2025

Whether Trump wins or is stopped this year will forever be considered a turning point in American history.

Do you know the Cairo Geniza? Let's have some positive content in this blog

I thought I knew about the Cairo Geniza but I have had my eyes opened to the richness of this amazing collection of medieval writings by the book The Illustrated Cairo Genizah > by Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee. https://www.academia.edu/124354176/The_Illustrated_Cairo_Genizah?

What is the Cairo Geniza? Why is it important?

The authors explain:

Almost one thousand years ago, the Jews of Old Cairo began to place their worn-out books and scrolls into a hidden storage room – a genizah – of their synagogue. Over the years, they added all sorts of writings to the pile, sacred and secular texts alike. When the chamber was emptied at the end of the 19th century, it held hundreds of thousands of paper and parchment fragments. Now known as the ‘Cairo Genizah’, it has become one of the most important sources of knowledge for the history of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. This book offers the first illustrated introduction to the unique collections of Cairo Genizah manuscripts at Cambridge University Library. Join Genizah experts Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee as they take you on a journey of discovery through more than 125 years of research at the University of Cambridge, showcasing over 300 stunning, full-colour manuscript images across 12 thematic chapters. From ancient Bibles to medieval magic and Renaissance printing presses, 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' reveals the forgotten stories of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities at the centre of a millennium of world history.

They have posted a free sample at Academic.edu. > Have a look. You may be stunned, like I was.<p></b>

This project says a lot about the positive potential of the human spirit. Nice to have such a reminder. Such as:

This is one result of an amazing multi-generational scholarly project that's been going on since the 19th century. This should remind us that there are an uncountable number of similar projects out there, mostly the product of people who, given their expertise, are paid very little and receive the appropriate appreciation only in a limited circle -- if even there. If it weren't for Academia.edu and Medievalists.net you might not have heard of this one.

Academics are getting smarter. Lots of them now realize that "ordinary people" are a big audience for their work, if it's appropriately packaged and priced. The genius scholars and publishers have managed to price this book at $60 US. Compare this to other academic books with less demanding technical and personnell requirements published in PDF versions at $120.

We hear a lot about the evils of too few rich people trying to control the half of global wealth they don't already control. This is a very bad, even evil situation. But there have been good things accomplished by rich people, even people who might be considered evil in general and acting from dubious motives when they did something worthwhile. For instance Andrew Carnegie didn't make his name as a great philanthropist, but he built a lot of public libraries, which I and my neighbors have benefitted from for many years.

A final point inspired by this book, though I've had it before. Egypt is an important and creative country which should be known for more than their early expertise in piling stone blocks --though they were awfully good at that. When the Crusaders showed up in Egypt in the 13th century, they were hicks from the sticks (even though the Europeans had gotten pretty good at handling stone blocks by then). And in general, imagine what we might know if other cultures had a custom like the Genizah.

Go, have a look. You'll thank me.

Rewriting history

I am tempted to say that Pope Francis' repudiation of the doctrine of discovery is a rewriting of ALL of history; let's just say he has opened the door to a tremendous rewriting of history, ESPECIALLY world history. The repudiation is a data point of great importance, whatever you think of its substance, which will have to be taken into account in any large-scale history. Some people I know and respect will scoff and probably say something about revisionist history. To which I have to respond, What do historians do if not revise our understanding of history?

A good summary of Walter Goffart's contribution to the history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

I was Walter Goffart's student and believe me it was a challenging experience. I learned a tremendous amount from informal discussions in his office and from his comments in the margins of drafts of my thesis. I found a good summary of some of his work on a bookseller's site and I put it here for the benefit of readers who might be interested in a period that fascinated him and me.

The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary Germans pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight. Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and Romans, Walter Goffart dismantles this grand narrative, shaking the barbarians of late antiquity out of this Germanic setting and reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire. The Empire was not swamped by a migratory Germanic flood for the simple reason that there was no single ancient Germanic civilization to be transplanted onto ex-Roman soil. Since the sixteenth century, the belief that purposeful Germans existed in parallel with the Romans has been a fixed point in European history.

Goffart uncovers the origins of this historical untruth and argues that any projection of a modern Germany out of an ancient one is illusory. Rather, the multiplicity of northern peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity. Most relevant among these was the long militarization that gripped late Roman society concurrently with its Christianization. If the fragmented foreign peoples with which the Empire dealt gave Rome an advantage in maintaining its ascendancy, the readiness to admit military talents of any social origin to positions of leadership opened the door of imperial service to immigrants from beyond its frontiers. Many barbarians were settled in the provinces without dislodging the Roman residents or destabilizing landownership; some were even incorporated into the ruling families of the Empire. The outcome of this process, Goffart argues, was a society headed by elites of soldiers and Christian clergy--one we have come to call medieval.

