The Study
of Chivalry, ed. Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler (Kalamzoo: Western Mi-
chigan University, 1988).

John A. Geck

Comic

A. Definition
Comic messages in medieval dramatic and literary texts extend to social, sex-
ual, scatological, corporeal, psychological, political, religious, literary, and
even culinary discourse. Though the alterity of time and distance may separ-
ate the modern reader from medieval audiences, studies on medieval literary
humor and comedy have attempted to unpack complex texts to begin to
1469 Comic

answer the question, what was funny in the Middle Ages? From witty puns
and sexual innuendos to food fight scenes and the slapstick actions of clumsy
knights, topics that were considered funny or comic in the Middle Ages were
varied, and their usage complex.
In exploring the comic, it is necessary to keep in mind Aristotelian no-
tions of comedy that may have been at stake in medieval comedy. Aristotle
defines drama as imitating either superior or inferior action; comedy is the
representation of inferior action. Aristotle characterizes the comic as the Rid-
iculous, a subset of the Ugly, with actions akin to mistakes or errors that may
incite laughter or provide emotional relief through comic catharsis. For Aris-
totle, the comic is opposed to tragic, a term applied to non-dramatic litera-
ture as well in the Middle Ages. Comedy was not limited to drama in this
period, though the concept of the comic was borrowed from the analysis of
comedy and drama found in Aristotle’s Poetics.

B. History of Research
Turning to a brief review of other perspectives on the comic that have been
useful to medievalists over the past century of scholarship, French philos-
opher Henri Bergson, Le rire: Essai sur la signification du comique (1940),
famously defined the comic in part as an impulse of social life and a type of
automatism, “Le rire? Du mécanique plaque sur le vivant …” Bergson’s
concept of laughter picks up where character and personality studies leave
off. The comic has for a social purpose the possibility of “snubbing” or “cor-
recting” individuals through laughter. The object of comedy focuses on fam-
iliar character types or sometimes creates new ones. While tragedy centers on
the individual, Bergsonian comedy represents a departure from the human
and the individual which results in laughter.
The works of Bergson and of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin on
comedy in the 1940s were an invitation for literary historians to consider
humor more seriously. Bakhtin’s concept of “carnival” focuses on early
modern comedy, fairs, and street theatre, but has also been applied to medi-
eval forms of play and humor, as seen in Rabelais and His World (1941, trans.
1965). Carnival, whether literary and mimetic or real-life, is essentially state-
sanctioned disorder or humor that serves as acceptable catharsis or permis-
sible satire and social criticism in a given society. He sees a plurality of pos-
sible comic voices in carnival. Conventional morality and social institutions
may be criticized through carnival. Bakhtin’s theory has been applied to
Rabelais and fabliaux humor. Thomas J. Farrell, ed. Bakhtin and Medieval
Voices (1995), shows that the theory of carnival is not limited to early modern
texts or culture; this edited volume begins with a discussion of liminality and
Comic 1470

what happens when we cross the line of societal expectations, covering comic
and carnival, heteroglossia, dialogism, and polyphony in, for example, the
Smithfield Decretals, Helmbrecht, the sottie and epic genres, Chaucer, and Ro-
bert Mannyng.
Humanist medievalist Ernst Robert Curtius also made contributions
to the study of the comic and other related terms, such as hagiographical and
liturgical ‘jest,’ through his comprehensive pan-European scholarly land-
mark on medieval world view, rhetoric, and poetics: Europäische Literatur und
lateinisches Mittelalter / European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages (1948, trans.
1953).
An important essay by another Germanist, on Wolfram von Eschen-
bach’s humor, that also provides a typology of hagiographical humor, is Max
Werhli, “Christliches Lachen, christliche Komik?” (From Wolfram and Pet-
rarch to Goethe and Grass: Studies in Honour of Leonard Forster, ed. D. H. Green,
L.P. Johnson, and D. Wuttke, 1982, 17–31). Robert Levine, “Wolfram von
Eschenbach: Homo Ludens” (Viator XIII [1982]: 177–201), also considers comic,
ironic, parodic, and satirical elements in a similar vein in the same year. In re-
sponse to Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (see entry on Huizinga), which
shows humor and social satire as essential parts of the medieval world view,
is Werhli’s exploration of poetry and art as play and as satirical social com-
mentary in the German romance tradition Max Wehrli, “Poeta Ludens:
Zum Spielelement der mittelalterlichen Literatur” (Variorum mundera florum,
1985, 193–203; see also his chapter “Komik in christlicher Kunst,” id., Lite-
ratur im deutschen Mittelalter, 1984, 163–81).
Hans Fromm’s work on German devotional musical genres, such as his
Deutsche Balladen (1965) and Der deutsche Minnesang (1966) also treats comic
themes in some comic song tradition from the perspectives of music history
and poetics. Humor is also the subject of his study “Komik und Humor in der
Dichtung des deutschen Mittelalters” (1962; id., Arbeiten zur deutschen Litera-
tur des Mittelalters, 1989, 24–42), in which he observed the important tensions
between internal and external motifs and the protagonists’ actions as under-
lying much medieval comic discourse.
From the early Middle Ages, laughter was subject for religious debate
and literary revelry alike; laughing could be viewed as a dangerous sin tanta-
mount to gluttony in monastic life; in some monastic rulebooks both over-
eating and the laughter of within the sacred space of the monastery were
sometimes forbidden as sinful and excessive, as studied recently by the con-
tributors to Risus Medievalis: Laughter in Medieval Literature and Art (ed. Herman
Braet, Guido Latré and Werner Verbeke, 2003), the product of an inter-
national symposium on medieval comic tales held in 1998. Paradoxically,
1471 Comic

however, literary texts seem to encourage laughter to serve entertaining, di-

dactic, or critical purposes. To generalize, studies on the comic in the Middle
Ages have revealed that social satire and humorous criticism of social institu-
tion and societal norms were often the butt of many literary jokes. Several
studies on humor in the European literary tradition have explored how
physical and verbal humor in literary texts invite laughter through witty
word play, comic stock characters, or nearly slapstick situations. Medieval
world views, social satire, and literary parody (see entry on parody) are re-
vealed through the use of the comic in literary and dramatic texts. From the
Goliardic tradition to manuscript miniature sotties, to mock sermons and
popular drinking songs, to the scatological Old French fabliaux to the erotic
German maeren to the late medieval farce, daily life is seen in a comic light in
the abundant comic genres of the Middle Ages. Late 20th-century and early
20th-century North American scholarship has provided the largest number of
significant studies on medieval humor and comedy, engaging in a dialogue
with important contributions by European scholars as well.
Louis Cazmian, The Development of English Humor: Part I (1951), is an early
literary analysis and cultural study of medieval humor, which includes
chapters on: humor and the English temperament, Old French humor, Eng-
lish humor before Chaucer, humor in Chaucer, and medieval English and
Scottish humor after Chaucer. The seminal study on Medieval European
humor, one of the first to demonstrate the comic as a valuable subject of
literary analysis, is the very wide-ranging study by French philologist Phil-
ippe Menard, Le rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge:
1150–1250 (1969), exploring examples of what might be considered funny in
close readings of texts ranging from Old French chanson de geste to romance to
fabliaux. In the 1970s the texts chosen for inclusion in the translated Rick-
ard anthology covering comic texts from French, Spanish, Dutch, German,
Medieval Latin, Italian and Middle English by Peter Rickard, Alan Deyer-
mond, Derek Brewer, David Blamiris, Peter King, and Michel Lapridge,
trans., Medieval Comic Tales (1973, rev. 1996) helped further define which
texts would be considered comic and encouraged study of comic sexual and
anticlerical themes in these texts particularly by North American scholars
and students. Norris J. Lacy, “The Comic Spirit in Medieval France” (L’ésprit
créateur 16 [1976]: 39–45), along with the other articles in this important
special issue on medieval French comedy (by L. C. Porter, Stephen G. Ni-
chols, Jr., Nancy Freeman Regalado, Jean Charles Payen, and Alan E.
Knight) launched a continuing critical dialogue on what was considered
comic in medieval literature and which satirical or parodic purposes such
comedy and humor might serve, notably in the French fabliaux and romance
Comic 1472

traditions. This special issue validated humor as an important arena of criti-

cal inquiry in Medieval Studies. A year later, the edited volume of Paul G.
Ruggiers, Versions of Medieval Comedy (1977) provided a broad theoretical
framework and a more pan-European exploration of the comic in medieval
fiction; Ruggiers begins with a review of theoretical considerations on
medieval comedy, followed in the volume by genre studies and studies from
across several language traditions, including comedy in Roman and 12th-cen-
tury Latin texts, the fabliaux and the grotesque in the Old French tradition,
Dante, Italian romances, Chaucer, and English mystery plays.
Germanist Dennis Howard Green, Irony in Medieval Romance (1979),
deals with irony and the literary themes of love and chivalry, irony and nar-
ratology, as well as verbal, dramatic, and structural irony, often related to
comic scenes or comic effects in the inherent ambiguities of the romance
genre in Chrétien, Wolfram, Gottfried, Hartmann, and other examples.
From the field of rhetoric comes the important contribution on comic de-
vices and techniques as well on the role of the comic in the medieval literary
world view in general, Joachim Suchomski, “‘Delectatio’ und ‘Utilitas:’ Ein
Beitrag zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher komischer Literatur” (Speculum
53.1 [1978]: 195–97). After a few such important rhetorical studies, several
subsequent Germanist studies on the comic in the 1980s focused on the par-
odic, ironic, and humorous treatments of the theme of chivalry, particularly
in the 13th century, such as Carolyn Dussère, “Humor and Chivalry in
Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Frauendienst and Gerhart Hauptmann’s Ulrich von
Liechtenstein” (Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für germanische
Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 16.4 [1983]: 297–320). Also an exploration of
humorous representations of chivalric convention is Gerhild Scholz Wil-
liams, “License to Laugh: Making Fun of Chivalry in Some Late Medieval
Texts” (Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur 78.1
[1986]: 26–37). Following in this vein was a study on fools, or jesters, whose
role was to make court-condoned comic satirical commentary, Rolf R.
Mueller, “On the Medieval Satiric Fictions of Neidhart and Wittenweiler:
Fools for their Theme, Let Satire be their Song” (In hôhem prîse: A Festschrift in
Honor of Ernst S. Dick, ed. Winder McConnell, 1989, 295–305).
The comic is approached today through several different theoretical
frameworks, for example through feminist theory with Lisa Perfetti’s
Women and Laughter in Medieval Comic Literature (2003). This is a 13th- through
16th-century comparatist study of medieval heroines who laugh and who
speak up looking at laughter associated with the body, gender, and sexuality
with a feminist critical approach. Perfetti’s volume provides a wide-rang-
ing comparative consideration of the comic, from the humor surrounding
1473 Comic

modesty in Boccaccio’s Décameron, to the Wife of Bath’s comic bawdy tone, to

funny literary representations of medieval conventions of marriage and
household interactions in English, German, and Arabic traditions (see also
Perfetti’s “The Lewd and the Ludic: Female Pleasure in the Fabliaux,”
Comic Provocations, ed. Holly A. Crocker, 2006, 17–31).
Over the last several decades, many studies on the comic have focused on
a single genre. Much of the genre-based scholarship advancing the appli-
cation of humor theory and humor studies in medieval literary studies has
focused on the short comic texts of the Old French fabliaux in particular
(see entry on fabliaux). The volume edited by Benjamin L. Honeycutt and
Thomas D. Cooke, The Humor of the Fabliaux (1974), began to define as bur-
lesque and parodic the Old French fabliaux. The Honeycutt and Cooke
volume launched the fabliaux into the forefront of Medieval Humor Studies,
with essays that shed new light on different aspects of the fabliaux: parody
of courtly convention, humorous criticism of morality or chivalry, sexual
humor and use of obscenity, including Paul Theiner’s contribution to this
volume, “Pornography, the Comic Spirit, and the Fabliaux” (137–62), fol-
lowed by Thomas Cooke’s “Modes of Signification and the Humor of the
Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux” (163–96). Though today most scholars no
longer refer to the fabliaux as obscene pornography as the have become more
accepted as an integral part of the Old French verse corpus, both of these es-
says focused on the shock or the laughter a modern audience might experi-
ence at the sexual imagery or sexual language found in the fabliaux. Studies
such as these enabled marginal texts like the fabliaux to begin to be included
in studies of comedy in canonical medieval literature, and enabled scholars
to begin to ask new questions about medieval perspectives on sexuality,
on the body and bodily functions, and on everyday life in a non-courtly set-
ting. Other notable studies that aim at mapping the comic in the fabliaux
appeared in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cooke’s next book-length study on
humor took a comparative approach (see entry on “Intertexuality and Com-
parative Approaches”) to the techniques and effects of humor in French and
English short verse fiction, The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A study of
their Comic Climax (1978). In response to such studies, which highlight the
shocking scatological and sexual motifs of these texts, R. Howard Bloch
created scholarly waves with The Scandal of the Fabliaux (1986), which demon-
strates that the power of the fabliaux lies in the scandal of their own composi-
tion and literary production more than in the obscenity of their language or
shocking narratives, showing the fabliaux as using humor to test the limits
of literary production and the limits of audiences alike. Also in the 1980s was
an important colloquium on functions of the comic in the Old French Roman
Comic 1474

de Renart cycle and the fabliaux, drawing many parallels between the comic
genres of the beast epic and the fabliaux in their social satire and literary par-
ody Comique, satire et parodie dans la tradition renardienne et les fabliaux: actes du
colloque des 15 et 16 janvier 1983 (ed. Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin,
1983). Brian J. Levy’s The Comic Text: Patterns and Images in the Old French
Fabliaux (2000) provided a landmark typology for this comic genre, explor-
ing various aspects of the fabliaux comic universe, from recurrent animal or
herbal motifs, to portrayals of sexuality and illness, to the role of the devil.
Levy focuses on notions of play, word play, comic situations, and comic
inversion. A related study, Adrian Tudor, A. Hindley, and Brian J. Levy,
Grant risee?: The Medieval Comic Presence – la présence comique médievale: Essays in
Memory of Brian J. Levy (2006), is a posthumous tribute to the scholarship on
the comic in the Old French tradition that Brian J. Levy contributed to the
field throughout his life. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a rebirth
in interest in the fabliaux, attracting more medievalists to the study of liter-
ary humor in these short texts, with the number of articles, critical editions,
and edited volumes on the fabliaux unparalleled since the study of the
fabliaux first came into fashion in the 1970, for instance: Comic Provocations
(ed. Holly A. Crocker, 2006), consisting in part of essays by the participants
of an NEH summer seminar on the fabliaux, and The Old French Fabliaux:
Essays on Comedy and Context (ed. Kristin L. Burr, John F. Moran, and Norris
J. Lacy, 2007); both cover a range of varied aspects of fabliaux comedy.
Studies on the fabliaux have broadened the horizons of literary history and
critical theory alike.

C. Humor in Chaucer
Chaucerian scholars have also greatly contributed to our notions of what
was considered funny in the Middle Ages. Studies on humor in Chaucer have
focused primarily on rhetorical word play, the theory of play, and social sat-
ire, for example, Laura Kendrick, Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the
Canterbury Tales (1988). The consideration of social class humor in Chaucer
was introduced previous to that volume by Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval
Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canter-
bury Tales (1973). Particular tales, such as the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” or the
“Physician’s Tale,” have been studied as essentially comic in form and con-
tent, for example D. W. Robertson, Jr. “The Physician’s Comic Tale”
(Chaucer Review 23 [1988]: 129–39). The extensive study of Jean Jost, ed.,
Chaucer’s Humor (1994), has also proven a comprehensive reference in them-
atic studies and close textual analysis of Chaucerian comedy. Focusing on
form rather than content, motifs, or thematic elements, one of the central
1475 Comic

articles on the poetics of Chaucerian comedy is Howell Chickering,

“Comic Meter and Rhyme in the Miller’s Tale” (Chaucer Yearbook: A Journal of
Late Medieval Studies 2 [1995]: 17–47). Bakhtinian theoretical analyses of the
use of carnival humor in Chaucer have grown in numbers over the years, as
for example in Heather Masri, “Carnival Laughter in the Pardoner’s Tale”
(MedPers 10 [1995–1996]: 148–56).

D. Humor in Arthurian Literature

In addition to Chaucer studies, the field of Arthurian studies has been instru-
mental in the rise of studies on medieval literary humor. Keith Busby and
Roger Dalrymple, ed., Arthurian Literature XIX: Comedy in Arthurian Literature
(2002), present fourteen essays selected from special sessions on humor at the
International Arthurian Society 1999 conference in Toulouse, France; rang-
ing from early medieval to modern medievalist literary production across
Europe (including Irish, Scottish, French, and other literatures), several of
the essays focus on the Arthurian romance tradition and elements of parody
or overturning of romance convention with the aim of showing that Arthu-
rian texts previously thought lacking in humor have a strong comic element
that often serves parodic or satiric functions in their literary and historical
context.
Pan-European approaches, such as that taken by the edited volumes of
Busby and Dalrymple or Perfetti (see above) have become more popular
in the 1990s and 2000s. As part the historical background in a larger study on
a national humor, John Parkin, ed. French Humor: Papers Based on a Colloquium
Held at the University of Bristol (1996), includes two essays that draw on modern
critical theory in a discussion of laughter and social satire: Alison Williams
and John Parkin, “Feminin Wiles and Masculine Woes: Sexual Dynamics
in Les Quinze joies de marriage” (21–37), and Michael Freeman, “Laughter in the
Waning of the Middle Ages” (39–59). As for Iberian humor, a broad historical
survey of Spanish literary humor includes essays on medieval humor, picar-
esque humor and the humor of Cervantes, considering the roles of humor
in the text and the importance of the audience, including the essay by Ismael
El Outmani, “El humorismo medieval: la litteratura andalusi” (El Humor en
España, ed., Harm Den and Fermín Sierra Boer, 1992, 27–54).

E. Humor in International Medieval Literature

Studies on medieval literary comedy have not been limited to European
texts. In the Asian tradition, we have for example the early critical edition of
comic dramatic works: Oswald T. Ruck, Some Comic Medieval Plays of Japan,
Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society 21 (1924). The late 1980s and
Comic 1476

1990s saw a rise in the number of studies on Asian medieval literature at

North American Universities, as for example the Cornell University Ph.D.
dissertation of Virginia S. Skord, The Comic Consciousness in Medieval Japanese
Narrative: Otogi-zoshi of Commoners (1987), an attempt to explain Japanese
class-based humor. In the Persian tradition, works by Nizam al-Din Ubayd
Zakani, texts similar to the Old French fabliaux and German maeren, which
demonstrate unabashed sexual and social humor, have begun to be explored,
for instance in the University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation by Paul Richard
Sprachman, The Comic Corks of ’Ubayd-I Zakani: A Study of Medieval Persian
Bawdy, Verbal Aggression, and Satire (1981).

F. Humor in Non-Literary Works

In the discipline of art history, comic medieval images in manuscript minia-
tures or marginalia have begun to be explored more closely in the early 21st
century, with studies such as Christa Grossinger, Humour and Folly in Secu-
lar and Profane Prints of Northern Europe, 1430–1540 (2002). Though not com-
mon, a few interdisciplinary studies of medieval comedy have appeared, such
as Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Guy
Halsall, which covers satire of social institutions, hierarchies and notions
of sovereignty from Roman, Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, and Carolingian cul-
tures in a variety of texts, including epics, chronicles, and riddles (2002).
Specific aspects of medieval daily life in medieval comedy have been ex-
plored in a new trend in scholarship that combines literary analysis with cul-
tural history of consumption and material culture, looking closer at humor
surrounding the human body. Sarah Gordon, Culinary Comedy in Medieval
French Literature (2006), investigates food humor across several genres, at the
intersection of the two human universals of eating and laughing. Chaucerian
Valerie Allen’s On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (2006)
also focuses on corporeal humor, in this case particularly scatological com-
edy surrounding flatulence, excrement, and other bodily functions, or what
might be termed ‘toilet humor’ in today’s language. Laughter based on the
body language and on transgression can be found in many late-medieval
short narratives, such as Till Eulenspiegel (1510), as studied by Albrecht
Classen, “Transgression and Laughter, the Scatological and the Epistemo-
logical: New Insights into the Pranks of Till Eulenspiegel” (Medievalia et Hu-
manistica 33 [2007]: 41–61), and id., “Laughter as the Ultimate Epistemo-
logical Vehicle in the Hands of Till Eulenspiegel” (Neophilologus 92 [2008]:
417–89).
1477 Comic

G. Humor on the Stage

Turning back to the stage, where the Aristotelian notions of comedy and the
comic began, from English Everyman plays to urban French farce in the late
Middle Ages, medieval theater was often characterized by the performance
of comic social satire (see entry on Drama). Comedy and satire in medieval
dramatic texts are brought together by the study of the theatrical genre of
comedy and theories of the comic in W. D. Howarth, Comic Drama: The Euro-
pean Heritage (1979). Howarth includes essays on the origins of English
comedy as well as a comparative survey of French, Italian and Spanish com-
media and other English traditions. Recent studies on dramatic texts have
focused on the concept of carnival. For instance Warren Edminster, The
Preaching Fox: Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master (2005), views
Christ as a comic figure in English mystery plays and focuses on the ‘festive’
as an anticlerical comic element that may be used to subvert religious institu-
tions and criticize kings and clergy member alike. The power of the comic as
a subversive and critical force, as well as a means of entertainment, has only
begun to be explored by medievalists.

Select Bibliography
Risus Medievalis: Laughter in Medieval Literature and Art, ed. Herman Braet, Guido
Latré, and Werner Verbeke (Leuven:Leuven University Press, 2003); Ernst Robert
Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter / European Literature in the Latin
Middle Ages (Bern: Francke, 1948; trans. W. R. Trask, Princeton: Princeton, University
Press, 1953); Sarah Gordon, Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature (Purdue:
Purdue University Press, 2006); Chaucer’s Humor, ed. Jean Jost (New York: Garland,
1994); The Comic Spirit in Medieval France, special issue of L’ésprit Créateur, ed. Norris J.
Lacy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1976); Philippe Ménard, Le Rire et le sou-
rire dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge 1150–1250 (Geneva: Droz, 1969); Women
and Laughter in Medieval Comic Literature, ed. Lisa Perfetti (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2003); Lachgemeinschaften: kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen
von Gelächter im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner Röcke and Hans Rudolf
Velten (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Laughter in the Middle Ages and
Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter,
2010).

Sarah Gordon
Contrafacture 1478

Contrafacture

A. General definition
The setting of a new text to an existing melody, which is the technical defini-
tion of contrafacture, was noticed early on in medieval lyric scholarship. The
cultural significance of the phenomenon is still subject of much study and
debate. From arguments concerning the very definition of contrafacture and
the manner by which contrafacta may be discerned to wider cultural ramifica-
tions, work on the question has been considerable for well over a century.
With questions of melodic borrowing come questions of shared metrical
schemes, simplified or purposely complicated rhyme schemes, and semantic
motivic borrowing and variation.

B. History of Scholarship
The fundamental work on contrafacture remains Friedrich Gennrich’s
Die Kontrafaktur im Liedschaffen des Mittelalters (1965). The work represents the
culmination of Gennrich’s work of the preceding decades, which was built
upon his own first-hand experience with primary sources in various national
traditions (“Der deutsche Minnesang in seinem Verhältnis zur Troubadour-
und Trouvère-Kunst,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Bildung 2 [1926]: 536–66, 622,
632; “Internationale mittelalterliche Melodien,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissen-
schaft 11 [1929]: 321–48; Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalterlichen Liedes,
1932; “Lateinische Kontrafakta altfranzösischer Lieder,” Zeitschrift für romani-
sche Philologie 50 [1930]: 187–207; Lateinische Liedkontrafaktur: Eine Auswahl la-
teinischer Conductus mit ihren volkssprachigen Vorbildern, 1956; and “Liedkontra-
faktur in mittel- und althochdeutscher Zeit,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum
und deutsche Literatur 82 [1948]: 105–41, and revised in Der deutsche Minnesang:
Aufsätze zu seiner Erfoschung, ed. Hans Fromm, 1961, 330–77). A contemporary
of Gennrich, Hans Spanke, also worked on the question (“Das öftere Auf-
treten von Strophenformen und Melodien in der alfranzösischen Lyrik,”
Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 51 [1928]: 73–117; “Romanische
und mittellateinische Formen in der Metrik von Minnesangs Frühling,”
Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 49 [1929]: 191–235, rpt. in Der deutsche Min-
nesang, ed. Hans Fromm, 1961, 254–329).
Gennrich’s main interest in contrafacture lay in the typological: he
wished to identify the various techniques of contrafacture and discover,
where possible, which melodies were reused and sung to which texts. In the
field of troubadour lyric, he had published what he deemed to be accepted
contrafacta in his Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours (1958–1960). In Die
1479 Contrafacture

Kontrafaktur, he explains more explicitly the criteria by which he judged, de-

lineating various categories of contrafactum such as those that share melody
and rhyme scheme with their models (“reguläre Kontrafaktur”); those that
show some variation (“irreguläre Kontrafaktur”); etc. Gennrich backs up
his categorizations with copious examples from the French, Latin, Occitan,
Spanish, German, Dutch, and English traditions.
Gennrich’s research offered both contemporaries and scholars who
came after him the tools to continue his mainly typological work. Even be-
fore the publication of Die Kontrafaktur, István Frank saw the possibilities of
contrafacture as a helpful tool in discussing possible influence and published
his Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours (2 vols., 1953–1957). Guiseppe
Tavani followed suit in 1967 with his Repertorio metrico della lirica galego-por-
toghese, as did Ulrich Mölk and Friedrich Wolfzettel in 1972 with their
Répertoire métrique de la poésie lyrique française des origines à 1350. Scholars work-
ing on a given text in each of these traditions could consult one of these books
and discover which other songs used the same metrical scheme and might be
therefore evidence of contrafacture. J. H. Marshall is careful to point out
that identical metrical schemes do not automatically indicate contrafacture
as other criteria such as musical evidence and the rarity of the scheme in
question must be considered (“Imitation of metical form in Peire Cardenal,”
Romance Philology 32 (1978): 18–48; “Pour l’étude des contrafacta dans la poé-
die des troubadours,” Romania 101 [1980]: 289–335). Hans Tischler con-
sidered just those very questions in his Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete
Comparative Edition (1997). He orders song texts according to the melodies to
which they were sung and includes song texts from other traditions, notably
Latin, Occitan, and German, when evidence points to a melody being bor-
rowed across a linguistic border.
In the wake of these typological works, more recent studies of contra-
facture have been undertaken on a smaller, more focused scale, especially
in regard to Occitan lyric and its relationship with other traditions. This is
undoubtedly because Occitan lyric flourished so early among the vernacular
traditions. William D. Paden has recently published studies of contra-
facture that relate Occitan lyric to Galician-Portuguese lyric (“Contrafacture
between Occitan and Galician-Portuguese,” Corónica: A Journal of Medieval
Spanish Language and Literature, 26 [1998]: 49–63 and “Contrafacture between
Occitan and Galician-Portuguese: The Case of Bonifaci Calvo,” TENSO: Bull-
etin of the Societe Guilhem IX. 13 [1998]: 50–71). Similarly, Paolo Canettieri
has offered “Para un Estudio Histórico-Xeográfico e Tipolóxico da Imitación
Métrica na Lírica Galego-Portuguesa: Recuperación de Textos Trobadorescos
e Troveirescos,” Anuario de Estudios Literarios Galegos, 1994, 11–50. In regard to
Contrafacture 1480

Catalan lyric, Dominique Billy takes up the question of troubadour in-

fluence in “Contrafactures de modèles troubadouresques dans la poésie cata-
lane” (Le rayonnement des troubadours, ed. Anton Touber, 1998, 51–74), as has
Volker Mertens in regard to German song (“Kontrafaktur als intertex-
tuelles Spiel: Aspekte der Adaptation von Troubadour-Melodien im deut-
schen Minnesang” (also in Le rayonnement des troubadours, 269–83).
Medieval treatises such as the Doctrina de compondre dictats stipulate that
certain lyric forms normally used existing melodies such as the sirventés and
cobla. As true as that may be, the repertory that lies heavily on contrafacture
and has provoked the most scholarly discussion is that of religious lyrics.
It was often, but not always, the case that the melody of a secular love song
was put to a new religious text, often Marian in nature. Paul Meyer dis-
cussed the question explicitly in an early, short study entitled “Types de
quelques chansons de Gautier de Coinci” (Romania 17 [1888]: 429–37) in
which Meyer called on philologists to consider publishing the 13th-century
Miracles de Nostre Dame which contains, depending upon the manuscript, well
over a dozen medieval Marian songs. Many of Gautier’s Marian songs were
contrafacta, so once work began on his songs, it did not take long for others to
broaden the focus of religious lyrical contrafacture. Edward Järnström
made particularly pertinent observations in the critical apparatus to the first
volume of his Recueil de chansons pieuses du XIIIe siècle (1910).
The exchange of materials among secular and religious lyrics through
contrafacture and, by extension, lyric citation, where not only formal prop-
erties but also semantic motifs are exchanged has led to a good deal of dis-
cussion about the cultural relevance of contrafacture. In his book, La lyrique
française au moyen âge (1977), Pierre Bec posits that religious lyric, precisely
for its use of contrafacture and lyric citation, belongs to a “parasitical” lyric
register (“registre parasite”). Scholars since then, however, have taken issue
with such a summary judgment of contrafacture as a process used only by
composers who lacked originality. Again, in the case of Gautier de Coinci,
Anna Drzewicka argues convincingly in her article “La fonction des em-
prunts à la poésie profane dans les chansons mariales de Gautier de Coinci”
(subdivided into two parts within volume 91 [1985] of Le Moyen Age, 33–51
and 179–200) that Gautier intentionally borrowed elements meant to high-
light his new conception of “bone amor” (“good love”) for the Virgin Mary
over human women. Kathryn Duys takes this line of argument a step further
in her Ph.D. dissertation, “Books Shaped by Song: Early Literary Literacy in
the Miracles de Nostre Dame of Gautier de Coinci” (New York University, 1997),
in which she explores how techniques of contrafacture and lyric citation
were used to serve sophisticated programs of compilatio. Finally, Daniel
1481 Contrafacture

O’Sullivan (Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric, 2005) dis-

cusses contrafacture more widely in the French tradition and even touches
upon its use across national boundaries (Latin and German) in a discussion of
Jacques de Cambrai’s lyrics. O’Sullivan discusses more particularly the
performative aspects of contrafacture: in many instances, melodies were
used and reused for several songs, both secular and religious, which results
in a densely allusive semantic fabric whose significance would vary from lis-
tener to listener, depending upon a given listener’s own experience with
lyric performance.
In German studies, in addition to work on Minnesinger, studies of the
poetry by Oswald von Wolkenstein has brought to light later medieval poets’
use of earlier poetic sources and use of common melodies. In the late 20th cen-
tury, Albrecht Classen was especially productive in this area, not only in the
pages he dedicates to Oswald in his Autobiographische Lyrik des europäischen
Spätmittelalters (1991), but also in several journal articles, such as “Giannozzo
Sacchetti’s Mentr’io d’amor pensava as a Source for Oswald von Wolkenstein’s
Song-Poetry,” Monatshefte 80 (1988): 459–68, and “French and Italian Sources
for Oswald von Wolkenstein’s Onomatopoetic Lyric Poetry,” Fifteenth-Cen-
tury Studies 15 (1989): 93–105. Before Classen, Herbert Löwenstein had
shown that Oswald tended to use common melodies among songs that share
a mood or tone (Wort und Ton bei Oswald von Wolkenstein, 1932).

Select Bibliography
Ardis Butterfield, Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean Renart toGuillaume
de Machaut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Friedrich Gennrich, Die
Kontrafaktur im Liedschaffen des Mittelalters (Langen near Frankfurt: 1965); id., Lateinische
Liedkontrafaktur: Eine Auswahl lateinischer Conductus mit ihren volkssprachigen Vorbildern.
Musikwissenschaftliche Studien-Bibliothek, no. 11, ed. Friedrich Gennrich (Darm-
stadt: 1956); Robert Falck, “Parody and Contrafactum: a Terminological Clarifica-
tion,” The Musical Quarterly 65 (1979): 1–21; John H. Marshall, “Pour l’étude des
contrafacta dans la poédie des troubadours,” Romania 101 (1980): 289–335; Daniel
O’Sullivan, Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2005).

Daniel E. O’Sullivan
Curialitas (Courtliness) 1482

Curialitas (Courtliness)

A. General Definition
Curialitas, from Latin curia (court), is a postclassical neologism that dates to
the middle of the 11th century (Peter Ganz, “curialis/ hövesch,” Höfische Lite-
ratur, Hofgesellschaft, Höfische Lebensformen um 1200, ed. Gert Kaiser and Jan-
Dirk Müller, 1986, 39–56). While it is an easy enough task to translate it as
modern English “courtliness,” and construe it generally as a measure of de-
corum in speech and behavior, its connotative overlap with the ideals of chiv-
alry, its relationship to earlier Roman ethical codes and class formations, its
reception by various segments of medieval society, and its vernacular cog-
nates pose complexities that modern scholarship has not yet fully resolved.

A.1. Curialis/Curiales
As a class, the medieval curiales share a title with the late-antique Roman
curiales, unlanded aristocracy charged with civic administration and tax-col-
lection, whose members comprised local city senates (curia). Between the 3rd
and 5th centuries AD, the curiales came under increasing financial pressure to
raise taxes whose shortfalls they were expected to make up out of their own
pockets. Whipsawed between class and financial obligations, they took flight
into the Church and Imperial aristocracy, and by the late 6th century were
extinct (J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the the Roman City,
2001). The only resemblance between the late antique and the high medieval
curialis was that the latter’s status as ministerial class straddled the porous
boundary between secular and ecclesiastic hierarchy. Judging by the example
of Thomas Becket, a product of the French lower nobility who served Henry
II first as chancellor and aide and then, after his investiture as Archbishop
of Canterbury, as antagonist, the social status of the medieval courtier was
located somewhere between the cleric and the literate, lay nobility, a position
confirmed by the semantic proximity of the terms curialis, capellanus, and
clericus (C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, 1985, 14–16). Much of
the value of the curialis to ecclesiastical and secular potentates was their legal
training which gave such courtiers as Thomas or Pierre de Flotte, chancellor
to Philip IV (le Bel), a formidable diplomatic authority beyond their modest
station. The sharp, even arrogant tongue of the courtier, as exemplified by
Pierre’s famous rebuke to Pope Boniface VIII, “Vestra [potestas] verbalis; nos-
tra autem realis” which preceded Boniface’s immurement at the hands of
Philip, is indicative of their rhetorical facility and political influence.
1483 Curialitas (Courtliness)

A.2. Curialitas-Urbanitas
If the historical affiliation of curialitas to the Roman social class system is
tangential, its relationship to traditional Roman ethical values (mos maiorum)
and cosmopolitan protocols of behavior is more direct. Gustav Ehrismann
(“Die Grundlagen des ritterlichen Tugendsystems” (ZfdA 56 [1919]: 137–216;
id., Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, 1927,
vol. 2.2/1, 19–24) was the first to argue that the system of chivalric values was
based on a tripartite distinction in Cicero (via Aristotle) of the highest good
(summum bonum), moral good (honestum), and the useful (utile) which develop,
mutatis mutandis, into medieval septenary catalogues of virtues and vices.
While Ernst Robert Curtius justifiably rubbished Ehrismann’s triparti-
tion as a gross misrepresentation of Cicero and his secondhand relationship
to Aristotle (European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, 1953 [orig. 1948],
519–37), other scholars have more reliably established medieval curialitas as
an ideology of cultivated speech and manners that duplicated and eventually
supplanted classical urbanitas, which Quintilian (Institutio oratoria, 6. 3.17)
discusses in opposition to rusticitas (Henri Bléry, Rusticité et Urbanité
Romaines, 1909; Edwin Ramage, Urbanitas: Ancient Sophistication and Refine-
ment, 1973). By the 14th century, the link between courtliness and exclusively
urban social values (as distinct from the wider ranging values of chivalry that
include military and physical culture) had been codified in a list of seven
curialitates: sobrietas, hilaritas, affabilitas, benignitas, liberalitas, dapsilitas, and
stabilitas (Paul Gerhard Schmidt, “Curia and curialitas: Wort and Bedeu-
tung im Spiegel der Lateinischer Quellen,” Curialitas: Studien zu Grundfragen
der höfisch-ritterlichen Kultur, ed. Josef Fleckenstein, 1990, 16–17).

A.3. Pejorative Connotations (12th century)

Curialitas seems to have had its inception as a vice rather than a virtue in
12th-century clerical accounts of the court, especially that of Henry II. In the
anti-curial Latin satire of Walter Map (De nugis curialium), the political writ-
ing of John of Salisbury (Policraticus, sive ne nugis curialium), and polemical
tracts critical of secular influence upon theology among such writers as Arch-
bishop Lanfranc (De corpore et sanguine Domini [PL 150: 414C]), Peter of
Blois (‘Quales sunt’ P.L. 207: 1005) and Nigel of Canterbury (Contra curiales
et officiales clericos), curialitas designates a range of ills associated with world-
liness: hypocrisy, sophistry, cupidity. Vernacular critiques of courtliness of
this period can be found in the works of Marie de France, Helinand of Froid-
mont, and Heinrich of Melk (Gerhild Williams, “Against Court and School:
Heinrich of Melk and Hélinant of Froidmont as Critics of 12th-century So-
ciety,” Neophilologus 62.4 [1978]: 513–26).
Curialitas (Courtliness) 1484

A.4. Civilitas
Although curialitas appears generally as term of derogation until the 13th cen-
tury, some clerics sought to rehabilitate the concept by realigning it ideologi-
cally with standards of civility (civilitas morum) whose roots John of Salibury
locates in Luke 14:8–10 (Policraticus, ed. Webb, vol. 2, 279ff.). In ascribing to
curialitas a Christian origin, John shifted its ethos toward an etiquette of hu-
mility whence it became a term of approbation in hagiography and romance
(Jonathan Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtier Books and the
Gawain Poet, 1985).

A.5. Vernacular Counterparts

The Old French and Provençal cortoisie, cortesia derive from Middle Latin
cortis, a servant attached to a large household. They appear in the latter third
of the 11th century in various genres of literature – Chanson de geste, chival-
ric romance, roman d’antiquité, and troubadour lyric – and modern scholars
have stressed the importance of recognizing the vernacular terminology of
courtliness as belonging primarily to literary rather than social history (Joa-
chim Bumke, Courtly Culture, 1991, 59). Cortoisie, cortesia describe kinds and
qualities of courtly literary production and literary character or littérature
courtoise as Reto Bezzola popularized the notion (Les origines et formation de
la littérature courtoise en Occident, 1963). It follows that the social values courtoi-
sie/cortesia exemplify should stand in close correlation to the genre in which
they are employed. In the Chanson de Roland, which provides the earliest attes-
tation of vernacular courtliness (ca. 1090), cortois appears almost exclusively
in varieties of the adverbial expression curteisment dire designating formal
speech to a social superior which would seem to reflect the etymological ori-
gins of courtliness in the service culture of noble households. In Provençal
lyric, by contrast, cortes seems to be inextricable from love: a courtier is effec-
tively a synonym for a lover, whence Marcabru’s “cortesia es d’amar” (Marc-
abru: A Critical Edition, ed. Simon Gaunt et al., 2000, 200). In the Romans
d’antiquité and Romans d’aventure, courtoisie governs a large range of beha-
vior and appearance, from speech, male and female, to comportment in com-
bat, to physical beauty, but always as an activity of display. Recent scholars
have observed that courtoisie seems to exist primarily as a standard of beha-
vior reserved for feasts and formal occasions rather than as a fully internalized
code (Ulrich Mölk, “Curia und curialitas – Wort und Bedeutung im Spiegel
der romanischen Dichtung: Zu fr. cortois(ie)/pr. cortes(ia),” Curialitas: Studien
zu Grundfragen der höfisch-ritterlichen Kultur, ed. Josef Fleckenstein, 1990).
Hövescheit is a Middle High German calque of the Old French courtoisie
(C. J. Wells, German: A Linguistic History, 1985, 120) that first appears as the
1485 Curialitas (Courtliness)

adjective hövisch and verb höveschen in the mid-12th century epic Kaiserchronik.
It covers a semantic range similar to its Old French etymon – suited to the
court, well-educated and mannered, beautiful (whence the Modern German
hübsch) – and defines itself ideologically in opposition to rusticity, insensitiv-
ity, fleshliness (Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, ed. Georg Benecke et al.,
1854). Although courtoisie in its French vernacular usage is unequivocally
positive, hövescheit, seems to have been influence by 12th-century clerical sat-
ire of curialitas. Judging by in its early use in both the Kaiserchronik and the
works of Heinrich of Melk, it appears in pejorative synonymy with rape and
sexual license (Peter Ganz, “‘hövesch’/‘hövescheit’ im Mittelhochdeut-
schen,” Curialitas, ed. Josef Fleckenstein, 1990, 40–42).

B. History of Research
The history of research into curialitas is the history of its recognition as an his-
torical, as opposed to literary, phenomenon. The romance of medieval
knighthood from which the scholarly study of the chivalry and “courtly
love” has suffered for two centuries has its roots in the anachronisms and
methodologies of the 18th-century scholar-diplomat Lacurne de Saint-Pa-
laye (Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, 1759). The flamboyant aristocrat pion-
eered the use of literary texts as the fount of courtliness from which he drew
a portrait of a noble knighthood dominated by aristocratic niceties reflecting
more the manners and socio-political dynamic of his own age than that of
medieval knighthood at its inception. On the coattails of Lacurne, scholars
tended to premise their notion of courtliness upon the assumption that the
medieval knightly class was noble in origin rather than servants to nobility,
an assumption corrected by, among others, Hans Georg Reuter (Die Lehre
vom Ritterstand zum Ritterbegriff in Historiographie und Dichtung vom 11. bis
13. Jahrhundert, 1971).
The main obstacle to any historical treatment of courtliness remains
the paucity of primary evidence. Modern scholarship is beginning to redress
this problem by recovering alternative sources, textual and non-textual, to
the medieval romance or love lyric, and cultivating more stringent histori-
ographical methodologies. The first and most important innovator in the
study of historical courtliness was Norbert Elias, whose groundbreaking
history of manners, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), vanished into obliv-
ion for a generation, resurfacing to acclaim in the 1960’s renaissance of soci-
ology. Synthesizing Weber’s definition of the state as a “monopoly of force”
(Politik als Beruf, 1919, ed. W. Mommsen, 1992), Freud’s “superego” as ex-
erting a similar coercive function upon the individual, and Kant’s antinomy
of culture and civilization as respectively internalized belief and external-
Curialitas (Courtliness) 1486

ized behavior (“Ideas on a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of

View,” [1784], Kant on History, trans. Lewis White Beck et al.,1963), Elias
posits that medieval courtliness is a political and ethical mechanism in the
service of absolutism. Its role is to enable a centralization of power in the
monarch, thus constituting the first step in the formation of the modern
state. Beyond methodology, Elias innovated in source material. Courtesy
books furnish the evidence of sociogenesis in the rhetoric by which they con-
dition the reader’s responses to power.
These same sources and lines of argument are developed and refined
in his study of aristocracy Höfische Gesellschaft (1969). Some of the most inter-
esting lines of modern socio-historical research have followed in this vein, in-
cluding Rita Gomes’s The Making of a Court Society: King and Nobles in Late Medi-
eval Portugal (2003) which investigates the culture and power dynamic of the
court through a close prosopographical and genealogical study of affiliated
nobles. Other cultural historians have used Elias’s paradigm of social con-
straint as the basis of the relatively new field of history of emotions (Peter N.
Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of
Emotions and Emotional Standards,” American Historical Review 90 [1985]:
813–36).
Elias’s influence upon the study of courtliness, while decisive, has
undergone critical revision in recent years that will no doubt drive future
lines of investigation. C. Stephen Jaeger notes, for example, his superficial
canvassing of medieval sources and overreliance on Freudian psychogenic
theory that tends to locate the mechanics of social change in preconscious
precincts inaccessible to historical ratification (The Origin of Courtliness, 1985,
5–8). While accepting the courtesy book as an essential measure of societal
pressure to conform, Rüdiger Schnell finds problematic the complete ab-
sence of fiction from the study of social coercion; more significant still is the
absence of the discussion of courtesy books for women and analysis of gender
in constructions of this coercion (“Kritische Überlegungen zur Zivilisation-
stheorie von Norbert Elias,” Zivilisationsprozesse, ed. Rüdiger Schnell, 2004,
21–84). Jaeger, for his part, is an intellectual historian who treats for the
first time Latin ecclesiastical sources as the foundation of curialitas in a semi-
nal study that has opened up a line of research yet to be further exploited (see
Sexuality in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2008). By contrast, Joachim
Bumke approaches historical curialitas from the perspective of material cul-
ture, that is the physical remains and actuarial records of courtly life lived in
the everyday, unvarnished and unromanticized (Courtly Culture, 1991).
1487 Curialitas (Courtliness)

Select Bibliography
Joachim Bumke, Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im Hohen Mittelalter (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986); Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation,
2 vols. (Basel: Haus zum Falken, 1939); Josef Fleckenstein, Curialitas: Studien zu
Grundfragen der höfischen-ritterlichen Kultur (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990);
C. Stephen Jaeger, The Origin of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly
Ideals: 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).

Gregory Heyworth
Discourse 1488

Discourse

A. Definition and Background

Defined most concisely as “language in use,” discourse as a term of art has
gained wide currency in the humanities and social sciences since the mid-
20th century. Descended from discurrere (Latin, “to run back and forth”),
discours has historically had varied meanings (See B. Hodge, “Historical
Semantics and the Meanings of ‘Discourse’,” Australian Journal of Cultural
Studies 2 [1984, 124–23]).
Since the 1960s, several disciplines have adopted the terms discourse, dis-
course theory, and discourse analysis; along with this technical status has come
a number of discipline-specific denotations and related practices, to which
hundreds of books and articles on the subject attest. Additionally, the study of
discourse as a complex cognitive and social phenomenon has often involved
cross-disciplinarity, resulting in considerable cross-pollination: in addition
to parallel developments in different disciplines (e. g., anthropology and his-
tory) that can be traced to a common founder or theoretical precursor, there
are borrowings, adaptations, innovations, overlappings, and re-borrowings.
As the definitions, theories, and methodologies that have resulted from these
reticular filiations have subsequently been adopted and applied to medieval
languages, texts, and culture, they have continued to evolve in a web-like pat-
tern, or alternatively as two overlapping and expanding constellations.
The following technical definitions of discourse and discourse analysis con-
stitute a guide to the main ways in which discourse is defined, interpreted,
and deployed in Medieval Studies.

B. Descriptive Linguistics, Structural Linguistics, and Narratology

Growing out of the traditional fields of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy,
and, subsequently, studies in linguistics, poetics, stylistics, and semiotics,
the simultaneously developing fields of Descriptive Linguistics and French
Post-Saussurean Structural Linguistics focused on natural language. Follow-
ing the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, these early linguistic investigations
were influenced by Russian Formalism, the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and
the Prague School, especially through the work of Roman Jakobson, and
1489 Discourse

through work in ethnography and anthropology, especially that of Claude

Lévi-Strauss. Additionally, in the last half of the 20th century exchanges
among linguists were accelerated by increased accessibility to international
conferences and meetings.
Beginning with Zellig Harris’s 1952 essay, “Discourse Analysis” (Lan-
guage 28, 1–30), Anglo-American Descriptive Linguistics began to investigate
language at the suprasentential level. Roughly coeval were the Birmingham
School’s work on language exchanges in classroom settings, M.A.K. Halli-
day’s work on functional grammar and cohesion, John Searle’s and J. L.
Austin’s Speech Act Theory, and the development of Pragmatics.
In early studies of medieval languages, scholars often sought evidence of
“oral” language, speech acts, and pragmatics-based clues (i. e., interactional
meaning) recorded in medieval documents. For overviews of the evolution
of Pragmatics and Historical Discourse Analysis, see Historical Pragmatics: Prag-
matic Developments in the History of English, ed. Andreas H. Jucker (1995); His-
torical Dialogue Analysis: Pragmatics and Beyond, ed. Andreas H. Jucker, Gerd
Fritz, and Franz Lebsanft (1999); and Laurel J. Brinton, “Historical Dis-
course Analysis,” HDA (2001, 138–60). An example of the application of his-
torical pragmatics to discourse is Dagmar Neuendorff’s investigation of
the politeness strategies for greeting and receiving guests in Wolfram of
Eschenbach’s Parzival: “Das Gespräch zwischen Parzival und Trevrizent im
IX. Buch von Wolframs Parzival. Eine diskursanalytische Untersuchung,”
Neophilologica Fennica, ed. L. Kahlas-Tarkka (1987, 267–94). Historical dia-
logic language use, defined as “textual interaction between text participants
in constructing and negotiating meaning in discourse,” continues to be
of scholarly interest (cf. Dialogic Language Use/Dimensions du dialogisme/Dialogi-
scher Sprachgebrauch, ed. Irma Taavitsainen, Juhani Härmä, and Jarmo
Korhonen [2006]).
Deploying the empirical descriptive linguistic tradition, scholars also
began to explore such subjects as discourse types, macro- and microstruc-
tures, cohesion, fixed phases and clauses, and boundary marking in medi-
eval discourse. An early example is Harro Stammerjohann’s investigation
of cohesion in La Chanson de Roland, which establishes a typology of discourse
connectives: “Hiérarchie des connecteurs dans la Chanson de Roland,” Opér-
ateurs syntaxiques et cohésion discursive, ed. Henning Nølke (1988, 63–74). An-
other area of continuing interest in connection with medieval languages is
“discourse markers” which foreground and structure information, mark
boundaries, and establish or maintain rapport with an audience. See, for
example, Laurel J. Brinton, Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization
and Discourse Functions (1996).
Discourse 1490

The structuralist linguistic theories of Emile Benveniste have deeply

influenced discourse theory and its applications to medieval languages,
especially Old and Middle French. In contrast to langue as a “système de
signes,” Benveniste establishes language as an “instrument de communi-
cation, dont l’expression est le discours.” Langue is converted into discourse
by means of the énonciation: “la mise en functionnement de la langue par un
acte individuel d’utilisation” (“the causing of language to function through
an act of individual use”). It is through language and discourse that “man
constitutes himself as a subject,” for “I and you exist only as they are consti-
tuted in an instance of discourse,” and this “momentary reference” is
marked by deixis: pronouns, demonstratives, spatio-temporal adverbs and
adjectives. Of fundamental importance also is the concept of intersubjectiv-
ity: the ‘I–you’ polarity is essential, for “neither term can exist without the
other.” Each énonciation presupposes an interaction between a “locuteur”
and an addressee, the former having the intention of influencing the other in
some way (Problèmes de linguistique général, vol. 1 [1966, 220–62], vol. 2 [1974,
80]).
Outlining the advent of Structuralist discourse linguistics in connection
with Old and Middle French, Suzanne Fleischman argues that, when
viewed in the context of spontaneously produced vernacular language, lin-
guistic features that have often resisted traditional grammatical analysis can
be explained. Invoking Benveniste, she points out that studies based on
his principles of énonciation illuminate medieval French discourse, where
the act of writing has not eradicated the traces of the “locutionary activity
(énonciation) that produced them”: “connections to a speaker, a context, and
the locutionary act that produced them” (“Philology, Linguistics, and the
Discourse of the Medieval Text,” Speculum 65 (1990, 19–37). For pioneering
studies in this vein see Bernard Cerquiglini, La parole médiévale (1981);
Christiane Marchello-Nizia, Dire le vrai: L’adverbe ‘si’ en français médiéval”
(1985); Michele Perret, Le signe et la mention: Adverbes embrayeurs ‘ci,’ ‘ça,’ ‘la,’
‘iluec’ en moyen français, XIVe-XVe siècles (1988); Barbara Wehr, Diskurs-Strate-
gien im Romanischen: ein Beitrag zur romanischen Syntax (1984); and Suzanne
Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity (1990).
Linguistic analysis has long considered narrative in naturally occurring
languages, as in the work of Dell Hymes and William Labov. Adopting the
fabula/sjuzet distinction, Structuralist theories of narrative and narratology
(like those of Tzvetan Todorov, and especially, Gérard Genette, and later
Roland Barthes) applied the concepts of “histoire et discours” to medieval
literary texts. Focusing on features of “narrative discourse,” these studies
examined tense and deixis, direct and indirect discourse, and narrative voice.
1491 Discourse

Examples include Duncan Robertson, “Epic Direct Discourse,” Pacific

Coast Philology 20 (1985, 70–74); Andreas Fischer, “Story and Discourse in
Sir Gawain and ‘The Franklin’s Tale’,” Anglistentag 1989 Würzburg: Proceedings,
ed. Rüdiger Ahrens (1990, 310–19); Alexandra Stein, ‘Wort unde werc’: Stu-
dien zum narrativen Diskurs im ‘Parzival’ Wolframs von Eschenbach (1993); and
Sophie Marnette, Narrateur et points de vue dans la littérature française médi-
évale: Une approche linguistique (1998).
Influenced by Jakobson, Benveniste, Lévi-Strauss, Genette,
Barthes, and Kristeva, Paul Zumthor’s Essai de poétique médiévale (1972)
elaborates a theory and taxonomy of medieval vernacular discourse types
based upon enunciative distance. One of his classificatory principles is “per-
sonal discourse” (i. e., it instills immediacy, at least fictively: “the presence
of an ‘énonciateur,’ an ‘I’, and reference to a ‘hic et nunc’”) and “impersonal
discourse,” which has the characteristics typically assigned to “histoire.” For
Zumthor, “The poet is situated in his language rather than his language in
him” (170–72).
Approaching “discours” from the perspective of “énonciation,” Zum-
thor argues that the poetic voice – singing or reciting – constitutes a site of
encounter between self and other, and “takes on a cohesive and stabilizing
function which the social group needs for its continued existence as such.”
This essential orality, or vocality, is connected to generating new works
through ‘intervocalité’ and “discourse fragments”, a process that can lead
to the creation of a monument. The goal of the “oralist” scholar, then, is
“to distinguish in the continuous stream” of these “discourses,” which are
“messages in the making and not finalized statements” (Paul Zumthor,
“The Text and the Voice” New Literary History 16 [1984, 67–92]; La lettre et la
voix: De la littérature médiévale [1987]). On the place of Zumthor in the con-
text of Marie de France scholarship, see: In Quest of Marie de France, a Twelfth-
Century Poet, ed. Chantal Maréchal, 1992, 1–27.
As the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle (much of it
produced in the 1920’s and 30’s) became known in France and subsequently
in the United States, the related body of theory entered laterally into on
going discussions by Structuralists and Poststructuralists. Bakhtinian con-
cepts linked to the Russian term slovo (which has a broader semantic field
than its French or English counterparts, being translated as word, utterance,
or discourse); in addition, Julia Kristeva equated that and other Bakthi-
nian terms with Benvenistean concepts of “discours,” “énoncé,” and “énon-
ciation” (“Bakhtine: le mot, le dialogue et le roman,” Critique 239 [April
1967, 438–65]. The result is an enriching and complicating of discourse
theory.
Discourse 1492

In addition to his discourse typology, a signal contribution is Bakhtin’s

emphasis on the social context and implications of language, richly diverse
and nuanced by interactions between speakers and interlocutors: “verbal
discourse is a social phenomenon – social throughout its entire range and in
each and every of its factors […]. The living utterance, having taken meaning
and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environ-
ment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads,
woven by socio-ideologically consciousness around the given object of utter-
ance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue” (“Dis-
course in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination, 1982, 259–422).
Among the early appearances of Bakhtinian concepts – “discursive
complexity,” “polyphony,” “heteroglossia,” and “dialogical interplay of
voices” – in medieval scholarship are Kathleen Ashley, in “Renaming the
Sins,” SSD (1989, 272–93), and Peggy Knapp in “Robyn the Miller’s Thrifty
Work,” SSD (1989, 294–308). See also, Bakhtin and Medieval Voices, ed. Thomas
J. Farrell (1995).

C. Poststructuralism and Discourse Theory

With Poststructuralism, theory flourished: deconstruction, decentering the
subject, language’s role in constructing knowledge, and power dynamics.
The social sciences, as well as the humanities, adopted and modified earlier
concepts of discourse, extending it beyond the confines of language to
broader social practices and phenomena. In the case of medieval scholarship,
as elsewhere, it is significant that in applying Poststructural discourse the-
ory, scholars often interlace discourse concepts from more than one theoreti-
cal source (e. g., Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, Gramsci, Bakhtin,
and Bourdieu). In this context, medieval historian Gabrielle M. Spiegel
offers an overview of the effects of the “Discursive Turn” on Historiography
in Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn
(2005).
Some of the earliest considerations of Poststructuralist discourse the-
ories by medievalists appear in collections of essays such as Kevin Brown-
lee and Stephen Nichols, ed., Images of Power: Medieval History/Discourse/
Literature. Yale French Studies 70 (1986). As the introduction explains, the col-
lected essays (which resulted from the 1983 international conference at Dart-
mouth) explore Poststructuralist approaches in connection with medieval
literature to “suggest new lines of inquiry”: the “historical, political, and
economic implications of the discourse modes developed between 1000 and
1500,” the role of “medieval discursive systems” as “dynamic codes” with
“gaps and inadequacies,” the question of the “inscription of paradigmatic
1493 Discourse

‘hypertexts’ or ‘architextes’ that controlled the form taken by discourse in

given works, thus generating generic transformations in the Bakhtinian
sense.” The aim of the collection is to “suggest that theory can resituate us in
history, while avoiding the futile nostalgia for a universal model.” Among
these essays is Bernard Cerquiglini’s “The Syntax of Discursive Authority:
The Example of Feminine Discourse” (183–98), which combines Bakhtinian
theory and structuralist linguistics to explain the discursive function of Old
French adverb mar (“in vain”).
The most influential Poststructural theorist on discourse, Michel Fou-
cault, has had a considerable impact on medieval studies both at a concep-
tual level and in connection with his commentaries on the Premodern period,
his terms and concepts being widely adopted. In his well-known definition
(L’Archéologie du savoir, 1969), Foucault concedes that he uses the term discours
in various ways: “Instead of gradually reducing the rather fluctuating mean-
ing of the word ‘discourse’, I believe I have in fact added to its meanings:
treating it sometimes as the general domain of all statements, sometimes as
an individualizable group of statements, and sometimes as a regulated prac-
tice that accounts for a number of statements” (Foucault, AK, 80).
Elsewhere Foucault explains his definition more fully:
(1) In the context of the “general domain of all statements,” le discours is
“un ensemble d’énoncés” (“an aggregation of statements”) that constitutes
subjects and objects, that which counts in the domain of knowledge. Accord-
ing to Foucault, a statement cannot exist in isolation; it “belongs to a dis-
cursive formation as a sentence belongs to a text.” Additionally, the state-
ment is not the same kind of entity as the sentence, the proposition, or the
speech act; rather it is a function enabling all of these to count as having
meaning. (AK 116, 86–87).
(2) For Foucault, “individualizable discourses” or “groups of state-
ments” (e. g., economics or medicine) “give rise to certain organizations of
concepts,” especially those of institutional authority (AK 64, 80).
(3) As a “regulated [discursive] practice,” discourse comprises a complex
of “autonomous, historical rules” that accounts for a limited number of
statements which “belong to the same [discursive] formation.” This complex
of “rules” permits or excludes, within a given discourse, a certain number of
statements. Significantly, in Foucault’s theory of discourse, the subject
is neither a “transcendental subject” nor a “psychological subjectivity,” nor
a grammatical subject, but a position constituted through discourse
(AK 116–117, 55).
In this discursive system the “archive” and the “episteme” function as
follows: The archive consists not of “the mass of texts” that has been col-
Discourse 1494

lected at a given period, but of “the general system of the formation and
transformation of statements.” “It is the first law of what can be said”: the
system of rules which at a given period and for a definite society defines and
limits forms of “enunciative possibilities.” The episteme constitutes the
knowledge system of a particular historical epoch (AK 129–30, 191–92).
Not only Foucault’s theories of discourse but his observations about
discursive formations (e. g., madness, punishment, and sexuality), which he
linked to the Middle Ages, captured the attention of medievalists. In Folie et
deraison: Histoire de la folie a l’âge classique (1961), Foucault depicted a brief
idealized portrait of medieval responses to madness.” While these observa-
tions have been largely rejected, his work inspired subsequent studies of the
topic, such as Jean-Marie Fritz (Le discours du fou au Moyen Âge, 1992) observes
that Foucault’s conclusion – that madness at that time was not a political
or epistemological problem – deterred him from a thorough study. Fritz
expands the inquiry with a multidisciplinary investigation of madness: its
discursive field, the rules pertaining to the discursive formation, “interdis-
cursive refutations,” the nature, places of production, and functions of dis-
course. Similarly, scholars have sought to identify other discursive construc-
tions in the Middle Ages. Early on, in Le champion des femmes (1977), Marc
Angenot demonstrated that the “slow discontinuous evolution of the dis-
cursive ensemble” illustrates that the counter example of woman’s virtues is
itself embedded in the dominant discourse of antifeminism. See also R. Ho-
ward Bloch, “The Discourse of Misogyny in the Middle Ages,” Odense Studies
in Medieval Culture (1986, 87–117); and R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny
and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (1991).
Medievalists have also explicated what Foucault terms “individualiz-
able discourses” that give rise to certain organizations of concepts (e. g., law,
economics, medicine). See H. Beneviste’s “Les enlèvements: stratégies mat-
rimoniales, discours juridique and discours politique en France à la fin
du Moyen Age,” Revue Historique 283 (1990, 13–35). In Clerical Discourse and
Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (1998), Fiona Somerset considers the
effects of translating learned Latin materials into English in the late 14th cen-
tury. Studies of medical discourse may be found in Irma Taavitsainen,
Päivi Pahta, ed., Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English (2004);
and Irma Taavitsainen, “Medical Discourse: Early Genres, 14th and 15th
Centuries,” Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. Keith Brown (2006,
688–94).
Foucault’s concepts of “archive” and “episteme” remain of continuing
interest: for example, Martin Irvine combines Foucault’s concept of the
archive with theories of Bakhtin and Jauss to explicate the cultural signifi-
1495 Discourse

cance of medieval compilations and glosses (“Medieval Textuality and the

Archaeology of Textual Culture,” Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disci-
plines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. J. Allen Frantzen,
1991, 181–210); and Philip W. Rosemann argues that the the scholastic
episteme underwent an essential transformation, which was manifested in
the witch-hunt (The Scholastic Episteme: Understanding Medieval Thought With
Foucault, 1999, 165–72).
Linking knowledge and power through discourse, Foucault empha-
sized the role of the Middle Ages. For Foucault, “there is no power relation
without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowl-
edge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power re-
lations” (Surveiller et punir, 1975, 27). Concomitantly, truth is not universal
and objective; indeed, there is no truth outside of or beyond power/knowl-
edge itself (DP, 1977, 27). Foucault characterizes one form of medieval
power as control over the physical body in the form of ritualized public tor-
ture and execution, a form that is later replaced with a transition to a disci-
plinary society, which employs different forms of punishment to gain control
over the individual mind (DP, 18). Similarly, in Histoire de la sexualité (1976), he
returns to the Middle Ages, locating the origins of “sovereign power” and the
“juridico-discursive” concepts of law and right in the formation of European
monarchy, beginning in the 12th century: “The great institutions of power
that developed in the Middle Ages – monarchy, the state with its apparatus –
rose up on the basis of a multiplicity of prior (often conflicting) powers […]
and to a certain extent in opposition to them.” These institutions succeeded
in “present[ing] themselves as agencies of regulation, arbitration, and demar-
cation, as a way of introducing order in the midst of these powers, of establish-
ing a principle that would temper them and distribute them according to the
boundaries and a fixed hierarchy” (HS, 86–87). Drawing on these Foucaul-
dian concepts, Scott Pincikowski explores the Speculum Principis in connec-
tion with discourse of sovereign power over the body as depicted by Hart-
mann von Aue, arguing that it was through such means that “the social body
of the nobility was able to maintain political hegemony” (Bodies of Pain: Suffer-
ing in the Works of Hartmann von Aue, 2002, xxiv).
Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité (vol. 1: La volonté de savoir, 1976) has
had an even stronger impact on medieval scholarship. Sketching out the con-
struction of sexuality, he alludes to the Middle Ages, where he locates the
relationship between sexuality and confession, the dominant shaping dis-
course of the period (especially after the Lateran Council of 1215 [HS 58]).
Again the historical gaps in Foucault’s analysis of the discursive formation
were expeditiously filled by subsequent works (cf. Danielle Jacquart and
Discourse 1496

Claude Thomasset, Sexualité et savoir médical au moyen âge, 1985, and Thomas
Laqueur, Making Sex, 1990). Additionally, Foucault contended that after
the Middle Ages sexuality began to be shaped by multiple discourses, an
idea developed in connection with sex and desire by John W. Baldwin who
represents several “discourses” (e. g., clerical and medical) with a “voice” (The
Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France about 1200, 1994). In a Foucaul-
dian-inspired analysis of confession in connection with medieval ecclesiasti-
cal discourse, John H. Arnold analyzes the way in which the “confessing
subject” is produced through discourse. The idea of autonomous confession
lies at the heart of the Inquisition’s claim to be an authoritative producer of
“truth.” Moreover, the confessing subject “is above all a textual subject, con-
structed within a particular discourse.” “The confessing subject was not her
or his own self: he or she was also subject of and subject to the inquisition”
(Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc,
2001).
For examples of the numerous surveys of ways in which Foucault’s
ideas on the discursive formation of sexuality have influenced scholarship on
medieval sexuality, see Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. Karma Lochrie,
James A. Schultz, and Peggy McCracken (1997), and Louise O. Fraden-
burg and Carla Freccero, “Introduction: The Pleasures of History,” GLQ:
A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4 (1995): 371–84.
For much of the later 20th century, considerations of Diskurs in German
scholarship have been placed in a pragmatic, communicative context. Here,
Jürgen Habermas’s theories of “communicative action” and the role of dis-
course in the public sphere, as set forth in his Theorie des kommunikativen Han-
delns (1981) and other works, have influenced medieval scholarship. For
Habermas, Diskurs is a reflective form of communicative activity (Moral Con-
sciousness and Communicative Action, 1990, 201–202). In Habermas’s theoreti-
cal writings, Diskurs specifies “a type of interaction that is coordinated
through speech acts and does not coincide with them” (TCA 1, 101); it has a
specialized sense of rule-based speech or argument in quest of consensus
based on reason (TCA 1, 42). According to this view, the individual self is per-
ceived as a member of a community, where social order depends on the
members’ capacity for and cooperation in communicative action and moral
argumentation. For Habermas, discourse entails conditions for compre-
hensibility, truth, rightness, and truthfulness, and it is defined in terms of an
ideal communication situation – an exchange among equals, rational beings
who cooperatively test the validity claims for the purpose of resolving differ-
ences. In discussing the importance of discourse in the bourgeois public
sphere, Habermas focuses on its emergence in the 18th century. However he
1497 Discourse

discovers its precursors in the Middle Ages with sovereign power and the
formation of the state, where society became a private realm (James Finlay-
son, Habermas, 2005).
Among scholars who have implemented this approach to discourse and
communication in early German works, Albrecht Classen has explored the
implications of Habermasian theory in the Hildebrandslied, where he finds
“the consequences of failed communication, and its causes: a lack of rational-
ity and a failed sense of communality” (“Why Do Their Words Fail? Com-
municative Strategies in the Hildebrandslied,” Modern Philology 93 [1995, 1–22].
See also id., Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Ge-
meinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 2002).
In recent years there has been growing interest among German scholars
in the theories of Foucault; for instance work in the social and cultural
sciences by Siegfried Jäger and Jürgen Link focuses on present-day dis-
course and “the effects of their power as revealed in language-based and ico-
nographic modes.” Here, Diskurs is connected to the “institutionally consoli-
dated concept of speech inasmuch as it determines and consolidates action
and thus already exercises power”; so too, it is “the flow of knowledge
through all of time” that determines the individual and collective doing
and/or formative action that shapes society thus exercising power.” (Siegfried
Jäger, “Discourse and Knowledge: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects
of a Critical Discourse and Dispositive Analysis,” MCDA [2001, 32–62]). A no-
table recent addition in the medieval context is Gert Hübner’s Introduction
to Old German Literature, which contains a chapter on “Diskurs und Diskurs-
analyse,” where he defines several central Foucauldian concepts and applies
them to significant medieval German works (Gert Hübner, “Diskurs
und Diskursanalyse,” Ältere deutsche Literatur: Eine Einführung, ed. id. [2006,
232–59]).

