Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine
1023
2013
978-3-8233-7820-4
978-3-8233-6820-5
Gunter Narr Verlag
Rachel Falconer
Denis Renevey
10.2357/9783823378204
CC BY-SA 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.de
This inter-disciplinary volume investigates the contiguities and connections that existed between poetic and scientific ways of knowing in the medieval and early modern periods. the aesthetic aspects of medieval texts are analysed, alongside the medical expertise articulated in literary texts. Substantial common ground is ground is discovered in the devotional, medical, and literary discourses pertaining to health and disease in these two periods. Medieval and early modern theatres are shown to have staged matter pertaining to contemporary science, provoking and challenging scientific claims to authority, as well as political ones. Finally, the volume demonstrates how certain branches of learning, for example, marine navigation and time-measurement, were represented as forms of both art and science.
<?page no="0"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28 Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine Edited by Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey <?page no="1"?> Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine Edited by Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey 081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey_081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey Titelei 26.09.13 10: 58 Seite 1 <?page no="2"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature Edited by The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE) General Editor: Lukas Erne Volume 28 081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey_081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey Titelei 26.09.13 10: 58 Seite 2 <?page no="3"?> Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine Edited by Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey 081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey_081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey Titelei 26.09.13 10: 58 Seite 3 <?page no="4"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Publiziert mit Unterstützung der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. © 2013 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: http: / / www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Einbandgestaltung: Martin Heusser, Zü rich Fotografie: © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford MS. Ashmole 399, fol. 21r Druck und Bindung: Laupp & Göbel, Nehren Printed in Germany ISSN 0940-0478 ISBN 978-3-8233-6820-5 081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey_081313 SPELL 28 - Falconer_Renevey Titelei 26.09.13 10: 58 Seite 4 <?page no="5"?> Table of Contents Introduction 11 Indira Ghose (Fribourg) The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter: Laurent Joubert’s Traité du Ris 19 Tamsin Badcoe (Bristol) Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors: Lucas Waghenaer and the Poetics of Navigation 33 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi (Siena) Between Astronomy and Astrology: Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” and the Measurement of Time in Late-Medieval England 49 Susan Závoti (Budapest) Blame it on the Elves: Perception of Illness in Anglo- Saxon England 67 Tony Hunt (Oxford) The Languages of Medical Writing in Medieval England 79 Mary C. Flannery (Lausanne) Emotion and the Ideal Reader in Middle English Gynaecological Texts 103 Virginia Langum (Umeå) Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 117 Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris) Syphilis or Melancholy? Desire as Disease in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) 131 Lisanna Calvi (Verona) “Is’t Lunacy to call a spade, a spade? ”: James Carkesse and the Forgotten Language of Madness 143 <?page no="6"?> Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Shizuoka) Post-mortem Care of the Soul: Mechtild of Hackeborn’s the Booke of Gostlye Grace 157 Christiania Whitehead (Warwick) Spiritual Healing: Healing Miracles Associated With the Twelfth- Century Northern Cult of St Cuthbert 171 Tamás Karáth (Budapest) Staging Childbirth: Medical and Popular Discourses of Delivery and Midwifery in the Medieval English Mystery Plays 187 Julia D. Staykova (Sofia) “We sit in the chaire of pestilence”: The Discourse of Disease in the Anti-Theatrical Pamphlets, 1570s-1630s 207 Jennifer Richards (Newcastle) Diagnosing the Body Politic: Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 223 Notes on Contributors 245 Index of Names 251 <?page no="7"?> General Editor’s Preface SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature) is a publication of SAUTE , the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English. Established in 1984, it first appeared every second year, was published annually from 1994 to 2008, and now appears three times every two years. Every second year, SPELL publishes a selection of papers given at the biennial symposia organized by SAUTE . Nonsymposium volumes are usually collections of papers given at other conferences organized by members of SAUTE , in particular conferences of SANAS , the Swiss Association for North American Studies and, more recently, of SAMEMES , the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies. However, other proposals are also welcome. Decisions concerning topics and editors are made by the Annual General Meeting of SAUTE two years before the year of publication. Volumes of SPELL contain carefully selected and edited papers devoted to a topic of literary, linguistic and - broadly - cultural interest. All contributions are original and are subjected to external evaluation by means of a full peer review process. Contributions are usually by participants at the conferences mentioned, but volume editors are free to solicit further contributions. Papers published in SPELL are documented in the MLA International Bibliography. SPELL is published with the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Information on all aspects of SPELL , including volumes planned for the future, is available from the General Editor, Prof. Lukas Erne, Département de langue et littérature anglaises, Faculté des Lettres, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland, e-mail: lukas.erne@unige.ch. Information about past volumes of SPELL and about SAUTE , in particular about how to become a member of the association, can be obtained from the SAUTE website at http: / / www.saute.ch. Lukas Erne <?page no="9"?> Acknowledgements The essays in this volume derive from papers originally delivered at the third international conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, on Literature, Medicine and Science, which took place at the University of Lausanne in June 2012. The essays collected here should give a flavour of the richness and breadth of that interdisciplinary encounter, but we are grateful to all the participants who gathered in Lausanne to make the conference such a rewarding experience. In particular, we would like to thank our guest speakers, Professor Margaret Healy (Sussex), Professor Tony Hunt (Oxford), Professor Jennifer Richards (Newcastle), Professor Heinrich von Staden (Princeton), and Professor Vincent Barras in dialogue with the physician and novelist, Dr Eric Masserey (Lausanne). The conference could not have taken place without the generous support of our academic sponsors: the Swiss National Foundation, the Fondation du 450è Anniversaire, the Faculty of Letters and the English Section of the University of Lausanne. Eva Suarato and Camille Marshall provided invaluable support in organising the conference, and we are infinitely grateful for the long hours and careful thought they put into making sure everything ran smoothly. Our grateful thanks, too, to Philip Lindholm, Georgia Guenzi and Raphael Mayer, for their excellent help with conference organisation and with preparing the index for this volume. Thanks, finally to Lukas Erne for his meticulous general editorship of this series, and to Keith Hewlett for his hawk’s eye attention to detail in the copy-editing of these essays. <?page no="11"?> Introduction In our present era of hyper-specialisation, where it is becoming increasingly rare for medievalists or Renaissance scholars to engage with, let us say, twenty-first century literature, let alone with contemporary mathematicians, medical practitioners, geographical explorers, religious leaders, or heads of state, it is important to recall how, in previous eras, these various fields of knowledge and expertise were often regarded as contiguous and complementary. The essays in the present volume demonstrate, above all, the hybridity of knowledge in the medieval and early modern periods, and the special illuminations that can arise from seeing the world through the lens of more than one particular discipline. In some cases, the discovery of a free flow of knowledge from folkloric or religious to medical spheres may make us glad of our own modern, rationalist separations (who would want to be treated by a doctor who believes in elves? ). In other cases, however, we may feel the loss of a certain richness of perspective that is produced when two ways of knowing (poetry and the arts of navigation, for example) are brought to bear on a single text. Our sense of identity may be said to rest, in fundamental terms, on the ways in which we choose to situate ourselves in space and time. With what systems of reference do we locate where we are, in order to say who we are? In the modern era, Einstein’s theory of relativity provides one way of addressing the question; the dynamics of narrative and story telling provide another. But it is one of the limitations of our age that we rarely attempt both kinds of investigation at the same time and in the same place. Tamsin Badcoe’s essay, “Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors: Lucas Waghenaer and the Poetics of Navigation,” provides a window into a world that was being mapped according to spatial metaphors that were simultaneously scientific and poetic. Badcoe studies the prefaces of navigational texts to reveal, firstly how mapping was recognised in the early modern period as a poetic science, and secondly, how reading was understood, in this maritime age, to be analogous to the art Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 11-17. <?page no="12"?> 12 Introduction of navigating the sea. One insight gained from this doubling of navigational and poetic arts is to be made keenly aware of language as a material substance that could be crafted to deliver an almost sensible, tactile experience to the reader. While many readers will be familiar with Chaucer the master storyteller, few will know him as the master of a treatise on the measurement of time. Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi’s essay, “Between Astronomy and Astrology: Chaucer’s ‘Treatise on the Astrolabe’ and the Measurement of Time in Late-Medieval England” discusses the rhetorical strategies that Chaucer deployed to make the study of time intelligible to a young schoolboy. The fact that Chaucer not only understood how medieval time worked and could be measured, but that he also felt an obligation to synthesise and communicate this knowledge to a young reader, provides us with another instance of the higher degree of integration between poetic and scientific ways of knowing in these earlier periods. Moving beyond temporal and spatial parameters, one of the dominant themes of the present, cross-disciplinary collection is the matter of human health and disease, as understood from the perspective of a range of different disciplines. Some contributors reveal the extent and depth of the medical discourse about health and disease that circulates in the poetry and drama of the medieval and early modern periods. Others demonstrate the rhetorical, poetic and narrative strategies employed in medical texts about disease. In contrast to the modern, secular consensus, an individual’s health was not considered to be solely or even primarily his or her doctor’s business; it was also the business of philosophers, poets, theatre (and anti-theatre) practitioners, and religious communities, all of whom sought, in their different spheres, to purge and relieve the body, soul or mind of the human sufferer. Anxiety and depression are chronic conditions in modern, developed societies, and the number of drugs used to treat these ailments escalates by the hour. But what physician, recently, has given thought to anatomising the healing powers of different types of laughter, in the kind of astonishing detail offered by the Renaissance physician, Laurent Joubert? In the opening essay of this volume, Indira Ghose explores the “Paradoxes of Laughter” in Joubert’s Traité du Ris (1579). Laughter, according to Renaissance humoral theory, originates either from the heart or the spleen; its medicinal properties attach to its capacity to warm the body. As Ghose fascinatingly argues, laughter plays a key role in the Renaissance art of “self-fashioning,” for the self can be forged through the acquisition of a socially appropriate laugh, a “decorous mirth” being the courtier’s ideal. If laughter is physically good for you, as well as a performative act that establishes your place in society, it becomes difficult indeed to separate the world of the physician from that of the Ren- <?page no="13"?> Introduction 13 aissance theatre-goer, who might have had multiple reasons for becoming devotees of the new comedies then being produced by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Three scholars engage closely with medical texts of the medieval and early modern periods, and in each case we find that medical discourse is hybridised either with the discourse of other spheres of knowledge, or with a plurality of linguistic traditions. In her essay, “Blame it on the Elves: Perception of Sickness in Anglo-Saxon England,” Susan Závoti analyses the recipes (medical receipts) of Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, where she finds a blend of medical and cultural discourses, ranging from classical medical theory (humours and elements) to native Celtic legends about the supernatural. Thus elves, conflated with devils, are held to be the cause of strong temptations and headaches. Meanwhile, Anthony Hunt’s essay, “The Languages of Medical Writing in Medieval England,” invites us to reflect more broadly on the term “medieval medicine.” What cultures and linguistic traditions does this term actually encompass? Hunt argues that we need to recognise England as a tri-lingual culture, particularly in the area of medieval medical culture. This tri-lingualism is clearly in evidence in the medical recipes or receipts which, in fact, make up the largest corpus of surviving medical documents written in English. According to Hunt, many of these receipts are written in a multilingual code which combines Old French, Anglo-Norman, English and Latin in a complex, symbiotic relationship. In her essay, “Emotion and the Ideal Reader in Middle English Gynaecological Texts,” Mary Flannery explores the rhetorical and affective structures of medieval gynaecological writing, demonstrating their close kinship with more evidently literary texts. In particular, she focuses on the construction of an implied, ideal reader through an appeal to their emotion. The emotion of shame proves to be an important constituent factor in the creation of a complicity between writer and reader of gynaecological texts. The author acknowledges the shame that (female) readers feel in relation to female-specific illnesses and, rather than dismissing such reactions as merely emotional as one might expect, encourages readers to deploy this sense of shame in a productive, therapeutic direction. The disciplined state of “shamefastness” becomes a contributory factor in developing the health of the soul, and thence the health of the body. Flannery’s analysis thus reveals how gynaecological writings dissolved binaries between rational and affective, as well as masculine and feminine, spheres of discourse and power. Indeed, in many cases, it proves anachronistic to think of medical, religious and literary practices as occupying separate spheres, as is demonstrated in the essays by Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa and Christiania Whitehead. Chaucer’s tale of the physician of The Canterbury Tales illus- <?page no="14"?> 14 Introduction trates how university-trained medical practitioners were often members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and were expected to practice medicine in accordance with the orthodoxies of the church and Bible. Religious and medical texts share a particularly close kinship in the literature of the medieval and early modern periods. In terms of rhetorical strategies, both religious and medical writers rely heavily on citations of auctores, whether of the Bible, patristic writings, Galenic or Hippocratic texts. The persuasio of the priest or physician’s text often takes the form of a dialogic exchange, between medical practitioner and patient, or between priest and penitent, as if the representation of a fictive intimacy played an essential role in stimulating the patient or penitent to produce his or her case history or confession. In such cases, story telling is not only an instance of, but also triggers further development of, the confessional mode. While the doctor or priest may cite instances of successful cures in the past, patients and penitents respond by narrating detailed experiences of their own. Extant manuscripts and early printed texts testify to the frequency of such dialogic exchanges. Both the medical practitioner and the priest also required expert hermeneutic skills. Just as the medical practitioner applied his hermeneutic skills to the body as “text,” so priests, friars and other clerics applied the hermeneutic tools of established exegetical practices in interpreting both the sacred books and the deep recesses of the human soul. The analogues between medical and devotional practices are particularly well demonstrated in Yoshikawa’s essay, “Post-mortem Care of the Soul: Mechtild of Hackeborn’s the Booke of Gostlye Grace.” Here, a convincing case is made for the therapeutic aims of votive masses and other liturgical performances. In the post-mortem care of the soul, we find an interesting transmission and transformation of medical discourse and practices onto a completely immaterial object. This hybridisation of religious and medical therapeutic practice is also shot through with economic interest, as those interceding on behalf of the post-mortem souls are motivated by expectations of recompense, in the form of the health of their own souls in the afterlife. Whitehead’s essay, “Spiritual Healing: Healing Miracles Associated With the Twelfth-Century Northern Cult of St Cuthbert,” explores further the economic interests involved in spiritual healing, as well as its complex relation to existing medical practice. Here the particular focus is on the Durham cult of St Cuthbert during the twelfth century and the role played by miracles in the process of spiritual and physical healing. Whitehead reminds us of the competition between the religious and medical fields in the care of souls and bodies. In the (many) cases where medicine failed to cure the body, the cult of saints provided a patient with a range of therapeutic alternatives. The proper devotion to Cuthbert could, it was claimed, perform miraculous healings where con- <?page no="15"?> Introduction 15 ventional medicine had failed. But entering this system of cure came at a cost; for those who failed in their devotions, the saint could be equally swift in visiting disease and injury on his lapsed patients. In the case of Cuthbert in the later medieval period, women were prohibited access to his shrine, and the texts provide examples of severe punishment for women trespassing in forbidden areas. Here again we see how miraculous spiritual healing was deeply grounded in political and economic concerns, as the followers of Cuthbert were embedded in a north versus south contest to capitalise on economically profitable pilgrimage routes running through their respective territories. Whitehead suggests that the northern cult of Cuthbert in Durham and on Lindisfarne was developed in competition with the major southern pilgrimage centre of Canterbury Cathedral, which housed the body of Thomas Beckett. While the parallels with poetry are not as clearly delineated as those between devotional and medical practice, yet it is obviously the case that poetry too has interests in the health of the mind, body and soul. What is striking about the medieval and early modern poetry discussed in the essays by Virginia Langum, Laetitia Sansonetti and Lisanna Calvi is the extent to which poets may be demonstrated to have engaged in medical questions about the nature of disease. They do not merely borrow the language of medical discourse; they also analyse symptoms, seek out causes and propose courses of treatment for both physical and psychological ill health. Thus, for example, Langum studies Gower’s exploration of the sins (or sicknesses) of wrath and envy in the fourteenthcentury poem, Confessio Amantis. Gower’s text raises the question of whether wrath and envy should be understood as metaphors for, or causes of, the soul’s ill health. No less than the devotional practitioner, then, Gower is asking his readers to consider, what makes us ill, and how can we be well? Ultimately the poem suggests the active practice of compassion as a form of spiritual cure, but this recommended treatment is based on a quasi-scientific analysis of the physiognomic symptoms of sickness. Spiritual and mental conditions are similarly understood in physiognomic terms in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590-6). As Sansonetti’s essay demonstrates, misplaced amorous passion is treated as an illness in The Faerie Queene, while melancholy is understood to have been caused by an imbalance of humours (for a similar idea, see also Ghose’s essay on Laurent Joubert). These mental and spiritual imbalances if unchecked can lead to the serious and often fatal disease of syphilis (or alternatively, syphilis is a manifestation of the mental disease). Combining Paracelsian and Galenic medical practices, Spenser’s poem suggests an integrated treatment combining (internal) spiritual regimen and (external) physical regimentation of the body. Many readers today may well <?page no="16"?> 16 Introduction react sceptically to the blend of poetic and medical diagnosis and treatment offered by these texts, and yet their holistic approach to questions of health and disease can, at very least, lead us to think more critically about modern western culture’s separation of medical, aesthetic and spiritual spheres. On the other hand, no modern reader in their right minds would wish to have been a mental patient in the medieval or early modern period, as the “cure” of mental illness involved just such treatment as would render a healthy person insane: imprisonment, light deprivation, starvation, and other bodily torture. We are given a rare insight into seventeenth century constructions of madness, and their often extreme treatments of mental conditions, in Calvi’s essay, “‘Is’t Lunacy to call a spade, a spade? ’: James Carkesse and the Forgotten Language of Madness.” Calvi discusses Carkesse’s poem, “Lucida Intervalla” (1679), which was composed inside Bethlem Hospital while its author was undergoing treatment for mental insanity. Amongst the treatments Carkesse endured were vein-cutting, emetics and the application of leeches. While his doctors understand his “poetic fury” to be symptomatic of his mental illness, Carkesse himself mounts a scathing attack on their medical practice, and sees the writing of poetry as his only means of cure and salvation, not only from his own condition, but also from the violence of the medical treatment he is forced to endure. Whether or not this poem was composed within the condition of madness, or in “lucid intervals” between bouts of insanity as the poem’s title suggests, the mysterious fact remains that Carkesse did recover, and yet, after his release from hospital, wrote no more poetry. If poets engaged closely with medical practice, the relation between medicine and the theatre was no less intense, as is demonstrated in the present volume by Tamás Karáth, Julia Staykova and Jennifer Richards. In our times, the surgeon’s operating chamber is still referred to as a “theatre,” but in medieval and early modern times, the parallels were ubiquitously felt, and commented upon extensively. Aristotle’s theory of theatre as a space for katharsis, or mental purgation, indicates, of course, the ancient alliances that have long existed between medicine and the theatre. But the medieval stage was used to reveal, probe and challenge current medical practice in particularly vivid ways; the ambivalently public/ private, feminine/ masculine scene of childbirth, for example, was alluded to in the Mystery Cycles. Thus in his essay, “Staging Childbirth: Medical and Popular Discourses of Delivery and Midwifery in the Medieval English Mystery Plays,” Karáth argues that the Nativity pageants, performed as part of the Mystery Cycles, may be interpreted as normative representations of actual medical practice of birthing children in the medieval period. What these pageants revealed to their contemporary <?page no="17"?> Introduction 17 audiences were the ambivalent power relations between professional female midwives and male medical practitioners during the “scene” of childbirth, a “scene” that was itself ambivalently situated midway between male, public and female, private spheres (on this ambivalence, see also Flannery’s essay). In the early modern period, the stage became a site of conflicting discourses, as Puritan religious writers co-opted the language of medicine to wage war against the perceived corrupting influences of Renaissance theatre. As Staykova’s essay argues, a steady stream of Puritan pamphleteers, writing from the 1570s to 1630s, accused theatre practitioners of breeding plague and pestilence. Not only was the gathering of large crowds for theatre performances conducive to spreading the plague, but also, they argued, the theatre’s seduction of the senses could in itself lead to the corruption of body and soul. But if these religious writers laid claim to the authority of medical discourse, Renaissance theatre was eloquent in its own defence and vigorously challenged the high claims to authority made by both medical and religious practitioners. In the final essay of this volume, Richards analyses Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, which of all the plays of Shakespeare’s corpus appears to be most urgently preoccupied with questions of disease and cure. What is at stake, ultimately, is the health of the state, as the play explores how a nation riven with civil war and rebellion can heal itself. The unruly, over-surfeited body of John Falstaff is a central figure for the diseased body of the state, and the official cure for both Falstaff and the state is “fasting.” But how this medical cure would translate into political action remains ambiguous, as two possible cures for Northumberland’s rebellion - one violent, and one irenic - are proposed in the play. Moreover, Falstaff himself challenges both medical and political authority, when he mocks physicians for their ineffectual treatments (and modern readers may be inclined to share his views) and diagnoses the disease of the state to be an excess of Puritan abstinence; its cure, he pronounces, is “more sack.” Thus we end, where we began, with the ambivalent nature of laughter. Is John Falstaff’s mighty laugh to be heard as a sign of the humorally unbalanced body, or is it the sound of sanity in a diseased state, and the likeliest noise to restore us to our senses? Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey <?page no="19"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter: Laurent Joubert’s Traité du Ris Indira Ghose Laughter was of absorbing interest to Renaissance medical scholars. The treatise on laughter published by the French physician Laurent Joubert in 1579 crystallizes a number of early modern debates about the nature of laughter. For Joubert, laughter finds its origin in the heart and is induced by a paradoxical mixture of emotions: joy and sorrow. What triggers laughter is the ugly. Joubert draws on the classical notion that laughter is an expression of derision - a notion that also shaped the thought of early modern writers, who considered laughter above all as a social corrective. As regards new developments in medicine, Joubert’s treatise is not particularly innovative. What is remarkable about his text is the Neoplatonic spirit it is imbued with. At the same time, his work is influenced by the early modern shift towards a culture of civility, which set a premium on corporeal control. This apparent paradox emerges as illusory: both a Neoplatonic celebration of the quest for knowledge and the movement towards greater self-control were rooted in an evolving notion of the individual as self-determined and inspired by the aesthetic imperative to cultivate the self. In his Treatise on Laughter, published in 1579, the French physician Laurent Joubert recounts an anecdote about a monkey that helped to cure his master. The man in question was very ill, and surrounded by people waiting for his death. The more ill he became, the bolder they grew, grabbing whatever item caught their fancy: Le Cinge voyant ce remuëmant de menage, prind pour sa part le chapperon rouge fourré, que son maitre portoit aus actes solamnels: duquel il s’affula d’une telle grace devant luy, que le patiant print si grand plaisir à contampler Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 19-31. <?page no="20"?> 20 Indira Ghose toutes ces cingeries, qu’il fut contraint de si fort rire, que cette emocion par tout le cors epanduë, emeut tellemant nature . . . qu’il an recouvra la santé. (334) 1 The monkey, seeing all this movement in the household, took for itself the furred red hood that its master wore on solemn occasions. It put the hood on before the patient with much grace, and the patient took such pleasure in contemplating all these monkeyshines that he was forced to laugh so violently that the commotion, spreading throughout his entire body, moved nature so much . . . that he recovered his health. (127) 2 Joubert concludes, “Donques la dignité & excellance du Ris æt fort grande, puis que il ranforce tellemant l’esprit, qu’il peut soudain changer l’etat d’un malade, & de mortel le randre guerissable” (335); “The dignity and excellence of laughter is, therefore, very great inasmuch as it reinforces the spirit so much that it can suddenly change the state of a patient, and from being deathbound render him curable” (128). The notion of the therapeutic value of laughter reaches back to the Hippocratic corpus, and has been assiduously recycled ever since. Similarly, most of Joubert’s findings have their roots in classical ideas on laughter or are premised on the Galenic physiology that dominated Western medicine until the discovery of the circulation of blood by William Harvey in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Joubert’s treatise is of interest as a compendium of contemporary thought on laughter. It crystallizes a number of early modern debates on the topic. Laughter was a leading concern of Renaissance science. There were lively arguments about whether laughter originated in the heart, the spleen, or the brain (Screech and Calder 220). A further vexed issue was the relation of laughter to the passions. Early modern thinkers were at pains to pinpoint precisely which emotions were activated in laughter (Skinner 143). For Joubert, the source of laughter is ugliness: “Ce que nous voyons de laid, difforme, des-honneste, indessant, mal-seant, & peu convenable, excite an nous le ris, pourveu que nous n’an soyons meus à compassion” (16); “What we see that is ugly, deformed, improper, indecent, unfitting, and indecorous excites laughter in us, provided we are not moved to compassion” (20). He reiterates the classical definition that Aristotle provided in the Poetics: “the laughable comprises any fault or mark of shame which involves no pain or destruction” (5.1449a). The risible was defined as all that appeared unseemly or distorted, so long as it did not arouse pity in the viewer. Even though the 1 I am very grateful to Peter Frei for his help in partially modernizing the French original. 2 I draw on the English translation by Gregory David de Rocher (1980). <?page no="21"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 21 Poetics had only been recovered in 1498, Aristotle’s views on the ridiculous were circulated in other works, in particular in the writings of Cicero and Quintilian. What triggered laughter was directly linked to the emotions involved. Joubert sees laughter as paradoxically bound up with two opposing passions, joy and sorrow. As he explains: la chose ridicule nous donne plaisir & tristesse: plaisir, de ce qu’on la trouve indigne de pitié . . . tristesse, pour ce que tout ridicule provient de laideur & messeance: le cœur marry de telle vilainie, comme santant douleur, s’etressit & resserre. (87-88) laughable matter gives us pleasure and sadness: pleasure in that we find it unworthy of pity . . . sadness, because all laughable matter comes from ugliness and impropriety: the heart, upset over such unseemliness, and as if feeling pain, shrinks and tightens. (44) Since the seat of the passions was the heart, laughter provoked powerful cardiac movements - involuntary dilations and contractions of the heart. In terms of humoral pathology, in joy the heart expanded, pouring forth great amounts of blood and humours into the face. By contrast, in sorrow, the humours drained from the face and retreated towards the heart. The distensions of the heart warmed the body, while the constrictions cooled it. These movements were transferred to the diaphragm, which caused the breath in the lungs to be expelled in laughter, by analogy with a bellows. In addition, the humours in the face activated the opening of the mouth, the stretching of the lips, and the widening of the chin. Interestingly, the facial distortion through laughter was the same as in weeping. In his version of the physiology of laughter Joubert elegantly offered a solution to a further conundrum that exercised his colleagues: why both laughter and sadness produced tears (Screech and Calder 221). As he points out: Touchant aus larmes que jettet les rieurs, il faut savoir qu’on pleure de marrisson, quand la douleur presse de contrainte les yeus, . . . epraignant leur humidité. Au contraire, la joye dilate & ouvre leurs pores, d’où peuvet couler & choir les humeurs an maniere de pleur. (118-119) Concerning the tears that laughers shed, it is necessary to know that one weeps of sadness when suffering presses the eyes, . . . squeezing out their humidity. Joy, on the other hand, dilates the pores, from which the humors are able to flow and fall in the form of tears. (56) The humours, meeting with the coldness of the eyes, thicken into tears - which explains why tears are cold. Joubert’s ideas are cited by the <?page no="22"?> 22 Indira Ghose English physician Timothy Bright, who in his Treatise of Melancholie (1586) refers his readers to the treatise of his colleague, lauding it as “not inferiour to any of this age” (152). Not all colleagues agreed with Joubert. For Nicolas Nancel, another French doctor who wrote a treatise entitled De risu (1587), it was the agitation of the brain, not the heart, that produced laughter (and tears) (Screech and Calder 220-21). By contrast, the widespread notion that the seat of laughter was the spleen is reflected in a number of references in Shakespeare’s plays. In Twelfth Night, Maria, announcing the arrival of Malvolio in carnivalesque yellow stockings, promises her fellow conspirators, “If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me” (3.2.64-65). In Measure for Measure, Isabella appeals to the authority of the angels, who never laugh - but who “with our spleens, / Would all themselves laugh mortal” (2.2.120-23). Paradoxically, the spleen is also mentioned as the source of anger: in Julius Caesar, Brutus challenges Cassius to swallow his fury with the words, “You shall digest the venom of your spleen / Though it do split you” (4.3.46-48). What was a shared premise, however, was the belief that laughter was an expression of derision. 3 Aristotle had adopted the idea from Plato, who in the Philebus (48-50) had disputed the proposition that pleasure, as opposed to wisdom, was the highest good. As Socrates points out, most forms of pleasure involved an ambiguous mixture of emotions. Laughter was inextricably linked to malice, a pain of the soul. Particularly deserving of laughter were those who displayed a blatant lack of self-knowledge, the key Delphic injunction that Socrates propagated throughout the dialogues. The notion that laughter was an ambivalent form of pleasure and an articulation of scorn and contempt shaped all discussion of laughter from antiquity onwards. The precise mixture of emotions at stake remained controversial. Not all thinkers bracketed the pair of concupiscible passions, joy and sorrow, with laughter, as Joubert did. In his treatise De ridiculis, published in 1550 with his commentary to the Poetics, Madius (or Vincenzo Maggi) proposed that laughter was produced by turpitude or the ugly in conjunction with wonder (admiratio) (Herrick 7-9). Descartes in Les passions de l’âme (1649) claimed that laughter sprang from joy mixed with hatred and wonder (85; part 2, art. 126). Other writers such as Thomas Wilson echo Aristotle faithfully: The occasion of laughter and the mean that maketh us merry . . . is the fondness, the filthiness, the deformity, and all such evil behaviour as we see 3 In the following I am deeply indebted to Quentin Skinner’s work on the classical theory of laughter. <?page no="23"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 23 to be in other. For we laugh always at those things which either only or chiefly touch handsomely and wittily some especial fault or fond behaviour in some one body or some one thing. Sometimes we jest at a man’s body that is not well proportioned, and laugh at his countenance if either it be not comely by nature or else he, through folly, cannot well see it. (165) Thomas Hobbes summed up these views in the memorable words, “laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in our selves by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly” (qtd. Skinner 148). Aristotelian ideas about the comic remained influential in the Renaissance. Together with Horace’s discussion of decorum in his Ars Poetica, and Cicero’s elaboration of the types of wit in De Oratore, they shaped the ideas of writers on the theory of comedy (Galbraith 7). In his Defence of Poesy Sir Philip Sidney draws a careful distinction between delight and laughter: “Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling” (112-13). In Timber, or Discoveries, Jonson denounces laughter categorically: Aristotle saies rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in Comedie, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a mans nature without a disease. As a wry face without paine moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude Clowne, drest in a Ladies habit, and using her actions, wee dislike, and scorne such representations; which made the ancient Philosophers ever thinke laughter unfitting in a wise man. (643) Satirical laughter, however, is justified as a social corrective, inspiring the audience to reform itself. In the Prologue to Every Man in his Humour Ben Jonson declares that comedy serves to “show an image of the times, / And sport with human follies, not with crimes” (23-24). He refers explicitly to “such errors, as you’ll all confess / By laughing at them, they deserve no less” (27-28). Thus far the theory. In practice, Renaissance drama exploded with laughter, comic literature of all kinds - satires, novellas, facetiae, ballads - flooded the market, and the genre of the jest book was born. Jonson’s own comedies were among the most hilarious on offer. Despite the pervasive early modern conception of laughter as ridicule, the idea that laughter might be an expression of delight unrelated to mockery was gaining ground (Skinner 160-62). In his De sympathia et antipathia rerum (1546) the physician Fracastoro claimed laughter sprang from joy and admiratio; Madius, who retained the emphasis on the ugly, nevertheless took up the notion of admiratio, as did, indeed, Descartes (Skinner 155-57). The emphasis on admiratio was linked to a revival of the notion of surprise in evoking laughter - originally put forward by <?page no="24"?> 24 Indira Ghose Aristotle in the Rhetoric (3.11.6, 1412a). Castelvetro, who otherwise endorses Aristotle’s theory of the ludicrous, did point out that some forms of laughter could be induced by pleasure alone (214). These thoughts paved the way for a new theory of laughter. In the eighteenth century the idea emerged that laughter was a purely benevolent affair. The views of Hobbes were challenged by Shaftesbury, who now proposed that humankind was in essence benign. Thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Francis Hutcheson and James Beattie, mooted the idea that laughter was not grounded in a feeling of superiority, but was a response to intellectual stimulation through the perception of incongruity. The emotion linked to laughter, they claimed, was sympathy rather than malice. Indeed, derisive laughter was now condemned as unnatural. These are not ideas that interest Joubert. While he concedes that the unexpected plays an important role in evoking mirth, in general he remains conservative in his approach, steeped in classical ideas both regarding the physiology of laughter and the source of mirth. Significantly, he ignores the findings of Vesalius, whose seven volume De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) had appeared in 1543, and whose experiments in anatomy had dismantled many of Galen’s claims. The most innovative aspect of Joubert’s work is the Neoplatonic spirit it is steeped in. Chancellor of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montpellier, Joubert was appointed premier médecin to Catherine de Medici and went on to become royal physician to Henry III. He dedicated his book to Princess Marguerite de Valois. In his dedicatory letter he waxes eloquent about the subject of his treatise: “Certainemant, il n’y ha rien qui donne plus de contantemant & recreacion, qu’un visage riant” (n.p.); “Certainly there is nothing that gives more pleasure and recreation than a laughing face” (10). Not only is laughter proper to man, as Aristotle had claimed, it was even more proper to woman: “Le Ris aussi luy æt plus convenable, mieus feant & de meulheure grace, declairant sa grande douceur & humanité” (n.p.); “laughter in her is also more proper, more fitting, more gracious, expressing her great gentleness and humanity” (11). In the Preface to Book Two, he enthuses, “il n’y ha rien de plus mervelheus que le Ris, lequel Dieu a donné au seul homme, d’antre tous les animaus, comme etant le plus admirable” (142); “there is nothing more marvelous than laughter, which God has given to man alone above all the animals because he is the most admirable” (65). In his paean to humanity he implicitly cites Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, which had set the framework for the humanist quest for knowledge: Car il et non seulemant prince des animaus, & d’une splandeur divine de raison & antandemant, interprete de toute la nature: ains aussi an mode de <?page no="25"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 25 Prothee, ou d’un chamaleon . . . il se transforme an tout ce qu’il veut coup à coup. (158) For he is not only prince among the animals, and of a divine splendor by virtue of his reason and understanding, interpreter of all Nature, but also of the nature of a Proteus, or of a chameleon . . . he transforms himself into everything he wishes again and again. (71) He prefaces his third book with a personal, rather touching proem, in which he justifies his scholarship in unequivocally Neoplatonic terms, claiming, “l’ame . . . et comme un petit Dieu” (121); “the soul is like a little God” (91), which remains insatiable in the sublunary realm. “Donques nottre esprit ne sera jamais rassasié, que la gloire de Dieu ne luy apparoisse” (227-228); “Therefore, our mind will never be satisfied until the glory of God appears to it” (93). This, he admits, is what inspired him to delve into the subject of laughter: “Or c’et ce qui m’a fait, si avant anfoncer au discours de mon argumant, an cette matiere du Ris, la plus jantile & galharde qui ayt eté jamais touchee” (228); “Now, this is what made me advance my argument so far into this matter of laughter, the nicest and most exciting that has ever been touched” (93). He realizes that his thirst for learning will never be quenched: “Car d’un propos je fuis conduit à l’autre, & d’un curieus desir je vay toujours recherchant, comme insatiable, tout ce que j’an peus comprandre” (228); “For from one proposition I am led to another, and with a curious desire I go searching constantly, as though insatiable, all that I can grasp” (93). As he sees it, laughter has been granted to humankind for recreation and as a means to refresh the mind. Here he draws on ideas adumbrated in the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle explained that relaxation and amusement were a necessary element in life. Quoting the philosopher Anacharsis, Aristotle declares, “It seems correct to amuse ourselves so that we can do something serious” (10.6.6, 1176b33-34). Amusement was a form of relaxation, and relaxation was conducive to activity and work, enabling one to lead a virtuous life. It is this passage that would emerge as the key justification for laughter, and would furnish arguments for a number of thinkers, ranging from Aquinas to humanists such as Erasmus and Thomas More. Joubert’s Neoplatonic credentials appear most explicitly at the very end of his book. He advocates living joyously and laughing often, citing the advice of Marsilio Ficino: “Vivés joyeusemant, dit-il. Le ciel vous ha creés de sa liesse, laquelle il ha declaré de sa fasson de rire . . . comme an s’ebaudissant” (330-331); “‘Live joyously,’ he says, ‘the heavens created you out of joy, which they have made clear to be their way of laughing . . . as if they were at play’” (126). In the Renaissance Ficino was proba- <?page no="26"?> 26 Indira Ghose bly one of the most eloquent champions of human laughter, which he saw as symbolic of the divine. In the strand of Neoplatonism that he represented, inspired by the fifth century Greek philosopher Proclus, laughter was an aspect of divine creativity. The physiological agitation brought about by laughter harmonized with the movement of the spheres. “Ficino identified laughter as pleasure; pleasure was grace; therefore, laughter could be grace” (O’Rourke Boyle 722). He radically reversed the long legacy of hostility towards laughter articulated by both Plato and the Church Fathers. What is striking about Joubert’s text is the absence of a didactic framework. To be sure, he does differentiate between proper and improper types of mirth. In Book Two he presents a taxonomy of types of laughter, and lists a number of forms of “Ris mal sain & batard” (177), “unhealthy and bastard laughter” (76): Sardinian laughs, engendered by eating the herb sardonia, also known as dog laughter; convulsions created by the bite of the tarantula; laughter caused by injuries to the diaphragm. Tickling, too, is a false kind of laughter. He also offers a catalogue of excessive laughs, such as the syncrousian laugh, which shakes one intensely; the bitter sardonian laugh; Ajax laughter, when one laughs with rage; megaric laughter, articulated while one is depressed; or Ionic laughter, associated with the “mollesse des Sybarites” (218), the “flabbiness of the Sybarites” (90). Then there is Catonian laughter, named after Cato, who laughed only once in his life, and then excessively. According to a hoary old chestnut that Joubert obligingly recycles, Cato saw an ass eating thistles and cried out, “Ces laivres ont de samblables laituës,” “His lips have similar lettuce” (90). Many of these forms of improper laughter are taken from Erasmus’ Adages, to which Joubert points his readers. For all Joubert’s endorsement of the therapeutic and recreational virtues of mirth, he devotes considerable effort to warning the reader against the harmful effects of laughter. Laughing weakens the body through the great dissipation of humours it effects - which in its turn produces the diminishing of natural heat. Those who are weak are further weakened by laughter. Laughter can even be the cause of death, most frequently through suffocation. Admittedly, these cases are extremely rare. However, he warns us that fat people are particularly at risk, since they have little blood left in their vessels (it has all solidified into fat). Indeed, among the less serious effects of laughter is the fact that too much laughter causes wrinkles. It also makes one fat. Laughter is evoked by an abundance of blood and heat. Fat people have an excess of blood, and are naturally joyous, foolish, and enjoy laughing. Hence the podgy end up more wrinkled in old age than their skinny counterparts. <?page no="27"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 27 Joubert’s emphasis on moderation in laughter is, of course, indebted to the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explicitly applies the yardstick of temperance to laughter: Those who go to excess in raising laughs seem to be vulgar buffoons. They stop at nothing to raise a laugh, and care more about that than about saying what is seemly and avoiding pain to the victims of the joke. Those who would never say anything themselves to raise a laugh, and even object when other people do it, seem to be boorish and stiff. Those who joke in appropriate ways are called witty. (4.8.3, 1128a4-10) The ideal that a virtuous man and a gentleman would cultivate lay in the mean and consisted of true wit (eutrapelia). For Aristotle, wit together with honesty and friendliness belonged to the social virtues, which contributed to leading a fulfilled life. Cicero develops the idea of the appropriate even further. In De Officiis, probably the most popular book of moral philosophy in the Renaissance, Cicero replaces the fourth of the canonical virtues (wisdom, justice, courage, temperance or moderation) with decorum. For him the proper regulation of speech and bodily behaviour is the foundational virtue of civil life. Even apparently trivial aspects such as laughing, posture, gait, and facial expressions are underwritten by natural law. They are signs from which the personality of the citizen can be inferred. At the same time, they are susceptible to selfdiscipline and are capable of being governed by force of habit. The virtuous self is a product of both nature and culture. In Ciceronian ethics, the key precept is the role of education in shaping bodily practice. As Michael Schoenfeldt has shown, the main difference between humoral pathology and modern ideas of the self rooted in psychoanalysis is the belief that emotions do not erupt out of an inner self, but are open to manipulation through regimes of self-discipline and dietary regulations (1-39). For Joubert, laughter is both an involuntary and voluntary phenomenon. Like all constituent factors in Galenic physiology, it is susceptible to human control. The wider backdrop to Joubert’s work on laughter is formed by the emergence of a culture of civility in the early modern period (Elias; Arditi; Chartier). A new set of rules regulating social manners and corporeal habits began to circulate in elite circles, specifying which forms of comportment, speech, gesture, and dress marked the aristocracy off from lower ranks of society. A gradual withdrawal of the elite from popular culture was discernible (Burke 335-86). In a political landscape in which absolutist regimes increasingly gained ground throughout Europe, the aristocracy was under pressure to find new forms of legitimation and authority. The Ciceronian precepts of self-restraint and de- <?page no="28"?> 28 Indira Ghose corum were refashioned into a code of social distinction. Certain types of behaviour were regarded as bearing the cachet of prestige, status, and authority. Laughter, too, became a tool of self-definition. In the book that launched the literature of civility in 1530, De civilitate morum puerilium, Erasmus expends considerable effort in discussing the limits to decorous laughter: To laugh at every word or deed is the sign of a fool; to laugh at none the sign of a blockhead. It is quite wrong to laugh at improper words or actions. Loud laughter and the immoderate mirth that shakes the whole body and is for that reason called “discord” by the Greeks, are unbecoming to any age but much more so to youth. The neighing sound that some people make when they laugh is also unseemly. And the person who opens his mouth wide in a rictus, with wrinkled cheeks and exposed teeth, is also impolite. . . . The face should express mirth in such a way that it neither distorts the appearance of the mouth nor evinces a dissolute mind. . . . If something so funny should occur that it produces uncontrolled laughter of this sort, the face should be covered with a napkin or with the hand. (275-76) Like other humanists, Erasmus was confident that laughter was amenable to self-control. The ethical principle he propounds is that of the Aristotelian mean, avoiding excess of any kind. As Vives explains in De Anima et Vita (1538), laughing “can be controlled by habit and reason to prevent excessive outbursts. . . . Such are the convulsions of the ignorant, the peasants, children, and women, when they lose their selfcontrol as they are overcome by laughter of this kind” (58). Excessive laughter stigmatized one as either vulgar, infantile, or effeminate. The cult of manners did not merely offer elite and upwardly mobile circles an instrument of social distinction. It was shaped by the same imperative as was Joubert’s paean to laughter. The Neoplatonic celebration of the human quest for knowledge and the techniques of selfcontrol set out in the courtesy literature of the Renaissance were both fuelled by the emerging ideal of humankind as consisting of selfdetermined, disengaged subjects, preoccupied with forging a self in accordance with their aspirations. Identity was seen as a matter of achievement, not a given. Manuals of courtesy had of course existed since the twelfth century. But in the new wave of books, which had its apotheosis in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528), the main focus shifted from virtue to aesthetics - albeit aesthetic virtuosity impelled by an ethical impulse (Arditi 55). At stake was the desire to create a self in consonance with aesthetic norms - and thus aspire towards the sublime. This is visible in the precepts on laughter in courtesy books, which apart from presenting prescriptions about the aesthetics of laughing often <?page no="29"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 29 include an entire section on decorous mirth. While jesting as a form of mockery remains an important tool in the game of one-upmanship played by courtiers with each other, what was also advocated was the deployment of laughter as a means of easing social relations. As Stefano Guazzo in The Civile Conversation (1574) has one of his interlocutors point out, it is a sign of courtesy and wit “no lesse in jesting merily with others, then in taking jest patiently of others” (1.158-59). In the final section of his book, Guazzo gives a demonstration of his ideal of witty, mirthful conversation. He presents a banquet in which he describes a small, elegant circle of aristocrats and the playful banter they indulge in. As it happens, one of the jests bandied about in this polished society is the joke about the monkey that Joubert relates to his readers (2.166). <?page no="30"?> 30 Indira Ghose References Arditi, Jorge. A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995. . The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999. Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke. “Gracious Laughter: Marsilio Ficino’s Anthropology.” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 712-41. Bright, Timothy. A Treatise of Melancholie. 1586. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press, 1969. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. London: Temple Smith, 1978. Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry. Trans. Andrew Bongiorno. Binghampton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1984. Chartier, Roger, ed. Passions of the Renaissance. A History of Private Life. Vol. 3. Gen. eds. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1989. Cicero. On Obligations. Trans. P. G. Walsh. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Descartes, René. The Passions of the Souls. Trans. and annotated Stephen Voss. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1989. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Erasmus, Desiderius. De civilitate morum puerilium: On Good Manners for Boys. Trans. Brian Macgregor. Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 25. Ed. J. K. Sowards. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. 269-89. Galbraith, David. “Theories of comedy.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy. Ed. Alexander Leggatt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 3-17. Grant, Mary. The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable: The Greek Rhetoricians and Cicero. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature 21. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1924. Guazzo, Steeven. The Civile Conversation. Trans. George Pettie and Bartholomew Young. 1581-1586. The Tudor Translations 7. London: Constable and Co., 1925. Herrick, Marvin T. “The Theory of the Laughable in the Sixteenth Century.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 35.1 (1949): 1-16. Hoeniger, F. David. Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992. <?page no="31"?> The Paradoxes of Early Modern Laughter 31 Jonson, Ben. Timber, or Discoveries. The Works of Ben Jonson. Ed. C. H. Herford Percy and Evelyn Simpson. Vol. 8. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947. . Every Man in his Humour, in Five Plays. Ed. G. A. Wilkes. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Joubert, Laurent. Traite Du Ris Suivi D’un Dialogue Sur La Cacographie Franc aise (1579). Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973. . Treatise on Laughter. Trans. and annotated by Gregory David de Rocher. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1980. Machline, Vera Cecilia. “The Contribution of Laurent Joubert’s Traité du Ris to Sixteenth-Century Physiology of Laughter.” Reading the Book of Nature: the other side of the Scientific Revolution. Ed. Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton. Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Publishers, 1998. 251-264. Plato. Philebus. Trans. Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975. Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Screech, M. A. and Ruth Calder. “Some Renaissance Attitudes to Laughter.” Humanism in France at the end of the Middle Ages and in the early Renaissance. Ed. A. H. T. Levi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970. 216-228. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. 2nd edition. New York: Norton, 2008. Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy. Rev. ed. R. W. Maslen. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Skinner, Quentin. “Hobbes and the classical theory of laughter.” Visions of Politics. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 3.142-76. Tave, Stuart M. The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Vives, Juan Luis. The Passions of the Soul. The Third Book of De Anima et Vita. Trans. Carlos G. Norena. Studies in Renaissance Literature 4. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Wilson, Thomas. The Art of Rhetoric (1560). Ed. Peter E. Medine. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. <?page no="33"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors: Lucas Waghenaer and the Poetics of Navigation Tamsin Badcoe Early modern books about navigation are often difficult to navigate. As the paratexts of the English edition of Lucas Waghenaer’s The Mariners Mirrour (1588) suggest, a reader is likely to be confounded by the troubling experiential gap that exists between a printed account and an encounter with the sea itself. In The Mariners Mirrour, both Waghenaer and Anthony Ashley, the English translator, use prefaces and dedicatory letters to conceptually prepare and orientate their audience. They posit the need for an active reader who is self-consciously engaged in the process of making knowledge and who is receptive to the figurative way that space is represented in their work. In addition, a poem attributed to Janus Dousa (Johann van der Does), printed alongside the prose prefaces of The Mariners Mirrour, places figurative expression at the heart of knowledge making practices, illuminating the ways in which early modern arts of navigation often relied on the interaction of techne and poiesis. A reader of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales will be familiar with the figure of the shipman described in the poem’s general prologue. A professional traveller, more at home at sea than on the pilgrim’s path between Southwark and Canterbury, he brings with him a sense of place that extends far beyond the immediate location of the poem. Described as originally “wonynge fer by weste,” his occidental place of habitation briefly invites the reader to contemplate the peripheries of the island on which the poem is set, and what might lie beyond it. There is something unsettling about his presence on dry land, which carries with it the suggestion of piracy and the death that comes by drowning; as the narrator hints, those who lose a fight against him are sent home “by water [ . . .] Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 33-47. <?page no="34"?> 34 Tamsin Badcoe to every lond” (The Canterbury Tales 401). As a final resting place, the sea holds a network of spaces in suspension, in which every road leads home. As Charles A. Owen comments, there is an “epic quality” to Chaucer’s portrait, which is not “so much critical of the Shipman as imitative of his world” (71). An image thus emerges of a man of no “nyce conscience” who has lived a life exposed to the elements, ungoverned by the petty transactions of merchants. In the words of Dan Brayton, author of Shakespeare’s Ocean, the shipman’s life appears to be governed by “contingency, risk, and the knowledge shared by an international cabal of mariners bound by their intellectual mastery of the forces that made ships sink or swim” (90). However, the image is more suggestive of isolation than of collaboration; the shipman is characterised as a solitary individual whose remarkable personal skill is his only redeeming feature. As the narrator explains: But of his craft to rekene wel his tydes, His stremes, and his daungers him bisides, His herberwe, and his moone, his lodemenage. Ther nas noon swich from Hulle to Cartage. Hardy he was an wys to undertake; With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake. He knew alle the havenes, as they were, Fro Gootland to the cape of Fynystere, And every cryke in Britaigne and in Spayne. (401-409) The shipman’s knowledge is repeatedly categorised by his possession of it, as if it is a selfish kind of knowing born of rare personal experience and labour. The poet writes only of “his craft [. . .], his tydes,” and of course, “his daungers,” as if these are things that are not to be shared. The detail of the shipman’s world may be narrated without irony, but the emphatic quality of the way in which it is possessed makes it sound like private property. In recent years, literary navigations of the waters of the deep have become an increasingly freighted area of interest for critics of medieval and early modern literature. In particular, there has been a movement in scholarship to think about the poetics of the sea, and the way that figurative language both shapes, and is shaped by, contact with salt water. As Steve Mentz observes in At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean: “when the ocean appears, even in metaphor, it wrenches us out of our landbased perspectives” (3). For readers in the sixteenth century in particular, these “land-based perspectives” were countered by multiple innovations, in both imaginative literature, and in practical treatments of subjects such as pilotage, chart making and ocean-going travel (see Waters). <?page no="35"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 35 For literary and cultural critics such as Mentz and Brayton, the plays of William Shakespeare have become one particularly rich place to investigate how sixteenth-century writing negotiates the conceptual and imaginative pursuits of an increasingly maritime culture. Of great allure, for example, is Shakespeare’s fascination with the murky depths of the sea floor, a place where no human gaze can penetrate, and where acts of “fathoming” and “sounding” engage not only with the technical language of seafaring but also with the conceptual limits of human knowledge and understanding (Mentz 1-18 and Brayton 68). During the late sixteenth century, advocates of the advancement of navigational science described their subject as the object of study most “necessary for al men” (Cuningham P2v). In order to explore the processes which gave rise to the particular kind of literary and imaginative engagement described above, this essay considers the way in which aids for navigation and pilotage, focusing on the English edition of Lucas Waghenaer’s The Mariners Mirrour, are already shaped by a figurative way of thinking. As Rayna Kalas has observed, for example, early modern authors were highly sensitive to “the material craft of figurative language,” and often recognised “poesy [. . .] as techne rather than aesthetics, and figurative language as framed or tempered matter, rather than verbalized concepts” (Kalas xi, 21). As we shall see, books about navigation, due to their innovative content, constantly meditate on the difficulties of communication and representation. These texts ask their readers to imagine that which cannot be seen, or grasped, in simultaneity, and to conceive of processes which, to ensure the survival of their users, have to remain fluid. In several cases, poetry is directly deployed as a teaching aid, where the reader is required to consider how language can shape their experience of the material world, and how it can catch “in concrete terms the feel of the sailor’s struggle with the elements” (Owen 70). Acts of making, or poiesis, communicate to the reader the need to negotiate perceptual processes and the problems of contingency, fathoming the act of translation that must occur when theory is applied to the problems of lived experience. Along with poetry, figurative prose works to frame and fashion textual spaces which give shape both to the sea and to the conceptual processes needed to navigate it. The sea is a difficult kind of space to place within a reader’s grasp and perhaps because of this, texts about navigational theory often have strange geographies. They take the reader into spheres of knowledge made by men whose homelands have untried coasts and whose native skies are populated with unfamiliar constellations. Their translators and editors are conscious that they need to orientate their readers so that their ways of looking though subsequent pages are alert to mobility; not all can be mastered from the comfort of the study. For navigational <?page no="36"?