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Medieval Religion and Political Engagement, Part 2: Biblical Precedents

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[This post is part of an ongoing series, inspired by the upcoming presidential election in the United States, seeking to answer the question: What does the medieval period have to tell us about Christianity and political engagement? For an introduction to the series, and some general examples, see Part 1.]

Contexts for the issues I posed in the first part of this series do not originate in the medieval period, but stretch back in time, to the authorities that medieval people themselves consulted: the Bible and early Christian writers. And yet medieval Christians looking back to the Bible as the ultimate authority found questions about religious political engagement in scripture, with varying answers and no clear resolution.[1]

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Hats off to the Papa: Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I, by Antoine Vérard (fl. 1485–1512).

Medieval people found various justifications for war and colonization in the name of God throughout the Old Testament. This begins with God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be the chosen people, and continues through the narratives of the Pentateuch and beyond, as the Israelites invaded and conquered the Promised Land. Such a model allowed for various medieval powers to justify notions of colonialism and empire, just as it still fuels some thinking in modern politics. Here we might consider the eighth-century monk Bede’s (672/3-735) view of the English people as an extension of the Israelites as God’s “chosen people”;[2] or Charlemagne’s (r.768-814) view of a pan-geographic kingdom that led to the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire as a type of Christian extension of the earlier Roman Empire.

Regarding earthly kingship, it is salient to revisit 1 Samuel, in which God negotiates with the Israelites (through the prophet Samuel) about establishing a monarchy. At first, when the Israelite people request a king because they want to be like neighboring peoples, God and Samuel are skeptical. In the end, however, a human monarchy wins out over theodicy. This scheme was only compounded with further complexity for early Judaism and Christianity when they were colonized by imperial powers like the Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans. Thus, rebellion against imperialism also takes center stage in early Jewish stories like the books of Judith and 1-2 Maccabees. In many of these texts, the notion of a Christ or Messiah is propped up to push back against imperial powers in a type of liberation theology where God’s people are ultimately the victors. These same ideas also permeated the New Testament, since the earliest Christian authors were very familiar with this view of salvation history. In this way, New Testament authors appropriated political terms like evangelion (gospel) for religious proclamations, setting up Jesus as the divinely sent Messiah who would topple all earthly rulers and kingdoms.

Models of kingship and empire would need further negotiation after the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, as new monarchical powers emerged across Europe, giving rise to the early foundations of our modern nation-state governments. Rulers like Charlemagne and Henry II (to name just two famous examples) saw their kingships as God-given rights, handed down from the same divine anointing that they found in the Israelite monarchy. Charlemagne was so fond of the biblical books of Kings (including 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles) that he refers to them as his own model for kingship in his collection of legislation known as the Admonitio generalis. In a famous passage from the prologue to this document, we find:

Nam legimus in regnorum libris, quomodo sanctus Iosias regnum sibi a Deo datum circumeundo, corrigendo, ammonendo ad cultum veri Dei studuit revocare: non ut me eius sanctitate aequiparabilem faciam, sed quod nobis sunt ubique sanctorum semper exempla sequenda….

(For we read in the Books of Kings how the saintly Josiah, by visitation, correction and admonition, strove to recall the kingdom which God had given him to the worship of the true God. I say this not to compare myself with his holiness but because it is our duty, at all times and in all places, to follow the examples of the saints….)[3]

And while Charlemagne (the presumed author) waves aside comparison with himself, he also subtly implies that this is precisely the parallel that should be drawn: he stands in a line of divinely chosen kings going back to the Old Testament.

When considering how medieval people might have viewed their responsibilities to the powers that be, we might recall Jesus’ words in Mark 12:17, “Reddite igitur quae sunt Caesaris Caesari et quae sunt Dei Deo” (“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”; cf. Matthew 22:21). Whatever this might have meant in the first century, for medieval Christians, the commandment is made more convoluted by complicated loyalties: for example, splitting belongings between tithes to churches, alms to the poor, donations to monasteries, taxes to governments, feudal payments to lords, and gifts to patrons. Of course, peasants, clerics, lords, and kings alike were all concerned with what freedoms and rights they could enjoy, and there was much discussion of these issues in the growing legal traditions of the Middle Ages. Surely medieval people felt just as offended when taxes went up as we do.

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The Magna Carta, British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106.

One key example is the English Magna Carta signed by King John in 1215, which addressed a host of issues, part of which were freedoms, taxes, and feudal payments to the English Crown. This same document, in fact, begins by establishing the separation of church and state: “In primis concessisse Deo et hac presenti carta nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illesas; et ita volumus observari” (“In the first place we have granted to God, and by this our present charter confirmed for us and our heirs forever that the English church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate; and we will that it be thus observed”).[4] Since this document in some ways influenced modern legal traditions, it should cause some pause to consider the implications of these separations for religious and non-religious alike.

Chosen people, imperialism, divine rights of kings, rebellion, and separation of church and state—all of these rested in biblical precedents. They certainly resist any clear or monolithic system for negotiating views of politics from a Christian perspective. Instead, biblical contexts and various interpretations only add to the bigger picture that makes sense of some of the competing tensions presented in part 1 of this series. And, in many ways, the multiplicity of such views make for a much more interesting sense of the medieval period than simplicity.

[1] References are to Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the dominant text in medieval Western Europe, as in Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. Robert Weber, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005); translations are from The Holy Bible: Douay Version Translated from the Latin Vulgate (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1956). A parallel presentation of the Vulgate and Douay Rheims translation is available online at http://www.latinvulgate.com.

[2] In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731.

[3] Capitularia Regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH, Capitularia regum Francorum, 2 vols. (Hanover: Hahn, 1883), 1:52-62 (no. 22), at 54; translation from Charlemagne: Translated Sources, trans. P. D. King (Kendal: P. D. King, 1987), 209-20, at 209.

[4] The Latin text and English translation of the 1215 Magna Carta is available online at Orbis Latinus, http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin/Texts/06_Medieval_period/Legal_Documents/Magna_Carta.html.



Medieval Religion and Political Engagement, Part 3: Monasticism

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[This post is part of an ongoing series, inspired by the upcoming presidential election in the United States, seeking to answer the question: What does the medieval period have to tell us about Christianity and political engagement? For previous posts, see Part 1 and Part 2.]

When we think of the medieval period and religion, one of the most enduring symbols is that of the monk: the figure pursuing religious devotion and prayer, promising to follow a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to God, separate from society, behind the walls of a monastery. With this popular conception, monasticism represents a separation from the world, one that seemingly yields little for considering religion and political engagement in the medieval period. Yet monasticism provides a number of rich examples that challenge what we might think of as a “separation” between church and state in the Middle Ages.

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Saint Benedict of Nursia, from a fresco by Fra Angelico (c.1400–1455) in the Basilica San Marco, Florence.

In early Christianity, many ideas of religious asceticism emerged, including holy men and women escaping to solitude in the desert, becoming hermits, or joining together in small communities outside of cities. As more people sought lives of religious asceticism away from common society, with the biblical Acts of the Apostles chapters 2 and 4 as models of communal life, monasticism emerged.

Much of Western monasticism owes its debt to Benedict of Nursia (c.480-543). He established the organization of a communal life for those seeking to seclude themselves from everyday life in religious pursuit in what is now known as the Rule of St. Benedict (composed c.530-43). For Benedict, the dual purposes informing all monastic life were “ora et labora” (“pray and work”), which manifested variously over the following centuries. In many ways, the politics of Benedict’s view of monasticism are biblically communist in the sharing and distribution of wealth and the social goals of cloistered living. This view became the basis of Benedictine monasteries in the medieval West, as well as later outgrowths based on the same set of rules.

But none of this is to suggest that monks were wholly disengaged from political questions. As the most literate class through much of the medieval period, monks were the ones writing and copying many of the books that survive, including those that address the issues I have outlined so far. Sometimes, those who sought out a cloistered religious life were those who had been heavily involved in government: sons and daughters of nobles, even former kings and queens. Monastic communities also relied on the generosity of benefactors like weatlhy, powerful nobles; and, in return, many monks wrote propaganda for their patrons.

In one instance, the English monk Bede (672/3-735) was very concerned about politics in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He offers a wide-ranging history encompassing kings, clerics, and popes, intertwined in a polemical argument for the greatness of the English and their place in the wider world of medieval Europe. Even Bede’s title speaks to the nuances I have mentioned in this series, as he conceives of religious affiliation (“Ecclesiastical”) and political identity (“English People”) entwined together into a coherent view of history.

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Hrabanus Maurus’ prefatory poem to Queen Judith of Bavaria, in Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. lat. 22, fol 3v.

Another notable case is the Frankish monk Hrabanus Maurus (c.780-856), who wrote commentaries on the biblical books of Judith, Esther, and Maccabees for the Carolingian Queen Judith of Bavaria (795/7-843). In a prefatory poem, Hrabanus calls on God’s favor for the queen, with the prayer, “Dona beata da Deus illi arce coronam” (“Give blessed gifts to her, God, the crown on high”). Implicit in this hymn is his hope that, as Queen Judith is blessed, so Hrabanus and his monastic community would be also. Thus, Hrabanus ingratiated himself into the court culture of the Carolingian nobles, with all of the political associations (for good and ill) that came with that.

The nature of living as a monk changed in the central Middle Ages, when new sets of mendicant orders were established, like the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites—further complicating what we might say about how monastics engaged with the world. Whereas most monks had previously remained dedicated mainly to a single monastery (or to solitary asceticism), in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries monks began to leave monasteries to participate in preaching and evangelizing to the people. They continued to practice poverty, chastity, and obedience to God, but rather than living in common with other monks, they lived as itinerants dependent on the good will of others, especially in urban areas. Thus, in contrast to the earlier model of monasticism based on cloistered retreat, mendicants viewed their role as needing to be actively engaged in social justice, as they sought to aid the homeless, sick, and other marginalized citizens of society.

Perhaps the most famous monastic author to modern people is Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), the Dominican friar who synthesized much of Christian philosophy into a systematized scheme in his Summa Theologiae. For part of this systematic theology, Aquinas presented what has become known as the theory of just war, concerned with determining if waging war is allowed for the greater good. For example, in Part II.2, Question 40, Article 1, Aquinas lays out his views:

Respondeo dicendum quod ad hoc quod aliquod bellum sit iustum, tria requiruntur. Primo quidem, auctoritas principis, cuius mandato bellum est gerendum. […]
Secundo, requiritur causa iusta, ut scilicet illi qui impugnantur propter aliquam culpam impugnationem mereantur. […]
Tertio, requiritur ut sit intentio bellantium recta, qua scilicet intenditur vel ut bonum promoveatur, vel ut malum vitetur. […]

(I answer that, in order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. […]
Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. […]
Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. […])[1]

Throughout his defense of these tenets, he relies on the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who first set forth various models for justifying war from a Christian perspective. Aquinas also turns to the Bible, finding support for violence when it is necessary for defense.

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Battle of Crécy (1346) between the English and French in the Hundred Years’ War.

Of course, Aquinas’ system in his Summa rests on a complex system of questions and answers necessary to determine rational, logical justification for waging war for the good of society. He is clear that some acts of war are to be avoided and condemned altogether: such as “inordinata exercitia et periculosa, ex quibus occisiones et depraedationes proveniunt” (“those which are inordinate and perilous, and end in slaying or plundering”). Even Aquinas notes, leading up to his arguments, that there are also biblical justifications for pacifism and avoiding violence (citing Matthew 26:52 and 5:39, as well as Romans 12:19). And, even more, there have been detractors to his type of justification, during Aquinas’ lifetime and up to the present.

From these examples, medieval monasticism poses distinct reasons for believing that seclusion is not a clear-cut way to escape politics after all. These cases perhaps reveal that we are always political in some way, even in drawing away from engaging directly (which is, after all, a political act); politics have the power to deeply affect, inside and outside of cloistered religious life. The point for medieval monks, then, was not to disengage from politics, not to escape, but to do so from a different perspective—whether that was through intellectual discourse, propaganda for patrons, social justice toward equality, or a combination of all of these aims.

[1] Corpus Thomisticum: Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth3034.html; translation from New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm.


A Tale of Two Women: Anna & Mary in Advent

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During the season leading up to Christmas known as Advent, the Christian story of Jesus’ birth is often a centerpiece of Western culture. Yet many Christians also celebrate another miraculous story during this time: the Conception of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother. The feast day is traditionally observed on December 8, exactly nine months before the celebration of the Nativity of Mary on September 8. And at the root of this holiday is a fascinating case of the representation of women in Christian apocrypha.

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Joachim and Anna presenting Mary at the Temple, in an Ethiopian sensul, Walters Art Museum, Manuscript 36.10.

Since little is told about Mary’s life in the Bible, many of the traditions about her conception, birth, and childhood come from extra-biblical literature known as apocrypha. One of the earliest and most important stories in this category is the Greek Proto-Gospel Gospel of James, written sometime in the second century. Later, medieval writers in Western Europe used this story as the basis for adaptations. Among these, the most popular is the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (composed in the seventh century), which expands the narrative; and a later text based on Pseudo-Matthew, the Latin Nativity of Mary (composed in the ninth or tenth century). While told with different details, in all of these, the main story revolves around a couple named Anna and Joachim, their daughter Mary (the mother of Jesus), and her life before she is betrothed to Joseph and gives birth to Jesus. All three are worth reading for a full understanding of the historical veneration of Mary in Christianity.

In these apocrypha, Joachim goes to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice, but is turned away because he and Anna have not been able to have any children. After his sacrifice is rejected, Joachim spends some time away from his wife as a shepherd, but finally returns after an angel visits him and promises that Anna will bear a child. One of the striking features of all of these accounts is the significant focus on women. In fact, all three place a heavy emphasis on female agency–first with the character of Anna, then (later) with Mary. Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary especially present intriguing scenes.*

In Pseudo-Matthew 2:2-3, after Joachim has been absent for some time, we find Anna in a garden by herself, lamenting her situation and reflecting on her possible widowhood:

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin and Child with Ss Anne and John the Baptist (c.1499-c.1500).

