Marginality is generally defined according to various factors that we can divide into four macro-categories: the first economic, when one is prevented from contributing to the economic process; the second social, when one is excluded from the rights/duties of community life; the third spatial, when a certain place (a city, for example) is precluded from an identity for political or other reasons; and finally cultural, when one is perceived as having customs that are incompatible with those of the surrounding community. To these “traditional” categories, so to speak, we can add that of “transgression,” understood in a broad sense as both the result and cause of the exclusion and persecution of those who are considered different. This is the basic thesis expressed in Living on the Edge. For the editors, observing lives at the margins does not mean dealing with a “minor” phenomenon in the history of studies on medieval society, but rather doing so enables a better understanding of society as a whole. With this in mind, the collection here is part of a distinctly growing strand of studies.
In 1978, Jean Delumeau published a noteworthy book: La peur en Occident (XIVe-XVIIIe siècles): une cité assiégée. Referring to the sociology of the period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which for the first time studied the behaviour of the masses, the French historian describes society, at a time between the plague of the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries, as pervaded by a feeling of anxiety that led to collective reactions from which “enemies” arise: the Jew, the leper, the witch, the heretic; the “besieged city” of the subtitle is the ecclesia entrenching itself within its defences against an adversary that, to a large extent, it has itself created. In 1987, R. I. Moore published The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, a book that resonated strongly in historiography, especially between France and the early medieval English world. Moore started from the traditional studies on anti-heretical persecutions in the central centuries of the Middle Ages, which tended to read in heresy an objective threat to the Church in front of which the forces of reaction would be unleashed, identifying in a certain sense the origin of the persecution in the victims themselves. Moore invited us, rather, to shift our gaze towards institutions and society as a whole, elaborating the idea that the same attitude was produced towards other minorities, such as lepers and Jews. In short, around the eleventh century a persecutory society would be built in the West, the consequences of which would be seen mainly in the following centuries, although the book stops in the middle of the thirteenth century. The concept of a “persecutory society” has since then become so well known and exploited that Moore himself felt the need to return to it, twenty years after the first edition, with a second expanded and revised edition, in which the basic concepts are nevertheless maintained.
Both books, very different in method and chronology, pose a common problem: does a “persecutory society” exist, and to what extent, or against which persons or groups? Particular studies of the individual categories of the persecuted identified by the two authors were conducted in the decades following the first publication of these works, shedding light on regional differences, different chronological hypotheses, and introducing more nuances into the discourse, as is normal in historiographical discourse. It is difficult to escape the opinion that as we approach the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age, there is a hardening of society and the authorities towards certain categories; at the same time, however, we register an increased attention to the condition of the poor and the sick. One of the questions that arise from reading these texts, as proof of their ability to stimulate even so many years later, is, in a more general sense, what leads to the definition of mechanisms of inclusion and/or exclusion in a given social structure? In which cases or on what basis do persecutory attitudes arise?
It seems to me that Living on the Edge goes in the same direction, but does so by bringing the discourse up to date with the new interests of contemporary historiography, shifting the focus away from the issues of religious dissent--but without evading them--that have been central in recent decades. As Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel writes in the Introduction: “The history of transgression and the studies focused on hitherto overlooked groups in medieval Europe are rapidly expanding fields of research. Scholars devoted to the history of disabilities, queer history, the history of medicine, and the history of ageing have joined heresiologists, experts in medieval transgressive literature, and in religious and ethnic minorities to provide an increasingly complex image of a diverse medieval period in which differences were at the same time abhorred and sought after” (3). Above all, in the present volume the discourse of the construction of alterity seems to me essential: “The chapters that follow deal with some of the many faces of alterity in the Middle Ages and the way in which medieval society reacted to it, most times by ‘othering’ individuals and groups that were considered different. Back then, much as it is now, ‘otherness’ was a way of defining social, moral, religious, intellectual, and behavioural boundaries. In this sense, throughout this volume, ‘otherness’ is understood as inextricably intertwined with power, for only those who held some measure of power were capable of successfully ‘othering’ differences and placing them outside the edge of what was accepted, of what was normative” (4).