> 36 Tamsin Badcoe theoreticians such as William Barlowe, for example, a clergyman with a passion for mathematics and seafaring instruments, even the most elegant abstractions tended to retain the memory of their material and experiential origin. In his preface to The Navigators Supply, for instance, Barlowe confesses that he “abhorred the sea,” due to the “antipathie” of his “body against [. . .] so barbarous an Element,” but that, once freed from the bodily discomfort of actual seafaring, or “the outward toile of the hand,” he remained tied to the intellectual pursuit of the navigational arts (A4v). Reflecting on the possible applications for mathematics on board a ship, he explains that it is “in the minde onely” that “pure and true Arte, refined from the drosse of sensible or experimentall knowledge, is to be found” (A4v). The language he uses to figure this desirable process suggests how sensible, tactile experience of the drossy, extraneous, content of the material world, can be “refined” or tempered by the promise of containment within new mathematical forms, a skill that suggests the practical rather than the aesthetic qualities of “arte.” By balancing deliberate intimations of his own physical discomfort and frailty with the active promotion of his “heartie affection” for navigational studies, Barlowe constructs an authoritative space “beyond the bounds” of his profession as a preacher (A4v, B1v). As a result, the memory of the “drosse” involved in a sea voyage is allowed to exceed its limits and to remain as a shaping influence, even within the work of a self-professed landlubber. As Barlowe seems to suggest, the full weight of the terraqueous world cannot completely be contained by abstraction and is thus left exposed like jetsam, something to be ignored at one’s peril; his withdrawal from the water is ultimately a sign of respect. After all, the audience he imagines is not comprised of other scholars in their studies but men who after “dangerous and dolefull experience,” have been betrayed by the “treacherie” or variation of the sailing compass, and who still “forsake the maine land, betaking themselves to the wide Ocean Sea” (A2v). As Barlowe’s concerns demonstrate, the author of a navigational text was required to respond to the challenge of negotiating the relationship between theory and experience. For many authors, this negotiation takes place in the preface and other paratexts, wherein an author could lay out the terms on which his book should be read. As Helen Smith and Louise Wilson explain in their introduction to Renaissance Paratexts, the paratextual elements present in printed texts “shape our approach to the books we are reading. They also work upon our imagination” and provide “a way of approaching the world which is structured by the physical forms in which it is described” (7). Building on the work of Gérard Genette, who defined the paratext as “a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy” (2), <?page no="37"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 37 their collaboration explores the multiplicity of ways in which early modern authors and printers reached out to their reading public through the manipulation of printed structures and forms. Translators such as Robert Norman, for example, used paratextual poetry to work through the nature of a seaman’s labour, catching in words the necessary interactions of skill, experience, character, and technical craft. In the poem which accompanies his translation of Cornelis Antoniszoon’s The Safegard of Sailers (B3v-B4r), Norman praises the seaman’s endurance and, echoing Chaucer’s portrait of the shipman, articulates an isolated sea-bound subject: Whoso on surging seas, his season will consume, And meanes thereof to make, his onlie trade to live, That man must surelie knowe, the shifting sunne and moone, For trying of his tides, how they doo take and give. (1-4) As a poet, however, Norman’s skills are noticeably meagre and the vocabulary of early modern navigation feels uncontained by his chosen stanzaic form. For example, the names of measuring instruments are forced into unremitting alexandrines, an effect best demonstrated by the sixth and seventh stanzas, which describe the seaman’s methods of fixing his location following a tempest: Thus when he all the night, with wearie toile hath tride, And sees the swelling seas, hath set him from his waie: Then when a little slatch of caulme he hath espied, With ioiful hart to take the height he doth assaie. His Astrolabie then he seeketh for the sonne, Or Crossestaffe for the starre, called the Ballastell: And thus with helpe of them, and declination, How land doth beare of him, he knows within a while. (21-28) Despite the slightly forced rhythm, these stanzas offer a rich image of reorientation in the midst of the “swelling seas.” Weak half-rhymes and impossibly stretched words aside, the poem successfully conveys an impression of ceaseless forward movement. In the final stanza, Norman moves the focus away from the mariners of his own age in order to indulge in a brief moment of praise for the pioneers of navigational theory, recalling those of Ovid’s Metamorphoses who “scarce knew the winds” and rode “in arrogance on waves unknown” (I.134, 136). There is perhaps also a moment of modest self- <?page no="38"?> 38 Tamsin Badcoe congratulation, for Norman himself joins the ranks of innovators and instructors, by association: If pilots painefull toile, be lifted then aloft, For using of his arte according to his kind: What fame is due to them, that first this arte out sought, And first instructions gaue, to them that were but blind. (33-36) Norman suggests that to travel without art is to travel blind. To be able to visualise the interactions between the sea, the ship, the winds, and the contours of the coast, is to have mastery over them. In the letter to his patron Charles Howard, Norman suggests that his readers will encounter such marvellous matters in his book “as it were in a mirror.” Here, the reader will discover “matter rather miraculous to wonder at, than to be thought compassable within the reach of humane braine, or liable to the capacitie of a fraile seelie worldling” (B3v-B4r). As Mentz notes, “Norman applauds not so much God’s mysteries as the emerging sciences of hydrography and navigation, which makes the sea legible” (4), thus begging the question as to what making the sea legible might actually involve. In imitation of the mariner’s use of the magnetic compass to measure their position relative to the magnetic meridian, or a pair of geometric compasses to measure distance, Norman borrows the language of capacity and orientation to push at the limits of what his audience might find “compassable.” The author’s figurative allusions to the mirror and the compass, both objects whose use augments human perception, demonstrate the powerful cognitive links made by the early modern imagination between “technology and representation” (Brayton 81). Rayna Kalas, for example, has argued that the “figures of framing” and “images of glass” that are so prevalent in Renaissance poetic imagery indicate how poiesis itself could be viewed as “a material practice and a technical craft” (ix). In order to pursue further this question of the role of figurative language in the art of navigation, the rest of this essay focuses on some of the paratexts from the English translation of Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer’s The Mariners Mirrour. Waghenaer’s book was originally printed in Leiden in 1584 by Christophe Plantin as the Spieghel der Zeevaerdt and the English edition appeared in 1588, an important year in English maritime history because of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. It is generally regarded as the first work of its kind owing to the way in which it presents both sailing directions and lavish coastal charts, which had previously existed as separate hydrographic practices. The title of the work immediately places the text in a tradition of exemplary writing, in which metaphorical reliance on a mirror image or perspective glass is used to <?page no="39"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 39 fashion a “compressed but comprehensive presentation of a larger reality” (Grabes 43). Indeed, the way in which the English, or “Englished” paratexts create a dialogue involving the translator, author, and imagined reader, suggests that the work constantly and consciously stimulates the reader to consider the ways in which Waghenaer’s work is framed. Dedicatory epistles and letters to readers are accompanied, for example, by a Latin panegyric attributed to the Dutch humanist Janus Dousa (Johan van der Does), which incorporates a variety of classical references to the sea. When read together, the paratexts reflect on the kind of unique cognitive practices required for the transmission and exchange of navigational theory and information. As a group, they provide a range of social contexts for the exchange of ideas in a dialogue that is performed across literal, generic, and linguistic borders. From the very first page of the work, problems concerning language and representation are brought to the foreground. In the dedicatory letter addressed to Sir Christopher Hatton which introduces the English edition of the work, Anthony Ashley, the English translator, apologises for his “slack performance” and “speedie translation,” confessing that he “no sooner vnder-took this woork then mistook it, not considering what perfect knowledge, proper termes and peculier phrases are necessarie and inseperablie incident to the true interpretation of any Mechanicall science, much more to this notable art of Hidrographie” (¶1r). 1 Drawing attention to the specialist vocabulary associated with seafaring, he recalls his need to collaborate with other translators in order to fill in his own linguistic blanks; after all, “perfect knowledge” of the sea comes with its own language. Indeed, the problems of translation are familiar from earlier pilot books. At the beginning of his translation of Pierre Garcie’s The Rutter of the Sea, for example, Robert Copland addresses something that appears to be an enduring problem: Me thought veray diffycyle to me, not knowynge the termes of mariners, and names of the coostes and hauens, for I came neuer on the see, nor by no coste therof. But folowyng my copye by the aduyse, and ouersyght of certayne connyng men of that scyence whiche bolded, and informed me in many doubtes, I did vntertake in doing my diligence: as a blind horse in a myl turnyng the querne ygnorauntly, saue by conductynge of the mylner that setteth hym on worke. (A3v) A translator who describes himself as a blind workhorse might not fill the reader with confidence, but it is perhaps the translator’s back-tobasics approach that facilitates the reader’s engagement. As both Cop- 1 The signature mark of the first gathering of The Mariners Mirrour is a ¶, or pilcrow. <?page no="40"?> 40 Tamsin Badcoe land’s and Ashley’s apologies suggest, in books such as these, verbal craft often goes hand in hand with technical craft, and language itself is thought of as an instrument, along with the compass and the sea card. Although less worried about his written expression, the Dutch author of The Mariners Mirrour still has to deal with problems of legibility. Waghenaer, whose original prefaces appear in translation in the English edition, repeatedly asks the reader to question the nature of the representations his atlas contains, demanding that his reader holds in constant suspension a mental translation that can constantly move between the literal and figurative. In an attempt to get his readers to question what they do when they look at a sea map, he points out something fairly obvious, though perhaps easily forgotten: “Freendly Reader,” he writes, “for as much as all skilfull and experienced in the art of Nauigation, do well know, that certain of the sandy coastes and shoares [. . .] are moueable, and haue not alwaies their being in one self place, as in these Tables or Chartes” (¶2r). His charts are simultaneously faithfully set down and fundamentally untruthful, a distinction that the author makes not on the basis of the legitimacy of his measurements and observations but on the basis of the technology he is using to share this information with his readers. Noting how several landmasses are known to shift under the eye of different pilots due to their surrounding currents and sandy shores, he draws attention to the spatial impossibilities and cognitive breaches that occur when the pages of a book are required to compass the seas of Europe and beyond: First; that by these examples, thou mightest vnderstand, that vpon the like causes, the like chaunges may happen: next that the vnskillfull and especially the enuious backbiter and carper, may haue no matter to cauill, nor occasion to carp, seeing that things to come, and vncertaine, can by no meanes possible, bee perfectly described. (¶2r) With no hope of attaining the impossible ideal of “perfect description,” Waghenaer defends himself against the “backbiter and carper,” whose destructive words are capable of unravelling his delicate process. As Ulrich Kinzel observes, it for reasons such as these that “navigation cannot be regarded as an episteme, knowledge aiming at unchangeable objects of the representational mode of being,” and “rather has to be seen as techne, knowledge that relates to changing objects or the operative mode of formation” (30). To make the ocean legible, one must first address the problem that “writing the ocean can only claim a virtual reality” (Kinzel 29). This is, of course, a feature of imitative writing more generally; sea water only makes the issue more immediately apparent <?page no="41"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 41 because of what Mentz calls “the basic challenge the ocean always poses: to know an ungraspable thing” (ix). As Bernhard Klein has recently observed in an article exploring the shared spatialities of early modern navigational literature and the sixteenth-century Portuguese epic The Lusiads, the “large map representing the sea” described in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark is perhaps “the only true sea chart ever printed” (239). Famously, as Klein recounts, Carroll’s fictional sea captain provides his crew with “a perfect and absolute blank” (239). Although Waghenaer does not resort to such extremes himself, his translator Anthony Ashley actually draws attention to the way that the newly engraved charts in the English edition of The Mariners Mirrour have had the sea “purposfuly left in blanc” so that each individual owner of the book can “correct the same with his owne hand, as it shall best like himselfe” (¶1r). As an impromptu theorist of maritime cartography, Ashley’s work demonstrates something that Elizabeth Spiller has revealed to be an intrinsic feature of early modern knowledge making practices, which emphasise the role and agency of the reader, and where “knowledge cannot be simply given to readers” but is instead “produced by them” (Spiller 3). The provisional aspects of Waghenaer’s charts are rewritten as strengths and actively invite the reader to participate in the exploration of the territories they represent. These charts invite collaboration and exchange, even if the users never meet in person. Furthermore, in a short section of The Mariners Mirrour printed under the heading “Of the Use and Practise of this Booke,” the reader is once again asked to collaborate in the author’s endeavour to grasp the ungraspable: And let it not seeme straunge to any if peradventure some of the sea coastes, havens, countries, etc., appeare not so fully and plainely, and shewe themselves as indeed they are, and as they are pourtraied in our severall Chartes [. . .]: perhaps many errors wilbe found in this booke, which a painfull and diligent Pilot will easely amend, seing as it is farre easier to correct that which is already invented, then to frame a new. (A1r) Here, the author reflects on the value of his endeavour, concluding not only with the admission of error but with the sense that it is only through further trial that his atlas of the sea can be augmented and amended. His refusal to commit to the creation of a treatise in which the coasts of Europe “shewe themselves as indeed they are” demonstrates an acute awareness of how his charts function in a performative mode (see Andrews 18). He offers a “frame,” rather than unmediated content, and as Brayton notes, there is something inherently performa- <?page no="42"?> 42 Tamsin Badcoe tive even about the composition of the work’s lavish title page, which “suggests the metaphor of the sea as a stage, with mariners as actors in a naumachia, or nautical drama, and a group of cartographers assembled around a blank globe as playwrights of a sort” (2). The part of the image to which Brayton refers could be a blank globe but it is more likely to be a mirror, where the speculative elision between global map and perspective glass echoes the introductory and highly figurative prose of Mercator’s Historia Mundi, which theorises its own cartographical project in very similar terms: It presenteth to our Sight the whole Globe of the Earth as it were in a Mirrour or Looking glasse and doth show the beautie and ornaments of the whole Fabricke of the world, and containeth all things within her ample and spacious bosom, and like the vaste Sea, it does not only open and lay forth the hidden and remote Islands, but also all other Countries. (A3v) Seductively, the task of Mercator’s “looking glasse” is to act strangely like “the vaste Sea,” imagined perhaps at the turning of the tide. Its action is to expose, or to “open and lay forth.” Yet, this is an inverted, flattened, world; the trope of the mutable mirror, as both surface and frame, is itself notorious for its protean ability to distort, refract, and transform. The mirror reflects back an image, “only so long as mirror and original are juxtaposed” (Grabes 113). To look at the title page of Waghenaer’s sea atlas is to face ambiguity; the mirror is an object in which the mariner sees himself, or at least the ideal qualities that he is supposed to possess, and a frame though which the reader is supposed to behold the mutable coasts of Europe, and a sea made as transparent to the viewer as tempered glass. As Jeffrey N. Peters has remarked, “maps succeed not only because they are science, but also because they are metaphors” (35), which begs the question what a map might be a metaphor for. Waghenaer’s charts speak of motion, discovery, and measurement, and as the prefaces indicate, a reader must be aware of how their rhetoric and figuration operates. The work of The Mariners Mirrour itself thus takes on a kind of epic quality that finds full expression in the Latin panegyric attributed to Dousa, which appears in the English edition with a facing page translation. The Dutch edition contains substantially more poetry, including a poem by the Leiden author Jan van Hout, but this does not appear in Ashley’s translation (see Koeman 43-47) and the single poem which is present bears only a passing resemblance to the earlier panegyrics on which it was modelled. It therefore offers yet another reframing of Waghenaer’s endeavour, casting the author’s travails both alongside and in opposition to the epic voyage of the Argonauts. The poet makes it <?page no="43"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 43 clear that The Mariners Mirrour is a work proudly produced in Northern Europe, distinct from the efforts of the Spanish and Portuguese: [. . .] Ile none of your Argos adventurs Western discoverers: tis enough for mee t’have a corner In this swift caravel to behold these Tables in order: And learne how Northern Nereus hath spread many braunches. (lines 34-37) In addition to the worldliness of its northern orientation, which proposes in its final line to direct the reader to places where “no star, nor lead, hath led any Spaignard” (41), the poem also conveys an idealised sense of Waghenaer’s project. The poem speaks of surfaces, where the reader will behold the ocean regions as if in a glass, and also of depths. The penetrating alien presence of the author’s gaze has astonished the sea-calves and other, more mythical, creatures of the deep. The knowledge offered by the work provides entrance to “the secreat closet of Seagoddeses” (22) and access to “th’hidden secreats of th’old Lady Tethis” (30). Its praise of the author is great indeed: Now Mariners henceforth at Sea may ye live very carelesse, For that a saulfe journey cleered from dangerous extreames, Is for ye prepared. For now may ye into good harbour Hale, even at pleasure. Now doth the forme o the mayn-deepe, And all shoalds proffer themselves to be cleerly beholden. All this prayse is dew to thy will, to thy paines, to thy charges, Ingenious Wagener, which hast so worthily guyded, That Wagon on Mayn-sea which winds cause flie to the compasse: As if upon thy both hands and knees with curious insight Strongly thy selfe hadst crept and search out th’Ocean althrough. Moreover unlesse that peradventure a Searcher of East-seas, Or Northern passage, should want any thing that he searcheth: Thou shewest each Region farr of, what sort it ariseth. Nor Venus in Mirrour could view her selfe any cleerer, Then Tethys in this Glasse may well discerne her apeeraunce. (6-20) Produced in the wake of experiments at sea, the poem is characterised by a vocabulary of elevations, breadths, and depths or soundings, of impossible and fantastic spatial and conceptual mastery. The “mayndeepe” is given “forme,” fashioned into something transparent in which its riches can be “cleerly beholden.” The translator of the poem even allows himself to indulge in making a pun on Waghenaer’s name, where the imagined ship guided by the author is refashioned as a “Wagon,” <?page no="44"?> 44 Tamsin Badcoe implicitly finding sea roads to traverse. Even Venus, who is often depicted as rising fully formed from the sea, and with a mirror in her hand, is outdone by the author’s performance. If, as Mentz has implied, there is a difference between sea-based, and land-based ways of knowing, the poem conflates the two, imagining a solid bottom to the ocean’s murky depths which can support the crawling, yet undaunted body of the author. Waghenaer, breathing miraculously among the fishes, suffers only the discomfort caused by his labours, not the inhuman transgression of elements. His imagined body is contorted in order to make maximum contact with the sea floor; fathoming his subject, his hands and knees are loaded with the same intent as the expected lead and line. What is usually only perceived using instrumental means is here passed through Waghenaer’s imaginary fingers, his “curious insight” allowing him both visual and tactile experience of an untouchable space. The sea made by the poem is both the sea of empirical encounter and that of myth and cultural fantasy. To borrow again from Gérard Genette, this poem-as-paratext acts as a very particular kind of threshold, “an airlock that helps the reader pass without too much respiratory difficulty from one world to the other” (408). In The Mariners Mirrour, the poem functions as a conceptual airlock in a very immediate sense, establishing a sea road between the study of a humanist scholar and a newly fathomable ocean; simultaneous land-based and sea-based perspectives are thus made possible. The sea of the poem is not a bottomless depth but a place of transparent exchange that appears illuminated from within. It is perhaps no coincidence that Waghenaer’s instructions concerning how to copy a sea chart in the section entitled “How to Draw and Use a True and Perfect Sea Carde” specify the use of a “table of glass,” lit from behind in order to render the inscribed surfaces translucent (A4r). However, to return to dry land, what the poem imagines is, of course, an impossible ideal. The impossible image of Waghenaer crawling along the sea floor actually dangerously obscures the single most vital piece of information both he and Ashley otherwise seek to emphasise. No mariner can ever “live very carelesse” as long as the sea and coast behave in the changeable way that is natural to them. The poem may encourage the reader to dream, to fantasise about the possession of an oceanic epistemology, and to share in the ambition of Waghenaer’s project, but it will not help them survive at sea. It offers a different mode of knowing and understanding, in opposition to the rhetoric of the cautious prose prefaces which situate navigation as a field of knowledge that fully belongs to the technai, the knowledge arts categorised by “their ability to manipulate the world, exercising some control over forces that otherwise might lead to our ruin” (Stern 50). What the poem <?page no="45"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 45 provides instead is an interrogation of the process of making knowledge, and the formation of a deliberate course of action which allows the author and translator to construct and privilege an active reader, who must “exerciseth, searcheth out and observeth” for himself (Waghenaer A2r). The many perspectival frames produced by The Mariners Mirrour sound the limits of the printed book as a piece of navigational technology and produce the reader as the site where knowledge is finally made. The matter found at the bottom of the ocean, both metaphorically and substantially, is perhaps that which makes the mirror for the mariner; but the subject is as difficult to bind as Proteus himself. 2 2 I’d like to thank all those who took part in the International Shakespeare Association seminar, “Multitudinous Seas: The Ocean in the Age of Shakespeare,” held in Prague in 2011, particularly the organisers of the seminar, Steve Mentz and Bernhard Klein. <?page no="46"?> 46 Tamsin Badcoe References Primary Sources Antoniszoon, Cornelis. The Safegard of Sailers. Trans. Robert Norman. London: John Windet and Thomas Judson for Richard Ballard, 1584. Barlowe, William. The Navigators Supply. London: G. Bishop, R. Newbery and R. Barker, 1597. Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales in The Riverside Chaucer. General ed. Larry D. Benson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Cuningham, William, The Cosmographical Glasse. London: John Day, 1559. Garcie, Pierre. The Rutter of the Sea. Trans. Robert Copland. London: T. Colwell, 1560. Mercator, Gerhard. Historia Mundi. London: T. Cotes, Michael Sparke and Samuel Cartwright, 1635. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Waghenaer, Lucas Janszoon. The Mariners Mirrour. Trans. Anthony Ashley. London: John Charlewood, 1588. Secondary Criticism Andrews, J. H. “Introduction.” In J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 1-32. Brayton, Dan. Shakespeare’s Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Edwards, Philip. Sea-Mark: The Metaphorical Voyage, Spenser to Milton. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997 Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Grabes, Herbert. The Mutable Glass: Mirror-imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and the English Renaissance. Trans. Gordon Collier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Kalas, Rayna. Frame, Glass, Verse: The Technology of Poetic Invention in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. Kinzel, Ulrich. “Orientation as a Paradigm of Maritime Modernity.” Fictions of the Sea. Ed. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Klein, Bernhard. “Mapping the Waters: Sea Charts, Navigation, and Camoes’s Os Lusiadas.” Renaissance Studies 25: 2 (2011): 228-247. Koeman, Cornelis. The History of Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer and his Spieghel der Zeevaerdt. Lausanne: Sequoia, 1964. <?page no="47"?> Mariners, Maps, and Metaphors 47 Mentz, Steve. At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean. London: Continuum, 2009. Owen, Charles A. Pilgrimage and Storytelling in the Canterbury Tales. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Smith, Helen, and Louise Wilson. “Introduction.” Renaissance Paratexts. Ed. Helen Smith and Louise Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 1-14. Spiller, Elizabeth. Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature: The Art of Making Knowledge, 1580-1670. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; repr. 2005. Stern, Paul. Knowledge and Politics in Plato’s Theaetetus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Waters, David W. The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times. London: Hollis and Carter, 1958. <?page no="49"?> Between Astronomy and Astrology: Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” and the Measurement of Time in Late-Medieval England Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe is analysed from the point of view of the language of scientific writing and of the very young age of the addressee. Chaucer is argued to have used a sort of language that strives for the rigour of scientific discourse while still being aimed at a young pupil who does not know Latin and is evidently at the beginning of his school training. Moreover, the fact that the schoolboy is introduced as the writer’s son gives the language a particularly intimate tone; the father takes pains to make his explanations clear, and attempts to arouse the child’s interest in a difficult subject. Another work also probably addressed to a young student, Richard Billingham’s Speculum puerorum is compared to Chaucer’s treatise with respect to tone and choice of subject. I argue that, in spite of the many differences between the two works, Billingham’s logical treatise may have aroused Chaucer’s interest and provided a model for his own work; there are some similarities between the carefully clear propositions which characterise both texts and which appear to be the result of both authors’ concern for a pedagogical approach to scientific subjects, where equally difficult problems have to be explained to young students and their complexities made understandable and interesting to small children. In Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale magic mainly serves the purpose of emphasising the idea of change - a leit-motiv in Chaucer’s poetic production - in order to give it literary form. The four objects the ambassador from “the Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 49-66. <?page no="50"?> 50 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi king of Arabe and of Inde” (l. 110) offers King Cambyuskan as a birthday present, the brass horse, the mirror, the ring, and the sword, all seem to give the king some sort of power over the natural world, and this is also, I think, what relates the first part of this fragmentary tale to the second with the story of Canacee and the falcon, where the magic ring allows the hawk to win back the tercelet’s love, thus transforming an unfaithful lover into a faithful one. But it is the brass horse, the most impressive of the gifts because of its aspect and the extraordinary powers it is apparently endowed with, that is interesting for our purpose: This steede of bras, that esily and weel Kan in the space of o day natureel- This is to seyn, in foure and twenty houres- Wher-so yow lyst, in droghte or elles shoures, Beren youre body into every place To which youre herte wilneth for to pace, Withouten wem of yow, thurgh foul or fair; Or, if yow lyst to fleen as hye in the air As dooth an egle whan hym list to soore, This same steede shal bere yow evere more, Withouten harm, til ye be ther yow leste, Though that ye slepen on his bak or reste , And turne ayeyn with writhyng of a pyn. He that it wroghte koude ful may a gyn. He wayted many a constellacion Er he had doon this operacion, And knew ful many a seel and many a bond. (The Squire’s Tale 115-131) [italics mine] Magic horses - from Pegasus onwards - are well-known in literature, but this one, connected as it is to the manipulation of space and time, seems to be something more than a complex mechanical toy for the king to amuse himself with. It has been suggested (Osborn 34) that the way it is described, besides recalling ancient stories about flying horses, can also allude to the main instrument that during the fourteenth century allowed people to calculate the hours of the day, the days of the week and the sequence of the months in the year and to position the sun in the “houses” of the individual planets, thus providing further astrological information. This instrument - the brass astrolabe - was capable of accounting for and measuring perhaps the most important kind of change occurring in nature, that is, the passing of time. It was first used in ancient Greece (its name means “star catcher” or “star holder”) and became more and more accurate and complex thanks to the work of Arabic astronomers. In Western Europe it soon established <?page no="51"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 51 itself as the main and most versatile instrument for the measurement of time. An astrolabe was a planispheric projection of the celestial sphere, an imaginary sphere the centre of which was made to coincide with the earth’s centre. It consisted of a circular plate (usually in brass) called the “mother,” with a diameter of about seven inches. The back side was flat and each quadrant of the circle was divided into ninety degrees in order to allow the measurement of the altitude of celestial bodies. Inside the rim there were the twelve signs of the zodiac, each divided into thirty degrees. The days of the year were represented in the two circles inside the first, while the next three bore, respectively, the names of the months, the number of days in each of them, and the smaller divisions that represented each day. The two innermost rings indicated the saints’ days and their Sunday letters, that is the letter upon which the first Sunday of the year fell. The scales of umbra recta and umbra versa, each divided into twelve equal parts, were designed to calculate the length of the shadow of an object (Skeat xxxiv) (see Figure 1). In the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale this method is clearly indicated: Oure Hooste saugh wel that the brighte sonne The ark of his artificial day hath ronne The ferthe part, and half an houre and moore, And though he were nat depe ystert in loore, He wiste it was the eightetethe day Of Aprill, that is messager to May; And saugh wel that the shadwe of every tree Was as in lenghte the same quantitee That was the body erect that causeth it. And therfore by the shadwe he took his wit That Phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte, Degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte. (1-12). The front side of the astrolabe had a rim with three circles, namely the circle of letters (from A to Z) representing the twenty-four hours of the day, the Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn and the line of the Equinoxes (which Chaucer calls the Aequinoctialis). A number of circular plates could be superimposed on the “mother.” The most important was called the rete (net) and was essentially a star-map (see Figure 2). Other circular plates called climates indicated the various latitudes (see Figure 3). The stars could be seen through holes in a pair of vanes placed on a straight rule (see Figure 4). A pin was made to slide through the centres of all the plates to hold them together and was secured by a <?page no="52"?> 52 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi <?page no="53"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 53 <?page no="54"?> 54 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi <?page no="55"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 55 <?page no="56"?> 56 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi wedge the head of which was often in the form of a horse’s head and was therefore called “the horse” (Skeat xxxv) (see Figure 5). If we now go back to the brass horse King Cambyuskan was given as a birthday present, we can see how it can metaphorically represent an astrolabe. In the words of Marijane Osborn, “The evidence mounts for a carefully contrived three-way correspondence between the steed of brass, the horse-shaped wedge of the astrolabe, and the position of the Sun on the king’s birthday. . .” (Osborne 52). Moreover, the expression “day naturel” is exactly the term Chaucer uses in his Treatise. It indicates the division of the day in twenty-four hours of equal length, a way of measuring time that was becoming more and more important with respect to the older way, called of “unequal hours.” The magic horse can take the king anywhere without harm in good as well as in bad weather and it will “turn again with the writhing of a pyn” (l.127); moreover, the craftsman who built it has observed “many a constellacion” and perused a lot of documents, that is, examined many charts. In presenting the king with a magic horse, the ambassador of the “king of Arabe and Inde” is giving him some sort of hegemony over time and indirectly over space, as well, thus allowing him a kind of control similar to the one that could be acquired by means of an astrolabe, where the measurement of time was performed by calculating distances on the projection of the celestial sphere. Between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, astrolabes were slowly replacing other instruments of measurement of time, such as sand glasses or water clocks, sun-dials, or even church bells. With the passion for fanciful etymologies the Middle Ages always show, John of Garland says that “Campane dicuntur a rusticis qui habitant in campo, qui nesciant judicare horas nisi per campanas” (Le Goff 123). 1 The need for a more sophisticated kind of time measurement was essentially due to two elements: one that I shall call “practical” - but which had also important general implications - and a purely theoretical one that concerned the nature of time and the meaning that could be given to the term “measurement.” The transformation of medieval society from an almost exclusively rural one, where agriculture was the main activity of labourers, to the rise of the new mercantile communities where craftsmanship and trade were predominant - the kind of society where time was (in the words of Jacques Le Goff) the merchant’s time, required a more and more precise notion of time, and one that could be valid across the countries where merchants went to sell their goods. The old system of “unequal hours” where the length of the hour varied over the 1 Campane-bells are so called by peasants who live in the fields - in campo - and cannot tell the time except by the bell toll (my translation). <?page no="57"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 57 course of the year and from one country to another was no longer adequate to suit the needs of the various new jobs. The astrolabe allowed - amongst other things - to pass from one system to the other and back in a relatively easy way. That the difference was clear in Chaucer’s mind can be found once more in The Squire’s Tale (line 64) where we read that describing the king’s rich array would be too long and take a “someres day,” hat is a period when days were longer, evidently calculated with the old method of “unequal hours.” The second element which made the astrolabe an important tool was theoretical and derived from the discovery of Aristotle’s libri naturales, and of the eight books of his Physics in particular. Aristotle’s definition of time as the measurement of the movement of the Primum mobile was accepted and repeated by many authors and soon taken as the standard notion of time, not, however without difficulties and ambiguities. The beginning of movement - that is, when change could be said to occur - and its end, when it ceased to exist, the possible division of continuum into parts, finite or infinite, etc., were problems heatedly debated in academic circles. In general, it can be said that during the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries the problem of the nature of time tended to become quantitative rather than qualitative. Enquiries concerned the way a phenomenon occurred rather than the reason for its occurrence, the “how” rather than the “why” in William J Courtenay’s words, and this made time once more an object of study for logicians and mathematicians (Courtenay xiii). Anyway, the subject was considered important enough to be thought appropriate for the instruction of a child of ten, who could reasonably be expected to be more interested in a hobby horse than in the horse as a synecdoche for the astrolabe. The dedication to “little Lewis” has often been considered little more than a narrative device, but the way the astrolabe is described and the language used to explain its workings show that - surprising as it may seem to us - the Treatise is really addressed to a young boy. In the very interesting Introduction the speaking voice explains that he has given the child a somewhat simplified version of an astrolabe and that it has been built on the latitude of Oxford. This means that either there was only one of the circular plates called “the climates” or that the Oxford latitude was engraved on the mother (the main body) of the instrument, thus greatly simplifying calculations. The pedagogical aim of the Treatise is further illustrated by the writer’s remarks on language: Lewis knows little Latin and therefore English is used. This is interesting in itself because, while the vernacular was by that time widely accepted in poetry or narrative, the language of science was definitely Latin - and Latin it would remain for a long time yet. But there is more: English is used not only to make <?page no="58"?> 58 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi a difficult subject understandable to a young child not proficient enough in Latin, but because it is equivalent to it: This tretis, divided in 5 parties, wol I shewe the under full light reules and naked wordes in Englissh, for Latyn canst thou yit but small, my litel sone. But natheless suffise to the these trewe conclusions in Englissh as wel as sufficit to these noble clerkes Grekes these same conclusions in Grek; and to Arabiens in Arabik, and to Jewes in Ebrew, and to Latyn folk in Latyn; which Latyn folk had them first out of othere diverse languages , and written them in her owne tunge, that is to seyn, in Latyn. And God woot that in alle these languages, and in many moo han these conclusions ben suffisantly lerned and taught, and yit by diverse reules; right as by diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome. (I,1) The same ideas can be expressed in the different languages according to their individual rules and they convey the same information; after all, you can reach Rome by following different routes. Moreover, the treatise was not originally written in Latin, but only translated into that language. It is interesting to note that here Latin - the well-known language of the authorities - is considered some sort of vernacular itself, a language one translates into as well as translating from. It is also probably the first mention of the Middle English vernacular as the king’s English (“lord of this langage” I 57), a remarkable statement in which power over language is considered as part of the political power. But even the use of the vernacular can be “curious,” that is, too elaborate; therefore the language of the treatise will be simple and plain, with some kind of repetition (. . .“me semith better to written unto a child twyes a god sentence, that he forgete it onys” ll 47-50), because a child is likely to forget what has been said and needs to be reminded. Of the promised five parts, only two have survived. The third part was to deal with the measurement of longitudes and latitudes. The fourth and fifth parts should have been devoted to the theory of Astronomy and Astrology, and it is a real pity we lack the relationship between the practical instructions for the use of the instrument and their theoretical bases. Of the parts that are extant the first deals with the description of the astrolabe and the second provides examples of the calculations that can be made by it. In both parts the language combines the kind of scientific discourse one is likely to find in a treatise on Astronomy with the acute consciousness of the extreme youth of the addressee. This pedagogical attitude is further emphasised by the special relationship between teacher and pupil, who is introduced as the writer’s son. The result is a language that shows the effort of keeping the level of the scientific explanation as <?page no="59"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 59 rigorous as possible, while at the same time trying to arouse the interest of a young student whose attitude to schoolwork and the range of whose knowledge the writer is familiar with. All the technical terms are carefully defined - which is, of course, to be expected in a scientific text - but here this feature is extended to words the meaning of which could be considered obvious: And tak kep, for from henes forthward I wol clepen the heighte of any thing that is taken by the rewle “the altitude,” withoute moo wordes. (I,1) A second feature is the constant effort to obtain the addressee’s attention; expressions such as “tak kep,” “understond well” or “rekene” tend to help him focus on important issues, while the insistence on the origin of words tries to make a complicated taxonomy less difficult to remember: “This same circle is clepid also the Equator, that is the weyer of the day” (I,17) or, perhaps: “Zodiac is clepid the circle of the signes, or the circle of the bestes, for zodiac in language of Grek sowneth ‘bestes’ in Latyn tunge.” (I, 21) But by far the most interesting linguistic feature from the point of view I am considering is the obsessive use of possessive adjectives. “Thyn astrolabe” is used throughout and is partly justified by the fact that “little Lewis” has a smaller astrolabe and the speaker has to refer to that particular instrument to tell the child what he wants him to learn. But in some cases this is not a sufficient justification. For example: Set the degree of thi sonne upon thin est orisonte, and ley thi label on the degree of the sonne, and that the point of thi label in the bordure set a pricke. Turne then thy riet aboute tyl the degree of thi sonne sitte upon the west orisonte, and ley thi label upon upon the same degree of the sonne, and at the poynt of thy label set another pricke. Reckne than the quantite of tyme on the bordure bitwixe bothe prickes, and tak there thyn arch of the day. (II, 7) [italics mine] This insistence appears to be a pedagogical device to establish some sort of contact between a very young boy and a complex instrument, to encourage the boy to “take possession,” so to speak, of the astrolabe, thus <?page no="60"?> 60 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi making him psychologically involved in a difficult subject, and thereby mitigating the impersonality and the distance that are typical of scientific discourse. Consistently with this point of view, sentences have generally a paratactic structure; subordinates are relatively rare and clarity and evidence are always sought. The result is a language that is essential, economic, and precise: words are carefully weighed and the speaker never seems to forget that - truly or fictitiously - he is a father trying to make the principles of Astronomy and Astrology attractive to his very young son. Thus, the usual features of scientific writing are even more evident in the writer’s attempt to find a balance between the conciseness of scientific discourse and the need to explain even relatively easy concepts at greater length because of the pupil’s age. But the difficulties of the subject-matter are never concealed and the technical terms are explained but not avoided, especially when a word commonly used in everyday language acquires a more restricted meaning when referred to a scientific phenomenon. An interesting example is offered by the word “conclusioun” which besides the usual meaning that prevails in the Introduction and in the first part, technically indicates the operations that must be performed to obtain a certain result; in a similar way, the word “equacion” is here equivalent to “calculation.” These differences with respect to ordinary language are always accompanied by an accurate description of the phenomenon that is being analysed: Another conclusioun to prove the latitude of the regioun Understonde wel that the latitude of eny place in a regioun is verrely the space bytwixe the cenyth of hem that dwellen there and the equinoxiall cercle north or south, taking the mesure in the meridional lyne . . . (II, 25) In general, the language of this treatise reminds us of the fact that in the fourteenth century “natural philosophy” was in an intermediate position between what we now call “mathematics” and a highly developed and elaborate logical science. That Chaucer was perfectly aware of the debate that was going on at British and continental universities (Oxford, Paris, Bologna) is now generally accepted by scholars (Bennett). Possible further evidence can be found in the remarks on language Chaucer makes at the beginning of his Treatise (the whole passage is quoted above): But natheless suffise to the these trewe conclusions in Englissh as wel as sufficit to these noble clerkes Grekes these same conclusions in Grek; and <?page no="61"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 61 to Arabiens in Arabik, and to Jewes in Ebrew, and to Latyn folk in Latyn; which Latyn folk had them first out of othere diverse languages . . . (I,1) This statement can be profitably compared to a passage in Roger Bacon’s Sumulae Dialectices where the philosopher maintains that language established by convention (ad placitum) is understood by people according to their birthplace and that the same concept can be conveyed in different languages: . . . homo non interpretatur omni homini, sed alicui, quia Gallicus Gallico, Graecus Graeco, Latinus Latino, et hec solum. (Bacon 233) [A man is not understood by all men, but only by some of them, since a Frenchman (is understood) by a Frenchman, a Greek by a Greek and a Latin by a Latin, and only by them.] (my translation) From this point of view it may be interesting to compare the kind of scientific writing I have been trying to describe with a treatise on the logic of propositions composed by Richard Billingham between 1340 and 1350 at Oxford. Billingham was one of the so-called “Oxford calculators,” a group of scholars engaged in finding quantitative methods to solve problems that were usually addressed by means of the traditional grammatical and logical analysis. Thomas Bradwardine, Ralph Strode, Richard Kilvington, William Heytesbury, Roger Swineshead, John Dumbleton and, of course, Richard Billingham, were all actively engaged in the study of sophismata and of insolubilia (paradoxes), as well as in discussing questions related to natural philosophy and even to theology by means of methods - until then limited to arithmetic and geometry - which implied the “measurement” of the truth-value of propositions. Billingham’s treatise is called Speculum puerorum and survives in about twenty-five manuscripts. We do not know whether the extant texts are the author’s original version or reportationes, that is the result of notes taken by some student during the master’s lectures (de Rijk 203). The treatise was well-known and on the syllabus at Oxford, Paris, Bologna and Padua for many years, as the numerous commentaries show, and the author was believed to combine the old with the new logic, the logica vetus with the via moderna. This fact, according to one of his commentators, could be traced in his very name: “Billingham,” “bis ligam,” “to link,” “to establish relationships” (Bos 373). The fact remains that the title is rather surprising: that a treatise on terminist logic should be addressed to a “puer” raises a number of interesting questions: who was <?page no="62"?> 62 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi a puer in the fourteenth century? At what age could a boy be expected to understand suppositio, appellatio and other difficult logical concepts? We know that during the Middle Ages elementary education began when children were about seven and consisted of recognition and pronunciation of words, usually taken form religious texts, followed, at a later stage, by the study of Latin grammar and syntax, which lasted for six or seven years (Courtenay 16). Trivium and Quadrivium were studied when a student entered University at about thirteen, and before that time he knew little mathematics and no astronomy, which was part of the Quadrivium. Unfortunately, we know very little about Chaucer’s readings and Billingham’s Speculum is no exception: there is no direct proof that the poet knew and used it, but his Treatise on the Astrolabe and Billingham’s Speculum puerorum seem to have in common both the scientific interest and the pedagogical concern. Here I can only point out some of the affinities and offer some tentative conclusions. The relationship between the idea of time and the analysis of propositions, which dates back to Aristotle, experienced a revival when the Philosopher’s Physics and his Posterior Analytics became known to medieval intellectuals (Travis 18). In the first of these works the nature of motion is analysed while the second includes a discussion of the nature of necessary propositions. A new approach to old problems coincided with the new interest in the measurement of time we have just discussed. The main idea involved was once more the nature of change: the different sciences - it was argued - deal with phenomena that are not always the same, but are subject to modifications. What scientists describe is some sort of “average” behaviour, i.e. what happens in the majority of cases (ut in pluribus). This concerns both the various disciplines and the same discipline in its time evolution (Bos 363). The problem therefore arises whether it is possible to formulate propositions that are general and necessary about an ever changing nature which seems to defy exact and stable definitions. To this state of things the Oxford calculators - and Billingham in particular - try to oppose the study of mutability with mathematical methods, thus trying to isolate what can be considered certain and necessary from what is uncertain and contingent, and applying to mutable phenomena methods generally used for the study of immutable objects. In the language of logic, their interest shifted from the res permanentes to the res successivae, which included the study of motion and time. Questions concerning the beginning or the ceasing of motion, the continuous or discrete character of time, what exactly measuring something that changes constantly meant, were the main interests of these scholars and quantitative methods were devised to find feasible answers to them. Billingham gives a number of definitions which are also the criteria to establish the truth- <?page no="63"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 63 value of a proposition containing the idea of change. Among other things, he concentrates on the two main verbs that seem to summarise the kind of question at issue: incipit (begins) and desinit (ends), and devises a number of sophisms which show the ambiguous nature of verbs that at first sight appear to indicate something definite and stable: “Incipit” exponitur cum quatuor propositionibus disiunctivis per istum modum. Ut “Sortes incipit esse”: Sortes nunc est; et inmediate ante hoc tempus quod est presens, non fuit ita quod Sortes est; igitur sic est quod Sortes incipit esse. Sed “desinit” converse modo exponitur. Ut “hoc desinit esse verum” probatur: hoc nunc non est verum; et inmediate ante hoc tempus presens erat ita quod est verum; igitur hoc desinit esse verum. (Speculum puerorum, II,45-46, ed. de Rijk 225). [“Begins” can be analysed with four disjunctive propositions in the following way. For example: “Socrates begins to exist”: Socrates exists now; and immediately before this time, which is the present time, it was not a fact that Socrates existed; therefore the fact is that Socrates begins to exist. “Ceases” can be analysed in the opposite way. For example: “this ceases to be true” can be proved as follows: “this now is not true”; and immediately before the present time, the fact was that it was true; therefore, this ceases to be true.] (my translation) Chaucer seems to be perfectly aware of the debate that concerned the nature of time; he was a friend of some of the Oxford masters (Strode, Bradwardine) whom he mentions in his works. In his Treatise he seems to remember Billingham’s propositional analysis: in describing the astrolabe he defines the parts of the instrument very thoroughly and the operations necessary to prove their importance in the measurement of time: The este side of thyn Astolabe is clepid the right side, and the west side is clepid the left side. Forget not thys, litel Lowys. Put the ring of thyn Astrolabe upon the thombe of thy right hond, and than wol his right side be toward thy left side, and his left side wol be toward thy right side. tak this rewle generall, as wel on the bak as on the wombe side. Upon the ende of this est lyne, as I first seide, is marked a litel cross (+), where as evere moo generaly is considered the entring of the first degree in which the sonne arisith. (I,6) We can easily imagine that a treatise that described change by forming “complex propositions of individual things and of their changing properties” (Bos 364) must have appealed to Chaucer when he was trying to describe an instrument - the astrolabe - that was devised to account for <?page no="64"?> 64 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi the passing of time, that is, for nature’s most important change. Although the Treatise on the Astrolabe is certainly not a work on logic, the method of Billingham’s analysis - provided Chaucer knew his treatise - could not fail to arouse his interest and could prove extremely useful in fulfilling both Chaucer’s purposes, namely the achievement of scientific precision and of the clarity of the exposition. The way Billingham intends the probatio propositionis has also a strong pedagogical value: to break up a sentence in its component parts, to give numerous examples together with directions to actually build up sentences, and to use paradoxes to show grammatical and syntactical inconsistencies is a way of allowing meanings to emerge clearly. If the Speculum puerorum is indeed meant for very young students, Chaucer had before him a text which, in spite of the differences, could provide him with a writing model as he was trying to explain a difficult subject to a child of ten. Following Aristotle’s sentence according to which in demonstrations one must proceed from what is best known to what is least known (Posterior Analytics I, 2, 71b, 20-22), Billingham starts with an apparently obvious proposition and shows its meaning by giving examples and showing how syllogisms are generated: Terminus resolubilis est omnis terminus, sive fuerit nomen, pronomen vel quecumque pars, qui habet saltem inferiorem terminum se secundum praedicationem; . . .Sicut hec proposition: “homo currit” sic probatur per terminos singulares istius termini “homo”: “hoc currit” et “hoc est homo”; ergo homo currit”, . . .(I, 2, ed. De Rijk 213) [A resolvable term is any term, whether noun, pronoun or any other part (of speech) which has at least one term inferior to itself according to predication; . . . So this proposition: “man runs” can be proved by means of singular terms of the term “homo”: “this runs” and “this is a man”; therefore “man runs”] (my translation) The truth of the proposition can be proved by breaking up the sentence into its component parts and analysing them individually, only to put them together again to re-construct the proposition, but this time clearly and without ambiguity. Chaucer’s statement “sothly me semith better to written unto a child twyes a god sentence, that he forgete it onys” (Introduction 47-50) can be interpreted not only in terms of mere repetition of phrases, but as an allusion to the method of analysis adopted by logicians, and by Billingham in particular, according to which the proposition is analysed in its parts and then the component words are put together again after their function has been explained. Thus the sentence is quoted twice, but the second time as the result of a linguistic and se- <?page no="65"?> Science and Education in Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” 65 mantic construction, and is easier to understand and therefore to remember. In a similar way, Chaucer’s already-mentioned remarks about the use of the vernacular, and in particular the idea that a concept can be expressed in Latin as well as in any other language and convey the same meaning, in spite of the grammatical and syntactical rules of the individual languages (. . . in alle these languages . . . han these conclusions ben suffisantly lerned and and taught, and yit by diverse reules [Introduction 37-39]) seems to share Billingham’s conviction that truth and falsity are in the soul, not in things (Bos 368): Nulla propositio singularis potest probari ratione sui termini discreti vel singularis per aliquod inferius sed solum probatur per sensum vel intellectum (II, 12, ed de Rijk 217) [No singular proposition can be proved on the basis of its discrete or singular term by means of an inferior term, but only by means of either sense or intellect] (my translation) Chaucer seems to share Billingham’s pedagogical concern in developing his subject in logical steps and by means of a rigorous probatio propositionis, by emphasising the difference between terms , by maintaining that knowledge must be acquired starting from the less known and proceeding gradually and without gaps. This - together with the fact that also Billingham’s treatise is addressed to a puer - may have suggested to the English poet that by careful definition and systematic explanation, his little son could be instructed in the use of a complex instrument where time could be made intelligible, be unambiguously defined and objectively measured. The astrolabe becomes then for the child the experimental equivalent - so to speak - of the solution of a logical problem by means of truthful propositions, but less abstract and easier to grasp. <?page no="66"?> 66 Stefania D’Agata D’Ottavi References Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Trans. G. R. G. Mure. The Internet Classics Archive, 1, 2, 71b, 20-22. http: / / classics.mit.edu/ Aristotle- / posterior.html Bacon, Roger. “Sumulae dialectices.” Opera hactenus inedita R.Baconis, fasc. V. Ed. R. Steele. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. 233. Bennett, J. A. W. Chaucer at Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. 58-85. Benson, Larry D. (gen. ed.). The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. If not otherwise stated, all quotations from Chaucer’s works are from this edition. Billingham, Richard. “Speculum puerorum.” Ed. L. M. De Rijk. Medioevo, I, 1975. 203-235. Bos, Egbert. “Richard Billingham’s Speculum puerorum. Some Medieval Commentaries and Aristotle.” Vivarium: 45, 2007. 360-373. Chaucer, Geoffrey. A Treatise on the Astrolabe. Ed. Sigmund Eisner. Norman, Oklahoma: The University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. . A Treatise on the Astrolabe. Ed. Walter W. Skeat. London: Oxford University Press, 1872 (reprinted 1968). Courtenay, William, J. Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Higgins, Anne. “Medieval Notions of the Structure of Time.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 19: 2, Fall 1989. Kretzmann, Norman. “Incipit/ Desinit.” Motion and Time, Space and Matter. Peter K. Macamer and Robert G. Turnbull, eds. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976. 101-136. Laird, Edgar. “Astrolabes and the Construction of Time in the Late Middle Ages.” Disputatio, 2, 1997. 51-69. Le Goff, Jacques. “Au Moyen Age: temps de l’Eglise et temps du marchand.” Annales ESC, 1960. 417-433. Maierù, Alfonso. Lo “Speculum puerorum sive terminus est in quem” di Riccardo Billingham. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1970. North, John D. “The Astrolabe.” Scientific American, 230, January 1974. 96-106. . Chaucer’s Universe. London: Oxford University Press, 1988. Osborn, Marijane. Time and the Astrolabe in the Canterbury Tales. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Rijk de, Lambertus M. “Another ‘Speculum puerorum’ attributed to Richard Billingham.” Medioevo, 1, 1975. 203-235. Travis, Peter. “Chaucer’s Cronographiae, the Confounded Reader, and Fourteenth Century Measurements of Time.” Disputatio, 2, 1997. 1- 34. <?page no="67"?> Blame it on the Elves: Perception of Illness in Anglo-Saxon England Susan Závoti From earliest times, people have sought to understand illness, so cultural attitudes to and treatment of illness tell us not only about the physical and material circumstances of a certain era, but also about people’s attitudes towards life, the supernatural and religion. My aim in this essay is to probe the Anglo-Saxon mind’s attitude to illness, in the transition period between heathenism and Christianity. In particular, I will explore the significance of the supernatural beings called elves, who are invested with an important role in the causes of disease and also bear a potential to be paralleled to devils, as witnessed by the Old English Leechbooks: even though the idea of connecting elves to illness is most plausibly much older in Anglo-Saxon England than that of connecting devils to illness brought by Christianity, ailments wrought by elves are still treated the same way as those wrought by devils. Furthermore, I shall discuss the power attributed to Christianity in the combat against elves regarding healing, as evidenced in Bald’s Leechbook, and Leechbook III. Since the earliest records of medicine in the Near East, it was the gods who were held responsible for afflicting people with illness. Demons and ghosts were also blamed, and in Mesopotamian texts, such demons were thought to be “gods gone bad” (Geller 5). The common cures for illness were the application of salves and exorcism, massaging or reeking the malevolent spirit out of the patients’ limbs. Biblical texts are replete with stories where the Lord casts illness upon an individual or a whole nation for various reasons. Many centuries later, we find the same idea in the classical Mediterranean. In his treatise on the “Sacred Disease” (i.e. Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 67-78. <?page no="68"?> 68 Susan Závoti epilepsy) written around 400 BC , Hippocrates also lamented over the popular belief, prevailing in his time, that epilepsy or other illnesses were wrought by the gods. One and a half millennia later, in Anglo- Saxon medical texts, we find evidence that it is elves who are thought to cause certain illnesses. Though both Greeks and Anglo-Saxons attribute illness to transcendental causes, there is one enormous difference between the ancient and the Anglo-Saxon perceptions of illness. In Anglo-Saxon leechdoms, God never appears as punishing mankind with illness; on the contrary, His power neutralizes the elves’ fiendish work. Hence, the Leechbooks present the transition from paganism to Christianity, where a benign God helps people fight the demonic forces manifested by older pagan beings. The Anglo-Saxon Leechbooks provide an insight into the religious mind that attributes all events to a higher being, at the same time indicating a certain reconciliation between Christian and pagan beliefs. The Sources The Old English Leechbooks are collections of recipes preserved in MS London, British Library, Royal 12 D. They were written down in the tenth century by the same hand as the annals of 922-55 in the Parker Chronicle (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 173, ff 1-56) presumably in Winchester (Ker 333). They consist of three segments with a numbered table of contents, the second ending with a verse colophon in Latin referring to Bald; hence the first two of the Leechbooks are referred to as “Bald’s Leechbook.” The separate Bald’s Leechbook segments and Leechbook III consist of 88, 67 and 76 chapters respectively on 128 folios. The MS was presumably read throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as it appears from the marginalia also in Latin and “the frequent nota signs” (Ker 332). As Rubin pointed out, they rely heavily on Classical Latin and Greek medical texts (59), and also bear textual parallels with the Salernitan Gariopontus (see Talbot). Following classical tradition, they present diseases and their cures in a downward order, from head to toe. Even though Latin was the language of science, these texts were written in the vernacular, which is exceptional amongst contemporary medical texts and suggests they were regularly used in medical practice. Another significant medical text needs mention here: the Lacnunga is “an inferior medical work of 122 chapters of miscellaneous leechdoms which provide many examples of pagan magic” (Rubin 62). It is extant in London, British Library, MS Harley 585 and “comprises 193 leaves of poor quality parchment” (Pettit 133). It is of utmost importance to us, <?page no="69"?> Perception of Illness 69 because in leechdom 127, it brings together elves and “ese” which can be paralleled to the “aesir ok álfar formula” (meaning “gods and elves”) often occurring in Scandinavian mythological texts (Hall 108), since the Anglo-Saxon word “ese” is interpreted as “gods”: Gif hit wære esa gescot, oððe hit wære / ylfa gescot, oððe hit wære hægtessan gescot, nu ic wille ðin helpan. [If it were shot of gods (or spirits), or if it were shot of elves, Or if it were shot of witch (or witches), now I will help you.] (Pettit 94-95) This manuscript thus proves the connection of Anglo-Saxon elves to Scandinavian ones by presenting them paired up with gods, just as we see in Scandinavian mythological texts. Bald’s Leechbook shows a stronger classical influence than Leechbook III. The contents are much more well-structured following the classical head-to-toe pattern. The first book describes external ailments, whereas the second discusses internal illnesses. By contrast, Leechbook III includes both external and internal diseases. While in the first third of its recipes the head-to-toe order is traceable, the rest lists diseases in a rather adhoc way. While Bald’s Leechbook makes reference to the classical concept of four humours and the four elements, Leechbook III rather resorts to magico-medical treatments. Bald’s Leechbook relies more on “rational” medicine, thereby showing a stronger bond to classical medical tradition. As Philip van der Eijk puts it: The “rationality” of Greek medicine was perceived to lie in the fact that it abandons “superstitious” beliefs about gods and demons as causes and healers of disease, and that it adheres to what is sometimes referred to as “the principle of the uniformity of Nature,” i.e. the view that like causes always produce like results. (3) In Bald’s Leechbook, diseases are for the most part ascribed to the imbalance of the four humours or to “ill humours.” With a few exceptions, the most frequently recurring diseases such as leprosy or erysipelas are treated by salves made of herbs or sometimes of animal origin; even surgery is implemented in certain cases, in line with rational medicine. The first instance of a magico-Christian element in Leechbook I, the implementation of holy water and prayer, is suggested as the cure for poison, snake bite, as well as “that which comes from shot” (Leechbook I 45; Cockayne 116). The ensuing recipes using Christian elements are for “flying venom,” “restraint,” “lent disease,” “fiend sick man,” “lunatics,” <?page no="70"?> 70 Susan Závoti “rune magic,” “elves,” “elf-shot” and “nightmare.” In Leechbook II, the magico-Christian element first occurs as late as recipe 53 (Cockayne 274), which proposes holy water as an ingredient for a “light drink.” From then on, various types of ailments are treated with Christian elements, such as elf-shots, dysentery, and jaundice. Contrastingly, the magico-Christian element in Leechbook III is apparent from the very first recipe, which prescribes a treatment for head troubles and at the same time for “temptation of the devil.” Leechbook III also contains the highest number of Christian elements as means of healing and supernatural beings as sources of illness. Most of the diseases are explained by the principle of the four humours in the Leechbooks, but where this principle is missing and there is no obvious cause of the disease (in the case of worms, ulcers, swellings and wounds of unknown origin, for example), then it tends to be attributed to supernatural beings like elves and demons. Elves Our knowledge of elves is scanty as records of them are quite obscure. Nevertheless, they seem to be a Proto-Germanic heritage. Their tradition has survived in nearly all of the West-Germanic territories well into the High Middle Ages or beyond. Apart from the Anglo-Saxon medical texts or personal names, we can find references to them in glosses, as well as in the Old English heroic epic, Beowulf. The passage describing Grendel’s descent traces back the origin of the race of monsters to the time when Cain slew Abel. Lines 102-114 of the poem explain that this was the time when eotens and elves and orcs sprang forth: Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten, mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold, fen ond fæsten; fifelcynnes eard wonsæli wer weardode hwile, siþðan him scyppend forscrifen hæfde in Caines cynne. Þone cwealm gewræc ece drihten, þæs þe he Abel slog; ne gefeah he þære fæhðe, ac he hine feor forwræc, metod for þy mane, mancynne fram. þanon untydras ealle onwocon, eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, swylce gigantas, þa wið gode wunnon lange þrage; he him ðæs lean forgeald. <?page no="71"?