Le Corps au Moyen Âge constitutes the sixteenth and most recent volume in the series L’Atelier du médiéviste, a collection whose purpose is to present an area of medieval scholarship by introducing basic concepts, providing critical bibliographies, and furnishing analyses of primary documents that reveal the methods of medievalists in their “workshop.” This new volume takes on a particularly ambitious topic. While previous volumes in the series have approached topics with well-defined contours (such as medieval languages, epigraphy, religious orders, or medieval geography), the topic of the body is challenging both to delineate and to encompass. While a completely exhaustive treatment of the topic would elude any single volume, Le Corps au Moyen Âge succeeds in providing a highly panoramic view. Its fifteen chapters (the first is an introductory chapter) are authored by preeminent specialists on the topic. Each author carves out a well-defined area, and the editors have taken care to include a diversity of perspectives while still producing a coherent result.
The book is not divided into subsections, and the editors, in their general introduction (chapter 1), do not suggest that the order of chapters follows a plan. The arrangement of chapters nevertheless bears the marks of thoughtful consideration, and readers will find the ordering of chapters to be organic. Chapters that treat adjacent topics are grouped so that they complement and expand on each other, which also facilitates cross-referencing between chapters. Chapter 2 (“Le corps sexué et ses fonctions,” by Laurence Moulinier-Brogi) provides a highly instructive overview of medieval medical theory and is followed by the topic of the production of food and its ingestion (chapter 3, “Le corps nourri,” by Bruno Laurioux). The two chapters are thematically linked because so much of medieval medical treatment focused on diet. The topics of clothing (chapter 4, “Le corps vêtu,” by Nadège Gauffre Fayolle) and beauty (chapter 5, “Corps en beauté,” by Laurence Moulinier-Brogi) both treat the body in its external appearance and address the concern of medieval society for the body’s outward form. The chapters on sexuality (chapter 6, “Corps et sexualité: Un regard historiographique,” by Jacques Rossiaud), suffering and healing (chapter 7, “Corps souffrant, corps soigné,” by Geneviève Dumas et Daniel Le Blévec) and injury and disability (chapter 8, “Corps meurtri, corps mutilé, corps déformé, corps empêché,” by Franck Collard) expand on the exploration of the body’s various states of health, illness, capability, or disability. Chapter 8’s treatment of wounds and impairments is followed by a chapter on the body before the law (chapter 9, “Le corps en procès,” by Claude Gauvard). The continuity connecting it to the preceding chapter is that many legal procedures sought to address injuries inflicted on others (maimings, murders); the law employed physical means to produce evidence (torture, ordeals); and the punishments for crimes were often inflicted on the body, such as confinement or mutilation. Finally, a chapter on the action of the body in leisure pursuits (chapter 10, “Corps en action, corps en jeu,” by Sébastien Nadot) leads us through an examination of activities associated with pleasure or entertainment (tournaments, dance, swimming, skating, jeu de paume, etc.) and rounds out the series of chapters that consider the body from biological or social points of view.
The remainder of the volume turns toward symbolic, institutional, or ideological functions of the body and its role in various systems of thought and representation, beginning with the fundamental question of the body in art and literature and the aesthetic purposes that informed visual and textual representations (chapter 11, “Le corps en image,” by Jean Wirth). The next chapter examines the exceptional bodies that the medieval period venerated or worshiped (chapter 12, “Corps vénérés, corps adoré: Les saints, La Vierge Marie, le Christ,” by Catherine Vincent) and is followed by a study of the ascetic practices that treated the body as a means to purge sin and express faith (chapter 13, “Les ascètes et leur corps,” by Patrick Henriet). The volume concludes with chapters on another body invested with exceptional qualities, the king’s body (chapter 14, “Le corps du roi,” by Élisabeth Lalou) and a chapter on the body as corpse and the rituals surrounding its interment (chapter 15, “Corpus, Cadaver: Le corps mort,” by Cécile Treffort).
In keeping with the format of other volumes in the series, each of the book’s substantial chapters (which typically reach or exceed forty pages in length, with some numbering up to seventy pages) includes a presentation of concepts fundamental to the chapter topic, an extensive critical bibliography, and “documents commentés”—reproductions of primary artefacts from the period that the author contextualizes and analyzes. With the combination of these three elements in each chapter, the overall volume performs three roles. First, it functions as a primer of fundamental concepts on a wide range of topics pertaining to the body, from medical theory, the sex-gender system, vestimentary codes, and law, to hagiography, asceticism and funerary practices. Second, it provides an extensive critical bibliography on the chapter topics: the typical chapter includes several hundred references, organized into sub-topics, with an overview of the trends that have emerged over time, and the directions of current research. Third, it constitutes an anthology of artefacts related to the body—texts, images, sculptures, devotional objects, even textiles—accompanied by analysis to demonstrate how medievalists derive meaning from primary sources.
Any volume dealing with the body in the Middle Ages will have to grapple with the Christian belief system that shaped the perception of the body in the period. While Christian thinkers strove to steer clear of a dualistic ideology, Christianity nevertheless placed the body in a position of hierarchical subordination to the soul, and disciplining the body could be viewed as a means to rise to a higher spiritual plane. The volume pays due attention to the impact of this belief system on a medieval anthropology of the body. The chapter on the body’s functions (chapter 2) stresses that the humors as understood in medieval medicine could only be brought into relative balance; perfect balance of the humors was unattainable due to humanity’s post-lapsarian condition. The chapter on health and sickness (chapter 7) points out that the belief that illness was the result of sin slowed the progress of medieval medicine. The chapter on asceticism (chapter 13) emphasizes that Christian ascetic practices that mortified the body derived their specificity from the belief that ascetics were expressing the human need to perform penance for original sin.
