Dear Blog,

I think I might be suffering from the newborn bloggers mania. Right after I completed my first post yesterday, my mind was already urging me to write about another topic close to heart. So, what can I do but comply? Hopefully this will even out soon, so I can spare some time for sewing and shooting as well. It would be ever so nice to blog about those too.

Sincerely,

Miss N.

Medieval Literacy

As a self-confessed bibliophile and medievalist I find myself often thinking about the relationship medieval people and especially women had with literacy and books. I'm fascinated with the roles texts and books had for the medieval laity and how they were used in everyday life.

The litterati and illitterati

The traditional way that medieval literacy has been discussed, is Michael Clanchy's litteratus/illitteratus -distionction. Litteratus referred to a person who had knowledge of the Latin literature, which is why it's often coupled with clericus, the priestly order. The opposite of this was illitteratus, that was associated with laity. In modern language literacy has a twofold meaning as well: it refers to both the ability to read and  to write texts. While litteratus encompasses these, it also refers to a person who has knowledge of literature.

Divine inspiration? Trivulzio. Book of Hours. Mid and perhaps late 15th c. Italy. 164r
(Only the page is given)
© Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands
You can fin more information about the Trivulzio Book of Hours in here:
http://www.kb.nl/en/digitized-books/trivulzio/about-the-trivulzio-book-of-hours

What about women?

This sort of distinction hasn't gone without critique. Even if this sort of division represents male literacy in the High Middle Ages, it doesn't really work with the study of Late medieval women's literacy. Most medievalist would never refer to Christine de Pizan as illiterate and certainly not ignorant, although she only wrote in French.

Kim M. Phillips has suggested, that we create a different kind of model for the study of medieval women's literacy. This would encompass varying abilities to read and understand vernacular texts. One that could read Middle English, French, or German might not be considered litterati, but they certainly were not illiterate in modern, and perhaps not even in medieval sense.

The power of words

When studying the past it's easy to forget that some words and concepts might have had a very different meaning in the past. They are not unchanging. For example: in historical study the essentialist way of understanding sex and gender would mean that what we understand with the word "woman" and "man" or "feminine" and "masculine" was the same in the Middle Ages as it is today. 

On a deeper and more philosophical level it also implies, that words only describe reality - which is unchanging regardless of time, place or culture. On the other hand, if you take the position that our experience of the world is socially constructed (dependent of our culture, gender, education, world view etc., and the ways in which we frame and name it effects our view and experience), you can better avoid historical anachronisms and gain a better understanding of the medieval mind and way of experiencing the world. This of course applies to other periods and cultures as well.

Textual Communities and reading with ears

So, what does all this have to do with literacy, and especially medieval women's literacy? 

1. Medieval literacy is not always interchangeable with modern-day literacy. (This might be a given, but it's always good to note the reasons why.)

2. Litterati/illitterati is a heavily gendered term, and with it's inclination to clergy, it has tendency to exclude women from the group of literate medieval people.

3. It also excludes the use and understanding of vernacular texts outside medieval literacy, which can lead to the conclusion, that women couldn't read or did not have knowledge of contemporary literature, save for nuns and some highly educated exceptions like Pizan.

Divine interruption? The Virgin Mary, book and a group of listeners. Pentecost and the Opening of the Long Hours of the Holy Spirit. The Bout Psalter-Hours. Haarlem and Utrecht, 1453. Fol., 79v, 60r. © Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands

One thing that many agree on about the Middle Ages is that it was a more communal culture - and thus different from our time and culture, that values independence and individuality. In my experience this idea is probably one of the keys to understanding why so many share the interest in the period and living history. But what does this have to do with literacy?

Brian Stock has noted accordingly, that our perception of literacy is very individualistic and text-dependent, which can perhaps be explained by our culture. To us reading is quite private, regardless of location. We hardly ever read aloud to each other or are been read to after childhood.