Yet she wept in her prayers and said: “Lord, you have given me no children; have you also taken my husband from me? For behold, five months have passed and I have not seen my husband, and I do not know where he might be dead, or where I might make his tomb.” And while she wept in the garden of her house, lifting her eyes in prayer to the Lord, she saw the nest of a sparrow in a laurel tree and sent her voice to the Lord with lamentation and said: “Lord, God Almighty, who has given children to all your creatures, and animals, and beasts of burden, and reptiles, and fish, and birds, all rejoice over children. Do you exclude me alone from your kindness? You know, Lord, from the beginning of my marriage I vowed that, if you give a son or daughter to me, I would bring it to your holy Temple.” And while she said this, an angel of the Lord appeared before her saying: “Do not be afraid, Anna, for your offspring is in God’s design, and that which is born from you will be given admiration in all ages to the end.” And when he said this, he disappeared from her sight. But trembling at having seen such power and hearing such words, she entered her room and threw herself onto her bed and as if dead she remained in prayer all day and all night.

Later, an angel appears to Joachim and gives him the news about Anna’s conception of Mary, telling him to return to his wife. Upon his return (3:5):

Anna ran to meet him and hung onto his neck, giving thanks to God saying: “I was a widow and behold, now I am not, I was sterile and behold, I have conceived.” And then there was joy among all their friends and family, so that all the land and people rejoiced about this news.

In the later, adapted Nativity of Mary, Anna’s prayer in the garden is omitted, as the author revised certain pieces of the story. But Anna is not relegated to a smaller role, as the author also adds a scene in which an angel announces the conception of Mary to her directly (4:1-3):

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8th-/9th-century fresco of St. Anna from Faras, Egypt, now in the National Museum in Warsaw. The Greek inscription reads, “Αννα η Μητηρ της Θεοτοκ[ου]” (“Anna, mother of the mother of God”).

Then [the angel] appeared to [Joachim’s] wife Anna saying: “Do not fear, Anna, nor think that what you see is a ghost. For I am the angel who has brought your prayers and offerings before the Lord. And now I am sent to you to announce that you will give birth to a daughter, who will be called Mary, blessed above all women. Immediately full of the grace of the Lord from her birth, she will stay at home for three years of nursing. Afterward, dedicated to the service of the Lord, she will not depart from the Temple until her adult years, serving God in fasting and in prayer night and day, abstaining herself from anything unclean. She will never know a man, but alone without example, without stain, without corruption, without intercourse with a man, as a virgin she will give birth to a son; as a servant of God, she will give birth to the Lord; excellent in name and in deed, she will give birth to the Savior of the world.”

Again, Anna and Joachim are reunited soon after this scene (5:2-3):

Then mutually joyful at seeing each other and comforted by the certainty of the promise of offspring they gave thanks owed to the Lord, the uplifter of the lowly. Therefore, having worshipped the Lord, they returned home and awaited the divine promise in certainty and joy. So Anna conceived and gave birth to a daughter and, according to the angel’s command, the parents named her Mary.

While these accounts are considered “apocryphal gospels” by modern categorization, they are quite unlike the biblical gospels because they spend so little time relating Jesus’ life. Instead, Anna and Mary are brought to the foreground.

These features especially highlight the roles of Anna and Mary as major characters in a long line of biblical women (like the genealogies of Jesus’ family in the New Testament) without whom there would be no Messiah. There are certainly parallels here with the story of Sarah’s long-lasting infertility in Genesis (made explicit in one angel’s expanded speech to Joachim in the Nativity of Mary), and the fulfillment of God’s promise to give her and Abraham a son. In many ways, the conception of Mary also foreshadows the later conception of Jesus, related in the narrative as a parallel to the canonical Gospel of Luke. Both Anna and Mary undertake the primary act of advent: waiting.

In the medieval West, both the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary were pivotal in the development of saint’s cults for both Anna and Mary. As their veneration began to flourish in the tenth and eleventh centuries, these apocrypha gained in popularity. For many religious women in the Middle Ages, the literary representations of Anna and Mary were important models of devotion to God. For Christians, both also remain examples of women who had major roles to play in world history. During the season of Advent, the apocryphal stories of Anna and Mary are important reminders that women have for centuries been seen as an integral part of the Christian tradition.

* Passages from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary are my own translations from the Latin texts in Libri de nativitate Mariae, ed. Jan Gijsel and Rita Byers, 2 vols., Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 9-10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997).


Was Baby Jesus “Kind of a Dick”?

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Just before Christmas, Mark Hay published a piece over at Vice titled “Baby Jesus Was Kind of a Dick” about certain accounts of Jesus’ miracles as a child. Specifically, Hay discusses apocryphal (extra-biblical or non-canonical, different terms for these stories that aren’t in the Bible) stories in which (in his words) “Lil’ Jesus used his divine powers to terrorize teachers, kill Jewish children, and be an all-around butthole.” While I disagree with a few points or interpretations of the material, the link-filled article is worth checking out.

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Baby Jesus toddles around in a walker while Mary and Joseph work. The scroll representing Jesus’ speech to Mary reads “I am your solace” (“Ego sum solacium tuum”). From page 146 of the Dutch Hours of Catherine of Cleves (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.917), created in Utrecht c.1440.

In the article, I’m cited and quoted for my thoughts on the popularity of these stories in the medieval period. When he was putting the piece together, Hay emailed me with several questions about these apocryphal accounts, but since he was only able to include a few of my responses, I wanted to share my more general thoughts now that the article is published. Below is an edited version of my full response to his questions, accompanied by images from a manuscript that exemplifies some of my points: the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Gen. 8). This manuscript contains the oldest copy of a German synthesis of biblical and apocryphal stories about Jesus and the apostles, with over 400 drawings to illustrate the text, created in Austria around 1340.

Recently I’ve been working on a new English translation of the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and related, later additions (to be published in the Early Christian Apocrypha Series by Polebridge Press). Pseudo-Matthew is a translation, adaptation, and expansion of the Greek Infancy Gospel of James (also known as the Protevangelium of James), and was likely composed sometime in the seventh century. But in the later Middle Ages (from the twelfth century onward), other pieces kept getting added on to the main narrative. Some of these pieces were various episodes translated into Latin from the Greek Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or taken from lost sources that don’t otherwise survive.

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A page from the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (fol. 20r) depicting two of Jesus’ childhood miracles during the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt–both episodes from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew: right top, Jesus tames and is venerated by wild animals who accompany the Holy Family on their journey; right middle and bottom, Jesus commands a palm-tree to bend down to provide its fruit to Mary when she is hungry.

Some authors also translated or adapted Pseudo-Matthew and its additions into other languages and forms (the  German Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk is a noteworthy example) like poetry and sermons that people would have heard in church. Sometimes these authors transformed or added to the content in their own innovative ways. These stories also became popular in art like manuscript illuminations, sculptures, stained class, and wall paintings. So there were a lot of these types of stories about Jesus’ childhood in medieval culture–we might think of apocryphal stories about Jesus as just another part of the multimedia of the Middle Ages.

These stories probably captivated medieval people for the same reasons they captivate us: they’re entertaining. Medieval people were no different from us in the fact that they craved good stories. In a lot of ways, stories about Jesus’ childhood were like the next good Netflix series. People wanted to know more about Jesus, and they found more in apocryphal narratives. All of these stories have layers to the points the authors want to make, and some of these are deep theological ideas; but, on the surface, they’re also compelling stories.

Some of these tales were outrageous, and they raise other types of questions. For instance, in a few episodes from the Infancy Gospel of James, Jesus curses other children or even a rabbi for interfering with him, and they end up dead. Medieval people wouldn’t have necessarily viewed Jesus’ acts as “malevolent” or even as “vengeance” the way we do. In many cases, the stories have something to do with someone insulting or affronting Jesus. Since medieval Christians recognized Jesus as divine, they would have also understood these stories as demonstrating some larger theological point about his holiness.

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The prophet Isaiah points to the text, indicating Jesus as the fulfillment of his prophecies (Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, fol. 4r).

Similarly, Jesus’ actions would also be understood as mysterious, beyond human understanding in the same ways as God’s unknowability. In one story, a boy destroys a series of pools and trenches that lead the water from the River Jordan; this is described by the author at first as play, but Jesus calls it his work. So when the other child destroys it, it could be seen as symbolic of human disrespect for God’s work. And many of these stories aren’t about Jesus hurting others, but various episodes exhibiting his super-human powers through miracles–often emphasizing Jesus’ actions as fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies (see the image to the right). One example is the story of a boy who was pushed off a roof by another child, but Jesus brings him back to life to bear witness to the fact that Jesus didn’t do it.

There is, however, another possible interpretation of some of Jesus’ childhood miracles in the additions to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and other sources: namely, that they point toward anti-Judaism.* In the series of episodes commonly found in later medieval manuscripts of the expanded apocryphal gospel, the stories often draw attention to antagonists as Jewish, hostile to the Holy Family. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are confronted by their Jewish neighbors because of Jesus’ miracles; in his education, Jesus challenges the Jewish rabbis who attempt to teach him; some scenes mention the formation of a Jewish mob; and some episodes feature members of the Jewish community going to the Pharisees to report the unlawfulness of Jesus’ miracles on the Sabbath.

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Jewish children report Jesus’ actions to Jewish authorities after he curses another boy (who dies) for destroying his waterworks (the whole sequence is in Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, fol. 27r).

Much of this attitude toward Jewish characters has to do with the text’s concern with the relationship or disjuncture between the Hebrew Law of the Old Testament and the New Covenant symbolized by Jesus and as discussed in the New Testament. Taken to an extreme, these issues led to negative, anti-Jewish attitudes in medieval texts. Some of this is at work in the details of Jesus’ childhood miracles in apocryphal stories. The unwillingness of the Jewish characters to recognize Jesus as Christ, or to understand his miracles, is thus meant to defame them.

We have to be careful not to view these stories as wholly separate from biblical stories in the medieval period. Medieval circulation, reception, and attitudes toward apocrypha were complex, and often they ran parallel to the circulation, reception, and attitudes toward the Bible. It can be easy to create a false dichotomy, though. Extra-biblical stories about Jesus and his followers were just as popular and prevalent as some of the biblical stories, often included together in the same places: just pages away in a manuscript, or in the same series of stained glass depictions in a church. (Again, the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk serves as one example among many.) Biblical and apocryphal narratives were part of the same overall store of knowledge about “biblical history,” even though the stories ultimately come from different sources.

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The three magi (here depicted as three kings) visit and venerate Jesus, a tradition with both biblical and apocryphal influences behind it (Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, fol. 14v).

Generally, infancy gospels began to lose interest in Western Europe during the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is especially true of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and later versions based on it. Protestants began to reject it for its non-canonical status, and especially for its associations with the veneration of Mary (which was a major sticking point for Protestants). A lot of questions arose about evaluating the Bible from original language manuscripts, and this led to new discussions about the canon of the Old and New Testament. While the rejection was mainly pronounced on the Protestant side of these debates, Catholics wishing to implement their own reforms also called for a return to the Bible. Over time and because of many factors, apocrypha were left behind in these debates about the Bible, doctrine, and theological points. Later, of course, scholars of religion in the nineteenth and twentieth century created new interest in them for understanding the history of Christianity in late antiquity and the medieval period.

* Pamela Sheingorn has discussed this issue in relation to illustrations of certain episodes in two manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 2688 (made around 1270) and Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, SP II 64 (made around 1400)–in her article “Reshapings of the Childhood Miracles of Jesus,” in The Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O!, ed. Theresa M. Kenney and Mary Dzon (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012), 254-92. These issues are clearly present in the textual sources of these illustrations, too.


Ælfric’s Sermon On Judith

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Prague, Musée nat., Bibl., XVIII. B. 18, fol. 200r.

When I first started working on texts related to the biblical Judith in Anglo-Saxon England (which I discuss here), I had several goals: one of these was to provide more exposure to literature other than the Old English poem Judith. The sermon On Judith by Ælfric of Eynsham was one of the main texts that sparked my interest. Ælfric composed this sermon sometime between 1002 and 1005, after he had completed his translation of Genesis and during a period when he wrote narrative summaries of various biblical books included in or as extensions of his Lives of Saints. Among these, he wrote on Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Esther, Judith, and Maccabees.

When I posted my online anthology of texts related to Judith, I included translations for most of the contents, but not for Ælfric’s sermon because I never sat down and finished it. In the meantime, I’ve had a number of people contact me to ask if I know of a translation, or have one on hand to share. But, to my knowledge, there is no full translation in print or online. So I finally sat down to translate the entire sermon. I offer this translation under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

The translation is based on Stuart D. Lee’s online critical edition, Ælfric’s Homilies on Judith, Esther, and the Maccabees (1999). I have also consulted the previous edition, Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Bruno Assmann, Bibliothek der angelsächsichen Prosa 3 (Kassel: Georg H. Wigand, 1889), 102-16. I have normalized names to modern standard forms, and I have supplied notes about biblical sources in square brackets.

orazio-gentileschi_1949-52_top25_web

Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes by Orazio Gentileschi (c.1610-12), courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Here begins On Judith, how she killed Holofernes

Now we tell first that in these writings there were two kings named Nebuchadnezzar in Latin, both very famous in name. One was the Chaldean who killed the people of God in the land of Judea for their unbelief, when they wrongly lived in heathen and demonic idolatry; they performed injury to their Lord. Then the king overthrew their happy city, named Jerusalem, and that holy temple, which Solomon built with marvelous craft, and cast them to the ground, and slew the people of God, and then those left from the battle he drove to his land, to Babylon, their great city. And there they lived in his cruel servitude, to know their sin against the true God. For seventy years they lived there in servitude, until King Cyrus sent them to return back to the land of Judea, from where they were led, and commanded them again to raise up that single temple, so that the almighty God sent it from his heart, that he was merciful to his people after such great misery.