(Queen Invisible)

 I've been following the death of the Queen fairly closely, somewhat to my own surprise.  I shouldn't have been. I'm a historian with an interest in the celebration of power..I have been fascinated by the efforts of commentators to put Elizabeth in historical perspective.  And what have they been saying?

Next to nothing!

Well, more specifically (my own summary, not entirely fair):

• Elizabeth was the longest reigning monarch ever 
• None of us can remember when she wasn't Queen (actually an interesting point)
• She was Head of the world-wide Commonwealth (which people aren't entirely unhappy with)

What struck me first was the total absence of comparisons to (Queen Invisible).(Queen Invisible) is such an obvious comparison point. 

• She sat on the same throne as Elizabeth did.  
•  Her reign was very close to being as long as Elizabeth's. 
•  She was also head of a world-wide organization, though it had a different name 

I only have only heard one commentator refer to the most obvious point:  If you bundle the last few years of her father's reign with Elizabeth's, you see the disappearance of the (world wide organization which (Queen Invisible) was head of , which we will not name.)

Now I can see that in the celebration of  a monarch's life you might not want to discuss at length such an embarrassing  fact.  But the complete disappearance of (Queen Invisible)'s very name! A woman whose very name is stamped on every continent, on islands, waterfalls, provinces, major cities, and country crossroads.  (Queen Invisible) is gone because she is a background for everything.

A whole era was named after (Queen Invisible) in recognition of her symbolic place in world culture.  Will there be a Second Elizabethan era? a Carolean era? Ah, here I may surprise you by plumping for EII.  People my age woke up one day (1973) to find that  the clunky old furniture that their parents hid in the attic were now valuable antiques.  Other things were already named after (Queen Invisible), who receded farther into the past. needed a symbol for the new historical awareness they gained.  Elizabeth filled the bill. She was after all old enough to be an historical figure based on the idealized Great-Grandmother. In the near term, this excludes the more controversial public record of  Elizabeth as an institution.  

Image:  > Who is this woman? 

 

What I thought everybody knew -- Man has baby

Today on CBC Radio's comedy show "The Debaters" was in Calgary, and much of the debate was on the desirability of building a new arena.  Big issue in that city.

One question thrown out to one of the debaters was to finish a famous quote by Montreal mayor Jean
Drapeau in his promotion of the 1972 Olympics:

"The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby."

Of course the Montreal Olympics lost millions.  And just about everyone quoted Drapeau if they had any motivation to oppose a sports boondogle.

I was surprised, then, that the Calgary crowd didn't react at all.

Of course, these were Albertans being indifferent to Quebec; and I think the Debaters appeals to a younger crowd; and by no means do I count as young.

But it is another lesson in the dangers of assuming you know that "everybody" knows what you know, even recent historical events.

Heroic female historians in old Korea

I'm just now watching an entertaining Korean mini-series on Netflix, Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung.  It is not exactly easy to follow, but not hopelessly obscure, either.

Goo Hae-Ryung is a young noblewoman sometime in the early modern period (at a guess). She loves literature, Korean, Chinese and European.  She may also be Maehwa, the author of the latest fad in Korean romance novels. Or maybe it's the young prince second in line to the throne who is Maewha.
The Korean state at this time works like the Chinese system.  Applicants for government jobs study classic literature and write exams based on that material.  The highly-educated office holders look down on the material written in Korean alphabets, on Korean novels, and on the people who read them.  Goo Hae-Ryung is a promoter of popular literature.  Lots of teenage girls are crazy for romances and when they hear that Maehwa is going to sign copies of his/her most recent book they practically riot.
The royal councillors decide to repress this "movement" by recruiting female historians OR forbidding the recruiting of female historians.  The King, who has been the target of bureaucratic criticism, takes the opportunity to open history offices to young women...Of course the male historians resist...

I am liking this series for its cinematography and the humorous depiction of character.  The music's good, too, which you might expect at a time when South Korea is strutting on the world music stage.

If you by chance run into me in person, I'll tell you both my Korean bureacrats' story and my Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) story.

Matt Gabriele, Peter Burke and Historians as Remembrancers

𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕓𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕝𝕖Verified account @prof_gabriele

one of my favorite #twitterstorians quotations. from Peter Burke "History as Social Memory"

Narrative history no good?

The Verge publishes an interview in which the philosopher-neuroscientist-historian Alex Rosenberg argues that the narratives out of which we build our underdtanding of other peopple's motives are entirely inadequate to the job. An excerpt:

The real imperative of my book is to try to get people to see that neuroscience has, in the last 20 years, begun to teach us about the nature of the brain and its relation to the mind and, of course, how this undermines theory of mind [the ability to guess other people’s thoughts and motivations]. There have been startling developments that have won Nobel Prizes and begun to answer the most profound questions people have been asking about human thought as far back as Aristotle and Descartes: how the brain could be the mind, exactly what it is about the machinery of neural circuitry that constitutes thought and cognition. If you pay attention to research and developments in these areas, you discover the way the brain actually realizes the cognitive properties that govern human experience is nothing like what consciousness tells us it is.

