The Culture of Europe in the Later Middle Ages

Author(s): Miri Rubin

Source: History Workshop, No. 33 (Spring, 1992), pp. 162-175
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289146
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A Corpus Christi procession

The Culture of Europe in the Later

Middle Ages*
by Miri Rubin
Cultural exchange, is this a tautology? Is there any type of exchange which is
not cultural, is there any culture which is not always in a state of exchange?
To ask these questions is to suggest that we must reflect on our notions of
culture, and our understanding of the conitoursand intensity of exchange in
the medieval world. Whereas culture used to be considered the domain of
learning, power, officialdom, the church, we now speak of cultures, of
complex and interesting interactions between areas within a culture; and we
subdivide cultulrefor the sake of convenience into popular, urban, female,
clerical, trying to say thus that there is a plenitude of possibilities within the
framework of shared symbols which we nonetheless would like to maintain
as culture. As to exchange, we seek it now not only within and between
burgeoning towns, or in the recesses of barter communities and customary
exchanges of gifts sometimes between friends and equals, other times
between dependents and would-be benefactors. We seek exchanges in
unlikely places, at the convergence of regional economies, highlighting the
complex fits which medieval people were able to identify and seek to fill in
their economic activities. To talk about culture and exchange, and to talk
about culture as exchange, is to recognise that the project which animated so
much historical work inl recent decades, that broadening of horizons
sometimes known as the 'new history', has also spurred us to acknowledge
the variety of experiences, needs, aspirations, capacities which coexisted
within the social world of the Middle Ages. Having granted the privilege of
historical weight to women as well as men, peasants as well as landlords,
artisans as well as great merchants, the poor parish priest as well as the
History Workshop Journal Issule33

?) History Workshop Journal 1992

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bishop and theologian, having followed complex methodological and

proceduralstrategiesin order to bring into the historicallight a hitherto
submergedworld of differinggroups, their strugglesand their collaborations, we find that the termswhichhave habituallybeen used to describe
their worlds, as well as the means by which this diversityactuallyworked
through cooperation, negotiation, resistance or deference, need to be
reconsidered.So, firstcame the makingvisible of work, marriage,death,
consumption,the bringinginto historyof a diverse social body, and next,
thatis now, the interpretationof the differingworldsof thesepeople, worlds
whichcoexistedandinterrelated.Makingsense of medievalsocietywithout
losing the sense of differenceand varietywithinit is the challenge.How to
acknowledgethe differencefromus; the differencefrom each other of the
young and old, the men and women, the powerful and the weak, the
northernand the southern,the peasantand the knight,the guildsmanand
the day-labourer,without cloaking them in a robe of piety (medieval
religion) on the one hand, or imputingto them agendasof social change
(feminist,classist)whichare perhapsanachronistic?While acknowledging
that these people in some importantway understoodeach other, shareda
meaningfulculturalworld, how to bringto lightthe fact that they often did
so as opponents, resentful underlings,frustratedwives or doubtingparishioners?Thisis a challengewhichfaces not only the medievalhistorian,it
is one which lies at the very heart of any democraticinquiry:how to give
people an equalweightandimportance,andyet acknowledgetheirdiffering
positions,aspirationsandcapabilities?
To envisage Europe as any sort of culturalentity is a problem which
demandsa particularimaginativeand conceptualpredisposition.It means
thatwe privilegecertaintypesof activitiesover others:thatwe considerthat
the fact that Italy and England entertainedvastly varying demographic
regimes was less important that the fact that Latin was the universal
language of learning;it requiresthat Bohemia, Scotland, Lithuania,the
Balticbe relegatedto only marginalmembershipin this entity;it meansthat
we prefer thinkingof Europe as a great commercialsystem, one whose
sophisticationmadefinancialandcommercialhandbooksas indispensablea
tool to the medieval merchant, as a train or flight-scheduleis to the
European businessman today.1 To think of a medieval Europe is to
concentrateon exchange,communicationandinterdependence,ratherthan
on those elements that are local, divergentand inimical.This is probably
whatwe shouldbe doingtodayas we edge nearerto the challengethat 1992
presents, and as the EC Councilof Ministersis faced with a rush of new
applications for membership in the community from countries whose
medieval adherence to Europe is questionableto say the least. Perhaps
ultimately, Europe is a collective fantasy of great strength, one which
becameenshrinedandinscribedin institutions:the Church,the papacy,the
orderof Hospitallers,the HanseaticLeague,the BardiCompany,the routes
to Compostella,Venetian diplomacy,antisemitism,the Mass. And today
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more than ever it seems to be, as ChristopherMarlowecalled it: 'infinite