> Perception of Illness 71 [Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, and far was he driven, for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men. Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, Etins and elves and evil-spirits, as well as the giants that warred with God weary while: but their wage was paid them! ] (Ford 16-17) The word elf also occurs in compounds. If not describing illness or magic, the expressions often denote an enchanting beauty, as in the poem Judith, or in Caedmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures regarding Sarah. In both of these poems, the captivating beauty of the women is a potential risk to the beholders: Holofernes is dazzled by Judith’s beauty so she is able to decapitate him, while Abraham’s life is endangered by envious men in an alien land who try to get his wife: (. . .) siððan egýpte eagum moton on þínne wlite wlitan wlance monige þonne æðelinga eorlas wénað mæg ælf-scieno (. . .) [“Since the Egyiptians, with their eyes, may on thy beauty gaze, many proud ones; when of men the earls ween, woman of elfin beauty! ”] (Thorpe 109) (. . .) cwæð þa eft raðe oðre wórde to sarran sinces brýtta ne þearf ðe on edwit abraham (sic! ) settan <?page no="72"?> 72 Susan Závoti ðín frea drihten þat þu flett-waðas mæg ælf-scieno mine træde ác him hýge-teonan hwítan seolfre deope béte. [“Need not to thee in reproach Abraham attach, thy lord, that thou my pavilion, woman elfin-fair! hast trodden; for to him the injury, with white silver, I will well repair.”] (Thorpe 165) In both of these instances, calling the women “elf-beautiful” does not simply indicate a high level of attractiveness, but naming elves conjures a shifty, threatening effect in the meaning of their beauty. We also have records of elves, or rather álfar, in Scandinavian literature, as attested by the Eddas and Scandinavian folklore. In the Eddas, elves are strongly connected to gods: they are often mentioned after the Aesir, the chief group of the gods, as it has been touched upon in connection with the aesir ok álfar formula. Beside elves and witches, the Aesir also occur in another collection of Anglo-Saxon leechdoms called “Lacnunga” in connection with a “sudden stitch” beside elves and witches. But, according to the Eddas, elves are also ruled by Freyr, who belonged to the other group of gods called Vanir. The Vanir are associated with fertility, and Freyr is considered to be a significant fertility god. Moreover, “light elves” and “dark elves” are distinguished in Scandinavian sources, the dark ones being said to be mischievous beings who live underground. So both godly and chtonic features can be attributed to them. The chtonic character is also stressed in Scandinavian folktales, in which the elves are closely connected to nature. Their otherwise secret and miraculously invisible dwelling places are described as opening up like gates in rocks or mounds (Craigie 144). Invisible though they are, they are highly territorial, and the encroachment by humans on their land is avenged by cursing the humans with diseases; for example, the elves might cause an arm to wither away or a person to lose his wits (Craigie 158). Lost wits, mental and consequently physical deterioration are especially characteristic of encounters with elves, as a significant <?page no="73"?> Perception of Illness 73 number of folktales narrate the tragedy of peasants meeting elves in woods, and thereafter becoming incapable of ordinary life due to medical conditions. Punishment by elves is not necessarily regarded to be an act of vengeance, but rather a logical consequence, almost like a natural law: when a promise made for an elf is broken, tragedy ensues, which is, however, expected and considered legitimate by the human party - just like it is expected that, for instance, a kettle of water would boil when 99 degrees C is exceeded. The Anglo-Saxon Perception of Illness As mentioned above, in many cultures preceding Christianity, disease was considered to be a punishment of the gods. God in the Christian Old English medical texts, by contrast, always appears as a benevolent and helpful being. And those who inflict mankind with illness are God’s adversaries, belonging to the “dark side.” The following excerpts will illustrate this point. Among the many ailments medieval people suffered, there was a good deal for which they could not find a direct and physical explanation. Since they found these diseases mysterious and menacing, they connected them with the supernatural. These conditions appear in the Leechbooks under names such as: “ælf-shot,” “ælf-siden” or “ælfsogoþa” (Leechbook II 65; Leechbook III 41, 62). What these illnesses denote is often obscure, but luckily we find them usually in the context of some other, defined leechdom as it can be seen, for instance, in the Leechbook II, entry 65: “Wiþ þære geolwan adle genim nioþowearðe eolenan (. . .) to gehealdanne lichoman hælo mid drihtnes gebede þis is æþele læcedom (. . .) hit eac deah wiþ feondes costungum yflum” [For the yellow disease (jaundice), take the bottom part of helenium (. . .), to keep the body healthy with the Lord’s prayer this is a noble leechdom (. . .), also effective against the evil probations/ temptations of the devil.] Another example for this is entry 41 in Leechbook III: Vyrc godne drenc wiþ eallum feondes costungum. Nim betonican bisceop wyrt elehtran gyþrifan attorlaþan wulfes eamb gearwan lege under weofod gesinge viiii mæssan ofer gescearfa þa wyrta on halig wæter (. . .) þeos sealf is god wiþ ælcre feondes costunga 7 ælfsidenne 7 lencten adle. <?page no="74"?> 74 Susan Závoti [Make a good drink for all the temptations/ probations of the devil. Take [herbs], lay under altar, sing nine masses over, slice the worts in holy water (. . .) good for all the temptations/ probations of the devil, for elf-magic and lent disease.] (Cockayne 334-335) In both of these leechdoms, the occurrence of devils and elves coincides with infectious diseases. Jaundice, which might be the result of the inflammation of the liver often occurs with high fever. Lent disease, which is assumed to have been a typhus-like condition also produces high fever. Extremely high fever can cause brain damage which in turn can result in the so-called “abnormal posturing” known as opisthotonus, when the patient’s legs and spine arch stiffly into a bridge, and this affliction is accompanied by clenched jaws, spastic tetraplegia and convulsions (Stokes 50). This condition can easily appear as a seizure, or a demonic possession. Even though costung is translated as “temptation” both in the Cockayne and in the Pettit publications of leechdoms consulted here, the word also bears the meaning “trial” and “probation” (see Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary) as if the devil had tortured the patient (167). Thus these medical conditions (i.e. abnormal posturing and delirious state resulting from fever), are understood as a demonic fight over man’s soul. Indeed, seizures resulting from high fever of bacterial infection could hardly be distinguished from seizures of mental disorders, and both were taken as proof of the presence of a ravaging demon in the patient. This might have given rise to the practice of paralleling elves with devils. With the arrival of Christianity, seizures were titled “demonic,” on the one hand because of the continental medical tradition and learning, and on the other hand because of the long-established Christian tradition of attributing seizures to devils. Because elves were obviously regarded as demons, conditions otherwise authentically pagan and Anglo-Saxon elfish, could be taken under one umbrella with those of being Christian demonic. Elf-related diseases treated as demonic possession also occur in Leechbook III, remedy number 62. This particular leechdom seeks to cure “elf disease” (ælf-adle) and the curious condition translated as “elf hiccup” (ælf-sogoþa). For elf disease, Leechbook III offers three separate remedies, all of them containing Christian liturgical elements, and two of them using the many thousand year old method of dislodging harmful possessing spirits by the smoke produced by burning herbs. The same entry also contains the description of the symptoms of elf-hiccup, and interestingly, in addition to the salve made of herbs and the writing of crosses, the remedy prescribes the following Latin text to be sung: <?page no="75"?> Perception of Illness 75 Deus omnipotens, pater domini nostri Iesu Christi, per impositionem huius scripturae expelle a famulo tuo, [name], omnem impetum castalidum de capite, (. . .) Almighty God, father of our lord Jesus Christ, with the imposition of your Scripture expel from your servant, [name], every attack of the castalides from the head (. . .) Later it instructs that the following lines also have to be sung: Dominus omnipotens, pater domini nostri Iesu Christi, per impositionem huius scripturae et per gustum huius expelle diabolum a famulo tuo. Almighty Lord, father of our lord Jesus Christ, with the imposition of your Scripture and your Ghost expel the devil from your servant. The implications of this leechdom are manifold. Firstly, it is striking that the illness is attributed to a possessing malevolent supernatural force that can only be removed by Christian exorcism as was the habitual treatment against demons. Secondly, in the first song the Latin expression “castalidum” is used, but in the second song “diabolum” is used, which clearly denotes the same force as “castalidum.” The Castalides, according to the Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology, were the muses associated with the sacred spring on Parnassus (Dixon-Kennedy 79), and were rendered “dunylfa,” i.e. mountain elves, in Byrhtferth’s Latin- Old English bilingual computus, the Enchiridion or Manual preserved in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 328. Byrhtferth, following traditional pattern, starts his work by addressing a higher being and beseeching help to complete his mission. However, he rejects the classical tradition of resorting to muses and chooses the Christian Cherub as aid. Thus, he identifies classical sprites of a sacred spring with the Anglo- Saxon elves, who are also associated with springs. In addition, he rejects elves and muses as they belong to the erroneous pagan world. This introduction of the Manual beside the text of the Leechbook indicates the clear tradition that heathen supernatural beings closely associated with nature (and springs) were rendered “castalides” in Latin in Anglo-Saxon writings. This conclusion leaves no doubt that the castalides of the leechdom were elves who were described, in fact, a few sentences later as being synonymous with diabolum, only to be defeated by God’s help. Thus, we can conclude that certain illnesses were ascribed to the supernatural elves, which were paralleled to devils. Leechdom 62 in Leechbook I shows a similar case. Lent disease and various forms of fevers are combated first with concoctions made of herbs and holy water, but then a rather sophisticated ritual follows in- <?page no="76"?> 76 Susan Závoti cluding writing on a paten and praying. After this, a text had to be recited in Latin, which opens with adjuring impersonated fevers: “Adiuro uos frigores et febres per deum patrem omnipotentem (. . .)” [I adjure you colds and fevers through the Almighty Father]. Addressing the fevers and calling out their names almost like personal names is familiar from Greek mythology, but is also frequently found in New Testament stories when Christ expelled disease inflicting spirits of people. As these examples show, medical conditions emerging from infectious diseases, or we should say profane diseases, were attributed to elves and devils. But another group of diseases also appears in connection with elves. Leechbook III, 61 prescribes the same leechdom for the “race of elves,” “nihtgengan” and for “those the devil sleeps with.” Wyrc sealfe wiþ ælfcynne 7 nihtgengan 7 þam mannum þe deofol mid hæmd genim eowohumelan (. . .) sete under weofod sing ofer viiii mæssan (. . .) Gif men hwilc yfel costung weorþe oþþe ælf oþþe niht gengan smire his andwlitan med þisse sealfe and on his eagan (. . .) [Work a salve against the elf race and for “nightgengan” and for those the devil sleeps with. Take [herbs] put them under the altar, sing over them nine masses (. . .) If someone is subject to ill temptation or elf or “nihtgengan” smear his forehead and his eyes with this salve (. . .)] (Cockayne 344-345) Apparently, the popular Christian belief in incubi and succubi was present in Anglo-Saxon culture as well. As this leechdom suggests, when elves did not cause a visible physical impact, they could inflict psychic damage. Thus they were associated with the devilish incubi and succubi, and also with the mysterious nihtgengan, which we can only surmise were supernatural beings walking in the night. So we can infer from the leechdoms that elves were not only alluded to as mysterious, absent, elusive causes of a host of physical and mental maladies, from stitches to fever and demonic possession. They were also thought to be actual, living creatures, who should be actively fought against like demons. Conclusion One of the great merits of the Leechbooks is that they give us an insight into the unique period after the Conversion in Britain. Despite the fact that Christianity had already been adopted on the Isles for four hundred years when the Leechbooks were written, elves were evidently still ac- <?page no="77"?> Perception of Illness 77 cepted as part of everyday Anglo-Saxon reality. Christianity could not entirely wipe out the belief in elves; instead it incorporated them into its system of beliefs and values. Thus, the disease-inflicting elves found themselves on the side of the devil, whereas God appeared as the benevolent healer, who was always at hand to help those who prayed to him. The Leechbooks provide insight into that particular period of history, when both Christianity and Anglo-Saxon paganism existed dynamically side-by-side, and in hybridized forms. Thus, in the Anglo- Saxon perception of illness, it was the demonic side that was responsible for ravaging humans with illnesses, and that side was also equivalent to the old German pagan religion. On the other hand, we also find evidence of belief in the benevolent God of the New Testament, who does not send illness to mankind, but rather heals and cures them of the demonic and pagan “pathogen.” <?page no="78"?> 78 Susan Závoti References Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller, eds. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898 Byrhtferth’s Manual. Early English Text Society, Original Series 177. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929 Cockayne, Oswald. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, vol II. Rolls Series. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1865 Craigie, William A. Scandinavian Folk-Lore. London. Paisley, 1896 Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 1998 Eijk, Philip van der. “Introduction.” Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine. Ed. H. F. J. Horstmanshoff and Marten Stol. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2004 Ford, James H., ed. Beowulf. Texas: El Paso Norte Press, 2005 Geller, M. J. “eud, Magic and Mesopotamia: How the Magic Works.” Folklore 108 (1997): 1-7 Hall, Alaric. “Elves in Anglo-Saxon England.” Anglo-Saxon Studies 8. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007 Ker, Neil Ripley. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Pettit, Edward. Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The “Lacnunga.” 2 vols. Lewiston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001 Rubin, Stanley. Medieval English Medicine, London: Barnes and Noble, 1974 Stokes, Maria. Physical Management in Neurological Rehabilitation. London: Elsevier Mosby, 2004 Talbot, C. H. “Some Notes on Anglo-Saxon Medicine.” Medical History, 9 (1965): 156-69 Thorpe, Benjamin. Cædmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures. London: Society of Antiquaries of London; Black, Young and Young, 1832 <?page no="79"?> The Languages of Medical Writing in Medieval England Tony Hunt Therapeutic receipts mark the beginning of medical writing in post- Conquest England, eighty-five surviving from the twelfth century, and these are examined for the light they shed, especially through codemixing, on problems of language identification and distinction in the period and, not least, on the phenomena of language contact, contiguity and continuity. The evidence up to 1400 suggests that there was no exclusive language of medical writing and that the traditional picture of linguistic and chronological discontinuities (Latin - French - English) is faulty. The emergence of medical compendia and translations after 1250 reveals the same linguistic hybridism, confounding the assumptions of monoglossia. The persistence of Anglo-Norman is striking, for Henslow’s Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century, published in 1899, airbrushed out Anglo-Norman evidence completely. In fact Anglo- Norman material is still being fed into medical compendia in the fifteenth century. The situation is rendered yet more complex by the fact that some Anglo-Norman material, for example that found in MS Cambridge, Trinity College 0.1.20, is arguably of Continental provenance and this possibility underlines the importance of careful attention to word-geography. It is medicine which par excellence engages us with the languages of medieval England. The vernacularization of medical writing in post-Conquest Britain begins with the medical receipt, or prescription as we now call it, which persists far beyond the Middle Ages. The receipt could be a stand-alone item inserted in a variety of manuscript contexts or part of a varied, more or less coherently structured miscellany, and almost anything in between. The Latin material on which the receipt tradition draws is con- Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 79-101. <?page no="80"?> 80 Tony Hunt ventionally divided into receptaria, collections devoted entirely to the therapeutic administration of naturally occurring simples, and antidotaria, receipts which include compound medicines involving minerals and metals, and ingredients of a more pharmaceutical sort, accompanied by indications of dosage. Questions relating to the destinatees of such collections have rarely been asked. Were the collections, for example, designed for the practical use of apothecaries who learned from them which items to stock, or were they directed at healers who might discover which ingredients were indicated for specific ailments? Neither type of collection admits of so much as a hint of medical theory, whilst both types provide a rich store of materia medica and their varying names, vernacular and Latin. The receipts may be therapeutic, diagnostic, prognostic, cosmetic, dietetic or eclectic, but the majority deal with medicaments for ailments. It should not be forgotten, however, that receipts, although frequently gathered in collections, persist throughout the Middle Ages as components of almost every kind of medical treatise. Receipts easily account for the largest share (2,500 items) of medical writings in English, indeed almost all of such writings before 1375, thus comfortably exceeding the next most appreciated scientific subject, alchemy (1,000 items in Voigts and Kurtz). In northern France the Abbé Poutrel’s so-called Cyrurgie, translated and adapted by Jean de Prouville, turns out to be largely a sequence of receipts. The Middle English adaptation of Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia in British Library MS Sloane 240 (s.xv 4/ 4 ) leads directly, in the same hand, to a large receipt book in five parts intended as a complement to Roger’s work on surgery. The fifteenth-century Middle English adaptation of Gilbertus Anglicus (over twelve MSS ) does little more than simply copy the receipts. Many receipts equally find their way into the Middle English translation of Gui de Chauliac’s Cyrurgie. The study of the medical receipt should not therefore be confined to what are expressly presented as remedy books. In the case of Anglo-Norman under “Medical Prescriptions” Dean and Boulton list thirty-eight manuscript sites, but in fact receipts occur profusely in almost all the medical treatises they inventory. If discrete recipe collections alone are taken into account, we must be dealing with at least 2,000 vernacular receipts, in three languages. If they are ever catalogued, as is fervently to be hoped they will be, the result would enable us to understand better their transmission. Do they travel in blocks or singly? How many are translated from another language, e.g. Latin? How much overlap is there between French, English and Latin items? What are the most commonly treated ailments? What proportion of receipts involves code-switching? Are multilingual specimens ever monolingualized? How <?page no="81"?> Languages of Medical Writing 81 many achieve an independent life and how many remain exclusively attached to, or contained in, a larger treatise? If we are to chart the growing circulation and rising status of the medieval medical receipt, we must cast aside an approach based on a single focus, monoglossia and its narrow definitions and prescriptiveness, and recognize that the receipt is a parasitic genre, keeping all kinds of company, the language, as in the case of Old French in general, being marked by diversity and variability, and therefore better approached as a multilingual code rather than as a switching or mixing of codes. We thus revisit the much vaunted trilingualism of medieval England not as the discrete use of three languages but as code in which all three languages (and later four) play a part simultaneously. As Turville-Petre puts it: “Three languages existed in harmony, not just side by side, but in symbiotic relationship, interpenetrating and drawing strength from one another; not three cultures, but one culture in three voices” (181). But how to define the three voices? It is clear that an investigation of the medical receipt at once centralizes the question of language contact - contiguity and continuity. Instead of adopting the traditional perspective on vernacular productions as a set of temporal discontinuities, a chronological sequence of language shifts (Latin - Anglo-Norman - Middle English), we ought to be looking instead at the dynamics of a constantly shifting network of relationships, without discreteness or exclusiveness, in which each language was itself changing, in both oral and written forms, as well as in its relations with others, thus complicating the issue of language identity. Oversimplified schematizations, segmentation, metaphors of rise and decline, victory and defeat, take us far away from the linguistic and cultural reality. There is currently taking place a widespread revision of linguist perspectives and terminology, partly as a result of work on language contact. This involves the collapsing of many conventional categories e.g. “vernacular,” the decay of the concept of “diglossia,” the relaxing of definitions of “code-switching,” the introduction of the idea of “lingua di genere” (i.e. attached to particular text-types), and so on. The evolution of French and Latin has been somewhat truncated by historians, and the position of English from the second half of the fourteenth century oversimplified. In particular the relations between Insular French and Continental French with its Paris-based standard have been little studied, despite the fact that the latter becomes a sort of fourth language in later medieval England. There is at no time a monoglot culture which observes clearly drawn linguistic boundaries, but rather a phenomenon of linguistic permeability and fluidity which supports for a considerable period the confident continuation of writing in three idioms. The appar- <?page no="82"?> 82 Tony Hunt ent vacuum in English writing for two centuries after the Conquest has been filled as the result of the work of Pelteret, Laing and Treharne who have shown how much Old English continued to be copied and, indeed, new texts composed. There simply was no vacuum, there was no rupture. It is in this multifarious linguistic context that the medical receipt continues to command our attention. The earliest post-Conquest vernacular receipts appear in the twelfth century and though what is commonly thought of as the matrix language is Anglo-Norman, English is present too in this first tranche of medical data, which is made up of five MS witnesses. What is the nature of these early witnesses? The first receipts are additions to British Library MS Sloane 2839 of c. 1100, which contains medical texts and a set of cautery illustrations. Before the end of the century this MS had played host to two Anglo-Norman receipts, without any English present, written on a blank folio (f.78v) and on the last page. Similarly, Cambridge, Trinity College MSR .14.31, a beautifully executed medical volume, consisting largely of Latin medical treatises, has on f.244v, in the hand responsible for the whole codex, a short Latin receipt, and one in Anglo- Norman illustrating the three languages of England, for it is headed Ad cancrum (“For cancer”), and incorporates an English gloss: Pernez la caneilidé, ce est en engleis henneuuol (“Take henbane, in English henbell”). British Library MS Royal 5 E VI is another twelfth-century production, principally furnishing a text of Pseudo-Isidore’s De numero, to which vernacular additions were made in the form of over thirty receipts in Anglo-Norman which were added towards the end of the century, in this case in the space surrounding the writing block. Here, too, we witness the coexistence of French and English: in crudes (“curds”) and huf (“h f”); Pur le huf lever . . . Si liefed le huf . . . le runce quit en vin e furmage freche amendet le huf. (“To get rid of a callus . . . it removes the callus . . . bramble cooked in wine and fresh cheese cure the callus”). There is also the mysterious boniface (.xv. fuilles de boniface), 1 as well as Latin: un herbe ki at nun aquileia en latin. A fourth MS from the twelfth century is British Library MS Royal 8 D V which presents Book II of Hugh of St Victor’s De sacramentis, after the end of which ten Anglo-Norman receipts have been added seriatim and not appended outside the main writing area, although 1 The word is noted in another manuscript by P. Meyer in Romania 37 (1908), 365 no.36 and recorded in W. von Wartburg, Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch 1,433a only with the sense of “simpleton.” The word is not in the Middle English Dictionary. <?page no="83"?> Languages of Medical Writing 83 headings are placed in the margin. There is no English. These then are early manuscripts, in which the vernacular receipts are all additions. 2 By far the most interesting of the early witnesses, however, is British Library Royal 12 C XIX , of the early thirteenth century, a MS embellished by an elegantly copied Bestiary, enriched with extracts from Honorius of Autun’s Imago mundi, Isidore’s Etymologiae, two Latin sermons and, at the end, supplemented by two quite extensive collections of medical receipts, the first in Anglo-Norman and the second in Latin. This marks the coming of age of the vernacular medical receipt for the following reasons: the manuscript is the work of a single scribe who has produced an elegant volume of 112 folios, which includes a vernacular receipt collection comprising no fewer than forty-two items which is accorded the same dignity as the other texts in this carefully copied codex, and represents a unit wholly composed in Anglo-Norman, and treated as a “text,” not flyleaf notes or add-ons. So far as language is concerned, there are four apparently “English,” by which I mean etymologically English, words in the matrix language of French: cherlokes; la flur de / la foille de slecfritgres / siecfritgres, “beivre pesant a un ferthing,” 3 (“charlock; the flower / leaf of slecfritgres / siecfritgres, drink a farthing’s weight”) and an explicit gloss in amorosche, ço est melden en engleis (in the Peterborough fragment amerusche and mayten, edited by Bell), (“stinking chamomile, mayweed in English”). To sum up, three of the earliest five manuscripts exhibiting vernacular receipts (eighty-five of them in all) display from the beginning French and English side by side. Just as significantly, they engage us with the notorious problem of code-switching or mixing - simply put, “the alternation of languages in a single communicative event,” - more specifically, with language demarcation or boundaries, and that bogeyman of lexicologists the “loan word” (see Trotter). In other words, they embody the world of language contact. There is now a huge literature 2 Another addition, in three languages, to a twelfth-century manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Titus D XXIV ), consists of a number of formulas for the visitation of the sick, see Careri et al. (80-81). 3 Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch 15, ii, 120b sub feor elin (ags.) gives Old French frelin, ferlin as quarter of a denier. Because of the chronological gap between the adoption of the two senses coin / weight it is suggested they arose at different times, the second from Middle English. The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources sub ferlingus gives the senses as (i) fourth part of a measure of land, usually of a virgate, with 12-century examples, and (ii) the fourth of a penny (1277 >). See Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii . Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.2.5 f.101rb has furline as an indication of weight. Both meanings, coin and weight, are illustrated in Beroul’s Tristran (s.xii 2 ), ed. A. Ewert ll. 3658 and 3982. <?page no="84"?> 84 Tony Hunt on code-switching, not all of which, though casting light on its mechanisms and distribution, has been of great assistance to sociolinguists in their study of communication systems, particularly discourse strategies and community, what is indicated by Fishman’s celebrated formulation “Who is speaking what language to whom and when.” To which we might add “and why,” for purpose is a very important factor in communication. Also, when positing a discourse strategy, we are led to ask how far socalled code-switching anticipates and acknowledges the perceived needs, and expectations, of the addressee, in a didactic or explanatory spirit comparable with the use of synonyms or doublets as aids to comprehension. Or may code-switching, rather, reflect the lexical acquisition of the speaker / writer, who displays his scientia in a manner he has learned from his source materials, including, by the way, oral sources, for we should keep in mind Richard Ingham’s argument (Mixing Languages) that the mixing of languages in manorial records he has studied may reflect oral discourse as part of the experience and memory of the writer. The very mention of our source materials, at least so far as written evidence is concerned, at once alerts us to a defining feature: we are surveying copies, and further, compilations, and moreover specialized (i.e. domain-specific) texts. None of the material is pris sur le vif, and recovering elements of discourse and community, speaker and addressee, is therefore more than just difficult - nothing has really been done on medical receipts and synonyma lists. Who were they designed for? At this early stage of medical writing most of the material contains single-lexeme switches, including synonyma, but the basic issue of language identification remains challenging and not unproblematic, as I shall now illustrate. Let us return to those early receipts from the twelfth century. In British Library Royal 5 E VI huf seems safe as Middle English indicating a horny growth or callus (see Gui de Chauliac “hoof or nayle”); crudes (si facet crudes) we find in Anglo-Norman also in Bodleian Library MS Digby 69 (s.xiii) f.176v “pernez crudden de leit . . .” and in Walter of Henley (Oschinsky 278, in Anglo-Norman: furmages, bure, leit, croddes). Now in the Royal example the morphological plural marker -s suggests a French word, as in Walter; whereas in Digby 69, the marker seems English, crudden. 4 It is repeated in the next receipt “od crudden seit mise,”(“let it be added to curds”) a receipt which begins with an English word (denoting a species of Ranunculus or Veratrum): “Pus pernez clofyunke” 4 See also Hunt (Teaching and Learning Latin, vol. 2 p. 19) where in a thirteenth-century Durham copy of Alexander of Villa Dei’s Doctrinale the word cruddes is preceded by macuns as a gloss on coagula. The form curde is later (avoidance of homonymic clash with curde = gourd / cucumber ? ). <?page no="85"?> Languages of Medical Writing 85 [cloþunke]. 5 Which dictionary does the word “curd” go into? The Anglo Norman Dictionary or Middle English Dictionary? Well, of course, clofyunke is etymologically Old English appearing in Middle English in a considerable variety of forms. Incontestably, therefore, indigenous, it is here unexpectedly glossed .i. c[el]idonie and has, even more unexpectedly, gained entry in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii ! The third example in Royal 5 E VI is boniface, also accepted into the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (as denoting “wood avens”), whilst occurring elsewhere only in a continental French receipt collection, as indicated above. Is its second, continental, occurrence a copying error, or a confirmation of an obscure word? There are, of course, a number of plants named from the combination of herbe and a saint (sanctus usually dropped in the vernacular), but Boniface has yet to be recorded. I have already suggested that in certain contexts and domains it may be that language demarcation and identity are an artificial concept and that the inclusive policy of Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii is the only right one. In a multilingual situation can we be sure of the chronology and etymology of certain words? By what criteria should we accord the status of loanword? In British Library MS Royal 5 E VI , for example, the word bersise (grout, infusion of malt) is not flagged, and yet almost all the citations in Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii are accompanied by English glosses as if the word needed explanation. Is it a loanword then, or has it been naturalized? Can we even be sure of its origin and identity? The form braisis (and braisium) is also found in medieval Latin (Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources) starting in the twelfth century, with bersisa attested for the thirteenth century. What about the Anglo- Norman receipt collection in British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX ? There we found cherlokes (Engl. charlock), another Old English word admitted to Anglo-Norman Dictionary 2 (though not to Anglo-Norman Dictionary i ! ). . In the Synonyma lists it is often flagged anglice, it is never identified as a French form, yet in the Royal MS it appears unflagged in a list of wholly French names. There are many intriguing cases like these. The second case of English in the Anglo-Norman text of British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX is slecfritgres / siecfritgres, the final syllable certainly suggesting English “grass,” the rest uncertain, 6 and marking a language switch: la flur de / la foille de. Will slecfritgres appear in Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii ? we may ask And then there is a single instance of an explicit bilingual gloss: la rascine de l’amorosche ço est melden en engleis, (“the root of stinking camo- 5 Oxford English Dictionary sub “cloffing.” 6 Is there a connection with “l’umbre de fosse, ço est flectrit,” see Short 203 no 12 (cf. 204 no. 16) - an error for feltrike (Centaurium umbellatum) common centaury? <?page no="86"?> 86 Tony Hunt mile, mayweed in English”), usually interpreted as the plant stinking camomile. Intriguingly, there are no examples of ameroche in Anglo- Norman Dictionary ii which are not accompanied by the English gloss, though there are four examples in my Popular Medicine without glossing; it can be misleading in a dictionary to give only glossed examples. Do we have here an adherence of the gloss to the interpretamentum as the result of endless copying rather than as a spontaneous, independent result of the unfamiliarity of the French derivative of amarusca? This specific case is the only example of such bilingual glossing in this particular receipt collection. This leads us to hesitate over the one other, monolingual, gloss in the same collection: “la racine del time, ço est l’amblette del pré ou des marais” (“the root of thyme, that is field or marsh amblette”). Where are we to place “thyme? ” Tobler-Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch can’t make up its mind between the French spelling tim and tym and consequently has no entry for either. The Französisches Etymologishes Wörterbuch dates it to the thirteenth century with no details. The Oxford English Dictionary has only late, essentially fifteenth-century examples, which seems extraordinary. We can certainly supply an earlier example from a synonyma list in British Library MS Add. 15236 (pre-1300 and containing Irish glosses: see Hunt, Botanical Glossaries) “thymus anglice time,” the earliest example by a century to be recorded in the Middle English Dictionary. And on the Anglo-Norman side? Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.1.20 has tim in an Anglo-Norman receipt on f.50v. Though the Anglo-Norman Dictionary has only two examples (including British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX ), there are certainly others from the thirteenth century, 7 but these have not been integrated into any printed account of the word. Thus the very earliest MS witnesses illustrate the interesting challenges posed for a linguist and the urgent need for writing wordhistories. The problem of language ascription continues of course into the thirteenth century. When we have no early datings, and related forms appear in Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English (e.g. grumil, gromil, grumillus 8 ) how are we to establish the etymology and development of the word (see Durkin)? What shall we make of the appearance 7 Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.1.20 f.50v (antidotaire); British Library MSS Sloane 3550 f.235r sauge . . . tim; Sloane 146 f.3v thime, f.6v thyme; Harley 978 f.28ra tiume e epetime. 8 Modern French grémil (obscure initial element plus mil “millet”). Hunt, Plant Names sub granum solis has “gallice et anglice wild gromil.” See also milium solis, sponsa solis, cauda porcina. Middle English Dictionary sub gromil (< Old French grumil, gromil) - first example 1300. <?page no="87"?> Languages of Medical Writing 87 of the word docke? in “.i. poigne de docke” which occurs in a receipt in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.1.20? A word of English origin, but not so flagged, it was easily confused with Latin daucus (creticus) “wild carrot” which is not in the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, but is recorded in Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii dauk . . . and Middle English Dictionary dauk(e (1400). In other manuscripts we find “un oynement de doche roche e holioc” (“an ointment of red dock and hollyhock”) and “ruge docke” which suggest complete naturalization. We also encounter “suredoke” (sorrel) and trilingual “accipe dok-rute et rue et simul terantur” 9 (“Take the root of dock and rue and grind together”). Also in Cambridge, Trinity College 0.1.20 (f.31va) we have “herbe que ad a non ramese,” suggesting either that there is no French word for the plant, or else that Old English ramse, “ramese” (elsewhere ramesee, English “ramsons”) is fully naturalized. 10 There are two examples of “titolose(s)” (medical receipts in Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.1.20 f.33r and f.36r), which are identified as English by Bierbaumer, 11 yet here are unflagged in continuous French. British Library MS Sloane 420 in a list of synonyma has “ermodactula vel titulosa, anglice croulek” which raises the possibility that Latin was the intermediary between English and French. There are plenty of such cases where the ascription of a plant name to a language and date seems precarious and a medico-botanical code has apparently been produced which does not distinguish or depend on a sense of language identity. 12 The Dictionary of Mediaeval Latin from British Sources contains thousands of headwords which are simply Latinizations of vernacular items, which adds to the complexity of etymologies. Consider the following: avencia, bardana, borago, calcatrappa, cholettus, confiria, cresso, currago, coluragium, faverellus, felgera, fras(e)aria, grumillus, fresgunda, germandrea. There are very many more. The uncertainties of language identity and consciousness are further exacerbated by the fact that in Insular MSS of the thirteenth century metalinguistic labels such as gallice and anglice as used by some scribes / authors are sometimes apparently “wrong.” My plant-names book records many instances where under a 9 From British Library MS Add 15236, Hunt, Popular Medicine, p. 229 no. 36. 10 See Bierbaumer, 3 142f Rumex acetosa. See Anglo-Norman Dictionary 2 ( ME ) (bot.), wild garlic. 11 Bierbaumer 3, 61f and 229 records two instances of tidolosa and tidulosa (hermodactula vel tidolosa) with the sense Allium vineale, Colchicum autumnale or Crocus albiflorus Kit (cr wenleac). Marzell considers that tidolosa is a Latinisation of Low German tidelose ( Old High German z t lose). Consider also the Anglo-Norman metrical Trotula in Hunt, Anglo- Norman Medicine 2, 99, where we might in l.629 correct “la litose” to “titolose”? 12 For scribal confusion of gallice / anglice, see Laing 7. <?page no="88"?> 88 Tony Hunt Latin headword a number of vernacular terms are given without tagging for language, both when standing alone and when in a multiple listing: acidula: asille, surele, surdokke. There are also innumerable instances where a single vernacular word is tagged gallice et anglice: amigdala: gallice et anglice alamande; apium macedonicum: anglice et gallice staunche [corr. stanmerche] vel alisaundre; aristolochia: gallice et anglice aristologe; atonia: gallice et anglice fenugreek; beta: gallice et anglice betys; betonica gallice et anglice betayne I have tried so far to suggest that the role of Anglo-Norman in the vernacularization of medieval English medical writing is part of a complex and sometimes ambiguous context. Looking at the earliest documents shows that so-called code-switching raises currently intractable problems of language identity and demarcation. The same may be said of the role played by Latin. The well-known collection of medical recipes known as the “Lettre d’Hippocrate” exists in Anglo-Norman in many copies. But in British Library Royal 12 B XII there is a version in Latin! Which came first? In this case, against expectation, I think because of a translation error, we can say that the Latin is translated from the Anglo- Norman. Such errors can of course shed valuable light on the direction of translation. The persistence of code-switching alerts us to the varied phenomena of language contact over a considerable period and warns us against the inherited picture of linguistic and chronological discontinuities of the Latin > French > English type. A symbol of the continued collateral development of Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English is provided by nine significant trilingual anthologies from the period 1260-1340 (Hunt, Insular Trilingual Compilations), not to speak of certain famous psalters. 13 Besides a change of approach we also need a concerted attempt at information gathering. The fact is that the dictionaries, according to which so much language labelling is effected, are unreliable, and deficient, so far as datings are concerned, certainly before 1300. There is a considerable traffic of medical receipts across the English Channel (for example in the Lettre d’Hippocrate) but in what direction? Investigating the distribution of such materials, at home and abroad, is naturally beyond the resources of the average dictionary. Who then in the interests of word geography will record them and where? Are insular lexemes filtered out when copied on the Continent? How 13 See G. Rector, “An Illustrious Vernacular: The Psalter en romanz in Twelfth-Century England” in Wogan-Browne 198-206. <?page no="89"?> Languages of Medical Writing 89 many regional French words are removed? This is where transmission and copying have important things to tell us. Copying over long periods raises many questions of recognition and shifts of meaning. I will illustrate this with reference to one of the early receipt collections which I have already mentioned, British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX . In the middle of the fourteenth century there was copied in Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.2.5 the book of the wise physician Hippocrates), a medical compendium, wholly in Anglo-Norman, with the Latin colophon Explicit liber Ypocratis philosophi et medici sapientissimi de diversis medicines maxime corporibus humanis proficientibus (“Here ends the book of the most wise philosopher and physician Hippocrates concerning different medicines beneficial to the human body”). The second section of the compendium is headed Si commence del livere del(i) sage mire Ypocras (“Here begins, and comprises a miscellany of medical receipts”) (hence my opening injunction not to search for receipts exclusively in remedy books), amongst which there is a block of fourteen receipts (plus one separate) which mirror almost exactly those encountered in British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX . How do we view discourse and community here and, for that matter, a century earlier when some of the royal receipts were copied into a manuscript at Peterborough (edited by Alexander Bell)? This time, in the Trinity medical compendium, though copied in the middle of the fourteenth century, everything is in French save the interlinear gloss (in the hand of the text) on f.106vb de l’aloigne / wormod / . Is this a function of age? All the problem words I discussed earlier in relation to British Library MS Royal C 12 XIX have gone. Why? Because they were no longer recognized or is this just an accident of transmission? What sort of factors affected the mouvance of manuscript texts? Who was to know that some of the receipts were already a hundred and fifty years old and originally bore lexical traces of their Insular beginnings? Was there a conscious attempt to clear such traces? The transmission of multilingual texts deserves a study to itself. The question of origins and provenance is significant, of course, if we wish to study the earliest form and subsequent transmission of medical receipts and compendia. Indeed, at the head of the vernacularization of medical authorities in England, which later spawned Middle English translations, lies the disconcerting volume Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.1.20 of c.1240, an Anglo-Norman copy, to be sure, but does it transmit the work of Anglo-Norman writers? Here word geography may be of vital importance. The word amblette, for example, has been thought of as a lexical trace (cf. bibuef, hannebane to be discussed shortly), for it is both rare and a pointer to north-eastern France (see Hunt, Anglo- <?page no="90"?> 90 Tony Hunt Norman Medicine 2, 13), where at one time most of the known examples came from (cf. modern French ambrette). 14 As evidence accumulates, however, we now have four occurrences in Anglo-Norman Dictionary ii 15 and the case in British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX , as we saw, is glossed: “thyme root.” Did it need explanation? What are the criteria for labelling an item “Anglo-Norman”? And how are we to describe the relationship between Anglo-Norman and English? Continuing the investigation of lexical trace elements as a means of determining the geographical origins of a text, we may examine the Trinity copy of Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia, which contains five glossed lexical items: I,46 Pernez de la semence jusquiami que en englés est apelé “hannebane” [Ms hannebaire] (“Take seed of hyoscyamus which in English is known as henbane”) I,54 e olie feit de la semence de chenillé, qui est apelee “hannebane” (“and oil from the seed of canicularis which is known as henbane”) I,53 une maladie que est apelé serpigo e en franceais “derte” (“a sickness known as serpigo, derte [=tetter] in French”) II,3 Pernez les verms qui issent hors del ventre de l’home e que li Anglés apelent “maddokes” (“Take worms which issue from a man’s belly which are called maddocks by English people”) II,5 gipsus, qui est en englés apelé “cockel” (“gipsus, called cockle in English”) III,10 foilles papaveris [nigri], qui est apelé en engleis “popi neir” (“leaves of papaver niger, known in English as black pepper”) The last entry suggests some linguistic confusion concerning the appellation “engleis.” “Popi” is sometimes found unflagged and unglossed in Anglo-Norman texts, 16 and “neir” is certainly not English. One might also observe that “dert(r)e” is common enough in Anglo-Norman not 14 It is found in British Library MS Add.10289, which is Continental, see Hunt in Medioevo Romanzo 13: 31 no.17 and n.34. 15 To which may be added Hunt, Three Receptaria, 112 no. 259 (amplette). 16 See sirup de blanc popi in “Euperiston” [99] and [107], Hunt, Anglo-Norman Medicine 2, 160 and 162 respectively. <?page no="91"?> Languages of Medical Writing 91 to require a gloss (from another source? ) “en franceais.” 17 Finally, “hannebane” (which lacks an ascription to English in the second example) also occurs in Continental texts. The manner of the incorporation of these “English” ords leaves room for the possibility that they began life as glosses before being attracted (by the copyist? ) into the main text. Can we then assume that the exemplar was Anglo-Norman? This is where the real problems start. The lexical evidence is ambiguous. In the text of the rhymed receipts known as Physique rimee, also found in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.1.20, we have two occurrences of the word bibuef (“rtemisia, mugwort”) which is not present in two other Anglo-Norman copies of the Physique, which instead have artemise. It is in fact a word of Germanic origin used in north-eastern France. There are three more examples in two other works copied in the Trinity MS , one receipt containing the ingredient blaunc bibuef - an Anglo-Norman graphy followed by a northeastern French lexeme! So it looks as if some of the texts in MS O.1.20 were copied from Continental French exemplars. This is confirmed by the occurrence, in several texts in the same MS , of the words gris con and con chanu, names for the plant “fumitory,” confined to north-eastern France. The same goes for amblette, which is restricted to texts in this MS and to the northeast region of France, with a single exception - the example we found in the twelfth-century receipt collection in British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX . These lexical items invite questions about the transmission of medical writings in the vernacular and, in particular, the issue of whether France or England legitimately has the priority in the vernacularization of Salernitan, and other, medical treatises. Aside from the major treatises in MS O.1.20 it also transmits a collection of medical receipts which include “vous li poés doner caudel, geline et vin feble” - the Anglo-Norman Dictionary entry (sub chaudel, “caudle”) is not marked as Middle English, in which it is attested from 1325. On the other hand the Dictionary of Mediaeval Latin from British Sources records caldellum from 1190 onwards, 18 which makes the Middle English Dictionary attestation seem suspiciously late. As we saw, Latinizations of vernacular words are common in this dictionary, but much depends on the amplitude of the documentation, especially as regards contexts and dates, if we are to form an idea how far these trace words migrate. So far the interaction of three languages, 17 See the receipt in Edinburgh, Advocates Library MS 18 .6.9 f.68v Por une maladye quod vocatur “tetur wilde,” Hunt, Anglo-Norman Medicine 2, 130 n.7. 18 See Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France nouvelles acquisitions françaises 6539 f.107vb (an extensive medical treatise with emphasis on humoral pathology) . . . chaudel d’amandes. <?page no="92"?> 92 Tony Hunt written and oral, is complex, and further complicated by “foreign” i.e. Continental items. There is, at any rate, no great language shift which prepares us for extended works in English in the fourteenth century. When we come to the fourteenth century there is often an expectation, fuelled by Henslow’s Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century, that English now takes over medical writing. The impression is misleading because Henslow simply excerpted medical receipts in English from a variety of manuscripts (there are eighty-five collections). He recorded no Anglo-Norman - it has been airbrushed out of the picture. Linguistic evidence in medieval English should not be presented without the concurrent evidence of other languages. The evidence of fourteenth-century receipts contained in Three Receptaria shows the shifting patterns of concurrence: in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C 814, 34 percent of the receipts are in Latin, the rest in Anglo-Norman; in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 388, first compendium, 36 percent are in Anglo- Norman, the rest evenly split between English and Latin; and in the second Corpus compendium all one hundred and eighty-six receipts bar one (in French) are in English: a choice therefore of all possible permutations. The parallels given in the editor’s notes show how widely disseminated such receipts were and offer an urgent invitation to establish an electronic repertorium. 19 Of the four major medical compendia of the fourteenth century three attracted vernacular material and were host to popular receipts, which bulk increasingly large in such treatises. The first such work by an English author is the Compendium medicinae (some twelve MSS ) of the elusive Gilbertus Anglicus writing c.1240, some thirty years before the earliest surviving MS . Perhaps because Gilbertus spent much time on the Continent (including visits, probably, to Salerno and Montpellier) he does not incorporate vernacular items or indulge in code mixing, but was a rich source of later receipt collections. When the Compendium was adapted by a fifteenth-century Englishman (fifteen MSS ), it was radically cut and reduced to become little more than a Middle English receptarium; treatments of easily identifiable conditions together with theoretical and natural philosophical aspects of medicine are entirely eliminated. The same phenomenon is illustrated in the odyssey undergone by the Latin Speculum medicorum, a compilation of uncertain dimensions, the beginning of which is found in the twelfth-century Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C 235 (ff.9r-31v) without glossing or vernacular items. A century later it appears, this time acephalous, in the late thirteenth- 19 For some of the difficulties to be encountered in such an enterprise see Hargreaves. <?page no="93"?> Languages of Medical Writing 93 century Bodleian Library MS e musaeo 219 where it comprises over twenty-five medical texts. There are French and English glosses, within and alongside the Latin text. Yet when it appears in the fourteenth century in British Library MS Sloane 420, it has no vernacular entries at all, is highly abbreviated, and offers little more than a personal anthology containing very short receipts, as is also the case in the next century when it reappears in British Library Harley 2390. The evident elasticity of medical compilations, together with language mixing, is further exemplified by the fact that an apograph, including all glosses and annotations, was made of MS e musaeo 219 in Oxford, Merton College MS234 one hundred and fifty years later, further demonstrating the inseparability of vernacular names from material medica, the continuing concurrence of three languages, and the tenacity of copying, which is such an obstacle to determining the work’s original function. Associated with Merton College were the medical writers John of Gaddesden, John of Arden, and Simon Bredon. The interval between the copying of the two texts is the same as in the case of British Library MS Royal 12 C XIX and Cambridge, Trinity College MS O .2.5. Finally in a fifteenth-century copy, British Library Royal 12 E XXII the Speculum is considerably amplified, and the French material it contains exceeds material in English. There are glosses in three languages, which also appear in some receipts: Accipe sepum ovinum et pinguedinem porcinam nova[m] et liquefiant ana succum de tansay, de plauntayne a[nglice] ribwort, mellis despumati, dregges de cervisia veteri, de jubarbe, de lempe, de grundeswall, de omnibus supradictis ana (“Take fresh sheepand pig-fat and render together with tansy juice and plantain - English ribwort - skimmed honey, lees of stale beer, houseleek, brooklime, groundsel, of all these the same amount”) What is interesting is how supplementary material in French is still being imported to a compendium as late as the fifteenth century, whilst the incidence of material in English is almost negligible. There is now only one further fate left open - that is, wholesale translation. In the second quarter of the fifteenth century a full and careful translation of the Speculum into Middle English was produced. It is found in British Library MS Add. 34111. Typically the only edition from this rich MS has been a collection of medical receipts (Fordyn) and a small anonymous collection edited uninformatively by W. L. Braekman. The Speculum medicorum, in all its forms, is a work which needs thorough investigation. As well as the Speculum and the work of Gilbertus Anglicus, there are three other fourteenth-century compendia which were hosts to English <?page no="94"?> 94 Tony Hunt and French material and cannot be approached from a standpoint based on monoglossia. Just as celebrated, but more pragmatic and clearly organized than Gilbertus, was John of Gaddesden’s Rosa medicinae (1305- 17) which was plundered for its receipts, and like Gilbertus, was translated in the fifteenth century - this time into Irish. Vernacular plant names are included and some MSS (e.g. British Library MS Add. 33996) contain vernacular receipts - mostly Anglo-Norman, a few Middle English - and vernacular glosses. In other words, Latin and the vernacular could not be kept apart. A third Latin medical compendium is the work of John of Greenborough and follows a copy of Gilbertus in British Library MS Royal 12 G. IV (s.xiv) and contains many receipts which, indeed, largely constitute the treatise. The number of Middle English items increases (there remain a few in Anglo-Norman) and vernacular words (Anglo-Norman and Middle English) occur frequently in the course of the Latin text. Finally, there is the most comprehensive summary of medieval English medicine, the Breviarium Bartholomei (two MSS ) of John of Mirfield (d. 1407), almost entirely therapeutic in nature, a generous host to vernacular words (see Getz, Medicine 52). Thus for a century, works designed to provide a summary of the standard medieval medical authorities, mixed learned and popular material, Latin and vernacular, without caution or impediment. But before the last quarter of the fourteenth century no medical texts, other than receipt collections or remedy-books, were written in English. A hundred and fifty years earlier Anglo-Norman had been used exclusively in the translations of Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia, Platearius’s Practica brevis, 20 Archimatthaeus’s De instructione medici, a versified translation of liber de sinthomatibus mulierum - in other words Salernitan material, all found in Cambridge, Trinity College 0.1.20. One of the most comprehensive compendia is the trilingual “Practica”(thirty folios) found in Cambridge, Trinity College MS 0.5.32, copied in the fourteenth century and containing treatises in Latin and French, and many receipts familiar from vernacular collections like the Lettre d’Hippocrate and the Physique rimee. English appears only in single lexeme glosses and in one whole receipt and a single charm (and half another). Code-switching is common between the indication and the directions in the numerous receipts. The acceptance of individual English lexical items, taken with the absence of any passages in continuous English, demonstrates that no English treatises were available, if indeed any existed. For the ampli- 20 For a fragment of a similar treatise in Anglo-Norman see Hunt, “An Anglo-Norman Medical Treatise.” <?page no="95"?> Languages of Medical Writing 95 tude of its sections in French it is surpassed only by a compendium in the National Library of Scotland, Advocates Library MS 18.6.9 which represents a collection of twenty-three medical texts copied in the fourteenth century nearly seventy folios of which are occupied by a Frenchonly treatise entitled “Euperiston, ceo est a dire bien esprové, car i[l] n’y a riens escrit en cest livre ke ne est esprové.” It is topically arranged, shows just as substantial an investment of time and labour, but its contents more commonly reflect the compound medicines of the antidotaria tradition, as opposed to the heavier reliance on popular medicine in the Trinity Practica. There is a great deal of naming of authorities, the lists of ingredients of the more complex remedies retain their Latin names and inflections in what must have been straight copying. It is markedly more ambitious than many contemporary productions, particularly if it turns out not to be a translation. Everything is in Anglo-Norman, making Euperiston comparable only with the Trinity Practica in scope. Lexically there are only seventeen instances of English names introduced as synonyms by formulas such as .i., ke est apelés en engleis, ceo est a dire etc. and not flagged in the two cases of sirup de blanc popy/ popi. All this, as one may appreciate, is a small harvest for English two hundred and fifty years after the Conquest. The evidence of the compendia I have been discussing confirms Richard Ingham’s view (Middle English and Anglo-Norman in Contact) that French expanded its range of functions until the late fourteenth century, that 1250-1400 was hence a period of bilingualism among the educated classes in England, and that this indicates that “the ‘language shift’ model should be abandoned in favour of a ‘maintenance with bilingualism’ model until the late fourteenth century.” It is at the beginning of the fifteenth century that the sort of medical knowledge which I have illustrated by reference to four Anglo-Norman works, Frugardi’s Chirurgia, Platearius’s Practica Brevis, the Trinity “Practica,” and Euperiston, appears in English alone. Throughout the Middle Ages translators had an almost impossible task of keeping up with constant changes of nomenclature and penetrating frequently obscure diagnostic and therapeutic distinctions. The meaning of a Latin term from the thirteenth century might have significantly changed by the fifteenth century, when a text was recopied. One remembers with trepidation Mondeville’s cynical observation “Oportet enim loqui et morbos nominibus terribilibus nominare, ut a barbaris pecunia habeatur.” (“he [the surgeon] has to label illnesses with fearsome names in order to get some wretched clients to pay”). <?page no="96"?> 96 Tony Hunt *** I would like to conclude by recommending the extended study of four substantial translations on which there is much work to be done. A Middle English adaptation of Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia is found in British Library MS Sloane 240 (s.xv 1 ) ff.1r 47v where it leads without interruption (same hand) into an extensive remedy-book in five parts (ff.48r- 137r) complementing the Surgery. Forty-five of Frugardi’s one hundred and forty-one (the Anglo-Norman translation omits only two! ) chapters are omitted. As one would expect, a few parts are abbreviated and there are also some additions and amplifications. On the subject of toothache, for example, the Middle English departs completely from the original, concluding “And knowe this for a good rule that ther is no medicyn so good for a roten toth as is pulling out þerof, for þat is most sekerest medicyn.” Surgical instruments are very rarely given their technical names, but some Latin quotations are preserved in the original. In general the translator announces clearly his procedures and sometimes offers translations which are an improvement in clarity, displaying a high degree of conscientiousness. The Practica brevis (at least seventeen Insular Latin copies) receives a detailed translation in Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.x.44 (s.xv) ff.1r-100v with a prologue in red. There are sixty-eight chapters, in which sections on cures are given a red heading Cura - the same is often true for Signa, Cause, Dieta. It is clear that the vernacular is still struggling to get to grips with botanical terminology and medical terms. As in other translations, materia medica is frequently copied out in its original Latin dress. Interestingly, there is a sixteenth-century copy of the earlier chapters (as far as Book 3) of the Middle English translation in British Library MS Sloane 14 ff.1r-24r. My concluding example of a fifteenthcentury Middle English adaptation of a much earlier medical treatise is found in British Library MS Add 34111 (s.xv 2/ 4 ) ff.40r-190r and is a full and careful version of the Speculum medicorum, “The Spectacle of Medicines,” with a Preface. My conclusion is simple. In medieval England medical writing was intimately involved with all three (or four) languages. Indeed, it is medicine which par excellence engages us with the languages of medieval England. 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Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986. <?page no="101"?> Languages of Medical Writing 101 Wallner, Björn. “Plant Names in the Middle English Guy de Chauliac.” Studia Neophilologica 64 (1992): 35-44. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn. Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100-c.1500. York: York Medieval Press, 2009. <?page no="103"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader in Middle English Gynaecological Texts Mary C. Flannery Middle English medical treatises often explicitly acknowledge that shame is one possible response to medical examination and treatment. This is a problem that medieval gynaecological treatises, in particular, struggle to address. These texts treat bodily shame as a paramount concern for women, who - socially and personally - might have much to fear from the exposure of their private lives and private parts. One of the foremost methods used by gynaecological treatises to circumnavigate the possibility of shame is to place the burden of responsibility on readers, male and female alike. Consequently, Middle English gynaecological texts tend to imagine their ideal readers in terms of shame, whether by admonishing male readers not to be “vncurteys” to women or by envisaging a community of female readers who share their medical expertise and do not “diskuren her previtees to suche vncurteys men.” Reading the prologues of these texts for their affective strategies reveals that shame could underlie not only the treatment, but also the acts of writing and reading about women’s ailments in the Middle Ages. Over the past twenty years, one of the most significant developments in the study of medieval women’s medicine has been the general shift away from the reductive assumption that “women’s illnesses were women’s business” (Rowland xv). As Monica H. Green has observed, scholars are no longer assuming that “women had exclusive control over gynaecology and obstetrics” or that “written texts on women’s medicine must have been created by women and intended for their use” (Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 18). But one persistent scholarly trend is a tendency to focus on the practical implications of medieval gynaecologi- Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 103-115. <?page no="104"?