Now the other king who was named Nebuchadnezzar in Latin was in the land of Syria, the son of Cyrus whom we said before, and his nickname was given as Cambisus. So, then Cambisus declared to fight against Arfaxad, the king of the Medes, and he slew him, and through that victory he raised himself into a very proud spirit, and he sent his messengers from every side of him to all of the realms of people which lay within his kingdom. He desired that they all should bend to him alone, so that he alone would be their king. But all the realms of people spoke against him together, and they sent his messengers back again quickly, without dignity, very unworthily.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was angered, and swore by his throne that he certainly desired to avenge all of them who scorned his messengers and himself. Then he gathered his counselors, and consulted with all of them all; he said that he thought that he desired to bend all the earth to his rule, and they answered him that he spoke singularly. Then the king sent a certain war-leader, named Holofernes, with a great army, and commanded him with these words: “Do not turn away from anything, nor show mercy to any kingdom nor any city region. But establish each city you bend to me!”

Then Holofernes went with an immense army, just as the king commanded, and broke each city, and slew those who stood against them, so that fear of him sprang up over all peoples. Twelve-hundred thousand warrior men were in his army, and twelve thousand bowmen went forth together with them. And no people could stand against his army, but they came to a distant land, taken with fear, asking for peace. They said that it was dearer to them that, living, they should serve the great King Nebuchadnezzar than that they, dying together, should be destroyed. And so they bowed to the famous army with all their possessions to the sole rule of the king. Then he [Holofernes] went with a fighting force against many peoples, and won their lands, until the Jewish people learned of his army, and they were afraid of his army. Nevertheless they prepared themselves for battle on that greatly surrounded high mountain, and closed off every way up to the mountain, and with one mind they all cried out to God, asking for his help so they would not be destroyed.

Afterward Holofernes came with his army to the land of the Jews, who believed in God, and the people of Israel together prepared to fight against his army, so that they might destroy them. But it became said that they themselves prepared for battle against him, and desired to stand against him. Then Holofernes asked his eldest champion who those people were, who dwelled on the mountain, who scorned him so, and would not seek him out, nor ask for peace, bowing down to him. Then a certain war-leader named Achior, of the Ammonite people, said with great belief: “Beloved, I will tell you the truth about these people. This race formerly came from the Chaldean tribe, and ever they worship one almighty God, he who dwells in heaven, believing in him.”

“When the great hunger went over all the earth, then their fathers went to the land of Egypt where they found food for themselves, and long they dwelled there, four-hundred years, until this race was grown so great that a man could not reckon them. Then Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, desired to afflict them evilly; and he set them in servitude to his wall-works, so that they made his city. But they cried out together to the almighty God in whom they believed so that he freed them; and soon he sent a wondrous wise man to the land of Egypt, until they let his people go free from that land to their own land.

“Then their God led all of them from the land over the Red Sea, journeying along the ground, so that the water stood like stonewalls on each side of them, there where they went in. And Pharaoh the king went to stop them; he desired to have them back in his servitude. But God drowned him in the deep sea, so that of all his army not one man remained.

“Those people of God then went up from the ground, praising their Lord who so freed them. And so they dwelled for forty winters in the wastes, there where no man before could dwell; and, through a sending of the Lord, food from the heavens came daily to them for all that race of men; and then bitter wellsprings became sweet to them; and also from a hard stone had running water. Afterward they won with victory this land, and their God helped them and fought for them; and no man could own this people, so long as they rightly held onto their God. So often as they bent from worship of him to the heathen gods, they became harried and turned to blasphemy through heathen peoples. So often as they turned back with true repentance to their God, he immediately made them mighty and strong to stand against their enemies. Truly their God hates unrighteousness!

“Now, for many years, when they neglected the heavenly God, they became harried, and some slain, and some led to distant lands, dwelling in captivity, until they turned back to the heavenly God in whom they believed; and now they have again inhabited their land and the city Jerusalem, where their temple is.

“Now I bid you, Lord, that you find out if this people now have worked any unrighteousness or sin against their God, and if they are subject to your one ruler. Then if they have no unrighteousness nor have angered their God, then we will all be finished by reproach from their lord, who guards them, just as is his custom.”

Then immediately after this speech Holofernes became very angry at him and with boasting said: “Now you know, Achior, that you shall be slain with our swords, when we slay them all to a man, that you may know that our king and lord Nebuchadnezzar is truly God, and how he will easily destroy all Israel.”

Then he [Holofernes] commanded to bind him [Achior] and to bring him into that land and be taken to the people so that he might be destroyed with them. Then he was bound, just as the famous one commanded, and led to that land; and they left him there, disgracefully bound to a tree. Then he was found by the people there, and he told them all about his journey in order, and then immediately after his speech the people fell to the earth, with flowing tears, crying with lamentation: “See, heavenly Lord, their pride and our humility; and reveal, Lord, that you despise no one who trusts in you with true belief, and that you humble those who rely on their glory.” Then they comforted the aforesaid Achior, and Ozias their leader had him with him, and then they all prayed for God’s mercy and for his protection against the Syrian army.

So, then Holofernes desired to besiege them out, and he beset their ships with guardsmen for twenty days altogether around the city; they said that they [the Israelites] hoped in the mountain more than in weapons or in any battle. Then the people of Israel became uneasy in mind for want of water, and truly there was not in all the wells in the city so much water that it might be enough for everyone. But then they had a counsel because they desired to bend to the famous war-leader in homage to him, so that they might live. Then Ozias said to all the people: “My brothers, be patient and with even minds wait still another five days for the will of our Lord, and if then no comfort comes for our people, nor any loosening of our needfulness, then we may bend to the famous war-leader in homage to him, that he might protect us.”

Then, at the same time, in that city was a singular woman in widowhood named Judith, from the race of the patriarchs, one who strongly believed in the living God, famous in servitude, rightly living by the law of Moses, a remnant of Manasses. He was her husband, but he was slain by the heat of the sun in harvest time, out with his reapers who reaped his corn. He left that widow not a little in wealth and in other possessions, according to his great birthright of wealth in many possessions; and she dwelled in cleanness after her husband in her upper floor with her maidservants. She was very beautiful, and of fair appearance, and she always fasted except on feast-days, always clothed with hair against her body, in the fear of God, without ill-fame.

This Judith learned how Ozias spoke, and said that it was truly bad counsel that one should set such an appointed day for God, so that within five days he should help the people or they would seek out the Syrian army and the nobleman in his sole rule: “These words do not gladden God into mercy for us, but they provoke him to fierce anger. We should be mindful to his mercy, because we know no other god but him alone. Let us await with humility his singular comfort. Abraham and Isaac and our patriarchs were tested in their perils and in sufferings. They were true to the almighty God, who always freed them. We should pray to him, so that he blesses us, and save us from this suffering.”

After these words, and other prayers, she cast off her haircloth and her widow’s clothes, and adorned herself with gold, and with purple, and with singular apparel, and afterward she went out, with one maidservant, out of the city. And she asked the people and the aforesaid Ozias that they not worry about her going, but they remained in prayers and prayed for her; and they all wondered at her great beauty.

Then, in the early morning, she came to the guards, said that she desired to seek the nobleman and to instruct him in his own desires how he might easily betray that race, without peril to his own people, so that not one man in his troop might be destroyed. Then they wondered greatly at her beauty, and her wise words, and with honor they led her to their leader into his tent. As soon as he [Holofernes] looked on her shining countenance, he became taken by the lust in his inconstant heart; and she lay down at his feet, said that she knew a certain thing, that the people of Israel were so badly held with sharp hunger, and great thirst, for their sins against the true God, that they could all together be destroyed, unless they bend to his rule immediately.

Again she [Judith] said other words: “I will worship my God just as well with you, and in a set time I shall pray with bended knees to him and learn from him when you might easily come to the people, with all your army, into the middle of Jerusalem, by my instruction, and you will have them all just as shepherdess sheep. For this I came to you, so that I might tell you this.”

Then he believed her words and promised her well, and his warriors said that no such woman was so fair of beauty in all the earth, and so wise in speech; and the nobleman commanded them to go into his treasure-chamber and remain there until he should send word, and he commanded his officers to serve her from his own meals and his luxury foods. However, she did not desire to eat his meals because of his heathenism, but she had brought in her maidservant’s bag her own food, until with works she fulfilled the intention of her mind.

Then Judith asked the nobleman that she might by his leave, in the long night, go to her prayers to pray to her lord outside of the treasure-chamber on her bended knees, and he gave her leave so that she might do so; and she did so ever into the night. She asked the almighty God that he instruct his people to freedom in their peril.

Then, on the fourth day, the nobleman gave a feast for his officers in his tent with much joy, and commanded his chamberlains that they should bring the aforesaid Judith into his feast, and so they did. Then she came adorned with no lust, and stood before him very fair in beauty, and his mind immediately became very kindled with desire for her in his lust; and he commanded her to be joyful in his feast, and she promised him that she so desired it.

Then Holofernes became wondrously joyful all the day, and made himself drunk with the strong wine through his custom, and all his warriors were also drunk; and they hastened into the evening in their great wickedness, and the chamberlains brought the nobleman to his own bed with Judith, and did not care much for their lord.

Then, when he was asleep, Judith saw that the way forward was opened up fully for her; and she commanded her maidservant to hold the doors, and she took his own sword and struck into his neck, and with two strikes cut him in the throat, and she wound the body with the bed-sheets. Then she took the head, and his bed-sheets, and she went out with her maidservant with such prayers, just as her custom was, until they came to the city gates.

Then Judith cried out and said to the guardsmen: “Undo these city gates! God himself is with us, he who might free the people of Israel.” And they quickly undid the gates, and together they came to her with a light, because they did not believe that she came back again. Then she ascended up to the high city, and showed the head to them all, saying: “I bid you, with joy praise our lord, who did not abandon those believing in him and those who trust in his great faithfulness; and through me he fulfilled his mercy, which he promised to the house of Israel; and now, tonight, through my hands he slew the enemy of his people!” And unafraid she said: “Truly the angel of God shielded me against them, so that I came back to you unblemished; and God himself did not allow that I should be shamed, but without defilement he sent me back, rejoicing in his victory and in your freedom.”

Then they beheld that head with great wonder, and Ozias their leader, and all of them together, blessed Judith with this blessing: “The Lord blessed you in his lordly might, he who turned our enemy to nothing through you, and he who magnified your name today, so that your fame might not cease in the mouths of men.” Then came Achior, the servant of Holofernes, he who earlier spoke the testimony of God, and it happened to them, just as he said, although he [Holofernes] commanded him [Achior] to be bound with disgrace, and caused him to be slain with the [Israelite] people. Then at first he became very afraid at the sight, when he beheld the head. But soon he rejoiced, and blessed Judith, and afterward believed in the living God, through the law of Moses, the famous war-leader.

Then Judith commanded the city-dwellers thus: “Set his head on the highest wall, and go with weapons, trusting in God, now in the early morning, out of this city. Then your enemies will be afraid of you, when they find their nobleman headless, when you may make your word over them.”

Then they did so, early in the red of day, and with weapons they went out with a troop, making a very loud noise at the unbelievers, until the Syrians saw their army; and then they desired to arouse their nobleman. But no man dared to unlock the door, so they desired to awaken him with loud noise. When this did not happen through their loud speech, then they sent in one of this chamberlains and he found his lord lying headless. And then he went out again with lamentation, seeking Judith, and said to the people: “A woman has now disgraced us all and our people’s lord! Here lies the nobleman headless in bed soiled with his blood!”

Then they all became afraid in wonder, and without any counsel they fled disgracefully toward their land, and abandoned the gathering with their enemies into the hands of those who followed in the back, and ever they [the Israelites] hounded them from behind with weapons. And from all their cities Ozias sent great help, and together they followed from their land so that they [the Syrians] did not return again. Then the people of Israel turned themselves homeward with singular victory, and dealt out those left from the battle between themselves as dear treasure, so that they became very wealthy; and they all gave these things from Holofernes for Judith to have, and then they praised God with very great rejoicing in song and in joy.

Their eldest priest was named Joachim. He came from Jerusalem with all his priests to the city of Bethulia with great joy, so that he saw Judith; and they all greatly blessed her with these words: “You are truly a glory to our city Jerusalem and the joy of Israel, worthy among our people, because you dwelled as a woman in cleanness after your husband, and God strengthened you for your cleanness, and therefore you yourself will be blessed in the world!”

Then Judith greatly praised the heavenly God with a hymn-song, as it tells us in Latin, and they all joyfully offered their sacrifice to God in Jerusalem for the victory. Then Judith dwelled in her widowhood famously for God in great honor; she lived one hundred years, and she freed her maidservant, and the people of Israel all dwelled in peace for all her life, and also long afterward.

This is no lying story! It stands in Latin, so in the Bible. Those scholars who know Latin know that we do not lie. In her was fulfilled the Savior’s saying: “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” [Matthew 23:12, Luke 14:11] She was humble and clean, and overcame pride, little and not strong, and laid down the great one. Therefore she signifies the faithful with works, the holy congregation who now lives in God, that is the church of Christ in all Christian people, his one clean bride who with keen belief cuts off the head from the old devil, ever in cleanness serving Christ. Judith first promised the bloodthirsty noblemen that she would bring him inside to her people. But it was not at all a lie, that she promised him that, when she bore his head within the walls and showed the people how God helped her. Glory be to him forever! Amen.

She did not desire to have, just as the story says, the bloodthirsty one’s war-spoils, which the people gave her; but she accursed all his clothes, she did not desire to wear them, but cast them off from her—she did not desire to have any sin because of his heathenism. Certain nuns are living disgracefully, believing it so little a sin that they might fornicate and that they might easily atone for so little. But she is not a virgin afterward, if she fornicates once; nor might she have the hundredfold reward of increase. Take for yourselves an example from this Judith, how cleanly she lived before the birth of Christ, and do not deceive God in the time of the Gospel in the holy cleanness that you promised to Christ, because he damns the secret fornicators and he scorches the foul shameful ones in hell, just as it says in Latin according to the teaching of Paul: “God judges fornicators and adulterers.” [Hebrews 13:4]

I also desire to say, my sisters, that virginity and cleanness have great power, just as we read everywhere in the passions of the martyrs and in the Vitas Patrum, just as Malchus….[1] Then Malchus went out of the cave with his companion, greatly astonished, and they took the horses that they had brought there, and then they were riding although before they were walking, and they came to Syria, where lived afterward always in cleanness in servitude to Christ. May glory and praise be to him forever and ever! Amen.