richesin a little room'.
So to talk about CulturalExchange is to admit that culture possesses
certaincommunicative,exchangeableelements,whichmakeit valuableand
usefulwithinandbetweengroups.It is also perhapsto say thatexchangesof
any sort must always take place within a field of culture:that trade and
armiestreadthe same routesas pilgrims,that they can be movedby similar
symbols, that an idea of trust within a Europeancommonwealthwas the
verybasisfor exchange,butthatat its rootlay somethingcultural,to do with
meaning and self-understanding.That so many activitiesin the medieval
worldbroke out and awayfrom a Europeanmatrix:that Italianmerchants
tradedwith Arabs,that AfricanslavesrearedItalianbabies, thatHanseatic
trade depended sometimes on the protection of still pagan war-lordsof
Lithuania,that Jews and Arabs and Christiansstill co-existed in a tense
commonwealthin Spain,all these strainournotionof the Europeancultural
sphere of exchanges.But perhapsthe true natureof its culturecannot be
measuredthroughthe facts of trade or even the rude reality of political
alliances, perhaps it is, as I have suggested, a transcendentnotion somewhatcosmological,metaphysical- whichoffered a matrixfor placing
the local in a larger world of meaning. This sphere was inhabited and
traversed most frequently by the powerful, but it also pervaded more
popularconceptionsof identityin the world.
*

To MargeryKempe, born at Lynnin Norfolk(c. 1373- after 1438), one of

the most famousand exasperatingwomen of the fifteenthcentury,Europe
was a richtreasure-trove,a jewel-box, andthe jewels withinwere the relics
of Christ'sbody.2Especiallypreciouswere those relicsof his Passionwhich
were not easy to come by in England;and the most preciouswere signsand
tokens of Christ'sbody, the ever renewedflesh and blood of the Eucharist.
After two long andarduouspilgrimagetrips- the firstin 1413-14to the Holy
Landand Rome, the secondin 1417to Compostella- in 1433,at the age of
60, soon afterthe deathof her son, Margeryembarkedon her thirdandlast
trip,to Brandenburg(Prussia),to visitthe Holy Blood of Wilsnack.She was
accompaniedby a young Germanwoman,her recentlywidoweddaughterin-law, who was returningto her homelandand to the child she and her
husbandhadleft therewithfriendsfor the durationof theirvisitto England.3
The passagefromIpswichto Danzigwas a harshone, andby its end Margery
had fallen out with her young relative. So they separated, and Margery
remainedalone in Danzig, a weak andbizarreold woman,not surewhatto
do next. She accepted an invitation from a man, John, to travel on
pilgrimageto Wilsnack.Wilsnackhad become one of the great centresof
late medievalpilgrimage,aftera miraclein 1383whichsawthe preservation
of three consecrated Hosts within the remains of an altar in a church
destroyedby fire. The devotionwas encouragedby papalindulgences,and
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165

by the taste for eucharisticrelics.4 So they journeyed first by boat to

Stralsund,and then by foot to Wilsnack.Her peculiarways and habitual
cryingso exasperatedher companionthat at times he would mischievously
speedup hispaceto annoyher. Forpartsof the journey,justbeforereaching
Wilsnack, she was carried on a bier. The jewel-box was opened on a
particularlyauspiciousday, for Margery'sjourneybroughther to Wilsnack
in the octaveof CorpusChristi,whena eucharisticprocessiondisplayingthe
precious relic was mounted.5It was so attractivean event that she could
hardlyfinda placeto lie downandrest, the innssurroundingWilsnackbeing
full with visitors and pilgrimslike herself. The knowledgeof Christ, the
desireto view his blood meantthatWilsnackbecamean intimateplace, the
distancefromLynnto it seemedto shrinkby powerof its promise.Margery,
unworldlyand untutoredin so many other ways, became a seasoned and
swift traveller spurred by her powerful purpose. She also travelled on
pilgrimagesin England,to the northernshrinesin York and to St John of
Bridlington (d. 1379) in 1413 and 1417.6 Her Europe was part of an
understandingof her relationshipwith Christ, product of many good
sermons,andthe storiesof saintsandmiracles.It wasparticularlyimportant
to Margeryto attestthis Holy Blood. Viewinganotherphialof Holy Blood,
that held at Hales Abbey in Gloucestershire,had become in the nervous
yearsof the earlyfifteenthcentury,a signof orthodoxy,againstaccusations
of Lollardy. Within it were enfolded the acceptance of pilgrimage, of
sacrament,of the orthodoxmanifestationsof salvationandworship.To the
woman who was broughtto trial seven times in her life for suspicionof
heresy, this was an attractiveand suitablyextravagantachievement.The
desireto partakein this Europeansymbolof orthodoxyspurredMargeryto
travel;it made Englandtoo smallfor her, and made Europebeckon, seem
accessible. She suffered appallingconditions, terrifyingpassages by sea,
cold and sickness, she was infested with verminwhich modesty kept her
fromwashingaway.But she travelled,not in the spiritof exotic exploration,
curiosityanddiscovery,butquitethe opposite.As a travellerwitha sense of
intimacyandrelevance,Margery,an old woman,a solitarypilgrim,cameto
Wilsnack.
*

