Article
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Gregory of Tours, Political Criticism and Lower-Class Violence
Michael BURROWS
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Authority, Class, Gregory of Tours, Merovingian Gaul, Political Critique.
The aim of this paper is to add to the growing scholarship on Gregory of Tours’ Histories by investigating a series of episodes of lower class violence that occurred in Book VII of that work. It is hoped that this study will demonstrate an additional layer to Gregory’s work, and add to our understanding of his perception of authority in contemporary Merovingian society. It is also hoped that, in addition to investigation Gregory’s agenda, some light will be cast on the lower classes of Merovingian Gaul and their potential for ‘independent’ acts of violence.
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The Reception of Latin Grammar Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages: Bede and Donatus
Maya PETROVA
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Bede, Donatus, Grammatical knowledge.
The article treats the grammatical tradition of Late Antiquity and its reception in the early Middle Ages. Bede’s rhetorical and grammatical works are analysed in the context of medieval school practice; the question of the extent to which Bede’s texts depend on Aelius Donatus’ Ars grammatica is considered; the parallels and differences between their texts are discussed.
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Preachers and Preaching in Bede’s Commentary on the Apocalypse
Maria NENAROKOVA
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Apocalypse, Bede, Biblical Commentary, Preachers, Preaching.
The present article is dedicated to the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Venerable Bede. The close reading of the commentary shows that the leading topic of Bede’s commentary is missionary work. By the beginning of the eighth century, the idea of preaching Christianity to the heathens on the continent was widespread in England, especially in Northumbria. While commenting on the verses of the Apocalypse, Bede also expresses his views concerning various aspects of preaching. In the case of Bede’s commentary, the genre in question turns out to be lively and full of allusions to current events.
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Royal Feuds and the Politics of Sanctity in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian Saxony
Laura WANGERIN
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Anglo-Saxons, Feud, Legal History, Ottonians, Royal Saints.
This paper is an examination of sanctification and politics in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian Saxony. The evidence suggests that a feud culture and feuding behaviours were the reasons for the proliferation of sanctified murdered Anglo-Saxon kings in the late-eighth through mid-ninth centuries, a phenomenon unique to England in this time period. An investigation of the nature of royal feuds in England, in contrast to those in Saxony, further suggests that the sanctification and cults of these Anglo-Saxon murdered kings were a strategic part of feuding interactions and negotiations between families. It also supports arguments for the relationship between a feud culture and the proliferation of legislative activity by the Anglo-Saxons, and offers new possibilities for understanding the dearth of legislative activity by the Ottonians.
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“Personal Jesus”: Adam of Bremen and ‘Private’ Churches in Scandinavia During the Early Conversion Period
Dimitri TARAT
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Adam of Bremen, Hamburg-Bremen, Local Churches, Local Kings, Scandinavia.
In modern research it is customary to describe the 50s and the 60s of eleventh century as a first phase of the struggle for independence by the local churches in Scandinavia. All of them were officially subordinated to the church of Hamburg-Bremen, even if some of them found themselves under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon church. However, careful reading of Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae Pontificum indicates that in fact the period at the end of the first phase of Christianisation, was a period of personal initiatives by local rulers to control the missions and religious establishments in their lands. These religious initiatives by rulers in 1050s and 1060s turned the control over the local churches into a political tool against unwelcome foreign influences. However, it would be a mistake to try and describe this period as an awakening of a national church movement in Scandinavia for ecclesiastical independence. The kings simply wanted to keep the church subjected only to them.
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Humour in the Game of Kings: The Sideways Glancing Warder of the Lewis Chessmen
Annika HÜSING
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Cultural Perspective, Cultural Turn, Humour, Lewis Chessmen, Odd one out.
The cultural turn of the twentieth century’s last quarter gradually led to a new approach to the classical objects of historical research. Historians nowadays are required to take on a ‘cultural perspective’ in the course of their studies. Using the example of a particular piece of the Lewis Chessmen this paper examines both the benefits and the limitations that come about with the cultural approach and cautions against a too rigid application.