> 104 Mary C. Flannery cal texts - in other words, on what they and their manuscripts suggest about who owned and read them, and about who had knowledge of and practiced women’s medicine in the Middle Ages. I would like to argue here for a new approach to reading medieval gynaecological texts that considers instead what they and their prologues can reveal about affective reading in medieval England. One particular element that suggests this might be a fruitful approach to these medical texts is the frequency of the shame topos in gynaecological literature. While shame’s recurrence as a topos in the discourse of women’s medicine has been well noted by historians (Green, “From ‘Diseases of Women’”), less attention has been paid by literary scholars to how the prologues of these texts both invoke and elevate shame as a key component of reading them appropriately. Indeed, one of the most significant aspects of these prologues is how they imagine ideal readers in specifically affective terms - that is, in terms of their readers’ grasp of the significance and dangers of shame, as well as in terms of readers’ response to the potential for shame to be experienced by women. These prologues and their collective stance towards shame suggest that this painful emotion could underlie not only the practice of women’s medicine, but also the acts of writing and reading about women’s ailments in medieval England. At the same time, the discourse of shame in the prologues - and, indeed, the very presence of the prologues themselves - provides convincing grounds for viewing gynaecological texts alongside other medieval texts and traditions, rather than treating them as a genre distinct from literature. *** Shame and women’s medicine have gone hand in hand for millennia. Writing in the fifth and fourth centuries BC , the author(s) of the ancient Greek Hippocratic text Diseases of Women observed that complications could arise in the diagnosis and treatment of female maladies because “women are ashamed to tell even if they know [what ails them], and they suppose that it is a disgrace, because of their inexperience and lack of knowledge” (Hanson 582). A few centuries later, the Roman author Hyginus (ca. 64 BC - AD 17) related the impressive story of the female Athenian doctor Agnodice in his Fabulae. 1 Agnodice disguised herself as a man in order to learn about gynaecology and obstetrics and to treat 1 See Hyginus, Fable CLXXIV (pp. 196-7); for an English translation, see Apollodorus’ Library 180. <?page no="105"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 105 women. Her medical reputation soon spread, and she eventually attended most of the female population in Athens. Jealous of her success, male doctors accused her of seducing her female patients. Their case fell apart when Agnodice exposed herself in court in order to prove her gender and her innocence, but they then protested even more vociferously that, because she was a woman, she should not be allowed to practice medicine. The wives of leading Athenians intervened on her behalf, however, and as a result the Athenian law against the practice of medicine by women was changed. But the question of who should be allowed to practice women’s medicine continued to be debated well into the Middle Ages, and many writers acknowledged the delicacy of the issue. Indeed, the Liber de Sinthomatibus Mulierum (the first text of the socalled Trotula ensemble, possibly dating from the late twelfth century) opens by observing that [W]omen, from the condition of their fragility, out of shame [uerecundiam] and embarrassment do not dare reveal their anguish over their diseases (which happen in such a private place) to a physician. Therefore, their misfortune, which ought to be pitied, and especially the influence of a certain woman stirring my heart, have impelled me to give a clear explanation regarding their diseases in caring for their health. (The Trotula 71) 2 When discussing these kinds of references to shame in medieval gynaecological texts, most scholars have focused on their implications for the practice and/ or regulation of women’s medicine in the Middle Ages. From the perspective of such studies, female shame’s significance lies in how it affected the nitty-gritty details of how medieval gynaecology was practiced, and who could practice it. How could (male) physicians diagnose and treat their patients without making them feel ashamed (or feeling ashamed themselves)? Who was best suited to the practice of women’s medicine? Viewed from this perspective, female shame functions as a kind of problem to be negotiated, a potential obstacle to effective diagnosis and treatment. Medieval medical texts tend to argue along the same lines: thus the twelfth-century Breviarium of John of Saint Paul (Johannes de Sancto Paulo) justifies male treatment of gynaecological diseases by arguing that Women are ashamed to confess [their diseases] out of embarrassment. Therefore, let reason reveal what shame conceals. (Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 44) 2 The Latin title of this text is most frequently translated as Conditions of Women. In medieval tradition, the text was later known as the Trotula Major (The Trotula 3). <?page no="106"?> 106 Mary C. Flannery Verecundantur femine confiteri propter turpitudinem. Ratio itaque pandat quod uerecundia celat[.] (London, British Library, MS Additional 16385, fol. 56) 3 Here, the learned, rational doctor must overcome the irrational hindrance that is female shame in order to diagnose and treat women. As Green notes, “John seems to see the problem of shame as women’s problem; it is the male practitioner’s reason, his enlightened ability to speak rationally about disease” that will solve the problem of women’s shame (Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 43-4, her emphasis). There are two key components to Green’s observation. The first is that John of Saint Paul’s statement draws a clear distinction between the emotion experienced by the (female) patient on the one hand, and the reason of the practitioner on the other. The second key point is that John’s statement also establishes a clear hierarchy between reason and emotion, one which prioritizes the “enlightened” rationality of the physician over the problem of female shame. Indeed, the binary seems almost explicitly to be one in which masculine, Latin learning and reason are opposed (and superior) to unlearned feminine emotionality. It is worth noting, however, that this dynamic of the physician’s rationality versus the patient’s shame was not confined to women’s medicine: for example, a fifteenthcentury Middle English translation of Guy de Chauliac’s Grande Chirurgie warns that ulcers “of the þighe bone and of his parties” may grow worse if a male or female patient is too ashamed of where the ulcers are located to expose them to “þe sighte and to the touchinge” of a physician; the key problem here is that the ulcers “ben not schewede for schamefastnesse til þat þai ben made wikkede” (Cyrurgie 319.31-320.4). On the one hand such passages indicate that fear or shame is a natural, expected response on the part of a patient who is asked to expose his or her private parts to close scrutiny. On the other hand, however, these passages also smack of a certain frustration concerning such “schamefastnesse”: it hinders diagnosis and treatment, and can result in the worsening of a patient’s condition. From the perspective of the learned practitioner, shame may be natural, but it is also inconvenient. Likewise, John of Saint Paul’s remark characterizes affect and reason as separate qualities, and privileges the latter as the superior of the two. But if we acknowledge - as I will argue we should - that shame can shape both the writing and reading of medical texts, then that acknowledgement puts pressure on this binary of “irrational” shame versus “enlightened” rational knowledge. Indeed, as I will show, the Middle English prologues’ re- 3 Cited in Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 44. <?page no="107"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 107 vised view of female shame elevates the emotion as a necessary component of diagnostic processes. In order to uncover the range of roles played by shame in medieval medical treatises, we would do well to consider the roles played by emotions such as shame in non-medical medieval texts, which offer some examples of how affect may be lauded as a productive tool for penitence and personal comportment. According to the authors of fourteenth-century devotional texts, for example, shame was one of the most effective emotional weapons against sin, particularly the sin of pride. The opening lines of Handlyng Synne, the treatise translated from an Anglo-Norman source by Robert Mannyng (died c. 1338), suggest that shame is fundamental both to moving the penitent to confession and to eventually triumphing over “þe fende”: Fadyr, and Sone, & holy goste, Þat art o god of my tes moste, At þy wurschyp shul we bygynne, To shame þe fende & shew oure synne; Synne to shewe, vs to frame, God to wurschyp, þe fende to shame. (lines 1-6) And as Walter Hilton’s The Scale of Perfection shows (c. 1343-1396), shame can also forestall the possibility of pride: Thanne yif thou feele a stirynge of pride, or ony othir spice of it, be soone waar yif thou mai, and suffre hit not lightli passe awai, but take in thi mynde and rende it, breke it and dispice it, and doo al the shame that thou mai therto. (89, fol. 80v) Here, Hilton’s words pit shame against pride in a psychomachic struggle over the Christian soul. In this context, shame is not a problem to be overcome by reason, but is instead a tool to be used by the reader “in thi mynde” to combat sin. 4 In medieval exempla and conduct literature, shame often plays a similarly disciplinary role. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale, for example, it is Virginia’s famed “shamefastnesse” - her modesty, sobriety, 4 This is not to say that shame was not sometimes viewed as an obstacle to such processes as that of confession. If felt too keenly, it might prevent a man or woman from confessing altogether. As Thomas N. Tentler has noted, the key was not to be coerced by shame, but to experience the appropriate amount while repenting of one’s sins (108). Similarly, as Robert Stanton points out, reveling in self-righteous shame could also lead to the sin of vainglory. See also Flannery. <?page no="108"?> 108 Mary C. Flannery and seriousness (Middle English Dictionary s.v. shamefastnes(se)) - that lies at the heart of her exemplary virtue: And if that excellent was hire beautee, A thousand foold moore vertuous was she. In hire ne lakked no condicioun That is to preyse, as by discrecioun. As wel in goost as body chast was she, For which she floured in virginitee With alle humylitee and abstinence, With alle attemperaunce and pacience, With mesure eek of beryng and array. [. . .] Shamefast she was in maydens shamefastnesse, Constant in herte, and evere in bisynese To dryve hire out of ydel slogardye. (lines 39-57) Chaucer’s doubled reference to the “shamefastnesse” of “shamefast” Virginia stresses the importance of this quality over and above all her other good points. Here, Virginia’s model behaviour is directly governed by her unflinching desire to avoid any form or risk of disgrace. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this emphasis on the importance of shamefastness to good conduct may also be seen in such courtesy poems as those contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (Flannery 177-8): How the Wise Man Taught His Son (fols. 6r-6v), How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter (fols. 7r-8v), Stans Puer ad Mensam (fols. 17v-19v) and Dame Courtesy (fols. 20r-21v) are all concerned with the way that one is perceived by others, and with the possibility of being disgraced or dishonoured in the eyes of others. Far from dismissing shame as an inconvenience or an obstacle, such texts privilege it as a means of governing one’s behaviour, and suggest new ways of approaching the topos in writings on women’s medicine. If in these recognizably literary genres it can be a means to virtue and penitence, can it not perform similar functions in the prologues of gynaecological treatises? In the remainder of this paper, I will angle away from the practical implications of shame for medieval women’s medicine to consider its potential as a means to the affective reading of medieval works on gynaecology and obstetrics. The prologues to two Middle English gynaecological treatises suggest a new way of reading shame’s role in medieval writings on women’s medicine: that is, as a corrective force that shapes and guides reading. Just as pastoral, exemplary, and courtesy texts rely on the shamefastness of their readers in order to produce good behaviour, the prologues of these gynaecological treatises use shame in order <?page no="109"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 109 to shape their readers’ approach to and use of the practical material that follows. The first text I will consider is the prologue to the mid-fifteenthcentury text The Sickness of Women, which appears to have been the “most widely disseminated” gynaecological text in late-medieval England (Green, “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts” 72). It is a partial translation into Middle English of the Latin Compendium medicinae by Gilbertus Anglicus (composed ca. 1240), and is extant in two versions preserved in sixteen manuscripts. The prologue appears at the beginning of Version 2, and constitutes an addition to the main body of the text, appearing in all four manuscripts in which the work survives. 5 The precise nature of the intended audience is unclear: although the main body of the text is in Middle English, it occasionally lapses into Latin, and never addresses itself to a female patient or midwife. The translator/ compiler explains that the guide has been produced partly in response to the shame women feel during medical examination: For as moche as ther bien many wymmen that han many diuers maladies and sikenessis nygh to the deth and they also bien shameful to shewen and to tellen their grevaunces to any wight therfor I shal sumdel write to their maladie remedy, prayeng to God and to his blessid moder Marie ful of grace to sende me grace triewly to write to the pleasaunce of God and to al wymmens helpyng[.] (485) At first glance, this passage seems to be addressing a practical issue: the fact that shame can be an obstacle to the diagnosis and treatment of women’s ailments. Because women can be “shameful to shewen and to tellen” what ails them, it is more difficult for them to be diagnosed and treated. But what follows these lines moves away from practical concerns and deeper into affective territory: And thowgh wymmen have divers evils and many grete grevaunces mo than al men knowen of, as I saide, hem shamen for drede of reprevyng in tymes comyng and of discuryng of vncurteys men that loven wymmen but for their lustis and for their foul likyng; and if wymmen bien in disease, suche men han hem in dispite and thynken nat how moche disease wymmen han or than thei han brought hem [i.e. men] furth into this world. 5 Version 2 is preserved in the following four manuscripts: London, British Library, Sloane MSS 249 (fols. 180v-205v) and 2463 (fols. 194r-232r); London, Royal College of Surgeons, MS 129 (fols. 1r-45v); and Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.14.52 (fols. 107r- 135v). <?page no="110"?> 110 Mary C. Flannery And therfor in helpyng of wymmen I wil write of wymmen prevy sikenes the helpyng of, that oo womman may help another in hir sikenes and nat discure hir privitees to suche vncurteys men. (Ibid.) These lines have most frequently been read for what they suggest about the status and/ or gender of the intended readers: the prologue invites female readers to “helpe another in her sykenesse,” envisaging a community of women who share their medical expertise and do not “diskuren her previtees to suche vncurteys men” (although, of course, the text’s actual readership may have been quite different). But I would argue that what is also significant here is shame’s status: here, womanly “drede” and shamefastness are not solely obstacles (although they are issues to be addressed). Instead, these lines identify shamefastness as the motivation behind the writing of the text that follows. Writing “in helping of women,” the author of this prologue identifies him-/ herself as someone who understands and sympathizes with female emotions, and by offering a way for women to avoid exposing themselves to “vncurteys men,” the author identifies the text as something intended for a shamefast readership. In other words, what matters most here is not a question of gender or literacy, but rather of affective disposition. Whether or not it was realized or reflected in actual practice, the pose of addressing women in this manner is significant, and it stands in stark contrast to the words of John of St. Paul. Here, the most important thing is not the reason or the Latin learning of the male physician, but the vernacular, affective female experience. The text markets itself as the product of (and for) a mind that is not “vncurteys” to women, a mind that wishes to help them to avoid shame. The translator of an earlier Middle English gynaecological text - The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing - similarly imagines ideal readers in terms of shamefastness. Composed either in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and extant in five manuscripts, The Knowing of Woman’s Kind synthesizes translations of a variety of gynaecological texts, and contains a number of structural and rhetorical similarities to The Sickness of Women. 6 Initially, its prologue explicitly claims that the text is intended for women: 6 As Green and Mooney note, although “Sickness owes no direct textual debt to Knowing,” “their structural similarities are unlikely to have been merely coincidental” (463). Indeed, they suggest that it seems “quite likely, then, that the author of Sickness 2 was aware of the existence and the rhetorical posture of Knowing even if s/ he didn’t employ it as a direct model. Both texts see male involvement with women’s diseases as potentially threatening to women, and both claim to wish to empower women to ‘help one another’ by reading (and using) their text, thereby allowing them to bypass any dependence on males” (466). <?page no="111"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 111 And be-cause whomen of oure tonge cvnne bettyre rede & vndyrstande þys langage þan eny oþer & euery whoman lettyrde [may] rede hit to oþer vnlettyrd & help hem & conceyle hem in here maledyes with-owten schevynge here dysese to man, I have þys drawyn & wryttyn in Englysch. (42) By composing a text that can be read by and shared among women, this author - like the author of The Sickness of Women - seeks to insulate women from the potential shame of exposure to men. However, the lines immediately following these concede that men may indeed read this text, and consequently admonish any male readers to respect the “preuytees” of women: And yf hit fall any man to rede hit, I pray hym & scharge hym in ovre Lady be-halue þat he rede hit not in no dyspyte ne sclavndure of no woman ne for no cause but for þe hele & helpe of hem, dredynge þat vengavns myht fall to hym as hit hath do to oþer þat have schevyd here preuytees in sclauvndyr of hem, vndyrstondynge in certeyne þat þey have no oþer euylys þat nov be a-lyue than thoo women hade þat nov be seyntys in hevyn. (Ibid.) 7 Although the “vengavns” that might befall the uncharitable male reader remains vague, this text demands that male readers approach its contents with not only charitable, but specifically shamefast intentions. This passage’s references to “ovre Lady” and other women “þat nov be seyntys in hevyn” lend an aura of sanctity to women in general, incorporating them into a community defined by female saintliness. The result is the corresponding elevation not just of women in general, but of their suffering, their illness, and even their shamefastness, which are here imbued with holiness-by-association. As a text that concerns the potentially shaming “preuytees” of women, The Knowing of Woman’s Kind begins with a preface that functions as a gatekeeper to the delicate subject it addresses. The prologue acknowledges that men may indeed read the ensuing text - and it nowhere suggests that this is, in and of itself, a problem. What is a potential problem is the intent or disposition of those male readers. 8 Above all, the text must not be read “in no dyspyte ne sclavndure of no woman.” Here, the “problem” of female shame is converted to a solution: a 7 The warning contained in this passage, taken from the “Douce Version,” may also be found in a nearly identical form in the “Cambridge Version” of the text (The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing 43). 8 Green makes a similar point regarding the contents of gynaecological treatises: “What is at issue is not so much what the texts contain as how they are read” (Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 201). <?page no="112"?> 112 Mary C. Flannery means of approaching and using a medical treatise appropriately, and the key issue on which successful treatment of female maladies hinges. The prologues to The Sickness of Women and The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing each describe themselves as relying upon a specific form of affective reading to ensure the correct reception of their texts. They thus effect two translations: one from Latin into English, and one from the masculine perspective of Latin learning to a perspective sympathetic to women’s affective experience. According to this new perspective, the ideal audience is defined in terms of its emotional intelligence. In turn, this strategy suggests an affinity with rather than a separation from other medieval genres, which privileged emotions such as shame in similar ways. Closer examination of the rhetoric of medical treatises could well reveal further appropriations of more familiarly “literary” techniques and perspectives, but closer examination of medical discourse in medieval literature would also do much to bridge the perceived gap between these bodies of medieval writing. 9 By way of a conclusion, I would therefore like to return briefly to the genre of pastoral writing in order to offer one example of how medical and emotional discourse can intersect in medieval prompts to affective reading. For my purposes, the most thought-provoking pastoral reference to shame occurs in Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale, a treatise on the three elements of penitence: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. The passage I wish to consider is the Parson’s strong condemnation of male fashion - specifically, men’s tights. What is particularly notable about this passage - apart from its vehemence - is the way that it merges pastoral and medical discourse with the language of shame in order to guide readers towards penitence : Allas, somme of hem shewen the boce of hir shap, and the horrible swollen membres, that semeth lik the maladie of hirnia, in the wrappynge of hir hoses; / and eek the buttokes of hem faren as it were the hyndre part of a she-ape in the fulle of the moone. / And mooreover, the wrecched swollen membres that they shewe thurgh disgisynge, in departynge of hire hoses in whit and reed, semeth that half hir shameful privee membres weren flayne. / And if so be that they departen hire hoses in othere colours, as is whit and blak, or whit and blew, or blak and reed, and so forth, / thanne semeth it, as by variaunce of colour, that half the partie of hire privee membres were corrupt by the fir of Seint Antony, or by cancre, or by oother swich meschaunce. (lines 422-7) 9 A number of scholars have begun to move in this direction; see, for example, Bishop, Gasse, and Walter. <?page no="113"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 113 The above passage fixes the mind’s eye on man’s shameful parts: the “boce” (bulge) of the “horrible swollen membres,” “the buttokes,” the “shameful privee members,” all of which are vividly likened to various medical conditions (“the maladie of hirnia,” “the fir of Seint Antony,” “cancre”). These images are not titillating, but disgusting and shameful, meant to combat any possibility of lust or pride and to inspire penitence. The grotesque imagery of swelling and discoloration transforms what might be an object of fascination to an object of revulsion. But these lines depend implicitly upon the shamefastness or modesty of readers for their shocking effect; if readers were impervious to shame and disgust, this kind of imagery would not be effective. Like the excerpt from The Parson’s Tale, the prologues to Middle English gynaecological texts rely on what is explicitly conceived of as a required, shared sensibility to shame for their definition of good reading and use. Rather than relying on masculine reason to solve the “problem” of female shame, readers are exhorted to cultivate a specific affective disposition in order to access the information that will enable them to diagnose and treat female maladies successfully. But just as these prologues exhort medieval readers to read the ensuing texts correctly, so, too, do they challenge us to reconsider how they work upon their readers. Shame’s role in these texts depends on how one is reading these texts. From the “practical” point of view, shamefastness is an obstacle that must be overcome by the “rational” physician in order for effective diagnosis and treatment to proceed. But read from an affective position, shamefastness is an essential tool for the correct reading and use of medieval gynaecological texts: a shamefast mind is the only mind capable of writing, reading, and using their knowledge appropriately. To focus solely on the practical aspects of these texts is to miss other ways in which they function, employing the affective strategies that we so often see at work in other medieval genres. For the present-day student of these works, perhaps the larger point to take away is that what can be lost or revealed in these texts also depends greatly on how we read them. <?page no="114"?> 114 Mary C. Flannery References Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, trans. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007. Barratt, Alexandra, ed. The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and Other Sources. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Bishop, Louise M. Words, Stones, and Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1007. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Parson’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer. Larry D. Benson et al., eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 [1987]: 288- 327. . The Physician’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed Larry D. Benson et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 [1987]. 190-3. de Chauliac, Guy. The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac. Margaret S. Ogden, ed. Early English Text Society 265. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Flannery, Mary C. “The Concept of Shame in Late-Medieval English Literature.” Literature Compass 9 (2012): 166-82. Gasse, Rosanne. “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman.” Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 177-97. Green, Monica H. “From ‘Diseases of Women’ to ‘Secrets of Women’: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 5-39. . Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre- Modern Gynaecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. . “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts in Middle English.” Studies in the Ages of Chaucer 14 (1992): 53-88. , ed and trans. The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. and Linne R. Mooney. “The Sickness of Women.” In Sex, Aging, and Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe. M. Teresa Tavormina, ed. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 292 (2 vols). Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006: volume 2, 455-568. . “Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in the Middle Ages”. Signs 12 (1989): 434-73. Hanson, Ann Ellis. “Hippocrates: Diseases of Women 1.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (1975): 567-84. <?page no="115"?> Emotion and the Ideal Reader 115 Hilton, Walter. The Scale of Perfection. Ed. Thomas H. Bestul. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. Hyginus. Fabulae. Ed. Peter K. Marshall. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1993. Mannyng, Robert. Robert of Brunne’s ‘Handlyng Synne,’ A.D. 1303, With Those Parts of the Anglo-French Treatise on Which it was Founded. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. Early English Texts Society, Original Series 119 and 123 (2 vols). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1901 and 1903 Rowland, Beryl. Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health: The First English Gynaecological Handbook. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University, 1981. Stanton, Robert. “Lechery, Pride, and the Uses of Sin in The Book of Margery Kempe.” The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 36 (2010): 169- 204. Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Walter, Katie L. “Discourse of the Human: Mouths in Late Medieval Religious Literature” (unpublished dissertation). University of Cambridge, 2006. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans, eds.The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. <?page no="117"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower Virginia Langum This essay discusses the presentation of wrath and envy, primarily in the Middle English poem the Confessio Amantis, but with some references to the French Mirror of Man, as a means of exploring the fourteenthcentury English poet John Gower’s understanding of the body, medicine and sin. Wrath and envy present interesting case studies as Gower claims that they are the most unnatural of the seven sins. Yet wrath and envy are richly embodied in both his poetry, as well as contemporary medical and pastoral literature as will be shown. The essay argues for the hitherto unnoticed importance of medicine in understanding Gower’s poetry. I would specifically like to address the question of whether wrath, envy and other passions cause or are metaphors for, sin, in Gower’s representations of these passions. By attending to human physiology, Gower invites the reader to recognize their shared human weakness, particularly in reference to the passions (emotions) and the predisposition to sin: his text thus fosters co-passion or compassion in his reader, as I will argue. Among the medieval poets, the late fourteenth-century John Gower is probably one of the least studied in his relationship to medicine or science. A study published in 1926 of Medieval Sciences in the Works of Gower concludes that there is “very little medicine” in his poetry (Fox 27). Although this opinion has not been challenged in later Gower studies, I would like to argue for Gower’s knowledge of medicine, specifically in his descriptions of wrath and envy. Gower presents these sins as a means of understanding the body, medicine and sin, primarily in his Middle English poem Confessio Amantis, and to a lesser extent in the Mirror of Man, an allegorical French poem. Both works were written in the late fourteenth-century and reflect contemporary medical and pastoral Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 117-130. <?page no="118"?> 118 Virginia Langum writing on the sins. Furthermore, critical questions are illuminated by putting his work in a context of medieval medicine, such as the ethical status of nature and what control people have over their own nature. Confessio Amantis spans more than thirty thousand lines and consists of a prologue and eight books. Seven of these books consider a different sin framed around a lover’s confession, and a further book summarizes the knowledge needed by a king to rule well. Throughout the text, the body is referenced as representative of the disordered macrocosm. In the Prologue, the poet describes how the body is divided from others through the separation of countenance and character, but it is also divided within its very physiology. Original sin is blamed for this division and disease. Scholastic and late medieval theologians characterize the source of physical and spiritual illness resulting from the disordered humors and the separation of sense and intellect that accompanies the Fall (Ziegler, “Medicine and Immortality” 201-242). Or as Gower writes in the Prologue to the Confessio: “the vice of alle dedly sin/ Thurgh which division came inne” (Vol. I 1009-1010). The poet dismisses protestations to “fortune” or “constellacion” as the cause of this state of affairs in seeming agreement with pastoral theologians who warned against such reasoning as a defense or excuse for sin in their manuals (Craun 35-45). For Gower, man is the cause of his own “well and wo.” He writes: “That we fortune clepe so/ Out of the man himself it groweth” (Vol. 1 548-549). While rejecting the stars as a cause, his poetic expression also appears to belie his argument for human responsibility. If this impetus, the source of happiness and sadness, is organic and “groweth” from within the human, it would suggest a pathological or physiological basis. If motivations are pathological, then how responsible can people really be for their sins? Elsewhere in the poem, the poet provides conventional medieval understandings of complexion or physiology as an explanation for dispositions to certain kinds of outlooks and behavior. In Book VII, he enumerates the four humors and their basis for particular ailments and dispositions. For example, cholera “makth a man be enginous/ And swift of fote and ek irous; / Of contek and folhastifnesse/ He hath a riht gret besinesse” (Vol. 3, Book 7 433-436). In what would seem a contradictory model to that indicated by his harsh words about human responsibility, the narrator here is advised to confess to love-drunkenness without shame. His confessor can tell by his physiognomy that he is predisposed to this behavior. (Vol. III, Book 6 104-111) Physiognomy was one tool at the educated confessor’s disposal to determine culpability for sin. Thus penitential handbooks advise confessors to practice spiritual as well as material diagnosis: that is, they should <?page no="119"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 119 study complexion and physiognomy to determine a sinner’s predisposition to particular sins (Langum 204-206). To understand responsibility for sin, the poet suggests, we must understand the relationship of sin to the body and its sicknesses. Confessio Amantis is replete with references to the “maladie” of lovesickness and the wounds of sin conventional in romance and confessional literature (Wack; McNeill and Gamer 44-50). The conceit of the poem is structured around both the associations of illness with love and cure with confession. Recognizing that he has a “maladie” that “myhte make a wis man madd” (Vol. I, Book 1 131), Amans pleads to Venus as “mannes hele” (Vol. 1 133). Venus encourages him to “schew” his “seknesse,” emphasizing that she will not be able to administer medicine if he conceals his “sore” or disguises his symptoms (Vol. 1, Book 1 185). However, following the mandates of Lateran IV that all secular medicine be preceded by pastoral medicine - the cure of confession (Lateran IV “Canon 22”) - Venus calls for her priest to “hier this mannes schrifte” (Vol. 1, Book I 197). It is conventional confessional enquiry, whereby the priest both interrogates and educates the confessant, that presents the poet with an opportunity to explore the seven sins and their various forms. The sins of envy and wrath are described as particularly unnatural or against “kind” as they have no instinctual prompting or urging in nature yet cause great destruction to man’s moral and physical being. The Mirror of Man condemns envy as “sur tous mals . . . desnatural” [“the most unnatural of evils”] (3757). Likewise, in Confessio Amantis, the poet writes of envy: “for ay the mor that he envieth,/ The more agein himself he plieth” (Vol. 2, Book 2 3145-3146). Likewise, wrath is “forein” to Nature’s law in that it works against the basic drive toward selfpreservation. Throughout his exposition on wrath, the Confessor emphasizes its destructiveness. He states: “to kinde no plesance/ It doth, bot wher he most achieveth/ His pourpos, most to kinde he grieveth” (Vol. 2, Book 3 8-10). Diseases were one of many schemata designed to help priests and parishioners understand and memorize the seven deadly sins as part of the broad pastoral movement of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Wenzel 154-156). Gower’s use of disease to describe the sins in the Mirror participates in this tradition, as well as the trend toward more detailed and naturalistic portraits of the vices in the later Middle Ages (Katzenellenbogen 44). The reforms of the third and fourth Lateran councils required annual auricular confession and generated new genres of confession and penance, as well as those of instruction and exemplification, which flourished in the vernacular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Boyle 30-43; Shaw 44-60). At the same time, technical manuals, such as physiognomies, encyclopedias, surgical manuals and <?page no="120"?> 120 Virginia Langum medical recipe books, were also being translated into the vernacular (Getz 1-17). The rise of these two discourses - religious and technical - did not occur in a vacuum. The historian Joseph Ziegler remarks that the filtration of medical material into religious discourse in the later Middle Ages “served to make medicine a significant cultural agent” (Medicine and Religion 177). With this in mind, scholars have been attending more to how medieval literary texts, such as Piers Plowman, deploy medical imagery (Gasse 177-197). Gower’s interest in the inter-relation of the medical with the ethical is apparent in The Mirror of Man where the seven deadly sins are described in terms of diseases and various physical ailments. In this allegorical French poem focusing upon the effects of sin upon the world, some of the seven deadly sins are figuratively correlated and others materially correlated to illnesses. For example, the poet figuratively compares pride to frenzy as it “tolt la resoun enterine” [“removes reason entirely”] (2526). Gluttony is ascribed two sets of physiological effects. Gluttony is first figuratively compared to “loup royal,” a disease which as he explains uses up medicines without producing a cure just as gluttons devour and waste animals without ever being sated (8521). Then, gluttony’s material symptoms are described: it impairs reason, causes pain in the belly and bowels, leads to gout, makes the mouth stink and so on (8596-8604). Sin is thus symbolically and physically the cause of specific diseases and general symptoms. Thus, in the Mirror, the medicalized body serves as both a useful analogy for metaphorical exemplification and a material site for the ravages of sin. Reflecting upon similar ideas in Confessio Amantis, Gower addresses fundamental questions about human responsibility for sin. Wrath and envy present particularly interesting case studies as Gower claims that they are the most unnatural of the seven sins. Yet wrath and envy are embodied in both his poetry, as well as contemporary medical and pastoral material. In Gower’s conception, we may ask, does human physiology serve as a metaphor for or a cause of sin, for example? And what implication does this have for his general view of the causality of and freedom from sin? By attending to human physiology, Gower prompts the recognition of shared human weakness, particularly in reference to the passions (emotions) and the predisposition to sin, and thus co-passion or compassion. Before looking at the effects of envy and wrath upon human health, I would like to put these sins in context: how unnatural did medieval medical and pastoral writers consider them to be? In evaluating human physiology, medieval medicine recognizes the division of “natural” forces such as complexions, humors, organs, operations, and the circulation of air and “non-natural” things, those things which are not “es- <?page no="121"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 121 sential parts of the body or of life itself.” These non-naturals include rest, diet and the passions, or emotions. (Luke Demaitre 106). The passions are most likely organized into four in medieval contexts: joy, anger, sadness and fear (Knuuttila, “Medieval Theories” 57-58). Wrath is almost invariably included among the passions, and envy is often at times included as a passion in its own right or discussed as a species of sadness (Aquinas Theologica II. IIae., Quaest. 36. Art. 1). One of the most widely cited sources on the passions in the later Middle Ages, Haly Abbas, describes the passions or “accidents of the soul” as forces, which cause the movements of the vital spirits and heat either towards or away from the heart. Anger, for example, was thought to cause the spirits and heat to rush from the heart to the extremities, heating and drying the body and causing swelling. Envy’s physiology produces the opposite effect: it draws heat to the heart (Knuutila, “Medieval Theories” 56-58). Medieval medicine holds that both animals and people are subject to passions. However, where passions lead animals, the former are subject to reason in human beings. As the English encyclopaedist Bartholomaeus Anglicus writes, “wraþþe, fitinge, indignacioun, enuye, and suche passiouns” “ariseþ in oþir bestis . . . withoute discrecioun. But in men suche passiouns buþ ordeyned and iruled by certeyn resound of wit” (On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1 107). Theologians also elaborate upon the functioning of the passions, particularly in descriptions of the effects of the Fall on human nature. While passions are not a consequence of original sin, they were originally entirely under the complete control of the rational will. Thus, there were no spontaneous reactions of the sensitive soul before the Fall (Knuutila, Emotions 180). After the Fall, passions are spontaneous, physiological reactions to stimuli. Both Augustine and Aquinas emphasize the physical and physiological in relation to the passions in postlapsarian man. In particular, Aquinas maintains that physical changes, such as an increase or decrease in the heart-rate or enlargement or contraction of the heart, always accompany the passions (Knuutila, Emotions 242). It falls to reason to rule the passions. When reason fails, then passions are occasions for sin (254). However, these discussions were not limited to the ancient philosophers, scholastic theologians and medical authorities. Contemporary references to passions in vernacular texts suggest a general cultural understanding of the role of the passions: although distinct from sins, they were impulses that needed to be controlled lest they prompt sins. For example, Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (c. 1380) mentions the “foure passiouns” with the warning not to allow them to “overcomen” or “blenden the” (Boece 1.m.7.20). In a sermon for the Day of the Martyr, John Wycliffe (d. 1384) writes that there are <?page no="122"?> 122 Virginia Langum “four passiouns in a mannis soule” in which lie both “synne” or “mede” depending on how they are “reulid” (187). This subject is tackled more systematically by the English bishop Reginald Pecock (d. c. 1461). Although writing later than Gower, Pecock provides a clear vernacular account of how to distinguish between passion and sin, or spontaneous and willful reactions, and the particular problem that wrath and envy present, which is consistent with earlier vernacular accounts. Drawing upon the etymology of passion, he describes passions as “suffryngis of þe wil” rather than “actijf or wirching deedis of oure wil” (Pecock 94). Passions are stirred by sense impressions - what is said or heard, for example. The will may suffer more owing to humoral imbalance; i.e., if a man predisposed to a choleric temperament then he must suffer more anger and struggle more to control it. However, passions themselves are ethically neutral: “neiþir moral vertues neiþir moral vicis.” As neither free will nor reason is involved, people should be neither praised nor blamed for them (96). Following from his extensive discussion of the passions, Pecock explicitly distinguishes between passion and vice. He argues that anger is a passion while wrath is a vice: ‘‘angir is a passioun of þe wil or of þe lou3er sensual appetit, and wraþ is a fre deede chosen freli by þe wil” (Pecock 110). Because of their rootedness in the humors and complexions, passions cannot be wholly eradicated. However, in addition to the will and reason, the passions can be controlled through the balance of the humors, which is accomplished through diet and the other nonnaturals. For example, Pecock writes that anger can be controlled through the manipulation of the choleric humor and envy through the manipulation of the melancholic humor (112-113). Although wrath and envy as passions may be unavoidable conditions of human physiology, it does not follow that they are perceived as “natural” or healthy by most medieval medical or moral authorities. Because of the perceived inevitability of wrath, Aristotle argued that anger is a natural impulse and seeks to preserve the self (Knuuttila, Emotions 29). However, most writers generally condemn wrath and envy as counter to natural law and personal health. While moralists present all the seven deadly sins as self-destructive to some extent, descriptions of these sins, and wrath in particular, are often more physiological in nature, and it is less clear whether what is being described is the vice or the passion or a conflation of the two. The Mirror of Man offers both figurative and material implications for how envy works upon the body. Figuratively, envy is like leprosy: “De l’alme la figure/ Envie fait desfiguré . . . Envie fait la purreture/ Des oss a celuy qui l’endure.” [“Envy disfigures the appearance of the soul . . . <?page no="123"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 123 Envy makes rottenness of the bones of him who bears it”] (3769-3772). Later in the passage, envy is compared to consumption: Ethike Envie est comparé. C’est un desnaturel ardour, Que deinz le corps u s’est entré De son chalour demesuré Arst comme ly fieus dedeinz le four; Dont ensechist du jour en jour Le cuer ove tout l’interiour, Que dieus en l’alme avoit posé; Siqu’il n’y laist du bon amour Neis une goute de liquor, Dont charité soit arousée. (3817-3828) [She is a fire, which, within the body she has entered, burns with excessive heat like fire in the stove; whereby day by day she dries up the heart with everything God has placed in it, so that she leaves there not a single drop of the liquor of good love with which to water charity] Here, the implications are both figurative and material. While the liquor symbolizes the nourishment and flourishing that love provides, the burning and drying of the heart describes the physiological process of consumptive envy, or the disease consumption and the passion envy. The Confessio describes envy as an illness where the afflicted is “sek of another mannes hele” (Vol. 2, Book 2 14-15). More specific descriptions of symptoms reflect a medical understanding of consumption. An envious cardinal has fire burning in his heart. Amans confesses that his “hertes thoght withinne brenneth” (Vol. 2, Book 2 23). In a vivid example, Confessor personifies Envy as the whore who pours the drink that makes the heart burn. He goes on to describe how the envious are destroyed by this internal fire, which causes a fatal dryness in the body. While consumption is not named in the Confessio, these symptoms of “hot envy” parallel those found of consumption in the medical tradition. Medical texts describe how consumption dries the body’s natural moisture. Due to lesions and tumors in the lungs, hot air cannot be filtered from the heart, so the heat grows and grows and the body wastes away through dryness (Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Vol. 1 375-6). Gower also offers a pathological description of Wrath. In The Mirror: Ire est en soy toutdis divise, Car de soy mesmes ne s’avise Et de l’autry nul garde prent, <?page no="124"?> 124 Virginia Langum D’enflure dont elle est esprise: Au cardiacre l’en divise Le mal de luy, car tristement Fait vivre, et trop soudeinement Le cuer ensecche tielement Q’a luy guarir n’est qui souffise; Nounpas le corps tansoulement En fait perir, mais asprement Destourne l’alme a sa juise. [5089-5100] [Anger is completely described in the swelling that inflames her, for she does not consider herself and pays no attention to anyone else. Her malady is comparable to heart disease, for it results in a sad life and soon dries up the heart so that no one is capable of curing it. Not only does she ill the body, but she also harshly perverts the soul to her will.] Here we see medical understandings of wrath as causing swelling and dryness as the vital spirits rush to the extremities. In line with Pecock, Gower understands that wrath is first a disorder of the body that becomes a disorder of the soul as the will consents to the sin. In the Confessio, the Confessor defines the vice of wrath in terms of its heat. Ire “is/ That in oure Englissh Wrathe is hote,/ Which hath hise words ay so hote,/ That all a mannes pacience/ Is fyred of the violence” (Vol. 2, Book 3 21-24). The association of wrath and fire is consistent in medieval discussions of both wrath the sin and wrath the passion and reflects a figurative, if not physiological consensus, as to how wrath reigns over the human. Angry dispositions are associated with an imbalance of the hot quality, the fire element and the choleric humor. Gower’s representation of envy and wrath as both destructive to others and to the self is echoed in other pastoral texts (Diekstra 437- 441). A sermon in a fifteenth century sermon cycle preserved in London Palace MS 392 also makes a figurative comparison of envy to leprosy in that it corrupts the soul (f. 172v). Wrath is also pathologized in pastoral literature in terms of self-destruction, unnatural heat and fever. For example, the compiler of the pastoral Book of Vices and Virtues describes the wrathful person as one who “werre wiþ himself” (25). The writer continues with an account of physiological decline and death: when wraþþe is ful in a man, he turmenteþ his soule and his body so þat he may haue no sleep ne reste; and oþerwhile it bynemeþ hym mete and drynke, and makeþ hym falle in-to a feuere, or in-to suche a sorwe þat he takeþ his deþ. Þis is þe fier þat wasteþ al good of þe hous (25). <?page no="125"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 125 This particular correlation of fever and wrath is found in many medieval homilies and relies upon both metaphorical and material understandings of how wrath impacts the body (Ziegler, Medicine and Religion 109-111). Medical sources claim that anger and excess cholera cause continuous fever, putrifying the blood and burning up the interior and exterior of the body (On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1 389-390). One medieval homilist uses the medical explanation in his exegesis of John 4: 46 (“And there was a certain ruler whose son was sick at Capharnaum”). This sick boy’s fever is shown to represent sin, specifically wrath. The sermon explains that both fever and sin cause swelling: the first in the body and the second in the soul (Ziegler, Medicine and Religion 110-111). However, given the physiological implications of wrath the passion to cause fever and swelling, the metaphorical use of medicine to describe sin blends with the more literal use of medicine to describe passion. Likewise, moral action is used to medical purpose in medical passages. In his late medieval surgical manual, Lanfrank of Milan writes of the dangers wrath poses to the patient, advising the surgeon to “entempre he þe herte of him þat is sijk, for to greet wraþþe makiþ þe spiritis renne to myche to þe wounde & þat is caus of swellynge” (Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie” 17) Here, Lanfrank’s sense of “entempre” is physiological in the sense of achieving humoral balance by pacifying the physiological effects of anger, but has an ethical application. One way of tempering the body and countering anger is to actively guard against it with the will. That anger causes swelling leads some writers to use it as a simple synonym for swelling. For example, in a passage on ague fever, one medical writer instructs the doctor to “anonynte hym firste with popilion, if he hafe anger in his lyuer” (Liber de Diversis Medicinis 61). To feel anger is a material event in medieval medicine, something physically evidenced, instantiated in the body. The co-existence of the physiological and the ethical in these medical and pastoral texts provides a context for understanding Gower’s use of medicine in relation to the seven deadly sins. In his medically specific descriptions of wrath and envy as passions, Gower extends beyond the figurative to suggest a more material relationship between the body and ethics. But this raises the question: do these allusions to wrath and envy as passions contradict the argument for human responsibility and culpability? While his descriptions invoke the passions, “passion” is a word seldom used by Gower. The Prologue to the Confessio, however, instructs “for as the man hath passioun/ Of seknesse, in comparisoun/ So soffren othre creatures” (Vol. 1, Prologue 915-917). Animals and people have the capacity to suffer passion in common. In another passage, thinking of “other mennes passioun” is invoked as a prompt to compas- <?page no="126"?> 126 Virginia Langum sion and pity, specifically to ward off wrath (Vol. 1, Book 3 2721-2722). The polysemousness of Middle English might open an ambiguity of meaning here (Bishop 37-41) between whether Gower refers to passion as “suffering” or as “emotion.” However Pecock’s discussion of the passions as “suffryngis of þe wil” underscores the common passive reception and interchangeability of suffering and the emotions, passion and the passions. While Gower may not use the word “passion” to denote the physiological forces of emotion in the body, he does distinguish nature from reason, that which distinguishes men from beasts. Yet as has been demonstrated by some studies of the poem, reason is often shown to fail against nature, particularly in the realm of love, where it seems an irrepressible force (White, Nature, Sex, and Goodness 200-206). The ultimate supremacy of reason and nature drives an important critical debate concerning the conclusion of the poem. In Book 8, after tens of thousands of lines of protest from the Lover, who seems to be a lovesick young man, we learn that he is actually old. He is goaded by Venus into recognizing his physical incapacity and the absurdity of his love. Two interpretations have been offered for this: first that the Lover’s own nature is ultimately the cure for his natural desire. The Lover is simply too old to love and is drawn to choose a more spiritually perfect love in the face of his bodily deficiency (Burrow, “The Portryal” 17). Second, the poem has been understood to fail to provide a consistent argument (White, “Division and Failure” 613). Despite being able to physically love, the Lover still actively desires to love against reason. In my view, Gower encourages his readers to find in passion an opportunity for exercizing compassion (cf. Rosenfeld 99). Gower’s use of medicine encourages the reader to recognize physiological forces at work in human choices and actions, if not ultimately excusing him for bending to these forces. By way of conclusion, I turn to one tale offered in Confessio’s book on Envy. After describing the ravages of Envy, the Confessor claims that “ther is physique for the seke,/ And vertus for the vices eke” (Vol. 2, Book 2 3163-3164). This offer of medicine precedes the famous medieval tale of Emperor Constantine (Rawcliffe 245). In this tale, Constantine is struck with leprosy for which he is advised to bathe himself in the blood of children as a cure. As convention dictates, he is moved to pity and the story ends with his conversion and spiritual cure, as well as miraculous physical cure. Gower uses the story to reflect upon human bodily weakness. Constantine makes conventional reflections upon death as the great leveler of humanity. He remarks upon human vulnerability to pathology and illness: <?page no="127"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 127 Mai non eschuie that fortune Which kinde hath in hire lawe set; Hire strengthe and beaute ben beset To every man aliche fre, That sche preferreth no degree As in the disposicioun Of bodili complexioun. (Vol. 2, Book 2 3250-3256) This understanding of human pathology assigns to nature responsibility for the gifts of their particular physiological balance or “bodili complexioun,” such as strength and beauty. Different types of bodily complexions, as the passions, are unavoidable facts of being human. However, from here he reasons: And ek of soule reasonable The povere child is bore als able To vertu as the kignes sone; For every man his oghne wone After the lust of his assay The vice or vertu chese may. (Vol. 2, Book 2 3257-3262) Constantine’s compassion is ultimately a recognition of human passion, the capacity to suffer physically and emotionally. This compassion enables him to recognize the choice of acting upon reason against the interests or instincts of the body. It is this compassion that leads to his own healing, and which possibly presents a cure to the diseased world presented in the Prologue. <?page no="128"?> 128 Virginia Langum References Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. [http: / / www.ccel.org/ ccel/ aquinas/ summa] Bartholomaeus Anglicus. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum: a Critical Text. Ed. M. C. Seymour et al. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975- 1988. Bishop, Louise, M. Words, Stones, and Herbs: the Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007. The Book of Vices and Virtues: a Fourteenth Century English Translation of the Somme le roi of Lorens D’Orléans. Ed. W. Nelson Francis. EETS o.s. 217. London: Oxford University Press, 1942. Boyle, Leonard. “The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology.” The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Ed. Thomas J. Heffernan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. 30-43. Burrow, J. A. “The Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis.” Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. A. J. Minnis. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983. 5-24. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Boece. In The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987. 395-469. Craun, Edwin D. “‘Allas, allas! That evere loe was synne: ’ Excuses for Sin and the Wife of Bath’s Stars.” The Hands of the Tongue: Essays on Deviant Speech. Ed. Edwin D. Craun. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. 33-60. Demaitre, Luke. “Theory and Practice in Medical Education at the University of Montpellier in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 30 (1975): 103-123. Diekstra, F. N. M. “The Art of Denunciation: Medieval Moralists on Envy and Detraction.” In the Garden of Evil: the Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages. Ed. Richard Newhauser. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005. 431-454. Fox, George Gillespie. The Mediaeval Sciences in the Works of John Gower. New York: Haskell House, 1966. Gasse, Rosanne. “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman.” The Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 177-197. Getz, Faye Marie. “Charity, Translation and the Language of Medical Learning in Medieval England.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 1-17. Gower, John. Confessio Amantis. Ed. Russel A. Peck. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. 3 Vols. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006. <?page no="129"?> Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower 129 . “Mirour de l’Omme.” The Complete Works of John Gower, Vol 1: The French Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899. . Mirour de l’Omme (The Mirror of Man). Trans. William Burton Wilson. East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1992. Katzenellenbogen, Adolf. Allegories of the Virtues and Vices. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1964. Knuuttila, Simo. Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. . “Medieval Theories of the Passions of the Soul.” Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes. Ed. Henrik Lagerland. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 49-83. Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie. Ed. Robert von Fleischhacker. EETS o.s. 102. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1894. Langum, Virginia. “Discerning Skin: Complexion, Surgery and Language in Medieval Confession.” Reading Medieval Skin in Medieval Culture. Ed. Katie L. Walter. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2013. 194-222. Liber de Diversis Medicinis. Ed. Margaret Sinclair Ogden. EETS o.s. 207. London: Oxford University Press, 1938. London, Lambeth Palace MS. 392. McNeill, John T. and Helena M. Gamer. Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation of the Principal Libri Poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938. Pecock, Reginald. The Folower to the Donet. Ed. Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock. EETS o.s. 164. London: Oxford University Press, 1924. Rawcliffe, Carole. Leprosy in Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006. Rosenfeld, Jessica. “Compassionate Conversions: Gower’s Confessio Amantis and the Problem of Envy.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 83-105. Shaw, Judith. “The Influence of Canonical and Episcopal Reform on Popular Books of Instruction.” The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Ed. Thomas J. Heffernan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. 44-60. “Twelfth Ecumenical Council: Lateran IV 1215.” [http: / / www.fordham.edu/ halsall/ basis/ lateran4.asp] Wack, Mary. Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: the Viaticum and Its Commentaries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Wenzel, Siegfried. “Preaching the Seven Deadly Sins.” In the Garden of Evil: the Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages. Ed. Richard Newhauser. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005. 145-69. White, Hugh. “Division and Failure in Gower’s Confessio Amantis.” Neophilologus 72 (1988)” 600-16. <?page no="130"?> 130 Virginia Langum . Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Wycliffe, John. Select English Works of John Wyclif. Ed. Thomas Arnold. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869. Ziegler, Joseph. “Medicine and Immortality in Terrestrial Paradise.” Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages. Ed. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler. Woodbridge: York University Press, 2001. 201-242. . Medicine and Religion c. 1300: the Case of Arnau de Vilanova. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. <?page no="131"?> Syphilis or Melancholy? Desire as Disease in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) Laetitia Sansonetti My contention in this paper is that syphilis and melancholy are represented as related diseases in The Faerie Queene because both are directly connected to desire. I will argue that Spenser relies on the Galenic theory of the passions to treat the topos of love-as-disease literally, as a form of humoral imbalance: people who fall in love often mistake their condition for an excess of black bile; the outcome of lust is systematically described in terms of syphilitic bouts. The two diseases are so alike in some of their symptoms that it may be difficult to distinguish between melancholy and the incipient state of syphilis. Focusing on Duessa’s syphilitic body in Books 1 and 2 and on Britomart’s several love wounds in Book 3 of The Faerie Queene, I will compare the description of the diseased body in Spenser’s poem to the medical examination of the causes and effects of syphilis and melancholy in various treatises, from Fracastoro’s Syphilis to Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. The triangulation between desire, syphilis, and melancholy that I suggest can prove useful, I think, to understand better the interplay between medical forms of discourse and literary works. From Girolamo Fracastoro, who wrote his treatise on syphilis as a poem in Latin hexameters and named the disease after a fictional shepherd, to Robert Burton, who illustrated his remarks on melancholy with quotations from Shakespeare, Marlowe and Spenser (Burton 71, 73, 74, 77; 3.2.2.2), early modern medical authorities testify to the importance of lit- Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 131-142. <?page no="132"?> 132 Laetitia Sansonetti erary forms to medical discourses. 1 As poetic rhetoric colours medical writing, so too does medical attention to the body influence Renaissance poetry which deals with passions, and in particular with desire. The suffering lover is a traditional figure in Western literature, be he wounded by Cupid’s arrows or by his lady’s eyes. But the growing interest in love melancholy, kindled by Ficino in Italy and culminating in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, made early modern poets more keenly aware of the physical dimension of desire. 2 At the same time as melancholy was gaining prominence as a theme in literature, another disease linked to desire was scourging Europe. Wherever it originated, syphilis first appeared among the ranks of the Spanish and French armies in Italy in the very last years of the fifteenth century. 3 It then spread quickly to the whole Continent, causing such terrible damage that Fracastoro compared the epidemic to the Black Plague outburst of 1348 (47-49; 1.186-196). As late as 1579, William Clowes, a surgeon at St Bartholomew’s in London, indicated that he and three fellow surgeons had treated more than a thousand syphilitic patients (B2 r-v ). Melancholy and syphilis share a very intimate relation to desire: the former, because one of its varieties is a form of love, the latter, because it is transmitted through sexual intercourse, as its early nickname of “morbus Venereus” clearly reflects (Béthencourt). Arguably, the outbreak of syphilis also contributed to challenging the Galenic theory of the passions as humoral imbalances, which was perfectly illustrated in the definition of melancholy as an excess in black bile. Indeed, the great adversary of Galenic medicine was a Swiss physician/ alchemist, Paracelsus, who became famous for his methods of curing syphilis. Paracelsus reactivated the old opposition between the understanding of disease as an internal problem that could be treated with a better regulation of bodily fluids, and the understanding of it as an aggression from the outside (Webster 146-148). Studying melancholy and syphilis as diseases of 1 As Laura Gowing phrases it, “Renaissance medical texts construct knowledge through narrative and rhetoric, and they openly acknowledge the power of story, myth and metaphor in making sense of the body” (3). Such a statement is not surprising if we bear in mind the early modern curriculum for physicians, which included undergraduate studies in the humanities (see Wear, French and Lonie ix). 2 As Lawrence Babb remarks, Elizabethan poets “frequently use phraseology which shows that their conception of love has been greatly influenced by the physiological psychology” (145). See also Schoenfeldt about “the profound medical and physiological underpinnings of Shakespeare’s acute vocabulary of psychological inwardness” (75), and Beecher and Ciavolella: “we pause before our own imperfect understanding of these same processes in demetaphorized form” (Ferrand 6). 3 At the battle of Fornovo di Taro, 5 July 1495. One of the first accounts is Joseph Grünpeck, Tractatus de pestilentiali Scorra Sive Mala de Franzos (1496). <?page no="133"?> Desire as Disease in The Faerie Queene 133 desire will thus help shed light on a crucial question for medicine as well as for literature: once you assume that desire has a bodily existence, where do you locate it? Is it an attack on the body or the product of inner imbalance? Spenser’s Faerie Queene is particularly distinctive in its representation of desire as disease. First, it is a romance, whose topic is the role desire plays in triggering (or preventing) heroic deeds; it is also an attempt to determine whether you can trust appearances (hence it raises the question of symptoms and what is hidden within the body, or revealed by it); and it is a reflection on incarnation - both on the validity of using allegory, metaphor, metonymy and related rhetorical devices and on the religious stakes of the English Reformation. The 1590 edition consists of three books, respectively devoted to “Holiness,” “Temperance,” and “Chastity,” thus clearly linking the physical control of the passions and the moral conduct of the individual. I shall start with a comparison of diagnoses and treatments for love, melancholy, and syphilis, before moving on to focus on the material wounds of desire. My last point will bear on Spenser’s use of syphilis as an allegory of treachery. Diagnosis and treatment Britomart, the heroine of Book 3 of The Faerie Queene, is a young princess bored in her father’s castle, spending her days musing on her marital future, “as maydens vse to done” (Spenser 3.2.23.5). Her father owns a magical mirror, which shows its owner’s enemies. To Britomart, the image of a handsome knight named Artegall appears in the mirror when she looks into it. She falls in love with the mysterious image straight away, but at first does not diagnose her symptoms correctly, mistaking them for signs of melancholy: And her proud portance, and her princely gest, With which she earst tryumphed, now did quaile: Sad, solemne, sowre, and full of fancies fraile She woxe; […] Yet thought it was not love, but some melancholy. (Spenser 3.2.27.3-6, 9) Britomart’s symptoms do indeed correspond to the characteristics of melancholy love described by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy. The melancholy lover is physically weak; he loses his appetite, grows paler and leaner; and he spends his time pining for his beloved (Burton 133-184; 3.2.3). <?page no="134"?