D. The First Decade of the 21st Century

As discourse studies have become more interdisciplinary, the investigation
of discourse has been increasingly integrated into Critical Discourse Analy-
sis. Critical Discourse Analysis, which overlaps Cultural Linguistics, Cultural
Criticism, and French Discourse Analysis, has been defined as research on
“ways in which social power, abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted,
reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political contexts.”
Analysts “take an explicit position and thus want to understand, expose
and ultimately resist social inequality” (Teun van Dijk, “Critical Discourse
Analysis,” HDA [2001, 352–72]). German Critical Discourse Analysis, as
noted, is strongly influenced by Foucauldian theory, and French Discourse
Discourse 1498

Analysis is characterized by a philosophical and psychoanalytic base; atten-

tion to language, especially enunciative linguistics; social contextualization
of the énoncé; and a technological, informatics orientation.
Often focused on present-day issues of gender, class, and race, these me-
thodological approaches combine social or ideological concerns with lin-
guistic and sometimes nonlinguistic elements; these methodologies are also
applied to the past. An example is Joannah L. Wood’s application of Norman
Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis framework to the 15th-century
letters written to and by Margaret Paston (“A Critical Discourse Analysis
Approach to Margaret Paston,” Letter Writing, ed. Terttu Nevalainen and
Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen [2007, 47–71]).
Discourse analysis has also become an integral part of fields like Cul-
tural, Feminist, and Postcolonial Studies, whose theories and methods are
applied to Premodern texts and culture. In such analyses, discourse method-
ologies are often blended with the theories of Michel de Certeau, Michel
Pecheux, Slovoj Mi žek, Antonio Gramsci, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said,
Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, and Pierre Bourdieu, among others.
See Emmanuel Filhol, “L’image de l’autre au Moyen Age: La représen-
tation du monde rural dans le Guide du Pèlerin de Saint-Jacques de Com-
postelle,” Cahiers d’histoire 3 (2000, 347–62); David Hanlon, “Islam and
Stereotypical Discourse in Medieval Castile and Leon,” Journal of Medieval and
Early Modern Studies 30 (2000, 479–504). Examples of Postcolonial analyses
that demonstrate various hybrid discourses in competing with master dis-
courses include Paul Goetsch, “Der koloniale Diskurs in Beowulf,” New
Methods in the Research of Epic/Neue Methoden der Epenforschung, ed. Hildegard
Tristram (1998, 185–200); Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval
Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (2003); and Alice Sheppard,
Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (2004).
As technology is increasingly employed to aid in investigating discourse,
medieval scholars have joined in large-scale long-term collaborative projects
with international contributors. Technologically grounded projects that ex-
plicitly address discourse analysis include: The Base de Français Médiéval
(BFM), founded by Christine Marchello-Nizia (1989), is a three-million-
word corpus of Old and Middle French: it is morphologically tagged and en-
coded for text or discourse type, discursive domain, and particular semantic
and linguistic features (e. g., demonstrative adjectives). (http://w3.ens-lsh.fr/
egerstenkorn/bfm2/). The Parzival-Projekt, an electronic edition of Wolfram
von Eschenbach’s work based at the Universities of Bern and Basel, is de-
signed to “tally with” new developments in “historiographical scholarship,”
and in discourse analysis (http://www.parzival.unibe.ch).
1499 Discourse

Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT), part of the Corpus of Early Eng-
lish Medical Writing, contains a 500000-word corpus illustrating the “evol-
ution of medical writing within the variationist framework of stylistics and
discourse analysis.” (Middle English Medical Texts. Compiled by Irma Taa-
vitsainen, Päivi Pahta and Martti Mäkinen. CD-ROM, Amsterdam, 2005,
http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/domains/scientific%20thought.html).

Select Bibliography
Gillian Brown and George Yule, Discourse Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1983); Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969; London:
Tavistock, 1972); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975:
London: Allen Lane and New York: Pantheon, 1977); Michel Foucault, Folie et
Déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Plon, 1961); Michel Foucault, The His-
tory of Sexuality, vol. 1: Introduction (1976; New York: Vintage, 1990); Jürgen Haber-
mas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990); Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I (1981; Boston:
Beacon, 1984); The Discourse Reader, ed. Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland,
2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006); Jørgen Dines Johansen, Literary Dis-
course: A Semiotic-Pragmatic Approach to Discourse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2002); The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. D. Schiffrin et al. (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001); Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. Teun van Dijk, 4 vols. (New York: Academic,
1985); Discourse Studies, ed. Teun van Dijk, 2 vols. (London: Sage, 1997); Glyn Wil-
liams, French Discourse Analysis: The Method of Post-Structuralism (London and New York:
Routledge, 1999); Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Ruth Wodak and Michael
Meyer (London: Sage, 2001).

Karen K. Jambeck
Fictionality 1500

Fictionality

A. Introduction
The development of fiction in the Middle Ages dove-tails the emergence of
modern historiography and distinctions between story and history, which
are still contested today. As Hayden White has pointed out, most notably in
his work The Content and the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Represen-
tation (1987), “The distinction between discourse and narrative is, of course,
based solely on the analysis of the grammatical features of two modes of dis-
course in which the ‘objectivity’ of the one and the ‘subjectivity’ of the other
are definable primarily by a ‘linguistic order of criteria’ […] every great his-
torical narrative is an allegory of temporality” (3). Despite the enormous
amount of discussion and debate the emergence of fiction in the Middle Ages
has generated over the past decades, upon close inspection there is more
agreement on this topic than on most others. Almost all of the attempts to
approach the phenomenon hold the following three attributes in common:
1) Twelfth and early Thirteenth Century Romance remains the primary
and almost exclusive subject of study.
2) During this period, imaginative literature, historiography, and the
hermeneutics of Biblical exegesis interacted to produce both a new literary
and a new historical consciousness beginning in France (see Douglas Kelly,
The Art of Medieval French Romance, 1992).
3) Fictionality depends upon a new relationship between the audience
and the material. D. H. Green’s definition remains the most succinct and co-
incides with most of the major positions, “Fiction is category of literary text
which, although it may also include events that were held to have actually
taken place, gives an account of events that, although possible, did not take
place, and which, in doing so invites the intended audience to be willing to
make-believe what would otherwise be regarded as untrue” (The Beginnings
of Medieval Romance, 2002, 4). Walter Haug’s numerous essays on the topic
of medieval fictionality constitute among the most exhaustive contested
bodies of work on the subject, yet Haug’s own definition coincides with the
one here by Green (see Die Wahrheit der Fiktion, 2003; Literaturtheorie im deut-
schen Mittelalter, 1985).
1501 Fictionality

B. Categories of Narration
Medieval rhetoricians and grammarians recognized three basic categories
of narration: fabula, argumentum, and historia. For medieval authors, the
category fabula relates the impossible or improbable and is wholly contrived.
The argumentum is also invented but can be distinguished from the fabula by
its level of verisimilitude. The events of an argumentum did not happen but
they could happen. Historia faithfully recounts the truth of actual historical
events. This system of classification can already be found in Cicero’s De inven-
tione (ca. 60 B.C.E.), in the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium
(ca. 60 B.C.E.), and in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (ca. 630 C.E.) (see Hennig
Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik, 1980; Päivi Mehtonen, Old Con-
cepts and New Poetics: Historia, Argumentum, and Fabula in the Twelfth- and Early
Thirteenth-Century Latin Poetics of Fiction, 1996). Since the communication of
“truth” constituted a consistent claim of almost all narratives, historia ranked
as the highest and most worthwhile form of literature. However, the estab-
lishment of truth was not based on the corroboration of verifiable facts but
rather on the extent to which the narrative was seen to comply with or dem-
onstrate an ideological truth. Christian theological concerns determined
conventions for establishing truth, usually through attribution to scripture
or a canonical authorship.
These criteria introduced a considerable amount of ambiguity into any
attempt to categorize a given narrative. As Alastair J. Minnis notes in his
Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middles Ages,
1984, “Two criteria for the award of this accolade [auctor] were tacitly applied:
‘intrinsic worth’ and ‘authenticity’. To have ‘intrinsic worth’, a literary
work had to conform, in one way or another, with Christian truth. […] To be
‘authentic’, a saying or piece of writing had to be the genuine production of
a named auctor” (11). This meant that most major literary endeavors, like
the romances, made claims of being transmitted from an accepted authority.
In addition, the inevitable encroachment of Biblical exegetical practice into
the reception and production of extra-Biblical texts enabled what modern
readers would consider fiction to be distributed as historia. Medieval litterati
also sought spiritual senses in profane texts, with, for example, the Char-
trian notion of the integumentum. The integumental method allowed for the
attribution of figurative truth to invented narrative, but medieval authors
did not need the concept of the integumentum to assert the figurative meaning
of their narratives as long as these were transmitted and received as authentic
histories (Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century:
The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres, 1972).
Fictionality 1502

C. Medieval Historiography and Fictionality

Medieval literate culture located the “truth,” or value, of any given text on
several possible levels as a general rule and routinely practiced the exposition
and extrapolation of the deeper significance of historical events, even those
recorded outside the Bible. Openness to the deeper significance of a given
historical event was an integral part of any general reception of historical
narrative or auctorial text. In general, the romancers of the late 12th and early
13th centuries participate in the hermeneutic model inherent in medieval
historiography. Medieval historiographic practice already allowed for an ex-
pansion of the number of possible “truths” that could be found in an extra-
Biblical text as long as the material was considered to communicate an actual
historical occurrence that could be understood as an expression of the will of
God. Within these bounds, the investigation of the real import of historical
events continually expanded the allowable range of interjection and inven-
tion (see Peter von Moos, “Poeta und Historicus im Mittelalter: Zum Mimesis-
Problem am Beispiel einiger Urteile über Lucan,” PBB 98 [1976]: 93–130).
Medieval historiography afforded and even obliged historians to recount
history with a certain amount of poetic license. Although the historical sub-
ject was traditionally limited to well-documented and established material,
the tolerance of authorial invention creates a seeming incongruity: the truth
of the historia is not exclusively located in nor limited to the literal historical
facts (see Fritz Peter Knapp, “Historische Wahrheit und poetische Lüge:
Die Gattungen weltlicher Epik und ihre theoretische Rechtfertigung im Mit-
telalter,” DVjS 54 [1980]: 581–635). The added endorsement of poetic ex-
pression as a means of communicating and uncovering deeper philosophical
truths encouraged the extension of historical extrapolation to the point of fic-
tional representation that culminated in the invention of the romance.
Bishop Otto von Freising’s (ca. 1112–1158) Gesta Frederici (1156–1158), for
example, depicts Frederick Barbarossa as heir to Constantine, legitimating
the Emperor both politically and soteriologically. In his prologue, Otto
describes his historiographic practice. He contends it is in keeping with the
nature of his work that he should vary his diction and shift from the plana
hystorica dictione to a loftier, philosophic style of poetry. Otto places his history
in the same category as the works of Lucan and Virgil, observing that these
two authors employ poetry to present intima phylosophiae secreta. Affirming the
philosophical depth of poetry, Gunther the Poet versified the Gesta Frederici in
his Ligurinus (1188) in order to communicate these truths in a more pleasing
manner. Of course, this move demonstrates that the Platonic rejection of
poetry as mendacious, which had held sway in the question West throughout
the early Middle Ages, was now, through the influence of authors like Ovid,
1503 Fictionality

Lucan, and Virgil, was slowly transforming into an estimation more akin with
the Poetics of Aristotle, although that work itself would not be known in
the West for almost a century after this process had already taken place. His-
tory provides fiction with a context and correlation to reality that enables the
audience to relate to the story (see Peter Damian-Grint, The New Historians of
the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Authorizing History in the Vernacular Revolution.
1999). The adaptation of historical forms locates the Arthurian Romances
within the bounds of appreciable communication, even though they lack the
vital Latin sources of the romans d’antiquité. As Hans Robert Jauss (“Theory of
Genres and Medieval Literature,” Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Tim-
othy Bahti [1982]) remarks that any new generic form must borrow from
previous genres in order to be understood (76–82). For Romance, the previous
genre was history. As Robert M. Stein, in his book Reality Fictions: Romance,
History and Governmental Authority 1025–1180, comments, “it is impossible to
draw a firm line between historiography and romance” (106).

D. The Role of the Audience

The Arthurian Romance achieves a true revolution by demanding complicity
in the fraud on the part of the audience (see Walter Haug, “Die Entdeckung
der Fiktionalität,” Die Wahrheit der Fiktion, 2003, 131). A willingness on the
part of the audience to accept the fictional communication as meaningful,
i. e., a willingness to accept fiction as significant and worthwhile, is the most
important and uncontested component of medieval fictionality. As histories,
the Arthurian romances are freed from the purely didactic horizon of expec-
tations associated with fabula and exempla. Moreover, as histories without
authentic and well-known sources, the Arthurian romances were not bur-
dened with the prescribed interpretations applied to the canonical Latin
histories informing the romans d’antiquité. Walter Haug sees this as the defin-
ing moment of what he calls the fictive experiment. In the absence of an
interpretive scheme, the authors and the audience a like take part in the
experience which is necessarily subjective and open (id., “Autorität und fik-
tionale Freiheit”, Die Wahrheit der Fiktion, 2003, 126–27.) With this assertion,
Haug subverts the didactic aspect of chivalric fiction that has been a corner-
stone of reception from the inception of the drama, though this aspect of his
theory has been widely rejected (see C. Stephen Jaeger, “Book-Burning at
Don Quixote’s: Thoughts on the Educating Force of Courtly Romance,”
Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness, ed. Keith Busby and Christopher Klein-
henz, 2004, 17). Nonetheless, Haug’s assertions are made in the context of
specific works and as such will remain a primary locus for discussion on this
topic.
Frontier, Transgression, Liminality 1504

The tacitly unauthentic versified Arthurian histories lead to gradual

reception of verse as the genre of subjective narrative and prose as the genre
of objective narrative. In her books Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose
Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (1993) and The Past as Text: The Theory
and Practice of Medieval Historiography (1999), Gabrielle M. Spiegel has charted
the emergence of a “objective” historiography at the beginning of the 13th cen-
tury. In her article, “Social Change and Literary Language: The Textualization
of the Past in Thirteenth-Century Old French Historiography,” Journal of Medi-
eval and Renaissance Studies 17.2 (1987): 129–148, Spiegel asserts that “by
about 1200, a new popular demand for historical works in prose began to make
itself felt. Little by little, vernacular prose, until then confined to translations
of biblical or homiletic texts, becomes the preferred form of history” (130).

Select Bibliography
J. Alexander Bareis and Lars-Åke Skalin, Narrativity, Fictionality, and Literariness: The
Narrative Turn and the Study of Literary Fiction (Oerebro, Sweden: Oerebro University
Press, 2008); Dennis H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and Fiction:
1150–1220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Walter Haug, Die Wahrheit
der Fiktion: Studien zur weltlichen und geistlichen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neu-
zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2003); id., Strukturen als Schlüssel zur Welt: Kleine
Schriften zur Erzählliteratur des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989); id.,
Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts,
Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985); Fritz P.
Knapp, Historie und Fiktion in der mittelalterlichen Gattungspoetik: Sieben Studien und ein
Nachwort (Heidelberg: Winter, 1997); Caroline A. Jewers, Chivalric Fiction and the His-
tory of the Novel (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000); Franco Moretti, The
Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention
in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991); Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval
Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

Stephen Mark Carey

Frontier, Transgression, Liminality

A. General Outline of Topic

Academic interest in frontiers and thresholds, including transition theory,
originated in (religious) ethnology. The phenomena and terminology en-
tered literary theory from this perspective, given additional impetus by the
so-called cultural turn in the 1980s.
1505 Frontier, Transgression, Liminality

B. Terminological Definition
In 1909 Arnold van Gennep divided the observable rites which constitute
magic and religion into three categories: rites of separation (rites de sépar-
ation), rites of liminality (rites de marge), and rites of incorporation (rites
d’agrégation). Together, the three make up the class of rites of passage. Their
purpose is to enable the transition of an individual from one precisely de-
fined situation to another, equally defined situation (Arnold van Gennep,
Les rites de passage, 1909; French reprint 1981; trans. into German with the
title Übergangsriten, 1986; Studienausgabe 1999, here 15). In 1964 Victor
Turner developed the middle phase further (Victor Turner, “Betwixt and
Between; The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” Proceedings of the 1964
Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, ed. June Helm, 1989,
4–20) and turned his observations into a political theory of society in his
major work five years later (Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and
Anti-Structure, 1969; German: Das Ritual: Struktur und Anti-Struktur, 2000). Be-
tween the initial and final state which, according to van Gennep, are clearly
defined, Turner placed a phase of liminality, i. e., indefiniteness, at best
ambiguity, in which the threshold crosser no longer possesses the character-
istics of the phase he has left, but has not yet acquired those of the phase he is
entering. This liminal phase is not confined to individuals; societies can also
undergo it, being then (for a period of time) neither structured nor differenti-
ated nor, for example, ordered hierarchically or according to a spatial Above
or Below; Turner refers to this threshold state as Communitas (2000, 96f.).

C. History of Research (and Current Issues)

In the U.S.A. where Turner taught from 1964 on until his death in 1983 (in-
itially at Cornell, then at the University of Chicago, and finally at the Univer-
sity of Virginia); publications on his liminality theory, as he had applied it to
drama, appeared from the year 1990 on; see: Victor Turner and the Construction
of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, ed. Kathleen Ashley,
1990). Within German-language scholarship, Turner and van Gennep’s
theories influenced mediaevalists earlier than they did modernists, because
the rituals and ceremonies connected to the transitions were perceived as
central to mediaeval poetics and communication (cf. Gerd Althoff’s works;
and further Jaritz’s article on “Ritual and Performance” in this Handbook).
However, this influence was generally not shown in explicit reference
to Turner and van Gennep but rather either to unexplained “liminal
states,” or a merely common-sense use of “threshold states, spaces or places.”
Turner’s theory deals primarily with changes of social context. For that
reason, it is unsurprising that most of the studies examining liminality deal
Frontier, Transgression, Liminality 1506

with the protagonists of medieval courtly romances. The knightly vita activa
proceeds from an initiation (dubbing, belting with the sword) via adoles-
cence and crisis to maturity and lordship (coronation), and can therefore be
read as a succession of transitions. Furthermore, the concept of the double-
cycle now so familiar to scholars – the hero must ride into the world twice,
once to win land and lady, and a second time after failure and crisis, to win
back both – also lends itself to interpretation via liminality. Inasmuch as –
in the broadest sense – psychological (maturation) processes are portrayed
in mediaeval literature with the aid of changing spatial descriptions, such as
the transition from the castle or court to the forest, a border between culture
and nature, mediaevalism chiefly recognises liminal places (cf. Christian
Schmid-Cadalbert, “Der wilde Wald: Zur Darstellung und Funktion
eines Raumes in der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur,” Gotes und der werlde
hulde, ed. Rüdiger Schnell, 1989, 24–47). Major impetus towards the
examination of borders (and hence differentiation) was given almost simul-
taneously by Albrecht Koschorke in his Die Geschichte des Horizonts: Grenze
und Grenzüberschreitung in literarischen Landschaftsbildern (1990).
Via a second category pair, interior-exterior, the interest in borders and
liminality has spread to further themes and disciplines. Skin is now regarded
as a liminal organ, which stands between the ego/body and the exterior
world, of interest not merely in psychology (with regard to binding – separ-
ation – reintegration) and perception/cognitive theory (with regard to sub-
liminal perception which lies below the threshold of consciousness but can
be observed galvanically in skin). In Mediaeval Studies which understand the
body as a socially and culturally generated bearer of symbolism the academic
stock of skin contact and tactility is currently rising (Christina Lechter-
mann, Berührt werden: Narrative Strategien der Präsenz in der höfischen Kultur um
1200, 2005). Equally, a connection between visual perception and liminal lo-
cations can be conjectured (Jerold. C. Frakes, “The Female Gaze and the
Liminal Window in Medieval Epic,” ‘De consolatione philologiae:’ Studies in
Honor of Evelyn S. Firchow, ed. Anna Grotans, Heinrich Beck, and Anton
Schwob, 2000, 85–100). The interior-exterior dichotomy also underpins
all the studies concerned with the concept of secret-public and with the
borders between intimate/private and official/public actions. Aleida Ass-
mann (Schleier und Schwelle, vol. 1, Geheimnis und Öffentlichkeit, 1997) pointed
the way; a little bit earlier, and dealing with the Middle Ages is Horst Wen-
zel (“Ze hove und ze holze – offenlîch und tougen: Zur Darstellung und Deutung
des Unhöfischen in der höfischen Epik und im Nibelungenlied,” Höfische
Literatur: Hofgesellschaft: Höfische Lebensformen um 1200, ed. Gert Kaiser and
Jan-Dirk Müller, 1986, 277–300). Finally, emotion research in medieval
1507 Frontier, Transgression, Liminality

studies takes on some theorems from liminality theory insofar as it addresses

transfer problems and answers the question of how emotions are transported
in literature by pointing to visualizing ritualization. However, such rituals
are originally always considered to be markings of borders, breaks or thresh-
olds (cf. Ingrid Kasten, Jutta Eming, Elke Koch, and Andrea Sieber, “Zur
Performativität von Emotionalität in erzählenden Texten des Mittelalters.
Eine Projektskizze aus dem Berliner Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Kulturen des
Performativen’,” Encomia-Deutsch. Sonderheft der ICLS, 2000, 42–60).
By no means of least importance is the possibility of understanding the
whole medieval period as a liminal epoch of transition which medieval schol-
arship frequently focuses on the transition from an oral to a written culture.
Inasmuch as writing can be defined as a frozen memory in material form,
then the wheel turns full circle back to van Gennep’s fieldwork on rites of
passage, for those also serve the visualisation (for instance through the stig-
matisation of the physis) of things which are “written” in collective memory.

D. Future Trends
Inasmuch as a trend in scholarship in German can be established, then it ap-
pears to consist not of a preoccupation with spatial or temporal crossing of a
border or transition, but rather with the phenomenon of transformation
which is implicit in every transition. The key word is “metamorphosis”, but
it goes beyond a purely physical transformation (cf. for instance Kevin
Brownlee, “Mélusine’s Hybrid Body and the Poetics of Metamorphosis,”
Yale French Studies 86 [1994]: 18–38. Currently the International Research Centre:
Metamorphic Changes in the Arts (IRCM) at the University of Salzburg, Austria,
is being established with six interdisciplinary axes, including “corporeal
transformations,” and “reception as metamorphosis.”

Select Bibliography
Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (1909; rpt. Paris: E. Nourry, 1981; trans. into
German as Übergangsriten, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 1986); Victor Turner, The
Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca, Edison, NJ: Aldine Press, 1969; trans.
into German as: Das Ritual: Struktur und Anti-Struktur, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag,
2000); Grenze und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter, ed. Ulrich Knefelkamp and Kris-
tian Bosselmann-Cyran (Salzburg: Akademie Verlag, 2007).

Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler
Game 1508

Game

A. Introduction
The concept of game and the concept of play are closely related, but a distinc-
tion has been drawn between the two since ancient times. One of the earliest
distinctions between game and play was provided by Plato (Phaedrus), who
asserted that game (ludus) possesses moves, rules and goals that are arrived at
through reason, play (paedia) however lacks rules, goals or structured moves.
Game is thus intentional and rational, although like play subject to effects of
chance. This distinction began to enjoy critical scrutiny in the 18th century,
and today critical approaches to game theory have come to influence the
study of mathematics, politics, philosophy, economics, theatre, theology, lit-
erature and sports. Contemporary theories of game most relevant for medi-
eval studies base themselves on the consideration of Kant, Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida, Bakhtin, Gadamer, Barthes,
and Foucault among others.
One of the significant and widely referenced theoretical treatments of
game in the field of Medieval Studies has proved that of Mikhail Bakhtin,
Rabelais and His World (trans. Hélène Iswolsky [rejected dissertation title
Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul’tura srednevekov’ia i renessansa {The work
of François Rabelais and the Popular Culture of the Middle Ages and the Re-
naissance}], 1940; first published in 1968) and his treatment of game in late
medieval and Renaissance carnival as a form of social play and game that be-
came the forum for an encoded protest of authoritarian constructs distin-
guishable as such only to the initiated who were conditioned to recognize the
parody, satire and allusion of transgressive and subversive forms of perform-
ance and public representation.
Another significant field of medieval studies in which Game theory has
been well received is that of literary criticism under the influence of Jacques
Derrida’s deconstruction, where game and play are postulated as capable of
undermining hierarchies and traditional authoritarian positions of under-
standing. Derrida, too, makes a distinction between game and play, with
game providing structure and credence to the established reification of belief
systems, social structures etc; and play representing the absence of goals and
1509 Game

lack of structure. Play has the ability to alter the rules of the game if suffi-
ciently developed. As Gordon E. Slethaug (“Game Theory,” Encyclopedia of
Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, ed. Irina Makaryk,
1993, 64–69) comments, “While Derrida’s critique of metaphysics may not
immediately change the power structure, it has the potential for altering it
over time or at least of making people aware of the privileged games of the
past and the conditions for winning” (67). Adaptations of this deconstructive
theme can be found in the literary criticism of Barthes and Foucault.
Further important contributions to Game theory can be found by Johan
Huizinga and Roger Caillois. The former discusses elements of play in
game itself, be the “game” a literary, political, social or philosophical one,
among others, which are marked by a non-utilitarian, playful, and voluntary
quality. Caillois expanded on Huizinga’s discussion of game for practical
socio-political purposes, in doing so he identified four game types, here
as explained by Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (2005): “agôn:
where competition is dominant (cf. antagonism): pitting one person or team
against another (e. g., football, tennis, chess); alea: where chance is dominant:
submitting oneself to fate or fortune (e. g. roulette, the lottery, spinning a
coin); mimicry: where simulation is dominant: assuming the personality or
taking on the role of another (e. g. role-play, charades, ‘pretend’); ilinx: where
vertigo is dominant: aiming at giddiness or, in extreme cases, ecstasy (carous-
els, driving fast, raves)” (120). As a consequence, should these aspects of game
be taken into account when treating a piece of literature, it entails that focus
of the study shifts in part away from the work itself, to the social environ-
ment within which it was created and the rules and institutions that govern
that environment (in terms of social mores, normative pressures, laws etc.)
and how it was received by the audience.

B. Game Theory and Games in Medieval Studies

The concepts of game and play have had and continue to exert a significant
impact on medieval studies, primarily in the study of theater, social studies
and literature. The brief overview provided here is intended only to provide a
glimpse at the treatment and discussion of game in the various disciplines
and discourses. In many instances, the works provided here are interdisci-
plinary in nature and transcend the scope of a single discipline. Similarly, the
concept of game in its most diverse sense is reflected through both the treat-
ment of game from an abstract (theoretical) and/or concrete (material cul-
ture) perspective. The treatment of courtly love as a form of game and/or play
in medieval and especially courtly literature can also be seen to exert a promi-
nent influence in literary studies.
Game 1510

Medieval English Studies have seen a wide variety of treatments of

game and play, a significant portion of which have focused on the works of
Geoffrey Chaucer and the anonymously composed Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight: Heather Masri, “Carnival Laughter in the Pardoner’s Tale,” Medieval
Perspectives 10 (1995): 148–56, Richard Green, “Troilus and the Game of
Love,” Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 201–20; Tison Pugh, “Christian Revelation
and the Cruel Game of Courtly Love in Troilus and Criseyde,” Chaucer Review
39 (2005): 379–401; Elizabeth McCormick, “It’s How You Play the Game:
Christine and Chaucer Debate ‘Woman’,” Ph.D. diss. Claremont (2006);
Gloria Torrini-Roblin, “Gomen and Gab: Two Models for Play in Me-
dieval Literature,” Romance Philology 38 (1984): 32–40; John Finlayson, “Sir
Gawain, Knight of the Queen, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” English
Language Notes 27 (1989): 7–13; Setsuko Haruta, “Sir Gawain and the Grisly
Game,” Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami. ed. Masahiko
Kanno et al.,1997, 283–96; Jefferey H. Taylor, “Semantic Social Games
and the Game of Life in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Arrow-Odd’s
Saga,” Medieval Forum 6 (2007), online: http://www.sfsu.edu/ medieval/Vol-
ume6/taylor.html.
The field of Medieval German Studies has seen considerable discussion
on courtly love as a social and poetological game, among others: Albrecht
Classen, “Das Spiel mit der Liebe: Leben als Spiel: Versuch einer Neuinter-
pretation des Moriz von Craûn,” GRM 40 (1990): 369–98; Otto Neudeck,
“Das Spiel mit den Spielregeln: Zur literarischen Emanzipation von Formen
körperhaft-ritualisierter Kommunikation im Mittelalter,” Euphorion 95
(2001): 287–303; Volker Mertens, “Das ‘Spiel der höfischen Liebe’ bei Wal-
ther von der Vogelweide,” Jahrbuch für Finnisch-Deutsche Literaturbeziehungen:
Mitteilungen aus der Deutschen Bibliothek 27 (1995): 178–92; Helmut Tervoo-
ren, “Das Spiel mit der höfischen Liebe: Minneparodien im 13.–15. Jahr-
hundert,” Schoeniu wort mit süezeme sange: Philologische Schriften, ed. Helmut
Tervooren et al., 2000, 73–95; Mireille Schnyder, “Glücksspiel und
Vorsehung: Die Würfelspielmetaphorik im ‘Parzival’ Wolframs von Eschen-
bach,” ZdfA 131 (2002): 308–25.
Medieval French studies have provided a broad and varied discussion of
game, the primary focus of which has been in troubadour literature: Stephen
Manning, “Game and Earnest in the Middle English and Provençal Love
Lyrics,” Comparative Literature 18 (1966): 225–41; Robert E Chumbley,
“Game Models for French Literature, 1100–1300: An Exercise in Relational
Criticism,” Ph.D. diss. Yale (1972); Laura. Kendrick, The Game of Love: Trou-
badour Wordplay, 1988; F. R. P. Akehurst, “Courtly Love as Zero-sum and
Non-zero-sum Game,” RLA 6 (1994): 1–5; Françoise Guichard-Tesson,
1511 Game

“Jeux de l’amour et jeux du langage,” Moyen Français 38 (1996): 21–44;

Melanie Gibson, “Lyonet, Lunete, and Laudine: Carnivalesque Arthurian
Women,” On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie
Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst, 2001, 213–27; Elizabeth Zegura, “True
Stories and Alternative Discourses: The Game of Love in Marguerite de Nav-
arre’s Heptaméron,” Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval
and Early Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004, 351–68; William
Calin, “Intertextual Play and the Game of Love: The Belle Dame sans mercy
Cycle,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 31 (2006): 31–46.
Medieval Italian Studies treating game and play focus to a large extent
on Boccaccio and Dante: Franco Masciandaro, “La violenza e il giuoco
nella novella di Martellino (Decameron II, 1): La problematica dell’improvvi-
sazione,” Italian Culture 8 (1990): 39–52; Richard Green, “Le roi qui ne ment
and Aristocratic Courtship,” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith
Busby, 1990, 211–25; Edoardo Crisafulli, “The Adequate Translation as
a Methodological Tool: Dante’s Onomastic Wordplay in English,” Target: In-
ternational Journal of Translation Studies 13 (2001): 1–28; Franco Mascian-
daro, “Madonna Isabella’s Play and the Play of the Text (Decameron VII.6),”
MLN 118 (2003): 245–56.
Medieval Spanish Studies have also tended to focus on the aspect
of game in social enactments of love: Edith Rogers, “Games of Muscle,
Mind, and Chance in the ‘Romancero’,” Hispania 55 (1972): 419–27; Louise
Vasvari, “The Two Lazy Suitors in the ‘Libro de buen amor’: Popular Tradi-
tion and Literary Game of Love,” Anuario Medieval 1 (1989): 181–205; Ian
Macpherson, “The Game of Courtly Love: Letra, divisa, and invención at
the Court of the Catholic Monarchs,” Poetry at Court in Trastamaran Spain: From
the Cancionero de Baena to the Cancionero General, ed. Michael Gerli and Julian
Weiss (1998): 95–110; Nathalie Kasselis, The Game(s) of Love and Language in
Antón de Montoro, Rodrigo de Cota and Fernando de Rojas, Ph.D. diss. Michigan
State University, published in Spanish translation by María Ferrer-Light-
ner (2000, trans. 2004); Nancy Marino, “Fernando de la Torre’s ‘Juego de
naipes’, A Game of Love,” Corónica 35 (2006): 209–47.
Aside from the study of medieval languages and literatures, the treat-
ment of game, play and the role they played in medieval Theater Studies has
also proven popular, frequently in light of Bakthin’s theoretical consider-
ations: Konrad Schoel, Das komische Theater des französischen Mittelalters: Wirk-
lichkeit und Spiel, 1975; Clifford C. Flanigan, “Liminality, Carnival, and
Social Structure: The Case of Late Medieval Biblical Drama,” Victor Turner and
the Construction of Cultural Criticism. ed. Kathleen Ashley, 1990, 42–63; Kris-
tina Simeonova, “The Aesthetic Function of the Carnivalesque in Medieval
Game 1512

English Drama,” Bakhtin: Carnival and Other Subjects, ed. David Shepherd,
1993, 70–79; André Lascombes, “Revisiting The Croxton Play of the Sacra-
ment: Spectacle and the Other’s Voice,” European Medieval Drama 2, ed. Sydney
Higgins, 1998, 261–75; Lee Templeton, “Cast Them in Canvas: Carnival
and the Second Shepherd’s Play,” Medieval Perspectives 16 (2001): 151–64;
Greg Cavenaugh: “Flesh and Spirit Onstage in Medieval English Theatre,”
Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies 57 (2004): 1–25.
Similarly, medieval Social Studies have investigated the aspects of game
and play in medieval festive culture: Lawrence M Clopper, Drama, Play,
and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period, 2001;
Neil Carlidge, “The Battle of Shrovetide: Carnival Against Lent as a Leitmotif
in Late Medieval Culture,” Viator 35 (2004): 517–42; Christopher Whyte,
“Bakhtin at Christ’s Kirk: Carnival and the Scottish Renaissance,” Studies in
Scottish Literature 28 (1993): 178–203; Nicholas Orme, “Child’s Play in Medi-
eval England,” History Today 51 (2001): 49–55.
Related but listed separately here is the treatment of game in relation to
Sports History: Ruth Huff Cline, “The Influence of Romances on Tourna-
ments of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 20 (1945): 204–11; Barbara Hanawalt,
“Men’s Games, King’s Deer: Poaching in Medieval England,” Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988): 175–93; William Sayers, “Games,
Sport, and Para-Military Exercise in Early Ireland,” Aethlon 10 (1992):
105–24; Gregory Semenza, “Historicizing ‘Wrastlynge’ in the Miller’s
Tale,” Chaucer Review 38 (2003): 66–82.
Finally, the consideration of Material Culture and the role of game(s)
therein can be found in discussions of manuscripts which provide games
or discussion thereof (card games, board games), and especially the role of
the game of Chess (including its influence on courtly literature, education
and symbolic value within literature): Ernst Voss, “Aus den Schätzen der
herzoglichen Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel,” Modern Philology 26 (1929):
477–80; George R Stephens, “A Mediaeval Game in Use Today,” Speculum
12 (1937): 264–67; Richard Eales: “The Game of Chess: An Aspect of
Medieval Knightly Culture,” The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed.
Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, 1986, 12–34. Eric Ander-
son, “Game and Reality in Medieval and Renaissance English Outlaw
Narratives,” Aethlon 8 (1991): 73–88; L. M. Eldredge, “Four Medieval
Manuscripts with Mathematical Games,” Medium Ævum 68 (1999): 209–17;
Sonja Golladay, “The Illuminated Microcosm of Alfonso X’s Book of
Games,” Art and Culture Magazine 13 (2004): 56–75; Catherine Batt, “Rec-
reation, the Exemplary and the Body in Caxton’s Game and Playe of the
Chesse,” Ludica 2 (1996): 27–44; Karina van Dalen-Oskam, “The Flying
1513 Gestures

Chess-Set in the Roman van Walewein,” King Arthur in the Medieval Low Coun-
tries, ed. Geert Claassens and David Johnson, 2000, 59–68; Kathleen
Kennedy, “Hoccleve’s Dangerous Game of Draughts,” Notes and Queries 53
(2006): 411–14.

Select Bibliography
Johan Huizinga: Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Zurich: Beacon,
1955); Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference: A Translation of Eight Essays from L’Ecri-
ture et la difference by Jacques Derrida, with Introduction and Additional Notes. trans. Alan
Bass (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); James A. G. Marino: “An Annotated
Bibliography of Play and Literature,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 12
(1985): 306–58; Herbert De Ley: “The Name of the Game: Applying Game Theory
in Literature,” SubStance 17 (1988): 33–46; Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of
the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. N. Walker, ed. R. Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986; orig. 1967–1980); Stefan Matuschek: Literarische Spiel-
theorie: Von Petrarca bis zu den Brüdern Schlegel (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter,
1998); Roger Caillois: Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (New York: Free
Press of Glencoe, 1961; orig. 1958).

Maurice Sprague

Gestures

A. Definition and Early Research

The study of gesture, defined as a semantically charged “movement of the
body” (motus corporis), has acquired greater prominence recently, due to an in-
creased interest in the history of the body and communication as well as the
development of a renewed cultural history.
Medievalists, however, have been aware of the communicative and sym-
bolic value of body-based systems of expression for a considerable time. Early
research from the end of the 19th century has focused on legal history and the
history of literature, while the concentration of general history on constitu-
tional and political questions prevented most authors from analyzing the
phenomenon of gestures. An exception are “cultural histories” in specialized
areas, e. g. the idea and concept of chivalry, like Charles Mills’s The History of
Chivalry or Knighthood and its Times (1825), Siméon Luce’s Histoire de Bertrand
du Guesclin et de son époque (1876), and Hans Prutz’s Kulturgeschichte der Kreuz-
züge (1883). In this context the use of allegedly archaic or primitive gestures
was described frequently in an anecdotal manner. Karl Lamprecht, who
Gestures 1514

propagated a “new cultural history” around 1900, did not reserve a system-
atic place for gestures in his works, although he pointed out their importance
(Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 3, 1893, 196).

B. Legal History, Literature and Art History in the First Half of the
20th Century
The distinction between gesture and ritualized behavior is hard to draw,
especially in legal contexts: Heinrich Siegel thus analyzed handshake and
oath in combination (Der Handschlag und Eid nebst den verwandten Sicherheiten
für ein Versprechen im deutschen Rechtsleben, 1894). Like Siegel, Karl von Amira
(Die Handgebärden in den Bilderhandschriften des Sachsenspiegels, 1905) concen-
trated his analysis of the iconography of Sachsenspiegel-manuscripts on the
judicial relevance of gestures used before courts and in legal contexts. His in-
clusion of iconographic material was an innovation in comparison to hitherto
text-centered approaches. He systematically distinguished gestures accom-
panying speech (Redegebärden) from demonstrative gestures (hinweisende Ge-
bärden), imitative gestures (darstellende Gebärden), and gestures of contact and
seizure (Tast- und Greifgebärden), proposing a catalogue of symbolic gestures
and their use in the highly codified legal culture of the later Middle Ages. Von
Amira was conscious of methodological problems and underlined the diffi-
cult distinction between the legal symbolism of gestures applied in real life
and iconographic conventions or preferences of the illustrator – a debate
which is still open today (see Norbert H. Ott, “Der Körper als konkrete Hülle
des Abstrakten,” Gepeinigt, begehrt, vergessen, ed. Klaus Schreiner and Nor-
bert Schnitzler, 1992, 223–41). He also combined references to the conven-
tional and the affective nature of gestures, thus evoking the image of a legal
culture that was at once highly stylized and extremely emotionally charged.
Legal historians tended to underline the traditional, culturally deter-
mined meaning of gestures, referring only secondarily to their value as
expressions of the analyzed peoples‘ “psychology” (cf. Wilhelm Wundt,
Völkerpsychologie, 1900). Literary historians, like Eberhard Lommatzsch
(System der Gebärden, 1910), on the other hand, concentrated on the use of
gestures as a vehicle for the expression of emotions. In spite of historical and
cultural variability, the artistic value of literary works was frequently judged
(amongst other criteria) by the author’s capacity to use the description of
particular gestures in order to enliven his narrative (cf. Barry Windeatt,
“Gesture in Chaucer,” Medievalia et Humanistica 9 [1979]: 143–61; or Robert
G. Benson, Medieval Body Language, 1980). The underlying idea of a stable
sense of a given gesture implicitly relied on biological and philosophical rea-
soning about the nature of emotion and its expression (for a recent overview
1515 Gestures

see Adam Kendon, Gesture, 2004), although this theoretical dimension has
been rarely explored explicitly.
In Art History, Aby Warburg and his circle occupy an important place
for the analysis of gesture, although they tended to ignore the Middle Ages,
due to Warburg’s prevalent interest in so-called “pathos formulae” – ico-
nographic structures that represented a given emotion in the densest pos-
sible manner, thus creating an ahistorical ideal. From this perspective, the
period between Antiquity and the Renaissance was considered to be of minor
importance, since it was characterized by a decline of artistic proficiency.

C. Early Impact of Sociology and the History of Mentalities

Although the cultural formation of bodily expression and its symbolism
have been discussed early in the development of the Social Sciences by Marcel
Mauss (“Les techniques du corps,” Journal de Psychologie 22 [1936]: 271–93)
and Robert Hertz (“La prééminence de la main droite,” Revue philosophique
68 [1909]: 553–80), medievalists‘ contributions were rare. The period as such
was referred to by the German sociologist Norbert Elias, who proposed the
model of a Civilizing Process (orig. 1939), as follows: through the development
of refined social conventions and manners, the body’s role in social inter-
action and communication would have been suppressed steadily. Elias de-
scribes the accompanying modifications in cultural structures and is inter-
ested in the mechanisms that allowed this process to impose itself: the
evolution of courtly society and the use of the court as a strategic instrument.
The resulting attitudes would then have been stabilized by a growing aware-
ness of social behavior which led to mechanisms of “self-disciplinization”
(Selbstdisziplinierung); a process, Elias dates to the early-modern period, but
his model and periodization have been subject to criticism since the 1970s
(cf. Rüdiger Schnell, “Kritische Überlegungen zur Zivilisationstheorie
von Norbert Elias,” Zivilisationsprozesse, ed. Rüdiger Schnell, 2004, 21–83;
Albrecht Classen, “Naked Men …,” Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Mod-
ern Times, ed. id., 2008, 143–70).
In the 1920s, the French historian Marc Bloch developed a different per-
spective on the basis of sociological theory. Inspired by Emile Durkheim, he
analyzed the mental structures behind the monarchical authority of the Rois
thaumaturges (1924): according to popular belief, the kings of England and
France could heal the “king’s evil” (scrofula) by touching its victims. Although
this observation remains inspiring, its impact was limited at first: Bloch’s
work was not translated with undue haste (English 1973, German 1998).
Most studies on the symbolism of rulership concentrated on the material
aspects of regalia, as can be seen in the contributions of Percy Ernst Schramm
Gestures 1516

(Kaiser, Könige und Päpste, 4 vols., 1961–1974) and his students. Schramm re-
peatedly pointed out the importance of gestures in this context and regretted
the absence of relevant studies for the Middle Ages. But although he and, for
example, Reinhard Elze worked intensively on material that could have
been fertile ground for such an approach (e. g. the coronation ordines), their
analyses focused on the intellectual aspects of this material. The same is true
for Ernst Kantorowicz (Laudes regiae, 1946), whose student Ralph E. Gie-
sey was innovative in the analysis of public ritual in his work on royal fu-
neral ceremonies in late-medieval and early-modern France (The Royal Funeral
Ceremony in Renaissance France, 1960).

D. Theoretical Turns and Methodological Progress

Until the 1970s, gestures remained a subject of minor importance, fre-
quently mentioned only in the context of liturgical studies, legal history and
the analysis of folkloristic traditions (rich material is available in the German
Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols., ed. Hanns Bächtold-
Stäubli, 1927–1942). Here, as in the presentation of liturgical history
(cf. Thomas Ohm, Die Gebetsgebärden der Völker und das Christentum, 1948),
the approach remained anecdotal or of antiquarian interest, with the aim
being to establish an inventory of individual gestures and their conventional
meaning, or a description of their use in a historical dimension. Import-
ant methodological innovations came from literary history, particularly in
the works of Lutz Röhrich (Gebärde, Metapher, Parodie, 1967), who analyzed
the relation between physical gestures and figures of speech. He under-
lined the chronological delay between these, pointing out that the figurative
use of certain gestures in speech does not constitute a proof for their practi-
cal use.
Alongside this important methodological caveat (which equally applies
to iconographic sources), further changes were caused by new research inter-
ests and related theoretical frameworks. The work of French philosopher
Michel Foucault led to the analysis of the human body and the surround-
ing discourse from the perspective of the establishment and stabilization of
power, while sociologist Pierre Bourdieu reflected on the strategies of so-
cial reproduction and the expression of social hierarchy by means of physical
inscription and behavioural strategies (cf. Le dictionnaire du corps, ed. Bernard
Andrieu, 2006; Histoire du corps, ed. Alain Corbin et al., 3 vols., 2005–2006).
Medieval Studies were equally inspired by ethnology and anthropology,
thus developing a new perspective on ritual and gesture, which could now be
approached from the perspective of cultural structures and historically vary-
ing symbolic systems.
1517 Gestures

The fertility of this approach in the context of political and social history
has been demonstrated by Jacques Le Goff in his study of the “rituel
symbolique de la vassalité” (Pour un autre Moyen Age, 1977, 349–420). Le
Goff interprets the act of homage as a semiotic system, in which the mutual
relationship between lord and subject is expressed and reinforced through
symbolically charged verbal utterances, gestures and objects. From his
(structuralist) perspective, the bodies of the participants acquire a particu-
larly important role, becoming the centre of a symbolic system, a “total social
fact” (Marcel Mauss) – hence the kiss of lord and follower, the ritual osculum
with which the two parties conclude the relationship of loyalty and mutual
obligation, refers to a broad range of fundamental ideas of medieval sociali-
zation, from love and peace between Christians to the symbolic equality
of the involved persons. This can be complemented by functional and struc-
tural consequences: the public display of the relationship serves to strengthen
the mutual obligation while it evokes at the same time the image of an inti-
mate personal union (cf. Klaus Oschema, 2006, 601–608).
This perspective already transcends the fields of enquiry of the preceding
periods: physical expression of emotional states, gesture as a means of com-
munication and gestures as part of the biological “nature” of humans
(cf. Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Introduction and General Bibliography,” History
and Anthropology 1 [1984]: 1–23). An increasing number of studies from the
1970s onwards have deepened our understanding of each of these aspects,
but overviews offering a synthesis are still lacking. The first steps towards
the production of such a synthesis were innovative in the attention they drew
to the new object, but their interpretative framework remained conventional.
Hence Heinrich Fichtenau (Lebensordnungen des 10. Jahrhunderts, 1984)
stressed the importance of gestures for social display and the establishment
and conservation of social hierarchies in the 10th century. He presented a rich
collection of material, but the interpretation remains superficial. Gestures in
political contexts are part of ritualized public communication (cf. Formen und
Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter, ed. Gerd Althoff, 2001),
but their transmission through mainly hagiographical, historiographical,
and literary texts necessitates an approach which is conscious of their use as
narrative device (see John Burrow, 2002, and Jan-Dirk Müller, “Visual-
ität, Geste, Schrift: Zu einem neuen Untersuchungsfeld der Mediävistik,”
ZfdPh 122 [2003]: 118–32).
In Art History, considerable efforts of systematization have been made by
François Garnier who presented a catalogue of individual gestures (Le lan-
gage de l’image au moyen age, 2 vols., 1982–1989), thus contributing to a para-
linguistic understanding of gestures and their iconographic representation.
Gestures 1518

Although such a project could help to amend the shortcomings of studies

which concentrate on a clear-cut range of gestures (cf. Moshe Barasch’s
controversial The Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art, 1976),
it also has disadvantages: in an historical perspective, the meaning of a given
gesture cannot be analyzed sufficiently without its context (for a recent over-
view from the perspective of Art History and further references see Mrass,
2005).

E. Current Trends in Research

Inspired by sociological works on the habitus and the body as a medium for the
physical inscription of social structures, gestures have now become an im-
portant category for the interpretation of pre-modern cultures. Jean-Claude
Schmitt (Schmitt, 1990) presented a wide-ranging synthesis on the sub-
ject from the perspective of historical anthropology, focusing mainly on the
clerical and liturgical context until the 13th century. He outlines the import-
ance of gestures in the context of public and individual ritual (religious, legal,
political), as well as their use in rhetoric and non-verbal communication.
Schmitt innovates particularly by complementing the hitherto communi-
cation-centred approaches (on the development of the idea of gestures as a
possibly universal language, see Anne-Marie Drouin, Gestes et physionomie,
1989) with didactic and ethical considerations, stressing the important and
morally charged distinction between ordered gesture and disordered gesticu-
lation: gestures not only express, but they can also be effective, due to their
performative nature in public contexts (cf. Gerd Althoff, “Inszenierung
verpflichtet,” FMSt 35 [2001]: 61–84) and the close connection between body
and soul that is a common assumption in medieval thought (Jérôme Baschet,
“Âme et corps dans l’occident médiéval: une dualité dynamique, entre plura-
lité et dualisme,” Archives de Sciences sociales des Religions 112 [2000]: 5–30).
As a consequence, the abundant use of gestures and ritualized behaviour
in public contexts can not be qualified as dysfunctional or even “primitive”.
It rather reflects the necessities and conditions of pre-modern politics and
its unwritten “rules” (cf. Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter,
1997), particularly in the early and high Middle Ages. In the context of
politics, gestures furnished a highly visible means to negotiate and demon-
strate mutual relationships, while at the same time being malleable and flex-
ible through their polyvalence. They allowed not only the clarification of
hierarchy and rank, but could also maintain a level of uncertainty through
the use of gestures of intimate physical proximity in public contexts, e. g.
sleeping in one bed (cf. Klaus van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens zum sys-
tematisierten Konflikt, 2002). Depending on the setting, this gesture could lose
1519 Gestures

its sexual implications while keeping its value as a demonstration of trust

and harmony.
Recent studies mainly focus on gestures of social interaction (for greet-
ing rituals, cf. Horst Fuhrmann, “Willkommen und Abschied,” Mittelalter,
ed. Wilfried Hartmann, 1993, 111–39), which can, in the case of particu-
larly polyvalent gestures like the kiss, serve as the starting point for the
analysis of an entire system of cultural values (cf. Yannick Carré, Le baiser sur
la bouche au Moyen Âge, 1992, and Kiril Petkov, The Kiss of Peace, 2003). The in-
clusion of a broad variety of source material as well as intercultural compari-
sons in recent approaches (cf. the contributions in Bremmer and Rooden-
burg [ed.], 1992) has highlighted the cultural specificities of a given gesture
in its particular setting.
The analysis of gestures as expressions of emotion is particularly prob-
lematic from a methodological viewpoint, due to intercultural and historical
variability (cf. the brief discussion of Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying
about Emotions in History,” AHR 107 [2002]: 821–45). In comparison with
earlier tentative approaches (J. Russell Major, “‘Bastard Feudalism’ and the
Kiss,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 [1986–87]: 509–35), recent con-
tributions are more conscious of methodological pitfalls and try to establish
the analysis of gestures as a means to contextualize theoretical discourses on
socio-political ideals with their practical application (Nicolas Offenstadt,
Faire la paix au Moyen Âge, 2007, and Oschema, 2006). The significance of ges-
tures for public performances by minstrels, but also in other social and cul-
tural contexts, has been investigated by Maria Dobozy (Re-Membering the
Present, 2005, 92–109), who confirms Schmitt’s insights into the major role
the major role played by the proper body control and the specific utilization
of gestures in scholastic debates of a man’s harmony of body and mind (Hugh
of St. Victor) from this specific perspective.

Select Bibliography
A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992); Riten, Gesten, Zeremonien, ed. Edgar Bierende et al.
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008); John A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Le geste et les gestes au Moyen Âge (Aix-
en-Provence: CUERMA, 1998); Marcus Mrass, Gesten und Gebärden: Begriffsbestimmung
und -verwendung in Hinblick auf kunsthistorische Untersuchungen (Regensburg: Schnell und
Steiner, 2005); Klaus Oschema, Freundschaft und Nähe im spätmittelalterlichen Burgund
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2006); Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, “Gebärden,” HRG 21, 1954–69;
Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard,
1990).

Klaus Oschema
Images 1520

Images

A. Introduction
The importance of visual images for the historical disciplines has increased
considerably in recent years. From the exclusive domain of art historians and
from a mere medium illustrating the analysis of the written word by other
fields of historical research they have developed into sources that also in
medieval studies receive similar consideration and critical approaches as
texts. On the one hand, this has to be seen in context with the role that
images play in today’s society, in which they have often taken over from the
written word (Ernst Gombrich, “The Visual Image: Its Place in Communi-
cation,” The Image and the Eye, 1982, 137–61). On the other hand, the import-
ant role and influence of pictures as media of medieval communication and
as carriers of different messages has now been recognized. Thus, they express
cultural, religious, ideological, popular, social, and economic ideas and func-
tions, among others, which often cannot be separated from each other. More-
over, images are highly ritualized products of medieval culture.
Of specific interest are the medieval discourses referring to the use
and misuse of images that can be traced in a large number of textual sources
(Władisław Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics II: Medieval Aesthetics, 1970).
As particularly important and as a basis for any research into the role of
images in the Middle Ages, one has to understand the literatura illiterato-
statement that became a topos of nearly all the remarks and discussion about
their function, starting with the letter of Pope Gregory the Great to Bishop
Serenus of Marseille (ca. 600) until post-medieval times (Lawrence G. Dug-
gan, “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?” Reading Images and Texts:
Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication, ed. Mariëlle Hageman
and Marco Mostert, 2005, 63–107).
Images have to be closely ‘read’, which today also has become a common-
place in medieval studies (Elizabeth Sears, “‘Reading’ Images,” Reading
Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. Elizabeth Sears and
Thelma K. Thomas, 2002, 1–7). Images consist of many layers and levels.
The varieties of direct and indirect contexts and connections of visual images
and written texts have taken on great relevance (see, e. g., Horst Wenzel,
1521 Images

Hören und Sehen, Schrift und Bild, Kultur und Gedächtnis im Mittelalter, 1995;
Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, 1992). With
regard to these contexts of images and texts the questions that Roland
Barthes had already posed in 1969 in his contribution “Is Painting a Lan-
guage?” (English version in id., The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on
Music, Art, and Representation, 1991, 149–52) certainly maintains its import-
ance also for Medieval Studies: “What is the connection between the picture
and the language inevitably used in order to read it – i. e., in order (implicitly)
to write it? Is not this connection the picture itself?”

B. History of Research
For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and his Aesthetics images
served as evidence of various historical and cultural contexts and processes.
His ideas spread widely and influenced many historians of art and culture of
the 19th and 20th centuries. Jacob Burckhardt’s (1818–1897) cultural his-
torical masterpiece, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: An Essay (1860),
lacks illustrations and the author also only rarely referred to the visual arts,
which he himself saw as “the greatest gap in it.” Thus, he intended to add an
additional volume only treating the history of Renaissance art, which, how-
ever, was never published. Only the 15th edition of Civilization (1926; English
version 1929) contained the first images that were selected by an assistant in
Art History at the University of Leipzig. Nevertheless, as Francis Haskell
emphasized (History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past, 1993),
“the principal insights “of Burckhardt’s study” are based directly on the
love and study of art.” In that, Civilization also strongly influenced the Herfst-
tij der Middeleeuwen (1919; English trans. 1924 as The Waning of the Middle
Ages; 1996 as The Autumn of the Middle Ages) of Johan Huizinga (1872–1945),
who saw Burckhardt as “the wisest man of the nineteenth century.”
Huizinga, mainly interested in the Flemish-Burgundian art of the 15th cen-
tury, represented the opinion that with the help of images one saw the past
more clearly and more historically. Thus, he himself influenced a number of
medievalists of the following generations, but was also confronted with a
variety of criticisms (Francis Haskell, “Art and History: The Legacy of
Johan Huizinga,” History and Images: Towards a New Iconology, 3–18). Aby War-
burg (1866–1929) and his school moved to approaches that often showed
the fuzziness of the borderline between art history and cultural history. He
stressed that images could only be seen in the context of the environments in
which they were produced.
The academic study of the meaning of pictures also started in the 19th
century, in particular with Émile Mâle (1862–1954), for instance, in his L’art
Images 1522

religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (1899, English trans. 1910: Religious Art in France:
The Thirteenth Century). The most influential paradigm for this approach in
art history was then offered by Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), especially in
his Studies in Iconology (1939) and Meanings in the Visual Arts (1955). He stressed
the importance of ‘disguised symbolism’ in early Netherlandish art in which
‘things’ signify and support or elaborate the meaning.
The time from the 1970s onwards has been significant for important
studies on the social and cultural function of images and art (e. g., Michael
Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the
Social History of Pictorial Style, 1972; id., Patterns of Intention: On the Historical
Explanation of Pictures, 1985), on questions of their perception and the re-
sponse towards them (e. g., David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in
the History and Theory of Response, 1989; Keith Moxey, Peasants, Warriors and
Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation, 1989; Hans Belting, The Image and
its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion,
1990; id., Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, 1994),
and on problems of images and ritual (e. g., Staale Sinding-Larsen, Ico-
nography and Ritual: A Study of Analytical Perspectives, 1984). Other studies con-
centrated on the role that pictures played for the history of mentalities (e. g.,
Iconographie et Histoire des Mentalités, ed. Michel Vovelle et al., 1979), for the
history of daily life and material culture (e. g., Pictura quasi fictura: Die Rolle
des Bildes in der Sachkultur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Gerhard
Jaritz, 1996), and for gender history (e. g., Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender
and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Jane L. Carroll and
Alison G. Stewart, 2003).
Since the 1980s, the creation and development of large digital image cor-
pora and the possibilities of accessing them on the World Wide Web have of-
fered new opportunities for the analysis of medieval visual evidence (e. g., the
database of the Princeton Index of Christian Art: http://ica.princeton.edu/;
the digitized collections of medieval French manuscript illuminations: http://
www.manuscritsenlumines.eu/; the database for the history of medieval
daily life and material culture: http://www.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/realonline;
and the collection of Danish wall paintings: http://www.kalkmalerier.dk).
Such projects have not only supported more qualitative and interdisciplin-
ary analyses of images, but have also led to an increase of quantitative ap-
proaches (e. g., Jérome Baschet, “Pourquoi élaborer de bases de données
d’image? Propositions pour une iconographie sérielle,” History and Images: To-
wards a New Iconology, ed. Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley, 2003, 59–106).
The 1990s saw a number of developments that occurred partly indepen-
dent from each other but initiated a particular increase for the relevance of
1523 Images

images and visual culture in medieval studies. New approaches to the theory
and methodology of art history (e. g., Keith Moxey, The Practice of Theory: Post-
structuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History, 1994; Critical Terms for Art History,
ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, 1996) showed the necessity of
broader interdisciplinary and comparative research and this also influenced
medievalists. Historians, in particular, have stressed the necessity of inter-
disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in history and art history (Der
Blick auf die Bilder: Kunstgeschichte und Geschichte im Gespräch, ed Erich Oexle,
1997; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, 2001;
Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Images and the Historian,” History and Images:
Towards a New Iconology, ed. Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley, 2003, 19–44).
Many new approaches toward images, also in Medieval Studies, have been
influenced by the “pictorial turn, […] the moment when the icon takes on a
body or becomes a frame,” that W. J. Thomas Mitchell made a plea for at
the beginning of the 1990s (“The Pictorial Turn,” Art Forum 30 [1991/92]:
89–94). For him, the necessary study of visual culture has to encompass on
the participation of many disciplines: “From the standpoint of a general field
of visual culture, art history can no longer rely on received notions of beauty
or aesthetic significance to define its proper object of study” (Mitchell,
“What is Visual Culture,” Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from Outside, ed.
Irving Lavin, 1995, 207–17). This statement led, on the one hand, to vehe-
ment critiques (see Keith Moxey, “Nostalgia for the Real: The Troubled
Relation of Art History to Visual Culture,” History and Images: Towards a New
Iconology, 2003, 45–55). On the other hand, a larger number of contributions,
at least partly following Mitchell’s demand for such broader approaches
towards visual culture, have also been published in Medieval Studies (e. g.,
Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. Kathryn Starkey and Horst
Wenzel, 2005; Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le corps des images: Essais sur la culture
visuelle au Moyen Âge, 2002; Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, 2007).

Select Bibliography
Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and
the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Reading Medieval
Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas
(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002); History and Images: Towards a New
Iconology, ed. Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003); Reading
Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication, ed. Mariëlle Hage-
man and Marco Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).

Gerhard Jaritz
Laughter 1524

Laughter

A. General outline of topic

Laughter never appears as a subject of inquiry in its own right, but is rather of
interest in connection with other concepts. The connection most frequently
made is that between laughter and comedy (for example, in the Historischen
Wörterbuch zur Philosophie the lemmas “Das Komische”/“Das Lachen” are
treated together in a single article by Werner Preisendanz, vol. 4, 1976,
col. 889–93). Henri Bergson’s early work, le rire, which quickly became a
classic (see bibliography), too, deals solely with the characteristics of the
comic. As a rule, this results from the assumption of a causal relationship:
that comedy evokes laughter (and where there is comedy, there is laughter).
However, the reverse: where there is laughter, there is comedy, is not always
true, the relationship indeed shows to be problematic. Hans Blumenberg
demonstrated this, using as his example an incident which stands at the an-
ecdotal beginnings of philosophy and the development of scientific theory.
Thales of Miletus falls, while star gazing, into a well, and a passing maid
laughs at him. “Philosophie ist jenes Denken, womit man wesensmäßig nichts an-
fangen kann und worüber die Dienstmägde notwendig lachen.” (“Philosophy is that
manner of thought which serves no practical purpose and about which the
servants must laugh;” Hans Blumenberg, Das Lachen der Thrakerin: Eine
Urgeschichte der Theorie, 1987, here 150, italics his.) The reverse, however, that
laughter always unmasks a servant in the eyes of the philosopher, is ob-
viously not, or not always, true. For that reason, Walter Haug has demanded
that the phenomenon of laughter not be understood via an analysis of comic
structure, but that a theory of laughter is instead a precondition for an
understanding of what appears to be comic or funny (“Schwarzes Lachen:
Überlegungen zum Lachen an der Grenze zwischen dem Komischen und
dem Makabren,” Semiotik, Rhetorik und Soziologie des Lachens: Vergleichende Stu-
dien zum Funktionswandel des Lachens vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Lothar
Fietz et al., 1996, 49–64, cf. 50). The close connection, however, between
laughter and the comic is maintained (On the different models of comedy,
whose methodical approach to laughter varies accordingly, from speech act
theory to dialogue analysis to narratology to psychoanalysis see Sylvie
1525 Laughter

Roman and Alexander Schwarz: “How to do funny things with words,”

‘Ist mir getroumet mîn leben?’ Vom Träumen und vom Anderssein: Fs. für Karl-Ernst
Geith zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. André Schnyder et al., 1998, 325–43 [Text in
German]).
The Thales example, as Blumenberg also points out, implies other
relationship forms. The (Thracian) maids (i. e., slaves) cannot only laugh
at the (Greek) philosophy (of free men). There is a social gradient, regional,
ethnic and cultural differences exist, and ‘gender trouble’ is the order of the
day. These kinds of difference, which are expressed in laughter, can be better
described via the phenomenon ‘humor’ (and/or ‘jokes’), for which reason the
connection between laughter and humor is another important method of ap-
proach. The subversive aspect of laughter, too, has found space in laughter
theory thanks to the widely known joke-theory of Sigmund Freud (laughter
as a defense against unpleasant concepts and feelings; see Sigmund Freud,
Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten, 1905; recently, compare Witz und
Psychoanalyse: Internationale Sichtweisen – Sigmund Freud revisited, ed. Karl Fal-
lend 2006, which includes [87–94] an article on medieval poetry: Irmgard
Gephart, “Halbe Birnen und sonstige Lustbarkeiten: Zur mittelalterlichen
Schwankerzählung von der ‘Halben Birne’ des Konrad von Würzburg.”)
There is, indeed, now even a branch of medicine and psychology, gelotology,
the study of laughter, which gives particular emphasis to the healing and
therapeutic potential of laughter in its positive somatic effects – a function
which is also attributed to laughter in fiction.

B. Terminological definition
One of laughter’s peculiarities results from the fact that it is the result of
a communicative process, and depends on an act of interpretation. Laughter
in literature is a communicative special case; that is when it is depicted in a
work and is aesthetically or poetically – or rather poetologically – generated.
The lowest common denominator of the by now rich crops of laughter theory
is, therefore, that in laughter (as in the joke) a connection is produced be-
tween things or situations which are very different in character, but are simi-
larly structured. This connection may act, particularly in medieval literature,
as a source of community or identity, for instance as a communicative form
of reception by an audience (Werner Röcke refers to ‘laughter communities’
[Lachgemeinschaften], Lachgemeinschaften: Kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale
Wirkungen von Gelächter im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner
Röcke and Hans Rudolf Velten, 2005). Laughter in literary represen-
tation, so a further consensus, is the result of an affective, artificial and seri-
ous creative act (‘staging’), in which the creator by no means participates –
Laughter 1526

a comedian makes others laugh, but does not do so himself. A third consen-
sus on the attempt to define laughter by exact description is found in its
transgressive character. Laughter is seen as an act of crossing boundaries, by
which hierarchies are suspended and existing systems of order are broken
open and questioned, even, in certain circumstances, portrayed as meaning-
less. Beyond these three defining basics, a wide field opens for terminological
variation, which can be best dealt with under the following three (overlap-
ping) categories: function, genre, gender.
(1) Function: what the laughter of a literary figure, or in some cases the
laughter which can be presumed in the recipients, triggers or should express,
allows a further differentiation. Laughter can be classed as cheering, relax-
ing, releasing, as solving conflicts or averting violence, there is revealing,
uncovering, identifying, knowing, prophetic laughter, or laughter which
is triumphant, disrespectful, blasphemous, mocking, malicious, devilish
(on the first group, cf. Werner Röcke, “Scherzkommunikation und Gewalt-
vermeidung: Rituelle Funktionen des Gelächters im europäischen Mittel-
alter,” Szenarien von Theater [und] Wissenschaft:Festschrift für Erika Fischer-Lichte,
ed. Christel Weiler und Hans-Thies Lehmann, 2003, 32–42; Id. “Der
zerplatzte Enterich und der Koch als Rollbraten: Gelächter und Gewalt in
Wolframs ‘Willehalm’,” ZfGerm N.F. 11 [2001]: 274–91. Looking beyond the
medieval period, see also Stefan Busch: Verlorenes Lachen: Blasphemisches Ge-
lächter in der deutschen Literatur von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart, 2004). The
peculiar characteristic of medieval laughter, however, should not be for-
gotten in this plethora of attributes: lachen, laughter, covers both loud, open
laughter as well as calm, quiet smiles. Given this lack of semantic precision,
particular care should be taken in the development of grand theories of
laughter in the middle ages. (An alteration has taken place, largely un-
noticed, in the reception of the anecdote of the laughing serving girl, the
ur-story of laughter – the title of Hermann Wiegmann’s study refers to
smiling: Und wieder lächelt die Thrakerin: Zur Geschichte des literarischen Humors,
2006. Gerd Böttcher remarked in this connection in the Neue Zürcher
Zeitung of 8. 10. 1998, how laughter separates, creates distance, and marks,
but by contrast smiling creates allies through identification, integrates that
which laughter had rejected as foreign, and so can dissolve shame, embar-
rassment, etc. Gradated variations of laughter are also observed, see Gerd
Althoff, “Vom Lächeln zum Verlachen,”Lachgemeinschaften ..., 2005 (see
above), 3–16.)
(2) Genre: the function of laughter alters, depending on who is laughing in
which context, and in what surroundings laughter appears, for example the
court or the cloister. For that reason, laughter has most often been the sub-
1527 Laughter

ject of genre-specific studies, with religious drama featuring significantly

often. There one finds the so called ‘Easter laughter’ or devilish laughter,
that is on the one hand (and overlapping with a definition via function)
schalc-like, that is villainous, malicious laughter of the devil, and on the other
triumphant laughter which transcends the earthly, such as that of the martyr
in the face of torture and approaching redemption (cf. Klaus Ridder,
“Erlösendes Lachen: Götterkomik – Teufelskomik – Endzeitkomik,” Ritual
und Inszenierung: Geistliches und weltliches Drama des Mittelalters und der Frühen
Neuzeit, ed. Hans-Joachim Ziegeler, 2004, 195–206). At the same time,
and as a counter-position to the extreme transcendence of divine or saintly
laughter, it is often emphasized how earthy, indeed, bodily laughter is.
Laughter releases the body from the control of the ego, brings the transcen-
dent to the corporeal and in laughter (following Nietzsche in Zarathustra), the
human becomes totally body. Within Medieval Studies, the connection
between the body and laughter is demonstrated by studies on jesters and
fools (see Hans Rudolf Velten, “Komische Körper: Zur Funktion des Hof-
narren und zur Dramaturgie des Lachens im Spätmittelalter,” ZfGerm N.F. 11
[2001]: 292–317). An almost natural, unmeditated closeness to laughter and
comedy is ascribed to the genre of fabliaux/Schwank/maere (Klaus Grub-
müller, “Wer lacht im Märe – und wozu?,” Lachgemeinschaften ..., 2005 (see
above), 111–24), as well as to the early modern picaresque (e.g., “Till Eulen-
spiegel”).
(3) Gender: It makes a great difference, and not merely with regard to
mediaeval didacticism, which held that a woman or a young girl should not
laugh loud or long, whether a male figure laughs, a collective (Hans Rudolf
Velten, “Text und Lachgemeinschaft. Zur Funktion des Gruppenlachens
bei Hofe in der Schwankliteratur” Lachgemeinschaften ..., 2005 (see above),
125–43), or a single female figure. The subversive nature of laughter, its abil-
ity to strike against norms (and men) is particularly prominence in women’s
laughter, and here a correspondence between gender and genre, courtly
epic, can be observed (cf. Sebastian Coxon, “do lachete die guote: Zur liter-
arischen Inszenierung des Lachens in der höfischen Epik,” Wolfram-Studien
18 [2004]: 189–210). A frequently, but not yet exhaustively, studied instance
of a laughing woman is Cunnewâre in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzi-
val.” Kurt Nyholm (“Cunnewâres Lachen: Überlegungen zum Parzival
151,11–19,” Laughter Down the Centuries, vol. 3, ed. Siegfried Jäkel and Asko
Timonen, 1997, 167–79) points to the fairy-tale motif which lies behind
this episode, with a change of emphasis consequent on an alteration of func-
tion from Chrétien’s, away from female prophecy to a sign of the election
of the male hero. In the same year, Waltraud Fritsch-Rössler (“Lachen
Laughter 1528

und Schlagen. Reden als Kulturtechnik in Wolframs ‘Parzival’,” Verstehen

durch Vernunft: Festschrift für Werner Hoffmann, ed. Burkhardt Krause, 1997,
75–98) saw Cunnewâre’s laughter – the scene in Wolfram, in contrast to
Chrétien, is absolutely not comic – as a form of female satirical discourse
against the chivalric moral complex and an attack on male, bodily êre, which
is expressed accordingly, that is corporeally, but which is – of necessity – mis-
understood by Keie. Katharina Philipowski (“Das Gelächter der Cunne-
wâre,” ZfGerm N.F. 13 [2003]: 9–23) understands laughter as a gesture, and at-
tempts, based on recent gesture-definitions, to show Cunnewâre’s laughter
not as an expression of subjectivity, but as a textual process which moti-
vates the plot.

