Although The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity doesn’t have an essay specifically on folk religion, this is a volume that the student of folk religion, whether medieval, early modern, or modern, will want to know and use. It should, however, be noted that this is a book on the Christianity of medieval Western Europe; Eastern Orthodoxy and other non-western-European forms of Christianity are not covered in the book.
As with most handbooks, The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Religion attempts to give an idea of the current state of the art in the study of medieval religion, and it does this well. Chapters of special interest to folklorists include John H. Arnold’s “Introduction: A History of Medieval Christianity,” which provides an orientation to the volume and its goals. Arnold’s second chapter, “Histories and Historiographies of Medieval Christianity,” then provides a useful survey of the historiography of medieval religion. Simon Yarrow’s “Religion, Belief, and Society: Anthropological Approaches” takes a perspective influenced strongly by Clifford Geertz in order to provide, as the title suggests, a survey of anthropological approaches to medieval religion. Beth Williamson follows with a survey of “Material Culture and Medieval Christianity.”
Later chapters of interest include those by Nicholas Terpstra on civic religion; Katherine L. French on “Localized Faith: Parochial and Domestic Spaces;” Marcus Bull on pilgrimage, Gabor Klaniczay on saints; Laura A. Smoller on “'Popular' Religious Culture(s)”; and Dorothea Weltecke on “Doubts and the Absence of Faith.” Other chapters that might not at first glance offer much to the folklorist turn out to be mines of information, like “Christianity and Its Others: Jews, Muslims, and Pagans” by Sara Lipton or “Christian Experiences of Religious Non-Conformism” by Grado Giovanni Merlo.
This, then, is a volume that offers much to the student and scholar of folk religion. The emphasis of many of the authors on religious practice and the interaction of elite and popular forms of religion is among many aspects of the book that makes this a volume of special interest to folklorists. There are, however, some problems. The chapters are, as is so often the case with handbooks like this one, of varying length and depth of discussion, and thus the coverage of topics is somewhat uneven. The bibliographies to the chapters are often curiously limited as well, and miss a number of relevant works, both in English and other scholarly languages such as German and French. One especially obvious lack in the volume for folklorists who use the book will be the almost complete disregard that the authors of the volume have for folklore research. In a book on a topic that folklorists have written a considerable amount on since the nineteenth century, one would expect to see some engagement with the folkloristic scholarship on folk religion, but there is neither reference to the research of older scholars, like Josef Schrijnen, whose Nederlandsche Volkskunde is in large part on folk religion, or Richard Weiss, whose Volkskunde der Schweiz also deals extensively with the interaction of folk culture and religion, nor to that of more recent scholars of folk religion, like Don Yoder. Engagement with this relevant folklore research simply isn’t there.
While it is unfortunate that the authors fail to acknowledge and use the considerable scholarship by folklorists on folk religion, this is nonetheless a book that will prove to be extremely useful to students and scholars of Western European folk religion; it offers sound guidance concerning the current status of the study of the elite and popular practice of religion in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
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[Review length: 591 words • Review posted on March 30, 2016]