Jan Hus (c. 1373-1415)was burntfollowingthe condemnationof his views

as hereticalby the Councilof Constancein 1415. He had been invited to
Constanceby EmperorSigismundin 1414 and was promisedsafe conduct
and an open discussionof his views aboutchurchhierarchyand liturgy,but
he was soon arrestedand finallycondemnedfor heresyand put to deathby
the seculararm. He also supportedUtraquism,the practiceof communion
by the laity in both species, the bread and the wine, a practicewhich had
spreadin Bohemiaas the veryepitomeof the critiqueof clericalprivilege,of
the cry for reformof lay piety, and for the replacementof the established
ecclesiasticalhierarchy.The tale of Hus'slife and deathwas the outcomeof
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a very singularculturalexchange.His vision of the Churchas the body of

those touchedby graceanddestinedto be saved- past, presentandfuturehad been inspired by the writingsof an Englishman,John Wyclif, texts
which received radicalinterpretationsby followers, Wycliffites,who also
popularisedthem, to produce that very English brand of late medieval
heresy, Lollardy.7
So the viewsof an Englishscholarandhis followersbecamethe treasured
blue-printsfor a movement of national, religious, intellectualand social
renewalat the other side of Europe, in Bohemia. It is movingto read of a
pilgrimage made by two Czech followers of Wyclif to his tomb at
Lutterworth(Leicestershire)in 1406, and of the legend that they chipped
pieces off the venerabletombto take home to the CzechWycliffites.By the
1390sWyclif'swritingshadspreadto manyEuropeancentresof learning:his
workson optics, on dominion,his treatiseon the Eucharist.These writings
were to be expunged and excoriated in some quarters, but copied and
upheldby others:amongthe Czechtheologiansof the universityof Prague
they took root, destinedto move people, armies,popes.8
From the mid-fourteenthcentury,with the comingtogetherof King of
Bohemia and GermanEmperorin the personof CharlesIV, Bohemiahad
been integratedinto the Empireas the heartandbase of a Germanpolity. It
was flooded by Germansin government,churchand in the newly founded
Caroline university. Bohemian displeasure was made apparent in the
internalpoliticsof the university,wherethe Czechstudentbody, the Czech
natio, mountedintellectualand politicalresistanceto the men of the three
imperialnations:the Saxons, the Poles and the Bavarians.The Bohemian
gentryrose in 1394againstKingWenceslas,andwhenthe imperialElectors
removedtheir approval,and he retainedthe sole title of Kingof Bohemia,
some possibilitiesfor realignmentwere in the air. The Czech intellectuals
and reformers,the leaders who had the supportof a local gentry and the
burgesses of Prague, found in Wyclif's writingsa political theory which
suitedtheirevangelicalideasof reformandtheiraspirationsfor a Bohemian
polity under a virtuousking. They called first on Wenceslasand then on
Emperor Sigismund, to correct abuses with all the power that Wyclif
accordedto the dominiumcivile. To wrest power away from the imperial
clergy and papal interventionand to sustain a purified ministryover a
corrected people was the aim, and it called for redefinition of the
differentialsin religiousaccesswhichseparatedlay and cleric.Thisdemand
was articulatedthrougha critiqueof religiouspracticeswhichwere clearly
open to the richand not to the poor such as privatemasses, almsgivingand
pilgrimages(Hus was particularlyvehementin his criticismof the fashionable cult of the Holy Blood of Wilsnackand the Synod of Pragueof 1405
forbad travel to it altogether). In the hands of other thinkers, such as
Matthew of Janov, reform was inspired throughan inversion of clerical
privilegearoundits most centralsymbol, the Eucharist.He recommended
that the laity communicatedaily, like priests, and receive communionin
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both kinds,like priests.His notionof Utraquismwas a cleardeparturefrom

Wyclif'seucharisticnotions,andone whichhada particularresonancein the
Bohemiancontext.
So a readingof Wyclifand Wycliffitesin Bohemiadevelopedtheirideas
in quite new ways. Culturalexchange and the movement of manuscripts
between Bohemia and Englandhad grown throughthe mediationof the
knightsin the entourageof Anne of Bohemia,who followedher to England
when she became RichardII's queen. Hus began the copying of Wyclif's
work at the Universityof Praguein 1398, and by 1402 he was appointed
preacherat the Bohemianmovement'schapelin Prague,Bethlehem,a stage
from whichhis views could be expounded.Wyclif'sphilosophicalrealism,
and his political theory, gave the Bohemian movement an intellectual
rigour, a programmeout of which a people's churchcould be conceptualised. To them Wyclif'ssubtle reformulationof the Aristoteliananalysisof
the Eucharist in terms of remanence, opened the door to far deeper
challengesto the sacramentalsystem.9Ideas nurturedat Oxfordunderthe
patronage of John of Gaunt and sections of the court, found much
popularity among poor scholars and unbeneficed English clergy, and
became in Bohemia intellectual and political tools with which Roman
orthodoxy was to be attacked, and order and hierarchy challenged.10
Followinga laboriousprocessof study,commentaryandinterpretation,the
conceptswhichheldtogethera wide-spreadBohemianalliancewereforged,
ideas which came to merit discussioneven in the highest forums of the
Church(like the Councilof Constance),andwhoselogiccouldrecruitforces
which would stand up to imperial armies.11Ideas nurturedin the late
medieval English culturetravelleda long road to shape the religiousand
political language within which the Bohemian polity and the Christian
Churchcouldbe transformed.12
*