C. History of Research
Two of the earliest, slender works on laughter in mediaeval (English and
Latin) literature date from the immediate post-war period: J.S.P. Tatlock:
“Medieval Laughter,” Speculum 21.3 (July 1946): 289–94; and in the follow-
ing year Helen Adolf, “On Medieval Laughter,” Speculum 22.2 (April 1947):
251–53. While English literary history at least concerns itself with investi-
gations of laughter and the comic in Chaucer, interest in this subject appears
much later in the romance languages, with studies of 16th- and 17th-century
literature, most frequently on Rabelais, Molière and “Don Quijote”. The ac-
cent lies on smaller genres which are defined as being comic per se, and on
comedy or the forerunner of drama, the religious drama (for example Lisa
Perfetti, Women and Laughter in Medieval Comic Literature, 2003; Stephen G.
Nichols, “Four Principles of Laughter in Medieval Farce,” Lachgemein-
schaften, 2005 (see above), 191–207). Studies of laughter within German-
language medievalism show, in addition to a clear tendency toward model
and theory building, two continuous influences: that of Sigmund Freud’s
psychoanalysis, as well as a definitive characterization from the theories of
Michail Bakhtin (1895–1975), although these only became widely known
posthumously: Literatur und Karneval: Zur Romantheorie und Lachkultur; a com-
pilation of his books on Rabelais (Russ. first publication 1965) and Dos-
toyevsky (1929; 2nd edition 1963). Bakhtin sketches a specifically mediaeval
culture of laughter, culminating in carnival as a phenomenon based on rit-
ualized laughter: during this sharply defined time, the “holy is united,
mixed with and married to the profane, the high with the low” (German edi-
tion, 1969, 49), in the form of a temporary, socially tolerated breach of taboo
(laughter at the expense of authority), which embraces all social classes.
Bakhtin’s theory of the ‘carnivalesque’ only achieved a wider reception fol-
lowing the new editions of his work in the late eighties, and was sometimes
1529 Laughter

the object of serious criticism from both German and English speaking
scholars (cf. B. Peter L. Berger’s much quoted, though arguably in some re-
spects not literary-critical study, Redeeming Laughter, 1997, German trans-
lation by Joachim Kalka, Erlösendes Lachen: Das Komische in der menschlichen
Erfahrung, 1998, 99–101). Nevertheless, Bakhtin’s work moved laughter
beyond both the individual-psychological Freudian tendency, which until
then had dominated, and the anthropological interests of Plessner
(laughter as a universal of the human condition), to add a sociological con-
text which politicizes and historicizes laughter. This coincided with the ‘cul-
tural turn’ in literary criticism, and as a result gave a special impetus to a con-
cern with laughter in mediaeval studies.

Select Bibliography
Henri Bergson, Le rire, trans. into German Das Lachen, 2nd ed. (Jena: Diederichs, 1921);
Michail Bachtin, Literatur und Karneval: Zur Romantheorie und Lachkultur (Munich:
Hanser, 1969 [2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990]); Helmuth Pless-
ner, Die Frage nach der Conditio humana: Aufsätze zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Frank-
furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976 [id., Title essay, op. cit., 7–81; id., “Verkörperung II:
Lachen, Weinen, Lächeln,” op. cit., 70–74]); Sprachspiel und Lachkultur. Beiträge zur Litera-
tur- und Sprachgeschichte: Rolf Bräuer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Angela Bader et al. (Göp-
pingen: Kümmerle, 1994); Laughter down the Centuries, 3 vols., ed. Siegfried Jäkel
and Asko Timonen (Turku/Åbo: Turun Yliopisto, 1994–1997); Komische Gegenwelten:
Lachen und Literatur in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Werner Röcke and Helga
Neumann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1999); Werner Röcke: “Teufelsgelächter. Insze-
nierungen des Bösen und des Lachens in der Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587) und in
Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus,” Der schöne Schein der Kunst und seine Schatten, ed. Hans
Richard Brittnacher and Fabian Stoermer (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2000), 345–365;
Werner Röcke, “Inszenierungen des Lachens in Literatur und Kultur des Mittel-
alters,” Kulturwissenschaften: Cultural Studies: Beiträge zur Erprobung eines umstrittenen lite-
raturwissenschaftlichen Paradigmas, ed. Peter U. Hohendahl and Rüdiger Steinlein
(Berlin: Weidler, 2001), 73–94; Il riso: Atti delle I giornate internazionali interdisciplinari di
Studio sul Medioevo: “Homo risibilis”: Capacità di ridere e pratica del riso nelle civiltà medievali
(Siena, 2–4 Ottobre 2002), ed. Francesco Mosetti Casaretto (Alessandria/Italia: Edi-
zioni dell’Orso, 2005); Lachgemeinschaften. Kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen
von Gelächter im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner Röcke and Hans Rudolf
Velten (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Lachen: Jahrbuch für Literatur
und Psychoanalyse, vol. 25, ed. Wolfram Mauser and Joachim Pfeiffer (Wuerzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2006); Sebastian Coxon, Laughter and Narrative in the Later
Middle Ages: German Comic Tales c. 1350–1525 (Oxford: Legenda, 2008); Laughter in the
Middle Ages and Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 2010).

Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler
Memory 1530

Memory

A. Definition of the Term

Infused with a socio-cultural, literary and scientific history stretching from
antiquity to the most recent work in cognitive neuroscience, the English
word “memory” is dense with meanings and associations. While the Proto-
Indo-European base of “memory” (*men-/*mon- “think”) reflects an active
sense, in quotidian use “memory” refers to both the mechanism for remem-
bering, and the remembered, and thus it appears strangely as both subject
and object, active and passive. In contrast, the modern French, following the
Old French, distinguishes between “mémoire” (the mental capacity, the
memory) and “souvenir” (that which is remembered, a memory). From Latin
“memoria,” and adopted into English through the Anglo-Norman ca. 1250,
“memory” refers variously to the memory of individuals and groups, from
historical, social, cultural and psychological perspectives, as well as to mem-
orization in rhetoric and mnemonics. While memory is often implied
through its absence in discussions of forgetfulness, I refer only briefly in
what follows to forgetfulness.
The semantic duality of memory as both active and passive is a useful
point of departure for an overview of “memory” in the Middle Ages, and
in medieval scholarship, since throughout history, memory is both. From
Plato’s description of memory as a wax tablet imprinted with impressions,
and remembering as a task comparable to midwifery, to theories of engrams
and false memories in modern neuroscience, the question of whether mem-
ory creates, or retrieves, returns repeatedly to discussion.

B. Memory in the Middle Ages

Memory is centrally important in rhetoric, theology, monastic practice, and
literature in the Middle Ages. Indeed Mary Carruthers (The Book of Mem-
ory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 1990) has argued that the culture of
the Middle Ages was “memorial.”
Starting with rhetoric, “memoria” as one part of a five part system of
rhetoric (the others being invention, arrangement, style and delivery) is the
single most important skill, on which the other parts depend. “Memoria” as
1531 Memory

a rhetorical concept is known to the Middle Ages through Cicero’s De oratore

(Book II, 350–60), Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (Book XI) and the Rhetorica
ad Herennium (Book III), composed during the 1st century B.C., and attributed
at that time to Cicero. While the Middle Ages did not produce any new arts of
memory, the manuscript and commentary traditions attest to interest in
those of antiquity. In particular, an extensive commentary tradition on the
Rhetorica ad Herennium appears in the 12th century. The principal mnemonic
art of antiquity and the Middle Ages consists of “locational memory,” at-
tributed to the poet Simonides, which is based on placing images of the
things to be remembered against a background. This is also known as “archi-
tectural,” “artificial,” or “Ciceronian” memory. During the Middle Ages the
architectural art of memory extends beyond rhetoric into what modern
science would term the “distributed” memory systems of libraries and
manuscripts, in a simultaneously oral and literate culture.
Frances Yates’s book The Art of Memory, 1966, was the first modern
study in English of memoria in the rhetorical tradition, and is largely
responsible for initiating interest in memory in current scholarship
(Yates’s book was preceded by Helga Hajdu’s Das mnemotechnische Schrif-
tum des Mittelalters, 1936). Mary Carruthers’s The Book of Memory ..., 1990
(see above), and The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures,
ed. with Jan M. Ziolkowski, 2002, continue and extend Yates’s work and
have also been extremely influential in promoting research into memory in
the Middle Ages. The Book of Memory includes translations of three little
known memory treatises: Hugh of St. Victor’s “De Tribus Maximis Circum-
stantiis Gestorum,” Albertus Magnus’s De bono, Tractatus IV, Quaestio 11
“De Partibus Prudentia,” and Thomas Bradwardine’s “De Memoria Artifi-
ciali.” The later Middle Ages produced arts of memory independently
of rhetorical treatises. However, these later scholastic ars memorativa trea-
tises no longer treat memory as a component of rhetoric, but as a part of
ethics.
While the arts of memory are central to organizing knowledge, speeches,
even libraries and manuscripts in the Middle Ages, memory was also a key
consideration in theology and especially in the monastic tradition. Jacques
Le Goff has detailed the “Christianization” of memory (History and Memory,
1992) focusing on the memorial aspects of the liturgy, and of the ecclesiasti-
cal calendar with its commemoration of saints. Jacques Le Goff attributes
the beginnings of this Christianization of memory to Augustine of Hippo,
who writes about memory in Books X and XI of his Confessions. For Le Goff
Augustine’s influence continues well beyond the Middle Ages: “With Augus-
tine memory sinks into the interior man, into the heart of that Christian dia-
Memory 1532

lectic between the inside and the outside from which will come the examin-
ation of conscience, introspection, and even perhaps psychoanalysis” (71).
In the monastic tradition, the association between the liturgy, prayer
and memory was strong. Monks placed on the altars of their chapels “libri
memoriales” in which were inscribed the names of the dead for whom they
prayed. However, the most significant monastic practice involving memory
was the “lectio divina” which was a form of meditation during which monks
internalized sacred scripture and saints’ lives with the goal of self-improve-
ment and advancement towards God (Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought:
Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images 400–1200, 1998). The ethical im-
portance of memory in the monastic tradition can be traced back to Aris-
totle’s contention that good character was founded on the memory of virtu-
ous actions from the past.
In the literature of the Middle Ages, there is an abiding interest in
remembering and, interestingly, especially in forgetting. In exordia and pro-
logues, authors invoke a creative impulse motivated by the will to remember,
or not to forget. Thematically memory is investigated through numerous
characters in romances who suffer some form of forgetfulness. Most notably,
Perceval in Chrétien de Troyes’s Le Conte du Graal falls into a state of forgetful-
ness, which apparently lasts for five years. In the Lais of Marie de France,
memory is important both structurally and thematically (Logan Whalen,
Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory, 2008).

C. Memory in Medieval Scholarship

Scholarship relating to memory is as diverse as the multiplicity of meanings
and concepts associated with the word. In addition to the works mentioned
above which deal with the history of memory in rhetoric and mnemonics,
there is a rich body of scholarship on historical, social and cultural memory,
as well as a number of distinguished books dealing with questions of orality
and literacy, both in relation to history in general, and to literary traditions
in particular. I include a brief overview of the scholarly work on orality and
literacy here for the following three reasons: a) the oral culture is often called
a memorial culture; b) memory is central to discussions of orality and liter-
acy, and c) the theoretical work on social and cultural memory is inevitably
informed by scholarship on orality and literacy.
Starting with the terms “historical, social and cultural memory” which
are used by historians and literary critics alike, it is useful to delineate the
differences between the terms. While “historical” memory may pretend to
objectivity, social memory refers to the shared beliefs of the group, and in-
cludes such material as folk-tales. “Social” or “collective” memory describes
1533 Memory

the remembering of a group and stands in contrast to “individual” memory.

“Collective” memory is often a politicized form of remembering. The his-
torian Peter Burke considers the relationship of history to social memory in
his 1988 Wolfson College lecture (“History as Social Memory,” Memory: His-
tory, Culture, and the Mind, ed. Thomas Butler, 1989, 97–113). He argues that
social memory in the form of images, memorials, and rituals is more than a
re-enactment of the past, since it imposes interpretations of the past and
shapes memory.
The term “social memory” originates with medievalists James Fentress
and Chris Wickham (Social Memory, 1992), who use it instead of Maurice
Halbwachs’s “collective memory” (Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, 1925;
On Collective Memory, 1992, published posthumously and includes trans-
lations of Les cadres sociaux and La topographie légendaire des évangiles en terre
sainte) to emphasize its separation from historical memory. While “social
memory” and “collective memory” are public and shared, and describe how a
group constructs the past, “individual memory” relates to personal histories
and identities. Jan Assmann further differentiates in Das kulturelle Gedächt-
nis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (1992)
by discussing “cultural memory” and “communicative memory” which
describes the social aspect of Halbwachs’s individual memory (Jan Ass-
mann, Religion and Cultural Memory, trans. Rodney Livingstone, 2006). Paul
Connerton has pushed the idea of collective memory even further to sug-
gest that the ultimate human collective, the human body is a locus for mem-
ory, and that memories are encoded in our gestures, our expressions, our rit-
uals (How Societies Remember, 1989). This idea of embodied memory subtends
Jody enders’s The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory and Violence
(1999).
Central to this scholarship are historical, but also literary texts, as well as
non-written ways of remembering and commemorating the past. Scholars
have considered not only how the past was preserved, but the ways in which
it was transformed to serve contemporary, political concerns, and how it was
sometimes effaced. In Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End
of the First Millennium (1994), Patrick J. Geary examines how 11th-century
individuals appropriated the past of the Carolingian empire. His work
collapses the sharp distinctions between individual and social memory, as
he demonstrates how the individual, through writing, for example, can in-
fluence social memory as much as he is shaped himself by social memory.
Geary states that the 11th century is a particularly interesting period to ob-
serve because it was during this century that many documents were being
transferred from oral into written records. Emphasizing the importance
Memory 1534

of memory to institutions, he examines memory in monastic and legal con-

texts, as well as in familial settings, where, for example, women commemor-
ated the dead through prayer. But what is forgotten or effaced is as important
as what is remembered and this is keenly felt in Susan L. Einbinder’s No
Place of Rest: Jewish Literature, Expulsion, and the Memory of Medieval France (2008).
Einbinder examines the effacement from written memory of the expulsion
of the Jews by King Philip from royal France in 1306. While Jewish literature
in the 14th century was flourishing, she finds no explicit references to the
expulsion in the contemporary works. However, Einbinder does uncover
traces of commemorative intent in a range of texts from lyric to medical texts
and astronomical charts.
Recently, scholars have focused on particular instances of writers recon-
figuring the past, and influencing collective memory for political reasons.
For example, Catherine Jones makes a case study of Philippe de Vigneulles
(1471–1527), who translated the epic Lorraine cycle into Middle French
prose (Philippe de Vigneulles and the Art of Prose Translation, 2008). While most
writers involved in the mise-en-prose of the Old French chansons de geste were
working under noble patronage, Philippe de Vigneulles was a cloth merchant
working in Metz, who recast the Lorraine cycle, and the history of Metz’s past
to reflect the concerns of the merchant class.
The scholarly work on historical, social, and cultural memory has built
upon the work of scholars such as Michael Clanchy and Brian Stock who
have traced the evolution of medieval society through orality and literacy,
and subtly corrected a simplistic, popular apprehension of a dichotomous
history of an oral culture superseded by a written culture. Michael Clan-
chy’s From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (1979) is a history
of literacy and record-keeping in medieval England, which ties literacy to
medieval state formation. However, in the second edition (1993) of the book
especially, Clanchy emphasizes growing literacy in everyday settings,
while contending that “innovation often originates at the peripheries and
makes its way to the centre where it is monopolized and redirected” (16).
Brian Stock considers the question of the shift from orality to literacy
from the opposite direction, by showing how increasing literacy created a
new interdependence between the oral and the written which brought about
changes in social organization and thought (The Implications of Literacy: Written
Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, 1983).
He describes “textual communities” which are influenced by shared knowl-
edge of texts, even in the absence of the texts themselves.
Recent work has emphasized that memorization and oral performance
extend into the 14th century and beyond, and that while texts were written
1535 Memory

down, they were read aloud in a performative, group context. Joyce Col-
eman in Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France
(1996), challenges the assertions in Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy (1982),
and makes a convincing case that both in Britain and in France from the mid-
fourteenth to the late 15th century, the literate preferred public reading to
private reading.
In literary studies, the discussion of memory takes yet another direction
when questions of transmission arise. Scholarship on orality and literacy has
produced a vast bibliography of books and articles, which all relate, however
tangentially, to memory, since an oral tradition is clearly circumscribed by the
limits of memory and speech. The pioneers of research on the oral epic, Mil-
man Parry (The Making of Homeric Verse, 1971) and his student Alfred Lord
(The Singer of Tales, 1960) proposed the theory of oral-formulaic composition
to explain how formulaic construction aided the memories of epic poets dur-
ing improvisational composition in performance. Parry and Lord’s work
on the Homeric texts, and epics from the Balkan region had a huge influence
of subsequent work on epics and other oral texts. For example, John Miles
Foley has extended the comparative analysis of oral traditions beyond the
Homeric and Slavic epic. His analysis of Beowulf in Traditional Oral Epic: The
Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croation Return Song, 1999, will be of particular
interest to medievalists. In the area of Old French epic studies, and again in-
fluenced by Parry and Lord, Joseph J. Duggan has analyzed the formulaic
content of the Chanson de Roland; The “Song of Roland”: Formulaic Style and Poetic
Craft, 1973.
While scholarship such as that discussed above focus on the medium of
composition, and thus on the texts contained within manuscripts, to discern
whether they are the products of oral or written composition, other studies
have moved the discussion into the area of manuscript studies, where the
mnemonics of formulae and motifs are replaced by formatting, punctuation,
illuminations and decorated initials. The first volume of Keith Busby’s two-
volume Codex and Context, 2002, describes how manuscript conventions serve
as mnemonics to readers performing the text aloud. Katherine O’Brien
O’Keeffe (Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, 1993) has
elucidated a two-tier system of oral and visual mnemonic in Anglo-Saxon
England for Old English verse on the one hand, and Latin verse on the other.
She writes about “transitional literacy,” demonstrating that the scribes who
punctuated the Latin verse with visual mnemonic devices did not initially
apply the same techniques when copying Old English verse. She argues that
this suggests that readers of Old English verse brought to the manuscript
their knowledge of the orally performed verse.
Memory 1536

In the first decade of the 21st century, there is renewed interest in citation
studies, in relation to intertextuality and memory, in contrast to previous
work on citations and authority. In January 2009, the University of Exeter
held a conference on “Citation, Intertextuality, Memory in the Middle Ages:
Text, Music, Image” as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council
funded project “Citation and Allusion in the Ars nova French Chanson and
Motet: Memory, Tradition, and Innovation” lead by Yolanda Plumley.

D. Neuroscience, Cognitive Literary Theory and the Middle Ages

At a considerable remove from the Middle Ages is the work of neuroscientists
and cognitive psychologists, who use brain imaging techniques such as fMRI
(functional magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission to-
mography) scans to probe the biology of memory. The pioneering psychol-
ogist in memory studies whose research was foundational to current work
in the field was Frederic Bartlett (Remembering: A Study in Experimental and
Social Psychology, 1932). Bartlett’s innovation was to recognize that re-
membering is a reconstructive process rather than a process of retrieval. He
rejected the idea that memories were “traces” to be recovered from particular
localized areas of the brain. His work anticipates the 20th- and 21st-century
theories of Gerald Edelman (Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group
Selection, 1987) and Daniel Schacter (Stranger Behind the Engram: Of Memory
and the Psychology of Science, 1982; Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and
the Past, 1996; The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers,
2001) who highlight the importance of neuronal plasticity in memory func-
tion, through which the neurobiology of the brain is changed by experience.
In spite of the centuries which separate the Middle Ages from the 21st
century, there are striking points of comparison between ancient and medi-
eval perspectives on memory, and the most recent theories in the sciences.
Kurt Danziger’s history of memory (Marking the Mind: A History of Memory,
2008) traces continuities from ancient and medieval memory theories to
modern psychology and neuroscience. A more general study which draws
comparisons between medieval and modern theories is Simon Kemp’s Cogni-
tive Psychology in the Middle Ages, 1996. In Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies
in the Reconstruction of the Past, 1992, Janet Coleman states that her book is
“an indirect attempt to re-examine ancient and medieval theories of remem-
bering in order to evaluate whether modern psychological and neuropsycho-
logical theories of remembering have superseded past accounts as they af-
firm” (xv). Coleman concludes that modern scientific studies reformulate
“issues and some answers, which were already at the heart of medieval dis-
cussions” (xvii).
1537 Memory

One of the most apparent continuities is that during the Middle Ages
memory was considered to be a creative, active faculty, closely aligned in
rhetoric to inventio, and in monastic meditation to access to the divine. Even
in the Middle Ages memory was not understood simply in terms of retrieval
of stored information, although the retrieval model was a concurrent pro-
ponent of a sophisticated, global theory.
Neuroscience and cognitive psychology meet the Middle Ages in cogni-
tive literary studies. Cognitive literary theory, which approaches literary
analysis with the tools of cognitive science, is relatively new to Medieval
Studies, although it first garnered attention about thirty years ago (Reuven
Tsur, What is Cognitive Poetics?, 1983). One of the first studies to bring medi-
eval literature and cognitive science together was written not by a medieval-
ist, but by the psychologist David Rubin (Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cogni-
tive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes, 1995). Rubin’s book
re-addresses memory in the context of the oral epic with the tools of cognitive
science. The first sessions on Cognitive Approaches to Medieval Literature at
the International Congress of Medieval Studies were held in 2008.

Select Bibliography
Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932); Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory:
A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1979; 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Janet Coleman,
Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992); Kurt Danziger, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory,
trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York, Columbia University
Press, 1992); David Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Bal-
lads, and Counting-Out Rhymes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Daniel L.
Schacter, Stranger Behind the Engram: Theories of Memory and the Psychology of Science
(Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1982).

Paula Leverage
Mouvance 1538

Mouvance

A. Introduction
Etymologically and ideologically, the modern French critical term mouvance
is yet another label to be placed within the long tradition of the mutability
topos. Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s formula panta rhei (“all is flux”) in-
herited from Plato (Theaetetus 182c3–4), has been widely influential since
classical times. The Heraclitan dictum that “You cannot step twice into the
same river” insisted on the radical fluidity of all matter and the irreversibility
of becoming. In the dynamics of process, every momentary phase will be
transformed by successive changes assuring qualitative difference, if not op-
position or contradiction. At the same time, Heraclitus himself with his river
simile might seem to point equally to an ordered flux when he says that “it is
in changing that things find repose” (Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus,
1988, 29). In sum, everything changes except change itself. According
to the modern French proverb: “plus ça change – plus c’est la même chose”
(Alphonse Karr, Les guêpes, 1853, 428). Again, says famously Lampedusa’s
19th-century Sicilian Prince in the novel The Leopard, “if we want things to stay
as they are, things will have to change,” for perhaps the only thing that is im-
mortal is immortality itself. In its various forms the mutability common-
place – that our world is unstable and in perpetual flux – flourished through-
out Classical times (e. g., Marcus Aurelius), the Middle Ages (e. g., Chaucer)
and across the Renaissance (e. g., Spenser) and into the 17th century, when
the classical French dramatist Corneille spoke of transiency, mirroring the
fluvial waters of Heraclitus with his own tidal image of change: “Le flux les
apporta, le reflux les remporte.” For the 19th century, too: “Tout passe,”
“Tout change,” affirmed poets and aesthetes Theophile Gautier and Charles
Baudelaire.
More specifically and more recently, the term mouvance has been pro-
posed as a modern variation on variation itself (French variance) to acknowl-
edge and address the proliferation of textual and performative variants in
medieval literature but also later in subsequent transcriptions of it. Mou-
vance at once identifies the intrinsic instability of medieval textuality and
problematizes its importance in the context of modern criticism and editing
of that same (yet ever-fluctuating) corpus. This essay presents the principle
of mouvance as elaborated since 1972 and then the practical consequences
which theory has provoked in the representation and interpretation of medi-
eval monuments, each no longer perceived as monolithic because now re-
vealed to crumble into a seemingly endless chain of sometimes incompatible
1539 Mouvance

documents. Any work is multiple because it itself consists of multiple ver-

sions, arguably themselves independent works. As if anticipating modern
authors from Montaigne to Whitman, today the medieval text re-affirms its
right to be diverse: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict my-
self, / (I am large, I contain multitudes)” (Whitman, “Song of Myself”).

B. The Coming of Mouvance: Zumthor

In 1972, Swiss-born scholar Paul Zumthor, transplanted from the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam to Montreal, launched in his Essai (1972, 505) the term
mouvance, an old word (roughly equivalent semantically to fiefdom) for a new
context. His usage seemed based on the Modern French mouvant, from Old
French movant, earlier used in a similar sense by Jean Rychner and Martín
de Riquer, as noted by Speer (1980, 317). Also employed by Rychner,
muance is the most common among the large variety of related Old French
words including mue, muage, muement, movement, mouveure, mutacion, mouveté,
muableté, movableté, and muabilité, these last from Latin mutabilitas. In recyc-
ling instead the old feudal mouvance to refer now to the potential or real
textual mutability in any work surviving in more than a single manuscript
(unicum), Zumthor redefined it as “the character of a work which, […] be-
fore the age of printing, is a relative abstraction, given that the concrete texts
which actualize it will present, through the interplay of variant readings and
reworkings, […] a ceaseless vibration and a fundamental instability” (1972,
507; in the glossary of the French original, not included in the published
English translation). In thus envisioning the particular, almost particulate
movement of the text, here defined as subject to a kind of Brownian motion
in its “incessante vibration,” Zumthor echoes the Heraclitan quarrel with
those who maintained that the vehicle itself was immutable despite the real-
ity of its motion. For Zumthor as for Heraclitus, the very matter itself is
subject to change, not simply movement. Textual mouvance is more than
movement, for it chronicles fundamental discontinuity and disjuncture over
time and space. As Zumthor wrote later, more explicitly and more univers-
ally, “Le texte est ‘mouvance’: fragment de soi, et jamais le même, mutabilité
fondamentale que camoufle à peine un masque d’organicité’ (“Médiéviste ou
pas,” Poétique 31 [1977]: 306–21, here 319). Mouvance soon became all-im-
portant in the definition of medieval literary genres and texts, whose very lit-
erarity is defied by their relative orality: “la plus ou moins grande amplitude
de leur mouvance … ne serait jamais nulle” (“Intertextualité et mouvance,
“Littérature 41 [1981]: 8–16, here 16).
In identifying mouvance as particularly characteristic of medieval texts,
Zumthor rejected the 19th-century classicists’ positivism which had run
Mouvance 1540

against the Heraclitan flow in a doomed attempt to return upstream to a

single original exemplar or Platonic Ur-Text. Earlier generations of text-edi-
tors (Zumthor himself did not practice the art, a criticism often leveled at
theorists) had been confident in the recoverability of an authorial or similar
archetype despite the frequent absence of a holograph in the author’s hand
or indeed of any contemporary manuscript. But at the same time, Zumthor
also implicitly rejected the self-sufficiency of a so-called best manuscript that
might accurately reflect a single highpoint in the early textual tradition. In
forsaking the possibility of reconstructing a unique original text but equally
abandoning a preference for any one surviving textual witness, Zumthor
affirmed the pertinence of the sum total of all versions, ultimately including
not only those surviving from medieval times but the more modern editions
and transpositions: both the Bédierist best (or worst) manuscript and the
multiple attempted Lachmannian reconstructions, to boot.
In this way, the original one-author exemplar became just one, if pre-
sumably the earliest among many versions, but no less subject to arbitrari-
ness or error or hypercorrection than its successors. That is, the mirage of an
authorial ipsissima verba was no longer pursued and if accessible would be no
more favored than the versions of any other scribe or performer, and some-
times less. The debate coincides with parallel arguments around Classical
Greek or Old Spanish non-lyric texts: Was Homer a man or a legendary figure?
Is the medieval epic Cantar de Mio Cid the product of an author or of a commit-
tee? Do we follow the individualist theory, which is monogenetic, or a collec-
tivist alternative, where many hands have amalgamated our text across the
generations? The primary version that was the author’s cut – be it imaginary,
reconstructed, or surviving – no longer has priority, still less holds a mon-
opoly: any and all alternate versions, including post-medieval and now post-
modern remakes, are considered by Zumthor or his followers to be poten-
tially comparable in documentary value in the ongoing accretion of a “text in
the act of making itself” (1972, 73) through performance and transcription
across the centuries.
Mouvance was the logical next leap to be taken in confiscating the legacy
of the author after his long-awaited and much-touted death. Not only is the
creator no longer the sole arbiter of a work’s intentionality and meaning but
even its conception and creation are no longer credited to that one formerly
“onlie begetter” (a poet is etymologically a maker). Instead, the post-author-
ial written tradition constitutes the work’s ongoing creation, in which by
now the long dead and buried author is denied authority and authorship.
Heraclitus’s river flows ahead impassibly and the text is swept ever onward
amid a sea of change.
1541 Mouvance

C. Critical History: Post-Zumthor

As Zumthor later recalled (Parler du Moyen Age, 1980, 69), his coinage pro-
voked extended critical activity around the concept of mouvance and its
implications for the understanding of medieval vernacular literature. Zum-
thor himself suggested that he might have gone too far, “generalized too
quickly.” Rather, he affirmed, one must study the mouvance of an individual
work’s various manifestations to determine its common features and per-
haps only then judge the nature of the medieval oeuvre. But the usage he had
introduced took on a life of its own as “a term which has unfortunately be-
come a cliché” (John Haines, Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères,
2004, 2). Like formalism a few years earlier, following Tzvetan Todorov’s
presentation of that Russo-Czech critical school in France, mouvance could
not be recalled after its release among not only medievalists and other
scholars globally but the general public, too. It had simply become a part of
what a post-Franco Spaniard might call “la movida”; that is, it was “dans le
vent,” i. e., dynamic and popular. For example, medievalist Betsy Bowden
extended the idea of performative mouvance to characterize Bob Dylan’s
songs in concert and recordings compared to the relative uniformity (but am-
biguity) of the published versions (Literature in Performance 3 [1982]: 35–48).
Most recently, Zumthor’s model of mouvance has been applied in classical
Greek (Homer) and Persian (Ferdowsi) (see Gregory Nagy, Poetry as Perform-
ance: Homer and Beyond, 1996, Chapter 1; and Olga M. Davidson, “The Text
of Ferdowsi’s ‘Shahnama’ and the Burden of the Past,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 118 [1998]: 64–68). Predictably, there has also been a backlash
against mouvance and its believers’ refusal to subscribe to the post-medieval
humanist idealization – since Petrarch and later Erasmus – of the philologi-
cally established base text. In 1981, for the inaugural issue of Text, distin-
guished Renaissance scholar Paul Oskar Kristeller railed against “the rise
of neo-romantic and radical attitudes and of various literary and intellectual
fads that are fundamentally opposed to reason, to history, and to scholar-
ship” (“The Lachmann Method: Merits and Limitations,” Text 1 [1981]:
11–20, here 12). But mouvance had come to stay and Zumthor was promi-
nent in the second issue of the competing journal Texte, with his own article
on “L’intertexte performanciel” (Texte 2 [1983]: 49–59).
The outspoken and acknowledged champion of mouvance was Bernard
Cerquilini, another critic and the editor of Le roman du Graal: manuscrit de
Modène in Zumthor’s series, the Bibliothèque Médiévale, published in the
10/18 collection. Long after the unitarianism of Lachmann or Bédier,
Cerquilini’s polemical booklet entitled Eloge de la variante accused philol-
ogists of deliberately amputating the native variance of medieval letters to fit
Mouvance 1542

a Procrustean editorial and hermeneutic bed. A corrective was needed to the

categorical dismissiveness of Cerquilini and the ensuing extreme icono-
clasm of others like him, such as R. Howard Bloch in “New Philology and
Old French” for a special issue of Speculum 65,1 (Jan. 1990, 38–58) entitled The
New Philology, ed. by Stephen G. Nichols. A relative balance was achieved in
the more nuanced essay by Rupert Pickens, himself a text editor, unlike
Bloch and Nichols, but an ardent advocate of mouvance. Pickens cites
early multi-text editions and the concurrent recognition of the diversity of
readings implied by mouvance “as a positive, not a destructive, force in medi-
eval textual transmission” (“The Future of Old French Studies in America:
The ‘Old’ Philology and the Crisis of the ‘New’,” The Future of the Middle Ages,
ed. William D. Paden, 1994, 53–86, here 61).
When in 1992 the Essai was translated into English, twenty years after its
original publication, Zumthor penned a new introduction in which mou-
vance appears accurately translated as mutability although his neologism had
by then long been naturalized in the critical vocabulary of both languages
(xiv). In his update he admitted some shifts and re-orientations, mostly in
renouncing the “impenetrable jargon” of generativist structuralism and in
respecting “the historical dimension of knowledge.” But above all he reaf-
firmed the essential continuity in his thought even if some of the formal ter-
minology had changed: in short, mouvance still characterizes the world
of medieval literature but not the unchanging thought of Zumthor, who
acknowledged that he (like troubadour Arnaut Daniel) was “swimming
against the tide [la marée, or better le courant, i. e., the current]” in holding to
“a theoretical position similar to that [he] occupied when conceiving” his
book of two decades earlier (xvi). For his immobility he was taken to task by
Roger Pensom in a review-article of the English edition which attacked
Zumthor with other critics “of the Zumthorian confession” who “priorit-
ize [textual] tradition and processes of transmission at the expense of the text
and thus call for the throwing-out of the hermeneutic baby with the Lanso-
nian bathwater” (Medium Aevum 62 [1993]: 294).
André Martinet observed in his memoirs how the rise of universals in
linguistic scholarship was the cause of the collapse of the science of lin-
guistics, until then based on the studied classification and differentiation of
languages but now replaced by their leveling to a possible least common de-
nominator without the benefit of solid philological scrutiny and comparison
(Mémoires d’un linguiste: vivre les langues, 1993, 349–50). Similarly, to mou-
vance might well be ascribed the beginning of what Michelle R. Warren has
labeled post-philology and others like Pickens have derided as pseudo-phil-
ology (“Post-Philology,” Postcolonial Moves: Medieval Through Modern, ed. Patri-
1543 Mouvance

cia Clare Ingham and Michelle R. Warren, 2003, 19–45; Pickens, 1994,
68–69). The danger is that there is now no hierarchy, no best text, no better
text, no good or even bad text, just texts and aporia. “[Y]oung, incomplete, and
mangled artifacts become as intriguing as old and lavishly illustrated ones.
Even printed and electronic editions become objects of study” (Warren,
27).

D. Editorial Practice: Pickens

The practical application of mouvance was not stalled by the on-going theor-
etical debate but was soon promoted and introduced into text-editing as
a largely new methodology. Pace Cerquiglini, even Gaston Paris in his
1872 edition of La Vie de St. Alexis “accounts for every version of the poem
known to him” (Pickens, 1994, 82, n. 20) and Alfred Jeanroy “prints the
complete texts of separate versions of Guillaume […] and occasional whole
stanzas for Jaufré poems” (Les chansons de Jaufré Rudel, 1915, 2nd edition, ed.
Alfred Jeanroy, 1924, rpt. 1965; Speer, 1980, 313, n. 5). It was the 12th-cen-
tury troubadour Jaufré Rudel who would become the subject of the first and
to date the only fully mouvance-inspired synoptic edition of a medieval poet
attested in many manuscripts. No other author, dead or alive, has enjoyed
the editorial attentions Pickens showered on one troubadour. Among the
half-dozen editions of the same poet published concurrently or subsequently,
all others are essentially single-text and one is virtually single-manuscript.
As noted by Maria Luisa Meneghetti, the editing of this exemplary trou-
badour now became the touchstone not simply for critical theories on the
troubadours but also for the pragmatics of text-editing in the wake of mou-
vance (“L’art d’éditer Jaufré Rudel,” CCM 34 [1991]: 167–75).
Pickens announced his edition with a prolegomenon in which he cat-
egorized variants not as careless errors but as attempted improvements
(1977). He taxed his predecessor Jeanroy with providing artificial, hybrid
texts attested nowhere but in his edition, which Pickens’s was conceived to
supplant in publishing all surviving medieval versions separately rather
than conflated into one à la Lachmann. Pickens had himself initially pro-
jected a Lachmannian edition, only to decide that it would be impossible to
reconstruct a 12th-century text from sixteen 13th- and 14th-century witnesses.
Pickens’s edition was generally heralded as giving new stability to
Jaufré Rudel’s songs by transcribing their various states for comparison. Yet
the critics were divided. Most, including Philippe Menard (AdM 94 [1982]:
111–12), applauded the corpus of data thus made available and welcomed a
worthy if not conveniently usable successor to Jeanroy. But Occitan text
editors who reviewed Pickens were not uniformly satisfied. In their book
Mouvance 1544

reviews, Ulrich Mölk (ZfrP 96 [1980]: 447–49), Frank M. Chambers (RPh 34

[1981]: 222–31), and John Marshall (MLR 77 [1982]: 195–96) were more
skeptical, the last doubting especially whether even “Rudel the poet has been
well served.”
Mary Speer (1980, 323) studied Pickens’s edition and concluded that
“in the face of mouvance, we need to reaffirm the validity, for many works, of
the traditional notions of author and scribe.” In a review-article marked by
its own typographical errors, Roy Rosenstein, a fellow editor of Jaufré
Rudel, contested the documentary value of Pickens’s edition. He cautioned
that editors may themselves partake of mouvance when in failing to tran-
scribe accurately the mass of variant readings they themselves willy-nilly cre-
ate previously unattested texts. Pickens is yet another Jeanroy but with
more numerous inauthentic, post-medieval versions. When editors do not
neutrally transcribe an existing stock of versions as intended in order to
bring their mouvance to an end, they contribute instead to its incremental
progression in an infinite because still growing repertory. When the editor
becomes a scribe, he runs the risk of illustrating the process of mouvance
rather than halting it. “The not always perfect modern editor strikingly
resembles the often imperfect medieval scribe […] Mouvance lives, and
through it so does medieval literature” (Rosenstein, 1989, 170). That is, as
Mary Speer also reminds us in a later study, “Pickens’ edition […] proves
dramatically that texts are inevitably messier than theories and resist neat
applications” (“Editing Old French Texts in the Eighties: Theory and Prac-
tice,” RPh 45 [1991]: 7–43, here 10). In this polarized climate, neo-Bédierists
again accused the Lachmannians of being overly dismissive of “dumb
scribes” when they confidently reconstructed an archetype, while the neo-
Lachmannians retorted that the Bédierists were themselves “lazy editors” for
relying on one flawed “best” manuscript.

E. Subsequent History: Post-Pickens

Pickens’s uniquely mouvance-driven edition was heralded by its publisher
as definitive. But that marketing ploy has not obviated the need for more
manageable and more accurate versions of the same corpus. 1978 also saw
the re-edition of Jeanroy, with Spanish translation by Luis Alberto de
Cuenca and Miguel Angel Elvira (Guillermo IX Duque de Aquitania y Jaufre
Rudel: Canciones completas). Giorgio Chiarini’s neo-Lachmannian edition
began to appear in the journal Paradigma also in 1978 and has since been
published as a book in four slightly different forms, most recently in 2006
(L’amore di lontano: Edizione critica, con introduzione, note e glossario). George
Wolf and Roy Rosenstein published a new edition with composite texts
1545 Mouvance

in 1983 (The Poetry of Cercamon and Jaufre Rudel). In 1992 Robèrt Lafont for
his Italian edition followed more closely than Jeanroy the same principal
manuscript, C (Jaufré Rudel: Liriche). Chiarini’s texts also appeared in 1996
with a Catalan translation by Victoria Cirlot (Las cançons de l’amor de lluny de
Jaufré Rudel). Finally, in 1997 Pickens posted on the University of Kentucky
website a first installment of a work in progress called Jaufre Rudel: Second Edi-
tion, which provided a diplomatic transcription of the Rudelian corpus in
manuscripts A, B, and C only, followed by a critical edition of each of those
three. At the time the present essay was written, Pickens’s revised versions
were no longer accessible on-line.
Critics have not missed the opportunity to compare the service or dis-
service done one poet by the proliferation of radically divergent editions.
Noting that the small corpus of Rudel’s songs has long been a consistent
launching pad for the conflict among theories of troubadour poetry, Me-
neghetti observes that this poet’s oeuvre is also the appropriate mouvance-
mined field in which the several schools of textual editing might joust. She
establishes the parameters of modern and post-modern textual editing in
juxtaposing the “extreme agnostic” Pickens, the “moderate Bédierists”
Wolf and Rosenstein, and the “neo-Lachmannian” Chiarini. Her pref-
erence goes to her Italian colleague’s edition as the most traditionally palat-
able for its stemmatics while rejecting the first as expanding the perspective
to provide all possible and even impossible readings (“même manifestement
mauvaises”) and the second as over-simplifying the wealth of data by reduc-
ing each work to a single best-manuscript version with some varia lectio for
classroom use (“scolaire”). In a comparative evaluation of the same three in-
dependent editions, but from a different position, William D. Paden finds
a compromise in recommending Chiarini as the most readable, Wolf and
Rosenstein as most faithful to the manuscript tradition, and Pickens as
“the whole truth” (Paden, RPh 44 (1990): 113–17). Finally, when in his book
review Michael Heintze undertook a detailed confrontation of Chiarini
with Wolf and Rosenstein, he barely referenced Pickens at the outset of
his comparison (ZfrP 107 [1991]: 242–46).
Chiarini’s edition in its fifth transmogrification in 2006, modified yet
again in title and presentation after the death not only of the author but now
of the editor in 1995, seems to have won almost universal suffrage. That edi-
tion has been on the market in variously mutating forms of transmission for
thirty years. It is revealing that, as Meneghetti also remarks, Chiarini is
the shortest and most compact of the three modern editions. (None could vie
with the minimalism of Ernesto Monaci’s twelve-page student edition of
1903: Poesie e vita di Jaufre Rudel). In its relative brevity Chiarini resembles
Mouvance 1546

closely the classic, wafer-thin Jeanroy paperback which, despite its fail-
ings – including various typographical errors for which Meneghetti simi-
larly criticizes Chiarini – long remained handy and readable. Pickens, be-
cause of medieval and modern mouvance the heftiest, the most expensive,
and the most error-ridden edition ever given Jaufré Rudel, offers as many as
eleven often imperfect transcriptions of one song.

F. Mouvance Now
What then remains of mouvance today? Following Zumthor and Pickens,
Hubert Heinen undertook to present up to four texts for each of the many
surviving multi-version Middle High German lyrics in his Mutabilität im
Minnesang, 1989. Since then, the long-awaited analysis of this wealth of data
in his promised two-volume Minnesongs in Motion has not yet appeared. From
the other side of the fence, a neo-traditionalist disciple of Erich Auerbach,
William Calin, ruled provocatively on the question in trumpeting that “the
worst development in Medieval Studies in the 20th century was the coming of
mouvance.” While not all would subscribe to this bias denying all validity to
mouvance, the long-term usefulness of the concept has certainly been com-
promised in the decades since 1972.
Indeed, the debate seems to have slowed to a stalemate. Yet its influence
is nonetheless felt. Mouvance has implicitly authorized the publication of
single-manuscript editions of multi-manuscript texts, such as Lafont’s
comparatively faithful transcription of C for Jaufré Rudel. The explanation
for generalizing this approach might stem from the relative neglect of some
manuscripts or the market competitiveness of several publishers around a
deservedly popular text or the perceived ease of preparing a critical edition of
a single manuscript. When such editions proliferate, it can be useful to jux-
tapose the variant treatments of the major manuscripts of Chretien de
Troyes’ romances, for example. On the other hand, sometimes a late or idio-
syncratic manuscript will be the base for the sole edition of a major narrative
text available in print, such as Aimé Petit’s Roman d’Eneas in the Lettres go-
thiques series. In extreme cases, key passages or entire episodes familiar from
other editions and perhaps better manuscripts might no longer be present.
For examples of near-exclusive attention to individual manuscripts when
the texts sometimes also exist in other exemplars, see Mouvances et jointures:
du manuscrit au texte médiéval, ed. Milena Mikhailova, 2005.
1547 Mouvance

G. Conclusion
In sum, as the reactions to Pickens’s edition confirm, the preparation or
simply the consultation of a mouvance-inflected edition is an ambitious
agenda impracticable in the case of any author whose complete works
number more than six or seven lyrics in multiple manuscripts. It is perhaps
equally unmanageable for a poet even with so microscopic a corpus as Jaufré
Rudel. Mouvance remains valid as principle, in theory, but impractical as
textual methodology. In hermeneutics, however, it continues to define our
conception of medieval textuality. Mouvance serves as a critical tool to be ap-
plied sparingly in recognizing and confronting the complex representation
and interpretation of individual medieval works which are so rarely fixed in
a single textual form other than as an always artificially reconstructed, pseu-
do-authorial archetype or as a sometimes arbitrarily selected, nominally best
manuscript. For those who want “the whole story until now,” mouvance
alone can accurately tell the tale through its ideal of respect for the multiple
textual versions of a work in progress with all their variants, medieval and
post-medieval, modern and now post-modern.

Select Bibliography
Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil,
1989); Rupert T. Pickens, “Jaufré Rudel et la poétique de la mouvance,” CCM 20
(1977): 323–37; The Songs of Jaufré Rudel, ed. id. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1978);
Roy Rosenstein, “Mouvance and the Editor as Scribe: Trascrittore Traditore?” RR 80
(1989): 157–71; Mary B. Speer, “Wrestling with Change: Old French Textual Criti-
cism and Mouvance,” Olifant 7 (1980): 311–26; Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médi-
évale (Paris: Seuil, 1972; trans. Philip Bennett, Towards a Medieval Poetics, Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).

Roy Rosenstein
Parody 1548

Parody

A. Introduction
Parody remains a problematic, nuanced, and malleable term in any time
period. The techniques of literary or artistic parody entail imitation, with
intentions ranging from silly spoof to biting criticism to respectful homage.
It is a form of imitation, a form of dialogue with the past that can tell us a
great deal about the reception of a text. In ancient Greek, the term parody de-
notes a song that is both “next to” and “opposite” and Frederick W. House-
holder’s landmark study (“Parodia,” Classical Philology 39 [1944]: 1–9) re-
lates this etymological origin to the process of parody as a form of “critical
ridicule.” A similar perspective was adopted throughout most of the 20th
century by medievalist literary historians. In an historical and theoretical
overview of parody from classical drama to postmodern production, Marga-
ret Rose provides the definition of parody as the “comic refunctioning of
preformed material” (Parody//Meta-Fiction: An Analysis of Parody as a Critical
Mirror to the Writing and Reception of Fiction, 1979). Such definitions, along with
the general notion of parody as any composition that simultaneously imi-
tates and mocks prior works, reinforces and disrupts order, has been applied
fruitfully to medieval literary studies
In the Middle Ages, when borrowing from various sources, recycling
existing texts, and making allusion to oral traditions provided material for
literary creation, authors sought different levels of critical distance or comic
rewriting through their imitations of prior texts. Many techniques of parody
employed by authors in the Middle Ages remain in use today. Medieval par-
odists revisit the familiar subjects and representations treated by their prede-
cessors, but with criticism and irony.

B. Research History
The scholarship on medieval parody by Paul Lehmann, Martha Bayless,
Kathryn Gravdal, Alice Elizabeth Cobby, and Tony Hunt is represen-
tative of studies on medieval literary parody over the 20th century, as shown
in the summary of their work below. Paul Lehmann and Martha Bayless
provide definitions for parody and trace its development in the Middle Ages,
1549 Parody

focusing on the Latin tradition, while Cobby, Gravdal, and Hunt have fo-
cused on defining parody and exploring examples of literary imitation in the
Old French genres of epic, romance, fabliaux, and chantefable. We turn first to
Hunt’s discussion of the term parody, which was aimed at clarifying the
term and how parody may be differentiated from other forms of imitation.
Medieval parody may be defined in terms of what it is not, first by distin-
guishing it from satire or pastiche, for instance, as demonstrated by Tony
Hunt as part of his answer to a long-standing scholarly debate over the na-
ture of the only existing Old French chantefable, Aucassin et Nicolette, with the
conclusion that is more a pastiche than a parody (“La parodie médiévale: le
cas d’Aucassin et Nicolette,” Romania 100 [1979]: 341–81). This study provides a
definition of medieval parody and a typology of other forms of imitation.
The debate over Aucassin is central to the study of medieval parody. Hunt
was the first to distinguish medieval parody theoretically from satire or pas-
tiche, providing not only insight into the nature of this complex text, but
also a terminological framework useful to medievalists in decades to come.
Moving beyond the earlier technique of a source study, he also provides a sur-
vey of medieval parody scholarship and redefines the term. In general, here
parody is defined as targeting a specific literary text, satire as mocking social
institutions, and pastiche as imitating several different texts or genres. Par-
ody must thus be differentiated from related techniques such as allusion,
homage, social criticism, or imitation of multiple sources. The problem of
precise terminology needed to categorize and understand 13th-century de-
rivative works is most pronounced in a scholarly debate surrounding Aucas-
sin et Nicolette. This critical controversy, still not completely resolved in the
eyes of all scholars, is about whether to label Aucassin a parody, a pastiche, a
burlesque, or something else; the debate over the labeling of Aucassin touches
on defining the very nature of medieval literary parody. Scholars Barbara
Sargent Baur, June Hall Martin, and Mario Roques referred to Aucassin
as parody, whereas Hunt, along with Alexandre Micha and Mariantonia
Liborio, consider it pastiche. Alternatively, D. D. Roy Owen has called it
burlesque because of its ridiculously unlikely scenes, including a food fight
and a king giving birth. Philippe Ménard, partially agreeing with Hunt
that the poem imitates several sources and thus does not fit most definitions
of parody, calls it both pastiche and burlesque. Scholars also frequently re-
mark upon the “world upside down” nature of the poem, and some, like
Kathryn Gravdal, consider Aucassin et Nicolette a parody for this reason, des-
pite the fact that it does not correspond to strict definitions of a parody ac-
cording to Hunt. Most scholars agree that Aucassin is not without extratex-
tual referents. Because it targets several texts and genres, from epic to courtly
Parody 1550

romance to lyric poetry, Hunt concluded that Aucassin et Nicolette may be

viewed as a pastiche, imitating many sources and conventions, rather than a
parody which would have targeted one recognizable text.
Predating scholarly efforts to define the nature of the imitation and
mockery present in problematic comic Old French texts such as Aucassin et Ni-
colette, German medievalist Paul Lehmann’s work on parody in the Middle
Ages (Die Parodie im Mittelalter, 1922 [rpt. 1963] and Parodistische Texte: Beispiele
zur lateinischen Parodie im Mittelalter, 1923), treats primarily Latin texts and
ecclesiastical parodies, with a definition of parody that focuses on literary
parody as the transformation of a specific text with comic use of recognizable
themes, motifs, styles, and characters. Lehmann underlines the fact that
parody is an act of imitation that is comic in effect, intentional in its origin,
and recognized as by the audience in its reception. In opposition, he proposes
nichtparodistische, or non-parodic, imitation. He then divides the study of
parody into two named categories: first critical parody “Die kritisierende,
streitende und triumphierende Parodie” and second, humorous or amusing
parody, “Die heitere, erheiternde, unterhaltende Parodie.” Lehmann also
demonstrates that halbparodistische, or partially parodic, imitations exist in
medieval genres. Later theorists, such as French critic Gérard Genette, also
begin to distinguish between ludic and non-ludic parody (Palimpsestes: la lit-
térature au seconde degré, 1982). Lehmann applies the above terminological
distinctions to a wide range of ecclesiastical and liturgical imitations and
parodies, including mock sermons, prayers and masses. He explores parody
in the Goliardic tradition, as well as in a broad selection of texts from love
lyrics to didactic texts to social satire.
Martha Bayless’s well-documented study on Latin Parody (Parody in the
Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition, 1996) extends beyond Lehmann’s work in
the area of Medieval Latin parody. Her study defines textual parody broadly
as:

[…] an intentionally humorous literary (written) text that achieves its effect by
imitating and distorting the distinguishing characteristics of literary genre,
styles, authors, or specific texts […] (Bayless, 3).

For Bayless medieval literary parody is then an act of distortion, or an act of

transformation, that distinguishes parody from other techniques of imi-
tation. Bayless points out certain aspects of parody unique to medieval
texts, showing that medieval parodists relied primarily on familiar authors
and sources of material, such as the Bible or romances. In addition, Bayless
endeavors to show that medieval parodists were less concerned with minor
or more individualistic texts, because
1551 Parody

Medieval parody, for instance, imitates a much different kind of text than those
discussed in modern studies. Instead of relying on the eccentricities of highly in-
dividualistic texts to ensure reader recognition, medieval parodists took as their
models the most widely known texts, the Bible foremost among them. In short,
the Middle Ages parodied the classic and the conventional rather than the idio-
syncratic and the avant-garde (Bayless, 6).

Bayless’s examples are literary and liturgical parody, and range from mock
sermons, saints lives, litanies and secular centos to humorous drinkers’
masses. One major contribution is that she demonstrates, paradoxically, that
pious clerical culture also valued humor, combining devotion and parody in
their spoofs of familiar liturgical texts and genres. She covers the Old French
fabliaux and Chaucer and other forms of literary parody and satire. This
study includes a lengthy appendix with a useful handlist of Medieval Latin
parody, providing twenty important parodic texts in the original Latin and
in translation.
In one of the two existing general book-length studies focusing on Old
French parody, Kathryn Gravdal approaches the origin of parody through
a Marxist and Bakhtinian perspective, as being essentially based on socio-
economic class difference (Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody in French Lit-
erature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, 1989). Gravdal’s study crosses
generic lines and finds parody and comedy in the incongruity of the binary
oppositions of vilain et courtois, the clash between high and low, between the
base and the courtly. Her examples of parody include the Roman de Fergus and
Aucassin et Nicolette. In Gravdal’s eyes, medieval parody can be detected
when an author imitates an aristocratic or courtly style, but places the ma-
terial in a more popular context.
Anne Elizabeth Cobby (Ambivalent Conventions: Formula and Parody in
Old French, 1995) revisits with a fresh perspective the question of how Old
French texts toy with generic formulae calling into question the conventions
of genres that may be characterized by their commonplaces and recurring
themes, motifs, characters, and topoi. Differing from Hunt, here Cobby
defines the term parody broadly and allows for the idea of parody of an
entire genre. Cobby’s analysis investigates the spoofing of courtly conven-
tion found in the Old French fabliaux corpus, revisits imitation in Aucassin
et Nicolette, and considers Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne as an example of medi-
eval parody of genre, mocking epic form, romance tradition, and religious
texts.
Prosopography (Christian) 1552

Select Bibliography
Paul Lehmann, Die Parodie im Mittelalter (1922, rpt. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1963);
Tony Hunt, “La parodie médiévale: le cas d’Aucassin et Nicolette,” Romania 100 (1979):
341–81; Kathryn Gravdal, Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody in French Literatur
e of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press,
1989); Anne Elizabeth Cobby, Ambivalent Conventions: Formula and Parody in Old French
(Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 1995); Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages:
The Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).

Sarah Gordon

Prosopography (Christian)

A. Definition
Prosopography is nowadays a widely-used tool or method for the study of so-
cial history of all periods; it can be used alone, or in combination with other
methods. It has evolved over the past century, with recent and future devel-
opments strongly linked to the use of computers and the increasing import-
ance of sociology and its methods for historians. It overlaps with biography,
genealogy, onomastics, demography and sociography, but is distinct from
them. By contrast, the development of prosopography – in the sense of writ-
ing about social groups, rather than the collective study of social groups
(Chase Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 2003, xxv) – occurs as an integral
part of Islamic historiography from the late 8th-early 9th century.

B. Terminological Definition
The word, derived from the Greek “prosôpôn-graphia” ( - φ‘),
has the literal meaning of “description of the external/material individual
characteristics of a living being”. It first occurs in the 16th century, when it
had the more restricted meaning of “description of persons by physical char-
acteristics or character traits” (Timothy Barnes, “Prosopography Ancient
and Modern,” Prosopography Handbook, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, 2007,
71–82), and was applied to works in which authors assembled material for
short biographical studies of a number of illustrious or remarkable persons
in order to point to some exemplary characteristic or characteristics. As such,
it ressembled properly so-called collective biography, though much un-
necessary confusion has resulted from its use in recent decades as a synonym
for prospography (see Keats-Rohan, “Biography, Names Identity,” Proso-
1553 Prosopography (Christian)

pography Handbook, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, 2007, 139–46). This early use
is the antithesis of the modern use of the word, which has evolved over the
past century from the work of German Ancient Historians.
As practiced now, prosopography examines a group of people – the
“population” – that shares one or more characteristics. The population is iso-
lated from source material according to carefully defined criteria – the “ques-
tionnaire” – and the data concerning it are collected and modelled according
to equally carefully defined criteria – “variables.” The modelling is done ac-
cording to the principles of a relational database; most prosopography is now
done using such software from the start. The variables sought are mainly
data relating to the life of each individual in the population – name, parent-
age, career structure, places and groups to which s/he was connected, and so
on. Whilst it is necessary to isolate every individual among the subject popu-
lation, the focus is not on the individual per se but upon the total collection
of individuals in aggregate. Analysis is thus based on the whole group con-
sidered with reference to its constituent parts; the object is to examine the
interplay between a set of variables in order to understand the formation and
function of specific groups, and the nature of political, social, economic and
cultural change over time. The twin strengths of the approach are both to en-
hance the value of scarce or fragmentary data, and thus to help overcome the
perennial problem of the inevitably unconvincing “case study” approach,
and also to permit the interrogation of variables so as to reveal hitherto
hidden or unsuspected trends. It is normal to provide brief summary “bio-
grams” (a term I have recently suggested to replace its many verbose syn-
onyms, Keats-Rohan, “Biography,” 151) for each person, summarizing in
natural language the biographical data gleaned in what is usually a lengthy
and demanding process. These can form a stand-alone product of the work –
a biographical register of the total population – or it can be regarded as a first
stage, preliminary to a multi-variate analysis of the whole, which at its sim-
plest means examining the variables for constants and exceptions. More
sophisticated statistical techniques can be used where there are plentiful
data; this “mass” prosopography (Lawrence Stone, “Prosopography,” Dae-
dalus 100 (1971): 46–79) is normally only possible for late or post-medieval
sources. A major defining feature of historical prosopography is that it is
source driven, requiring a profound and intense scrutiny of the primary
sources; by contrast modern sociological prosopography (below) is question
driven.
Prosopography (Christian) 1554

C. History of Research, Schools of Thought, Approaches

The earliest prosopographies were monumental biographical registers of all
individuals in a total population, starting with Prosopographia Imperii Romani
(PIR), first published in 1897–1898; work on the second edition was com-
pleted in 2007. Initially an antiquarian approach that gathered all material
on all persons considered important in the period ca 100 B.C.E.–284 C.E., it
achieved a firm chronology of the period by identifying sequences of office
holders (“prosopographie sérielle,” Mireille Corbier, “Pour une pluralité
des approaches prosopographiques,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome:
Moyen Age-Temps Modernes, 100.1 [1988]: 187–97). The workings of Roman
imperial government were shrouded in secrecy, being confined to the em-
peror and an inner circle of confidants. By analysing the PIR, Matthias
Gelzer (Die Nobilität der römischen Republik, 1912; The Roman Nobility, English
translation 1969) was able to show that political power was monopolized by
a small group of families, the nobiles, and operated by the formation of bonds
between them. This insight, that family ties were usually a determining
influence in personal advancement, and that the links thus formed played an
equally crucial role in the operation and mediation of political power struc-
tures, whether of Imperial Rome, or the successor states of medieval Europe,
both lay and ecclesiastic, forms the basis of so-called elite prosopography
(Stone, 1981), which informed and continues to inform medieval proso-
pography as practised by modern historians. The elite approach was so
successful that it has been succeeded by: The Prosopography of the Later Roman
Empire (260–641), ed. A. H. M. Jones and J. R. Martindale, 1971–1972;
Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire (I. Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne
[303–533], ed. A. Mandouze, 1982; II Prosopographie de l’Italie chrétienne
[313–604], ed. Charles and Luce Pietri, 1999); Prosopographie der mittelbyzan-
tinischen Zeit: Erste Abteilung (641–867), ed. F. Winkelmann, Ralph Johannes
Lilie et al, 7 vols., 1998–2001; and The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire I
(641–867), ed. John R. Martindale, published on CD-ROM, 2001. Smaller-
scale studies include: Horst Ebling, Prosopographie der Amtsträger des Merowin-
gerreiches: Von Chlothar II. (613) bis Karl Martell (714), 1974; and Philippe De-
preux, Prosopographie de l’entourage de Louis le Pieux (781–840), 1997.
Medieval prosopography outside Byzantium began with German scholars
investigating the episcopy of Francia and Germania (J. Simon, Stand und
Herkunft der Bischöfe der Mainzer Kirchenprovinz im Mittelater, 1908). A series of
investigations of the higher clergy of later medieval England began with M.
Gibbs and I. Lang, Bishops and Reform 1215–1272 (1934); the trend still con-
tinues (Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of
the Province of Canterbury: c.1066–1540, 1997). The French have been similarly
1555 Prosopography (Christian)

important, with the ongoing project Fasti ecclesiae Gallicanae: Répertoire proso-
pographique des évêques, dignitaires et chanoines de France de 1200 à 1500 (ed. Hélène
Millet and P. Desportes, 1996–), and the recent monument of traditional
scholarship, Véronique Gazeau, Normannia Monastica (2007). The study of
political elites – the families surrounding kings and princes – began most no-
tably in Germany with Gerd Tellenbach (Königtum und Stämme in der Werde-
zeit des deutschen Reiches, 1939), whose work was profoundly influential on the
works of Karl Schmid, Horst Ebling, Edouard Hlawitschka, Jörg Jar-
nut, and Karl Ferdinand Werner, among others. Tellenbach referred to
prosopography as the process of collecting and organizing data (in the bio-
graphical register), leading to a secondary, analytical stage called Personenfor-
schung (research into persons). This division has been challenged by Neithard
Bulst (“Objet et méthode,” 1988), who pointed out that the assumptions
which underlay the collection and registering of data are the essential sub-
structure which subsequent analysis depends upon and is thus part of the
same process of prosopography. Bulst has been important in promoting the
use of prosopography and in formalizing it through dedicated conferences
and attendant publications (Medieval Lives and the Historian: Studies in Proso-
pography, ed. Niethard Bulst and Jean-Pierre Genet, 1986), and has been an
advisory editor of the sole journal in the field, Medieval Prosopography, estab-
lished at Michigan State University, Kalamazoo, by Americans Joel Rosen-
thal and George Beech, in 1980. More recent trends include the meeting
of elite studies with major onomastic projects such as Nomen et Gens (Nomen
et Gens: Zur historischen Aussagekraft frühmittelalterlicher Personennamen, ed.
Dieter Geuenich, W. Haubrichs, et al., 1997) with studies of monastic
Libri Vitae and necrologies, which have provided important insights into the
formation of sometimes temporary, sometimes enduring political alliances,
not always dominated by family (Gerd Althoff and Johannes Wollasch,
“Bleiben die Libri Memoriales stumm? Eine Erwiderung auf H. Hoffmann,”
DA 56 [2000]: 33–35).
Alfred B. Emden produced his Biographical Register of the University of
Oxford to AD 1500 between 1957 and 1959, and its counterpart for Cambridge
in 1963 (see Ralph Evans, “The analysis by computer of A. B. Emden’s Bio-
graphical Registers of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,” Medieval
Lives and the Historian: Studies in Medieval Prosopography, ed. Bulst and Genet,
381–94). Latterly Dutch and Belgian scholars have led the way in the devel-
opment of the prosopography of medieval education, which overlaps with
that of clerics; examples include C. Renardy, Les maîtres universitaires du dio-
cèse de Liège: Repertoire biographique 1140–1350 (1981), Hilde de Ridder-Symo-
ens, “Possibilités de carrière et de mobilité sociale des intellectuels-universi-
Prosopography (Christian) 1556

taires au moyen âge” (Medieval Lives and the Historian, ed. Bulst and Genet,
343–56). Such studies have helped to broaden the approach of prosopography
and to have opened up historians more to the ideas and methods of anthro-
pology and sociology, and hence taken them further from the “elite,”
politics-based, approach. Kinship, for example, has long been of interest to
social scientists, who have explored its cultural and juridical aspects, which
have been of increasing interest to prosopographers since the 1980s (see An-
drejs Plakans, Kinship in the Past, 1984). Since the 1960s a new type of proso-
pography, so-called French or Bourdieusian prosopography has developed,
based upon the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his col-
laborators. They were primarily concerned with contemporary society, but
their aim is to uncover the structures of different fields, such as the religious
field or the educational field. The idea is that human action takes place
within social fields, which are arenas for competition for resources. Success
within the fields depends upon one’s “capital,” whether economic, cultural
or symbolic, as well as “habitus,” or system of acquired dispositions forming
the organizing principles of action education (Donald Broady, “French
Prosopography: Definition and Suggested Readings,” Poetics: Journal of Em-
pirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts 30 [2002]: 381–85). These ideas
are investigated through data collection of carefully defined variables, lead-
ing to a more quantitative, question-driven approach than is the norm for
pre-modern history. Nevertheless, it has been used in a study of Roman busi-
nessmen Koenraad Verboven, “The associative order, status and ethos of
Roman businessmen in Late Republic and Early Empire” (Athenaeum [2007]:
861–93) and has the potential to be of use in medieval prosopography.

D. Current Issues and Future Trends

The tremendous increase in the use of prosopography of recent years, which
began in the late 1970s and has produced a torrent of outputs large and
small, is partly due to greater awareness of social theory, and to the increas-
ing use of the computer. Both have contributed considerably to the develop-
ment of prosopography as a method (i. e., an organized and regular way of
doing something) and to the range of its application. It is now possible to
code statistics-based documents of the later Middle Ages for exploitation
with a range of techniques, including prosopography, as has been shown by
David Herlihy’s work on the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (David Herlihy
and Christiane klapisch-zuber, Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the
Florentine Catasto of 1427, 1985). The development of the use of computers
by historians in general has not been uncontroversial. In prosopography the
advent of the desktop relational database has been the biggest single advance
1557 Prosopography (Christian)

in the power and possibilities of the approach, but there was plenty of debate
about the suitability of a relational database, with its atomized data normally
intended by statistical analysis, for modeling medieval sources, which are
amongst the least standard texts on the planet (Ralph Mathisen, “Where
are all the PDBs? The creation of prosopographical Databases for the Ancient
and Medieval Worlds,” Prosopography Approaches, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan,
2007, 95–126). Modern software, including database management systems
allowing quantitative analysis (statistics based) and qualitative data analytical
software (text based), and programming languages such as XML has allowed
much greater flexibility in database design, with the potential to incorporate
or being built around texts with relative ease. This in turn has led to develop-
ments in modeling, such as the “New Prosopography” pioneered by the Pro-
sopography of the Byzantine Empire and Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon
England projects (see www.pase.ac.uk) which make individual source state-
ments the building blocks of the prosopography – rather than persons. These
source statements, or “factoids,” can make different and often contradictory
statements about an individual but in this approach none is given the status
of “fact” (John Bradley and Harold Short, “Using formal structures to
create complex relationships: The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire –
A case study,” Resourcing Sources, ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, 2002, 3–21). This
approach is complex and beyond the reach of most in terms of finance and or-
ganization, but has introduced some interesting new ideas. Much current
focus is upon presenting prosopography as a web-based resource for the
wider world. There are major and yet unresolved issues about sustainability
of websites, as well as the issue of technological transfer for projects pub-
lished or maintained digitally in general.

E. Summary
The ever-increasing use of prosopography has already transformed under-
standing of the medieval world and its Roman precursor: a full bibliography
would require a volume of its own. The pioneering “elite” studies established
the foundations with regard to political elites, whilst the newer, more socio-
logical approaches are looking more at intellectual and economic groupings.
With greater understanding of individuals as members not just of one or two
groups but a network of multiple groups the potential for prosopography to
incorporate Social Network Analysis is growing – something also being
pioneered by Ancient Historians (Shawn Graham and Giovanni Ruffini,
“Network Analysis and Graeco-Roman Prosopography,” Prosopography Hand-
book, 325–36; G. Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Eygpt, 2008). Proso-
pography as practiced by historians is dependent upon its sources which are
Prosopography (Christian) 1558

finite and often unsatisfactory, but the better they are understood the more
they have to tell. This is one of prosopography’s strengths, as are its increas-
ingly interdisciplinary nature and its enthusiastic embrace of technology. All
this will ensure that it will continue to develop and make important con-
tributions to our understanding of medieval history well into the future.

