Categories of Medieval Culture - PDF Free Download (2024)

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he position of the individual vis-it-vis the society he lives T in is defined and regulated primarily by the system of law governing that society; while at the same time, the realities

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society. 'To insist on having what is supposed to be due to . you is anti-social and in contravention of good manners. '3 In China, the norms of law did not safeguard the functioning of society and of government. Social well-being, Chinese thinkers believed, depended on people's behaviour, first and foremost on those who governed the state. Hence, the principle of legality, of lawful government, has no roots in Chinese civilisation. These two attitudes to law and its role in the life of society - the Muslim and the Chinese are poles apart from the concept of law that we find in medieval Europe. Clearly, the profound differences cannot be explained simply by the traditional character of the social orders or the mutual relationship of law and religion; they go much deeper. In my view, the conception of law obtaining in a given society depends in the final analysis on the position of the human being in that society. And it is from the viewpoint of the relationship between the law and the person that I now wish to treat some aspects of medieval European law. In other words, I shall treat law as a socio-cultural category, as an element in which essential aspects of human individuality are displayed, and as one of the forms of human self-knowledge.

function. To assume that law formed social relations in a barbarian society is justified only if we take the word form in its original meaning: law gave these relations a generally significant form, outside of which they would be unthinkable. If it is accurate to say that form was the true content of Skaldic poetry,4 this is very largely true of law also. The Germanic tribes had arrived at 'a conception of law as a general bond between people even before the adoption of Christianity, and in this connection it is very instructive to analyse the terms for law in use among the Scandinavians. The term lag (log) had a whole series of meanings. In the broad sense, the term lag signified a state: order ('to put something in proper order', 'to put in place'), degree (with a corresponding adjective: 'sufficiently long', 'proper', '£1 tting', etc. ), price, payment (prescribed by someone), musical tune (concord, harmony), metre in poetry. The term lag was thus clearly associated with the concept of measure, the observance of due proportions in things and relations. In a more specialised sense, the term was used for various forms of human grouping (a company of people, a partnership, cohabitation of man with woman). In the plural, the term lag (log) denoted 'law, right, statute', literally 'that which is laid down', 'code'. The establishment of law for people meant the creation of a system of ties among them. Law was thus the basis of human society. 'The country is built up on law and goes to ruin in the absence of law' ('mea logum skalland byggja en mea 6logum eyaa') said a proverb which amounted to a legal maxim. At the people's assemblies - the pings - the experts 'talked law'. Bringing an action meant 'to get/ obtain law', and the pronouncement of sentence in court was known as 'the awarding of law'. Further, the term log was applied to the community in the legal sense, the community of people who lived by a law common to all of them. Hence the possibility of such expressions as 'to be at law with other people' or 'to take someone to law'. Hence also the area or region where customary law was effective was known as lag. In Norway, these areas defined by the observance of common law began to take shape even before their union within the kingdom, and for several hundred years in Iceland - until its submission

As before, we start with the age of barbarism. The life of the traditional barbarian society was subordinated to behavioural norms laid down once and for all. The predominance of the stereotype in the art forms of the Germanic tribes (already discussed) is but one small part of the general all-embracing regimentation. Individual behaviour is in strict conformity with a far-reaching system of prohibitions and incentives. The individual does not stand before a choice; he follows examples sanctioned by religion, by law and by the moral code. But in barbarian society law and the moral code do not exist as different bases and forms of social awareness and of human behaviour. Law and morals coincide or are at least very close to each other, since the precepts of law depend for their effectiveness not simply on outward constraints, on a system of punishments; rather, they represent inner imperatives, invested with moral and religious content. Consequently, barbarian law is similar only in name to contemporary law; in reality, it is far wider in scope and

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'The country is built on law . .. '

'The country is built on law ... '

to Norwegian rule, in fact - the only form of union was that upon the basis of law. What united the people was not the exercise of force or political dominion but an organ for regulating legal relations. 5 Thus, the totality of meanings of the term lag (log) covered every known form of ordered union. Evidently, the positive moral value of such a union was also included in the concept. Law was the basis and an' indissoluble component of world order. 'Law and order' and world order were virtually synonymous. Law was a boon which must be preserved and guarded. Clearly, this concept was of fundamental importance in the Old Norse worldView. The same shades of meaning can be observed in another word used by the Scandinavians to denote law - rettr. As an adjective, its range of meaning includes such concepts as 'straight', 'direct', 'precise', 'correct', 'just', 'equitable'. As a noun, rettr means 'law', 'right'. Conceptually, log and rettr are close, but not identicaL Like log, rettr can denote the law of the land (log og lands rettr) or ecclesiastical law (Guas rettr, Kristins doms rettr). An improvement or an amendment in law was usually called rettarbot, but the Norwegian king Magnus Hakonarson, famed for his law-giving, was given the nickname Lagabaetir (,Improver of laws'). More often, however, the term rettr did not express the concept of law as the state of people united in a community, but rather summed up the personal rights of the individual- his status. Hence, it also denoted compensation for infringement of these rights: rettr sinn meant 'his compensation', konungs rettr was 'compensation laid down by the king', and so on. Individual status and compensation for any encroachment thereon were accordingly inseparably bound up with each other in the Scandinavian mind; status was construed as something concrete, immediately bound up with the individual, and, at the same time, as something that could be expressed as a given value. So the difference between the terms rettr and log is probably that while log covered the general concept of law and had an abstract and all-embracing significance, rettr was understood in a more subjective and concrete sense. In the Old English legal texts the term right (ryht)

comprises the notions of law, justice, custom, right - the last of these in both the wide sense of law in general, and in the narrower sense of personal rights, the status of the individual. This is the only indigenous term expressing the concept of law, as the term lagu seems to have entered Old English from the Scandinavian languages, and in any case does not appear in the sources until a comparatively late date. There are g~ounds therefore for assuming that the Old English term rtht denoted a general bond between people, as did the Scandinavian term 109. To be declared 'outlawed', outside the law, meant not only the loss of all the rights enjoyed by a man as long as he was 'inside the law'; it was equivalent to being expelled from the human community in general. The disgraced man, outcast in a state of ittlega, debarred from living in the community, to?k himself off to some uninhabited place (hence his appellatIon of sk6garmaar = 'man of the woods', 'living in the woods') and was regarded as a werewolf or wolf (vargr).6 Living 'in the law', or 'according to the law', meant living with people and maintaining with them relations based on justice and on mutual respect for personal rights. For this reason, the barbarian law codes are mainly concerned with the protection of the personal rights and property rights of free men, and with the meet punishment for infringement of these rights. The words for 'law' which we have considered here refer mainly to custom, to the ancient order of things inherited from the tribal ancestors. The Scandinavian term log was close in meaning to its derivative orlog, signifying ancient, long-established law or 'doom'. The belief in doom or fate played an 'enormous part in the Germanic mind, and shaped its understanding of custom. Custom was that with which everyone agreed and which everyone voluntarily respected, since it was not· only obligatory but also sound and just. In barbarian society, a man was born with certain rights and privileges: either he was from birth of noble stock or he was born into a family descended from either rank-and-file freemen or from unfree (i. e. dependent) men. In all cases, c.ertain rights were his by virtue of his social category. Social tIes were still mainly of a natural, organic character: patri-

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'The country is built on law . .. ' monial, family, clan relationships. In so far as the relationship -, between ruler and ruled obtained in this society (there already existed serfs and other categories of non-free men) these ties also fitted in with the predominant social model and assumed a patriarchal character. In general, the individual could not choose those with whom he was to be grouped: the group was formed from his relatives, and even marriage ties were subordinated to the accepted scheme of things and its limiting constraints. The element of choice in the composition of social groups and networks was either lacking altogether or minimal; at most, it was a factor in the formation of groups centring on leaders and princes. Membership of a social order or stratum in barbarian society determined the behaviour of the individual in that society. All aspects of his life were regulated: it was known in advance how he was to behave in this or that situation; personal choice hardly entered into it. Each and every action was strictly prescribed by virtue of his belonging to one group or another, and by an awareness of family or clan rather than personal honour. The life of every member of the collective group was programmed by custom and the ne~d to_follow the example set by gods, forefathers, elders. Regulation of individual behaviour in barbarian society assumed ritualistic proportions; in so far as it affected the interests of the group, any important individual undertaking was accompanied by special ceremonies and pronouncement of the due formulas, the absence of which rendered the act or undertaking ineffective, null and void. Not that the member of barbarian society was necessarily a cipher without willpower; but this willpower, instead of being expressed in the free taking of decisions, was primarily directed towards the realisation of aims set before the individual by the group he belonged to. Just as the poet or the sculptor brought a wealth of ingenuity, skill and intelligence to producing works of art. that complied with the established canons, original variations on traditional themes, so the individual member of society was obliged to behave and act in all respects in keeping with established ritual and custom; his personal distinction lay in unity with the group. In these circ*mstances, morality is not so much a hallmark

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'The country is built on law , , .' of the individual, conditioned by his personal qualities and finding expression in his personal behaviour, as a qualitati~e system proper to his family, his kin, his social stratum, In the same way as his rights and obligations. In fact, these rights and obligations are inseparable from the ethical evaluation of the individuals who make up the group. The aristocracy are noble and honourable, their behaviour is exemplary-, courage and generosity are their natural qualities. Such qu~h­ ties cannot be expected in persons of ignoble birth. Barbanan society acts upon the conviction that moral qualiti,es a~e inherited in the same way as physical traits. Beauty; Intelhgence, honour and magnanimity must be sought among the princes of the land, baser qualities among the unfree and the low-born. The son of a nobleman and a bond-woman cannot be expected to display the same character and bearing as the son of the same nobleman by his legal wife of equal birth. Hence, not only were persons of noble birth far more handsomely compensated for harm done to them; a grea~er load of responsibility also rested on their shoulders, and, If found guilty of a crime, they were punished far more severely than were rank-and-file freemen. Thus, legal status was inseparable from its bearer and was an essential attribute of him. High-class people were 'noble', 'better'; low-class people were 'inferior', 'bad', 'base' . Legal status, that is to say, took on a moral complexion; and .a person's legal condition both determined and r~f1ected h,ls personal qualities .. The legal and moral categones had, In addition, an aesthetic component. Nobility was naturally associated with beauty, just as the concepts of evil and deformity were inseparably 1inked. In Old English, for example, it was not possible to say of something or someone 'beautiful but bad'. There was no way of expressing a purely aesthetic judgment. 'Beautiful' was a moral evaluation as well as an aesthetic one. Beauty was an expression of personal honour and dignity, In the same way, the intellectual qualities were inseparable from the ethical: 'intelligent' carried the connotation 'honest'. 7 In barbarian society, law was not something occupying a special compartment of social life. All its facets were regulated by custom. Law and custom provide the element in

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which societY exists, and they are at the same time an indissoluble dimension of the human consciousness, The conversion of the barbarians to Christianity had a profound effect on their whole way of life, and was in itself a symptom of a transformation in their social structure. ~cceptance, <;>f the new religion depended on a radical change In the tradItIonal customs and institutions of the Germanic tribes. In the field of law, the church brought far-reaching change; and though morality and law would continue to be closely as~ociated throughout the Middle Ages, they would n~ver agaIn, be synonymous. Morality became concerned wIth man's Inner existence, with his conscience and with the exercise of his free will, while law came to be understood as a supra-individual instance which all men were called upon to obey. The barbarian concept of law was not completely ousted by the new combination of church and the feudal system, but was taken up - albeit in partially revised form - as a med,ieval law. In general, law, like any constituent part other fac~t of medIeval lIfe, was throughout the Middle Ages strongly Influenced by Christian doctrine. ~h~ church was t~e bearer of a nomocraticconcept of law de,rIving from t~e, BIble, especially from the Epistles of Paul. HIS theory of dIVIne law promoted the thesis of the universal rule of law as laid down by God. Baptism - the act whereby natural man becomes a Christian, a faithful member of the church - was seen as a 'rebirth'. The member of society is not hom*o naturalis but hom*o ,Christianus. Baptism was a special means of institutionalising the individual in medieval col~ectives; upon the individual it laid certain legal obligations whIch he could not transgress, though he had had no say in their formulation. Law in any case is not established by men but by God; lex est donum Dei. The members of the church - the members of the community of the faithful (universitas fidelium) , which comprised both lay and clergy - were not equal among themselves, the clergy being preferred over the l~y members, who again were not equal among themselves, SInce all had rendered 'service' to God in varying degree, though by nature all men are equal. The hierarchy of merits

of

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and services implies that the, ~ight~ of i?divi.duals are not identical. An individual's pOSItiOn In SOCIety IS based upon his service. . The highest position is occupied by the monarch appOInted by God. Just as the world (the macrocosm) is directed by God, and the human body (the microcosm) by the soul,. so is the body politic directed by the monarch, w~ose relatIon with his subjects might be compared to the relatIon between the head and the limbs. The power of the monarch, does !10t depend on the will of the subjects. The monarc~ ~s subJe~t to one God alone, whom alone he serves (rex - mInIster Del), The church was, however, at pains to st:e~~ that the monarch by divine grace bore a certain respon~lbllI~y to the church, for the church alone proclaimed God s, WI~l. The ruler .was bound by no earthly institutions or ordl,n~tIons, Al~ subJects received the law from their ruler, the dlvlI:ely' anolnte~ one to whom they owed complete and unqueStIOnIng obedIence. A crime committed against the ruler ~as both ~r~ason and sin, for the criminal was offending agaInst the dIVIne l?ower inherent in the ruler. The ruler's duty was to concern hImse~f with the welfare of his subjects. Not agreement but ~ncondl­ tional obedience and loyalty on the part of the subJects was the basic ingredient of the law. The. s~bjects could have .no influence on the law, as they were Ill-Informed and ~ac~Ing in understanding. In acco:d~nce wi.th this way of. thInkI?g, the sovereign enjoyed unlImIted unIlateral power In relat1?n to his subjects, to whom was bou~~ by no sort of obl~g­ ation. He even had domlnlOn (domInIum) over them WIth regard to their property? o~ whic~ he could make such u~e a~ seemed appropriate to h~m In the ,Interests of the communIty, Underlying these not:ons! whIc~ are so far re~o.ved from political and social reahty, IS the Idea of the prIonty of the common weal, as represented by the ruler, over the Inte;es:s of the individual. Law, like the (communal body, ~s immortal while individual man is mortal. What matters IS the good 'of the whole, not the good of an insigni~caJ?-t. part of the whole - the individual. In consequence, the IndIvIdual saw himself in the light of this concept, ~s completely absorbed in and swallowed up by the communIty - the gre~t unified organism in which each component member has hIS

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~alling (vocatio) and carries out his allotted function. Accord~n~ly, the in~ividual does not exist simply for himself. What IS, Important 1.S not his 'personality' but the duty that falls to hIm, the servIce he discharges. Thu~, law is cryst~llised in the person of the ruler, the ~m~odlment ?f the Idea of law (lex animata), dispensing lustIce and mIndful of the common weal. Only the church IS competent to decide in what circ*mstances the ruler who has abused his power has forfeited his right to be considered God's representative and servant. The church alone is able and entitled to disti?guish tyrannus from rex iustus; and only the .church can str~p a tyrant of plenipotentiaty authority (whIch becomes a ~ust ru!er) and absolve his subjects from the duty to obey hIm. It.IS well known how the ideologists of the papal theocracy tned - not always without success _ to put these principles into practice: witness the policies of Greg~ry VII and Innocent III. On the other hand, the protagonIsts of the doctrine of an all-powerful monarchy by the. grace of God, argued that the king, as the eanhly embodIment of God, could not be subject to the church. T~e efforts made by the monarchy to substantiate its links w~th transcende~t rea}i~y fo~nd a ready echo in the popular mInd. ,The sanctIty ot Impenal and royal power was readily dedUCIble from the premi~e that the syzygy formed by the p~ople and the lay authonty partook of the divine.9 Christ hImself was, not infrequ,ently depicted as an earthly ruler. T~e coronatIon cetemonles of an earthly ruler were without fall accomp~nied by rel!g!ous rituals which visibly and palpably proclaImed the dIvIne nature of his power,10 Actual events were ?early ~lways in flat contradiction of this pious and the~cratIc thes~s. 11 N ev:ertheless, the high value placed ?n l~w In theocratIC doctnne deserves close attention. In IdealIsed form. it refl~cts the truly enormous importance of the role of law In the ~Ife of the feudal community. Abstracted from ~veryday practIce and everyday reality as it was _ as every Ideal must be - the nomocratic theory of divine law nevert~eless gave a higher dimension to everyday life. ~a~sIng no~ from the teachings of theologians, jurists and polItIcal theonsts to a body of ideas which enjoyed a much

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'The country is built on law , . " wider currency in the Middle Ages - ideas which were not so much expressly formulated as tacitly taken. for granted. as the indispensable prerequisite for the formulatIon an? appl.Ication of law - we find both Pauline and. ant1~Pa':lhne concepts. The belief was widely held that law :s an IndI~so­ luble element of the world order, as eternal and IndestructIble as the cosmos itself. 12 The world, whether the human worl.d or the world of nature, is unthinkable witho~t law. La~ IS the basis of all human society; on law are bUIlt .up relatIon~ between people: 'where there is .serty of all God's creatures (hence not only men but also ~nlmals and even things can be held accountable for transgressIons of this in-built law). The way of fife and t~e manner ~f behaviour of all beings are determIned by the1: status. ThIS is the medieval concept of 'natural law', the unIversal law of the cosmos as interpreted in theocratic terms~ No one - neither emperor nor any other ruler nor any assembly of lay officials or representatives - worked out or formulated new statutes. In as much as God was seen as .the source of the law, it followed that lavl could not be :xnJ':lst or bad; it was good in itself, good in essence. Law and JustIce were synonymous. Injustice could ensue only where law w~s inadequately applied, misinterpreted or forgotten. Ju~t .as e:vIl in the world was explained as the absence of good, so InJus~Ice was held to be due to misapplication of law. Law was Just because it was reasonable and in keeping with the n~ture of men. St Thomas Aquinas defined law as 'the establI.shment of reason for the common good, as promulgate~ by hIm who cares for the community of men'. It was essentIal to observe all these conditions: law must be based on reason, must serve the common good and must be in relation to the com~etence of the instance which duly and fittingly promulgates ~t.14. Equally inseparable from La:" was ~ts ~alo of ant1qu~ty. There can be no such thing as InnOvatIon In law; law e~Is:s from time immemorial, just as eternal justice ~oes. ThIS IS not to say that law is in its entirety laid down In law books and legal codes, and needs no further articulation by human

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'The country is built on law ... ' agency. As.a whole, as an idea, law is imprinted on the oral conscIousness, and moral norms are drawn from it as ~Irc*mstances arise which humanity has not yet faced. Law IS not .ren:odelled; it is 'sought and found'. What makes the antIqu.Ity of l~w. valuable, however, is not so much its ~hronologI~a,l ag~ In Itself as the fact that this vouches for its Inco~testabIhty, ItS esser:tial goodness. Ancient law was good ~nd Just. 15 The great legIslators of the Middle Ages were not Inn?Vators, creators of. r:ew la~s~ they 'found', 'sought out' a?CIent law and reha~Ihtated It In the light of its manifest nghtness; a process In which previously existent law was not a?rogated b~t was ~upplemented; a process in which if anythIng was extIrpated It was those distortions of law which people had admitted into the canon. .Thus it is curious, but highly characteristic of the medieval ~llnd, to find the Frisian law books introduced by the assertI?n that ~he Frisian people must have that law which God hImself laId down when Moses led the children of Israel through the Red Sea. After exposition of the Ten Commandments the pr~phets and kings are enumerated (beginning with Saul and DavId), who ruled down to the birth of Christ. and 1;C't- "C ... t.~ R. . ... ' then ('om pc a ...... ~.~ - ~~ AA_"" .,\. VI UIIC .1 urnan emperors, IncludIng, as one mIght expect, .a~~ the French and German rulers down to the ?ate of the FrISIan law books. 16 In this way, the law actually In force among the Frisians is presented as part of an un'brok~~ legal chain stretching back to the dawn of mankind. ~f the hIstory of law' in the proper sense of the words there IS no trace.

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.In the sam~ way, th~ laws of King Alfred the Great begin wIth a long Introduction expounding the Ten Commandments. and other examples of biblical legislation. In addition there IS ~ ~hort account of the history of the Apostles and of the de~Isions reac~ed by ~cclesiastical synods, both ecum~nIcal and Enghsh. Alfred IS modest about his own role as .1~glslator: 'I have not dared to presume to set down in WntI~g m~ny of my own, for I cannot tell what innovations of m.Ine wIll meet with the approval of our successors.' But he dId select for retention the most just of the laws of his ro;:-al prede~essors (Ethelbert, Ine, Offa); the rest he rejected. ThIS collectIon of laws found favour in the eyes of Alfred's

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'The country is built on law ... ' counsellors.17 The legislator'S task wa~ held to be .not new legislation but the selection a~d adoptIon of the WIsest .and most equitable edicts from anCIent law. Anglo-Saxon legIslation in the tenth and eleventh centuries consists for the most part of borrowings from. earlier codes, interlaced here and there with innovations. LIsts of customs and usages are often introduced by a preamble ascribing them to one or anot~er celebrated ruler of earlier times. Many of the Old NorwegIan laws are described as 'The Laws of Saint ~laf' although they are really precepts of customary law wr~tten, down at a considerably later date. The legal code complIed In England in the early twelfth century was entitled ,'The Laws of Edw~rd the Confessor' who had in fact nothIng at all to do WIth them. The Lo~bard king Rothari saw it as his duty not to create new laws but to codify ancient Lombard law In so far as it needed to be corrected and amended. 18 . Laws could be supplemented and. ~nhance~: In other words, it was possible ,to 'find' p.rovislons whIch had n?t been given legal expreSSIon but whIch h~d bee~ preserved In the moral consciousness of the people, In a~ Ideal treasurehouse of justi~e, ~s it w~re. Thus, the f;ehng for la~ _~~~ order inherent in the people was accountea as a second SUUI~t: of law, supplementing its divine origins. A~ove all, law was held to be retained in the memory of the WIsest of men, the experts in law. But these experts - t~e 199sggumen~, the ,'la~­ speakers' in Scandinavia, the rachtnburgen, an~ echevtns In France the witan and liberi et legales homtnes In England ~ did no~ produce new legislatio~ ..They knew the 'old, w,ay of ancient custom. At least, thIS IS how they saw theIr Job as legislators. . Everybody is subject to cus~om. and law, espeCIally the ruler. His most important functIon IS to uphold the law and see that it is observed. The belief that the ruler must concern himself with the protection of the customar~ l~w" an~ mus~ be just and gracious, runs through the many KIng s ~Irrors produced in the Middle Ages, which contaIn exho:t~tIons t.o monarchs and lay stress on their individual ,quah~Ies. T~Is was natural at a time when royal power was IdentIfied WIth the personality of. the ruler .. At his coronatIon the kIng swears to uphold the law.

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'The country is built on law , , "

N o~here in the Middle Ages can we find any trace of a spe~Ial state law: th~ ru~er must uphold the existing law and

order, the meliores et maiores were called upon to decide in what measure the new laws introduced by the king corresponded to the existent law inherited from ancient times, The principle of the supremacy of law and justice and their independence of the monarch can be detected in medieval juristic practice. Thus, in England, although the courts were in the service of the government, they displayed a certain independence of the sovereign and never degenerated into mere instruments of his will. If the statutes and customary law contradicted the king's wishes, the king's courts took up their stance on the side of the law. 21 This principle lies at the root of feudal action against kings who broke the law and offended against the customs of the country. It is well known that Magna Carta was the result of such action taken by the English barons and knights, who saw their initiative as a completely legal one, deriving naturally from the essence of English law. Magna Carta provided for a commission of twenty-five barons, whose task it was, not only to limit the power of the king, but also to restrain him by force of arms should he break his word. Dangerous as this might seem for national unity, it did not contradict the spirit of the law or the understanding of the relationship between the king and his immediate vassals. From the medieval point of view, there was nothing paradoxical in the notion of the bellum iustum, the legal rebellion. In normal circ*mstances the subjects were subordinated to their legal sovereign. Their obedience was expressed, however, not so much in passive submission as in fidelity (loyalty). Fidelity (jidelitas) is distinguished from mere obedience in that it specifies definite conditions in which 'the loyal/faithful' serve their lord, and also in that it implies a certain reciprocity; the vassal is bound by fidelity to his master who, in his turn, assumes certain duties towards his vassal. It is' often asserted that relations between lord and vassal were built up on agreement or treaty. But this is to see medieval social relations partially at least through modern eyes, in that feudal relations are thus construed in terms of the bourgeois contract. In fact, the relationships of fidelity and patronage were built up on joint submission to the rule of law, custom, by both the ruler and the ruled; the fidelity

act ,In accordance WIt~ It. Should he transgress the law, his subjects are not requIred to submit to injustice. 'A man is called upon to oppose his king and the king's judge, as soon a~ th,e latter does wro~g, and he shall continue to oppose hIm .In all ways and WIth all means even if he is his relative or hIS lord, And in so doing he does not break his oath of loyalty', says the 'Saxon Mirror', 19 Isidore of Seville alters Horace's :words to warr~nt the, concept that the king is he wh,o act~ Justly ~ otherwIse he IS not king ('Rex eris si recte faCIes, SI non facIas, non eris').20 Intentional transgression of the law by t,he ruler depriv,es him of the legal bases of his po~er, and lIberates the subjects from their oath to him. The subjects a:e also called upo~ to uphol~ the law even against the ruler If he has broken It. The oblIgation to uphold the law does not derive fr?m any treaty or agreement but from the concept .of the unIversal power of the law to which all ~en are subject. Accordingly, law unites all men, and is in Itse!f the gen~ral bOt;ld between people. This principle is basIcal~y at vana~ce WIth the theocratic concept of monarchy, accordIng to whIch the king is above the law and answerable only to God, EU,t, granted that the people had in certain circ*mstances t~e nght to. op~os,e an illegal ruler or a king who failed to d~scharge hIs mISSIon as required by the law, this did not gIVe them the right to change the form of government; the place of the overthrown monarch had to be filled by another. ~ 0 succeed to the throne, the new monarch had to have nghts of succession, and ~e had to be accepted and anointed by ,the cler~y. ~embership of the royal family or kindred, whIle certaInly Important, was not in itself sufficient to warrant su~cessi?n to the thro~e; for this to happen, both in th: barbanan kIngdoms and In the early medieval monarchles~ the agreement of the 'people' was necessary - in actual practIce, the support of the nobles. In, the same way, the agreement of the subjects (consensus fideltum) was necessa,ry ,before new laws drawn up by the ruler could be ~ade bIndIng. As representatives of the people and as embodYIng the people's inborn feeling for law and

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'The country is built on law . .. '

'The country is built on law .. "

binding on both parties is their fidelity to the law. 22 When they swore fidelity it was not simply to each other, but rather to that higher principle to which ruler and ruled alike felt themselves subject. . .Law was ~eld to be ancient and its authority rested on thIs ..InnovatI.on as su.ch was not considered, and legislative practIce consIsted maInly in the restoration of ancient law the identification and clarification of the customs of the fore~ fat~ers: Law was backward-looking, focused on the past. Th~s ,hIgh regard for ancient times and practices is charactenstIc of all, walks ,life i,n the Middle Ages. There was more to medIeval tradItIonalIsm than mere conservatism and force ~f cu~t
institution. No social relationship was effectively existent unless it had the sanction of law. The major social and political conflicts of the Middle Ages were fought not only over religious issues but over legal issues as well, and this was clear to the people of the time. We have space only to mention some stock examples: the conflict for political supremacy between the German emperors and the papacy centred in the first place on the question of investiture - the right to appoint bishops; the dramatic clash between King Henry II of England and Archbishop Thomas a Becket began in a disagreement over the question of the king's judicial competence; it was John Lackland's disregard for feudal custom and feudal law that led to Magna Carta. Experts in Roman law had to be called in to provide a legal foundation for the French monarchy, and their help was also found necessary in the struggle between Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII. Law and theology were the oldest and most influential faculties in the medieval university. The adoption of Roman law in Europe, thanks to a whole series of social, economic and political factors, was of enormous import for every aspect and area of public life.

