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Subject: TMR 12.10.26 Noble and Van Engen, European Transformations (Moore)
Noble, Thomas F.X., and John Van Engen, eds. <i>European
Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century</i>. Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. xii, 562. $65.00. ISBN-13:
9780268036102.
Reviewed by R. I. Moore
Newcastle University
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In 1977 Robert Benson and Giles Constable convened a conference at
Harvard to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Homer
Haskins's <i>The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century</i>. Its
proceedings, published as <i>Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth
Century</i>, has itself become a classic, and in turn its
celebration at Notre Dame in 2006 has given us the volume now under
review. [1] It should be said, before we embark on the carping that
is the reviewer's duty and delight, that it is fully worthy of its
predecessors, both of which are still in print. Noble and Van Engen
have assembled a remarkably distinguished team of contributors and
the quality of the eighteen chapters is uniformly high. Almost all
should be at or pretty near the top of any introductory reading
list on their topics, as well as providing succinct and stimulating
updates for those already in the game, who will also find the
exhaustive notes an invaluable bibliographical resource.
As Noble explains in a thoughtful introduction, the vision of the
editors goes well beyond to reconsider both the periodization-?how
long was it?--and the characterization appropriate to western
Europe in the twelfth century (Byzantium is mentioned only in
passing, and only one chapter focusses, in part, on the Muslim
world). The concept of transformation came into use in the 1980s,
deployed by the proponents of "late antiquity" in place of the idea
of the fall or end of the ancient world. Its employment here was
directly inspired by a volume of essays specifically devoted to
this period, Johann P. Arnason and BjÜrn Wittrock's <i>Eurasian
Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries</i>, [2] to which
several contributors refer. As Noble remarks transformation
"connotes change without denying continuity (and) suggests that
there were significant differences between conditions existing at
both ends of a span of time without pointing to a place, time, event
or cause that somehow effected that difference..." (10). It would
be a pity, however, if the term's main virtue were thought to lie
merely in allowing us thus to escape the hazard of saying anything
at all, or, as Noble puts it, to "avoid all the historiographical
baggage carried by 'renaissance' and perhaps by 'reform' as well"
(and he might have added, one or two other "r" words deployed at
one time or another by incautious synthesizers of these years)
without confronting the question how to relate whatever particular
set of changes any of us may be concerned with to all the others so
evidently under way at the same time. For Arnason and Wittrock
"Transformation" means, briefly, "a set of <i>interlinked</i>
changes in economy, society and culture amounting to a
transformation of the quality and conditions of social and
political life" (my emphasis) and, in a phrase important to them,
"involving a deep-seated cultural crystallization." It deserves
better than to become (as <i>longue duree</i> has done) a mere
catch-phrase emptied of specific meaning, and Noble and Van Engen
have accepted the challenge its use implies to broaden the
discussion well beyond learning, thought and spirituality in pursuit
of "a sense of the social and cultural dynamics peculiar to that
era" (22). Van Engen sets the scene with a rich and wide? ranging
discussion of change and its sources in the twelfth century,
proceeding from an incisive analysis of the historiography, which
suggests that success in acknowledging the diversity and long-term
significance of change in that crowded and tumultuous age has been
achieved at the expense of coherence. He does full justice in the
process to all those "r" words, adding for good measure three of his
own, reason, reading and revolt, with whose aid he brings order to
chaos, suggesting that the resolution of the conflict between custom
on the one hand and reform under the banner of reason on the other
was not victory but synthesis. [3]
That state formation is central to Transformation as conceived by
Arnason and Wittrock both accounts for the most substantial difference
of emphasis between this volume and its predecessors, and enables it
to play much more of the role of the conventional textbook, apart
from narrative. The still insufficiently familiar creation of new
states in Northern and East Central Europe is addressed directly and
authoritatively by Sverre Bagge and Piotr Gùrecki respectively,
while a powerful group of chapters illuminates various aspects of it
in the dramatic changes that overtook the older polities. John
Gillingh provides a scintillating account of the transformation of
Anglo-Norman England through the eyes of William of Malmesbury.