Select Bibliography
George T. Beech,, “Prosopography,” Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James Powell
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1976), 151–84; Karl Schmid, “Zur Problematik
von Familie, Sippe und Geschlecht: Haus und Dynastie beim mittelalterlichen Adel,”
Zeitschrift Geschichte des Oberrheins 105 (n. s. 66) (1958): 1–62; id., “Über die Struktur des
Adels im früheren Mittelalter,” Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 19 (1959): 1–23;
Gerd Tellenbach, Königtum und Stämme in der Werdezeit des deutschen Reiches (Weimar:
Böhlau, 1939); id., Zur Bedeutung der Personenforschung für die Erkenntnis des früheren Mit-
telalters (Freiburg: H. F. Schulz, 1957); Neithard Bulst and Jean-Pierre Genet, Medi-
eval Lives and the Historian: Studies in Prosopography (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1986); Neithard Bulst, “Objet et méthode de la prosopographie,”
Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Age-Temps modernes, 100/1: La prosopographie:
problèmes et méthodes (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome 1988), 467–82; Hélène Millet,
“Notice biographique et enquête prosopographique,” Mélanges de l’École française de
Rome. Moyen Age-Temps modernes, 100/1: La prosopographie: problèmes et méthodes (Rome:
Ecole Française de Rome 1988), 87–111; Jörg Jarnut, Prosopographische und sozial-
geschichtliche Studien zum Langobardenreiche in Italien (568–774) (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1972);
K.S.B. Keats-Rohan and Katharine S. B., Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons
Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166 ; I: Domesday Book; II: Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum
(Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999, 2002); id., “Biography, Names and Iden-
tity,” Prosopography Approaches and Applications: A Handbook, ed. id. (Oxford: Linacre Col-
lege, 2007); Dion Smyth, “Prosopography,” The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies,
ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Karl Ferdi-
nand Werner, “Untersuchungen zur Frühzeit des Französischen Fürstentums
(9.–10. Jahrhundert),” Die Welt als Geschichte 18 (1958): 256–89; 19 (1959): 146–93; 20
(1960): 87–119.

K.S.B. Keats-Rohan
1559 Ritual and Performance

Ritual and Performance

A. Introduction
Since the 1970s, many disciplines have turned to the analysis of rituals,
which has emerged as a broad field covering many aspects of cultural and
social studies. In the context of this development, ritual has been defined
so variously “that it means very little because it means so much” (Richard
Schechner, The Future of Ritual. Writings on Culture and Performance, 1993,
228). Such scepticism was already expressed in 1977 by Jack Goody, who
stated that the concept had become global in a way which made it rather
unusable (“Against Ritual: Loosely structured Thoughts on a Loosely De-
fined Topic,” Secular Ritual, ed. Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Meyen-
dorff, 1977, 25–35).
One of the most frequently used definitions explains ritual as “behavior
that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as
a social act” (Conrad Kottak, Cultural Anthropology, 1st ed., 1975, 12th ed.,
2008, 228). For Medieval Studies, the definition by Gerd Althoff has
proved influential (“The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages,” Medieval
Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. Gerd Althoff et al.,
2002, rpt. 2008, 71–87, here 71). He has recognized rituals as “chains of
actions of a complex nature [that] are repeated by actors in certain circum-
stances in the same or similar ways, and, if this happens deliberately, with
the conscious goal of familiarity.”
Ritual and performance are closely connected. Without performance
there is no ritual. In historical studies, the “performative turn” came to the
fore in the 1990s (Geschichtswissenschaft und ‘performative turn’: Ritual, Inszenie-
rung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Jürgen Martschukat
and Steffen Patzold, 2003), following the trend of the 1970s and 1980s
in anthropology, when Victor Turner created the sub-discipline of the “an-
thropology of performance” (The Anthropology of Performance, 1986; cf. Dwight
Conquergood, “Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn
in Anthropology,” Text and Performance Quarterly 1 [1989]: 82–95). Particularly
in anthropology, however, the analyses of rituals have decreased in recent
years (Geoffrey Koziol, “The Dangers of Polemic: Is Ritual still an Interest-
Ritual and Performance 1560

ing Topic of Historical Study?” Early Medieval Europe 11 [2002]: 367–88, here
367). This is not the case with regard to the historical disciplines and Medieval
Studies. There, the relevance of rituals and their analysis is still prevalent.

B. History of Research
The development of modern theories of ritual began around 1900; initial
interest in the field of rituals arose in Religious Studies. The work of Émile
Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology,
1st French ed. 1912, new trans. 1995) can be seen as the starting point of se-
rious studies into ritual, and it also influenced the historical disciplines.
Even today, the sphere of religion represents one of the most important areas
of research, although the range of ritual has been broadened to the secular
sphere and even to daily life.
Also Arnold van Gennep’s (1873–1957) famous anthropological
study on The Rites of Passage (1st French ed. 1909) has had strong influence on
later theories and research, especially on Victor Turner’s theory of ritual.
Turner (1920–1983) was the author of the most influential general work on
ritual in the second half of the 20th century (The Ritual Process: Structure and
Anti-Structure, 1969, rpt. 1995), which also had an important impact on the
historical disciplines.
From a mainly religious emphasis rituals developed, also in medieval
studies, to a field of cultural study covering more or less any aspect of human
life (Gerd Althoff, “The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages,” Medieval
Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. Gerd Althoff et al.,
2008, 71–87). Although he avoided the use of the term “ritual,” the works
of Percy Ernst Schramm (1894–1970) from the 1920s onwards (particularly
his Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 3 vols., 1954–1956) may be seen as a
forerunner of modern ritual studies in medieval history. This is also the case
for Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) and his Autumn of the Middle Ages (1st Dutch
ed., 1919), and for Marc Bloch’s (1886–1944) Les rois thaumaturges (1st ed.,
1924).
The current interest of medievalists in rituals and performances did not
so much arise out of considerations regarding the theory of performance, but
was mainly influenced by ethnological studies on oral societies. Three groups
of studies have become relevant: (1) the analysis of individual rituals or spe-
cific conduct actions; (2) studies that start from the goals of communication
and deal with the various rituals and conduct actions which communicate
these goals; (3) research into the way in which rituals and performances were
represented in texts (Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Jürgen Martschukat and
Steffen Patzold, 13–15).
1561 Ritual and Performance

Representatives of the historical disciplines have regularly applied

anthropological, ethnological, sociological, and systems theoretical models
to their analyses of rituals (e. g., Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, “Mittelalterliche
Rituale in systemtheoretischer Perspektive: Übergangsriten als basale Kom-
munikationsform in einer stratifikatorisch-segmentären Gesellschaft,”
Geschichte und Systemtheorie: Exemplarische Fallstudien, ed. Frank Becker,
2004, 108–56). Such a development of ritual studies, of the applied ap-
proaches and the concepts behind them, have occasionally been criticized.
Philippe Buc (The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scien-
tific Theory, 2001) emphasized that historians have used sociological and eth-
nological models uncritically and overenthusiastically in their studies of
medieval rituals, assigning to them a central position that they do not de-
serve. He stressed that misinterpretations of medieval documents could ea-
sily occur in applying 20th-century theories and models (Buc, “Political Rit-
ual: Medieval and Modern Interpretations,” Die Aktualität des Mittelalters, ed.
Hans-Werner Goetz, 2000, 255–72, here 255). Buc’s critique itself has been
heavily criticized; he has been accused of arguing too polemically by making
unproved generalizations, and of not offering any alternatives (Koziol,
“The Dangers of Polemic,” 367–88).
Since the 1970s and 1980s analyses of rituals, mainly initiated by
American researchers, may be found in Medieval Studies in a large number of
fields and on an international level: in the history of religion (e. g., Bryan
D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New
Testament to the Council of Trent, 2006); the history of theater and drama
(e. g., Francis Edwards, Ritual and Drama: The Medieval Theatre, 1976; Acts and
Texts: Performance and Ritual in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Laurie
Postlewate and Wim Hüsken, 2007); the history of art (e. g., Staale Sin-
ding-Larsen, Iconography and Ritual. A Study of Analytical Perspectives, 1984);
the history of literature (e. g., Christiana Witthöft, Ritual und Text: Formen
symbolischer Kommunikation in der Historiographie und Literatur des Spätmittel-
alters, 2004; Corinna Dörrich, Poetik des Rituals: Konstruktion und Funktion
politischen Handelns in mittelalterlicher Literatur, 2002); the history of music
(e. g., Jane Morlet Hardie and David Harvey, Commemoration, Ritual and
Performance: Essays in Medieval and Early Modern Music, 2006); economic history
(e. g., Kathryn Reyerson, “Rituals in Medieval Business,” Medieval and Early
Modern Ritual: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China and Japan, ed. Joëlle Rollo-
Koster, 2002, 81–103); legal history (e. g., Les rites de la justice: Gestes et rituals
judiciaries au Moyen Age occidental, ed. Claude Gauvard et al., 2000); the his-
tory of gender and family (e. g., Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women,
Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, 1985; Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Child-
Ritual and Performance 1562

hood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe, 1998 [1st ed. 1984]); the history of
magic (e. g., Claire Fanger, Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval
Ritual Magic, 1998); the history of gestures (Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison
des gestes dans l’Occident medieval, 1990; Kiril Petkov, The Kiss of Peace: Ritual,
Self, and Society in the High and Late Medieval West, 2003), the history of emotions
(e. g., Piroska Nagy, Le don des larmes au Moyen Âge: Un instrument spirituel
en quête d’institution (Ve–XIIIe siècle), 2000); the history of dress (e. g., Susan
Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred
Years War, 2002); and so on. The Journal of Ritual Studies, founded in 1987,
deals with ritual in all its aspects and has also published some contributions
on medieval topics.
The most interest in symbolic communication and rituals developed
in two fields of Medieval Studies: urban history (e. g., Edward Muir, Civic
Ritual in Medieval Venice, 1981; Peter Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian
Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent, 1996; Symbolic Communication in
Late Medieval Towns, ed. Jacoba van Leeuwen, 2006), and political history,
particularly connected to rulership (e. g., Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremo-
nial in Traditional Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon Price, 1987;
Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak,
1990; Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, ed. Frans
Theuws and Janet L. Nelson, 2000; Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale:
Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter, 2003).
Multi- and interdisciplinary studies have dealt with the transformation
and change of ritual practices during the Middle Ages and stated that rituals
and their performativity are to be seen as a process (e. g., The Appearances
of Medieval Ritual: The Play of Construction and Modification, ed. Nils Holger Pe-
tersen et al., 2004; Visualizing Medieval Performance, ed. Elina Gertsman,
2008). The German Sonderforschungsbereich (Collaborative Research Center)
619, “Ritualdynamik” (“Ritual Dynamics”), was founded at the University of
Heidelberg in 2002 and has been the largest interdisciplinary research collec-
tive worldwide dealing exclusively with rituals, their transformation, and
dynamics. Its medieval branch has concentrated on “Politik und Ritual –
Herrschertreffen als Handlungsform politischer Praxis im Spätmittelalter”
(“Politics and ritual – rulers’ encounters as procedures of political practice in
the late Middle Ages”). Another German Sonderforschungsbereich, 447, founded
in 1999 at the Free University of Berlin, has concentrated on “Performing
Cultures,” that is, examining and comparing the function and significance
of performance in the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and modernity.
Other comparative approaches have become relevant concerning differ-
ent cultures and geographic areas (e. g., Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial
1563 Space and Nature

in Traditional Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon Price, 1987; Medi-
eval and Early Modern Ritual: Formalized Behavior in Europe, China and Japan,
ed. Joëlle Rollo-Koster, 2002) as well as periods (e. g., L’audience: Rituels
et cadres spatiaux dans l’Antiquité et le haut Moyen Age, ed. Jean-Pierre Caillet
and Michel Sol, 2007). Generally, it can be stated that for modern medieval
studies the attractiveness of research strategies concentrating on perform-
ance and ritual lies in the opportunity to apply sometimes entirely new
approaches to sources that have been well known for a long time (Frank Rex-
roth, “Rituale und Ritualismus in der historischen Mittelalterforschung:
Eine Skizze,” Mediävistik im 21. Jahrhundert: Stand und Perspektiven der interna-
tionalen und interdisziplinären Mittelalterforschung, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz
and Jörg Jarnut, 2003, 391–406, here 403).

Select Bibliography
Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York et al.: Oxford University
Press, 1997); Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, ed. Jeffrey
C. Alexander et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Philippe Buc,
The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social ScientificTheory (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2001); Riti e rituali nelle società medievali, ed. Jacques Chif-
foleau et al. (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1994); Edward
Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005 [1st ed., 1997]); Inszenierung und Ritual in Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. Andrea von
Hülsen-Esch (Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag, 2005); Visualizing Medieval Performance, ed.
Elina Gertsman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

Gerhard Jaritz

Space and Nature

A. General Definition
Our understanding of the medieval idea of space (and that of nature as space,
in contrast to “human nature”) has undergone substantial transformations in
the last few decades. The former Euclidean concept of space as a measurable,
but empty background for human endeavor has evolved into a rich and var-
ied entity, imbued with great cultural, metaphysical, sociological, economic
and other significances. No longer can one speak of a generalized “space” any
more than one can speak of the “town” or the “farm” and cover all possibil-
ities; instead, critics have traced more discernable and demonstrable scien-
Space and Nature 1564

tific, social, political or economic forces that have created notions of space,
and have brought them to the forefront of the discussion. The following ar-
ticle attempts to present aspects of the idea of space as it has been explored in
the critical literature that reflect the range of the discussion: indeed, the com-
plexity and breadth of this topic are immense. However, some specific areas
of recent interest may be identified as follows.

Cosmic Space
According to Edward Grant (The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle
Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts, 1996), medieval cos-
mology remains the dominant scientific paradigm until as late as 1687. The
central concepts forming the backbone of this perspective proceed from Aris-
totelian premises of an ordered universe that is essentially finite, although
according to the medieval overlay of Christianity, the infinite Being who
created the universe essentially out of nothing, God, inhabits and sustains it.
The space of the cosmos, conceived of as a geocentric sphere filled with
matter, was divided into as many as eleven concentric subspheres, which
carried the moon, the known planets Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn, and the fixed stars. Beyond this was the all-encompassing
heaven, where the souls of redeemed Christians enjoyed the beatific vision of
the Almighty. One could further distinguish between the celestial spheres
and the terrestrial region, consisting of orbs corresponding to the four el-
ements. The celestial spheres were not vacuums, but rather were filled with a
kind of ether, possessing unique properties of uniform movement and incor-
ruptibility. Medieval scientific philosophers considered the celestial regions
nobler than their terrestrial counterparts, which resulted in the view that in-
fluences rained down from above, but did not rise from below.
The issue of “place” bears some influence on the notion of space, and its
revision became important after the condemnations of Aristotelianism in
1270 and 1277 (David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The Euro-
pean Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehis-
tory to AD 1450, 1st edition 1992 [2nd edition 2007], 246–60). Aristotle had
defined place through reference to one body containing another; thus, if the
outermost cosmic body is contained by a finite container, what specifically is
this container? Such arguments encouraged attempts to redefine place by
reference to the contained body, or to refine the notion of the cosmos to in-
clude various kinds of outer shells that might accommodate such logical
paradoxes.
Conceptions of terrestrial space were represented by mappaemundi,
simple and highly abstract maps of the world, which geographers drew most
1565 Space and Nature

commonly as a “T” (corresponding to bodies of water that separate the three

known continents, Europe, Africa and Asia) inscribed within an “O” (denot-
ing the earth) (Lindberg, 280–81). Other such “maps” included represen-
tations of the earth’s climatic zones and portolan charts, based upon actual
maritime experience. As these became more detailed over time, and as their
value as navigational aids increased, mariners grew ever bolder in venturing
beyond the limits of their familiar geographical spaces. (See also Fabienne
Michelet, Creation, Migration, and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of
Space in Old English Literature, 2006).

Secular Space – Courtly and Urban

In the preface to the second volume of his monumental Histoire de la vie privée:
de l’Europe féodale à la Renaissance (1985), Georges Duby sketches some of the
most significant developments that have provided us insights into the pri-
vate and domestic lives not only of aristocrats but also of middle and lower
class individuals. An increasing availability of documents from this period,
the stark reduction in population due to plague, a shift in development from
France to Spain, Italy and Northern Germany, a greater appreciation for the
material world, an easing of the earlier medieval contemptus mundi revealed
especially in the plastic arts, and a profusion of materials available to archeol-
ogists after the middle of the 14th century – all of these give better evidence
to the kinds of lives led behind castle walls and within private domiciles
across Europe during the later Middle Ages. Objects that filled the rooms and
buildings of private life indicate to us how one perceived and used the spaces,
and what a person considered important entered into the language of wills,
marriage documents and inventories from this period, thus enriching our
pool of information.

Space at the Court

The space at court was the arena of power; hence, courtly objects of beauty,
elegance and richness appropriately enhanced the power of the ruler and
preserved the hierarchy that structured courtly activity. Essentially, power de-
fined social and political relationships in medieval Europe, and the residences
and fortresses of the aristocracy concretized this value. Architecture and
material culture at court became a visual language of lordship: the majesty of
the ruler was reflected in the richness of her or his domus and in the strength of
the adjoining donjon, the site of defense against invasion and the expression of
the ruler’s half of the feudal bargain: the protection of one’s liegemen.
While political power is usually contained within the person of the ruler,
and the space around her or him (hence the term pax regis in reference to the
Space and Nature 1566

body and immediate vicinity of the king), majesty extends that power to loci
within the realm, especially to the persons and surroundings of the ruler’s
allies. Thus, early in the medieval period there begins the significant practice
of granting immunities, that is, the guarantee that the safety and security of
an individual or community within a particular space will be guaranteed,
under threat of harsh punishments for transgressors (Barbara H. Rosen-
wein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medi-
eval Europe, 1999). Initially this practice forges especially strong alliances be-
tween courts and monasteries, which enjoy safety in return for their support
of the ruler, while they maintain power over their own space. Later, through
the addition of stipulations, called tuitio, secular authorities at court begin to
exert controlling influence in monastic affairs, rendering monastic terri-
torial autonomy ever less effective.

Urban & Domestic Space

Henri Lefebvre (La production de l’espace, 1974, 253–65) maintains that the
most significant evolution in spatial conceptions during the later Middle
Ages was linked with the rise of towns. Before the 12th century, Christian
Europe had been fascinated with the artistic symbology of death, and sep-
ulchers, catacombs, graves and crypts served to mark the continent’s holiest
places – for Lefebvre, the process forced an “encryption” of meaning. But
after 1300, surplus production in the countryside made it possible to support
urban populations with food and raw materials, and thus began the crystal-
lization of political and economic power in the towns. The pilgrim’s path – to
pay homage to a saintly grave – was replaced by the merchant’s travel route as
the most significant road through the late medieval landscape. No longer
was religious authority empowered to the extremes the earlier medieval
period had witnessed. Towns rose up, with new architectural marvels that
towered over marketplaces and Romanesque churches, liberating the Euro-
pean consciousness from the crypt and creating a vertical dimension of dif-
fuse meanings, power and possibilities. Gothic cathedrals stretched high
up to a luminous space that opened thought and belief to the light, making
the very secrets of creation available to human vision. Research on medieval
urban space has recently expanded profusely, and the following pieces indi-
cate some of the most significant turns it has taken (see the introduction and
contributions to Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times,
ed. Albrecht Classen, 2009). The phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard
(Poétique de l’espace, 1957), attempting to identify the archetypal feeling
evoked by the poetic image of the house, comprehends it as vertical space,
in which one feels sheltered and can dream – granting the individual the in-
1567 Space and Nature

terior space for self-awareness and self-determination. Peter Arnade, Mar-

tha C. Howell, and Walter Simons emphasize the diversity of urban space
in the later Middle Ages, and the “revolutionary” role these various, specific
spaces played as agents of change (“Fertile Spaces: The Productivity of Urban
Space in Northern Europe,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32 [2002]:
515–48). The literature of the late medieval period also bears the clear marks
of this transition. For example, William F. Woods, in Chaucerian Spaces:
Spacial Poetics in Chaucer’s Opening Tales (2008), relates Chaucer’s tale-tellers
to their characteristic spaces and vice-versa. Culminating with the “Wife of
Bath’s Tale” he demonstrates this inner sensibility of self, not only a turning
inward reflected in the character, but also a new sense of domesticity in the
character’s intimate space (see also Chiara Frugoni, A Distant City: Images of
Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans. William McCuaig, 1983, 1991).

Sacred Space
As Sarah Hamilton and Andrew Spicer (“Defining the Holy: the Delin-
eation of Sacred Space,” Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Mod-
ern Europe, 2005, 1–23) have pointed out, the etymological origins of “sacred”
and “profane” are both rooted in spatial categories: sacer referred to objects
and locales, but profanus denoted the area outside a holy place (sacrum), and
referred to the location of things beyond the limits of sanctity. One of the
most important works on the subject of what constitutes sacredness, Mircea
Elaide’s The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion (1959), employs
spatial discourse, that is, the locus of contact between heaven, earth and hell,
in defining the term “hierophany,” or the cultural-religious representation
of the divine.
Sacred space can be thought of as a cultural area reserved for religious rit-
ual, the purpose of which is to encounter a divine presence. For Christianity
during the Middle Ages, such spaces were manufactured and separated from
secular space by elaborate artifice, such as the walls of a cathedral or church.
The most important artists and craftsmen of the social community then dec-
orated the space both externally and internally in an appropriate manner.
The sanctity of space was signaled by various sensual signs: visually through
architecture and art, aurally through the ringing of bells and through the ol-
factory sense with the burning of incense (Hamilton and Spicer, 7–8).
At times, such space had been appropriated from earlier religions, but
more often the space was taken from a central point within communities,
settlements, or towns. John Howe (“Creating Symbolic Landscapes: Medi-
eval Development of Sacred Space” Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place
in Western Europe, 2002, 208–23) argues that the sacred medieval landscape
Space and Nature 1568

includes elements of Ernst Robert Curtius’s (Europäische Literatur und latei-

nisches Mittelalter, 1948 [trans. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
1967]) locus amoenus and locus horribilis, and combines them into a concept of
“Sacred Center,” “a symbolic physical point with its associated social and re-
ligious constructs,” drawing both pilgrims and crowds of worshipers. These
grew into the more urban forms – the cathedral or the parish church – that
sacred space acquired in the Middle Ages.
The primary locus of sacred space in medieval Europe was, of course, the
cathedral. In The Gothic Enterprise: a Guide to Understanding the Gothic Cathedral
(2003), Robert A. Scott demonstrates that to the medieval mind sacred
space had to be created and that it demanded the highest forms of artistic ex-
pression on the part of the best craftsmen of a community. This resulted from
the pervasive feeling that the divine was not in the raw materials construct-
ing the space of the cathedral or church, but that at some point, usually after
a ritual of sanctification, the divine entered into the objects. Thus, the inner
spaces of the church imitated the imagined forms of heaven, thereby wel-
coming divinity while at the same time introducing the religious commu-
nity to the beauty of heaven. Sacred places had to be clearly separated off
from secular space, and they had to be substantial and solid, since durability
and permanence were required to greet and to retain the divine presence.
The sacred objects and artwork within were constantly subjected to daily,
weekly and yearly cycles of ritual in order to maintain the concentrated sanc-
tity of the space. Furthermore, the church protected them from damage
or desecration, and if the holy objects were removed, for example, on Palm
Sunday, it was only to represent vulnerability, i. e., the dangers Christ en-
countered before his crucifixion, in order to stir interest and excitement
among pious observers.

Gendered Space
One of the most significant ways in which autonomy manifests itself is in
one’s ability to gain entry to space. The ability to restrict the access of another
is a hallmark of power and subjugation. The spaces of medieval Europe were
not as open to females as they were to males, and a woman’s transgression
of the rules governing access could be dangerous. Barbara A. Hanawalt
(“Medieval English Women in Rural and Urban Domestic Space,” Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 52 [1998]: 19–26) reveals that, in rural regions, women were rel-
egated to areas “inside,” whereas men dominated “outside,” where women
sought safety through company. A woman alone, out in the fields of rural
England, for example, was in potential danger of rape and injury. In urban
spaces, even “outside,” men and women mixed company in most mercantile
1569 Space and Nature

situations; however, any woman unaccompanied by a man who would dare

enter into a tavern would run the risk of possible violence – minimally, her
reputation would suffer severely. Thus, men were able to exercise social con-
trol over women by defining acceptable spaces for them, specifically the
home, the village and most spaces of urban commerce. At the borders of, or
beyond, these areas, women were easily marginalized as socially unaccept-
able and dishonored, and, in extreme cases, preyed upon.
The issues around gender and space become particularly complex when
women enter the sacred space of the church. For example, a very broad range
of diverse topics is presented in a volume of essays edited by Virginia Chieffo
Raguin and Sarah Stanbury, Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in
the Medieval Church (2005), where many of these complexities are examined as
aspects of the general themes of spatial control of women by men, and of the
body as a spatial metaphor of subjugation. While one cannot deny the promi-
nence of the cathedral during the Middle Ages, nevertheless it was the parish
church that played the central religious role with the great majority of medi-
eval Christian women, articulating in an essentially religious space the psy-
chological and material demands of community and thereby representing as
space the predominant political and economic attitudes toward women. The
parish churches as well as the medieval monasteries were social construc-
tions that provided an arena for the interaction of community rituals of
practice. Women’s access to privileged space depended upon several factors,
each of which could be cited for the purpose of exclusion; thus the chancel,
considered the “head” of the parish, barred women, while the “body” was
formed by the space of the church to which both men and women had access.
Religious buildings were designed for ritual cultural performance (e. g., the
mass), and therefore they offer a clearer perspective on medieval spatial prac-
tices than most other kinds of space.
In the medieval epic, the process of creating a space for the characters to
move across or through, “spatialization,” allows a negotiation of gender
roles (Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations, 1994), which has import-
ant implications for both politics and power. Movement across medieval lit-
erary spaces creates encounters with “others” who initiate change, a “becom-
ing.” Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (Topographies of Gender in Middle
High German Arthurian Romance, 2001) asserts that the spatialization that is
represented in the medieval German epic creates a “topography” of becom-
ing male, female, king, queen, etc. through power and gender negotiations,
the result of which is a mapping, in the mind of the reader, of a path reflect-
ing the character’s progress.
Space and Nature 1570

Nature
An important, exceptional example of space in the Middle Ages was the idea
of nature. While the space beyond the area under the protection of the court,
the forests and fields of medieval Europe, provided sustenance and adven-
ture to the nobility, it was also a locus fraught with danger. Jacques LeGoff
(La civilisation de l’occident medievale, 1st edition 1964, rev. edition 1982) gives
a comprehensive description of how the medieval world felt about the
area outside of the court. The forest was the border of the civilized, courtly
realm, where the clearings and roadsides edged up against the unknown and
formed the border that isolated and restricted human consciousness. To the
medieval psyche, it was the realm of wolves, wild boars and monsters. In the
Tristan epics, the hero, as a young boy set ashore on the coast of Cornwall after
his abduction and release, confronts the frightening prospect of finding
his way alone through the wilds. At the same time, the forest presents the
challenges the medieval hero was forced to overcome. Because he knew how
to properly slaughter a deer and present it to the court, Tristan befriends
King Mark’s hunting party that leads him back to civilization, his uncle and
family. Later, he would vanquish the dragon in the forests of Ireland, thereby
gaining Isolde; and discover the cave of the lovers (in Gottfried’s version of
the tale) where he and Isolde would live on love (Ingrid Hahn, Raum und
Landschaft in Gottfrieds Tristan: ein Beitrag zur Werkdeutung, 1963). Nature, as
space, confronted the medieval individual with the trials and rewards of an
authentic kind of experience, in which such an individual struggles for life
against death on a razor’s edge, and where dangers were most extreme but
the rewards of success were most sublime.
Ernst Robert Curtius (Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter,
1948) describes the idealized space of medieval literature as a manufac-
tured landscape consisting primarily of a number of topoi woven together
through the progress of the characters’ actions. As Sterling-Hellen-
brand points out, this composite is further modified by medieval nar-
rators in order to complete an image of the particular world each describes
in her or his particular work; the recognition that authors superimposed
topographies on the idealized space of the Middle Ages yields a rich and
multifaceted, cross-disciplinary potential for new research on medieval
landscape. Several noteworthy examples of such work in literary criticism
include: Woods’s Chaucerian Spaces; G. A. Knott, “‘Une question lanci-
nante’: Further Thoughts on Space in the Chansons de Geste,” Modern Lan-
guage Review 94 (1999): 22–34; Catherine Léglu, “Place and Movement in
the Old French Chanson de Toile,” Paregon 24 (2007): 21–39; Vicent Mar-
tines, “Tiempo y espacio en la versión Catalana de la Queste del Saint Graal,”
1571 Space and Nature

Hispanic Review, 64 (1996): 373–90; and Der Wald in Mittelalter und Renais-
sance, ed. Josef Semmler, 1991.
Early Christianity originated in more arid climes, and monasticism was
born in Egypt and Syria; therefore the desert acquired an exotically spiritual
significance. Even before the onset of the medieval period, the desert had be-
come a goal that drew some extremely zealous Christians to a life of physical
hardship, corporal self-denial and religious contemplation. But most
importantly, cartography of that period reveals the core medieval Christian
concept that Jerusalem marks the center of the world, hence of the universe,
and thus the desert occupies a privileged position of the highest spiritual
values in European thought. By the end of the 11th century, European Chris-
tianity considered the desert regions of the Middle East to be occupied reli-
gious space, and unleashed the ultimately disastrous series of Crusades
against the Muslim peoples who had found their home there, in an attempt
to reclaim that space and reassert there the domination of the Roman Cath-
olic Church. See James E. Goehring, “The Dark Side of Landscape: Ideology
and Power in the Christian Myth of the Desert,” Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies 33 (2003): 437–51.

The Garden
The garden provided the inhabitants of the court, the monastery or the
town (particularly after the rise of urban wealth and prominence in the
later medieval period) with a natural space that could be controlled and
made productive, either for the purposes of raising food or for “pleasure”
(Phillipe Contamine, “Peasant Hearth to Papal Palace: the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Centuries,” Histoire de la vie privée, ed. Georges Duby, vol. 2,
1985, 435–36, 441–42), and thereby giving the courtier, the monk or the
Bürger an opportunity to enjoy a tamer and more rationalized natural ex-
perience. Often enclosed behind high walls, it marked off a space for the
cultivation of vegetables and fruits, as well as the herbs for which the medi-
eval pharmacy has gained ever greater appreciation (among the profuse
number of works treating the medieval garden, please see John Harvey,
Mediaeval Gardens, 1981; Sylvia Landsberg, The Medieval Garden, 1996;
Medieval Gardens, ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, 1986; Jerry Stan-
nard, Richard Kay and Katherine E Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism in
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1999; Élisabeth Zadora-Rio, “Garden,”
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, ed. Andre Vauchez, vol. I, 2000, 588; Chris-
topher Thacker, “Gardens, European,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Jo-
seph R. Strayer, vol. 5, 1985, 358–65; Christopher Thacker, The History
of Gardens, 1979, 81–93).
Space and Nature 1572

In most parts of Europe three types of gardens can be distinguished by

size (see Landsberg, 11–44): the “herber,” a small enclosed garden of less
than an acre, would provide both sensual beauty and practical use; often
these were planted with a variety of aromatic herbs and an abundance of
flowers, thus offering medicinal materials, visual relaxation and olfactory
pleasure. Next larger was the orchard, of one to four acres, with regularly
arranged rows of trees, bounded by a ditch or a growth of hawthorn, and
yielding a supply of fruit as well as shade for strollers and privacy for lovers.
The pleasurable aspects of such a garden were enhanced through a variety of
fruit and aromatic trees. Particularly in the midsized gardens of high lords
one might find fishponds and fountains and, for exotic animals and birds,
menageries or aviaries, but relatively few statues such as those gracing
gardens of classical antiquity (Thacker, “Gardens, European,” 363). The
largest garden was the pleasure park, somewhat smaller than the hunting
park, and populated with similar animals and birds for the viewing pleasure
particularly of kings and high lords.
Within these general types, there were also gardens serving specific func-
tions. For example, where climate permitted the cultivation of grapes, vine-
yards became a significant gardening space; in England, many previously
flourishing vineyards disappeared in the 14th century due to the cooling Eng-
lish climate, while in Bordeaux at the same time climatic change established
the region as one of the best wine-producers in Europe. The kitchen garden
also grew to be an important garden space, dedicated to the production of
plant materials for food, medicine or household use. In such spaces one was
likely to find hyssop, parsley, sage and other herbs, as well as colewort, leeks,
garlic, and root vegetables. These gardens also provided materials for sup-
pressing insects and for covering floors.
Monastery gardens became centers of horticultural science, and monks
contributed greatly to knowledge of growing plants and tending gardens.
The cloister garth, an area of turf next to the church at the center of the mon-
astery compound, furnished a relatively austere outdoor area for the monks
to walk, ponder and pray. The infirmary garden enabled the monastery to
provide for the needs for its members’ health, such as geriatric care, hospital
care and convalescence from blood-letting, and other physician’s directives.
Other monastic gardens included the private obedientiary gardens of high
ranking officials, the cellarer’s garden that supplied food for the monks, the
day laborers and the poor, and the often expansive vineyards, from which
monastery wine and liqueurs were produced.
In a great number of medieval literary works, gardens play a central
role, and the critical literature on them is profuse. For example, please see
1573 Space and Nature

Thacker, “Gardens, European,” in regard to the Decameron and the Romance

of the Rose, among others; Laura L. Howes, Chaucer’s Gardens and the Language
of Convention (1997); and Karen Sullivan, Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowl-
edge in Medieval French Literature (2005).

B. History of Research
Earlier treatments of space were structured around Aristotelian philosophi-
cal categories of cosmos or universe; medieval philosophy attempted to
grapple with the logical problems presented by the presence of God in a fi-
nite universe. Pierre Duhem’s massive Le système du monde. Histoire des doc-
trines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernicus, 10 vols., (1913–1959) – tracing the
developing intellectual conception of the universe from Plato to Coperni-
cus – contributed an important part of the discussion for most of the 20th cen-
tury. Duhem presents medieval scientific perspectives in the contextual
space of religious belief, showing again and again how cosmic questions
posed by medieval science are tempered by theology. He suggests a continu-
ity between the medieval and later theories of universe, asserting connec-
tions that his predecessors had considered untenable. Alexandre Koyré
becomes Duhem’s most prominent critic; in his From the Closed World to the In-
finite Universe (1957), he insists that there is no such continuity, and that the
revolution in world view, where the medieval cosmology of an ordered,
closed unity is smashed apart by the new understanding of an undeter-
mined, infinite universe, presented Europe with a crisis in consciousness.
The modern view of medieval map drawing, perhaps one of the most sig-
nificant indications of spatial concepts, has also undergone a great evolution
(J. B[rian] Harley and David Woodward, The History of Cartography, vol. 1,
1987). For many years geographers, particularly those writing in the later
19th century, considered the medieval mappaemundi to embody a naïve per-
spective on spatial realities; however, this attitude has begun to change and
modern critics are granting an ever more developed geographical under-
standing to medieval cartography. David Woodward, “Reality, Symbol-
ism, Time, and Space in Medieval World Maps,” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 75 (1985): 510–21, describes several variations of the
maps, and suggests that they were created for functions other than those
of current maps, that is, other than Euclidean spatial representations. For
example, the situating of Jerusalem at the center of the earth, a common
practice during the late medieval period, reflects a religious-pedagogical
map function, to educate the faithful to the central role of faith in their lives
and to convey the spiritual history of the Christian world, rather than to es-
tablish a scientific truth (Jon Stone, “The Medieval Mappaemundi: Toward
Space and Nature 1574

an Archaeology of Sacred Cartography, Religion 23 [1993]: 197–216). The

more than one thousand extant mappaemundi cover a broad variety of such
functions and defy the constraints of easy categorization (see Margriet
Hoogvliet, Pictura et scriptura: Textes, images et herméneutique des Mappae
Mundi [XIII-XVI siécles], 2007; Leif Søndergaard and Rasmus Thorning
Hansen, Monsters, Marvels and Miracles: Imaginary Journeys and Landscapes in the
Middle Ages, 2005; and Brigitte Englisch, Ordo orbis terrae: Die Weltsicht in den
Mappae mundi des frühen und hohen Mittelalters, 2002).
Particularly since the publication of Henri Lefebvre’s La production de
l’espace in 1974, and its translation into English (finally accomplished in
1991), space is no longer conceived of as a uniformly empty and undifferenti-
ated commonality, or a monolithic backdrop to all human experience. Nor
is it restricted to the idealized landscapes and personifications, such as one
encounters in Ernst Robert Curtius’s Europäische Literatur und lateinisches
Mittelalter (1948). From his neo-Marxist point-of-view, Lefebvre claims
that “every society […] produces a space, its own space” (31) and shows how it
is conditioned by economic (and other) forces. Gaston Bachelard’s Poétique
de l’espace (1957) moves the focus of attention onto domestic space as phe-
nomenon, whose quality conditions human reactions to it: hence, the house
becomes the defining psychological borderline for the dialectic between inti-
macy and universe, wherein one finds a “nest” for dreaming and a shelter for
imagining. For Bachelard, space becomes a conduit granting the human
psyche access to meaning and symbolism. Following in this tradition, several
more recent critics have emphasized the productive character of space, that
is, the tendency of perceived and framed space to influence what transpires
within it.
Subsequent research has derived much of its impetus from these sources,
and has exploded exponentially as a result of cross-disciplinary efforts over
the past two decades. Philosophers, geographers, physicists, astronomers,
historians, and literary critics, to name but a few, are combining their intel-
lectual resources to redefine the way in which space is appreciated. Several col-
lections of these essays have profoundly important implications for the fu-
ture understanding of space in the medieval world, two of the most notable
of which are Raum und Raumvorstellung im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and
Andreas Speer, 1998; and Medieval Practices of Space, ed. Barbara A. Hana-
walt and Michal Kobialka, 2000.
1575 Space and Nature

Select Bibliography
Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society: 1250–1600
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); People and Space in the
Middle Ages, 300–1300, ed. Wendy Davies et al. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006);
Vito Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear: Perceptions of Nature and the City in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); Edward Grant, Much Ado about Nothing: Theories of
Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution (London et al.: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); John Howe, “Creating Symbolic Landscapes: Medieval Devel-
opment of Sacred Space,” Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe,
ed. John Howe and Michael Wolfe (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002),
208–23; Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative, ed. Laura L. Howes (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 2007); Uwe Ruberg, Raum und Zeit im Prosa-Lancelot
(Munich: Fink, 1965); Uomo e spazio nell’alto Medioevo: 4–8 aprile 2002, Settimane di stu-
dio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 50. Spoleto (Perugia): Centro ita-
liano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2 vols. (Spoleto: CISAM, 2003); Paul Zumthor, La
mesure du monde: Représentation de l’espace au Moyen Age Poétique (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1993).

Christopher R. Clason
Text 1576

Text

A. General Definition
Broadly speaking, the textualist approach analyzes cultural products – in-
cluding written works, oral traditions, performances, rituals, and visual art –
as signifying acts that operate through the combination of different expres-
sive elements or situations. In this conception of culture, even non-written
and non-verbal phenomena can be interpreted as “texts” – as meaningful
systems or arrangements of signs created by an author (an individual, com-
munity, institution, or abstract forces such as economic structures or ideol-
ogy) for a reader who may likewise be an individual, or communal, or even
absent (ancestors, the divine). To analyze something as a text may involve
examining the processes by which it is produced, the ways its elements inter-
relate to achieve cultural expressiveness, and the manner in which it is con-
veyed to and understood by its public.
A key tenet of textualism is that no text, object, or activity has a single
or transparent meaning, but that meaning is instead the product of intersect-
ing discourses, intentions, authorities, and interpretive schemes. One of
textualism’s goals is to elucidate the ways in which these elements express
themselves in cultural products, even though they may be occulted, repressed,
or distorted. Whereas medievalism until the Second World War generally fo-
cused on official history, theology, philology, and the iconography of high
art, textualism opened a space for the introduction of new questions and
methodologies. A striking result of this interpretive reconfiguration is that
subjects once considered vulgar or irrelevant have become the focus of schol-
arship in the past forty years. Two striking examples are comic literature and
manuscript marginalia, which have received serious analyses devoid of the
condescension of earlier generations (Lillian Randall, Images in the Margins
of Gothic Manuscripts, 1966; R. Howard Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliaux,
1986; Michael Camille, Image on the Edge, 1992; Andrew Cowell, At Play
in the Tavern: Signs, Coins, and Bodies in the Middle Ages, 1999; Valerie Allen, On
Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages, 2007). Textualism also vali-
dated a move away from official history to considerations of non-noble and
marginal groups such as urban laborers (Antony black, Guilds and Civil
1577 Text

Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present, 1984;
Richard MacKenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice
and Europe, c. 1250–c. 1650, 1987; Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in
Medieval Europe, 1991), peasants (Robert Fossier, Paysans d’Occident (XIe–XIVe
siècles), 1984; Werner Rösener, Bauern im Mittelalter, 1985; William H. Te-
brake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders,
1323–1328, 1993), and the poor (Michel Mollat, Les pauvres au moyen âge,
1978; Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and
the Daily Lives of the Poor, 2002).
A chief concern of textualism is the ways in which authorities seek to
control, define, and represent identity, which has had a profound impact on
medieval studies. This is evident in the numerous studies devoted to issues
of gender, sexuality, and the body (Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brund-
age, Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, 1982; Caroline Walker Bynum,
Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, 1982; Carolyn
Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, 1989; Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmen-
tation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion,
1991; Roberta L. Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old
French Verse Romance, 1993; Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bul-
lough and James A. Brundage, 1996; Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and
Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer, 2001; Queering the
Middle Ages, ed. Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger, 2001; Same Sex Love
and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Francesca Canadé Sautman and
Pamela Sheingorn, 2001). A similar interest in the effect of authority on
cultural notions of normalcy is visible in studies on the relationship between
literature and the law (R. Howard Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law,
1977; Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French
Literature and Law, 1991; Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and
Law in Ricardian England, 1999), on magic and heresy (Edward Peters,
The Magician, the Witch, and the Law, 1978; James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and
Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550, 1979; Michael
Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, 1989;
Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages, 2006), on madness
(Jean-Marie Fritz, Le discours du fou au moyen âge: XIIe–XIIIe siècles: Étude compa-
rée des discours littéraire, médical, juridique et théologique de la folie, 1992), and on
foreignness and monstrosity (Debra Higgs Strickland, Demons, Saracens,
and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art, 2003; Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts:
Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 1993; Asa
Simon Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England, 2006). Postcolonial
studies have shown how western European culture and identity were altered
Text 1578

by the very civilizations Europeans sought to conquer (Sahar Amer, Esope au

féminin: Marie de France et la politique de l’interculturalité, 1999; The Postcolonial
Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 2000; Postcolonial Approaches to the Euro-
pean Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne
Williams, 2005; Sylvia Huot, Postcolonial Fictions in the Roman de Perce-
forest: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, 2007).
The ways in which cultural products intersected with the rigid social
hierarchies of medieval society provide another defining framework for
textualist studies. The influence of political and social ideology on medieval
literature, history writing, and visual culture has received much attention
(Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France, 1985; Anne D. Hedeman, The
Royal Image: Illustrations of the ‘Grandes chroniques de France’, 1274–1422, 1991;
Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, 1991; Gabrielle M. Spie-
gel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-
Century France, 1993; Sarah Kay, The ‘Chansons de geste’ in the Age of Romance:
Political Fictions, 1995; Robert M. Stein, Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and
Governmental Authority, 1025–1180, 2006). Medieval social hierarchies were
also maintained by class mythologies that drew on and shaped many differ-
ent media and rituals (Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and
its Context, 1270–1350, 1982; Louise O. Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tourna-
ment: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland, 1991; Michael Camille, Mirror in
Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England, 1998; Susan
Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity during the Hundred
Years War, 2002; Andrew Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Viol-
ence, Performance, and the Sacred, 2007).
The textualist concern with uncovering the competing discourses within
cultural products is matched by an interest in the processes that lead to these
products’ creation and reception. Textualism breaks with traditional evalu-
ations of documents and objects as fixed receptacles of meaning that the
scholar is to discover and extract; similarly, it breaks with the notion of
the author or artist as the controlling force behind an artifact (Seth Lerer,
Chaucer and his Readers: Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England, 1993;
R. Howard Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France, 2003). The turn to text is
marked by an interest in the multiple ways by which things signify – not only
inscription, but inscribing; not only the record of a play, but its performance
contexts and history; not only the political reasons for a battle, but the social
and material factors that made its conception and execution possible.
The term “performance” has come to encompass this understanding of
materiality, process, and reception as constitutive of the meaning of a cul-
tural production (see Gerhard Jaritz’s entry, “Rituals and Performance,” in
1579 Text

this Handbook). The interest in performance, not surprisingly, has renewed

the study of dramatic spectacles by bringing many more disciplines and per-
spectives to bear on them (Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval
Drama, 1992; Claire Sponsler, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatri-
cality in Late Medieval England, 1997; Jody Enders, The Medieval Theater
of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence, 1999; Mark Trowbridge, Art and
‘Ommegangen:’ Paintings, Processions, and Dramas in the Late-Medieval Low Coun-
tries, NYU Ph.D. thesis, 2000; Jody Enders, Death by Drama and other Medieval
Urban Legends, 2002; Dunbar H. Ogden, The Staging of Drama in the Medieval
Church, 2002; Darwin Smith, Maistre Pierre Pathelin: Le miroir d’orgueil: Avec
l’édition et la traduction de la version inédite du Recueil Bigot (XVe siècle), 2002; New
Approaches to European Theater of the Middle Ages: An Ontology, ed. Barbara I. Gu-
sick and Edelgard E. Bubruck, 2004; Véronique Dominguez, La scène et la
croix: Le jeu de l’acteur dans les passions dramatiques françaises (XIVe–XVIe siècles),
2007; Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras,
2007). Moreover, the conceptual and methodological approaches offered
by performance may be applied more broadly than just to forms traditionally
defined as dramatic, as evidenced by studies on folk festivities (Rolf Jo-
hannsmeier, Spielmann, Schalk und Scharlatan: Die Welt als Karneval: Volks-
kultur im späten Mittelalter, 1984; Lawrence M. Clopper, Drama, Play, and
Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period, 2001), ges-
ture (Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval, 1990),
processions (Marialuisa Angiolillo, Medioevo: Lo spettacolo dei religiosi e dei
giullari, 1994; City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt
and Kathryn L. Reyerson, 1994), and preaching (Michel Zink, La prédication
en langue romane avant 1300, 1982; Siegfried Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the
Early English Lyric, 1986; D. L. D’Avray, Death and the Prince: Memorial Preach-
ing before 1350, 1994). Performance has also transformed the understanding
of literary transmission, of the relationship between orality and literacy, and
of the role of images in oral culture (Michael Clanchy, From Memory to
Written Record (England, 1066–1307), 1979; Manfred Günter Scholz, Hören und
Lesen: Studien zur primären Rezeption der Literatur im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, 1980;
Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Con-
venient Distinctions, 1982; Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later
Middle Ages, 1982; New Literary History 16.1 [1984]; Paul Zumthor, La poésie et
la voix dans la civilisation médiévale, 1984; Michael Camille, “Seeing and Read-
ing: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Art History
8/1 [1985]: 26–49; D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary
Reception of German Literature, 800–1300, 1994; Suzanne Lewis, Reading Images:
Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse,
Text 1580

1995; Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval
England and France, 1996; Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early
French Romance, 1999; Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon: Making a Contract
with the Mother of God, Saint Mary of Amiens, 2004; Performing Medieval Narrative,
ed. Evelyn Birge Vitz et al., 2005).
As with the study of theater, the textualist concern with how discourses
shape the form and transmission of cultural products has also transformed
another established discipline, codicology. Whereas the study of book struc-
tures traditionally focused mainly on cataloguing and style analysis, textual-
ism examines how the material design of the book inscribes the presence of
authority and voice in order to persuade, inspire, educate, and capture the
imagine. This interpretive codicology understands the book’s physical form
and extra-textual elements – folio size, ruling, illumination, picture place-
ment, rubrication – as inherent to its meaning (Sylvia Huot, From Song to
Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry, 1987;
John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro
de buen amor, 1994; Joan Holladay, Illuminating the Epic: The Kassel ‘Wille-
halm’ Codex and the Landgraves of Hesse in the Early Fourteenth Century, 1997;
Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript,
2002; Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and their
Readers, 2002; Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Sheingorn, Myth, Montage,
and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Epistre
Othea,’ 2003; Kathryn Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century
England: Three Women and their Books of Hours, 2003).
A final characteristic of the textualist approach is that it is self-aware and
self-interrogating. Just as textualism seeks to reveal and understand the
forces and factors underlying cultural production, so does it also examine its
own motivations and goals. The result has been a surge of works devoted to
the history and practice of medievalism as a way of uncovering the unspoken
presumptions that have driven and continue to drive the field (Michael Ann
Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History, 1984; The New Medievalism,
ed. Marina S. Brownlee et al., 1991; Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Dis-
ciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen,
1991; R. Howard Bloch, God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Indus-
try and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne, 1994; Keith Moxey, The Practice of
Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History, 1994; Visual Culture:
Images and Interpretations, ed. Norman BRYSON et al., 1994; Medievalism and
the Modernist Temper, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols, 1996;
Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval His-
toriography, 1997; The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Per-
1581 Text

spectives, ed. Mark A. Cheetham et al., 1998; Bruce Holsinger, The Premod-
ern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory, 2005).

B. History of Scholarship
At the beginning of the 20th century, medieval studies was marked by a con-
fidence in the ability of philologists to reconstruct and interpret texts, of ico-
nographers to decipher the meaning of images, and of historians to evaluate
documents and the motivations of those who produced them. This confi-
dence was shaken by the profound epistemological and methodological
transformations that appeared in every branch of the humanities and social
sciences in the postwar period. Out of this crisis arose the textualism that in-
fluences so many studies to this day.
There is no single textualist approach, largely because textualism derives
from two different critical tendencies. The first, broadly speaking, is decon-
struction, according to which all signs refer to other signs so that there is
no fixed meaning, only a fluid and indeterminate play of signification
within texts (Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences
humaines, 1966; Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1967). Extrapolated
to the level of culture, deconstruction means that there can be no origin or in-
tentionality behind a cultural product because all such products are based on
others in an infinite regression. What’s more, any attempt to find a stable
meaning risks being naïve or, worse, reinforcing traditional power struc-
tures by positing an authoritative source of signification. Following decon-
struction’s caveats, a textualist approach is wary against deterministic inter-
pretation and aware of its own limitations and motivations, which may also
become objects of study. On the other hand, textualism also inherits a great
deal from anthropology, specifically the understanding that all cultural
products are meaningful, and that the scholar’s task is to seek the processes
permitting this creation of meaning in social relationships (Victor Turner,
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, 1969; Clifford Geertz, The Inter-
pretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, 1973; Claude Lévi-Strauss, La fonction
symbolique: Essais d’anthropologie, 1979). Textualism inherits from anthropol-
ogy the tendency to situate artifacts within signifying networks – to look to
multiple cultural spheres for those references and situations that endow an
object or performance with meaning. As a result of this intellectual parent-
age, textualism offers scholars many different strategies when approaching
culture as “text.”
The Transcendental 1582

Select Bibliography
Teodolinda Barolini, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984); Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative
Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1987); Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Roger Chartier, L’ordre des livres:
Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliothèques en Europe entre XIVe et XVIIIe siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea,
1992); Paul V. Rockwhell, Rewriting Resemblance in Medieval French Romance: ‘Ceci n’est
pas un grail’ (New York: Garland, 1995).

Mark Cruse

The Transcendental

A. Definition
The term ‘transcendental’ neighbors with notions like supernaturalism,
spiritualism, and the speculative. Firstly, it refers to a relation of transcen-
dence and immanence where the former signifies whatever possesses a
higher level of existence. Thus, humans transcend animals as to reason. God
is the absolute transcendent and yet immanent in the Creation, a tension-
provoking position for the conceptual intelligence. The theory of medieval
transcendence is crystallized in the late medieval theory of transcendentals
though no limited into it alone. The theory of the transcendentals states that
the notions of ‘one’, ‘good’, ‘true’ and ‘being’ are super-categorial predicates
that nevertheless apply to every being. The origin of this theory goes back
to the Platonic theory of transcendental forms, to Aristotelian essentialism
and to the Neo-platonic conceptions of gradual levels of reality. Religious
thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita or St. Augustine introduced
forms of philosophical transcendence into their conception of divinity. More
concretely, the medieval transcendence into its more official expressions
was restrictive because it entailed a very close relation between transcen-
dence and immanence. The transcendental of the Middle Ages conformed to
a type of likeness with the immanent, an affinity that in Western thought
was defined under the term ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis). The notion of
‘analogy’ stands for a likeness that however close it will never be total and
thus there will always remain a difference between the transcendental and
the immanent being. Of course, not every likeness between the two leads to a
theory like the analogy of being. There can be an ecstatic approach to likeness
1583 The Transcendental

as it happens with different forms of medieval mysticism or in theological

traditions like that of Byzantium that aims at the experience of the divine.
Also, there is a form of naturalistic monism that appears in various ex-
pressions of Islamic philosophy that proclaim the conception of truth in a
double manner.
The medieval theory of the transcendentals states specifically that: (1)
being qua being has certain attributes; (2) being qua being and its attributes
are transcendentals; (3) the attributes of being qua being are convertible with
it. Such transcendentals were the being (ens), the one (unum), the true (verum),
the good (bonum). The primordial transcendental was that of being. Some-
times, other transcendentals were added in the list like the ‘something’
(aliquid) and the ‘thing’ (res) by Thomas Aquinas or even the ‘beautiful’ (pulch-
rum). Transcendentals were supra-categorial notions, in the Aristotelian
sense of a category, and not just simple ways of speaking and dealing with
reality. They were the philosophical implications of Christian Theology and
the products of theorizing about statements like: ‘I am who I am’ (ego sum qui
sum) in Exodus 1:34. The transcendentals were for Duns Scotus the object of
metaphysics (see Jorge J. E. Gracia, “The Transcendentals in the Middle
Ages: An Introduction,” Topoi 11 [1992]: 113–20).
If Duns Scotus appears as the first scholastic to have suggested that
metaphysics is the science of the transcendentals (transcendentia) it is not
until Chrysostomus Iavellus (ca. 1470–1538), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617),
and other late scholastics of the 16th and 17th centuries that we see this early
intuition, in itself an expression of a general medieval transcendentalism,
translated into something that resembles a philosophical system. Francisco
Suárez’s Disputationes metaphysicae (1597) moves forward on the path opened
by Scotus. By the same, Suárez delimits the final question concerning the
transcendental: it refers to the mind or to reality? Is it an expression of men-
talism or of metaphysical realism? (see Jorge J. E. Gracia, “Suárez and the
Doctrine of the Transcendentals,” Topoi, op. cit., 121–33).

B. Modern to Contemporary Research:

the Transcendental and Historicity
The medieval transcendental lost in radiance partly because of the underes-
timation of medieval philosophy and spirit and partly because of the harsh
critique of metaphysics that culminated largely in the 20th century. There is
a total undermining of the medieval transcendentals prevailing since En-
lightenment and David Hume more precisely amidst a constant evolution
from a religiously oriented philosophy to a value-neutral approach. All the
transcendentals are now degraded or denied. We have plurality instead of the
The Transcendental 1584

one; taste instead of the beautiful; morality instead of the good; epistemol-
ogy instead of the true. It is the slicing of medieval transcendentalism into
philosophical sciences like metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, or aes-
thetics.
In the thought of Renaissance, the idea of likeness between the transcen-
dental and the immanent was transformed in a way that the human factor
would become now the central one. The interest is focused on experience
rather than ontology and the Ciceronian rhetoric takes the place of Aristote-
lian metaphysics (see Charles Trinkaus, in Bibliography). In a text by Lo-
renzo Valla, we see a metaphor of the analogy of being where man is the criti-
cal element of the analogical relation.

As the sun paints its image in polished and smooth things and does not receive their images in
itself, so the soul, advancing into exterior things by its own light, projects and depicts a certain
image of its memory, intellect and will (Repansinatio philosophiae et dialecticae, quoted in
Trinkaus, 344).

In René Descartes (1596–1650) the institution of the transcendence is made

through the ‘ego’ and not through the ‘being’. For some scholars, Cartesian
philosophy constitutes a kind of return back to Augustine since in Descartes
like in Augustine the essences of things continue to be dependent on God,
known through the mediation of things and finally, no distinction can be in
God between contemplating the essences and creating God (see Zbigniew
Janowski, Augustinian-Cartesian Index, 2004). Furthermore, the Cartesian
philosophy of nature is primarily directed not against scholasticism but
against a philosophy that was itself a reaction against scholasticism, i. e. the
renaissance naturalism that promoted the unity and dynamism of the natu-
ral realm. Descartes’s system persisted in preserving the dialectics between
the natural and the supernatural that was a central theme of medieval phi-
losophy, of course in a quite different light (mechanicism). The historian of
medieval philosophy Étienne Gilson insisted on the medieval roots of the
Cartesian philosophy (see É. Gilson, 1913 and 1930). Roger Ariew sup-
ports the idea of a clear relation between Descartes and the Scotists but with
no reference to the question of transcendentals except in regard to Descartes’s
Jesuit education (Descartes and the Late Scholastics, 1999).
It is in Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) that we see a clear reference to the
transcendentals. In Kant survives a trace of the medieval usage of the tran-
scendental not as a form of knowledge of transcendental objects but as con-
ditions of possible experience. The system of the concepts which constitute a
priori knowledge may be described as transcendental philosophy. Thus for
Kant transcendentals are on the side of knowledge and not on that of general
1585 The Transcendental

metaphysics or ontology. Furthermore, he distinguishes between the tran-

scendental and the transcendent. This latter is the term used to describe
those principles which ‘profess to pass beyond’ the limits of experience, as
opposed to immanent principles ‘whose application is confined entirely
within the limits of possible experience’ (Critique of Pure Reason A 296/B 352;
see Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, 1995, 399).
Kant’s reference to the medieval theory of the transcendentals is made in
the following passage:

“In the transcendental philosophy of the ancients there is included yet another
chapter containing pure concepts of the understanding which, though not enu-
merated among the categories, must, on their view, be ranked as a priori concepts
of objects … They are propounded in the proposition, so famous among the
Schoolmen, quodlibet ens est unum, verum, bonum … These supposedly tran-
scendental predicates of things are in fact, nothing but logical requirements
and criteria of all knowledge of things in general, and prescribe for such knowl-
edge the categories of quantity, namely, unity, plurality, and totality” (Immanuel
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 12, transl. by Norman Kemp Smith, 1958, 118, cit.
in John P. Doyle, 783).

As to the sources of Kant’s relation to the theory of the transcendentals, Hans

Leisegang (“Über die Bedeutung des scholastischen Satzes: ‘Quodlibet ens
est unum, verum, bonum seu perfectum’ und seine Bedeutung in Kants Kri-
tik der reinen Vernunft,” Kant-Studien 20/4, 1915, 403–21) has showed
some continuity from the Medievals to Kant. The philosophical link be-
tween them was according to Leisegang, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and
his Ontologia and Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) and his Metaphysica.
Norbert Hinske (Kants Weg zur Transzendentalphilosophie, 1970) thinks that it
was rather Wolff than Baumgarten that influenced Kant while Ignacio
Angelelli (“On the Origins of Kant’s Transcendental,” Kant-Studien 63,
1972, 117–22) points more to Baumgarten. For Cornelio Fabro (“Il tran-
scendentale moderno e il transcendentale tomistico,” Angelicum 60, 1983,
543–58) the precise enumeration of transcendentals goes back to late schol-
astic philosophy of modern era, to Suárez then and not to medieval thinkers
like Thomas Aquinas.
A special theme in the research on the survival and the evolution of me-
dieval transcendentals is the following: Modern times saw the introduc-
tion of the notion of ‘supertranscendentals’; by this it is implied the notion
of ‘impossible objects’ like the imaginary beings or the fictions. We per-
ceive this and relevant notions in Francisco Suárez, in Thomas Compton
Carleton S.J. (1591–1666), and also in Domingo Soto O.P. (1495–1560), Pedro
da Fonseca S.J. (1528–1599), the Calvinist Clemens Timpler (1568–1624),
The Transcendental 1586

and John Baptist Clauberg (1622–1665), also a Calvinist. A logical use of the
term is made in the Dominican John of St Thomas (a.k.a. John Poinsot,
1589–1644); other uses in Sebastian Izquierdo S.J. (1601–1681), Antonio
Bernaldo de Quiros S.J. (1613–1668), Silvester Mauro S.J. (1619–1687), Luis
de Lossada S.J. (1681–1748), André Semery S.J. (1630–1717). It is not claimed
that supertranscendentalism influenced Kant, but there are reasons to make
us believe that supertranscendentality theories might have constituted the
‘missing link’ between medieval philosophy and Kant on transcendentals
(see J. P. Doyle, in Bibliography).
The philosophy of the Protestants (“Protestantische Schulphilosophie”)
made various contributions to the study of the transcendental: Rudolph
Goclenius (1547–1628) spoke about the ‘transcendens physicum’ which
is neither a logical nor a metaphysical supra-categorial notion; Christoph
Scheibler (1589–1653) delimited the “transcendentia” according to their
nobility, the divine ones being the highest; Johann Scharf (1595–1660) and
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1631–1689) adopted a mixed philosophical
and theological view and Johann Adam Scherzer (1628–1683) the theory
of ‘supertranscendentals’; Abraham Calovius (1612–1686) and Andreas
Rüdiger (1673–1731) related more clearly the transcendental to ontology.
Apart from these protestant attempts, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) insisted
that the transcendental must be detached from the idea of First Philosophy
while the study of transcendentals as mere concepts is put forward by Johann
Amos Comenius (1592–1670), Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld (1605–1655),
Joachim Jungius (1587–1657), and John Wilkins (1614–1672), and their con-
ceptual ambivalence is assessed by Étienne Chauvin (1640–1725).
The degree of our understanding of medieval transcendentalism is also
due to the question of the scope of the medieval philosophical histori-
ography. It is commonly believed that the renewal of interest in medieval
thought, and in particular Neo-Thomism, is related to Pope Leo XIII’s encyc-
lical Aeterni Patris (1879) although the Dominicans Antonio Goudin
(1639–1685) and Charles-Rene Billuar (18th century) had preceded in their
writings the papal encyclical. It was over a century since the Historica Critica
Philosophiae (1742–1767) by Jacob Brucker (1696–1770), a history of phi-
losophy that was emblematic of Enlightenment, had consumed the separ-
ation between philosophy and theology stating that the scholastics dogma-
tized with only the appearance of philosophy. The virtue of such a schematic
position is that it leaves open a problem that will constitute a challenge. The
challenge was met in Germany by scholars like the Catholic Romantic Joseph
Görres (1776–1848) and the Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen (1811–1883) who in his
Philosophie der Vorzeit (1860–63) defended the philosophical value of the medi-
1587 The Transcendental

evals, notably of Aquinas. Alasdair MacIntyre (Three Rival Versions of Moral

Inquiry, 1990) perceived in Kleutgen’s version of medieval philosophy a de-
gree of Kantism. Albert Stöckl (1823–1895) and his Geschichte der Philosophie
des Mittelalters (1864–1866) saw the historical problems of medieval transcen-
dentalism through the conceptual tandem of faith and reason. Maurice de
Wulf (1867–1947) and his Histoire de la philosophie médiévale (1900) will conse-
crate this approach. According to Inglis, the work of Étienne Gilson
(1884–1978) and the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (ed. Nor-
man Kretzmann et al., 1988) conform also to this model (J. Inglis, in Bib-
liography). For Fernand van Steenberghen (1904–1993) (Introduction à
l’étude de la philosophie médiévale, 1974, 46ff.), there are two main approaches
to the history of medieval philosophy: the rationalist approach and the theo-
logical one (often Neo-thomist but not only). Thus the medieval transcen-
dental is to be seen through the conceptual framework of faith and reason.
Even analytic philosophy approaches the medieval transcendentality
through the conceptual tandem of faith and reason (see Faith and Philosophical
Analysis, ed. H. A. Harris, Chr. J. Insole, 2005).
For a series of religious thinkers, the transcendental is seen as complete
otherness. For instance, Karl Barth (1886–1968) condemned the notion of
the analogy of being following in that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) for
whom divine transcendentality is complete otherness. Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889–1951), in advancing counter-privacy, i. e., the impossibility of epis-
temic privacy, may be seen as possibly contributing to an ecstatic disposition
toward religious transcendence. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) holds an in-
teresting position due to the fact that he inherits both the kierkegaardian
heritage and the historiographical one. His habilitation thesis was on the
theory of categories in Duns Scotus (Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns
Scotus, 1916) (see Ruedi Imbach, “Heidegger et la philosophie médiévale,”
Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 49 [2002]: 426–34). As to tran-
scendentality, Heidegger, in contrast to Kant, focuses on ontology rather
than epistemology and on the difference between casual being (Dasein) and
Being. The question of the medieval transcendentals may be seen as part of
the Heideggerian history of the oblivion of being, a history that coincides
with the full evolution of Western metaphysics since Plato. This evolution is
defined as ‘ontotheology,’ a term that we find also in Kant. Ontotheology
refers to a theology of being that we may find in the Scholastics and which is
more or less identified with pure metaphysics. In an attempt to escape the
overwhelming transcendental of being, there is an effort to turn to the study
of henology and the question of the one (from the Greek hen=one; see W.J.
Hankey, “Aquinas’ First Principle, Being or Unity?,” Dionysius 4 [1980]:
The Transcendental 1588

133–72). The Heideggerian influence is combined with poststructuralist and

postmodernist approaches. Thus, the transcendentals, in Thomas Aquinas
in particular, are seen as part of a dialectics of the same and the other: “For a
being to be some ‘thing’ (res) and ‘one’ thing (unum), it must leave itself be-
hind and affirm itself as ‘other’ than another (aliud quid), thereby returning to
itself” (see Philipp W. Rosemann, 136). It is an effort to escape ontotheology
by discerning parallel ways of thinking in medieval transcendentality. Post-
modernism, situated beyond faith and reason, is open to the question of the
historical a priori of the medieval transcendental and to its transcultural di-
mensions.

Select Bibliography
Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas
(Leiden: Brill, 1996); John P. Doyle, “Between Transcendental and Transcendental:
The Missing Link?,” Review of Metaphysics 50 (June 1997): 783–815; Ludger Honne-
felder, “Metaphysics as a Discipline: From the ‘Transcendental Philosophy of
the Ancients’ to Kant’s Notion of Transcendental Philosophy,” The Medieval Heritage
in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory: 1400–1700, ed. R. L. Friedman and
L. O. Nielsen (Berlin: Springer, 2003), 53–74; Étienne Gilson, Études sur le rôle de la
pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien (Paris: Vrin, 1930); Étienne Gilson,
Index scolastico-cartésien (Paris: Alcan, 1913); Jorge J. E. Gracia, “The Transcendentals
in the Middle Ages: An Introduction,” Topoi 11 (1992): 113–20; Jorge J.E. Gracia,
“Suárez and the Doctrine of the Transcendentals,” Topoi 11 (1992): 121–33; John Ing-
lis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (Leiden:
Brill, 1998); Jeff Malpas, From Kant to Davidson: Philosophy and the Idea of the Transcenden-
tal (New York and London: Routledge, 2003); Philipp W. Rosemann, Understanding
Scholastic Thought with Foucault (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999); Charles Trinkaus,
Italian Humanism and Scholastic Theology (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate/Variorum,
1999), 327–48; Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Meta-
physics of Duns Scotus (St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 1946).

George Arabatzis
1589 Typology

Typology

A. Definition
The term ‘typology’ refers to a central theological concept of the Middle
Ages, which was taken up with enthusiasm in medieval art, architecture and
literature. Against the background of the conviction of medieval scholars
that the Bible was the Word of God whose various parts formed a unity, and
that the Old and New Testaments could only give the history of the saving
actions of God when read together, the two great textual corpora of Holy
Scripture were linked in a typological interpretation. The Old Testament was
viewed as the ‘type’, that is, an imperfect pre-figuration of the New Testa-
ment, which was at once the fulfillment and perfection of the Old Covenant
and its expression in a higher form. The Old Testament was read in terms
of Christ, and searched for motifs, scenes and figures which could be inter-
preted as pre-figurations of the events of the New Testament. Equally,
connections between scenes from the history of Israel and New Testament
incidents were used to make the aspect of salvation history more apparent in
the latter. Each Testament cast light on the other: they merely represented
two different ‘eras’ in the history of the people of God (‘Law’ and ‘Grace’).
However, as salvation history was understood as a process of the growth
and maturing of the Body of Christ, the typological interpretation of the
Bible always implied a denigration of the Hebrew Bible, because from the
perspective of Christian exegetes, salvation was only imperfectly present
within it and still required perfection in Christ. The intellectual model of
typology not merely contrasted ‘pre-figuration’ and ‘fulfillment’, but also re-
garded the latter motif of each pair as superior, as the New Testament was ul-
timately viewed as the more important and valid revelation.
The foundations for typology, as an intellectual construct, were laid by
Paul. His epistles contain many contrasts between Old Testament ‘types’ and
New Testament ‘anti-types:’ Christ is seen as the new, ‘better’ Adam, the sav-
ing baptism of Christ in the Jordan linked to Noah’s rescuing ark, and
Jonah’s captivity in the belly of the whale compared with Christ’s three day
rest in the grave. These classic typological pairs, which played an important
role in theology and art throughout the Middle Ages were thus already avail-
able in the New Testament itself. In the writings of the Fathers, among them
Origen, Ambrose and Augustine, the typological model underwent exten-
sive further development in which they identified numerous contrasting
Biblical pairs, for instance the sacrifice and rescue of Isaac and Christ, Daniel
in the lions’ den and the death and resurrection of Christ, the Mosaic Law and
Typology 1590

the Gospel, the bronze snake and the Cross, Eve and Mary, etc. These pairs of
motifs do not merely appear in the Biblical commentaries, but appeared in
art and literature. Medieval stained glass and illumination brought the ar-
tistic representation of typological motifs to a high pitch, and they remain
present in hymns, religious instruction, and sermons even today. Famous
examples of medieval art with typological content include the Bernward
door at Hildesheim cathedral, the Biblia Pauperum, the Klosterneuburg Altar,
and the Bible moralisée. To this day, the Roman Catholic church teaches the
validity of the interpretation of the Old Testament as the imperfect pre-figu-
ration of the New.

