GLOBALISATION

Today, we're looking at medieval Europe from a global perspective in our tutorials. The fourteenth century is an intriguing period in this respect - often overlooked in our excitement at fifteenth century European exploration and discovery - fourteenth century Europe was characterised by increased contact with the Mongols (an alliance against the Turks was even mooted), trade routes stretching from Genoa to China, missionary activity across Asia and into China, pilgrimages and even some cultural exchange.

                                     

Fifteenth-century depiction of Alexander the Great flying (having explored the entire known world): Roman d'Alexandre, Ms.651/1486,Musee Conde, Chantilly, France

Global history is a relatively new phenomenon in the field of medieval studies. It does two things: it draws our attention beyond Europe and helps us to readdress our very Eurocentric vision; and it provides methodologies for thinking about interconnections and exchange across boundaries. The first of these is very difficult to achieve, primarily because of the enormous range of languages this requires of researchers. Which doesn't mean to say that scholars are not going to try to take up the challenge: the recent book by Giorgio Riello on cotton re-centres the story on India in the Middle Ages.

There is a third reason why it is important to look at medieval history from a global perspective. That is that such a perspective sheds new light on the history of ideas and identities: how Europeans understood themselves, and how they conceptualised difference. Europeans in the Middle Ages seem to have been quite aware that the world they inhabited was, in many sense, expanding. And travel literature was immensely popular. Increasingly, they were able to draw on empirical observation to see that their everyday surroundings were not universal, that this was a world characterised by diversity and different ways of doing things.

And yet, the ways in which they described those new discoveries and observations could only be done within familiar frameworks. Riello reproduces a particularly striking illustration from the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, an exceptionally popular fourteenth-century text, which describes, in highly imaginative terms, the wonders and marvels and monsters of the wider world.

This is, apparently, a cotton plant. 'There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie.' What I love/ find troubling about this description and the image is the way in which Mandeville imaginatively recreates what is to him and his readers an utterly strange plant in terms of the familiar. In England, cloth production was of wool. So what better way to try to convey to his armchair readers this exotic Indian form of cloth production that in terms of a kind of weirdly contorted animal husbandry which allowed Europeans to understand the different in familiar frameworks, as well as creating an intoxicating sense of the monstrous and deviant?

I wonder how often, nowadays, media accounts of happenings in distant lands actually squash a more complex reality into familiar frameworks. And how often we allow genuine attempts to understand cultural differences to become overlaid with Eurocentric concepts which make the different automatically appear deviant.

TERRORISM AND LAW

I've spent a few days wondering what on earth there is to say about the horrible murder in Woolwich, and the ultimately pretty distasteful political wranglings that have followed it.  In a way, adding another voice to the cacophony isn't very helpful.

But what puzzled me most about the political reaction to the incident was why this counted as terrorism. On the one hand, why focus so much on this when homicide rates in London are high and stabbings all too common?  And on the other hand, why describe this as terrorism when the victim was a soldier (albeit off-duty)?  An article by Glenn Greenwald gave me some interesting answers to these questions, arguing that the problematic and actually very hypocritical designation of this killing as an act of terrorism is tempting for politicians because it packs such a 'political, cultural and emotional punch'.  And, of course, because the perpetrators are deemed to fail to abide by the rules of war (notably in targetting non-combatants), terrorists are answerable to the rules of ordinary criminal law, rather than the laws of wartime which permit killing.

This last point strikes me as perhaps the most revealing one here.  Law is very often a function of power.  What better way of asserting authority both practically and symbolically than through the exercise of law?  How law and power are intertwined is more complex however, but it strikes me that one of the most effective mechanisms for bringing this about, is to convince people that law and morality are the same thing.  They're not - of course - but conflating the two makes law an incredibly powerful (and reassuring) tool.  

William de Brailes, The Israelites Worship the Golden Calf and Moses Breaks the Tablets (Exodus 32:1-19), Walters Art Museum, W.106.13R

In the later Middle Ages, this elision of law and morality was certainly one which kings, as lawgivers, attempted to make.  But it was harder to convince people, because there were so many different kinds of law - in England for example, there was common law, customary laws, ecclesiastical law, forest law, maritime law, the laws of war, and so on.  Which set of legal rules applied depended on place, context, and who was involved.  Faced with such a diverse set of laws to choose from, in many ways it was far more obvious that law was a changing and historically contingent thing, far removed from what was supposed to be the more constant nature of morality.  Lawgivers couldn't pretend to exercise the same moral hegemony and control.