> 134 Laetitia Sansonetti When he tries to determine the location of melancholy love, Burton reviews different possibilities: is it in the heart, as some argue, or in the blood, as Ficino suggested, or rather in the brain? He favours the brain because this particular form of melancholy affects the patient’s capacity to pass judgments (the vis estimativa): “the major part concur upon the brain, ’tis imaginatio laesa; and both imagination and reason are misaffected, because of his corrupt judgment, and continual meditation of that which he desires, he may truly be said to be melancholy” (Burton 58; 3.2.1.2). Lawrence Babb suggests that the overlap between love and melancholy, which is obvious in Burton’s treatise, may be the result of the courtly influence on Elizabethan love literature, to which Burton clearly is indebted (Babb 52). By focusing on a naive heroine who is unaware of the general confusion between love and melancholy, Spenser thus offers a subtle critique of the poetic tradition of the morose lover. If Britomart mistakes the symptoms of love for those of melancholy, her disease is described in terms that are strikingly close to a diagnosis of syphilis. Fracastoro lists the symptoms of incipient syphilis thus: Those afflicted were burdened by an unusual lethargy and, feeling a languor with no apparent cause, performed their tasks with increasing weariness and tried to keep themselves going although their whole body felt sluggish. Their natural liveliness fell downcast from their eyes, their colour from their unhappy brow. (Fracastoro 55; 1.325-329) This is exactly what happens to Britomart after she has seen the image in the mirror. Of course, these are common enough symptoms. But her nurse, Glauce, uses a significant oxymoron when she comments on her altered complexion: “what euill plight / Hath . . . liuing made thee dead? ” (Spenser 3.2.30.7-8, 9). This sentence reminds us that the plague was often referred to as “Death” and that syphilis, which causes the slow deterioration of the body, had become known as “living Death” (Healy 130). Glauce tries to cure Britomart with herbs that were recommended in the treatment of syphilis for their soothing effects, such as rew (Spenser 3.2.49.5), which features in several of Fracastoro’s recipes. As for camphor (“Camphora” [3.2.49.6]), known for its antiseptic and anaphrodisiac properties, it can be synthetised from turpentine, an ingredient also mentioned by Fracastoro. Calamint (3.2.49.5) is an anti-pyretic, and dill (3.2.49.6) is a variety of fennel, which was infused to be drunk by victims of the pox (Fracastoro 71; 2.177). According to A. C. Hamilton, Glauce has diagnosed Britomart with a case of anaemia, more precisely the kind of anaemia that affects virgins: “morbus virgineus,” or “the green sickness” (Hamilton apud Spenser <?page no="135"?> Desire as Disease in The Faerie Queene 135 3.2.39.2-5). Glauce does not in fact refer to iron, or any other traditional treatment used to cure hypochromic anaemia. But Hamilton’s hypothesis is not to be entirely discarded, as Glauce does prescribe the archetypal remedy for young women suffering from the green sickness, namely sex, which will cure the hysterical imbalance of desire in a virgin. If the diagnosis shows how similar the symptoms of love, melancholy and syphilis can be, the cure implemented by Glauce identifies Britomart’s disease not as the consequence of unrestrained sexual activity, but as the outlet of her frustrated desire. As I will try to demonstrate presently, the alterations undergone by Britomart’s body, because they can be diagnosed as either melancholy or syphilis, invite the readers to reshuffle the traditional oppositions between inner imbalance and aggression from the outside, as well as between love in the mind and love in the heart. The melancholy and the syphilitic wounds of love After seeing the image in the mirror, Britomart starts having nightmares: And if that any drop of slombring rest Did chaunce to still into her wearie spright, When feeble nature felt her selfe opprest, Streight way with dreames, and with fantasticke sight Of dreadfull things the same was put to flight, That oft out of her bed she did astart, As one with vew of ghastly feends affright. (Spenser 3.2.29.1- 7) Her disturbed mind seems to be under attack by phantasms, material particles running through her brains. Such particles were sometimes understood to be demons named incubi, which were thought to be capable of inseminating women by penetrating their bodies via their imagination in their sleep. According to Bernardus Gordonius, a French physician from the late thirteenth century, incubi could cause the body to move and speak, and even to suffocate (Bernardus 115; 2.24). In his translation of Lemnius’s Touchstone of Complexions, Thomas Newton mentions those aggressive spirits that try to penetrate human bodies and permeate the minds, staging a conflict between the body-as-fortress and diseaseas-besieger (Lemnius 22 r-v ). The cure recommended by William Vaughan reflects a different conception of the nature of these spirits: he advises purging and bleeding so as to get rid of the melancholy vapours that can cause nightmares (Vaughan 290-291). <?page no="136"?> 136 Laetitia Sansonetti We know that Britomart’s melancholy dreams begin after she sees the image in the mirror, which might induce us to identify her dreams with the manifestation of malignant spirits which have seized the opportunity of her vulnerable state to invade her mind. Thus it was believed that melancholy could enter a weak body, just as syphilis propagates via contagion. But in Renaissance medical terms, we could also interpret her dreams as the corpuscular condensation of her melancholy vapours. It is therefore as difficult to determine the origin of the wound in Britomart’s mind as it is to relate her love symptoms to an inner or an outer cause. When it comes to the hackneyed image of the heart wound, about which every lover poetically complains, the situation is different, and the vocabulary of syphilis seems to hold sway. Just as Petrarch compares his innamoramento to a deer being wounded by an arrow (Petrarch 209.10: “Et qual cervo ferito di saetta”), Britomart receives a love wound on first seeing Artegall in the mirror. She explains how the wound, launched in her heart, has spread to her bowels and infected her whole organism: Sithens it hath infixed faster hold Within my bleeding bowels, and so sore Now ranckleth in this same fraile fleshly mould, That all mine entrailes flow with poysnous gore, And th’vlcer groweth daily more and more; Ne can my running sore find remedie[.] (Spenser 3.2.39.1-6) For Maureen Quilligan, Britomart’s complaint is an obvious parody of the stereotyped Petrarchan discourse to which all poets/ lovers were resorting. Quilligan even finds it too extreme to be effective: Spenser makes Britomart speak Petrarchese with such a vengeance that her description of love’s suffering sounds more like a clinical account of stomach cancer than a conventional complaint of love. Both Britomart and Glauce take the traditional metaphor of the arrow wound from the Roman de la Rose too literally. (Quilligan 200) But the process by which metaphorical clichés are remade into literal statements constitutes much more than a parody of Petrarchist rhetoric. First, the “entrails” have a very important symbolic value for such Protestant authorities as Paul and Augustine, who believe them to be the siege of conscience (Hillman 16). And secondly, some medical authorities thought that love melancholy originated in the liver (Burton 40; 3.2.1.1). Spenser is not only parodying a literary tradition, he is directly <?page no="137"?> Desire as Disease in The Faerie Queene 137 associating it with a medical and religious tradition dealing with literal wounds and metaphorical interpretations. Britomart’s terminology when describing her wounds is particularly striking, as it is strongly reminiscent of the words used to describe bodies cankered with syphilis. Her “poisonous gore” (Spenser 3.2.39.3, quoted above) recalls the description of Ulrich von Hutten’s own rotten blood, and her ulcers and sores are also typical of syphilis at an advanced stage (Hutten 4 r ). Despite Britomart’s spotless virginity, her love wound is made literal via a location and an evolution that point to the pox, whose means of transmission Hutten clearly identified: “defilynge of hym selfe, which thing especially happeneth by copulation” (Hutten 3 r , 52 r , 35 v ; see also Boorde lxxxviv and Du Laurens 23-24). To revivify the poetic language of love, Spenser borrows from the clinical language of health breviaries such as Ulrich von Hutten’s De morbo gallico. The quickening of desire in a young virgin is presented both as an aggression from outer elements and as a change coming from within the body that makes it more receptive to external impressions. Spenser is thus combining two different kinds of discourses on the passions, testifying to the growing influence of the discourse on syphilis at the end of the sixteenth century. As he satirises those who mistake love for melancholy, he does not fall into the trap of mistaking love for syphilis: Britomart’s literal wounds of desire are not the pox, as a study of two unmistakably syphilitic female bodies will show. Allegories of syphilis In Book I of The Faerie Queene, Duessa, who has pretended to be a chaste damsel, is unmasked - and unclothed - so as to reveal her moral and physical uncleanliness. While the symbolic fox tail and cloven feet clearly make her an allegory of false - that is to say Catholic - religion usurping the identity of Una, the true (Reformed) religion, her diseased body was intended to remind Renaissance readers of syphilis: A loathly, wrinckled hag, ill fauoured, old, Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told. Her craftie head was altogether bald, And as in hate of honorable eld, Was ouergrowne with scurfe and filthy scald; Her teeth out of her rotten gummes were feld, And her sowre breath abhominably smeld; Her dried dugs, like bladders lacking wind, <?page no="138"?> 138 Laetitia Sansonetti Hong downe, and filthy matter from them weld; Her wrizled skin as rough, as maple rind, So scabby was, that would haue loathd all womankind. Her neather parts, the shame of all her kind, My chaster Muse for shame doth blush to write[.] (Spenser 1.8.46.8-9, 47, 48.1-2) “Secret filth” is one of the characteristics of syphilis, as signalled by Ulrich von Hutten, who tells his reader how frequently he has to cleanse his sores (see also Clowes Aiv r and Bi v ). We also know that syphilis first strikes the genitalia, which Spenser signals in alluding to Duessa’s shameful “neather parts.” Far from being an innocent damsel in distress, Duessa looks much more like a cunning prostitute using tricks, clothes, unguents and other ointments to conceal her disease from the men she tries to seduce. Among other consequences of syphilis, or of its cures, rank hair loss and scabby scalp, loss of teeth and foul breath, which all affect Duessa’s unmasked body (Hutten 7 r ). The association between syphilis and false religion is obviously made stronger by the location of the first outbreak among a Catholic army stationed in Italy, inciting Marian exiles to use the pox as a metaphor for Popery. Thus, in his pamphlet entitled A newe booke of Spirituall Physik for dyverse diseases of the nobilitie and gentlemen of Englande, William Turner combines the image of the defiled prostitute with the dangers of religious transgression, setting in parallel syphilis, or “the Frenche pokkes” as it was known then, and “the Romish pokkes”: “There was a certeyne hore in Italy, whych had a perillus disease called false religion” (Turner 74 r-v ). Spenser knew about the fate of the Whore of Babylon (Revelation 17), the daughters of Zion (Isaiah 3.17) and more generally, God’s enemies, struck with various forms of the plague, which is probably why he imitated Turner in making a poxy prostitute the allegory of false religion. Spenser goes a step further in the creation of False Florimell, an artificial creature made by a witch out of materials such as snow and gold, which were traditionally used to describe feminine beauty (Spenser 3.8.6-7). False Florimell is not only love poetry materialised, she is also a compound of medical treatments against syphilis and concealing products, such as mercury, advocated as a miracle cure by Paracelsus, and vermillion, used by diseased courtesans to disguise their pale complexion (Hutten 6 v ). 4 If Florimell can be seen as an allegory of syphilis, she 4 Margaret Healy refers to an emblem by Francis Quarles entitled “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed,” in which the serpent describes the fruits on the forbidden tree in terms reminiscent of pocky faces: “Mark what a pure Vermilian blush has dy’d / Their swelling Cheeks” (Quarles 5; Healy 166). <?page no="139"?> Desire as Disease in The Faerie Queene 139 also reminds us of melancholy: the anti-syphilitic treatments coat an incubus, a type of demonic spirit associated with melancholic pathologies. Whereas Britomart’s beauty and chastity were genuine, in the case of Florimell but most of all with Duessa, the language of syphilis is connected with religious allegory so as to denounce jointly false beauty and false religion. Spenser also seizes the opportunity to critique his own poetic practices, implicitly mocking those, including himself, who continually compare women’s white skin with snow or their red lips with vermillion. *** When describing Britomart’s love wound, Spenser focuses on how the disease affects her imagination, thus setting his description in the context of melancholy love, a pathology which stems from frustrated desire. Britomart, on the other hand, laments her physical condition in words that clearly allude to the sores and cankers of syphilis. The vocabulary divide reflects the gap between Britomart’s naive interpretation of her condition, in which she equals all forms of desire to degenerate lust, and Spenser’s insistence on the passive suffering of the despairing lover. Whereas Britomart thinks there is no remedy to her disease and is ready for a life of pain (just as syphilitic patients could hope for no definitive cure), Spenser shows that the only remedy to frustrated love is action: Britomart will leave her father’s castle to go in search of Artegall. In The Faerie Queene, the interaction of medical and literary discourses allows the poet to revivify dead metaphors and to discriminate between love and lust. But the poem also registers mutual influences within medical discourse, in which the lore on melancholy helped phrase the discourse on the symptoms of syphilis, while the fear of contagion raised by epidemics of syphilis put to the fore a more invasive notion of melancholy. Spenser combines the two aspects to set a physical and moral programme of temperance in which regimen, the control of inner operations, and regiment, the protection against external attacks, work together to preserve the body and the soul. <?page no="140"?> 140 Laetitia Sansonetti References Babb, Lawrence. The Elizabethan Malady. A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951. Béthencourt, Jacques de. Nova penitentialis Quadragesima nec non purgatorium in morbum gallicum sive venereum. Paris: Nicolas Savetier, 1527. Boorde, Andrew. The Breviary of Helthe, for all maner of syckenesses and diseases the whiche may be in man, or woman doth folowe, expressynge the obscure termes of Greke, Araby, Latyn, and Barbary in to Englysh concerning phisicke and chierurgye. London: William Middleton, 1547, STC (2nd edition) 3373.5. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Ed. Holbrook Jackson. London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1932. Cheney, Patrick. “‘Secret Powre Unseene’: Good Magic in Spenser’s Legend of Britomart.” Studies in Philology 85/ 1 (Winter, 1988): 1-28. Clowes, William. A short and profitable Treatise touching the cure of the disease called Morbus Gallicus by Vnctions. London: John Day, 1579, STC (2nd edition) 5447. Du Laurens, André. Petit Traité de la vérole, in Toutes les Œuvres de Me André Du Laurens, sieur de Ferrières, recueillies et traduittes en françois par Me Théophile Gelée. Rouen: Du Petit-Val, 1621. Ferrand, Jacques. A Treatise on Lovesickness. Ed. Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990. Ficino, Marsilio. Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love (De Amore, 1469). Trans. Sears Jayne. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1944. Fracastoro, Girolamo. Fracastoro’s Syphilis. Ed. and Trans. Geoffrey Eatough. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1984. Gordonius, Bernardus. B. Gordonii omnium aegritudinum a vertice ad calcem: opus praeclarissima quod Lilium medicinae appelatur, nunc denuo ab omnibus mendis, quibus scatebat, repurgatum, & septe particulis distributum, ut quarta indicabit pagina. Paris: Jean Foucher, 1542. Gowing, Laura. Common Bodies. Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth- Century England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. Grünpeck, Joseph. Tractatus de pestilentiali Scorra Sive Mala de Franzos. Leipzig: Gregor Boettiger, 1496. Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic. Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Healy, Margaret. Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England. Bodies, Plagues and Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. <?page no="141"?> Desire as Disease in The Faerie Queene 141 Hillman, David. Shakespeare’s Entrails. Belief, Skepticism and the Interior of the Body. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Hutten, Ulrich von. De morbo gallico [or: de guaici medicina]. Translated by Thomas Paynell. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1533, STC (2nd edition) 14024. Jacquart, Danielle and Claude Thomasset. Sexualité et savoir médical au Moyen Âge. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985. Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Religion, Art, and Natural Philosophy. London: Nelson, 1964. Lemnius, Levinus. The touchstone of complexions generallye appliable, expedient and profitable for all such, as be desirous & carefull of their bodylye health: contayning most easie rules & ready tokens, whereby euery one may perfectly try, and throughly know, as well the exacte state, habite, disposition, and constitution, of his owne body outwardly: as also the inclinations, affections, motions, & desires of his mynd inwardly / first written in Latine, by Leuine Lemnie; and now Englished by Thomas Newton. London: Thomas Marsh, 1576, STC (2nd edition) 15456. Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body. Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Canzoniere. Ed. Marco Santagata. Milan: Mondadori, 2005. Quarles, Francis. Emblemes. London: John Marriot, 1635, STC (2nd edition) 20540. Quétel, Claude. Le Mal de Naples. Histoire de la syphilis. Paris: Seghers, 1986. Quilligan, Maureen. “Words and Sex: The Language of Allegory in the De planctu naturae, the Roman de la Rose, and Book III of The Faerie Queene.” Allegorica 2/ 1 (1977): 195-216 Schoenfeldt, Michael. Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England. Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Silberman, Lauren. Transforming Desire: Erotic Knowledge in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995. Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. Harrow: Longman, 2001, 2007. <?page no="142"?> 142 Laetitia Sansonetti Turner, William. A nevv booke of spirituall physik for dyuerse diseases of the nobilitie and gentlemen of Englande, made by William Turner doctor of Physik, Rome [i. e. Emden], Marcus Antonius Constantius [i. e. Egidius van der Erve], 1555, STC (2nd edition) 24361. Vaughan, William. Directions for Health. London: Roger Jackson, 1617, STC (2nd edition) 24616. Wear, A., R. K. French and I. M. Lonie, eds. The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Webster, Charles. Paracelsus. Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Whitehead, Christiania. Castles of the Mind. A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003. <?page no="143"?> “Is’t Lunacy to call a spade, a spade? ”: James Carkesse and the Forgotten Language of Madness Lisanna Calvi They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn they outvoted me. Nathaniel Lee (attrib.) James Carkesse, poet and former Navy clerk, was sent to Bedlam in the late 1670s out of religious mania. In his Lucida Intervalla, a collection of poems written during his residency at Bethlem Hospital and published in 1679, he illustrates life in the madhouse and offers to the modern reader a singular glimpse into what Michel Foucault would call the “great confinement.” In what is possibly the first collection of verses written and published by an inmate of a mental asylum, Carkesse’s poetry not only gives voice to the lucid intervals within a period of madness, it also reflects the intricate and ambiguous nature of his condition as belonging to the world of the mad, constantly crossing the line between reality and pretence, allegedly feigned and supposedly authentic distraction. Thus, Lucida Intervalla offers far more than a glint of the cultural implications of insanity and of its cure in seventeenth-century England and also delves into the problematic relationship between madness and poetical creation. Lucid intervals, or lucida intervalla in its mediaeval Latin plural form, are by definition “periods of temporary sanity occurring between attacks of lunacy.” 1 The same expression was chosen as a title of a collection of 1 See OED , “lucid,” adj., 3.a. Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 143-156. <?page no="144"?> 144 Lisanna Calvi poems the obscure Navy clerk and would-be poet James Carkesse wrote and published in 1679. Although very little is known of Carkesse himself, his poems are an original and possibly unprecedented document that not only adds some interesting material to the history of madness and its treatment in early modern England, but also uncovers an intriguing perspective on the relationship between mental derangement and poetic creation. As for Carkesse’s biography, this is how Samuel Pepys refers to him in his diary: “[T]here is nobody’s ill tongue that I fear like his, being a malicious and cunning bold fellow” (Pepys 306). Carkesse was educated at Westminster School and later at Christ Church in Oxford, became an instructor at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was later employed as clerk in the Navy Office, where Pepys made his acquaintance. In the early 1660s he earned a position in the Navy Ticket Office but was dismissed after a couple of years for speculating in the payments to discharged seamen, even though he was soon able to regain his post thanks to some powerful connections, especially with Sir Edward Turnor, the speaker in the House of Commons. The same was probably instrumental also in letting Carkesse out of Bethlem Hospital, where he had been committed for six months in 1678 allegedly diagnosed with raving madness. Apart from Pepys’s notes on his residence at the Navy Office, the only extensive source of information on Carkesse’s otherwise obscure existence is his own collection of poems: Lucida Intervalla: Containing divers Miscellaneous Poems, Written at Finsbury and Bethlem by the Doctors Patient Extraordinary. Presented as written during their author’s internment at Bethlem and at Finsbury madhouse, a private establishment ruled by Dr Thomas Allen - who later treated Carkesse in Bedlam too -, the fiftythree pieces that make up Lucida Intervalla allow us to catch a glimpse of what Michel Foucault famously defined as “le grand renfermement” (Foucault, passim). In the madhouse, Carkesse’s poetic “career” flourished, an event that critically brings to our memory the Foucaultian “silencing of the mad,” since, in fact, James Carkesse was not silent at all and not only did he speak of madness in his poems, but he did it from inside madness or better from inside the madhouse. The title itself, Lucida Intervalla, is intriguing as it indirectly states the author’s distracted condition, characterized by “lucid intervals,” and at the same time denies that same circumstance claiming the poet’s lucidity. As Michael V. Deporte has noted, this “must be the first collection of verse ever published in English by the inmate of an asylum” (Carkesse ix). The poems were published in 1679 by an anonymous London printer, presumably immediately after their author’s release from Bed- <?page no="145"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 145 lam. Indeed, in the collection, while trying to convince Dr Allen and the other madhouse authorities of his sanity, the poet laments the poor conditions in which he is forced to live. Half naked, confined in a dark cell swarming with mice and lice, he is put through all kinds of cures that were adopted to relieve lunatic patients from the “malicious humours” that were thought to afflict them. Carkesse, in particular, was treated with purges, emetics, bloodlettings, and even occasional beatings. These cures were habitually thought to be of use in cases of mania or raving madness, which leads to the hypothesis that Carkesse was possibly assigned to that specific diagnostic grouping. This assumption may be substantiated by looking at how this particular kind of distraction had been described by sixteenth-century physician Andrew Boorde as “madnes or woodnes [i.e., fury] like a wild beast.” Boorde also advised that, “if neede require,” that kind of “pacient [. . .] must be punished and beaten” (75-76). In 1583 Philip Barrough described mania in similar terms, and suggested a series of remedies, among which the “letting of blood.” “[I]t is good,” he says, “to cut the uttermost vaine of the arme, or if that do not appeare, then cut the middle vaine” or “let horseleaches round about the head,” and he also adds “you must minister purgations [. . .], and other medicines that will purge choler” (35). Much later, this therapy was still held to be viable as proves William Salmon’s 1694 medical catalogue The Practice of Curing Disease in which it is suggested that raving madness should be cured by causing vomit in order to have “the reliques of the Morbisticks matter [. . .] carried off” (772). Carkesse refers several times to these kinds of cures, and especially to emetics, which he finds revolting and largely ineffective. But why was he confined in the first place? In 1678, he had broken into a meeting of dissenters trying to destroy their house possibly out of devotional zeal, but the grounds of his internment are not totally clear and the allegations of religious enthusiasm are shady since no testimonies of his misdeed are known (except for his own poetic one). The accusation of fanaticism can have a specific link to the association of religion and insanity that had become rather common in the 1650s. Generally, it was Anglican divines - on which part Carkesse now stands as the avenger of conformity - who described the visionary fervour of mid-century sectarian prophets and saints as devilish possession or madness in disguise. His violent interruption seems to have been reason enough for him to be apprehended and conducted to Finsbury and later to Bedlam. In “The Poetical History of Finnesbury Mad-house” (9), Carkesse himself reveals, in a sort of poetic dialogue he engages with the doctor who has just received him, a few details of the assault he had carried on against <?page no="146"?> 146 Lisanna Calvi what he dubs as the “Chappel o’th’ Devil” (Carkesse 11) 2 , that is, the dissenters’ meeting house, in order to allow the “Church,” meaning the established Church of England, to flourish over nonconformity: For surely, the way to Build up the Church, Is to pull down the Chappel o’th’ Devil. Then throw the House out at Window, And lay it flat with the Ground; (11) In her study on mental illness and autobiography in the seventeenth century, Katharine Hodgkin points out that “[t]o bring into the open the speech of those who have suffered from madness [. . .] does not really break that silence, for these are people who speak only because they have emerged from it” (11). Yet, this is not the case with the poems of Lucida Intervalla, which give voice, or seem to give voice, to “madness-in-progress,” as it were. But what do his poems express? Is it madness or temporary sanity? Carkesse adroitly makes use of rhetorical, literary, and linguistic strategies: his rhyming couplets brilliantly satirize the cures doctor “Mad-Quack” Allen imposes on him, and he even writes short verse epistles addressing them to courtiers and people of importance. He can even play with the stereotype of the “mad poet” and depicts Bedlam as a training ground for making verses: “In Bedlam, best of Universities, / The Poet, not the Parson, takes degrees.” (50). In the asylum he apparently casts off the “Parson”’s habit and puts on the poet’s identity and, in the collection, verses are actually used as an instrument both of defence and offence against the condition of social exile and confinement he is suffering. Carkesse poetically confronts his “opponents” (the doctor, the keepers, etc.) and while he wishes to demonstrate his own sanity by making verses, they see in it the very expression of his distraction. In “The Doctors Advice” (27), the doctor expounds his diagnosis and suggests the cure: “Parson, leave off the Poet and Lampoon, / You’le Sober be, and may defie the Moon” (27). Giving up poetry would restore the patient to health, to which The Patient replies Faith, Doctor, what you say, is very prity; I ne’re before (nor now) thought you so witty: But if’t be thus, your Phys[ick]: I’le spill o’th’ground, Vomit up Helicon, and then I’m sound. (27) 2 All emphases in quotations are as in the original. <?page no="147"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 147 The whole piece is structured as a satire against the cures he is receiving through the assumption that sanity means lack of wit, which he identifies here with poetic wit. Mimicking medical jargon, Carkesse identifies “Helicon” as the “bad humour” one should expel to regain soundness of mind, but it is Apollo himself, he says in another poem, who will protect him from obnoxious cures: Sure the Stars raign not now, but some dire Comet Sends Mad-quack to me with this Poison’d Vomit; But thanks to Apollo, who is on my side, And hath with Antidote me fortify’d: [. . .] T’elude the needless Physicks ill effect, Purges and Vomits, Helicon shall correct. (30) The situation is reversed and “Helicon” has now turned into a remedy, the “Antidote” against the fruitless but toxic therapy “Mad-Quack” would administer. Medical and poetical discourses intermingle and disclose a vision of reality in which the cure becomes the disease and the doctor is the bearer of a deadly potion. It is a critique that does not appear completely preposterous but in fact quite sane, given the brutality of the medical cures of the day. In this scenario, poetical inspiration becomes therefore a shelter, a defence, and indeed an interval of lucidity against those who expect to heal what is sound. Poetry also helps transmute the reality of the madhouse by bringing light (and consolation) into its darkness and solitude. In “On the Ladies looking into his Cell” (42), the passing glance of a visitor is transfigured into a ray of light that illuminates the dark bottom of the cell in which he has been confined: When Doctor Mad-Quack me i’th’Dark had put, And a close Prisoner in my Cloyster shut; A Lady chanc’d peep in, whose Beauty bright Enlarg’d the crannies, and let in new light: Quack, I’m now pleas’d, without the Sun, confin’d; See how she Blushes, by my Star, out-shin’d. (42) The image of female beauty as starlight is a commonplace but in this context he does not use it, or at least not exclusively, to pay homage to an anonymous lady but to resist, defy and even defeat the doctor’s decision to deprive the patient of the sun. The “Star” that eventually outshines the “Sun” is indeed the product of the imagination and these verses, spurred by a casual incident, break through the darkness that encloses the poet and open up a saving crack (“Enlarg’d the crannies”) not <?page no="148"?> 148 Lisanna Calvi so much in the obscurity of folly, but in the physical constraints that should cure it. In another poem, “On the Doctors letting him Blood” (52), he ironically acknowledges that poetry is (his) madness and of a kind that finds proper expression through verses: Doctor, my Rhythmes on you which do reflect, Know, of Poetick fury, are th’effect; To let me Blood then, you’re but Fool in grain, Unless your Lance prick my Poetick Vein: No longer now, for shame, pretend the Moon, For Phoebus rules my Madness and Lampoon. (52) The rhetorical clash between the unsearchable, abstract nature of the “Poetick Vein” and the reality of blood letting mockingly identifies poetry, which he practices through parody, with (mental) disease. In “On the Doctors telling him . . . ” (51), he seemingly (ironically) agrees with the doctor’s opinion on this same matter. Poetry is a kind of madness; that is why, the doctor says, the famous poets, and playwrights of the day, the laureate John Dryden included, will be soon conveyed to Bedlam by royal command: For know, New Bedlam, chiefly for th’infected With this new sort of Madness, was erected: Bucks both and Rochester, unless they mend, Hither the King designs forthwith to send: Sheperd and Dryden too, must on ’em wait; (51) The idea of having all poets confined is enthusiastically welcomed by the patient who envisages it as a tangible and even soothing option: The answer pleas’d; yet I have cause to fear, The Doctor flatter’d, as ’tis usual here: But if my Brethren come, I’ve learnt this Lesson, In such good Company, Bedlam is no Prison. (51) Bedlam would indeed benefit from this kind of crowd, since this is a place where, as he himself allows in another poem, the conventions that rule the outside world are turned upside down: Poets and Players, now pack up your Awls, To Bedlam you aloud, Fop Mad-Quack calls; And ’till he cures you of Poetick Rage, Our Galleries you must fill, quit Pit and Stage. (50) <?page no="149"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 149 If Bedlam is a playhouse, poets and actors are called to play the spectators to the drama that doctor Quack, now turned into a comedic fop, will stage for them sitting in the galleries until they are cured. Indeed, as he argues in “The New Distinction” (28), two kinds of patients are to be found in Bedlam: the mad and the witty. The one is “hot” with frenzy and the other is burning with “poetic fire”; the doctor is of course unable to distinguish between the two and administers a generalized cure leaving both exposed to harsh weather and chilly temperatures, “in frost and snow” (28). The remedy is ineffectual for the poet’s supposed distraction but proves deleterious for his body making him almost freeze to death: ’Tis true for want of Fire, as if grown old, My joynts are stiff, and I’m oppressed with cold; But influence of Apollo is still strong, My Satyr brisk, lively my Muse and Song. You that should Fury cure, and Poet save, Are sending Post your Patient to the Grave: For he (not frighted out of’s Wits by Physick) To your new Madness, Palsie adds and Tisick. (28) The early categories of the witty and the mad eventually overlap and the idea of a furor poeticus that seizes the artist and inspires his creation, which has a long tradition going back to Plato’s Phaedrus and the “divine fury” of the poet, gets parodically appropriated and becomes the “warming fire” that cannot be numbed by the literal-mindedness of doctor Quack, who has mistaken him for a lunatic while he is a poet, instead. Loosely following the Platonic notion that has “poetic madness” coming from the Muses, 3 Carkesse claims that Apollo himself, father of the Muses, has given him a gift and, unlike everyone else, he is now able to recognize and call things by their proper names. He says it is the doctor who should turn into patient as it is his own senses which are lost since he could not tell proper madness from mere masquerade: 3 In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates divides divine madness into four kinds “prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros [. . .] The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses; which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers” (79, 60). <?page no="150"?> 150 Lisanna Calvi It’s Doctor should be his own Patient; [. . .] Is’t Lunacy to call a spade, a spade? And, Ladies, tell me, in your Mascarade, Are wit and senses lost? or doth this follow, When Poetry is given by Apollo? [. . .] Doctor these Conclusions makes; For Lunacy, Lampoon and Satyre takes: (63) While ascribing his folly to simulation, he seems to question the artificial nature of his “Mascarade” by claiming that he is indeed mad, although his distraction proceeds from Apollo, the sun, and not from the moon (“Lunacy”), and therefore being confined to Bedlam will be of no avail to improve his condition. For a moment, poetry and madness are made to coincide with each other and he seemingly recognizes to being insane, thus contradicting what he has been claiming all along. Yet, his argument is meandering as he later claims that his being a poet, that is, writing “Lampoon and Satyre,” has been wrongly interpreted as madness because of the doctor’s inability to comprehend his sarcasm. Indeed, in a poem he entitles “Nullum Magnum Ingenium (absit verbo invidia) sine mixtura dementiae” (24), 4 he ascribes his own dementia to his magnum ingenium that he vindicates as his most eminent trait. His being sharp and witty above the “standard pitch” (24) has caused his friends’ envy and has made them wish to have him out of their way. On these terms he accuses them and their accomplice, doctor “Quack”: Within the Banks Wit flows with Moderation, But Pride a deluge makes and Inundation: This with the world, know, is your common case; And that with Pride, Envy keeps equal pace: Hence they are call’d, by Plot of poor and rich, Madmen, whose wit’s above the standard pitch: This makes a Carcase with an Eagles Eye, Be thought a Fit-for-Bedlam Prodigy. But sure, when Friends & you me Mad concluded, ’Twas you your senses lost, by th’Moon deluded: Then take advice; with Physick, of Apollo Pray ask more Wit, and ’twill reason follow; (24) Playing upon his own name (Carkesse was also spelt Carkasse or Carcasse), he pictures himself as a “Carcase with an Eagles Eye.” The eagle’s eyes were traditionally considered to be very sharp, so that these birds 4 The title comes from Seneca’s De Tranquillitate Animi. <?page no="151"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 151 could even look directly into the sun. As Bartholomeus Anglicus had it in his thirteen-century De proprietatibus rerum: And among all foules, in the egle the vertue of syght is moost myghty and stronge/ for in the egle the spyryte of syghte is moost temperate and moost sharpe in acte and dede of seeng and beholdynge the sonne in the roundenesse of his cercle wythoute any blemiysshynge of eyen/ And the sharpenesse of her syghte is not reboundyd ayen wyth clerenesse of lyghte of the sonne, nother dysperplyd of ye sonne (Liber XII, Aiii v ) The eagle’s sight bears moral qualities of temperance and strength which are actually echoed by Carkesse’s call for moderation (“Within the Banks Wit flows with Moderation”). This goes far beyond being just “lucid at intervals” and retorts the charge of madness against the envious fools who have confined him to the madhouse. His wit, his “Eagles Eye” allow him a superior sight, and the sun he is staring at without blinking might as well be Apollo’s, the god of poetry. Moreover, the reference to the carcase and the eagle might also bear a Biblical echo to Matthew 24: 28, when Jesus, prophesying the end of the world, says to the Apostles that they need to beware of false prophets and deceiving wonders, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” If we understand Christ as the carcase and the eagles as his followers, the fact that the poet, despite his prodigiousness, has been confined to Bedlam may shade his confinement with the hue of martyrdom. As with Christ’s divinity, his exceptionality has been likewise misunderstood and, even though people around him (his friends, his wife, Pepys himself) 5 went not as a far as having him killed, they nevertheless thought him fit to be shut in the asylum out of ignorance and envy. A similar perspective is pursued in another poem which deals directly with what appears to have been the very episode that led to his being put away: “On his being Seiz’d for a Mad-man, only for having endeavoured to reduce Dissenters unto the Church” (17). Now the “fire” he refers to is no longer poetic but “Heavenly”: When Zeal for God inspires the Breast, Says the Blind world, the Man’s possest; And flattering their own cold desire, Call Lunacy, the Heavenly Fire: But though their Eyes are by the Flame So dasled, they mistake the Name; 5 In “To His Royal Highness” (5), Carkesse actually accuses Samuel Pepys of having benefited from his dismissal from the Navy Office. <?page no="152"?> 152 Lisanna Calvi Know, that ’twas born with Christ at first In Bethlehem, and at Bedlam Nurst. (17) As happened with his prodigious “Eagles Eye,” he says that the world got perplexed and dazzled by the “Heavenly Fire” that guides his deeds, and read it as lunacy. Being blind and cold, which is the opposite physiological state to his being “hot,” the world is unable to perceive the authentic nature of his mission, and has misunderstood his motives and high origin of his mission therefore degrading “Bethlehem” into “Bedlam.” To be sure, it all seems to be a matter of intention and right apprehension, but Carkesse never clarifies his position, repeatedly claiming he has just been acting mad, thus overlapping the boundaries of truth and pretension. In fact, it is never clear why he should have been feigning madness. Despite what he says about his many masquerades, we should not mistake such attitude for a proof of sanity, for “lunacy in disguise” does not necessarily correspond to reasonableness. He seems to dwindle between the two positions of mad and sham and on several occasions, while arguing that he is just “acting the Part” (45) like one on the stage, he simultaneously claims he is not a fraud or at least not a foolish one: “my Name-sake’s not Sir Martin,” he says, alluding to the protagonist of John Dryden’s eponymous 1667 comedy Sir Martin Mar- All, emblem of the silly cheat. He also plays upon his Christian name which he shares with James Nokes, one of the leading comic actors of his time and declares: “My name is James, not Nokes, and yet an Actor” (5). Does it mean he is a true actor, even though not as famous as Nokes? And also, when exactly has he been performing? Was it before or after entering the madhouse? In “To the Duke General,” he pleads for deliverance claiming: “A Mad-man I have Acted, as a Feat” (4), but he gives no further explanation for it and his motives remain in the haze. Of course, ascribing his mad exploit to some kind of “lunatic performance” could work as a self-justification but the idea of feigned madness runs in fact through many of his poems, emphasizing the blurring of the discrimination between reality and make-believe and impairing the unity of his own self. Indeed, the poet’s identity gets fragmented into several and at times colliding projections, which vary from intimations of grandeur to a fall into disgrace and humiliation. As an example, we may take one of the longest and perhaps more intriguing poems in the collection: “Jackstraws Progress” (21). It consists in the description of the poet’s arrival at Bethlem Hospital from Finsbury, which he pinpoints as a royal progress, shaping for himself the diverse identities of conqueror, prince, Jackstraw, parson, and patient. His removal is initially transfigured into a conquering assault against Bedlam, <?page no="153"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 153 now transformed into a castle ruled by one “Jackstraw” who, according to the poet, has betrayed reason: Then in my Charet Triumphant Rode away, As well assur’d that I got the day; That this has storm’d the Castle call’d Jackstraws, Arch-Traytor unto Reason and her Laws. (21) Yet, his crusade is not to restore Jackstraw to reason but to substitute him as new “prince of the mad.” In this capacity, he rides along the streets and is even attended by a “Lacquay throng” (22). As is appropriate to royalty, he procures himself some regalia to finish off his appearance. He chooses a piece of broken glass as his sword and brandishes it while solemnly entering Bedlam’s gates: I arm’d my hands in Coach with broken Glass Threatening the Slaves, which waited on my wheel That if they touch’d me, they should find ’twas steel Th’affrighted multitude observe their distance, Without their help I enter, or my resistance: But the great Tumult, and such solemn state, Amus’d the Officers of Bedlam-Gate So well I Acted, that they did not stick, Me to receive as their Arch-Lunatick: (22) His performance has been grandiose and he has now taken the role of Jackstraw, the former “Arch-Traytor to Reason” (21), and has eventually become Bedlam’s own “Arch-Lunatick” (22). Jackstraw may refer both to the enigmatic rebel leader of the 1381 peasants’ revolt or, as may be the case here, to a man of no substance or worth ( OED 1). Appropriately enough, in his newly acquired “Jack-quality” he deludes himself with the idea that he can rule the disorderly world of the mad but the keepers, whom he thought he could command, obviously disobey him. Thus the “Parson,” who is yet another representation of his same self, recalling his religious feats, is cast into a narrow cell “with chains and darkness” (23) and treated as any other patient. But if in the upsidedown world of the mad the “Prince” has in fact the authority of a “Jackstraw,” why does he keep on acting as such? As a matter of fact, the idea of being royal may be linked to one of the different “properties” of madness that later in the century Thomas Tryon would categorize in his A Discourse of the Causes, Natures, and Cure of Phrensie, Madness or Distraction (1689). In a passage that sheds light on Carkesse’s insistence on being affiliated with the sun, Tryon elaborates on the “Solar Property” of madness thus: <?page no="154"?> 154 Lisanna Calvi [I]f the Solar Property do bare Rule, such have great and high thoughts, and lofty Imaginations, fancying themselves to be Kings and Princes, and that all are in subjection to them; and between while, they are very unruly fierce and boisterous, when they think they are not respected or humoured according to that Quality they have assumed to themselves. (271) This would imply that Carkesse were creating a poetical persona on the basis of contemporary medical diagnosis, even though he has constantly repudiated it in his satirical attacks against “Mad-Quack.” However, his construction of a figural royal identity reaches back and is attuned to his claim to be a prodigy (“a Carcase with an Eagles Eyes” 24) or a “Christlike” missionary imbued with “Heavenly Fire” (17) and further characterizes his pretension to being marked by uncommon and superlative qualities. Indeed, it is an extraordinariness that does not fit the world, be it the one outside or the one inside the madhouse. Far from being considered a “prodigious wit,” he has been confined to Bedlam, where, despite his ironical allegations of superiority and his despising the remedies and the cures he receives, he keeps on being treated as nothing more than an ordinary patient. And it is in fact to this last role he eventually (ironically? ) chooses to assign the still “extraordinary” authorship of Lucida Intervalla, which is attributed to “the Doctors Patient Extraordinary”. After a visit to Bedlam in 1657, John Evelyn recorded in his diary that he had seen there “several poor, miserable creatures” and in particular one who “was mad with making verses” (103). Of course this man could not be James Carkesse, who would enter Bedlam more than ten years later, but the description of one “mad with making verses” certainly could have been applied to him. So clearly his situation was not a unique one. Moreover, the fact that no other poems of his are known strengthens the hypothesis that his “Poetick fury” actually coincided with and was limited to his sojourn in Bedlam. In fact, it is Carkesse himself who seems to substantiate this possibility when, in one of the opening poems of Lucida Intervalla, addressed to the general of the Artillery Ground, he prays to be relieved and actually promises to quit his poetry: “Relieve me; hold! my Suit I won’t Repeat / [. . .] Muse, sound a Retreat” (4). Once he regains his place outside the madhouse, the language he has been speaking in Bedlam is muted and he seems to forget it: the patient has been healed, but his “retreat” into the world of the sane has silenced the poet. <?page no="155"?> Carkesse’s Lucida Intervalla 155 References Andrews, Jonathan. “The (un)dress of the mad poor in England, c.1650-1850. Part 1.” History of Psychiatry, 18, 1 (2007): 5-24. . “The (un)dress of the mad poor in England, c.1650-1850. Part 2.” History of Psychiatry, 18, 2 (2007): 131-156. Anglicus, Bartholomeus. De proprietatibus rerum. London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. Arnold, Catharine. Bedlam. London and Its Mad. London, Sydney, New York and Toronto: Pocket Books, 2008. Barrough, Philip. The methode of phisicke conteyning the causes, signes, and cures of inward diseases in mans body from the head to the foote. London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1583. Boorde, Andrew. The Breviary of helthe for all maner of syckenesses and diseases. London: Wylllyam Myddelton, 1547. Carkesse, James. Lucida Intervalla, with an introduction by Michael V. Deporte. Los Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society, 1979. Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Ed. Guy de la Bédoyére. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1995. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Hodgkin, Katharine. Madness in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Hunter, Richard and Ida Macalpine. “The Reverend John Ashbourne (c.1611-61) and the Origins of the Private Madhouse System.” British Medical Journal (1972): 513-515. Ingram, Allan. The Madhouse of Language. Writing and Reading Madness in the Eighteenth Century. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. and Michelle Faubert. Cultural Constructions of Madness in Eighteenth Century Writing. Representing the Insane. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Jackson, Stanley W. Melancholia and Depression. From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. MacDonald, Michael. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Maclennan, George. Lucid Interval. Subjective writing and madness in history. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992. Natali, Ilaria. “James Carkesse and the Lucidity of Madness: A ‘Minor Poet’ in Seventeenth-century Bedlam.” The International Journal of the Humanities, 9, 5 (2012): 285-297. Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1667. Ed. Henry B. Wheatley. Teddington: Echo Library, 2006. Plato. Symposium and Phaedrus. New York: Cosimo, 2010. <?page no="156"?> 156 Lisanna Calvi Porter, Roy. Madness. A Brief History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. . Mind-Forg’d Manacles. A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. London: The Athlone Press, 1987. . “Bedlam and Parnassus. Mad People’s Writings in Georgian England.” One Culture. Essays in Science and Literature. Ed. George Levine. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988: 258-286. Salmon, William. Iatrica, seu, Praxis medendi the practice of curing diseases: being a medicinal history of near two hundred famous observations in the cure of diseases. London: Printed for Nath. Rolls, 1694. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Della tranquillità dell’anima, Della brevità della vita. Ed. Luigi Castiglioni. Brescia: Paideia, 1984. Tryon, Thomas. A Discourse of the Causes, Natures, and Cure of Phrensie, Madness or Distraction, in Tryon Thomas. A Treatise on Dreams and Visions. London: T. Sowle, 1689. <?page no="157"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul: Mechtild of Hackeborn’s the Booke of Gostlye Grace Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa The Booke of Gostlye Grace is the Middle English translation of Liber Specialis Gratiae, the revelations of Mechtild of Hackeborn, a German mystic and chantress of the convent of Helfta at the end of the thirteenth century. This essay argues that Mechtild’s revelations demonstrate a unique interface between medicine and religion. In the late Middle Ages, spiritual care and cure were expected to be administered during one’s life time and after death. Focussing on the health of the soul as evidenced in Mechtild’s revelations on the last rite, post-mortem prayers and commemorations, this essay will demonstrate that the concept of the body and blood of Christ as caritas was central to the deliverance of souls from Purgatory and that the act of mercy performed for fellow Christians was steeped in the culture of redemptive reciprocity. At the end, it will reassess the popularity of the Middle English extracts of Mechtild’s prayers in fifteenth-century England, also in the context of the care of the soul. In this world, which is essentially those regions of Europe under direct influence of the Frankish political and cultural traditions, death was omnipresent, not only in the sense that persons of all ages could and did die with appalling frequency and suddenness but also in the sense that the dead did not cease to be members of the human community. Death marked a transition, a change in status, but not an end. (Geary 2) The Booke of Gostlye Grace is the Middle English translation of Liber Specialis Gratiae, the revelations of Mechtild of Hackeborn, a German mystic and chantress of the Benedictine/ Cistercian convent of Helfta at the end of the thirteenth century. The Booke consists of five parts: Part I is Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 157-170. <?page no="158"?> 158 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa Mechtild’s visions arranged around the seasons and holydays of the liturgical year; Part II lists the special graces bestowed on Mechtild; Part III gives guidance for “the helthe of manys sawle”; Part IV offers instruction to religious men and women; and Part V discusses prayers for the dying and the deceased. 1 Although Caroline Walker Bynum has discussed Mechtild’s spirituality, and Rosalynn Voaden, and more recently C. Annette Grisé investigated the popularity and circulation of her revelations in fifteenth-century England, the text itself has generally escaped widespread scholarly attention. This essay explores the idea of the health of the soul that permeates the Booke. In a pre-Cartesian society where body and soul were inextricably linked, aspects of devotional literature were predicated upon an interaction between medical and religious discourses, and Mechtild’s treatment of this interaction renders her revelations unique. My focus in this essay is on the late medieval concern for the post-mortem care of the soul. Although in Christian belief death was thought to be a transition to a better state of spiritual health, as it is nowadays, people in late medieval society were constantly preoccupied by fears of mors improvisa (sudden death) and concentrated their minds on the health of the soul. Their preoccupation was interconnected with the teaching of the late medieval Church, whose concern was the promotion of spiritual rather than physical health for the living and the dead. The examination of Mechtild’s revelations which follows will illuminate the increasing importance of the last rite, post-mortem intercessions and commemorations - the three rituals which guarantee a better state of spiritual health. At the end, I will re-assess the popularity of the Middle English extracts of Mechtild’s prayers, also in the context of the care of the soul. Medieval death rituals were founded in part on the classical idea of the recovery of one’s soul. As Paul Binski argues, “the quasi-medical, or ‘thaumaturgical,’ character of medieval death rituals owed much to the heritage of Greco-Roman medicine” (33). When Christianity inherited the practice of ancient rituals, Christian death rituals became more about healing than dying. In addition, there was the widespread concept of Christus medicus in the Christian faith during the Middle Ages. 2 Behind I would like to thank Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy and Professor Catherine Innes-Parker for their comments on an earlier version of this article. It has recently benefited from the scrupulous attention of Dr Christiania Whitehead, to whom I am very grateful. 1 Halligan 38. All references to The Booke of Gostlye Grace (hereafter Booke) are from this edition and will be followed by part, chapter and page number. 2 For Mechtild’s vision of Christus medicus, see Booke, I, 43 197 <?page no="159"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 159 this concept is a belief that the chief cause of sickness was Original Sin. Theologians such as St Augustine (c. 340-430) saw the Passion of Christ as the best medicine through which man might recover his spiritual and physical health. 3 Mechtild’s vision of the last rite can be contextualised within these therapeutic traditions. When Mechtild attends the last rite of a sister in sickbed, she prays for her and has a vision of the sister’s soul kneeling before Christ, who shows the sister his red wounds as she receives the sacrament. The sister’s soul worships the “heylefulle woundes of [her] holy luffere Ihesu Cryste” (V, 2 556), and gives a salutation to the Holy Trinity. 4 Although the last rite itself has sacramental resonances, Mechtild’s vision distinctively stresses the therapeutic power of Christ’s body and blood and incorporates medical concepts into a late medieval mystical discourse, a discourse which had evolved through intensive devotion to Christ’s humanity shown by his sufferings during the Passion. Christ’s wounds were hailed as the essence of his humanity. The eucharistic Christ who bleeds and offers himself for the salvation of humankind stimulated the devotion to Christ’s humanity and related devotion to his blood, heart, and wounds, all of which symbolised the Eucharist. 5 Furthermore, devotion to the Body of Christ was increasingly emphasised in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which not only advocated the centrality of the Mass in Christian life but considered the sacrament to be the protection and remedy for spiritual and bodily ills. 6 Early in the Booke, Christ confides to Mechtild that his blood was deemed to be the “medycine of sawles heyle” (I 35 178) while his fresh red wounds were “verrey medycine of heyle to mannys sawle” (I 38 183). Privileged in its sacramental implications, the wound of Christ’s side, from which flows the nourishing and cleansing liquid, was worshipped as a fountain of his redemptive love. 7 Moreover, in Christ’s maternal role in the scheme of salvation, his blood was thought to be the “birthing blood, living and red,” which anticipated spiritual rebirth and salvation. 8 The wound of Christ, therefore, is the source of eucharistic medicine as revealed in the sacrament of the Mass and the 3 St Augustine, Book 10, chapter 27 432. 4 Booke, V 2 556-8. 5 For eucharistic piety, see Bynum, Wonderful Blood 271-72; Holy Feast and Holy Fast, chapter 4; Rubin 302-19. 6 The Mass became “in every sense a medicina sacramentalis, suffused with occult power”: Rawcliffe, Leprosy 339; see also Horden 141. 7 A related devotion to the Sacred Heart was cultivated by the nuns at Helfta: Finnegan 133-43. 8 Bynum, Wonderful Blood 159. For the efficacy of Christ’s blood, see Millett 45. <?page no="160"?> 160 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa locus of redemptive love through which one receives eternal life and health. Following the last communion administered to the dying sister, Mechtild sees two angels preparing two basins to wash away her stains of sin with the water of mercy, in keeping with the words of the Scripture: Misericordia et veritas precedent faciem tuam [Mercy and truth shall go before thy face] (Ps. 88.15). Notably, instead of the priest, Christ sits before the sister while the Virgin Mary, sitting at her head, prays for her. Christ assures the sister of the “halwynge & heyle of bodye ande sowlle” (V 2 557) by blessing her with the token of the holy cross. After this anointing, Christ commends the sister’s spotless soul to his Mother: “Lo, modere, I commende þis sawlle to þe, whiche þowe schalte presente to my syght withowtene anye spotte of synne” (V 2 558). This vision illuminates not only the role of Christ as physician of the soul but also of the Virgin, who acts as a nurse in the service of her Son. The eucharistic and medical overtone of Mechtild’s vision can be compared with Henry, Duke of Lancaster’s penitential meditation in Le Livre de seyntz Medicines. Employing wounds as a dominant metaphor, Henry envisions himself as mortally wounded by sin and pleads for urgent medical help. In the process of treatment, Henry asks the Lord to give him medical ointments made from his precious blood. 9 Each spiritual wound in Henry’s body must be treated with ointment made with blood from the corresponding part of Christ’s suffering body, for the wounds of Christ act as antidotes to sin. As Henry meditates upon Christ’s suffering body, he seems to see his bleeding wound as the place from whence the therapeutic and spiritual blood flows. Ultimately it comes to signify the source of divine love for sinful humanity. 10 Late medieval preoccupation with Christ’s wounds is reflected in the practice of saying the Pater Noster in veneration of the wounds. This prayer, the staple of late medieval devotion, emerges as a therapeutic and efficacious prayer carrying a freight of medical imagery in Mechtild’s vision (IV 32 538 etc). For example, when she offers up five thousand and four hundred Pater Nosters said by her congregation in memory of Christ’s wounds (IV 32 537), Christ appears to her, spreading out his hands with open wounds, and says to her that his wounds would soothe the wrath of God the Father: “Whan I hange on the crosse alle my woundes schewede þame openlye ande þay alle syngulerly criede to God the fadere ande prayede for mannys hele, ande so 3itt into this daye with a manere crye, þay slake þe wrath of þe fadere fro a synfulle man” (IV 9 Le Livre 170-88. 10 See further Yoshikawa 407-8. <?page no="161"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 161 32 538). Moreover, as Christ gladly receives the prayers in worship of his wounds, he identifies himself with a poor almsman who rejoices in taking daily bread, and assures Mechtild of the merit of worshipping the wounds with the Pater Noster: Ande this I telle the þat þare my3t neuere pore almessemane be made more gladde when he toke almesse whiche he hadde with his importunite cryenge ande askynge als I with gladnesse and ioyfull[nes] receyues a prayere whiche es 3yffene to me in worscheppe of my woundys. Also I telle the þat þat prayere may nevere be sayde deuoutelye & intentelye for any mane botte þat itt schalle gette hym the state of helth. (IV 32 538) 11 The repetition of the Pater Noster according to the number of Christ’s wounds was also perceived to be related to the ways in which the prayer would become therapeutic. When Mechtild says five Pater Nosters to Christ’s wounds for a friend who recently passed away, she asks him what remedy a dead soul will obtain from that prayer. 12 He tells her that the soul will have five benefits - protection, consolation, hope, trust and joy of heaven, all of which are ministered by the angels (V 11 581). Mechtild’s vision of the last rite, however, not only illuminates the healing power of Christ’s wounds but provides a testimony to the widespread belief in the efficacy of intercession by the Virgin and saints. When the Virgin is named by a priest in the litany of the saints, she commends that the sister be embraced by Christ as his bride: 13 “Lo, sone, I gyffe þe þis spowse to þe evere to be in thy presence ande in thy holye beclyppynges” (V 2 557). As Carole Rawcliffe argues, “[the Virgin’s] role as a mediatrice between sinful humanity and God ensured a special place for Marian devotions in the liturgy for the dead” (Medicine for the Soul 104). At the same time, the increasing demand for intercessory prayer is germane to what Jacques Le Goff called “the birth of Purgatory.” After the idea of Purgatory had become well established in the twelfth century, the demand for intercession and remembrance to bring about swift delivery from the pains of Purgatory increased. As Eamon Duffy argues, “the souls in Purgatory were part of the church of the redeemed, and 11 A passage about “pore almessemane” appears in an extract (Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd. xiv. 26[3]), attributed to Mechtild, although the translator of this extract took some liberties: see Voaden 64-65 and my argument below. 12 It was a custom of her convent to say the prayer as soon as they were informed that anybody was dead: see Booke, V 11 581. 13 Although the names of the intercessors were said in litany during the canonical Hours throughout the Middle Ages, intercession by the Virgin became increasingly efficacious as the cult of the Virgin grew in the later Middle Ages. <?page no="162"?> 162 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa prayer for the dead was one of the principal expressions of the ties that bound the community together” (348-49). Moreover, since intercession was thought to be a spiritual regimen to counteract the lethal consequences of the seven deadly sins, the accumulation of intercessory prayer as a treasury of merit was believed to result in a speedier journey through Purgatory and ultimately a means to allow the deceased soul to obtain Paradise. Indeed, mass-singing, intercessory prayer and alms-giving were the predominant features of post-mortem care of the soul in a society where judgement loomed frighteningly large. 14 In this context, the remembrance of the dead became a key element of the post-mortem ritual in the medieval Church. As the Christian era was celebrated in a single liturgical year, the prayers for the death of Christ, saints or worthy individuals were structured into the year as a seamless progression of prayers. I argue that this temporal and spatial seamlessness united the prayers on earth with eternal salvation. The remembrance and anniversaries of the dead became integrated into Christian history, “forming a framework not only for the year, but also for God’s plan for earth, which incorporated all of history and the future” (Daniel 13). Mass as post-mortem ritual, therefore, was believed to be especially “inclusive of and interactive between all generations: the living and the dead and God” (Hill 153), and such a spiritual aid was considered to be one of the works of mercy done by the living to help the dead. Moreover, since it was believed that prayers for specific souls were the most effective way of ensuring spiritual health, it became important for the wealthy to have daily Masses said by chantry priests, which was often done by leaving testamentary bequests for commemoration in religious houses where votive masses might be regularly celebrated on their behalf by a chaplain. For others, it was important that they be remembered yearly on the anniversary of their death or burial. One of Mechtild’s visions bears witness to the efficacy of her intercessory prayers. When Mechtild is praying for the earl, the founder of the convent, 15 on the day following his death, she sees his soul weeping before Christ’s feet, sorrowing over his unworthiness while he had been living in the world. Out of compassion, Mechtild prays that Christ’s tears would remedy the earl’s soul (V 4 560). In the third month after his death, the earl appears to her again. This time Mechtild asks him what was most helpful and profitable for his soul after death. He tells 14 In medieval hospitals, alms-giving was directly linked to the benefactor’s salvation: see Gilchrist 8-9. 15 This appears to be a mistake. The earl is likely the descendant of the founder, Burchard, count of Mansfeld: see Halligan 105, note 560/ 9. <?page no="163"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 163 her that “[m]assis syngynge, gyffynge offe allmus, ande clene prayere þat commeth fro a clene herte ande clene fro dedelye synne” (V 5 565) are of help. Noticeably, as the soul of the earl reveals, the morals of those who said prayers come under close scrutiny, since intercession by those who had made full atonement for their own sins was thought to be more effective. This is particularly obvious in the medieval hospital, where inmates were carefully chosen from the rank of the respectable poor, “on the assumption that prayers said by individuals of unimpeachable moral character would find greater favour with God” (Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul 106). Moreover, like the Pater Noster, the Mass was considered a unit of merit and so the efficacy of the Mass increased as the number of masses said for the soul increased. 16 The votive Mass of the Five Wounds of Jesus, one of the most popular votive Masses of the late Middle Ages, was thought to be efficacious for delivering from Purgatory the soul for whom the masses were celebrated. 17 In this context, the trental, which consists of a set of thirty requiem Masses celebrated on thirty consecutive days, is an important occasion for remembrance of the dead and communication between the living and the dead. During the trental observed for the earl, Mechtild has a vision in which Christ stands before the priest and says to the congregation that the oblation a priest receives from faithful men is profitable for the health of the soul (V 4 562). At the end of this vision, she sees the soul of the earl going about the altar and singing these words: “Lorde, I knawe itt wele þat þowe haffes betakene my bodye to deyde for helth, ioye, ande comforth of my sowlle” (V 4 562). Thus, the soul of the earl has secured spiritual health by virtue of the trental masses he bequeathed. However, the hope for early deliverance from Purgatory is not limited to the wealthy who could afford to bequeath expensive spiritual services. Christ guarantees the efficacy of the Pater Noster said for the dead souls, and gives Mechtild a detailed exposition on each petition of this prayer (V 10 575-80). Christ teaches her how a man should pray in his heart recalling the loving redemption of Christ and ask the Father that the souls in pain would receive the love of his son’s heart (V 10 576-77). When Mechtild says the Pater Noster with a devout intention as inspired by Christ, she sees a great multitude of souls being delivered from Purgatory (V 10 580). 