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Law was understood as the essential framework of society as a whole; but more than that, each member of society was characterised first and foremost by his legal status. In feudalism, as in barbarian society, status and person were inseparable. In general, status was inherited, passed on from father to son. It was, however, susceptible of change. The ruler could confer new status and enhanced rights upon one person or another. The peasant who forsook his feudal lord for the town received personal freedom; and when he became a burgher, a member, that is, of the urban community or of a guild, his status was changed. The rank-and-file freeman, and in some cases even the non-free man, could be knighted by doing homage - i. e. taking the oath of loyalty toa feudal lord - and thereupon be entitled to the legal rights proper to his new status. The layman who entered the priesthood became a member of the clergy, legally a special group

[171]

'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

enjoying special privileges. From this we can see that the medieval estates and other categories of the population as distinguished in Jaw, were not closed and petrified castes with no possibility of transfer from one to another. There was, in fact, a rather high degree of socio-legal mobility in feudal society. The essential point is that status - whether inherited or acquired - remained directly linked with an individual's inner nature, and influenced, as the medieval view had it, his moral self and the basic traits of his character; indeed, it determined him as a human being. In legal documents, social status is not infrequently defined in terms of moral categories. Those of noble birth are described as 'best', 'most worthy'; while common people are categorised as 'low', 'base', 'vile'. Society is divided according to the medieval legislators into the 'nobility' on the one hand and the 'plebs' on the other. Nor is there any equality between rulers and ruled in moral matters either - a very comforting state of affairs for the ruling classes! All social categories were first and foremost legal categories. The medieval mind did not recognise the de facto status of an individual or of a group of individuals if this had not been juridically identified and defined. It is not so much a question of class differences as such, as of estate indices which determine the individual's social position. A man's value depends primarily not on his belongings but on the righ.ts to which he is entitled. The poorest knight is higher on the social scale than the richest burgher. Neither money nor even possession of landed property attracts per se official recognition or special rights. To be of noble estate, to enjoy full rights, one must either be born noble or be the recipient of royal favour. High birth and full legal competence - these are the criteria of membership of the ruling stratum of society. Wealth is normally associated with these criteria but does not in and of itself mark its possessor as a nobleman. Feudal society is a society of legal orders. It is easy to see that the role of law in such a society was enormous. It was a role that grew even larger as a result of the high degree of ritualisation of social practice. In a traditional society 'normal' behaviour was that of the man who followed accepted example and never deviated from the established

norm. Such exemplars acquired the force of moral standards, and departure from them was accounted not only reprehensible but on occasion even as infringement of the law. All the big moments in people's lives - marriage, acceptance into a family, becoming a knight, joining a guild, inheritance and its apportionment, lawsuits, commercial transactions, sale of land, taking monastic vows, excommunicatio?, receptior: s, diplomatic missions, etc. - all of these were subject to ntualtsation and had to be accompanied by the proper procedures, failure to observe which rendered the act null and void. Accordingly, a man's actions took place within strictly defined and immutable juridical forms: action outside theIr radius was both unthinkable and ineffective. But, unlike later bureaucratic periods of history, this age of total and all-embracing formalism and ritual was in no sense a 'paper' (or, more accurately, a 'parchment') culture. Many transactions were not fixed in deed form at all; it was held to be enough if the proper ceremony was duly observed. In the early days of the feudal system in Europe, grants of land played a big part and had to be recorded in documentary -form. The Germanic peoples, however, having borrowed the carta, the official deed, from Roman juridical practice, did not really grasp its essential meaning. The function of the written deed would surely have seemed to be to fix the de,al and secure proprietary rights over the land in future. But In the early Middle Ages most people put little trust in a vyritten document - which very few could even read - and faIled to understand its juridical nature. Accordingly, the preparation and delivery of the land deed was accompanied by the traditional custom of throwing or handing over a handful of earth, turf, twigs, etc. The deed (carta) was seen simply as an object, a piece of parchment, and before inscribing the text it was customary to take the parchment and the writing materials to the piece of land involved in the transaction, so that the 'power of the earth' would penetrate the material ar:d ~~ke the inscription effective and inviolable. 26 To make a Jundical act effective, magic ritual was necessary. The deed itself was accepted as a symbol. As such, it did not even have to have anything written on it, and cartae sine litteris were not infrequently accepted. A ruler wishing to

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'The country is built on law . .. '

'The country is built on law ... '

ensure the obedience of his subjects or to communicate a decree to them could send them a piece of parchment or a seal without writing: the symbol of his authority was enough. 27 The ritual made the transaction substantive, irrespective of whether a document was provided or not. Hence, a crucial role was played by the witnesses present at the conclusion of the deal. The role of witness was restricted to a comparatively small, localised and stable group of people who were personally acquainted with each other. When a man moved to another locality it was not obligatory for him to furnish documentary proof of his status; his new neighbours would take his word for it that he was what he claimed to be. Since a man's status was not some sort of exterior and inessential marker, but the factor determining his nature and his essential qualities, an individual's behaviour was the best evidence of the truth or the falsehood of his claim to belong to this or that order or social stratum. In such circ*mstances, law was seen as the generally accepted form in which essential human business took place, both between individuals and between groups, and was understood by both individuals and groups as the essential factor in their behaviour. In the spiritual life of the Middle Ages law could not but appear as one of the basic categories in human awareness. But mediev.allaw was no logically articulated and roundedoff system, all of whose parts fitted nicely together. On the contrary, no manifestation of medieval social life was more contradictory and complicated than its law. The law not only united, it also divided people by giving rise to mutually conflicting clairps and complicated quarrels. It was to be a long time before law could be looked upon as an abstraction. There was no 'law in general'. In the early Middle Ages, indeed, there was not even one identical law for all the inhabitants ofa country. In the Germanic kingdoms occupying territory which had formerly belonged to the Roman Empire, the Germans and the 'Romans' retained their own forms of law; each tribe or people lived 'according to its law', whose customs and precepts every member of the tribe observed irrespective of where he happened to dwell. It was only very gradually that the monarchy succeeded in estab-

lishing alongside the body of tribal precepts a system of law generally binding on all subjects. In the same way, the monarch himself was originally the king of a tribe not of a state: rex Francorum, not rex Franciae, king of the Angles, or the Saxons, not the king of England. The practice of recognising the particular laws and special cust0n:-s ~f individual peoples, certain parts of the country: lo.c~l dIstr~cts, was carried on into much later times. It was JudIcIally laId down in Nuremberg in 1455 that when a Franconian wa~ being declared an outlaw, the judge must stand near the bndge on the Neuenstadt road on Franconian soil; he must stand on Swabian soil beyond the stone brid~e on the Onolzbach r?ad if a Swabian was being outlawed; In the case of a Bavan~n, the judge must stand in front of the Frat1;entor on Bavanan soil; and if the criminal was a Saxon the Judge had to stand before the Tiergartentor on the Erlangen road. 28 Lacking internal coordination as it did, medieval law was readily susceptible of many different interpretations and gave rise to many conflicting claims. The word !aw was synonymous with justice; but in point of fact medIeval law was not directed towards establishing the 'truth' in our sense of the w·ord. \Y/hat was 'true' was what was 'proved' in court by means of oaths and sworn statements and the rigorous observance of all the ceremonial steps prescribed by custom. Credence was placed on oaths, rituals, trial by. ordeal or single combat rather than in material proof or eVIdence, on the grounds that truth inher~s in the oa.th, and a ~olemn act of this nature cannot be carned out agaInst the wIll of God. The slightest deviation from the accepted formula, the failure of one party to adhere to every detail of the procedure, identified that party as the guilty one, for God does not allow the guilty to triumph ove: the inno~ent. T~e .truth cannot be made manifest except Vla the preCIse and InVIolate . . formalism of the judicial process. All of this can be traced back to the barbanan age. But It would be wrong to see in the ritualised nature of medieval law no more than a survival of the preceding age. Throughout the Middle Ages, the retention of custo~s and proc~dures genuinely inherited from pre-feudal law IS accompanIed by the growth and spread of many new forms of ritual and

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[175]

'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

ceremony and by the emergence of new formulas and oaths. This is not simply because the archaic stage lingered on, but rather is implicit in the very nature of medieval society, which was built up on the premise of regulated behaviour on the part of all its members. Informal, unrestrained, unconventional behaviour is not typical of the Middle Ages. One took up one's allotted position in society and tried to behave in keeping with it. A man's role in society set the scene for his behaviour, leaving little room for innovation or unconventionality. Hence the semantic density of the social behaviour of medieval people: every action has symbolical meaning, every action must be performed in the approved way and follow the generally accepted model. All sorts of things sword, spear, hammer, club, chair, gauntlet, head-dress, key, etc. - have, over and above their pragmatic use, a symbolical meaning which is called upon in court and other juridical proceedings. The earliest legal texts of medieval Europe are the leges barbarorum, the law codes of the barbarian tribes which settled in the territory of the former Roman Empire. Ancient custom is the rule here, though it is only partially fixed in the codes themselves. The few innovations introduced into these codes are also treated therein as 'custom'. Certain customs enshrined in the codes had effectively lost their currency - but veneration for the past, and belief in the sanctity of custom nevertheless dictated their retention, even though they were sometimes in clear contradiction with later norms. Henceforth laws issued by medieval rulers often took the form either of 'amendments of the law' - that is to say, the registration of norms which, it was held, had existed earlier but which had not been entered in the legal codes o~ of 'purification of the law', that is to say, the removal of dIstortions and 'human invention'. Thus, even innovation in the legal sphere had a conservative function. As a result, traditional law became multi-tiered and overgrown with additions; the old coalesced with the new. In their effort to restore law to its pristine purity the people of the Middle Ages were guided by the concept of ideal law - of law, that is, as it ought to be, in keeping with their ideas of justice. In pursuit of this ideal they sometimes had recourse

to forgery. But forgery in the Middle Ages was not always deliberate falsification undertaken for nothing more than selfish gain. Things were much more complicated than that. In 'pious fraud' (pia fraus), there was an element of selfdeception. The monk who 'corrected' the text of a book of donation while copying it, did so out of his conviction that it was simply not possible for the land mentioned in the deed not to be donated to a holy place (a monastery); for it would be unjust, and ipso facto impossible, for it to be possessed by an impious layman. In the monk's eyes this was not forgery but a triumph of justice over wrong. A forged deed crediting some ancient monarch with donation of land to a holy place was seen as doing no more than paying this ruler his due - for he 'ought' to have acted in this way! At the same time, this was seen as a verification of the generally accepted principle that in so far as there was a right to possess land, it could only be inherited from ancient times: entitlement must have a pedigree. In the same way, false evidence was not infrequently given out of a conviction that 'justice' was best served by a nudge in the right direction. The function of documents was to express the highest truth - justice in the ideal meaning of the term - and not simply record chance facts. For truth was enshrined not in the coarse facts of everyday existence but in that right view of things which was above all the province of the church. The PseudoIsidorian Decretals, substantiating the supreme authority of the Roman church over Western Europe and ascribing to the Emperor Constantine a corresponding grant in benefit of the Bishop of Rome, were forgeries - but forgeries which expressed an 'ideal reality': papal hegemony in the medieval world. 29 Speaking about the falsification of documents in the Middle Ages, Marc Bloch points to the paradox that veneration of the past should impel the medieval mind to show the past not as it was but as it ought to have been. 30 Individually both clerical and lay institutions had recourse to forgery in their efforts to establish, at whatever cost, their great age and, hence their legal integrity and respectability. The University of Paris was able to date its beginnings from the reign of Charlemagne; Oxford claimed King Alfred, Cambridge the

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[177J

'The country is built on law ... ' l:gendary King Arthur as its founder. Inability to think histoncally led to the~e documents being drawn up in contemporary style, not In the style of the age to which they allegedly belonged. 31 The. med~eval .chr?niclers never tire of proclaiming that truth theIr maIn .aIm and the invariable guideline of their exposIt.lon ..Yet. theIr accounts are packed with the products o.f the ImagInatIOn - to say nothing of the fact that much is sl.mply passed over i,n si~ence. 'Truth' meant something very ~hfferent from the sCIentIfic 'truth' on which so much reliance IS placed today: to the medieval mind, truth had to corresP.ond to the ideal norms, it had to be in conformity, not Wlt~ the actual course of earthly events, but with the higher realIty of God's predestined plan. 32 Then again, in a society based on the principle of fidelity ~o family, kindred, lord, etc., truth could not have a value Independent of the concrete interests of the group. Fidelity to. the .'truth' took second place to fidelity to the ruler, or to faIth In the Lord~ Truth was, so to speak, 'anthropomorphous' . The history' .of the Middle Ages is full of pretenders and ~surp:rs claImIng to be lawful rulers or their descendants. If these .Impostors were, by and large, accepted by the people at th:lr face value, this was due in the first place to the hopes ?ounshed ~y the downtrodden and enslaved masses that a ~ust and n&hteous. monarch would appear, who would ImI:rove theIr condItion and liberate them from their expl~)lters and oppr~ssors: T~eir hopes made them gullible. But It IS perhap.s unfaIr to dIsmIss all these pretenders as tricksters pure and sImple, moved by nothing more than self-interest. ~fter: they themselves seem to have been deluded into believIng eIth:f that they had som~ sort of c~se, ?owever shaky, f~r ~aklng. the cl.aIms they dId, or that InspIration 'from on hIgh was ImpellH~g. them to take up a mission they could not refuse. The relIgIOUS mood of a period has perhaps never been more favourable to the emergence of all sorts of prophets, 1?opu~ar lea~ers and divine messengers. People lIved In a clImate of marvels and wonders, which were accepted as everyday reality. The ability to think for oneself was as yet comparatively weakly developed; the

:s.

[178]

'The country is built on law ... ' collective mind dominated the individual one. The belief in images, words, symbols, was limitless and taken uncritically for granted - circ*mstances in which forgery and falsification found a natural habitat. 33 The figment was hardly distinguished from the reality, and what seemed 'due' or 'fitting' was readily preferred to what. merely 'was'. Medieval people were very credulous. Tales about animals that spoke, possession by evil spirits, visions and miraculous cures; reverence for relics and other holy objects, the tendency to explain earthly happenings by the configurations of the heavenly bodies and supernatural phenomena - none of this is surprising if we remember the extent to which the medieval mind was ruled by religion, the ignorance and ill iteracy in which the great mass of the population was plunged, the total absence of objective scientific thinking and of orderly sources of information. The hard lot of the downtrodden peasantry inevitably fostered hopes of miraculous help from above. Medieval people believed not only in the Day of Judgment, which would come 'at the end of time' and at which everyone would be rewarded or punished according to his or her deeds, but also in more immediate divine wrath or recompense in this world. 34 It was not marvels and wonders that hid to be explained, but their absence. 35 But we must not assume that there were no limits to credulity. Not every miracle was given credence, and a boundary betWeen the true and the false, between the natural and the supernatural, was certainly recognised. 36 The medi:" eval assumption was that while normally the law of causation operated, in certain circ*mstances it could be 'suspended' and a miracle could then take place. The theologians repeatedly emphasised that the ability to perform miracles was not what made a saint a saint, and was not even the sole proof of his saintliness, but this was not something likely to appeal to the medieval mind. A saint who did not perform miracles might well be venerated; but from the point of view of 'the man who was little versed in the niceties of theology and merely wanted a quick return on his pious outlay, it was a pure waste of time to do obeisance to his relics or make a donation to his church or monastery.

[179]

'The country is built on law . .. ' Neither the concept nor the practice of law in the Middle Ages can be understood in isolation from the real social and political conditions in which it took shape and in which it operated. The feudal state cannot really be compared with th~ modern state; the analogy is false. The ruling class in the MIddle Ages shows as a rule no tendency towards cohesion. The feu~al lo~ds forming it were, along with their groups and factIons, In a permanent state of rivalry among themselves ~nd of 'permanent revolt' against the royal power. The ?overeign was n?t synonymous with the power nor was he Its onl>-: bea~er, sInce every feudal lord of the slightest importance tned hIS best - not always without success - to concentrate power over his people in his own hands and to rule them himself. Hence the state was not centralised or unified. ~here was no ?rga~ised administration. The unity of the state: In so far as It eXIsted, was embodied in the person of the sovereign. h~ was to possess real power, the monarch had to have at hIS dIsposal the same means as his feudal lords had - private forces. T~e distinction between 'public' and 'private' was not consIstently adhe~e~ to .in the Middle Ages. The state property was not ,dIstinguIshed .from the patrimony of the monarch; the ~Ing was sovereIgn over all his subj ects, while at the same tIme some of them could become his private dependants, to be under his protection. Kings and princes r~gar~ed th,eir accession to power as an act of personal succesSIon, Inhen~ed from their ancestors. The inheritance procedu~e regardIng landed property or allods, as set out in the Sahc L~w, was subsequ~ntly to become the procedure for succeSSIon to the throne In France: the Salic decision that the paternal po~tion should pass only to the male issue was u~terpreted In such a way that the female issue of French kIngs were excluded from the line of succession to the throne, The power of a medieval ruler was real in so far as it was coextensiye with his seigneurial rights. Relations of vassalage and of pnvate dependence were intertwined with one's status ~s a su~ject. Magna <;arta is the most important document In the hIstory of En~hsh gover~ment, but essentially it is no more than .a regulation o~ relatIons between the king - the supreme seIgneur - and hIS direct vassals, the barons.

It

[180J

'The country is built on law ... ' At the same time, seigneurs discharged public ~un,ctions in their own name, for property and power were IndIssolubly linked; great landed property was ipso facto power (~he lan~­ owner ruled the land and the vassals who lived on It), whIle power conferred property rig~ts (~he ~ossession of politi~al, juridical and military prerogatives Imp~Ied the transfo~mation of the area over which these prerogatIves extended, Into the personal possession of the person exercising these prerogatives). " , No clear distinction was made between Ideal and pOSItiVe, i, e. law as ideal, complete and perfect jus~ice, ar:d law as it was actually applied in practice or set out Ir: ordInances and codes. Hence, people's actions had to be gUIded not only by actual laws and prescriptions but also by norms of conduct which were nowhere codified but which nevertheless corresponded to the medieval feeling for justice and for law and order. Medieval law as written was fragmentary and full of gaps; it was completely unsystematic, ~any areas of li~e bei~g juridical no-man's-land. The most Important relat,lons In feudal society were regulated by local custom, whIch, had either never been written down at all or was only partially committed to writing at a much later stage. If. we compare Carolingian legislation with the legislative activity of,Western European rulers in the period of mature feudahsm, the extreme poverty of the latter becomes at once evident. Ha~dly any area of human affairs remained unaffected by the legIslative enterprise of the Carolingians, w~o ,saw themselves ~s the heirs of the Roman emperors, COntInUIng the great tradItion of the ancient law-givers; whereas the feudal systeI?remained virtually without a written legal code. W~ether It was the election or the succession to power of a pnnce, the exact order to be observed in the inheritance of fiefs, the extent and nature of vassalage services, the delimitation of the juridical rights of ruler and subject, relations between church and state - these and many other equally crucial questions affecting the working of the feudal system 'Yere never unambiguously defined in law. All ~hese questIons were settled in ad hoc fashion as and when a dIspute had to be settled or an uncertainty cleared up. In place of ,unambigu
[181 ]

'The country is built on law . .. ' a precedent for the future, it was increasingly to custom, whi.c~ varied according to place, time, person and many other

decIsIve factors, that appeal was made in the day-to-day handling of feudal juridical problems. . In .circ*mstances such as these, the 'law of the strong' came Into Its own. What could not be satisfactorily settled in court on the basis of juridical proceedings was settled by the sword and civil strife. Powerful lords were not over-inclined to take their affairs to law, and either had recourse to violence when they could not be certain of a favourable decision, or simply set up their own courts. Single combat, war, blood feud were the invariable concomitants of feudal law. But the current view of the Middle Ages as the age of the 'law of the fist', the age when things were settled by arbitrary force in place of law and custom, is unfounded. It is a view which arose at a time when emergent bourgeois law was taking over from an increasingly discredited medieval law which could no longer meet all the demands made on it. There was certainly plenty of violence in medieval society, but it was not a society built on violence, nor did the extraeconomic constraints which played such a major role in feudal production relations reduce simply to violence. The ruling classes in any society resort to violence when they are faced with the necessity of bringing the masses to heel, just as the oppressed meet violence with violence when they are no longer able to put up with being exploited. Naturally, the ruling class in a feudal society - the armed ,and pugnacious ~o.bility - was particularly prone to resort to violence. But It IS equally true that any society feels the need for law, for th~ juridical formulation of realistic and practicable laws, and thIS need was felt as keenly in the Middle Ages as in any other historical period. Obsessed as it was with traditiQn, feudal society was a peculiarly fertile field. for de facto social relations to assume the halo of antiquity and take on the force of law. We have already seen how its antiquity was held to be the most important characteristic of medieval law, so much so that even innovations were regarded .as really restorations of ancient if unrecorded ordinances. Renovation was understood as restoration, progress as a return to the past; for only

[182]

'The country is built on law ... ' that which had existed from time immemorial carried m~ral force and incontrovertible authority. This attitude was typl~al not only of the sphere of l~w but .of literally a~l oth.er SOCIal spheres, in production relatIons as In theology, In phllo.sop~y and in family matters. Development and chaI?-ge were Inev~t­ ably construed in such terms as reformatw, regenera~w, restauratio, revocatio. The ideal state was seen as havIng existed in the past, and what mattered was ~ither to restore it or to return to it. Unconventional behavIour, a taste for novelty, for innovation, are not ty~ical of this society. One distinguished oneself not by departIng frorr: exarr:p~e but by sticking to it as closely as pOSSIble. ~or. thIS, .a ngid framework of convention was necessary, wlthu: wh.Ich one a~ways knew exactly how to behave in a &iven slt~atIo.n; ~nd In the construction of this framework, In the ntuahsatIon of all sides of social behaviour, custom and law playe~ an enormous part. They did not simply sh~pe r~lationshlps. - they very largely constituted these relationshIps, prOVIdIng ?ot only a ready-made sche~a for .gene.ral use but also detaIled scenarios· for use in parttcuJar sItuatIOns.. .' . If medieval government is not noted for ItS legIslatIve actIvity, this is due in part to the prevalence of customary law. All aspects of life were governed by cu~t
[183]

'The country is built on law ... ' condu ct was guided less by the letter of the law than by custom, by recollection of how people used to act in similar circ*mstances and by what one's moral conscience suggested as the proper course of action. Here we touch on the main difference between custom and law. Once laid down as law, a norm became immutable: henceforth, the letter of the law would have to be rigorously obeyed. The law freed itself from the circ*mstances which had given rise to it and took on its own indepe ndent existence. This is the essential point: by acquiring written form, law became 'alienated' from its begetters, who thereafter could no longer influence it or amend it; its interpr etation would now be the exclusive monop oly of the judiciary and of the ruling power - in no case of the comm unity, which nevertheless would be obligatorily subjected to it. Custom , on the other hand, being unwrit ten, had not cut the umbilical cord linking it to the comm unity, to groups and strata of real people; and while it appeared to those affected by it not to change, imperceptibly it did change in answer to new needs as they arose. Custo m is not stored up in people's memories in unchanging form; it is created by people who may not be aware of this, and remain convinced that this is how it was 'long ago'. There was no 'alienation' of custom ary law from the comm unity; it remained a creative source. Medieval law was ratio vivens, not ratio scripta. Whenever customary law had. to be invoked, its interpr etation was guided, almost unconsciously, less by what one remembered than by the real needs of the case, the de facto interests of the parties. Thus, while inferior to written law as an articulated, systematic, unamb iguous and perfected instrument, custom was a creative factor in medieval law, a means where by a wide cross-section of medieval society could share in the interpr etation and implementation of law. The legislator had to reckon with custom ary law which was obligatory on all, and which even the ruler could not change. The prestige of the monarch was safeguarded by the doctrine that all law was protec ted and preserved in his person. In practice, however, of the two systems of medieval law - written legislation and unwrit ten custom - custom ary law was the more impor tant

[184]

'The countr y is built on law ... ' and the more directl y applicable to the. proble ms ?f real life. Misgivings vis-a-vis 'unhea rd-of n~:)VeltIes' had theIr effect on official legislation as well, and thIS left room for .c~stomary law to contin ue to develop under cover of tradItional and unchan ging social order.

If it is one-si ded to dismiss the Middle Ages as an age wi.th

no law but that of the 'maile d fist', it is equally superfiCIal to see therein unrelieved lawlessness and arbitrariness. Feudal society was built up on domin ion and subo.rdination. No one in medieval society was completely free In all respects, for everyo ne was subjec t to ~ lor~. If we a~e .to unders tand the exact meani ng of the relatIonshIp of domInIon and subordinatio n in feudal society , we have to be clear about the real conten t of such concep ts as freedom and dependence .. The social relations of the Middle Ages are above all Interpersonal relations. Relations between people are. -':lot yet screened by relations involving t.hings, co~mod.ItIes and other material values as is the case In bourgeoIs socIety. Precapitalistic societies ;re marke d by direct, immediate relations between people ; the social body h.as nO.t yet been affected by the n1echanism of 'aliena tion', which becomes all-powerful in a society geared to the produc tion of goods. ~n this l~tter stage, relations betwee n people are concealed ~ehInd relatIOns between the goods which represent pe~ple. I~ th; marketplace; as Marx puts it, relations are then f~tI~hIsed .. As they became reified, human relations lose theIr ImmedIacy,. t?e individual is replaced by his goods, and his personal 9uahtl~s play no role whate ver in these. relations. 'Comm ?dIty fetIshism' was unkno wn to the MIddle Ages. In partIcular, the value of this or that article was not determ ined by the market, or by the labour input; everyt hing bore ~ts ma~er's imprin t, its proper ties were linked to the personalIty of ItS cre~tor. In medieval society goods and money had not combIned to dictate the shape of social relations. The role of such a regulator was played by law. . When we speak of the interp~rsonal ~ature of s?cIal r~la­ tions in the Middl e Ages - partIcularly In the ea~her penod - we have to remem ber that the human personalIty was not yet individualised: it was still very closely connec ted to the

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

collective, the group, of which it was indeed an inseparable part. 37 It was the victory won by a market economy, the consolidation of the rule of money, that was later to. destroy the system of interpersonal relations, free the individual from the corporate integument and confer freedom of personality. The personality gains foothold and takes over in a society which denies the personal character of social relations. Medieval social relations are shot through and through with the principle of mutuality, of reciprocity, which played no small role in the forging of these relations. The vassal finds himself a lord. The links thus set up between the two are not natural, as they were in barbarian society, but purely social (although the organic groupings either retain their previous identity, e. g. the family, or are retained for a long time, e.g. kinship relations under feudalism). In addition, in contradistinction to the collective ties of barbarian society, feudal ties are built up on an individual basis. The ties between lord and vassal, between protector and ward, are constructed on the assumption that, in some form or other, both sides have accepted certain obligations. The vassal undertook to serve his master, to help him in every way, and to be personally faithful to him .at all times. On his side, the lord undertook to protect the vassal, defend him, and to treat him justly. Entering upon this relationship, the two exchanged solemn oaths and performed the ritual act of homage which rendered their bond indissoluble. Any infringement of the feudal treaty by one party liberated the other from his obligation to it. A poor helpless man who found a patron for himself asked him for protection and support, promising in return to be obedient in all things; the patron undertook to feed and protect his client. A peasant giving up his rights to a property in favour of an ecclesiastical or lay magnate and seeking dependence on the latter, was entitled by law to expect to be protected by his new patron, and to expect that the landowner would release him from having to undertake public service on behalf of the state. The real content of the relationship between lord and dependant consisted as a rule in the exploitation of the latter by the former, and the relationship was regulated by the principle

of reciprocity of obligations and services agreed by the two sides. In contradistinction to the doctrine of the unconditional obedience of subjects to the divinely appointed authorities, with its emphasis on the role played by one's duty or service instead of on the person performing that role, feudal law is based on the relationship between two persons who admittedly stand on different rungs of the hierarchic ladder, but who are in identical fashion included in the scope of the law, and who are individually responsible for the fulfilment of their obligations as undertaken. In the same way, the rule of the king is no longer founded on the unilateral 'descent' of power from him to his subjects, but on cooperation between him and his vassals, whose relationship to him is a personal one. It is hardly necessary to point out that the principle of reciprocity is far more readily identifiable in the relationship between knight and baron than in the relations between landowner and peasant; but in all cases the relationship is based on a definite personal bond. It is in this sense that the feudal dependence of the peasant is radically different from the dependence of the slave, 'who was treated by his owner as a thing, something to order about and make use of, but never as a person. The man of the Middle Ages could not be turned into a disposable object like the slave in antiquity,principally because he was not an isolated unit, like a cow, which could be easily 'alienated'. Medieval man is invariably a member of a. group to which he is very closely bound. From top to bottom medieval society is corporate. Associations of vassals, knightly orders, monastic brotherhoods and Catholic clergy; town communes, merchant and trade guilds; defensive unions, religious brotherhoods; village communities, kindreds, patriarchal and individual family groupings - these and similar collectives spliced individuals together in closely knit microcosms which gave protection and help, and which were built up on a basis of mutual exchange of services and support. Some of these groupings were organic in nature - a man was born into one, lived and worked within it, satisfying all his social needs within the radius defined by it. Other

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'The country is built on law ... '

groups were less closely knit and did not completely absorb the personality of the members. But in one way or another, medieval man was always related to a corporate body. The ties binding people within a group were much stronger than the ties between groups or between individuals belonging to different groups; social ties in medieval society were above all ties within groups. Each group had its own regulations constitution, statutes, and code of behaviour either written or traditional, which was strictly binding on all the members of the collective. These regulations were not imposed on the collective by any higher power or authority; they were worked out by the group itself on the principle of general agreement and self-rule (or were borrowed from a similar corporate body as, for example, urban law). In the sphere of corporate relations there took shape the principle of representation, something completely alien to the concept of the unlimited power of the ruler. Each type of social group had its moral attitudes, its sociopolitical ideals. The group to which an individual belonged gave him his occupation and guaranteed him a certain lifestyle; in many cases it also ensured his material existence. But over and above all this, the group recommended or rather prescribed the way he behaved, the way he thought and the way he reacted to things. The corporate social structure of the Middle Ages was at the same time a mental conformism. The corporate body repudiates non-traditional behaviour on the part of its members, anything that runs counter to its accepted standards. Those who break the rules are subject to moral censure, are punished and even expelled from the group. In this context, the exact manner of the deviation from the norm is not too important. The craftsman who produces an article better in quality than is normative in his guild, or who works more efficiently or quicker than his fellows, is punished, just as is the negligent craftsman. It is not the threat of competition that occasions these punitive measures but simply the fact of deviation from the accepted standard. The conclusion suggests itself - the corporate nature of social life in medieval Europe prevented the development of human individuality; it arrested initiative, robbing people of

the chance of opening up new ways of life, and subjecting the individual mind to the collective mind of the group. The guilds and other corporate bodies generated by the whole structure of material existence in the Middle Ages and the division of labour inherent in the feudal system used their influence to strengthen the prevailing relations within society. These bodies represented a form or mould in which society was much more likely to reproduce itself in its own image than to change or develop. They conserved those production levels that had been attained, and discouraged innovatory ideas among their members. All this is true; yet we have to see the other side of corporate life in the Middle Ages. The guilds and other corporate bodies did not all enjoy equal rights; but they were constituted on the principle of the equality of their members. The corporate group united people who not only belonged to one profession or were engaged in the same sort of work but who were also equal in socio-legal status. Within the confines of such a group there were no master-subject relations as there were in the vertical scale uniting feudal lord and vassals, who belonged to different socio-Iegal orders and to different groupings - some belonging to knightly orders, others to the barons who held estates immediately from the Crown, etc. Social ties within the corporate group are not 'vertical' but 'horizontal'. By requiring its members to observe its discipline, to live and even think according to its sole example, the corporation nourished them at the same time, in a spirit of equality, of mutual respect for the rights of all members of the group. It united them in defence of these rights and of the group's general interests against any possible interference or encroachment from outside. The principle of the equality of the members of the corporation remained its crucial index even when it was not observed in practice. Guild unity could be ruptured by the emergence of differentiation among the craftsmen, just as the unity of citizens in the town communes could; but the idea of equality stuck in their minds and served as a rallying point for its restoration. Equality was never quite reached in the Middle Ages, but the gap between the ideal and the reality was never allowed to weaken the ideal.