My point is that nowadays, it is less obvious that there are lots of types of law.  And therefore, we are all the more ready to accept the conflation of law and morality uncritically, without thinking about the political drive of much of the use of law.  But this is delusional - there are still different types of law - and these are manipulated in order to shape our reactions to particular acts and to help us to brush others under the carpet.  So, on the one hand, political discourse is anxious to convince us that law and morality are the same and that our reactions are not just legal but righteous.  And on the other hand, that same discourse uses the diversity of types of law (here criminal law and laws of wars) to choose which morality should apply to particular cases.  There is a gap in our thinking, and thinking critically about it might help underline some of our double standards.

On the laws of war in the Middle Ages, see the seminal book by Maurice Keen.

Postscript: interestingly, Michael Adebowale has been charged with murder rather than terrorism offences after all (30th May).  In terms of rejecting the horrific violence he carried out, this strikes me as a far more effective response than acknowledging that he has some kind of political platform by categorising him as a terrorist.

TORTURE: CAN WE BRING OURSELVES TO SAY IT?

Fouquet's image of the martyrdom of St Apolline, Musée Condé, Chantilly

I’m in the process of reviewing a very interesting book about medieval torture.  As the author points out, it’s an appropriate time to be thinking about the question, given the rise of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ in recent years.  Although torture was practised in the medieval period, perhaps rather more often than this author claims, her central argument is a convincing one: that torture figured so often in medieval texts not because it was common in reality, but because it shocked readers so much that descriptions could effectively be used to demonize others.  And certainly, we tend to use references to torture in such a way now too – to distance ourselves from those who practise it, whilst denying our own complicity in its use.  What really interests me about medieval attitudes to torture is neither its use, nor the frequent denials.  It’s the ambivalence of medieval people regarding torture.

And one way in which that was effectively expressed was through euphemisms.  In fourteenth-century France, torture was referred to by the term ‘question’.  Those responsible could gloss over the brutal violence which this involved to focus on the supposed function of interrogating the accused.  The euphemism indicates that they weren’t quite comfortable with the level of pain and violence this involved, but nevertheless wanted to stress the function of the practice.  Is the phrase ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ so very different?  And even if we know precisely what it really refers to, how are we to read our own reluctance to do something about it?

The book I am reviewing is Larissa Tracy's Torture and Brutality in Medieval Texts, published by Boydell in 2012.

ARE WE NATURALLY VIOLENT?

Most of my own research until now has been on the subject of violence in the Middle Ages.  It's a topic a lot of people are talking about at the moment, and even more so now with the publication of Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.

This is an extremely provocative, and wonderfully wide-ranging book, in which Pinker (a cognitive scientist) argues that levels of violence have declined over the centuries.  Given the mass violence of the twentieth century, and our seeming inability to relinquish war (see, for example, here), this is not uncontroversial.  Equally problematic is Pinker's reliance on other people's interpretations of the past, without checking the sources or distinguishing between different kinds of evidence.

But it's a really seminal book, and one which really makes us challenge our approach as historians.  In a way, the really important question about violence isn't whether it has declined (the surviving sources make it very difficult to construct reliable comparative statistics), but why it happens.

Most historians now, myself included, have tended to approach the problem from a cultural perspective.  We look at how education, religious discussions, political discourse, moral frameworks and so on, shape the ways in which people get involved in, and interpret, acts of violence.  But there's a real problem here: in talking endlessly about cultural constructs, we shy away from the very uncomfortable truth that in order to have been quite so prevalent throughout history, there must be something violent embedded in our human nature.

Pinker, as a behavioural psychologist, is particularly interested in how this violent nature has been, in a sense, tamed over the centuries - the processes by which our 'better angels' come to the fore.  He cites the role of the state, commerce, female values, empathy and reason.  All this sounds to me very convincing and nicely intertwines cultural and socio-political changes with an acknowledgement of our human nature.

By implication, though, Pinker is suggesting that the Middle Ages were an era of irrationality, when people lacked a sense of moral reason, when 'macho' values ruled supreme.  As any medievalist knows, this is far from being true of the period.

Pinker claims that medieval people saw violence so often that they were largely inured to it, but looking at the sources, whether literary or legal, paints a completely different picture.  For example, Francois Villon's fifteenth-century French 'Ballad of the Hanged Men', describes how 'We are never ever still: This way and that way, as the wind blows, It sways us at its whim, And we are pecked at by birds more even than thimbles.'  