[1] Here there is a gap in the manuscript record: the main witness, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303, contains only up to line 321; and the fragmentary witness in London, British Library, Cotton Otho B.x ends here due to damage during the fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Lee reconstructs the end of the text based on Humphrey Wanley’s transcription of the explicit from Otho B.x in Librorum Veterum Septentrionalium Catalogus, printed in George Hickes, Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus (Oxford: Theatrum Sheldonianum, 1705); see Lee’s edition for details.


My Debt to Public Education

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The latest news cycle brings a media storm about Tuesday’s (January 17) confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos: news stories, live-streaming of the event, video clips saved for later, tweets on both sides of the political divide, and of course hot-takes. Consider this one of the latter.

Specifically, I want to respond to one of DeVos’s historic comments, one that has been repeated over and over in various media: that public education is a “dead end.” During her hearing, DeVos gave no solid indication that her views have changed. For a few news outlets that have commented on her past statement and the hearing, check out these search results.

During the confirmation hearing, media figure and journalist Wajahat Ali tweeted the following to remind his audience of DeVos’s past comment:

Soon after, among others responding to Ali’s tweet, writer, director, and actress Justine Bateman retweeted with the following comment:

Between the time when Bateman posted that tweet and my time of writing this post, nearly 9,000 people have retweeted it directly. Additionally, a whole host of people have added comments about their own experiences to reject and resist DeVos’s claim.

I posted my own response to Ali’s tweet last night:

But, as I’ve reflected on my own education, I also realized that this tweet deserves elaboration. So here’s my own story–my own rejection of the claim that public education is a “dead end,” my own resistance to these types of attitudes, which can become all too normal when we encounter these kinds of statements from figureheads in the media.

My family was lower-middle-class, and lived for most of my childhood and adolescent life in rural upstate and northern New York. My father was a minister and full-time dad, my mother (among a variety of jobs) a cosmetologist, secretary, substitute teacher, and a full-time mom. Both of my parents attended public schools. I also have two siblings. Even if they had the money to send us to private schools, in a few places we lived the options weren’t there; I’m not sure they would have chosen that possibility anyway. I attended public schools from preschool through twelfth grade, in three different school districts in three different places–two of them rural, the other (in between) a small city, but all three places economically depressed.

These public school districts and individual schools didn’t have a lot of money, but I never felt like they failed me. I was often in accelerated classes in different disciplines. Much of my personal story–my love of fantasy and the beginnings of my forays into medieval literature–go back to the fourth grade. That year, my teacher, Mrs. Dreyfus, read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit to the class. I was captivated, and fell in love with Tolkien. We also switched to another class for language arts, and our class read C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe with Mrs. Howe. I also remember a special section of Mrs. Howe’s classroom, where she had dozens of crates stacked with readings, and it was our duty to read a certain number of them. In those crates, I encountered Beowulf. I remember poring over the pages of a comic-book version of the story, entranced by the hero, his nemesis Grendel, the terror of Grendel’s mother, and the magnificence of the fight with the dragon. I knew then that there was something special about Tolkien, Lewis, and Beowulf, and I started to pursue the land of fantasy in which they all lived.

From fifth through twelfth grade, I participated in band and choir; in high school, I joined the show choir and jazz band; I acted in a few plays over the years; and I sometimes was part of different clubs.

I spent a lot of time at the local Wead Library, which is overseen by the public school district. I would get lost in the stacks–both the children’s and the adult sections. I learned to read voraciously. I learned that books change lives. I learned that books contain magic. I learned that books are my passion. I also built relationships with the library staff, especially the children’s librarian, Mrs. Wool (now the director), and Mrs. Trickey. In some ways, I owe my life to the Wead Library. In my senior year of high school I giddily took a job there, and it’s still the true love of my job life.

I fondly remember programs like Scholastic book club and the Book-It program for literacy; going to area all-state for band and choir; field trips to libraries, museums, the courthouse, a biodome, and other fun, educational places (at least, I see that they were in retrospect, even if the courthouse seemed boring at the time); weekend trips to compete in band and choir competitions (and sight-seeing and fun) in Toronto, Canada and New York City. Some of these a few or several hours away and meant parents helping financially, or students doing fundraisers.

It was on one of my field trips (to the biodome) that I first actually engaged with one of my middle-school history teachers, Greg Littell. While he seemed strict and had high expectations in the classroom, on that trip, getting to know him a bit better outside of the classroom, I realized that Mr. Littell wasn’t just a difficult teacher, but was fun, cared about students, and pushed us because he knew we could rise to his expectations. Hanging out with Mr. Littell was a pivotal moment for me.

I developed another important relationship in my senior year of high school, when I had the opportunity to take not only AP English but also another elective English course. Because I had room in my schedule, and was thinking about going to college for English, I took both classes. In the elective course, I met Brian Doe, who introduced me to Old English literature and rekindled my love of Beowulf, as well as Norse and world mythology, Arthurian legends, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and a host of other medieval subjects. That was where I found my love for Old English and Old Norse literature. I would often stop by Mr. Doe’s classroom in free periods or after school just to talk to him about our mutual interests. Over the course of the year, he gave me a few dozen books, including Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf with the Old English and translation on facing pages; The Sagas of Icelanders; the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda; and The Saga of the Volsungs. In many ways, Mr. Doe put me on the path that led me to graduate school and my career as a professor of medieval literature. These were the core start  of a library of medieval texts that I still own as it’s grown over the years. I not only still own these books but also remember who gave them to me. They came from a public school teacher who cared.

After high school, to save money and take a bit more time to decide where I wanted to complete my four-year BA, I spent a year living with my parents and attending community college–a local branch of the not-much-larger main campus about an hour away, part of the public college system of NY State. I also continued to work at the Wead Library, which gave me experiences that I carried with me into college. Through that year, and when I would return home on breaks, I substitute taught in the local public schools. This only fueled my desire to be an educator.

I decided to attend a private college for the remaining three years of my undergraduate education, but afterward I chose to attend the University of Connecticut, a public state school. There I completed my MA in Medieval Studies; then I applied to the PhD program, was accepted, and decided to stay. I had another offer, from a private university, but for a number of reasons, including a better funding package, I chose to continue at UConn. It was the best fit, and I don’t regret it. It was the best PhD program for me, personally, and I wonder if part of that was the fact that it is a public university.

Since I enrolled in my MA program at UConn, and for the past ten years, I have taught only in public education. For the first few years that I was in graduate school, at the end of each academic year, I substitute taught in local public schools in Connecticut. I loved working with the students, and the experiences helped me to understand learning much better, in a more general way. After UConn, I taught for a year at another public state school, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Since fall of 2015, I have taught at Rhode Island College, a public liberal arts college. Most of my students have grown up in public education. And many of them amaze me. Like me, they did not face a dead end. They continue to seek and strive for success.

I know that not all public education stories are like mine. My parents played a huge role in my education and success. I also have certain privileges as a white male.There are many other factors (systemic, social, cultural), and I acknowledge those, too. But my story also isn’t an aberration. I owe many thanks to the experiences and especially the teachers I had in public schools.


Medieval Multimedia Syllabus

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This semester I’m teaching a graduate seminar (the first since I’ve started at RIC). Over the course of the semester, I’ll be posting some reflections on the course and the material we’re covering, partly to sort through some of my own thoughts and also in solidarity with my students, who will also be blogging. So here is the inaugural post about the course, with some general information about it.

While the course on the books is “Topics in British Literature before 1660,” the main theme will be “Medieval Multimedia.” We’ll be starting the course with some introductions to medieval literature and media studies, then delving deeper into some theoretical readings alongside some Old English literature. One of my main focuses will be on how textual and manuscript culture intersected in the medieval period–how literature and manuscripts can be understood together. But we’ll also consider other “old media” artifacts like stone crosses, bells, monastic spaces, the Franks Casket, and (finally) printed books.

Throughout the course, we’ll look at many examples of material culture, ranging from digital facsimiles to actual artifacts. Fortunately, we’ll have access to a few hands-on examples: RIC owns two leaves, one from a chant manuscript and another from a book of hours; and I’ll bring in a page from a chant manuscript that I personally own. We’ll spend an entire class session examining these. But we’ll also spend time almost every class to look at digital representatives. What follows is a general description and an outline of the weekly readings and topics.

Here’s my course description:

We live in a world of rich multimedia—so much so that some argue that we live in an age of information overload. But what of the multimedia of past cultures? This course explores medieval British literature through the lens of media studies, encompassing technologies of verbal, visual, tactile, and other lived, sensory experiences. We will engage with classic works of media theory like Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media as well as more recent approaches in media archaeology, with a special focus on book history. We will use these theories to consider medieval media as a key context for understanding famous literature like Beowulf and William Langland’s Piers Plowman, along with less well known literature like anonymous sermons, saints’ lives, histories, and romances. Requirements include engagement in class discussions, reading responses, field trips to local libraries and museums, and a final multimedia project.

Week 1: No class
[Because our semester starts on a Tuesday, and this class meets on Mondays.]

Week 2 (1/23)

Before class:
Treharne, Medieval Literature: A Very Short Introduction, Introduction & chapters 1-3 (1-54)
Getty Museum, Making Manuscripts (video)
Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, “Introduction” & section on “Codicology” (1-45)
McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Introductions, chapter 1

In class: An introduction to medieval literature and manuscripts
Rouse & Rouse, selections from Bound Fast with Letters:
“From Flax to Parchment: A Monastic Sermon from Twelfth-Century Durham” (translated text, 83-85)
“St. Antoninus of Florence on Manuscript Production” (translated text, 516-17)
Chaucer, “To His Scribe Adam”
Pangur Bán
“My Hand Is Weary with Writing”

Week 3 (1/30)

Before class:
McLuhan, Understanding Media, chapters 8-10
From the following, choose one reading; be prepared to report to the class on it:

Goddard, “Opening up the Black Boxes”
Huhtamo & Parikka, Media Archaeology, “Introduction”
Mitchell & Hansen, Critical Terms for Media Studies, “Introduction”
Parikka, What Is Media Archaeology?, “Introduction”

In class: A crash course in media archaeology
Exeter Book Riddles
Cynewulf’s signatures (section V of Christ II & Epilogue of Juliana)
The Wife’s Lament
The Husband’s Message
The Ruin

Week 4 (2/6)

Before class:
From the following, choose one reading; be prepared to report to the class on it:

Gitelman, Always Already New, “Introduction”
Guillory, “Genesis of the Media Concept”
Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, “Introduction”
Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media, “Introduction”

Foys, “Media”
Old English The Dream of the Rood
Ruthwell Cross video (video; watch to get a material sense of the object)
The Ruthwell Cross (fully view the cross and its content on this 3D site)
The Brussels Cross (fully view the cross and its content on this site)
Explore the Digital Vercelli Book (opens to The Dream of the Rood)

In class: The media ecology network of The Dream of the Rood & the Vercelli Book

Week 5 (2/13)

Before class:
University of Iowa Special Collections, If Books Could Talk, episodes 1-6 (videos)
From the “Manuscript Studies” folder, choose one reading from the “Primer” series and one from the “TextManuscripts” series; be prepared to report to the class on both of them.

In class: Meet in RIC Adams Library, Special Collections for a hands-on lab about manuscripts

Week 6 (2/20)

Before class:
Theisen, The Rule of Saint Benedict: Introduction
Monasteriales Indicia (Anglo-Saxon Monastic Sign Language)
Batuman, “The Bells”
Poe, “The Bells”
Amalarius of Metz, “On the Significance of Bells”
Exeter Book “Riddle 4” & Commentary

In class: Monastic media
Watch part of Into Great Silence

Week 7 (2/27)

Before class:
“Franks Casket” on Wikipedia (read this first)
Franks Casket item record at the British Museum (click “More views” for all photographs)
Old English The Whale
“Whale” in the Medieval Bestiary
Old Norse Lay of Volund (Wayland the Smith)
Adoration of the Magi in Matthew 2 & the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 16

Choose one of the following to read; be prepared to report to the class on it:

Abels, “The Franks Casket and the Acculturation of Christianity in Early Anglo-Saxon England”
Klein, “The Non-Coherence of the Franks Casket: Reading Text, Image, and Design on an Early Anglo-Saxon Artifact”
Vegvar, “Reading the Franks Casket: Contexts and Audiences”

In class: Piecing together the puzzle of the Franks Casket

Week 8 (3/6) No class, spring recess

Week 9 (3/13)

Before class:
“Introduction” to The Beowulf Manuscript (ed. and trans. Fulk)
Beowulf & Judith in The Beowulf Manuscript (ed. and trans. Fulk)

In class: Heroes and their media

Week 10 (3/20)

Before class:
From The Beowulf Manuscript (ed. and trans. Fulk):

The Passion of Saint Christopher
The Wonders of the East
The Letter of Alexander the Great

Rust, “The Page in Comics and Medieval Manuscripts”
Optional: Treharne, Medieval Literature, chapter 5

In class: What binds the Nowell Codex together?