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

Thus we see that the social structure of feudal society in Western Europe was characterised by two contradictory but functionally associated organisational principles: on the one hand, the relations between lord and vassal (dominion and subordination) and on the other the corporate relationships. Masters and subordinates formed part of corporate groups which defended their rights and guaranteed their specific social and juridical status. By leaving no room for the free development of the human personality, the corporation created the conditions for its existence within certain prescribed limits: allowing it, that is, an area of action, a radius which did not run counter to the interests and aims of the collective. Medieval law reflects this duality: rejecting novelty as reprehensible and even criminal, it defended the status which a man enjoyed by virtue of his adherence to a given social group. The corporation was a sort of nursery where the self-respect and dignity of its individual members were inculcated. The man who relied on the support of his fellows, and who felt himself equal to them, learnt to respect himself and those like him. People were bound together in their group not by fear or by deference to higher authority but emotionally by feelings of fellowship and of mutual respect. If we are to gain more than a superficial understanding of the social structure of medieval Europe we have to take into account both the 'vertical' link of lord and subject, and the 'horizontal' link provided by the corporate body. Individually, the vassal was subordinate to his . lord ; but he received his status from the group, from the socio-Iegal instance, the corporation, and his lord and master had to bear this status in mind. The role of the corporate society in the development of the personality becomes clearer if we compare the corporative structure of Western Europe with the comparatively individualised social and ideological relations obtaining in the Byzantine Empire. In Byzantium, the ruling class was not united as it was in the West in groups of lords and vassals, and it was easier for upstarts to move upwards from lower to higher social strata. In theory, the individual in the Eastern Roman Empire had a better chance of rising in the world

and improving his socio-legal status. But closer study of this Byzantine 'individualism' will convince us that it had little to do with the genuine development of human individuality. Byzantium knew nothing of the feudal treaty, the loyalty of the vassal or the group solidarity of peers. In place of the 'horizontal' ties linking people of the same status, there prevailed the 'vertical' linkage from the sovereign downwards to the subjects. 38 Byzantine society was marked not by mutual assistance and exchange of services but by the unilateral and sa--vile dependence of the lowly on their masters. The most powerful personages, the princes and the very rich, who had attained high state office, were completely devoid of rights and unprotected by law in relation to the emperor, who could deprive them at will of their property, their rank or even of their lives just as he. could at will elevate any man of the people and turn a vulgar upstart into the highest official in the land. It is highly significant that the power of the monarch (Basileus) to punish and exploit his subjects to an unlimited degree was never questioned in Byzantium; it was simply accepted as the natural order of things. It is quite impossible to imagine anything like Magna Carta - a legal compromise between the monarch and his vassals - in a Byzintine setting. The 'individualism' of the Byzantine aristocrat was the individualism of the lackey looking for a career and a chance to enrich himself, devoid of personal dignity, cringing before his superiors and ready to demean _ himself for a gratuity. 39 At a reception given by the Byzantine emperor one of the knights of Lorraine taking part in the First Crusade was outraged to see that 'one man could sit while so many great warriors had to stand', and proceeded to place himself ostentatiously on the throne. 4o An example of the uncouthness of Western courtiers amid the niceties of Byzantine ceremonial? No doubt; but here we also see the personal dignity of the knight, something which was retained even in the presence of the monarch, the 'primus inter pares' - not the master among slaves. It might look as though only one personality really existed in the Byzantine Empire - the sacred person of the Basileus himself. But the fact is that it was the imperial office itself

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

that was considered sacred, the office and everything connected with it, while one Byzantine emperor in two was removed by violence, mutilated or murdered. Even while he was in power - apparently, total power - he was the slave of the most complicated court ceremonial. The subjects who prostrated themselves before the emperor one minute would betray him the next; there was no trace in this relationship of knightly loyalty or personal commitment. From top to bottom they were all slaves. Hence, the Byzantine attitude to law was also totally different from that of the West. Byzantium is distinguished by possession of the most substantial of the medieval law codes - the Code of Justinian, unifying Roman law - and by a total absence of any feeling for law and order, any regard for law as the guarantee of the observance of human rights. The principle of 'whatever pleases the emperor is law' is the principle of autocratic lawlessness. Autocratic rule and human individuality are incompatibles. Servility became established as the behavioural norm: the result was arbitrariness and despotism, hypocrisy and 'Byzantinism'. The West had its share of lawlessness and perfidy, but throughout the ~v1iddle Ages in Europe it was never forgotten that the monarch must obey the law set over and above him. The royal power was not in a position to rule if it ignored the interests of the corporate estates; on the contrary, it convoked these orders and sought their support in all complicated political situations. The corporate nature of the feudal state is explicable first and foremost by the existence of powerful and influential corporate groups, whose members were united by sharing status and equality of rights. It can be seen that the relation between the individual and the corporation was contradictory in the extreme. While rigorously delimiting the area in which human personality might develop, and channelling it into a code of regulations, the corporate group at the same time helped its members to value their human dignity as individuals, their solidarity as members of a group, and the equality they shared. True, it was a relative degree ef equality, valid only within the confines of the group, but it was a necessary step on the road

to the recognition, at a much later date, of the equality before the law of all citizens. No less contradictory and idiosyncratic in content is the medieval concept of freedom. 'Freedom' in its medieval meaning is something quite different both from the ancient and the modern concept. It was not simply the antithesis of servitude and dependence. No one was completely independent in medieval society. The peasant was subject to his master, but even the feudal lord was the vassal of a greater lord. A proprietor was master on his land, but it was a fief given him for service and obedience. The coalescence of seigneurial rights and the obligations of vassalage is characteristic for every member of the feudal hierarchy right up to the monarch who heads it: for in a sense he too is a vassal, having taken the oath of fealty to emperor and pope, or he regards himself as a vassal of God. Possession of complete and final sovereignty is unknown in this society. Every member ()f feudal society is dependent on someone, even if the dependence is no more than nominal. At the same time, significant strata of this society regarded themselves as juridically free. Hence, freedom was not construed as the antithesis of dependence; freedom and dependence were not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, such concepts as 'free dependence', 'free service', 'free obedience', etc., had real meaning. 41 And just as freedom did not exclude dependence, so too dep,endence did not imply the absence of all rights. A wide spectrum of degrees of freedom and dependence is in fact characteristic of medieval society. No one limited definition of freedom is universally valid. Freedom and dependence are relative states, not absolutes. One's freedom increases or decreases depending on the nature of one's rights. One and the same man can be at one and the same time free and unfree: dependent on his feudal lord and free with regard to all other men. It was difficult and often impossible to define the status of one or another man or of a social order unambiguously and definitively; the juridical categories were fluid and variable, and the medieval courts were always having to take up cases involving personal rights. Definitions of dependence changed in the course of time; for example over a long period, it was impossible to establish who

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'The country is built on law . .. '

'The country is built on law .. . '

belong:ed to the class of serfs, as the dependent peasants were called In Fra~ce. Th~ fact th~t in Western Europe the peasant was not free In relation to hIS landlord did not mean that he had no rights at all. The dependent peasant who carried out heavy labour, service and paid his taxes in money or kind, who had no nght to leave his lord and was juridically subject to the lord, was nevertheless not in a state of total servitude nor was his depe~dence regarded as arbitrary. The lord of the manor was oblIged to safeguard certain rights enjoyed by such a peasant; he had to take into account those customs which limited t~e extent to which he could exploit the peasant, and whIch defined the other claims which the lord could make on the peasant's labour and person. The lords had to d?, not with individual peasants but with collectives, whole v~llages ?r districts, which enabled the peasants to offer resIstance In cases where the lords tried to depart from c~st?m and step up the exploitation of the peasant. It is sIgnIficant that one of the most usual and widespread forms of peas~nt resistance against their lords was the appeal to law; gOIng to court to have a disputed custom investigated and restored, to have documents verified was the form of . ' re~lstance which stressed the highest social value of the MIddle Ages - law. 42 It would be historically inaccurate to draw any sort of parallel between the dependent peasants in the Western European feudal system and the Eastern European serfs o~ the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The total absence of nghts which was a characteristic of the Russian serf, and by virtue of which he was hardly distinguishable ~ro~, a sla~e, ~as som,ethingvery different from the specific Jundical SItuatIon enjoyed by the dependent peasant in Western feudalism. The legal t,r~atment of the status of human personality had a strong relIgIOUS component. The doctrine that all men were equal before God and that Christ died to save all men ~pirituapy, was combined with the church's teaching that InequalIty on earth was the result of the Fall. Since true freedom" as the church taught, "could only be found in ~~ave~, l~ was ll;P, to everyone to bear earthly adversity and InjUStIce In .a spint of meekness and humility. 'Is not every man born to, labour as a bird to flight? Does not almost every man serve eIther under the name of lord or serf? And is not

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he who is called a serf in the Lord, the Lord's freeman; and he who is called free, is he not Christ's serf? So if all men labour and serve, and the serf is a freeman of the Lord, and the freeman is a serf of Christ, what does it matter apart from pride - either to the world or to God - ~ho is called a serf and who is called free?' in such terms dId St Anselm of Canterbury seek to justify inequality ip society. 43 Christianity, which had starte.d. out In the late, Roman Empire as a denial of and OppOSItiOn t~ the ,establIshme~t, soon altered its stance to one of conformIty WIth the prevaIling forms of social exploitation. In feudal society the, chur~h developed its theory of the organic structure of SOCIety, In which each member is an indispensable part of the who!e, and must, as such, carry out his allotted task. Parallel WIth the feudal system there evolved the eccles~astical do~tr,ine of the three-fold functional structure of socIety, conSISting of ordered strata (ordines): the clergy (orat?res) whose task, it is to care for the spiritual health of the kingdom, the knIghts (bellatores pugnatores) who defend it, and the ploughmen, the labou'rers (aratores, laboratores) who feed it. A,ny infringement of this harmonious reciprocity could brIng about the most disastrous consequences for the whole organism. 'The house of God is three-fold', wrote Adalberon, bishop of Laon (late tenth/early eleventh century), 'but belief is one. Therefore some pray, others fight, and others again labour; altogether they form three orders, and • their separation is not to be endured. '44:[Together with the doctrine. of the m
Asterisks indicate addenda. See p. 315.

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'The country is built on law . , .'

'The country is built on law ... ' ~an:~ation. 45, Christ's act of redemption confronts every

IndIvIdual wIth the problem of choice and the free fulfilment ?£ ~i~ moral duty. By giving priority to the salvation of the IndIvIdual soul and by taking freedom of will as a cardinal t~net, C?ris.tianity put a higher value on the human personalIty, whIch It represented as in direct and immediate relationship with God. As we, have al:eady pointed out, this relationship was re~arded In the MIddle Ages as a service. If man served God falt~fully and was obedient to him in all things, he would attaIn freedom. Those faithful to God, those who believed in him with all their soul, would be free; but those who persisted in their pride and were recalcitrant to God's will only imagined themselves to be free - in fact they wer~ unfree, the slaves of their passions on earth and condemned to the torments of hell in the life to come, In this sense the 'free bondage in the Lord' (Libera servitus apud Dominum) was opposed to 'the servile freedom of the world' (servilis :nundi li.bertas). Only the faithful servant enjoys true freedom In the hIghest sense. St Augustine had already distinguished between the vera libertas of the devout and the falsa libertas of the sinful. Augustine links the concepts of 'justice', 'peace' a~d 'su.bordination', since only submission to God anl unity wIth hIm can serve as a guarantee of peace and justice on ~art~. Thus on the teleological plane as well we see an approxImatIon and coalescence in sense between the concepts of 'freedom', 'service' and 'fidelity'. , In ~he Middle Ages, fidelity was the most important Christlan vlr~ue. In b~th the c~urtly epic and the courtly romances, the maIn hero IS the faIthful, valiant vassal who performs countless exploits of derring-do. He even overshadows the king and pushes him into second place. In the Chanson de Roland Roland is a far more active and lively figure than Charlemagne. In later works the monarch is allotted an even more passive role: Charlemagne turns into a sick old man, :\rthur snoozes at his Round Table, and the heroic principle IS completely embodied in the faithful vassal. 46 Not freedom and dependence but service and fidelity are the central socio-political and moral-religious values in medieval Christianity. These values are treated in very similar

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fashion by theology and by law, for, af~er al~, law 'Y as regarded as part of Christian morality. The dIalectIcal relatIon between freedom and unfreedom had both a speculative and a practical sense. Law was a global and all-embracing en~ity to which all things were subjected. It formed the general lI~k binding people together. But this link was not the same In degree for all people. The unfree were bound to a lesser degree by the prescriptions of law, the free to a gre~t~r degree; in fact, the more free s?meone was, the ore pnVIleges he enjoyed, the more stnctly he had to abI~e, ~y the law and the greater the weight of moral responsIbIlIty he carried for exact observance of the law. The feudal lord enjoyed a far wider range of privileges t~an did the dependent peasant, but precisely because of thIS ,he w~s bound t? observe a code of behaviour which reqUIred hIm to submIt to a whole series of restrictions which were invalid for commoners, 'Noblesse oblige', In this respect the distinction between the unfree and baseborn on the one hand, and the free and noble-born on the other lies in the fact that the former were not free to choose their 'situation or their behaviour; their birth, their blood determined that for them. The free-born man, however, could opt to become a knight, the vassal of a noble seigneur, to whom he would swear the oath of fealty; he would voluntarily take upon himself certain specific obligations, inclu~ing observance of the code of chivalry with all its rules o,f ntual and ceremonial behaviour. By this act of, free WIll, ~he nobleman consciously recognises the law, Just as a pnest deliberately and at the dic~ate of hi~ own co?science see~s ordination. The free man hves by hIS own WIll and se~s h.Is own limits while the unfree man lives by another's WIll, In submissio~ not to the law but to the will of this other. The hierarchy of privileges, of freedom, ?f dependence and ,of servitude was also a hierarchy of serVIces. A vassal's s.ervice to his lord found moral sanction and enhancement In the analogy of the Christian's 'free service' to the ~rea~or. . We see then that man's freedom was not denIed In feudal practice. But it was a very particular kin,d of freedo~, quite different from 'freedom' as understood In modern times. A man's rights in the Middle Ages, as a matter of fact, were

n:

~r

I

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'The country is built on law ... ' not his individual rights. If he was to make use of his rights, a :nan had to be a member of a corporate group or corporatIon from which he acquired these rights; and it was the corporate body which protected these rights from being eroded or ignored. Outside the social. group, a man ceased to be a member of society; he became an outcast, defenceless and devoid of rights. It 7"as not only juridical rights that accrued to the individual In .so far as he belonged to this or that social group; his prof~~sIonal skills co~ld only be practised and his mental qualItIes expressed wIthin the framework of the collective. ~ssentially a man's social status, his ability to work, his Ideology, were not his own personal qualities but a property of the corporate group. ~eudal society was a society of clearly specified social roles assIgned and fixed by custom or by law. The individual was boun~ in the most intimate way with his social role, and it was hIs performance in this role that enabled him to make use of the rights accruing to the incumbent of such a role. More, his individuality was very largely determined by the role he playe? in society. Not only his rights were corporate; so v,rere hIs Inner nature, the way he thought and the way he behaved. Medieval man was a knight, a priest or a peasant - not s~meone behaving as a knight, a priest or a peasant. ',The SOCIal order of the Middle Ages saw itself and accepted Itself as the natural order of things as ordained by God. The corporation shaped the individual. From a modern individualistic point of view, the medieval group stunted the developme~1t of~he personality. B~t in the Middle Ages - up to a c~rtaln pOInt,. at least - thIS was not recognised as constraInt; rather, It was seen as the natural form in which alone the individual could develop his capabilities. Within the co?fines of his own social sphere the individual enjoyed a relatIvely large measure of freedom and could accordingly express himself in his daily activity and in his emotional life. His bel.onging to a group d~d not as a rule weigh heavily upon hIm; on the contrary, It was a source of contentment and made for con.fidence. Thus, the medieval personality lacked the generalIsed - and hence abstract - character it has acquired in modern times. It was rather a concretised

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'The country is built on law . .. ' personality playing its allot~e? rol~ in .a general s~cial c:>rd.er, which was understood as dIVInely Instituted, and IdentifYIng itself mainly through and in t~rms of this soc~al role. Since individuality merged with SOCIal role and socI~1 stat:us, law acted as the main regulator of the whole of SOCIal eXIstence. Not all corporate bodies and social groups were integra~ed in identical fashion, however, and there were very WIde differences in the degree to which they determined the individuality of their members. The monotony and the very low differentiation of the social and productive activity of the. p~asantry mad~ for conservation of traditional forms of thInkIng and behavIour. The peasant felt himself at one with his natural environI?ent. His horizon was bounded to a very great extent by the VIllage horizon .. His life depended in every detail on the rhythms .of nature. As we saw above, time for the peasant was cyclIc, bound up with the changing y.ea~ and the ag~icultural seasons. In the peasant mind, the ChnStian world-VIew w~s an ac.cretion to a massive stratum of magic and mythologIcal belIefs, which had by no means lost thei.r power. 47 The pe~sant saw himself as a member of the agncultural communIty rather than as an individual. Inwardly, the medieval collective w.as not united: low individual productivity subordinated Its members to. general routine patterns, and served a~ the saI?e time as a source of conflict, disagreement and InequalIty among them. To some extent, the antagonism between the . peasants and the feudallord~ made for l?easa~t unity,. but ~he division of the land-tenants Into categones WIth non-Identical rights and obligations, and with h?l.d~ngs which varied markedly in size and yield, act~d as a dlvlsl,:e .factor. Neverthele~s, the peasant mind remaIned collectiVIst. Non-conformIst behaviour was scarcely imaginable in the village or the countryside; where it occurred, it was mainly in the shape of change of employment from agriculhl:re to a craf~ or trade or perhaps a move to the town. In chOOSIng to remaIn a peasant, a member of a community - i. e. a dependent tenant to whom feudal society had denied most rights - wa~ submitting to an all-embracing social conformism. OppreSSIon by the feudal landlord was compounded by spiritual d.ependence on the priests, and by mental backwardness and Ignorance.

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law , .. )

F<;>r ~any centuries, .folk culture remained oral; like village mUSIC It was never wntten down. All that the historian can find out about the spiritual and emotional life of the peasantry is contained in chance references and solecisms in authors belonging to much more elevated social circles who treat p~asants with sco~n, host~lity or contemptuous pi~y. In the leXIcon of the medIeval wnter, the rusticus is an uncouth bo~r. The peasant~ fo,:"med the silent majority of medieval soc~ety, and, made ItS VOIce heard only at times of exacerbated socIal conflIct and of mass movements such as rebellions heretical uprisings and outbursts of religious fanaticism. A~ a rule, the feudal lords were well able to handle such outbursts. ~:. At the. same time, the governing orders exercised a great deal of Inf1~ence o~ the mental and spiritual life of the pea,santry ~Ith the aIm ~f. persuading .the peasants to accept t~eIr lot WIth due humIlIty. The pnest's sermon and the lIturgy w~re highly effective ways of ensuring control over the behav~our of the oppressed classes of society. In the Lives of, the SaInts, a most popular form of writing during the MIddle ~ges, composed by monks, it is stressed over and over agaIn that any alleviation of the lot of the Door is exclusively in God's hands and in the hands of the sainJ.ts wh-~ ~re unfailingly rep~esent~d as the defenders and protect~rs of the leas~ of these. It IS, however, significant that over a long J::enod the heroes of this hagiographic literature were exclusIv~ly, re~resentat~ves ?f t~e upper classes of society, and th: s~Ints were pnmanly bIshops and priests. Thus was the belIef,Inculcated in the ordina~ people that sacral powers were takIng care of them; and It was for their spiritual welfare, for th,e salvation of the~r s~uls, that these powers sent down pu~~shment from on hIgh In the shape of sickness, natural cala?1Itles and cruel ,and unjust rulers. The message for t~e ordInary man was SImple: rely on miracles, not on your own strength. 48~:' , Certai~ p<;>s~ibili~ies w~r~ open to the nobleman to develop hIS own IndIvIdualIty. LIVIng an isolated life in his castle at t~e head of his o~edien~ and servile microcosm, he co~ld hImself lay down Its rules and routines. In relation to the world outside, he was a relatively autonomous unit. His

warlike profession was very largely an individual skill, in that he had to rely on his own strength, courage and experience in battle. Even when campaigning in his lord's army the knight acted very largely on his own initiative and at his own risk. His relations with other feudal lords were also mainly of an individual nature, consisting as they did in mutual visits, feasts, quarrels, parleys and marriage contracts, More than anyone else in feudal society, it was the members of the aristocratic order who had to abide by very strict rules governing their conduct. Entering upon or quitting a lord's service, declaring war, taking part in a tournament, attending at court, acting as judge - for all their actions rules were laid down which had to be meticulously observed, and a strict ritual was prescribed which had to be carried out to the letter. The code of chivalry set out the complicated procedures of etiquette, the slightest departure from which could tarnish a knight's honour in the eyes of other members of his class. The code did not require the knight to be so meticulous in his conduct towards the unprivileged classes; but in his own milieu he had to be continually on his guard against any infringement of the rules of behaviour. His noble birth and his high social status laid obligations upon him which restricted the extent to which he might develop his own ego. When we say that in the feudal system of social relations it fell to the knight to 'play a leading (and far from easy) role', this is no mere metaphor. It was a role that had to be sustained in constant mindfulness of the audience for whom he was 'playing', whether it was the king or his own immediate superior, a lady or another knight like himself. The key issue is honour: this is not inner awareness of one's own worth, not the self-awareness of a man conscious of his own individual qualities as those traits which distinguish him from others, but rather the prestige which a man enjoys in his own milieu. He sees himself through the eyes of others, and his prowess crystallises not in his difference from others in that milieu, but in his identity, his congruence with them. So, etiquette is no more than an elaborate scenario for behaviour in society. Even where it might seem that all that is needed is a bit of personal initiative and resourcefulness, the knight must not be guided by common sense but must

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law ... '

act in conformity with the requirements of the corporate ethic. A knight bearing tidings to the king in the heat of battle, must not approach him directly but wait to be called to audience, even if the delay means disaster on the field. 49 Medieval culture is a good example of an elaborate semiological system which is seen at its best in relations between members of the dominant order. Every action of the knight, every article he uses, his garments and their colour, his words and expressions, the language he speaks - all of this is invested with symbolic significance. Socially, the feudal upper classes expressed themselves in ritual and symbol. In a dominant position and enjoying the maximum degree of juridical freedom possible in an age of general corporate determination, this class was nevertheless not free to select its own ways of lJehaving. The inevitable result was that the individuality of the knight had to express itself in fixed and conventional forms. Here, the literature of chivalry is instructive. The earliest of its basic forms is the epic. The epic corresponds to a way of thinking associated with the predominance of collective principles and of stable group attitudes, both social and mental. The personages of the courtly epic embody conventional ideas and qualities - courage, fidelity and strength visa-vis villainy, treachery and cowardice. They are abstract types rather than real people. The hero of chivalry has no individuality. Evidence of the changing relationship between the individual and his milieu is to be found, however, in the courtly lyric. At its best, the love poetry of the M innesanger and the troubadours reveals an exceptional ability to penetrate into and to analyse the inner world of the individual. The love celebrated by the Proven~al poets of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (in contradistinction to what might be called its 'family' or 'dynastic' form) has an individual ring to it: one woman only is dear to the poet, and he will exchange her for no other. What inspires the troubadour is not nobility of birth or riches (though the poets are by no means indifferent to ,these assets I), but the beauty and the courtoisie of his lady. Here we see the concepts of nobility

of origins and nobility of soul beginning to take their separate paths. 50 And yet, whoever the lady is, the portrait we are given of her in the Proven~al lyric is stereotyped, and her beauty is hymned in. the usual cliches. The catalogue of the lady's charms, from her 'beautiful fair hair' and brow 'whiter than the lily' to her 'white hands with their long, slender, smooth fingers' and her 'charming body, soft and youthful', becomes a literary convention. 51 The lady celebrated in these lyrics has no marks of identification: she is an abstract and ideal figure, apprehended in the main, nevertheless, by the 'eyes of the body'. She is also anonymous; as a rule, the poet gives her an amorous pet-name. Nor are her inner qualities individualised to any greater extent. The beautiful lady is tactful, lovable, worldly-wise; she dresses tastefully, is a coquette in moderation, she is well-born, intelligent, and can carryon a sophisticated conversation. In short, she is a compendium of those qualities which were given the overall nam.e of courtoisie . To judge from the troubadour lyrics, relations between lovers varied considerably from the platonic 'service' of an inaccessible lady, a sort of worship which ennobled and elevated the poet, to the most intimate intercourse which the troubadours not infrequently describe in explicit and naively coarse language. Soon, however, a definitive ritual for courtship and amorous relations was worked out, which became obligatory for refined people who set some store on their reputations. A lady was bound to have a lover and to treat him as such, while her knight was expected to keep the 'secret love' secret, and to serve the lady of his heart in exactly the same way as a vassal served his lord. The terminology of feudal institutions was easily transferred to more intimate relations. 52 The passion for classification which is characteristic of the whole epoch gave rise to a 'scholasticism of love', a sui generis codification of canons of amorous behaviour and the expression of feelings. Poets gained added lustre from their affairs with noble ladies and sought to build up reputations as fearless and daring lovers. It was not just the material value of tribute and plunder that made knights go on military expeditions, but the chance thus offered to acquire fame through an ostentatious (and therefore symbol-

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'The country is built on law . .. '