[Interviewer Angela Chen]

Before we get into the neuroscience part, how exactly does history get things wrong? And why do you find narrative so unconvincing?

           [Neuroscientist-historian Alex Rosenberg]

I myself am the victim of narrative. I love narrative. It’s the only thing I read, and it’s fantastically seductive. When I say “narrative,” I don’t mean a chronology of events; I mean stories with plots, connected by motivations, by people’s beliefs and desires, their plans, intentions, values. There’s a story. The problem is, these historical narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand what’s going on and why things happened, but most of it is guessing people’s motives and their inner thoughts. It allays your curiosity, and you’re satisfied psychologically by the narrative, and it connects the dots so you feel you’re in the shoes of the person whose narrative is being recorded. It has seduced you into a false account, and now you think you understand.

Rosenberg's ideas are treated at length in his book, How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories, just out from MIT Press.

Image Herodotus, Father of History, Father of Lies. This is not what he really looked like, but what do you expect?

Be proud, heralds!

Or maybe this is just a bit over the top.

I am translating a fifteenth-century set of treatises by a man who went under the title Sicily Herald.  He was big on the historic foundations of heraldry and armory.  This morning I was looking at his account of the history of heraldry and read this:

Concerning the seven ages of the world in which are comprised the commencement, the middle and the end of the noble office of arms,

Don't blush!

Josh Marshall's excellent Christmas book list

Image:  Chris Wickham, one of the excellent historians listed here.



Josh Marshall is the editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo, my favorite source for news out of Washington, DC.  I think he is pretty smart and judicious.  Marshall, it seems, was trained as a historian, and I think it shows.

When not writing or managing, Marshal reads history.  He has made available some of the best histories he's read recently, and his list shows remarkable good taste.  I'm including most of that post  here.

Enjoy!

The cauldron and promise of Eastern Europe.

* The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
* The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999

As I noted, I’m generally not interested in reading about contemporary history. And things from the last 100 years I generally see as contemporary history. But I’ve been interested lately in the recent history of Eastern Europe and the aftermath of World War I. These are two very different but related books. Vanquished is about the aftermath of World War I in the East – the relevant point being that the war really didn’t end in the East until the early 1920s. In many respects there were continuing cycles of brutalizing violence in the East that continued – with only a relatively brief interruption in the late 1920s – right through into World War I. This is critical to understanding the origins of fascisms and all the subsequent history of the continent. An engrossing, really important read.

The Reconstruction of Nations goes back into the Early Modern period. It’s largely a history of and a paean to a certain strain of cosmopolitan, multi-national Polish history. I have a general knowledge of the very different path to the formation of nation-states in Eastern Europe versus Western Europe. This book helped me understand that history at a much, much deeper level. It also greatly deepened my understanding and perspective on the current struggle between nationalism and multinationalism which is roiling Europe and in many respects the entire globe. These are both books I highly, highly recommend. (I also did a podcast interview with the author of Reconstruction of Nations.)

Pre-History

* By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia
* Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
* The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

History from one certain understanding begins with writing. Writing is when most of the things that historians use to understand the past come into view, when some of them even come into existence. But of course the human past did not begin with writing. Writing is a fairly recent development and in some parts of the world it’s extremely recent. Indeed, writing itself, certainly in its literary permutation, is often less reliable that modern archeology, at least on the things archeology lets us see clearly. These are three books that look at the distant past, often spanning thousands of years, mainly before the advent of writing. By Steppe, Desert and Ocean is simply the last 10,000 years of Eurasian history, the vast and surprisingly integrated stretch of land from the Pacific coast of China to Spain – where did human civilizations first develop over this expanse, how did they came into contact with each other, what were the key drivers of change. Excellent book.

Pathfinders covers some of the same territory but from a different vantage point. We tend to think of the history of exploration as the history of largely Western Europeans traveling to the Americas, Africa and Asia starting in the 1400s. There’s a whole complex and political debate about whether this counts as discovery versus conquest. But set that all aside. People have been traveling and settling new places for thousands, even tens of thousands of years, starting from the initial migrations out of Africa and culminating in the island explorers who spread out from southeast Asia to populate most of the islands of the Pacific. Basically, how did humans go from an origination point in one part of Africa to populate almost the entire globe, all long before the history of any kind of writing. Almost all long before Western European exploration. That’s this book. Fascinating read.

The last of these three is one of the densest books I’ve read in a very long time but also one of the most transformative in my understanding of numerous topics. It’s so dense that I would recommend reading it even if you read only the first half and then find it simply too tough going after the first half. (That’s what happened to me the first time. Then months later I went back to try to tackle the second half.) Because to me it went from being very dense and complex to almost impenetrable. That probably doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation. But, a transformative learning experience about the history of language, archeology, history and much more.