Week 11 (3/27)

Before class:
Scase, “Editorial Introduction” to the Vernon Manuscript
Peruse the contents of the Vernon Manuscript
Gast of Gy
Joseph of Arimathea
Saint Kenelm from the South English Legendary

In class: Cracking open the Vernon Manuscript

Week 12 (4/3)

Before class:
Treharne, Medieval Literature, chapters 6-7
Selections from The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript (Part I ed. Horstmann; Part II ed. Furnivall)

In class: Navigating the Vernon Manuscript

Week 13 (4/10)

Before class:
“Introduction” in the Norton Critical Edition of Piers Plowman
Explore visualizations for the Piers Plowman tradition by Angie Bennett Segler
Langland, Piers Plowman, Prologue & passus 1-4

In class: Piers Plowman Part I

Week 14 (4/17)

Before class:
Langland, Piers Plowman, passus 5-7
Choose one piece from the “Criticism” section of the Norton Critical Edition; be prepared to report to the class on it.
Optional: Weiskott, “Prophetic Piers Plowman: New Sixteenth-Century Excerpts”

In class: Piers Plowman Part II

Week 15 (4/24)

Before class:
Kennedy, Medieval Hackers

In class: Transgressing boundaries & resisting the print revolution


Refugee Jesus in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew

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Recently, Casey Strine (Lecturer in Ancient Near Eastern History and Literature at the University of Sheffield) wrote for the Huffington Post UK about “Ancient Christianity’s Opposition To Trump’s Proposal To Prefer Christian Refugees.” In the article, Strine musters different passages in the Bible that speak to early Jewish and Christian responses to refugees, relating them to the Trump administration’s recent order to ban refugees from America. But what about other Christian ideas of refugees, outside of the canonical Bible? Some remarkable examples appear in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which I’ve written about before.

e-codices_sbs-0008_024r_large_detail

An angel visits Joseph, in Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (fol. 24r).

Those familiar with the life of Jesus from the gospels know about his family’s flight to Egypt because of Herod’s order to kill all children in Israel under the age of two. The Gospel of Matthew says (in the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate):

And after [the magi] were departed, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt: and be there until I shall tell thee. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him. Who arose, and took the child and his mother by night, and retired into Egypt: and he was there until the death of Herod: That it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying: Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. (2:13-16)

Ancient and medieval apocryphal gospels drew on this same story, sometimes expanding it. Among these, Pseudo-Matthew largely follows this narrative, but adds several episodes about the journey. Jesus’ family leaves their homeland because of persecution and head to Egypt.

e-codices_sbs-0008_020r_dragons_detail

Depiction of Pseudo-Matthew 18:1, from the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (fol. 20r).

Along the way, the holy family is met by a curious amount of welcome. At one point, when they stop to cool off in a cave on the road, several dragons emerge:

And behold, suddenly many dragons went out of the cave…. Then the Lord, although he was not yet two years old, shook himself off and stood to his feet before them. And the dragons worshipped him, and when they had worshipped him they went away. (18:1)

Not long after this incident, other animals begin to join the crowd:

Similarly, both lions and panthers worshipped and accompanied him in the desert wherever Mary went with Joseph. And they went before them, showing the road and delivering obedience, and bowing their enormous heads with reverence they displayed their servitude by wagging their tails. (19:1)

Therefore, lions and asses and oxen and mules walked together, who carried their provisions, and wherever they made a stop together, they went to pasture. There were also tame rams who had come out of Judea together and followed them, and who walked among wolves without fear. (19:2)

All of this is included in Pseudo-Mathew as a way to link Jesus’ childhood miracles with prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. Yet the episodes also highlight the dangers of traveling: wild animals were certainly a hazard in the wilderness. Even these beasts show the decency of accepting the refugees.

e-codices_sbs-0008_019r_large_detail

Refugees on the run, in the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (fol.19r)

Eventually, the family makes it to a city, and there the child Jesus performs a miracle of making the idols in an Egyptian temple bow down and venerate him. A local governor named Afrodisius brings a mob, intent to see who has defiled the pagan temple. But, when they arrive and see what has happened, the governor Afrodisius “immediately he went to Mary and worshipped the infant whom Mary held in her lap as Lord.” He then instructs all of the Egyptians to do the same. Clearly there are layers of theological content here, but one point of the story is to show how Christianity is meant to create unity, not division, between people from different ethnicities.

In the later Middle Ages, authors continued to expand the story of Pseudo-Matthew, adding further episodes to the core narrative. One of these expansions explicitly sets the story in Egypt, during Jesus’ time abroad with his family in exile:

When Jesus was three years old, he lived in Egypt in the home of a certain widow with his mother and Joseph. When he saw children playing, he began to play with them. And Jesus took a very dry fish and turned it to dust and ordered it to tremble. And again he said to the fish: “Reject the salt that you have within you, and go into the water.” And thus it was done. And seeing, the neighbors informed the female widow in whose home he lived. As soon as she heard about this, she cast them out of her home with great haste.

So not everyone treated the refugee holy family right in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The story is an odd one, especially since the widow herself would have experienced a certain amount of being marginalized in the culture. Yet she looks down on Jesus and his family out of fear.

Again, the theological point behind the story with the widow is complex, here pointing to the fact that Jesus’ miracles can inspire fear. The widow also caves to societal pressure to see Jesus’ miracle as somehow threatening. This is often the case with the unknown, the Other. But, from a medieval Christian perspective, the text also has another implicit message: the unknown Other is not to be rejected, since we cannot presume to know the true nature of those who ask for refuge at our doors.



E-Clavis Entries

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I’m happy to share two entries I’ve contributed to the e-Clavis for The North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL):

Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew

Life of Judas

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent a lot of my time over the past year working on an introduction, translation, and commentary for the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The e-Clavis page is a distillation of that work, including a summary, resources, list of the most important manuscripts, and bibliography for editions, translations, and studies. I hope to develop this page with links to digitized facsimiles of manuscripts as they become available.

Another text that I’ve worked on in the past few years is the Life of Judas, a short Latin apocryphon that tells the story of the apostle’s life before he meets Jesus. My translation of the earliest extant version of the legend (from Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 14489) with a brief introduction will appear in volume 2 of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, ed. Tony Burke and Brent Landau. The e-Clavis entry includes a summary, list of manuscripts, bibliography, and a link to a separate page specifically about Paris, lat. 14489.


Forthcoming: “Omnis piger propheta est”

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I was recently asked to contribute a piece for a forthcoming Festschrift in honor of Michael E. Stone, a scholar whose work on early Jewish and Christian pseudepigrpaha and apocrypha has affected many of my own views on these subjects. I’m very pleased to be included in this collection, with a piece titled “‘Omnis piger propheta est‘: An Apocryphal Medieval Proverb.”

For my contribution, I returned to a challenge that I first dug into in graduate school–in fact, around the same time when I first encountered Michael’s ideas–but I had set it aside because I didn’t then see how the pieces fit together or what argument they made together. Returning to the project, however, and considering it specifically in light of some of the conceptual frameworks I’ve found so useful in Michael’s work, I saw the texts and argument come together. Below are a few paragraphs (without footnotes) to give a sense of the subject and the argument, as well as a summary of the rest of the article.

Bosch accidia.jpg

Detail of accidia (acedia), or Sloth, from Hieronymous Bosch’s painting The Seven Deadly Sins and The Four Last Things (c.1500)

In this article I discuss how some of [Michael’s] ideas about extra-biblical literature help to understand an instance of a medieval apocryphal proverb. Proverbs pose particularly prickly problems for positing origins, sources, analogues, and transmission histories. Part of the enigmatic character of proverbs is the problematic, elusive relationship between oral and textual backgrounds. Yet certain proverbs in the Middle Ages are demonstrably linked to learned, literate contexts—particularly those associated with Latin traditions that have obvious roots in biblical learning. In many ways, they share some of their characteristic features with biblical pseudepigrapha and apocrypha in terms that Stone has suggested, since they pose problems of “categorization and classification”; are frequently “anonymous or pseudepigraphic”; possess “an aura of antiquity and participation in a tradition of great status and authority”; often have a “biblicizing style”; demonstrate fluidity through “continually changing and restructured literary form”; involve “dynamism of transmission”; and constitute “‘clusters’ of texts” that defy text-critical assumptions about linear relationships.[1] As a way to consider these interrelated complications, I focus on one particular case in which proverbs and apocrypha converge.

I start with the Hiberno-Latin florilegium known as the Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae—the same collection that led me to Michael’s work, as it contains the Fifteen Signs in Latin. The apocryphal proverb appears as item 227 of the compilation, which reads, “Omnis piger propheta est” (“Every lazy person is a prophet”). In our own idiom, we might take this as a judgment on those who are all talk and no action. This particular saying is included within a block of verses gleaned from the biblical Book of Proverbs: items 225-26 and 228-31 quote from Proverbs 27:28, 27:2, 3:28, 18:1, 10:11, and 22:15. Unlike the items immediately surrounding it, this dictum about the lazy prophet is not from Proverbs. A likely place to find such a text is among variants of biblical verses in Vetus latina translations of the Old Testament, but Pierre Sabatier’s standard reference includes no mention of the proverb about the lazy prophet. Unfortunately, the source remains elusive. In fact, the proverb is something of an anomaly within the Collectanea, since it is one of twenty-three items for which no source or analogues have been identified, and no commentary is provided for it in the most recent edition. It would be easy to view this dictum as a mere interruption in the sequence of biblical quotations, but this justification dismisses the complexity of considering the proverb about the lazy prophet as an apocryphon.

The compiler of the Collectanea recognized the dictum as related to the genuine verses from Proverbs, with its subsequent status of authority, and this seems to have persisted in other texts. While the Collectanea is the earliest identified witness to this proverb, analogues appear in later medieval texts, some closely related to study of the biblical Book of Proverbs. These examples testify to the apocryphon’s continued status of authority alongside biblical proverbial wisdom in the Middle Ages.

A brief note on the rest of the article: I go on to trace later uses of the proverb in texts that are not reliant on the Collectanea but survive as independent witnesses to the apocryphal wisdom saying. Ultimately, a group of disparate texts, from disparate time periods, disparate locations, disparate contexts, and disparate genres demonstrate a common tradition that takes on a complex life of its own. The afterlife of the medieval proverb exhibits many of the same difficult and fascinating aspects that make the transmission of apocrypha so frustrating but intriguing to understand. In this, it becomes clear that the medieval afterlives of these types of materials offer useful ways to extend frameworks for understanding apocrypha not only in the early Jewish and Christian periods but also through the long history of Christianity.

[1] These phrases come from a number of works by Michael E. Stone, including: “Categorization and Classification of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Armenian Studies: Collected Papers (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 1.3-13; “Pseudepigraphy Reconsidered,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 9 (2006): 1-15; and esp. Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), passim.


Two Thieves and a Funeral

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Recently, I’ve been reading Mary Dzon’s new book, The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 2017), and it’s turned out to be quite appropriate for the season of Lent leading up to Easter. This might seem somewhat odd, given the focus on Jesus’ childhood rather than his later life and death. But Dzon demonstrates that many medieval representations of Jesus as child also evoke strong links with his Crucifixion. This is especially true in later medieval devotional writings, but it may also be found in many other texts.

Some of the conceptual links between Jesus’ childhood and death come from earlier apocryphal narratives that influenced medieval people. While most apocryphal infancy gospels have little in them directly regarding Jesus’ death or afterward–which is expected, considering that they focus on his childhood–there is one fascinating instance in an apocryphal gospel that I’ve recently been reading: the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour. In this apocryphon, an explicit connection between Jesus’ childhood and death is found during the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, when Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are stopped by two robbers.

Holy Family with Robbers (BL, Add 47682, fol. 14r)

Detail from the Holkham Bible Picture Book (London, British Library, Additional 47682; c.1327-c.1335), folio 14r: robbers assault Jesus, Mary, Joseph.

It’s a short episode, and worth quoting fully (from chapter 23 of Alexander Walker’s translation):

And [the Holy Family] came to a desert; and hearing that it was infested by robbers, Joseph and the Lady Mary resolved to cross this region by night. But as they go along, behold, they see two robbers lying in the way, and along with them a great number of robbers, who were their associates, sleeping. Now those two robbers, into whose hands they had fallen, were Titus and Dumachus. Titus therefore said to Dumachus: “I beseech you to let these persons go freely, and so that our comrades may not see them.” And as Dumachus refused, Titus said to him again: “Take to yourself forty drachmas from me, and hold this as a pledge.” At the same time he held out to him the belt which he had about his waist, to keep him from opening his mouth or speaking. And the Lady Mary, seeing that the robber had done them a kindness, said to him: “The Lord God will sustain you by His right hand, and will grant you remission of your sins.” And the Lord Jesus answered, and said to His mother: “Thirty years hence, O my mother, the Jews will crucify me at Jerusalem, and these two robbers will be raised upon the cross along with me, Titus on my right hand and Dumachus on my left; and after that day Titus shall go before me into Paradise.” And she said: “God keep this from you, my son.” And they went thence towards a city of idols, which, as they came near it, was changed into sand-hills.

While symbolically cryptic, both Mary’s speech and Jesus’ prophesy play on the canonical Gospels of Matthew 27:38, Mark 15:27–28,32, Luke 23:33, and John 19:18. In the traditional understanding of these accounts, the Good Thief–Titus in the Arabic Gospel–hangs on a cross on Christ’s side. This is foreshadowed by Mary’s reference to “His right hand,” which exhibits both wordplay and the Christological connection between Jesus and the Trinity.

This story became known much more widely, and medieval authors recounted it in various ways. In Western Europe, Latin authors also learned of this story, and it took hold in representations of Jesus’ childhood in different media (textual and visual).

The earliest author in the Latin West to retell the story of the Holy Family and the two robbers was the Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-67). Although we don’t know where he found this story, Aelred recounts it in a spiritual work known as De institutione inclusarum:

Accept as true the legend that [Jesus] was captured by robbers on the way and owed his escape to a young man who is supposed to have been the son of the robber chief. After seizing his booty he looked at the Child and his Mother’s bosom and was so impressed by the majesty that radiated from his beautiful face as to be convinced that he was something more than man. Inflamed with love he embraced him and said: “O most blessed of children, if ever the occasion arises to take pity on me, then remember me and do not forget the present moment.” This is said to be the thief who was crucified at Christ’s right hand and rebuked the other thief when he blasphemed.[1]

As already mentioned, the story’s transmission reached far and wide in the medieval period, and even influenced certain artistic depictions of Jesus’ childhood. For example, the story seems to be depicted in the image featured above, from a sequence about Jesus’ life in the fourteenth-century Holkham Bible Picture Book, folio 14r.