The book is divided into three sections, each of four chapters. The first part is entitled “The Fundamental Edge.” Sergi Sancho Fibla opens with an analysis of Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 13503, which contains the Vida de la benaurada Sancta Doucelina mayre de las donnas de Robaut, the most important source for the study of the two communities of beguines known to exist in the territory of Provence in the Middle Ages. Sancho Fibla argues that scholars devoted to the history of Christianity have focused on stories that are often forgotten in traditional scholarship by rendering central the masses of religious and lay people who lived on the fringes of church institutions, as for the communities of religious women, namely those of tertiaries, penitents, hermits, and beguines. Such communities should not be understood as a counterweight in constant conflict with the church, but as religious centres that have built a way of life with a great social impact, which Sancho Fibla calls the institutional edge. Their connections with the hegemonic centres of religious life, or lack thereof, must be examined on a case-by-case basis, as they depended on a range of social, economic, political, and theological considerations. But beyond the differences of convention and circumstance, this chapter shows how the decentralized nature of these women’s communities was not only central to their way of life, but also reflected in the memorial documents produced and handed down by the community.
Next, Courtney A. Krolikoski examines the intersection of female holiness, royal status, and leprosy through twelfth- and thirteenth-century hagiographical texts to highlight how the use of exclusionary language towards lepers contributed both to legitimising royal female holiness and to marking lepers as worthy recipients of charity. The analysis is conducted through the vitae of Matilda of Scotland (d. 1118), St. Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243), and St. Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231), which, though spanning more than a hundred years, are still worth comparing because all three women had a similar position in their society and culture. Recent scholarship on leprosy has overturned the myth surrounding lepers in medieval society. We now understand that lepers were not social outcasts, but interacted in many ways with the rest of the population. Nonetheless, the sources taken into account by Krolikoski show how lepers are depicted as “miserable” and “contemptible” to enhance the piety and heroism of royal queens and saints who took care of them. It is a construct rooted in this type of sources, that does not say much about the actual life of those suffering from Hansen’s disease.
With Mireia Comas-Via’s contribution we move geographically and chronologically. The essay deals with economic marginalisation and social exclusion of widows, seeking the link between the different phenomena with a rich exemplification gathered in the city of Barcelona that could lend itself to comparison with other city situations. Being a woman without a husband reduced the social status of widows to that of the poor. It was poverty and, in some cases, the resulting marginalization that led them to social exclusion, especially elderly widows who lacked financial resources and independence who were marginalized by that situation. Among the most vulnerable widows should also be included those who have just arrived in the city and had no ties with the community that accepted them. Their situation was somewhat alleviated by the development of both institutional and informal forms of assistance, in a way that show how the city could offer these widows alternatives.
Finally, Laura Cayrol-Bernardo deals with the relationship between women and age, a constant theme in the misogynistic literature of the medieval and modern centuries. The essay starts with the remark of how the subject of old age in the Middle Ages remains largely unexplored, both according to specific sub-topics and to geographical regions. Studies are scarce, even within the field of cultural history. Cayrol-Bernardo’s focus, though, is not on written sources, but on a selection of artworks (especially religious art) executed in the Iberian Peninsula between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries to highlight the gender and age dynamics. The conclusion comments on how the male gaze shapes the way in which the ageing female body is systematically despised.
With Part II, “The Religious Edge,” we are evidently deep into the central theme, that of religious dissidence and marginality, already present in the first section. Rachel Ernst’s chapter takes us to the field of Catharism studies, flourishing and in part problematic today after contemporary revisions of past interpretations; the very title chosen for the essay seems to refer to an important miscellany on the subject (Cathars in Question, edited by Antonio Sennis). The first few pages of the essay are in fact dedicated to a discussion of recent scholarship that is set in discontinuity with the past, while the rest is devoted to the way Saint Augustine defines Manicheism and, along with his peers, created polemical treatises that will serve as models for later theologians and inquisitors to condemn religious dissidents and non-conformists.