B. History of Research
Older scholarship centered on the investigation and description of the
methods of typological exegesis in the patristic and medieval periods, and in
the interpretation of individual works of art using typological motifs. For a
considerable time, typology was chiefly a topic of interest for biblical scholars,
and also art historians and church historians. Of the German theological
studies, those by Goppelt (Typos: Die typologische Deutung des Alten Testaments
im Neuen, 1939) and von Rad (Theologie des Alten Testaments, 1957–1960)
stand out. The discussion as to the legitimacy of typological exegesis cuts to
the heart of Christian theology, involving as it does reflection on the appro-
priate hermeneutic method for the interpretation of the central revelation,
as well as the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. von Revent-
low gives a systematic review of the introduction of typological interpre-
tation by the church fathers in his ground-breaking work Epochen der Bibelaus-
legung (1990–2001). The monumental account by Henri de Lubac’s Exégèse
médiévale: Les quatre sens de l’Écriture (1959–1964) remains unsurpassed and
authoritative for the understanding of medieval exegesis; it describes the
typological method in detail and with countless examples. A foundational
introduction can also be found in Beryl Smalley (The Study of the Bible in
the Middle Ages, 1952). The article on “Typologie” in the Lexikon der christlichen
Ikonographie by Peter Bloch (1972) is relevant to typology in medieval art.
The most substantial and comprehensive lexicographic account of typologi-
cal exegesis and its history (with a detailed theological literature review) can
be found in the Theologische Realenzyklopädie, by Stuart George Hall (2002).

C. Major Contributors
The question as to whether it is methodologically permissible and histori-
cally appropriate to apply typological structures, that is, the relation in terms
of salvation history of prophecy and fulfillment to non-Biblical cases, par-
1591 Typology

ticularly in the secular narratives of the Middle Ages, remains controversial.

The first person to apply typology to courtly romance in the field of German
studies was Julius Schwietering (Typologisches in mittelalterlicher Dichtung,
1925). He was of the opinion that certain poets and their works, such as Hein-
rich von Veldeke’s Eneas and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, existed in
a typological context, and contrasted classical and Arthurian chivalry in the
sense of preparation and perfection. Wolfram’s Christian heroes, he argued,
exceeded and replaced the pagan-classical protagonists of Veldeke. Schwie-
tering’s pupil Friedrich Ohly then developed and systematized this
approach (Synagoge und Ecclesia: Typologisches in mittelalterlicher Dichtung, 1966;
Halbbiblische und außerbiblische Typologie, 1976; Typologie als Denkform der Ge-
schichtsbetrachtung, 1988). He viewed, for example, the stories about the
protagonists’ parents in Parzival and in Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan as
imperfect pre-figurations of the main narrative and its protagonists, and saw
the literature of the Middle Ages as fundamentally informed by the mode
of thought and structure of progression (“Steigerung”) from a preceding state
of the world by a later. Therefore, he classes numerous examples from art and
literature as typology if they included a moment of ‘progression,’ even if they
did not contain identifiable directly Biblical aspects. Many literary critics
accepted this significant expansion of the typology concept, but others did
not. Particularly vehement opposition came from Werner Schröder (Zum
Typologie-Begriff und Typologie-Verständnis in der mediävistischen Literaturwissen-
schaft, 1977). He believed that the term typology should not be used in liter-
ary criticism, unless the place in question explicitly referred to Biblical mo-
tifs or figures, and a moment of progression relating to salvation history
could be clearly seen. He therefore recommended dispensing with the term
entirely where secular narrative was concerned, and that the structures of
medieval novels be more suitably described using established philological
categories and termini.

D. Current Research
Although the Roman-Catholic church continues to hold to the concept of
typological exegesis and its influence is felt in liturgy and catechesis, aca-
demic Biblical scholars are now somewhat more cautious in its use. While no
theologian would deny that large parts of the New Testament were written
typologically and can only be understood with reference to the Old, other ap-
proaches, such as the historical-critical or the structuralist, are treated as
equally valid. Modern theology is particularly concerned to avoid the down-
grading of the Old Testament or the treatment of Judaism as a deficient pre-
cursor of Christianity, which tends to be implicit in typology (cf. Wilfried
Typology 1592

Härle, Dogmatik, 2000, 124–27). Literary critics and art historians, too, are
more cautious with the term than was the case some years ago. As a conse-
quence of the debate around the subject, the standard of proof of typological
relationships is higher than formerly. In German studies, narratology and its
concepts and terminology has largely replaced typological approaches, par-
ticularly in the great courtly romances. However, the discussion about the
appropriateness of typological categories in philology did not just lead to a
more precise analysis of textual structures, but also produced several import-
ant research projects. In particular, the school around Friedrich Ohly pro-
duced important work in which the concept of typology in medieval litera-
ture is described, and offers helpful catalogues of motifs on the allegorical
and typological meanings of scenes and figures but also of objects and things
such as stones, animals, colors, and numbers.

Select Bibliography
Julius Schwietering, “Typologisches in mittelalterlicher Dichtung,” Vom Werden des
deutschen Geistes: Festgabe für Gustav Ehrismann, ed. Paul Merker and Wolfgang
Stammler (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1925), 40–55; Leonhard Goppelt,
Typos: Die typologische Deutung des Alten Testaments im Neuen (Guetersloh: Bertelsmann,
1939); Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952);
Gerhard von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Munich: Kaiser, 1957–1960);
Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l’écriture, 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier,
1959–1964); Friedrich Ohly, “Synagoge und Ecclesia: Typologisches in mittelalter-
licher Dichtung,” Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch,
ed. Paul Wilpert in collaboration with Willehad Paul Eckert (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1966), 351–69; Peter Bloch, “Typologie,” LCI 4 (1972): 395–404; Friedrich
Ohly, “Halbbiblische und außerbiblische Typologie,” Simboli e simbologia nell’alto
medioevo, Ventitreesima settimana di studio, Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medio-
evo (Spoleto: Presso La Sede del Centro, 1976); Werner Schröder, “Zum Typologie-
Begriff und Typologie-Verständnis in der mediävistischen Literaturwissenschaft,” The
Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values, ed. Harald Scholler (Tuebingen:
Max Niemeyer, 1977), 64–85; David C. Fowler, “Bible,” DMA 2 (1983): 212–15; Fried-
rich Ohly, “Typologie als Denkform der Geschichtsbetrachtung,” Typologie, Inter-
nationale Beiträge zur Poetik, ed. Volker Bohn (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988),
22–63; Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, 4 vols. (Munich: C. H.
Beck, 1990–2001); John E. Alsup, “Typology,” ABD 6 (1992): 682–85; Josef Enge-
mann, “Typologie,” LMA 8 (1999): 1133–35; Wilfried Härle, Dogmatik (Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2nd rev. ed. 2000); Stuart G. Hall, “Typologie,” TRE 34
(2002): 208–24.

Heiko Hartmann
1593 Violence

Violence

A. General Definition
Violence is the intentional use of force against people or property. It is an ex-
pression of power that may also be interpreted as aggression, the physical
and non-physical violation of self or society (Heinz-Horst Schrey, “Gewalt/
Gewaltlosigkeit I: Ethisch,” TRE, vol. 13, ed. Gerhard Müller, 1987, 168–78).
All human history has been marked by violence, including violent acts such
as assault, rape, torture, murder, combat, warfare, and genocide. The prac-
tice of violence in the Middle Ages has been preserved in a wide variety of
sources: chronicles, behavioral manuals, legal treatises, heroic epics, courtly
romances, paintings, and tapestries. By analyzing these sources, the causes of
violence, its consequences, and the critique of its abuse in the Middle Ages
can be observed. Scholars can also gain insight into the customs, rituals,
religious beliefs, and cultural attitudes that not only validated its use, but
also endeavored to limit its scope and provide prescriptions for its preven-
tion and peaceful resolution (Peter Dinzelbacher, Mentalität und Religiosi-
tät des Mittelalters, 2003, 403–28; Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature, ed. Al-
brecht Classen, 2004; A Great Effusion of Blood?, ed. Mark D. Meyerson et
al., 2004; William H. Jackson, “Court Literature and Violence in the High
Middle Ages,” German Literature of the High Middle Ages, ed. Will Hasty, 2006,
263–76). Most often the medieval church and state determined which forms
of violence were legitimate or illegitimate, sanctioning violence that upheld
their cultural dominance, maintained social hierarchy, protected land and
territory, and preserved law and order, while condemning violence that
undermined their authority (Gadi Algazi, Herrengewalt und Gewalt der Herren
im späten Mittelalter, 1996; Guy Halsall, “Introduction,” Violence and Society
in the Early Medieval West, ed. id., 1998, 1–45; Gewalt und ihre Legitimation im
Mittelalter, ed. Günther Mensching, 2003).

B. Seminal Research
Neither the Dictionary of the Middle Ages nor the Lexikon des Mittelalters offer an
entry on “violence,” but both do provide discussions of crime and medieval
jurisprudence. Early studies comment on issues related to medieval violence
Violence 1594

such as the violent tenor and impulsive nature of the Middle Ages, warfare,
and feudalism (Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, 1989 [1919];
Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 1961 [1939/1940]; Jan F. Verbruggen, The Art
of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, 1997 [1954]; Georges Duby,
The Three Orders, 1980 [1978]). However, the study of medieval violence as
a specialized topic did not truly begin until the 1990s. Influential to the
increase in scholarly interest in violence at this time was Michel Foucault’s
groundbreaking Discipline and Punish (1975), the rediscovery of Norbert
Elias’s seminal Civilizing Process (2000 [1939]) in the 1980s, and René Gir-
ard’s Violence and the Sacred (1988 [1972]). Research on violence in the Middle
Ages began in earnest after Christiane Raynaud published her La violence au
Moyen Âge (1990; see also David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 1996;
The Final Argument, ed. Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon, 1998;
Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, 1999).

C. Combating Violence
Violence was considered a legitimate form of conflict resolution and articu-
lation of political and social power in the Middle Ages, of which warfare and
warrior ethos were two of its starkest expressions (Philippe Contamine,
War in the Middle Ages, 1984 [1980], Medieval Warfare, ed. Maurice Keen, 1999;
Helen J. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare, 2003). But contrary to the popular
image of the Middle Ages as an era defined solely by unrestrained and
barbaric violence, there were many efforts by the church and nobility to regu-
late, minimize, and avoid violence. Princes’ Mirrors, legal and religious
texts, and political treatises such as John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (1159)
attest to the importance medieval society placed upon the regulation of
violence (Udo Friedrich, “Die Zähmung des Heros: Der Diskurs der Ge-
walt und Gewaltregulierung im 12. Jahrhundert,” Mittelalter, ed. Jan-Dirk
Müller and Horst Wenzel, 1999, 149–79). As the essays in Conflict in Medi-
eval Europe (ed. Warren C. Brown and Piotr Górecki, 2003) illustrate, medi-
eval conflict resolution took many forms, including judicial courts, penal-
ties, retribution, and settlements (see also Peace and Negotiation, ed. Diane
Wolfthal, 2000). In fact, mediation and arbitration carried out by kings,
queens, princes and bishops were integral to resolving conflict in a non-viol-
ent manner, as Gerd Althoff (“Genugtuung [satisfactio]: Zur Eigenart güt-
licher Konfliktbeilegung im Mittelalter,” Modernes Mittelalter, ed. Joachim
Heinzle, 1994, 247–65) and Hermann Kamp (Friedensstifter und Vermittler
im Mittelalter, 2001) have shown (see also Träger und Instrumentarien des Friedens
im hohen und späten Mittelalter, ed. Johannes Fried, 1996). And even when
violence was unavoidable, accords like the Peace and Truce of God reform
1595 Violence

movements in the 11th century and the Landfrieden (territorial peaces) in the
12th and 13th centuries attempted to control aggression. These peaces in-
tended to check the rampant violence of feuds, protect property, provide im-
munity for non-combatants, and create conventions limiting battle (Joachim
Gernhuber, Die Landfriedensbewegung in Deutschland bis zum Mainzer Reich-
slandfrieden von 1235, 1952; The Peace of God, ed. Thomas Head and Richard
Landes, 1992; Dominique Barthélémy, L’an mil et la paix de Dieu, 1999).
A number of studies have explored the importance of ritual to the regu-
lation of violence in the Middle Ages. Gerd Althoff’s work has been par-
ticularly important to this approach (Die Macht der Rituale, 2003). His Spiel-
regeln der Politik im Mittelalter (1997) demonstrates how ritual functioned as
a form of restraint that allowed for peaceful conflict resolution, even after
violent disputes (see also the essays by id. and Hanna Vollrath in Medieval
Concepts of the Past, ed. Gerd Althoff et al., 2002, 71–110). Significantly,
ritual also justified violence, propagating the idea that the nobility were
sanctioned to use violence, while attempting to limit the impact of violence
on that very same group (Scott E. Pincikowski, “Violence and Pain at the
Court,” Violence, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004, 97–114). For instance, tourna-
ments and knightly competitions such as the bûhurt, which had strict rules
of engagement, provided the nobility a safer outlet to prove their honor (Wil-
liam H. Jackson, “Zank und Zwist bei Waffenspielen,” bickelwort und wildiu
mære, ed. Dorthee Lindemann et al., 1995, 408–23; Juliet Vale, “Violence
and the Tournament,” Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard Kaeuper,
2000, 143–58). Moreover, rituals evolved in battle so at least members of the
nobility had a better chance of surviving conflict. As Christoph Huber’s and
Martin H. Jones’s contributions to the volume on Spannungen und Konflikte
menschlichen Zusammenlebens in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (ed. Kurt
Gärtner et al., 1996, 59–90) demonstrate, the ritual of granting mercy to a
defeated opponent depended on the opponent’s social status and provided a
means by which the victor could win honor without killing.
The predominant theme of unrestrained violence in medieval literature
may point to another, albeit futile, attempt to regulate violence in medieval
society. Jan-Dirk Müller shows how the Nibelungenlied is an unusual heroic
epic, depicting the negative consequences for society when limits on violence
break down and unrestrained violence becomes epidemic (Spielregeln für
den Untergang, 1998). Albrecht Classen concentrates on communication in
epics, poems, and romances, showing how good communication deters viol-
ence, whereas failed communication leads to disastrous violence (Verzweif-
lung und Hoffnung, 2002). For Richard W. Kaeuper, the ambivalent nature of
violence in English and French courtly literature reveals that literary depic-
Violence 1596

tions provide prescriptions for the proper use of violence rather than descrip-
tions of historical reality (Chivalry and Violence, 1999). In fact, even as the
courtly poets idealize combat (Martin H. Jones, “Chrétien, Hartmann, and
the Knight as Fighting Man,” Chrétien de Troyes and the German Middle Ages,
ed. id. and Roy Wisbey, 1993, 85–109; Thomas Bein, “Hie slac, dâ stich!: Zur
Ästhetik des Tötens in europäischen Iwein-Dichtungen,” LiLi 28 [March
1998]: 38–58), they cannot conceal the destabilizing potential violence had
for the nobility’s hegemony, explaining why the negative effects of violence
appear amidst the refinement of the court (Scott E. Pincikowski, Bodies of
Pain, 2002). But the critique of violence did not remain at the subtle level of
symbolism in literature. There are many examples for medieval poets criti-
cizing armed conflict and advocating for peace (Stefan Hohmann, Frieden-
skonzepte, 1992; Albrecht Hagenlocher, Der guote vride, 1992).

D. Violence and Civilization

Norbert Elias has been highly influential in the study of medieval violence.
In his Civilizing Process (1997 [1939]) he posits that the centralization of politi-
cal power at the courts of the 16th and 17th centuries created a monopoly of
violence, decreasing the need for physical force as an expression of power and
emphasizing instead refined behavior and the restrained use of violence (for
critical evaluations of Elias, see Hans Peter Duerr, Der Mythos vom Zivilisa-
tionsprozeß, 5 vols., 1988–2002; Norbert Elias und die Menschenwissenschaften,
ed. Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, 1996; Jonathan Fletcher, Violence and Civili-
zation, 1997; Michael Hinz, Der Zivilisationsprozess: Mythos oder Realität?, 2002;
Albrecht Classen, “Naked Men in Medieval German Literature,” Sexuality
in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. id., 2008, 143–69). Elias sug-
gests that the Middle Ages were less civilized than the early modern period
and Medieval Studies have fruitfully responded to his theory, searching for
the roots of courtly behavior and evaluating violence in medieval culture.
C. Stephen Jaeger (The Origins of Courtliness, 1985) identifies the beginning
of the civilizing process at the German imperial courts of the 10th through
the 12th centuries. And there is plenty of textual evidence that shows the in-
tegral role that self-control played in the development of medieval courtly
culture. Fictional works such as the anonymous Ruodlieb and Wolfram von
Eschenbach’s Parzival emphasize the importance of self-restraint as much
as medieval education and etiquette manuals such as Hugh of St. Victor’s
De institutione novitiorum and Thomasin von Zirclaere’s der Welsche Gast do
(Joachim Bumke, “Höfischer Körper – Höfische Kultur,” Modernes Mittel-
alter, ed. Joachim Heinzle, 1994, 67–102). However, self-control does not
eliminate violence; social conventions may actually modify its use for politi-
1597 Violence

cal or social purposes, making violence an integral part of the civilizing pro-
cess. As the essays in Anger’s Past (Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., 1998) demon-
strate, violent emotions like anger are as symbolic and ritualized as other
forms of courtliness (see also Irmgard Gephart, Zorn der Nibelungen, 2005).
Moreover, as William H. Jackson (Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany, 1994)
and Richard W. Kaeuper (Chivalry and Violence, 1999; id., “Chivalry and the
‘Civilizing Process’,” Violence in Medieval Society, ed. id., 2000, 21–35) show,
chivalric modes of behavior promote the use of violence, connecting prowess
in battle to honor and glory (see also Maurice Keen, Chivalry, 1984). Will
Hasty’s analysis of German courtly literature in Art of Arms (2002) confirms
these observations by demonstrating how violence is a constitutive part of
courtliness and knightly identity.

E. Religious Violence
Christianity spawned many forms of violence in the Middle Ages. Medieval
mystics and ascetics, for instance, turned to self-inflicted violence to repent
and show devotion to God by imitating Christ’s suffering (Giles Constable,
Attitudes Toward Self-inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages, 1982; Richard Kieck-
hefer, Unquiet Souls, 1984; Niklaus Largier, Lob der Peitsche, 2001). More-
over, violence inflicted by others often held an uneasy and sometimes posi-
tive position within Christian belief. The extreme tortures endured by
martyrs were often reinterpreted as a sign of devotion and spiritual purity
(Caroline W. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 1991; Sarah Kay, “The
Sublime Body of the Martyr,” Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W.
Kaeuper, 2000). At the same time, violence against Christians could be used
as a means to redirect violence at groups perceived to be a threat to Christian-
ity, explaining why medieval images and texts often depict violence com-
mitted by pagans, Muslims, and Jews as unusually cruel (Daniel Baraz,
Medieval Cruelty, 2003). Indeed, the righteousness of medieval Christian
monotheism incited zealous violence against the religious Other (Robert I.
Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, 2007 [1987]), whether that
violence was directed outward against Muslims during the Crusades or in-
wards against Jews or other Christians as during the Albigensian Crusade
(1209–1229), with both types of violence often occurring simultaneously
(Religious Violence between Christians and Jews, ed. Anna S. Abulafia, 2002).
In fact, throughout the Middle Ages, church authorities sacralized violence
in order to protect the church from external threats and establish peace
between Christians in Europe (Tomaž Mastnak, Crusading Peace, 2002; Leo
D. Lefebure, “Authority, Violence, and the Sacred at the Medieval Court,”
Violence, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2004, 37–66). Examples for this sacralization
Violence 1598

include the following: the church’s invocation of the concept of the Holy War
to justify the Crusades (The Holy War, ed. Thomas P. Murphy, 1976); medi-
eval commentators’ use of Saint Augustine’s definition of a just war in his
City of God to legitimize killing in battle; and the transformation of secular
soldiers into militia Christi (soldiers of Christ) during the High Middle
Ages with the promise of indulgences for killing heathens or dying in the
Crusades (James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, 1969).
Sacralized violence was also propagated in literature, including crusade
lyrics and the chanson de geste genre such as the Old French Chanson de Roland
and the Middle High German Rolandslied by Priest Konrad (Friedrich W.
Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Kreuzzugsdichtung, 1960; Ulrich Ernst, “Kollek-
tive Aggression in der Chanson de Roland und im Rolandslied des Pfaffen Kon-
rad,” Euphorion 82 [1988]: 211–25; D. A. Trotter, Medieval French Literature
and the Crusades, 1988).

F. Gendered Violence
A hierarchy of violence existed in the Middle Ages. In many cases, free
noblemen were afforded the authority to inflict violence in public and pri-
vate spheres, whereas common men were mostly limited to the family.
Noble- and common women were more restricted in their use of violence
than men. They were limited to expressions of violence that adhered to their
gender roles and did not disturb the status quo. Acceptable violence for
women was self-inflicted. Cultural ideals centered around the ability of
women to endure pain and suffering while showing devotion to God or
mourning for a loved one (Caroline W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 1987;
Urban Küsters, “Klagefiguren: Vom höfischen Umgang mit der Trauer,”
An den Grenzen höfischer Kultur, ed. Gert Kaiser, 1991, 9–75; Scott E. Pinci-
kowski, Bodies of Pain, 2002, 91–132). Moreover, medieval women were
often the objects of male violence. In the medieval family, for example, the
husband possessed the right to inflict corporal punishment on his wife,
children, and servants if they transgressed his absolute authority (Andreas
Roth, “Züchtigungsrecht,” HRG, vol. 5, 1998, 1781–84). Medieval legal
texts, chronicles, epics, romances, and farces indicate that domestic and
marital violence were problems in medieval society and held an uneasy posi-
tion within the medieval cultural consciousness. There are discernible mo-
ments of critique, narratives that upend the hierarchy of violence, but most
often these texts reinforce the status quo (Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts,
ed. Eve Salisbury et al., 2002; Sara M. Butler, The Language of Abuse: Marital
Violence in Later Medieval England, 2007). As the essays in Violence against Women
in Medieval Texts (Anna Roberts, ed., 1998) demonstrate, popular narratives
1599 Violence

perpetuated misogynistic societal tendencies while also normalizing viol-

ence against women (see also Elisabeth Lienert, “Zur Diskursivität der
Gewalt in Wolfram’s Parzival,” Wolfram-Studien XVII [2002]: 223–45; Robert
Scheuble, mannes manheit, vrouwen meister, 2005). Nowhere is this normaliz-
ation more evident than by sexual violence (Stephanie H. Jed, Chaste Think-
ing, 1989; Representing Rape, ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M.
Rose, 2001). Rape was considered a serious crime and sin in medieval so-
ciety, a legal issue tied to male property rights or a religious issue connected
to the cultural ideal of virginity. But as Kathryn Gravdal (Ravishing Maidens,
1991) argues, rape is a constitutive narrative device in legal and literary texts,
a discourse defined by men that reinforced male domination and female sub-
ordination through either eroticization or minimization of the violent act.
Corinne J. Saunders (Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England,
2001) criticizes Gravdal for over-generalizing, arguing that while misogyn-
istic attitudes toward rape were prevalent, other more critical discourses
existed in medieval culture (see also Jocelyn Catty, Writing Rape, Writing
Women in Early Modern England, 1999), often centering on the crucial issue of
consent (Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou, 1993,
223–89). Diane Wolfthal makes a similar argument in her pioneering
Images of Rape (1999), showing that the valorization of “heroic rape” in medi-
eval art represents but one mode of cultural expression and that “alter-
native” depictions of rape existed which condemned sexual violence.

G. Pedagogic and Mnemonic Violence

Pedagogy and violence were closely connected in the Middle Ages. Not only
was violence considered an acceptable means of disciplining children, it was
also important part of medieval education. As Jody Enders shows in Medi-
eval Theater of Cruelty (1999), violence and the threat of violence, the so-called
“rule of the rod,” was believed to keep students focused and help them mem-
orize grammar rules, liturgy, and even musical scales (Bruce W. Holsinger,
Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture, 2001, 259–92). Violence and mne-
motechnics are therefore interlinked. As Enders’s studies demonstrate
(see also id., “Rhetoric, Coercion, and the Memory of Violence,” Criticism and
Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. Rita Copeland, 1996, 24–55; id., “Emotion
Memory and the Medieval Performance of Violence,” Theatre Survey 38
[1997]: 139–60), the rhetorical tradition of the art of memory emphasized
the recollective and inventive power of violence. For rhetoricians believed
that bloody and shocking images leave lasting impressions upon the reader,
viewer, and listener, making it easier to recall the image and the message that
image meant to convey, whether for didactic, ideological, or political pur-
Violence 1600

poses (Marjorie C. Woods, “Rape and the Pedagogical Rhetoric of Sexual

Violence,” Criticism and Dissent, ed. Rita Copeland, 1996, 56–86; Mary Car-
ruthers, “Reading with Attitude, Remembering the Book,” The Book and
the Body, ed. Dolores W. Frese and Katherine O’Brian O’Keeffe, 1997,
1–33). Eugene Vance, for instance, illustrates how violent textual images
may have functioned as important memory aids in the performance of oral
epics, while also commemorating the fallen hero (“Roland and the Poetics of
Memory,” Textual Strategies, ed. Josué V. Harari, 1979, 374–403). In a simi-
lar interpretative move, Urban Küsters (“Narbenschriften: Zur religiösen
Literatur des Spätmittelalters,” Mittelalter, ed. Jan-Dirk Müller and Horst
Wenzel, 1999, 81–109) demonstrates how the depiction of Christ’s broken
body in texts and images act as memoria, a means to remember Christ’s suffer-
ing by invoking different moments of the Passion through specific wounds
and scars. This type of remembrance is also what informs different forms
of imitatio Christi. As flagellants violently whipped their own bodies, they in-
voked the memory of the scourging of Christ (Robert Mills, Suspended Ani-
mation, 2005, 145–76), which suggests that rhetorical violence sometimes
prefigured real violence, providing the script for the violence of religious ex-
pression, pedagogy, and torture.

H. Judicial Violence
Violence was one means by which legal disputes were settled and justice en-
forced in medieval society. In the early Middle Ages, the feud was an accepted
custom or legal means to resolve disputes and repair injured honor, whereby
compensatory justice could take the form of vengeance. Either more violence
or the threat of violence then ended the dispute or led to another form of
legal compensation such as wergild (William I. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peace-
making, 1990; Paul R. Hyams, “Feud in Medieval England,” The Haskins
Society Journal 3 [1992]: 1–21; Antje Holzhauer, Rache und Fehde, 1997; Guy
Halsall, “Introduction,” Violence and Society, ed. id., 1998, 19–29). In the
early to High Middle Ages, courts used the irrational proof of unilateral
ordeals, such as trial by fire or water, and bilateral ordeals, such as trial by
combat, to resolve disputes caused by sexual transgression, treason, murder,
robbery, and heresy. In the Christian form of the ordeal, the immanent jus-
tice of God would intervene on behalf of the innocent and condemn the
guilty party, whereas judicial duels did not depend upon divine intervention
(Vickie L. Ziegler, Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature, 2004,
1–19). As the use of the unilateral ordeal gradually decreased in the 12th cen-
tury, resulting from either social change or clerical opposition (for represen-
tative sides of this debate see Peter Brown, “Society and the Supernatural:
1601 Violence

A Medieval Change,” Daedalus 104 [1975]: 133–51; Robert Bartlett, Trial

by Fire and Water, 1986), the medieval church and state turned to the inquisi-
torial procedure and the proof of confession obtained through torture
(Henry C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition, vol. 1, 1955 [1887]; Edward Peters,
Torture, 1996 [1985], 40–73; Lisa Silverman, Tortured Subjects, 2001, 1–24).
Medieval punishment was in its own right often tantamount to torture, with
judicial violence mirroring the type and extremity of the crime and creating
a spectacle meant to deter future crime (Hubert Drüppel, “Körperverlet-
zung,” LMA, vol. 5, 1991, 1447–48; Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross
and the Wheel, 1999).

Select Bibliography
Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 1998); Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999); A Great Effusion of Blood? Interpreting Medieval Violence,
ed. Mark D. Meyerson et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Violence in
Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook, ed. Albrecht Classen (New York and London:
Routledge, 2004).

Scott Pincikowski
Violence 1602
1603

Textual Genres in the Middle Ages

1604
1605 Adversus-Iudaeos Literature

Adversus-Iudaeos Literature

A. Early Christian Roots

Tertullian’s (ca. 165–235 C.E.) tract Adversus Iudaeos stands at the anacrusis of
a topically broad and wide-spread anti-Judaic literature, from late antiquity
through early modern times. Still, it draws on earlier prototypes from the
Greek, such as the Epistle of Barnabas and Justin’s Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon.
Tertullian’s key position in anti-Judaic literature is due to his broad recep-
tion by the church fathers (cf. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Adver-
sus Judaeos Tradition in the Church Fathers: the Exegesis of Christian Anti-
Judaism,” Aspects of Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Paul E. Szarmach,
1979, 27–50; Michelle Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaiz-
ing in the First and Second Centuries CE, 2004), such as Hippolyt of Rome (Demon-
stratio adversus Iudaeos: PG 10, 787–94), Cyprian of Carthago (Testimoniorum
libri adversus Iudaeos, CCL 3, 1–179), pseudo-Cyprian (Adversus Iudaeos, CCL 4,
265–78; De montibus Sina et Sion, CSEL 3/3, 104–19, and Ad Vigilium episcopum
de iudaica incredulitate, CSEL 3/3, 119–32 – cf. also Hieronymus in PL 26,
386–89), as well as by Novatian (De Trinitate, CCL 4, 1–78, and De cibis Iudaicis,
CCL 4, 89–101 – cf. also Hieronymus in De viris illustribus, cap. 70), Commo-
dian (Instructiones 24, 37–40, ed. Ernst Ludwig, 1878), and other influential
writers. These late antique theologians, including the wide-spread writings
of Augustine (cf. Bernhard Blumenkrantz, “Augustine et les Juifs, Augus-
tine et le Judaïsme,” Recherches augustiniennes 1 [1958]: 225–41), form the
sediment medieval Adversus-Iudaeos-literature could build upon. Hence,
Byzantine treatises share common roots with the Western tradition as well
(cf. Maryse Waegeman, “Les traités Adversus Judaeos. Aspects des relations
judéochrétiennes dans le monde grec,” Byzantion: Revue internationale des
études byzantines 56 [1986]: 295–313; Andreas Külzer, Disputationes Graecae
contra Iudaeos: Untersuchungen zur byzantinischen antijüdischen Dialogliteratur und
ihrem Judenbild, 1999 – for an important critique, cf. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 98
[2005]: 133–35).
Adversus-Iudaeos Literature 1606

B. Adversus-Iudaeos-Literature and Religious Encounter

If we believe writers such as Johannes Chrysostomus and their preaching
against Judaizing (PG 48, 843–942), Judaism still must have been attractive
for many Christians in the 4th century. Adversus-Iudaeos-treatises, so scholars
have argued for long, might have taken up anti-Judaic tendencies of Chris-
tian parenesis, but their main intent was to provide material against those,
who could interpret the Scriptures in a different way. This, they argued,
might have worked against Jewish accounts as well as still existing pagan
criticism, and was felt especially necessary to repudiate Christian beliefs as
mere renegades from Judaism. While not wholly dismissing this dimension
of Adversus-Iudaeos-literature, recent scholarship has accentuated reading
these works as evidences of Jewish-Christian contact. They have character-
ized most of the earlier medieval texts as more admonitory against iudaiz-
antes and homiletic rather than missionary with direct appeal to Jewish com-
munities (Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au Moyen Âge,
1990, 426). After all, for the later Middle Ages they seem to have figured as
“a basic medium for Christian self-expression” (Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters
of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity [1999], 13) rather than follow-
ing the ostensible aim of conversion which gains weight again during the ref-
ormation.

C. Medieval Material
The most comprehensive collection of Adversus-Iudaeos-literature (in
regestae), plus an extensive study of anti-Judaic iconography is provided by
Schreckenberg’s four volumes (1994ff; cf. below). More recent publi-
cations can be found via the Index of Articles in Jewish Studies (Jerusalem), the
yearly bibliographic references in the Revue des Études Juives and the Jewish His-
tory, or via the IMB.
Most writings commonly assumed as Adversus-Iudeaos-literature share
a significant amount of material, though each author chooses his own set of
texts and topics. The basis of all argumentation is the spiritual blindness of
the Jews who – in the eyes of their Christian opponents – find themselves un-
able to correctly interpret the Old Testament.
The literary tradition of Adversus Iudaeos can be traced from the early
through the later Middle Ages, which saw a renaissance of such works
throughout Europe (in general: Amos Funkenstein, “Basic Types of
Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 2 [1971]:
373–82; cf. for Germany: Manuela Niesner, “Wer mit juden well disputiren”:
Deutschsprachige Adversus-Judaeos-Literatur des 14. Jahrhunderts, 2005; see also
her edition of a treatise from ca. 1400, “Über die Duldung der Juden in der
1607 Art Manuals

christlichen Gesellschaft,” Mediaevistik 20 [2007]: 185–214; for England:

Renate Bauer, Adversus judaeos: Juden und Judentum im Spiegel alt- und mittelen-
glischer Texte, 2003; for Portugal: Maria de Lourdes Sirgado Ganho,
“Uma obra de teologia Adversus judaeos de um anónimo português de mea-
dos do século XIV,” Pensamiento medieval hispano 2 [1998]: 1543–50; for Spain:
María L. A. Núñez-Castelo, “La literatura adversus iudaeos: obras de
polémica religiosa (un manuscrito del siglo XV),” Edición y anotación de textos,
ed. Antonio Chas Aguión et al., vol. 1, 1998, 97–102; for Russia: Alexander
I. Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin without a Cat: Adversus Iudaeos Texts in
the Literature of Medieval Russia (988–1504), 2002). One of the particular new
aspects in later medieval Adversus-Iudaeos-treatises is the sporadic recep-
tion of Rabbinic material, as for instance by the Catalan Dominican Ray-
mond Martini (cf. Görge K. Hasselhoff, “Some Remarks on Raymond
Martini’s (ca. 1215/1230–ca. 1284/1294) Use of Moses Maimonides,” Trumah
12 [2002]: 133–48).
Until now, there is no fixed taxonomy of the genre, which comprises
theological treatises of all sorts in both Latin and the vernacular as well as ser-
mons, dialogues or alleged public debates and, on its periphery, several other
forms of pre-modern anti-Judaic literature (cf. Gérard Nahon, “Adversus
Judæos: Sources hébraïques et latines sur la Première Croisade,” Problèmes
d’histoire des religions 7 [1996]: 83–95).

Select Bibliography
Jean Juster, Les juifs dans l’Empire Romain: leur condition juridique, économique et sociale,
vol. 1 (Paris: Geuthner, 1914), 53–76; Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adver-
sus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld, 3 vols., 4th ed. (Frankfurt a. M.
et al.: Peter Lang, 1994–1999) (1st ed. 1982ff); James Carleton Paget, “Adversus
Judaeos literature,” A Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations, Edward Kessler and Neil
Wenbaum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6–8.

Hiram Kümper

Art Manuals

A. Introduction
Medieval manuals on art or artists’ materials are a valuable literary source
for the study of painting in particular and material culture in general. When
placed alongside the surviving visual evidence – from panel painting to
Art Manuals 1608

stained glass, and from manuscript illumination to metalwork – the written

record casts light on the richly articulated workshop practices of the crafts-
man and the conventions associated with the design and execution of the
artefact. Originating from technical rather than theoretical issues, the sur-
viving manuals stress the importance of the work of art as the product of a
particular craft, and the artist as an exponent of a particular technological
process. Among the relevant texts are recipe collections, practical treatises,
and technical handbooks; some survive as short sections within manuscripts
containing miscellaneous texts while others have come down to us as inde-
pendent books.

B. Corpus of the Surviving Key Texts and the Related History

of Scholarship
The oldest and among the most widely disseminated texts on the practical
arts of the Middle Ages is a compendium of recipes for, among other things,
the production and application of dyes and pigments known as the Composi-
tiones variae or Compositiones ad tingenda musiva (Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare,
cod. 490) of the late 8th or early 9th century (Hjalmar Hedfors, Compositiones
ad tingenda musiva, 1932) and the Mappae clavicula, which survives in many
copies with considerable variation (Cyril Smith and John Hawthorne,
“Mappae clavicula: A Little Key to the World of Medieval Techniques,” Trans-
actions of the American Philosophical Society 64 [1974]: 3–122). The latter would
appear to derive from the former (Rozelle Johnson, Compositiones variae,
from Codex 490, Biblioteca Capitolare, Lucca, Italy: An Introductory Study, 1939)
or from a common source in Greek alchemist texts of the 4th century C.E. (Ro-
bert Halleux and Paul Meyvaert, “Les origines de la Mappae Clavicula,”
Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen-Âge 54 [1987]: 7–58). It has
also been proposed that the Lucca Manuscript depends upon a Spanish text
dating from 725, which in turn has its roots in earlier Greek writings (John
Burnam, A Classical Technology edited from Codex Lucensis 490, 1920). The ear-
liest fragments of the Mappae clavicula date from the 9th or 10th century, but
the most complete copy is a 12th-century manuscript in Corning, New York
(Museum of Glass, Phillipps ms. 3715), first published in 1847 (Thomas
Phillipps, “Letter from Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart, F.R.S., F.S.A., Ad-
dressed to Albert Way, Esq., Director, Communicating a Transcript of a MS.
Treatise on the Preparation of Pigments, and on Various Processes of the Dec-
orative Arts Practised during the Middle Ages, Written in the Twelfth Cen-
tury, and Entitled Mappae clavicula,” Archaeologia 32 [1847]: 183–244).
Another compilation of technical recipes with general information con-
cerning the materials of the medieval artist is De coloribus et artibus Roman-
1609 Art Manuals

orum, which is attributed to Heraclius or Eraclius, although the proposal has

been questioned (Albert Ilg, Heraclius, von den Farben und Künsten der Römer:
Original-Text und Übersetzung, 1873). The work now exists in three books:
I and II are in verse and in one hand; III is in prose and the work of more than
one hand. De coloribus can be considered an attempt to revive antique techni-
cal traditions for work with ivory, glass, dyes, and gems. Scholarly disagree-
ment surrounds its date of execution and localization, however, and a recent
proposal (I colori e le arti dei romani e la compilazione pseudo-eracliana, ed. Chiara
Garzya Romano, 1996) places the writing of Books I and II in Italy around
the 8th century and Book III in France or England in the 12th or 13th century.
De coloribus has been seen to contain among the earliest references to the use
of oil as a tempering medium for paint (Rudolph Raspe, A Critical Essay on
Oil-painting; Proving that the art of painting in oil was known before the pretended
discovery of J. and H. van Eyck, 1781; Charles Eastlake, Materials for a History of
Oil Painting, 1847) and is therefore central to debates around the supposed
development of the medium in the Middle Ages.
The manuscript traditions of the Compositiones, the Mappae clavicula, and
De coloribus pave the way for the fullest and best known account of the work-
ing methods of the medieval artist in northern and central Europe, De diversis
artibus or Schedula diversarum artium by Theophilus (Presbyter). The work is
divided into three books: the first on painting, the second on glassmaking,
and the third on metalworking; the writing in all three is informed by the
author’s direct practical experience of the techniques. In many respects the
text is characterized by a fresh approach to the subjects treated and has been
seen to lie outside the literary tradition of the old recipe collections in its em-
phasis upon critical enquiry and instruction (John Hawthorne and Cyril
Smith, ed., Theophilus, On Divers Arts, 1963, 1979). The author’s name is a
pseudonym and since 1874 (Albert Ilg, Schedula diversarum artium: I Band,
revidirter Text) has been associated with the goldsmith monk Roger of Hel-
marshausen (fl. early 1100s), who probably came from the Mosan region.
Although the proposal was challenged in 1928 (Hermann Degering,
“Theophilus Presbiter qui et Rugerus,” Westfälische Studien: Beiträge zur Ge-
schichte der Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur in Westfalen, Alois Börner zum 60. Ge-
burtstag gewidmet, 248–62), all the available evidence strongly supports the
argument in favor of the historical Roger (Peter Lasko, “Roger of Helmars-
hausen, Author and Craftsman: Life, Sources of Style, and Iconography,” Ob-
jects, Images and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane,
2003, 180–201; Werner Jacobsen, “Roger von Helmarshausen: ein Künst-
ler verliert seine Werke; aus Anlaß des Symposiums ‘Roger von Helmarshau-
sen’ am 17.–18. 11. 2005 im Paderborner Diözesanmuseum,” Kunstchronik
Art Manuals 1610

59 [2006]: 273–76). As for the chronology, the internal evidence weighs in

favor of a date in the first half of the 12th century (Charles Dodwell, ed.,
De diversis artibus: The Various arts, 1961, 1986), even though arguments have
been advanced for the 9th century (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Vom Alter der
Oelmalerey aus dem Theophilus Presbyter, 1774; now available in modern edi-
tions of the complete works of this famous German enlightened author, phil-
ologist, and librarian), 10th century (Degering, 1928; Wilhelm Theobald,
ed., Technik des Kunsthandwerks im zehnten Jahrhundert des Theophilus Presbyter
Diversarum Artium Schedula in Auswahl neu herausgegeben, 1933), and the first
half of the 11th century (Robert Hendrie, Theophili qui et Rugerus … libri III. de
diversis Artibus, seu diversarum artium schedula, 1847). Many critical editions of
the work have been published and, since the second half of the 20th century, it
has appeared in new translations in English (Hawthorne and Smith,
1963; Dodwell, 1961, 1986), French (André Blanc, ed., Essai sur divers arts:
en trois livres, 1980), German (Erhard Brepohl, ed., Theophilus Presbyter und
das mittelalterliche Kunsthandwerk: Gesamtausgabe der Schrift ‘De diversis artibus’ in
zwei Ba·nden, 1999), and Italian (Adriano Caffaro, ed., Le varie arti: manuale
di tecnica artistica medievale, 2000).
While Theophilus may have mentioned the techniques of manuscript
illumination, the most important source for the craft is the anonymous man-
ual known today as De arte illuminandi, which was probably written at the end
of the 14th century in southern Italy (Demetrio Salazaro, ed., L’arte della
miniatura nel secolo XIV: codice della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli messo a stampa,
1877). Well organized and practical in approach, the text affords focused
insights into the art of the illuminator – from the preparation of pigments to
the application of gold leaf (Daniel Thompson and George Hamilton, ed.,
An Anonymous Fourteenth-century Treatise, ‘De arte illuminandi’: The Technique
of Manuscript Illumination, 1933). The 15th-century Portuguese Livro de como se
façen as cores in Hebrew (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, De Rossi ms. 945) is
similar in content but ultimately derives from a 13th-century work (David
Blondheim, “An Old Portuguese Work on Manuscript Illumination,”
Jewish Quarterly Review 19 [1928–1929]: 97–135). Marked by a different ap-
proach, however, is the Göttingen Model Book (Göttingen, Niedersächsische
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, ms. Uffenb. 51): it was written and dec-
orated in Germany in the 15th century and is unique in so far as manuals on
miniature painting techniques are concerned because it features both text
and image (Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, ed., The Göttingen Model Book: A Fac-
simile Edition and Translations of a Fifteenth-century Illuminator’s Manual, 1972,
1978). The tradition of compiling recipe books for the manufacture of pig-
ments and other techniques of the illuminator’s craft was carried on by
1611 Art Manuals

Johannes Alcherius (fl. 1382–1411), who lived in Paris but traveled to Italy
on a number of occasions between 1382 and 1410. Alcherius’s De coloribus
diversis modis tractatur and De diversis coloribus were copied out by Jehan Le Bègue
(fl. 1368–1431) into a collection of texts entitled Experimenta de coloribus,
which includes a glossary of terms (Bianca Tosatti, “La ‘Tabula de vocabulis
sinonimis et equivocis colorum,’ ms. lat. 6741 della Bibliothèque Nationale
di Parigi in relazione a Giovanni Alcherio,” Acme 34 [1983]: 129–87) and was
first published in 1849 by Mary Merrifield (see bibliography, 258–91).
The clear expression, practical manner, and logical structure of De arte
illuminandi are qualities that also characterize the writing and approach of
Il libro dell’arte of the late 14th or early 15th century by the Tuscan painter Cen-
nino Cennini (fl. 1370–1440). The most important manual on late medieval
painting techniques, it is the first of its type in Italian and, as such, was
clearly composed for disseminating information and teaching the painter’s
craft rather than stimulating theoretical speculation among the learned,
even though Cennini saw his art as the equal of the ancient liberal arts. Il libro
dell’arte is distinguished from most other medieval writings on art by its
relatively non-derivative character and, like Theophilus’s work, by its orig-
inality. In fact, Cennini’s text has been seen to anticipate the Renaissance
concern with the artist’s autonomy and the nature of artistic creation
(Charles Hope, “‘Composition’ from Cennini and Alberti to Vasari,” Pictorial
Composition from Medieval to Modern Art, ed. Paul Taylor, 2000, 27–44). He
is believed to have composed the work in Padua as it contains many Venetian
terms and includes a dedication to Saint Anthony (Silvia Isella Brusa-
molino, “‘Il Libro dell’arte’ di Cennino Cennini tra Toscana e Veneto,” Storia
della lingua e storia dell’arte in Italia: dissimmetrie e intersezioni, ed. Vittorio Ca-
sale, 2004, 297–318). First published in 1821 (Giuseppe Tambroni, Di
Cennino Cennini Trattato della pittura messo in luce la prima volta con annotazioni
dal cavaliere Giuseppe Tambroni), the handbook has been the focus of many
detailed critical editions ever since (see most recently Fabio Frezzato, ed.,
Il libro dell’arte, 2003, 2008), including translations into English (Daniel
Thompson, ed., The Craftsman’s Handbook, 1933, 1960), French (Colette
Déroche, ed., Le livre de l’art, 1991), and German (Willibrord Verkade, ed.,
Des Cennino Cennini Handbüchlein der Kunst, 1916).

C. Recent Research and Scholarly Trends

The efforts of scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries were mostly directed
towards identifying and publishing critical editions of the key contributions
to craft literature, paying particular attention to questions of philology,
transmission, and transformation. More recent developments have built
Art Manuals 1612

upon these findings and examined the written evidence for the significance
of color in the Middle Ages, including symbolism (Il colore nel Medioevo: arte,
simbolo, tecnica, 1–4, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2009), chemical properties (Pigments et
colorants de l’Antiquite’ et du Moyen Âge: Teinture, peinture, enluminure; études his-
toriques et physico-chimiques, 1990), and the tradition of the recipe (Robert
Halleux, “Recettes d’artisan, recettes d’alchimiste,” Artes mechanicae en Eu-
rope me’die’vale, ed. Ria Jansen-Sieben, 1989, 25–49). The practical nature
of the writings of Theophilus and Cennini in particular has stimulated re-
search into the character of specific pigments (Adam Raft, “About Theo-
philus’ blue color, ‘Lazur’,” Studies in Conservation 13 [1968]: 1–6; Edgar Den-
ninger, “What is ‘Bianco di San Giovanni’ of Cennino Cennini?,” Studies in
Conservation 19 [1974]: 185–87; Lorenzo Appolonia et al., “‘Della natura del
bianco sangiovanni:’ un pigmento e la lettura delle fonti,” Colori, coloriture,
restauro: studi su sgraffiti, intonaci e coloriture architettoniche, 1985, 63–74).
As recent research has demonstrated, most medieval art manuals are not
only of historical value but are of practical use today: Cennini’s description of
the materials and the processes of making a panel painting have been united
with the results of modern X-radiography and infra-red reflectography in an
investigation of the early Italian paintings in the National Gallery, London
(David Bomford et al., Italian Painting Before 1400, 1989); Theophilus’s com-
ments have contributed to recent discussion about the oil medium (Paola
Del Vescovo, Il trattato di Teofilo e il problema dell’origine della pittura ad olio,
2006) and enamel (David Buckton, “Theophilus and Enamel,” Studies in
Medieval Art and Architecture: Presented to Peter Lasko, ed. David Buckton and
Thomas Alexander Heslop, 1994, 1–13); and the sources of the illumi-
nator’s craft have yielded fresh insights into the associated practices of
miniature painting (Charles Dodwell, “Techniques of Manuscript Paint-
ing in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts,” Artigianato e tecnica nella società dell’Alto
Medioevo occidentale, 1971, 643–62) and tooling (Mojmír Frinta, Punched
Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting, 1998). Of equal value to
the conservator, restorer, and art historian are studies of the more general
processes of design as attested by the technical literature. Again, Cennini’s
thorough instructions have focused critical attention upon such topics as
modeling (Norman Muller, “Three Methods of Modelling the Virgin’s
Mantle in Early Italian Painting,” Journal of the American Institute for Conser-
vation 17 [1978]: 10–18), the properties of light and shade (Mary Pardo,
“Giotto and the ‘Things not Seen, Hidden in the Shadow of Natural Ones’,”
Artibus et Historiae 18 [1997]: 41–53), the role and function of drawing (Joanna
Woods-Marsden, “‘Draw the irrational animals as often as you can from
life:’ Cennino Cennini, Giovannino de’ Grassi, and Antonio Pisanello,” Studi
1613 Art Manuals

di Storia dell’Arte 3 [1992]: 67–78; Ugo Procacci, “Disegni per esercitazione

degli allievi e disegni preparatori per le opere d’arte nella testimonianza del
Cennini,” Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard
Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin, 1977, 352–67), and wider issues about style and
authorship, including the plausible identification of his own work as a
painter (Fantasie und Handwerk: Cennino Cennini und die Tradition der toskan-
ischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco, ed. Wolf-Dietrich Löhr and Stefan
Weppelmann, 2008).
Finally, recent scholarship has shed light upon the broader cultural and
social contexts in which medieval art manuals were written and read. Theo-
philus’s book, though not overtly concerned with intellectual questions,
does express an awareness of contemporary theological debates (John Van
Engen, “Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: The Manual Arts and
Benedictine Theology,” Viator 11 [1980]: 147–63) and theoretical problems
(Marco Collareta, “Teofilo, ‘qui et Rugerus:’ artista e teorico dell’arte,” Ar-
tifex bonus: il mondo dell’artista medievale, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2005,
50–55). Cennini’s handbook, meanwhile, has been considered a precursor of
the Renaissance treatise on art in its apparent interest in verisimilitude (An-
drea Bolland, “Art and Humanism in Early Renaissance Padua: Cennini,
Vergerio and Petrarch on Imitation,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 [1996]: 469–87).

Select Bibliography
Franco Brunello, ed., De arte illuminandi: e altri trattati sulla tecnica della miniatura medi-
evale (1975; Vicenza: Pozza, 1992); Mary Merrifield, Original Treatises, Dating from the
XIIth to XVIIIth Centuries on the Arts of Painting, in Oil, Miniature, Mosaic, and on Glass (1849;
Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999); Salvador Muñoz Viñas, “Original Written Sources for
the History of Mediaeval Painting Techniques and Materials: A List of Published
Texts,” Studies in Conservation 43 (1998): 114–24; Heinz Roosen-Runge, Farbgebung
und Technik frühmittelalterlicher Buchmalerei: Studien zu den Traktaten ‘Mappae Clavicula’
und ‘Heraclius’ (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1967); Julius Schlosser Magnino,
La letteratura artistica: manuale delle fonti della storia dell’arte moderna, rev. Otto Kurz. 3rd
ed. (1st German ed. 1924; 1st Italian ed. 1935–1937; Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1964);
Daniel Thompson, “Trial Index for Mediaeval Craftsmanship,” Speculum 10 (1935):
410–31; Silvia Tosatti, Trattati medievali di tecniche artistiche (Milan: Jaca Book, 2007).

Flavio Boggi
Autobiography and Biography 1614

Autobiography and Biography

A. Introduction
The medieval autobiographical and biographical textual tradition en-
compasses materials typically shared by historians and literary historians.
These textual sources might more aptly be gathered under the umbrella term
“life writing,” as the generic labels biography and autobiography are of more
recent invention. The term biography was seldom used in the Middle Ages,
and texts conforming to modern standards of autobiography are extremely
rare. Studies of medieval autobiography and biography have thus been de-
pendent not only on texts that are (auto)biographical in the modern sense,
but also on hagiographic texts and on biographical, autobiographical, or
pseudo-autobiographical details inserted in chronicle, poetry, and romance;
the pseudo-historiographic roots of romance and epic are also a ripe field of
inquiry.

B. History of Research
19th- and early 20th-century studies of (auto)biographical materials were
dominated by historicist tendencies. Following Leopold von Ranke’s 1824
Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514, which drew
in part upon memoirs and other autobiographical and personal documents,
(auto)biographical texts were routinely used as tools to reconstruct the past
“wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” (as it really was). Benedetto Croce’s pioneer-
ing work on the history of historiography, notably in Teoria della storia e della
storiografia (1917), offered an alternative to this positivist model. Although
still heavily leaning on a positivist approach to autobiographical writing,
Georg Misch’s monumental Geschichte der Autobiographie (orig. 1907–; 3rd rev.
ed. 1949–1969; transl. numerous times) represents the most comprehensive
overview, covering the time from antiquity to the Baroque.
Mid-20th-century surveys of medieval historiography, such as James
Westfall Thompson and Bernard J. Holm’s A History of Historical Writing,
vol. 1 (1942), consider lives alongside chronicles, yet seek to maintain a clear
distinction between “literary” and “historical” content. Indeed, it is in the
first third of the 20th century that biographical writings gain a more promi-
nent place in literary studies. But early 20th-century studies of the history of
biography, including Wilbur Cross’s An Outline of Biography from Plutarch to
Strachey (1921) and Donald Stauffer’s English Biography Before 1700 (1930)
largely ignore the medieval period; according to Stauffer, “biography as an
art was static in the Middle Ages” (3).
1615 Autobiography and Biography

The 1940s saw renewed interest in medieval (auto)biography, particu-

larly on the part of scholars in the United States and in Germany. Josiah C.
Russell’s “An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Biography” (Modern
Language Quarterly 4 [1943]: 437–53) reintroduced the topic to American
readers. Jan Romein’s De Biografie, een Inleiding (1946) provides an overview
of the history of European biography, including a substantial treatment of
medieval texts, at the beginning of his study of the methods and structures of
biography; the chief biographical forms Romein considers are hagiography,
secular vitae, and Byzantine imperial memoirs. Paul Kirn, on the other
hand, relies primarily on court biographies in Das Bild des Menschen in der Ge-
schichtsschreibung von Polybios bis Ranke (1955). With few exceptions, studies of
this period focus on biography to the exclusion of autobiography, as medi-
eval autobiographical materials are typically less easily classified as historical
or literary in nature.
In the 1960s, coinciding with the rise of post-structuralist theory, auto-
biographical texts gain new prominence. In Design and Truth in Autobiography,
Roy Pascal reflects on autobiography as a labor of self-reconstruction;
while Pascal is invested in the term “autobiography” and in determining
what would constitute a “true” model autobiography, his awareness that all
autobiography is a rewriting of one’s perceptions is already moving toward a
more “post-structuralist” model questioning generic distinctions. In the
wake of the post-structural movement the distinction between historical
writing and fiction is significantly blurred, allowing for greater scholarly at-
tention to the problematic categories of autobiography and biography.
Psychoanalytic theory has also had a significant impact on studies of
medieval biography and autobiography, as these life-texts are mined for
their insights into medieval selfhood. Jean Leclerq’s “Modern Psychology
and the Interpretation of Medieval Texts” (Speculum 48 [1973]: 476–90) con-
siders a wealth of (auto)biographical materials, as do more recent articles
such as Nancy Partner’s “The hidden self: psychoanalysis and the textual
unconscious” (Writing Medieval History, ed. Nancy Partner, 2005, 42–64) and
Richard Lawes’s “Psychological disorder and the autobiographical impulse
in Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve” (Writing Reli-
gious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, 2000,
217–43).
Autobiography and Biography 1616

C. Overviews and Recent Trends

General overviews of these genres, and especially of autobiography, have
continued to appear: representative examples include Horst Wenzel, Die
Autobiographie des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, 1980; Heinz Hof-
mann, “Autobiografisch schrijven in de middeleeuwse Latijnse literaa-
tuur,” Over de autobiografie, ed. Els Jongeneel, 231, 104–22; and Albrecht
Classen, “Autobiography as a Late Medieval Phenomenon,” Medieval
Perspectives 3 [1988]: 89–104; a number of these studies situate medieval
autobiography in relation to the more familiar autobiographical tradition of
the Renaissance. Classen’s monograph Die autobiographische Lyrik des euro-
päischen Spätmittelalters (1991) discusses autobiographical elements in lyric
poetry by Hugo von Montfort (Styria), Oswald von Wolkenstein (South Tyrol),
Antonio Pucci (Italy), Thomas Hoccleve (England), Michel Beheim, Hans
Rosenplüt (both Germany), and Charles’ d’Orléans (England and France).
Contemporary approaches to medieval autobiography and biography tend
to use these texts as a means of exploring the construction of subjectivity. In
addition to psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches, other dominant trends
include gender studies and feminist criticism; (auto)hagiography and anti-
hagiography; cultural history and the politics of (auto)biography; romance,
pseudo-autobiography, and autofiction; revisiting generic distinctions; and
comparative studies of nonwestern texts (especially Arabic, Indian, and Jap-
anese) written during periods corresponding to the European Middle Ages.
In recent decades feminist critics and historians have turned their atten-
tion to women’s spiritual autobiographies: Kate Greenspan’s “Autohagi-
ography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography” (Gender and Text
in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance, 1996, 216–36) provides a represen-
tative overview of this trend. Biographical and autobiographical elements in
the writings of female authors, notably Christine de Pizan, have also been of
interest to feminist scholars. The implications of self-writing as a form
of autohagiography are explored by Carlo Delcorno in “Biografia, agiogra-
fia, autoagiografia” (Lettere italiane 2 [1999]: 173–96). In recent years, a par-
ticular form of biography, namely antihagiographic lives of the prophet Mo-
hammed, has received renewed attention: see John V. Tolan’s articles
“Antihagiography: Embrico of Mainz’s Vita mahumeti” (Journal of Medieval
History 22 [1996]: 25–41) and “Rhetoric, polemics and the art of hostile bi-
ography: portraying Muhammad in thirteenth-century Christian Spain”
(Pensamiento medieval hispano: Homenaje a Horacio Santiago-Otero, ed. José María
Soto Rábanos, 1998, 1497–1511).
Recent studies of autobiography and biography also tend to blur the dis-
tinctions between fact and fiction, historiography and literature. Evelyn
1617 Autobiography and Biography

Birge Vitz, in “Type et individu dans l’ ‘autobiographie’ médiévale” (Poé-

tique 24 [1975]: 426–45), addresses the fictionalized elements of life-accounts
that Laurence De Looze would later refer to as pseudoautobiography. Other
notable studies that question the disciplinary boundaries of history and lit-
erature are Ruth Morse, “Medieval Biography: History as a Branch of Litera-
ture” (Modern Language Review 80 [1985]: 257–68), Felice Lifshitz, “Beyond
Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative” (Viator
25 [1994]: 95–113), and Katherine Lewis, “Women, Testamentary Discourse
and Life-Writing in Later Medieval England” (Medieval Women and the Law,
ed. Noël James Menuge, 2000, 57–75). Nonwestern autobiography and
biography, as well, are increasingly recognized as offering valuable insights
into European life-writing of the Middle Ages. Islamic prosopography
(Claude Gilliot, “Prosopography in Islam: An Essay of Classification,”
Medieval Prosopography 23 [2002]: 19–54) and medieval Indian biography
(Phyllis Granoff, “Sarasvati’s Sons: Biographies of Poets in Medieval
India,” Asiatische Studien 49 [1995]: 351–76) are of interest, while Japanese
memoirs and autobiography have more often been read in conjunction with
Western texts: notably by Edith Sarra in Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inven-
tions of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs (1999), and in the essays
collected by Barbara Stevenson in Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays in
Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers (2000). This revisiting of
established boundaries between the domains of history and literature, or be-
tween distinct cultural and linguistic traditions, has led to a mounting inter-
est in the problematics of medieval (auto)biography in the last decade of the
20th century and at the dawn of the 21st.

Select Bibliography
Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974);
Laurence DeLooze, Pseudoautobiography in the Middle Ages (Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida, 1997); Georg Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, vol. III: Das Mittel-
alter, part 2: Das Hochmittelalter im Anfang (Frankfurt: G. Schulte-Bumke, 1959); Gerald
Prince, ed., Autobiography, Historiography, Rhetoric (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994); Franz
Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Brill, 1968); Jay
Rubenstein, “Biography and Autobiography in the Middle Ages,” Writing Medieval
History, ed. Nancy Partner (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), 22–41.

Julie Singer
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1618

Ballads, Songs, and Libels

A. Definition of the Genre

The aim of this article is to produce a fresh perspective on a group of histori-
cal texts often implicitly regarded as a genre. Literary scholars and historians
highlighted the defamatory function of songs and ballads. Ballads and libels
are categories of action. This communicative function is the main criterion
to synthesize a genre. The evidence suggests that there were diverse literary
forms that influenced the political culture since the late Middle Ages, where-
as defining the genre by strictly formal means has proved to be problematic,
witness to the heterogeneous empirical basis. The main focus must therefore
be strictly on what these texts intended to do and by what means.
Ballads, songs, and libels are not covered entirely in the given space.
Rather than that, this article sketches the qualities they share. Some intro-
ducing remarks are therefore necessary. Ballads and songs are – although
sometimes seen as popular ballads – somewhat established categories of
historical poetological consideration. Different European languages place
the genre “ballad” in different traditions, such as the Italian balata, French
courtly literature, or the modern German derivate Ballade. The literary cat-
egory this article outlines is different. Speaking of libels seems problematic
with respect to a clear-cut definition that includes, say, the history of their
legal restriction or disseminating media.
Ballads, songs, and libels coincide in belonging potentially to pragmatic
contexts, forming a distinct communicative (rather than a poetological)
genre. There is broad evidence of songs and ballads since the 15th century;
case studies describe increases of production and promulgation during war
times, libels often aiming at individuals to discriminate his political party
or social group. The earliest broadside prints in the 15th century were revo-
lutionary both with respect to quantity and quality of multiplication of
popular songs; they were soon affordable to broader layers of society. This
had an innovative effect on the political culture of the time.
The popular literary world became a fore-runner of the modern public
sphere. The public voice (Gemain Sag, publique voix, vox populi) was considered
to be a political arbiter and could serve political viewpoints in both affirm-
1619 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

ative and destructive ways. An important tradition across European litera-

tures more generally was the “Pasquino” dialogue, hence the genre of “small
Pasquinos,” i. e., “pasquills,” dealing with controversial matters of their
time (Günter Hess, “Pasquill,” Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft,
ed. Jan-Dirk Müller, 2003, vol. 3, 31–34); the nature of pasquills in this
sense remains a matter of debate. There seems to be consensus regarding cul-
tural exchange from Italy throughout Europe around 1500; whether by way
of transfer or productive apprehension, there was a European tradition of
dialogue literature and facetiae on which, say, vernacular pasquills relied.
All these literary forms relied on communicative practices in the pre-
modern face-to-face society, including marketplace performances with min-
strels. The strength of the media of libellous communication is mirrored by
the continuous need to regard anonymous communication as criminal. The
main criterion to integrate and distinguish the genre is that these texts were
acting in social contexts with literary means. These could even be extreme lit-
erary forms, as the cases of defamatory scatological marginalization suggest,
see the catalog in Matthias Lentz, Konflikt, Ehre, Ordnung: Untersuchungen zu
den Schmähbriefen und Schandbildern des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit
(ca. 1350 bis 1600), 2004.
In a peculiar way, historiography of the genre has stood in the way to de-
fine it in an appropriately consistent way. Recent and historical scholarship
regarding the long Middle Ages, i. e., bridging the threshold of 1500 by way
of systematic questions including the study of the 16th century, are therefore
the main reason for the synthesis undertaken here. Despite the somewhat
blurred view there is evidence that suggests main currents in diverse disci-
plines that shall be summarized here in a methodologically useful way for
further research in cultural history of political communication by literary
means.

B. Historical Background
The knowledge of the historical background of the genre is limited by the
sources that often mediate their objects. When 15th- and 16th-century chron-
icles narrate tumultuous uprisings that were accompanied by ballads, libels,
and songs, they are far from impartial; manuscripts of songs do not pro-
vide the origin and degree of popularity of the songs nor do they offer much
other meta-data. Medievalists have marked this problem thoroughly, see
Frieder Schanze, “Überlieferungsformen politischer Dichtungen im 15.
und 16. Jahrhundert,” Schriftlichkeit und Lebenspraxis im Mittelalter: Erfassen,
Bewahren, Verändern, ed. Hagen Keller, Christel Meier, and Thomas
Scharff, 1999, 299–331, esp. 303. When songs and libels were archived at
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1620

all, the object was necessarily mediated by interests, time-bound world view
or distance of time to the events itself. The sensibilities of Victorian culture,
for instance, seem to have moderated Francis J. Child’s collection, see Ri-
chard Firth Green, “F.J. Child and Mikail Bakhtin,” The Singer and the Scribe:
European Ballad Traditions and European Ballad Cultures, ed. Philip E. Bennett
and Richard Firth Green, 2004, 123–34; for a catalog of different historical
perspectives, see already Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann, Deutsche Volks-
kunde zwischen Germanistik und Sozialwissenschaft, 1969. Defamatory pieces
were of course likely to be destroyed by the addressees, while songs mostly
escaped archival documentation or merely reached it in few late forms of
their usual variations; the variability of the performed songs was so high that
exemplary cases of developments of meaning are known (for the problematic
concept of “Zersingung,” see Norbert Mayer-Rosa, Studien zum deutschen
Tagelied: Untersuchungen zur Gruppe ‘Tagelieder’ in Uhlands Sammlung ‘Alte hoch-
und niederdeutsche Volkslieder’, 1958, 153, or the examples in Selma Hirsch,
Das Volkslied im späten Mittelalter: Zwanzig spätmittelalterliche Balladen und Lieder
aus ihren zersungenen Formen wiederhergestellt und erläutert, 1978, 57–94).
Although different mediating factors can be distinguished, the prob-
lems the sources confront their interpreter with are more complex. Knowl-
edge of how to perform songs was – in substance – lost in the process of tex-
tification (Aleida Assmann, “Schriftliche Folklore. Zur Entstehung und
Funktion eines Überlieferungstyps,” Schrift und Gedächtnis. Beiträge zur Archäo-
logie der literarischen Kommunikation, ed. Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, and
Christof Hardmeier, 1998, 175–93). It remains a matter of debate whether
songs were only put into writing after they had left the realm of oral knowl-
edge and whether the process of writing had a mediating impact or even fil-
tered the evidence by interests of a particular elite or social group. These
mediating factors, it seems, made different interpretations of medieval cul-
tures, i. e., ballads, songs, and libels, possible.
Although these types of texts seem distinct, they have qualities in com-
mon that integrate them to a communicative genre. Put in terms that need
further specification, all these texts focus on conflicting historical percep-
tions that are useful sources to understand the past. The empirical basis
includes works from musicology, literary studies as well as ethnological
studies. This interdisciplinarity builds bridges toward the study of culture in
a more general, comprehensive sense, see Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann,
Andreas C. Bimmer, and Siegfried Becker, Einführung in die Volkskunde / Eu-
ropäische Ethnologie: Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2003, 192–204.
1621 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

B.1. Ballads
The popular ballad is a hybrid genre that is conceived as a European phenom-
enon including Eastern Europe, see the articles in Balladenforschung, ed. Wal-
ter Müller-Seidel, 1997, 77–154. The European field of medieval balla-
desque poetry has been divided into seven circles: Scandinavian as the richest,
besides the English, German, Romanic, Balkan, West-Slavic, and Greater
Russian ballads that are conceived as distinct areas of influence, see Gottfried
Weissert, Ballade, 1980, 52, but, nevertheless, as a common European con-
text. The following list acknowledges that the terminology was ‘loosely’ and
‘indiscriminately’ applied as described by Arthur K. Moore, “The Literary
Status of the English Popular Ballad,” Comparative Literature 10.1 (1958):
1–20, esp. 2.
The German Volksballade (popular ballad) is a longer text with several
stanzas that was sometimes sung. Popular ballads were distributed in manu-
script or broadside print form, topics of this 15th- and 16th-century genre
were mainly love, family life, and social problems. The content was in-
fluenced by historical and epical figures, such as in the Hildebrandslied (for
John Meier’s classical collection, see below) that is seen by some as one of the
only remaining German examples; epical topics reach the German popular
ballad, the Heldenzeitlied, only when it is received by the lower social strata,
see Walter Hinck, “Volksballade – Kunstballade – Bänkelgesang,” Balladen-
forschung, Walter Müller-Seidel, 1980, 61–76, esp. 61, see also Albrecht
Classen, “The Jüngeres Hildebrandslied in Its Early Modern Printed Ver-
sions: A Contribution to Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Reception His-
tory,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 95 (1996): 359–81. The term
covers mainly the medieval liet and maere and intends to distinguish it from
the modern artificial ballad. The character of the popular ballad, its age, and
author(s) are a matter of debate. What is agreed upon is the attachment of the
popular ballad to singing and performing, the potential variability of the
songs and the perseverance of mediating factors, the existence of typified
expressions in these songs as well as the transnationality of certain motives,
see Weissert, 1980, esp. 53.
Scottish ballads were collected since the 17th century, the most impor-
tant early collection being Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, 1723–1737,
followed by Thomas Percy’s collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Con-
sisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets, 1765. Based
also on field studies of oral tradition, and implying a longe durée of preserving
treasures of popular literature, is Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border, 1802–1803. This editor’s conjectures have been regarded as influenced
by Romantic ideas but also as deeply knowledgeable. The first comprehen-
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1622

sive edition of English-Scottish ballads with ‘academic’ intentions is the

third improved edition of Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish Popu-
lar Ballads, 1882–1898. These examples are landmarks in the field of ballad
scholarship and were followed by different other editions. For these, see
Wolfgang G. Müller, Die englisch-schottische Volksballade, 1983, 17–26,
212–19; David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk, 1972. The term ballad was
derived from the French courtly literature, but early English “ballads”
included street, broadsides, and news ballads; for later receptions, see Joy
Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early
Modern England and Germany, 1992, 17–26. In the Irish periphery of Europe,
the “drama and song-and-dance” model of ballads was also assumed, see
Hugh Shields, Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and other
Songs, 1993, 41. Medieval Danish ballads were collected by Grundtvig,
an adviser of Child, see Svend Grundtvig, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser,
1853–1976.
Throughout the Middle Ages, ballads continued to express “popular
beliefs about the Past”; these perceptions could conflict as well, and a major
quantitative change in this regard took place after printing had become
a generally affordable means of distribution of information, see Daniel
Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past. English Historical Culture 1500–1700,
2003, esp. 333, 340–44. Ballads could also invent historical events, apart
from providing narrative accounts far from impartiality, for a saturated
account of the poetical material see, Alfred Adler, “Die politische Satire,”
La littérature didactique, allegorique et satirique, ed. Hans Robert Jauss, 1968,
146–244, 275–314, and 304–05.
The material suggests the hybrid character of the popular ballad genre,
but it was left to the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga to declare
that popular ballads were pivotal elements of late-medieval mentality; for a
critical assessment see Christoph Strupp, Johan Huizinga: Geschichtswissen-
schaft als Kulturgeschichte, 2000, esp. 115–20. It is an achievement of his study
on medieval France and the Netherlands to include ballads among other
genres, styles, and social strata of literature in a cultural historiography of
the Middle Ages. For Huizinga, ballads were an integral part of a historical
culture; his mode of writing cultural history places the imagination of the
past higher than consistent categorizations of the sources involved. From
this point of view, popular ballad means popular culture in a romantic sense of
rough humor, authentic emotions, deep-felt lust for life and joy, frequently
combined with dances; thereby folklore is attributed a high value as mirror
of popular “authentic sources of beauty,” see Johan Huizinga, Herfsttij der
middeleeuwen. Studiën over levens- en gedachtenvormen der vertiende en vijftiende
1623 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden, 1919, passim. The genre seems to preserve

notions of the late Middle Ages that have not found their way into the arti-
facts of elite literature of the time. Huizinga characterizes laughter as a
natural expression of life; medieval folk had the strongest desire to soothe
the hardship of their destiny and wanted to be entertained by an authentic
culture, as well as be assured of salvation in diverse official and popular liter-
ary forms. Huizinga argues for a novel quality of life that emerged at the
end of the medieval period.
The image of the ballad culture is strongly formed by the interests of
scholars, editors, and the cultural values of a particular present; besides posi-
tive medievalisms there could also be phenomena like suppressed ballad
traditions, see Philip E. Bennett, “The Suppression of a Ballad Culture: the
Enigma of Medieval France,” The Singer and the Scribe: European Ballad Tradi-
tions and European Ballad Cultures, ed. Philip E. Bennett and Richard Firth
Green, 2004, 105–22. In the British context, to be “balladed” remained
a serious threat for anyone, especially after the ‘written hand literacy’ in-
creased, see Adam Fox, “Ballads and Libels,” Oral and Literate Culture in Eng-
land, 1500–1700, ed. id., 2000, 299–334, esp. 303, 316, 321. Such powerful
ballads were often intended as libels.