Crucifixion in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, folio 32r.png

The Crucifixion in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, folio 32r.

The association between the story from Jesus’ childhood and the Crucifixion in this manuscript is striking when, on folios 31v and 32r the thieves appear again, as adults. On 30v, they stand in the background, looking on as Jesus is hoisted on the Cross. On the facing page, folio 32r features a full-page image of the Crucifixion, with the thieves hanging on either side (see image above). Here, the Good Thief on Jesus’ right side (that is, stage right) is given the speech, “Remember me, Lord, when thou shalt come into thy kingdom” (“Memento mei Domine dum veneris in regnum tuum”), the common liturgical phrasing derived from Luke 23:42. Indeed, this arrangement (Jesus in the middle, the Good Thief on his right, the other on his left) recalls the arrangement of the earlier image, with the infant Jesus in Mary’s arms, flanked by the two robbers as boys on left and right. Such details bring together the moments between Jesus’ childhood and his Crucifixion.

The story of the two thieves stopping the Holy Family therefore entered part of the medieval popular imagination through various representations. For those who knew the story, it would be difficult to consider the flight into Egypt without also putting to mind Jesus’ Crucifixion; and, conversely, it would be difficult to consider the Crucifixion scene with the two thieves without reflection on the longer life of Jesus, from infancy to death.

[1] Translation by Mary Paul Macpherson in Aelred of Rievaulx: Treatises and Pastoral Prayer, Cistercian Fathers 2 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 41-102, at 81-82; quoted and discussed by Dzon, Quest for the Christ Child, 60-63.


Teaching Writing for the Public

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Last summer, I participated in a week-long Summer Seminar on the Teaching of Writing (SSTW) hosted through our campus Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. The Seminar has continued in some ways, as our group of faculty have met twice a semester to share how we’ve been implementing some of our ideas into our classes. I recently presented some of my reflections on how my views of teaching writing have developed over the past year or so.

As I put together my thoughts, I found that many of my own ideas intersect with how I’ve been reconceptualizing my own writing and desires to do more writing for the public. Much of this reconceptualizing has been because of and acted out on this blog, and I hope to do that more in the future. So I wanted to present some of those thoughts here. My learning with colleagues through the SSTW, and in other discussions and my own work over the past year, has mainly revolved around one developing idea:

We need to reconceptualize the relationship between “academic writing” and “writing for the public.”

I’ve been thinking about and exploring this idea for a few years, in my own writing as well as teaching. As I’ve said, my blogging has played a big part in this: through my posts at Modern Medieval, the American Society of Church History’s History of Christianity Blog, and here, I’ve sought to reach wider audiences interested in the same things I am. As I’ve been writing and revising my first book, and working on various translations of medieval texts to make them more accessible (see here and here), I’ve also been considering what it might be like to write my next project not as a monograph but as a work for a more general audience. This has also led me to reflect on how and why I teach different types of writing.

Writing is one of the most valuable skills we teach our students, and while this also occurs in other departments and courses, this type of work is pretty significant for English classes. I build writing into all of my courses in a variety of ways (brainstorming, shorter and longer in-class writing, shorter and longer reading responses out of class, close readings, research-based analyses–just to name a few), and I’ve been increasingly wondering why I should be teaching essays built on critical literary analysis as the pinnacle achievement in my courses. After all, most students in my general education courses will never need to write a critical analysis of a piece of literature outside of their few liberal arts requirements. So what am I teaching them about writing?

All of this has led me to consider imaginative modes of writing for the public, for students and myself. I’ve also been part of conversations on Twitter and seen some endeavors to open up more writing by academics to the public. I was especially inspired by the series of posts that Kathleen Kennedy edited for HistoryBuff about #HistoryStuffIsCool, and I’m often impressed by the work over at History Today. What about Buzzfeed-style articles? Or some of those fascinating types of articles I read on Medium? Isn’t there room in the world for more pieces like we loved on The Toast? I want to see more like this.

My main goal over the past year has been to rethink writing in my courses, especially those that satisfy general education requirements (100-level introduction to literature courses, with about 30 students in each section). I really started playing with models of writing in the course I taught about Vikings! in fall 2016. Instead of a specific essay at the end of the semester, I asked students to produce creative projects that synthesized what they had learned about a specific exploration topic they had chosen. This was a semester-long project, with steps along the way, and I encouraged them to be imaginative. Their main objective was to make their topics accessible to a general audience, and interesting in the final form. Some of them came up with great projects–one of my favorites was an analysis of how Viking warrior culture influenced the game Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the Barbarian class.

Surely more people want to read more interesting pieces like these about topics that people might not encounter regularly. So why shouldn’t I be writing them? That’s at least one of my goals with this blog, but I want to expand my writing to do more. There’s also good reason to teach this type of writing. Students can use writing like this to think through anything they want to criticize–from the topics in my class to their own majors. So why not teach them that writing like this matters? So I’m reconstructing my pedagogy, and at the heart of it is a new approach to opening up writing to more than just academic essays.

 


Translation as Public Writing

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I’ve been thinking about translation more and more over the past several years. Partly, this is because I find myself needing to translate more obscure texts for my own research. But one of my goals with some of my projects has also been to make obscure or lesser known medieval texts accessible to broader audiences. More medieval texts need to be more accessible to more people.

In many of my endeavors, translation has become important to how I think about my work in terms of public writing. I previously wrote about ways I’m considering public writing lately, and translation pushes me to consider it in a different way. This approach has been key to my project looking at the biblical story of Judith in Anglo-Saxon England; some of the translations of Old English texts that I’ve posted here; and my current work on the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. I also hope, in the future, to do more translation work like this.

Eadwine Psalter folio 243v detail

Detail from the Eadwine Psalter (Cambridge, Trinity College, R.17.1; c.1160, Christ Church Canterbury), folio 243v (Psalm 136): containing translations of the Psalms into multiple Latin versions, French, and Old English, with commentary.

Much of my work in my first book has to do with thinking about translation broadly conceived: the afterlives of texts in new languages, adaptations, and across media. The broader concept of translation, from Latin translatio, encompasses much more than presenting texts in another language. In the medieval period, the idea of translatio was conceived of beyond linguistic transfer, and we still use it for broader meanings in contemporary English. And built into the wider use of translation is the carrying across, transportation (trans-port), transference (trans-fer) of knowledge. The translatio, or transfer of knowledge, is a fundamental aspect of teaching in the medieval period, and it’s no wonder that so many texts meant for teaching are translations from Latin into vernacular languages.

We might also consider (following Lawrence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation) the invisible work that goes into translations, the ideological decisions that lie behind them. My own ideological reasons for engaging in translation reflect my aims to pass on knowledge that readers might not otherwise encounter. Perhaps my main ideological motivation with translation is to present the texts that I find interesting for others who don’t have access to them.

The broader conceptual idea of carrying across–in this case, across time and cultures–is also part of why translation as public writing matters. On the one hand, readers who want to explore medieval literature can’t do that if they don’t have the language skills. Similarly, on the other hand, readers who want to explore medieval literature can’t do that if they don’t know what’s out there.

A major part of generating interest in medieval texts through public writing (for me) is to open up literature that poses interesting questions about the intersections between past and present. I don’t just want to write about medieval literature for others; I want them to be able to read it for themselves. Yet so much of the literature of the Middle Ages remains inaccessible without advanced training in languages. I want to see this change.


Public Writing Round-Up

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This post is a sort of follow-up to a few others in which I’ve written about my own work turning toward public writing. Fortunately, other academics have laid the groundwork in this field. This type of work is not uncommon. And my own thinking has not been in a vacuum–I’ve been influenced by some smart critiques of academic writing as well as some models for the type of work I want to do.

A lot of my own ideas have been shaped by conversations and examples I’ve seen on Twitter. People like Matt Gabriel (who started Modern Medieval and invited me to join a few years ago; see here), Kathleen Kennedy (blog), and David Perry (blog), have shown how academics can do well with reaching the public; recently, I’ve enjoyed seeing friends like Eric Weiskott write some great pieces (see here). I’ve also been inspired by sites like History Today and Medievalists.net.

More generally, I’ve found it helpful to read what others have written about. Some have shared their experiences, suggestions, and arguments for why public writing by academics matters. So I’ve compiled some of the pieces that have resonated with me on the subject. These are roughly chronological, with a few aberrations.

Mike Rose, “Opinion: Writing for the Public,” College English 72 (2010), 284-92, seems to be a classic in the field of rhetoric and composition for its focus on public writing. He offers a strong argument in favor of scholarly voices in public writing, reflections on his own experiences starting in this genre, and some ideas about how academics can successfully enter this genre.

Paul Thomas, “Professors as Public Intellectuals: A Reader” (Feb. 17, 2014), is a great starting place, since he provides an overview of some of the major issues, responses to a few others thinking about academics as public intellectuals, and his own roundup of links to relevant pieces. In “Writing for the Public: A Framework” (June 3, 2015), Thomas offers suggestions, tips, and examples of what makes compelling public writing, based on his own experiences in teaching and writing for the public.

David Leonard, “In Defense of Public Writing” (Nov. 12, 2014) on Chronicle Vitae, suggests that “Writing for a mainstream audience is just another form of teaching.”

Anne Trubek, “5 Lessons on Writing for the Public” (Aug. 1, 2015), offers practical tips for writers who want to reach the public, especially in journalism and trade publishing. In “Learning To Write All Over Again” (Aug. 18, 2016), Trubek also recounts her own experiences learning to write publicly rather than for other academics.

Jeff Guhin, “On Writing in Sociology” (April 19, 2017), provides a reflection on the accessibility of academic writing–for both other scholars and general readers–with many of the points applicable to more than social sciences.


Will the Real King Arthur Please Rise?

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This week we’ll witness the release of yet another movie about perhaps the most famous ruler from the medieval period, King Arthur. The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, is titled King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. From what is shown in the trailer, the story depicts the rise of Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) from nobody orphan to leader of the people pitted against tyrannical King Vortigern (Jude Law). The preview also shows all of the expected castles, battle scenes, mythical creatures, and of course Excalibur, the sword promised in the title.

This is only the newest addition to a long line of modern media based on Arthurian legend. Film adaptations including nearly forty titles, with at least another fifteen film “modernizations” and thirteen tv series. Long before film and television, however, the Arthurian craze swept through late medieval culture, when dozens of stories and retellings of the king and his knights proliferated.

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Miniature of King Arthur from the Flores Historiarum in Manchester, Chetham 6712 (A.6.89; s. xiii), fol. 53.

Yet Arthur is demonstrably legend, with only the smallest kernel of historicity behind the figure. So how did the story take such strong root as a cultural myth?

We find a start to an answer in the 1120s or 1130s. At that time, a British cleric from Monmouth named Geoffrey (c.1095-c.1155) published a book that became a bestseller of the medieval period and began the trend of hundreds of adaptations between his own time and the present. This book is now known as The History of the Kings of Britain, containing one of the earliest and most famous narratives about the life and deeds of King Arthur and his knights.

Of course, Geoffrey didn’t write in a vacuum, and he wasn’t the only author interested in Arthur and his court in the twelfth century. Nor was he the first to write about this legend. To understand the background of The History of the Kings of Britain, we need to go back to the middle of the sixth century.

The earliest reference to a man who would later become known as King Arthur appears in the historical work On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, by a British monk named Gildas (c.500-570). This three-part sermon was meant to excoriate Gildas’ contemporaries for their moral failings. In the author’s view, the decline of Britain after the Romans left the island was their fault, for their sins. But in the midst of his criticism Gildas tells the story of how a remaining Roman leader rose up to fight against the Saxons migrating to the island at the time:

Their leader was Ambrosius Aurelius, a gentleman who, perhaps alone of the Roman people, had weathered the onslaught of the recent storms. His family, who had been killed in these troubles, had certainly worn the purple…. Under Ambrosius Aurelius, our people [the Celtic British people] revived its strength and provoked the victors to battle. By the will of the Lord, triumph was theirs.

This figure became an essential part of British history, despite the fact that Gildas gives such a sparse biography.

Gildas’ story was picked up by other early medieval authors. For example, the monk Bede (672/3-735) told his own version as part of his historical propaganda for the Anglo-Saxon people in Ecclesiastical History of the English People, following Gildas fairly closely.

While early medieval authors kept their accounts brief, some offered significant changes. These adaptations began to shape the legend. The Welsh monk Nennius (fl.800) wrote from the perspective of propping up the Welsh people in his History of the Britons. Here we first encounter the use of the name Arthur, in place of Ambrosius Aurelius. Nennius writes, “Then Arthur fought against [the Saxons] in those days together with the kings of Britain, but he was himself the leader of battles.” After Nennius, the name stuck, as it was used in later chronicles like the Annals of Wales (composed c.950).

The real kicker came in the early twelfth century, when the Anglo-Norman historian William of Malmesbury (c.1095-c.1143) wrote his Deeds of the Kings of the English. Surveying earlier sources, William crafted his own story about Arthur, giving him an expanded biographical narrative. In Book I, William writes:

But when [Vortimer, son of Vortigern] died, the strength of the Britons dwindled away, hopes diminishing and fleeting; and indeed they would have then immediately perished had not Ambrosius—alone of the Romans surviving, who reigned as king after Vortigern—overpowered the presumptuous [Saxon] barbarians with the distinguished service of the warlike Arthur. This is the Arthur about whom the trifles of the Bretons rave even now, one certainly not to be dreamed of in false myths, but proclaimed in truthful histories—indeed, who for a long time held up his tottering fatherland, and kindled the broken spirits of his countrymen to war.

William separates the figure of Arthur from Ambrosius, giving them parallel roles. William also forcefully insists that this man Arthur was not mythical or legendary, but part of “truthful histories.”