Around1461a playwasenactedin Croxton,Norfolk.It hascomedownto us

in a singlemanuscript.It is knownas the CroxtonPlay of the Sacrament.13 It
is a delightfulcomedycontainingsome of the best of medievalslapstick,the
sort of play whichpeople in villagesas well as townswere used to andwere
able to enjoy in the fifteenth century. It tells of a Christianmerchant,
Aristorius, who procuredthe Host from a churchand sold it to a Jew,
Jonathas,for ?20. The latterwent on to test the Host in a parodyof clerical
consecration. He wounded it, buffeted, scourged and beat it, then
immolatedit in an oven, from which Christ ultimatelyarose in a mock
resurrection.A miracle was enacted on stage. The miracle called forth
witnesses, amongst them a bishop who worked the miracle in reverse,
returningthe Host to its normalshape, andwho receivedthe convertedJew
into the bosomof the Christianfaith,whilethe whole assemblyof Christians
and Jews paraded in procession singing the feast's hymn 0 sacrum
convivium. The play represents a version of a myth which emerged in
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European culture in the last decade of the thirteenthcentury, but which

spreadvigorouslythroughoutEurope:the Host desecrationtale. This story
emerges in the late thirteenthcenturyfollowingits enactmentin Paris in
1290, where a Jew, Jonathan, was accused of procuringa Host from a
Christianwoman, abusing it with a knife, and then throwing it into a
cauldronof boilingwater,only to see it bleed. The miraclewas discovered,
the Jewpunishedwithdeath,manyJewsconvertedandthe miraculousHost
was joyfully taken to the parish church."4The tale of Host desecration
entered into the major collections of religious tales and sermons, was
representedin visual art, and enacted in plays such as the Jeu de la Sainte
Hostie, or in the Italian play Del miracolo del Corpo di Cristo."5Now the

storytold in these playsis a literaryrepresentationof a narrativewhichnot

only capturedthe imaginationof late medievalpeople, but also movedthem
to violence. The Host desecrationaccusation,side by side with the mythof
ritualmurder,was a tale of inexorableforcewhenretoldin localcontexts,as
accusationsunfoldedandwereenactedinto pogroms.The Host desecration
accusationwas an elaborationof all the fears, desires, and doubts which
resided around the Eucharist, and more generally, within the story of
salvation.It showed how very vulnerableChrist'sbody was, how easily it
couldfall into the wronghandsandbe derided,how availableandexposedit
was (not leastbecauseof its publicexposition,suchas at Wilsnack,the scene
whichMargeryKempehadrushedto visit). The Host desecrationnarrative
had a doublelife: one fairlybenignin the pocketsof preachersandadorning
painted panels; and anotherenacted in reality providingthe lines to real
actorswho accusedreal Jews of havingperpetratedthe crime, actorswho
threw these Jews into real fires, robbed real Jewish houses and claimed
veritablemiraclesto be workedby the miraculouslyunscathedHosts.
Now, fifteenth-centuryEnglandwas free of Jews, but it was not free of
fears of their contaminating,ridiculing,sacrilegiousthreat. Culturalexchange meant that Englishpreacherspossessed tales about Jews, like the
one just mentioned. They read them, saw them in miniaturesand could
disseminatethem to such a degree that Englishparishioners,like those of
fifteenth-centuryKirton-in-Lindseyin Lincolnshire,even encounteredit
depictedon the wallsof theirvillagechurch.16
Whatis extremelyimportant
is that the EnglishPlay of the Sacramenttold the Host desecrationtale in a
wayquitedifferentfromthe Continentaltale. Not becausethe Englishwere
niceror more tolerant,but becausethis particularculturalgood - the Host
desecration accusationagainst Jews - could not elicit the same type of
interpretationas it didon the Continent.The imagesof JewandHost carried
different symbolicvalences in fifteenth-centuryNorfolk than they did in
fifteenth-centuryFlorence or Paris. In the Croxton Play the narrativeis
drivenby a comiclogic. It is full of detailedandemphaticstagedirections,it
is full of theatricaltricks: in the scene when the Jew tries to throw the
Eucharistinto the oven while Jewish accomplicesstoke the fire, the Host
cleaves to the Jew's hand drawinghim towardsthe oven. When his friends
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try to help him they nail the Host to the wall in order to pull the Jew's hand
away, in what can only be seen as a mock, inverted crucifixion. The Jewish
hand comes off with the Host, but is ultimately restored. In producing such
powerful parodic drama, in working theatricality to its fullest, the play not
only demonstrates the obvious and un-deniable truth of the Eucharist
(through its constant miraculous transformation), but also cleverly confronts high-minded Lollard objections to theatricality. It rebuts the claim
that drama sows confusion in people's minds by representing lofty subjects
through mundane and profane images and persons.17 Jews are not the
subject of the Croxton Play, its dramatic force is not fuelled by the desire to
punish and avenge the desecration of Christ's body, it is not phobic. Rather,
the story, once received in England, is transformed and remade into a story
about eucharistic truth, a story of forgiveness and inclusion. The story now
emphasises the simplicity and plasticity of the Eucharist offered to
humanity, while unshakeably supporting its divinity, in fact taking it to be
obvious. Why, even the Jew comes to believe in the end; perfect
one-upmanship in face of Norfolk Lollards who insisted on doubting what
was all too true. We witness here a form of cultural exchange and circulation
through participation in a literary world, a world of religious instruction,
exchange which none the less could produce some very different interpretations and uses of the same cultural artifact - in this case the Host
desecration narrative. I would like to suggest that this changing and
reorientation of meanings, even within a shared cultural field, is the very
essence of all cultural processes. To talk about cohesion within the cultural
sphere is perhaps not to talk about shared meaning, but rather varied uses of
shared symbols, narratives, artifacts.
*