His view is that most medieval people didn't actually depend on books or physical texts and their eyes to read or gain knowledge of literature, because the majority gained their knowledge by listening. This sort of popular literacy was not dependent on physical texts nor the ability to interpret letters and their combined meanings. Instead it was text-based, meaning that their knowledge of literature was based on physical texts, that were read to them by interpreters that knew how to read with their eyes. 

Conclusions

St. Anne teaching the Virgin Mary to read. 

The theme became popular in the 14th century.

Book of Hours by Master Sir John Fastlof. J. Paul

Getty Museum, Ms. 5, fol 45v. I found the image

here:http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-saints-of-skid-row/

A literacy gained by listening was readily available for a much larger group, than the text-based visual literacy. Otherwise illiterati people could gain a relatively vast knowledge of literature: in a way they could became literate, i.e. "well read", by listening as well as memorizing texts, which could have been read to them from the pulpit or in other public as well as domestic surroundings. 

Quite unlike us, medieval people lived in a dominantly oral culture, where knowledge, songs and stories were seldom put to parchment and thus had to be memorized. Because the Middle Ages are often associated with written records in the study of Nordic history, it's easy to forget that it was still predominantly an oral culture.

In my opinion the connotations that the lack of text-dependent and stereotypical litterati-type of literacy has with ignorance, should therefore not be taken for granted in the medieval or even early modern period. This can explain why common women such as Margery Kempe could recite many stories from the bible as well as other popular texts of her time. The question of her ability to read remains to be under debate.

At least for me, being aware of the gender and Latin-centered connotation of medieval litterati and the possibilities that textual communities and text-based literacy created for lay medieval women, have been and continue to be eye-opening and intriguing.

Sources

Burr, Vivien: Social Constructionism. Routledge. East Sussex and New York, 2003.

Glenn, Cheryl: "Medieval Literacy outside the Academy: Popular Practice and Individual Technique." College Compostiion and Communication, Vol. 44, No 4 (Dec.,1993), 497-508.

Fletcher, Bradford Y. & Harris, A. Leslie: "On the Concept of 'Popular' in Middle English Poetry." English Studies. 1992, 292-299.

Phillips, Kim M.: Medieval Maidens. Young women and gender in England, 1270-1540. Manchester University Press. Manchester and New York, 2003.

Swanson, R. N.: "Will the Real Margery Kempe Please Stand Up! Women and Religion in Medieval England. Ed. Diana Wood. Oxbow Books. Oxford, 2003.

Websites

The Getty. http://www.getty.edu/

Koninkljike Bibliotheek: The National Library of the Netherlands. http://www.kb.nl/en/digitized-books

Women, Weapons and Violence in Medieval Europe, part 1

The combination of women, weapons and violence easily conjures up images of victimized women. I wouldn't go as far as to argue that the Damsel in distress is a character that formed first in the minds of the 19^th century Victorians, since there are plenty of pictorial as well as textual evidence of her in illuminated manuscripts and medieval romances. While I cannot and will not deny her presence, I intend to direct my gaze towards something more controversial: the women who were, or were seen to be willing to defend themselves against violence and use it and it's instruments. 

Women and weapons. Armed with a spear, bow and arrows, these amazons are one of the types of people and nations depicted in Der Naturen Bloeme, which could be translated as "The best in nature". Der naturen Bloeme. Jakob van Maerlant. Flander or Utrecht, c.1350. The Hague, KB, KA 16, fol. 40r. © Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands

In the past few days I've been searching images of women, weapons and violence from late medieval manuscripts. My interest is focused mainly on 13^th, 14^th and 15^th century sources. In this part I'll use two illuminated manuscripts form the 1350's and late 1400's as my main examples.

The text will be divided in different parts and I shall post on the subject as my research and writing goes ahead. At the moment it's hard to say what sort of angles, themes or resources I'm going to use as I progress. Writing is a journey and it has the tendency to lead to exciting and sometimes unexpected places!

Art as evidence: Der Naturen Bloemen and La Cité de Dieu

The scholar at work. The image of Jacob

van Maelrant is quite typical of the period.

For example the female scholar Christine

de Pisan was depicted in the same manner 

at the turn of the 14th century. Source: 

Wikipedia. 