William also relates Arthur’s victory at Mount Badon (as in the histories of Gildas, Bede, Nennius, and other chronicles), and later his death–or his seeming death, in any case. William writes, “But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere seen, whence ancient dirges still fable his coming.” With this statement, the king became a legendary hero not dead but only waiting to return until needed once again. William solidified Arthur’s position as a figure ready for political appropriation.

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King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, by William Morris (1862), one of a set of 13 stained glass panels commissioned from Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. by Walter Dunlop for Harden Grange.

A clear line of influence through these texts, finally arriving at Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, published even before William of Malmesbury’s death. Geoffrey acknowledges Gildas and Bede by name within the first sentences of his dedication. He also mentions oral tradition, tales told that had not been written down. Likely some of these were Welsh stories (like the Mabinogion) that predate Geoffrey’s writing but only survive in later (thirteenth- and fourteenth-century) versions.

The authority that sticks out most in Geoffrey’s account of his own history is even more fascinating. He tells how his friend Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, an educated and knowledgeable man, gave him “a certain very ancient book written in the British [Welsh] language.” In this book, Geoffrey claims, he found the full account of the kings of Britain and their deeds. He presents his own History as a Latin translation of this Welsh book, though he also hints at his own additions.

Where other historians had told the story briefly, Geoffrey created an epic depiction. Other authors had provided details that fed life into the enduring presence of Arthur in British history, but Geoffrey told a full epic for the nation. He set Arthur within a much larger narrative, running from Roman myth, through the drama of Arthur’s parents, developing the court, knights, villains, and travails of the hero, to his death and beyond. He gave Arthur his wife Queen Guinevere (Guanhumara), loyal knights, the wise old guide and prophet Merlin (Merlinus), and the arch-villain Mordred (Modredus). In doing so, he held up Arthur as the archetypal ruler of Britain, the once and future king.

In the decades after Geoffrey of Monmouth published The History of the Kings of Britain, Arthurian legend boomed. Dozens of manuscripts containing the work survive from before 1200, and other authors capitalized on the popularity. Between the 1170s and 1190s, Chrétien de Troyes (c.1140-c.1200) penned a cycle of more elaborate, expanded stories about Arthur and his knights, creating the character Lancelot along the way. Around the same time, Arthur and other figures that became associated with his court (like Tristan and Isolde) also appeared in the writings of Marie de France (fl.1160-1215), especially in her romance lais.

The prevalence of Arthurian stories thrived for the next several centuries. In addition to many Latin works, we find romances featuring Arthurian subjects in French, German, and Middle English literature. One prominent example is the anonymous fourteenth-century Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Authors even used the setting of the Arthurian court when it has little to do with the narrative, as did Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400) for his Wife of Bath’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales.

The culmination of Arthurian popularity, for the medieval period, appears in Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (c.1415-1471). Malory retells stories of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table, collected from previous sources. William Caxton published Malory’s Morte d’Arthur in 1485; soon, and for long after, it became one of the most widely and well known versions of the legend.

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Merlin reads his prophecies to King Vortigern, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini in London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B.vii (c.1250-c.1270), fol. 224.

Through the late medieval period, every author found Arthur useful for one reason or another. This Arthurian legend became useful as a symbol against racial and ethnic oppression; a vehicle for idealizing court culture; a context for thinking about social issues; an allegory about kingship in the face of questionable practices by nobles; and, often in tandem with other uses, Arthur remained the centerpiece of ripping good yarns. Each author adapted the story to their own needs, remixing details and making their own custom narrative. And each author refashioned the hero as a king for the present time. Although he was a figure lifted out of historical propaganda about the sixth century, Arthur became a knight embodying the values of each author’s own time–a trend continuing to the twenty-first century.

There was no monolithic story of King Arthur, but one figure loomed at the center of them all.

As the many modern adaptations demonstrate–from T. H. White’s novel to Guy Ricthie’s new film–Arthurian legend still holds appeal to this day. As shrouded in the mists of myth as he was at the beginning, King Arthur has become an enduring legend with continued grip on popular imagination. So what’s one more retelling among the multitude of stories that began in the Middle Ages and endure up to our present?

Update: read my review of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword at The Public Medievalist.

Sources
Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Lewis Thorpe (New York: Penguin, 1966).
Other excerpts from Arthur, King of Britain: History, Romance, Chronicle, & Criticism, edited by Richard L. Brengle (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964).



How I #KeepJoyInScholarship on the Tenure Track

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When my friends Micah Goodrich, Bre Leake, and I came up with the #KeepJoyInScholarship hashtag on Twitter, I was fairly new to my job. I was in my first semester of my first year at Rhode Island College, after a year as a teaching post-doc, and I was learning to navigate life as a tenure-track assistant professor. Part of our initial conversation was about this, and the hashtag remains a reminder of balancing various aspects of my job.

Micah recently put out a call to embrace the hashtag again and I’ve been thinking about it lately. Now, standing on the edge of summer, just after grades have been submitted, I’m reflecting on what it means to #KeepJoyInScholarship after the dust has settled from what has been my craziest academic school year.

Looking back at my tweets with the hashtag, I find that they revolve around similar themes: the community of medievalists (especially on social media), research and writing, and seeing students engage with their learning about medieval subjects. I want to write about the first and last of these, plus another way that I’ve found joy in my work on the tenure track.

As a lone medievalist, I’ve found social media to be a great place for community. The transition from being a graduate student in a Medieval Studies program with great community to being the only medievalist on campus has been challenging. I love my colleagues. We have great conversations about work and our lives outside of work. But I still look for medievalists to discuss medieval things.

Fortunately, Micah and Bre keep in close contact and we often share work. Many other medievalists I know have been generous with sharing work back and forth, too. I also find sharing my own thoughts via this blog to be helpful, and I have great conversations with #medievaltwitter. I’m grateful for the network that exists

Teaching has taken many turns for me over the years. I taught First-Year Writing throughout my MA and PhD, with many different types of content as my hook: non-fiction, fairy tales, gender identity, satire, and medieval and early modern literature. At RIC, I teach a wide range of courses, including an Introduction to Literary Analysis course for all English majors; British Literature to 1700; lower level general education courses, and upper-level courses like Medieval British Literature, History of the English Language, and the senior capstone course. And I find that there’s a different type of joy in each of these.

I especially find joy in the fact that my range of teaching both keeps me rooted in medieval topics and gives me freedom to explore other types of literature. In my Literary Analysis and general education courses, I often avoid medieval literature altogether (except for in my Vikings! course) and take the opportunities to teach other texts that I enjoy.

Every semester, I choose a piece of literature I’ve never read and put it on my syllabus, tackling it as a new experience like my students do. A few times, I’ve run a class nomination and voting process to choose a book that we all read together for the first time at the end of the semester. Some of these titles have included Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, poems by Sam Sax, Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel. All of these have been a joy to read and to teach.

I also find ways to keep joy in my work from other outlets, such as service–which many people dread. During my first few years at RIC, I’ve been fortunate in getting involved with service to the college that I care about. The most exciting part of this has been my involvement with our common reading program, Open Books – Open Minds (OBOM). In many ways, this has intersected well with my teaching.

In the past two years, our common books were Diaz’s Oscar Wao and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, both of which I’ve taught multiple times while at RIC. This past semester, I also taught next year’s selection, Coates’s Between the World and Me, and I’ll certainly use it again this coming year.

It’s been difficult to view OBOM only as service because it’s been so helpful to getting involved with the RIC community. The OBOM co-chairs to this point have been colleagues from my own department, and I’ve forged friendships with them both. I’ve enjoyed working with students reading out common books in my classes.

The program has given me other community opportunities, too. This year I organized a film series based on this year’s selection, which I’ll continue in the future. Helping with the Student Conference for the past few years has allowed me to see some wonderful student work come out of the program. This summer, I’ll take on a new role as a co-chair, since one of my colleagues will step out of that position when she goes on leave in the spring. I’m looking forward to a lot more joy in this role.

How we find joy in our work matters. While on the tenure clock, I’ve found that it matters in different aspects of my job. It also matters to step back and reflect on that process, and on the balance of different activities. At least, for me, that’s one way I’ve found to #KeepJoyInScholarship.


King Elizabeth and Identity Politics

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Showing this month at the The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is the play King Elizabeth. Written and directed by the Gamm’s Artistic Director, Tony Estrella, King Elizabeth is a 21st-century adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s 18th-century Mary Stuart, about the imposing 16th-century Queen Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots. The play stars Jeanine Kane as Elizabeth and Marianna Bassham as Mary in lead roles opposite each other.

Focused on the conflicts of politics, gender, religion, and personal and civic loyalties, King Elizabeth is a striking depiction of a battle of wills between the two queens. Much of this is found in the very name itself. It’s difficult to dismiss the change of title from Schiller’s own focus on Mary to Estrella’s focus on Elizabeth. The title also hints at the broader appeal of the play itself in challenging norms and using history to question social issues of our current cultural moment.

This is a play about navigating identity politics as a ruler.

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Staging for King Elizabeth. For more production photos, visit The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre.

Most poignant is the central anachronism, adopted from Schiller’s own play: the dramatic meeting of the two queens. Elizabeth and Mary never met in person, which has led to much speculation. As Estrella notes, “Schiller’s genius was to fill that hole with a great ol’ fashioned knock-down-drag-out brawl.” Estrella takes this to the next level, crafting a psychological drama between the women.

Gender is brought to center stage in this production. Elizabeth and Mary are forced to navigate the world of politics so often populated, regulated, and dominated by men. This was especially true in the sixteenth century, but continues in the present. Estrella’s production brings this notion to the foreground of audience minds.

One of the most compelling moments in the play is Elizabeth’s speech in Scene 6, as a mob rallies to await the Queen’s decision about Mary’s execution. Elizabeth looks upon a locket with Mary’s picture in it, addressing her cousin:

Oh, Mary, tell me what, in God’s name, am I?
Old Talbot says I’m a tree. [She smiles.]
I’m tired of being a metaphor.
And you? Would you be a martyr?

This moment encapsulates the central tension of the play: Elizabeth and Mary locked in a duel for identity. But these foils vie for their identities in a man’s world.

Those keen to history will also find many Easter eggs in King Elizabeth. For example, at one point, Elizabeth’s advisor Lord Burleigh jokes, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome queen?” This moment echoes the same (not joking) question King Henry II supposedly (in oral legend) asked to instigate the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket. There’s also an unsettling aspect to Burleigh’s line, since it’s left ambiguous whether he means Mary or Elizabeth.

The title King Elizabeth also holds a nice allusion to the queen’s speeches, filled with invocations of her role as a king in juxtaposition to her female identity. In one of the most famous instances, in her Speech to the Troops at Tillbury, Elizabeth says, “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too….”

Yet no audience of the play would see this Elizabeth, or her counterpart Mary, as feeble. Both Kane and Bassham present formidable figures on the stage. We do see both characters in their most vulnerable moments, but we see them at their most fierce moments, too. Kane and Bassham are a duo worth watching fill the stage.

At its heart, King Elizabeth probes notions of government, loyalty, status, social issues, as well as personal and collective identity. All of these ebb and flow throughout the play. There is no denying the impact of these themes in the wake of the Clinton-Trump election cycle of 2016. Many of these themes are even more pronounced in the Trump presidency of 2017.

The drama centers on figures from the sixteenth century, but it surely speaks to our own lives in the twenty-first century. For this, Estrella’s King Elizabeth is a preeminent production.

 


Bede, Star Wars, and Ascension Day

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This morning I was pleasantly elated to discover a fact of the calendar and a trio of celebrations coming together. Today, on May 25, 2017 we get to commemorate three major events simultaneously: Bede’s Day, the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, and Ascension Day!

This is just a happy coincidence in the way that these celebrations fall in the calendar. The Feast of St. Bede, always falls on May 25 (in the West), when his death is commemorated (although he actually died on May 26). The Star Wars 40th anniversary marks the debut of Episode IV, A New Hope, released on this day in 1977. And the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus is always celebrated (again, in the West) on the 40th day (traditionally a Thursday) after Easter. Also coincidentally, Bede died on Ascension Day in 735, and they happen to come together again this year.

So I couldn’t pass up a special post in honor of the calendrical serendipity.

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I created this meme this morning, as a mashup of two of the figures I love, Yoda and Bede. The image is fairly obvious, but the textual bit might not be. It’s meant to allude to a story from Bede’s monumental Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he finished writing in 731, just four years before his death. (You can read excerpts from it here.)

The story is about King Edwin of Northumbria, who sought advice from his advisors about whether or not to convert to Christianity. This event, according to Bede, occurred in 627, early in the conversion of England. It was a major moment for British and Western European history.

In Bede’s account, Edwin calls on his advisors to provide help with his decision, and a certain anonymous man offered this parable (you can read the original Latin here):

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he. is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.

All of the other advisors agreed, and Edwin decided to convert.

Christian or not, this is quite the striking allegory. It seems to me appropriately similar to the kind of wisdom that a Jedi Master like Yoda would give to a young disciple like Luke Skywalker. And we might recall that there are many parallels between Star Wars and medieval culture.

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Incidentally, Bede also wrote a special homily for Ascension Day, in his cycle of Homilies on the Gospels. This collection supplied preaching texts to be read at major points during the church year.

You can read Bede’s homily for Ascension Day here (pdf). I only want to highlight a few passages, which seem apt for Bede’s Day and the 40th anniversary of Star Wars. Especially interesting in connection with the parable of life as a sparrow flying through a hall is the way Bede begins his sermon. He writes:

When he was about to ascend into heaven, our Lord first took care to instruct his disciples diligently concerning the mystery of faith in him. Thus they might preach it with greater certainty to the world, insofar as they had received it from the mouth of Truth himself, and recognized that it had long ago been foreshadowed by the prophets.

In both the sparrow parable and this homily, Bede embraces the mystery of life and faith. He does not pretend to explain it all, but leaves much of the universe to its secrets.