About half the world speaks an Indo-European language. It’s by far the biggest language family. That is largely because the ancestor language “proto-Indo-European” is the ancestor language of major languages in India, Iran and most of Europe. From Europe, English and Spanish came to dominate the Western Hemisphere. That’s a lot of people. But where and when did this language come from and how do we prove it? The premise of this book is that the speakers of this original language began in the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, which is to say modern southern Ukraine and southern Russia with Romania, Moldova and a few other countries in the mix. I don’t even know where to begin in explaining the book. But that’s what it’s about. It’s not an easy read but I found it a deeply fascinating and transformative one.

Rome

* SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
* The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine (History of the Ancient World)
* The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe)

Here are three books on Rome. We begin with the city itself in its republican period and end up with the civilization of Rome in which the city of Rome itself had become a peripheral part. SPQR is a new treatment of the whole civilization from one of our leading contemporary historians of Roman history. A very good read. The Triumph of Empire is a new look, a new interpretation of what we once called the early decline of the Romand Empire. That is what we might call the long 3rd century that takes us from high imperial years of the Antonine emperors – Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius – to the the breakdown of the third century and reconstitution of the empire under Diocletian and Constantine. I found it a very interesting discussion and history of just why this happened, the mix of successional breakdown, invasions, the rise of a new, more aggressive dynasty/state in Iran, the changing structure and personnel of the empire beginning in the early third century which anticipated the very different composition of the imperial government starting in the 4th century. If you’re interested in this period, I found it an illuminating, interesting read.

Finally, Chris Wickham’s book on the Late Antique period and the ‘Dark Ages’. The concept of a ‘dark ages’ has been under assault by historians for decades. From another perspective, it has progressively had its historiography colonized by historians from the classical period. All of these histories are – broadly speaking – efforts to understand this period on its own terms rather than just a long period when everything went to shit between the Classical era and the Renaissance or at least during the High Middle Ages. Wickham looks at the period as parts of an evolution from the classical world, still deeply formed by many of its basic assumptions. He is also attempting to push off efforts to look at this period as the proto-history of modern states. So looking at the societies and states or quasi-states of 8th and 9th century Gaul isn’t a way to understand the deeper history or origination of … say, modern France with all its nationalist mythologies. As with all these histories, modern archeology is making itself felt at the expense of the literary record which was always incomplete and wanting. Anyway, another really illuminating and pleasurable read, like every book I’ve read by this author.

St. Catherine's monastery delivers again

At the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt there is a very ancient monastery, St. Catherine's, which may have been patronized by Constantine's mother Helena and was apparently built by the emperor Justinian.  The monastery is best known for its collection of manuscripts, which include some of the most important sources for the text of the Bible.

The most famous manuscripts from St. C's were discovered and studied in the 19th century, while other mss (=manuscripts) were found in caves in the 20th.  Now scholars are using advanced technology to read the original texts of reused mss. The Independent explains:

Monks originally wrote their texts down on parchments which were later scrubbed off and used to write the Bible by future generations who spoke more modern languages. But a new technique developed by researchers allows them to see the original text hidden from the naked eye in a development hailed as a “new golden age of discovery”.
Researchers took photographs of the material using different parts of the light spectrum and put the electronic images through a computer algorithm.
The method allows them to see the first writing laid down on the parchments, which at the time were highly valuable; before they were re-used in later years.

The scholars seem to be most excited by finding writings in obscure  or dead languages, like the one spoken in Caucasian Albania (not the same as the Albania next to Greece).  But I find this mindblowing:

“I don’t know of any library in the world that parallels it,” said Mr Phelps [from the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library in California]. “The monastery is an institution from the Roman Empire that continues operating according to its original mission.”

Image: By Berthold Werner - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12215773

Great Events in Religion, edited by Florin Curta and Andrew Holt

A while back I was recruited by Andrew Holt to write some articles for an encyclopedia of the history of religion.  I took him up on it, even though he was asking for articles not particularly close to my current research interests.  It was an interesting challenge.

Just a couple of hours ago my contributor's copy came to my door.  I hadn't thought about the encyclopedia for quite a while, even though Andrew and I correspond fairly frequently, and as a result it was a bit of a shock to see the finished work.


Part of the surprise was the sheer size of the thing, which is a three-volume work.  I shouldn't be surprised, of course, because it is after all aiming at describing a whole important aspect of human existence.  There are, however, plenty of things calling themselves encyclopedias that have huge holes in their coverage.  Now I'm not sure yet that Great Events covers everything that I might think it should cover -- remember I've had it for two hours or so -- but it does have an awful lot of stuff.