The tone is one of pathos, and the poem only achieves its dramatic effect by appealing, precisely, to the empathy, of the audience - that characteristic which Pinker denies to pre-modern peoples.  And if this was an era lacking moral reason, why did preachers and moral arbiters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries engage in such long discussions about the justifiability of domestic violence? They found it profoundly problematic and were unwilling to condone it in any straightforward way.  If this was an era where the 'state' had no role to play in curbing violence, why do we find legal records at all, and why do we find contemporaries appealing to royal government to practise what it preached in terms of legal constraints on violence?

My point is not that the Middle Ages weren't as violent as Pinker suggests.  They may well have been.  But it certainly was an era during which people thought long and hard about the implications of violence, and when people were genuinely concerned and shocked about it.  And it's surely in acknowledging rather than denying the complexity of medieval thought on the question that behavioural sciences really add something to our understanding.  These aren't just cultural issues, but questions which make us think about human nature and where psychologists and historians can really learn from each other.

For an excellent review of this material, see G. Hanlon, 'The Decline of Violence in the West: From Cultural to Post-Cultural History, English Historical Review (2013), 128/531, pp. 367-400.

GOOD LUCK

This is just a very quick post to wish all finalists (and indeed A-Level, IB and GSCE students) the very best of luck for their exams.

Our history finalists begin next week, and I'm sure that they'll all be great. But the message I'd like to convey right now, is that they have all already proved themselves.  A History degree is as much about participation and engagement throughout the course, as it is about performance on paper at the end.  All my students have been really wonderful to work with - challenging and debating, and providing new insights and perspectives for all of us.  So I can congratulate and thank you all before you've even started your exams.

MEDIEVAL GARDENS

I've been looking at a wonderful book by Sylvia Landsberg on medieval gardens.  What I love about gardens is the tension between nature and art which they embody - art imitates nature, and uses nature, and nature lends its beauty to art.  In the Middle Ages, the relationship was even more complex - the most perfect gardens, loci amoeni (places of pleasure), were the imaginary creations of literature and illuminations, which planters then sought to imitate in their real-life gardens - the real and the imaginary, nature and art are entirely intertwined.

Image of Paradise, by the Master of the Upper Rhine

What's really striking about medieval gardens is the way that they appealed to the senses.  We expect gardens nowadays to look beautiful and to offer a place of retreat.  But, as Landsberg points out, in the Middle Ages, the appeal to the senses was much more carefully constructed.  Most of all, these were gardens which smelled amazing.  Plants were chosen in order to give wonderful blends of olfactory sensations.  Of course, there were many types of medieval gardens - from parklands, to functional vegetable and herb patches, to the soothing dreaminess of cloister gardens. 

The Cloisters, New York

And colours were used in wonderful ways which went far beyond what looked pretty.  The colour green, for example, was seen as a symbol of rebirth and everlasting life: it was also deemed to be particularly calming and refreshing, and the medieval thinker William of Auvergne explained that this was because 'it is half way between black which dilates the eye and white which contracts it' (quoted in Landsberg, p. 36).

It's a shame that medieval gardens have barely survived.  Occasionally, we can see the shapes of ancient parklands in the bumpy lay of the land, and there are some wonderful reconstructions and recreations.  I have added the recently recreated Queen Eleanor's Garden in Winchester to our list of places to visit this summer... I can't wait!

Queen Eleanor's Garden, Winchester

Nb. The Medieval Cloisters Museum in New York has a wonderful blog for anyone interested in medieval gardens and their planting: http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/

REPUTATION AND VICTIMHOOD

Residents of Oxford are currently reeling at what is emerging in the trial of the appalling child abuse ring based in what can seem like a rather tranquil and certainly very privileged city (don't be taken in though - Oxford has one of the largest wealth differentials in the country).

Reading Zoe Williams' commentary on this in the Guardian today, I was particularly struck by her critique of the repeated excuse that 'no one quite put the whole picture together'.  As she says, the assumption here is that one girl's testimony was not enough.  And why was it not enough for one victim to claim that she had been sexually abused?  Because of the reputations of these girls.  Williams explains: 'Victims were considered unreliable because they'd run away, because they were challenging, maybe they were drunk or on drugs when the rape occurred'.

It is frightening to be forced to acknowledge that the credibility of victims is still considered to be dependent essentially upon their good name, let alone to consider that their 'bad reputations' are often indicative of the lack of social choices open to them.  