Can illuminated manuscripts with their artistic imagery and often fictional narratives really be taken as historical evidence? My view is that they indeed can, and the reason is that they are contemporary: made by people who were part of that time and world and influenced by the attitudes and realities of their time and surroundings. 

This does not mean that we should take everything at face value: it seems highly unlikely that there were people who only lived by the the scent of apples, as the images in Jacob van Maerlants book Der naturen bloemen seem to suggest. Nor is it likely that there were headless people living in some part of the world at the time.

Still, we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that all medieval people believed in monsters the way we preceieve them. As a writer who is said to have moved away from the tradition of the romance, it is reasonable to think he aimed most of all to something he and his contemporaries would have recognized to be a scientific approach to world and it's phenomenons. 

So, why does Der Naturen include such things as people who had their arms and legs backward or have dogs heads? In Maerlants case the answer lies in the traditional authority of the sources he used. They were both contemporary and classical. The introduction to the text in the pages of The National Library of Netherlands points to two sources: Der natura rerum, by french philosopher and theologian Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1200-1272). He's sources go even further back in time, to antiquity. The Library suggest the main known classical source to be a second century Greek text Physiologus.

I's also good to notice, that the edition as well as the illuminations used here were made approximately half a decade after the death of Maerlant. In the end the images of this sort don't actually seem to be more fantastical than other imagery in contemporary manuscripts from 13^th to 15^th century. To see for yourself, you can browse the collection in for example Bodleian Library, Koninklijke Biblioteek and British Library.

Above, people with one giant foot and below the people who 

burn their dead. While the one above seem intuitively 

fantastical, the other might be referring to real cultures, like

Vikings or Hindus. Der Nature Bloemen, c.1350. The Hague,

KB, 76, E 4. © Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands

But it's of course good to look at other sources as well, if they are available. In any case I always try to keep in mind, that all sources had a reason why they were made and why they were made the way they are. 

Costly manuscripts were often made for prominent and wealthy people, as in the case of the the late 15^th century copy of La Cité de Dieu, (wich was originally written by the Church Father Augustine in the beginning of 400 AD).
  In Raoul de Presles translation of the book and in Der Naturens 1350's version the human figures, when dressed, are invariably and distinctly clothed in contemporary fashions. This is typical of medieval imagery. This can be interpreted in many ways,  but I would suggest that the themes and stories of the manuscripts were just as current and meaningful to medieval people as they were at the time they were created. 

My interpretation is that dressing the characters in fashionable attire was most likely deliberate and an effective strategy: it enabled the reader (or viewer) to identify with the characters and the often moral messages of the books. As owning a book such as these was a status symbol, since only the wealthy could afford them, it is likely they wouldn't want to commission something too old fashioned in fear it would 
reflect on them in a negative way. 

Monks turn away from vices (1 of 2). La Cité de Dieu. Augustine. Transl. Pierre de Presles, 1475; 1478-1480. TheHague, MMW, 10 A 15. © Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands

For me the illuminations offer a rich and graphic source to women and the many ways they were seen and depicted in the middle ages. In the next part I shall focus my attention to the images, where women and violence are combined.



The writer is always amazed how much space one can use while scratching the surface.

Sources

Der naturen bloemen. Jacob van Maerlant. Flander or Utrecht, 1475;1478-80. Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands  

La Cité de Dieu. Augustine. Translated from Latin by Raoul de Presles, 1475;1478-80. Bodleian Library. MS.Bodl.624.

My first post!

Be warned: I too have to tendency to express myself in a 

more than few words - but it seems to be and old problem

;)

I've been playing with the idea of writing a blog about medieval women, dress history and archery for a long time. At last I came up with the courage and took the modern quill, a.k.a the keyboard, in my hands. 

My aim is quite selfish: I aim to amuse and educate myself through research, writing, sewing and experimentation. I am of course delighted if somebody else finds my writing entertaining and useful.   

And... ...here it is!


Sincerily,

Miss Needle