Likewise I did know, somewhere in my fallible memory, that it was going to be "an Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History," but perhaps I hadn't really thought about what that might mean. What it does mean is that all religious history is treated in chronological order, which gives the whole thing a comparative history emphasis.  For me, that's a big plus. I am tempted to just sit down and read it through and see what I learn.  (I am unlikely to be able to do that.)

I have to admit that I have always been skeptical of the usefulness of  encyclopedias -- something I share with many historians -- but there is a chance that this one might be useful. The rare reader who has the time and access to the whole thing may get a much fuller view of world history than I did l when I  read Arnold Toynbee's A Study in History in my high school library.

I am genuinely pleased to see this.  As to how well it succeeds, I will get back to you.

Contest:   I am not sure this will have a prize, and it has as much intellectual content as clickbait promising to show you how the stars of some shows in the 70s look today.  In other words, you will be guessing.  Guess what three pivotal events I wrote up for Great Events.  To narrow the field a tiny bit, I wrote nothing on chivalry or the crusades.  Do it for laughs.

Objectivity and the teaching historian

Andrew Holt of Florida State College at Jacksonville recently asked some medieval historians (he is one himself) to comment on the possiblity of "objectivity" in the teaching of history. I was one of them. Here are the answers he received.
Objectivity and and the classroom: ten historians respond.
There are no big surprises, but the similarity of views here might be of interest to non-academic readers.

Who reads this stuff?

Back in the mid-1980s, I spun an article off my dissertation, The Fifth-century Chroniclers. The article was entitled "Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon: Was There An Edition of 443?" and was a brief discussion about...whether the 5th-century chronicler Prosper wrote an edition in A.D. 443! (As you may have guessed!) It could be taken as a fine example of scholarly nit-pickery, but it was worth doing because close scrutiny of ancient and medieval sources is and has been one of the methods we reconstruct the distant past. I thought it might help some readers somewhere while assuring potential employers that I was still at work.
But how many such readers could there be?
Well, this week I got a note from the Academia.edu site telling me that a Russian scholar was interested in having a look at the old article. I brushed it off and sent it off to the site. She saw it and thanked me.
Two days later the site has recorded 27!!!views. Good grief!
If any of you readers is really interested in the historiography of the Later Roman Empire and the origins of the medieval Latin chronicle tradition, the book version of The Fifth-century Chroniclers is still in print.
But if you are just vaguely curious about the answer to the question in the article's title: I said, probably not.
Image below: Somebody else's book on Prosper.

Guy Halsall: think with history, act in the present.

Guy Halsall sings, "You better free your mind instead!"

The point is this: HfB [Historians for Britain] and its opponents share exactly the same, entirely conventional approach to the ‘relevance’ of history to current political debate; in other words, to ‘why history matters’. That relevance, as is clear from any close reading of almost all of the contributions to the exchange, consists entirely in the deployment of historical ‘fact’. I find this, to be blunt, more than a tad wearisome. [The involvement of historians in the referendum on Scottish separatism took exactly the same tedious form.] What seems largely to be at stake is who can assemble the biggest pile of facts. This is not going to make much of a difference, let alone decisively carry the day, either way. By way of demonstration, and if you can bear it, just read ‘below the line’ on the on-line version of the ‘Fog in the Channel…’ piece. To quote the (in my estimation) criminally underrated Andrew Roachford, ‘I don’t want to argue over who is wrong and who is right’.

Let me row back from the extreme position that might be inherent in that statement. First, it is very important to deploy historical fact to counter misleading public presentations of what ‘history shows us’. This was another reason I signed up to the ‘Fog in the Channel…’ letter. There were some seriously dubious elements in Abulafia’s piece ... However, as I have said too many times to count, history (as opposed to chronicling or antiquarianism) is the process of thinking, interpretation, explanation and critique, carried out on the basis of those facts, it does not stop at the latter's simple accumulation (most historical 'facts' are, to me, not especially interesting in and of themselves: this happened; that did not happen – factual accuracy is a duty not a virtue).

More seriously, both sides essentially see the course of history (as established by these facts) as providing a set of tramlines governing the proper path we should take in future. This removes any kind of emancipatory potential from the study of history. Put another way, and to restate the counter-factual posited earlier, suppose you agreed with Abulafia (and after all he’s not wrong about everything) that Britain’s history was, fundamentally, profoundly different from that of mainland Europe and had run a quite separate course (there is a case that could be put to support that contention that would have to be taken seriously, even if it is not the one put forward by HfB). But suppose that, unlike him, you thought that this had been a terrible thing and thought that Britain needed to incorporate itself more fully in Europe. Or suppose that you thought that the authors of ‘Fog in the Channel…’ were fundamentally right that Britain’s history was entirely entwined with that of the mainland but that you thought that this was wholly regrettable. In still other words, suppose that – like me – you thought that the course of the past had no force and provided no secure or reliable guide at all to what ought to be done in future.