This is followed by an essay by Marta Fernández Lahosa, which goes back a long way chronologically, and perhaps for this reason could have opened the section. It aims to show how the boundaries of orthodoxy fixed between the fourth and fifth centuries defined also the edge of dissent, “othering” Arians and Nestorians. The analysis uses the iconography of Ascension, and the scholarship around this subject, as a case study, wondering whether there are opposing or converging patterns between Arians and Nicene Catholics.
We return to the middle centuries and the theme of heresy with Stamatia Noutsou’s chapter. The writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Geoffrey of Auxerre show how these Cistercian abbots defined societal order and approved the violent persecution of heretics, even if different stances about it, though Noutsou is more interested in how they discussed the issue of violence specifically. The analysis reveals how their polemics against heresy served both as a warning of the dangers they allegedly posed, and the need for overall divisions between secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
Finally, the section concludes with an essay by Jordi Casals i Parés that reverses the usual perspective with which the subject of Jews in Spain is examined, since the gaze here is that of the oppressed minority on the oppressing majority. The author begins with a general overview of how the Jews regarded Christians, and then focuses more on the turning point of 1391, when persecutions against Jews occurred in the Crown of Aragon (but also in Castile) and they were forced to abandon their homeland. The causes of the persecutions resulted from the social and economic crisis in the second half of the fourteenth century, worsened by the war and the plague outbreak of 1348. For some, the plague was to be considered a divine punishment on Christians for allowing the presence of Jews among them. There is discussion about the causes, but the main contribution of the essay is given by the gaze upon Jewish perception of the events.
The third and last part, “The Edge of Society,” is varied in terms of content: it opens with an essay by Ivan Armenteros-Martínez, which starts from the evolution of the concept and terminology to define “slavery” and then moves to analyse how the European (mainly Portuguese) expansion in West Africa laid the foundation for triggered a chain of events that would enslave thousands of sub-Saharan men and women in the markets of southwestern Europe within a few years, having the greatest impact on the Iberian Peninsula, where black captives soon became the main groups of slaves.
The next essay, by Anna M. Peterson, is directly linked to Krolikoski’s, although here hagiography gives way to other sources, from sermons to laws: the author chooses five texts from France, Italy, and Iberia to provide an accurate insight of how lepers were perceived by their “healthy” neighbours. As before, however, the essay starts from the historiographical reversal of the theme of the lives of the sick in relation to communities that is characteristic of recent decades, indebted to the works of François-Olivier Touati and Carole Rawcliffe.
Angana Moitra’s article is different from the others, taking a literary source into consideration, a medieval retelling of the Orpheus story. In the Middle English version, “Orfeo” is the King of Winchester and his court presents an idyllic political landscape where everyone is happy. The happiness of the kingdom is ruined, however, by the abduction of Orfeo’s wife Heurodis by the devilish king of the fairies. Inconsolable for the loss of his queen, Orfeo exiles himself to a forest for years, until one morning he sees Heurodis in a hunting party and follows her, thus entering the evil domain of the king. The adventures continue until the happy ending. The figure of exile has a dual function in the poem. First, it is a narrative device to enhance the action and express the character of the hero. At the same time, the poet also enriches the semantic field of exile with associations drawn from the Bible.
The section and the book closes with an essay about monstra in medieval literature with a case study given by Estela Estévez Benítez on Monte Cassino Abbey, MS 136 of Monte Cassino Abbey, which contains De universo by Rabanus Maurus. Monstra, like Cynocephali, Blemmyae, Sciapod, and Monopod, were quite common in both sculptural and pictorial representations. With their non-normative body they codified the image of otherness located on the margins of the ecumene and especially in the East, based on the writings of the Ancients inherited from the Middle Ages.
As is often the case with collections, there is a great variety of themes here, which can sometimes make one lose the thread of the discourse outlined in the Introduction. At the same time, there are no weak essays and all of them are evidently the result of ongoing research, which has the merit of presenting--to a potentially wide audience--scholarly experiences that might otherwise remain on the margins of the academic community.