Medieval Magic and the Supernatural

On Thursday 29th May, the Oxford Medieval Society welcomed Dr Sophie Page and Dr Carl Watkins to discuss 'Medieval Magic and the Supernatural.' This topic challenges us methodologically to unravel complex cultural concepts, as 'magic' and 'supernatural' are hard to define. Sophie and Carl are familiar with these challenges, as they have both worked extensively on these issues in the High Middle Ages. Sophie's interest in magic has grown out of her studies of the manuscript traditions of texts about magic theory and astrology. Carl takes a literary approach to systems of belief, working with narrative sources such as chronicles and hagiography. Together, they were able to talk us through how they approach some issues that come up in their research in this field.

Sophie introduced the topic of magic by exploring some issues of definitions. The boundaries around magic are blurred for the historian who might want to separate it from 'rational' aspects of intellectual culture; but this very blurring of boundaries was fundamental to medieval concepts of magic as a form of knowledge that was at once non-mainstream and elite. Sophie challenged the assumption that those who wrote about or read about magic were subversive - in particular, Richard Kieckhefer's suggestion that this was a vent for disgruntled clerics who had missed out on promotions seems too simplistic. Magical manuscripts produced by the community of St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury (which is the focus of Sophie's recent book) demonstrate that magic could be studied even in highly prestigious, mainstream contexts. Sophie argued that magic needs to be viewed as an intellectual activity integrated into its context, complete with all of its paradoxes. She suggested that we adopt a broad working definition for magic, as 'a practical art that offered the tools to manipulate the cosmos.' Such a holistic approach to magic allows us to see how it could relate to both the natural world of animals and the spiritual world of angels and demons, all in the same tradition. Likewise, such a broad definition of magic allows us to see more variety in the ways that it was deployed by writers and communities. For example, Sophie explained how the translation of theoretical texts from Arabic into Latin was an opportunity for different approaches to emerge, with some translators removing magical content from their texts, and others keeping it.

Carl explained similar issues of definitions in his recent research on visions of the dead. Medieval texts display two traditions for describing apparitions of the dead. On the one hand, moralising ghosts were portrayed as abstract visions warning the living of the threat of purgatory and hell. On the other hand, the dead who played a more central role in narratives, interacting with the living in diverse ways, were often described in tangible bodily terms. This distinction seems to be a specific feature of Medieval texts, as descriptions of visions of the dead from the Early Modern period follow only the second model, of tangible ghosts. Carl therefore encouraged us to think sensitively about how this variety of apparitions of the dead functioned in medieval thought. The historiographical and hagiographical sources that Carl works with employ these two forms of describing the living-dead in complex ways that don't fit some common assumptions about text and belief. For example, Carl pointed out that this is by no means a distinction between 'high' intellectual culture that employed accounts of the dead for moralistic metaphors, and 'low' uneducated culture that foolishly believed that the dead could return physically to earth. Like Sophie, Carl also suggested that medievalists need broader views and more sophisticated categories in order to grapple with this complex cultural phenomenon. For example, Carl pointed out that much of this literature has resonances with theories of purgatory, so we should view narratives about ghosts in the context of theological changes. In social terms, it is also possible that these narratives were used to articulate anxieties about death and community relationships - we can look to anthropology for comparative insights on these issues.

Laura Varnam, President of the Oxford Medieval Society, chaired a variety of questions that explored in more detail the case-studies presented by Sophie and Carl. It was particularly interesting to see that two distinct genres, the theoretical texts used by Sophie and the narrative texts used by Carl, brought out similar issues of contextualising the knowledge of authors and their place in broader intellectual traditions. We would like to thank Sophie and Carl for bringing together such interesting research issues.

Re-framing the Near East in the Tenth Century

On Thursday 20th February, the Oxford University Byzantine Society and the Oxford Medieval Society hosted their first joint meeting. We were particularly pleased to see that the biggest audience the Medieval Society had seen for twenty years gathered to hear papers from Prof. Garth Fowden and Prof. Hugh Kennedy. The aim of the event was to broaden the views of both Byzantinists and Medievalists by looking at the history of the Near East in the tenth century. Garth is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths at Cambridge, so his work encompasses the intellectual and social history of Byzantium, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam. Hugh is the Professor of Arabic at SOAS and has spent part of this year as a visiting fellow at All Souls, where he has been working on a comparative project on the 'Late Antique' Abbasid state of the tenth century. Garth and Hugh introduced us to their comparative perspectives, and demonstrated how Medievalists and Byzantinists alike could benefit from such approaches.