If exchange and communication lie at the very heart of any culture, its field is
defined by the collective fantasy of belonging, trust and identity within that
culture. Notions of identity which suggested the otherness of Jews and
Muslims were also bolstered by the sense that the shared culture was
coterminous with the realm of civilisation, and that outside it lay treachery,
danger, monstrous and exotic beings. Maps of the world represent this
sense. Some maps placed the known countries of Europe and the
Mediterranean onto the bodily form of Christ, while those in the Mappa
mundi tradition nurtured the images of Sir John de Mandeville's Travels and
thus fed the minds of Europeans throughout the fifteenth century: one-eyed
people, many-headed people, cannibals, strangely proportioned and alien
peoples. And yet some of them were strangely near, otherwise why send
ambassadors to them, as Henry IV did in 1400 when he sent a letter to the
legendary Prester John, hoping for collaboration in a revived crusading
mission. The embassy ended up in Ethiopia, where Christians lived. But
only a little beyond lay the lands beyond cultural exchange, even if these
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were the lands where Venetians and Genoese did business:lands whose
ivories, spices, andpeople, were commoditiesfor Europeanconsumption.
This vision would have ChristianEurope as the world, a network of
different, competingand yet reassuringrelated communities.Findingout
their originsbecame a majorfifteenth-centurypreoccupation.Some were
satisfiedwith the reassuringmeritconferredby the commoncivilisingfaith.
But others, notablyItalianhumanists,were constructinginterestingwaysin
whichto conceptualiseand justifythe sense of differencebetween Europe
and the rest of the world, in the face of on-goingexchangeand impending
militarysuccessesof the Turksin EasternEurope.Theorisinga hierarchyof
existence, a ladderof humancommunities,was a dangerouspreoccupation:
it could providelegitimationfor authoritarianrule withinrepublics,but it
also createdall the justificationswhichwouldbe needed for the exploitation
of the peoples encounteredat the very end of the century in the New
World.18
*

Notionsof hierarchyareimportantissuesin as muchas they can enhanceor

retard the conditionsof exchange, the ability to cooperate and to strike
usefulalliances.MovingfromEngland,throughFrance,throughthe Italian
towns, through some German principalities,into Hungary and Poland,
through the Baltic to Norway, a large degree of similaritywould be
encounteredby the traveller.Merchant,pilgrimor artistwould be passing
throughmonarchiesor republicswhichhadbalancedsystemsof government
with representativeassemblies, what Sir John Fortescue called in his
Governance of England of the 1470s: dominium politicum et regale. Notions

of a popularsovereigntydelegatedto God-chosenroyallineagesformedthe
prevailingunderstandingof power, legitimacy, order and duty. Philippe
Pot, a BurgundianDeputyof the EstatesGeneralwhichassembledat Tours
in 1484duringa royalminoritycoulddescribethusthe creationof a regency
council:'thepeople mustresumea powerwhichis theirown'. 9 The traveller
on business would also note that these systems of authoritywere manytiered, from constables and churchwardens,through county courts or
town-courts,to the echelons of governmentidentifiedwith the commonwealth or the common good: king and parliament, or ruling patrician
council.Travellerswouldfindfamiliarthe modes in whichpoweroperated,
even if foreignerscould sometimesfindthemselvesin very stickysituations
withoutprotectoror friend.But artistsandmerchantswere neveralone.
They would pine for their home, and reckon that their country's
landscapewas the fairest,its women loveliest, its climatemost temperate,
andits governmentmostjust. But thatis the way of the humanimagination.
Yet there was a reassuringfamiliarityin Europe located in certainsimilar
symbols:of majesty,of divinity,of fellowship,whichwouldbe familiarand
create a basis for exchange.Facets of social organisationwould strike the
travelling person as universal. Think of women: at work in fields and
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workshops,in kitchensand gardens,tendingthe sick, just as the traveller