B.2. Libels
Libels were mostly anonymous accusations in the urban context. In Italian
cities, there were specific walls where such short texts could be affixed and
read; in Rome in particular, there was a tradition of talking fountains and
statues, of which the Pasquino was the most famous, see Peter Burke, The
Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communi-
cation, 1987. Libels were prerequisites for (as well as weapons against) social
status, see contributions about the European context in Ex Marmore: Pasquini,
pasquinisti, pasquinate nell’Europa moderna, ed. Chrysa Damianaki, Paolo
Procacioli, and Angelo Romano, 2006.
Papal conclaves were principal occasion for the production of such satires;
comprehensive editions are comparably recent, such as Pasquinate romane
des Cinquecento, ed. Valerio Marucci and Antonio Marco, 1983. French evi-
dence suggests intensive cultural transfer from Italy to France since 1500 in
the light of satirical libelling, see Chiara Lastraioli, “Die ‘Pasquini’ – ein
europäischer lieu de mémoire?,” Kulturtransfer: Kulturelle Praxis im 16. Jahrhun-
dert, ed. Wolfgang Schmale, 2004, 299–314. In the Dutch culture the crisis
of the 16th century was suspended by laughing and the enemy was at least
symbolically overwhelmed, see Markus Völkel, “Historiker oder Narr: Das
Lächerliche in Theorie und Praxis frühneuzeitlicher Geschichtsschreibung
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1624

(16. und 17. Jahrhundert),” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 21.4 (1994):
483–511, esp. 505. Individuals were ridiculed in libels by drawing exempla
to extremes, see Heinz-Günter Schmitz, Physiologie des Scherzes. Bedeutung
und Rechtfertigung der Ars Iocandi im 16. Jahrhundert, 1972, here 34. Legal regu-
lations throughout the Middle Ages until the modern period regarded any
anonymous text, image or combination a libel if it hurt the honor of the ad-
dressee. The libelli famosi-tradition could take any form of written communi-
cation, see Günther Schmidt, Libelli famosi: Zur Bedeutung der Schmähschriften,
Scheltbriefe, Schandgemälde und Pasquille in der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 1985,
146.
The genre of defamatory pictures, by contrast, was not anonymous, but
affected the honor of a person in a somewhat legal, contracted way; scatologi-
cal images insulted the person with a visual rhetoric involving sodomite
actions with the person’s seal. It is obvious why only few examples of these
sources survived, the remaining evidence is catalogued in Lentz (2004).
Similar scabrous assaults were hauled upon “materia giocosa,” i. e., social
groups or more general entities (the world, women) by early Tuscan poetry
that – in consequence – was often clandestine, see Dietmar Frenz, Kunstvol-
les Schmähen: Frühe toskanische Dichtung und mittellateinische Poetik, 2006, 5.
Satire, parody, and libel were frequent in Italian poetry and extended
to confessional matters, see Marianne Albrecht-Bott, Die bildende Kunst in
der italienischen Lyrik der Renaissance und des Barock: Studien zur Beschreibung von
Portraits und anderen Bildwerken unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von G. B. Marinos
‘Galleria’, 1976, 90–98. Any communicative act could be perceived as libel-
ous, especially in the case of blasphemy, see Gerd Schwerhoff, Zungen
wie Schwerter: Blasphemie in alteuropäischen Gesellschaften 1200–1650, 2005,
esp. 281–89. Christian-Jewish relationships were accompanied by libellous
polemics from both sides, including cases of self-censorship since the early
Middle Ages. Satirical commentaries on the gospel and the life of Jesus in
particular circulated in prints throughout Europe and the Mediterranean
area, but archival evidence is restricted to manuscripts; another clandestine
technique besides destroying the evidence was cryptifying the names of
Christian holy places, rituals, and values, a reaction to the missionary pres-
sure of the majority culture, a comprehensive account in Michael Toch, Die
Juden im mittelalterlichen Reich, 2nd ed. 2003 [orig. 1998], 133–35.
During the Reformation period, controversial publishing was frequently
regarded as libellous, see Hans Peterse, Jacobus Hoogstraeten gegen Johannes
Reuchlin: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Antijudaismus im 16. Jahrhundert, 1995, as
well as Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, 2005.
Farce-literature, dialogues, and assaults in the form of songs could be re-
1625 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

garded as libellous, such as in the context of anti-Judaism, see e. g. Matthias

Schönleber, “‘der juden schant wart offenbar’: Antijüdische Motive in
Schwänken und Fastnachtsspielen von Hans Folz,” Juden in der deutschen Lite-
ratur des Mittelalters: Religiöse Konzepte – Feindbilder – Rechtfertigungen, ed. Ursula
Schulze, 2002, 163–82; for the spectrum of genres involved, see Martin
Bauer, Die ‘Gemain Sag’ im späteren Mittelalter: Studien zu einem Faktor mittel-
alterlicher Öffentlichkeit und seinem historischen Auskunftswert, 1981.

B.3. Songs
Songs are not sharply distinguishable from ballads and libels, because the
mode of delivery is the distinguishing trait. In addition to the logical prob-
lem, there are problems generated by the ambivalent research history. The
Historisches Volkslied-terminology remains a disputed category; medieval songs
could be subject to – say 17th-century – medievalisms. Collections were based
on selections, for example based on anti-papal preferences, see Leopold
Schmidt, Volksgesang und Volkslied: Proben und Probleme, 1970, 62. Few col-
lections are contemporary, Liliencron’s collection informs us about a
number of its sources (Rochus von Liliencron, Die historischen Volkslieder der
Deutschen vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, 5 vols., 1865–1869), early collections were
probably overshadowed by Herder’s hypostatic re-evaluation of the ma-
terial, a part of the reception that is best summarized in Leopold Schmidt,
“Das Volkslied in der Wissenschafts- und Sammlertätigkeit der Volks-
kunde,” Handbuch des Volksliedes. vol. 2: Historisches und Systematisches –
interethnische Beziehungen – Musikethnologie, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich,
Lutz Röhrich, and Wolfgang Suppan, 1975, 9–24. There were collections
with confessional bias, but usually following Romantic ideals during the
19th century, see the sources section in Dietmar Sauermann, Historische
Volkslieder des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Volksliedforschung und zum
Problem der volkstümlichen Geschichtsbetrachtung, 1968. Luther’s songs are a per-
fect example of songs promulgated in their own times, being popular at the
time and bringing messages across to the audience and thereby forming
identity, not exclusively during the Reformation period, see Pettegree
(2005).
Major song collections are those of Leonard von Soltau, of Ferdinand
Rochus von Liliencron, as well as of C. C. van de Graft, Middelnederland-
sche historieliederen, omgewijzigde herdruk der uitgrave van 1904, 1968; for more
specific classifications of songs (i. e., conflicts between established social
groups with other groups and marginalization processes of Jews, heretics,
and criminals), see Steinitz’s collection; John Meier collected the material
in the Freiburg archive, see Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Melodien, ed. Deut-
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1626

sches Volksliedarchiv, 1935ff. For comprehensive bibliographical informa-

tion see Dietmar Sauermann, “Das historisch-politische Lied,” Handbuch
des Volksliedes. vol. 1: Die Gattungen des Volksliedes, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Bred-
nich, Lutz Röhrich, and Wolfgang Suppan, 1973, 293–322, here 322;
Ernst Klusen, “Das sozialkritische Lied,” Handbuch des Volksliedes. vol. 1: Die
Gattungen des Volksliedes, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Lutz Röhrich, and
Wolfgang Suppan, 1973, 737–60, here 739; Bibliographie der Literatur zum
deutschen Volkslied: Mit Standortangaben an den wichtigsten Archiven und Biblio-
theken der DDR, ed. Jürgen B. Wolff and Erik Kross, 1987. Scholars with
regional focus collected material and thereby demonstrated how much the
historian of songs relies on secondary sources, such as chronicles, trans-
lations and so on that imposed their particular political point of view on the
material presented, see, for example, Werner Schwarz, Pommersche Musik-
geschichte. Historischer Überblick und Lebensbilder. Teil 1: Historischer Überblick,
1988, 233–69.

C. Research History
Our knowledge of relevant texts and their tradition highly depends on
the history of research. Both have often proven somewhat hypothetical,
nevertheless there are several editions. French pamphlets before 1601 have
not been collected comprehensively until recently (French Vernacular Books, ed.
Andrew Pettegree, 2007, 2 vols.); reasons for the reluctance of research are
not always as obvious as in the case of pornographic libels in the Holy Roman
Empire, see also Matthias Lentz, “Defamatory Pictures and Letters in Late
Medieval Germany: The Visualisation of Disorder and Infamy,” The Medieval
History Journal 3.1 (2000): 139–60. There was of course a confessional interest
by contemporaries in the 16th century (as well as throughout the early mod-
ern and modern periods) to further their confessional party in the light of
historical texts; the confessional element seems to have dominated research
until the interest in culture evolved in the 18th century, probably first in the
case of European border region that had for long not been deeply Christian-
ized in daily practices and therefore showed folkloristic practices and super-
stitions that could appear to observers like Herder as specifically original,
see Weber-Kellermann, Bimmer, and Becker (2003), 9–20.
After Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld (1604), the political lyrical
literature has not been dealt with in comprehensive historical perspective
until Wilhelm Schlegel’s selective edition of Gedichte auf Rudolf von Habs-
burg von Zeitgenossen, 1812. The 19th century experienced political instrumen-
talization of medieval political lyrics, according to the premises of move-
ments like liberalism, confessional debate about ultramontanism and
1627 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

national identification, see Ulrich Müller, Untersuchungen zur politischen

Lyrik des deutschen Mittelalters, 1974, vol. 1, 29–37.
Jacob Burkhardt’s historiography about the evolving state in Italian
city republics interpreted clandestine libellous communication as a disturb-
ance of the emerging public order, see Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der
Renaissance in Italien, 1860, 167–79 et passim. Following this negative
appreciation of clandestine communication, Bakthin declared the existence
of a popular (vs. a serious elite) culture of laughter, see Michail M. Bakhtin
Rabelais and His World, 1993. Medievalists opposed this creative theory and
rendered it absurd, lacking of medieval archival evidence, e. g., Dietz-Rüdiger
Moser, “Lachkultur des Mittelalters? Michael Bachtin und die Folgen
seiner Theorie,” Euphorion 84 (1990): 89–111. Nevertheless, historians have
frequently highlighted the relevance of laughter and humor for the under-
standing of historical cultures, sometimes highlighting literary sources,
see Johan Verbeckmoes, Laughter, Jestbooks and Society in the Spanish Nether-
lands, 1999; Olle Ferm, Abboten, bonden och hölasset: Skratt och humor under
medeltiden, 2002; sometimes concentrating on political protest, see recently
Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, “Introduction: Humour and
History,” A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Jan
Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 1997, 9–17; Marjolein t’Hart,
“Humour and Social Protest: An Introduction,” Humour and Social Protest, ed.
Marjolein t’Hart and Dennis Bos, 2007, 1–20.
A second, substantially similar scholarly approach to humor and laughter
existed but was not nearly as intensively received by Western scholarship, see
Dmitrij S. Pancenko and Aleksandr M. Lichacev, ‘Smechovoj mir’ drevnej
Rusi, 1976. Recent studies of humor as a medium of critical or libellous
expression seem to be supported by emotional history, see Peter Burke,
“Is There a Cultural History of the Emotions?,” Representing Emotions: New
Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine, ed. Penelope Gouk and
Helen Hills, 2005, 35–49; Rüdiger Schnell, “Historische Emotions-
forschung: Eine mediävistische Standortbestimmung,” FMSt 38 (2004):
173–276. Although relevant historiographical genres were hard to categor-
ize, humor was seen as definitely involved in historical imagination, see
Völkel (1994) and Woolf (2003), here 302.
The term Historisches Volkslied was first coined by Leopold von Soltau
[Leopold von Soltau, Ein Hundert deutsche historische Volkslieder, 1836] and
made popular by von Liliencron, who saw the original mentality of the
German people at work; according to his narrative, singing Germans over-
came ‘decadent’ Burgundian court culture until 1530, fighting “intellectual
wars of liberation,” see Rochus von Liliencron, Deutsches Leben im Volkslied
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1628

um 1530, 1884. In a way, the aura of popular culture and the notion of a his-
torical subject “Volk” remained intact even in some of the best of recent
scholarhip, whether in the form of ‘popular’ resistance or in explicit words
such as “helle Lache des Volkes,” see Donald J. Ward, “Scherz- und
Spottlieder,” Handbuch des Volksliedes. vol. 1: Die Gattungen des Volksliedes, ed.
Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Lutz Röhrich, and Wolfgang Suppan, 1973,
691–736 and 734, or in the distinction of historically authentic and artificial
folk music in the late Middle Ages, see Walter Salmen, “Das gemachte ‘neue
Lied’ im Spätmittelalter,” Handbuch des Volksliedes. vol. 2: Historisches und Sys-
tematisches – interethnische Beziehungen – Musikethnologie, ed. Rolf Wilhelm
Brednich, Lutz Röhrich, and Wolfgang Suppan, 1975, 407–20.
The Reformation period showed more than others how widely songs cir-
culated; they were taken in ‘public ownership’ and openly perceived, as fre-
quent cases of contra-facture of these literary products demonstrate; songs
were distributed by way of colportage, semi-professional singers on market-
places, and single-leaf publishing; a hybrid form of up-to-date information,
entertainment, and commercial interest was the news song (Zeitungslied) that
highlighted somewhat topical content as recent, see Hartmut Braun, Ein-
führung in die musikalische Volkskunde, 1985, 84–5.
The terminology of the popular historical song was misused by extreme
approaches to folk music under fascist and nationalist regimes in the 20th
century, incorporating ethnical, political, and geographical interests into
the legitimizing research of popular music as a key to the ‘original’ historical
life of a people as represented in ballads and songs still sung at the time of the
research. The Freiburg Volksliedarchiv was a central institution, see Otto
Holzapfel, Das Deutsche Volksliedarchiv Freiburg i. Br., 1989, but was in close
touch with provincial archives like that of Pomerania, see Schwarz (1988),
267; for the involvement of John Meier see also Handbuch der völkischen Wis-
senschaft. Personen – Institutionen – Forschungsprogramme – Stiftungen, ed. Ingo
Haar and Matthias Berg, 2008, 21.
The most comprehensive and influential collection remained Lilien-
cron’s. It conceived historical popular songs as anonymous, popular and
broadly disseminated. Scholarship has shown obvious inconsistencies in Li-
liencron’s collection of songs. Quantitative approaches with fixed criteria
revealed how Liliencron’s influential collection bridged several empirical
gaps across separate genres, harmonized differences of archival evidence and
poetological distinctions between libellous and erotic contents, see Ulrich
Müller, “‘Historisches’ Volkslied: Überlegungen zu einem verfehlten Ter-
minus,” Historische Volksmusikforschung: Bericht über die 4. Arbeitstagung der Stu-
diengruppe zur Erforschung und Edition historischer Volksmusikquellen im Inter-
1629 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

national Folk Music Council vom 7. bis 12. April 1975 in Kazimierz Dolny, ed. Alois
Mauerhofer, Wolfgang Suppan, and Ludwig Bielawski, 1979, 111–21,
114.
In East Germany until 1989, folklorist studies were given high priority.
Under the uncompromising premise of historical progression in the sense of
Marxist ideology, song collections in high technical quality appeared in
print, see Wolfgang Steinitz, Deutsche Volkslieder demokratischen Charakters
aus sechs Jahrhunderten, ed. Hermann Strobach, 1978. Despite apparent con-
tinuities in the terminology from the 19th century, new political elements
were implemented into the heuristic framework, for examples see Geschichte
der deutschen Volksdichtung, ed. Hermann Strobach, 1981. Ideological rein-
terpretations must have been a reaction to the Fascist instrumentalization
of “the folk” in an ethnic sense of the term. Priorities were now differently
set for a similar object; e. g., anarchical satire was systematically cast out to
further an image of the past as permanent ‘serious’ class struggle, see Eck-
hard John, “Die Entdeckung des sozialkritischen Liedes: Steinitz als Weg-
bereiter eines neuen ‘Volkslied’-Verständnisses,” Die Entdeckung des sozial-
kritischen Liedes: Zum 100. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Steinitz, ed. Eckhard John,
2006, 13–25, here 19. Probably more than other fields, European Ethnology
is currently in transition to create a reflected history of the discipline’s politi-
cal involvement, see e. g. Weber-Kellermann, Bimmer, and Becker
(2003), 123–36.
Medievalist scholarship has first commented on the desirable clarifica-
tion in the use of terms, see Müller (1974), vol. 1, 26–28, a tendency
that was generally supported and extended by historical scholarship, see
Schanze (1999); archival tradition as well as other forms of tradition had a
mediating impact on the material. Recent discussions argue for a compre-
hensive empirical context, but nevertheless seem somewhat precedented by
the thorough case study of Kieslich; its focus is on communicative aspects
of folk songs, a term already put into quotation marks to identify the relation
to the dominant conception of that ‘genre’ dating from the 19th century.
Kieslich distinguishes what different songs were ‘doing,’ i. e., whether
they stimulated or settled conflicts, or stabilized the existing political order;
his distinctions are in substance pragmalinguistic ones, see Günter Kies-
lich, Das ‘Historische Volkslied’ als publizistische Erscheinung: Untersuchungen zu
Wesensbestimmung und Typologie der gereimten Publizistik zur Zeit des Regensburger
Reichstages und des Krieges der Schmalkaldener gegen Herzog Heinrich den Jüngeren
von Braunschweig 1540–1542, 1958.
Some of the best of recent scholarship in textual linguistics has argued
quite similar if not identical to Kieslich that the action intended by the text
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1630

or its author should be the main criterion to classify genres, see Oskar
Reichmann, “Autorenintention und Textsorte,” Textarten im Sprachwandel –
nach der Erfindung des Buchdrucks, ed. Rudolf Grosse and Hans Wellmann,
1996, 119–34. Much of the research history regarding ballads, libels, and
especially songs can be read as a possibly unintended extrapolation from the
principle to appreciate the text’s or its author’s intention to act in social con-
texts. On a comprehensive scale, applied to the entirety of all medieval texts,
this pragmalinguistic approach may seem too generalistic to be useful for
the historian working in a particular empirical context, see the empirical
breadth of text in categories such as “texts that inform,” “texts that enter-
tain,” or “texts that legitimate” in Frühneuhochdeutsches Lesebuch, ed. Oskar
Reichmann and Klaus-Peter Wegera, 1988, 26–51, 147–69, 170–90. The
basis of the conceptual framework is, nevertheless, the most convincing to
date. Traces of it can be found in the several different approaches of scholar-
ship to interpret the poetologically inconsistent material; these include the
topics of the public sphere, gender, honor, laughter as well as the field of his-
torical anthropology more generally.
Scholarship on public sphere has become more attentive to elements of
reciprocal communication, rather than exclusively focusing on the dawn of
modernity around 1800, see Andreas Gestrich, “Politik im Alltag: Zur
Funktion politischer Information im deutschen Absolutismus des frühen
18. Jahrhunderts,” Alltag in der Zeit der Aufklärung, ed. Klaus Gerteis, 1990,
9–28. The Reformation is seen as a period of intensified public communi-
cation, when the literary market, one-leaf printing, and singing became
strong means of influence. A translation of “publica voce” (Machiavelli)
could therefore remain ambivalent, until studies of public opinion showed
the need for revision of the first half of the structural change of the public as
outlined in Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchun-
gen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, 1962.
Uprisings throughout the later Middle Ages demonstrate that com-
munication and even representation were far more reciprocal than expected;
“fama publica” was not a static entity but the result of continuous communi-
cation, both apologetic and critical, for “geschrey” see Bauer (1981); Gerd
Schwerhoff, “Öffentliche Räume und politische Kultur in der frühneu-
zeitlichen Stadt: Eine Skizze am Beispiel der Reichsstadt Köln,” Interaktion
und Herrschaft: Die Politik der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt, ed. Rudolf Schlögl, 2004,
113–36, 127.
While the concept of public opinion seems to be a project of the En-
lightenment, there was a disposition in the medieval audience of ballads,
libels, and songs to perceive and judge their living and imagined world; “Pas-
1631 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

quini” (rather than the Roman statue “Pasquino”) developed into a Euro-
pean literary genre that resembled a public sphere in its declared thrive for
truth.
Songs as well as ballads were part of partial and unfair discussions, as a
case study of the Cities’ War by mid-15th century shows. Kellermann deals
with the Volkslied by way of induction, see Karina Kellermann, Abschied
vom ‘historischen Volkslied’: Studien zu Funktion, Ästhetik und Publizität der Gattung
historisch-politische Ereignisdichtung, 2000, 49, and derives the genre of “histo-
risch-politische Ereignisdichtung,” defined by the content that is domi-
nated by political conflict. She regards the boundary to the “historical bal-
lad” as blurred, since the legitimative purpose (rather than poetological
patterns of form) ruled the application of literary means. Ballads in Keller-
mann’s sense are never impartial, but libellous. Although ballads were al-
ways attached to particular political situations, this quality might be staged
by the producers or be the result of performative mediation. Subtly mod-
ifying, partially highlighting, leaving away or deceiving, agitating openly all
belonged to the repertoire of political lyrics.
The year 1517 constitutes a break, because political lyrics in the Refor-
mation period were confessionally based, in addition to a quantitative gap of
public communication extending to a first ‘public sphere.’ The 15th-century
public, Kellermann argues, was more occasionistic and depended on the
polarizing impact of political lyric on group identities, see Kellermann
(2000), 51, 57–58, 363. The 15th and 16th centuries can be distinguished by
quantitative differences, also marked by years like 1524, the ‘year of singing’
(‘Liederjahr’), when Luther became increasingly active as composer and
musician and added further strength to the Reformation’s (not exclusively
Protestants’) media concert that penetrated the society through the diffuse
powerful channels of informal and intensive oral communication, see Jo-
hannes Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert: Deutsche Geschichte zwischen
Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung 1517–1617, 2002, 58.
Libellous literature was interpreted as a form of honor communication
as well. In early medieval Ireland individuals were afraid to lose their faces by
songs of jocular nature aimed at their honor; this was a typical shame culture
that more and more developed into a guilt culture that internalized the sense
of honor, see Ward (1973), 696. During the early Middle Ages, certain topics
like sodomy, pederasty, and cowardliness dominated the public forms of
communication; there was a superstititional element in these songs that
could repeat the name of the insulted person, and curse it (“Fluch-/Schaden-
zauber”); magical connotations of songs have especially been preserved in
carnivalesque singing, see Felix Hoerburger, Musica Vulgaris: Lebensgesetze
Ballads, Songs, and Libels 1632

der instrumentalen Volksmusik, 1966, 77–80, in analogy to libellous portraits,

see Franco Sacchetti, “Das Porträt auf dem Kopf: Schandmalerei, Ironie
und forensische Praxis (ca. 1392),” Porträt, ed. Rudolf Preimesberger,
Hannah Baader, and Nicola Suthor, 1999, 195–200, esp. 199. The evi-
dence shows continuous emergence of genres like “Schimpfliet,” “Twing-
liet,” “Scheltliet,” and “Rüegeliet,” often categorized by editors as Sang-
spruch, see Ward (1973), 703.
In the light of the scarce evidence of jocular songs, interpreters seem
somewhat free to see courtly and popular literature intertwined. Most songs
relied on oral tradition because they were attached to the time structure of
urban life as well on the dispersion of information, see Wolfgang Suppan,
Deutsches Liedleben zwischen Renaissance und Barock: Die Schichtung des deutschen
Liedguts in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1973, 13; the ethnological per-
spective has long explained that written sources are a mediated substrate
of oral communication, the anthropology of media has shown the analogy
of oral communication during the late Middle Ages and the age of print.
The concept of a ‘Great Divide’ around the late 18th century is critically re-
assessed in Peter Burke and Asa Briggs, A Social History of the Media: From Gu-
tenberg to the Internet, 2002, esp. 13; for the impact of the increase in literacy on
the singing culture see Suppan (1973), 37. Recent approaches to premodern
media interpret historical theories of the media, including theological con-
notations of images and texts and show that concepts of media theory must
be re-examined to shed light on performance and reception practices.
The topic of honor comes up beyond sheer situational criticism. Several
songs deal critically with the ambition of young women to social advance-
ment, see Ward (1973), 716; Schmidt (1985), 180. Several trades like mil-
lers, shepherds, or rich farmers are criticized for stereotypical reasons, such
as cheating, sodomy, and unfairness in social relations with their inferiors;
clerics or minorities could be hit by such assaults, see Klusen (1973), 745.
The history of early modern women has been considered as part of the
history of “street literature” in the sense of clandestine and popular texts, see
for ballads, pamphlets, jestbooks, and the like Wiltenburg (1992), 30–34,
100, et passim.
In a cultural transfer from Italy to France, during the years following
1500, satirical libel called “pasquinati” were translated from Italian and
French and made the honor of individuals a matter of public debate, see Las-
traioli (2004). Blasphemic libel received a new interpretation beyond a
merely religious debate; blasphemers were very much acting in their social
contexts, therefore a pragmalinguistic approach is needed to interpret bal-
lads and libel, see Francisca Loetz, “How to do Things with God: Blasphemy
1633 Ballads, Songs, and Libels

in Early Modern Switzerland,” Ways of Knowing. Ten Interdisciplinary Essays,

ed. Mary Lindemann, 2004, 137–52; Schwerhoff (2005), esp. 281. The
political context is increasingly interpreted as reciprocal communication, a
formerly underestimated paradigm in urban history, see Robert Jütte,
“Sprachliches Handeln und kommunikative Situation: Diskurs zwischen
Obrigkeit und Untertanen am Beginn der Neuzeit,” Kommunikation und All-
tag in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Hundsbichler, 1992,
159–81.

D. Conclusion
The object of this article is presented in the form of a working-definition.
Even if one follows one of the different approaches to communication in bal-
lads, songs, or libel specifically, parallels cannot be overlooked. Although
there are many open questions and a need for further research, there are,
nevertheless, main currents of interest in research equally regarding ballads,
songs, and libels. Relevant texts like rhymed historical political narratives,
satires, and defamatory literary forms were often at the borderline of clan-
destine and officious, and critical and affirmative communication. The em-
phasis is on the political, the “field of textual political communication”: for
an overview of useful or necessary limits of this field see Frieder Schanze,
“Überlieferungsformen politischer Dichtungen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,”
Schriftlichkeit und Lebenspraxis im Mittelalter: Erfassen, Bewahren, Verändern, ed.
Hagen Keller, Christel Meier, and Thomas Scharff, 1999, 299–331,
esp. 301.
Their potential communicative function is often described by more or
less implicitly positioning them in a particular set of dichotomies. Ballads,
songs, and libels are discussed with regard to the learned or popular, as well
as the oral or written, textual or plurimedial (images/music) realm. Was their
intended role in communication rather affirmative, agitative, or destructive?
Can political and religious, serious and humorous or political and consola-
tory discourse be sharply distinguished? Most examples can be comprehen-
sively described by an entire set of the given categories. This is not to say
that there was no change of manuscript communication after the production
of printed material became more affordable. Historical description adds to
these questions, because the empirical basis was in most cases synchronically
selected.
To summarize the history and the current state of research, one may
extrapolate that researchers’ interest in communication has continuously
grown during the last decades, including debates regarding established
questions such as what impact popular media had in a world possibly domi-
Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus 1634

nated by elite culture. The interpretation of media and media practices yield
insights into dialogical reciprocal interaction of different social groups.
Further studies in this field will elucidate further political communication
and culture throughout the premodern period.

Select Bibliography
David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routledge, 1972); Chiara Lastraioli,
“Die ‘Pasquini’ – ein europäischer lieu de mémoire?,” Kulturtransfer: Kulturelle Praxis
im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolfgang Schmale (Vienna: Studien-Verlag, 2004), 299–314;
Matthias Lentz, Konflikt, Ehre, Ordnung: Untersuchungen zu den Schmähbriefen und Schand-
bildern des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (ca. 1350 bis 1600). Mit einem illustrierten
Katalog der Überlieferung (Hanover: Hahn, 2004); Francisca Loetz, “How to do Things
with God: Blasphemy in Early Modern Switzerland,” Ways of Knowing. Ten Interdisciplin-
ary Essays, ed. Mary Lindemann (Boston: Brill, 2004), 137–52; Oskar Reichmann,
“Autorenintention und Textsorte,” Textarten im Sprachwandel – nach der Erfindung
des Buchdrucks, ed. Rudolf Grosse/Hans Wellmann (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag
C. Winter, 1996), 119–34; Frieder Schanze, “Überlieferungsformen politischer
Dichtungen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” Schriftlichkeit und Lebenspraxis im Mittelalter:
Erfassen, Bewahren, Verändern, ed. Hagen Keller, Christel Meier, and Thomas
Scharff (Munich: Fink, 1999), 299–331.

Christian Kuhn

Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus

A. Introduction
Scholarly interest in the relationships between humans and beasts and birds
has expanded greatly from the late 19th century to the present, and studies
concerning these relationships specifically within the medieval period are
common. Within this broader field of animal studies, a more specific interest
in bestiaries and aviaries exists, and has developed in tandem with an inter-
est in the relationship of these genres to their classical sources. The bestiary
(book of beasts) is a book or manuscript that presents images of birds, ani-
mals, or other creatures, actual or imagined, along with interpretive and
moralizing narratives that reflect the human world and simultaneously pro-
mote Christian doctrine. The aviary (book of birds), which similarly presents
didactic morals through its catalogue of winged beings, is often included as a
category within bestiary texts, but it also appears on its own. Both the besti-
ary and the aviary, genres that blossomed in the late Middle Ages, primarily
1635 Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus

in Latin and French, are descendants of the Greek Physiologus, a primarily

theological work comprised of approximately twenty to fifty moralized ani-
mal tales that articulate Christian themes and concerns.

B. Physiologus
One of the earliest trends in scholarship on the Physiologus was the publi-
cation of annotated editions. During the late 19th century, no less than seven
versions of the Physiologus were published, and a few editions appeared in the
mid- to late 20th century. Francesco Sbordone’s Physiologus (1936) is con-
sidered the authoritative edition of the Greek text, although others precede
it, such J. B. Pitra’s Spicilegium Solesmense (1855) and Friedrich Lauchert’s
Geschichte des Physiologus (1889), or follow it, such as Dimitris Kaimakis’s
Der Physiologus nach der ersten Redaktion (1974). Although Sbordone’s text
supersedes Lauchert’s as the authoritative edition, the latter’s study is still
considered the most comprehensive to date, and it set an early precedent for
subsequent studies. Lauchert provides details on the individual Physiologus
legends, including information on the dates, origins, and sources of each leg-
end, as well as similar information on the texts and manuscripts overall. In
addition, he provides information on the later histories of the Latin and ver-
nacular translations of the Greek text as well as on the Physiologus’s influence
on trends in visual art forms, a field of study that extends to bestiaries and
aviaries. Later scholars, such as Nikolaus Henkel (Studien zum Physiologus im
Mittelalter, 1976) and Francis Klingender (Animals in Art and Thought to the
End of the Middle Ages, 1971), continued this avenue of inquiry, and have com-
pleted examinations of the animal forms within the Physiologus within the
broader field of art history.
Following Lauchert’s example, Sbordone’s edition, which is based
upon the data gathered from his study of over seventy manuscript variants,
provides extensive details on the analogues and sources of the Greek text. As
Michael J. Curley notes in Physiologus (1979) – his modern translation of the
Latin texts edited by Francis J. Carmody (Physiologus Latinus: Éditions prélimi-
naires, versio B, 1939, and “Physiologus Latinus, versio Y,” 1941) – some of
these sources include Aristotle’s On the History of Animals, Pliny’s Natural His-
tory, and Aelian’s History of Animals, as well as non-literary sources such as
folklore and legend from eastern and Mediterranean cultures. Sbordone’s
study also continues the debate concerning the possible authorship of the
Greek text, noting that the Byzantian recension of the Physiologus identifies
Solomon and Saint Basil as the pagan and Christian authors respectively.
Here, Sbordone is influenced by Karl Ahrens, who, in Zur Geschichte des so-
genannten Physiologus (1885), theorized that the Greek Physiologus was actually
Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus 1636

a composite of two separate pieces, with legends written by a pagan author

comprising the first part, and exegesis written by a Christian author com-
prising the second part. Not all scholars support this view, however. Max
Wellman, for instance, argues that the author was a disciple of the Greek
church father Origen (“Der ‘Physiologus,’ Eine religionsgeschichtlich-
naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung,” Philologus, Supplementband 22.1
[1930]: 1–116), a view that has been commented upon by Sbordone (Ricerche
sulle fonti e sulla composizione del Physiologus greco, 1936) and refuted by Ben E.
Perry (“‘Physiologus,’” Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
[1941]: 1074–129). In fact, the debate over authorship can be traced back as
far as the 4th century AD, to the Syrian translation of the Greek text. As Cur-
ley notes, the Syrian text, edited by J. P. N. Land (Anecdota Syriaca, 1874), at-
tributes authorship to St. Basil in its opening title, “liber Physiologi sive
verba facientis de naturis, et compositus est a S. Basilio, cum theoria sive ex-
positione ex illis deprompta” (Physiologus, 1979, xxvii). Since then, numer-
ous other well-known names have been attached to various Physiologus texts
as potential authors, including Peter of Alexandria, Ambrose, Jerome, and
John Chrysostom. More recently, Beryl Rowland returned to the question
of St. Basil’s authorship and argued that the Saint’s allegorical style has very
little in common with the extended allegorizations of the Physiologus (“The
Relationship of St. Basil’s ‘Hexameron’ to the ‘Physiologus,’” Epopée animale,
fable, fabliau, ed. Gabriel Bianciotto and Michel Salvat, 1984, 489–98).
Similar debates surround the Physiologus’s composition date and origins.
Sbordone draws upon data from his extensive study of the Greek manu-
scripts and concludes that the original text was composed ca. AD 200, a view
similar to that of Lauchert, although Lauchert argues for the possibility
of a date as early as AD 140. Contrarily, scholars such as Ahrens and Well-
man suggest that the text was written considerably later, probably during
the 4th century. Yet, despite their disagreement over specific composition
dates, scholars generally concede that since translations of the Greek text ap-
pear in the early 5th century, first in Ethiopian, and then in Syrian and Arme-
nian, the Physiologus must have been in circulation by the 4th century. Studies
of early translations such as these provide insight not only to the Greek text’s
transmission but also to its origins because they display a high degree of fi-
delity to the original. For example, Fritz Hommel, in his edition of the Etho-
pian translation, Die aethiopische Übersetzung des Physiologus (1877), posits that
the Greek original has specifically Alexandrian origins, an argument that
Emma Brunner-Traut reinforces in her study of Egyptian myths within
the text (“Altägyptische Mythen im ‘Physiologus,’” Antaios 10.2 [July 1968]:
184–98).
1637 Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus

Early publications of translations of the Greek text have also led to spe-
cific trends in research. The Old English translation, which was originally
edited and then translated by Albert. S. Cook (The Old English Elene, Phoenix
and Physiologus, 1919, and The Old English Physiologus, 1921), was recently re-
edited by Ann Squires (The Old English Physiologus, 1988). This re-edition co-
incided with a revival in critical attention, much of which concerns the gen-
eric nature and religious significance of the Old English text. In particular,
parallels have been drawn between the Physiologus of the Exeter Book and other
Old English poems. Douglas R. Letson, for instance, compares the text
to homilies (“The Old English ‘Physiologus’ and the Homiletic Tradition,”
Florilegium 1 [1979]: 15–41), as does Andrea Rossi-Reder, who expands this
argument to suggest that the Old English text is complete rather than frag-
mentary, and that it is an Easter poem similar in nature to the homilies, one
that leads its Christian readers through the rituals of Lent and that helps
them prepare for Judgement (“Beasts and Baptism: A New Perspective on the
Old English ‘Physiologus,’” Neophilologus 83.3 [July 1999]: 461–77).
Studies concerning the role of the Physiologus in religious narratives are
not exclusive to the Old English text. Curley has also written on the Physio-
logus’s author’s ability to infuse pagan tales with Christian morals through
animal symbolism, and suggests that the Greek text is an early and influen-
tial contributor to the field of Christian allegory (“‘Physiologus,’ Fysiologia
and the Rise of Christian Nature Symbolism,” Viator 11 [1980]: 1–10). Indeed,
manuscripts and translations of the Physiologus survived precisely because
they could be used by church fathers (classical and medieval) as rhetorical
models in monastic classrooms and as didactic examples for sermons; the
beasts and birds within the text operated as exemplars for their human (and
Christian) audiences.

C. Bestiaries and Aviaries

In the 12th century, Latin versions of the Physiologus were expanded through
the inclusion of new chapters on various birds and animals as well as through
the integration of material from encyclopedic works such as Isidore of Sevil-
le’s Etymologies, especially material from Book 12 (“Concerning Animals”),
and Ambrose’s Hexameron. These expanded versions (which became known
specifically as bestiaries) divided the Physiologus and additional materials into
zoological categories, expanded upon the exegetical commentaries, and
added coordinating illuminated figures or images.
Ultimately, these new texts – the bestiaries – had a greater popularity
than the earlier Physiologus. Over forty Latin Bestiaries are extant, most of
which were produced in England between the 12th and 14th centuries. Some
Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus 1638

of the more renowned Latin bestiary manuscripts are available in facsimile,

but only a few are available in translation. The Bodley Bestiary is available as
a facsimile, edited by Christopher de Hamel (The Book of Beasts: A Facsimile
of MS. Bodley 764, 2008), and in a translation by Richard Barber (Bestiary:
Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M. S. Bodley 764 with All the
Original Miniatures Reproduced in Fascimile, 1992). Similarly, the University
Library Cambridge bestiary is available as a facsimile, edited by Montague
Rhodes James (Bestiary: Being a Reproduction in Full of MS. Ii 4. 26 in the University
Library, Cambridge, with Supplementary Plates from Other Manuscripts of English
Origin, and a Preliminary Study of the Latin Bestiary as Current in England, 1928),
and in a translation by T. H. White (The Book of Beasts, 1954).
One of the most persistent areas of study concerning the bestiary is, of
course, its relationship to the Physiologus. The earliest and most significant
study in this area is James’s Bestiary: Being a Reproduction in Full of MS. Ii 4. 26
in the University Library, Cambridge, with Supplementary Plates from Other Manu-
scripts of English Origin, and a Preliminary Study of the Latin Bestiary as Current
in England, 1928. In this study, James identifies four basic categories, or
“families,” which group together manuscripts with similar content. The
first family includes all of the variant Latin Physiologus manuscripts, all of
which were produced on the continent between the 8th and 10th centuries
and which also are typically organized into three groups or versions: version
Y (extant in three separate manuscripts: Munich, Lat. 19417; Munich, Lat.
14388; and Bern Lat. 611), version B (Bern, Lat. 233), and version C (Bern,
Burgerbibliothek, Lat. 318). The second family includes bestiary manuscripts
in which the Physiologus text has been expanded with extra material from Isi-
dore, Abmrose, and/or other sources. The third and fourth families include
larger bestiaries, with a greater number of entries drawn from Isidore’s Ety-
mologies and a greater number of entries and illustrations of fish, invert-
ebrates, and birds. Many of the bestiaries in these latter two families also
have remarkably similar illustrations of animal and bird forms.
In Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries (1959, 1962), Florence McCul-
loch modifies James’s system. She breaks the manuscript “families” into
smaller groups (“sub-families”), and includes a number of manuscripts over-
looked by James. For example, in the first family, she includes a 10th-century
composite of Physiologus, version A (Brussels, Bibl. Roy. 10074). She also in-
cludes the De bestiis et aliis rebus, a text erroneously attributed to Hugh of Saint
Victor, and discusses, albeit briefly, the first book of this text, which is com-
prised entirely of birds and is known as the Aviarum. McCulloch also intro-
duces a new category of “transitional” manuscripts (manuscripts that have
similarities with other texts in more than one group or family), and refers to
1639 Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus

these manuscripts as the B-Is (B for the B version of the Physiologus, I for con-
tent that derives directly from Isidore). She includes in her study the frag-
mented and non-allegorical Glossary of Ansileubus, which includes twenty-two
entries from the Physiologus, and two manuscripts that she refers to as other
“principal” texts, the Physiologus of Theobaldus and the Dicta Chrysostomi
(a text erroneously attributed to John Chrysostom).
McCulloch also extends her study to include vernacular bestiaries in
French from the 12th and 13th centuries, specifically those of de Thaon, Ger-
vaise, Guillaume le Clerc, and Pierre de Beauvais. Although she does not
place these new listings within the family system, she does examine their
relationship to the Physiologus. A number of scholars have followed her
example in this area of study. Xenia Muratova has written numerous jour-
nal and book articles over the last thirty years concerning the relationship be-
tween the Physiologus and its vernacular translations (see, for example, “Prob-
lèmes de l’origine et des sources des cycles d’illustrations des manuscrits des
bestiaires,” Epopée animale, fable, fabliau, ed. Gabriel Bianciotto and Michel
Salvat, 1984, 383–408, and “Aspects de la transmission textuelle et pictu-
rale des manuscrits des bestiaires anglais à la fin du XIIe et au début du XIIIe
siècle,” Comprendre et maîtriser la nature au Moyen Age: Mélanges d’histoire des
sciences offerts à Guy Beaujouan, 1994, 579–605), as have F. N. M. Diekstra
(“The ‘Physiologus,’ the Bestiaries and Medieval Animal Lore,” Neophilologus
69.1 [Jan. 1985]: 142–55) and J. Holli Wheatcroft (“Classical Ideology in
the Medieval Bestiary,” The Mark of the Beast, ed. Debra Hassig, 2000,
141–54).
The system suggested by James and revised by McCulloch persists in
much of the extant bestiary scholarship, although it is frequently modified
when used. However, it is certainly not the only methodology employed by
scholars, especially in more recent studies. Many of the recent studies are
concerned with questions of textual transmission, but not just those arising
from the relationship between bestiaries and the Physiologus. Attention has
turned, instead, to the questions of textual transmission, translation, and
adaptation that arise from the movement of texts from the secular to the ver-
nacular languages, and from the monastic to the lay audiences. Other recent
trends reflect the frequent overlap bestiary studies experience with studies
on animals and animal symbolism in the Middle Ages. Commentary on the
bestiary tradition appears, for instance, in studies such as Joyce E. Salis-
bury’s The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (1994), which focuses on the
interaction between humans and birds and animals (domestic and wild), as
well as in studies concerning the human interpretation and representation
of other species in, for example, art and architecture. Two such articles ap-
Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus 1640

pear in the volume edited by L. A. J. R. Houwen, Animals and the Symbolic in

Medieval Art and Literature (1997), one by Jan. M. Ziolkowski (“Literary
Genre and Animal Symbolism,” 1–23), the other by Masuyo Tokita Dar-
ling (“A Sculptural Fragment from Cluny III and the Three-Headed Bird
Iconography,” 209–23).
A large part of the recent criticism on bestiaries also examines the genre’s
influence on other literary forms such as love poetry, psalters, Books of
Hours, and medieval romance. For instance, both Gabriel Bianciotto (“Sur
le ‘Bestiaire d’amour’ de Richart de Fournival,” Epopée animale, fable, fabliau,
ed. Gabriel Bianciotto and Michel Salvat, 1984, 107–19) and Jeanette
Beer (Master Richard’s ‘Bestiary of Love’ and Response, 1986, and Beasts of Love: Ri-
chard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amour and A Woman’s Response, 2003) examine how
Richard de Fournival, in his mid-13th-century Bestiary of Love, reworked besti-
ary materials and juxtaposed them to materials derived from the traditions
of love literature, especially from courtly love poetry. Similarly, Michelle
Bolduc explores the relationship between the bestiary tradition and the
beasts or animal characters in the French medieval romance, Le Roman de Silence
(“Silence’s Beasts,” The Mark of the Beast, ed. Debra Hassig, 2000, 185–209).
A number of key volumes reflect these trends, all of which have been
published within the last twenty years. Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages:
The Bestiary and its Legacy (1989), edited by Willene B. Clark and Meradith R.
McMunn, includes articles by scholars such as Curley, Rowland, Guy R.
Mermier, and Beer, and covers topics ranging anywhere from manuscript
production to the role of memory in bestiary lore and use. In contrast, Wilma
George and Brundson Yapp, in The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the
Medieval Bestiary (1991), take a zoological approach and examine bestiaries
and aviaries as evidence of medieval and classical awareness of knowledge
of natural history. Yet another avenue of study is explored both by Debra
Hassig (Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology, 1995), who examines how the
content of medieval bestiaries reflected and/or commented upon contem-
porary issues related to both religious doctrine and secular matters, and by
Ron Baxter (Bestiaries and their Users in the Middle Ages, 1998), who draws
upon narrative theory and reexamines how, precisely, bestiaries were used
and disseminated during the Middle Ages. Two later volumes, both from
2000 (The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, ed.
Hassig, and Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Nona C. Flores), continue to ex-
pand the critical realm through their inclusion of articles on topic such as the
relationship between bestiaries and art and architecture, depictions of sexual
relations and lust within the bestiaries, social taboos, and manuscript margi-
nalia.
1641 Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus

Manuscripts dedicated entirely to birds (aviaries), both plain and illumi-

nated, also survive, and, like bestiaries, have received considerable attention.
Most proliferate is the late twelfth-century De avibus, attributed to Hugh of
Fouilloy, of which there are over forty extant manuscripts. A modern edition
of Hugh’s text (The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarum), edited
and translated by Clark, was published in 1992, but the text also appears, in
its entirety or in fragments, in numerous medieval bestiaries. Clark’s edi-
tion is a pivotal text in aviary studies not only because it examines Hugh’s
text in its entirety but also because it includes a detailed catalogue and analy-
sis of all of the extant manuscripts. Like Clark, Rowland makes a signifi-
cant contribution to aviary studies, especially through her book on the role of
birds in human thought and memory (Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird
Symbolism, 1978). Yapp, however, is the most prolific writer on aviaries. He
has produced numerous articles on birds in architecture and manuscripts
over the last thirty years, and, like Rowland, he dedicates an entire book to
the subject (Birds in Medieval Manuscripts, 1982), in which he examines aviary
entries from the perspective of a zoologist or an art historian. More import-
antly, Yapp suggested further revisions to the “family” system established
by James and modified by McCulloch. He created a set of sub-families
within the second family (much like McCulloch created sub-families
within the first family), and he reorganized manuscript groups in order to re-
flect the amount of materials they included that derive from Hugh of Fouil-
loy’s Aviarum (“A New Look at English Bestiaries,” MAevum 54.1 [1985]: 1–19).
Recent studies of bestiaries, aviaries, and the Physiologus, then, are diverse
in their approaches and in their focuses. They demonstrate, overall, a move
away from pure textual studies and towards, instead, considerations of the
texts within broader cultural contexts. Yet, new editions of many key texts
are needed, as are continued discussions on relationship of the texts to other
cultural artifacts and practices. The steady growth of scholarship from the
late nineteenth century to the present, indeed, the explosion of critical works
in the last three decades, suggests that there is still much more work to be
done in this field.

Select Bibliography
Friedrich Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus (Strasbourg: Karl J. Trübner, 1889); Phy-
siologus, ed. Francesco Sbordone (Milan: Dante Alighieri-Albrighi, 1936); Michael J.
Curley, trans., Physiologus (Austin and London: University Press of Texas, 1979); The
Bestiary: Being A Reproduction in Full of Ms. Ii 4. 26 in the University Library, Cambridge, with
Supplementary Plates from Other Manuscripts of English Origin, and a Preliminary Study of the
Latin Bestiary as Current in England, ed. Montague Rhodes James (Oxford: Roxburghe
Club, 1928); Florence McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, rev. ed. (1959;
Bibles (Popular) 1642

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962); Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages:
The Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn (Philadelp-
hia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp, The
Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary (London: Duckwork, 1991);
Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995); Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and their Users in the Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton,
1998); Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, ed. Debra Hassig
(New York: Garland Publishing, 2000); Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed.
Nona C. Flores (New York: Garland, 1996).

Renée Ward

Bibles (Popular)

A. General Definition
By this concept is not meant a particular Bible or translation, but rather the
presentation and reception of Biblical themes to a wider, non-clerical public
in vernacular prose, verse or (later and more vigorously) drama, as well as in
iconography. The focus is upon the relationship between the Biblical stories
as presented and the actual Biblical text. Selected scenes are expanded or
given a particular interpretation which may be based upon various sources.
Assertions of authority attached to non-Biblical additions may also give the
impression to the (unlettered) recipient that what is being presented is genu-
inely scriptural. Expansions to the Biblical texts are linked most frequently
to the literal or historical sense of medieval Scriptural interpretation: thus
the identification of the serpent in Eden with the devil belongs to popular
Biblical tradition, and a New Testament example is the visit to the infant
Christ by three (named) kings, based upon Gospel references to unspecified
wise men bearing three gifts. Further, the acceptance of the fructus of Genesis
III as an apple depends upon an allegorical Latin reading in which malum
links “apple” and “evil,” and important typological parallels (such as the sac-
rifice of Isaac as a type of the Crucifixion) influence the selection of elements
in the popular Bible.
Text-types which provide evidence of the medieval popular Bible include
the following (editions with source-notes are cited): vernacular presentations
of Biblical stories such as the German Historienbibeln; moralizing treatises
containing Old and New Testament plus legendary narratives (such as The
ME Prose Translation of Roger d’Argenteuil’s Bible en François, ed. Phyllis Moe,
1643 Bibles (Popular)

1977); sermons and sermon collections; vernacular metrical adaptations of

the Bible, such as the English Cursor Mundi (ed. Richard Morris, 1874–1893,
rpt. 1961–1966), the French rhymed Bibles (such as La Bible de Macé de la
Charité, I. Genèse, Exode, ed. J. R. Smeets, 1967), the Irish Saltair na Rann, the
Middle Franconian Rhymed Bible, or Jacob van Maerlant’s Rijmbijbel; verse
adaptations of individual books or episodes (the Altdeutsche Genesis, the Span-
ish Coplas de Yocef, Passion-poems in many languages); prose or verse world
chronicles such as those by Rudolf von Ems, Jans Enikel (Weltchronik, ed. Phil-
ipp Strauch, 1891–1900), Heinrich von München, Ranulph Higden (ed.
Churchill Babington and Joseph R. Lumby, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden …
with the English translation of John Trevisa etc., 1865–1886), the Irish Lebor
Gabála Érenn (ed., trans. R. A. S. Macalister, 1938–1956), or the Spanish
General Estoria; and the drama, such as the mystery plays preserved in many
European languages. Most medieval religious texts, however, contain evi-
dence of the popular reception of individual Biblical motifs. See also Hans
Vollmer, Materialien zur Bibelgeschichte und religiösen Volkskunde des Mittelalters
(1912–1938). Iconographical reflections may be in manuscript (the Holkham
Bible Picture Book, large historiated Bibles), as well as wall-paintings, carvings,
glass or tapestry. Typologically arranged sequences of Bible scenes are found
in the so-called Biblia Pauperum and parallel traditions (see as a brief but useful
introduction M. R. James, “Pictor in carmine,” Archaeologia 94 [1951]: 141–66).

B. Development of Research
Scholarship is both broad and fragmented, given the very wide range of lan-
guages and materials involved, especially in Western Europe; Greek, Slav-
onic or Near-Eastern traditions of Bible interpretation are often separate,
may or may not overlap with those in the West, and are less frequently taken
into account. Even the Latin Vulgate is variable (see Samuel Berger,
L’histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du Moyen Age, 1893, rpt. 1976;
H. H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England, 1933), and sometimes an early
text might even reflect the Old Latin versions. The principal source for the
augmentations which constitute popular Biblical tradition, however, is
Latin exegesis in the writings of the Church Fathers, either directly, or more
often by means of compendia of commonplaces (much-repeated interpre-
tations) like the Glossa Ordinaria (and its interlinear and marginal forms, the
parva glossatura; see Biblia Latina cum Glossa Ordinaria, 1480/1481, ed. Karlfried
Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson, 1992), or through widely-known
works like the Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor. The availability of such
sources has been an ongoing process since the publication of major collec-
tions such as the Patrologia Latina in the mid-19th century and its successors.
Bibles (Popular) 1644

See on the background Ceslas Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au
moyen âge (1944); Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (1952,
3rd ed., 1983); E. Friedrich Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittel-
alter,” ZfdA 89 (1958): 1–23; Robert E. McNally, The Bible in the Early Middle
Ages (1959); Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Ca-
therine Misrahi (1960; 1962) and Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, The Cambridge His-
tory of the Bible, vol. II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation (1969). Much
exegetical material comes via sermons into vernacular traditions: see texts
such as the preacher’s handbook Fasciculum Morum, ed. and trans. Siegfried
Wenzel, 1989.
Early and often neglected sources for Scriptural expansion are the nu-
merous apocrypha and pseudepigrapha of the two Testaments. Although the
deuterocanonical books in the Protestant tradition are also termed apocry-
pha, here the term refers to works linked with the Bible by theme or ascrip-
tion. Recent collections are: James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha (1983–1985); H. F. D. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament
(1984); Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924; rpt.
1975), new edition by J. K. Elliott (1993); and see also Wilfried Lechner-
Schmidt, Wortindex der lateinisch erhaltenen Pseudepigraphen zum Alten Testa-
ment (1990). Works include the Infancy Gospels, developing incidents from
the early life of Christ, or the ramified Adam-books, expanding the brief nar-
rative in Genesis. Linked with the latter is the legend-cycle of the Holy Rood,
which is also integrated into medieval narratives as if it were Biblical. Other
enlargements of the New Testament narrative includes apocryphal/legend
material on the fates of Judas and of Pilate. Some reflections are found in
compilations such as the Gesta Romanorum or the ramified hagiographic
Golden Legend, and vernacular writers adapt these writings independently, or
more usually merge (without comment) apocryphal and Biblical material
(the Saltair na Rann is an example). Since Biblical augmentation may have
many different sources, reference must be made, finally, to such general
studies as Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,
1948; trans. Willard R. Trask, 1953, rpt. 1979, 1983, and 1990.
Earlier scholarship frequently applied a positivist Quellenforschung to
individual texts which could be misleading. An early study of Otfrid’s Old
High German Gospel-book considered that the poet’s additions all derived
specifically from the Glossa Ordinaria, which is now known to postdate the
German work (A. L. Plumhoff, “Beiträge zu den Quellen Otfrids,” ZfdPh 31
(1899): 404–96 and 32 [1900]: 12–35). However, the derivative nature of
the Glossa means that the thrust of the work was not entirely misplaced (see
Donald A. McKenzie, Otfrid von Weissenburg: Narrator or Commentator?, 1946).
1645 Bibles (Popular)

It is rarely possible to pinpoint a specific source, but it is important to be

aware that the popular Bible depends almost exclusively on usually widely-
known sources rather than on individual imagination. The background is
discussed in the debate on “Patristic Exegesis in the Evaluation of Medieval
Literature,” especially “The Defense” by R. E. Kaske, in Critical Approaches
to Medieval Literature, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (1960), 1–82. See also Brian
Murdoch, “Theological Writings and Medieval German Literary Research,”
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 71 (1970): 66–82.

C. Current Scholarship
Recent theoretical studies are those by Pim Valkenberg, “Readers of Scrip-
ture and Hearers of the Word in the Medieval Church,” The Bible and its
Readers, ed. Wim Beuken (1991), 47–57 and John Morgan-Guy, What Did
the Poets See? A Theological and Philosophical Reflection (2002). The great diversity
of the theme is illustrated by the collection Metamorphosen der Bibel, ed. Ralf
Plate and Andrea Rapp (2004). General and theoretical studies remain con-
centrated on a particular part of the Bible (Brian Murdoch, The Medieval
Popular Bible. Medieval Adaptations of Genesis, 2003); on a particular source
(James H. Morey, “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval
Popular Bible,” Speculum 68 [1993]: 6–35); on a particular vernacular tradi-
tion (David C. Fowler, The Bible in Early English Literature, 1977, and The
Bible in Middle English Literature, 1984; Achim Masser, Bibel- und Legenden-
epik des deutschen Mittelalters, 1976); or on a particular Biblical theme – an ear-
lier example is Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah (1949, rpt. 1963),
with a further limitation to a particular vernacular or genre as well in works
like Paul Schwarz, Die neue Eva: Der Sündenfall in Volksglaube und Volks-
erzählung (1973), or Gabriel Viehhauser, Die Darstellung König Salomos in
der mittelhochdeutschen Weltchronistik (2003). The most common approach to
the popular Bible, however, is by way of individual texts. Modern editions
have often supplemented earlier ones without source-notes, such as the
partial text of the Saltair na Rann: The Irish Adam and Eve Story from Saltair na
Rann, I, ed. and trans. David Greene and Fergus Kelly; II, Commentary
by Brian Murdoch (1976). Recent studies of prose vernacular Biblical adap-
tations cover a wide variety of languages: John J. Thompson, The Cursor
Mundi: Poem, Texts and Contexts (1998); Jaap van Moolenbroek and Maaike
Mulder, Scholastica willic ontbinden. Over de Rijmbijbel van Jacob van Maerlant
(1991); David Wells, The Central Franconian Rhyming Bible (Mittelfränkische
Reimbibel) (2003). Similar examples relating to chronicles are: Monika
Schwabbauer, Profangeschichte in der Heilsgeschichte: Quellenuntersuchungen zu
den Incidentien der ‘Christherre-Chronik’ (1996) or R. Graeme Dunphy, Daz was
Bibles (Popular) 1646

ein michel wunder: the Presentation of Old Testament Material in Jans Enikel’s Welt-
chronik” (1998).
Interest has grown in the role of pseudepigrapha and related legends.
General investigations include Michael Stone, A History of the Literature of
Adam and Eve (1992), and Stone in particular has bridged the gap with East-
ern traditions in studies such as: “Jewish Tradition, The Pseudepigrapha and
the Christian West,” The Aramaic Bible: Targums in Their Historical Context, ed.
D. R. G. Beattie and M. J. McNamara (1993), 431–49. Individual new edi-
tions include Mary-Bess Halford, Lutwin’s Eva und Adam. Study. Text. Trans-
lation (1984) and The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve. The Canticum de Creatione
and the Auchinleck Life of Adam, ed. Brian Murdoch and J. Tasioulas (2002);
for studies, see Esther C. Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (1962),
Achim Masser, Bibel, Apokryphen und Legenden. Geburt und Kindheit Jesu in der
religiösen Epik des deutschen Mittelalters (1969), and the collection Apocryphal
Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Kathryn Powell and Donald
Scragg (2003). There have been several studies on the Gospel of Nicodemus in
various languages.
Studies of the biblical aspects of medieval drama are extremely numer-
ous; beside bibliographies like The Bible in English Drama, an annotated list
compiled by Edward D. Coleman (to 1931) and updated by Isaiah Sheffer
to 1968 (1968), representative studies include Eleanor Prosser, Drama and
Religion in the English Mystery Plays (1961), W. Noomen, Het middeleeuwse
bijbelse drama in Frankrijk (1964), Brian Murdoch, “The Mors Pilati in the
Cornish Resurrexio Domini,” Celtica 23 (1999): 211–26. There is a good general
study by Peter Meredith, “The Direct and Indirect Use of the Bible in Medi-
eval English Drama,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 77 (1995): 61–77. Ico-
nographic studies continue to examine either single motifs (such as Ruth
Mellinkoff, The Mark of Cain, 1981) or may be very extensive, such as Hans
Martin von Erffa’s two-volume Ikonologie der Genesis (1989–95), which con-
siders thoroughly the interface of art and writings of all kind through the
whole of Genesis.

Select Bibliography
Hans Martin von Erffa, Ikonologie der Genesis (Stuttgart: Deutscher Kunstverlag,
1989–1995); David C. Fowler, The Bible in Early English Literature (London: Sheldon,
1977); David C. Fowler, The Bible in Middle English Literature (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1984); James H. Morey, “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and
the Medieval Popular Bible,” Speculum 68 (1993): 6–35; Brian Murdoch, The Medieval
Popular Bible (Cambridge: Brewer, 2003).

Brian Murdoch
1647 Books of Hours

Books of Hours

A. General Definition
Medieval Books of Hours emerged as a genre in the 13th century, and were
conceived as private prayer books, more often than not small and portable.
Among the earliest known is The de Brailes Hours (Claire Donovan, The
de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford, 1991).
Although initially based on Hours of the Virgin – a 9th-century compilation of
prayers and psalms – the books were soon expanded to include Church year
calendars, excerpts from the Gospels, additional prayers to the Virgin, the
seven Penitential Psalms accompanied by a Litany, and the Office of the
Dead. In order to exercise their private devotions, the owners of the Books of
Hours would open the volume eight times a day: at Matins (midnight), Lauds
(3 a.m.), Prime (6 a.m.), Terce (9 a.m.), Sext (noon), None (3 p.m.), Vespers
(6 p.m.) and Compline (9 p.m.). In illuminated manuscripts, beginning with
Matins, each hour was associated, respectively, with the image of the Annun-
ciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the
Adoration of the Kings, the Presentation in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt
and the Coronation of the Virgin, which accompanied Compline (James
Thorpe, Book of Hours: Illuminations by Simon Marmion, 1976, 2f). The read-
ings for these canonical hours varied, but all comprised a hymn, a psalm, a
capitulum, and a prayer, punctuated throughout by antiphons, versicles and
responses. In other words, the Books of Hours were lay equivalents to Brevi-
aries, only considerably shortened and considerably more varied: in addition
to the above texts, we find Books of Hours that include, among others, Hours
of the Holy Ghost, Hours of the Cross, and Suffrages of the Saints (Chris-
topher De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 1994, 176). Although
written entirely in Latin, some Horae began including excerpts in the ver-
nacular after about 1400, the exception being the Dutch Books of Hours that,
from the 14th to the 16th century, appeared almost exclusively in Dutch, in
Geert Grote’s translation (Roger S. Wieck, Painted Prayers. The Book of Hours in
Medieval and Renaissance Art, 1997, 10).
What set Books of Hours apart from other medieval books was their
demotic appeal; acquired by individuals and families, a Book of Hours may
have been the only book possessed by a household. It could be used to record
births and deaths, and could function as a primer to teach children (A History
of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Philip Ariès and George
Duby, 1988, 530). It was also a book that was often highly individualized,
not strictly codified as those books that played a role in the services of the
Books of Hours 1648

Church. Prayers included in these books varied according to the owner

and his or her concerns, while dates important to the family that owned the
book (such as births and deaths) were continuously added to the calendars.
Usually, Books of Hours were decorated, some more lavishly than others, and
the lavish ones were commonly associated with courts; invariably, these
Books of Hours were personalized. For instance, the Book of Hours illumi-
nated by Jean Pucelle around 1325, which belonged to the last Capetian
queen of France, Jeanne d’Evreux, features an image of Jeanne enclosed
within the initial D (Domine labia mea aperies) of the Annunciation miniature. It
has been argued that the sentinel guarding Jeanne outside the initial, along
with the frightening grotesques populating the entire book, was meant to
keep the queen’s attention on her devotions (Madeline Caviness, “Patron or
Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed,”
Speculum 68.2 [1993]: 333–62). Moreover, the book, decorated in delicate
grisaille and punctuated with splashes of color throughout the miniatures,
features, in addition to the Office of the Virgin, the Hours of St Louis, the
Capetian family saint whose presence underscores the intensely personal
nature of the manuscript and re-asserts the attribution of its ownership
to Jeanne d’Evreux (John Harthan, The Book of Hours, 1982, 74). Similarly,
The Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duke de Berry, an avid collector and patron of
the arts, introduces the Duke’s portrait in the January miniature of the book’s
calendar. Illuminated between 1411 and 1416 by the Limbourg brothers
(and finished between 1485 and 1490, long after Jean’s death, by Jean
Colombe), the book is famous precisely for this splendid Calendar that fea-
tures different castles and fields associated with the Duke (Millard Meiss,
“Preface,” The Très Riches Heures, ed. Jean Longnon and Raymond Ca-
zelles, 1989, 10). Owner portraits, too, mark the Hours of Mary of Burgundy,
illuminated ca. 1477 by Claes Spierinc and Liétard van Lathem (Eric Inglis,
comm., The Hours of Mary of Burgundy: Codex Vindobonensis 1857, Vienna, Österrei-
chische Nationalbibliothek, 1995). On its pages, the wife of Archduke Maximi-
lian of Austria appears repeatedly, immersed in her devotions, so much so
that she often becomes an active protagonist in her own visions (on portrait-
ure in Books of Hours see Joan Naughton, “A Minimally-Intrusive Pres-
ence: Portraits in Illustrations for Prayers to the Virgin,” Medieval Texts and
Images, ed. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir, 1991, 111–206). The
very visual format of the book may be a witness to Mary of Burgundy’s chang-
ing fortunes: initially conceived as a “mourning book of hours” – to com-
memorate the death of Mary’s father – the manuscript was partially stained
black, but Mary’s marriage to Archduke Maximilian rendered such mourn-
ing inappropriate: beginning with folio 35, all the pages remain white (for a
1649 Books of Hours

study of black Books of Hours see the commentary to the facsimile of Morgan
Library Ms. M. 493, Das schwarze Stundenbuch, ed. Bernard Bousmanne and
William M. Voelkle, 2001).
The Books of Hours lost their personal nature at the end of the 15th cen-
tury, when the Horae began appearing in printed format. Paper soon replaced
vellum, and woodcuts, often colored by hand, took the place of illuminated
miniatures; these Books of Hours began including new stock iconographies,
both in full-page images (such as David and Goliath and the Tree of Jesse) and in
border decorations (such as the Dance of Death and the Prodigal Son). Among
the most important publishers of these printed books, Antoine Vérard and
Simon Vostre must surely be mentioned. Despite the change in medium, the
Books of Hours nonetheless retained their primary function to encourage
pious contemplation, to guide the reader in his or her devotions, and so to
help the devout to achieve inner peace through prayer.