So, what would one be able to contribute to a debate on these (or other) issues if one held a (superficially) seemingly nihilistic view, like mine, of history as random, chaotic, ironic, and unpredictable, and of the past as having no ability in and of itself to compel anyone to do anything? What, so to speak, would be the point of history? Why would it matter?

In his excellent blog-post – in my view, the best intervention in this discussion by some way (impressive not least for its concision) – Martial Staub draws attention to the discontinuities of history that subvert any attempt at a unified narrative or quest for origins. This seems to me to point us at a much more valuable and sophisticated means by which the study of history (rather than ‘History’ itself, that somehow mystic object, or objective force) can make a political contribution. Every dot that is later joined up to make a historical narrative represents a point of decision, of potential or, if you prefer, of freedom, where something quite different could have happened. To understand any of these decisions, as again I have said many times before, it is necessary to look at what people were trying to do, at what the options open to them were, or those they thought were open to them, what they knew – in short at all the things that didn’t happen, which frequently include the intended outcomes. You cannot simply explain them as steps on a pre-ordained path towards a later result, or as the natural outcomes of the preceding events. Any present moment of political decision represents the same thing: a point of choice, of decision, which requires serious thought. It should not be closed down by the idea that some 'burden of history' or other compels us to go one way rather than another. Those decision points that I just called the dots joined up to make a story were, at their time, points of freedom when any number of things were possible. The unpicking of narrative constructions makes this very clear and that – in my view – is the point that emerges from historical study.

This lesson, for want of a better word (I mistrust ‘lessons from history’), points at a string of possible subversions. Staub points out the subversion of the ‘national’ story but at the same time it subverts any similar ‘European’ master narrative. Britain can be said to have had a history different from that of other European countries – true enough - but to no greater extent than any other region of Europe has a history different from the others. It may be true that at some points British history seemed to run on a course that bucked European trends, but exactly the same can be said of, for example, Italian or Spanish history at various points. What is Europe anyway? Is it any more natural a unit of analysis than any other? In the Roman period, the idea of thinking of the north of Africa as somehow a different area from the northern shore of the Mediterranean would be very odd. Indeed the Mediterranean basin can be seen as a unified area of historical analysis (who, after all, knows that better than David Abulafia?), rather than as different continents divided by a sea – perhaps one with different histories from northern Europe or the North Sea cultural zone (which obviously includes Britain). All of these points also contribute to a historical critique and dismantling of the idea of the nation (any nation) itself, not simply the national story (see also here). All historical narratives are constructs so (unless one is based upon the misuse or fabrication of evidence, or not staying true to the basic 'facts' of what did or did not happen) one cannot be claimed to be more accurate than another. No one can win an argument on that basis. The best that can happen (and it is important) is the demonstration that there is more than one story to be told.

Above all, what I find to be one of the most important contributions that historical study can make, in terms of social/political engagement, is the subversion of all reifications, of all attempts to render contingent categorisations as natural. And of course it similarly subverts claims to represent contingent oppositions as eternal or natural.

All these subversions arise from what I have repeatedly argued on this blog are historical study’s most important benefits: the critique of what one is presented with, as evidence, and the simultaneous requirement to see similarity – shared human experience – in difference and diversity, or to listen to and understand that evidence).

So I would contend that the view of history sketched above is very much not a disabling, nihilistic one but quite the opposite. The careful, sympathetic yet critical investigation of the traces of the past, the deconstruction of narrative, nation and so on, can and should free us from the burdens that people want to impose on us in the name of history. The appreciation of the once possible but now impossible potentials at the decision-points of the past can and should allow us to think twice about what people tell us are now impossibilities and open our minds to the potentials and possibilities of the present.

If you want a catchphrase, try this: think with history, act in the present.

Griping about the word medieval

This past week I was in Kalamazoo Michigan for the International Congress for Medieval Studies. It was the 50th such Congress at Western Michigan University, and a certain number of sessions were devoted to looking back over the past half-century or so.

Sure enough, some of those sessions (which I should point out were very good and interesting) included a lot of griping and grouching about the misuse and ambiguity of the word medieval. You would think that a bunch of scholars who by their very nature of their discipline are experts in the evolution of the meaning of words would by now have gotten over the fact that though it doesn’t make a lot of sense to call “the Middle Ages” by that term, and that coming up with a really good, chronological definition of those ages is impossible, we are stuck with the words medieval and Middle Ages anyway. But no, there is a lingering feeling that it should be possible to nail down these terms – Middle Ages, medieval – once and for all. Or ditch them. If all the experts agreed, everybody else would have to fall into line – right?

You know that’s not going to happen.

Scholars of the Middle Ages, like experts in any other field, feel they should be in control of the terminology that defines their work and gives them legitimacy. But the truth is that any important subject is contested between a whole bunch of different individuals and groups who have an interest in that field. A single word – medieval – is shattered into a variety of definitions, many of which are out of date – at least in the eyes of people working on the cutting edge of, say, “medieval studies.” Old assumptions and terms and generalizations which current practitioners have rejected hang on in popular and nonspecialist discussions.