sawthembackhome. And he mightfindit reassuringto knowthatwhatever
the foreignplace, if he wishedto makeadvancesor payrespectsto a woman,
a father, a brother, or a brother-in-lawwas to be approached,since a
woman,even a widowwithsome life experience,dweltunderthe tutelageof
men. This is not to say that a great varietyin the effective functioningof
women did not exist throughoutEurope: there were vast differencesin
access to work, size of family, age at marriage,householdstructure,all of
whichmadebeinga womanquitea differentthingin Florenceandin York.20
But the collective fantasyabout women was very similar:so much so that
besides the fine-tuningof local colour and custom, whicha clever artistor
merchantcouldpickup quickly,he couldguesshiswayprettywellwithinthe
ritualsand conceitsof courtshipand love.
And yet, at another level of representation,we can detect a subtler
differentiationin the misogynywhichunderpinnedso muchof the relations
between the sexes. A debate rocked the literarycirclesof early fifteenthcentury Europe, this time a debate in French, about the depictions of
women in popular romance. This is the celebrated Querellede la rose,
initiated by Christinede Pisan (1363-1429x34), the foremost woman of
letterswho followedher fatherinto the serviceof CharlesV of France.She
had marrieda courtierwho died youngandleft her a widowat 25. She lived
the rest of her life as a singlemother,workingat her writingfor her family's
support. Christineinitiated the Querellein 1399 with her EpUtreau dieu
d'amours.Christinelamentedthe injusticedone to women in the popular
literatureof her day. She singledout the most widely knownromance,the
French allegoricalpoem the Roman de la Rose written by Guillaumede
Lorrisc. 1237and then continuedby Jean de Meun c. 1275-80. The poem
was translatedinto other Europeanvernacularsin the fourteenthcentury.
Now the Romande la Rose uses a wide rangeof source material,and it is
encyclopaedicin its recyclingof the stories of love and seduction, lost
honourandsuicidestold by the greatpoets of antiquitylike OvidandVirgil,
as well as patristicwriters,and more recentsages such as Alan of Lille and
Johnof Salisbury.In the secondpartof the poem, the tales are interspersed
with a poisonousanti-feministvitriol.All women are made into eitherugly
and cunningor beautifulandwoundingcreatures,andthe only way to treat
themis withdeceit, so as neverto fallinto theirhands:they areto be seduced
anddiscarded.Thisvenomouspositionin the Rose sectionof Jeande Meun
made him the target for Christine'sattacks. The patristic and clerical
tradition provided mixed legacies: the deep suspicion, even hatred, of
women of a Tertullian,the youthful misogynyof a Chrysostom,or the
compromisingacceptance of marriageand sexuality of an Augustine.21
There was a courtly tradition in which the love-object was given little
personality,but was wrappedin fantasy of virtue, acquiescence,beauty,
chastity. The extreme elaborationsof this tradition could produce the
disembodied(althoughsometimestreated stylisticallyas a female virtue)
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History Workshop Journal

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Christine de Pisan presenting her work to Louis d'Orleans.

love-object, Reason, as the only worthy object of trust and love in a sinful
world.22And there were martyred women whom patristic writers could set
forth as edifying figures.23But romance also incorporated the bawdy and
ridiculous satire of the fabliaux in which women were not only nags and
hags, but lustful temptresses, and only too willing partners in adultery and
other offences and deceits. The Roman de la Rose boasts of men's exploits as
seducers and then betrayers of women and it is peppered with speeches and
declarations about women's fickleness, their lasciviousness: an orgy of
misogynistic indulgences, in the most popular vernacular poem of the
Middle Ages. Christine took up her eloquent pen and wrote against this. She
quarrelled with the Rose and with those who enjoyed such literature and yet
failed to see the pain and insult which it inflicted on women. She marshalled
great examples of constancy and virtue: the Virgin, female martyrs,
heroines of antiquity, which she developed into Le livre de la cit des dames,
completed in 1405. The debate continued in an exchange of letters with Jean
de Montreuil (Provost of Lille) and Gontier and Pierre Col; but on