16 Tanner 105. 17 Medieval hospitals also offered masses of the Five Wounds of Christ, “which were usually requested in multiples of five for the commemoration of the dead”: Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul 128. <?page no="164"?> 164 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa Significantly, as Christ continues to instruct Mechtild about the efficacy of intercessory prayer, his emphasis moves from the benefit of the suffering souls to that of the person who performs intercessions for the dead. He tells her that when a person prays for any dead soul out of compassion or charity, 18 s/ he will be “partynere of alle goodenesses þat be done in holy cherche, specially for þat same þat es deyde” (V 11 581) and that s/ he will be granted the remedy and health of the soul when passing out of this world. 19 Behind this vision is a system of reciprocity firmly established in late medieval society. It is widely known that the recipients of a corporal work of mercy, such as the sick poor in medieval hospital, were expected to reciprocate for the benefit of benefactor with their own prayer, which was also understood as one of seven spiritual works of mercy. 20 Although Mechtild’s vision emphasises the reward of one who prays for the dead soul rather than the reciprocal work expected from the recipient of the work of mercy (in this case, Mechtild as the recipient of the charity provided by the founder of the convent), nevertheless, it elucidates that “reciprocity was quintessential both to their practical execution and to the perception of their spiritual merit” (Hill 121). As Liz Herbert McAvoy argues, with Purgatory taking on an eschatological role, “an organised intercession for souls passing through this liminal realm” was understood to “benefit not only those suffering souls but also those performing intercession on their behalf in the world,” and so the system of reciprocity enforced “communication between the three realms of the afterlife and the world” (draft 5 143). Furthermore, Mechtild had an illuminating vision of this reciprocal activity, a vision of the Mass sung on the anniversary of the death of the founder of the monastery, whose act of charity was remembered through mass singing. The soul of the lord enjoys bliss in heaven because of his commendable work of founding the monastery where, governed by an abbess, a congregation of nuns offers worship to God: In his corowne he hadde als many flowres of golde als he hadde ande schulde wynne sowlys to God in þat monasterye. Also two abbesses whiche gouernede that monasterye stode be hym, one on the right syde ande anothere on the lefte syde of hym. . . To þase abbesses owre lorde gaffe þankkynges with fulle pleysynge ande softe wordes, forasmoche as neuere sawlle perryschede of þame þat were commyttede to þare kepynge. (V 3 558-59) 18 For a discussion on “feeling compassion,” see McNamer 1-57. 19 See the extract in Cambridge, University Library, MS Did, xiv. 26(3), in Voaden 65 and my discussion on this extract and fn 28 below. 20 The spiritual works of mercy were to counsel, correct, console, relieve, forbear, pray and instruct: Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 1302. <?page no="165"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 165 Christ explains that since the lord was a man of benevolence, “[God’s] sapience ande wysdome fonde hym þis waye of helthe” (V 3 559). Moreover, he tells her that since the lord loved the congregation as a means to worshipping God and ensuring the health of his soul, he has claimed the merit of the nuns and enjoys all their good deeds as his own: “[the lord] haffes chalanchede [claimed] to hym the merittes of eche of þame be a specyalle propyrte ande ioyeth nowe in blysse of alle here goode dedys ande goodnessys as of his owne” (V 3 559). Central to this vision are the images upon the lord’s clothing, where Mechtild saw “alle þe ymages of þat congregacion, boyth of þame þat were in hevene blysse, ande of þam þat were on lyve atte þat tyme” (V 3 558). This extraordinary vision conveys that the sisters of the monastery (both the living and the dead) are tightly woven into the fabric which clothes the soul of the lord and that the health of his soul is dependent on the good works of the sisters. The vision illuminates the way Mechtild understands the nature of the spiritual reciprocity between the founder and the congregation of sisters, living and dead. The culture of reciprocity is further illuminated by an account of a spiritual work of mercy which was granted to Mechtild by her benefactors. When Mechtild considered herself unworthy to receive spiritual gifts from God since she thought of herself as not worshipping God sufficiently, two persons, who had learned about her desire to praise God fully, ordered that an anthem, Ex quo Omnia, the antiphon for the feast of the Holy Trinity, be said to God for her as long as she lived on earth (V 17 592). After this arrangement, when Mechtild offers up worship to God in the union of divine love, she sees a great river of water flowing from Christ’s heart, which washes the filth away from the souls of her friends because of their charity (V 17 592). As Christ tells her that “[a]lle werkes of charyte puryfye a man fro alle venyalle synne[,] [b]otte deydelye [synne] muste be waschede ande done awaye by lowlye confessioun ande grete ande moche contricion” (V 17 592), Mechtild understands that the river of clear water flows in response to the charitable acts of her friends. It is a reward for their work of mercy. Moreover, she hears Christ saying to her: Also I reserue specyallye to me alle werkes of charite in my herte als [a] dere beluffede tresour into þe tyme þat he come to me whiche haffes fulylede þoo dedys ande werkes of charite, ande þan I wille 3elde þame to hym into encrees of his meritte and of his blysse. (V 17 592-93) This confirms that those who perform works of mercy will be rewarded by God, who reserves the works of charity as “tresour” in his heart. <?page no="166"?> 166 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa Furthermore, I would like to argue that the river of water flowing from the wound of Christ’s heart is emblematic of redemptive, reciprocal love, not only between the actor and the recipient, but also between the human soul and Christ. “In a society where works of mercy were interpreted as “services to both the human and the divine body at the same time” (Hill 123), it meant that whether corporal or spiritual, a work of mercy was understood as the accomplishment of a redemptive ideal. Just as a prayer in memory of Christ’s wounds is grounded in the concept of the body and blood of Christ as caritas, a work of mercy performed for one’s fellow Christian is rewarded by Christ’s self-giving, redemptive act of charity. Steeped in the culture of redemptive reciprocity centred on the body of Christ, Mechtild’s vision assumes a sacramental resonance and illuminates the Eucharist as “‘the origin and bond of charity,’ uniting the dead as well as the living in the body of Christ” (Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul 107). 21 To conclude, it is useful to reassess the popularity of the Middle English excerpts of Mechtild’s prayers, which testifies powerfully to the anxiety about salvation in late medieval English society. Apart from two complete versions of The Booke, 22 there are a number of excerpts by, or attributed to Mechtild in devotional works and compilations produced for a lay audience. 23 As C. Annette Grisé argues, “many of the extracts and prayers from continental women visionaries that circulated independently in late-medieval English devotional manuscripts and texts emphasize the holy woman’s role as a specialist in prayer and devotional practices” (165). Voaden states that one translator of Mechtild’s revelations made a patchwork of extracts “to form a relatively homogenous homily to suit [his] own didactic purpose” (65). Adding to these views, I would argue that the extracts of Mechtild’s prayers can be contextualised in the late medieval devotional milieu in which the Pater Noster and Christ’s wounds played a pivotal role in ensuring the health of the soul. A reference to Mechtild and the Pater Noster is found, for example, in a section of Carthusian devotional material in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 379. The passage from Mechtild comes at the end of a passage concerning the efficacy of the Revelations of Hundred Pater Nosters, a series of seven daily meditations on the shedding of Christ’s blood. In this extract, a Carthusian monk of London wrote about the devotions to 21 See also Aquinas, III, Supplement, question 71, article 9. 22 London, British Library, MS Egerton 2006 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 220. 23 The Myroure of Oure Ladye contains two excerpts from The Booke, although the translator took some liberty. The attribution to “Seynt Maude” lent authority to some common prayers and her name became “a kind of free-floating talisman” (Voaden 60). <?page no="167"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 167 a brother at Mountgrace, who not only felt joy and consolation, but, following every hundred Pater Nosters, said a little Latin prayer allegedly used by Mechtild in mind of Christ’s wounds, hoping that the addition of Mechtild’s prayer would enhance the efficacy of the devotions: 24 Domine Jhesu, filii dei viui, suscipe hanc orationem in amore illo super excellentissimo in quo oram vulneram tui sanctissimi corporis sustinuisti et michi miserere et omnibus peccatoribus cunctis que fidelibus tam viuis quam deffunctis amen. That ys to say my lorde Jhesucrist þe sone of almyghty god receyve this prayer in that most excellent love in the which thou souffred all the woundes of thy most holy body and have mercy of me and all synners and on all crysten people qwyk & ded Amen. 25 In this extract, the Latin prayer accompanies an English translation which was probably inserted for the convenience of its lay audience. The writer of this passage continues to recount that the monk sent copies of the Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters and of Mechtild’s prayer to his friends, 26 thereby providing a testimony to the popularity of the prayer in memory of Christ’s wounds. Furthermore, the extracts in Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.xiv. 26(3) include the passage noted above stating that Christ would receive the prayers in worship of his wounds as if he were a “pore almesman.” 27 In addition, Christ tells Mechtild that if a man prays for a dead soul compassionately and charitably, he shall participate in Christ’s goodness and receive remedy and health of his soul when he passes out of this world. 28 The extracts emphasise the reward of a person who, out of compassion and charity, performs intercession for the dead souls. The message here is both didactic and practical, in that the reader learns that a spiritual work of mercy will be duly rewarded when s/ he passes out of the world. The popularity of Mechtild’s revelations and prayers in the form of manuscripts and excerpts shows that the idea of charity and reward was deeply embedded in late medieval cultural consciousness. Furthermore, Mechtild’s revelations bear witness to the way that the Passion was understood as therapeutic and medicinal and that the living continued to offer intercessory prayer for the dead in mind of Christ’s wounds. This brings us back to the epigraph of this essay: the post-mortem care of the 24 See Grisé 170-71. 25 London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 379, ff. 52r-53r, quoted from Voaden 63-64. Cf. Booke, IV 538, lines 20-539, line 9. 26 Voaden 63-64. 27 Cf. Booke, IV 32 538 and fn 11 above. 28 Voaden 65. Cf. Booke, V 11 581 and fn 19 above. <?page no="168"?> 168 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa soul was expected to be administered during one’s life time and after death, in its role in the cure of souls for eternal salvation, for “the dead did not cease to be members of the human community” (Geary 2), but remained within a system of loving reciprocity in late medieval society. <?page no="169"?> Post-mortem Care of the Soul 169 References Arnould, E. J., ed. 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Yoshikawa, Naoë Kukita. “Holy Medicine and Diseases of the Soul: Henry of Lancaster and Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines.” Medical History 53 (2009): 397-414. <?page no="171"?> Spiritual Healing: Healing Miracles Associated With the Twelfth-Century Northern Cult of St Cuthbert Christiania Whitehead This essay examines miracles of spiritual healing and illness in the Durham cult of St Cuthbert during the twelfth century, drawing upon a range of miracle collections, vitae and Cuthbertine historiographical writings. It explores the ways in which these miracles work to defend the autonomy of the region against threatening ethnic and institutional incursions, to compete with the south, and to create consensus between the cathedral and the city. Following this, it focuses on two kinds of healing/ illness miracle which have a special and specific relation to the North East. First, it studies the folkloric miracles associated with the secondary cult centre on Inner Farne Island, and investigates the relation of Inner Farne to Durham. Second, it details the use of miracles of illness to police sacred architectural space and compel spatial segregation along gender lines. The essay closes with remarks on the complementary role played by the cult of St Godric at Finchale in relation to this gender segregation. This essay, focused upon healing miracles within the northern cult of St Cuthbert during the twelfth century, works upon the premise that the region is the key social category for the study of religious textual production before the Reformation and needs to be given a dominant role in the analysis of such production. The region in question in this essay is the north-east of England. And the key places in relation to the cult are the Island of Lindisfarne at its northern tip, where Cuthbert was prior of the monastery in the 660s, and later bishop of the diocese, and the adjacent island of Inner Farne, where he retired in 676 to lead a life of er- Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 171-185. <?page no="172"?> 172 Christiania Whitehead emitic seclusion, and where he died in 687. Buried on Lindisfarne, Cuthbert’s body quickly became the focus of a tomb cult. In the late ninth century, in order to avoid Danish raids, his coffin was taken to the mainland by the Lindisfarne community and moved around Northumbria, eventually coming to a standstill in Durham in 995, where a church was built to house it. After the Conquest, the married secular clergy tending Cuthbert’s tomb were dismissed, a new Anglo-Norman Benedictine priory was founded at Durham, and the cathedral church was reconstructed to house his shrine. In 1104, Cuthbert’s body was translated to its new and final home behind the high altar in a grand public ceremony, the coffin opened, and the body confirmed to be incorrupt and flexible. In addition to Lindisfarne, Farne and Durham, this essay will also refer to Finchale, just north of Durham, the home of the twelfth-century hermit, St Godric. After Godric’s death at Finchale in 1170, his tomb began to generate miracles and quickly became the focus of a popular tomb cult. This cult was controlled and overseen by the Durham Benedictines, who set up a dependent priory there in 1196. 1 Because not all that much remains by way of English hagiography pre-conquest, and virtually no miracle collections, it can sometimes be difficult to say much about the pre-conquest workings of a saint’s cult. However, Cuthbert is an exceptional case. In this instance, we retain three early eighth-century vitae, two by Bede, together with the extensive account given in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (Colgrave; Jaager; Colgrave and Mynors, Bk 4, chs 27-32). With all this material to draw upon, it is possible to extract a few threads about the way the discourse of illness and health works initially in these early vitae of Cuthbert, before turning to the twelfth century. First, during his active life as a prior and bishop, Cuthbert practices a miraculous healing ministry modelled on Christ’s in the Gospels. So, the touch of his garments heals. He is able to heal from a distance, even before he has arrived at a sickbed, based on the faith of those who summon him. He frequently heals women (notable, because his tolerance of women changes markedly later on), sometimes intervening in cases where medical practitioners have declared the patient beyond help (Bede, chs 23, 15, 29, 30). Parallels for several of his miracles, including his healing miracles, are drawn with the continental saints of the Roman church - Augustine, Benedict, Anthony and Marcellinus, while all Celtic antecedents are suppressed (Bede, chs 38, 14, 19). As such, the discourse of spiritual healing is used to facilitate the construction of Cuthbert as a localised Christ-figure, and as a Romanised saint in the north of England, at an ecclesial frontier where Roman and Celtic models of Christianity are rubbing up against each other in antagonistic 1 On monastic competition for the possession of Finchale hermitage, see Licence. <?page no="173"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 173 ways. Second, consequent to Cuthbert’s healing ministry and, one might say, at odds with it, in old age he is burdened with the prolonged agonising illness which will lead to his death. This illness is constructed in a very different way. Bede writes of it as a means to purgation and purification, and as a period of spiritual temptation (ch. 37). Effectively, this illness is Cuthbert’s passio - his martyrdom. His heroic stoicism in the face of extreme bodily illness is equivalent to the heroism of the early Christian martyrs in the face of torture and execution, and gives him the right to be numbered amongst them. In fact, it is even more competitive than that as his first posthumous healing miracle makes clear. A boy possessed by a brutal spirit, and beyond the help of the normal monastic exorcist, is prayed for at an altar containing relics of the Christian martyrs in Lindisfarne monastery. But the martyrs do nothing. And the reason they do nothing and refuse to grant a cure, we are told, is specifically to defer to Cuthbert, to show how high a place he holds amongst them. It is not until the boy drinks soil mixed with the water used to wash Cuthbert’s corpse, that he recovers from his madness (Bede, ch. 41). 2 So far we have identified three ways of utilising the discourse of spiritual healing: to compete with and supersede conventional doctors and exorcists, to construct Cuthbert along Romanised lines, and to give him pre-eminence amongst the Christian martyrs. As such, in these vitae, we perceive Northumbria jostling for position and elbow-room within the field of Romanised Christianity. However, spiritual healing works very differently once we turn to the twelfth century. The most important preliminary point to make here is that after the Conquest, in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the major Benedictine monastic foundations and cathedral chapters are extremely anxious to sort out questions of territory and boundary, and to assert their customary land rights in the face of the new Anglo-Norman landownership. I would argue that the scores of hagiographies and miracle collections generated during this period play a key role in staging this assertion. These miracle collections centralise miracles of illness and healing. As such I contend that, during the twelfth century, the miraculously diseased or renewed body becomes a key means by which to establish territorial possession and express idealised relationships between social groups, both within the region and beyond. We will explore a number of different examples of these strategies in practice, using material drawn from the main ecclesiastical histories and Cuthbertine miracle collections of the twelfth century: the Libellus de exordio of Symeon of Durham, a history of the 2 Bede relates how Abbot Benedict of Wearmouth brought relics of the apostles and martyrs back from a visit to Rome in c. 671 (Historiam abbatum, ch. 4). <?page no="174"?> 174 Christiania Whitehead church at Durham up until the twelfth century (c. 1104-7), the anonymous Capitula de miraculis et translationibus sancti Cuthberti (mid twelfth century), the anonymous De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis (late twelfth century), Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis virtutibus beati Cuthberti (1160s-70s) and Libellus de vita et miraculis S Godrici (1170s), and the “Irish” Libellus de ortu S Cuthberti (1190s). First, serious illness miraculously imposed by St Cuthbert is used to “warn off” racial groups that pose a threat to the region: the Danes, the Scots, and the Normans. The opening chapters of the Capitula de miraculis include a series of anecdotes to this effect. In the early tenth century, Reginald, a Norwegian Viking, occupies Cuthbert’s lands, 3 and gives them to two retainers. Onalafbald, the more oppressive of the retainers, scorns Cuthbert’s corpse at the door to his church and swears upon his own Nordic gods. He is immediately struck with paralysis, and subsequently dies in agony (ch. 3). In the late ninth century, a Scottish army crosses the Tweed and enters Cuthbert’s lands, pillaging and burning as it advances. Guthred, the beleaguered king of Northumbria, heading a much smaller army, experiences a vision of Cuthbert assuring him of God’s help and his own. The next morning as the armies begin to fight, the ground opens and swallows the Scottish army up (ch. 4). 4 After the conquest, William I sends a Norman tax collector to the region to try to extract taxes from the citizens of Durham. The tax collector is cursed with supernatural illness by Cuthbert, sent about the county publicly acknowledging his sin, and only restored to health once he has crossed the diocesan boundary (Symeon, Bk. 3, ch. 20). 5 In addition to safeguarding the boundaries of “Cuthbert’s lands” against hostile ethnic incursions, miraculously-imposed illness is also used to resist smallerscale threats to monastic land-holdings from ecclesial institutions outside the region. The Capitula de miraculis tells how abbot Paul of St Albans makes the foolish mistake of accepting the gift of the church at Tynemouth (formerly a part of Cuthbert’s patrimony) from Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland. 6 Upon arriving at Tynemouth to visit his new possession, the abbot is promptly taken ill (an imposition from St Cuthbert) and dies, while the hapless earl is subsequently cap- 3 The lands allegedly donated to Cuthbert’s tomb guardians by earlier Anglo-Saxon kings and magnates. This patrimony subsequently forms the diocese of Durham. 4 Ch. 9 recounts a further “anti-Scottish” miracle in which Cuthbert breaks the Scottish ensiegement of Durham in 1091. 5 The same fate befalls King William himself in the previous chapter: scorning Cuthbert and menacing the county, he is cursed by an immense heat that only subsides once he has crossed the River Tees. 6 In these miracle collections, various earls of Northumberland are repeatedly a thorn in the side of Cuthbert’s people (the haliwerfolc). <?page no="175"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 175 tured and imprisoned at Tynemouth by the king’s army, an ironic reversal of fortune which is not lost upon the miracle compiler (ch. 12). Second, healing miracles are used to negotiate the north/ south divide, and to assert the spiritual potentia and autonomy of the northern region. Reginald of Durham, himself very possibly a medical practitioner, repeatedly records miracles noting how Cuthbert heals sick pilgrims who have previously made fruitless visits to the major southern shrines of St Edmund at Bury and St Thomas Becket at Canterbury (De admirandis, chs 116, 126). 7 Some of these stories omit the journeys and simply describe the pilgrim casting lots between northern and southern saints (chs 112, 115). In one case, an indecisive pilgrim lights three candles representing St Cuthbert, St Edmund, and St Etheldreda at Ely in an attempt to determine which will be most efficacious for them. St Cuthbert’s candle significantly burns out first (ch. 19). Sometimes, the saints of the south are shown explicitly to co-operate in promoting the north as a region of healing potentia. In one miracle story from Reginald’s Libellus de vita et miraculis S Godrici, Becket appears in a vision to a Northumbrian pilgrim who has journeyed to Canterbury and tells him to search out healing within his own region - to apply to Cuthbert in Durham and Godric at Finchale instead: “Quare vos de Northymbria ad me huc venitis, cum sanctum Cuthbertum multo me pretiosiorem, et sanctum Godricum mei consortem, in finibus vestris habeatis? ” 8 (459- 60) In another, from the same collection, Godric appears in a vision to a Durham scholar and says he will soon be joined by Thomas à Becket his brother, and Cuthbert his father, in working healing miracles at his shrine (366-67). These examples demonstrate a range of ways of negotiating the north/ south divide: explicit rivalry resolved in favour of the north; a show of co-operation, through which the south acknowledges and defers to the north’s spiritual potentia and autonomy; and the construction of a saintly familia in which Becket is drawn into the orbit of the north, and Cuthbert presides over both Becket and Godric as spiritual father. In all these instances, spiritual healing is the vehicle enabling the expression of these inter-regional relationships. Third, the activity of spiritual healing works to demonstrate and extend social consensus between the cathedral priory and its tomb-cult, 7 See also, Webb 52-6; Tudor, “Reginald” 65-6. Tudor cites Reginald’s knowledge of the technical names of ailments and the increased medical detail he brings to his descriptions of Cuthbert’s cures. If Reginald was indeed the monastic infirmarer and a trained medicus, his additional role as the compositor of Cuthbert’s miracles illustrates the complex engagement which took place between conventional and spiritual healing practices within monastical shrines. 8 Why have you come to me from Northumbria, when you have St Cuthbert, much more precious to me, and St Godric my companion, in your neighbourhood? <?page no="176"?> 176 Christiania Whitehead and the city. The Capitula de miraculis tells how, less than a year ago, a great beam intended for use in the fabric of the cathedral, fell from a wagon entering the city gates of Durham, and crushed a child. Nonetheless, through the miraculous intervention of Cuthbert, when the beam was lifted the child was found to be unhurt (ch. 16). 9 The majority of the miracles in the Capitula de miraculis and other twelfth-century collections benefit people associated with the church in Durham: monks, priors, ecclesial servants and their families, pilgrims visiting the shrine. Here, by contrast, the miracle story appears to foreground urban labour (the construction trade, epitomised by the beam) and urban space (the city gates). The child has no explicit connection with the cathedral, s/ he is simply a city member. Despite this difference, we are told that Cuthbert would not allow any object connected in any way with his church to cause either injury or harm. His spiritual potentia intervenes at a moment where church and city might potentially be at odds, and heals that rift, restoring the child’s body to wholeness at an urban boundary (the city gates) that suggests the possibility of correlating the child’s restored body with the health or wholeness of the bounded civic body. Policing a healing shrine located at the heart of the city, the cathedral priory demonstrates consensus with the city by constructing a spiritual patron flatteringly committed to the health of its members and civic boundaries. *** Some of the ways in which healing miracles operate at Durham - to order racial, regional and civic relationships - are also relevant to the miracle output of other cathedral shrines around England, with obvious variations in local emphasis (Yarrow; Nilson). Canterbury may feel less need to assert itself quite so defiantly against the north! In the second part of this essay, we will review some functions assigned to spiritual healing that bear a more specific relation to Cuthbert’s cult and to the north-east region, commencing with a discussion of healing miracles on Inner Farne, the island where Cuthbert pursued his seventh-century vocation of eremitic asceticism. Some healing miracles are initially recorded on Inner Farne during the earliest years of Cuthbert’s posthumous cult: a piece of calf-skin pinned up in the oratory to stop the 9 Ch. 21 records a very similar miracle in which a young man, who has stopped to give assistance, is crushed by a sled bearing a great bell destined for the cathedral at Durham. The monk accompanying the sled reproaches St Cuthbert for not caring for his servants, and the young man emerges unscathed. <?page no="177"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 177 draught, heals Cuthbert’s second eremitic successor, Felgild, from an inflamed face (Bede, ch. 46). 10 They cease completely during the centuries of Danish incursion, and pick up again from the twelfth century, at the point at which Benedictine hermits from Durham priory begin to inhabit the island hermitage. 11 Now, the first observation to be made in relation to this, of course, is that there is no body, no relic on the island. Rather, it is the geographical space of asceticism paired with a living tradition of asceticism which seems to give rise to manifestations of healing power. In other words, a bounded ascetic space, inhabited by a hermit re-enacting the original vocation of that space, creates spiritual potentia. This is very removed from the way in which most tomb cults operate, offering as it does a completely different conceptualisation of the ongoing liveliness of the saint’s body. In the light of this unusual modelling of the presence of the saint, it seems worth exploring whether the kinds of miracles performed on Farne yield any insight into the character of the relationship between the eremitic cell and the cathedral shrine at Durham. On the one hand, there are important and predictable signs of conformity between the two sites: several of the healings which take place on the island are explicitly held over until the feast day of Cuthbert’s Translation at Durham (4 September), when most miracles are also recorded at the shrine, nudging the island into a kind of temporal and kalendrical synchronicity with the cathedral, and reminding local participants of the absent, translated body which effects the cure (De mirabilibus Dei, chs 4, 13). In addition, there are several miracles in Reginald’s Libellus de admirandis that seem designed to express liturgical conformity, together with the cathedral’s episcopal domination and possession of its dependencies. In these miracles, a monk, sleeping respectively in the churches of Inner Farne, Lindisfarne, and Durham Cathedral, is given a midnight vision of a liturgical procession of torchbearers and deacons, and of a bishop cele- 10 It is interesting that at this early stage in the cult, Bede is uncertain whether to attribute the miracle to Cuthbert, to Aethilwald, Cuthbert’s first eremitic successor on the island, or to both. 11 The earliest Durham hermit, Aelric, seems to have lived on Inner Farne alone before 1150. He was succeeded by Aelwin, who was in residence when Bartholomew (St Bartholomew of Farne) arrived in 1150. The two quarrelled and Aelwin left the island. Bartholomew was joined by Thomas, a former prior, in 1163, and later, by a Brother William. After Bartholomew’s death in 1193, the island remained continuously occupied by Durham hermits until the Reformation. It was formalised as a dependent cell of Durham priory in the early thirteenth century (Tudor, “Durham Priory”). Miracles upon Farne are recorded in the anonymous De mirabilibus Dei . . . in Farne insula (late twelfth century), probably written by one of the monks on the island, in Geoffrey of Coldingham’s Vita Bartholomaei Farnensis (late twelfth century), and in Reginald’s De admirandis. <?page no="178"?> 178 Christiania Whitehead brating solemn mass before the altar of the church in question (De admirandis, chs 38, 58, 59). 12 These examples demonstrate the long arm of the cathedral shaping the miraculous expression of the island cell. Nonetheless, there are also several healing miracles recorded about Inner Farne that are a world away from the miraculous narratives of a cathedral shrine. These are miracles based on the premise that Inner Farne represents a very particular category of sacred space: that it lies on the brink of the otherworld, as it were: on a supernatural frontier from which one expels devils and builds an altar with the assistance of angels. 13 It is this otherworldly understanding of ascetic space which explains the fairytale content of one of Farne’s most extended healing miracles, described in the anonymous De mirabilibus Dei . . . in Farne insula. A young labourer from Sunderland is kidnapped by three youths dressed in green riding green horses. They bring him to a courtly company in a valley representing the land of faerie, tempt him with food and drink, and offer him rest from his worldly toils. When he resists, they agree to bring him home but punish his intransigence with dumbness. Back with his parents, the labourer indicates that he wishes to be taken to Farne Island. Sprinkled with holy water there by St Bartholomew of Farne, he is cured from his dumbness, crying out “St Cuthbert, St Cuthbert” (ch. 6). Once again, the disabled and restored human body becomes the locus for testing power relations between different social units. But on this occasion and in this ascetic context, these units are nothing less than contending spiritual infrastructures. The Christian otherworld of Farne Island with its angels and demons is set in opposition to the Celtic or folkloric land of faerie, and effectively overturns it. The false seclusion proffered by faerie land (a respite from worldly toil), symbolised by the sensual impairment of the human body, is trumped by an oppositional figure of otherworldly seclusion - the Christian seclusion of the ascete, which has the power triumphantly to return the human body to full reverential Christian speech and praise. The folkloric miracles of Farne represent one distinctively northern way of utilising spiritual healing. The other distinctively northern feature is much less fanciful and concerns the use of healing miracles in relation 12 Similar visionary masses are also found, in a very different generic setting, in the French Vulgate Grail romances. Both kinds of vision bear witness to a twelfth-century climate of liturgical mystification in which the supernaturalism of the mass was emphasised. 13 Bede describes Cuthbert undertaking both of these activities on Inner Farne (ch. 17). In general, hermits’ vitae contain much more supernatural interaction in the form of visions and spiritual battles than other kinds of saints’ lives. See Reginald’s vita of St Godric, and John of Ford’s vita of Wulfric of Haselbury (Tudor, “Reginald” 125-30). <?page no="179"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 179 to gender segregation and misogyny. From the early twelfth century onward, St Cuthbert becomes a palpably, uniquely, misogynistic saint. 14 As so often, this is mediated physically through the rhetoric of space and illness. Any woman who sets foot in Cuthbert’s cathedral or cemetery at Durham, Cuthbert’s churches and cemeteries on Lindisfarne and Inner Farne island, other churches around the land dedicated to St Cuthbert, or into any of his hermitages, is going to rue the day they ever transgressed. Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio, the earliest narrative in this misogynist tradition, relates the story of Judith, wife of Earl Tostig of Northumberland, who, apparently aware of this ban, sends her maidservant on to forbidden soil to test the water. Entering the churchyard of Durham cathedral, the girl is repelled by a violent force, stricken ill, and eventually dies (Bk. 3, ch. 11). Another tale from Symeon: a Durham woman whose husband’s social position fills her with pride, walks through the cathedral cemetery in defiance of the ban, becomes insane and later cuts her own throat (Bk. 2, ch. 9). A little girl who strays into the cathedral by mistake is similarly rendered insane (Reginald, De vita 403). A Flemish woman who visits Inner Farne island and complains that women are treated like dogs there, tries to enter the island church but is repulsed by a strong wind (Geoffrey 309). A Scottish count foolish enough to bring his wife and daughters to a Scottish hermitage allegedly formerly inhabited by Cuthbert, is punished by breaking his hip and leg (Libellus de ortu, ch. 26). 15 In all these instances, in a wide range of twelfth-century Cuthbertine writings, divinely-imposed illness is made key to the contruction and maintenance of gender-specific boundaries, barring access to the saint’s sacred terrain. That this gendered ban upon ingress was still a current topic for debate in the fifteenth century is demonstrated by a lengthy interpolation towards the end of the fifteenth-century Middle English metrical Life of St Cuthbert, probably written by one of the Durham monks (Life; Whitehead, “Regional”). The bulk of this poem closely translates the “Irish” Libellus de ortu, Bede’s Prose vita, and other twelfth-century sources. However, in the passage in question, immediately following on from his translation of Symeon’s misogynist miracles (Earl Tostig’s wife, the proud Durham matron), the translator interpolates 40 or so lines of his own, responding to the arguments of those who say that since women were allowed around Cuthbert’s coffin while he lay at Chester-le-Street, there is no reason why they should be barred from his shrine at Durham. The translator replies: 14 The following discussion is indebted to Tudor, “Misogyny.” 15 This maverick late twelfth-century “Irish” life gives Cuthbert a royal Irish birth, and a Scottish sphere of saintly activity. <?page no="180"?> 180 Christiania Whitehead And gif þai did, it semes on chanunce Þai knew no3t þe saint ordenaunce, Þar fore þai were excused þan, for why Þai did wrange unwitandly. Or ellis say he gaue fredome Þare women to his toumbe to come, In takyn full to men discryd Þat he sulde no3t þare abyde . . . . . . women he forbare Whils he and monkys togydir ware, Restand in a mynster . . . Þarfore whare his cors rest, He will na woman byde ne gest. (lines 7303-18) The translator’s use of the present tense suggests that the ban remained current in the fifteenth century, and the arguments he amasses show that he was clearly in favour of its enforcement. Nonetheless, the fact that he feels the need to step aside from his narrative at all to argue this position implies that Durham’s conservative adherence to the exclusion of women had become subject to question in certain quarters. Even though one might expect some restrictions upon female access in cathedral shrines manned by Benedictine monks, the sheer number and rhetorical intricacy of these miracle stories punishing disobedient women with illness or death, and the institutional misogyny which ensued, 16 is unique among English cathedral shrine cults. There are a number of mythic stories of causation which explain how this ban arose - in the “Irish” Libellus de ortu, an unmarried Scottish princess falsely accuses Cuthbert of causing her pregnancy (the ground promptly swallows her up! ). A beautiful woman distracts Cuthbert’s monks when they should have been listening to him preaching (chs 27, 29). However, it is important to emphasise that none of these stories emerge earlier than the twelfth century - the original Cuthbert depicted by Bede seems to have had perfectly friendly relationships with women. 17 One reading of the misogyny initiated in this period is to see it as a disapproving Benedictine reaction to the expelled community of married secular clergy and their families that grew up around the saint’s body in the late Saxon pe- 16 Tudor describes the public punishment and humiliation of two women servants from Newcastle who broke the ban in 1417, and draws attention to a passage in the late sixteenth-century anonymous Rites of Durham mentioning a blue marble line in the floor near the west end of the cathedral, which women would be punished if they crossed (“Misogyny” 164-5). 17 Indeed, in one episode (Bede, ch. 37), Cuthbert asks to be shrouded after his death in a length of linen given to him by abbess Verca from South Shields, which he has kept out of love for her. <?page no="181"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 181 riod (Symeon lxxxi-lxxxv; Foster; Tudor, “Misogyny” 159). Certainly, while Symeon initially presents a broadly tolerant account of this community, mid-twelfth-century additions to the Libellus de exordio and papal pronouncements are much more vituperative, lambasting their “depraved and incorrigible way of life” (Foster 61), so as to justify their expulsion and replacement by the southern monks of the Norman Benedictine reform. There are a number of sociological ways of responding to this exclusion. First, it seems clear that English saints’ cults generally engage with the notion of inviolability in some way. In female saints’ cults - those of Werburge at Chester, Frideswide in Oxford, and Etheldreda at Ely, are good cases in point - hagiographic writing emphasises these women’s heroically maintained virginity and immunity to desire, and contemporary theorists of this literature link the intact character of these saintly bodies to the inviolability of the cities and regions they protect (Sanok). It seems to me that Cuthbert is accompanied by a rhetoric of inviolability as zealously promulgated as that of any female saint. But whereas female hagiography stresses the inviolability of the body, and makes that metonymic of wider social units, male hagiography substitutes the sacred building for the body, and constructs that building as a carefully bounded, filtered and purified space, free from the contamination of the opposite sex. Second, it is valuable to think about this exclusion in terms of its reading of bodiliness. We have established that the saint’s body and the cathedral shrine which houses it can usefully be viewed as a symbolic representation of regional social cohesion and wholeness. People from every social class and occupation, and from all the reaches of the region, bring their brokenness there and come away restored. It is a very bodily dense place - full up with the sick bodies of the pilgrims; the invisible but incorrupt body of the saint; hundred upon hundred of wax body parts symbolic of previous healing suspended above the shrine and crammed in around it; 18 wax candles, also symbolically representative of the bodies of sick pilgrims and supplicants. 19 At Durham, women are not a welcome part of this complex three-dimensional emblem of regional social unity and transformation. The bodiliness so frequently attributed to the medieval feminine would seem to be different in kind to the expectant, regenerated, and symbolic bodies heaped 18 The contemporary inventory of votive offerings at the shrine of Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford from 1307, lists, amongst other things, 1,424 images of men or their body parts in wax, and 129 in silver (Nilson 101; Finucane 97-99). 19 The bodies of sufferers were measured and a wick of that same measurement incorporated into a candle which was burnt at the shrine. As such, these candles seem to have “stood for” the bodies of invalids in some way (Nilson 102-4). Nilson also discusses the central role of wax within the cathedral economy (105, 136-37). <?page no="182"?> 182 Christiania Whitehead around the shrine. Illness drops like a portcullis to prevent women accessing a hub-point that emanates health. Unsurprisingly, the region came up with a solution; impractical in the extreme entirely to halt female pilgrimage north and lose the accompanying shrine revenue. Godric was that solution! Constructed as a saint and miracle-worker in vitae written by the Durham Benedictines, 20 Godric’s life is made to sound unusually full of women for a hermit - he travelled to Rome with his mother, encouraged his sister to establish her own cell next to his, and is described learning songs in visions from the Virgin Mary. 21 In his 240 recorded posthumous miracles - one of the largest collections to survive from twelfth and thirteenth-century England - his tomb at Finchale is given a compelling association with female healing. It seems to have worked. Women came. Two thirds of the pilgrims to Finchale were women, a far higher percentage than to any other male saint’s shrine. 22 The complementary relation to Cuthbert is made even more explicit, in that some of the women whom Cuthbert renders insane, Godric obligingly heals. This I think is the reason that Godric’s bones don’t get transferred to Durham cathedral unlike the bones of most other saintly north-eastern bishops, abbots and anchorites. 23 Finchale is developed by Durham as a secondary north-eastern tomb cult to mop up the woman issue. *** To conclude: acts of spiritual healing and illness within shrine cults always need to be viewed in relation to local and institutional agendas. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Cuthbert’s relation to disease is used to construct him as a Romanised saint and a Christian martyr. Post-conquest, a 20 Godric seems to have attracted 4 Benedictine biographers: Reginald, Walter, Geoffrey (poss. of Coldingham), and a lost vita by Prior Germanus. The fullest account is given by Coombe. 21 The single extant illustration of St Godric in the copy of The Desert of Religion in Cotton MS Faustina B.vi.Pt.ii, shows him praying to or receiving a vision of the Virgin (Coombe 111). 22 68% of the people cured at Godric’s shrine are women; the only other twelfth/ thirteenth century English shrines with comparably high percentages for female healing are those of two woman saints: Aebbe (62%) and Frideswide (68%) (Coombe 51-2; Finucane 127). 23 The bones of Godric’s eremitic friend Aelric were collected for interment at Durham. Likewise, in a mythic narrative, Symeon tells us how Cuthbert’s sacrist, Elfred, was instructed in a vision to gather the bones of two local anchorites, the bishops of Hexham, Acca and Alchmund, abbesses Aebbe and Aethelgitha, abbot Boisil, and Bede, and bring them to the Durham shrine (Bk. 3, ch. 7). These collections were probably carried out to prevent other monastic orders from developing competing tomb cults (Licence). <?page no="183"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 183 much more vengeful manifestation of the same figure imposes illness to punish individuals, racial groups and institutions who pose a threat to the region and to his patrimony. Simultaneously, spiritual healing becomes the locus for staging competition with other shrines and other regions of the country, and for competing with other more medical models of healing. Some modes of manipulating the trope of spiritual healing seem distinct to the north-eastern region. A particularly folkloric type of healing miracle arises from sacred eremitic space. And healing and illness are used to police sacred space in relation to gender, and to compel spatial segregation along gender lines - male pilgrims to Durham, female pilgrims to Finchale - up until the end of the Middle Ages, to a degree unparalleled in English hagiographical culture. <?page no="184"?> 184 Christiania Whitehead References Bede. Prose vita. In Colgrave. 141-307. . Historiam abbatum. In Charles Plummer, ed. Venerabilis Baedae Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum; Historiam abbatum; Epistolam ad Ecgberctum; una cum Historia abbatum auctore anonymo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. Capitula de miraculis et translationibus sancti Cuthberti. In Thomas Arnold, ed. Symeonis monachi Opera Omnia. Rolls Series. London: Longman, 1882- 85. I: 229-61, II: 333-62. Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of St Cuthbert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940. and R. A. B. Mynors, eds. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Coombe, Margaret. “Reginald of Durham’s Latin Life of St Godric of Finchale: a study.” PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2011. De mirabilibus Dei modernis temporibus in Farne insula declaratis. Ed. H. H. E. Craster. “The Miracles of St Cuthbert at Farne.” Analecta bollandiana 70 (1952): 5-19. Finucane, Ronald C. Miracles and Pilgrims: popular beliefs in medieval England. London: J. M. Dent, 1977. Foster, Meryl. “Custodians of St Cuthbert: the Durham Monks’ Views of their Predecessors 1083-c.1200.” Anglo-Norman Durham 1093- 1193. Ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994. 53-66. Geoffrey of Coldingham. Vita Bartholomaei Farnensis. In Thomas Arnold, ed. Symeon monachi Opera Omnia. Rolls Series. London: Longman, 1882-85. I: 295-325. Jaager, Werner, ed. Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti. Leipzig: Mayer and Müller, 1935. Libellus de ortu S Cuthberti. In James Raine, ed. Miscellanea biographica. Surtees Society 8. London: J. B. Nichols and son, 1838. 61-87. Licence, Tom. “The Benedictines, the Cistercians, and the acquisition of a hermitage in twelfth-century Durham.” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003): 315-29. The Life of St Cuthbert in English Verse. Ed. J. T. Fowler. Surtees Society 87. Durham: Andrews and Co., 1891. Nilson, Benjamin J. Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. Reginald of Durham. Libellus de admirandis Beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patrate sunt temporibus. Ed. James Raine. Surtees Society 1. London: J. B. Nichols and son, 1835. <?page no="185"?> The Spiritual Healing of St Cuthbert 185 . Libellus de vita et miraculis S Godrici, heremitae de Finchale. Ed. Joseph Stevenson. Surtees Society 20. London: J. B. Nichols and son, 1847. Sanok, Catherine. Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2007. Symeon of Durham. Libellus de exordio. Ed. and trans. David W. Rollason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Tudor, Victoria. “Reginald of Durham and St Godric of Finchale.” PhD dissertation, University of Reading, 1979. . “The Misogyny of St Cuthbert.” Archaeologia Aeliana. 5th series 12 (1984): 157-67. . “Durham Priory and its Hermits in the Twelfth Century.” Anglo- Norman Durham 1093-1193. Ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994. 67-78. Webb, Diana. Pilgrimage in Medieval England. London: Hambledon, 2000. Whitehead, Christiania. “Regional, and with Attitude: the Middle English Metrical Life of St Cuthbert.” Festschrift for Roger Ellis. Ed. Catherine Batt and René Tixier. Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2013. Yarrow, Simon. Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth- Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. <?page no="187"?> Staging Childbirth: Medical and Popular Discourses of Delivery and Midwifery in the Medieval English Mystery Plays 1 Tamás Karáth Gynaecological sources of the late Middle Ages attest to two major changes in the practices of delivery: first, the (re)appearance of the professional midwife, increasingly operating under corporate control, and second, a growing presence of male medical practitioners at natural deliveries. I argue that the Nativity pageants of the English mystery plays can be used to reconstruct the transformations of contemporary professional and lay discourses of childbirth. Staging Christ’s birth in the English cycle plays confronted playwrights with the challenge of disclosing to the public what was considered to be an exclusively female experience. An analysis of the discursive and dramaturgical strategies of the Nativity episodes of the cycle plays and the Coventry fragment reveals that the plays were concerned with the development of a new professional midwifery. At the same time, plays staging conflicts between the female participants of the birth and the male witnesses reflect on male claims of involvement, and thus join discourses of shame and blame. Similarly to the “gendered” prologues of gynaecological texts, the medieval pageants of the Nativity also maintain a dichotomy of the ideal presence of certain people at birth and the non-desired intrusion of others. But unlike those prologues, the stage plays do not impose shame on the public gaze intruding into the revelation of the secrecies of the birth 1 I am grateful to my wife, Judit Gombás, psychologist, and to Ágnes Dékány, obstetrician-gynaecologist, for their theoretical and intuitive knowledge through which they led me to a deeper insight into the mysteries of life and to the recognition that, in lack of experimental knowledge, I will always remain an outsider in the field of this paper. Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 187-206. <?page no="188"?> 188 Tamás Karáth chamber. Playwrights of the most elaborate Nativity pageants are sympathetic towards the idea of empowering women in the birthing process; on stage, at least one mother (the Virgin Mary) remained in full control of her delivery. In this essay, I consider the medieval English Nativity pageants as a valuable contribution to the medieval discourse of delivery and midwifery. I will argue that these texts can also be used to advance our knowledge of late medieval conceptions of birth in England. Literary sources may never answer with certainty if their discourses were conceived to corroborate “unquestionable” assumptions of the community, or if they intended to instruct people on the protocols of childbirth. Also, my method may question the validity of conclusions pertaining to social attitudes. However, I wish to show that the reading of the Nativity plays in the context of sources documenting contemporary experiences and practices of birth reveal late medieval changes affecting childbirth. Common to all medieval discourses of delivery is the overt or covert acceptance of the spiritual and transcendental dimension of this event. The spiritual aspect of birth is touched upon in different ways, in a range of medieval discourses. Birth in the Middle Ages was thought to reveal something mysterious about the relationship of the human and the divine, because all births were prefigured by the Nativity of Christ. For example, Margery Kempe, who herself experienced childbirth fourteen times, saw every birth as an incarnation: Sche was so meche affectyd to the manhode of Crist that whan sche sey women in Rome beryn children in her armys, yyf sche myth wetyn that thei wer ony men children, sche schuld cryin, roryn and wepyn as thei sche had seyn Crist in hys childhode. And yf sche myth an had hir wille, oftyntymes sche wolde a takyn the childeryn owt of the moderys armys and a kyssed hem in the stede of Cryste. (Windeatt 190-1) In the late Middle Ages, the lay discourse of childbirth was more and more affected by the themes of gynaecological and obstetrical literature. Lay discourses and presentations of delivery became inseparable from the medical and (semi-)professional treatments of the subject. Mary C. Flannery’s contribution to this volume very convincingly and sensitively illustrates the ways in which strategies of affective reading were incorporated in the prologues of gynaecological literature for the purposes of distinguishing ideal readers from the undesired intruders into women’s <?page no="189"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 189 “secrets.” 2 On the other hand, literary texts attest to an undeniable indebtedness to some essential themes of gynaecological literature. This interaction between the two textual traditions and the blurring of the discursive strategies pertaining to the medical/ professional and the lay conceptualizations of birth are expressions of a shared need to face the dilemmas and consequences of making parturition both men’s and women’s “business.” My analysis of the Nativity plays will discuss questions of control and authority. The English Nativity pageants witness the late medieval and early modern transformation of conceptualizing delivery. Gynaecological and obstetrical sources of this period attest to two major changes: the (re)appearance of the professional, although not yet systematically trained, midwife who is gradually drawn under corporate control (Aveling 3-7; Donnison 5-7; Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 134-6; McKinney 230-6), and the growing demand of male medical practitioners to assist and control natural deliveries. By their public display of women’s private experience, and their concern with the professionalization of midwifery, the Nativity pageants seem to react to a growing lay, particularly lay male, interest in the heretofore private, female sphere of the birth chamber. Middle English gynaecological and obstetrical literature constitutes a small corpus of texts. Monica H. Green has compiled a list of thirty manuscripts containing eleven gynaecological and obstetrical texts or collections of recipes (Green, “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts”). Green divides this corpus into three groups: (1) translations made from the Latin Trotula texts, (2) translations of Gilbertus Anglicus’s “The Sekenesse of Wymmen,” and (3) texts from other sources (Green, “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts” 54-55). Two manuscripts of the two versions of “The Sekenesse of Wymmen” have each been transcribed by Beryl Rowland and M.-R. Hallaert. Alexandra Barratt has edited one of the five independent versions of the most popular Middle English Trotula. Finally, Green has transcribed “The Nature of Wymmen” in the Appendix of “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts” (84-8). 2 I am grateful to Mary C. Flannery for providing me with the manuscript of her presentation at the SAMEMES conference, “Emotion and the Ideal Reader in Middle English Gynaecological Texts.” Her findings substantially nuance my conclusions drawn from the analysis of the Nativity episodes of the English mystery plays. I believe that my discussion of the N-Town Nativity episode also elaborates and continues her discussion of the interrelations of shame, affective reading and gynaecological discourse with proposing alternative uses or the role of the theme of shame. <?page no="190"?> 190 Tamás Karáth Medieval gynaecological and obstetrical literature of ancient heritage does not treat childbirth as a medical event. Soranus’s Gynaecology, its Greek and Latin revisions and abridgments, as well as the twelfthcentury Salernitan Trotula texts only discuss difficult deliveries of particular medical interest (Green, Trotula). The typical topics of this literature were: menstrual disorders, sterility, pruritus, signs of pregnancy, difficult parturition, infant feeding, the choice of a nurse, and “problems of women after childbirth” (Rowland 22-23). As Rowland writes, “instruction on the delivery of the child is often omitted by encyclopaedists and medieval writers.” (22) The same applies to the “decidedly impoverished imagery” of gynaecological texts (Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 151). Although the discussion of delivery is not more elaborate in treatises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the reason for their silence is profoundly different. The 1508 Venetian print of De Secretis Mulierum explains: “Now it is time to bring up the topic of how to assist a mother in childbirth, but this topic is a medical one, and so is omitted here.” (Lemay 143) Technicalities of the delivery have no place in a popular edition for a predominantly male audience with especial interest in issues of conception, the signs of pregnancy and lineage. Yet the medieval discourse of childbirth was not only shaped by the gynaecological and obstetrical texts. The English Nativity plays were embedded in the biblical and apocryphal tradition of conceptualizing birth. The legacy of this tradition was inculcated into people’s mental imagery by a plethora of texts elaborating on the theme of the Nativity: the Legenda Aurea (Jacobus de Voragine 37-39), The South English Nativity (Pickering 77-79), John Mirk’s “De Nativitate” sermon (Powell 24-25), A Stanzaic Life of Christ (Foster 15), the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Ragusa and Green 31-42) and its Middle English rendering by Nicholas Love (Sargent 38-39). Mystics’ assistance at Christ’s birth as quasi-midwives in their visions was a popular theme of female revelatory writing. These non-dramatic representations of birth show a deep awareness of the gender-based division of labour surrounding delivery and of the exclusion of men from the birth experience. “The view that childbirth was an area of indisputable female jurisdiction seems to have been generally well accepted to the end of the period when the plays were being performed” (Ryan 443). But it was also uncontested that the medieval theatre was a male world. Plays were authored, authorized, organized, staged and performed by males. By contrast, the Nativity pageants unveiled the secluded female space of the birth chamber to the eyes of a large and mixed public. In these pageants, we find a range of strategies <?page no="191"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 191 being explored to negotiate between the staged world of the public and the domestic privacy of childbirth. Eventually, the lack of such a negotiation is also indicative of a strategy in which the playwright decided not to show what was not supposed to be seen by the public gaze. For example, the Wakefield Shepherd’s Pageants bar any intrusion into the intimacy of birth. The Second Shepherd’s Pageant focuses on post-partum events, when the mother and the newborn have already become accessible to the broader community of visitors. The intimate moment of the shepherds’ gift-giving at the crib reinstates communal peace and mirth, and emphasizes forgiveness after the theft and mock-birth scene of the first part of the play. The pageant celebrates the real Nativity with the habitual gesture of presenting gifts after birth in a homely reunion. It advocates a humble model of postnatal festivities where drinking, eating and joy went much beyond the frames of decent family assemblies, and therefore often irritated the authorities vigilantly keeping the peace of the community (Ryan 439-40). Claude Chidamian suggests that another enigmatic episode of the play, the sheep-stealing and plotting of Mak’s tossing in the blanket by his fellow shepherds, is also reminiscent of childbirth practices. Chidamian interprets this episode as a humiliating punishment (186-8), which imitates the rocking and rolling of women in difficult labour, as the Trotula instructs midwives to conduct: Those who labor excessively in giving birth to a dead fetus we assist thus. Let us place the patient on a linen sheet and let us have it held by four strong men at the four corners, the head of the patient a little bit elevated. We will make the sheet be pulled strongly this way and that at the opposite corners, and immediately she will give birth. (Green, Trotula 122-3) Chidamian’s interpretation is rich in allusions that uncover the complexity of the enigmatic scene of Mak’s tossing up in the blanket. Mak, who stole a sheep from his destitute fellow shepherds, is reaccepted by his own community and reinstated in his moral integrity. Mak’s weakness is symbolically deleted by an act that Chidamian interprets as an imitation of birth labour. The pageant describes the reintegration of the lapsed Mak into the community and his willingness to compensate for the lost trust of his fellows with an image evoking difficult birth. The visual and gestural language of the episode ultimately suggests that rebuilding bridges of trust is as difficult an initiation as a birth may possibly be. Chidamian’s reading of the scene is also suggestive in another respect: the representation of the very birth of Christ is missing from the Wakefield Nativity, though it may deliberately be hidden in the enigmatic ges- <?page no="192"?> 192 Tamás Karáth ture of tossing up Mak in the blanket. But the play’s structure would rather suggest forgiveness and not humiliation as its central message. The ritual of tossing also evokes a gesture of celebration which implies confidence: the person tossed up in the air has to trust the others that he will not be allowed to fall. 3 The York Nativity pageant also excludes the intruding eye from the birth chamber and substitutes the display of women’s birth chamber privacy with the Virgin’s intimate prayer to the newborn Jesus. Joseph’s absence from the birth is necessitated by his quest for light, and not for midwives, as in some other plays: J OSEPH : Þan wolde I fayne we had sum light, What so befall. It waxis right myrke vnto my sight, And colde withall. I will go gete vs light forthy, And fewell fande with me to bryng. (Beadle, 2009, ll. 39-44) *** M ARY : e ar welcum sirre. J OSEPH : Say Marie, doghtir, what chere with the? M ARY : Right goode Joseph, as has ben ay. J OSEPH : O Marie, what swete thyng is that on thy kne? M ARY : It is my sone, the soth to saye, Þat is so gud. J OSEPH : Wele is me I bade this day To se this foode. 3 I am grateful to my late colleague Professor Kathleen E. Dubs for sharing her ideas with me, which made me reconsider my understanding of this episode of the Second Shepherd’s Play. <?page no="193"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 193 Me merueles mekill of this light Þat thus-gates shynes in this place, Forsuth it is a selcouth sight. (ll. 84-94) Joseph’s departure and return frame the birth scene, which is not itself shown on stage. The secrets of birth are sublimed in Mary’s prayer, a four-stanza meditation. In the first two, Mary turns inward in contemplation and concludes with the simple announcement of the birth of her son: “Now born is he” (l. 56). In the next two stanzas, she turns to Jesus with hail lyrics as a recognition of the divine nature of the newborn. Her monologue ends with the recognition of the human nature and needs of Jesus: “Vowchesaffe, swete sone I pray the / That I myght the take in the armys of myne / And in this poure wede to arraie the” (ll. 65-7). The revelatory character of the York pageant makes it most closely akin to revelatory writings on the Nativity. J. W. Robinson and Clifford Davidson propose York’s indebtedness to the visuality of St. Bridget’s revelation of the Nativity: [W]hile [the Virgin] was engaged thus in prayer, I saw the child in her womb, and suddenly in a moment she gave birth to her son. [. . .] And so sudden and instantaneous was this way of bringing forth that I could neither discover nor discern how . . . she gave birth. Verily, though, all of a sud-den I saw the glorious infant lying on the ground naked and shining. [. . .] When the virgin felt that she had already borne her child, she immediately worshipped him. [. . .] Then as the child was whining and trembling from the cold and from the harshness of the floor where he was lying, he stretched out his arms, imploring her to raise him to the warmth and to her motherly love. The mother took him in her arms and pressed him to her breast, and with her cheek and her breast she warmed him with great joy and tender maternal compassion. She then sat down to the floor and laid the child in her lap, and at once she began to cover his small body. (Davidson 17-8) Although Robinson sees in the similarity of the two Nativity scenes proof of the Bridgettine inspiration of the York playwright (Davidson 18), he ignores the striking silences in the York pageant. Firstly, the playwright does not mention Christ’s delivery on the floor, as is inevitable when a woman has to give birth alone. Secondly, he replaces Mary’s lifting the child to her breast by her wish of taking Jesus into her arms. Bridget’s revelation discloses the first-hand experience of a mother, in which the most instinctive gestures of the birthing woman are not left unnoticed. The two very similar narratives display the differences of <?page no="194"?> 194 Tamás Karáth gendered narratives: the one discloses a motherly involvement in the experience of birth, while the other uses elements of this narrative from second-hand experience. Not considering the earlier lost version of the York Nativity play (Beadle, 1982 426), three of the five English Nativity pageants stage midwives: Chester, N-Town and the Shearmen and Taylors’ fragment from the lost Coventry mystery cycle. “Midwives negotiated the divide between the external, masculine domain of civic power and the ‘bustling female community of domestic space’” (Ryan 440). The presence of midwives also guaranteed an old-established and reliable testimony to the authenticity of the Incarnation, confirmed partly by the longevity of biblical, apocryphal and patristic discourse, and partly by the social recognition of their position of trust. Strictly speaking, midwives are not related to the Nativity accounts of the Gospels, but the earliest records of midwives are biblical. Two midwives, Shiprah and Puah, appear in the Book of Exodus (1: 15); they are “rewarded by God for their part in outwitting Pharaoh” (Donnison 1). Two further passages of the Book of Genesis (35: 16 and 38: 27-30) mention midwives with much esteem (Towler and Bramall 6-7). The apocryphal tradition of the midwives assisting at Christ’s birth was based on two texts: the Protoevangelium Jacobi and The Book of Pseudo- Matthew on the Infancy of Christ. Liturgical plays also dramatized the apocryphal scene of the midwives in the “Quem queritis in presepe” dialogue with the shepherds at the crib (Ryan 435-48; Young II. 5-105). Most plays of the “Three Magi” and some of the “Killing of the Innocent” also employ midwives even if their presence was not justified by the Nativity narratives of the New Testament. The role of the midwives remained unaltered throughout the twelfth to fourteenth centuries in the surviving liturgical plays of Italy, Germany, France and the Low Countries (Young II. 5-105). The midwives fulfilled an active role of demonstration; they pointed first at the child, and then at the mother, in testimony of the Incarnation and the virgin birth. The Coventry Nativity pageant preserves the reminiscences of a midwife scene, but due to later revisions of the play, the midwives do not appear on stage. The obvious revision of the original plot and the insertion of the Nativity pageant in a composite play are indicative of the restructuring of the Coventry cycle in order to adapt it to the shrinking number of guilds in an economically declining town. A history of redactions, at least after 1491, may largely be explained as efforts at accommodation to changing guild resources. Especially <?page no="195"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 195 with the decline of many of the guilds responsible for individual pageants, the cycle itself could hardly be expected to remain stable in its organization or in financial support from contributory guilds (King and Davidson 3). 