Garth opened the event by explaining how we need to reframe some of our assumptions about interactions between cultures. Medievalists and Byzantinists alike have often fallen into the trap of assuming that the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome was valued primarily within the Christian cultures that took root in the geographical centres of these empires. We often view the Arabic preservation of ancient philosophy as an interlude before the translation of such texts into Latin in the twelfth century. But Garth explained that the scholarly culture that grew around ancient Greek philosophy in the tenth century, particularly in Baghdad, produced a flourishing and cosmopolitan intellectual community. The doctrinal outlooks of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian scholars were subsumed by their desire to debate in Aristotelian terms. Likewise, our tendency to look at religious groups in isolation from one another obscures the complex ways in which scholars expressed awareness of the cultures of religions other than their own. The demarcation between the faiths was certainly a firm community marker, but Garth pointed out that this is not the same as cultural isolation. For example, he explained how the tenth-century Muslim bibliophile Ibn al-Nadim listed the religious books of other faiths, even claiming that a priest had explained the Christian Bible to him. Garth then moved on to explain how our assumptions about chronological frameworks should also be reviewed. Historians often frame their work according to a linear movement from event A to event B, but in a comparative view this might not give space for the full complexity of interacting societies and cultures. Instead, Garth suggests that historians should think of other 'shapes' for their chronologies, such as a broader study pivoting around a key event. This is an approach that Garth has recently employed for his history of the Near East in the first millennium, pivoted around the life of Muhammad.

The importance of reviewing of chronological and geographical boundaries is amply demonstrated by Hugh's work on the Abbasid caliphate of the tenth century. Hugh explained that traditionally, we have thought of antiquity giving way after the sixh century to a period that we might call either 'medieval' or 'Islamic.' This has curtailed comparative studies of the late classical world and periods that followed. Comparative studies could use all sorts of criteria, but Hugh has found the concept of the state to be the most fruitful way of looking at the parallels between the classical, medieval, and Islamic worlds. Hugh explained that in both classical antiquity and the early Abbasid Caliphate, the existence of a state could be seen in three major concepts: the active use of currency; the deployment of governors to provinces, rather than local elites; and the idea of a continuity of the power of an office, even when a ruling figurehead or dynasty was replaced. Looking at these three categories, Hugh found that the Abbasid world experienced the fragmentation of these systems in the tenth century, significantly later than comparable developments in sixth-century Western Europe. Both societies experienced the development of a hoarding mentality towards coinage, the sale of state lands to local lords, and increasing emphasis on the dynastic nature of office. Hugh brought these elements together in a comparative history of Late Antiquity that stretches across the geography of the Mediterranean and across our preconceived assumption about periodisation. Hugh expanded on this research project in his keynote paper at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2014.

Dr Mark Whittow chaired an active discussion about these two papers. The audience was particularly taken with the potential for further comparative viewpoints, for example whether there is scope to include China and Scandinavia in such projects. Likewise, Garth and Hugh's focus on the tenth century as a period of significant cultural interaction struck a chord with medievalists, as it offers a way of contextualising what their field has often regarded as a time of particular change around 'l'an mille.' We would all like to thank Garth and Hugh for introducing us to such fresh research and new approaches.

New Perspectives in Palaeography

On Thursday 14th November, the Oxford Medieval Society was delighted to welcome Prof Daniel Wakelin and Dr Stewart Brookes to discuss their work as part of an event on 'New Perspectives in Palaeography.' Between them, Stewart and Dan cover over half-a-millennium of script, as Stewart specialises in the vernacular minuscule of later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and Dan works on books and literature from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. They introduced us to two very different (but arguably mutually-dependent) ways of engaging with manuscript sources, so the event certainly broadened the perspectives of members of the Oxford Medieval Society.

Dan started the evening by introducing us to the background of palaeographical study. This is a field that has sometimes been presented as a Darwinian evolution, with script just doing its thing, changing from one form to another over time... But as Dan pointed out, does this model forget to leave room for human agency? Dan pointed out that script is a cultural phenomenon, and handwriting is a day-to-day cultural act performed by people - so we need to think of them too. We can look for little details in manuscripts that hint at the experience of writing them, such as scribal mistakes. Dan illustrated this by showing us a variety of scribal hands from his own research on various Gothic scripts, with examples in which scribes had made tiny little errors in the shaping of letters. Either the scribe, or someone else, had gone back to make corrections. These little details remind us that manuscripts don't just happen, but were made by people working with complex expectations of how script should appear on the page. Dan called this the craft of scribes - an idea that could translate to many areas of manuscript research, and gave our audience food for thought.

Stewart also focused on the significance of the little details that appear in manuscripts, explaining how digital approaches can aid research in script analysis. Stewart is currently working on the DigiPal project, a free online tool that will allow users to compare the letter-forms of vernacular Anglo-Saxon scripts using database technology. He explained that we often think of script in macro terms: the units of the manuscript, one (or more) scribe, the overall style... But what about the micro-scale, where individual letter-forms might tell us about the influences of the scribe, in their moments of creativity or little accidents they might make (like Dan's accident-prone Gothic scribes)? DigiPal will offer a way of looking at lots of different letter-forms without flicking through manuscripts - instead, letters can be searched for and compared on-screen. The resource offers a great opportunity for the student members of the Society to engage with detailed analysis of script in their future research - we hope M.St and D.Phil students will find it helpful.

Questions, chaired by the Oxford Medieval Society's President Laura Varnam, suggested that Oxford palaeographers are keen to get involved in the type of detailed analysis both Dan and Stewart suggested. In particular, the group wondered whether the technology used by DigiPal will be applied to other fields. Thank you to everyone who came to the event, and particularly to Stewart and Dan for providing such interesting introductions to their work!

Oxford Medieval Society Research Presentation Day