Dominique BarthÄlmy reprises his defense of the "old school" of
Marc Bloch's generation and before against the novelties of Georges
Duby's, and refreshes it with a characteristically trenchant
argument that the French chivalry which began to be written up in
the second half of the eleventh century was mainly a device to
uphold noble and military prestige and values against a rising
bourgeoisie. Adam Kosto sharply recasts Iberian history in the
context of Richard Bulliet's expansion of Islamo-Christian
civilization, de-emphasizing the frontier and firmly rejecting the
representation of the region as a passive recipient of French
culture. Maureen C. Miller, in something of a <i>tour de force</i>,
shows how the mobilization of the papacy by what, despite her best
efforts, we still have to call "reform" was essential to the
legitimation of the new political formations that transformed the
peninsula, both north and south. Her essay is complemented by
Hannah Vollrath's reminder that the participants in the great crises
of Sutri in 1046, Canossa in 1077 and Rome in 1111 acted on what
they considered their own prerogatives, without taking account of
the views and intentions of their antagonists, and indeed often
without knowing what they might be. Legal development, of course,
was central to state formation, as it was to Haskins for his
renaissance. In a notably lucid and accessible essay Anders Winroth
confirms the main thrust of the story developed in Haskins's wake
while observing, especially by drawing attention to developments in
procedure, that the outcomes were not quite so uniformly beneficent
as that tradition took for granted.
To complain of omission from so large and comprehensive a volume as
this would be unrealistic as well as ungrateful, but in an ideal
world another chapter could have explored the common presumption
that no transformation of underlying political structures and
conditions comparable with these would be found in imperial
Germany. Karl Leyser and Tim Reuter, for instance, might not have
been so sure. Its absence, however, underlines how much we need a
unified analysis of economic, social and cultural change in the
macro-region comprising the Rhineland, Flanders and Champagne. That
its position at the intersection of three distinct and very
different historiographies has for so long inhibited such treatment
is an anomaly underscored by this collection, for in its terms
there is at least a prima facie case for suspecting that
Transformation was experienced here no less profoundly and perhaps
more suddenly even than in northern Italy. If anyone is capable of
so daunting a synthesis it would be David Nicholas, and indeed his
superb overview of the urban revolution in this volume is
distinguished by its ability to transcend conventional national
categories and provide an analytical framework, in the contrasting
and changing relations between "Lords, Markets and Communities,"
for a sophisticated comparative discussion. Together with Paul
Freedman's crisp and masterly discussion of "Peasants, the
Seignurial Regime and Serfdom," it provides--in the middle of the
boat as it were--the engine-room of social analysis for the entire
volume.
Material life and mental horizons are brought together by Olivia
Remie Constable's subtle juxtaposition of the export of iron,
timber and weapons to the Muslim world and the growth of fears
about Islam, especially as it arose from assimilation between
Muslims and Christians around the Mediterranean, and as it was
expressed in demands for distinctive clothing, culminating in the
closing canons of Lateran IV, while Anna Sapir Abulafia offers a
parallel and impressively comprehensive survey of relations between
Christians and Jews. Both are careful to avoid simplistic
conclusions, but it is fair to comment that both point more in the
direction of clerical protectionism and intellectual innovation
than of traditional and/or popular hostility as a source of change,
and that sympathizers with Mary Douglas's understanding of
unacknowledged dependency as a source of pollution anxieties will
find something here to chew on.
Barbara Newman remarks that when she entered graduate school in
1976 the twelfth century had only three women writers--and
charitably refrains from adding that Haskins managed even a passing
mention (or three, to be strictly fair) of only one of them. No
prizes for guessing which one, or for what she rated the mentions.
It should be added however, since the matter is of perennial
interest though it has no direct bearing on Newman's thesis, that
the identification of Hersende, the first prioress of Fontevraud,
as the mother of Heloise is very far from secure: a background in
Champagne seems much likelier. [4] For Newman Heloise represents
one pole of a strikingly original argument in which, to summarize
with a simplistic brashness far removed from the subtlety of its
author, women entered the twelfth century as accomplished and
independent humanistic scholars and left it as mystics and
visionaries manipulated by men. As a discussion of women writers in
religious life this is a rich and important survey in its own right.
Placed alongside recent insights on the custody of memory, on the
sacramental capacity of women, on mixed religious communities, their
fate and demonization, [5] it is also something a good deal more than
a straw in a wind which is blowing with rising force towards the
unveiling of yet another twelfth-century transformation--and
decidedly a negative one. Women did not benefit from the universal
drive towards classification and stratification in every area of
life and thought. It is easy to say after the event that Newman's
essay, like several others, would have benefited greatly from the
support of a chapter, gendered and regionally differentiated, on
family structures, property rights and legal competencies. For John
Marenbon the responsible contributors to <i>Renaissance and
Renewal</i> appreciated, as Haskins had not, that the point about
twelfth century "Philosophy and Theology" is that it is interesting
as philosophy (that is, to philosophers now), and not merely--in the
reviewer's unsympathetic paraphrase--as history. The full extent to
which this is the case, however, is not yet apparent because,
despite considerable progress in unearthing and publication of texts,
most of the relevant material is not yet accessible to trained
philosophers, due to the concentration of historians' attention on
a few well-known figures. Rachel Fulton Brown, on the other hand,
sees the conventional stress on "an increased emphasis on Christ in
his humanity" (470) and on personal devotional experience in
twelfth-century religiosity as owing too much to the nineteenth-
century preoccupation with the historical Jesus, paying too little
attention to its theological and still more its liturgical context,
and underrating the centrality of the Holy Spirit and the Trinity.