4 In the Shearmen and Taylors’ pageant, the embedded stage directions indicate that Joseph is supposed to go away on a quest for midwives, but after the ensuing shepherds’ scene, he returns without them. Joseph’s absence has a dual dramaturgical function: firstly, “to clear the way for the next scene, which initially focuses on the shepherds and the heavenly song they hear” (King and Davidson 224), and secondly, to anticipate the assistance of the midwives at the Nativity. M ARE God haue marce, Josoff, my huse-bond soo meke! And hartely I pra you, goo now fro me. J OSOFF Thatt shalbe done in hast, mare soo swete! The comford of the Wholle Gost leyve I with the. Now to Bedlem streyght woll I wynd To gett som helpe for Mare soo free. Sum helpe of wemen God may me send, Thatt Mare, full of grace, pleysid ma be. [Shepherds’ scene is inserted here] M ARE Josoff, husebond, cum heddur anon; My chylde ys borne that ys Kyng of blys. J OSOFF Now welcum to me, the Maker of mon, with all the omage thatt I con; Thy swete mothe here woll I hys. M ARE Josoff, husebond, my chyld waxith cold, And we haue noo fyre to warme hym with. J OSOFF Now in my narmys I schall hym fold, Kyng of all kyngys be fyld and be fryth. (Craig ll. 196-204 and 282-92) Pamela King and Clifford Davidson explain the inconsistency of the extant pageant with the reviser’s indebtedness to the iconography of St. Bridget’s vision of the nativity: 4 The critical edition of the two extant Coventry fragments, by Pamela King and Clifford Davidson, also distinguishes several strata of composition in the Shearmen and Taylors’ Nativity pageant according to formal and linguistic criteria (14-20). <?page no="196"?> 196 Tamás Karáth Because no midwives are present, the presentation of the birth seems to imply dependence on St. Birgitta’s account, in which the mandorla-encircled Child appears miraculously and painlessly before her; this iconography, influenced by the Meditations of the Life of Christ, was popular in England after c. 1420. [. . .] In the Shearmen and Taylors’ play, the birth of the Child most likely took place as the audience’s attention was directed elsewhere. The Child is already born by the time that the angels sing the Gloria at l. 250. In fact, the moment of birth probably coincided with the appearance of the star to the shepherds at l. 229 s.d. - a cunning device to distract the audience from the event in the stable. (224-5) While the simultaneous staging of Joseph’s quest for midwives, the appearance of the angel to the shepherds and the “invisible” birth of Christ add an intricate density to the pageant, the contradiction between the original and the new design of the Nativity is in no way resolved by the reviser. Moreover, attempts at an interpretation of the play are challenged precisely by the details that were obviously deleted and supposed to be left unnoticed by a “distracted” audience. Why does Joseph fail to find midwives; or eventually, why do the midwives not appear on the stage? Is Joseph’s assistance in the birth chamber a spontaneous and inevitable arrangement for want of the midwives, or does he become a substitute for the midwives in order to provide and promote a pattern of an intruding male birth assistant who appears in female conventional roles? The Coventry Nativity episode presents a careful balance in the division of labour and control: Mary sends Joseph away to be distant from delivery. Joseph knows very well that his task is to seek for women helpers from the town. As Green observes, midwifery was inherently an urban profession, which also explains Joseph’s know-how in the preparations for the birth (Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 134). After Joseph’s return, he claims a very active role for himself in the birth chamber; he takes the infant Christ in his hands to warm him up. The scene reverses the traditional roles and presents a tableau, very familiar from modern birth chamber scenes but practically unknown in medieval representations of the immediate post-partum moments. The father stands next to the mother, and keeps the newborn baby in his arms. If there is anyone holding the baby after the birth in medieval images, it is the midwife or a female relative (MacKinney 234). The Coventry pageant perplexes the modern reader by substituting the midwives whom Joseph was supposed to call to help Mary for the father. The otherwise shocking presence of a male person in the birth chamber in the immediate moments after birth, however, dissolves into <?page no="197"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 197 the harmonious familial union and the reassuring assistance of Joseph. The extant pageant and its stage directions are silent on the reasons for the absence of midwives who were originally intended to help Mary; nor does the play provide any explanation for the obvious revision of the original plot. Be this as it may, the play’s concern does not seem to be the presence or intrusion of a male assistant into the female privacy of the birth chamber. Joseph’s entry into the secluded space of birth does not impose on him a sense of shame. Whether the point of the reviser and, consequently of the extant play, is to make a claim for male birth assistants as full-right substitutes for midwives cannot be argued or contested on the grounds of the text. It is, however, clear that Joseph’s presence is treated as an alternative to midwife-assisted deliveries. The Chester Nativity shifts its focus from the intimate family circle to the miracle of the unbelieving midwife, Salome. The wonderful cure of her withered hand provides the occasion for the staging of the actual work the midwife was supposed to carry out in the birth chamber, i.e. to intervene in the process of parturition by the use of her hands. The very presence of these women also empowered them by virtue of the confident role that only their testimony could be used to protect the mother from suspicions (if the child was still born) or to prevent the substitution of children (Donnison 3-4). The presentation of Chester’s midwives highlights and perverts the two major functions the midwives were generally expected to assume: the physical touch with the mother’s private parts and the declaration of evidence-based testimony, which in the case of the Nativity of Christ is the confirmation of Mary’s virginity. While the first midwife’s declaration of Mary’s virginity tactfully remains silent on the way in which she ascertained the miraculous birth, Salome demands her part in the verification of virginity in a more direct way: “But never the latter, I will assaye / whether shee bee cleane mayde” (Lumiansky and Mills 117, ll. 537-8). What part the midwives of Chester pageant might actually have played in the delivery is very obscure, due to the playwright’s enigmatic arrangement of the birth scene. Only in Chester are all characters of the Nativity pageant simultaneously present on stage at the moment of birth. The stage direction requiring brief silence does not enable us to reconstruct the scene fully. As Mary seems to take full control of her delivery, we can assume that the stage was divided between her solitary figure, perhaps behind a veil, and the three other characters grouped together: <?page no="198"?> 198 Tamás Karáth J OSEPH Loe, Marye, harte, brought I have here too middwives for the mannere to bee with thee, my darlinge deare, tyll that hit bee daye. M ARY Syr, the be welcome withowt were. But God will worke of his power full sonne for mee, my lefe fere, as best is nowe and aye. Tunc paululum acquiescunt. (Lumiansky and Mills ll. 493-500+SD) A clue to the staging of the scene may be Joseph’s prior arrangement of an ad hoc birth chamber between an ox and an ass, where he was instructed to leave Mary in standing position: “Tunc Joseph accipiet Mariam in brachia sua [. . .] Tunc statuet Mariam inter bovem et asinam” (Lumiansky and Mills ll. 464+SD and 468+SD). Denise Ryan observes: Joseph, having settled Mary in what must pass for her birthing room or childbed chamber, is immediately alert to customary practice and his conventional role in the imminent event, and declares his intention to go in search of two midwives. [. . .] The reference to “this cittye” reminds the audience, as it often does in the Chester cycle, of the topicality of the subject being addressed and of the conflation of historical time with the present in which the play is performed in a way that emphasizes timeless relevance. (444) The discourse of the midwives is aligned with the dominant discourse of civic authority, which was inherently supportive of the midwives’ good reputation for professionalism and reliability. The N-Town Nativity episode is the most complex medieval dramatic text with its double focus on parental relations at birth and the birthing mother’s positioning vis-à-vis a new type of midwifery. The play reflects both shifts in obstetrical practice which can be reconstructed from late medieval and early modern medical texts: the professionalization and institutionalization of midwifery on the one hand, and a growing male lay and professional interest in learning more about, and seeing more of, the birth chamber events. The focus of the N-Town Nativity pageant and the late medieval gynaecological and obstetrical discourse have many commonalities. None of the other extant English Nativity pageants display such affinity with the strategies of inclusion and exclusion pursued by contemporary gynaecological medical treatises <?page no="199"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 199 and their prologues. N-Town is unique in the ways in which it engages itself in the discussion of issues of authority, gender, and shame. Mary Flannery’s article in this volume convincingly demonstrates that the topos of shame in gynaecological literature ultimately transposes the strategies of affective reading in imagining their ideal readers in order to prevent the undesired and inappropriate uses of the texts. N-Town dramatizes inappropriate intrusions in the secluded space of birth, but does not explicitly invoke or impose shame on the perpetrators of social practices. While I am joining Mary Flannery’s argument in maintaining the “potential” of shame to keep off the non-desired reader of medical texts, I will argue that shame - in case of dramatic performances destined to be witnessed and “gazed upon” by an eclectic audience of both desired and undesired readers for medical texts - could also be a counter-effective strategy in fixing people’s eyes and minds on shameful events performed on stage. Two in-depth studies of the N-Town Nativity episode have analyzed the purposes of the gynaecological discourse and their social resonances; they have reached divergent conclusions. While Denise Ryan argues that the pageant reinstates dominant public discourses (444), Gail Mc- Murray Gibson proposes that the plays might have been instrumental in productively shaping new discourses, although she is reluctant to acknowledge the relevance of medical texts for the plays (McMurray Gibson 24; Coletti 66). However, what is intriguing about the performance of midwifery in N-Town is its representation of the struggle for control over birthing, which is the structuring device of the pageant as a whole. In the opening scene, Joseph overanxiously counteracts Mary’s control of the preparations for the delivery. Rhetorically, he appropriates the vocabulary of the female tasks of delivery: J OSEPH Lord, what travayl to man is wrought! *** J OSEPH Thus to labore I must my body bende. *** J OSEPH My spowse, ye be with childe - I fere yow to kary, For mesemyth it were werkys wylde, But yow to plese ryght fayn wold I. Yitt women ben ethe to greve whan thei be with childe. (N-Town ll. 1, 13, 18-21) <?page no="200"?> 200 Tamás Karáth In the ensuing cherry-tree episode, Joseph’s verbal labour is ironically deployed by Mary: M ARIA Now, my spowse, I pray yow to behold How the cheryes growyn upon yon tre, For to have therof ryght fayn I wold! And it plesyd yow to labore so mech for me. J OSEPH Youre desyre to fulfylle I shal assay, sekyrly. Ow! To plucke yow of these cheries — it is a werk wylde For the tre is so hygh, it wol not be lyghtly! Therfore, lete hym pluk yow cheryes begatt yow with childe. (ll. 32-39) The miracle of the cherry tree and Mary’s self-sufficiency together undermine Joseph’s verbally abusive strategy and reverse the power relations of the opening scene. Mary is empowered with dictating the pace of the route to Bethlehem, and Joseph acknowledges “the integrity of Mary’s childbirth zone” and “the necessity of his own exclusion” (Ryan 444). The vocabulary of “travail” is given back to the sphere where it belongs, i.e. the birth chamber: J OSEPH Travelynge women in care be bownde With grete throwys whan thei do grone! God helpe my wyff that sche not swownde - I am ful sory sche is alone. It is not convenyent a man to be - Ther women gon in travalynge! Wherfore sum mydwyff fayn wold I se, My wyff to helpe that is so yenge. (ll. 130-7) The two midwives, whom Joseph meets on the way, reassure him by their insistent references to their good fame and professional reliability, which is a new motif in the obstetrical “qualities” in English mystery plays. Still, the midwives’ appearance in the immediate area of the symbolically - though not physically - separated “birth zone” as outsiders indicates some contradiction between the supposed involvement of the confidential midwives in parturition and their actual self-exclusion on stage. As Gibson emphasizes, “birth takes place not in a secluded domestic chamber, but in a place ‘þat is desolat, withowty[n] any wall,’ a shelter without enclosing walls, out of doors and out of boundaries” <?page no="201"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 201 (Gibson 17). Nevertheless, the play carefully establishes a symbolic and social boundary that vigilantly controls access to the birth zone. Astonishingly, this control is given to a male attendant, Joseph. Contrary to medieval social practices and norms, the midwives of N- Town stay out of the birth chamber in fear of the light they see above the place, while Joseph alone transgresses the zone he is not supposed to enter: “[ J OSEPH ] Than wyl myself gon in alon / And chere my wyff, if that I may. / All heyl, maydon and wyff, I say! ” (ll. 168-70). In the presence of female birth attendants, Joseph’s intrusion into the female space of birth could have been decoded as a shocking breech of norms, similar to the embarrassing experience of the parturient wife in the French Roman de Silence: The count rushed into the bed chamber To find out how things really stood. He locked the door of the bed chamber behind him. His desire to know the truth Took away any feeling of shame Which would have kept him from seeing a woman in childbed. He took [his wife’s] hand in his: She was very embarrassed at this, But the count did not go away. (Gibson 9) But shame, whose ultimate function was to suppress the curiosity and to bar the presence of a male intruder in the birth chamber, does not restrain Joseph from entering. Obviously, the lack of shame in Joseph is inherently associated in the play with the idea of an irresistible drive to be present. But does his empathic curiosity justify the transgression of social borders, or does his shamelessness indicate that his behaviour is unacceptable? If the pageant is read in the context of gynaecological discourses invoking the notion of shame as a corrective tool, we find that the N-Town playwright was more ambitious and audacious in pursuing the strategies of those discourses. He does not simply borrow elements of gynaecological discourses to make them resonate in his play, but he engages himself with an experiment that envisions the consequences of the intrusion of undesired witnesses in the birth chamber. While a major concern of the late medieval gynaecological texts and of their prologues was to maintain the boundaries between certain types of readers and to reaffirm correct ways of reading those texts, as is shown by Mary C. Flannery in this volume, the N-Town playwright provides a unique fiction that actually imagines such transgressions and dramatizes their consequences. While the N-Town episode dissociates Joseph’s <?page no="202"?> 202 Tamás Karáth intrusive behaviour from any sense of shame, it also shows that his incompetence, both in terms of empathy and professional erudition, disputes his claim to the control of parturition in his hands. The play translates this struggle and failure into the language of gendered power relations. Joseph is a self-promoted mediator between Mary’s secluded space and the outer world. He brings in messages and ushers in the midwives. As we could see, the play does not present this mediation as shocking. On the contrary, his entry into the birthing room is presented as quite a natural step. Yet, his presence within the private space eventually becomes an annoying nuisance to Mary. Joseph’s insistence on an assumed code of behaviour and his anxieties over satisfying social expectations metaphorically devour what remains from the intimate “zone of birth” and entirely incorporate it into the outer sphere of social order. The manifestations of Joseph’s care turn into a display of his insensitivity as his pretended control of the events is undermined by the fact that he misses the childbirth unawares. He comically urges Mary to receive the midwives. When Mary suppresses an enigmatic laugh, Joseph becomes again overanxious and corrects Mary by reminding her of an implicitly agreed code of behaviour that binds women in birth: J OSEPH Thee for to helpe that art in harde bonde Zelomye and Salomee be com with me. For dowte of drede withowte thei do stond And dare not come in for lyght that they se. [Hic Maria subridendo, dicat: ] M ARIA The myght of the Godhede in his magesté Wyl not be hyd now at this whyle. The chylde that is born wyl preve his modyr fre, A very clene mayde, and therfore I smyle. J OSEPH Why do ye lawghe, wyff? Ye be to blame! I pray yow, spowse, do no more so! In happ the mydwyvys wyl take it to grame, And at your nede helpe wele non do. Iff ye have nede of mydwyvys, lo, Peraventure thei wyl gon hens! Therfor be sad and ye may so And wynnyth all the mydwyvis good diligens. (ll. 174-89) <?page no="203"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 203 For a second time in the play, Mary has to mitigate Joseph’s “displeasure”; he, in turn, humiliates himself. The midwives are called in to the routine of post-partum examination only after Mary’s control over the birth attendants and the birth zone has been restored. What Gibson calls “a stunning transgression of social order” (Gibson 17) in the play, that is, the midwives’ shameless display of touching Mary’s private parts, could be applied much more appropriately to Joseph’s imposition on his parturient wife and on the consensual social norms of delivery. When Gibson states that for Salome there is no shame but grace in the place of birthing (19), her understanding is conditioned by one of the most important topoi of medieval gynaecological literature: readers and hearers of such texts were supposed to be ashamed of the very exposition of women’s bodies. In the light of these texts, the lack of shame that should clearly stigmatize Joseph’s behaviour as rude is perplexing. But, as I have suggested, the concern of the playwright is not any more to see the potentials of shame in suppressing the intrusion and control of undesired birth assistants, but to create a situation in which shame is no longer a sufficient deterrent to suppress curiosity. Moreover, the play seems to advocate the idea that the female secrets of the birth chamber hidden from the (largely male) public are matters of public concern. After all, the N-Town Nativity episode does not pursue the strategy of Coventry or York in distracting the audience’s attention from the scenes and moments that were not supposed to be witnessed by anyone. The N-Town playwright might then be just as anyone of the ideal readers or users addressed by the prologue of The Knowing of Women’s Kind, a Middle English version of medical material derived from the Trotula and other sources: And yf hit fall any man to rede hit, I pray hym & scharge hym in ovre Lady be-halue þat he rede hit not in no dyspyte ne sclavndure of no woman ne for no cause but for þe hele & helpe of hem, dredynge þat vengavns myht fall to hym as hit hath do to oþer þat have schevyd here preuytees in sclauvndyr of hem, vndyrstondynge in certeyne þat þey have no oþer euylys þat nov be a-lyue than thoo women hade þat nov be seyntys in hevyn. (Barratt 42) The rejection of Joseph’s blames and the “sclauvndyr” of the midwives by Mary is also in line with Green’s observation of the late medieval transformation of gynaecological discourse. The newly emerging motif of “slander” marks a new concern which asks not what the texts con- <?page no="204"?> 204 Tamás Karáth tain, but how they are read and seen (Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 201). The medieval English Nativity pageants represent a spectrum of attitudes to childbirth. The plays, less intent to elaborate the secrecies of the birth chamber and the midwives’ parts, do not challenge dominant public discourses of ancient heritage. Chester and especially N-Town explore the dramatic potentials of a less intimate Nativity scene and reflect on the transforming gynaecological and obstetrical discourse, which apparently echoed some emerging themes of the medical texts, such as blame, curiosity and claims on the access to such texts as well as to the birth chamber. But while the English compiler of the midfifteenth century Sickness of Women felt uneasy about men abusing knowledge of women’s diseases and laid out “an unflattering depiction” of the unwelcome reader for such a work (Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine 201), the N-Town playwright’s bolder rhetoric and dramaturgy openly challenged this attitude on the public stage. <?page no="205"?> Staging Birth in Medieval English Mysteries 205 References Aveling, James Hobson. English Midwives: Their History and Prospects. London: J. and A. Churchill, 1872. Barratt, Alexandra, ed. The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and Other Sources. Cheltenham: European Schoolbooks, 2001. Beadle, Richard, ed. The York Plays. London: Edward Arnold, 1982. . The York Plays. Vol. 1: The Text. EETS s.s. 23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Chidamian, Claude. “Mak and the Tossing in the Blanket.” Speculum 22 (1947): 186-190. Coletti, Theresa. “Purity and Danger: The Paradox of Mary’s Body and the En-gendering of the Infancy Narrative in the English Mystery Cycles.” Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature. Ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. 65-95. Craig, Hardin, ed. Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. 2nd edition. EETS e.s. 87. London: Oxford University Press, 1957. Davidson, Clifford. From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1984. Donnison, Jean. Midwives and Medical Men: A History of Inter-Professional Rivalries and Women’s Rights. London: Heineman, 1977. Foster, Frances A., ed. A Stanzaic Life of Christ. EETS o.s. 166. London: Oxford University Press, 1926. Green, Monica H. “Obstetrical and Gynaecological Texts in Middle English.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 53-88. . Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited (Variorum), 2000. . The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. Ed. and transl. Monica H. Green. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. . Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre- Modern Gynaecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hallaert, M.-R. “Sekenesse of Wymmen”: A Middle English Treatise on Diseases in Women. Scripta: Mediaeval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 8. Brussels: Omirel, 1982. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Transl. William Granger Ryan. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. <?page no="206"?> 206 Tamás Karáth King, Pamela M. and Clifford Davidson, eds. The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 27. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. Lemay, Helen Rodnite, ed. Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’s De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Lumiansky, R. M. and David Mills, eds. The Chester Mystery Cycle. Vol. 1: Text. EETS s.s. 3. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. MacKinney, Loren. “Bilder aus der Geburtshilfe im Mittelalter.” CIBA- Symposium 8 (1960): 230-6. McMurray Gibson, Gail. “Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval Childbirth.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999): 7-24. N-Town Plays. Ed. Douglas Sugano. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. Pickering, O. S., ed. The South English Nativity of Mary and Christ. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1975. Powell, Susan, ed. John Mirk’s Festial. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Ragusa, Isa and Rosalie B. Green, eds. Meditations on the Life of Christ. An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century. Transl. Isa Ragusa; ed. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Robinson, J. W. “A Commentary on the York Plays of the Birth of Jesus.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 70 (1971): 241-54. Rowland, Beryl, ed. Medieval Women’s Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook. London: Croom Helm, 1981. Ryan, Denise. “Playing the Midwife’s Part in the English Nativity Plays.” Review of English Studies 54 (2003): 435-448. Sargent, Michael G., ed. Nicholas Love: The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. Towler, Jean and Joan Bramall. Midwives in History and Society. London: Croom Helm, 1986. Windeatt, Barry, ed. The Book of Margery Kempe. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. <?page no="207"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence”: The Discourse of Disease in the Anti-Theatrical Pamphlets, 1570s-1630s Julia D. Staykova This essay places the language of disease at the centre of the antitheatrical controversy, which flared up in the late 1500s in response to the rising popularity of the secular theatre. Theatre objectors worried that drama lured crowds away from the pulpit with its visually seductive fleshly spectacles. They accused the theatre of perpetuating the idolatrous culture of Catholicism, and portrayed it as a site of moral and physical contagion. The disease imagery in antitheatrical pamphlets reconfigures the once cooperative historical relationship between drama and religion into one of antagonism. Bringing together cultural associations between Catholicism, idolatry and adultery, the medically-inflected moral rhetoric of antitheatricalists charts a curious mechanism for disease transmission in the theatre. Contagion migrates from the bodies of the players, through the senses of spectators, as they empathetically observe the actions portrayed, into their own bodies and minds. Thus the pamphlets establish a causal link between seduction of the senses, corruption of the soul and contagion of the body. By creating this system of causalities, I suggest, the pamphleteers sought (and failed) to regain the attentions of playgoers. Lamenting the ruinous effects of the public stage on the morals of the nation, the clergyman Stephen Gosson exclaims, “Happy saith the Prophet is he That walketh not in the Counsell of the vngodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sits in the chaire of pestilence.” Gosson quotes from Psalm 1 in the translation by Miles Coverdale, published in the 1540 Psalter. As this was the version of the Psalms included Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 207-222. <?page no="208"?> 208 Julia D. Staykova in the Book of Common Prayer, it would have been etched into the memory of all churchgoers. Gosson develops the familiar imagery in a new direction, portraying the theatre as the seat of disease condemned by the psalmist: if we flocke to Theaters to gase vpon playes, wee walke in the Counsell of the vngodly. . . We stand in the way of sinners, because plaies are the procéedings & practises of the Gentiles in their Idolatrie; We sit in the chaire of pestilence, because we thrust our selues into the companie of them. (Playes confuted in fiue actions, 1582, sigs. Bvi v -Bvii r ) Thus the antitheatrical pamphlets construct a medically-inflected argument which locates the theatre at the crossroads between pestilence and idolatrous religion. In the three sections of this essay, I will place the language of disease at the rhetorical centre of the antitheatrical controversy. First I argue that antitheatricalists deployed plague imagery in order to reconfigure the once cooperative historical relationship between the theatre and the church into one of antagonism and competition. In the second section, I explore the linguistic and cultural associations between popery, idolatry and adultery which were linked with images of disease in the medically-inflected moral rhetoric of theatre objectors. In the third section, I explore the mechanism for disease transmission proposed in antitheatrical pamphlets, which I describe as the epidemiology of affective identification. Moral contagion migrates from the bodies of the players impersonating sin, through the senses of spectators, as they empathetically observe and identify with the actions portrayed, into their own minds. From there contagion spreads into the bodies of spectators, inciting them to action and carnal sin. Ultimately, I argue, by portraying the theatre as a locus of disease transmission, antitheatricalists sought (and failed) to regain the attentions of an audience divided between the medicinal powers of the pulpit and the fleshly attractions of the stage. From cooperation to competition: rewriting the relationship between the stage and the pulpit The antitheatrical polemic flared up in the latter decades of the 1500s in response to the rising popularity of the secular theatre, and continued into the 1630s. Among the antitheatricalists were Church of England clergymen known for their Puritan leanings, including John Northbrooke, Stephen Gosson and John Rainolds, as well as secular authors and controversialists, notably Philip Stubbes and Anthony Munday. As a <?page no="209"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 209 collective body of opinion, the pamphlets convey a strong iconophobic sentiment, portraying the theatre as a site of corporeal idolatry which, like the Catholic Mass, lures spectators with visually seductive spectacles, and spreads moral and physical diseases. Linking the stage to the Catholic liturgy, the pamphlets project anxiety about the ability of dramatic arts to satisfy a communal hunger for aesthetically mediated affect in a way that the sober Protestant liturgy could not. Arguably, generations of Elizabethan churchgoers who experienced the Mass prior to the Reformation remembered nostalgically the lavish spectacle of the Catholic service. Louis Montrose has suggested that the theatre compensated for the absent rites of Catholicism by providing a “distinctive source of affective and intellectual stimulation and satisfaction, an experience that was collective and commercial, public and profane” (31-32). This experience, Montrose writes, provided a secular alternative to the “ritual practices and popular religious festivities” of late medieval religion (30, 32n). Similarly, Stephen Greenblatt has argued that Elizabethan theatre “effects a drastic swerve from the sacred to the secular” and depicts “evacuated rituals, drained of their original meaning,” constructing a hollow space “that calls forth what is not, that signifies absence” (126, 127). By providing a secular substitute for the rich sensory appeal of pre-Reformation religion, the theatre fulfilled an experiential need created by the Reformation. The urgent tone in which the antitheatricalists plead with playgoers to get back into the church indicates that many a respectable parishioner had yielded to that experiential need and swapped a Sunday sermon for a play. Peter Lake has suggested that the competition between the pulpit and the stage was over “a common stock of discursive and ideological materials” that appealed to “what may well have been more or less the same ‘popular’ (i.e. socially, culturally and confessionally mixed) audience” (425). It is here that the medical rhetoric of the antitheatricalists enters the equation. If the playhouse poached audiences from the church, the way to regain their attention was to lay claim to ideological materials that lay beyond the mandate of the theatre. The antitheatricalists did that by portraying the theatre as a locus of disease transmission and by claiming medicinal powers of healing against its virulent, infectious influence. Thus John Northbrooke announces that he undertook the writing of his work, A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine playes or enterluds . . . are reproued (1577), “that I mought therby helpe those that are diseased with any of these diseases, either of diceplaying, dauncing, or vaine playes or enterludes” (sig. Aii r ). Northbrooke worries that the mystical body of Christ is being crippled by the lewd culture of playgoing. Elaborating on Paul’s analogy between the church and the body, he offers to help as a <?page no="210"?> 210 Julia D. Staykova physician would, by “giuing herein medicines and remedies against these diseases which most of al trouble the whole mébers of the body” (sig. Aii v ). Likewise, Anthony Munday, in A second and third blast of retrait from plaies and theaters (1580), evokes the metaphor of Jesus the Physician while pleading with city authorities to take prompt action against the playhouses: In the beginning euerie disease is to be stopped, and cured; but if a sore run ouer-long it wil growe past the cure of the Physition. The Magistrate is therefore to prouide in time a remedie to redresse the mischiefes that are like to ensue by this common plague. (72-73) In portraying the evils of playgoing in somatic terms, as ailments that could be treated by amputating corrupt tissues or administering salves, the antitheatricalists drew on a philosophical tradition in which the bodily and spiritual worlds were perceived not merely as analogous but as continuous. In Fictions of Disease, Margaret Healy emphasises the discursive continuities between religion and medicine, and between the moral, physical and societal flaws to which the two professions directed their efforts: the activities of the body and the soul are so thoroughly intertwined that any attempt to separate “medical” from “religious” matters would be erroneous and impossible. The boundaries between discourses and professions concerned with “disease” are inevitably weak in a medical schema where body and soul are intimately related and restraint of bodily pleasures is construed as fundamental to health with implications for society (and its controlling mechanisms) as well as the individual. (47) If health and sickness are manifestations of divinely ordained principles that apply with equal force to the material and spiritual worlds, an institution promoting moral laxity is bound to be at fault for spreading bodily infections. The theatre seat becomes, literally and not just metaphorically, a chair of pestilence. Healy notes that fear of the plague was exploited for purposes of political propaganda, by targeting “a readily identifiable group of people, whose sins or moral deficiencies had incurred the wrath of God” and who could be “‘scapegoated’ as both the moral and the physical polluters of a community” (62-63). It is to this end that the antitheatricalists deployed their pestilential rhetoric, seeking to ostracise and eliminate an institution which proved a powerful competitor but could be demonstrated to draw its strength from moral deficiencies. <?page no="211"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 211 In constructing a medical argument against the theatre, however, the antitheatricalists were rewriting an alternative cultural narrative in which the relationship between religion and drama was not portrayed as antagonistic but as cooperative. In Performance and Cure, Karelisa Hartigan describes the pageants enacted by priests in the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, as an example of the productive relationship between theatrical and religious institutions. Before patients gained admission into the sanctuary of Asclepius, Hartigan relates, they participated in dramatic interludes enacted by the priests in a space outside the temple. The performance prepared them psychologically for the rituals they were about to witness, and modelled the affect and ritual gestures they were expected to replicate (29ff). Early modern accounts of classical antiquity emphasise this role of Graeco-Roman theatre in facilitating the implementation of religious and medical regimens in times of disease epidemic. In Th’overthrow of stage-playes (1599), John Rainolds cites his opponent, the dramatist Gager, as proof that theatre-defenders were too eager to draw dividends from the cooperative ties between the theatre and religious and economic authorities in pre-Christian societies: “playes (say you) were sometime instituted, as in a common plague, ad placandos Deos, and were prouided by great officers of the common treasure: and so they are referred ad religionem & deuotionem” (68). The antitheatrical response to this argument was patterned on exempla from the early church fathers, who were understandably annoyed by the prominence of dramatic arts in the devotional life and plague-response strategies of the Roman polis. Augustine, whose aversion to public entertainments was enthusiastically referenced by the antitheatricalists, admits in the Confessions to having enjoyed immensely the Roman theatre and games prior to his Christian days. 1 Post-conversion, he exploits the association of the plague with pagan drama and devotions, constructing a medical argument against the theatre. The gist of this argument is here recounted by Northbrooke: S. Augustine sayth that such Enterludes and Playes are filthie spectacles. For when the Heathen did appoint and ordeyne (sayth he) Playes and Enterludes to their Gods, for the auoyding of the Pestilence of their bodies: your Bishops for the auoyding of the pestilence of your soules, hath prohibited and forbidden those kynde of Scenicall and Enterlude playes. (69) 1 Augustine discusses his love of the Roman theatre in Confessions 1.10.16, 1.19.30 and 3.1.1. <?page no="212"?> 212 Julia D. Staykova The fledgling Christian church promoted by Augustine refused to share its medicinal powers with a ritual integral to the devotions of the pagans. Consequently, Augustine reinterprets the plague as a spiritual condition, and accuses the theatre of spreading moral plagues by assisting the pagan priesthood in their attempts to contain disease epidemics. In this medico-religious schema picked up by the antitheatricalists, the plague predictably becomes the trope of choice for portraying the publicallytransmitted moral evil. Stephen Gosson enforces the same association between the theatre, the plague and pagan customs, drawing on Tertullian’s treatise, De Spectaculis, which names disease as the catalyst for the export of the Greek theatrical tradition to Rome: Playes wer not set vp by the Gentiles of any blinde zeale within themselues, but by the motion of the diuell, as may be prooued by the originall of them in Rome. This kinde of Idolatrye was long practised among the Gréekes, the Romanes not being acquainted with the same. Therefore the deuill spying his time to bring it into Italie, about 400. yeares after the building of Rome . . . the inhabitantes beinge mightelie deuowred with a greate plague, the Deuill foreseeing the time when the plague should cease, taught the Romanes by the oracles of Sibilla to set forth plaies to appease the anger of the Gods, that the pestilence ceasing after this solemnising of their plaies, might nussle them in idolatrie and wantonnesse euer after. (sigs. Ci r -Ci v ) The story carries an ambiguous moral, as the plague seems to have receded following the introduction of playacting into the city. Gosson compensates for what the tale lacks in consistency with accusations of satanic worship and adultery. Presumably, the twin threats of spiritual fornication and venereal disease balanced out the fact that the ancients hoped to please the gods and restore their health by attending a performance. These anecdotes about measures for disease control in the ancient world indicate that renegotiating the relationship between the church and the theatre was not as straightforward a business as the antitheatricalists would have it. Historical links had to be acknowledged before they could be severed. To portray the relationship as one of antagonism, theatre objectors emphasised the theatre’s ties with pagan devotions. They insinuated that idolatrous dramatic rites contributed to the spread of moral diseases, yet substituted the Greek and Roman customs condemned by Augustine and Tertullian with the more topical problem of Catholicism. <?page no="213"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 213 Seduction and contagion: the plagues of popery, idolatry and adultery When John Northbrooke argues that all manner of sin and criminality spring from an idle lifestyle, he places the theatre in the same category as whoredom and the popish faith of Catholicism. “Idleness,” he asserts, “is the fountayne and well spring whereout is drawne a thousande mischiefes . . . as whoredome, theft, murder, breaking of wedlocke, periurie, Idolatrie, Poperie, &c. vaine playes, filthy pastimes, and drunkennesse” (33). For Northbrooke’s contemporaries, “play” is a blanket term for drama and other public entertainments, including card-playing, bearbaiting, and dancing. The link between these moral “mischiefes” and communicable diseases was circumstantially justified by the realities of life in London’s two entertainment districts - Shoreditch, near Bishopsgate and Southwark, on the Bankside. 2 Loiterers, street vendors peddling their wares, sailors, apprentices, crooks, and prostitutes migrated between playhouses, bear-baiting houses and taverns. While churchgoers were encouraged to abstain from fleshly excess and to practice moderation in their appearance, diet and occupations, playgoers departed from performances drunk on passions, blood and deviant spectacles. In the minds of the respectable burghers whose interests were adversely affected by the entertainment industry, the theatre stood at the epicentre of a culture of excess and promiscuity which spread venereal disease, dietary imbalance, alcoholism, and violence. The plague makes a natural appearance in this context. As a polysemantic trope for a publically transmitted evil, the plague evokes associations with famine, political strife and the moral and social devastation that followed disease epidemics. It is an especially convenient trope for condemning venues which drew large crowds and contributed to the spread of disease as well as public disturbances. Hence Northbrooke’s caution to playgoers to flee from the idle pursuits of the theatre “as thou wouldest flee from the plague of pestilence” (33). Hence, too, William Prynne’s similar caution in Histrio-mastix: The players scourge, or, actors tragaedie (1633), to “feare, and flie” the theatre “as much, nay more then any Pest-house.” Plays, Prynne thunders, are “the Plagues, and Poyson of mens Soules, and Manners,” and playhouses are “Oratories of the Deuill” and “Synagogues of Satan” (69). 2 In Shakespeare’s lifetime, Shoreditch housed the Red Lion (1567), the Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577), the Fortune (1600), the Boar’s Head (1602), and the Red Bull (1604). In Southwark on the Bankside stood the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Globe (1599), and the Hope (1614). On public theatres in Shakespeare’s lifetime, see Andrew Gurr (13-22). <?page no="214"?> 214 Julia D. Staykova In the wider context of Prynne’s and Northbrooke’s argument, adultery, with its accompanying threat of venereal disease, triangulates with the plague and idolatry as a metaphoric short-hand for spiritual and bodily corruption. This triple link between disease, sins of the flesh and the unholy urges of the spirit originates in analogies which were emphatically enforced in the seminal text of public devotion in Reformation England, Thomas Cranmer’s Sermons, or Homilies (1547). “A Sermon Against Whoredom and Uncleanness” places whoredom and idolatry on the same quick path to damnation: It is necessary unto salvation to abstain from idolatry; so it is to abstain from whoredom. Is there any nigher way to lead unto damnation, than to be an idolater? No: even so, neither is there any nearer way to damnation, than to be a fornicator and a whoremonger. (111-12) “The Third Part of the Homily against Images, and the worshipping of them” metaphorically conjoins the two sins by defining idolatry as spiritual fornication: Doth not the word of God call idolatry, spiritual fornication? Doth it not call a gilt or painted idol, or image, a strumpet with a painted face? Be not the spiritual wickednesses of an idol’s enticing like the flatteries of a wanton harlot? Be not men and women as prone to spiritual fornication (I mean idolatry) as to carnal fornication? (221) This link between seduction and false religion was so prominent that accusations of harlotry flew in all directions in the controversial prose of the period. Defending the Anglican church Richard Bancroft, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, calls the religion of his adversaries “the harlotte a false Church.” Its proponents, he warns, are “most daungerous and pestilent seducers . . . Theyr dealing is counterfeyt and corrupt” (419). Here we arrive at a linguistic cluster in post-Reformation rhetoric which establishes a causal link between seduction and corruption. Adultery and excessive decoration (the “strumpet with a painted face”) are for the physical world what iconophilia and idolatry are for the spiritual one. Their dealings are corrupt: both harm the body and soul with diseases. The iconophobic rhetoric, with its parallels between disease and the erotic and idolatrous desires aroused by painted idols, was enthusiastically redirected by the pamphleteers towards the theatre. In a muchquoted passage from Playes confuted in fiue actions, Gosson asserts that “maygames, stageplaies, & such like, can not be suffred among Chris- <?page no="215"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 215 tians without apostacy, because they were suckt from the Deuilles teate, to nurce vp idolatrie” (sig. Bviii r ). An erotically-charged image of the female breast, with possible anti-Catholic connotations evoking the Virgin Mary, mediates between the stage and the practice of idolatry. The theatre, like the ambiguously gendered devil who is in possession of a breast, becomes a nexus of erotic and idolatrous desires. Anthony Munday places “harlots, vtterlie past al shame” in direct proximity to the players themselves, metonymically represented by the scaffold of the dramatic stage: Whosoeuer shal visit the chappel of Satan, I meane the Theater, shal finde there no want of yong ruffins, nor lacke of harlots, vtterlie past al shame: who presse to the fore-frunt of the scaffoldes, to the end to showe their impudencie, and to be as an obiect to al mens eies. Yea, such is their open shameles behauior, as euerie man maie perceaue by their wanton gestures, wherevnto they are giuen: yea, they seeme there to be like brothels of the stewes. (89) The harlot is not merely a vivid presence in the theatre. She is herself something of a keen performer: given to dramatic gestures, eager to position herself at the nexus between the adulterous gaze and the idolatrous image mounted on the scaffold. The role she performs in Munday’s “chappel of Satan” is of a devil’s nun, a seductress whose carnal charms entice her victims into demon worship. As Alison Shell has argued, the painted harlot in the iconophobic rhetoric of the Reformation descends from the biblical Whore of Babylon - a female goddess of polytheism who signifies spiritual degeneracy and translates idolatrous worship into the physical act of copulation (31-36). The moral consequences of copulating with harlots were represented in the antitheatrical discourse through the most grotesque manifestations of venereal disease and bodily corruption. Asserting that “there is no sin greater before the face of God, then whordome,” Philip Stubbes briefly cautions that “euerlasting damnation” awaits all whoremongers, then compiles a generous list of the “inconueniences” inflicted by this sin on the body: it dimmeth the sight, it impaireth the hearing, it infirmeth the sinewes, it weakneth the ioynts, it exhausteth the marow, consumeth the moisture and supplement of the body, it riueleth the face, appalleth the countenance, it dulleth the spirits, it hurteth the memorie, it weakneth the whole body, it bringeth it into a consumption, it bringeth vlcerations, scab, scurf, blain, botch, pocks & biles, it maketh hoare haires, & bald pates: it induceth olde age, & in fin, bringeth death before nature vrge it, malady enforce it, or age require it. (sig. Hiv 4 ) <?page no="216"?> 216 Julia D. Staykova The “painted harlot” who transfers ulcers and boils to her customers became, for the antitheatricalists, an icon of the theatre’s own brand of devious eroticism. Rainolds asserts that “mony spent on playes” is as “mony spent on harlots” (147). Northbrooke cautions against watching plays “bicause the arguments (for the moste part) contayned the actes and doings of harlots,” so that “to exercise this arte . . . is not onely a dishonest and wicked occupation but also to beholde it, and therein to delite” (64-65). Like harlots, actors paint their faces and wear “fantastique costly apparell,” Prynne complains (sig. A** v ). Like harlots, they seduce with gestures and speech. More worryingly, actors dress like women, employing the female costume as an instrument for constructing false identities and ambivalent sexualities. Jonas Barish and Louis Montrose, among others, have observed that the female costumes worn by the all-male Elizabethan troupes provoked especially vehement attacks from theatre-objectors. 3 Citing the prohibition in Deuteronomy 22 against cross-dressing, Gosson reminds that actors “put on, not the apparrell onely, but the gate, the gestures, the voyce, the passions of a woman” (sig. Ciii v ). Rainolds quotes Cyprian’s Letter 61 “To Euchratus, About an Actor,” where the bishop of Carthage accuses actors of corrupting young boys “by instructing them how to play the wemen, and to expresse & counterfeit vnhonest wanton gestures” (21). Prynne lists the players’ “effeminacy” in the same breath as “wanton Fashions, Face-painting, Health-drinking, Long haire, Love-lockes, Periwigs, womens curling, pouldring and cutting of their haire” (“To the Christian Reader” sigs. A** v -A*** r ). The cross-dressing, face-painting actor is a transvestite, and the transvestite, let us remember, is guilty of the sin of sodomy. The link between seduction and sexually-transmitted disease is apparent. As Sander Gilman notes in Disease and Representation, sixteenth-century portrayals of the syphilitic patient foreground the fashionably dressed young man as the at-risk demographic. “It is the fop, the young male,” Gilman argues, who is represented as the victim of “defilement and illness” (57). Actors and a sizable segment of their audience fell into this demographic, described by Jonas Barish in a summary of the antitheatrical argument as “a class of upstart vagabonds who strutted the town in finery it was illegal for them to wear” (114). The implicit causal relationship between seduction and contagion is at the root of the pamphleteers’ harangues against what Barish describes as “the whole complex of theatre, dance, music, gorgeous attire, luxuri- 3 See Barish 124-125 and Montrose 36, n27, as well as Stephen Greenblatt 66-93; Jean E. Howard 93-128; Laura Levine 121-43. <?page no="217"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 217 ous diet, cosmetics, feminine seductiveness, feminine sexuality, transvestism.” This complex, Barish suggests, “aroused a painful anxiety in the foes of the stage . . . because it represented a deeply disturbing temptation” (115). John Rainolds worries that no one is immune from this temptation. Heterosexual spectators may experience homoerotic desires when a cross-dressed male actor convincingly impersonates a woman “because a womans garment beeing put on a man doeth vehemently touch and moue him with the remembrance & imagination of a woman; and the imagination of a thing desirable doth stirr vp the desire” (97). Marjorie Garber has suggested that in representing women’s clothes “as transferential objects” which kindle “a metonymic spark of desire,” Rainolds creates “a classic description of a fetishistic scenario” which triggers transvestite tendencies in the spectators (29). The logical conclusion of this scenario, as Philip Stubbes describes it, is that “these goodly pageants being done, euery mate sorts to his mate, euery one bringes another homeward of their way verye fréendly, and in their secret conclaues (couertly) they play the Sodomits, or worse. And these be the fruits of Playes and Enterluds” (sig. Lviii v ). Thus we arrive at an interesting epidemiological argument proposed by the antitheatricalists. In the theatre, diseases migrate through empathetic observation and imaginative identification with the actions performed. The epidemiology of affective identification According to the antitheatricalists, moral diseases, like communicable diseases, transfer by mental contact. By enticing the mind to meditate on the lives of lechers, drunks and murderers, the theatre transmits corruption from the bodies of the players impersonating those evils, through the senses of the spectators into their thoughts. Anthony Munday asserts that actors and spectators alike become adulterers by watching lusts represented in the theatre: in that representation of whoredome, al the people in mind plaie the whores. And such as happilie came chaste vnto showes, returne adulterers from plaies. For they plaie the harlots, not then onlie when they go awaie, but also when they come. For as soone as one lusteth after a filthie thing, whiles he hasteneth to that which is vncleane, he becometh vncleane. (3-4) John Rainolds warns that physical and spiritual diseases can be contracted by enacting them or even by meditating on their properties: <?page no="218"?> 218 Julia D. Staykova diseases of the mind are gotten farre sooner by counterfeiting, then are diseases of the body: and bodily diseases may be gotten so, as appeareth by him, who, faining for a purpose that he was sicke of the gowte, became (through care of counterfeiting it) gowtie in deede. So much can imitation & meditation doe. (20) Rainolds cautions again and again that imitation of villainous deeds is dangerous for the actor, who identifies with them: “the earnest care of liuely representing the lewde demeanour of bad persons doeth worke a great impression of waxing like vnto them” (108). For the spectator, mere presence at the scene is dangerous because “the maners of all spectators commonlie are hazarded by the contagion of theatricall sights (163). By witnessing lewd spectacles, spectators, too, as Munday argued, “in mind plaie the whores.” The catalyst for this transfer of disease is the idolatrous gaze enticed by a visually enticing object. Michael O’Connell, among others, has pointed out that the theatre’s idolatry, from the point of view of its detractors, consisted, like that of Catholicism, in its strong appeal to the eye: “[t]heatrical presence is not a mere sign but a use of corporeality to “body forth” the fiction is portrays” (20). Objectors viewed the theatre as an idolatrous institution which celebrated the link, discredited during the Reformation, between “the eye and the image, whether painted, sculpted, or realized kinetically” (ibid., 32-33). Peter Lake also highlights the antitheatricalists’ unease with the visual and auditory appeal of the theatrical sign: “popery and the theatre seduced their victims into sin and damnation through inherently fleshly appeals . . . directed as much to the eye as to the ear” (453). The problem here is that the eye and the ear provide direct access to the soul of the spectator. Northbrooke cites Chrysostom’s commentary on the Psalms in support of his claim that in the theatre “the soule of the wise is snared & condemned” by filthy spectacles and speeches: “thou seest not only Res infauslas, vnlawfull things: but also hearest spurciloquia, filthie speaches, whereof is (sayth he [i.e. Chrysostom]) incessu meretricis, the beginning of whoredome, and the habite of all euilnesse and mischiefe” (61). “For what is there which is not abused thereby? ” Munday exclaims, introducing his work, the “blast of retrait from plaies and Theaters”: “our eies with vaine aspects, gestures, and toies; our eares with filthie speach, vnhonest mirth, and rebaldrie; our mouths with cursed speaking; our heads with wicked imaginations; our whole bodies to vncleanes” (sig. Aii r ). Likewise, Gosson cautions: “how dilligent, how circumspect, how wary ought we to be, that no corruption of idols, enter by the passage of our eyes & eares into the soule” (sig. Bviii v ). <?page no="219"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 219 John Rainolds illustrates how the theatre infects the mind by seducing the eyes and the ears, with an interesting anecdote about a “strange distemper” gathered from the Greek writer Lucian. The iambic verses of Euripides affected the mind of spectators so greatly, Rainolds relates, that they collectively fell ill: “at midsummer, in very hott weather, Andromeda (a Tragedie of Euripides) being played, manie brought home a burning ague from the theater.” Having caught the reader’s attention with an introduction that relates disease directly to playgoing, he describes the symptoms of this ague: about the seventh day folowing, they were ridde thereof, some by much bleeding, some by sweating, but all, as soone as they were abroade out of their beddes, did fall into a strange distemper and passion of a light phrensie. The which exciting them to say & cry aloude such things as were sticking freshly in their memorie, and had affected most their minde, they grewe all to Tragedie-playing, and full lustilie they sounded out Iambicall speeches: their toungs harping chieflie on Euripides, Andromeda, and the melodious woords of Perseus touching love. So that the whole citie was full of pale and thinne folke, pronouncing like stage-players, and braying with a loude voice. But O Cupido, prince of Gods and men, with the rest of that part: vntill at length the winter and colde, waxing great, asswaged their distemper, and eased them of their frantike follie. (118-19) The antitheatrical theory of disease transmission through imaginative identification is again at work in Rainolds’ tale. A summer epidemic is triggered by Euripides’ amorous verses, which infect the bodies as well as the minds of spectators. As the primary physiological symptoms of burning and sweating give way to the secondary symptoms of affective identification, a “light phrensie” causes the patients to act out their memories of the performance. Only the advent of the winter assuages this collective poetic frenzy. Notably, Rainolds’ emphasis is on the auditory symptoms of the epidemic. As the sufferers “cry aloude,” sounding “full lustilie” “the melodious woords of Perseus,” the ear provides the main entryway for the melodious sounds of theatrical idolatry for the Protestant clergyman. Let us conclude with this cautionary tale about the enticing sights and sounds of the theatre. The antitheatricalists fought their battle for the attentions of playgoers on medical grounds, by establishing a causal link between seduction of the senses, corruption of the soul and contagion of the body. Their medically-inflected moral rhetoric charted a quick path from seeing a play to catching the plague. We can speculate whether their harangues about moral plagues and strange fevers drove spectators out of the theatres. Prynne’s Histrio-mastix (1633), the latest of the pamphlets discussed in this chapter, provides some evidence to the <?page no="220"?> 220 Julia D. Staykova contrary: “many who visit the Church scarce once a weeke,” he estimates, “frequent the Play-house once a day” (4). Prynne’s exaggeration suggests he was trying hard to sway the emotions of an unresponsive audience. Despite their fear-mongering tactics, in the 1630s theatreobjectors evidently felt they still remained on the losing side of a public debate. <?page no="221"?> “We sit in the chaire of pestilence” 221 References Bancroft, Richard. A suruay of the pretended holy discipline. London: John Wolfe, 1593. Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1981. Cranmer, Thomas. In Church of England, Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the time of the Late Queen Elizabeth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1840. Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1997. Gilman, Sander. Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS . Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. Gosson, Stephen. Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale. London: Thomas Gosson, 1582. Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkley: University of California Press, 1988. Hartigan, Karelisa. Performance and Cure: Drama and Healing in Ancient Greece and Contemporary America. London: Duckworth, 2009. Healy, Margaret. Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plagues and Politics. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001. Howard, Jean E.. The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Lake, Peter and Michael Questier. The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. Levine, Laura. “Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-theatricality and Effeminization from 1579 to 1642.” Criticism 28 (1986): 121-43. Montrose, Louis. The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Munday, Anthony. A second and third blast of retrait from plaies and theaters. London: Henry Denham, 1580. Northbrooke, John. A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine playes or enterluds with other idle pastimes [et]c. commonly vsed on the Sabboth day, are reproued by the authoritie of the word of God and auntient writers. London: Henry Bynneman for George Bishop, 1577. O’Connell, Michael. The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theatre in Early- Modern England. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. <?page no="222"?> 222 Julia D. Staykova Prynne, William. Histrio-mastix: The players scourge, or, actors tragaedie. London: Edward Allde et al. for Michael Sparke, 1633. Rainolds, John. Th’overthrow of stage-playes. . . . Wherein is manifestly proved, that it is not onely vnlawfull to bee an actor, but a beholder of those vanities. Middelburg: Richard Schilders, 1599. Shell, Alison. Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Stubbes, Philip. The anatomie of abuses contayning a discouerie, or briefe summarie of such notable vices and imperfections, as now raigne in many Christian countreyes of the worlde. London: John Kingston for Richard Jones, 1583. <?page no="223"?> Diagnosing the Body Politic: Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two Jennifer Richards The language of disease dominates Henry IV, Part Two. Several characters, including Falstaff and Henry IV, experience illness and sickness also serves as a presiding metaphor to diagnose both the problems endured by the body politic and the means to cure these. With respect to the latter, the play accords a crucial role to the Lord Chief Justice. He emerges as a true political physician whose commendable and effective remedy for the distemper of faction and self-seeking is to uphold the rule of law. And yet this is not the only valid perspective in the play. As I will argue, there are counter-cures and diagnoses. Shakespeare explores medical discourse in complex ways to remind us why and how political diagnoses and cures are so difficult to achieve. One crucial context for this aspect of the play is Shakespeare’s engagement with the way in which earlier Tudor political thinkers - among them Thomas Starkey, Thomas Elyot and William Bullein - explored the different healthy states that could exist, as well as the ills that imperil these and the range of remedies required. Like Elyot and Bullein, Shakespeare explores a wide-ranging set of implications deriving from different politico-medical discourses including an interest in the priority that needs to be accorded to the tongue and the stomach. This paper will trace the consequences of this specific discourse within the play and consider its implications for Shakespeare’s understanding of political sickness and its cure. The language of disease dominates the politics of The Second Part of King Henry IV (hereafter, Henry IV, Part Two). According to a Shakespeare concordance, there are more references to the words “sick,” “disease” Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Medicine and Science. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28. Ed. Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 223-243. <?page no="224"?> 224 Jennifer Richards and “health” in this play than in any other in his canon. 1 This language draws attention to the way in which characters diagnose not only each other, but also the ills of the commonwealth of fifteenth-century England, and prescribe its cure. Medical language is called upon by the Archbishop of York to justify rebellion. “The commonwealth,” he argues, “is sick of their own choice; ” the “over-greedy love” of the commons for their king, “hath surfeited” (1. 3. 87-88). 2 Later in the play he uses the same language to explain why he has rebelled, although he is a man of peace: “we are all diseas’d,” he reflects, “And with our surfeiting, and wanton hours, / Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, / And we must bleed for it” (4. 1. 54-7). He also uses this language to guide the (bad) political decisions he makes, i.e., when he foolishly agrees to disband the rebel army with this misleading simile: “Our peace will, like a broken limb united, / Grow stronger for the breaking” (4. 1.222-3). Crucially, the metaphor of the sick polity is also called upon by York’s antagonists: the King, to lament the condition of the “body” of his kingdom, and the Earl of Warwick, to anticipate its cure: King. Have you read o’er the letters that I sent you? War. We have, my liege. King. Then you perceive the body of our kingdom How foul it is, what rank diseases grow, And with what danger, near the heart of it. War. It is but as a body yet distemper’d, Which to his former strength may be restor’d With good advice and little medicine. My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d. (3.1. 36-44) Still thinking of his kingdom as a living human body, the King is prompted to predict that under Hal’s profligate rule the polity will remain afflicted, opining “O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! ” (4.5. 133). This is the familiar metaphor of the body politic. Perhaps the most obvious point to make about the analogy between the body and the state at this stage in my argument, before I delve any deeper, is that it provides us with a narrative structure of diagnosis and cure that makes sense in this play. But what is the cure for the sick state, and who will apply it: the rebels or the King? In the end, it is the new King, Henry V, his brother John, and the Lord Chief Justice who apply this. And the 1 http: / / www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ concordance/ , accessed 19 November 2012. 2 All references are to the A. R. Humphreys edition, which is based on the 1600 quarto, with additions from the Folio. <?page no="225"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 225 cure? Most obviously, it is the execution of the rebels and the upholding of the rule of law. However, the old order, the King’s party, needs purging too. This is memorably signified onstage with the public chastisement of Falstaff, whose moral sickness is acknowledged even by his companions. “[H]ow doth the martlemas your master? ” Poins asks Bardolph. “In bodily health, sir,” he replies, to which Poins responds just as swiftly: “Marry, the immortal part needs a physician, but that moves not him; though that be sick, it dies not” (2.2.96-100). 3 This argument, if I were to pursue it, would fit with the relatively recent critical emphasis on the disciplinary uses of medical discourse in social and political commentary. Since the late-1990s, literary critical interest in medical discourse has generally focused on its use to manage and discipline the body-politic. The shift from one medical paradigm to another, from Galenism to Paracelsianism is held responsible by Jonathan Gil Harris for a new conception of the cause of social ills: “infiltration by hostile, foreign bodies” (Harris 14). In contrast, Margaret Healy stresses the haphazard process of this epistemic shift, and attends instead to the way in which medical discourse is used to discipline the self. In the second half of the sixteenth century, she explains, “the English medical regimen entered full square into the arena of social control.” For later medical writers health “is increasingly about social and national responsibilities, about collective initiatives and penal sanctions to subdue the ‘enemie’ within the castle” (Healy, Fictions 38; 39-40). Both scholars use the discourse of medicalization to offer sophisticated readings of the cultural work of early modern drama, including plays by Shakespeare and Dekker. Nonetheless, I will not be pursuing this argument exactly. It is not just because this is an unsatisfying interpretation for many scholars. In one of his Oxford lectures (1909), A.C. Bradley argued that Falstaff’s rejection “was meant by Shakespeare to be taken as a catastrophe” (Bradley 253). And while later scholars may not articulate their responses to Falstaff in quite such strongly-worded and personal terms, there is much sympathy for this subversive “carnivalesque” figure. 