B. History of Research
The first to have catalogued the Books of Hours, and described their general
format was Victor Leroquais (Les livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque
Nationale et Supplément, 1927–43). However, the Books of Hours were not
given serious consideration until 1972, when L. M. J. Delaissé’s “The Im-
portance of Books of Hours for the History of the Medieval Book” appeared
(posthumously) (Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner, ed. Ursula E. Mc-
Cracken, Lilian M. C. Randall, and Richard H. Randall, Jr., 1974,
203–25). A lavishly illustrated selection from different Books of Hours –
from The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux to the printed Horae – was compiled and in-
troduced by John Harthan (1982), followed closely by Robert G. Calkins,
Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (1983) and Janet Backhouse, Books of Hours
(1985). Roger Wieck’s Time Sanctified: the Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life
(1988), a catalog for an exhibition that was held at the Walters Art Gallery,
offers a comprehensive overview and a sophisticated introduction to the
medieval Books of Hours, and includes an excellent bibliography.
Exhibition catalogs, in general, provide very useful introductions to the
format, both visual and textual, of the lay prayer books. They also often allow
for the localization of the Book of Hours in a particular part of Europe, more
often than not England, France, Flanders, Netherlands, and Italy (German,
Spanish and Portuguese Books of Hours are rare). So, The Golden Age of Dutch
Manuscript Painting (Henri L. M. Defoer et al, 1990) explores visual and de-
votional particularities of Dutch Books of Hours, and is a welcome addition
to A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination, by L. M. J. Delaissé (1968).
Similarly, “Flemish Manuscript Illumination, 1475–1550” from the Renais-
Books of Hours 1650

sance Painting in Manuscripts, Treasures form the British Library catalog (T. Kren,
1983, 3–85) and Vlaamse Miniaturen voor Van Eyck (ca. 1380–ca. 1420) include im-
portant discussions of Flemish illuminated Books of Hours, and the same is
done for French Horae in Francois Avril’s and Nicole Reynaud’s Les manu-
scrits à peintures en France, 1440–1520 (1993), and especially in Mya Dickman
Orth’s and Thierry Crépin-Leblond’s Livres d’heures royaux: La Peinture de
manuscrits à la cour de France au temps de Henri II (1993). Aside from exhibition
catalogs, important treatments of decorated Books of Hours have appeared
in studies concerned with medieval manuscript painting in general, such
as Millard Meiss’s multi-volume study French Painting in the Time of Jean de
Berry (1967–1974) as well as an excellent introduction to Books of Hours in
the chapter entitled “Books for Everybody” by Christopher De Hamel (see
above). Additionally, surveys of holdings in particular libraries and mu-
seums regularly provide valuable overviews of collections’ Books of Hours,
in manuscript and/or printed form. A case in point is a magisterial multi-vol-
ume study by Lilian M. C. Randall, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in
the Walters Art Gallery (1989–), and a catalog compiled by Paul Lacombe,
Livres d’heures au XVe et au XVIe siècle conservés dans les bibliothèques publiques de
Paris (2003; 1907).
Finally, studies on particular books are plentiful. The number of facsim-
iles, accompanied by in-depth introductions or commentaries, is too vast
to consider here, but among the most useful and beautifully published are
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves (John Plummer, 2002; 1966), Les belles heures
du Duc de Berry (2003) and Das Berliner Stundenbuch der Maria von Burgund und
Kaiser Maximilians, which both include commentaries by Eberhard König,
The Hastings Hours (D. H. Turner, 1983). Some books draw the attention of
scholars over and over: the splendid Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, has been
published and commented upon multiple times, most recently by Jean
Dufournet (2002), Raymond Cazelles and Umberto Eco (2003), and
François Autrand et al, Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry et l’enluminure en
France au début du XVe siècle (2004). In addition, a number of studies that focus
specifically on Books of Hours created for women, offer invaluable insight
into works of art commissioned by female patrons: Susan Groag Bell’s
“Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of
Culture,” Signs 7.4 (1982): 742–68, focuses particularly on the Books of
Hours commissioned, owned, and used by wealthy women, while Joan Hol-
laday’s “The Education of Jeanne d’Evreux: Personal Piety and Dynastic
Salvation in Her Book of Hours at the Cloisters,” Art History 17.4 (1994):
585–611, analyzes the Book of Hours made for the last Capetian queen as a
guide for behavior and devotions. Two recent studies focused on Books of
1651 Books of Hours

Hours produced for women in England: Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-
Century England by Kathryn A. Smith (2003), and a selection from Anglo-
Norman, Latin, and Middle English Books of Hours edited and commented
by Charity Scott-Stokes (Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England, 2006).
Additionally, a substantial part of Eamon Duffy’s Marking the Hours: English
People and Their Prayers 1240–1575 (2006) is dedicated to the discussion of
women owners of the Books of Hours. For an overview of the subject, see
Kathryn A. Smith’s “Books of Hours” entry in Women and Gender in Medieval
Europe: an Encyclopedia, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard, Thomas Izbicki, and
Margaret Schaus, 2006, 89–91.

Select Bibliography
Roger Wieck, Time Sanctified: the Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life. 2nd ed. (1988; New
York: G. Braziller in association with the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 2001), John
Harthan, The Book of Hours, 2nd ed. (1977; New York: Park Lane, 1982), Christopher
De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (1986; London: Phaidon Press,
1994, 168–99). For a recent survey, see Albrecht Classen, “The Book of Hours in the
Middle Ages,” Futhark 2 (2007): 111–29.

Elina Gertsman
Islamic Calendars 1652

Islamic Calendars

A. General Definition
The Islamic calendar par excellence is the pure lunar calendar starting from
the Hijra, i. e., the “Emigration” of the Prophet Muhammad b. Abi Talib
from Mecca (see below). This is the calendar normally used by Muslim
peoples: nowadays only for religious purposes, but in the past for approxi-
mately all the exigencies of historical chronology. However, one may con-
sider “Islamic” any calendar starting with this era.

B. Solar Islamic Calendars

Many forms of calendar starting from the Hijra developed in the countries of
the Islamic world during different period of its millenary history, such as the
numerous solar calendars elaborated for administrative (fiscal) or agricul-
tural purposes. Two calendars of this kind are in use today in the Islamic
Republic of Iran and in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan respectively. His-
torically, alongside the Hijri era and the Arabic lunar calendar, we have spe-
cific forms of calendars that seem to be the product of combining the Muslim
era with the solar years and months of different national or religious tradi-
tions existent in the territories subjected to Islamic rulers. These were help-
ful especially for financial needs and show different forms in various coun-
tries of the Islamic world, such as the financial solar calendars of Abbasid
times or the still not well-known sursana of Moghul India. About the origin
of the Persian fiscal era the question is still open. For instance, see Reza Ab-
dollahy, “Calendars – II. The Islamic period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. IV,
1990, 669–70 (a summary of his “Taqwim-e ä araji,” Našriya-ye daneškada-ye
adabiyat wa ^olum-e ensani-ye Esfahan, II-1 [1361š/1982–83)]: 37–58), who hy-
pothesizes a starting point of that era in pre-Islamic times, and Simone Cris-
toforetti, Izdilaq: miti e problemi calendariali del fisco islamico (Izdilaq: calendri-
cal myths and problems of Islamic public revenue), 2003, 89–118, who summarizes
the different opinions about this topic and proposes an analysis of the per-
sistent monetary crisis during Omayyad and Abbasid Chalifates in the light
of calendrical facts. In addition, in many texts one may find dates calculated
according to solar calendars and different eras, especially for astronomical
1653 Islamic Calendars

needs. For example, years may be reckoned according to the Seleucid era and
the Syrian solar calendar (in Christian authors), or the so-called “era of the
martyrs” and the Coptic solar calendar, according to the era of Yazdegard
and the Persian solar calendar (in Persian authors), the Julian calendar
(Greek, Orthodox and Spain), the Jalalian calendar (in astronomic works),
or the Zoarian cycle of the twelve animals with various eras (in the countries
occupied by Mongols). All necessary information on the different Christian
calendars will be found in Victor Grumel, Traité d’études byzantines (1955) ed.
by P. Lemerle, vol. I, La chronologie (1958). Material on the Persian calendri-
cal system and the calendars in the Turkic world is available respectively in
Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh, “Various Eras and Calendars Used in the Coun-
tries of Islam,” B.S.O.(A.)S., IX-4 (1937–1939): 903–922 (Part I.), B.S.O.(A.)S.,
X-1 (1939–1942): 107–32 (Part II), an abridgment of its masterly Gahšomari
dar Iran-e qadim (The Time-Reckoning in Ancient Iran), Tehran, 1316š/1937–1938,
written in Persian language, and in Louis Bazin, Les systèmes chronologiques
dans le monde turc ancien (Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica, XXXIV), 1991. On the
Ottoman financial calendar see Joachim Mayr, “Das türkische Finanzjahr,”
Der Islam 36 (1961): 264–68. The establishing of chronologies is made diffi-
cult by the variety of methods of dating in use in the East. The following ar-
ticles are of the greatest importance to a general view on calendars and eras
during Islamic times: “Ta’rikh I. – Dates et ères dans le monde islamique,”
Encyclopédie de l’Islam2, vol. X (2002): 277–90, by François C. de Blois, B. van
Dalen, and “Calendars (Islamic period),” op. cit,” Encyclopaedia Iranica,
668–74, by R. Abdollahi. In the last case, it is necessary to pay attention to
the given conversion formula for the Zoarian cycle with solar Hijri era – used
in Ilä anid age and in modern Iran until 1343 (1304š)/1925 – because a mis-
take occurred. For a correct version of it see S. Cristoforetti, Forme ‘neoper-
siane’ del calendario ‘zoroastriano’ tra Iran e Transoxiana (‘New-Persian’ Forms of
the ‘Zoroastrian’ Calendar between Iran and Transoxiana),” Eurasiatica n. 64
(2000): 94–98.

C. The Lunar Hijrı̄ Calendar

In September 622, the Prophet Muhammad fleeing Mecca, after some days’
travelling, reached the oasis of Ya©rib (later called al-Madina, i. e., “the City”
par excellence). This event – which occurred in the Arab month of Rabi^ Ist – is
the Hijra, the basis of Islamic chronology. After an initial period of about 17
years in which the dates were reckoned by counting the months from Rabi^
Ist, under the second caliph ^Umar ibn al-Ä attab (13–23/634–644) the fixing
of the beginning of the new Islamic era took place. Then, the term Hijra, that
in Arabic was used to denote the Emigration of the Prophet from Mecca to
Islamic Calendars 1654

Medina, was also applied to this era (Hijri, i. e., “of the Hijra”). In spite of the
opinion of the Prophet’s cousin, ^Ali ibn Abi Talib, who preferred to reckon
from the first day of the month Rabi^ Ist, the caliph ordered that the year start
with the 1st of Muharram – the first month of the Arabic traditional calen-
dar – in that lunar year corresponding to 15th/16th of July 622 in the Julian
calendar (R. Abdollahy, “Calendars …,” op. cit. 668). The choice of Muhar-
ram as the first month of the year instead of Rabi^ Ist or Ramadan (the month
of the first Coranic revelation) reveals the greater importance attributed to
the traditional (pre-Islamic) starting point of the year and to the social and
economic relevance of that moment (end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca).
In the preference given to the year of the Hijra as the first year of the new
Islamic era it is possible to see the prevalence of some politico-social issues
(e. g., severance of relations between Muhammad and his clan and the follow-
ing alliance with the people of Medina) over purely religious events (e. g.,
God’s call to Muhammad) or hagiographical facts (e. g., the Prophet’s birth)
(S. Cristoforetti, Forme ‘neopersiane’ …, op. cit., 14). The incertitude be-
tween 15th and 16th of July concerns the beginning of the day (nychtemeron)
in Arabic custom. Still today, for religious purposes, the day is considered
to start after the sunset. Then, for example, Monday night for the Muslims
is the night between Sunday and Monday and not that between Monday and
Tuesday. For this reason the beginning of the Hijri era is Friday 16th July in
civil usage, or Thursday 15th July in the common astronomic (and religious)
usage. The lunar Hijri calendar was based on the synodic month (29,53 days
approximately), reckoned from one sighting of the new moon to the next (on
the matter see Miquel Forcada, “L’Expression du cycle lunaire dans l’eth-
noastronomie arabe,” Arabica 47 [2000]: 37–77; Jan P. Hogendijk, “Three
Islamic Lunar Crescent Visibility Tables,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 19
[1988]: 29–44). This could have caused a one- or two-day discrepancy be-
tween the effective sighting of the new moon and the start of the correspond-
ing month in civil usage (the latter constitutes the basis on which all the
tables for converting dates are elaborated). In such cases, any presence in the
sources of indications on the position of the days in the week may be of the
greatest importance for the reconstruction of the exact date. For example,
the existence of a double recording system of lunar months is clearly docu-
mented in Somalia. There it was normal usage to distinguish al-sana al-qama-
riyya (“lunar year”) – reckoned on the basis of months corresponding to the
effective sightings of the new moon – from al-sana al-ta’riä iyya (“civil year”) –
reckoned according to the written Islamic calendar (Enrico Cerulli, Soma-
lia: Scritti vari editi ed inediti, vol. I, 1957, 185). For many years the most trust-
worthy work for help in establishing concordances between the official Is-
1655 Islamic Calendars

lamic calendar and the Julian and Gregorian has been Ferdinand Wüsten-
feld, Vergleichungs-Tabellen der muhammedanischen und christlichen Zeitrechnung
(1854), third edition revised by Bertold Spuler in collaboration with Joa-
chim Mayr (1961), which also gives a table for converting the Ottoman
financial (solar) years. Nowadays, in addition to Edward M. Reingold and
Nachum Dershowitz, Calendrical Tabulations 1900–2200, 2002, many con-
version programs are easily available on-line.

D. History of Research
The knowledge of different calendarical systems is basic for astronomers.
Normally a section on calendars is present in ancient astronomic Arabic
works; see for example the section entitled De Arabum, Romanorum, Coptorum
et Persarum aevis atque de alia in aliam convertenda in Carlo Alfonso Nallino’s
annotated Latin translation of Zij al-Sabi’ by the famous astronomer of
9th –10th century Abu ^Abdallah Muhammad al-Battani (al-Battani, sive Alba-
tenii opus astronomicum, Milano, 1899–1907: vol. I, 66–71 [rpt. 1977]). One
of the most ancient and important sources on different calendars used in the
Islamic world is the masterpiece of the great man of science Abu al-Rayhan
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (362–440/973–1048) translated by
C. E. Sachau, The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Arabic
Text of the Athâr-ul-Bâkiya of Albîrûnî, or ‘Vestiges of the Past,’ Collected and Reduced
to Writing by the Author in AH 390–1, AD 1000, 1879; rpt. in 1998. In Europe the
knowledge of Hijri lunar calendar keeps up with the translations of Arabic
astronomical writings (on the topic see Bruce S. Eastwood, “Astronomy in
Christian Latin Europe,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 28 [1997]: 235–58;
José Maria Millás i Vallicrosa, “Las primeras traducciones cientificas de
origen oriental hasta mediados del siglo XII,”, Nuevos estudios sobre la historia
de la cienca española, ed. id. 1960, 79–115). A good example of it is John
Greaves’s Epochæ celebriores, astronomis, historicis, chronologis, Chataiorum, Syro-
Græcorum, Arabum, Persarum, Chorasmiorum, usitatæ ex traditione Ulug Beigi …
(1650), i. e., “The most famous eras […] according to tradition by Ulug Beg,”
Timurid ruler (850–853/1447–1449) and astronomer, author of an import-
ant astronomic treatise. A more specific interest in the lunar Arabic calendar
develops during the later 17th and 18th centuries (Barthélemy d’Herbelot
de Molainville, Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionaire universel contenant gener-
alement tout ce qui regarde la connaissance des peuples de l’orient, 1697, 444–45, 857;
William Marsden, “On the Era of the Mahometans, called the Hejerà,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 78 [1788]: 414–32). Old
studies of great importance for research on the calendars used in the Islamic
world are to be found in the fundamental miscellany edited by Fuat Sezgin,
Islamic Calendars 1656

Calendars and Chronology in the Islamic World: Texts and Studies I, 1998. All the
writings by Christian Ludwig Ideler on the matter are reprinted in it
(“Über die Zeitrechnung der Araber,” first published in AKAWB 1812/13,
Hist.-phil. Kl. (1816): 97–120 [= Sezgin: 103–126]; “Über die Zeitrechnung
der Perser,” first published in AKAWB 1814/15 Hist.-phil. Kl. (1818): 259–289;
[= Sezgin: 127–157]; “Über die bei den morgenländischen Völkern ge-
bräuchlichen Formen des julianischen Jahrs,” first published in AKAWB
1816/17, Hist.-phil. Kl. (1819): 215–262 [= Sezgin: 159–206]) along with
some other important works, such as that by Franz Xaver Freiherr von
Zach, “Über den Kalender der Türken,” first published in Zeitschrift für Erd-,
Völker- und Staatenkunde 2 (1825): 64–69 [= Sezgin: 234–239]. The above-
mentioned miscellany also contains studies on conversion systems (for
example: J. B. Navoni, “Rouz-namé, ou calendrier perpétuel des Turcs, avec
les remarques et des exemples sur la manière de compter les lunaisons, et
avec des tables pour trouver la correspondance des dates entre l’ère turque et
l’ère vulgaire,” first published in Fundgruben des Orients 4 (1814): 38–67,
127–53, 253–77 [= Sezgin: 1–92]; Ch. L. Ideler, “Über die Vergleichung
der muhammedanischen und christlichen Zeitrechnung,” first published in
Fundgruben des Orients 4 (1814): 299–308 [= Sezgin: 93–102]) and important
writings on the pre-Islamic form of the Arabic lunar calendar (Mahmoud
Pacha al-Falaki, “Mémoire sur le calendrier arabe avant l’islamisme, et
sur la naissance et l’âge du prophète Mohammad,” first published in Journal
asiatique, sér. 5, 11 (1858): 109–192, already rpt. in Mémoires couronnés et mém-
oires des savants étrangers, publiés par l’académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des
beaux-arts de Belgique, 30, Classe des lettres (1861): 1–45 [= Sezgin: 251–336]).
On this topic and in particular on the nasi[’] (the pre-Islamic “intercalation”),
in addition to the old works by Armand-Pierre Caussin de Perceval,
“Mémoire sur le calendrier arabe avant l’islamisme,” Journal asiatique, ou
recueil de mémoires, d’extraits et de notices relatifs à l’histoire, à la philosophie,
aux langues et à la littérature des peuples orientaux, sér. 4, 1 (1843): 342–79
(an English translation is available [by L. Nobiron], “Notes on the Arab
Calendar Before Islam,” Islamic Culture 21 [1947]: 135–53), and by Aloys
Sprenger, “Über den Kalender der Araber vor Mohammad,” Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 13 (1859): 134–75, see C. A. Nallino,
Raccolta di scritti editi e inediti, vol. V, 1944, 152–71, who translated some
important passages from Arabic sources. A more recent contribution on the
matter is the work of F. A. Shamsi, “The Meaning of Nasi: An Interpretation
of Verse 9:37,” Islamic Studies 26 (1987): 143–64. The most important sources
on Islamic calendars are available in F. Sezgin, Calendars and Chronology in
the Islamic World: Texts and Studies II, 1998. Unfortunately an organic and com-
1657 Cantigas de Amigo

prehensive work on the history of calendrical systems in Islamic world is still

needed.

Select Bibliography
R. Abdollahy, “Calendars – II. Islamic period),” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. IV (London
and New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, 1990), 668–74; L. Bazin, Les
Systèmes chronologiques dans le monde turc ancien (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, and Paris:
CNRS, 1991); Elias Joseph Bickerman, “Time-Reckoning,” The Cambridge History of
Iran, vol. III-2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 778–91; F. C. de Blois
and B. van Dalen, “Ta’rikh I. – Dates et Ères dans le Monde Islamique,” Encyclopédie
de l’Islam2 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 277–90; Friedrich Karl Ginzel, Handbuch der mathema-
tischen und technischen Chronologie (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906–1914, rpt. 1958 and 2007);
V. Grumel, Traité d’études byzantines, ed. by P. Lemerle, vol. I, La chronologie (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1958); F. Sezgin, Calendars and Chronology in the
Islamic World: Texts and Studies I (Frankfurt a. M.: Institute for the History of Arabic-
Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1998); F. Sezgin, Calendars
and Chronology in the Islamic World: Texts and Studies II (Frankfurt a. M.: Institute for
the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University,
1998); S. H. Taqizada (= Taqizadeh), Gahšomari dar Iran-e qadim (The Time-Reckoning
in Ancient Iran) (Tehran: Majles’ Editions, 1316š/1937–1938); S. H. Taqizadeh, “Vari-
ous Eras and Calendars Used in the Countries of Islam,” B.S.O.(A.)S., IX-4 (1937–1939):
903–22 (Part I), B.S.O.(A.)S., X-1 (1939–1942): 107–32 (Part II).

Simone Cristoforetti

Cantigas de Amigo (“Songs of the beloved”)

A. Introduction
The earliest known examples of traditional Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry,
essentially those brought together in three medieval cancioneiros (“song-
books”), dating approximately from the late 13th century to the early 14th,
plus early fragments and some later copies (Lanciani and Tavani, 113–26,
132–39, 627–32). The cantigas de amigo appear in these MSS, together with
two other contemporary poetic genres, both rather less oral or traditional in
character and more learned in origin: cantigas de amor (“songs of love”) and
cantigas de escarnho e maldizer (“insulting and scandalous songs”). In the canti-
gas de amor, the author, influenced by the Provençal lyric, writes of his own
amorous sentiments; in cantigas de escarnho (from the same Germanic root as
English scorn), the poet singles out some contemporary enemy – or perhaps
only a supposed enemy – as an object of total ridicule and not infrequently of
Cantigas de Amigo 1658

obscene sexual mockery. In the cantigas de amigo, where a young girl gives
voice to her sorrow or disillusionment regarding an absent or neglectful
lover, we are inevitably reminded of identical or at least very similar senti-
ments and situations, in two other types of medieval Iberian Frauenlieder: Mo-
zarabic kharjas and Castilian villancicos (q.v.). Even though, in the cantigas
de amigo, a learned male poet usually claims authorship and is pretending to
express a girl’s sentiments, the motifs, topoi, and formulaic diction, shared
with kharjas and villancicos, are too similar and too numerous to be attributed
to chance. First of all, the amigo and the mother-as-confidante, in the cantigas,
clearly correspond, in identical situations, to the habib (“friend, lover”) and
the mamma in the kharjas and to the same figures present also in the villancicos.
In a pathfinding study, published immediately after the discovery of the
Hebrew-letter kharjas, Dámaso Alonso already brought to our attention a
number of thematic parallels between the three genres. James Monroe’s
comparative study (1975) is likewise indispensable in this regard. Parallel-
isms between motifs and formulas shared by cantigas de amigo, kharjas, villan-
cicos, and other medieval European forms of the traditional lyric were system-
atically studied and compared by Martha Schaffer in 1987. Basing her
work on Nunes’s collection, striking parallels came to light: Among other
formulaic elements, the girls’ invocations of friends or sisters are known in
both kharjas and cantigas, as are the motifs of dying of love and such rhetorical
questions as que farei? and que será de mi? (What will I do? What will become of
me?).
Typical of the cantigas de amigo’s metrical form are parallel couplets which
reiterate, in different rhymes, the song’s central concerns. In the following
song, by Martin Codax (mid-13th c.), the girl, sadly yearning for her absent
lover, addresses the sea, asking for news: “Ondas do mar de Vigo, / se vistes
meu amigo! / e ai Deus, se verrá cedo! // Ondas do mar levado, se vistes meu
amado! / e ai Deus, se verrá cedo! / Se vistes meu amigo, / o por que eu sospiro! /
e ai Deus, se verrá cedo! / se vistes meu amado, por que ei gran ciudado! / e ai
Deus, se verrá cedo!” (Waves of the sea of Vigo: Have you seen my beloved? Oh
God! May he come soon! Waves of the rising sea: Have you seen my friend?
Have you seen my friend, for whom I am sighing? Have you seen my beloved,
for whom I am deeply worried?; Nunes, no. 491; Jensen, 65). The dominant
sentiment in these songs is saudade (“yearning”) and these distressed girls
cannot help but remind us of the lonely, worried, distraught young ladies of
the Mozarabic kharjas. The parallelistic couplets, however, so typical of the
Portuguese songs, seem to be relatively rare among the medieval Castilian
villancicos. Here is one example from the Cancionero musical de Palacio: “Al alba
venid, buen amigo, / al alba venid. // Amigo, el que yo más quería, / venid al
1659 Cantigas de Amigo

alba del día. // Amigo, el que yo más amaba, / venid a la luz del alba. // Venid a
la luz del día, / no trayáis compañía. // Venid a la luz del alba, / no traigáis gran
compaña” (Come at dawn, good friend, / come at dawn. / Friend, whom I love
most of all, / come at the dawning of day. / Friend, whom I love best of all, /
come at the light of dawn. / Come at the light of day; / and don’t bring com-
pany. // Come at the light of dawn, / don’t bring many companions; Frenk,
Lírica española de tipo popular, 1990, no. 110). In line with the villancico’s more
ample and usually more cheerful perspectives, here there is no distress, but
rather eager and joyously erotic anticipation. But the seeming rarity of such
parallelistic couplets in the early villancicos may well be more apparent than
real. In a pathfinding survey of the modern tradition, including previously
unedited material collected from oral tradition, José Manuel Pedrosa has
discovered ample evidence of the existence of similar parallelistic rhyme pat-
terns in traditional songs from Trás-os-Montes and the Algarve (in Portugal)
and from Asturias, Burgos, Soria, and La Rioja (Spain), as well as in the Judeo-
Spanish traditions (“Reliquias de cantigas paralelísticas de amigo … en la
tradición oral moderna,” Lírica popular / Lírica tradicional: Lecciones en homenaje a
Don Emilio García Gómez, ed. Pedro M. Piñero, 1998).

B. Development of Research
From the pathbreaking 19th-century investigations of Carolina Michaëlis
de Vasconcelos down to the present, the three major cancioneiros (Ajuda,
Biblioteca Nacional, Vaticana) and other sources have been the subject of exten-
sive investigations (Lanciani and Tavani loc. cit. and pp. 654–56). Con-
cerning cantigas de escarnho, see Manuel Rodrigues Lapa, Cantigas d’Escarnho
e de Mal Dizer, 1965; Francisco Márquez Villanueva, “Las lecturas del
deán de Cádiz en una cantiga de mal dizer,” Studies on the ‘Cantigas de Santa
Maria,’ ed. Israel J. Katz et al., 1987, 329–54; Graça Videira Lopes, A Sátira
nos Cancioneiros Medievais Galego-Portugueses, 1994; and Benjamin Liu, 2004.
The standard collection of cantigas de amigo is that of José Joaquim Nunes,
1973; an extensive anthology: Kimberley S. Roberts, An Anthology of Old
Portuguese, 1956, 149–273; indispensable studies are: Manuel Rodrigues
Lapa, Das Origens da Poesia Lírica em Portugal na Idade-Media, 1929; Stephen
Reckert and Helder Macedo, Do Cancioneiro d’Amigo, 1976; Frede Jensen,
1978; Rip Cohen, Thirty-two Cantigas d’amigo of Dom Dinis, 1987; for the cru-
cial relationship to the kharjas: Dámaso Alonso, “Cancioncillas ‘de amigo’
mozárabes (Primavera temprana de la lírica europea),” Revista de Filología
Española 33 (1949): 297–349; Jole Scudieri Ruggieri, “Reflessioni su
kharge e cantigas de amigo,” Cultura Neolatina 22 (1962): 5–39; James T. Mon-
roe, “Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Tradi-
Ceremonial Texts 1660

tions,” Hispanic Review 43 (1975): 341–50; and Martha E. Schaffer, “The

Galician-Portuguese Tradition and the Romance Kharjas,” Portuguese Studies 3
(1987): 1–20. For a useful and well-written translation of representative
cantigas de amigo, see Barbara H. Fowler, Songs of a Friend, 1996.

Select Bibliography
Frede Jensen, The Earliest Portuguese Lyrics (Odense: Odense University Press, 1978);
Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa, ed. Giulia Lanciani and Giuseppe
Tavani (Lisbon: Caminho, 1993); Benjamin Liu, Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d’es-
carnho e de mal dizer (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2004); José
Joaquim Nunes, Cantigas de Amigo, 3 vols. (Lisbon: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1973).

Samuel G. Armistead

Ceremonial Texts

A. Introduction
Ceremonies as signifiers of the movement and acts of a ruler have always been
a demonstration of the political, social and religious rules. Ceremonies have
a high symbolic content, and express the ideology and anthropology (posi-
tion of different dignitaries) of a certain period. Ceremonials, such as coron-
ation documentation, were trasmitted in several ways, such as notitia, mem-
oranda, protocols, reports, letters, historical records and, above all, ordines.
There is no exact definition of an ordine, which creates a fixed norm of the
order of ecclesiastical ceremonial acts and informs readers about the liturgi-
cal wording. All such acts, texts and insignia of ceremonies should always be
seen in a particular social and political context.

B. Byzantine Empire
Old rites fell away with the progress of Christian elements, just as triumphal
arches disappeared after the 5th century. The ceremonial of the state had been
expanded in the 3rd century by consolidating the emperor’s dignity, majesty
and stability. Royal insignia, such as the crown and purple robe, were used,
audiences and banquets arranged, and legislation codified (Codex Theodsia-
nus, Iustinianus). The ceremonies in the palace demonstrated closeness with
the élite, but ceremonial manifestations in town, such as processions, dem-
onstrated the relationship of the ruler to the people. Victory celebrations
1661 Ceremonial Texts

from the late antiquities until the 11th century offered a complex picture of
this. The fundamental work on triumphal entries assembled by Constantine
VII Porhyrogenitus (De ceremoniis) had its sources in the 6th century. Medieval
Byzantine rulers selected favored elements of old ceremonies, adapting them
to the current situation. Great processions of liturgical feasts, characterized
by well-organized chants for imperial victory, and secular celebration of the
Hippodrom in the form of a demonstration of military victory, lost the char-
acter of mass rallies in the 7th and 8th centuries. Celebrations in which the
order of precedence was very important were concentrated in the palace, and
liturgical celebrations were celebrated in the Hagia Sophia. Constantine VII
asked for a revision of the Ceremony Book because he wanted to restore ne-
glected traditions and hand them down to his successors. During his plans
for restoration, Manuel I extended the ceremonial as an important facet of
his power. The ceremonial was shorter in the late Byzantine period, when
this celebration was extended to the court, and also to religious feasts, like
imperial funerals.
In his comprehensive study of the triumphal rulership from late an-
tiquity onward, McCormick pointed to the continuity of the ritual elements
of late antique state symbolism and its significant changes in the 7th and 8th
century. Constantine’s idea of reform was conditioned by the decay of and
disorganization in the preceding period’s rituals. His purpose was to restore
neglected traditions, such as the renewal of imperial robes and regalia. This
reform was in effect for at least two decades.
Jacobus Goar, Euchológion, sive Rituale Graecorum, copmplectens ritus et or-
dines divinae liturgiae …, 1730; Constantini Porphyrogeniti imperatoris De ceri-
moniis avlae byzantinae libri duo graece et latine, ed. Weber, 1829–1830; Excerpta
historica iussu imp. Constantini Porphyrogeniti, 1903–1906; John Bargnell Bury,
“The Ceremonial Book of Constantine Porphyrogennetos,” English Historical
Review 22 (1907): 209–27, 417–39; Otto Treitinger, Die oströmische Kaiser-
und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischen Zeremoniell 1938, 3rd ed. 1969);
Cornelius Adrianus Boumann, Sacring and Crowning: The Development of the
Latin Ritual for Anointing of Kings and the Coronation of an Emperor before the Elev-
enth Century, 1957; Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership
in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West, 1986.

C. Kingdom of Jerusalem
The pecularity of the coronation custom in the Holy Land was the laying of
the crown into the rocky dome of Jerusalem – templum Domini – and then its
repurchase. The coronation meal and the celebration service corresponded to
the occidental customs. One exception was the coronation of heiress Sibille
Ceremonial Texts 1662

by the patriarch in 1186. She crowned herself, then her husband, who was
afterwards anointed by the patriarch; this act provoked an opposition. The
coronation was celebrated after the occupation of Jerusalem in Tyrus – dur-
ing the same time the Staufer received the title “Kings of Jerusalem” through
the wedding of Friedrich II with Isabella II. The patriarch kept a French-style
pontifical with the Fulrad-Ordo in the cathedral of Tyrus. The indication of
the coronation in Johann von Ibelin’s book of law corresponded to the Ordo.
The oldest order of coronation for the Latin emperors in the Latin Patri-
archate is recorded in two pontificals, which had been already mentioned by
Edmont Martène in his study of the ancient ecclesiastical rites. Elze drew
in his investigation attention to the coronation of Balduin of Flandern,
which observed the Venetian patternand had some likeness to the Burgun-
dian Order, – already mentioned by Martène – and that of Reims. Balduin’s
unction, and the coronation performed by all present bishops was done ac-
cording to the French model. Later coronations, particularly the vestments,
were influenced by the Byzantine tradition. Here, the Latin Patriarch was the
consecrator and the Venetian component became more prominent. The ex-
ception – as demonstrated by Percy Ernst Schramm – was the third coron-
ation, of Peter of Courtenay, performed by Pope Honorius III in the Roman
basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura in April 1217.
Elze questioned the existence of a tradition and definite order. But
the “Order of Constantinopel” explicitly refered to the Roman Pontifical as
model of the imperial coronation. Indeed, the “Order of Constantinopel” can
be characterized as an enlarged version of the oldest Roman imperial coron-
ation, the order of Cecius I.
Reinhard Elze, “Die Krönung der lateinischen Kaiser,” Herrschafts-
zeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis sechszehnten
Jahrhundert, ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, vol. 3 (1954–1956): 839–44; Hans
Eberhard Mayer, “Das Pontifikale von Tyrus und die Krönung der Latei-
nischen Könige von Jerusalem, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Forschung über
Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 21 (1967):
142–232.

D. Imperial Coronation
The Order (Ordo) of imperial coronation is recorded, for the most part in
pontificals, in more than 200 manuscripts from the 10th century through the
15th century, but these manuscripts are only a small portion of those existing
during that period. These manuscripts do not only contain all liturgical
instructions, which clerics followed, but also various events that applied in
the Roman Church, such as consecration and coronation of popes and emper-
1663 Ceremonial Texts

ors. Michel Andrieu presented a historical survey and a comprehensive

compilation of these pontificals in Le Pontifical Romain au Moyen Age, citing
many of the copies of imperial pontifical kept in European libraries. An-
drieu pointed to the importance of the Ottonian Pontifical of Mainz (960),
which arrived in Rome in the 10th century and was adapted there. Andrieu
studied the development of the Roman Pontifical in the 13th century and that
of the canonist Gulilelmus Durandus (1292/96). The Orders (Ordines) of the
imperial coronation transmitted in these Pontificals have their origins in cer-
emonies of the Ottonian or Roman coronations, but often did not follow the
model word-by-word. In addition to these liturgical texts, there are other
records of papal ceremonies: the so-called Ordines Romani. The Benedicine
scholar Jean Mabillon was the first to collect and describe the early and
medieval versions of these records. This section of his Museum italicum was,
for a long time, the only estensive reseach into this field and was edited by
Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 78 (1862): 937ff. The importance of these early texts
and their presentation was discussed by Joseph Kösters in his Studien zu
Mabillons römischen Ordines. Michel Andrieu studied the later period, begin-
ning in the 12th century, in his Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen age,
1886–1956 (re-ed. 1961–1974). Here Andrieu presented an excellent sur-
vey of the source materials and dating in connection with a critical edition of
several ordines. Although all of these texts can be designated as curial cer-
emonial books, they are really just a collection of different ordines for differ-
ent occasions. The three oldest of these are closely connected with the Apos-
tolic Chamber, as demonstrated by Pierre Fabre in his study of the Liber
Censuum. At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, the cardinals Jacobus
Gaetani Stefaneschi and Napoleon Orsini initiated a substantial compilation
of ceremonial books with varying contents and structures. Most of these
books also contain orders for imperial coronation. The books’s present form
mostly dates from the 15th century, when the compilation was completed.
The contents of several of these books were published by Giovanni Battista
Gattico in his study of ecclesiastical ceremonies in 1753. Gattico also in-
tended to complete Mabillon’s edition. A new form of the presentation of
the ordines was created by Blasius de Cesena for Charles V’s coronation in
Bologna in 1530. De Cesena also compiled a nez compendium, the so-called
diaries, in which he entered all records of the coronation celebrations.
At the end of the 19th century, when the historical studies of sources de-
veloped further, the first critical investigation of the sources was published
by Georg Waitz (Die Formeln der deutschen Königs- und römischen Kaiserkrönung,
1872). Waitz’s research concentrated on the ordines of coronation between
the 10th and 12th centuries, and he was determined to discover the time and
Ceremonial Texts 1664

origin of the ordines’s compilation. Nearly 10 years later, Waitz’s suggested

dating was criticized by Joseph Schwarz (“Die Ordines der Kaiserkrö-
nung,” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 22 [1882]: 159–212), who prepared
the first index of all medieval imperial coronations and the history of the cor-
onation ceremony. All news about coronations was collected by Anton
Diemand, who tried to make these records accessible as historical sources.
Diemand did not only examine the Ordines but also of all complementary
information. (A discussion of the dating and connection of some ordines to a
particular coronation never stops. For example, a discussion continues of the
oldest and most detailed ordine, the Order Cencius II, for which the dating is
still controversial. The bulk of Eduard Eichmann’s 1912 dating and tradi-
tion investigation slowly transformed from source research to a wider dis-
cussion as he was forced by those critical of his research to defend in his find-
ings in several articles. Eichmann’s many and diverse investigations,
published in 1942, are indispensable because he took ecclesiastical law,
politics, and liturgy into consideration.
One of the most important contributions to recent studies on ordines
is presented by Percy Ernst Schramm, Die Ordines der mittelalterlichen Kaiser-
krönungen (1930). With this and several other important articles, Schramm
proposed basic principles for the research of ordines and considerably in-
creased the database of source materials. But Schramm was not able to draw
the obvious conclusion from his enormous body of research and its result,
shown in his last articles. Cornelius Adrianus Boumann and Carl Erd-
mann were the first to regard the Ordines consequently as a component of
medieval liturgical literature. Liturgy was much more important in medi-
eval times and could be easily compatible with political action. Therefore
these liturgical texts can be considered estimable sources of information.
Reinhard Elze completed an extensive and profound study. In his introduc-
tions he presented the development of the ordines during nearly 500 years –
from the Ottonian period until the compilation and transmission of the new
ceremonial book at the end of the 15th century – as well as the problems of re-
searching them. In addition to the edition of the main texts, Elze also indi-
cated all manuscripts recording ordines of coronation.
It seems there was no record of the order (Ordo) of imperial coronation in
the first period, because no trace has been found belonging to the period of
time from Charlemagne (800) through Berengar I (915), during which 11 em-
perors were crowned. The transmission of ordines began with the renovation
of the imperial dignity by Otto I (962) and ended with the last imperial cor-
onation performed by Pope Clement VII in 1530, when Karl V was crowned
in Bologna. The authors of the ordines, of which a differentiation of similar
1665 Ceremonial Texts

texts is possible only by its handwritten records, are mostly unknown. The
oldest ordines are very short and have been collected in the written Ottonian
Pontifical of Mainz (960). The Roman Order (Ordo I) was probably compiled
some years earlier than the pontifical, using the consecration of popes as a
model. The Western Order (Ordo II) repeated an older order for kings with
small changes in the text. The Benedicito Reginae was derived from the same
West Franconian model as the Order of the Seven Formulas, which the editor
of the Pontifical of Mainz had added to the early German Order. The ordines
that followed until the 12th century were only completions to Ordos I and II,
adapting the different conditions. The first took the Roman background into
consideration; Ordo V was certainly written in Rome around 1000, but it had
no particular influence on the following imperial ordines. The three written
ordines in the 11th century were widespread, but did not greatly influence
future developments. The Ordo of Arras (Ordo IX) has been considered a pro-
duction outside the imperial ordines. The order of the Roman Pontifical
of the 12th century and the Ordo Cencius I (Ordo X) transmitted in the Liber
Censuum of Cencius Camerarius (later Honirus III), were models with large
significance for later ordines. The Liber Censuum is a collection of papal docu-
ments which were used in curial administration. The original of 1192 is con-
served in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 8486).
Both the order (Ordo XI) compiled for a Spanish king’s mid-12th-century
coronation in Southern France and the very similar order probably written
in Apulia (Ordo XII) were an attempt to arrange the ceremonial of the older
orders but without any larger influence for future orders. The procedure of
the imperial coronation at the time of the Salier is the only text without any
liturgical references. It contains the imperial coronation outside the clergy
and had no practical value, but has been an important testimony for histori-
ans.
The four Roman ordines of the 12th century have become particularly sig-
nificant for the history of the imperial coronation. They show the tendency to
reduce the possibility of improvisation offered by the older ordines through
a larger written concentration on the details, and also reveal the basic prin-
ciples of the later ordines too, in which nothing was changed of the ceremo-
nial, fixated in its form since that time.The oldest of these orders is the con-
troversal Ordo Cencius II (Ordo XIV), which was compiled in the first half of
the century and at the century’s end much changed by the author of the Ordo
of the Staufer (Ordo XVII). The Ottonian and Roman pontificals of the 12th
century became established in the Ordo of Constantinople, the earlier ver-
sion of which referred to the 13th-century Pontifical of the Roman Curia and
was also used in Spain for the imperial coronation in Toledo. The Ordo of
Ceremonial Texts 1666

Apamea (Ordo XV) had no great influence on the following order (Ordo XVI).
The last Ordo and the XVII was used at the beginning of the 13th century for
the compilation of the Ordo of the Curia (Ordo XVIII), the principle version
of the Pontifical of the Roman Curia. This Ordo was finally included in the
curial books of ceremonies. Some attempts to improve the text of this ordo
(Ordo XIX–XXIV) were unsuccessful; Ordo XVIII was decisive for the papal
ceremonies in the ceremonial books until the end of the 15th century. The
pontificals in which the Ordo XIX–XXIV were collected, however, never have
been obligatory for the pope. The are two editions of the Pontifical of the
Roman Curia; the first was compiled in the middle of the 13th century and the
second, the more important one, the Ordo (Ordo XX) of Durandus (the jurist
and the liturgist Guillelmus Durandus) was written between 1292 and 1296.
The Ordo XXIII, which had been a compilation of the Ordo XVIII and XIX, is
conserved in one manuscript. The manuscript was used at the imperial cor-
onation of Karl IV on April 5, 1355. The papal ceremonial masters Augusti-
nus Patricius Piccolomini and Johannes Burckard, who worked out the new
ceremonial for the papal liturgy, created a new Ordo for emperors by using
and completing the Ordo XVIII – including aspects of Friedrich III’s coron-
ation (March 19, 1452). Remarks on the coronation of emperors in the pope’s
presence and the coronation of empresses were collected in Ordo XXV and in
several parts of the Pontifical of the Dominican Alberto Castellani near 1520
(Ordo XXVI). The papal ceremonial master Blasius de Cesena wrote a com-
pendium (Ordo XXVII) for the last imperial coronation, that of Charles V on
September 3, 1539, based on the order of imperial coronation conserved in
the ceremonial of 1488 but adapted to the practical situation. Some changes
were necessary because the coronation took place in Bologna and not in
Rome. The compendium became established in Ordo XXVIII A. These rec-
ords were presented in the form of a diary, in which there were registered
both the ordines and descriptions of particular celebrations.
Beside the Roman Pontifical and the Pontifical of Mainz, there were also
others which prescribed local rites outside Rome. The later ordines were
collected in the ceremonial books, the oldest of which – that of the canon
Benedikt of St. Peter (1140) – did not take any consideration of imperial cor-
onation. The collection of the Cardinal Albinus (1189), the so-called Ordo
Cencius I (Ordo X), was not included in the Liber Censuum of 1192, but was in-
serted into the more detailed Ordo Cencius II between 1195 and 1198.
During the residence of the popes in Avignon, some cardinals performed
the coronation of Heinrich VII (June 29, 1312) and Karl IV (April 5, 1355)
in the order of the pope. An order of coronation found by the notaries in the
ecclesiastical archives was issued in the bull Rex regum of Clement V – instruc-
1667 Ceremonial Texts

tions for the cardinals – and has been equal to the Ordo of the Staufer. The
bull Speciosus forma of Innocent VI for coronation was quite similar to the
former bull and contained the same Ordo, and was included in the Johannes
Porta de Annoniaco’s report about Cardinal Bishop Peter of Ostia’s coron-
ation journey.
In some non-liturgical manuscripts, ordines of imperial coronation have
also been transmitted, such as chartular of Aachen (ca. 1200), which contains
the German king’s Ordo, the coronation of queens, and the ordines of coron-
ation for the Ottonian Pontifical (Ordo I and II). Ordines I and XI can be ver-
ified in a 13th-century manuscript, probably of Venetian origin, conserved
now in Dresden. Konrad von Mengenberg inserted and explained fully the
Ordo XIX in his Oeconomica in the middle of the 14th century. The testimony
of the only non-litugical Ordo (Ordo XIII) can be found in the chronicon maius
of the Dominican of Milan, Galvaneus Flamma. Flamma’s source, a cronica ka-
lendaria of the 11th century, unfortunately was lost.
The oldest ordines have been very short because the celebrating popes
or bishops enjoyed privileges to arrange services. The model for the older
ordines of imperial coronation was the Sacramentaries and Benedicitionals,
and for the more recent ordines – beside one or more ordines of emperors –
the ordo of kings is considered the model. In the meantime the ordines got
longer and included rules to guarantee the uniformity of rites for the whole
church. Two groups of texts could be distinguished in the ordines: spooken
formulars (prayers, benedictions, songs, and oaths) and connecting rubrics.
The first group has depended on written submissions and the second group
could be liberally arranged. The text of the first prayers also could be verified
similarly in the Franconian Sacramentaries (8th and 9th centuries) and the
Benedicitionals of the following century. The songs derived from liturgical
sources, such as Antiphonaries or Responsories, conformed to the text of the
Vulgata. The oaths were a strange part of the liturgical ordines. The oldest
imperial oaths – probably used in the imperial coronation of Karl the Bald
(December 25, 875) – did not change in the written edition until the 12th cen-
tury. It seems the text was transfered without any consideration of contem-
porary wording. The so-called “Roman Oath,” certain rights guaranteed to
the Romans by the emperor, was written in the 12th century. Only a written
model of the oldest imperial ordo, the Roman Ordo of the Ottonian Pontifi-
cal, has been discovered. It was an old Ordo that was handed down for papal
consecration from the 9th century on. It was translated into a longer version
in the Ottonian Pontifical. Later ordos have been directly or indirectly based
on this version.
Le Liber censuum de l’Eglise romaine, ed. Pierre Fabre, 1905; Richard Salo-
Ceremonial Texts 1668

mon, Iohannis Porta de Annoniaco Liber de coronatione Karoli IV. imperatoris, 1913;
Jean Mabillon and Michel Germain, Museum italicum seu collectio veterum
scriptorum ex bibliothecis italicis, 2 vols., 1687–1689, vol. II: 3–554; Michel An-
drieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Age, 1931–1961; Michel Andrieu,
Le Pontifical Romain au Moyen Age, 1938–1941; Cornelius Adrianus Boumann,
Sacring and Crowning: The Development of the Latin Ritual for Anointing of Kings and
the Coronation of an Emperor before the Eleventh Century, 1957; Eduard Eich-
mann, “Die Ordines der Kaiserkrönung,” ZRG, Kan. Abt. 2 (1912): 1–43;
Eduard Eichmann, Die Kaiserkrönung im Abendland: ein Beitrag zur Geistes-
geschichte des Mittelalters mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des kirchlichen Rechts, der
Liturgie und der Kirchenpolitik, vol 2, 1942; Reinhard Elze, “Der Liber Cen-
suum des Cencius (Cod. Vat. lat. 8486) von 1192 bis 1228,” Bolletino dell’Archi-
vio paleografico italiano, Nuova Serie II–III (1956–1957): 251–70; Reinhard
Elze, “Eine Kaiserkrönung um 1200,” Adel und Kirche: Festschrift Gerd Tellen-
bach zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht von Freunden und Schülern, ed. Josef
Fleckenstein, 1968, 385–73; Reinhard Elze, Die Ordines für die Weihe und
Krönung des Kaisers und der Kaiserin, 1960; Johannes Haller, “Die Formen der
deutsch-römischen Kaiserkrönung,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen
Archiven und Bibliotheken 33 (1944): 49–100; Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz,
Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship, 1958;
Hans-Walter Klewitz, “Papsttum und Kaiserkrönung: Ein Beitrag zur
Frage nach dem Alter des Ordo Cencius II,” Deutsches Archiv für die Geschichte
des Mittelalters 4 (1941): 412–43; Joseph Kösters, Studien zu Mabillons römi-
schen Ordines, 1905; Percy Ernst Schramm, “Die Krönung in Deutschland bis
zum Beginn des Salischen Hauses (1028),” ZRG, Kan. Abt. 24 (1935): 184–332;
Percy Ernst Schramm, “Ordines-Studien I: Die Ordines der mittelalter-
lichen Kaiserkrönung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kaisertums,” Archiv
für Urkundenforschung 11 (1930): 285–390; Percy Ernst Schramm, Kaiser Rom
und Renovatio: Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Erneuerungsdenkens vom Ende
des Karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit, 1929; 3rd ed. 1975; Joseph
Schwarz, “Die Ordines der Kaiserkrönung,” Forschungen zur deutschen Ge-
schichte 22 (1882): 159–212; Georg Waitz, Die Formeln der deutschen Königs- und
römischen Kaiserkrönung (1872).

E. France
Several editions of ceremonial texts were published in the 17th century.
Immediately after his appointment to “Historiograph de France,” in 1619,
Théodor Godefroy published his Cérémonial français. With this text, Gode-
froy passed on an important aid to the absolute kingdom and the world of
scholarship. This publication, in which Godefroy unified all the historical
1669 Ceremonial Texts

information about coronation he found in the currently discovered ordines,

was important to members of the court for its preservation and also for
scholars as information about traditional costume. This edition was so suc-
cessful that his son, Denys Godefroy, who had taken over his father’s posi-
tion, published a larger re-edition in two volumes in 1649. The first of these
volumes discussed coronation; the second volume handled state ceremonies.
Through these volumes, France had a comprehensive description of its cer-
emonials. Guillaume Marlot had compiled all of the important coronation
records for Reims some years earlier, but without considering the records’
source material. Jacques Sirmond studied the early Carolingian period dur-
ing the time of Godfroy’s edition, and his book is the only reference for the
oldest Ordo (the coronation of Judith in 856), because the original manu-
script was lost. There always have been published texts for special coron-
ations, in which traditional ceremonies were repeated without any criticism.
Nearly 100 years later, Edmond Martène published some unknown or-
dines; He verified, for example, the Ordo of the Capetingians in the Pontifical
of Sens, but there is no direct connection to Sens. The dating proposed by
Godfroy in the 18th century for some ordines was, for some time, con-
sidered doubtful. Two German scholars, Hans Scheuer and Max Buch-
ner, tried at the beginning of the last century to figure out the character-
istics of these coronations and suggested possible dates for them. The history
of the French coronation published by George Péré in 1921 did not fulfill
the hopes placed in it to have a solution for unanswered questions. This book
did not consider the already printed ordines and was not interested in their
dependance on one another. Some years later, Marc Bloch noted on the lack
of critical classification of the French coronation. In the introduction of his
comprehensive study, in which he principally followed the available text edi-
tons and manuscripts, Percy Ernst Schramm indicated that the 20 described
ordines are the main texts, and that many ordines without any practical im-
portance – such as those that owe their creation to the editing of a pontificale
or of another kind of liturgical handbook – existed which had not been ac-
cepted for use and survived only on parchment. The pre-condition of a criti-
cal history of French coronations is doubtless the distinction of the valid and
not valid ordines. Aside from their collection and the reconstruction of their
transmission, Schramm tried to discover the ordines’ dependance on and
their connections with texts from other countries, because most ordines of
the western world were more or less similar. Sometimes it is very difficult to
determine which texts were the models and which were based on them.
Schramm expressed hope that his present study would easily make a critical
edition, thanks to the latest scientific research.
Ceremonial Texts 1670

The oldest Ordo is that of the coronation of Judith, daughter of Charles

the Bald (October 856). The text of the lost manuscript of St. Laurent in Liège
had been edited by Jacques Sirmond, Karoli Calvi et successorum aliquot Fran-
ciae regum capitula in diversis synodis ac placitis generalibus edita …, 1623, 498ff.
Some formulas used in it were adopted by the Anglo-Saxon Dunstan-Ordo.
The first Ordo created solely for coronation was that of the coronation of
Charles the Bald as king of Lorraine (September 869). This Ordo’s text was
preserved in the same lost manuscript, but the bishops’ previous speeches –
the most important testimonies of that time – are found in several manu-
scripts (such as Reg. lat. 291, f. 120v) and in the Annales Bertiniani of Hinkmar
of Reims.
The Ordo of the Ludwig II’s coronation (December 877), which was based
on the previous Ordo (869), was also contained in the manuscript of Liège as
well as in the Annales Bertiniani. The Ordo of Ludwig’s second coronation
(September 878) by Pope John VIII is preserved in the manuscript of Reims
214.
The “Erdmannsche Ordo” (about 900), which is found in a copy of a lost
codex of Sens in Paris, Bibl. Nat. Baluze 379, f. 86r-v, was consulted in Ger-
many and England at that time – and probably in France as well – until the
coronation of 1059. This text is the Westfranconian Ordo of that time, used
for nearly two centuries. The Erdmannsche Ordo is quite similar to that of 877.
The wording came from different 8th-and 9th-centuries sacramentaries, from
enlargements around Hinkmar, and from the so far not identified scrip-
torium where the Ordo was compiled.
The Fulrad Ordo drawn up by the abbot of the monastery Saint Vaast at
Arras (c. 900) has been used in France since 1108. This Ordo, which was trans-
mitted in several manuscripts (e. g., Paris and Brussels), was influenced by
the English Dunstan- and Edgar-Ordines and the German Ordo.
The Ordo of Arras (c. 1000) was found in chapter 141 of the Cologne cathe-
dral library’s pontifical, became important for the Lombardian coronation of
kings in the 14th century.
The Ordo of Reims, contained in the manuscript of Reims, was a comple-
tion of the compilation of 1200 and was written at Ludwig IX’s court. This
Ordo is quite different from the previous one, which indicated each word but
gave very short instruction about the situations in which these formulas
were used. The Ordo of Reims instead assumed the familiar wording and
ordered the performance of single ceremonial acts. The indications for the
anointing of the king were taken from the Ordo of Mainz and those for the
king’s oath were taken from the Fulrad Ordo and the Anglo-Saxon Edgar
Ordo. The French translation was probably the Ordo of the coronation of
1671 Ceremonial Texts

Saint Ludwig IX, and could be verified in the Gesta Ludiwici IX of Guillaume
de Nangis, in the 1737 burnt Registers of the Chambre des comptes of Paris,
and in some manuscripts such as those found in the British Library, Cotta-
nian Mss. Tiberius B. VIII.
The 1300 compilation was probably the Ordo of the coronation of
Ludwig VIII (1223). This text became known to Godefroy, who awarded
the formula of coronation to Ludwig VIII. The text also was republished by
Martène in the manuscript Paris, Bibl. Nat. 4464. Instructions for the gird-
ing on the sword were also taken from the Ordos of Mainz and Reims, and
from former ordines – but the rest of the Ordo was compiled based on the
Fulrad and Edgar Ordos, as well as the 10th-century German Ordo.
The last Ordo of the Capetingians (Ordo of Sens) was written between 1300
and 1320. This ordo used as models the Fulrad and Reims Ordos, the compi-
lation of 1300, the Ordo of Mainz, and the Edgar Ordo. The author, probably a
Reims cleric, based the 1300 compilation on a synthesis of the 1200 compi-
lation with the Ordo of Reims – adding missing parts and verifying suspicious
ones from the older Fulrad Ordo.This newer Ordo was used as a base for the
coronation of the first Valois, Philipp VI, in 1328. The following Ordos were
based on this one, and it was still observed in the 15th century because the
text was more detailed and better arranged than previous ordines. The
French translation resulted from the fact that laymen’s understanding of the
text in the national language was considered important.
In 1365, King Charles V ordered an Ordo for library be written and illus-
trated (manuscripts now in Paris and London). This was more than an official
Ordo, as the king wanted a splendidly illustrated manuscript. The king was,
therefore, more involved in this Ordo’s compilation than any of his pre-
decessors were with previous ordines. Undoubtedly, Charles had different
models used in his Ordo (last Capetingian and Fulrad Ordo and the Ordo of
Pedro IV of Aragon), including the pontifical with the Ordo of Mainz and that of
Wilhelm Durandus. Particularities which were not recorded in the text were
shown in the illustrations. The Carmelite Jean Golein (Goulain) wrote a com-
mentary on this Ordo in his translation of the Pontifical of Wilhelm Duran-
dus (1372). This chronicle and the description of the coronation were more
detailed than any had been since the time of Charles V.
In his treatise on the coronation, Jean Foulquart described the procu-
reur syndic of the lay judges of Reims and their tasks during coronation. Aside
from information on local history, Foulquart worked out the most im-
portant aspects of coronation, including the expenses.
The report for Charles VIII’s coronation in Reims (1484), which Gode-
froy had already mentioned, was more than a simple description. It was an
Ceremonial Texts 1672

explanation of protocol because all facts and participants were exactly regis-
tered. This report did not create a model that was decisive for future cer-
emonies. From this time on, the Ordo did not change but the course of events
became more splendid and the dignities changed each time.
Théodore Godefroy, Le cérémonial de France ou Description des cérémonies,
rangs, et séances observées aux couronnemens, entrées, et enterremens des roys et roynes
de France …, 1619 (expanded ed. 1649; see. Paris, Bibl. Nat. 4411–28); Guil-
laume Marlot, Théâtre d’honneur et de magnificence préparé au sacre des roys,
auquel il est trité de l’inauguration des souverains, du lieu où elle se fait et par qui, de la
vérité de la Sainte Ampoule des roys qui en ont été sacrez, du couronnement des reynes,
des antrées royales et cérémonies du sacre, 1643; Nicolas Menin, Traité historique et
chronologique du sacre et coronnement des rois et des reines de France depuis Clovis I
jusqu’au présent et de tous les princes souverains de l’Europe augmenté de la relation
exacte de la cérémonie du sacre de Louis XVI, 1723; Edmond Martène, De antiquis
Ecclesiae ritibus libri quatuor, 3 vols., 1700–1702, rev. ed. 1736–1738; Pons-
Augustin Alletz, Cérémonial du sacre des rois de France …, 1775; Charles Joseph
de Bevy, Histoire des inaugurations des rois, empereurs et autres souverains de
l’univers …, 1776; Georges Péré, Le sacre et le couronnement des rois de France dans
leurs rapports avec les lois fondamentales, 1921; Percy Ernst Schramm, “Or-
dines-Studien II: Die Krönung bei den Westfranken und Franzosen,” Archiv
für Urkundenforschung 15 (1938): 3–55; Percy Ernst Schramm, “Der König
von Frankreich: Wahl, Krönung, Erbfolge und Königsidee vom Anfang der
Kapetinger (987) bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters I,” ZRG, Kan. Abt. 25
(1936): 222–354, II. 26 (1937): 161–284.

F. England
Records, memoranda and acts of the Court of Claims, as well as the Ordines,
should be consulted for information about the English coronations.
The oath of coronation of kings, to which the “Charters of liberty” is similar,
has many times been recorded and transmitted separately. All these texts,
however, can not be seperated from the Ordines as they have been passed on
together and complement each other. An enormous number of official and
private descriptions deal with coronation, which is why constitutional litera-
ture has been engaged in its study since the time of the Tudors, and liturgical
research has taken interest in coronation since the 19th century. The value of
these texts is quite different, as some records were drawn up by experts who
discussed particular events, and other records fell back on historical facts.
John Neville Figgis’s study for the 16th century used the constitutional
literature of the time on a large scale. Selden, Thomas Milles and William
Prynne’s investigations and research in the following century contain im-
1673 Ceremonial Texts

portant information and source material about coronation ceremonials.

In the first half of the 18th century, Thomas Rymer produced a broad, com-
parative study of English rites and ceremonies, including papal, imperial
and other royal courts’s ceremonies. Some historical books with important
references for this field, such as those of Goffrey of Monmouth, should be
mentioned alongside the great number of publications about the English
constitution and the history of the following time. The facts and source ma-
terials published by Leopold George Wickham Legg, presented in two
books dealing with coronation and its ceremonies, are fundamental for
further investigations. The summary of Reginald Maxwell Woodley’s book
of coronation rites is very useful, but some completations and corrections to
this book should be taken into consideration. The specialist in medieval
European coronation ceremonies, Percy Ernst Schramm, devoted a great
deal of his time to studying the English rites. Gaining insight from earlier
studies by English specialists, Schramm proved that most of the English
texts can be adapted with a definite concept of specification that relates the
texts to continental versions. He showed that the Westfranconian Order,
which he carefully studied and which had not been known to English
scholars, represented a solution for the textual development in Britain.
Schramm’s proposal of a distinction between adapted and non-adapted
Ordines is only aplicable in the early period, because in modern times the
Ordines varied from one ceremony to another. Records in different forms of
several offices must therefore be included in such an investigation. For a re-
construction of the historical tradition, Schramm collected information on
officials and the purpose of some ceremonial acts from literary sources and
library catalogues. These facts could also be useful for a new edition of the
English “Coronation Record.” In this manner, Schramm’s edition can be a
helpful completion to Leopold George Wickham Legg’s famous book as an
enlargement of the most important texts – taking account of all records and
compositions of the original version and at least a characterisation of elder
and different models – that were consulted. Wickham Legg’s intention
was to provide perspective on this wide field of records, some of which have
not yet even been discovered.
The Judith Ordo is that of the coronation of Judith, daughter of Charles
the Bald (October 856 – Westfranconian Ordo); the text of the lost manu-
script of St. Laurent in Liège has been published by J. Sirmond (manuscript
is lost, text has been preserved only through the printed edition by Sir-
mond); the Dunstan Ordo I (960–973), preserved in the manuscript of the
Bodleian Library (579), was written on the continent with 10th- and 11th-cen-
tury editions completed in England; the Dunstan Ordo II (960–973 “Egbert”
Ceremonial Texts 1674

review), contained in Paris Bibl. Nat. 10575 was wrongly attributed to Arch-
bishop Egbert of York. This Ordo continued to have an effect later in Hun-
gary and Poland, and on the coronation of German rulers and Italian kings
in the 11th century (Lombardian Ordo); the Edgar Ordo (May 973) was based on
the Dunstan Ordo II and used the Ordo of Karl the Bald (869) and that of
Mainz. The Erdmannsche Order was prepared for the coronation of King Edgar.
This Ordo was taken as the model in France and England, and has come
down to us in seven manuscripts (Paris, London, Cambridge, Rouen). A de-
scription of the coronation of Edgar (May 973) by a Ramsay monastery monk
was included in the Vita S. Oswaldi (995–1005) and contained in a manuscript
in the London British Library. A translation of the oath of the coronation of
Aethelreds II (April 978) took the Edgar Ordo as model. Laudes for William the
Conqueror as Duke of Normandy, which were destined for religious festiv-
als, were copied in a manuscript now found in the Rouen public library.
A copy of the Laudes for the coronation of Mathilde, William the Conque-
ror’s wife (May 1068), was damaged by a fire in 1731 but is preserved in the
Pontifical of Winchester, preserved today in the British Library. These and
previous Laudes that were performed on feast days are reminiscent of the cor-
onation, as had been custom in Normandy. The Wilhelm Ordo English period
of William the Conqueror (1066–1087) is contained in a pontifical found
today in the Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. This text is richer than the
Edgar Ordo because of the carefully considered alternation of prayers,
especially the antiphons. The Coronation Charter of Henry I (1100) has been
preserved in various manuscripts, from which printed editions have been
published. The charter had been very important for the history of the Magna
Carta. The Anselm-Ordo was an adaptation of the Edgar Ordo and was used from
1154 until the beginning of the 14th century. This text was copied in several
12th-century manuscripts. All sections of this text, which differs from those
of Anglosaxon origin, follow the German customs which were then con-
sidered universally valid. The most important combination of the two ver-
sions is that from the German Ordo that included the questioning of the
people; this means that there was a restoration of the old law, in which elec-
tion was the most natural matter. The Anonymous Treatise of York was a
comparison of the King Ordo and the ordination (beginning of the 12th cen-
tury). This work is unique in its time because the result of the comparison of
the consecration and symbols of kings and priests was that the king was not
disrespected.
Coronation ideals contained in Goffrey of Monmouth’s 1136 Historia
regum Britanniae include some instructions for festival coronations taken
from the English court, as well as a description of the coronation of King
1675 Ceremonial Texts

Arthur – a ceremony influenced by Celtic nationalism; the Coronation Charter

of Henry II (1154) was used for the Magna Carta; the protocol of Richard I’s
coronation (September 1189) was important for a new type of text used in fu-
ture ceremonies. Four chroniclers recorded the coronation of Richard (Gesta
Ricardi). The Ordo of the secondo coronation of Richard I (April 1194) was
difficult to realize because it was the secondo one. Richard wanted to reestab-
lish his honor when he arrived in England after being held captive by the
emperor. The coronation ceremony created difficulties as, for example, the
anointing could not be repeated because of its sacramental character.
The Ordo of the coronation of Edward II (February 1308), which has been
preserved in many mansuscipts and chronicles (Oxford, London) in a short
(which is the older version and based on the Anselm-Ordo) and a long version
(based on protocol 1189, Ordo of Reims, Fulrad-Ordo king’s and papal docu-
ments and Roman-German Pontifical), presented an important stage in
the English coronation. The longer version was written in Westminster Abby
in 1377. This is where the abbot Nicholas Lytlington ordered a Missal to be
written that has been the textual testimony of the younger version. It is pos-
sible that the revision of the Ordo took place in view of Richard II’s coron-
ation in July 1377. The French translation of the oath of Edward’s coronation
(1308) was added as a “Memorandum” to the Close Rolls. The coronation of
Richard II was also described by Thomas Walsingham in his Historia Angli-
cana.
The oath of the memorandum of the coronation of Edward III (1327)
which took as its model the Ordo of 1308, was directly noted on the roll and
inserted in the Close Rolls. Beside the Lytlington Ordo can be found a treatise
Forma regum et reginarum coronacionis Anglie in several manuscripts, which
was a recording of the ceremonies in a functional and chronological manner
worked out by an officer of the court. A series of indications, such as poetic
works for coronation, reception of the king in a church, and Ordo for a king’s
funeral (de exequiis regalibus), were also noted. Memorandum of the coron-
ation of Henry IV (October 1399): In this document, preserved in the Public
Record Office, there is the decision of the Claims and no indication of the coron-
ation. This coronation was connected to a new version of the legend of S.
Thomas, who received oil from the heavens for the coronation. Little divice for
the coronation of Richard III and his wife (1485): This text, preserved in sev-
eral manuscripts, began with the dates and details of the coronation, then
changed to the format of an Ordo (mainly based on the Lytlington Ordo); the
words of the prayers were only implied, whereas the Ordo itself is deter-
mined by the ceremony of the court and not by liturgical ceremonies. This
document stands at the door of a new period, in which paper took place of
Ceremonial Texts 1676

parchment and printing had been invented. Thus, there was an extensive
documentation of the following coronations, along with the official ver-
sions.
Thomas Milles, Catalogue of Honor or Treasury of Nobility, 1610; John
Selden, Titles of Honor, 1614; William Prynne, The Signal Loyalty and Devotion
of Gods true Saints and pious Christians towards their King, 1660; A Complete Account
of the Ceremonies observed in the Coronations of the Kings and Queens of England,
1727;Thomas Rymer, Foedera, conventiones, literae et cuiuscunque generis Acta
publica inter Reges Angliae et alios quos vis Imperatores, Reges, Pontifices, Principes,
vel Comunitates … ab anno 1101 ad nostra usque tempora habita aut extracta; … 20
vols., 1704–1732; Goffrey of Monmouth, The British History in twelf books
translated from the Latin by A. Thompson, 1842; William Maskell, Monu-
menta ritualia ecclesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols., 1846–1847, 2nd ed. 1882; John Ne-
ville Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings, 1896, 2nd ed. 1914; Mode Violet Clark,
Medival Representation and Consent, 1936; Eleanore Cosntance Lodge and
Gladys Amy Thornton, English Constitutional Documents, 1307–1485, 1935;
Heinrich Böhmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie im XI. und
XII. Jahrhundert: eine historische Studie, 1899, rpt. 1980; Leopold George Wick-
ham Legg, English Coronation Records, 1901; Leopold George Wickham
Legg, A History of the English Coronation, 1937; Percy Ernst Schramm, “Or-
dines-Studien III: Die Krönung in England,” Archiv für Urkundenforschung 15
(1938): 305–91 (special studies 306–09).