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TheCultureof Europe

173

her side were moralistsas well as cultivatedmen of court such as Jean

Gerson and Jean de Boucicaut, the Marshalof France, and Nicolas of
Clamanges.
Christinehad an allyin her complaint- GeoffreyChaucer.She probably
wasnot fullyawareof himas such,even thoughhe hadbecomequitefamous
by the time of his deathin 1400,a yearafterthe beginningof the Querelle. A
contemporaryof Chaucerhad embarkedin the 1360supon a translationof
the Roman,to producethe earliestof the threefragmentsnow knownas the
EnglishRomauntof theRose.25Chaucerwas at once a fine judge of literary
taste and fashionableopinion, and the most originalsubverterof pieties as
well as prejudicethroughhis irony,keenerthanany knife. In his Legend of
Good Women Chaucerhimself attemptedto extol the virtues of female
martyrsof love, ratherthan to revel in the seductionand betrayalof their
trust. Neither Chaucernor the translatorsof sections of the Roman into
English(still held by some to have been Chaucerhimself!)had approached
this most famousof Europeanpoems, writtenin the languageof European
polite secular society, as enslaved provincials. They submitted to the
workingsof culturalexchange, or interpretation,as we have alreadyseen
other usersof Europeansymbolsand texts do.26The Romaunt includesthe
first half of Guillaume'spoem, and two extractsof Jean's work. It steers
awayfromthe most misogynisticpassagesof Jean'scontinuation.We know
that Chaucerconsideredthe French style of denigrationof women and
extollingof duplicitousamorousconquestto be somethingin the way of a
'French disease'.27Neither his inclinationnor his sense of his audience
allowedthe translatorto includethose hatefullines, whichwouldhave been
so painfulto Christine,in the Englishversion of the Rose. So the English
knew a Rose by the same name, but whichwas indeed not the same Rose.
Within the European-Christianculture of misogyny there were some
strikinglyfamiliarthemes, and yet the experience of it must have been
differentin Englandandin France.
Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1368-1430), long-standingclerk of the privy-seal
andpoet extraordinaire,contributedto the debatein his own way. He chose
to translateChristine'sEpitre in his 476 line long verse Letter of Cupid, of
1402.28Hocclevewas veryloyal to Christine'spoem, althoughhe shortened
here or there and droppedreferencesto famousGallicseducerswhom the
English audience simply would not have known. The wit of Christine's
defence of womencomesthroughloud andclear:
In generalwe wole pat yee knowe
iat ladyesof honurandreverence,
And othirgentilwommenhan, I-sowe,
Swichseed of conpleyntein our audience
Of men pat doon hem outrage& offense.
Pat it oure eres greeuethfor to heere,
So pitousis theffectof hirmateere.29
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HistoryWorkshopJournal

It is realisticandbawdy,andyet seriousandbalanced.It even putsforward

the theoryof the FortunateFall, not only exculpatingEve for responsibility
for Adam's temptation,but even explainingthat it was a happychoice, a
felix culpa. So misogyny,one of the powerfulideas of medievalEuropean
culture,also haddivergentformsandformulations:it wasfamiliarto all, and
yet specific in articulation,in its contextual construction,in the lived
experienceswhich it produced. As culturalmaterialwas exchanged(and
nothingturnedroundfasterthana good Frenchromance),culturalartifacts
and symbols were wroughtand remade, interpretedin grids of meaning
whichwere embeddedin local experienceand in the varietiesof languages,
andpower, whichcommunitiesandindividualsexperienced.
Thisallowsus to reiteratewhathasbeen emergingas my mainpoint- that
the sense of contactandsharingwithina culturalentityis a highlybrittleand
circumstantialexperience.To move withinmedievalEurope with ease, as
the executive travellerdoes in today'sEurope, was to be able to function
withina semioticfield:to enter a church,a market,to view a procession,to
attenda Mass,to decodethe messagesof hierarchyat courtor assembly,and
to feel that these were familiaractivitieswhichcouldbe made sense of and
which reassuringlyconjuredexperiencesfrom one's own background.At
least sufficientlyso to inducetrustand intimacy,whichfacitatedexchange,
alliances,cooperation.Yet, in importantwaysthis was an illusion,and one
whichwas fabricatedand perpetuatedto facilitatethat very exchange,that
happy alliance against enemies, that easy commerce. Perhaps to be
European was to have a visceral sense of a crucifixand of the Man of
Sorrows,an avoweddisgustof Jews, a patronisingattitudeto women, a fear
of monstrouspagans, a pride in royal lineages. Perhapsit was the shared
symbols, rather than their intrinsic meaning, that allowed so vast an
interactionon a Europeanscale of people who wouldswearthat they were
above all Bavarians,Auvergnats,Friulans,or Welsh.

NOTES
* I wish to thank Janet Nelson and Paul Strohm for their helpful and
corrective comments
on a draft of this paper.
1 See on this type of genre in the Middle Ages P. Spufford, 'Spaitmittelalterliche
Kaufmannsnotizbucher als Quellen zur Bankengeschichte', in Kredit im Spatmittelalterlichen
undfrahneuzeitlichen Europa, M. North (ed), Cologne, 1991, pp. 103-20.
2 On Margery and her book see C. W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: the Book and the
World of Margery Kempe, Ithaca NY, 1983.
3 The Book of Margery Kempe, B. A. Windeatt trans., Harmondsworth, 1985, book 2,
chapters 2, 3, 5, pp. 267-79.
4 On Wilsnack see J. Sumption, Pilgrimage, 1975, pp. 282-4.
5 The Book of Margery Kempe, Book 2, chapter 6, pp. 279-81.
6 The Book of Margery Kempe, Book 1, chapters 52-53, pp. 161-9; see also chapter 54,
pp. 169-73.
7 On which see A. Hudson, The PrematureReformation, Oxford, 1988.
8 For a detailed chronology see H. Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution,
Berkeley CA, 1967.