4 There is a sense in which Falstaff has much to offer, comically, emotionally and politically. I won’t be pursuing this argument for another reason, though. In the sixteenth century the metaphor of the body politic worked in different 3 For this argument see Hutson. The chastisement of Falstaff, she argues, is central to this imagining of the body politic: it means that his “fantasies of dominating the law” - “the laws of England are at my commandment” - are no longer threatening” (182). 4 One of the most subtle readings of Falstaff’s carnivalesque role in the play is Poole 1995. <?page no="226"?> 226 Jennifer Richards and complicating ways that we have not readily recognized. I want to spend some time explaining how in order to move us away, decisively, from a dialectic of subversion and containment. 5 I do so not to confirm the rebels’ diagnosis of the body politic, but rather to make more of Falstaff’s role in this play. I want to explore his tendency to play the physician, and think about what this adds to the play’s political analysis. Falstaff is quick to diagnose other characters, to explain diseases on the grounds that he has read “Galen” (1.2.116), and even to offer medical advice: the king suffers from apoplexy; the Chief Justice is “old” and should “have a reverend care for [his] health” (ll. 98-99); while John of Lancaster suffers from green-sickness (anaemia) and should drink more sweet wine (4.3.91). We may be unlikely to accept these judgements. Often Falstaff’s attempts at diagnosis are a delay tactic - always they are self-interested. However, I will suggest that it is through Falstaff’s diagnoses that Shakespeare appeals to a different medico-political discourse of the body politic, one which prioritizes the mouth and the stomach over the head. This is not to return to a defence of the carnivalesque body and to celebrate excess over constraint. It is not just the physical stomach along with its literal function that I am referring to. I am also noting that this most corporeal and medically-informed of plays is interested in, and indeed enacts, a process of thoughtful digestion; it is ruminative. In this respect, the presence of Falstaff and the diagnoses he offers provide a point of contrast and comparison that expands our view. Falstaff’s role is not just to provide a point of contrast, however. His diagnoses, flawed though they may well be, insistently remind us of the body, its pleasures and suffering, and the danger of forgetting this in political analysis. In both of these ways, I will argue, Shakespeare’s play contributes to a humanist tradition which understands that the healthy body-politic needs governors who are not just sceptical of medicopolitical diagnosis, but who contribute to the care of the bodies of the polis. One final thought before I go any further: Shakespeare’s fascination with the limitations of body-political language and thought has long been noted; but the play that usually attracts this kind of analysis is his Roman history play, Coriolanus. Since the 1970s literary scholars have argued convincingly that by the early 1600s “it was becoming increasingly difficult for the Jacobean state to appropriate the human body in order to legitimate the organic inviolability of the existing order” (Riss 53), and, moreover, that this is reflected in Coriolanus. 6 There are differ- 5 On the centrality of the Henry IV plays to the subversion/ containment debate see Greenblatt, “Invisible Bullets.” 6 See also Barkan; Gurr; Hale (1971a; 1971b). <?page no="227"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 227 ent ways of understanding how this is worked out, with Arthur Riss arguing this late play explores the tension between literal and ideological “bodies”: Coriolanus fails because he “asserts himself as a private, absolutely enclosed, literal ‘body’ in a society that mandates he embrace an ideology of the body politic” (Riss 54). What my argument suggests, however, is not only that Shakespeare was already thinking through the tension between literal and metaphorical bodies in the late 1590s, when Henry IV, Part Two was composed (circa 1596), and reflecting on the redundancy of the metaphor of the “body politic,” but that he understood this kind of critical enquiry had resonance for English historical drama too. He understood that the language of the body politic could be used responsibly to express commonwealth values, not just protect the social order. Diagnosis and the Body Politic To begin I will say a little about the metaphor of the body politic. The basic idea is a familiar one: that the state is akin to a human body, with its different parts - head, heart, limbs, hands and feet. Like the healthy human body in which all the parts work well together in harmony, so in the healthy body politic the different social ranks work together without contention. The state might be ruled by the head or heart, depending on which kind of constitution is favoured. A rebellious state, in contrast, is ruled by the belly. This is the gist of the Archbishop of York’s diagnosis of the state of England, with his emphasis on greediness and surfeiting. He joined the warlike rebels, he explains awkwardly to the Earl of Westmoreland, “To diet rank minds sick of happiness” and to “purge th’obstructions which begin to stop / Our very veins of life” (4.1. 64-6). It is a persuasive and effective metaphor because it helps us to visualize the state as a vital, living entity with different parts that interrelate. But it is also effective because it allows us to imagine that political ills can be “diagnosed,” and also set right or cured. “Medical language,” Margaret Healy writes, “is a powerfully meaningful, persuasive and emotive idiom in which to couch political discourse.” It is powerful because the “prescriptions” of those diagnosing the problems in the body politic “tend to be experienced as ‘natural’ and even indisputable” (Healy, “Curing the ‘frenzy’” 334). We can see what she means with reference to the analogies drawn by a representative theorist of the body politic, the Tudor humanist Thomas Starkey, whose manuscript Dialogue Between Pole and Lupset details a conciliar remedy for the various ills that cause a distempered polity. I would like to look more closely at this text and at the work of the doctor and author William Bullein and also the human- <?page no="228"?> 228 Jennifer Richards ist Thomas Elyot to broaden our understanding of the period’s conception of political diagnosis and cure before making my way back to Shakespeare’s play. Starkey, who was briefly in the service of Thomas Cromwell, composed an imaginary dialogue between two contemporaries, Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset, sometime between 1529 and 1532. Pole and Lupset, T. F. Mayer explains, had recently returned to England having secured support from the theologians of the University of Paris in favour of Henry’s divorce in 1529-30, and Starkey wanted “Pole to capitalize on that triumph and to lead a reformed nobility back to the head of the commonwealth” (Mayer, introduction to Starkey viii). To make this argument, he has Pole instruct Lupset on the diagnosis and cure of the polity. Starkey knew that Pole and Lupset had “worked on the Aldine edition of the text of Galen in the 1520s” in Pole’s household in Padua, and this makes the analogies that he has them draw between the diseased body and the state “particularly appropriate” (Healy, Fictions 66). Indeed, as we see below, Pole spells out the value of this analogy: lyke as to physycyons lytyl hyt avaylyth to know the body, complexion therof & most perfayt state, except they also can dyscerne & juge al kynd of syknes & disseassys wych commynly destroy the same, so to us now, thys universal & phylosophycal consyderatyon of a veray & true commyn wele, lytyl schal profyte, & lytyl sschal avayle, except we also truly serch out al commyn fautys and general mysordurys, wych as sykenes & dyseasys be manifest impedymentys. (Starkey, 47) If you want to reform the commonwealth, Pole is arguing, you need to know first what is wrong with it, just like the physician looking after a sick body. Pole is the physician-cum-counsellor this dialogue sets us up to trust and he identifies various ills of the English commonwealth: under-population, idleness, an attachment to the pursuit of luxury etc. These conditions are likened to specific diseases: dropsy, palsy, frenzy, gout, plague. Thus, Pole compares the neglect of duty and the propensity for gluttony among the so-called lower sort, artisans and ploughmen, the feet and hands of the commonwealth, to gout (58-9). Later he will propose a remedy for this: if officers punished lazy artisans and ploughmen, and if enclosure was prohibited, then “al thyngys” would be “more abundante & the polytyke body more lyvely & quyke” and “thys goute bothe in the fete & handys schold be much therby easyd” (Starkey 113-4). It is not hard to suppose that this analogy is reassuring and effective: this is the illness, Starkey says, now let me give you the cure. And yet, even those without the advantage of reading David Wootton’s Bad Medi- <?page no="229"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 229 cine were aware that Renaissance physic was far from effective, and this surely had implications for its use as an analogy within political commentary (Wootton 1-26). There is a disparity between Starkey’s confidence with reference to the diagnosis and cure of the commonwealth and the hit and miss reality of medical experience in the sixteenth century - in most cases, largely miss. In her diary Lady Margaret Hoby, who suffered from a range of unidentified illnesses, notes the death of her physician, Dr Brewer, who poisoned himself by self-ministering “a medeson . . . to Cause him to sleep.” Hoby expresses regret, but not surprise. She thanks God for “Causinge” her physician “to haue great Care of ministringe vnto me, and so litle for his owne saftie,” but she continues to take the “phisecke,” the pointless potions, clisters and blood-letting, prescribed by her new physician, though it is clear from her diary that these often make her ill: “After I was awake,” she records, “Mr lister Came with phisecke whiche I tooke presently and lay after a whill, which Continewed me ill all most all the day that I omitted my ordenarie exercises of praier” (Hoby 13, 75). Margaret Hoby’s transactions with the medical profession are far from sceptical. But scepticism - or, at the very least, cautiousness - is encouraged by most vernacular medical writers, and most inventively and far-reachingly by the physician William Bullein in his last health book: A Dialogue bothe pleasaunte and pietifull, wherein is a goodly regimente against the fever Pestilence with a consolacion and comfort against death (1564). This is a remarkable text: a series of dialogues with a cast of characters in what appears to be a five-act drama. These characters represent various social types and professions - a citizen and his wife, a servant, a doctor, an apothecary, a lawyer, a divine - and they discuss a variety of “health” issues, especially the plague, but also how to make money, and most prominently of all, the state of the commonwealth. Given this dialogue’s preoccupation with the commonwealth and its strong religious narrative we might suppose that it represents Bullein’s turning away from medicine. And in many ways this dialogue is concerned with the spiritual health of the nation and its citizens. In the dramatic conclusion to the dialogue the soul of the dying Civis is saved because he seeks help from a theologian rather than a physician. Similarly, in a letter appended to this book, the author Bullein refuses to treat a friend, Francis Barlow, who is stricken with the plague: “If the time had not been somoche spent, and the venime so daungerous, and the parties so weake and feble, I woulde have caused you to have been letten blood and geven you pilles contra pestem [against the plague].” Instead he gives him a different cordial, a prayer: “Thus God give you the croune of life, which Jesus Christ without our deservings, hath pur- <?page no="230"?> 230 Jennifer Richards chased for us in his precious blood. His name bee praised. Amen” (Bullein N3 r-v) . Nonetheless, despite Bullein’s repeated attack on the worldliness of characters who neglect the health of their souls, he has still written a medical book. 7 Bullein is arguing that there is a time for medicine and the art of the physician, which are “not againste Gods worde” (A4 r ); however, he also recognizes that the citizen needs a dose of medical scepticism to stay healthy in body and soul. Thus, although the end of A Dialogue . . . against the fever Pestilence is to provide spiritual counsel, at its heart is a dialogue between a patient, Antonius, and his physician, Medicus, in which good advice is given even as we are encouraged to read what is said with some suspicion. Antonius is consulting Medicus about his symptoms and treatment; the dialogue - or table talk - is part of that treatment because it involves keeping Antonius awake (D2 v ). Medicus answers questions posed to him by Antonius. These questions are both philosophical - e.g. “is there a soule in manne? ” - and medical. Medicus explains the causes of pestilence according to Hippocrates and Galen (D7 r-v ), and advises on its remedies (E2 r ). Antonius should avoid wine, potage, milk, unripe fruits, hot spices, honey, anger and perturbations of the mind (E2 r ). All of his advice is unremarkable. Similarly Medicus’s moral advice is conventional enough. “Extreames are ever hurtfull,” he declares at one point. In fact, it is recognized that this is a good theme for him to hit on since it is suspected that Antonius’s “greate surfeites in banquetyng” (C4 r ) have made him susceptible to the plague. When Antonius asks how one should remedy this, Medicus’s advice is familiar: “Nothyng is better then a meane, called temperaunce, which is governed by prudence” (D6 r ). Medicus is giving conventional advice. Regimens reiterate the importance of measure and moderation to good health, and Bullein’s doctor is no different. However, it becomes clear that something else is needed, that it is not enough simply to reiterate this (or any other) prescription. Medicus may recommend the virtue of temperance, but he is no representative of it. Rather, he is a corrupt physician who is out for gain. Antonius, his patient, is plague-stricken and dying. At this point Medicus should be encouraging him to save his soul, but instead he uses the promise of physic to give him false hope. So corrupted is he that when Antonius recounts a nightmare which anticipates the horrors of hell that await him (C7 v -8 r ) - a sign, the print marginalium tells us, that he has a “troubled conscience” (C8 r ) - he discourages further reflection because he knows that this would lose him money. He discourages this by wrongly diagnosing Antonius. Medicus advises that Antonius’s night- 7 On the dual function of this work see especially Maslen. <?page no="231"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 231 mare is caused by an “aboundaunce of choler,” and he appoints a time to apply a clister and arranges for a surgeon to let his blood (C8 v -D1 r ). This diagnosis and cure advantages one interlocutor only, Medicus. All of Bullein’s earlier print-publications were rather more straightforward medical advice books, including The Government of Health (1558), a simple question and answer dialogue between a student/ patient, John, and his teacher, a physician called Humphrey. A Dialogue . . . against the fever Pestilence mimics this form, but it does much more: it does not just give advice; it also makes the difficulty of interpreting it part of the experience of reading. In fact, Bullein foregrounds the problem of interpretation in different ways throughout the dialogue. He may present us with fables or emblems that need interpreting, and share with us the characters’ conflicting attempts to do this, for example, when Medicus and the apothecary Crispine “read” the emblematic monuments in Antonius’s garden. The first of these represents a tiger, with a child in his arms whom he threatens to kill; the child has a gold crown on his head and a globe in his left hand, “figuring the whole worlde.” Medicus offers one interpretation, revealing his bias: “This gentleman came of a greate house, this is the crest of his armes, for he descended of the most auncient Romaines I warrant you, he is no upstart, assure your self.” In contrast, Crispine reads it more convincingly thus: “I had thought it had rather signified the condicions of a cruell tirant, or some bloodie conquerour” (B5 r ). At other times, Bullein shows us the characters understanding but failing to apply moral sententiae to their own situation. “For Tempura labuntur, is to saie: by little and little, time dooe slipe awaie,” Medicus helpfully offers, translating the Latin tag; however, he takes no heed of its meaning, rushing on: “I will heare the reste of the matter at leasure. What is it a clocke? ” (C1 v ). Finally, Bullein shows us characters being taken in by mendacious speakers, like Mendax, who tells absurdly fabulous tales of “Terra Florida.” The scepticism Bullein wants the reader to experience is prompted also by ironic print marginalia like “No lye, no lye” (Withington 469; Bullein K1 r ). None of this is to make us flatly sceptical of the benefits of medicine; but it does reveal the limitations of the art and its practice. A Dialogue . . . against the fever Pestilence, I noted above, is concerned in the end with the spiritual health of the body politic and its citizens, like Civis. It presents a far-reaching attack on the worldliness of characters like Antonius whose short-sightedness is represented by his belief that he can pay Medicus to make him better. But Bullein, a practising physician, does not neglect the body, and he is not, in the end, dismissive of the desire to heal. The last word on this might be given, surprisingly, to Medicus when he finally admits that Antonius is past cure. When Crispine concludes “Then I perceiue your talke was unprofitable,” he <?page no="232"?> 232 Jennifer Richards quickly responds, echoing Bullein in the letter to Francis Barlow appended to the dialogue, “Not unprofitable, if the Phisicion come in the beginning or augmenting of the sicknesse” (F5 v ). In this culture, when there was still no body of accepted medical lore and certainly no “medical science,” what kind of counsel might one hope for from a physician? There is a long tradition of sceptical engagement with medical knowledge, represented in health books like Bullein’s. But the purpose of this essay is not to develop this detail, but rather to observe it and to think through what such scepticism meant for the medical metaphors that political commentators, among them Shakespeare, drew on. To put this another way: given this distrust of the physician and his art, how useful was the medical analogy for political thinking? Bullein’s distrust prompts us to think about the analogy of the body politic differently to Starkey. In Starkey, the physician provides a rhetorically compelling match for the counsellor who understands and promises to cure the ills of the commonwealth. His prescriptions seem “indisputable.” In Bullein’s dialogue, in contrast, the diagnoses and cures offered are disputable. The patient would do best to think hard about the advice he is given. Antonius never manages this, but in the main plot the citizen Civis does. To be sure, he makes interpretative mistakes as he journeys away from the plague with his wife and servant. But for much of the dialogue we see him engaged in reflective conversation; in the end he makes the right decisions. A source for this different model of the healthy body politic “indialogue” is provided by another of Thomas Cromwell’s commonwealth-men, Thomas Elyot. Like the physician Bullein twenty years later, but unlike his contemporary Starkey, Elyot is preoccupied with the physical body, and this informs his political thinking in interesting ways. Elyot admits in his letters to suffering several bouts of ill-health in the 1530s (Wilson 16, n. 10.); he also explains in the preface to his popular vernacular regimen, Castel of Helth (1539), that he compiled this work on hearing that his friend and patron, Sir Thomas Cromwell, was ill. This preoccupation carries over to his political writing too. Elyot’s The Image of Governance (1541) presents the acts and sentences of the governor, Aurelius Alexander, “sommetyme Emperour of Rome” (Elyot, Image A1 r ), titled Severus because he is a harsh punisher of men’s offences. He is compared to a sharp physician who purges the state of its corrupt officers on his accession. However, he is also a physician in other ways. Severus “is well read in Galenic medicine,” and he uses this knowledge to the advantage of his citizens, providing “open spaces for healthgiving exercise” and building “free hospitals” (Elyot, Image K3 v -M1 r ). <?page no="233"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 233 Crucially, Severus’s understanding of the source of well-being is not just corporeal. He also understands that the body “requires intellectual as well as physical sustenance” (Shrank 164-5). He builds libraries as well as gymnasia so that his counsellors and citizens have the opportunity to exercise their minds, and he creates public places “where civile controversies” can be “herde and judged” (Elyot, Image K4 r ). It is not hard to see how this informs Elyot’s conception of the body politic. In the commonwealth Elyot depicts, Severus makes sure that his counsellors have time to read so that they can gather “sentences.” His libraries have spaces for disputation and declamation (“consultation”) (Elyot, Image L2 r-v ), whereby speakers select from “some auncient story some question concernyng martiall or civile polycie,” “commendyng or discommendynge it,” and “declare their opinyons and sentences” (Elyot, Image, L2 v ). This is important because it increases the “wytte and prouysion of counsaylours” (Elyot, Image L2 v ). A healthy body politic, Elyot explains, has many officers not just a single ruler. No single man can digest all the different “meates” - the causes to be discussed - to sustain the body politic. He explains: “it fareth with hym as it dothe with a mans stomacke, for the stomacke receyueth meates, dyuers in qualities and effectes, which altogither can not be by one mans Nature duly concocte and digested” (Elyot, Image I1 v -I2 r ). This is a different way of explaining the common sententia: as many heads as many wits. Simply, without counsellors the king’s “wytte” and nature will be overwhelmed. This is a conception of the functioning body politic that is grounded in a particular engagement with the material body and its care, but which also makes wit - judgement - integral to this. Elyot had no formal medical education. He tells us in the preface to the 1541 edition that before he was twenty years old, “a worshipfull physician,” probably Thomas Linacre, read to him from the works of Galen, Johannicius and Hippocrates, and that he studied many other authorities including Avicenna, Celsus and Pliny (Elyot, Castle A4 r ) . This declared autodidacticism shapes his view of physicians. In the long sub-title of his regimen, Castel of Helthe, Elyot makes clear his distrust. His book promises information “whereby every man may knowe the state of his owne body, and preservation of healthe, and how to instruct well his physition in his sicknes, that he be not deceived.” And while in the preface he defends the “science of physicke” (Elyot, Castle A2 v ), he also alerts the reader to errors, explaining cheekily that he wrote this book for the “commodity” of physicians, so that “the uncertayne tokens of urynes and other excrementes should not deceyve them, but that by the true information of the sycke man, by me instructed, they mought be the more sure to prepare medicines convenient for the disseasis” (Elyot, Castle A4 r ). <?page no="234"?> 234 Jennifer Richards So to summarize, before I turn back to Shakespeare: I have been arguing in favour of a different model of the body politic, the health of which is best protected by the self-reliant, critically-engaged, even sceptical and well-informed citizen, not the diagnosing physician. In the work of Elyot and Bullein I have traced a different engagement with medical discourse, one that is rooted in a recognition of the vicissitudes of bodily experience and the uncertainty of medical knowledge. It is with this tradition in mind that I return to Shakespeare’s scepticism of medico-political diagnosis in Henry IV, Part Two. I suggest that the sceptical turning over of advice encouraged in this medical tradition is absorbed by Henry IV, Part Two and becomes integral to its reflection on political experience - and, furthermore, to the habits of mind it wishes to inculcate in its auditor. In the following sections I will explore, firstly, how Shakespeare makes us sceptical of political diagnosis; and secondly, why we might prefer Falstaff’s flawed attempts at corporeal diagnosis instead. Rebellious Diagnosis Shakespeare was well acquainted with the tribulations of the medical profession. After all, his daughter Susanna married a physician, John Hall. In Hall’s casebook, his record of medical success stories, we find one treatment he prescribed for Susanna’s ill digestion or colic. Hall began by trying several purgatives, but these compounds produced merely two stools and no abatement of the pain. Eventually, he “appointed to inject a Pint of Sack made hot.” This seems to have done the trick. “This presently brought forth a great deal of Wind,” he writes cheerily, “and freed her from all Pain” (Hall 34). This is an example of successful diagnosis and eventual cure, after some trial and error. But whatever Shakespeare thought of his son-inlaw and his professional skills he could not, as an early modern man, have escaped the vagaries of contemporary health care. Even a cursory glance through the medical casebooks of the period discloses some of the weird, wonderful and entirely pointless remedies, including this “speciall medicine for the Gout”: Take a young whelpe, in the month of May, & strip him out of skin, & dresse him cleane, then take a quantity of water froges, & choppe them small, & put them in his bellie when the guttes be out, & sew up his belly, then rost him, & take the dripping in an Iron vessell, & when it is cold, put it in a glasse, and therewithal anoint the disease, & yow shall be whole (by Godes grace). (Anon., English medical recipe book, c. 1635, fol. 175r. ) <?page no="235"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 235 Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two is manifestly concerned with the abiding problem of diagnosis and remedy as a way of reflecting on political issues. However, it is equally interested in misdiagnosis and this is equally integral to its method. To begin with, the characters of Henry IV, Part Two are always analyzing each other’s constitution, and usually getting it wrong. The hostess mis-describes Falstaff’s hot and dry or choleric nature as “rheumatick as two dry toasts” (2. 4. 56). We know that Falstaff is ill, but the problem remains undiagnosed. At the start of Act I, scene 2 he asks “what says the doctor to my water? ” His Page responds thus: “He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he knew for” (1.2. 1-4). We never find out what is wrong, and Falstaff himself is uncertain. “A pox of this gout! or a gout of this pox! ” (1.2. 244-5), he declares at the end of this scene. Moreover, he supposes his illness “incurable,” like the disease he describes as “consumption of the purse” (1.2. 237, 239). Also undiagnosed and untreatable is the spurious illness of the Earl of Northumberland who “Lies crafty-sick” (Induction, l. 37). Given how difficult it is to diagnose diseases, we might be sceptical of confident attempts to do just this, especially when an ulterior motive is suspected. In Act I, scene 2, Falstaff and the Chief Justice are discussing the King’s illness. In fact, Falstaff is trying to distract Justice from his misdemeanours: Fal. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. Ch. Just. Well, God mend him! I pray you let me speak with you. Fal. This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, and’t please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling. Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? Be it as it is. Fal. It hath its original from much grief, from study, and perturbation of the brain; I have read the cause of his effects in Galen, it is a kind of deafness. Ch. Just. I think you are fallen into the disease, for you hear not what I say to you. Fal. Very well, my lord. Rather, and’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. (1.2. 106-21) Sickness becomes Falstaff’s excuse for not attending to the Chief Justice who wants to speak with him about the Gad’s Hill robbery; it gilds his instruction to his page: “Boy, tell him I am deaf” (l. 66). The Chief Justice puts it more plainly and accurately. When the page advises “You must speak louder, my master is deaf,” he responds bluntly: “I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good” (ll. 67-8). Of course, scenes like this one provide a parallel to and commentary upon the conduct of the rebel nobility in the play. As all the characters <?page no="236"?> 236 Jennifer Richards acknowledge, the body politic is also sick. However, diagnosing the causes of this with any degree of exactitude is extremely difficult. For instance, the rebels are quick to medicalize the commonwealth, though this is rarely helpful. They debate whether all is lost, and whether another uprising against the king has any chance of success. “[I]t never yet did hurt,” says Lord Hastings, “To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope” (1.3.34-5), to which Lord Bardolph notes that hope is not enough; without a careful plan, hope becomes despair: . . . When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model, And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection, Which if we find outweighs ability, What do we then but draw anew the model In fewer offices, or at the least desist To build at all? Much more, in this great work - Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down And set another up - should we survey The plot of situation and the model, Consent upon a sure foundation, Question surveyors, know our own estate. . . . (1.3. 41-53) This is good advice, but it is not taken. Hastings immediately replaces the building metaphor, reverting to the more emotive language resonant of the body-politic: Hast. Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth, Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d The utmost man of expectation, I think we are a body strong enough, Even as we are, to equal with the King. (1.3. 63-7) The argument that “we are a body strong enough” does not sound much like planning! This theme is then picked up by the Archbishop, who mixes the metaphors, when he tries to explain why the commonwealth of Henry IV is failing: The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited. An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. (1.3. 87-90) <?page no="237"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 237 Bardolph’s suggestion that the rebels need a plan is undeveloped; instead, attention shifts to the weakness of the commonwealth, built “on the vulgar heart.” I note that Lord Bardolph plays no further part in the scene, apart from asking one practical question about the enemy forces: “Who is it like should lead his forces hither? ” (1.3.81). After this he is silent. In fact, we don’t hear from or about him again until Act IV, scene 4: “The Earl of Northumberland, and the Lord Bardolph, / With a great power of English and of Scots, / Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown” (4. 4.97-99). Healy argues that the “prescriptions” of those diagnosing the problems in the body politic “tend to be experienced as ‘natural’ even indisputable.” This is an apt description of what is happening in this scene. We move from Bardolph’s invitation to the rebels to design the foundations of a new commonwealth to the easy diagnosis of the commonwealth as sick, with no further thought. So reassuring is the metaphor that the Archbishop of York returns to it in Act IV, scenes 1 and 2, before the rebels are betrayed and sent for execution by Hal’s brother, the Duke of Lancaster; and again the same problems surface. “[W]e are all diseas’d,” he declares, “And with our surfeiting, and wanton hours, / Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, / And we must bleed for it.” Yet York seems uncertain of his own role in the curative process of rebellion. “I take not on me here as a physician,” he says, “Nor do I as an enemy to peace,” but “To diet rank minds sick of happiness, / And purge th’obstructions which begin to stop / Our very veins of life” (4.1.54-66). Is he a physician, or not? Is rebellion medicinal, or not? It is also unclear what is the cause of the political illness; really, what does “surfeiting” in this particular diagnosis actually represent? Does it represent the moral laxity of princely government, represented by Hal and most egregiously, Falstaff? It seems not. When pressed, the Archbishop explains the source of the rebels’ discontent thus: that the ringleaders have been denied access to the king. Yet there is no evidence to warrant this either. In short, the rebels’ attempts at diagnosis are confusing. It is obvious that something is seriously wrong: sickness is embodied on stage in the figures of Falstaff, the King and other characters, and this is represented too in the play’s social divisions. But we never get to the root of the problem. The rebels certainly struggle to diagnose their world and indeed, from a different perspective - Henry IV’s - they are the disease itself. In the light of this, the simplicity of the play’s end may come as a relief. I don’t mean just the execution of the rebels, although that is a resolution of sorts, but the banishment of Falstaff, who is both with and outwith the King’s party. The sickness of the Lancastrians is invested in <?page no="238"?> 238 Jennifer Richards this body and with his purgation we may assume this has been cured. Indeed, his cure - his bringing to order has been anticipated from the start when the Chief Justice tells him: “I care not if I do become your physician” (1.2.123-4). Only it is Hal, of course, who finally and brutally diagnoses Falstaff: “I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,” he says to his erstwhile companion, “So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane. . . . / Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape / For thee thrice wider than for other men” (5.5. 49-54). Yet, notoriously, the adequacy, let alone the equity of this curative measure is equally symptomatic of the play’s complex and equivocal approach to the issue of political diagnosis and remedy. Quite simply, it is not satisfactory in a play that encourages us to think sceptically about medico-political diagnosis. There are many problems with the analogy of the body politic in Henry IV, Part Two. For instance, it does not help the rebel aristocrats to understand what is wrong with the commonwealth and so “cure” it. In fact, we might say that the analogy exacerbates the problem. It makes them overly confident of their analysis and proposed prescriptions, while also serving to conceal from them their self-interest. Our conclusion might be simply that we need to find a different analogy to study the condition of the polis, perhaps the architectural metaphor invoked by Lord Bardolph. And yet a different use of the body politic analogy is suggested by the very flawed Falstaff; I suggest we might want to take note. Without Falstaff and his misuse of Galen early in the play (1.2), we would not have our prompt to think about the way in which characters misdiagnose social ills and we would have no alternative way of seeing and thinking about what we hear. More to the point, we would also miss what should be central to political thinking: as Thomas Elyot suggested, the care of the bodies of the citizens who make up the commonwealth. Falstaff’s diagnosis “Shakespeare’s history plays,” writes Dermot Cavanagh, “have long been understood as dramas which create an influential form of national myth.” One aspect of this, undoubtedly, is the commemoration of the “lives (and deaths) of great men” (Cavanagh 38-9). However, there is another aspect to the Shakespearean history play that counters such memorialization, and this too needs to be noted: an awareness of the costs of political unrest and of war especially. In Henry V, for example, the celebration of the English/ British nation and its king is painfully countered at moments that recognize the suffering of the fallen in battle: “‘All those Legges, and Armes, and Heads, chopt off’” (Cavanagh, 41; 44, citing Hinman’s The Life of Henry the Fift, l. 198). <?page no="239"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 239 There are moments, too, in Henry IV, Part Two, when attention is drawn to the impact of war on the lives of ordinary men and women. It is not clear what is more unsettling about Act III, scene 2: the evidence of the corruption of Bardolph and Falstaff, who will free from the press-gang those who have the means to bribe them, or Falstaff’s callous wit. Fal. Is thy name Mouldy? Moul. Yea, and’t please you. Fal. ’Tis the more time thou wert used. Shal. Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i’ faith, things that are mouldy lack use: very singular good, in faith, well said, Sir John, very well said. Fal. Prick him. Moul. I was pricked well enough before, and you could have let me alone. My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery. You need not to have pricked me, there are other men fitter to go out than I. Fal. Go to; peace, Mouldy; you shall go, Mouldy; it is time you were spent. Moul. Spent? Shal. Peace, fellow, peace; stand aside. (3.2. 104-119) Mouldy’s questioning of Falstaff’s throwaway remark is left unanswered. This is not one of Falstaff’s finer moments and it provides another reason why he needs to be purged at the end of the play. Yet, there is also reason to think again about the significance of this scene. To be sure, this scene represents Falstaff’s culpability. His moral bankruptcy is contrasted sharply with Feeble’s resigned sense of duty to King and country. But, at the same time, this scene comments on the warmongering aristocracy on both sides and their lack of care for the bodies of the commonwealth: a strange fact given their medicalization of the play’s political discourse. There is a connection between the sick bodies on stage and the health of the body politic. Sometimes the connection is made explicitly. On occasion, for example, illness makes the king unable to rule properly. Henry IV’s counsellor-cum-physician, the Earl of Warwick, packs him off to bed at the end of Act II, scene 2 with the advice: “Please it your Grace / To go to bed: upon my soul, my lord, / The powers that you already have sent forth / Shall bring this prize in very easily” (3.1. 98-101). At other times, his health is directly affected by the state of the polity. We are told repeatedly that the King is “Exceeding ill” (4. 5. 11), and it becomes clear that his condition is exacerbated by bad political <?page no="240"?> 240 Jennifer Richards news. For example, his health deteriorates further when he hears that Hal is still consorting with his companions: “This part of his conjoins with my disease,” he complains, “And helps to end me” (4.5. 64-5). Yet, more often than not, the characters have to be reminded that bodies are mortal. For example, at the very start of the play, Morton needs to remind the battle-shy Northumberland, who is grieving the loss of his son Hotspur in battle, that he should have known that he was not invincible: “You were advis’d his flesh was capable / Of wounds and scars” (1.1. 172-3). Or they need to be reminded of the severity of the prescriptions proposed. When York prescribes bleeding to cure the polity’s sickness, he is speaking in the abstract terms of Starkey’s Cardinal Pole, but we know he means that blood must really be spilt. Similarly, Warwick may reassure the King that the commonwealth: . . . is but as a body yet distemper’d, Which to his former strength may be restor’d With good advice and little medicine. My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d. (3.1. 41-4) However, we know very well that the “little medicine” that will cool Northumberland and the other rebels will be their execution. We might be tempted momentarily to think that Warwick’s “little medicine” means something else: the promise that the rebels’ terms will be met, thereby avoiding bloodshed. In Act IV, scene 2, the cure seems to be going in this direction at the point at which Lancaster promises redress: the rebels disband their army and the two sides drink to each other’s health. But this moment of resolution is short-lived. The play teeters between the possibility of an irenic cure, on the one hand, and on the other, the application of the solution that is actually intended, the execution of the rebels on the charge of high treason. It is the rebel Mowbray who has a premonition of this and York who, cup in hand, foolishly reassures him: Mowb. You wish me health in very happy season, For I am on the sudden something ill. Arch. Against ill chances men are ever merry, But heaviness foreruns the good event. (4.2.79-82) All of this death and destruction does not pass without comment. However, it is Galen-reading Falstaff that we have to thank for this. I would like to end with a last example that represents one of the few astute, albeit flawed moments of medico-political diagnosis in the play: Fal- <?page no="241"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 241 staff’s witty diagnosis, in Act IV, scene 3, of the Duke of Lancaster’s coldness, which he attributes to greensickness or anaemia. This short scene includes Falstaff’s encounter first with the rebel knight Sir John Colevile, and then with the Duke of Lancaster. Colevile, who is fleeing the battle scene, yields quickly to Falstaff, recognizing his captor, Falstaff tells us, from the size of his belly: “I have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine, and not a tongue of them speaks any other word but my name” (4.3. 18-19). In the second encounter, Colevile is handed over to Lancaster, and this concludes his brief appearance on stage. Before he is sent for “present execution” (l. 72), however, Colevile offers this sharp reflection on the previous scene when the rebel noblemen are deceived into giving themselves up, and a last stand of defiance: “I am, my lord, but as my betters are / That led me hither. Had they been rul’d by me, / You should have won them dearer than you have” (4.3. 63-5). This scene is memorable because it offers different kinds of political commentary on what we have already heard. Coleville is one kind of commentator, Lancaster another. The latter clearly sees through Falstaff’s “tardy tricks” (l. 28) and grandiose waffle, and points us towards the play’s conclusion: the chastening of this corruptor of the prince. But the last word is given, crucially, to Falstaff who articulates and analyzes the discomfort that Lancaster’s cold, calculating manner surely invokes in the audience. That is, Lancaster is diagnosed by Falstaff. His diagnosis is both corporeal and political: Falstaff’s commentary suggests that the body politic will not be well served by this unhealthy governor. The cause of this duke’s illness is not surfeit, but abstinence, and its cure, more “sack.” The diagnosis and cure are typically irreverent, self-interested, in other words “Falstaffian,” but in this one example we see the value and force of medico-political analysis: what it can tell us about what is lacking from this body politic: “excellent wit” and a warmth that leads all “the vital commoners” of the body/ politic to “muster” behind him (100; 108-109). It is through Falstaff’s alternative perspective that the concerns so pervasive in the tradition of medico-political thinking that I have been tracing - an awareness of the problem of diagnosis and of the bodies of the commonwealth - are made an integral part of our experience of this play. <?page no="242"?> 242 Jennifer Richards References Primary Sources Anon. English medical recipe book, c. 1635. Wellcome Institute Western MS 809. Bullein, William. A Dialogue bothe pleasaunte and pietifull, wherein is a goodly regimente against the fever Pestilence with a consolation and comfort against death. London, 1564. Elyot, Thomas. The Castel of Helthe. London, 1541. . The Image of Governance Compiled of the Actes and Sentences notable, of the moste noble Emperour Alexander Seuerus. London, 1541. . The Letters of Thomas Elyot, Studies in Philology. Ed. K. J. Wilson. 73.5,1976. Hall, John. John Hall and his Patients: The Medical Practice of Shakespeare’s Son-in-Law. Ed. Joan Lane; medical commentary by Melvin Earles. Stratford: The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 1996, rpt. 2001. Hoby, Lady Margaret. The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599-1605. Ed. Joanna Moody. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998. Shakespeare, William. The Second Part of King Henry IV. Ed. A. R. Humphreys. London: Methuen, 1981. . The Life of Henry the Fift, facsimile edition of The First Folio of Shakespeare. Ed. Charlton Hinman. New York: Norton, 1968; reissued 1999. Starkey, Thomas. A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset. Ed. T. F. Mayer. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1989. Secondary Sources Barkan, Leonard. Nature’s Work of Art: The Human Body as Image of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Bradley, A. C. “The Rejection of Falstaff.” Oxford Lectures on Poetry. London: Macmillan and Co.: 1934. 247-73 Cavanagh, Dermot. “History, Mourning and Memory in Henry V.” Shakespeare’s Histories and Counter-Histories. Ed. Dermot Cavanagh, Stuart Hampton-Reeves and Stephen Longstaff. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. 32-48. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion.” Glyph 8: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, 40-61. Gurr, Andrew. “Coriolanus and the Body Politic.” Shakespeare Survey, 28 (1975): 63-9. <?page no="243"?> Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two 243 Hale, David George. The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in English Renaissance Literature. The Hague: Mouton, 1971a. . “Coriolanus: The Death of a Political Metaphor.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 23 (1971b): 197-202. Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Healy, Margaret. Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plague and Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. . “Curing the ‘Frenzy’: Humanism, Medical Idiom and “Crises” of Counsel in Sixteenth-Century England.” Textual Practice. 18.3 (2004), 333-50. Hutson, Lorna. “Not the King’s Two Bodies: Reading the Body Politic in Shakespeare’s 1 and 2 Henry IV plays.” Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Victoria Kahn and Lorna Hutson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, 166-98. Maslen, R. W. “The Healing Dialogues of Doctor Bullein.” The Yearbook of English Studies. 38.1/ 2 (2008), 119-135. Mayer, Thomas F. Thomas Starkey and The Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Poole, Kristen. “Saints alive! Falstaff, Martin Marprelate, and the staging of Puritanism.” Shakespeare Quarterly. 46 (1995), 47-75. Riss, Arthur. “The Belly Politic: Coriolanus and the Revolt of Language.” English Literary History. 59 (1992), 53-75. Shrank, Cathy. “Sir Thomas Elyot and the Bonds of Community.” The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature. Ed. Mike Mincombe and Cathy Shrank. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 154-69. Withington, Phil. “‘For this is true or els I do lye’: Thomas Smith, William Bullein, and Mid-Tudor Dialogue.” The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature. Ed. Mike Mincombe and Cathy Shrank. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 455-71. Wootton, David. Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. <?page no="245"?> Notes on Contributors TAMSIN BADCOE is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol. Before arriving in Bristol she worked at the University of East Anglia and at the University of Geneva, and received her PhD from the University of York. Her main research interest concerns Renaissance conceptions and representations of space, and she is currently working on a monograph on the late sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser. LISANNA CALVI is lecturer in English Literature at the University of Verona. Her research interests have included Restoration theatre and James II Stuart’s devotional writings on which she published a book (La corona e la Croce, ETS ) in 2009. More recently, she has worked on madness and spiritual autobiography in seventeenth-century England and has edited the first Italian translation of two early modern female autobiographies, Memoria, malinconia e autobiografia dello spirito: Dionys Fitzherbert e Hannah Allen (Pacini, 2012). STEFANIA D’AGATA D’OTTAVI is Professor of English at the Università per Stranieri di Siena, where she also teaches “History of the English Language.” She has worked on Thomas More, Shakespeare, Blake, Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy. Her publications include a book on the mise en abyme in Chaucer’s dream poems (Il sogno e il libro, 1992), the first Italian verse translation of the B-version of Piers Plowman, essays on the Medieval theatre and on the Canterbury Tales. She is mainly interested in the relationship between late-Medieval philosophy (especially logic) and the literature of the time. RACHEL FALCONER is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Lausanne. She has published on John Milton, Sir Thomas Wyatt, classical and Renaissance epic poetry as well as twentieth century literature and literary theory. She is particularly interested in literary descents to the underworld, in reworkings of Virgil in modern English literature, in the dialogue between human and non-human <?page no="246"?> 246 Notes on Contributors voices, as well as the connections between music and poetry in English and European literatures. MARY FLANNERY is a lecturer in medieval English at the University of Lausanne. She received her PhD in English from the University of Cambridge, and has held posts at the J. Paul Getty Museum and at Queen Mary University of London. Her first book, John Lydgate and the Poetics of Fame (D. S. Brewer, 2012), explored the self-fashioning strategies of fifteenth-century England’s most important poet. In addition to studies on literary and legal fame in medieval England, she has also published on medieval shame and gender. In collaboration with Katie Walter, she has edited a volume on The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England (Westfield Medieval Studies, 2013). Her areas of interest include the cultural, political, and legal history of late-medieval England; the roles of reputation and “talk” in medieval and early modern literature; and the history of emotion. INDIRA GHOSE is Professor of English Literature at the University of Fribourg. Her main research interests are literature of the British Empire and Renaissance drama. Her book, Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze (Oxford University Press, 1998) looks at Victorian women’s travel writing under the Raj. In 2008 her book Shakespeare and Laughter: A Cultural History appeared with Manchester University Press. TONY HUNT is a Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques. After lecturing at the University of St Andrews he became successively Besse Fellow, Vice Master, Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Fellow of St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. His research interests have been concentrated in medieval medicine and its vernacularisation, the edition of Anglo-Norman texts, publication of French adaptations of Latin “school” texts (“Auctores Octo”) from the 13th to 15th centuries, and the editing of Old French versions of biblical texts (Song of Songs, Book of Proverbs). He is currently Co- President of the Anglo-Norman Text Society. TAMÁS KARÁTH is lecturer in medieval English literature at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest (Hungary). His research focuses on <?page no="247"?> Notes on Contributors 247 medieval theatre, late medieval devotion and religious culture in England. His PhD dissertation (2008) discussed the transformation of the authority and interpretation of intellectual authorities and knowledge in 15th-century English literary texts. With scholarships from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian state he has been working on the project of alternative intellectual authorities in late medieval England. In the frame of this research he studied issues of heterodoxy in 15th-century England and the textual tradition of the translations of Richard Rolle’s works. He also translates British and American fiction into Hungarian. VIRGINIA LANGUM is a postdoctoral research fellow at Umeå University in Sweden, where she is researching the physiology of the seven deadly sins in late medieval culture. She has published on confessional and religious literature, as well as intersections of medical knowledge and religious and literary discourse. DENIS RENEVEY is Professor of Medieval English Language and Literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is the author of several articles and book chapters on vernacular theology. His recent book publications include The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary, co-edited with Christiania Whitehead and Anne Mouron (Exeter University Press, 2010); A Companion to the Doctrine of the Hert: The Middle English Translations and its Latin and European Contexts, co-edited with Christiania Whitehead (University of Exeter Press, 2010); Convergence/ Divergence: The Politics of Late Medieval English Devotional and Medical Discourses. Poetica 72 (Special Issue), co-edited with Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Yushodo Press, 2009). His most recent chapters of books include “1215-1349: Texts,” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, edited by Vincent Gillespie and Samuel Fanous (Cambridge University Press, 2011); “Reflections on Medieval English Literature,” Christian Thought in the Twenty-First Century: Agenda for the Future, edited by Douglas H. Shantz and Tinu Ruparell ( WIPF and STOCK Publishers, 2012), and “Mysticism and Vernacularity,” The Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Julia Lamm (Blackwell, 2012). JENNIFER RICHARDS is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. She is the author of Rhetoric (Routledge, 2007) and <?page no="248"?> 248 Notes on Contributors Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003; 2007). She has published articles in Renaissance Quarterly, Criticism, Huntington Library Quarterly and The Journal of the History of Ideas. She is currently editing Thomas Nash, with Andrew Hadfield, for Oxford University Press, and she is writing a new monograph, “Useful Books: Reading and Talking in the English Renaissance.” This last project is supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2013- 2015. She is the editor of the journal, Renaissance Studies. LAETITIA SANSONETTI holds a PhD in English Literature from University Paris 3 (France) and she is now a lecturer in English at Ecole Polytechnique (Department of Languages) in Paris (France). Her dissertation bore on desire in Elizabethan narrative poetry. She co-edited a collection of articles on women in Early Modern England (2009) and has published articles on Shakespeare’s drama, Spenserian allegory, and the reception of classical texts. JULIA D. STAYKOVA completed her doctorate at Sofia University, Bulgaria. She teaches at Sofia University and has also taught at the universities of British Columbia, Amsterdam and Sofia. Julia has published on Shakespeare, Milton, the Augustinian meditative tradition, and religious controversies after the Reformation. Currently she is working on a book-length study of the devotional soliloquy and writing her first novel. CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD is a Reader in Medieval English Literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. She has published widely in the fields of medieval devotional literature, allegory and women’s writing. Her most recent publications include a co-edited critical edition of the Middle English Doctrine of the Hert (Exeter, 2010), and a co-edited companion volume of essays on the Doctrine (Exeter, 2010). NAOË KUKITA YOSHIKAWA is Professor of English in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shizuoka University, Japan. She has widely published on late medieval devotional texts, including Margery Kempe’s Meditations: The Context of Medieval Devotional Literature, Liturgy and Iconography (University of Wales Press, 2007) and edited with Catherine Innes-Parker, Anchoritism in the Middle Ages (University of Wales Press, <?page no="249"?> Notes on Contributors 249 2013 forthcoming). Her research also focuses on late medieval medicine and religion. She has published an article, “Holy Medicine and Diseases of the Soul: Henry of Lancaster and Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines,” Medical History, 53 (2009) and co-edited with Denis Renevey a special journal issue, Convergence/ Divergence: the Politics of Late Medieval English Devotional and Medical Discourses for Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic- Literary Studies, 72 (2009). SUSAN ZÁVOTI was born in 1983 in Miskolc, Hungary. She graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2009, and received her degrees in Scandinavian and English studies. In 2010 she began her doctorate studies at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest (Hungary) where she is writing her dissertation on the interaction between paganism and Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, especially in the sphere of medicine. She has published an article, “Malcolm Lambert, Christians and Pagans: The Conversion of Britain from Alban to Bede,” Innes Review 63.1 (2012). <?page no="251"?> Index of Names Abbé Poutrel, 80 Acca, Bishop of Hexham, 182n Aebbe, St, 182n Aelric, 177n, 182n Aelwin, 177n Aethelgitha, 182n Aethilwald, 177n Agnodice, 104 Alchmund, Bishop of Hexham, 182n Allen, Thomas, 144-146. Anacharsis, 25 Andrews, J. H., 41 Anglicus, Bartholomaeus, 121, 123 Anglicus, Gilbertus, 80, 92-93, 109 Anthony, St, 172 Antoniszoon, Cornelis, 37 Aquinas, Thomas, 121, 166n Archimatthaeus, 94 Arden, John of, 93 Arditi, Jorge, 27-28 Aristotle, 16, 20-25, 27, 57, 62, 64, 122 Ashley, Anthony, 33, 39-42, 44 Augustine, St, 121, 136, 159, 159n, 172, 213, 213n, 214 Autun, Honorius of, 82-83 Aveling, James Hobson, 189 Avicenna, 231 Babb, Lawrence, 132n, 134 Bacon, Roger, 59 Badcoe, Tamsin, 11 Bald, 68 Bancroft, Richard, 214 Barish, Jonas, 216, 216n, 217 Barkan, Leonard, 226n Barlow, Francis, 229, 231 Barlowe, William, 36 Barratt, Alexandra, 189, 203 Barrough, Philip, 145 Bartholomew of Farne, St, 177n, 178 Beadle, Richard, 191 Beattie, James, 24 Becket, Thomas, 15, 175 Bede, 172-173, 173n, 177, 177n, 178n, 179-180, 180n, 182n, Beecher, Donald A., 132n Bell, Alexander, 89 Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth, 173n Benedict, St, 172 Benedictines of Durham, 172, 182 Bennett, J. A. W., 59 Beroul, 83n Béthencourt, Jacques, 132 Bierbaumer, Peter, 87, 87n Billingham, Richard, 49, 61-65 Binski, Paul, 158 Bishop, Louise M., 110n, 124 Boethius, 119 Boisil, Abbot, 182n Boorde, Andrew, 137, 145 Bos, Egbert, 61-63, 65 Bothworth, Joseph, 74 Boulton, Maureen B. M., 80 <?page no="252"?> 252 Index of Names Boyle, Leonard, 119 Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke, 26 Bradley, A. C., 225 Bradwardine, Thomas, 61, 63 Bramall, Joan, 194 Brayton, Dan, 34-35, 41-42 Braekman, W. L., 93 Bredon, Simon, 93 Bridget, St, 195 Bright, Timothy, 22 Bullein, William, 223, 227, 229- 232, 234 Burchard, Count of Mansfeld, 162n Burke, Peter, 27 Burrow, J. A., 126 Burton, Robert, 131-133, 136 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 158, 159n Byrhtferth, 75 Calder, Ruth, 20-21 Calvi, Lisanna 15-16 Canacee, 50 Cantilupe, Thomas, 181n Careri, Maria, 83n Carkesse, James, 16, 143-156 Caroll, Lewis, 41 Castalides, 75 Castelvetro, 24 Castiglione, 28 Cavanagh, Dermot, 236 Celsus, 233 Chartier, Roger, 27 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 12-13, 33- 34, 37, 49-66, 107-108, 112, 121 Chauliac, Guy de, 80, 84, 106 Chidamian, Claude, 191 Chrysostom, 218 Ciavolella, Massimo, 132n Cicero, 21, 23, 27 Clowes, William, 138 Cockayne, Oswald, 69-70, 74, 76 Coletti, Theresa, 199 Colgrave, Bertram, 172 Coombe, Margaret, 182n Copland, Robert, 39-40 Courtenay, William J., 57, 62 Coverdale, Miles, 207 Craig, Hardin, 195 Craigie, William, 72 Cranmer, Thomas, 214 Craun, Edwin D., 118 Cromwell, Thomas, 228, 232 Cuningham, William, 35 Cuthbert, St, 14-15, 171-185 Cyprian of Carthage, 216 Daniel, Christopher, 162 Davidson, Clifford, 193-194, 195, 195n De Rijk, L. M., 61, 63, 64, 65 Dean, Ruth, 80 Dékány, Ágnes, 187n Dekker, Thomas, 225 Demaitre, Luke, 121 Deporte, Michael V., 144 Descartes, 22-23 Diekstra, F. N. M., 124 Dixon-Kennedy, Mike, 75 Donnison, Jean, 189, 194, 197 D’Ottavi, Stefania D’Agata, 12 Dousa, Janus (Johann van der Does), 33, 39, 42 Dryden, John, 148, 152 Du Laurens, André, 137 Dubs, Kathleen E., 192n Duffy, Eamon, 161 Dumbleton, John, 61 Durkin, Philip, 86 Edmund, St, 175 Eijk, Philip van der, 69 Elfred, 182n Elias, Norbert, 27 <?page no="253"?> Index of Names 253 Elyot, Thomas, 223, 228, 232- 234, 238 Erasmus, 26, 28 Etheldreda, St, 175, 181 Euripides, 219 Evelyn, John, 154 Falstaff, John, 17 Felgild of Farne, 177 Ferrand, Jacques, 132n Ficino, Marsilio, 25, 132, 134 Finnegan, Mary Jeremy, 159n Finucane, Ronald C., 181n, 182n Fishman, Joshua, 84 Flannery, Mary, 13, 188, 189n, 199, 201 Ford, James H., 71 Foster, Frances A., 190 Foster, Meryl, 181 Foucault, Michel, 143-144 Fox, George Gillespie, 115 Fracastoro, Girolamo, 23, 131- 132, 134 Frei, Peter, 20n Frideswide, St, 181, 182n Frugardi, Roger, 80, 90, 94, 95 Gaddesden, John of, 93-94 Gager, William, 211 Galbraith, David, 23 Galen, 24, 27, 226, 228, 230, 233, 235, 238, 240 Gamer, Helena M., 119 Garber, Marjorie, 217 Garcie, Pierre, 39 Gariopontus, 68 Garland, John of, 56 Gasse, Rosanne, 112n, 120 Geary, Patrick, 157, 168 Geller, M. J., 67 Genette, Gérard, 36, 44 Geoffrey of Coldingham, 177n Getz, Faye Marie, 94, 120 Ghose, Indira, 12, 15 Gilbertus Anglicus, 189 Gilchrist, Roberta, 162n Gilman, Sander, 216 Godric, St, 171-175, 175n, 178, 182, 182n Gombás, Judit, 187n Gordonius, Bernardus, 135 Gosson, Stephen, 207-208, 212, 214, 216, 218 Gower, John, 15, 117-130 Gowing, Laura, 132 Grabes, Herbert, 39, 42 Green, Monica H., 103-106, 106n, 109, 110n, 111n, 189- 190, 196, 203 Green, Rosalie B., 190 Greenblatt, Stephen, 209, 216n, 226n, Greenborough, John of, 94 Grisé, C. Annette, 158, 166, 167n, Grünpeck, Joseph, 132n Guazzo, Stefano, 29 Gurr, Andrew, 214, 226n Guthred, King of Northumbria, 174 Hackeborn, Mechtild of, 14, 157-170 Hale, David George, 226n Hall, Alaric, 69 Hall, John, 234 Hallaert, M.-R., 189 Halligan, Theresa A., 158n, 162n Hamilton, A. C., 134-135 Hanson, Ann Ellis, 104 Hargreaves, Henry, 92n Harris, Jonathan Gil, 225 Hartigan, Karelisa, 211 Harvey, William, 20 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 39 <?page no="254"?> 254 Index of Names Healy, Margaret, 134, 138n, 139n, 210, 225, 227-228, 237 Henry III, 24 Henry, Duke of Lancaster, 160 Henslow, George, 92 Herbert McAvoy, Liz, 158n, 164 Heytesbury, William, 61 Hill, Carole, 164, 166 Hillman, David, 136 Hilton, Walter, 107 Hippocrates, 68-69, 230-233 Hobbes, Thomas, 23-24 Hoby, Lady Margaret, 229 Hodgkin, Katharine, 146 Horace, 23 Horden, Peregrine, 159n Hout, Jan van, 42 Howard, Charles, 38 Howard, Jean E., 216n Hugh of St Victor, 82 Humphreys, A. R., 224 Hunt, Tony, 13 Hutcheson, Francis, 24 Hutson, Lorna, 225n Hutten, Ulrich von, 137-138 Hyginus, 104, 104n Ingham, Richard, 95 Innes-Parker, Catherine, 158n Isidore of Seville, 83 Jaager, Werner, 172 Jacobus de Voragine, 190 Johannicius, 233 John of Ford, 178n John of Saint Paul (Johannes de Sancto Paulo), 105, 106, 110 Jonson, Ben, 13, 23 Joubert, Laurent, 12, 15, 19-31 Judith, wife of Earl Tostig of Northumberland, 179 Kalas, Rayna, 35, 38 Karáth, Tamás, 16 Kempe, Margery, 188 Ker, Neil Ripley, 68 Kilvington, Richard, 61 King, Pamela, 195, 195n Kinzel, Ulrich, 40 Klein, Bernhard, 41, 45n Knuuttila, Simo, 121-122 Koeman, Cornelis, 42 Kurtz, Patricia, 80 Laing, Margaret, 82 Lake, Peter, 209, 218 Lanfrank of Milan, 125 Langum, Virginia 15 Le Goff, Jacques, 56, 161 Lee, Nathaniel, 143 Lemay, Helen Rodnite, 190 Lemnius, Levinus, 135 Levine, Laura, 216n Lewis, 57, 59 Licence, Tom, 172n, 182n Linacre, Thomas, 233 Love, Nicholas, 190 Lumiansky, R. M., 197-198 Lupset, Thomas, 227-228 MacKinney, Loren, 189, 196 Madius (Vincenzo Maggi), 22- 23 Mannyng, Robert, 107 Marcellinus, St, 172 Marlowe, Christopher, 131 Maslen, R. W., 230n Mayer, Thomas F., 228 McMurray Gibson, Gail, 199- 201 McNamer, Sarah, 164n McNeill, John T., 119 Medici, Catherine de, 24 Mentz, Steve, 34-35, 38, 41, 44, 45n Mercator, 42 Meyer, P., 82n <?page no="255"?> Index of Names 255 Millett, Bella, 159n Mills, David, 197-198 Mirandola, Pico della, 24 Mirfield, John of, 94 Mirk, John, 188 Mondeville, 95 Montrose, Louis, 209, 216, 216n Mooney, Linne R., 110n Mowbray, Robert, Earl of Northumberland, 174 Munday, Anthony, 208, 210, 215, 217-218 Nancel, Nicolas, 22 Newton, Thomas, 135 Nilson, Benjamin J., 176, 181n Nokes, James, 152 Norman, Robert, 37-38 Northbrooke, John, 208-209, 211, 213-214, 216, 218 O’Connell, Michael, 218 Onalafbald, 174 Osborn, Marijane, 50, 56 Oschinsky, Dorothea, 84 Ovid, 37 Owen, Charles A., 34-35 Paracelsus, 132, 138 Paul, St, 136, 209 Paul, Abbot of St Albans, 174 Pecock, Reginald, 122, 124, 126 Pegasus, 50 Pelteret, David A. E., 82 Pepys, Samuel, 144, 151, 151n, Peters, Jeffrey N., 42 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 136 Pettit, Edward, 68-69 Pickering, O. S., 188 Plantin, Christophe, 38 Platearius, 95 Plato, 22, 26, 149 Pliny, 233 Pole, Cardinal, 227-228, 240 Poole, Kristen, 225n Powell, Susan, 190 Proclus, 25 Proteus, 45 Prouville, Jean de, 80 Prynne, William, 213-214, 216, 218-220 Pseudo-Isidore, 82 Quarles, Francis, 138n, 139n Quilligan, Maureen, 136 Quintilian, 21 Ragusa, Isa, 190 Rainolds, John, 208, 211, 216- 219 Rawcliffe, Carole, 126, 159n, 161, 163, 166 Rector, G., 88n Reginald of Durham, 174-175, 175n, 177, 177n, 178n, 179, 182n Richards, Jennifer, 16-17 Riss, Arthur, 226-227 Robinson, J. W., 193 Rocher, Gregory David de, 20n Rosenfeld, Jessica, 126 Rowland, Beryl, 101, 189-190 Rubin, Miri, 159n Rubin, Stanley, 68 Ryan, Denise, 190-191, 194, 198-200 Salmon, William, 145 Sansonetti, Laetitia, 15 Sargent, Michael G., 190 Schoenfeldt, Michael, 27, 132n Screech, M. A., 20-21 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 150n Shaftesbury, 24 Shakespeare, William, 13, 17, 22, 35, 131, 132n, 213n, 223-243 Shaw, Judith, 119 <?page no="256"?> 256 Index of Names Shell, Alison, 215 Shrank, Cathy, 233 Sidney, Sir Philip, 23 Skeat, Walter W., 51, 56 Skinner, Quentin, 20, 22n, 23 Smith, Helen, 36 Socrates, 22, 149n Soranus of Ephesus, 187 Spenser, Edmund, 15, 131-142 Spiller, Elizabeth, 41 Starkey, Thomas, 223, 227 Staykova, Julia, 16-17 Stern, Paul, 44 Stokes, Maria, 74 Strode, Ralph, 61, 63 Stubbes, Philip, 208, 215, 217 Susanna (Shakespeare’s daughter), 234 Swineshead, Roger, 61 Symeon of Durham, 173-174, 179, 181, 182n, Talbot, C. H., 68 Tanner, Norman P., 163n Tentler, Thomas N., 107n Tertullian, 212 Thorpe, Benjamin, 71-72 Toller, T. Northcote, 74 Towler, Jean, 194 Travis, Peter, 62 Treharne, Elaine, 82 Trotter, David, 83 Tryon, Thomas, 153 Tudor, Victoria, 175n, 177n, 179n, 180n, 181 Turner, William, 138 Turnor, Sir Edward, 144 Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 81 Valois, Marguerite de, 24 Vaughan, William, 135 Verca, Abbess from South Shields, 180n Vesalius, 24 Villa Dei, Alexander of, 84n Vives, Juan Luis, 28 Voaden, Rosalynn, 158, 161n, 164n, 166, 166n, 167n Voigts, Linda E., 80 Wack, Mary, 119 Waghenaer, Lucas Janszoon, 11, 33-47 Walter, Katie, 112n Wartburg, V. von, 82 Waters, David W., 34 Webster, Charles, 132 Wenzel, Siegfried, 119 Werburge, St, 181 White, Hugh, 126 Whitehead, Christiania, 13-14, 158n William I., 174 Wilson, Louise, 36 Wilson, Thomas, 22 Windeatt, Barry, 188 Withington, Phil, 231 Wootton, David, 228-229 Wulfric of Haselbury, 178n Wycliffe, John, 121 Yarrow, Simon, 176 Yoshikawa, Naoë Kukita, 13-14 Young, Karl, 194 Závoti, Susan, 13 Ziegler, Joseph, 118, 120, 125 <?page no="257"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 28 This inter-disciplinary volume investigates the contiguities and connections that existed between poetic and scientific ways of knowing in the medieval and early modern periods. The aesthetic aspects of medical texts are analysed, alongside the medical expertise articulated in literary texts. Substantial common ground is discovered in the devotional, medical, and literary discourses pertaining to health and disease in these two periods. Medieval and early modern theatres are shown to have staged matter pertaining to contemporary science, provoking and challenging scientific claims to authority, as well as political ones. Finally, the volume demonstrates how certain branches of learning, for example, marine navigation and time-measurement, were represented as forms of both art and science.