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The Pleasure of Martyrdom
Brigit G. FERGUSON
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Art History, Emotion, Martyrdom, Sculpture, Thirteenth Century.
A late thirteenth-century Stoning of St. Stephen, currently in the Cathedral Museum in Mainz, Germany, shows the martyr smiling radiantly in the midst of his execution. In contrast to Stephen’s saintly bliss, his executioners scream in rage. The narrative of St. Stephen, from the Acts of the Apostles, reports that those present at Stephen’s trial ‘viderunt faciem eius tamquam faciem angeli [saw his face as if it had been the face of an angel]’ (Acts 6:15). Although the biblical story describes Stephen as crying out to God at the moment of his death, the makers of the Mainz relief applied the description of the saint as angelic – which they understood to mean that he smiled softly – to the martyrdom in order to highlight his joy at dying for Christ. Stephen’s calm joy makes him angelic, while the anger of the attackers makes them demonic. The Mainz relief is far from the only representation of a blissful saint in medieval art. Early Christian and medieval hagiography is full of saints who taunt their persecutors or are described as smiling while they die. This is also true, for example, in the story of St. Vincent. In contrast, the persecutors of these saints often experience debilitating, blinding rage. Drawing on visual and textual hagiographies, this paper explores the implications of martyrs’ smiles, arguing that their calm pleasure in the face of suffering both asserts the power of their belief in salvation and serves to disarm their persecutors. The contrast between calmly smiling saints and their immoderate enemies underlines the importance of emotional restraint for Christian virtue.
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Imagining Otherness: The Pleasure of Curiosity in the Middle Ages
Anna KOŁOS
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Augustine of Hippo, Curiosity, Imagination, Order of things, Otherness, Pleasure.
The main aim of this paper is to take a closer look at both the philosophical and religious presumptions upon which the medieval concept of curiosity was premised. Such an enterprise needs to go back to Aristotle in order to fully comprehend the limitations for curiosity introduced by St. Augustine in his City of God and developed by such medieval thinkers as Isidore of Seville and Thomas of Aquinas. These conceptions will be analysed in reference to Foucauldian archeology of knowledge. Much attention should be paid to the ideas of curiositas, admiratio and studiositas.
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Painful Pleasure. Saintly Torture on the Verge of Pornography
Sarah SCHÄFER-ALTHAUS
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Body, Hagiography, Pornography, Torture, Women Saints.
Within female hagiographical narratives, stimulating, pornographic, and often sadistic endeavours can be detected; gendering the tortured body parts such as the tongue, teeth or the breast and thus supporting the development of (negative) erotic fantasies. This paper will explore the connection between pornography, torture, and hagiography and investigate the ambiguity of this ‘painful pleasure’, which, despite any assumptions, is not only enjoyed by the male torturer when cutting off these symbolically significant body parts, but recurrently so it seems also by the saint herself, who more than once cheerfully exclaims that ‘the pains are my delight’ (St Agatha).
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The Myth of Lot in Genesis 19 and its Implications in Sexual Education During the Middle Ages
Andrea A. M. GATTI
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Allegory, Cave cult, Homosexuality, Hospitality, Incest.
An accurate understanding of sexual relations described in Lot’s parable in Genesis 19 constitutes an interesting key to the analysis of this episode and to its exegetic interpretation throughout the Middle Age. In this essay we will focus on two distinct moments of the account: first, the attempted rape of Lot’s divine guests by the populace of Sodom, then destroyed by God’s anger; second, the incestuous intercourses between Lot and his daughters in a remote cave, far from the burning cities of the Dead Sea’s plain. By comparing this passage with similar episodes in the Old Testament, we will try to explain those topoi in their historical and geographical context, by stressing the ethnic and genealogical background of this episode. Then, we will show different readings by exegetes of all the revealed religions during the Middle Age. Finally, Supported by textual and iconographical analysis, we will study the social and cultural implications of such readings in response to these violent behaviours and to the role played by facts and characters.