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175

9 G. Leff, 'WyclifandHus: a DoctrinalComparison',in Wyclifandhis Times,A. Kenny

(ed), Oxford,1986,pp. 105-25,at pp. 117-8.
10 Leff, 'WyclifandHus',pp. 118-25;M. Keen, 'TheInfluenceof Wyclif',in Wyclifandhis
Times,A. Kenny(ed), Oxford,1986,pp. 127-45,at pp. 137-45.
11 A. Kenny, "'The AccursedEnemy":the Counter-Reformation
Reputationof John
Wyclif',in Wyclifandhis Times,A. Kenny(ed), Oxford,1986,pp. 147-68;at pp. 150-3.
12 On his Europeanreputationsee V. Murdoch,'TheFifteenth-Century
Reactionandthe
Sixteenth-Century
Reformation',in TheWyclifTradition,AthensGeorgia,1979,pp. 1-5.
13 The Non-cycle MysteryPlays, 0. Waterhouse(ed), EETS Extra Ser. 104, 1909,
pp. 54-87.
14 S. Beckwith,'Ritual,ChurchandTheatre:MedievalDramasof the SacramentalBody',
in CultureandHistory,1350-1660,D. Aers (ed), 1992,pp. 65-89.
15 L. Muir, 'The Mass on the Medieval Stage', ComparativeDrama 23, 1989/90,
pp. 314-30, at pp. 317-18.
16 M. Rubin, CorpusChristi:the Eucharistin Late MedievalCulture,Cambridge,1991,
pp. 102-3.
17 See for examplethe Wycliffitetext in Selectionsfrom EnglishWycliffitewritings,A.
Hudson(ed), Cambridge,1978,no. 19, pp. 97-104, 187-9.
18 R. Tuck,'Humanistsandscholasticson warandpeace', in 'SorryComforters':
Political
ThoughtandInternational
Relationsfrom Grotiusto Kant,Oxford,1993,ch. 1.
19 H. G. Koenigsberger,'Dominiumregaleor Dominiumpoliticumet regale:monarchs
and parliamentsin early modernEurope',in Politiciansand virtuosi:essaysin earlymodern
history,1986,pp. 1-25;esp. pp. 1-2.
20 C. Klapisch-Zuber,Women,Familyand Ritualin RenaissanceItaly, Chicago, 1985,
especiallychapters3, 6, 8, 10, 11;J. P. J. Goldberg,'Femalelabour,serviceand marriagein
northerntowns duringthe Middle Ages', Northernhistory22 (1986), pp. 18-38; J. P. J.
Goldberg,'Marriage,migration,servanthoodand life-cyclein Yorkshiretowns of the later
MiddleAges: some Yorkcausepaperevidence',Continuityand change1 (1986),pp. 141-69.
21 P. Brown, The Body and Society:Men, Women,and SexualRenunciationin Early
Christianity,New York, 1988,p. 318; E. A. Clark,"'Adam'sOnly Companion":Augustine
and the EarlyChristianDebate on Marriage',in TheOld Daunce:Love, Friendship,Sex and
Marriagein the MedievalWorld,R. R. Edwardsand S. Spector(eds), Albany NY, 1991,
pp. 15-31.
22 See J. V. Fleming,Reasonandthelover,PrincetonNJ, 1984.
23 See forthcomingarticleby J. Wogan-Browne,in Framingmedievalbodies,S. Kayand
M. Rubin(eds), Manchester,1993.
24 La Querellede la Rose:LettersandDocuments,J. L. BairdandJ. R. Kane(eds), North
CarolinaStudiesin the RomanceLanguagesandLiteratures199,ChapelHill NC, 1978;P.-Y.
Badel, Le Romande la Roseau XIVesiecle.Etudede la receptionde l'oeuvre,Geneva, 1980.
25 See The Romauntof the Rose and Roman de la Rose: a Parallel Text Edition, R.
Sutherland(ed), Oxford,1967.
26 On thissee D. Wallace,'Chaucerandthe EuropeanRose',Studiesin theAge of Chaucer
1 (1984),pp. 61-7.
27 R. F. Green, 'Chaucer'sVictimisedWomen',Studiesin theAge of Chaucer10 (1988),
pp. 3-21, esp. pp. 7ff; R. HowardBloch, 'MedievalMisogyny',Representations
20 (1987),
pp. 1-24.
28 Hoccleve'sworks.II: theminorpoems, I. Gollancz(ed), EETSExtraSer. 73, London,
1925;L'Epitreon pp. 20-34.
29 Ibid., lines8-14, p. 20.

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