'The country is built on law . .. '

ical) squandering of wealth; and in the same way, in courtly love the socially most valuable dividend was the renown accruing to the poet through his praise for his conquest - his lady - and his feelings for her. The poet's individuality was constrained by a set of stereotypes; directness of expression was replaced by mannerisms, artificiality, conventionality and play on words. 53 These traits of the courtly lyric may be taken as an index of the growth of a corporate awareness in chivalry. By elaborating an ideal type of love and turning it into a ritual, the troubadours created a special sublimated world which existed for only one social group of the feudal hierarchy, screened off from the ordinary people on the one hand and the higher aristocracy on the other. But over and above the traditional features which are characteristic of medieval society in general, the courtly lyric has something quite new to offer. The position of woman in this context is totally different from her position in official, feudal marriage, which was understood as the union of two houses. Courtly love cannot arise between husband and wife. One of the troubadour lyrics expresses this in unmistakable terms: 'A husband offends against honour if he loves his wife as a knight loves his lady; .for in this the worth of neither increases, nor can the relationship yield anything that is not already there by law.' The verdict reached by the 'Courts of Love' said to be held by Eleanor of Aquitaine (if these courts existed at all and were not invented by the poets) was that there could be no courtly love between husband and wife. 54 Courtly love is illegal, officially beyond the pale; but the more deeply it touches the inner world of the individual, the more clearly it illuminates his spiritual resources. The courtly lyric provides a new basis for human self-expression. 55 For the first time in European literature, the analysis of intimate experience takes a central place in the writing of poetry. Individual passion becomes virtually the main aim in life. The poet acknowledges that love enriches him inwardly. Feeling is one of the moral and aesthetic categories of chivalry; and if the lady hymned by the troubadour remains a non-individualised embodiment of the ideal of womanly beauty fashionable in the courts of Southern France,immer-

sion in his own inner self, ardent recapitulation of his own adventures, the cultivation of love's joys and sorrows, all of 'this amounts to a reappraisal of moral values and constitutes a step forward in the development of the knight's self. . awareness. More strictly bound by etiquette in his social setting than peasant or burgher in theirs, the knight had nevertheless a better chance of discovering and developing his personality in the cultural sphere, though even here his emergence as an individual in his own right was subject to certain limitations. The situation of the town dweller was quite different. The most heterogeneous elements went into the formation of this stratum of society. The social structure of the medieval town was far more complex than the relatively hom*ogeneous structure of the countryside and the villages. In itself, the burgher's activity as a producer of goods generated a completely different attitude to life. His dependence on nature and her cyclical changes was already far less than that of the peasant. In place of a direct metabolism with nature, a qualitatively new medium was created for the circulation of the products of human labour. This is the key importance of urban production and the exchange of manufactured products. In the towns, relations with nature are second-hand. hom*o artifex has to rethink his role in the world. Man face to face with a nature he has transformed can ask himself a question that could never occur to the peasant: are these products, and the tools he has used to make them, works of God or works of man, i. e. his own creations ?56 A more complex understanding of the relationship between art (in the wide sense of the word, as used in the Middle Ages to mean all sorts of skills) and nature arises. Town-dwellers rationalise their ideas of time and space. In this process, the personality of the burgher was bound to be affected with consequent changes in his self-awareness. Nevertheless, the life of the medieval town-dweller continued to be hedged about by all sorts of regulations. Naturally, these regulations were first and foremost due to the conditions involved in production, the effort to save small handicrafts from competition and secure better conditions for the expanding production of commodities, the organisation of

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law . .. '

markets, and the subordination of apprentices to the control of master craftsmen. But the roots of Zunftzwang (compulsory membership of a guild) which prevailed in the towns went deeper than this and can only be· understood in connection with the essential peculiarities of social life in the Middle Ages. Guild rules did not so much restrict a man (for a long time, he was subjectively not aware of any restriction) as stamp his behaviour with a generally significant form, which identified him in the clearest possible way as a burgher. The behaviour of burghers was laid down and regulated by guild and town codes of rules. Together with the regulations governing the production process and other sides of economic life, these codes contain provisions for the care of the poor, they specify the baptism service, the authorised dress for apprentices, ev~n lists of swear-words and the fines payable for using them, and much more. In the 'Wedding Regulations' of Augsburg, description of the marriage rites and procedures is not less detailed than the full and factual account of the 'leges Barbarorum'. Here we learn the maximum number of guests that the burgher may invite to the wedding, the number of times it is permissible to change one's cloth;~ during the first two days- of the wedding, and how much the musicians should be paid; the order of the wedding procession is set out, and we learn how many women may acc.ompany the bride to the bath, and how many men should perform the same service for the bridegroom; everything, even what would seem to be the most ordinary of everyday practices, is ritualised and made subject to the rules of the municipal magistrate. 57 The rules for laying on a feast, with· their petty details - how the participants should behave and what to do if the guests get out of hand - remind us of the casuistic German law-codes. 58 In guilds we can find strong evidence of the efforts made by medieval citizens to unite in a corporation - efforts in which we can see not only specific urban conditions· but also the typical traits of the human personality of the epoch. The guild - the association of craftsmen - was the organisational form in which they and their families spent their lives. It was not only production and marketing interests or the social

struggle that united them in the guild, but also corporate membership, justice, the need for protection, religious functions, the organisation of leisure, entertainment, mutual assistance. It is worth while remembering that the word Zeche meant 'drinking-bout', 'blow-out', the word guild was derived from the Old English gild meaning.' sacrifice', and the Old Scandinavian word gildi meant 'feast', 'festivity' and also 'payment' or 'cost'. The guilds of the early Middle Ages had a sacral character and were connected with pagan cults. Members of the guilds called each other 'brother'; democratic forms and traditions played a rather large part in the medieval town in spite of the high degree of differentiation in the commune and the guilds. The relation between the craftsman and his product was highly specific; he saw it as part of himself. The concept of the chef d'oeuvre, the 'exemplary product', had a moral tinge, for only a conscientious worker who worked honestly and produced nothing but high-quality goods could be a guild member. The attention paid to the quality of every article produced by a guild's craftsmen bears witness to the absence of mass production and the limited nature of the market for which they worked. In the Icelandic sagas we find a curious example of the envy felt by a master craftsman of his own product. The Norwegian king Olaf Trygvason ordered the most powerful warship in the land to be built. The vessel was almost ready for launch when it was discovered that it had been damaged - during the night someone had bored holes all along the sides. The king offered a reward for the discovery of the culprit, who would be put to death. The chief boat builder Thorberg then admitted that he himself had damaged the vessel. The king ordered him to make good the damage. After Thorberg's repairs the boat vras even more . beautiful than before. 59 Belonging to a guild was connected with a complex of emotions which a man shared with other members: pride in his guild, whose reputation and authority he would jealously defend, participation in meetings and general decisions, assertion of his dignity as a fully-fledged burgher vis-a-vis the town patricians and the nobles, and a feeling of superiority vis-a-vis the unorganised craftsmen, the apprentices, pupils,

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'The country is built on law ... '

'The country is built on law . .. '

servants - the common people of the town. A master craftsman sought and found in his work not simply a source of material prosperity: his work gave him satisfaction in itself. Hence his work and its product could be a means of achieving aesthetic pleasure. Perfection in a craft was handed down from generation to generation, forming a tradition of excellence and pushing the productive and the artistic possibilities of the craft to their utmost limits. A craft was a skill, and skill was artistry. The free work of a master craftsman within a guild was a means of asserting his human personality and heightening his social awareness. The union of productive, ethical and aesthetic principles in the work of the master craftsman gave this work a very high social significance. It provided a basis for the development of the human personality to the maximum possible in the corporate society of the Middle Ages. The burgher was a citizen of his community, an owner, a working individual. The multilateral nature of his social relations raised him above the representatives of the other orders in feudal society. The built-in limitations of production based on handicrafts were, of course, at the same time the limits to' which this society could develop. The horizon of the medieval burgher remained limited, and the narrow, closed social groupings at one and the same time united the citizens (in communes, guilds, corporations) and divided them (disunity among guilds, hostility to manufactures that began to appear towards the end of the Middle Ages, the narrow provinciality of the towns, which prevented them from realising the need for national unity). Urban society was incapable of rapid development; though it was dynamic in comparison with the agrarian society, it shared with the latter the tendency to reproduce itself on too narrow a base and in over-close adherence to traditional forms and standards. Over a certain period, however, it was precisely in the towns that the human personality was able to achieve a certain growth, a specific medieval individuality. The distinction made by F. Tonnies between Gem einsch aft and Gesellschaft is relevant here. 6o Tonnies applied the term Gemeinschaft ('community') to the Middle Ages to indicate

what he saw as the integrated quality of this medieval individuality, and its close organic unity with its social environment. Gesellschaft ('society') on the other hand is constructed, not on immediate personal relations between individuals, but on relations between the depersonalised owners of commodities - i. e. the bourgeois society.

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

he world-view of any society will include that society's Tconcepts of property, wealth and labour. These are not only politico-economic categories but also moral and ideologIc.al ones;, labo~r and wealt~ may be highly valued or desplsed~ thel~ r,ole !n human affall~s can be variously assessed. EcoI?-omic a.ctivity IS a component part of social practice, of the InteractIon between man and his environment, and of , ' , man s creative actIon on this environment. It reflects the vital preoccup~tions of a, socie~y, ~n~ if we are to penetrate the mental clImate of thIs socIety It IS particularly important for us to try to understand its attitudes to labour and property, Labour can be seen as a curse which the human race has to bear, or as a blessing, enabling man to separate himself off from the rest of the world and make himself the lord of nature. Wealth can be seen as an end in itself or as a means of achieving other ends. Hence, the attitudes to labour and. wealth which prevail in a given society are indissoluble comp~nents o~ that society's world-view, determining the be~aviour of ,ItS members and setting the ideals towards whIch the~ strIve. ?f cours,e, the ideas of property and labour ~revalent ,In any gIven s?c!ety are gener~ted by the production relatIons characterIstIc of that SOCIety; but the ideas themselves enter into these relations and are an essential factor in their operation. From the outset, the medieval attitude to labour and wealth was quite different from that of the ancient world. Far from regarding labour as a virtue the ancient world did not even consider it as something befitting free men. The classical ideal c~I?-tred on the in?ividual - member of a polis, of a state, the cItIzen absorbed In his social, political and cultural life and ha:ing nothing to do with physical labour . Labour was s~me­ thIng better left to slaves or to freedmen. The citizen was a warrior - he attended the national assembly, took part in

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athletic competitions, performed religious sacri~ces, went to the theatre feasted with his friends; his personahty developed entirely o~tside the sphere of 'mater,ial production: Wealth was something which enabled the citizen to lead thIs sort of life. Thus the economic theories of the ancient world can be reduced to the one question: what form of owners~ip provides the best citizens? Ancien~ ciyilisation of ,t~e ClassIcal period did not recognise the dIgnIty, the r,e~IgiouS-m?ral value, of physical labour. Plato rejected the vIsIble, tangIble world as a pale copy of the world of ideas, and Aristo,tle emphasised man's political nature; both reg~rded pr~ductI:e labour with aristocratic contempt. Noble Idleness IS desIrable. For the ancients, labour was the negation of leisure, a sort of deviation from the normal tenor of life. It must be pointed out, however, that their notion of leisure, was not simply inactivity. The Classical Greek ?,XoA.f} (Latin ~chola) means free time leisure, relaxation, Idleness; but It also signified the tim; allotted to learning and lea~ned discussion, schooling, in particular philosophical schoolIng (whence the . medieval scholastica). As regards labour, the term 1T6vo<; ha~ a secc;>nd meanIng, closely allied in the ancient Greek ,mInd w~th the first: burden, suffering, misfortune, calamIty. PhYSIcal labour toil and pain - was the lot of the unfree and the lowly, a heavy, dirty business which degraded m~n to the level of the animals. The free man used the serVIces of slaves and attendants who were the tools and the instruments assuring his welfar~. Initially, one exception was made - for farming. But towards the end of antiquity even farm~ng ceased, to count as the civil virtue it had been in the patnarchal penod of, say, Cincinnatus. In the Empire period, the view that those who engaged in physical labour, especially sl~ves, were innately base was generally accepte,d by t~e ruIII~.g class. Certain thinkers disagreed with thIS negative attitude ~o labour (the Cynics, Seneca, Epictetus), and we may, see In their views preparatory steps towards that break wI~h t~e old slave-owning morality which finally found expreSSIon In Christianity. The only people who put any value on. labour were the labouring masses themselves. A totall~ck of Inte~est in mechanical inventions which might have alleVIated phYSIcal

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour labour was combined with dreams of robots and other wonderful co~traptions which would ensure permanent leisure fo~ mankInd - which is perhaps indicative of the general attItude to physical labour in the ancient world. Labour, it was held, could not dignify a man; it was senseless and brutalising; it did not have, indeed could not have inner -beauty. The image of Sisyphus ceaselessly pushing ~ stone up to the top of a mountain only to see it roll down again could only have occurred to a society which regarded labour as a punIshment; Idleness, freedom from having to give oneself any trouble, was the ideal not only of well-to-do people but also of the poor; the slogan of the proletariat was 'bread and circuses', and existence at someone else's expense always seemed to be the best way out of their difficulties. Preaching 'if any would not work, neither should he eat' (II Thess. 3:10), Christianity broke radically with this attitude to labour. A society of small-scale producers could hardly regard labour as something disgraceful. People began to loo~ ~pon work as the normal state of human beings. True, If It was a necessary state, this was not because man was th.us created but b,ecause of the Fall; that is to say, labour :vas stI~1 seen as a punIshment. The essential point, however, I~ that Idleness was now accounted one of the most grievous sl,ns. Ever~ mar: had to carry out his allotted function, occupy hImself wIth hIS work, though not all varieties of work _ necessary for the community though they might be - were e9 uall y acceptable t~ -G?d. Like labour, wealth was no longer ylewe~ as an end In Itself or as a means to securing an Idle e~Ist~nce. Attitudes to wealth were defined by hopes of sah~atl<;>n In, the world to come; for the possession of wealth, whIle It mIght help, could also actually hinder the soul's chances of entering into eternal bliss. In the possession of wealth, th~ ,followers of Christ - who had preached poverty and ascetIcIsm, - ~aw something very questionable and morally ~ar?ly J~stlfiable. The words of Matthew's Gos'pel (19:24), It IS .eaSIer !or a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a nch man to enter into the kingdom of God', served as the source of much spiritual and social conflict throughout the Middle Ages. The economic postulates of the medieval church corres-

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour ponded to the social reality of feudalism by tr~ating we~lth not as an end in itself but as a means guaranteeIng the eXIstence of every member of society 'secundum suam conditionem'. Production in the early Middle Ages was not geared to accumulation and profit. Its aim was to ensure a 'comm,e~­ surate' existence for each part of the whole: corpus Chrxsttanum corporately divided according to the will of God. Here, wealth serves as a means towards achieving and consolidating social power, while in-bo,urgeois ~ociety w~alth in and by itself constitutes decis,ive SOCIal p<;>wer. In ~edIev,al society the actual form in whIch wealth IS embodIed - In l~nds or goods and chattels .or mO,ney ~ was ,not a matter, of indifference. Property was VIewed In various hghts dependIng on how it was embodied and to what order the owner belonged, in contradistincti<;>n to bo~rgeois, w~alth, which is not connected with any SOCIal or ethIcal cnte:-Ia. , Naturally, in feudal society people ~elonging to ,dIfferent social classes did not always see labour In the same lIght; and differing attitudes to labour and property underlie many of the social antagonisms of the Middle Ages.

'A gift demands a gift' Several factors went into shaping the medieval attitude to property and wealth. Christianity certainly play~d an ~r:~r­ mous part, as in so many other aspects of medIeval CIVIlIsation' but it did not act alone, and no less a part was played in this context by the values prevalent among the barbarian tribes who settled on European territory in the days of the declining Roman Empire. In many :ways, the structure of barbarian society, whether GermanIC or Slav, recalls t~e system of social relations prevalent ~mong other peoples I,n a pre-class or early class stage of s,oclal de~elopment. That IS to say, the social attitudes, the b~lIe!s and Ideals of the European barbarians were often very SImIlar to tho~e found amo~g the so-called primitive peoples. Pre-class SOCIety has certaIn specific social institutions, variants of which are encountered all over the globe. These institutions and attitudes are partially at least eliminated during the process of development

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour from barbarism to civilisation; for a class society acquires a new set of morals and ideals, a new religious system is established and radical changes take place in all branches of social life. Nevertheless, even in the class society, alongside the new systems of relations, ideas and beliefs, certain archaic relations are retained and often contin ue to play a very impor tant role in the new setting. Medieval Europ e is a case in point. Howe ver deeply Christianity affected the general world-view, it was not able to eradicate all the mental attitudes that had domin ated the age of barbarism. The result was a complex synthesis of barbarian, Christian and classical values. The civilised neighbours of the barbarians were unanimous about one thing - the barbarians were not slow to help themselves to other people 's goods. The though t of the treasures stored up in the rich countries drew the barbarians like a magnet; and plunde r was the main motive for their military expeditions. As they saw it, violence paid off far better than toil. Young men flocked to noble leaders, hoping that a quick and successful campaign would yield plentiful booty which the leader would then divide up among his warriors. But what was to be done with wealth thus acquired? As Tacitus already tells us, when they were not away on military raids, the Germa n body-g uards spent most of their time feasting. A lot of the plunde r went into feasts at which the warriors publicly and ostentatiously ate too much and drank themselves silly. Loot from a successful raid was not merely a way of feeding the warriors, but also the best way of holding them togeth er and of affirming the leader's authority. The barbarians tended to despise military deeds which were not widely publicised. They had to be celebrated in the songs of the bards and thus fixed in the memo ry of the warriors and of all the members of the tribe. The plunde r - treasure, garments, arms - bore eloque nt witness to the virtues of the heroic way of life and to the prowess of the leader and his men, and was boastf ully paraded. Gold and silver were not yet used by the barbarians as money ; exchange of goods was on the most direct and natural level. Coins plunde red from more advanced peoples were turned into ingots, cut into pieces, or made. into rings, bracelets, brooch es and so on.

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Medie val attitudes to wealth and labour Valuable vessels and jewellery often came in for the same treatm ent. So wealth accruing from warlike expeditions con/er red social distinction. In barbar ian society wealth was neIther a means of commercial exchange nor something to hoard up, it was not even put into circulation: rather, it had a ·valuable semiological function. This conclusion would seem to run counte r to the wellknown fact that the barbar ians were very fond of buryin g and hiding the treasure they plunde red. All over the territ~ry settled by the Germa nic tribes buried ho~rds ,of Roma n C?lnS are found. The Viking hoards in ScandInaVIa ~re especI,al~y rich and some scholars even speak of a 'SlIver age In No:th ern Europ e of that period , so freque nt and rich a!e the finds of Sassanid, Byzan tine, Germa n, Anglo-Saxon COInage, most of it silver. Several hundr ed thousa nd hoards have already been discovered and the nu~ber is rising continually. Are we entitled to deduc e from thIS that a monet ary system had been developed in tenth- and eleventh-cent,,:ry ?candi navia and that coins were used as currency? ThIS VIew has had i~s suppo rters, while some scholars have even writt.en about the 'comm ercial boom' in the northe rn countn es broug ht about by the activities of the V,ikings. The adherents of such a view think it likely that at times of danger - e. g. during attack by raiders - the local inhabitants ,hurried to hide their valuables and failed to dig them up agaIn after the danger had passed. 1 , But this point of view seems questionable. In the first place, the Icelandic sagas, dating from much ,late~, oft,en refer to people who buried hoards of coins, makIng It qUIte clear that not only were these hoards not subseq uently dug up but that there was never any intenti on of doing so: the mon~y was buried for ever so that no one could make use of It. Rulers often buried their money before death, making sure there were no witnesses' the slaves who did the digging were put to death. Archaeolo~ical finds yi~ld evidence of the widespread practice of buryin g treasure In ,swamps and marshes; this 'marsh silver' could not be retnev ed for use. In the second place, it is well known tha~ trade !n Scandinavia at the time when these hoards were beIng buned en masse, was

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

primarily carried on by means of exchange in kind; certain commodities, e. g. home-spun cloth, were used as currency, or wealth was expressed in terms of head of horned cattle. Coins acquired as loot during predatory excursions or as tribute were not used as currency in Scandinavia. The Vikings must have known very well how highly gold and silver were valued in other countries, and they themselves were very far from despising them - witness the trouble they took to hide coins and other objects made from the precious metals - but as a rule they did not use them in trade or as a currency. Thus, on the one hand the Norsem*n prized precious metals and went to any lengths to lay their hands on them; on the other hand, they never used them for trading purposes; but buried coins in the earth, in swamps and even sank them in the sea. And while they wore articles such as pendants, brooches and necklaces, made of gold and silver, which they liked to flaunt in public (the men no less than the women), they treated coins in a way that was completely incomprehensible to peoples who knew the commercial uses of money and equally incomprehensible to many scholars today. If we are to understand the way the ancient Germans and Scandinavians treated precious metals, we cannot approach this problem from a narrowly economic standpoint; we have to see it in the wider context of the spiritual life of peoples making the transition from barbarism to civilisation. According to con,cepts still current among them, the treasures a man owned incorporated in some way his own personal qualities and were intimately bound up with his fortune and happiness. To be deprived of them was equivalent to perishing, to losing one's most important qualities and one's prowess as a warrior. Let us recall the struggle that arose over the Rheingold - the inherited treasure sunk by the legendary Niflungs (in German, Nibelungen) in the Rhine which was in the long run to be their ruin. Gold, as the ancient Germans and Scandinavians saw it, was a materialisation of its owner's good fortune. Guided by this idea, the Norsem*n tried to conceal the coins they plundered, with no real intention of ever digging them up again; as long as it lay undisturbed in the ground or at the bottom of a marsh,

the hoard preserved within itself its owner's success, which was therefore inalienable. In the eyes of the barbarians gold and silver possessed magic and sacramental power. This power did not pass from the metal when it was used to make bracelets and other ornaments. These were not buried; on the contrary, they were flaunted, as unmistakable indices of social position and prowess. The bracelets and rings which the warriors solicited from their leaders were not merely material gifts: in them a portion of the leader's 'success' passed to the recipient, who thus partook, as it were, of the leader's essence. 'Dispenser of the rings', 'liberal with bracelets' these are the epithets we find given by grateful skalds to the leaders and kings who had bestowed such gifts on them. A leader who was sparing of gifts, who did not hand out rings and jewellery, was simply not worth serving, for he was stingily withholding the magical powers and the good fortune in which his men should have a share. Generosity, no less than military prowess and valour, was what characterised a true leader. The true leader was generous; his generosity was a token of his nobility. In one of the poems of the Elder Edda about the Scandinavian hero Helgi, we read that 'to his faithful company he generously gave red gold won by blood'.2 The rich booty taken by the barbarians in times of war and in the course of predatory expeditions was not turned into a currency for the acquisition of wealth in our sense of the word; it was not used to buy cattle or lands or any other sort of property. It was distributed, consumed, or it became a hoard invested with sacral properties and exercising magical influence on its owner. This was a way of looking at treasure that could not survive the coming of Christianity and the spread of monetary commercial relations among the erstwhile barbarian peoples. People began to grasp the earthly role of money, the material value of gold and silver. But under the feudal system wealth continued to be regarded above all as an instrument in social relations, as a means of establishing and reinforcing social authority. . The specifically barbarian attitude to money can also be identified in a very important feature of their social structure

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

- the wergild. Normally this replaced the blood-feud and was paid for the murder or mutilation of a man or for certain other serious crimes. The law-books - the 'barbarian codes' - contain detailed assessments of the due recompense to be paid to the victim or to his relatives. Recompense was fixed after due consideration of the social status, the age and sex of the victim (sometimes also of the culprit), the circ*mstances of the crime and a series of other factors. In the Germanic 'law-codes', the wergild is usually expressed in terms of a certain sum of money: this sum to be paid (if we can take the 'codes' at their face value) whenever a certain crime was committed against someone belonging to a given social order (noble, free, semi-free). There are, however, grounds for believing that in practice the scale of values set out in the codes was not the only criterion used in fixing the amount of wergild. Every concrete case seems to have produced ad hoc criteria affecting the sum awarded. The principles underlying assessment by the adjudicators are not clear. We may assume that compensation depended in no small measure on the power and social prestige of the injured party or his family. Naturally, the aim was to get as much compensation as possible under the law. But in many cases we find people who have to pay wergild actually insisting on increasing the sum. At first sight this seems very strange, but it becomes understandable if we bear in mind the special nature of wergild and its meaning for the people of that time. The amount of the wergild reflected the social position not only of the recipient party but also of those paying it; the higher the wergild, the more this redounded to the social prestige of the individuals concerned and their kin. Thus, wergild was something more than the (not inconsiderable) monetary sums that were paid by way of material compensation for loss or injury. Although the 'barbarian codes' specify the amount of wergild and of all other dues in terms of money, these payments were in fact usually made in goods - after all, there was not so very much money about. Not all commodities were acceptable in payment of wergild, however. Cattle were always acceptable. Many codes specify the number of animals - usually cows - held to be equivalent to the monetary value

of a given wergild. Other goods that were acceptable included slaves, weapons, armour, land, woven cloth. Anything put up and accepted as compensation in lieu of monetary settlement had to be of good quality and without defect. There were other, limiting factors: thus, among the Norwegians, only 6dal land was supposed to be acceptable as wergild: inherited land, that is, in the possession of the family for several generations and virtu;:tllyinalienable. 'Bought land', recently acquired and involving none of the difficulties attending the disposal of odal, was not acceptable in lieu of wergild. 3 Here there seems to be a special relationship between family and wergild. The compensation paid for a slain relative could not become an alienable object, and the lands and other property forming it would remain in the possession of the family for ever. The wergild symbolised reconciliation between two feuding families. It also served as a graphic demonstration of the social status of the victim and his kin. As the sum of money or other valuables paid on the reconciliation between a murderer and his victim's kin had such an important semantic function, it could hardly be freely disposed of and freely spent. Sometimes people on their deathbeds left their wergild to the church, along with their other possessions. In these circ*mstances, nothing is known of a murder or any other crime punishable by payment of wergild. In the bequest, the amount under this heading is specifically isolated; which suggests that some particular significance was accorded to the wergild: in some special way it was connected with the man and expressed his social dignity and status. 4 Great landowners who had made land donations to a monastery sometimes redeemed these after a certain interval by paying the proper wergild. This is a clear example of the link between a payment protecting the life of an individual, and his hereditary property.s As in any pre-class society, exchange of gifts played an enormous part in barbarian society. The establishment of friendly relations with others, marriage, visits by guests, the successful conclusion of a trade deal or of a peace treaty, funeral feasts, award of patronage - these and many other social occasions were invariably accompanied by an exchange

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

of gifts. Any gift implied reciprocity. A gift from a leader was an award for faithful service and a pledge of the recipient's. devotion in the future. A gift from equal to equal requIred a gift in return. 'A gift demands a gift' says one of the aphorisms in the Old Icelandic lay The Words of the High One (Havamal).6 The same principle is recorded in Old Germanic law as well: a gift had no virtue unless the recipient made an equivalent return. Among the Lombards, a gift had to be acknowledged by means of a special compensatory payment - launegild, although by this time it was nothing more than a symbolical gesture. 7 Thus the very idea of a unilateral gift was alien to the ba~barians: they recognised only exchange of gifts. It is interesting to note that the Indo-European languages had originally the same word to express the concepts of 'give' and 'take'. One or the other meaning of the verb do had to be supplied according to its grammatical context. 8 This is true of Old Scandinavian: the verb fa has both meanings, and only the context and the syntax will tell us which of these is to be used in any given case. 'Giving' and 'receiving' are apparently closely associated in the minds of many peoples on the archaic stage; exchange - of property, of feasts and services - expressing and reinforcing feelings of friendliness and confidence as it did, was a universal form of social intercourse. 9 At the rOQt of the exchange of gifts lay the conviction that the given object carried with it some part of the essence of the giver, and that in this way the recipient entered into closer contact with him. If no gift was made in return, the recipient was in some degree dependent on the giver. The warrior who received a gift from his leader was not troubled by this dependence - on the contrary, he was always striving to. strengthen his ties with his leader, hoping to acquire along wIth the gift something of the 'success' which made the leader what he was. A gift from a powerful man could be answered with faithful service or songs of praise; but a gift from an equal could be fraught with great danger for the recipient unless the latter could send something in return. Magic dependence on another man could involve loss of one's own personal integrity and freedom, even the ruin of the recipient

who failed to make a return gift. 10 Hence either one hastened to repay a gift, or one tried to avoid accepting it. It is very difficult if not impossible for us to comprehend the nature of the dangers that lay in wait for the man who accepted a gift and failed to repay it. It is clear that what I call 'magic dependence' (in view of its non-material character) was perceived by the ancient Scandinavians in quite a different way. The sharp distinction between the ideal and the material which dominates our present-day ways of thought, was completely alien to the barbarian mentality. We saw above how time was apprehended by them in material terms. Similarly, the 'fortune', the 'luck', which the warrior might obtain from a leader rich in it, was just as materially real as the ring or bracelet handed to him by the leader. Recipient and giver were closely interrelated, as it were; and the person who received the gift remained under the influence of the giver. The dependence was magical in nature. Gifts were continually being exchanged in barbarian society; often quite modest gifts without much material value. In Havamal we read:

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A kind word need not cost much, The price of praise can be cheap: With half a loaf and an empty cup I found myself a friend. 11 What matters is. not the value of the gift but the friendly relations which result from the exchange of gifts. Thus the author of H avamal says: No man is so generous he will jib at accepting A gift in return for a gift, No man so rich that it really gives him Pain to be repaid. Once he has won wealth enough, A man should not crave for more: What he saves for friends, foes may take; Hopes are often liars.

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

With presents friends should please each other, With a shield or a costly coat: Mutual giving makes for friendship So long as life goes well.