G. Roman Curia
The ceremonial master Agostino Patrizi compiled the first edition of ec-
clesiastical rites at the beginning of the 16th century; during that time he
worked on the composition of the ceremonial book of the Roman Curia,
which had been obligatory for a long time. Nearly 100 years later, Edmond
Martène published research covering the study of ancient rites. This work
was soon republished with different supplements. One of the first edition of
the Ordines Romani was created at the end of the 17th century by Jean Mabil-
lon. The presentation of this important collection of source materials,
which had much influence on later investigations, was prepared by Josph
Kösters and was not satisfactory because of its lacking consideration of
manuscripts and the included attempts to uncover archetypes. Many useful
indications of old liturgical manuscripts can be found in the liturgy of the
Roman popes published by Domenico Giorni in the middle of the 18th cen-
tury. For his investigations of ceremonies undertaken nearly at the same
time, Giovanni Battista Gattico mainly used manuscripts preserved in the
Vatican Library. An account of the solemn procession from the Vatican Basil-
1677 Ceremonial Texts

ica to St. John in Lateran following the coronation of a pope, a tradition that
lasted for nearly 1000 years (from Leo III [795] to Pius VII [1801]), was written
by Francesco Cancellieri. In this body of research, Cancellieri tried to
classify and compile detailed information from unknown documents. Un-
fortunately, the investigation of the textual history of ceremonial books
done by Franz Ehrle some years earlier focused only on the 14th century and
remained incomplete. In an introduction to his edition of the order under In-
nocent VIII, Joaquim Nabuco wrote an incomplete survey of the develop-
ment of the papal ceremonial during and after the pontificate of Nicolaus V.
The most substantial and comprehensive study of the recent past is that
of Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, a specialist of ceremonies and their trans-
mission, who reconstructed the papal ceremonial by using important texts
preserved in manuscripts from various European libraries. Schimmelp-
fennig also wrote an extensive exploration of the ceremonial of the Curia
and its tradition. The indications of different copies of texts concerning the
original are certainly a theoretical foundation for further investigations.
Schimmelpfennig subdivided the history of the ceremonial books into
four phases.
The Ordines Romani were collected in the first period (from the 8th to the
10 century) from the early 9th century onward and were included in the
th

Roman German Pontifical of Mainz. The tradition of ceremonial books of the

Curia began in the middle of the 12th century, when different ceremonial oc-
casions were described and characterized by the service of patriarchical and
stational Roman churches. The oldest collection, the Liber politicus, was
drawn up by Canon Benedict between 1140 and 1143, then edited by Mabil-
lon as Ordo Romanus XI. Benedict used liturgical books, sacramentaries,
Ordines Romani, and different models for peculiarities of S. Peter’s in Rome for
his compilation, which followed the course of the ecclesiastical year.
At the end of the 13th century, different, smaller liturgical collections,
that referred to the 12th century, came into being. The papal liturgy of this
period was also preserved in a manuscript from Basel, which is similar to
Benedict’s work, but shorter, and in the collections of cardinals Albinus and
Cencius (Liber Censuum). The description of this second group is more de-
tailed, but there were fewer feast days described than in Benedict’s version.
The collections of Basel, Albinus and Cencius were transmitted in an Ordo
for the election, consecration and coronation of the pope. Since the pontifi-
cate of Innocent III, who reformed the service, there was better information
about liturgical books used in the papal chapel because Cardinal Gil Albor-
noz had ordered that a copy be made in 1365. The model of this copy, which
included notes about events under Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Urban IV and
Ceremonial Texts 1678

Boniface VIII, was probably written under Innocent III. There are three com-
parable groups of texts from the 13th century. They are the liturgical testi-
monies of the Franciscans (Breviary of S. Francis and S. Clara) written be-
tween 1215/1220 and 1231/1234 outside the Roman Curia. There are four
manuscripts in the second group: two missals written in the scriptorium of
S. Maria Maggiore, and two Sacramentaries which indicated Roman atti-
tudes. These manuscripts contained details about the papal liturgy, particu-
larly in the two Missals that concentrated on the ceremonies of the three last
days of the Holy Week.The different versions of the Pontifical of the Roman
Curia also contained texts from Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday. The cer-
emonial book of the 13th century, preserved in the papal library in Avignon,
is a compilation of texts, probably done under Boniface VIII by comparing
the ceremonial with pontifical texts. The compilation of the Ordo Romanus
XIII, which should settle procedures of the election and consecration of
popes, also recorded the events following the election and took into consider-
ation all possible eventualities – a sort of desciption of the whole ecclesiasti-
cal year. This Ordo considerably expands the Ordo of Cencius.
During the period when the papal court was in Avignon until the end of
the schism, the ceremonial became more concentrated on the papal palace
and was less public, as only a few ceremonies took place outside the palace.
Under John XXII, who resided in Avignon most of the rites were celebrated
in the cathedral and some churches. Benedict XII ordered construction of a
new papal palace with more chapels inside (the capella parva was preserved for
the private service and the capella magna for high feasts assumed the position
of the Roman patriarchial churches), which brought about a concentration of
the ceremonies at the papal palace. The mid-14th-century compilations could
be related with the Ordo Romanus XIV. The text of manuscript 1706 in the
Avignon public library, discovered by Franz Ehrle, contains, besides the
Order, a lot of various news pertaining to the papal ceremonial. For example,
the Holy Week texts were followed by those of the funeral of Benedict XI,
nominations of prelates, and canonizations, coronation and deaths of kings.
The three recorded Ordines of kings’s coronations are connected with the
Sicilian kings Charles II and Robert the Wise, based on the Ordo of imperial
coronation, propably transmitted in a pontifical. The Ordo Romanus XIV
exists in different versions and is preserved in several manuscripts; it is one
of the best-known source texts of Avignon ceremonials. Texts of the pope’s
election and coronation, of papal service, of celebrations during the ecclesias-
tical year, order of councils, appointments creations of cardinals and their
nominations as legates, and smaller supplements and glosses of several
hands have also been preserved.
1679 Ceremonial Texts

The compilation of Bindo Fesulani – the original started with Whit Sun-
day 1377 and its copy was begun in September of the same year – described
the different forms of the papal service and liturgy of the main feasts. The so-
called Ordo Romanus XV edited by Mabillon is dated in the late 14th century,
and most of its sections are based in the middle of the century. Petrus Ame-
lii’s compilation (since Gregory XI became a member of the papal chapel) in-
cluded the most important feast days, rubrics of the brevary devided by
months, instructions for the illness and death of a pope and conclave, and
texts from the time of Boniface IX. Supplements to this text were done by
Amelii’s nephew, Petrus Assalbiti, who was an Augustinian hermit.
A manuscript in the library of Eichstätt contains an Ordo of the conse-
cration of popes, references to the death of Innocent VII, and the coronation
of Gregory XII, along with a detailed description of the procession to the
main altar of St. Peter for the coronation.
François de Conzié used an older model for his compilation of texts
about the coronations of popes and cited two manuscripts in his glosses.
In his records about the journey of Benedict XIII (1406–1408), de Conzié
described the events at the papal court, as later on did Johannes Burckard in
his diary. His description is contained in two manuscripts of the 15th century.
But this text had no influence on future ceremonial books.
The ceremonial book of the time of Benedict XIII, written by ceremonial
clerks, was excerpted and transformed during the time of Agostino Patrizi,
and was probably a model for the new ceremonial book.
The ceremonial collection has only been enlarged by glosses and supple-
ments as an adaption to the current situation during the 15th century. The
arrangement of some pontificals has shown that the ceremonial of the Curia
influenced other churches of bishops.
These ceremonies were grandiosely updated until the time of Innocent
VIII, when two ceremonial masters, Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini and Jo-
hannes Burckard, compiled the ceremonial book which was decisive for cen-
turies until the second Vatican Council. For the new compilation, Patrizi Pic-
colomini described all ceremonies by analyzing the traditional ceremonies
and examing their importance. His opus was hardly changed, only com-
pleted by commentaries and the diaries of Johannes Burckard.
Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini, Rituum ecclesiasticorum sive sacrarum
ceremoniaum S.S. Romanae Ecclesiae libri tres non ante impressi …, 1516; Edmond
Martène, De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus libri quatuor …, 1700–1702; Le Liber
pontificalis, texte, introduction et commentaire par l’abbé Louis Duchesne,
1955–1957; Jean Mabillon and Michel Germain, Museum italicum seu col-
lectio veterum scriptorum ex bibliothecis italicis, 2 vols., 1687–1689, vol. II, 3–554;
Ceremonial Texts 1680

Domenico Giorgi, De liturgia Romani Pontificis in solenni celebratione missarum,

3 vols., 1731–1744; Giovanni Battista Gattico, Acta selecta caeremonialia
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae, ex variis mss. codicibus et diariis saeculi XV. XVI. XVII.,
1753; Francesco Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi de’ sommi pontefici detti
anticamente processi o processioni dopo la loro coronazione dalla basilica vaticana alla
lateranense, 1802; Franz Ehrle, “Zur Geschichte des päpstlichen Hofcere-
moniells im 14. Jh.,” Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittel-
alters 5 (1889) 565–602; Joseph Kösters, Studien zu Mabillons römischen
Ordines, 1905; Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Age, Spicile-
gium Sacrum Lovaniense. Études et documents, vol. 2 (1931–1961): 23f,
28f; Michel Andrieu, Le Pontifical Romain au Moyen Age, 1938–1941; Joaquim
Nabuco, Le cérémonial apostolique avant Innocent VIII. Texte du manuscrit Urbi-
nate Latin 469, 1966; Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Die Zeremonienbücher
der römischen Kurie im Mittelalter 1973; Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, “Die
Bedeutung Roms im päpstliche Zeremoniell,” Rom im hohen Mittelalter.
Studien zu den Romvorstellungen und zur Rompolitik vom 10. bis zum 12. Jahrhundert.
Reinhard Elze zur Vollendung seines siebzigsten Lebensjahres gewidmet, ed. id. and
Ludwig Schmugge, 1992, 47–61; Joaquim Nabuco, Le cérémonial aposto-
lique avant Innocent VIII, 1966; Marc Dykmans, L’œuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini ou
le cérémonial papal de la première Renaissance, 1980–1982; Agostino Paravicini
Bagliani, Il corpo del Papa, 1994; Gerit Jasper Schenk, Zeremonielle und Poli-
tik: Herrschereinzüge im spätmittelalterlichen Reich, 2003, Bernhard Schim-
melpfennig, Das Papsttum von der Antike bis zur Renaissance, 5th ed. (1st ed.
1984), 2005; Jörg Bölling, Das Papstzeremoniell der Renaissance: Texte –
Musik – Performanz, 2006.

H. Sicily and South Italy

Schramm mentioned in his research that the symbols of power used in Sicil-
ian coronations had taken imperial emblems as their model. Elze’s research
shows how the historical background and political problems influenced
ceremonies in the Kingdom of Sicily. Roger II took the Roman imperial court
as a model and transferred its customs to the Norman court in Sicily. Four
manuscripts from the Sicilian kingdom contain the Ordo of 1130, which con-
served a version of the “Mainzer Ordo” in the Roman-Germanic Pontifical as
its model. Only two Ordos – the copy of Monreale (Vat. lat. 6748) and of Mes-
sina (Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 678) – presented the Ordines of the coronation in
their original order; the manuscript of Montecassino (Casanatense, 614) kept
only the old imperial Mass. The text of the Ordo of Coronation in all four
manuscripts was changed in view of the situation in 1130 (Pope Anaklet
guaranteed Roger the crown of Sicily, Calabry and Apuly, if the king created
1681 Ceremonial Texts

an archbishop of his realm for his coronation and if the king became a papal
vassal, treating the pope with fidelity). The Montecassinian manuscript,
with its inclusion of the coronation of the queen, was probably already being
used at Roger’s second or third wedding. Roger’s grandson, the Staufer Frie-
drich II, kept the Norman traditions.
Reinhard Elze, “Zum Königtum Rogers II. von Sizilien,” Festschrift für
Percy Ernst Schramm: zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag von Schülern und Freunden zu-
geeignet (1964), 102–16.

I. Spain
Karl Schwarz’s historical study of the court and offices at the court of Ara-
gon is a description of the six orders of the court from Pedro I – whose orders
were very detailed – until Pedro IV, whose perfectly thought-out system was
first conceived in the strict ceremonial of Majorca. The uniqueness of this
order can be seen in a common interest and repeated publications of it.
Schwarz demonstrated, for example, the parallels to France in the three
main functions of the court clerics: chaplains of the court, responsiblity for
alms, and confessors of the ruler. The only diffence was in Aragon, where the
clerics were subordinated under the chancellor, and in France they were
counted among the members of Chambre le roy. This jurisdiction, which was,
in Majorca, in the hands of the maggiordomus, and was exercised in Aragon
by a particular official. Olivetta Schena’s book about the Palatine laws of
Pedro IV begins with a detailed list of the manuscripts kept in libraries in
Spain, Paris and Cagliare. Schena took into account different versions and
records of text with explanatory notes and text passages. Schramm’s two
studies discuss the historical background for the development of ceremonies
on the peninsula.
The Liber ordinum of the Westgothians was handed down for a long time
on the Peninsula. In the Northwestern part of the Peninsula, this Ordo was
practiced by anointing the king since the 9th century, and from 905 on the
royal title was introduced, and probably because of Franconian influence,
the anointing was connected to an ecclesiastical coronation. As a reaction to
the coronation of 1204, which was performed by the pope in Rome in St. Pan-
cratii (because St. Peter was reserved for popes and emperors), Pedro III
crowned himself. This demonstration that the crown did not come from the
pope was taken as a model by following Castilian kings. The Ordo of Pedro
(1276 Ordinamentes de senyor rey en Pere el Gran) has survived since then,
but it is not certain if this text was drawn up for the coronation or afterwards
in connection with Pedro’s court etiquette. The self-coronation can be found
earlier in orders of early Carolingian times, when the king himself put on the
Ceremonial Texts 1682

symbols of power. The prayers of the Ordo of Pedro, whose origin was a Bur-
gundian Ordo of the 12th century, and some parts of the Roman German Pon-
tifical, were written in Latin. The rest of the text was, however, written in the
languages of the countries. As a result of the conquest of Mallorca, Pedro IV
took over its court etiquette (Leges Palatinae – the detailed ceremonal was con-
centrated on the palace and the chapels of the kingdom, and thereto were
fixed all actions of the court and its servants), transforming it for his own
court. Pedro IV ordered the compilation of a new Ordo, based on the Ordo of
his grandfather, Pedro III. This new Ordo included a revision of the prayers
that were used in the Pontifical of Guillelmus Durandus, and began with a
theological prologue. This new Ordo also included the coronation of the
queen, based on those of previous empresses. The author of the order, who
had been chancellor since 1338, had studied the sense of the coronation sym-
bols in De regimine principium, which was a valuable completation of the Ordo.
The protonotary Miguel Clemente wrote a Castilian version of this ceremo-
nial in 1562 by order of the infante Don Carlos.
Diego de Valdés, Praerogativa Hispaniae hoc est, De dignitate et praeminentia
regum regnorumque Hispaniae, & honoratiori loco ac titulo eis eorumque legatis à Con-
ciliis, nec non Romana sede iure debito, tractatus eximius …, 1626; Esteban Gari-
bay y Zamalloa, Los qvarenta libros del compendio historial de las chronicas y
vniuersal hiftoria de todos los reynos de Espana, 1628; Juan Francisco Andrés de
Uztarroz, Coronaciones de los Sereníssimo Reyes de Aragón …, 1641; Prospero de
Bofarull y Mascaró, Colleccion de documentos inéditos del Archivo de la Corona
de Aragon, …, vol. 1, 1847–1859; Mario Férotin, Le liber ordinum en usage
dans l’église wisigothique et mozarabe d’Espagne du cinquième au onzième siècle,
1904; Le leggi palatine di Pietro IV d’Aragona, ed. Olivetta Schena, 1983; Karl
Schwarz, Aragonische Hofordnungen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert: Studien zur Ge-
schichte der Hofämter und Zentralbehörden des Königreichs Aragon, 1914; Ferran
Valls i Taberner, “De regimine principum,” Estudis Franciscans 38 (1926):
432–50; Percy Ernst Schramm, “Die Krönung im Aragonischen König-
reich,” Kaiser Könige und Päpste: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geschichte des Mittel-
alters, vol. IV, 1, 1970, 352–71.

J. Scandinavia
Coronation conferred by an ecclesistical leader was introduced in Denmark
and Norway at about the same time (mid-11th century), and with christianiz-
ation, each country got a patron saint. The position of the king was
strengthened by christianization (anointing and coronation). It seems that
the German coronation Ordo was used in Sweden and Denmark. A mirror of
princes giving guidance for the conduct of a king, Kronung Skuggsjá, was
1683 Chansons de geste

drawn up in Norway in 1260. This novel had German and Christian origins,
with a description of the ceremonials of the court. There are only a few de-
scriptions of the ceremonies in the Northern countries, for example Saxo
Germanicus or Helmold of Bosau. Walter Holzmann, a specialist in North-
ern countries, showed the connection of the oath of coronation (1164) in Nor-
way with the canon law and decretales recorded in manuscripts, explaining
this to be the result of a synod after the coronation, probably proposed by the
papal legate. Erich Hoffmann proposed (after an investigation of early
medieval times through the mid-16th century) the coronation of Waldemar I
(1170) as a turning point in Denmark. With the anointing and coronation,
the king received his position by “Dei gratia,” and with the elevation of his
son to regent, he safeguarded his succession. An important fact in this devel-
opment is the canonization of Knut. In this way the German kingdom was
brought closer to West European realms.

Select Bibliography
Walter Holzmann, “Krone und Kirche in Norwegen im 12. Jahrhundert,” Deutsches
Archiv, 2 (1938): 341–400; Erich Hoffmann, Königserhebung und Thronfolgeordnung in
Dänemark bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1976).

Christine Maria Grafinger

Chansons de geste

A. Introduction
The chansons de geste, or “songs of [heroic] deeds,” constitute the body of
epic poems encompassed by the so-called matière de France or Matter of
France. Produced primarily between the 11th and 15th centuries, originally in
French, these poems were adopted, from the 12th century on, into almost
every linguistic tradition in Europe. The bulk of the material draws on the
history of France during the 8th and 9th centuries, primarily dealing with
Charlemagne as well as Charlemagne’s grandfather (Charles Martel) and son
(Louis the Pious). The written transmission of the poems, beginning in the
late 11th century, coincides with the age of crusades. The poems extrapolate
and exaggerate relatively minor border clashes from the 8th and 9th centuries
to provide contemporaries with stories of monumental conflicts with the
Moors and Saracens, which catered to the crusading fervor. Accordingly, in
later poems, the Orient and the fantastic play ever greater roles, with one cycle
Chansons de geste 1684

actually devoted to the First Crusade and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Similar
to the Arthurian Romances, the chansons de geste also express the ambitions
of the courts of the lesser nobility, who produced and consumed these texts.
The first chansons de geste consisted of ten-syllable lines (decasyllables)
grouped in assonated stanzas called lassies. In each line of the stanza, which
vary in length, the last stressed vowel repeats but the last consonant varies.
Stanzas too are of variable length. Later chansons are composed in mono-
rhyme stanzas, in which the last syllable of each line rhymes fully through-
out the stanza. As the form developed, lines were expanded to twelve-syl-
lable alexandrine lines instead of ten. The poems are often quite repetitious,
lending credence to theories that the written forms, which begin to appear in
12th century, grew out of oral tradition as initially proposed by Gaston Paris
in Histoire poétique de Charlemagne, 1865. That notwithstanding, certainly,
as the work of Joseph Bédier has shown, Légendes épiques, recherches sur la
formation des chansons de geste, 1914, the written works were crafted and (re)
composed to serve the intentions of the 12th-century authors, which in-
cluded establishing and advertising pilgrimage sites and routes.

B. Medieval Categorization
In his own chanson de geste, Chanson de Saisnes (before 1200), Jean Bodel
(1165–1210), provides three categories into which the French romances, by
far the most influential of the Middle Ages, are divided: “N’en sont que trois
materes a nul home entendant / De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant
/ Ne de ces trois materes n’i a nu le semblant. / Li conte de Bretaigne s’il sont
vain et plaisant / Cil de France sont voir chascun jor aparant” (Jean Bodel, La
Chanson des Saisnes, ed. Annette Brasseur, 1989, 6–10; The well educated
person recognizes three bodies of literary material, that of France, that of
Brittany and of the great Rome. There are no other similar bodies of work.
Just as the tales of Brittany [of Arthur] are fantastic and enjoyable, those of
France are, as clear as day, true) (trans mine). Bodel’s categories remain current
today and also testify to the perceived historical veracity of the Matter of
France. In the introduction of the chanson de geste, Girart de Vienne (ca. 1200),
Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube (ca. 1170–1220), divides the Matter of France into
three main cycles:
A Seint Denis, en la mestre abaie,/ trovon escrit, de ce ne doute mie, / dedanz un li-
vre de grant encesorie, / n’ot que trois gestes en France la garnie; / ne cuit que ja
nus de ce me desdie. / Des rois de France est la plus seignorie, / et l’autre après, bien
est droiz que jeu die, / fu de Doon a la barbe florie, / cil de Maience qui molt ot ba-
ronnie (8–16); … La tierce geste, qui molt fist a prisier, / fu de Garin de Monglenne
au vis fier (46–47);
1685 Chansons de geste

At Saint-Denis, in the great abbey, we find it written (of which I do not doubt) in
a book of noble ancestry that there have been only three families in mighty France
(I think no-one will disagree). The noblest is that of the kings of France (Cycle du
roi). The next after it, I quite rightly claim, was that of Doon Whitebeard of Mainz
who had many fiefdoms (Cycle de Doon de Mayence) […] The third, which was very
praiseworthy, was that of Garin de Monglane of the fierce countenance (Cycle de
Garin de Monglane) (trans mine, see also Michael A Newth, trans., The Song of Girart
of Vienne by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube: A Twelfth-Century Chanson de Geste, 1999).

The three cycles are, therefore, Cycle du Roi, Cycle de Doon de Mayence, and
the Cycle de Garin de Monglane. Scholarly opinion diverges as to the origins of
this categorization, but most believe that Bertrand did not simply invent this
himself and that it must have had some basis in contemporary reception of
the works. Moreover, modern scholarship ascribes several works to the genre
of chanson de geste that are not in these cycles and, at the very least, two ad-
ditional cycles, Cycle de la Croisade and Geste des Lorrains, are often included.

C. Cycle du Roi
The geste du roi, or “the deeds of the king,” form the core of the Matter of
France and include the most famous chansons de geste. Charlemagne or one
of his immediate successors serves as the unifying figure, but does little else
as one of the champions associated with court defends Christianity against
the Muslims. The first and most famous poem in this cycle is the Chanson
de Roland or “Song of Roland.” Of the nine extant Old French manuscripts,
the oldest, the Oxford manuscript in Anglo-Norman, dates between 1140
and 1170 as asserted by Ian Short, La Chanson de Roland: présentation et traduc-
tion (1997, 5). The actual poem and story are clearly much older. A Latin prose
version, Historia Caroli Magni (The Pseudo-Turpin) was composed around 1100.
The Middle High German Rolandslied (Song of Roland) by Konrad the Priest
(1170) is a relatively faithful retelling of the original song and appears shortly
after the canonization of Charlemagne in 1165. The Old Norse version,
Karlamagnús saga (Saga of Charlemagne) (ca. 1300), is divided in ten chapters and
includes many different stories from the Cycle du Roi, some of them no
longer extant in any language. The chapter which treats The Song of Roland,
Af Runzival Bardaga, remains relatively true to the Oxford manuscript. Ver-
sions of the Song of Roland can be found in almost every European tradition,
see Rita Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, The Legend of Roland in the Middle
Ages (1971). Almost from the beginning, the Cycle du Roi also included works
that could be interpreted as satirical. Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne or Voyage
de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople (Pilgrimage of Charlemagne or Char-
lemagne’s Voyage to Jerusalem and Constantinople) (ca. 1150) is a comic tale of a
Chansons de geste 1686

fictional expedition by Charlemagne and his knights to the Levant (The

Pilgrimage of Charlemagne (Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne), ed. Glyn S. Burgess
and Anne Elizabeth Cobby, 1988). The origin story Chanson d’Aspremont (ca.
1190) tells the story of an equally fictional battle in Africa against the Mus-
lims and how the young Roland saved Charlemagne’s life and won the sword
Durendal. See Michael A. Newth, The Song of Aspremont (La Chanson d’Aspre-
mont), 1989.
Another major work in the cycle, Fierabras (ca. 1170), introduces two mo-
tifs that re-appear in the Cycle de Garin de Monglane. See Fierabras: Chanson de
geste du XIIe siècle, ed. Marc Le Person, 2003; and Marianne J. Ailes, “The
Date of the Chanson de Geste Fierabras,” Olifant: A Publication of the Société Ren-
cesvals, 19.3–4 (1994–1995): 245–71. The first is that of the giant Saracen,
here the titular hero, Fierabras, who after battling against the Christians con-
verts and gains a new name, here Florien. The second is the theme of the Sara-
cen princess who falls in love with a Christian knight, converts, marries and
becomes a Christian queen. In this poem, it is Floripas, Fierabras’ sister, who
performs this role (Suzanne Conklin Akbari, “Woman as Mediator in
Medieval Depictions of Muslims: The Case of Floripas,” Medieval Construc-
tions in Gender and Identity: Essays in Honor of Joan M. Ferrante, ed. and introd.
Teodolinda Varolini, 2005, 151–67; and Hans-Erich Keller, “La belle
Sarrasine dans Fierabras et ses dérivés,” Charlemagne in the North, ed. Philip E.
Bennett, Anne Cobby, and Graham A. Runnalls, 1993, 299–307). There
are English versions of this popular work, for example, Sir Ferumbras
(ca. 1300) (Sir Ferumbras, ed. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, 1966), and even a
Middle Irish version, Stair Fortibrais (ca. 1350) (The Irish Version of Fierabras, ed.
and trans. Whitley Stokes, 1898). Fierabras was also widely disseminated
and translated into several European traditions in the early days of printing,
see Elio Melli, “Les versions en prose de Fierabras: Nouvelles recherches,”
L’épopée romane, I–II, ed. Gabriel Bianciotto, Claudio Galderisi, and Bern-
ard Guidot, 2002, 611–15. Other works associated with the Cycle du Roi in-
clude, among others: the brutal and bloody Garin le Loherain (ca. 1180), Jehan
de Lanson (before 1239), and Berthe aux Grands Pieds (ca. 1275) by Adenet le Roi
(1240–1300). The later chansons, Hugues Capet (ca. 1360) and Galiens li Restorés
(ca. 1490), are also included in the Cycle du Roi.
The tale of Huon de Bordeaux (ca. 1260–1268), introduces a number of fan-
tastic and other-worldly elements to the cycle du roi and constitutes its own
cycle within the cycle (Huon de Bordeaux: Chanson de geste du XIIIe siècle, publiée
d’après le manuscrit de Paris BNF fr. 22555, P, ed. William W. Kibler and Fran-
çois Suard, 2003; and Huon de Bordeaux: chanson de geste; publiée pour la pre-
mière fois d’après les manuscrits de Tours, de Paris et de Turin, ed. François
1687 Chansons de geste

Guessard and Charles Loizeau de Grandmaison, 1860). The tale is some-

times counted among the Cycle des barons révoltés as well. Huon kills Char-
lemagne’s son Charlot but instead of being executed, he is sent on a suicide
mission to Babylon. To reconcile with the Emperor, he must return with
a handful of the Emir’s hair and teeth, kill the Emir’s best knight, and kiss
Esclarmonde, the Emir’s daughter, three times. The fairy king Oberon
aids Huon and the hero accomplishes each task. As Irena Prosenc notes
(“Le merveilleux dans Huon de Bordeaux,” Acta Neophilologica 31 [1998]: 35–49),
many of the fantastic element already existed within the tradition. However,
the introduction of elf Alberich from Germanic mythology as the Fairy
King Oberon begins with Huon de Bordeaux and thus earns the poem a place
amongst the most influential works of the Western Literary tradition. Huon
de Bordeaux inspired several continuations which were produced shortly
thereafter in the 13th and early 14th centuries. The Chanson d’Esclarmonde tells
of how Huon saves Bordeaux and his wife after the powerful Emperor from
Germany, Raoul, besieges the city in an attempt to win Esclarmonde for him-
self. The Chanson de Clarisse et Florent tells of the courtship of the Huon’s
daughter. The Chanson d’Yde et d’Olive, which treats Clarisse’s daughter Yde, is
a fantastic medieval reworking of the Greek myth of Iphis and has been the
focus of studies on the presentation of gender and sexuality in the chansons
(Diane Watt, “Behaving like a Man? Incest, Lesbian Desire, and Gender
Play in Yde et Olive and Its Adaptations,” Comparative Literature 50.4 [1998]:
265–85). The Chanson de Godin tells the tale of Huon’s son and the Roman de
Croissant, which only exists in prose form, relates the adventures of his grand-
son. The Roman d’Aubéron provides a lengthy and detailed prologue for the
entire cycle. The Turin Manuscript (1311) (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Uni-
versitaria, L. II. 14, f. 297–354v) contains the full cycle, and the only copy of
the Chanson de Godin and Roman d’Aubéron. Almost all of the poems in Huon de
Bordeaux cycle were reproduced in prose from the 15th century on and are rep-
resented in almost every European linguistic tradition. (Michel Jean Raby,
Le Huon de Bordeaux en prose du XVème siècle, 1998). A Dutch Huge van Bordeeus ap-
pears in 1490 (see Mieke Lens, “Huge van Bordeeus,” Olifant: A Publication of
the Société Rencesvals, Spring-Summer, 23.1 (2004): 79–93, and Maria Johann
Lens, Huge van Bordeeus: Een Ridder van Karel de Grote op Avontuur in het Oosten:
Onderzoek naar de Middelnederlandse Versfragmenten en Prozaroman, 2004) and the
English version in 1534, see John Bourchier Berners, The Boke of the Duke Huon
of Burdeux (1534) ed. Sidney Lee, 1882–1887.
Chansons de geste 1688

D. Cycle de Doon de Mayence

The cycle, also known as the Cycle des barons révoltés (the cycle of the rebel-
lious barons), contains epic poems treating barons who rebel against Char-
lemagne. In as far as the cycle has a basis in history, it constitutes adaptations
of real events to the historical-fictional scheme. Similar schemes were
adopted in several other European literary traditions and are understood as
expressions of the ambitions and frustrations of the lesser nobility which
both question and confirm the power of the Emperor. The cycle, which in-
cludes over 60 poems, has no central figure. The fictional Doon of Mainz had
twelve sons: Gaufrey de Danemarche, the father of Ogier the Dane, Doon de
Nanteuil, whose son Gamier married Aye d’Avignon, Griffon d’Hauteville,
father of the treacherous Ganelon, Aymon de Dordone or Dourdan, the
father of Renaud, Richard, Alard, and Guiscard, Beuves d’Aigremont, and his
sons Maugris and Vivien de Monbranc, Sevin or Seguin, the father of Huon of
Bordeaux, and Girart de Roussillon. The main figures of the cycle are Girart
de Roussillon, Raoul de Cambrai, and Renaut de Montauban. The poems
surrounding Girart de Roussillon demonstrate both contradictory historical
transmission and the liberties that poets took with the material. The tradi-
tion provides us with two versions of Girart de Roussillon (ca. 810–878), who
is not from Roussillon, and is therefore also called Girart de Vienne and Gir-
art de Fraite; see Jean Misrahi, “The Origin of ‘De Roussillon’,” PMLA 51.1
(1936): 8–12, and René Louis, Girart, Comte de Vienne, dans les chansons de geste:
Girart de Vienne, Girart de Fraite, Girart de Roussillon, 1947. In the northern tradi-
tion, including the Vita Girardi de Roussillon (La légende de Girart de Roussillon, ed.
Paul Meyer, Romania 7 [1878]: 161–235) and Girart de Roussillon, see Girard
de Roussillon, ed. Paul Meyer, 1970. Girart appears as the son of Doon and
these works are counted among the Cycle de Doon de Mayence. The southern
tradition identifies Girart as the son of Garin de Monglane and is included in
the Cycle de Garin de Monglane as treated in Girart de Vienne by Bertrand de
Bar-sur-l’Aube.
The poem of Raoul de Cambrai, a fragment of 8,542 decasyllable verses
dating from about 1200, stands as one of the bloodiest chansons de geste,
see Raoul de Cambrai: chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, ed. and trans. Sarah Kay and
William W Kibler, 1996; Jessie Crosland, trans., Raoul de Cambrai: An Old
French Feudal Epic, 1966, and Raoul de Cambrai: Chanson de geste. Texte original en
ancien français, manuscrit 2493f. fr. BNF, ed. Jean Touzot, 2008. The story
revolves around the feud over the fief of Vermandois instigated by Raoul in
defiance of the king. The poem provides a morbidly realistic picture of medi-
eval warfare, including a battle in which Raoul more or less loses his entire
army and a scene in which the mother of the hero, Bernier, is burned alive
1689 Chansons de geste

with all the nuns in the church at Origny. The poem participates in a critique
of contemporary feuding, see Dominique Boutet, “Le roi Louis et la signifi-
cation politico-historique de Raoul de Cambrai,” Romania 118.2 (2000): 315–35.
Renaut de Montauban is the hero of one of the longest chanson de geste,
the late 12th-century poem, Quatre Fils Aymon or The Four Sons of Duke Aymon
(Renaut de Montauban: édition critique du manuscrit Douce, ed. Jacques Thomas,
1989). In the poem and the cycle that developed over time, the rebellious
barons are portrayed as protagonists, who do their best to maintain honor in
the face of imperial tyranny and excess, see Emmanuèle Baumgartner and
Laurence Harf-Lancer, Raoul de Cambrai: l’impossible révolte, 2000. The
poem contains fantastic elements like the magical horse Bayard and the
sword Froberge given to Renaud by his brother Maugis the sorcerer, who was
raised by the fairy Oriande. Renaud also makes pilgrimage to the Holy Land
in order to reconcile with the Emperor, a theme seen in the poem Huon of Bor-
deaux and one that reappears in similar poems across Europe (Bernard Gui-
dot, “La géographie de l’imaginaire dans Renaut de Montauban,” Moyen
Age: Revue d’Histoire et de Philologie 103.3–4 [1997]: 507–26).
The poems of the sub-cycle, sometimes called “Renaud de Montauban
cycle” appear in the 13th century and include Maugis d’Aigremont and the Mort
de Maugis. These poems describe the youth and death of Maugis respectively.
The rather short and unpopular poem treating yet another of Aymon’s sons,
Vivien de Monbranc features further escapades of Maugis as well as the titular
hero’s pugnacious steed, Passavant. A chanson devoted to the proud father of
the brood and brother to Girart de Roussillon and Doon de Nanteuil, Beuve
d’Aigremont as well as those devoted to Ogier the Dane (Ogier le Danois),
Enfances Ogier (1275) of Adenes le Rois (1240–1300), and the Chevalerie Ogier de
Dannemarche (ca. 1192–1200) of Jean d’Outremeuse are sometimes included in
this cycle but also included in the Cycle du Roi. Variants of the Renaud story
spread throughout Europe. Already in the 14th century, there was an Italian
prose and a verse version of the story, Rinaldo, and this hero would go on
to become one of the most important characters of Italian Renaissance litera-
ture in works such as Luigi Pulci’s (1432–1484) poem about the giant Mor-
gante (1483), Matteo Maria Boiardo’s (1434–1494) Orlando Innamorato (1495),
and, of course, Orlando Furioso (1532) by Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533). The
prose Ystoire de Regnault de Montauban (1480) was generally printed as Les quatre
fils Aymon, and was among the most popular romances in the late 15th and
first half of the 16th century in Europe. It was published in English by Wil-
liam Caxton (1422–1492), who published prose versions of several chansons
de geste (The Foure Sonnes of Aymon, 1488) and it appeared in Dutch (Historie
van den vier Heemskinderen, 1508) and German (Heymonskinder, 1531) as well.
Chansons de geste 1690

Gormont et Isembart is, along with the Chanson de Roland and Chanson de
Guillaume, one of the three oldest chansons de geste, and it is the oldest poem
of the Geste de Doon de Mayence Cycle. The oldest fragment of 611 lines is
dated to the 11th century (see Alphonse Bayot, Gormont et Isembart: fragment de
chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, 1914, and Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard,
Gormont et Isembart: Chanson de geste: cycle des barons révoltés, 2008). Philippe
Mousket’s 13th-century rhyme chronicle, which contains a complete version,
ascribes the poem to the cycle of the rebellious barons (see Chronique rimée de
Philippe Mouske, ed. Baron Frédéric-Auguste-Ferdinand-Thomas de Reif-
fenberg, 1836–1838). Another version is found in the 15th-century German
text by Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken, Loher und Maller (ed. Ute von
Bloh, 1995) The story tells the tale of Isembart, who, after being mistreated,
betrays his uncle King Louis and goes into exile in England. There Isembart
renounces Christianity and joins the heathen King of Cirencester, Gormont,
in his attacks against France. Louis eventually defeats Isembart and Gor-
mont. The mortally wounded Isembart converts back to Christianity on his
deathbed. The invasion and burning of Abbey of Saint-Riquier in February
881 by Norsemen, who were subsequently defeated by Louis III at Saucourt-
en-Vimeu, is generally held to supply the historical background for the story
(see Theodor Fluri, Isembart et Gormont: Entwicklung der Sage und historische
Grundlage, 1895).

E. Cycle de Garin de Monglane or Le cycle de Guillaume d’Orange

The Cylce of Garin de Monglane, or Montglane, often also referred to as the
Cycle de Guillaume after the protagonist, Saint William of Gellone (Guil-
laume d’Orange) (755–814), stands unto itself as one of the most influential
bodies of literature in the Middle Ages. The namesake of the cycle, Garin de
Monglane, however, has rather obscure origins. As mentioned above, Garin
de Monglane is identified as the progenitor of the lineages involved in the
cycle in Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube’s Girart de Vienne (ca. 1200). Garin also
appears in the late 13th-century German romance, Gauriel von Muntabel oder
der Ritter mit dem Bock by Konrad von Stoffel (see Der Ritter mit dem Bock: Konrads
von Stoffeln Gauriel von Muntabel, ed., introd., and commentary by Wolfgang
Achnitz, 1997). On a very basic level, the cycle chronicles the exploits of the
knights made landless by the prima genitor. The cycle includes the chansons
of Girart de Vienne, Aimeri de Narbonne, and Guillaume. The cycle, relative
to other two major cycles, was, although extremely popular and influential
in the High Middle Ages, relatively ignored and did not enjoy wide trans-
mission in the Early Modern Period. Joseph Bédier’s study, mentioned
above, inaugurated serious scholarly engagement with the cycle and Jean
1691 Chansons de geste

Frappier’s monumental Les chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume d’Orange,

1955–1983, established a baseline for further research. The poems constitute
episodes of the same grand narrative and are less independent than the
poems of other cycles, and were often collected as a unit. The foundations of
manuscript studies for the cycle were laid by Madeleine Tyssens in her La
Geste de Guillaume d’Orange dans les manuscrits cycliques, 1967.
Garin de Monglane had four sons: Hernaut, Girart de Vienne, Renier,
and Milon. Hernaut’s son Aymeri de Narbonne marries Hermanjart and has
seven sons and five daughters. Guillaume d’Orange is the third oldest son.
(Due to this lineage, the Guillaume cycle is sometimes referred to as La geste
des Narbonnais). Several different events involving Umayyad incursions into
southern Gaul and Frankish expansion into the Umayyad Caliphate in Iberia
form the basic historical background of the cycle. The cycle draws from
events beginning with the Battle of Tours (October 10, 732), and the remain-
ing campaigns of Charles Martel (688–741), including the battles of Avignon,
Narbonne, the River Berre and Nimes 737, continuing with the capture
of Narbonne by Pepin III (714–768), through the reign of Charlemagne
(742–814) and the Frankish conquest of Catalonia under Louis I (788–840).
Several historical precedents for Guillaume have been suggested, however,
William I of Provence (950–993), who was victorious against Saracen pirates
at the Battle of Tourtour in 973 and ended his life in a cloister, remains
the most convincing. The general historical background of the cycle is, how-
ever, an anachronistic amalgamation of figures and events from the 8th
and 9th centuries. Given the greater historical reliability of the sagas, it is not
surprising that in the Karlamagnús saga Guillaume appears in his proper his-
torical environment, as a chief under Charlemagne, but even this text de-
parts from the historically possible and we find Guillaume interacting with
Louis the Pious as emperor after 813, the year after Guillaume’s death (see
Gustav Adolf Beckmann, Die Karlamagnús-Saga I und ihre altfranzösische Vor-
lage, 2008).
Although the cycle contains twenty or more contingent poems, six are
generally held to form the core of the cycle: Les Enfances Guillaume, Le Couron-
nement de Louis, Le Charroi de Nîmes, La Prise d’Orange, Le Moniage Guillaume, and
La Chanson de Guillaume. The latter poem does not appear in any of the collec-
tions of the other poems and tells portions of the tale covered in the other five
poems central to the cycle, Les Enfances Vivien, La Chevalerie Vivien, Aliscans, La
Bataille Loquifer, and Le Moniage Rainouart. The Les Enfances Guillaume (The Youth
of Guillaume), typical of enfances, is much younger than the rest of core cycle
and dates from the 13th century. The poem establishes the youthful Guil-
laume as superior to his siblings. The bulk of the short poem (ca. 3126 lines)
Chansons de geste 1692

treats the wooing of Orable / Guibourc (see Les Enfances Guillaume: chanson de
geste du XIIIe siècle, ed. Patrice Henry, 1935, and Anna P. Carney, “A Portrait
of the Hero as a Young Child: Guillaume, Roland, Girard and Gui,” Olifant
18.3–4 [1993–1994]: 238–77).
The Couronnement de Louis (Li coronemenz Looïs) treats, obviously, the coron-
ation of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne but is actually focused on Guil-
laume (see Karina H. Niemeyer, “Le Couronnement de Louis et le mythe de
Guillaume,” Societe Rencesvals pour l’etude des epopees romanes, ed. Jean Subre-
nat, 1975, 639–50). Louis is presented as a weak figure (see Jean Frappier,
“Les thèmes politiques dans le Couronnement de Louis,” Melanges de linguistique
romane et de philologie medievale offerts a M. Maurice Delbouille, ed. Jean Renson
and Madelaine Thyssens, 1964, 635–52), and the poem seems to highlight
the steadfastness and loyalty of Guillaume (see Alfred Adler, “The Dubious
Nature of Guillaume’s Loyalty in Le Couronnement de Louis,” Symposium 2
(1949): 179–94, and Carol A. Kent, “Fidelity and Treachery: Thematic and
Dramatic Structuring of the Laisses in an Episode of the Couronnement de Louis
(Laisses 43–54),” Olifant 19. 3–4 [1994–1995]: 223–38). In this poem, Louis
is raised at Guillaume’s court and accompanies the hero on a pilgrimage to
Rome. They find the city under siege. Guillaume challenges the Saracen
hero, the giant Corsolt, to a duel and although he wins, Guillaume has the tip
of his nose cut off in the fight and gains his nickname “au court nez” (short
nose) (see F. M. Warren, “The Giant Corsolt,” Modern Philology 28.4 [(1931]:
467–68). The poem is dated to the 1130s in the circle of the abbey of Saint-
Denis and sometimes attributed to Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube (see Le Couron-
nement de Louis [Li coronemenz Loois], ed. Ernest Langloi, 1888).
The Charroi de Nîmes (The Caravan of Nîmes) has no historical basis and
many critics even read it as a comic interlude (see Jean Charles Payen, “Le
Charroi de Nimes, comedie epique?,” Melanges de langue et de litterature du Moyen
Age et de la Renaissance offerts a Jean Frappier, 1970, 891–902, and Lisa R. Per-
fetti, “Dialogue of Laughter: Bakhtin’s Theory of Carnival and the Charroi
de Nîmes,” Olifant: 17.3–4 [1993–1994]: 177–95). The poem serves as a bridge
narrative connecting Le Couronnement de Louis and La Prise d’Orange. Louis
slights Guillaume and fails to reward him with a fief for his service. Louis
then grants Guillaume the rights to Nîmes, if he can conquer it. In a Trojan
horse scenario, Guillaume disguises himself and his army as merchants
and by this ruse they gain access to the city, which they then take. The tale
was composed in the latter half of the 12th century and was extremely popu-
lar (see Anthonij Dees, “La tradition manuscrite du Charroi de Nîmes,” Moyen
Français 44–45 [1999]: 129–89). William Jonckbloet’s edition of the text
inaugurated modern engagement with the Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange (see
1693 Chansons de geste

W. J. A. Jonckbloet, Guillaume d’Orange. Chansons de geste de XIe et XIIe siècles,

1854).
The Prise d’Orange (Conquest of Orange) chronicles Guillaume’s conquest of
the city of Orange from the Saracens as well as his marriage to their queen,
Orable, renamed Guibourc. This poem was written around 1190 and draws
on a now lost Siège d’Orange which was based on a Vita sancti Wilhelmi (1125)
(see Raymond Weeks, “The Primitive Prise d’Orange,” PMLA 16.3 [1901]:
361–74). This adventure lends Guillaume his byname. Guillebert de Laon
escapes from Saracen-controlled Orange and arrives at Guillaume’s court
at Nîmes with news of the beautiful Queen Orable and the magnificent city
of Orange. Guillaume sets out to take them both. Guillaume and his com-
panions Guillebert and Guielin are captured and at the mercy of Orable, who
rules in the absence of her husband Thibaut. Guillaume woos Orable and
after several adventures, he and his companions send to Nîmes for help.
Guillaume’s nephew Bertrand leads an army against the city. The Christians
win the battle and the city. Guillaume weds Orable, who is baptized in a
mosque converted to a Christian church and takes on the Christian name of
Guibourc (see Charles A. Knudson, “Le thème de la princesse sarrasine dans
La prise d’Orange,” Romance Philology 22 (1969): 449–62, and Sharon Kino-
shita, “The Politics of Courtly Love: La Prise d’Orange and the Conversion of
the Saracen Queen,” Romanic Review 86.2 (1995): 265–87; cf. also Albrecht
Classen, “Confrontation with the Foreign World of the East: Saracen Prin-
cesses in Medieval German Narratives,” Orbis Litterarum 53 [1998]: 277–95).
The tale represents a fusion of courtly narratives: the chanson de geste epic
tradition and bridal quest narratives. It stands as one of the most influential
and most widely imitated narratives of the cycle (see Claude Régnier, La
Prise d’Orange: chanson de geste de la fin du XIIe siècle, 1966).
Le Moniage Guillaume (The Monking of Guillaume) is the crowning tale of the
cycle (see Nelly Andrieux-Reix, Le Moniage Guillaume, 2003). There are two
redactions of the poem, the shorter incomplete Moniage I (934 verses) which
postdates the much longer Moniage II (6,629 verses) (see Les deux rédactions en
vers du Moniage Guillaumer, ed. Wilhelm Cloëtta, 1906–1911). The life Guil-
laume of Toulouse, who lived out his final days in the monastery of Gellone,
provides the basis for the tale (see Norval Lee Bard, Changing Orders: The
Poetics of the Old French Epic Moniages, 1997). The poem opens with Guillaume
taking the vow to become a monk after the death of Guibourc and a comic
juxtaposition of monastic life and the voracious warrior appetites of the
aging hero ensues (see Jean Larmat, “Manger et boire dans le Moniage Guil-
laume et dans le Moniage Rainouart,” Manger et boire au moyen âge, ed. Denis
Menjot, 1984, 391–404, and Bernard Guidot, “Vieillesse, fontaine de Jou-
Chansons de geste 1694

vence: L’âge d’or du héros épique d’après le Moniage Guillaume,” Sénéfiance 19

[1987]: 112–32). However, the monks prove to be less than virtuous and after
killing the prior, Guillaume sets out to found his own hermitage (see Jean
Subrenat, “Moines mesquins et saint chevalier: A propos du Moniage de
Guillaume,” Mélanges de philologie et de littératures romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathe-
let-Willem, ed. Jacques de Caluwé, 1978, 643–65, and André Moisan,
“L’abbé Henri et ses moines dans le Moniage Guillaume et le Moniage Rainouart
ou la perfidie dans l’état monastique,” Sénéfiance 37 [1995]: 435–47). This
movement from the monastery at Aniane to Gellone mirrors exactly the path
of Saint Guilhem-le-Désert, who entered the abbey at Aniane in 806 and later
founded and died at the abbey in Gellone in 812.
Although Guillaume unceasingly strives to lead the life of a monk, the
Church and France continually call for his skills as a knight to save them; this
tale even includes a battle with yet another heathen Giant, Ysoré. The tales
ends on a more saintly note, as the hero wrestles with and defeats the Devil
himself. Le Moniage Guillaume provides a fitting end to the cycle as it merges
hagiography with the epic and comic elements found in the rest of cycle.
In terms of the cycle, the Anglo-Norman Chanson de Guillaume (Chançun de
Willame) is actually a composite text which is both central and marginal
(see François Suard, La chanson de Guillaume, 2008). The text does not appear
in any of the cyclical manuscripts nor in the eponymous Geste de Guillaume
d’Orange. It was discovered in 1903, well after the establishment of a modern
critical reception of the cycle. The first part of the poem deals with Guillaume
‘al curb nés’ (‘Hooknose’) and his nephews, the brothers Vivien and Gui and
the battle at L’Archamp. This first part is often dated at 1150 but elements
have also been dated as far back as 1080, which would make this one of the
oldest chansons de geste and the oldest fragment of this cycle. The second
half of poem deals with exploits of Guillaume’s brother in law, the brother of
Orable / Guibourc, the giant Rainouard (Rennewart). These episodes are
largely based on the poem Aliscans (ca. 1170) (see Aliscans, ed. Claude
Régner, 2007) and The Song of Aliscans, trans. Michael A. Newth, 1992).
Aliscans tells the story of defeat of the Christians at the hands of Orable /Gui-
bourc’s betrayed husband Desramé and of the death of Guillaume’s sororial
nephew Vivien in that battle. It is generally assumed to represent the battle of
Villedaigne and named after a cemetery outside of Arles, Les Alyscamps
(Champs-Élysées or Elysian Fields).
Early studies suggested that the story is based on a battle near the Arch-
ant in Spain, near Vivien’s headquarters at Tortosa (Raymond Weeks, “The
Boulogne Manuscript of the ‘Chevalerie Vivien’” Modern Language Review 5.1
[1910]: 54–67). However, contemporaries like Wolfram von Eschenbach,
1695 Chansons de geste

who mentions the tombs on the battlefield in his Willehalm (ca. 1217) (Wh.
386: 2–7; 394: 20–22; 437: 20–25), seem to have thought the battle took place
at the cemetery, Les Alyscamps (see Wolfram von Eschenbach, Willehalm, ed.
Werner Schröder and trans. and ed. Dieter Kartschoke, 1989). After the
failure of the first battle, in which Guillaume’s nephew Vivien dies, Guil-
laume finds Rainouard as a servant in Louis’s kitchen at Laon. The slapstick
surrounding Rainouard influenced the kitchen-humor which became stan-
dard in later chansons and romances. Rainouard also fights with the massive
wooden pole (tinel) that he had been using to carry water buckets to the
kitchen. Medieval continuations based on Rainouard include Le Moniage Rai-
nouart (ca. 1190) (see Le Moniage Rainouart I: publié d’après les manuscrits de l’Ar-
senal et de Boulogne, ed. Gérald A. Bertin, 1973, and Le Moniage Rainouart II et
III, ed. Gérald A Bertin, 1988). The most memorable medieval adaptation of
the figure Rainouard is found in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm,
which was based largely on the Bataille d’Aliscans. The figure of Wolfram’s
Rennewart was so popular that Ulrich von Türheim also produced a German
continuation (see Ulrich von Türheim. Rennewart, ed. Alfred Hübner, 1938).
By virtue of the tremendous fighting power of Rainouard, Guillaume finally
defeats Desramé and his armies. Rainouard is revealed to be the brother of
Orable /Guibourc, he is baptized, and marries Guillaume’s niece, the prin-
cess Aelis.

F. La geste des Lorrains

The Lorraine cycle is composed of four main branches: Garin le Loherain, Hervis
de Metz, Gerbert de Metz and Anseïs fils de Girbert, of which Yon ou La Vengeance
Fromondin is an abridged version. The cycle deals with the Dukes of Lorraine
(the Lotharingians) and their feud with the Dukes of Bordeaux (the Borde-
lais) during the reign of Pépin le Bref or Pepin III, the Short (751–768). The
events are roughly based on feuds that accompanied the emergence of the Ca-
rolingian Dynasty but have no exact historical correlation in the period and
may have been inspired by a war of succession over the control of the Verman-
dois between Philip of Alsace, the Count of Flanders (1143–1191) and
Philip II (Augustus) of France (1165–1223) that raged from 1180–1186. The
cycle shares many features with the Cycle des barons révoltés but unlike
those poems, the feud between the lesser nobility remains the principal
focus. Episodes of treachery at the court of Pepin represent one of many nar-
rative elements which advance that theme.
The central poem of the cycle, Garin le Loherain (1180–85) presents the
initiation of the feud and the ensuing calamity that overtakes two gener-
ations of Lotharingians (Garin le Loherenc, ed. Anne Iker-Gittleman, 1986,
Chansons de geste 1696

and Bernard M. Pohoryles, “Sur la datation de Garin le Loheren et Gerbert de

Mez” XIV Congresso internazionale di linguistica e filologia romanza, ed. Alberto
Varvaro, 1981, 333–42). At the urging of Hardré, of the house of Bordelais,
Pepin refuses to send aid to vassals besieged by Umayyad forces in the South
of France. Initially, Garin’s father, Hervis de Metz, attempts to provide aid
with the assistance of Ansis of Cologne, and although the army he raises
repels the invaders, Hervis dies in the battle. Later, Pepin fails to honor
his commitments towards Thierry, king of Morianel (Tierri de Morïane).
Even Hardré’s own son, Fromont de Lenz, is appalled and he joins Garin.
The Loherain and Bordelais ride together to aid Thierry. However, the
treacherous Fromont refuses to send his forces into battle. The Christians are
victorious and in gratitude, from his death-bed, Thierry offers Garin the
hand of his daughter Blanchefleur. When Garin pursues the matter at court,
Fromont challenges him for Blanchefluer’s hand. A brawl erupts in which
Garin kills Hardré. A short time later, Hardré’s position at court is occupied
by Archbishop Henri (also a Bordelais), who convinces Pepin to pursue mar-
riage with Blanchefleur.
A parallel narrative involving Garin’s brother, Bégon, begins to inter-
twine with the main story. Bégon, a favorite of Pepin’s, had been appointed
Duke of Gascony at the beginning of the poem, thereby gaining control over
Bordelais lands and instigating the antagonism between the two houses.
After Fromont entraps Garin in a plot to gain Blanchefluer, Bégon exoner-
ates his brother from the subsequent accusations of treachery by defeating
Isoré in a trial by combat. Bégon also marries into the house of Blaye, gaining
even more disputed lands. Animosities cool down for a period but after
Blanchefleur becomes the wife of Pepin and Bégon is accidentally slain as a
poacher during a hunt on the border between Bordelais and Loherain lands,
the feud reignites. The death of Bégon is considered to be one of the most
dramatic scenes of the cycle, see Catherine M. Jones, “The Death of Bégon,”
Por le soie amisté: Essays in Honor of Norris J. Lacy, ed. Keith Busby and Cather-
ine M. Jones, 2000, 235–46. The Lotharingians attack and sack the city of
Bourges. Pepin puts his full support behind the Bordelais. The disgraced
Garin is eventually overcome and slain by Fromondin (alternately Fromont’s
son or nephew) in Val Gelin near Metz (alternately in a hermitage or in open
battle). In the former scenario, the death blow is delivered by Bishop Guil-
laume de Monclin, in the latter by Fromondin. The poem, from beginning to
end, stands as a spectacular admonition against feuding. In the sequel, Ger-
bert de Metz (ca. 1200), the feud continues with a new generation as Garin’s
son Gerbert, along with his cousins, the Lotharingians Hernaut and Gerin,
seek revenge for the murder of their father and uncle (Gerbert de Mez, Chanson
1697 Chansons de geste

de Geste du XIIe siècle, ed. Pauline Taylor, 1952 and Bernard Guidot, “Con-
tinuité et rupture: L’univers épique de Garin le Lorrain et Gerbert,” Olifant
13 [1988]: 123–140). The narrative paints an all too realistic picture of the
brutality of feuding. Great effusions of blood abound as hacked limbs fly,
corpses are torn from the grave and children are taken hostage or worse (see
Catherine M. Jones, “L’enlèvement dans Garin le Lorrain et Hervis de Metz,”
Plaist vos oïr bone cançon vallant?: Mélanges offerts à François Suard, ed. Dominique
Boutet, Marie-Madeleine Castellani, Françoise Ferrand, and Aimé
Petit, 1999, 455–63.) This aspect of the poem should not obscure the great
literary quality of the poem, which keeps the audience engaged with twists
and turns. At one point the two families seems to be reconciled and even join
the King of France in repelling an attack of Saracens led by Fromont. How-
ever, after defeating Fromont, Gerbert serves wine to his guests from the
skull of Fromont, re-igniting the feud in a most gruesome manner. Fromon-
din responds in kind by promptly smashing the heads of Gerbert’s children
against the marble pillars in the hall. Fromondin is able to flee, but later in
the narrative Gerbert and Geren stumble upon him in hermitage while on a
pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Fromondin’s identity is betrayed and
the kill him. There are two versions of the sequel to Gerbert de Metz, each bear-
ing an alternate name for Gerbert’s son, Anseïs de Metz (ca. 1230) (Anseÿs de Mes
according to ms. N. (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 3143) Text, ed. Herman J. Green,
1939) and Yon, ou La vengeance Fromondin (ca. 1220) (Yon or la Venjance Fromon-
din, ed. Simon R. Mitchneck, 1935). Both poems relate the murder of Ger-
bert at Gironville. In these poems, Gerbert’s demise mirrors in several as-
pects the story of Fromondin found in Gerbert de Metz.
Further literary overlap resides in the borrowing of over 750 lines di-
rectly from the chanson Raoul de Cambrai. Both Yon and Anseïs relate the acts of
retaliation that follow Fromondin’s death as well as the murder of Gerbert de
Metz. The Anseïs is the younger and longer of the two poems and it continues
with tales of the exploits of Gerbert’s sons. The cycle also includes the
prequel Hervis de Metz (ca. 1200), the patriarch of the Lotharingians (Hervis de
Mes: Chanson de Geste Anonyme, ed. Jean-Charles Herbin, 1992). The work was
composed after Garin le Loherain but before the sequels. As the poem deals
with a hero who dies before the feud begins, it stands out in the cycle as hav-
ing the most in common with courtly romance and even includes a bridal
quest of sorts. 16th-century prose versions of the Lorraine Cycle such as
those by Philippe de Vigneulles and the fragments in Middle Dutch evidence
its popularity (La chronique de Philippe de Vigneulles, ed. Charles Bruneau,
1927–1933).
Chansons de geste 1698

G. The Crusading Cycles

The crusading cycles are divided into those that attempt to retell historical
events and those that recount more fabulous and fantastic events (see
Anouar Hatem, Les poèmes épiques des Croisades: Genèse – Historicité – Locali-
sation, 1932). The works, also, of course, served as crusading propaganda
(Robert Francis Cook, “Crusade Propaganda in the Epic Cycles of the Cru-
sade,” Journeys Toward God: Pilgrimage and Crusade. ed. Barbara N. Sargent-
Baur, 1992, 157–75) but also aspired to historiography (see Jeanette Beer,
“Heroic Language and the Eyewitness: The Gesta Francorum and La Chanson
d’Antioche,” Echoes of the Epic, ed. David P. Schenck and Mary Jane
Schenck, 1998, 1–16) and Sarah-Grace Heller, “Surprisingly Historical
Women in the Old French Crusade Cycle,” Women and the Medieval Epic, ed.
Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman, 2007, 41–66). Research on the cycle
has been greatly enhanced by Jan A. Nelson and Emanuel J. Mickel’s ten-
volume series The Old French Crusade Cycle (1977–2003). The primary histori-
cal poems include La Chanson d’Antioche, La Chanson de Jérusalem, La Chanson
de la croisade Albigeoise and Les Chétifs (The Little Ones), which tells of the
exploits of Richard de Chaumont, Baudouin de Beauvais and Haripin
de Bourges after the Battle of Antioch. An early version of the Chanson
d’Antioche is presumed to have been authored by Richard le Pèlegrin
(Richard the Pilgrim) in the early part of the 12th century. However, the
revised version by Graindor de Douai (ca. 1198–1218) forms the basis for
the current edition and serves as the source for the expanded version from
the 14th century (La Chanson d’Antioche, ed. Jan A. Nelson, 2003). Graindor
de Douai also incorporates most of Les Chétifs (see Les Chétifs, ed. Geoffrey M.
Myers, 1980). La Chanson de Jérusalem also only comes down to us in a 13th
century revision but is believed to be based on an older poem (Le Chanson de
Jérusalem, ed. Nigel R. Thorp, 1992). La Chanson de la croisade Albigeoise treats
the brutal extermination of the Cathars in the Languedoc (1209–1229) and
was composed in two phases. Guillaume de Tudèle (1199–1214) wrote
the first 2772 verses between 1209–1212 and an anonymous continuation
of 6800 lines covers the period between 1213–1218 (La Chanson de la Croisade
Albigeoise, ed. Eugène Martin-Chabot, 1957–1961; Guillaume de Tu-
dèle, The Song of the Cathar Wars: A History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans.
Janet Shirley, 1996, and Jean-Marie d’Heur, “Sur la date, la composition
et la destination de la Chanson de la Croisade albigeoise de Guillaume
de Tudele,” Melanges d’histoire litteraire, de linguistique et de philologie romanes
offerts a Charles Rostaing, ed. Jacques De Caluwe, Jean-Marie d’Heur, Rene
Dumas, Charles Senninger, Jean Subrenat, Andree Subrenat, and
Rene Jouveau, 1974, 231–66).
1699 Chansons de geste

The main protagonist of the more fantastic chansons of the crusading

cycle is a real historical figure, Godfrey of Bouillon (1058–1100), also con-
nected with the legend of the Swan Knight through this cycle. These songs
were often collected separately from the more historical chansons. There are
three separate branches of the Swan Knight tales, composed between 1170
and 1220 by anonymous poets. Le Chevalier au Cygne (1192) tells the story of
Godfrey of Bouillon’s grandfather Elias and may be based on Johannes de
Alta Silva’s tale of the seven sages, Dolopathos, sive de Rege et Septem Sapientibus
(ca. 1190), see also Emanuel J. Mickel, “The Latin Visions of Calabre and Ida
and the Origins of the Initial Branches of the Old French Crusade Cycle,” Neo-
philologus 88 [2004]: 181–88. The tale is expanded in the prequel, La naissance
du Chevalier au Cygne (The Birth of the Swan Knight) and sequel, La fin d’Elias (The
Death of Elias) (La naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, ed. Geoffrey M. Myers, Ema-
nuel J. Mickel, and Jan Nelson, 1977), and Le Chevalier au Cygne and La fin
d’Elias, ed. Jan Nelson, 1985).
The material was received in almost every European linguistic tradition,
most famously in the German tradition of Lohengrin. The cycle is rounded
out with Les Enfances Godefroi de Bouillon (The Youthful Exploits of Godefroi
de Bouillon) (ca. 1200) and La Mort de Godefroi de Bouillon (The Death of Godefroi de
Bouillon) (see Les Enfances Godefroi and Le retour de Cornumaranted, ed. Emanuel J.
Mickel, 1999) and La prise d’acre: La Mort Godefroi, and La Chanson des rois Bau-
doin. ed. Peter R. Grillo, 1989). A 15th-century prose summary of the cycle,
Godefroi de Buillon, has also come down to us as well (see Godefroi de Buillon, ed.
Jan Boyd Roberts, 1995). The material surrounding Godfrey culminates in
the epic poem by Torquato Tasso, completed in 1575 and originally entitled
Il Goffredo, it appeared in 1581 as the now famous La Gerusalemme liberata
(Jerusalem Delivered) (Torquato Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme
liberata), ed. and trans. Max Wickert, 2009).

Select Bibliography
Norval Lee Bard, “Changing Orders: The Poetics of the Old French Epic Moniages,”
Ph.D. thesis Pennsylvania State University 1997; Emmanuèle Baumgartner and
Laurence Harf-Lancer, Raoul de Cambrai: l’impossible révolte (Paris: H. Champion,
2000); Gustav Adolf Beckmann, Die Karlamagnús-Saga I und ihre altfranzösische Vorlage
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008); Joseph Bédier, Légendes épiques, recherches sur la formation
des chansons de geste (Paris: H. Champion, 1914); Philip E. Bennett, The Cycle of Guil-
laume d’Orange or Garin de Monglane: A Critical Bibliography (Rochester, NY: Tamesis,
2004); Theodor Fluri, Isembart et Gormont: Entwicklung der Sage und Historische Grundlage
(Basel: E. Birkhäuser, 1895); Jean Frappier, Les chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume
d’Orange (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur, 1955–1983); Anouar
Hatem, Les poèmes épiques des Croisades: Genèse, Historicité, Localisation (Paris: P. Geuth-
ner, 1932; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1973); W. J. A. Jonckbloet, Guillaume d’Orange.
Charms and Incantations 1700

Chansons de geste de XIe et XIIe siècles (La Haye: M. Nyhoff, 1854); Richard W Kaeuper,
Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Rita
Lejeune and Jacques Stiennon, The Legend of Roland in the Middle Ages (New York:
Praeger, 1971); André de Mandach, Naissance et développement de la chanson de geste
en Europe (Geneva: E. Droz, 1961); Gaston Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (Paris:
A. Franck, 1865); Jean Rychner, La chanson de geste, essai sur l’art épique des jongleurs
(Geneva: E. Droz, 1955).

Stephen Mark Carey

Charms and Incantations

A. Introduction
Although certain well-known charms and incantations (among them the
Irish “St. Patrick’s Lorica,” the Old English “Æcerbot” and the Old Icelandic
Völuspá) are distinctive in form and content, it is difficult to arrive at clear
definitions that give comprehensive coverage of the very extensive array of
candidate texts. Scholarly recourse to the term “charm” is in itself a poten-
tially distorting factor (Lea Olsan, “Latin Charms of Medieval England,”
Oral Tradition 7 [1992]: 116–42). Other medieval terms, among them OE geal-
dor and its cognate Old Icelandic galdr, point to a much wider semantic and
performative range (cf. John D. Niles, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropol-
ogy of Oral Literature, 1999).

B. Attestations and Corpus

Relevant texts are so widely scattered in time, space, and manuscript prov-
enance that the coverage here can only be indicative rather than comprehen-
sive. Future research will be facilitated by a database currently being com-
piled (Suzanne Sheldon Parnell and Lea Olsan, “The Index of Charms,”
Literary and Linguistic Computing 6 [1991]: 59–63). Numerous texts in Latin
and the vernacular are extant from England, Germany (Adolf Spamer, Ro-
manusbüchlein: Historisch-philologischer Kommentar zu einem deutschen Zauber-
buch, 1958), Iceland, Denmark (Ferdinand Ohrt, Danmarks Trylleformler,
1921), the Netherlands (Jozef Van Haver, Nederlandse Incantatie literatuur,
1964), and Ireland. The Russian corpus, though mostly recorded from oral
transmission, also has medieval origins (Viljo J. Mansikka, Die Religion der
Ostslaven. I: Quellen, 1922; Robert Mathiesen, “Magic in Slavia Orthodoxa:
The Written Tradition,” Byzantine Magic, ed. Henry Maguire, 1995, 155–77).
1701 Charms and Incantations

Earlier scholars tended to assign charm texts very early datings (Richard Paul
Wülker, Geschichte der englischen Litteratur von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegen-
wart, 1896). To many present-day scholars the more interesting aspect is
their tenacious survival, whether piecemeal in manuscript marginalia or col-
lectively in manuals (Cyril E. Wright, Bald’s Leechbook: British Museum Royal
Manuscript 12D xvii, 1955) and Hausrezeptbücher (books of household recipes),
often with striking analogues in early modern and modern texts. The shift
from oral culture to literacy has also been traced in these texts (Mare Kõiva,
From Incantations to Rites, 1995).

C. Definitions and Distinctive Features

The texts are often linguistically mixed, usually between Latin and the ver-
nacular (cf. Bernhard Bischoff, Anecdota Novissima, 1984, 258), but with
Arabic, Greek, or Hebrew making occasional appearances as well. Texts
in runes and gibberish texts have caused particular difficulties (Barbara Ke-
rewsky-Halpern and John Miles Foley, “Power of the Word: Healing
Charms as an Oral Genre,” Journal of American Folklore 91 [1978]: 903–24; Ivar
Lindquist, Religiosa runtexter I. Sigtunagaldern, 1932). Another focus of study
has been the non-verbal element. An intermediate category between text and
action extensively canvassed in recent decades is the speech act. Attention is
now also being paid to the instrumentality of the physical medium, as in the
case of the “textual amulet” (Audrey L. Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Cur-
ing Stones, 1981; Don C. Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle
Ages, 2006).
The form may be variously verse, prose, and prosimetrum. Ivar Lind-
quist sought to trace the Scandinavian verse-form galdralag back to
Germanic origins (Galdrar, 1923). Eduard Sievers posited an ancient form
intermediate between verse and prose (Deutsche Sagversdichtungen, 1924). An
alternative mode of explanation sees the verses as typical of popular vernacu-
lar styles (Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry, 1977). In a
reaction against this emphasis on poetic form, the placement of metrical
texts in separate editions from prose texts, as in Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie’s
The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (1942), has been widely criticized (Charles J.
Singer, From Magic to Science, 1928).
Genre is another elastic feature. At one extreme, charms are close to
hymns (Eleanor Hull, “The Ancient Hymn-Charms of Ireland,” Folklore 21
[1910]: 417–46), and for practical pedagogical purposes they lend themselves
to comparison with prayers (Albrecht Classen, “Zaubersprüche, Beschwö-
rungen und andere Formen des ‘Aberglaubens,’” Unterrichtspraxis 29,
2 [1996]: 231–39). At the other extreme, they have been confused with medi-
Charms and Incantations 1702

cal recipes (Patrizia Lendinara, “Gli incantesimi del periodo anglosas-

sone,” Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli Filologia germanica 21
[1978]: 299–362). Scholars in the New Critical tradition have attempted to
forge links with more literary kinds (Morton W. Bloomfield, “The Form of
Deor,” PMLA 79 [1964]: 534–41).
The structure of charms varies greatly. While some are as brief as a single
word or sentence, a great many are bipartite, with a narrative section (the
“epic introduction” or historiola) preluding the active part of the charm (Tony
Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, 1990). Analyses of struc-
ture are often difficult because of multiple uncertainties of interpretation
(Kenneth Northcott, “An Interpretation of the Second Merseburg
Charm,” Modern Language Review 54, 1 [1959]: 45–50).

D. Charms as a Body of Knowledge

In the attempts to identify a body of knowledge underpinning the various
corpora, Romantic nostalgia for nativism and ‘paganism’ and Marxist disap-
proval of religion, superstition, and magic have acted as p