This can be intensely irritating for people who know that certain phrases and analyses lost their cogency back in 1927 and want to talk about what their friends are doing in the field now. Nevertheless people whose business is words should really accept the fact that words like “medieval” have a number of popular meanings, and when one of them shows up in current discussion (when, for instance, a Game of Thrones shows up and is widely labelled as medieval, even though the world of Game of Thrones is not our earth at all), the fact can be dealt with a good-humored way. It certainly would reflect credit on any field where a good-humored approach was the norm.

David Parry made the most sensible remark of the entire week when he pointed out that an imprecise word like medieval has a lot of cultural value for people who make their living interpreting that era. Indeed there is a financial payoff being associated with it. As he said, “the word makes students registering for courses press the button on the screen that says ‘enroll.’ The phrase ‘early modern’ doesn’t have that effect. ”

Antoine de la Sale, Jean de Saintré. My review of a new translation

From The Medieval Review

De la Sale, Antoine. Jean de Saintré: A Late Medieval Education in Love and Chivalry. Trans. Roberta L. Krueger and Jane H. M. Taylor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Pp. 264. $59.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4586-8.

Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger

Nipissing University

stevem@nipissingu.ca

Translations are sometimes seen as a lesser form of scholarly endeavor. This is to my mind quite unfair. Medievalists should be among the first to acknowledge that we all bump up against our linguistic limitations and have to turn to translations for help. Translations allow us medievalists to decide, after mastering four or five languages, whether material in a sixth is going to be relevant to our research question. Of course without translations we would have no way of introducing our students to the evidence on which we build our historical reconstructions. The best translations are running commentaries on some historical subject, which provide far more than a literal representation of the original text. The best translators are expert guides to whole past cultures. Finally, translators are literary artists who (in perhaps their most contentious role) create a modern analog of a premodern aesthetic experience.

Jean de Saintré (1456) has long attracted the attention of scholars and ordinary readers. It survives in ten manuscripts and numerous printed editions starting in 1517. Indeed there have been two previous English translations, the most recent being from 1965. Non-specialist readers have been attracted by Jean de Saintré as a portrayal of the chivalric, courtly culture of the fifteenth century--what has been called an early historical novel. Scholars have found and continue to find the book as capturing an important moment in French literary history. Roberta L. Krueger and Jane H. M. Taylor have given this text a new and approachable form.

Jean de Saintré draws much of its value from the fact that it portrays chivalric and courtly culture from the inside. Its author, Antoine de la Sale, is himself a fascinating subject for scholarly investigation. The son of a Gascon mercenary, La Sale spent most of his long life as a courtier in the retinues of the houses of Anjou and Luxemburg, working most of that time as a preceptor or tutor for various young princes. His duties provided him with motivation to write. His three major works, of which Jean de Saintré is one, have a strong pedagogical component, combining moral instruction with discussion of chivalric customs and courtly manners and lighthearted storytelling.

La Sale combined these various elements into Jean de Saintré, which has been called the first historical novel. The eponymous hero was a real warrior of the fourteenth century but little of his actual career found itself into La Sale's book. Jean de Saintré the character is a young nobleman who over the course of the book advances from being a bashful and uncultivated youngster to being a perfect knight, expert in chivalric competition, courtly intercourse, and war. He owes his transformation to the patronage of an older woman, a rich widow whom the author calls the lady of Belles Cousines. This lady spots young Jean in court one day and decides to take him in hand. After teasing him unmercifully about his ignorance of love and his lack of a lover, she begins to train him up to be a knightly figure who attains such courtly grace that by his mid-teens he is wildly popular with all and sundry. Even kings feel privileged to associate with him.

His relationship with the lady of Belles Cousines is more complicated. To judge by her rather cool public interaction with Jean, her fellow courtiers might easily conclude that she of all the ladies is the least impressed with him. While others are full of praise for the wonderboy she has hardly a good word to say to or about him. But she meets him in secret to share pleasure and delight; and perhaps more importantly, she lavishly dresses and equips him and funds his training in chivalric combat. Parts of the book reads like a catalogue of luxuries that most nonfictional noblemen of La Sale's time could hardly hope to obtain. For the modern reader, these passages give an idea of the attractions of the royal court--clothing, weapons, horses as well as good company and good food. Not that this can be taken as reportage. Jean lives a dream-like existence and enjoys the best of everything and the approval of all the best people.

Young Jean, with the encouragement of his lady, matures into an impressive warrior. Much of the book is devoted to describing Jean's tremendous success in the lists and on the battlefield. This is the ultimate test of Jean's worth as a man and of the quality of the secret and intense love affair he enjoys. The lady of Belles Cousines is his silent partner, imperiously telling him when and whom he will fight, praying and weeping for him when he goes out to do her will.