At the same time, the volume uncovers points of divergence where a distinction can be drawn between the Church’s representation of the Christian life in spiritual or theological works and concrete practices; the volume also addresses aspects of the body that were not tightly policed by the Church, reminding us that Christian belief did not permeate every aspect of life to the same degree. It may come as a surprise to the reader when Laurence Moulinier-Brogi emphasizes that medical theorists practiced dissection in the Middle Ages (chapter 2, “Le corps sexué et ses fonctions”); a common misconception holds that the Church completely banned dissection but, in fact, the Church allowed and even promoted it in certain instances. Bruno Laurioux (chapter 3, “Le corps nourri”) notes that while the Church condemned the sin of gluttony and the pleasure of food associated with it, it remains to be seen to what extent theology informed the practices of confessors and preachers or made its way into the conscience of believers; theological determinations do not necessarily reflect concrete social norms. Sébastien Nadot (chapter 10, “Corps en action, corps en jeu”) reveals that dancing enjoyed tremendous popularity, even if the Church viewed it as a suspect pleasure. Moreover, quite a few of the activities discussed in chapter 10 fall outside of the purview of moral evaluation by Church authorities, such as the various exercises that formed part of the training of the military class (swimming, wrestling, archery, riding) or the leisure pursuits of the nobility (tournaments, jousting, hunting). Cécile Treffort (chapter 15, “Corpus, Cadaver: Le corps mort”) informs us that the customs for preparing the body for burial—embalming, shrouding, clothing—were not precisely routinized by any Church teachings, which focused on the sacramental (last rites) and liturgical procedures surrounding death; thus, funerary customs followed traditions that developed outside of Church doctrine.
Cumulatively, the volume leaves the reader with a more precise understanding of a medieval experience of the body heavily influenced by Church belief but not entirely circumscribed by religious teaching. Because the Church’s attitude toward the body is reflected in a great deal of the sources traditionally relied upon as documentary evidence, the degree of influence of Christian belief can easily be overestimated. This contribution of the volume to encouraging the reader to be wary of drawing overreaching conclusions also pertains to a broader trend in the chapters, concerning the use and interpretation of sources. Catherine Vincent (chapter 12, “Corps vénérés, corps adoré”) observes that the explicit punishments of skeptics in narratives of miracles of the saints suggests that not all members of the medieval audience were convinced of the veracity of accounts of miracles; this serves as an example of reflecting on sources to determine how they might internalize or respond to countervailing points of view. Frequently, the authors emphasize the importance of cross-referencing different types of sources with each other and of taking advantage of emerging sources enabled by application of technological tools. Bruno Laurioux (“Corps affamé, corps nourri”) discusses recent methods of analysis of skeletal remains that provide new information about the medieval diet and sometimes contradict earlier findings; there is research to be done to explain the conflicting evidence. In chapter 4 (“Le corps vêtu”), Nadège Gauffre Fayolle notes the difficulty of approaching the nomenclature of medieval clothing using texts alone and recommends better integration of textual, iconographical and archeological evidence. In chapter 7 (“Corps souffrant, corps soigné”), Geneviève Dumas et Daniel Le Blévec relate the progress being made in the understanding of the origins and spread of disease (leprosy, plague) through the disciplines of paleopathology and bioarcheology. Claude Gauvard (chapter 9, “Le corps en procès”) puts us on guard against the assumption that the punishments and procedures described in legal texts were strictly followed: negotiated reductions of sentences were common in the Middle Ages, as were royal commutations of sentences (of which much documentation has survived). Moreover, the same author notes that many sentences are unobtainable because they only ever existed in oral form. Through such observations, the authors convey to the reader both the value of sources and the care to be taken in drawing conclusions from them.
The volume includes forty-five large-format, high-quality color illustrations (most fill one-half to a full page), which are listed in a table of illustrations at the end of the volume. The volume does not include an index, but chapters are divided into sections using alphanumeric designations and bold-faced section titles, making it easy to pinpoint a part of the book relating to a specific topic of interest. All texts in languages other than modern French (mostly Latin and Old or Middle French, with a smattering of texts in other medieval languages) are accompanied by modern French translations.
The volume can serve its audience in multiple ways. It provides an invaluable reference work on the body in the Middle Ages and can be used as an encyclopedia of the topic for answers to immediate questions, or to find a reference to a secondary work where the answer can be found. It is therefore the type of book that many medievalists may wish to keep on their shelf along with other tools of the trade. Some readers may proceed by selecting one or several chapters pertaining to a current project or area of inquiry; the volume certainly lends itself to be used in that manner: the quality of the essays, the bibliography they provide, and the examples of analysis of documents, would make a relevant chapter or chapters of this book an excellent point of departure when embarking on research. But if one value of the volume lies in its parts, Le corps au Moyen Âge, considered in its entirety, allows readers to transcend the boundaries of a single approach or angle of study. Through the accumulated expertise and insight of its fourteen authors, it provides a holistic vantage point that initiates its readers into historiographical methods, encourages the discovery of new connections, and opens new horizons for exploration.