. . ... gIve a nng, so that you are not the recipient of bad wishes. 14

'Bad wishes' or curses could be very dangerous, since words are invested with magical power; the barbarians believed that malediction could bring evil powers to bear on a man and ruin him. Was not the word just as real and 'materially' effective as the act? Again we are brought face to face with the absence in barbarian thinking of any sharp dividing line between the material and the spiritual spheres. Reality is not divided into mind and body, into natural and supernatural; everything is active, everything is capable of taking part in and affecting human affairs, and so the action the barbarian performs, the word he utters, can have far-reaching consequences, even to the extent of upsetting the world order. Hence, one has to be permanently on guard. We have to bear this in mind when we are reading Havamal. It contains many exhortations to be prudent and avoid precipitate action. We find not infrequent hints in histories of Old Norse poetry that this prudence reflects 'peasant cunning', the small-mindedness of the 'little man' with his fears and his limitations, in sharp contrast to the 'grand style' of the nobles and the Vikings, the heroes who do things in a big way. It hardly needs to be stressed that the norms governing the lives of the ordinary bonder - farmers and peasants - were radically different from the warlike code of chiefs and Vikings. Circ*mspection in deed and word - especially when not on one's home ground - was called for: circ*mspection at meetings, during visits, at feasts, with unknown or rich people, brevity in speech, wariness, resourcefulness, shrewdness, determination to keep one's independence while at the same time avoiding disputes and making enemies, sobriety, self-control in eating and drinking, moderation in all things including knowledge, diligence and thrift - these are the qualities recommended in Hdvamal. In my opinion, however, it would be quite unfair to see in such homilies no more than the worldly wisdom of the crafty smallholder. The aphorisms of Hdvamal are the product not of a class society but of a weakly differentiated society; and any attempt to classify these maxims into 'aristocratic' and 'peasant' compartments is artificial and hardly in keeping with historical reality. The matter-of-fact and utilitarian nature of what has been called the 'egoistic' morals of H avamdl really

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A man should be loyal through life to friends, To them and to friends of theirs, A man should be loyal through life to friends, And return gift for gift, Laugh when they laugh, but with lies repay A false foe who lies.

If you find a friend you fully trust And wish for his good will, Exchange thoughts, exchange gifts, Go often to his house. 12 There is no mistaking the close connection between friendship and the exchange of gifts. Gifts are the most important, indeed the crucial factor in the establishing and maintenance of social relations. Generosity shows that a man has made a success of his life and is socially respected, while meanness is a man's undoing; a miser is literally beyond the pale: The generous and bold have the best lives, Are seldom beset by cares, But the base man sees bogies everywhere, And the miser pines for presents. 13 Generosity, boldness and good fortune go naturally together, just as cowardice and miserliness do. The moral evaluation of the qualitative antithesis is evident. The miser is afraid of receiving a gift and shies away from it because he kno'Y s that he will have to give something in return. The man who gives nothing to others risks his social well-being:

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour reflects the very special position of man in a world full of d~nge~s, a worl~ in which anything and everything can affect hIm dIrectly. It IS a world all of whose elements and manifestations are linked to each other by mysterious and incompr,ehensib,le bonds; a world which can only be approached WIt~ ~autIon and guile. This is why the desirable qualities of nobIlIty, boldness and honour are accompanied in this Eddic lay by egoistic and cynical advice; there is no need to contrast them as expressions of two different world-views. C?ne of the main requirements for a happy existence is the maIntenance of friendly relations with people. One must be continually exchanging visits with friends, and, on each such ~ccasion, exchanging gifts with them. The original connec~Ion between h~spitality and the exchange of gifts is linguistIcally, attested In several Indo-European settings. Is Taking part In feasts and exchanging gifts - these were the main channels of social intercourse among the barbarians. With many peoples, e~change of gifts had reached such a pitch that It developed Into a whole system of elaborate ceremonial. Certain articles or fruits of the earth were ceremonially passed from hand to hand in exchange for others; these objects were not consumed or used but were passed on or amassed, so that ~hey c?uld be publicly ~xhibited. Their importance lay not In theIr use value but In the fact that in them were palpably embodied the social ties between the peQple making the exchange. Ceremonial exchange united people belonging to different family and tribal groups. Am?ng primitive peoples the reciprocal hosting of feasts sO,metImes led to extraordinary competitions in generosity, WIth the hosts trying to stupefy the guests with their largesse. It was then up to the guests to act as host in their turn, and ~ot fail to match or surpass the same lavish standards. There IS an element of belligerence here which sometimes becomes explicit: the aim being not so much to do the guests a good turn as to leave them in no doubt of the host's superiority. On o~casion, in their determination to outstrip all comers in conspICUOUS waste, the hosts would destroy their entire stock of food and chop their boats into pieces, without so much as a thought for what was going to happen after the feast was over. The aim of such feasts was to confirm the moral

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour superiority of the spenders, something much more important to them than mere material well-being. 16 • , In this extreme form, ceremonial exchange and comp~tltIve feasting are not found among the European peoples In the early Middle Ages. But the idea th~t feas~s and t~e exchar:ge of gifts had a very big part to play In SOCIal relations was Inbuilt in the Germanic mind. 17 In H avamal, one of the most important leitmotivs is provided by the feast and the need to conduct oneself thereat in proper fashion. " . . The feast was one of the most important socIal InStitutions among the Scandinavians. On their ceremonial j~urneys through the territory subject to th.em, the leaders - kIng and jarl - were entertained at feasts laId ?n by the local population. All matters of interest were dIscussed at these feasts, and sacrifices and libations to the pagan gods were performed. The union of the country under one ,king ~rought no change whatever in the role of the feast. 18 ThIS ancI~nt ~nd venerable custom remained the keystone of the ScandIn~vlan political system. The ruler travelled systematlc~lly throughout the country at the head of a bodyguar~, whIch tended to increase - so that the need for provender Increa~ed in the same measure. In certain parts of the country the kIng had estates, where he would put up for period~ dur~ng these peregrinations. It was then up to the local InhabIt~nts to supply the produce necessary for the proper entertaInment of the king and his retinue. . As the royal power increa~ed an~ was. cons.o~Idated the character of the feast changed In that It lo~t ItS ongtnal :voluntary character; now all bonder were oblIged to prOVIde for the king's festive requirements. ~ut, as before, the feast remained the main channel for dIrect contact between the .' . peasants and their leader. The Icelandic sagas describe these feasts In gr~at detaIl. The company that assembled in t~e great banquetIn& hall of a Norwegian king included his retaIners and the most Infl~en­ tial bonder. The host sat at the head of the table an a raIsed dais; the seat for him was supported on wooden posts decorated with carved images of the pagan gods under whose protection the house was supposed to be. Round the walls were benches for the guests and retainers. In the centre of

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

the hall was the hearth with a blazing fire. The feast lasted many hours if not several days. It was the occasion for the king to learn all the local news, to decide various matters and issue orders. In conversation with the nobleman and bonder it would become clear whom he - the king - could rely on ~nd ,who was hostile to him. Not infrequently the feast ended In, vlolen~e, even bloodshed - after all, weapons were either lymg besIde the feasters or were hanging on the wall. Any disturba,nc~ of the peace at a time and place where people were dnnkIng together was severely punished. Seated in the seat of honour, the ruler dispensed his favours to his retainers aJ?-d his allies, presented them with rings and arms, settled dIsputes and fixed wergild. An indispensable or at least highly desirable participant in the festivities was the skald who wo~ld deliver. a song (sometimes improvised on the spot) in praIse of the kIng and either craving a reward or thanking him for one received. Egils saga tells of the behaviour of a wellknown Icelandic skald at a feast given by the English king Athelstan (or Adalstein as he is called in the Icelandic sources).

'King, corslet's god, has given me A ringing springe/for clawtongs, 19 To swing from hawktrod hangtree,20 Handgallows goldenhaltered. Aloft on sword I lift it, My gallows-spar of spearstorm; This swordhand's snare wins favor And fame for ravens' feeder.'

While he [EgilJ sat . . . , he was twitching one eyebrow down on to his cheek and the other up into his hair roots. Egil was black-eyed and with brows of dark brown. He would drink nothing, though drink was fetched. him, but twitched his eyebrows up and down, now thIs way, now that. King Athelstan was sitting in the high-seat. He too had laid his sword across his knees" and when they had been seated so for a while, the king drew his sword out of the scabbard and, taking a fine big gold ring off his arm, drew it over his sword's point, stood up and walked on to the floor and reached it across the fire to Egil. Egil stood up, plucked out his sword, and walked on to the ~oor. He st~ck his sword in the round of the ring, drew It towards hIm, then went back to his place. The king sat down in the high-seat. When Egil sat down he drew the ring on to his arm, and with that his eyebrows fell into line. He then put down sword and helm, took hold of the horn which was brought him and drank it off. Then he chanted:

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From then on Egil drank his full share and conversed with other men. In addition, Athelstan sent Skallagrim, Egil's father, two chests full of silver as wergild for his slain son; he also promised Egil wergild for his brother in the shape of land or money as he wished: Egil took the· money and thanked the .king for his gifts and friendly words. From then on EgII began to grow cheerful, and chanted: 'M y browcrags griefbraised 0' erhilled my eyehollows; Yet forehead's rough furrows Were smithred to smoothness. The prince has now prised up (Gold armrings' despoiler) High edge of my eyecliffs Frommaskland of face. '21 Here we have a particularly clear example of an exchange of valuables: the king gives Egil money and valuables, and the skald thanks him in song. This would have been seen as a completely fair exchange as the Scandinavians and the AngloSaxons valued poetry very highly indeed. !twas not only that the skald's song appealed to the leader's vanity: since words - and particularly poetical words ('bound speech') possessed magical power, lampoon was a way of .causing genuine harm, while eulogy reinforced the well-beIng and the success of the monarch to whom it was addressed.

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour Other participants at a feast also received gifts - indeed it was the custom for no one to ·leave the scene without a gift of some sort. Great attention was paid to the quality and the yalue of the gifts, and a man would react bitterly and angrily If someone else of the same status was more lavishly rewarded tpan he. The sagas of the Norwegian kings tell the story of Aki the rich bondi, who once invited two kings - of Norway ~nd of Sweden - to a feast. He received the king of Sweden In the old b.anqueting hall, but for the Norwegian king a new hall was buIlt and decorated with new tapestries. The Swedish king and his retinue had to drink out of old vessels and horns, while new vessels, polished and smooth as glass and adorned . with gold, were prepared in hOI'!our of the Norwegian king. When parting with his guests Aki asked the Norwegian king, to whom he had given 'splendid gifts', to take his son into his service; to the Swedish king he offered 'noble gifts:, also. The Swede did not conceal his resentment and asked Aki why he, being 'his man', had seen fit to offer sl;lc.hve~ superior hospitality to t~e king of Norway, by gIVIng hIm 'the best of everything'. Aki answered that he had provided the Swede with old things because the Swede was the older, ~hile the Norwegian king, being a yOll;.ng man, had been gIven the new things that befitted him. Aki went on to deny his subordination to the king of Sweden: 'As to your reminding me that I am your man, why, I consider it no less true that you are my, man.' This was a direct insult, a~d the S~edish king slew Aki. In revenge, the Norwegian kIng and hIS men slew several members of the Swedish king's retinue. 22 Not too much reliance can be put on the details of this s~o~y, but. it is not without interest as it provides a graphIC IllustratIOn of the value the medieval Scandinavians placed on the rules and symbolism of hospitality. Just as a gift had to be repaid, an invitation to a feast had to be rewarded. Bonder and nobles who entertained kings were rewarded with gifts. In Norway, the custom was for the king to show his gratitude for being entertained at a feast by granting the host a piece of landed property, which was called drekkulaun - from drekka, 'to drink', 'to feast', and launa, 'to reward', 'repay', 'thank'.23 There was, however, more to a feast than a simple exchange of gifts; the gifts and

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour hospitality laid on by the bonder in honour of the king had a deeper significance. The feast and the libations which accompanied it were a means of ensuring the people's welfare which depended on the king. At the festive board goblets were raised to the pagan gods and the king. On the king and his relationship with the gods depended whether there would be a good harvest, whether the cattle would be fertile and whether the herring shoals would come close inshore. As we saw above, the barbarians believed that they could influence time and its real content. The feast was the chief means employed of influencing time; but for this to be effective a personal relationship had to be set up between the farmers and the king, who embodied the -'fortune' and the 'success' of the country and its people. Social relations in the world of the barbarians had a direct person-to-person character. The same goes for relations between the farmers and the king, and never was this more strikingly demonstrated than at times of ceremonial feast. As the royal power became stabilised and as Christianity rendered the king's role as the director of religious affairs superfluous, not to say impossible, the character of the feasts changed. From being the main channel for contact between the bonder and the leader, they turned into an instrument for exploitation of the people by the king and his retinue, who could force the farmers to pay their tribute in the form of produce. Kings began to grant their retainers th~ right to appropriate such tribute for themselves; the practice began to resemble the award of fiefs. 24 Not that feasts ceased to be an important medium of social relations. According to Norwegian law, the mark of a free man enjoying full rights was that he managed his-own household, rode a horse and took part in feasts; there was no impediment in the way of such a farmer ?r bondi ow~in.g and controlling property.25 Long after the VICtOry of Chnstlanity over paganism, the custom of holding obligatory feasts every year persisted; and all householders, apart from the poverty-stricken, were required on pain of punishment to supply a given quantity of be~r for the feast. 26 The feast :vas an occasion for the conclUSIon of property and marnage deals; the formal taking over by an heir was accompanied by

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

~ feast, and at feasts feuding parties made peace; 'acceptance

Hospitality to guests was a cardinal and inviolable obligation on the part of any householder. Of the legendary king Geirroor it was said that he was 'so sparing of food that he starved his guests if he thought that too many of them had come'. In the original of this passage the word matnidingr is used. But nidingr meant 'villain', 'scoundrel', 'base criminal'; the term was one of very strong legal and moral condemnation, being used of traitors, treaty-breakers, disturbers of the peace, those guilty of murder or other serious crimes, cowards - indeed, of anyone who was held to be useless to the community. So the term matnidingr does not mean 'miser' in our present-day sense of the word, which carries no very strong moral condemnation; rather it signifies a villainous reprobate who actually refused people hospitality. It was the worst accusation that could be levelled at anyone, and the story goes on: 'It was a great slander that Geirroor was not hospitable. '31 The need to pay continual attention to one's guests is stressed over and over again in Hcivamcil; generosity, solicitude and, above all, gifts - we are told - safeguard friendship:

Into the family' of an illegitimate son, that is, his investiture with personal and inheritance rights as a free kinsman and member of the family, was also the occasion for a specially arranged feast. Among the other Germanic peoples we find the ceremonial feast playing no less important a part than among the Scandinavians. Like the Scandinavian kings, the Anglo-Saxon kings too travelled about the country, stopping to feast with their retainers and nQbles. According to the Laws of A ethelbert, the first written example of English law (beginning of the seventh ~entury), the king was mainly concerned with fixing due punlshrpent for any action undertaken against him at a time when he was feasting at some country estate. 27 It seems that fighting and bloodshed were by no means rare at feasts, and 'ancient law' prescribed that the guilty party had to pay compensation not only to the victim but to the master of the house where the feast was taking place and also to the king. 28 Later, in the tenth century, those responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the provinces were required to assemble regularly at feasts, where they discussed affairs of the day and decided whether the law had been infringed in any way.29 The guilds - associations of people having common political or economic interests - also organised feasts; indeed, the very word guild is derived from gildi, a feast, offering, festival. For these people, the communal consumption of food and drink had a profound social, religious and moral significance; the table-companions made new friends and old quarrels were patched up. In an appeasem*nt formula which has been preserved in an Icelandic saga, we are told of the enemies who reached agreement and paid their wergild: 'You are to make peace and come to agreement over food and drink, at the ping and in the national assembly, in the church and in the king's house, and wherever people are gathered together, and you are to be as peaceable as though there had never been any disagreement between you. You will exchange knives and morsels of meat and all things like kinsmen and not like enemies. '30

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Greetings to the host. The guest has arrived. In which seat shall he sit? Fire is needed by the newcomer Whose knees are frozen numb; Meat and clean linen a man needs Who has fared across the fells. Water, too, that he may wash before eating, Handcloths and hearty welcome, Courteous words, then courteous silence That he may tell his tale. 32 We find ourselves in the presence of a society in which all aspects of social life have been regulated and ritualised, even the consumption of food and drink. 33 In the barbarian view, peace was equivalent to feasting: the two things were virtually synonymous. The Einherjar,

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

the heroes fallen in battle and taken by Guinn to the hall of the gods - Valhalla - divide their time between the battles they engage in every day, and the peaceful feasts that follow the bloodshed. It was the warrior's ideal, at any rate. For the farmer, however~ military expeditions and plunder could hardly be his source of livelihood; nor could he count on gifts from the king. Such welfare as he has comes from his own labour:

They manured the fields, And built folds, They gathered peat, And fed the pigs, Guarded the goats. 36

Early shall he rise who rules few servants, And set to work at once: Much is lost by the late sleeper, Wealth is worn by the swift. 34 Naturally, it was not easy to earn very much in this way. However: A small hut of one;s own is better, A man is his master at home: A couple of goats and a corded roof Still are better than begging

As if that were not enough, Thrall - the founder of the 'race of slaves' - 'stripped bast, made hurdles and carried brushwood for days on end'. The free man, .Karl, domesticated oxen and handled the plough built houses, erected barns made carts and tilled the soil. 37

The ethical norms in barbarian society are diffuse; they are not formulated with the clarity and finality characteristic of biblical commandments. Hence, it is not easy to reconstruct the barbarian attitude to work. As is well known, no small part was played in their economy by slaves, who were of course given the heaviest and dirtiest jobs - looking after the cattle, dunging the fields and so on. Female slaves worked in the house and reared the master's children. The main agricultural tasks, however, especially tilling, were performed by the masters themselves, the free men. In the Icelandic Rigspula - a sort of mythological sociology of barbarian society - the work of slaves is described thus:

His wife span and looked after the house. Clearly, the authors do not consider these agricultural tasks as beneath the dignity of a free man. The nobleman, however, will not concern himself with tilling or putting up farmyard buildings - he is completely taken up with entertainments, and military expeditions, the sort of thing that will ensure him fame and plunder. In the Rigspula, Earl is a dashing warrior, always ready to go on the warpath, who owns a large number of country estates; he is a keen hunter, fond of horse-racing and of throwing the javelin. He lives in a richly furnished house, eats fine foods and drinks wine. Together with his wife, who is also of noble birth, Earl lives 'in comfort, prosperity and good fortune', increasing his family. He distributes generously of his treasure and makes presents of swift horses, costly r~iment; he throws rings and golden bracelets to his companions. For the ordinary man, however, work is the only way he can get the means to keep himself alive. The connection between labour and property - the realisation that the former can generate the latter - can be traced in the records of barbarian custom. The right of possession was seen as deriving from the actual tilling of the land in

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A small hut of one's own is better, A man is his master at home: His heart bleeds in the beggar who must Ask at each meal for meat. 35

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

question. Hence, the peasant could take squatter's rights on communal land in so far as he was able to cultivate his holding. According to Norwegian law, a farmer was entitled to clear for ploughing an additional piece of common land (almenning) stretching as far from the boundary of his own piece as he could throw his sickle or knife. 38 In the same way, meadowland was deemed to be taken by the first man to put a scythe to it;39 and in the forest, as much wood could be taken as a man could cut down and transport before sunset. A husbandman who cultivated a piece of land over a lengthy period without any other claim being made on it from any quarter, was entitled to regard it as his own. On the other hand, anyone who failed to make proper use of his land in the long run lost his rights to it. In other words, the right of ownership was not understood in any abstract sense: a piece of land being tilled was held to belong to the tiller. But for the ownership of a piece of land to be established beyond question, something more was needed than hard work on it; ownership had to be consecrated by certain prescribed ritual procedures, which alone ensured that the rights of an individual would be recognised by the community. The juridical terminology of the Scandinavian is particularly interesting, as it very clearly reflects their ideas in this context (unlike the Latin used in the historical documents of continental Europe). The Scandinavians used the word helga, 'to sanctify', 'to consecrate', 'to make inviolable', to indicate titular rights to a piece of land. The rituals by means of which the act of possession was consecrated placed the land and the right to it under the patronage and protection of higher powers, and at the same time linked the possession in the closest possible manner with the person performing the ritual. The most important means of taking and consecrating possession was fire. An Icelander, wishing to appropriate a piece of no-man's-land, wasteland, had to spend a day, from sunrise to sunset, circumambulating it and lighting bonfires at certain prescribed distances. It was permissible to fire an arrow with burning tow and the fire sanctified the spot where the arrow fell. 40 The appropriated land was often dedicated to the god Thor; this was enough to make it impossible for anyone else to lay claim to the

land. In Icelandic, the expression helga ser still means 'to declare one's ownership'. Land and other goods which underwent the sanctification and dedication ceremony were protected by law, and any infringement of their inviolability was punishable by fine. Thus, the mediating role played by the gods conferred a sacral character upon the acquisition of landed property. Labour and religion, the norms of law and the trappings of magic, were brought together and interwoven. The de facto situation had to receive not only juridical recognition but also religious sanction; hence inevitably it also acquired a symbolic meaning. By cultivating his ground a man entered into a sacral-magical relationship with nature and with the gods. A productive activity was given a symbolic setting, which enhanced its significance and lent it a new dignity. To judge by the aphorisms contained in Hdvamdl and by the Icelandic family sagas the farmer's ideal could be summed up simply as the hope of a comfortable existence. The desire for luxury which was characteristic of the nobleman was alien to the ordinary free man. For neither of them, however, did wealth - whether earned through hard work or taken as plunder in battle - represent an end in itself. Wealth is not very highly valued in the world-view prevalent in this society. In Hdvamdl, which seems to sum up the mental attitudes of the pre-feudal period, it is the ephemeral nature of wealth that is stressed, its inessentiality, its insignificance in comparison with the higher values inherent in observance of social morals. Wealth is transient:

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It is always better to be alive, The living can keep a cow; Fire, I saw, warming a wealthy man, With a cold corpse at his door.

Fields and flocks had Fitjung's41 sons, Who now carry begging bowls: Wealth may vanish in the wink of an eye, Gold is the falsest of friends. 42

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Wealth does nothing for a man's dignity and can even be detrimental to his personal qualities:

host at feasts - in short, on turning wealth into a sign of personal prowess. The feast and the gift are key concepts linking their economy and their culture.

The nitwit does not know that gold Makes apes of many men: One is rich, one is poor There is no blame in that.

The sin of cupidity

The last line in this translation does not give all the shades of meaning that are present in the original. D6mr um dauaan hvern means literally: 'The judgment [verdict] on each of those who have died'. S. Piekarczyk is right to stress that these words reflect the weight of public opinion which was brought to bear on the individual. 45 The contrastive pair formed by wealth and good name is highly characteristic of the world-view prevalent in barbarian society. Wealth is valued only in so far as it contributes to the attainment of fame and public esteem. But as we have seen, this does not depend on the accumulation of wealth but on showing oneself to be lavish, a giver of gifts, a liberal

Medieval feudal society differed fundamentally from the barbarian society which preceded it. It was built up on class antagonism, on the political and social dominance of the feudal landowners over the dependent peasantry. So attitudes to labour and property in feudal society differed radically from those in the pre-class society. Nevertheless there is a close link between the two. Our present task is not to analyse property relations under feudalism; rather, we wish to show how property and wealth were understood in this society, how they were valued from an ethical viewpoint, what was the purpose of wealth. It is hardly necessary to point out that different classes looked on labour and property in very different fashion. At the same time, feudal society was dominated by Christian morality, whose norms were obligatory upon all of its members, and shared to greater or less degree by all classes and social groupings. Feudal society was founded on property - on the immense holdings of the nobility and the church on the one hand and the small holdings of the peasant or the artisan on the other. And yet throughout the Middle Ages the possession of property was never expressly approved or justified: it was permitted, but only under certain conditions and with pretty extensive provisos. For while Christianity gave its blessing to the feudal structure in general, its attitude to property was somewhat contradictory. The Church Fathers were at pains to point out that Adam and Eve, being without sin and in direct contact with God, knew nothing of labour or of property. The Lord had created the earth, its fruits and all living creatures forman's use and enjoyment; but these things were to be held in common. It was people's cupidity after the Fall that led to the institution of private property. Thus, property and individual possession are not of God

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In the fool who acquires ,cattle and lands, Or wins a woman's love, His wisdom wanes with his waxing pride, He sinks from sense to conceit. 43 The main thing is that it is not wealth that elevates a man but his good name: that is what remains in people's memories even after his death: Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal: But the good name never dies Of one who has done well. Cattle die, kindred die, . Every man is mortal: But I know one thing that never dies, The glory of the great dead. 44

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

but are the result of human cupidity and the shortcomings of human nature after expulsion frpm paradise. This viewpoint, which links private property with primeval sin, was also accepted by the medieval church. According to the law of God, all things are held in common. 'Mine' and 'thine' are the outcome of man's greed. Christ had no property and lived in poverty, an example which was followed by his disciples. As it is said in the Gospel of St Matthew (6: 19-21, 24): 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; For where your treasure is there will your heart be also .... Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' And again in verse 26: 'Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them ... ' The medieval Christian could not but take these commands seriously. Ideally the righteous man was a poor man; for poverty was a virtue which wealth could never be. Property was the embodiment of earthly interests which distracted man's attention from the life to come and the salvation of his soul. Faith demanded the renunciation of earthly things and earthly interests. So a true follower of Christ could only look upon wealth with suspicion. 'Scorn earthly riches', said St 'Bernard of Clairvaux, 'so that you may gain heavenly riches.' Property was seen as a hindrance in the way of the love of God and of mankind, for it generates selfishness and the struggle to acquire things; and in the process altruism is overcome by avarice and enmity. 'And so the first and basic condition for the attainment of perfect love', taught St Thomas Aquinas, 'is voluntary poverty. '46 The sermons preached by the medieval theologians on the nee~ to renounce property contain more than a trace of rhetoric. If few people were prepared to take such teachings seriously, they were not just paying lip-service to their inability to follow the Christian doctrine of poverty literally. If the great mass of be~ievers were to succeed in reconciling the prescription of evangelical poverty with the possession of property, there had to be people in society who would

take it upon themselves to practise voluntary poverty, thus setting others an example, which, even if it could not be followed by the backsliders, at least gave them some comfort. By behaving righteously and renouncing earthly delights, these godly men were saving the whole of the human race. In the monastic orders the vow of poverty was a basic condition. The Benedictines not only eschewed all forms of property but were even forbidden to use the words 'my', 'mine' and 'thy', 'thine'; in their place the founder of the order, St Benedict, prescribed the word 'our'. 'The concept of common property was even extended to the physical bodies of the monks. There was discussion as to whether a monk was entitled to look upon the limbs of his body as his personal property; was he entitled to speak of 'my head', 'my tongue', 'my hands' or was he to say 'our head', 'our tongue', 'our hands' in the same way as one said 'our headdress', 'our cassock'. In monasticism medieval renunciation of the world and of the self led to the annihilation of the individual personality.'47 In the post-Benedictine orders of the Franciscans and the Dominicans not only personal but communal property as well was forbidden. The monks were supposed to live entirely on charity. For most members of feudal society it was practically impossible to live in a state of evangelical poverty. The clergy were well aware of this. If society was to exist and function as a whole, some property had to be tolerated. 'It would be wrong to say that men must have no property', admitted St Thomas Aquinas,48 who reasoned that the Fall not only caused private property to appear but also rendered its retention inevitable: for, in a state of worldly sinfulness, a man naturally cared and worked for himself and his own affairs more than for others. However, it was not so much private property itself that the theologians condemned as its abuse. According to them, a man should not own more property than was absolutely necessary for the satisfaction of his needs. As Augustine said: 'he who has more than he needs has what does not belong to him'. The early Christian ideal of a community of believers, who have renounced all possessions and take no thought for their sustenance, is replaced in the Middle Ages by the ideal of thesmallholding, the possession

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour of which allows basic needs to be satisfied. Accumulation over and above this minimum was considered a sin' for it ~as ~i~tat~d by c~pidity. As defined by St Thomas A~uinas, cU~ldIty IS the SIn whIch leadsman to try to acquire or to retaIn more wealth than he has need of'. 49 On the basis of this concession, the church recognised a real social requirement. And i~s teaching ~h~t a limited amount of property, th?u~h an eVIl, was permIssIble because it prevented a greater evIl, Incorporated and satisfied the main aims of the small landowners and small craftsmen and artisans who formed the backbone of medieval society. Christian condemnation of property reduced in practice to the condemnation of profiteerin~ ~nd money-grubbing; and the question of what was permIssIble and what impermissible property was assessed, nO.t so much by its dimensions, as by the aims pursued ~y ItS ow~ers ar:d ~he means they used to get their hands on It. A cardInal cntenon, too, was the mental attitude the spiritual state of the owner. Wealth, as St Thoma~ Aquinas said, could not be accounted an end in itself; it was no more than a means for the attainment of other ends that lay beyond the purely economic sphere. The biggest proprietor in feudal society, and one bound by many ties of common interest with the great lay land?wners, was the church. As one might expect, it did nothIng to encoura~e any change in the institution of private proper~y, or to b~Ing about any redistribution of property that mIght ,apprc;>xImate ,m?re to the ideal of small holdings and the satisfaction of hm! ted needs. In a class society, the commandment 'Thou shalt not steal' protected property in a way that was very much in the interests of the 'haves'. At most, the church countenanced a partial redistribution of wealth by urging the faithful to give alms to the poor. The 'hav~-nots' of the world were regarded as being closer to ~hnst than ~he well-to-do; in the poor man was seen the Ima~e ofChnst. Hence charity was encouraged in every way pOSSIble. ~ulers and noblemen normally supported a fairly large contingent of beggars and poor people at their courts, to whom they gave food and money; It was not unusual for these ,hand-outs to asSUme very large proportions indeed, and nch people were in the habit of providing substantial