In later medieval England, 'reputation'  was actually enshrined in law as a key element of prosecution.  One's standing as a witness depended upon reputation, one's role as a juror was officially dependent upon 'good name', the credibility of victims was shaped by what was already known of their behaviour and standing within the community, and, of course, perpetrators could be found innocent or guilty on the basis of reputation.  This was not seen as problematic - it was in the nature of the law.  And in some ways, it can even be seen as a rather positive aspect of medieval law in action: it meant that communities, from a bottom-up perspective, were actively involved in the prosecution of law and in shaping legal outcomes.

But it doesn't take much to see the problems with such an approach.  

Strangers in communities were faced with almost automatic demonisation, the process of law became deeply prejudiced against those unpopular for other reasons, and the marginalised or disempowered within communities became ever more so, as their damaged reputations ensured legal persecution.

Clearly, lessons are to be learned from the 21st-century Oxford case, and I sincerely hope that one of them will be to assess complaints and testimonies of victims on their own merits, without the assumptions shaped by prejudice and stereotypes.

If you're interested in questions of medieval gossip and rumour, look at Chris Wickham's  'Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry', Past and Present, 160. (1998).  And if you want to know more about the medieval English legal system, see Anthony Musson Medieval English Law in Context (Manchester, 2001).

FAIR TRADE AND THE MEDIEVAL JUST PRICE

It was World Fair Trade day on May 11th - so I'm a little late with this. 'It is a worldwide festival of events celebrating Fair Trade as a tangible contribution to the fight against poverty, climate change and the economic crisis that has the greatest impact on the world’s most vulnerable populations' in the words of the World Fair Trade Organisation. 

There is much to celebrate - fair trade products are gaining in visibility and really making people think about the ethics of their consumerism. But beside this we need to set our society's continued addiction to things like cheap coffee, fast fashion, sports equipment of dubious origins. The tragedy in Bangladesh on 24th April, in which over 1, 100 garment workers died is horrific beyond words and should shame us all - and yet, whilst clothing chains have been quick to offer compensation, the idea of imposing stricter building regulations initially encountered attempts to wriggle out of collective responsibility.

The fact that we can even continue to debate the importance of fair prices and decent working conditions is quite simply shameful. And perhaps the example of fourteenth century concern about fair prices might serve to highlight our own hypocrisy here. 

The fourteenth century was a time of rapid commercialisation and economic change. Despite its reputation in popular imagination, the medieval period was one in which people thought carefully and problematically about everyday life. And trade was an issue which provoked much discussion: it was largely governed by the notion of 'the just price' - the notion that the price which was ‘enough’ for a certain product should correspond with the production and labour costs. It's a good theory - but once you are trying to compete for trade and custom, you 'need' to find ways around it. And that's exactly what happened in the fourteenth century, when we find lots of attempts to justify, in theological and moral terms, the growing gap between prices and the mode of production. As a market economy grew and prices responded to market forces, preachers, theologians, and legislators all tried to find ways of justifying the change, even though the notion of the just price was their own invention anyway. It's easy for the historian to spot the hypocrisy here and the deliberate moral denial and self-delusion. Many fourteenth-century contemporaries spotted it too, and commented upon it in comic literature for example. 

Returning to our own century, we're doing something rather similar. Buying clothes and foods produced in ways we know to be unacceptable, but busily justifying it to ourselves with ever more contorted arguments because the prices are just too tempting...

If you're interested in the medieval notion of the just price, try Baldwin, J., ‘The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 49/4 (1959), pp. 1-92.

HELLO THERE!

Hello!  I guess I ought to start by explaining why I'm bothering to write this blog...

I am fellow and tutor in medieval history at St John's College, Oxford.  I love my job, and fourteen months ago, I was blessed with a wonderful little boy.  It was a real wrench going back to work, and two weeks later, I became very ill and had to spend a long time in hospital - I'm lucky now to be alive.  All this has shifted my perspective somewhat.  Most of all, it has reminded me why I do what I do - and it was my brother's idea to try to express that on a day-to-day basis in a blog.  I'll be exploring how the perspectives and ways of thinking afforded by the study of medieval history can shape our reactions to current events and our sense of how we should behave in the modern world.  

This doesn't mean that I'm claiming we can straightforwardly learn from the mistakes of history, nor does it mean that history can be reified into some kind of edifying moral tale.  And I certainly reserve the right to say not particularly intelligent things sometimes!  

But the idea is that I will share my responses to current events, to books I have read (not necessarily medieval), and talk a little about the experience of being a working mum who loves and believes in her work, but misses being with her little boy the entire time!