Analogous changes in approaches to the divine effected by the
impact on perception of the use and significance of seals may
perhaps be detected in the highly original essay of Brigitte Bardos-
Rezak by readers more capable than this one of penetrating the
abstraction of her language. C. Stephen Jaeger, with refreshing
lucidity and cogency, places John of Salisbury at the end of a
humanistic tradition of philosophy and teaching with roots deep in
the eleventh century and stretching back to the ninth, rather than as
an exponent of the newly dominant scholastic style with which he had
little sympathy. The place of this fine essay at the end of the
volume reflects Van Engen's observation that Jaeger alone among
recent scholars has posed "a direct challenge to the broader
narrative argument" which (in line with Wittrock's conception of
cultural crystallization) presents the twelfth century as a
springtime of modernity (19-20). That the chronology of change
implied thereby, pointing to the 1140s as a pivotal decade, is in
harmony with that suggested above in respect of the position of
women, and readily paralleled in other aspects of thought and
government, suggests that Jaeger may not be crying in the
wilderness, or at least that however we characterize it the "long
twelfth century" did not lack its own discontinuities.
It is in the nature of any collection of this kind, on however
generous a scale, that the very excellence of what is done should
leave every reader feeling that her own particular perspective
ought to have had a larger share of the goods on offer. This
reviewer would heartily endorse the <i>cri de coeur</i> with which
Nicholas concludes his essay, lamenting the chronic failure of
medievalists as a tribe to grapple with the fact that all the
achievements which this volume celebrates "are all concomitants of
twelfth-century urbanization," (247) and therefore, he might have
added, on the agrarian development on which urbanization itself
depended. In that respect <i>European Transformations</i>, unlike
the relevant volumes of the <i>New Cambridge Medieval History</i>,
which Nicholas tactfully cites to support his point (258 n. 89)
greatly improves on its predecessors, but there is still a long way
to go. Nevertheless, this will remain an indispensable and
frequently consulted companion for a much longer period than the
publishers anticipate, to judge from the binding's uncertain grasp
on the pages of the review copy. Since, moreover, they have
provided no illustration beyond a single map the volume can be
hailed as a bargain only in strictly intellectual terms. That it
undoubtedly is, and a distinguished example of the collective
endeavor without which we could hardly hope to keep pace with the
headlong growth of knowledge. Whether it will succeed in
precipitating the general reappraisal of the "long twelfth century"
as a whole for which it implicitly calls may be another question.
The follow-up for which we must hope, preferably in less than forty
years, is at least one synthesis arising from it, from either of
the editors or almost any of the contributors. There are many
reasons for the continuing influence of Haskins's book despite its
manifold imperfections. Not the least of them is that he wrote it
all by himself.
--------
Notes:
1. Charles Homer Haskins, <i>The Renaissance of the Twelfth
Century</i> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927); Robert
L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds., with Carol D. Lanham,
<i>Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century</i> (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
2. Johann P. Arnason and BjÜrn Wittrock, eds., <i>Eurasian
Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallisations,
Divergences, Renaissances</i> (Leiden: Brill 2004). The theory is
elaborated by Wittrock, "Cultural Crystallizations in World
History: the Age of Ecumenical Renaissances," 41-73.
3. It should be mentioned that the sectaries who denied infant
baptism at Arras in 1025 (31) were not condemned, still less the
first to be burned, as heretics: that honour belonged to the very
different clerks arraigned at OrlÄans in 1022.
4. Newman, p. 396 n. 85; cf. Guy Lobrichon, <i>HÄloòse: L'amour et
le savoir</i> (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 111-129, esp. 120-121.
5. I have in mind Patrick Geary, <i>Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory
and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium</i> (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994); Gary Macy, <i>The Hidden History
of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West</i>
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Ch. 1; Anne E. Lester,
<i>Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women's Religious Movement and Its
Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne</i> (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 2011), esp. Chap. 1; and R.I. Moore,
<i>The War on Heresy</i> (London and Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2012), esp. Chaps. 8-10, where it is
suggested that the last may be seen as (among other things) a
reaction against the evidently growing.
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