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour sums for the destitute. Noble ladies were particularly zealous in this field, and some persons of royal origin did not shrink from sacrificing part of the state income to the needs of the poor. Paupers and beggars were widely supported by the monasteries; in some years, for example, up to seventeen thousand poor people were fed at Cluny. Medieval charity was, however, inspired less by love for one's neighbour as preached by Christianity than by the donor's concern for his own spiritual salvation. If a rich man could save his soul by giving alms to the poor, that was what mattered; the beggars to whom he gave a portion of his wealth did not concern him overmuch. This is shown by the fact that throughout the Middle Ages there was not one single attempt to get to grips with the root causes of poverty; the poor continued to be fed, the donors gained virtue, and the situation remained as it was. For the coexistence of poverty and riches the church provided a logical explanation: 'The rich are created to be the salvation of the poor, and the poor are created to be the salvation of the rich.' Giving charity to the poor was seen as a sort of insurance for the rich. Alcuin wrote that by giving alms to the poor one might go straight to heaven. Hrabanus Maurus echoed him: material riches given to the destitute are turned into heavenly riches. 50 Thus it was actually necessary for the have-nots and the ne' er-dowells to exist, and it never entered anyone's head to try to get rid of poverty; just as the beggars themselves came to see themselves as God's chosen and made no attempt to better their earthly lot. On the contrary , poverty was seen as an ideal to be aimed at, and the church allowed the taking of the oath of poverty by those who were drawn to it by reasons of 'humility and concern for the common good, not out of self-interest or sloth'. The papacy, it is true, apprehensive lest anti-property convictions should become too popular, announced that poverty was not a general obligation but rather a vocation for a chosen few. It would be a long time before poverty was recognised in medieval society as a social evil, as an index of social malfunction. 51 Poverty was not seen as a contingency to be got rid of, but rather as a state of self-abnegation and renunciation of the world; with the result that the business of poverty was very much part of the

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

medieval scene. Not riches but poverty - above all, poverty of spirit, humility - was the ideal of medieval society. Every society has its heroes, every society produces its ideal type of man, who serves as an example to be followed. This ideal type plays a very important part in moral education, and can therefore be itself construed as a reflection of the moral condition of society. This is especially true in the case of an authoritarian society like the medieval one, all of wh~se culture bears the didactic imprint. In such a society the Ideal type of man is a not unimportant ingredient of its moral climate. What was this paragon like? The ideal human type of the antique polis was the allrounder, the citizen who had fully developed his talents. A:uong t?e qualities that went to make a harmonious personalIty, an Important part was played by physical development; the athlete, the Olympic champion, embodied this ideal to perfection. The ideal human type of the Middle Ages was infinitely removed from the antique one. The cult of the body, of visible beauty, has nothing in common with worship of the sufferings of a God who has chosen to embody himself in mortal flesh. In so far as we can speak of a 'physical ideal' in the Christian Middle Ages, this is represented by the tortured body of Christ, crucified to save the human race. The Middle Ages did obeisance not to the bodily strength and the harmonious proportions of the athlete but to the wasted frame and suppurating sores of the sick. Nursing the sick, washing their wounds and seeing therein the suffering Saviour was a service as pleasing to God as the giving of alms. The ideal of medieval society was the monk, the saint, the ascetic, the man who had most completely renounced earthly interests, cares and temptations and who was therefore of all men nearest to God. The Greek word aO"KllO"L<; means 'exercise' - in particular, 'gymnastic exercise'; the aO"Kll T -rl<; is the athlete, the wrestler. The same word was used in the Christian. Middle Ages for the man who neglects his body and mortIfies the flesh for the sake of exercising his soul. Perhaps nothing is more expressive of the contrast between the antique and the medieval mind than the shift in the meaning of this word. The medieval ideal is not this-worldly,

earthly and practical; it is transcendental, having outgrown its earthly ties. The ideal of the saint was a general one, with a hold on all strata of society. Of course, the various strata and estates of medieval society also had their own individual ideals. For example, there was the knightly ideaL But even this ideal was long subordinated to the universal ascetic ideal, for what was held to be admirable and worthy of imitation about the knight was not only his physical prowess and warlike spirit - not even the conscious effort he made to live up to his order and his adherence to a strict code of behaviour, but his subordination of all these qualities to a higher ideal; the knightly class was called upon to place its arms at the service of God and the church. The Crusader - the loftiest type of the man-at-arms, miles Christi, exemplifies this ideal type of knight. 52 The whole of society cannot be judged by its ideal type. But the type serves as an index of the prevalent mental climate, of the moral norms accepted in this society, and it reflects the system of values by which its members are in one way or another guided. The social ideal of the Middle Ages did not favour the accumulation of material goods, nor was it compatible with vanity or ostentation. Medieval literature is unsparing in its condemnation of showy attire. Women's fashions, which are perhaps the best guide to social taste and social trends, did not change over centuries, and we are on the threshold of the Renaissance before we find a desire for quick changes, for innovation and extravagance, creeping in. The successful and wealthy could not be taken as objects of admiration and examples to be followed. The religious-ethical glorification of poverty and recognition of its sacral character found their supreme expression in the preaching of St Francis of Assisi, who called upon people to 'follow naked the naked Christ' and who solemnised a mystic marriage with Our Lady Poverty. It was no part of St Francis's plan to release the poor from their miserable lot; on the contrary, he accepted material inequality on earth, seeing poverty as a virtue and as an example most worthy to be followed. Christian moral attitudes did not prevent the steady development of trade and industry, but created a specific mental

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour and spiritual climate in which this development took place. The accumulation of wealth and the undue adulation of earthly goods were targets for attack by all those who were dissatisfied with the social order as it stood. Ideologically, dissatisfaction of this sort drew for its sustenance on the evangelical ideals of poverty and ascetism, and this continued to be the case right up to the Reformation. Opposition to feudalism, which took in these days the form of religious heresy, used these ideals as its ammunition, and strove to r~alise them in practice. Predictably, all efforts in this directIon came to naught - yet in themselves they are very characte~istic of a s~ciety which was based on property and exploitatIon and whIch nevertheless preached the virtues of poverty and humility. Medieval man laboured, prospered and led a sinful life, doing obeisance to the saints and repenting of his own imperfection. Hypocrisy was not unknown in the Middle Ages, far from it - but to reduce the gap between the way people lived and the ideals they professed to nothing more than sanctimoniousness would be an oversimplification. ~edieval man was conscious of the dichotomy between the kIngdom of heaven, the abode of the blessed where justice ruled, and the earthly world sunk in sin and riddled with temptation. As a rule, man was not able to tear himself away f~om the embrace of this earthly world, and he paid for ~IS ,:ea.kness by being in a state of mental ambiguity and Infenonty. The mass sectarian movements, the social convulsi.ons, accompanied by self-flagellation, mass repentance and pIlgnmages to the Holy Places, the dispersal of one's goods and taking the vow of abstinence - all this reflects both the social and the spiritual conflicts of feudal society.

'Serving' and 'distributing' As we, examine the attitude to wealth and property which underlIes the values held by the ruling class in feudal society, we come across something that may strike us at first sight as paradoxical: the ethical attitudes of this ruling class - the knights and nobles - quite closely resemble the attitude to wealth which was characteristic of barbarian society, Further-

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour more, it is a resemblance which extends beyond this to a wider area of feudal ideology and social psychology. Su~h concepts as 'honour', 'fame' and 'high birth', as, used In feudalism, seem to be directly borrowed from the Ide,ology of the period preceding the emergence of the class sO~lety. Of all the virtues that could grace the feudal seIgneur, generosity took first place. The seigneur was surrounded, by his family, his retainers, his vassals, all of whom served hIm, supported him and did his bidding. The power of ~ no~le seigneur is determined by the number of persons servIng hIm and owing allegiance to him. Otherwise, he is not 'senior'; he is not lord and head. The seigneur is, of course, a lande,d proprietor, drawing revenue from the peasants ~ho work hIS land. Were it not for such revenue from hIS dependent tenants, he would not be in a position to maintain h.is retinue and feed his many hangers-on. The income h,e denves fr<;>m his estates enables him to give feasts and receptIons, to receIve guests and hand out gifts - in a word, to live in the gran~ manner. A seigneur is behaving 'normally' when he IS generous, careless of cost, open-handed and spendthrift, and indifferent as to whether he is spending more than he receives. Any gap between income and expenditure can be filled by squeezing the peasants a little harder and fining them; robbery and war booty bring in additional sun: s . Economy and thrift are qualities running counter to t~~ ethICS of his estate. His income is looked after by the baIlIff, the steward and the reeve, and all he has to do is eat and drink and give away his property - and the more l~vishly, the ~ore spectacularly he can do this, the more vocIferously, WIll he be praised and the higher will be his social standIng and prestige. Wealth as seen by the lords was not an end in itself, nor was it something that should be accumulated or used for economic improvement or development. The la~down~r who sought to increase his income did not do so Wlt~ a v~ew t.o stepping up production; it was simply a way of WIdenIng hls circle of friends and retainers, allies and vassals, among whom he would then distribute his largesse of money and goods. Pushkin's stingy knight, secretly gloating over the sight and sound of the money he keeps in armoured chests in the

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour cellars ' may be a fi gure ch aractenstlc " f h R ' b ut he has nothing at all t d 'h h ,t e enalssanceAges. Feudal extravagan~ a WIt t e nIghts of the Middle the proceeds of the e I ~ ~as one of the ways in which 'I 1 ' , xp oItation of th d Istnbuted among the b f h e servI e c asses were mem ers ate I' 1 ' farm of feudal distrI'b t' ru lng c ass. But thIS ' u Ion was very sp 'fi ' , f Th e seIgneur could get littl ' f ' /CI c In Its e fects. ~hat he owned treasure if h e satls act,Ion rOI?, the knowledge It and exhibit it _ or t e ~as not In a POSItIon to squander 1 . , , a put It more ac It In spectacular fashion It . CUI rate y, to squander k' . was not SImp y a f' . ~n d d nn Ing one's way throu h f . matter a eatIng In the full glare of publ" g a ortune; It had to be done free gifts. ICIty at a crowded table with lots of

k

The way wealth was ha dl d . n e ,In feudal society often reminds us very stron gI American Indians who ~ the. potlhtch' of the North tribe to feasts ancl't t ,au InvIte at er members of the o entire food stocks 7nd Ihpre~s ther, by squandering their C pieces. In these and oth OppIng heIr fishing boats into generosity and extravagan er ~ays t ey demonstr~ted their very similar practices fromc;~ud ir~ Bloc~~as descnbed some ~ho ordered a ploughed fielda t~bes. ere ~as th~ knight stIver; another required h' f d b e sown wIth pIeces of but with very ex ensive':: 00 to e coo~ed not with wood the public eye bf burning aili~nd~'?b.a ~lrd sou~ht to catch wa~ton acts of wastefulness alw IS orses ahve. 53 These audIence of other noblemen and ha~s took pla.ce before an, startling them _ otherwise an. t fIr vassals wI~h the aim of would have no point. act 0 such conspIcUOUS waste 1 , Competitions in wastefulness of h In archaic societies and th t e pot atch type found medieval nobility have so e gha:gan,tuan feasts put on by the ' b . met Ing In c IS an aggressive generosity a ff ammon: In oth there with one's extravagance a' dn e art to overwhelm the guests nary Sort of social game' ,n, ~~ hOhe points in an extraordiinfluence. Of Course b~hn ~ IC } e ~takes are prestige and f~udal nobles was di~tatedabourbOd. t h IS sort on ,t~e part of than by a dominant frame of Ym~nd' Ienci e. t? tradItIon :ather more outrageous acts of ,an It IS true that In the something unusual a depa;;tra'fa*ganceh' contemporaries saw , ure rom t e norm. But an essen-

°fd

Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour tial trait of courtly psychology is here laid bare, albeit in somewhat hypertrophied form. For the feudal lord, wealth was a means of retaining his social influence, of affirming his 'honour'. In itself, being rich did not command respect; on the contrary, the merchant with plenty of assets, who used money to make more in commercial or money-lending operations, awoke all sorts of emotions in the medieval breast: hate, envy, scorn, fear but not respect. The seigneur, on the other hand, carelessly flinging his revenues to the winds and living beyond his means, had only to invite guests to a feast and hand out gifts he could not afford to be universally renowned and looked up to. The feudal lord saw wealth as a means for attaining ends lying far outside the purely economic sphere. Wealth was an index of the lord's success, of his generous and magnanimous nature. He had to show off. For the rich lord, the supreme moment of pleasure in his wealth carne when he could squander it in the company of as many people as possible. Like all semantic systems with a social significance, this one too had to be translated into practice via an obligatory ritual and a series of established canons. Feasts, entertainments, courtly gatherings, tournaments, took place at regular intervals duly accompanied by the proper ceremonial and protocol. The public life of the knight was spent either on the battlefield or in diversions organised at his lord's court. The lyrics of the Proven~al troubadours provide perhaps the best evidence of the extent to which every detail of knightly behaviour was ritualised. Courtly love which is their theme is understood as service of a lady, exactly similar to a vassal's service of his lord. The lady bestowed her favour on the knight just as the lord gave him a fief or a gift. The troubadours liked to use legal language and feudal terminology to describe their amorous langour. Sometimes the poet actually calls his lady-love 'seigneur'.54 Recent research has shown that courtly love, which the troubadours had ritualised down to the last detail, was an important factor in the consolidation of the lesser nobility attached to the courts of great feudal lords, since it was an indissoluble component not

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour only of their amorous life but of their social behaviour as a whole. . In t~eir idealised picture of relations at court, the poets gIve pnde of place to the idea of generosity. The court of the great. feudal lord is above all a place where people 'give and receIve'. The theme of giving and the distribution of gifts is linked in troubadour poetry with the theme of the decadence of the world - a very popular theme in the Middle Ages. The world is seen as a battlefield where virtues confront vices. Among the worst and most heinous defects must be reckoned arrogance, stinginess and cupidity. 'No more do barons bestow gifts on youths as they used to do long ago', laments one poet, who sees in this a symptom of the intrusion of evil into the world. Meanness must be opposed by a noble generosity, which the poets see as the crucial criterion of the state of society. 'To give' and 'to make a gift'; to a troubadour, this is the prime virtue. The split between wealth and th~ joy of dispensing it is tantamount to the collapse of unIversal harmony, for avarice is the mother of all vices, hi1e generosity is the core of all virtues. A man is weighed In respect of his generosity, round which the whole ethical system of chivalry revolves, and which even takes precedence over prowess on the field of battle. 'By means of gifts and largesse a man becomes noble, acquires honour and fame', says one poet; 'I say nothing ill of arms .or reason, but gifts govern all. '55 He who gives will gain divine favour. 'Valour teaches us to be lavish with our income', said the poet Peire Cardenal. Generosity, hospitality and a readiness to hand opt g~fts were the distractions of the nobleman, the only way for hIm to reach the supreme pinnacles of love. In the eyes of a troubadour, the rich miser is a monster who fails to grasp the significance of his privileged position and who acts contrary to God's will. The troub.adours' appeals to the generosity of the feudal lords come In all keys - from the bluntest of extortionate demands to the subtlest of hints. According to the morality they preached, which was doubtless shared at court, the sole justification for wealth and power is that by being passed on from the owner they can contribute to the happiness and welfare of others:

:v

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour As soon as you gather goods together, Divided they can do good, Without selfishness and falsity. (Giraut de Bornelh)56 The question of the incomes of the lesser knights, ~he cadets - i. e. unmarried men without fiefs - was a burnIng social problem in feudal society.57 The lyrics of the court poets reflect the conflict between rich and poor knights and the tensions that existed between different levels of the feudal hierarchy. Relations between seigneur and vassal are presented by the poets as relations of mutual service, help and friendship. 'To serve', in their lexicon, often meant not 'to take', but 'to give' 'to offer', 'to spend'. In the lyrics of the Old Provenc;al poets, we are constantly coming across such compounds. as 'serving and giving' or even 'serving and giving some~hIng from one's own property'. The Provenc;al poets ~eve~ tire C?f stressing that the power of the feudal lords reSIdes In theIr generosity. 'Ignoble is he who serves not nor gives, and does not behave as reason bids us' (Bertrand Carbonel). 'The owner of a castle who, serving and giving, attains to happiness' - only he deserves the poet's praises (Richart). Rich and renowned is the castle of the seigneur who 'serves' and 'gives' in lordly and magnificent fashion. We even find the expression 'to serve by means of one's property'. The concepts of 'giving' and 'taking' along with 'serv~n~' and 'accepting service' are here intimately correlated wl~hln ~he ideological nexus of the reciprocal lord-vassal relationshIp. Thus, the feudal concept of service is indissolubly linked with the concept of the bestowing and squande:ing of. property. Where it not so, how could there be fnendship ~nd loyalty between two knights? Only the generous squandenng of wealth can make a man famed and respected. 'If a man scorns fame and generosity, he is acting without dignity. God exhorts men to dwell on their fame and good name ... ' (Montanhagol). Lords who transgress the~e rules of courtly morality do not deserve the love of faIr ladies:

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

The baron who in secret feasts Behaves unacceptably vilely, But a hundred times worse than he is the lady Who then accepts him. (Magret)58 Like relations with one's vassals, love for one's lady entailed a lot of outlay. The chief merit of the gift, however, did not lie in its material value; indeed, the troubadours censured those who solicited more opulent gifts, and tended to regard such behaviour as immoral. The real meaning of the gift lay in the actual act of giving, in the tie between individuals which the gift established or consolidated. Custom required not a single gift unilaterally given, but an exchange of gifts. Quite often it was not the knight who made an offering to the lady but she to him, and there was nothing humiliating in this. Service was understood both as giving and as receiving gifts. The better to understand the close connection between the concepts of 'serving' and 'gift' we must rid our minds of the idea that 'service' was always undertaken for the sake of material reward; service, like the proffering of gifts, was a form of social intercourse which united people in cohesive sets. Wealth was a means whereby such links could be socially sustained. At one point in the poetic competition between Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and the Marquis Albert de Malaspina, the former accused the marquis of extorting money from merchants travelling through his domain. The marquis replied that if he did so it was not out of greed but merely so that he could then distribute the plunder to others. 59 For medieval seigneurs exchange of gifts was no less important than the question of donations to the church for the purpose of saving souls. Giving, donating, was an inexhaustible theme for pointed discussion. John of Garland wrote In Praise of Noble Donors and On the Reasons for Giftgiving (Commendatio nobilium datorum et de causis dandi) , while other authors expatiated on the dangers inherent in accepting gifts. How and to whom gifts should be made is one of the themes of twelfth . . century literature. 60 Generosity is an inseparable trait of the monarch, as, in general, of any great lord in the courtly romances. Generosity is the 'lady and queen' without whom all other chivalric

qualities are reduced to naught. As we are told in the Romance of Lancelot, the ruler must distribute horses and gold, raiment, 'prime' revenues and 'rich lands' whereby 'he loses nothing but will gain in all'. In the Arthurian cycle, generosity and gifts appear as the sole factors making for cohesion among the knights. We need not dwell here on the ruthless exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal lords: it is well enough known. Peasants were subject to corvee and to quit-rent, either in money or in kind and to many other kinds of extortion; often the poorest peasants were driven to ruin and desperation" Nor did it take the nobility long to decide to lay its hands on the wealth of the townspeople as well. Medieval knights saw nothing disgraceful in relieving others of their wealth; indeed, they often boasted of their predatory skills and exploits. Respect for other people's property was not uppermost in their minds. The history of the Middle Ages is one of interminable wars and civil strife. Each and every campaign, even if it ostensibly pursued worthy ends 'pleasing to God', was accompanied by pillage and rape. The seizure of wealth was followed by its distribution among one's comrades-in-arms, the bestowal of gifts on vassals and companions, and the ostentatious consumption of whatever was left, at feasts. To recapitulate: only as and when turned into a palpable symbol of high socia.l standing and privileged position could a nobleman's wealth be squared with feudal morality and with the style of life and mode of behaviour required of him by his membership of the noble order. We see then that the exchange of gifts, the festive distribution and squandering of wealth, and the spendthrift attitude to property, so characteristic of the barbarian age, were equally characteristic of feudalism. But this is not to say that feudalism simply took over these institutions and traditions from its predecessors, and that the medieval scene is no more than a rerun of the past. Many archaic features of medieval life do indeed display remarkable tenacity, but nothing is gained by dismissing them as mere atavisms. The crucial question is: what was the role of these traditional institutions in the new economic and social climate? The gift, the feast, the ceremonial exchange of objects or

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

services and their semantic function as the indices of wealth - these are specific manifestations of social relations in the societies we have been considering. Under feudalism, these relations were primarily of a person-to-person nature. Members of the society entered into direct personal contacts with each other, relations which were based on kinship, on marriage, on proximity as neighbours and on common membership of a group, and on patronage or dependence on and subordination to the lord. However these relationships might differ in nature and function, they always found expression in the shape of direct personal relations between individuals - in sharp contrast to the relationships of bourgeois society, which are 'reified' and 'fetishised' as relationships between commodities. 'Wealth', says the hero of a French epic, 'is not fine furs, nor money, nor castle walls, nor horses; wealth is kinsmen and friends ... '61 It is the personal relationship between lord and servant a relationship with which the whole structure of feudal society is imbued - that gives the feudal concept of property its specific character. This is very far from what is usually called private property. Roman law defined private ownership as the right to the free possession and disposal of property and the right to make unrestricted use thereof, including its abuse (jus utendi et abutendi): the feudal law of ownership was different in principle. The main category of feudal property - land - was not something that could be freely alienated. The feudal proprietor could not appropriate for his own use all the revenue from his lands and was deprived of it altogether if he failed to perform the services that went with ownership. At the same time, as long as the peasants working on his land paid their rents and carried out the services required of them, their allotments were safeguarded and he had no right to expel them. Strictly speaking, the concept of 'private owner' cannot properly be applied either to the medieval landlord or to his vassal. The landowner was regarded not as 'possessor' but as 'holder' (tenens) to whom land has been assigned by a higher authority, and for his tenure to be viable certain conditions had to be observed. The rights of the tenens were always limited. Even in cases where he exercised de facto independent ownership

over a piece of land, he was still regarded as having received it from a seigneur above him, and in several areas of feudal Europe the principle of 'no land without a seigneur' was adhered to. Independent properties with no known human seigneurs were called 'fiefs in the air' or 'fiefs held of the sun'. The concept of 'partial ownership' does little to clarify the specific nature of feudal ownership. It is not so much a question of the 'limitation', the 'incompleteness' of feudal ownership (concepts which creep in when we try to compare feudal' ownership with classical or bourgeois ownership) as of the personal nature of the relationships connected with it. Property is always a relationship between people. But private property is a reified form of social relations, while feudal ownership is an interpersonal form, containing in essence all the social relations of medieval society. If bourgeois ownership confronts factory workers and agricultural tenants as impersonal wealth, feudal land ownership is always personified for the peasant in the person of the seigneur and in the authority, the judicial prerogatives and the traditional ties inseparable from him. Bourgeois ownership can be entirely anonymous, while feudal ownership always bears a name which it confers upon the feudal lord; for him, the land is not just something to be owned, but also his native soil, with its history, its local customs, its beliefs and its prejudices. Landed property relations under feudalism are above all relations between those in authority and those subject to authority. The vassal entering the service of a feudal lord and accepting his patronage swore an oath of fealty to him and pledged himself to help him in all things, to defend him from his enemies, to. do his bidding and to perform such services as were incumbent upon him. For his part, the lord undertook to protect the vassal, to care for him and not leave him to fend for himself. The exchange of oaths and pledges might be accompanied by grant of a fief, but to qualify for this the vassal had to be in a' position to perform knightly or other 'noble' service. Grant of a fief usually meant a land grant, but it might also be no more than the right to the revenues from the land, or the right to customs and other forms of extortion, judicial rights and the income therefrom, and so

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on. The key issue was not the object granted but the fact of the grant itself; the conferring of a fief entailed obligation on the vassal's part to serve and obey his lord. The fief gave the vassal the material security which was needed if he was to serve his master properly. The lord could, however, attain the same ends without conferring any sort of grant: he could simply receive the vassal into his establishment and provide for his upkeep. Thus, in essence, the feudal relationship between seigneur and vassal consists above all in the establishing of a personal link : master and servant, patronage and service. In these relationships the principle of reciprocity, the mutual exchange of services, is as clearly visible as it was in the forms of ceremonial exchange we looked at above. Like the exchange of gifts and participation in a feast, the establishment of vassalage relations had its due ritual; as oaths were exchanged, certain special rites were performed, which were designed to reinforce the personal ties being forged and lend them juridical force and inviolability. The vassal went down on his knees and put his hands between the hands of the seigneur. This meant literally that he 'came into his hands', made himself his 'man'. When granting a fief the seigneur handed the vassal a twig or some other object symbolising the transfer of the holding. The profound symbolism of these procedures found adequate expression in contemporary art. The miniatures illustrating the medieval law-codes often show people with several hands and two faces. This is not simply a grotesque fantasy: it is a way of reproducing the actual content of certain juridical procedures - investiture, paying homage, 'commendatio', the act of becoming a vassal. The artist sacrifices reality to the need to incorporate in one configuration all the implications of the juridical act - hence the additional hands. The feudal lord, seated ona chair, holds between his hands the hands of the vassal who is swearing fealty to him, pointing at the same time with an additional hand to the land which is being granted to the new vassal as his fief. Elsewhere, the lord is shown in the form of a twofaced Janus; on the left, he holds the hands of a vassal, while on the right he .offers the symbol of landed property to another man. What is represented here is the transfer by the

lord of a fief owned by one vassal to a second, without the knowledge of the first. The duplicity of the lord is shown literally: he has two faces and two pairs of hands. Such illustrations are collocations of acts taking place at different times; they are synchronic and diachronic at one and ~he same time. The medieval artist chooses to represent succeSSIve acts in one single configuration, thus emphasising the close inner ties between them in a symbolic fashion which would have been immediately clear to his contemporaries. The handing on of an inherited fief was also accompanied by symbolic procedures, as was renewal of oath upon change of seigneur: the vassals of a dead seigneur had to swear to his son, just as the heirs of deceased vassals could only take over the fiefs of their dead fathers if they swore fealty to the seigneur. Even annulment of the treaty of vassalage had its specific ritual. Indeed, all aspects of feudal fealty w.ere t?US symbolised and ritualised; divorced from the semIologIcal system of formulas and rituals, these relations were unimaginable and had no juridical force. In particular, the.relatio~­ ships of land grant and vassalage could only acquIre soc~al significance in this symbolic form. Ipso facto, these socIal and political institutions also became cultural factors. The cultural symbolism, which is a universal trait of the spiritual life of the Middle Ages, absorbed this sphere of social activity as well, lending it a higher significance and raising social ties to the level of ethical values. Pointing out the essential difference between the feudal and bourgeois forms of land ownership, Marx wrote that for the former to turn into the latter several things were necessary:

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It is inevitable that ... landed property, which is the root of private property, should be drawn entirely i~to the orbit of private property and become a commodity; that the rule of the property owner should appear as the naked rule of private property, of capital, divested of all political tincture; that the relationship between property owner and worker should be reduced to the politicoeconomic relationship of exploiter and exploited; that the personal relationship between the property owner

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and his property should come to an end, and that the property itself should become purely material wealth; that the marriage of interest with the land should take over from the marriage of honour, and that land like man, should sink to the level of a venal object. It is ~nevitable that the root of landed property - sordid selfInterest - should also manifest itself in its cynical form. It is inevitable that immovable monopoly should become mobile and restless monopoly, competition; and that the idle enjoyment of the products of the sweat and blood of other people should become a brisk commerce in the same. Finally it is inevitable under these conditions of competition that landed property, in the form of capital, should manifest its domination over the working class and over the property owners themselves, inasmuch as the laws of the movement of capital are either ruining or raising them. In this way the medieval saying nulle terre sans seigneur gives way to the modern saying l'argent n'a pas de maitre, which is an expression of the complete domination of dead matter over men. 62 Such was the long and arduous path that feudal ownership of l,and had to traverse in order to become a commodity subject to the laws of market production which are in flat contradiction of its own essence. In feudal society, land was not 'dead matter' dominating people; people were fused with the land, as it were. The feudal lord participates in a 'marriage of honour' with his hereditary fief. Nothing could be further from his thoughts than to treat this fief as no more than a source of wealth or an object to be traded. The ties that link the feud~llord with the earth and with the dependent tillers of the sOlI are not those of naked material interest; they form rather an intricate nexus of exploitation, political power, subordination, tradition, habit, emotion, patronage and respect (Marx points to the 'emotional side' of the feudal landowner's attitude to'the peasantry and the poeticisation (Bodenpoesie) inherent in Romano-German feudalism).63