Throughout his Ascension Day homily, and especially at the end, Bede also highlights another connection with the parable of life as a sparrow. Like in the parable for King Edwin, Bede talks about how life is fleeting, and humans only live in this life on a journey to their true home. He says in his conclusion:

[B]ehold, we have recognized that the entrance to the heavenly fatherland has been opened up to human beings by the ascension into heaven of the Mediator between God and human beings. Let us hurry, with all eagerness, to the perpetual bliss of this fatherland; since we are not yet able to be there in our bodies, let us at least always dwell there by the desire of our minds.

In this, Bede embraces the mystery and the transience of the here and now, but also acknowledges the importance of devoting oneself to the right frame of mind in the here and now.

Perhaps Bede’s thinking isn’t all that far from the wisdom of the Jedi. After all, the Force is a mystical experience, too. As Yoda said:

For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force flow around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, yes, even between the land and the ship.

If Bede and Yoda were ever to meet, surely they would have much to discuss.


All Scholarship Is Autobiographical

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Almost two years ago I wrote a post about the intertwining of literature and culture. I started composing this post at the same time, but I never published it. I’ve gone back to it over the past few years, revising and reconsidering it. Finally, it’s time for me to publish this.

I want to explore an assumption that I’ve lived with for several years: All scholarship is autobiographical.

In the preface to her book Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton, 2015), Caroline Levine poses a sort of confessional reflection on criticism and experience. She writes about how her “father was a liberal humanist and a historian of ideas” (ix) and how that affected her own views. Levine deftly expressed how her work on literary theory developed out of her life experiences. More recently, Averil Cameron gave a lecture for the Women’s Classical Committee about her experiences in academia, titled “Starting out in the 1960s, working class and female.” Toward the start of her lecture, Cameron suggested, “I believe profoundly that at least for a historian, a person’s own history and experience have an enormously important role in how they approach their subject, and in what subjects they are drawn to.”

I think that both Levine and Cameron would agree: All scholarship is autobiographical.

I’m sure there are plenty of others who can agree with this, too. I encounter hints of it regularly, in academic writing and in conversations with other scholars. Our lives crash in on our academic work in curious ways.
My own belief in this idea began to solidify while working on my dissertation prospectus. It hit me hardest during a meeting with one of my committee members, Sherri Olson, an incomparable mentor who taught me everything I know about historiography. Sherri pushed me to think about why I was interested in my topic–not only in an academic sense but also for my personal stake.

Why was I so interested in thinking about apocrypha and preaching in Anglo-Saxon England? Why this and not other more popular or more seemingly “literary” topics in Anglo-Saxon studies, like Old English poetry? What had drawn me to these preaching texts that were so often overlooked and marginalized in our field? What could I bring to apocrypha and sermons to craft an argument that would appeal to others?

The story of my dissertation, now revised into my first book, began in the first semester of my master’s degree. That semester, I took my first class on Old English with Tom Jambeck. While I began to read and love Anglo-Saxon literature in high school, Tom provided my first formal exposure to learning the language. I wrote a seminar paper about the relationships between some of the laws and homilies of Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (d.1023). I had read and enjoyed Wulfstan’s famous Sermo Lupi before, but with that project I my fascination with Anglo-Saxon preaching emerged.

In the last semester of my master’s degree, I took a class with Bob Hasenfratz on the Vercelli Book, an Anglo-Saxon collection of Old English poetry and sermons. As I read the Vercelli Book contents, I was delighted to see so many influences from apocrypha. I began to formulate some of my own approaches to these extra-biblical works in that course, and my seminar paper eventually led to one of my first publications.

Some scholars have vilified apocryphal stories as “unorthodox” or “heterodox,” often relegating them to the margins in modern scholarship. Through my PhD coursework and exams, I continued to find evidence that they were a major part of medieval Christianity, especially in tenth- and eleventh-century England. And in this I found diversity in beliefs and practices.

I began to focus on this diversity and influences of apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. Fortunately, I found a mentor in Fred Biggs, who had worked on the topic extensively, and he became one of my dissertation directors. As I explored the topic and we talked, I realized that this was my main research interest.

But part of my research that was autobiographical didn’t really start in graduate school. It was a more fundamental part of my life. I hadn’t considered its significance, though, until Sherri prompted me. I had to dig into my own autobiography to realize it.

Whle I was growing up, my father was a church pastor. He was a minister in the Wesleyan Church (an offshoot from Methodist traditions) through most of my childhood–until I was in high school, when he became a prison clergy. During my formative years, I went to church and heard him preach every week. On the Sundays when my father didn’t preach, I likely heard a sermon from someone else. Sermons were a natural part of my life.

So was Christian belief. As might be apparent, I was raised as a Protestant, evangelical Christian. I attended Sunday school, Bible studies, different types of vacation Bible school, youth camps, and other events. When I was old enough, I spent a lot of time reading, thinking about, and talking to my father about the Bible and theology.

Many of my perspectives shifted during my undergraduate education at a small, liberal arts, Christian college, and in graduate school at a public research university. I found myself increasingly disagreeing with and frustrated by evangelical Christians, particularly those who identify as conservative fundamentalists.

I became more open to accepting a variety of traditions in my own beliefs and practices. I learned about other traditions within Christianity and world religions. While growing up, I had met and knew other types of Christians (mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, I’m sure others) and people from different faith traditions (Jews, Mormons, agnostics). But most of the people I knew, and most of my immediate friends, were evangelical Christians. I hadn’t explored the diversity of Christian beliefs and practices on my own.

Some of my best experiences during my undergraduate years were when I explored other religious traditions. I met people who practiced other religions. I met people who were not part of evangelical Christianity. I became active in a group where we read, invited guest speakers, and debated issues from an array of different viewpoints. One of my fondest memories is of hanging out with a group of Franciscan friars who taught me about the fundamentals of Catholic monasticism (“poverty, chastity, and obedience”) with a phrase that I now use: “No money, no honey, and a boss.” Over the years, I became more interested in exploring the multivalences of Christianity throughout Western history.

Once I stopped to reflect on my work as autobiographical, connections to my father as a minister and my desires to embrace Christian diversity became obvious. I was able to see parallels between my work on the historical past and my own present.

All scholarship is autobiographical.

In my previous post about literature and culture, I wrote about similar ideas, though not with as much overtly personal narrative. I did consider “how we reflect our own culture onto our readings” with these thoughts:

Bias. Perspective. Identity. Theory. We all have our own agendas when reading and analyzing. We read, interpret, write, and analyze through different lenses. We use glasses of various tints. And, in many ways, using these glasses is often necessary, sometimes justified, and even honest to who we are. Part of academic work means reflecting on, acknowledging, and challenging our own personal assumptions and biases. Sometimes we (and our students) view bias as negative, although it’s not; it’s part of being. I’m skeptical that we ever can (or should) wholly discard our own biases and, in many ways, our identities, as we learn to analyze somewhat more objectively.

All scholarship is autobiographical.

In her preface, Levine discusses the relationship between studying the past and relating it to the present. She warns about presentism but also considers the need to put past and present into conversation with each other. She suggests, “none of our research matters unless it is generalizable, unless we can learn something from it that has implications beyond its own time” (xii). The same could be said for the experiences that lead us to our scholarly interests.

When I considered connections between my life experiences and scholarly interests as a PhD candidate, I was reminded of a book I had read in one of Sherri’s historiography courses, James Simpson’s Burning to Read English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents. In his book on early modern Christianity, Simpson explores the roots of evangelical fundamentalism in the English Protestant Reformation. His polemic is clear, as he traces a line from early modern to contemporary debates about Christian beliefs and practices.

Making this connection, I realized how polemical my own work is at its heart. While I don’t think I’ve overtly expressed this in my scholarship, one of my main drives is to expose the diversity of Christianity over the centuries. The use of apocrypha is a major part of that multivalence. Christian apocrypha demonstrate that different Christians have believed that there are other ways of telling the story, or that there are other stories to tell. People have had different, even competing, ideas about Jesus and his followers, and what that means for living out Christian beliefs and practices. Apocrypha challenge normative history as it’s been told.

In the decades that saw the emergence of Christianity, there were a lot of debates about what that meant (just read the biblical Acts of the Apostles). In the patristic period, people constantly differed–that’s why so many councils were needed to find common ground. A Christian didn’t have to be heretical or unorthodox to contribute to the diversity of beliefs and practices. These trends continued for the next few thousands years: through the medieval period, when Roman Catholics split with Eastern Orthodox believers and then often followed local customs rather than purely universal trends; through the early modern Protestant Reformation, when Catholics called for reform, which led to further denominations within both Catholicism and Protestantism; through the sectarianism of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries; and through to our own time, which is arguably the most multifaceted period for Christianity.

Christianity has never been monolithic. I want that to be clear in my scholarship. It’s certainly been true in my life experiences.

Part of the autobiographical drive in my scholarship is selfish and deeply personal. It’s related to my anxieties about being a Christian in academia, especially since I study the history of Christianity. I don’t want people to make assumptions about me based on what they know about conservative American evangelicalism. I’d rather people see my Christianity within the framework of diversity.

Part of this drive is to open up history against popular misconceptions about Christianity. I see misunderstandings of historical Christianity (and religion more generally) from various groups: conservative evangelicals who reject whole swaths of Christian tradition; those who see Christianity only as a host for violent ideologies; those who read their own modern biases onto the past; those who appropriate Christianity to justify misogyny, racism, white nationalism, colonialism, and other wrongful attitudes and acts of oppression. I’m sure I’m guilty of my own misconceptions. But I also hope to have some part in showing the nuances and complexities of Christianity across its long history, to help rectify these misconceptions.

In the end, I’m led to another truism that I’m starting to embrace: There’s a lot to be gained from critically considering the influences of our personal lives on our scholarship. We do this with the subjects of our research, as we piece together how their biographies inform our readings of their works. Perhaps it’s just as pertinent to consider how our own lives are tangled up in our scholarly pursuits.


Getting Medieval in Virtual Reality

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Last week I had my first fully immersive experience with virtual reality. I saw the future, and it is good.

 

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My first immersive virtual reality experience.

My experience came about because of the generosity of someone I recently met, Adam Blumenthal, the Virtual Reality Artist-in-Residence at Brown University. Because of my work on our common reading program at RIC, I had invited Adam to give a keynote at our spring Open Books – Open Minds Student Conference, themed around Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. After that event, Adam invited a group of RIC faculty and staff to his virtual reality lab.

This wasn’t my first VR foray, though. A while back I had gotten a hold of a Google Cardboard (a special Star Wars edition) and played with that a bit, but I haven’t returned to it in about a year and a half. Coincidentally, just last weekend a techie friend had pulled out his Google Cardboard to show me a few rollercoaster videos on YouTube, and we were talking about the technology.

Visiting a full virtual reality lab was totally different.

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RIC faculty and students with Adam Blumenthal in the Virtual Reality Lab, Granoff Center for the Arts, Brown University.

I’ve learned quite a bit about virtual reality from Adam, both in his talk and at his lab. His own work focuses on educational applications, and he’s currently working on creating a VR experience based on the Rhode Island Gaspee Affair. Some Rhode Islanders would argue that this event (which predated the Boston Tea Party) was the true start of the American Revolution; as Adam claims, “You can trace a dotted line from the Gaspee Affair to the Declaration of Independence.” Over the past several months, Adam has been filming, editing, and building parts of this VR documentary, which includes reenacted scenes and historic locations related to the Gaspee Affair.

Adam’s knowledge of VR doesn’t end with his focus on education and history, though. Both in his keynote talk at RIC and in his lab, it was apparent that he’s spent a good amount of time researching and exploring the emerging technology. After all, he’s been involved with virtual reality design (off and on) since his undergraduate years at Cornell University in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

We were able to demo a number of applications on Steam (which, we learned, is one of the largest VR content providers), using the HTC Vive system. Everyone who visited the lab with me was able to try out the VR, and everyone enjoyed it. For those of us waiting for our own turns, we enjoyed viewing the 2D version on a large-screen computer monitor.

Some might call many these of these applications “games,” but not all of the applications are strictly for play. For example, one of my colleagues chose to demo a Google Earth application in which she spent a good deal of time flying over canyon country enjoying the views created by satellite photography. Adam also told us about Google’s TiltBrush, which looks like an amazing 3D painting application (see a video he had shown us previously at the link). Although we only tried out ten applications, we got a look at the larger repertoire available–which includes over 1,600 titles on Steam’s platform.

The software that Adam loaded up when I put on the headset was one of Valve’s own VR games, The Lab. In this environment, users choose from a variety of mini-games, such as knocking over stacked boxes in a warehouse with a mech-powered slingshot or exploring the universe in outer space. Of course I chose the castle defense mini-game called “Longbow.” Valve offers the description, “Use your archery skills to defend your noble castle gate from a rampaging but adorable and equally noble horde of attackers.”

I got medieval in virtual reality.

Here’s how the game looked to viewers on the 2D monitor.

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“Longbow” on the computer monitor.

And here’s how I looked while shooting at those funny little attackers. (One of the most fun parts about being an onlooker is watching how ridiculous people look when you can’t see what they can inside the headset.)

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Defending my castle with a longbow in virtual reality.

Virtual reality is an experience I’ve wanted to have for years. Many of us who grew up in the 80s have seen VR as a type of icon of the future. Every once in a while, the idea of VR is whispered about as if it could really happen, then it fades away. As I walk through the mall and see the VR headsets for sale in local games shops, that future is emerging. Maybe we didn’t get the hover-boards we were promised, but VR is likely the next computer entertainment product to make its way into our homes.

I also started to imagine other ways that VR could be used in medieval studies. Could we provide students with field trips to some of the historic sites that matter to our field? If we had enough headsets and ability, a group of students could reproduce a piece of Middle English drama in the middle of medieval Oxford just as the guilds did. We could visit Stonehenge at the solstice. We could recreate the Battle of Hastings to show how momentous that multi-army ordeal was. Perhaps we could capture something of what it was like to walk into a medieval cathedral, full of the sights and sounds of sacred space.

With enough imagination, we could harness our own virtual reality technologies to bring the world of medieval multimedia into our present.


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