Eventually, however, the partnership breaks down when after many years Jean arranges a deed of arms without consulting the lady. She takes tremendous offense at this and without a word of explanation withdraws to the country where she begins an affair with a rich abbot. The book ends with Jean following her to her rural retreat, where he finds out how the land lies. Unsurprisingly, the two lovers of the lady come to blows and Jean defeats the abbot, though not without difficulty. His revenge on the lady is more subtle; he traps her into betraying herself before the entire court as an unworthy lover.

Roberta L. Krueger and Jane H. M. Taylor have created in Jean de Saintré a work that has many valuable characteristics. First, the translation makes available a rich source for those interested in the culture of chivalry in the later Middle Ages. For me, the depiction of the role of the lady in the education and success of an aspiring knight was particularly interesting, a theme that gave me new material to think about, and one that might well be very useful in a number of different teaching situations.

Second, the translators' apparatus is effectively mustered. The introduction briefly and clearly covers the essential information; it should be understandable and accessible to all potential readers. There is a valuable glossary, and a good discussion of some of the choices the translators made, e.g. their very sensible decision not to translate heraldic terminology.

Third, the style of the translators is neither obviously modern nor obnoxiously archaic. They have not, in other words, produced a new set of barriers that readers must jump over.

Fourth, unlike some earlier translations, the entire text is translated, including two long catalogues, one of the heraldry borne by important families of France, another of families that supposedly accompanied Saintré to Prussia on crusade. These catalogues and other long passages devoted to description of the court, luxurious gifts exchanged between important courtiers, and blow-by-blow coverage of Saintré's deeds of arms, could be and sometimes have been abridged in earlier versions of the book; the result being, however, that what La Sale and his fifteenth-century readers thought was edifying and enjoyable is obscured.

It is too bad that the publishers have decided to charge the same price for the e-book as they do for the hardback. For years I have taught a seminar on the history of chivalry and this book is an obvious candidate for the reading list. At its current price, however, I would probably pass it by the next time I teach it.

Scholarly editions and databases online

In the good old days of the early Internet, the appearance of a new site or resource often attracted a lot of attention. Now there are so many good resources that it’s quite easy for them to slip by without people who might really be interested finding out about them.

Here are three resources related to medieval military history and chivalry, one of my own particular interests. I am not surprised if you’ve missed them.

What looks like a brand-new one just caught my attention. It is a site devoted to the Spanish epic, the Song of the Cid (Cantar de mio Cid).  Its purpose is to make the text more accessible in its original language.  Thus its primary users will be students of medieval Castilian who want to compare the readings of the chief manuscript with a “normalized” text, to a spoken version, to an English translation. There is a lot of useful information packed into the site, and it is really pretty to look at, too. One gripe: it is not so easy to find the English translation. There is a button that takes you straight to it, but that button is not labelled. I rather think that was people who come to the site will be using the English version, even if they are not the core audience for whom the site was built.

A similar site has been around for a while. It is the Online Froissart, which like the Cid site presents textual material in a variety of ways, with once again serious scholars being the core audience. The value of the site is underlined by the fact that the the best print edition Froissart’s over a century old and still unfinished. Looking at book prices for much less specialized and complicated scholarly works, one wonders whether the print edition will be finished and if anyone will be able to afford it on that happy day. The editors of the site have broken down one set of barriers to this key later medieval work.

And how about Armour in Art?  It describes itself thus:  “ArmourInArt.com is a searchable database of medieval art featuring armour. Items in the database range in date from 1100 to 1450 and are located throughout Europe. Content is varied - frescos, altars, stained glass, reliefs, etc - anything that is not an effigy/brass or manuscript is included.”

Why those latter two exclusions? Because, Mr. Bones, there related sites to cover that of the material. See the links just above.

Even yet, the Internet offers us some good serious content along with the kitty cats and the child stars who have aged so badly.

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991, by Eric J. Hobsbawm

It has been almost a quarter-century since Eric Hobsbawm the daring step of writing history from the outbreak of World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And only now am I getting around to reading it.

This is not a book that I think I would ever read from cover to cover. It is a long one. However, it is so interesting in its many details and its many passages of analysis that I got a lot out of it even just reading a few pages at a time more or less at random.

Here's one fact of 1 million: Hobsbawm points out that of the leaders of the various countries of the world in 1970, a year when baby boomers were  coming of age, almost all were people who had been adults at the end or even at the beginning of the First World War. No wonder there was a lack of sympathy between the establishment and the young rebels! It is typical of Hobsbawm's style that he illustrates the point thus: professors of economic history in France were people who had grown up on or vacationed on farms, and had a pretty good idea of how agriculture worked. They faced students in their classes with no idea what  milkmaids did or the usefulness of manure piles to a working farmer.
Anecdotal history? I love it nonetheless.