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Labour - curse or salvation? The medieval attitude to labour was no less contradictory than the medieval attitude to property. Of course, the ruling class had nothing to do with productive activities ?f any kind and in so far as such activities were the prOVInce of the iower: unprivileged strata of society, tended to d~spi~e them. From the knightly point of view, only war, chivainc exploits and entertainment - what. Marx trencha~tly described as 'heroic laziness' - qualIfied as occupatIons worthy of a nobleman; the provisif produ~ts, for converting his revenue into symbols of SOCIal pr~stIge, specified the position and the role of the feudal lord In the production process. . ' . But there is more than thIs to the attItude of the rulIng class towards labour. The clergy did not share the nobility'S preference for 'heroic indolence' as an ethically acceptable way of life. The church's position as rega~ds the ,mora~ va~ue of labour was dualistic. On the one hand, In man s oblIgation to labour the church saw both the result of his imperfection and a striking manifestation of it. As long as Adam and Eve

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour were in paradise they were in a state of innocence and took no thought for their sustenance. The Fall entailed divine retribution; now man would have to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden to till the earth from which he had been made (Genesis, 2:23). This biblical verdict on labour as a punishment became an integral part of the Christian ethics of the Mid~le Ages. Christ, the clergy pointed out, did not labour. HavIng g~thered hi~ disciples around him he encouraged them to gIve up theIr earthly occupations and become not labourers but 'fishers of men'. Christ's associates had no need to ?other their heads about what they were going to eat; ~h~lr teacher could provide for them without any difficulty; It IS ~nough to recall the parable of the five loaves with which Chnst .feeds five thousand people (not counting the women and chIldren) and the seven loaves which satisfied the hunger of four thousand of his followers (St Matthew 14: 15-21 ; 15:32-8). S~ labour was not a postulate in man's state of innocence; he dId not have to work when he was walking with God. In general, .man was called upon to concern himself, not so muc~ wIth what he could put in his stomach or with his physIcal welfare, as with his spiritual salvation and with life eternal. 'N?t b~ bread. alone . . .' The theologians rated the c~ntemplat1v~ lIfe, whIch brought man into closer contact wIth holy thIngs, higher than the active life, Mary rather than Martha, and therefore monks occupied a higher degree on . the ladder of spiritual ascension to God than any of theIr fellow humans. St Bernard of Clairvaux identified three degrees of this ascension corresponding· to three kinds of people - lay, clergy and monastic orders: 'the first are in the mill, the second in the fields and the third in bed'. 64 The 'mill' stands for the earthly life of the world; the 'field' refers to the souls of lay people, on which, as on a field, the clergy have to labour by preaching God's word; 'on the bed rests the holy love of those betrothed to Christ' - that is, the monks. On the whole, labour was not rated very highly . On the other hand, labour was recognised as something I~separable from man'~ condition: in ordinary, day-to-day lIfe people have no optIon but to work. The Christian soci-

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour ology of the Middle Ages was based on the principle of the organic nature of society, each of whose members had an allotted function in the integrated upkeep of the aggregate. The laboratores and aratores were just as necessary elements of the social organism as the oratores and the bellat?res: In service to the whole organism, the church saw the JustIfi.cation for productive labour. The decisive factor here was the intention for which the labour was undertaken. The accumulation of earthly riches was not something likely to get the blessing of the theologians. Christ had condemned usury and had chased the traders out of the temple; for the pursuit of wealth deflects man from his main raison d'etre and serves bodily needs rather than spiritual ones. For the Christian theologians, labour was above all edu~a­ tiona!' Origen put it as follows: 'God created man as ~ beIn.g who needs work in order that he may fully exerCIse hIS cognitive powers.' Man is the arena for a permanent battle between the forces of good and of evil, and only in the light of this confrontation can his actions be morally evaluated. Idleness - the' enemy of the soul' - breeds vice and threatens the immortal soul, while work subdues the flesh and makes for self-discipline and application. But only in so far as it serves these aims and is conducive to spiritual progress can labour's educational role be justified. While the first anchorites renounced all contact with the world and gave themselves over to contemplation, monks as they were integrated into corporate form adopted a new attitude towards worldly ~c~u­ pations. Followers of Christ were r~commen~e~ to dIVIde their time between prayer and work, lest the spint of temptation that lies in wait seize upon the idle mind' (St Bernard of Clairvaux). Thus, it was not so much the practical uses of productive work that counted as the aim served by the work - 'the attainment of spiritual perfection'. The key notion here was moderation: it was necessary to identify the precise measure in ~hich work :va~ good and pleasing to God, without becomIng an end In Itself and a means of worldly enrichment. The situation of many monasteries in the wilderness or in dense forest far from human habitation ensured that monks had to do hard physical labour; and they were in no small measure responsible for

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour the clearance of land that took place in Europe at this time and for the development of agriculture. But, as the Speculum M o'!achorum stressed in the twelfth century, concern for theIr work must not be allowed to divert their attention from spiritual matters. 'Spiritual exercises are not done for the sake of bodily exercise, but bodily exercise is done for the sake of the spirit. '65 By the Rules of St Benedict, monks skilled in a craft were allowed to practise it, but, 'if anyone of them should p~ide himself on his, skill, presumptuously imagining that he IS thereby benefiting the monastery, let him be forbidden to practise his craft' .66 For monks, work could not be an end in itself, A water-mill was constructed in one of the French monasteries so that the monks should have more time for their prayers. 67 Not all categories of work were considere~ permissible. Preference was given to agricultural work, whIle the brethren were forbidden to engage in trade and m~ny crafts. Not only in the early Middle Ages but in . the thIrteenth and fourteenth centuries as well we find the cler&y forbidden by synodalordinances to engage in weaving, makIng clo~h or footwear, dyeing, milling, brewing, or work as blacksmIths or bakers.68 In the early Middle Ages it is rare ~o find ,c~aftsmen being canonised as saints - the exception IS StEhglUS, who was court jeweller to the Frankish King Dagobert. The work most pleasing to God was agriculture. The sons of farmers were allowed to take holy orders and to enter monastic C?rders, and some prelates of the church were of peasant extraction. In his Colloquy the English bishop Aelfric (early eleventh century), discussing the importance of various trades and crafts for human existence, declares that the best and most useful activity is that of the tiller of the soil. All crafts are useful, but 'we all of us prefer to live with you Ploughman rather than wi~h you Blacksmith, for the Ploughman gives us food and dnnk, but what have you to offer us Blacksmith in yo~r smithy except sparks, the sound of hammering and the WInd from your bellows?' 'Let us all help each other with our crafts and let us all abide in concord with the Ploughman who feeds us. '69 It is a point of view which is completely natural for an agrarian society. Thus, from the clergy's point of view, labour, as long as

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour it was not an end in itself, did not conflict with asceticism; on the contrary, it was a useful adjunct, which helped to keep mankind from sliding into si~. , All this, of course, was on the Ideal and theoretical level. Practice was a different matter, and the same monastic orders which started out with strict regimes of poverty and s~lf­ discipline were later to tum into powerful landlords ownIng a vast amount of treasure; and it was precisely on their lands that agriculture and other forms of husb,andry reached, the highest degree of rationalisation and efficl~ncy ever attaIned in the Middle Ages. The order of the KnIghts Templar fell victim to the greed and rapacity of its own members, who amassed so much wealth that the French king, Philip IV, thought it worth while to kill or exile the Templars in order to confiscate their property. His example was followed by other rulers. Popular disgust with the great mo~a~tic orders for ab~n­ doning their vows of poverty and ascetICIsm found expreSSIon in the appearance of the mendicant orders, whose members were forbidden to own property of any sort whate~er and who lived by charity alone. From the twelfth and thIrteenth centuries onwards, people in Catholic Europe gre:v more and more discontented with the Papal Cuna, whIch had become a powerful owner of wealth and which continued to extort money from the faithful in the shape of tithes, 'crusade money', payment for church offices and the indulgences ~old by papal agents for the absolution of sins. There was lIttle common ground between the high ideals of the church and its actual practice - in fact, in many :espect~ they we~e the exact opposite of each other, somethIng whIch gave nse to much acute social and mental unrest. The clergy attempted to defend itself by asserting that the pope and the church used their wealth not for their own gratification but as a general fund designed to help all those in nee~.,70. But such claims were not likely to fool anybody, and cntICISm of t~e church and of the papal throne itself on th~ groun~s of theIr greed and avarice became more and more bItter. It IS enough to recall the Gospel according to the Silver Mark, or Langland's Lady Meed, the incorporation of venality. 71 The peasant and the craftsman could not view labour in

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

the same way as the clergy. To them it was not a means of se~f-discipline an~ deliverance from the temptations which mIght beset the Indolent, but harsh necessity. The neverending cycle of the agricultural seasons and the work connected with them, the repetition of the same productive p~ocesses ~rom year to year and from generation to generatIon, subjected the peasant to a labour routine from which there was no escape. The organic connection between the peasant and the soil he tilled was conditioned inter alia in no small measure by the fact that he worked with his hands; his work require.d him to use his own physical strength, since t~ere were VIrtually no technical means which might have lIghtened his task, being a transmissive mechanism between him and nature. It. would, however, be misleading to see in the lot of the medIeval peasant no more than its dark side. Medieval man was well able to see his mundane task as a producer in a more poetic light. Along with the Old Testament personages clustered round the doorways of the Gothic cathedrals are statues and bas-reliefs representing toilers engaged in various stages of the agricultural cycle. These sculptural calendars follow the workers through the tasks typical for each month and se.ason. ~loughin~, sowing, harvesting, threshing, fruit gathe!Ing, wIn.e-growI~g, planting trees, setting a scythe, mO~Ing, huntIng, fellIng trees - all of them pictures that contInue an old artistic tradition, enlivened with close observation of the living scene; they are imbued with the artist's int~r~~t in ordin~ry people absorbed in their daily productive . actIVItIes. By actlng o~ na~ure, man at work is glorifying the Creator, and the actIve lIfe takes its due place beside the contemplative life. Each is in equal measure sanctified. At Chartres, the virtues and the industrious maidens are arranged symmetrically, with the latter on the right-hand side - 'Yhich, as is well known, takes precedence over the lefthand. SIde. Gradually, work receives its moral and religious sanctIon. No doubt, the representation of agricultural tasks reflects. the growing s~lf-awareness of the people and their deepe~Ing understandIng of the importance of productive work In the general scheme of things. Under the pressure of this new attitude of workers to their

work, even the theologians began to reconsider their view of labour. Hitherto, appealing to the Bible, they had declared work to be a punishment from on high forman's fall from grace. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the theologians began to stress other ideas in this same book of Genesis (2: 15) - namely, that Adam tilled the Garden of Eden, and hence, before becoming a form of penitence, labour had been an activity enjoying God's blessing. A 'theology of work' is developed. Work is pleasing to God. The first worker was the Creator himself, summus artifex, architect of the world. In the cathedral at Laon God is portrayed as a worker, counting off on his fingers the number of days necessary for the Creation, and is then shown sitting resting after completing the work. Representations of various trades and crafts are frequent in medieval cathedrals. The windows donated by the guilds at Chartres collocate the workers with the saints, for labour too has its dignity and its sanctity. At Semur, the windows contain no scenes from the Lives of the Saints; what is shown in the most minute detail is the process of cloth-making,72 Not infrequently, productive work is glorified in iconography devoted to religious subject-matter: for example, Noah's construction of the Ark, or the building of the tower of BabeL The artists are at pains to show the enthusiasm of the builders as they carry stones and erect their buildings; the faces and figures are not individualised, the masses of workers move in unison, one single rhythm runs through them expressing the joy and high endeavour of labour shared in common. In the decoration of churches architects and artists did not have complete freedom of choice as regards subject, and in the cathedral in its function of 'Bible for the illiterate' only such themes were permissible as were in strict conformity with theological canons. The fact that agricultural occupations and crafts could be portrayed in such sanctified surroundings bears witness to general recognition of the value of labour as a divinely appointed institution, one of the ways leading to salvation - always, of course, assuming that the work served virtuous ends. Productive work was under the patronage of higher powers, and the medieval guilds chose saints as heavenly patrons. The cathedral itself, while glorifying God,

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immortalised the industry, the talents and the expertise of the men who built it. This rehabilitation of the active life reflects the growth of self-awareness among those belonging to the various productive professions and guilds. There is general acceptance of the belief that Christian values are inherent in all honourable callings. Each man has his vocation and may save his soul by exercising it honourably. 73 Along with rehabilitation of physical labour, the Middle Ages also came to look with a new respect at intellectual labour. In the early Middle Ages, the view had been widespread that intellectual activity did not rate material reward; in particular, teachers did not receive salaries, for wisdom was accounted as a gift of God which therefore could not be the object of mercenary trading. At best, a teacher could be offered gifts in gratitude for his dispensation of knowledge. 74 Such a view could of course survive only as long as knowledge and education were the exclusive province of the clergy;75 with the spread of urban schools and with the growing demand for educated people, it was not long before the learned professions received full recognition and took their place along with other skills. Payment began to be regarded as legal as long as it was pro labore. The enormous popularity enjoyed by outstanding professors at the universities is well known; pupils flocked from many countries to sit at their feet, their knowledge was said to be all-embracing and their authority was constantly invoked in learned discussion. In the taxonomy of medieval culture, the contrastive pair litteratus ('educated') - illitteratus (,non-educated') is basic. Poets, however, continued for a long time to be looked down on, and it was virtually impossible for them to live on what they made out of their writing; all they could hope for was a gift from a noble patron. There is only one piece of external documentary evidence concerning the life of the great Middle High German .poet Walther von der Vogelweide: in the travelling accounts of the bishop of Passau mention is made of five solidi given to the poet to help him to get a fur coatJ8 1Jnlesshe had a post as schoolteacher, the poet was on about'the same footing as a tumbler or jester. Many fashionable poets were also wandering actors, vagrants,

or goliards, as they were called. Complaints about the poverty and deprivation associated with the poet's calling are no fewer in the Middle Ages than in other periods. In the early Middle Ages, awareness of oneself as poet was not as yet developed, and most poetry was anonymous. Poets were remembered, if at all, by their contemporaries (sometimes by themselves too) because of their feats of knightly derringdo, their exploits on crusades, or for their piety; any poetic merit in this would be simply ignored. It is only from the twelfth century onwards that we find the situation changing and the poet beginning to be aware of himself as a creative artist. 76 We have already spoken about the relationship between the medieval craftsmen and their products, a relationship which is entirely different from the indifference in bourgeois society of worker and entrepreneur alike to the manufactured product. The relative restriction of the medieval urban market, the prevalence of work to order, the very high qualitative standards imposed by the guilds - these are some of the factors determining this special relationship between the master craftsman and the product of his hands. We have to remember that crafts were in the literal sense of the word 'handicrafts'. As in agriculture, there was for a very long time no technical or mechanical intermediary between producer and product; the product came directly from the hands of the maker, the craftsman who had worked on it from the beginning to the end of the productive process. Such a manufactura obviously engendered a very close relationship between it and the maker. Work in a guild had 'not yet degenerated into a total indifference towards its objective content'.77 The finished product embodying the skill, the taste and the working time of its maker was inwardly close to him; it carried the imprint of his personality. All this led to a certain poeticisation, or, one might say, an apotheosis of guild activity. Ethical and aesthetic considerations could not be detached from the guild method of production, and guild members were keenly aware of the dignity of their work. The master craftsman parted reluctantly with his work. 'The old craftsman fights for the pipe which the merchant wants to buy from him. '78 In any case, the craftsman was

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incapable of seeing in the finished product nothing more than an empty exchange item, a means of obtaining money and other goods. Exercising his skill, he was concerned not with profit at any price but with securing for himself a decent and dignified way of life. 'Our ancestors were not fools', we read in the German Reformation of Sigismund (c. 1439), 'they devised the crafts so that each one of us may thereby earn his daily bread, and no one may interfere in the craft of another; thus the world provides our basic needs, and each of us can feed himself. '79 In this way, a craft exists primarily not for the consumer but for the master himself, mindful of his income on the one hand and his good name and dignity as a craftsman on the other. 'Dignity' in this context implies, along with material sufficiency, the capability of taking due part as appropriate in the public affairs of the town. In this society of small-scale producers the manufactured article is assessed primarily according to its use value, and only thereafter according to its exchange value - to which it is never reduced. Parallel to the economic content of labour was its role as a source of moral satisfaction. By perfecting a fine article the master craftsman was at once confirming his right to guild membership and asserting his own personal dignity, his social position and his estate in life. It was only as a member of a group that he could assert himself as a legal individual, as a human personality. In this society, labour was understood as a common social responsibility; by means of his productive activities a man took part in the vital work of the whole whether guild, town or society in general. So the craftsman was aware of the importance of his work. The same awareness can also be found among the peasants. Early in the fourteenth century we find a French peasant declaring, after being excommunicated by the church, that this holds no terrors for him as 'his work will save him'.80 Labour, which had been represented by the clergy as a punishment visited upon men for original sin, is seen by the peasants as a way of opening the gates of heaven and of leading the soul to salvation. What is more, labour could be seen as a social advantage enjoyed by the peasantry over the nobility. It is well known

how popular the sermons of the Lollards were in fourteenthcentury England on the theme 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?' Here, the labour of the forefathers is not a curse but a genuine in-built human activity, while the noble is a superfluous member of society, since he performs no useful function therein, and cannot have been thus created in his knightly capacity by God. Behind Milton's assertion that Adam's work in the Garden of Eden is proof of his merit 81 stands a tradition spanning many centuries. Work is just as obligatory for the Christian as active love, says the fourteenth-century English poet William Langland in his Vision of Piers Plowman. The ploughman's work is righteous, and it alone opens the way to truth. By his work, Piers Plowman saves calle that halpe hym to erre, to settle or to sowe,lOr any other myster, that myghte Pieres anaille'. 82 We pointed out above that the agricultural year was also the liturgical year. The natural and the productive cycles coalesced in the cycle of religious rituals, ceremonies and festivals. The onset of the main productive processes was accompanied by prayers and religious-magical rites; the end of the agricultural cycle was marked by festivals. The established order of things seemed to be divinely ordained and by that very token acquired moral significance. Inevitably, in a society full of contradictions negative reactions to work were also bound to make their appearance. From the point of view of the peasants, labour was frequently excessive and forced; they had to do far more than seemed to them necessary if they were to settle their accounts with their lords. Adalberon, bishop of Laon, developing his doctrine of the organic structure of society, all of whose estates - clergy, nobility and peasantry - served the whole, admitted that 'to supply gold, food and clothes - this is the duty of the estate of serfs .... This miserable estate owns nothing except what it gets from hard work. . . . Who could count. . . all the hardships, the curses and torments that the unhappy serfs have to endure?'83 The peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages were due above all to the peasants' resistance to having to do excess work. The social Utopia of the Middle Ages was linked with the dream of a blissful state in which

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

no one had to work hard: the fabled land of co*ckaigne, or Schlaraffenland, as it is known in German, where no one worked, where there was plenty of everything and where fruit fell into your mouth. In the kingdom of 'the fifth monarchy' of the revolutionary sects at the end of the Middle Ages there was to be no hard work and all land was to be public property. When talking about excess working time in a medieval context we must be careful not to overlook its very specific character. In a society built up on what might be called natural husbandry and which was traditional through and through, work could not take up as much time as it did in early capitalist society. It is well known, for example, how many days there were in the year when no one did any work - Sundays, holy days and other church festivals. In fact, work was forbidden on at least a third of the days in the year, possibly more. This meant that on working days work had to go on for a long time. Guild rules laid down that their members worked from sunrise to sunset. Working quickly did not come naturally to a society which was slowly developing and which had a very special attitude to time. More germane to such a society was thoroughness of work, high quality; the craftsman's aim was to reach a master's standards, to make his craft into an art. The product was evaluated from a qualitative, not a quantitative standpoint. The artefact must bear the imprint of the individuality of its creator and must' be worthy of him. The product does not overshadow the maker; it is organically bound up with him. Thus did the Middle Ages re-interpret the meaning of labour in human life. From being a curse laid upon mankind work turned into a calling. This clarification of the dignity and the worth of work played a major part in the general growth of human self-awareness. But complete rehabilitation of work in feudal conditions was an impossibility; and it remained a goal desired rather than realised right up to the close of the Middle Ages.

God and Mammon

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P. Wolff has called medieval European civilisation 'a civilisation of labour'. 84 A fair definition, as far as it goes, but perhaps it should be extended to read 'a civilisation of the work of small farmers and craftsmen'. Virtually all the principles underlying the ethics of medieval economics were borrowed from early Christianity, but their enormous influence on the whole of the feudal age can hardly be explained by appealing to the force of tradition and to faith in the ecclesiastical authorities. The fact is that these principles in large measure answered the needs of small-scale producers. The positive evaluation of labour as a means towards salvation and as the only justifiable source of property, the recognition that it was lawful to possess property in sufficient bulk for the satisfaction of personal needs, the extolling of poverty over wealth - all this found a fertile soil in the minds of small-scale producers and conferred a high spiritual value upon their work. The way of life of the ruling class, of those who idled away their time at the expense of the peasants and the artisans, fitted in with none of these principles. It suited the feudal lords and the rich to pay at least moral tribute to the subjugated masses. Good works, generosity, prayers and penitence, going on pilgrimages, letting younger sons enter the priesthood and putting daughters in convents, bequests to the church, even (as happened . in the case of a few nobles) entering monasteries - these were some of the ways chosen as a means of compensating for the injustice which, from the viewpoint of medieval Christianity, necessarily accompanied wealth and high social position. The need for acts of contrition and purification, the need for inner reconciliation with the demands of their religion, was keenly felt among the nobility also whose public behaviour was in such glaring contrast with these demands. 85 Less exalted strata of society, drew some moral satisfaction, no doubt, from the spectacle of their social betters doing penitence because they felt less certain of salvation than the poor. It hardly needs to be said that the church did not insist on literal adherence to the ideal of evangelical poverty and the total rejection of property. This ideal was understood in a

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

spiritual sense. As far back as the second century, Clement of Alexandria debating the question 'What kind of a rich man can be saved?' in relation to Christ's words to the rich young man (Matthew 19 :21) 'If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor', had given the following opinion: it is not a question of getting rid of one's property and liberating oneself from riches; what matters is 'expelling from the soul wrong ideas about riches, the desire for riches, the effort to acquire riches, preoccupation with riches, these are the thorns of life which choke the seed of the word'. 86 The essential thing was to obtain inner freedom from riches, to resist wealth's power to enslave. It is pointless to throw away one's wealth: it can be useful to one's neighbour, and it can be put to good use in doing good works. Riches should 'serve man, not rule over him'. The art of acquiring money, taught St Thomas Aquinas, is less valuable than the art of using money properly . To transform money from a means into an el!d in itself is to ensure the destruction of the human soul. 87 We see then that the whole question reduced to this: how is money to be used? What ends may it properly serve? Our assessment of medieval civilisation as a civilisation of small-scale owner-producers is reinforced by an analysis of its relationship with money and its ways of using it. If all kinds of wealth were subject in the Middle Ages to some degree of moral obloquy, this was particularly so in the case of monetary wealth. Trade played a great and growing part in medieval society, and as time went on the merchant class made itself a powerful social force in the towns and even extended its influence to the political arena. Nevertheless, throughout the Middle Ages a violent prejudice persisted against people who were engaged not in productive work but in commercial dealings, especially if usury was involved. There is something disgraceful about trade, something sordid and sham~ful, wrote St Thomas Aquinas. 88 According to the Bible, Cain was the builder of the first city. An English sermon of the fourteenth century contrasts the priests, the knights and the workers, created by God, with the townspeople and the money-lenders, the spawn of the devi1. 89 Such an attitude towards dealers in money is very characteristic of

small owner-producers, who understand wealth as the yield of their own efforts; in an agrarian society money inevitably appears as a low and ignoble form of possession in comparison with landed property. As they gained ground, trade and profit-bearing capital became more and more of a threat to the economic independence of small owner-producers, whose hostility to both grew in equal measure. The relentless suspicion with which monetary wealth was viewed in the Middle Ages becomes understandable in the light of the ethico-philosophical principles of the age - above all, the basic principle that what is general takes precedence over what is individual. The part does not exist in its own right but only in its modality as part of some whole. Both nature and society are integral complexes upon which their component elements depend for their existence. Every grain of sand reflects the cosmos and embodies the wisdom of the creator of the world with its harmonious synchronisation and concordance of all its parts. What is individual derives its meaning and its significance from what is general. In human affairs, universitas has priority over all the individuals that go to form it. In medieval society a man is not reflectively aware of himself as of a fully independent unit. The unlimited individualism of bourgeois society is completely alien to feudal society. The personal interests of an individual are always in one way or another subordinated to the interests of the whole, whether it be group, corporation, society, church or nation. In concern for the common good he finds his own good - for the latter is inconceivable without or in contradiction of the former. 90 Medieval universalism had not only a social-practical but also a conceptual character. The world had to be conceived first as a whole, if its parts were to be comprehended; for the whole was real, while the individuals were products of this reality and had to be deduced from it by a process of ratiocination. 91 Closely allied with this basic principle was another, about which we have already spoken: the principle of the general rule of rectitude. The world is built on rectitude, and any infringement of this principle threatens us with chaos and destruction. Justice is at one and the same time a moral and a cosmic principle, to which all human activity must be

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M edievalattitudes to wealth and labour subordinated. Any departure from this principle is equivalent to transgression of the divine order of things and of natural law. Justice is understood in an extremely wide and farran~ing sense. It implied God's goodness and it provided the basIs of the political and legislative structure; it was one of the main. Chri~tian v~rtues, the purity and sanctity of life, a personallnteg~lty whIch found expression in one's behaviour, a state of rectItude and an innate urge towards the good of all God's creatures. Hugh of St Victor defined social justice as (~hat by ,which the harmony of the whole is sustained, and whIch denIes none their due deserts'. 92 Rectitude is under. stood as a supra-individual category, to which all the actions and thoughts of separate individuals are subordinated. That is to say, in the principle of rectitude the relationship between part and whole is realised; in consequence of the demands of a higher justice, the individual has to subordinate his demands to the socium, This did not mean that the main end of human existence - the salvation of the individual soul - was to be f
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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour of reason and the principles of natural law . Following Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas construed justice as the expression of proportionality and equivalence in relations among men, each giving others their due. In this sense the concept of justitia can also be applied to matters of trade and commerce. Material relations must be built upon a basis of mutual help and equivalence of services, but not on unilateral profit and exploitation. The conceptual matrix is once again provided by rectitude - 'the firm and continual desire to give to each man that to which he is entitled'. 93 Strictly speaking, medieval thealogy neither formulated nor ever applied a theory of economics in the exact meanin.g of the words. Economic activity was of no interest to medIeval scholastics as an independent subject for intellectual analysis. Like the problems of labour and property, questions of usury and price were taken up .by the theologians in so far as such matters had a bearing on loftier and ultimate problems of existence. So it is inaccurate to speak of politicoeconomics or of economic doctrine of the Middle Ages. The theologians were concerned not so much to provide a theoretical interpretation of economic practice as to influence it, to subordinate it to religious and ethical ideals, and to decide questions of price in the light of the metaphysical doctrine of value. In their eyes, society was a spiritual organism, not an economic mechanism; and as a result, economic activity had to be controlled and directed towards those moral ends for whose realisation it provided the material means. Seen thus, economics is not an independent entity; it become-s significant only in the framework of a wider ideal whole.94 Economic problems were seen as expressing themselves in categories of human behaviour. At the root of the whole matter lay the interpretation of the concept of rectitude. As we have seen, the theologians' attitude to private ownership was determined by the category of higher justice: property was an evil from the point of view of the common good which must necessarily coincide with the divine ordering of things ('By injustice one man calls one thing his property, another man calls· something else his property', wrote Clement of Alexandria, 'and thus has division come about among mortals'95); yet since man's nature,

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

being in a state of sinfulness, is imperfect, private property must be allowed. In itself, money is neither good nor bad; the moral pros and cons only emerge in the light of its application. If money is used in a spirit of greed and runs counter to justice then money is evil. The medieval theologians recognised the necessity of trade if society was to survive. But trade without some profit margin will attract no one. In what circ*mstances, then, is profit permissible? The answer to this given by St Thomas Aquinas and other theologians reduces to the statement that the final and definitive criterion is that of the common good. Trade is introduced for the public benefit. Commercial profit is justified if it serves the common good, if it is moderate and if it can be accounted a fair reward for the risk, the work and the outlay involved (stipendium laboris), a reward which assures the trader's existence. In addition commercial profit may be justified by such philanthropic works as it may be spent on. Avarice and money-grubbing are sins, and any commercial activity undertaken as a means of satisfying these base motives is to be condemned out of hand. But how are we to identify the trader's motives, his state of mind? Where does 'serving the common good for moderate reward' end and 'self-enrichment' begin? This was a dilemma with which the Church Fathers had already struggled: 'If cupidity is removed, there is no basis for the desire for profit; but if nobody is interested in making a profit, there is no incentive to engage in trade', said Tertullian. The merchant adds nothing to the value of the goods, so, if he takes in payment more than the goods cost him, he does harm to a fellow human being; trade is inextricably bound up with fraud and therefore 'dangerous for the soul' (St J erome).96 A merchant can scarcely be pleasing in the sight of God, we read in the treatise ascribed to St John Chrysostom. 97 These difficulties were unknown to Roman law, which took its stance on the principle of the individual ego seeking its own ends. The Roman jurists saw nothing illegal in partners in a commercial deal trying to outwit each other or enrich themselves at the expense of others - the question whether such behaviour was moral or immoral simply never arose. It was, however, precisely this question

that was uppermost in the minds of the Christian theologians, for law is inconceivable without inner moral rectitude. Above all, it is up to the trader himself to judge in his heart of hearts whether the motives that guide him are just or unjust. The church and the lay authorities did not hesitate to intervene in commercial activities if they felt called upon to do so. The church often condemned profiteering, and throughout the Middle Ages the lay authorities tried to regulate prices, especially those relating to basic products. It was a policy dictated by practical necessity, by the constant thr~at of famine and its associated ills. Freedom of commerCIal enterprise and practice is about as remote from medieval society as unlimited right to private property. If intervention in business dealings had to be justified, the authorities had only to appeal to the maxims of justice and the common good discussed above. If further authority was needed, they had recourse to the teaching of the church, the words of the Gospels and the pronouncements of the Church Fathers. The concept of the 'just price' was widely accepted in the Middle Ages and understood on the moral, the juridical and the economic plane at one and the same time. Yet what it implied was never laid down with any precision. It remained an indefinite and confused notion, just as vague as the distinction between the value of an article and its market price in the minds of the medieval philosophers and political theorists. Analysis of the concept of justum pretium shows that what was meant seems to have been the current price established in stable market conditions, that is when there was no sharp rise in prices due to profiteering. 98 An 'unjust price', on the other hand, resulted when men of ill-will tried to make as much profit as possible. The key point is that determination of the 'just price' was in the hands of responsible and respected people, who were mindful that the norms of truth and general justice were here involved. The price or the value of something is determined - so taught the medieval philosophers, following Aristotle - by human need. Value then derives from man and only partially from the objective qualities of goods. The measure of this value, however, is common not individual need. All this was relatively straightforward at a time when

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour exchange of goods took place directly between producer and consumer, and when the craftsman worked mainly for a customer known personally to him, or gave his product to a second craftsman to be rounded off. In these conditions it was not so difficult to arrive at a value for a given article, taking the maker's earnings into due account; and it was in fact possible to speak of a fitting return for work done. Prices were only marginally affected by the action of free and uncontrolled market forces. Thus the impression was created that prices did not change and could be fixed once and for all. In common law records of the early Middle Ages we often find prices fixed for a great variety of merchandise, ranging from cattle to arms and slaves. The prices thus specified are probably maximum prices. Two factors - public need of the article, and due return for its manufacture and its transportation - were sufficient criteria for determination of the just price. St Thomas Aquinas 99 and other theologians of the thir,.. teenth century taught that compensation for labour outlay was just; and in such circ*mstances the concept of 'j:ust price' acquired meaning. It was of course to be expected that Catholic thinkers should see a self-ensuring economy as the ideal to be aimed at. It was St Thomas's view that it would be best if each nation produced enough to obviate the necessity of having to import goods from abroad. Commercial dealing was to be based on simple promise, on the given word. Small-scale trade as it existed in a period dominated by natural husbandry was seen as the ideal. As commercial activity grew, however, and the relations between producers and consumers became more complicated, the role of the commercial middleman increased, and the concept of 'just price' became more and more inconvenient. The application of abstract principles to an area of human affairs as intensely pragmatic as trade was bound to give rise to a whole series of problems and difficulties, the theoretical solution of which fell to the lot of the same theologians and jurists. It was no easy task to reconcile the maxims of ethics and religion with the requirements of everyday life. But it is curious to see that the efforts to rehabilitate in theory the ideal of economic 'innocence' already lost in practice, become increasingly

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour strenuous from the thirteenth century onwards - precisely at the time, that is to say, when the purely financial attitude to trade was making more and more headway. Ecclesiastical condemnation of usury was based on the words of Christ (Gospel according to St Luke 6:35): 'lend, hoping for nothing again'. A financial deal could therefore be no more than a gratuitous service, a friendly grant or loan. Any increment added to the sum granted (apart from a g?
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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour sins of extortion and usury being condemned by ecclesiastical synods, papal decrees, theologians and preachers. Dante compares Cahors, a town whose financiers were notorious fO,r their u~ury~ ,with Sodom, and condemns the usurers along ~Ith th~ SImo,nlacs, forgers, and pimps (procurers) to suffer In the sIxth cIrcle of Hell: 'usury is a crime against God's bounty' . . . 'the usurer scorns even Nature'. 102 It was, howev~r! the theologiar:s alone who stuck to a rigid ~n~ uncompromIsIng condemnatIon of usury. The medieval JUrIsts -leglsts who had studied Roman law - and the canonists were far less uncompromising on a number of points. Roma~ law allowed freedom of trade and money-lending and dId not forbid interest, basing this dispensation on the principle, of the, sovereig~ ~ill of those who take part in commercIal dealIngs. The JUrIsts of Bologna and canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries asserted that 'contractors mar natur~l1y seek to o~twit eac,h other' and that in designatln~ a prIce they may make mIstakes' 'in all good faith' _ that IS, they may act in this way without the intention to deceive. Even among the theologians, there was no clear agreeme~t either on the validity of the arguments against profiteerIng or on the extent to which it should be condemned. The theoreticians enj:Tap"ed on these problems had to cope with two different approoaches to them _ that of 'divine law' (lex, divina) and that of 'human law' (lex hum'!na); accordu;tg to the former, usury was a sin and nothIng n;t0:e, whIle the second looked more leniently and more realIstIcally on monetary operations, bearing in mind ~he nee~s of a d~~eloping commercial economy. Human law IS, not In, a posltI<;>n t<;> ,forbid all that offends against the hIghest vIrtue; whIle dIvIne command requires justice to be perfect and leaves nothing unpunished. , ParticuJar weight was laid upon intention. It was not in ItSel! a SIn to make a mistake in calculating a price; what m~t~ered vyas the intentic:>ll of the contracting parties. Usury OrIginate~ In ~ hope ?f gaIn, a~d all the tricks and subterfuges used to dIsguIse the Ill-gotten Increment will not save the soul ?f the usurer. The churc~ was completely uncompromising in ItS. treatmer:t of usurers, even forbidding them to use for phIlanthropIC purposes money obtained through usury.

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour Usurers and their descendants were required to return all such monies to the debtors they had robbed, In the fifteenth century, when usury in Florence, had attained unprecedented proportions, Archbishop Antoninus m<;>unte~ an extremely outspoken attack on it, exceeding anythIng hIS pre~ecessors, the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologIans, had attempted. The growth of money through usury.' he wr?t~, may appear to be something of a miracle" but In fact It IS simply the work of the devil. Of one famIly of usurers ~e wrote that four of its generations were doomed to ~uffe: In hell for failure to return the riches amassed ~y theIr unJ~st ancestors, 103 Nor did the church rest conte~t WIth den<;>uncing usurers and excommunicating them; In, the .thirteenth century, those who were accused of takIng bnbes -w:ere brought to trial by court of law. Many usurers were subject to social ostracism. , ,, It is obvious that ecclesiastical disapproval and prohibitlon were powerless to halt the gro~th of usury, let alone put an end to it. The very fact that as tIme go~s on the tone of these prohibitions grows more an~ more VIolent, ~hows th~t the sin against which they were dIrected was prOVIng to be lne,radicable. Nevertheless, attacks on usury were, a, retardIng factor on the growth of banki~g. 10~ In the opInIon of th,e outstanding authority on financI~l hIstory" R. De Roover, It is impossible to understand medIeval ~anking unless we ,bear in mind the ecclesiastical condemnation of usury. NeIther bankers not usurers could afford to ignore these censures. Reluctant to give up their business methods, they wer~ forced to resort to all sorts of subterfuges in order to charge Interest without drawing upon themselves the wrath of the clergy, the chief custodians of public morals. A~ a result, the wh~le structure of medieval banking took on Its own very speCIal character. 105 As any increment charged ?ver, and ~bove ~he sum lent was regarded as illicit gain (qutdqutd sortt acced~t, us"!ra est), some way had to be found of concealing the USUrIO~S Interest. One of the most widespread methods of secunng profit without explicit specification of i~terest was to use cheques payable in a town or country dIfferent from the ~own <;>r country where the loan was incurred, and accordIngly In

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

another _currency. In such a case, the interest was included in the sum of the debt. The point here is that a deal involving exchan&e was not held to be a loan, and accordingly exchange of monIes. or the buying and selling of foreign currency did not fall WIthin the scope -of ecclesiastical displeasure. In the account books of the Medici and other Italian money-changing banking houses, -we find many thousands of currency ~xchange notes, bu.t no reference at all to the receipt of Interest. All that IS mentioned is 'revenue and loss in excha~ge'. It ~as.a highly inconvenient way of doing business; It complIcated procedures, increased costs and meant a lot of ~xtra time and effort spent on book-keeping. Perhaps the maIn drawback was the growth of the risk entailed in a monetary transaction, which required in addition to the creditor and the debtor a third person (correspondent) by whose agency the transfers were effected. The creditor was dependent on the debtor in the sense that if the latter failed to return the money, the former was unlikely to appeal to the law. As a result, the cost of a loan increased, as the usurers tried to p~otect themselves against possible loss. Banking developed In very unfavourable conditions, and the crash of occurrence. It was not unknown for even a crowned debtor to declare himself insolvent. Officially, the big bankers were not regarded as usurers. Th~ subterfuges to which they resorted when extending loans at Interes~ were accessible only to people in possession of large capItal sums and with representation in other towns a.nd countries. Thus, while big operators could evade accusations of usury, small-scale dealers had no such possibilities open to t?en:, and it was on their heads that the main weight of eccleSIastIcal censure and public disdain fell. But the consciences ?f many rich financiers were far from easy, and many last wIlls and testaments are extant containing instructions for some reparation to be made for the harm done to debtors by their activities. From the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, the number of such wills in Italy begins to drop, - evidently it was becoming customary for bankers to contInue money-lending without feeling obliged to purge their souls for their impious deeds.

In France and Spain, merchants and ban.kers were more susceptible to ecclesiastical censure and often consulted with the clergy before undertaking this or that financial operation; some, like the sixteenth-century Spanish merchant Simon Ruiz, refused to take part in any sort of dubious deal. 106 In the struggle to reconcile business with piety, the Spanish were rather more scrupulous than the Italians. The Italians were less inclined to discern spiritual danger in the dilemma, and their account books and personal records often begin with such passages as the following: 'In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed mother the Virgin Mary and all the saints in heaven, may they grant us, in their mercy and grace, health and success, and may our wealth and our children be increased, and may our bodies be preserved and our souls saved. '107 No doubt the fact that the authors of preambles such as this did not sense the gap between the practice of making money and hopes of spiritual salvation, was distinctly helpful in business. We must ask ourselves, however, how far the sang-froid of an Italian merchant of the Renaissance period can help us to appreciate the state of mind of a medieval citizen engaged in financial dealings of some kind. Business ethics must have borne the brunt of the ecclesiastical attacks on usury, and had to take into account a public opinion sharply hostile to it. The spiritual climate of medieval society, with its built-in contempt for riches and its specific attitude to consumption, was not exactly favourable to the smooth development of a financial system. 108 It would be a mistake to imagine that the church's attitude to usury closely reflected the interests of the small ownerproducers, or indeed of any other class of medieval society. The theologians were guided primarily by general principles of justice and by the gospel doctrine of the evil inherent in material wealth. It was not mere chance, however, that the theologians began to pay particular attention to these questions from the thirteenth century onwards. For it was then that discontent with the spread of usury began to make itself more and more widely felt among the population. It was principally the small owner-producers, the craftsmen, the peasants and the minor nobility who suffered from financial

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Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour

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sharp practice, and in SQ far as this is so, it is reasonable to suppose that ecclesiastical censure of such practices reflected the attitude of these groups. As we have seen, however, such sanctions as were imposed affected only petty usurers, leaving the big bankers with plenty of loopholes. After all, they enjoyed the protection of the princes of this world, who relied on them for loans, and even of the popes, whose financial dealings often reached enormous proportions. It is important to remember, however, that public disapproval of the practice of charging interest on money loans increased the overall risk inherent in such dealings, and made the business of banking both odious and disreputable. It took the transition to 'modern times to break with this medieval impediment in the way of free accumulation of wealth, and open the door to any and every form of economic activity. 'Money doesn't stink' - but not in every sbciety.

to a great extent from early Christianity, though modified by factors indigenous to feudal society, were inextricably bound up with a wider and more far-reaching system of religious and ethical concepts. This Weltanschauung was one that answered the social and psychological conditions of the time and was in keeping with the way people thought. For example, the special relationship with nature which people of a principally agrarian society did not construe as an object, as a datum to be used; an emotional and axiological approach to things rather than a purely cognitive and abstract approach; patriarchalism and traditionalism in social life allied to a regulatory system of behaving and thinking built into a society of small owner-producers; a preoccupation with the past and a negative attitude towards whatever is novel and unheard-of - all these traits of the medieval worldview helped the social and ethical concepts of Christianity to take firm root. 109 Down-to-earth reality never corresponds to the ideal, the moral postulate. Life is untidy and full of contradictions where moral imperatives and religious precepts are uncompromising and direct. Of course, an ideal must not simply reflect reality - if it is to be an ideal it must be above reality, it must lift reality up to itself, it must present reality in an abstract normative form and set an example which is impossible of attainment. Because of this ideals do not cease to play an essential role in social development, as one of the factors affecting human behaviour. Medieval concepts of wealth, labour and property are an integral part of the life of the period, an element in the culture of feudalism.

There is a striking contrast between the crass 'materialisation' of social practice in latter-day Rome, a wallowing in sensual pleasures and material values, combined with total contempt for the labour which provided these luxuries, and the specific attitude to man's earthly possessions which arose in the 11iddle Ages. In terms of economic ethics, the main stages of the transition process from antiquity to feudalism can be set out as follows: from the unbridled hedonism and theacquisitive spirit of Classical society, which turned man himself into a thing to be manipulated, the first transition is to the principial 'dematerialisation' of all social relationships in early Christianity and the symbolic assessment of wealth by the barbarian societies; thence to the triumph - not only economic but moral as well- of small self-contained production and the rehabilitation of labour; the recognition, even if only in the abstract, of the human dignity of all men; then the transformation of property - the source of wealth - into a means of gaining power, into an intermediary relationship between lord and subject, entirely ritualised, and into commercial-monetary activity, disciplined and moderated by the moral censure of 'mammon' which threatens the salvation of the soul. The social and economic ideas of the Middle Ages inherited

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hardly seem to be related to each other. But our study of medieval concepts of time and space, of law as the allembracing principle of world order, of labour, wealth and property, seems to show the mutual interconnectedness of all these categories. Their connection is determined first of all by the fact that medieval people perceived and construed the world as a unity; that is to say, its component parts were conceived not as independent entities but as copies of the whole, each carrying the imprint of the whole. All that exists is derived .from the central regulating principle; all things are arranged In the structural hierarchy and are in harmonic relationship with other elements of the cosmos. Since the regulating principle of the medieval world is God, conceived as the highest good and as that which is perfect, the world and everything in it is seen from a moral standpoint. In the medieval world model there are no ethically neutral forces or things; all things and all agencies are active elements in the cosmic conflict between good and evil and in the universal process of salvation. Hence, time and space have a sacral character; the ineluctable characteristic of law is its moral goodness; labour is conceived of either as a punishment for original sin or as a means of saving the soul; no less clearly bound up with morality is the possession of riches, which may spell spiritual ruin or which may be used for the performance of good works. The moral essence of all the categories of medieval perception which we have studied is at the same time a manifestation of their inner unity and kinship. What medieval man perceived as a unity finding its ~ompletion in the Go.dhead, did indeed possess unity - for It represented the moral universe of medieval mankind. This is why the significance of the separate mental

categories of the medieval world-view can only be grasped if we treat them as a unity. They must not be viewed in isolation but as components of a whole which we call medieval culture. It is from their prehension in this whole that each component of medieval culture acquires its higher meaning. The Middle Ages saw the efflorescence of the Encyclopaedias, the Summae, the Specula. All of these exhibit that same obsession with comprehensiveness which we find in medieval 'universal histories' which claim to tell the story of mankind from Adam to the moment of their writing - or even beyond that to the end of the world and the Day of Judgment. The same all-embracing tendencies are present in the structure of the cathedral, which is designed to be a complete and perfect model, a palpable and visible embodiment of the divinely ordered cosmos. The universalism of medieval knowledge is an expression of the medieval conviction that the unity and order of the world can be rationally comprehended. Thus, philosophy could only be the handmaiden of theology; and, far from being seen as degrading, this role was actually felt as a distinction - first of all, because medieval man did not regard voluntary service as degrading, and secondly because service to theology could not but help philosophy to approximate to divine truth. By the same token, universal history was seen as the history of salvation; and any work dealing with knowledge of nature turned sooner or later into a compendium of all that was supposed to be known about the structure of the world (cf. the many treatises bearing such titles as Imago mundi, De creatura mundi, De aeternitate mundi, De mundi universitate, De processione mundi - but also De vanitate mundi, De contemptu mundi). The purpose of these encyclopaedias was to give, not the sum of knowledge about the world in an arithmetical sense - 'sum' as the result of simple addition - but to exhibit the unity of the world: summa in the meaning of 'highest', 'principal', 'most perfect'. Medieval encyclopaedism is a consequence of the belief that the world is knowable and accessible to reason. The awareness, or perhaps we should say the feeling that all things share a unity, which lies at the roots of all the component elements of medieval culture, can be traced in everything down to the smallest details. Let us take the

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n what has gone before we have examined some aspects of I the medieval world picture. ::. The aspects may at first sight

Conclusion

Conclusion

concept of time as an example. Time is perceived in terms of spatial categories. Past, present and future could be comprehended as simultaneous: a simultaneity finding visual embodiment in the structure of the cathedral which transmutes the history of mankind into the world picture: the cathedral is the 'microcosm of time' (F. Ohly). Time also proves to be an essential characteristic of law: true law is that which goes back to ancient times, which has been established since time immemorial, so that its antiquity is just as much an organic element in law as justice or rectitude. The theory of the sinfulness of usury also turns upon the concept of time; time is God's creation, it is God's gift to all, and cannot be used as something to bargain with. It is not simply that all the categories of the medieval world-view are mutually intertwined. What is far more important is that in the Middle Ages, such concepts as time and law which we regard as abstract were held to be just as concrete, as tangible, to have just as much 'materiality', as material objects. Hence general concepts and material objects were regarded by the people of the Middle Ages as manifestations, hom*ogeneous and comparable, of one and the same order. People have rights, but so too do places. Time consists of atoms, as do bodies. Time is spent in the same way as money. Often the same word is used to denote an abstract category and a tangible object. For example, honor signifies both 'honour' and' a fief' ; gratia is not only 'love' and 'grace' but also 'gift' and 'compensation'. It is well known how a faulty translation of one such word started an international conflict: a statement made by Pope Hadrian IV on the good offices he had shown Frederick Barbarossa was translated from Latin into German in such a way as to make it appear that the pope was presuming to be the feudal seigneur of the emperor (this turns on the dual meaning of the term beneficium, which can mean either 'good deed' (bonum factum) or 'fief, 'feudal donation/grant'). The moral and conceptual categories could be' illustrated in a sort of blueprint in the shape of geometrical figures joined to each other by lines of force. ~:. N umbers and geometrical shapes and diagrams (circles, spheres, squares, etc.) had more than merely mathematical significance. In them, the harmony of the world was expressed, and they possessed definite magical and moral

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significance. What was important to a consciousness that ~ad not yet fully 'desemanticised' numbers was 'sacral anthmetic'. Augustine's concept of the number system as the thoughts of God was taken over; a knowledge of numbers was the key to a knowledge, of the universe itself. The Bible was full· of sacred and mysterious numbers which were constantly studied and deciphered in an effort to discover the essence of the cosmos. The best-known example of medieval number mysticism is Dante's Divina Commedia, which is built up on the numbers three, nine and thirty-three: these numbers were believed to symbolise the divine rhythm which the universe obeys. Here are some of the most important medieval beliefs concerning numbers - beliefs which were held to be evidently and unquestionably true. Three was the number of the Holy Trinity and the symbol of all that was spiritual. Four was the symbol of the four great prophets and of the four evangelists. Four was also the number of the world elements and therefore the symbol of the material world. Hence, ~ultiplication of t~r~e by four indicated the mystical penetration of matter b~ splnt, the proclamation to the world o~ the truths of t~e faIth, the establishtnent of the church -unIversal, symbohsed by the twelve apostles. Four plus three equals sev~~, the human number, the union of two natures, the splntual and the bodily. In addition, seven is the sign of the s~ven sacraments, the seven virtues and the seven deadly SIns; further, the harmony of the human being and the harmony of his relationship with the universe; seven planets direct human fortunes, the world was created in seven days, and there are seven modes in Gregorian music - the audible expression of universal order. Words too had magical power. In the Middle Ages, etymologies were as popular as encyclopaedias .(indeed, they .often coincided). The etymology of a word dIsclosed the hld~en essence of the manifestation it denoted. From the standpOInt of scientific linguistics, medieval etymologies are simply absurd, but for the people of the age they se~ed as poi?-ters and guides to penetration into the secrets of thIngs. Occ~dens is the west, the place where the sun goes down; but the medieval, etymologists derived· the word, not from ocddere (ob + .cadere), meaning 'to fall down', 'to set', 'to wane',

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Conclusion but from occidere (ob + caedere), meaning 'to kill', 'destroy', and in the symbolism of the heavenly directions which finds such graphic representation in cathedral lay-out, the west fa~ade was associated with the Last Judgment. Isidore of Seville derived the word hom*o from humus, meaning 'earth', for God created man from the dust of the earth, and to dust man returns. Reges, or 'kings', was derived from regere, from re[ cte a]gere, meaning to act correctly, justly; that is, a king had to act in accordance with his essence, in other words 'justly'. Decorus, meaning 'proper', 'decorous', 'beautiful', was derived from dec[us] cor[dis], meaning 'spiritual beauty', 'moral virtue', for bodily, purely earthly, beauty lacking a firm moral basis was accounted as evil and the work of the devil. What is for us no more than a metaphor, which it would be foolish to accept literally, had symbolic import for the people of the Middle Ages; it was the tangible embodiment of invisible essences. As understood in the Middle Ages, the sy'mbol is not simply a convention but is powerfully charged wlth the most profound significance. For it is not only certain separate acts or objects that are symbolic; the whole of this world is no more than a symbol of the world above. Hence, everything has dual or manifold significance: along with its practical use it has a symbolic application. The world is a book written by the hand of God, in which everything is a meaningful word. 'Every created thing shadows forth truth and life', said Honorius Augustodunensis. The rose, the dove, precious stones - these are among the most important religious symbols. The lion symbolises the evangelist Mark, the eagle symbolises John, Matthew is symbolised by the human figure, and Luke by a calf. But these same four creatures also symbolise Christ in the four crucial moments of his life: Jesus Christ 'was born as man, sacrificed as a calf, rose as a lion and ascended as an eagle'. The same four beings symbolise the human virtues. According to Hugh of St Victor (twelfth century) the symbol is a focusing of visible forms, so that what is invisible may be bodied forth. This' demonstration' is not to be understood formally in terms of categorical syllogistic: rather, it is a direct expression of a reality which is inaccessible to reason. 1

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Conclusion Medieval symbolism is very far from being an emp~y intellectual exercise. As P. Bitsilli points out, 'it is not sImply that things can be used as symbols, it is not we who invest them with symbolic content; they are symbols, and the ta~k of the percipient subject is to discov~r t,heir true ?le~nlng'. 2 Accordingly, the symbol is not subjectIve but objective and of general compulsory significance. The way to understanding of the world lies through comprehensl?n o.f symbols, of their hidden meaning. Medieval symbohs~ IS a means whereby reality may be intellectually appropnat.ed. But why should 'understanding' take ~his parucu}ar for!ll? Is it not because the world was not perceIved to be I?- m?t1?n or development, but rather immovable and unaltenng ~n .ItS essentials ? Not time but eternity was the determInIng category of consciousness; time measures motion, eterni:y signifies constancy and permanence. Chan.ge was a super~cIal thing, and what was novel rarely met wIth apJ::roval. S~nce the problems of change did not bulk very large In the mInds of medieval people, the connections between phenomena were not perceived in a causal nexus that could be pr~gmat­ ically investigated and checked. The world was perceIved as a whole, whose parts were bound togeth:r in a system of symbolic analogues. Hence, causal explanatIons played a very minor role being limited to elucidation of only the most concrete ot' cases; the world as a whole, as medieval man saw it, was not subject to the principles of causality. Events ,are linked not horizontally (in terms of 'cause - effect', 'actl?n _ reaction') but vertically through a hierarchy: :very matenal object has its transcendental prototype, whIch does not 'explain' that object (if we take 'explain' .in its modern se~se) but rather discloses its deeper meanIng. 3 The relatIons between the prototype and the event or obje~t are s~able ~nd unchanging; they are functional, not dynamIC relauonshIJ::s. This way of looking at the relati~nship between ~atenal things and the higher reality o,f, whIch. they are copIes, gave medieval man a theory of cognltlon whIch he found satlsfa~­ tory for most of the period. The do~in.ation ?f the ~ymbohc way of thinking was bound up W,lth. ItS universa,hsm., The medieval mind starts from the pnnciple that unlversltas wholeness, whether it be society, nation, church, corpor-

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Conclusion

ation, kingdom - is conceptual and therefore takes precedence in the real world over its individual members. It is the wholeness that is real; the individual parts comprised in it are its derivative contingencies. Paraphrasing the thesis of the medieval realists - universalia ante rem - we may say that the principle informing medieval society is universitas ante membra. Medieval theoretical analysis always started from the whole, never from the individual case. And hence the individual was seen as a symbol of the general. The medieval symbol is never ethically neutral; the hierarchy of symbols is at the same time a hierarchy of values. Everything on earth, every being, has its determinate and determining value or worth depending on its locus in the universal hierarchy. The centre and the apex of this hierarchy is God, whom all creation serves, from the highest to the lowest, from the angels to the insects and the stones. In this context it would be quite wrong to speak of the 'backwardness' of medieval thought, of its 'primitive' understanding of nature, or of the unsatisfactory standards of prescientific thought - these are all relative assessments which do not help us to grasp what is specific to medieval culture. By modern standards, these 'ways of construing reality are of course absurd and unacceptable; but our medieval predecessors would probably have found our contemporary methods of scientific elucidation equally alien, and the (for us) unquestioned advantages of the scientific approach would not have seemed so indisputable to a theocentric society. Ina theocentric society the world does not need explanation; it is directly apprehended. This way of spiritual appropriation of reality and of its syntactic relationships is deeply mystical. In the medieval setting mysticism and logic were not opposites; logic helped in the mystical discovery of 'the divine secret' the structure of the universe and the place occupied therein by man. This medieval form of the symbolic reading of the universe is Christian N eo- Platonism. However, as we have seen, symbolism - albeit in a much coarser and more naive form - was also characteristic of barbarian society in the preChristian stages. And even in the Middle Ages, side by side with the subtle symbolism of the theologians we find count-

less symbolical representations, rituals and form':1las which derive from the beliefs and practices of the barbanan age, or which have taken on a new lease of life and show us a stratum of medieval thought underlying the Christian. ~any ju~icial practices - ordeals, single combat, oa~hs, In~at;1ta:Ions, sorcery - either had nothing at all to do wIth Chnstianity or had merely taken on a Christian veneer. The symbolical way of thinking of the Middle Ages was not engendered by Christianity; rather it is a variety of that ~rchai~ '~rimitiye' way of thinking found all over the planet In S?Cleties ~hIch are in a pre-class or early class state. The SOCIal prac~lce of feudalism provided a rich soil not on!y for the retent1?n .of symbolism but also for a new and VIgorous upsurge In ItS development. The symbolical apprehension of space and time the ritualisation of all relationships between lords and vass~ls including service as a knight, the exchange of gifts and even courtly love, the semiotic function of wealth, ~he strict formalism of law which recognised as legal and effectIve only those ordinances and acts executed or performed under strict observance of all the due ceremonial- these are examples of the all-embracing medieval symbolism whic~ we have considered in this book, Christianity proved condUCIve to the reinforcement and the philosophical sublimation of ce:t.ain symbols with which medieval man was a~ready yery famIlIar, and also introduced some new elements Into thIS complex of heterogeneous images. . As a normative and generally significant system, ~he semIologyof the material world is parallel~d by the seml?logy of the social world. The social symbolIsm and the ntualIsed behaviour of medieval man are generated by the specific relationship between individual and group, by the position of the personality in ~ociety. The view, popular up to a few decades ago, that not until the ~en,aissance 'Y as . ~here anything that we would call 'personalIty, that the IndIVIdual was completely absorbed in thesocium, is no lo~ger tena~le~ Of course there was nothing comparable to the personalIty which has developed pari passu with the atomisation of society in modern Europe; an 'individualit):-'w~ich ~ikes to regard itself as completely autonomous. and ImagInes Itself ~s enjoying sovereign rights vis-a-vis SOCIety was unknown In

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Conclusion

the Middle Ages. But this modern type of personality is equally determined by its historical parameters; it is not the only possibl~ hypostasis of the human personality. Throughout hIstory, the human personality has in one way or another always identified itself as such; whether standing aside in a group or merging into it, man has never been a fac~less ite~ in a herd. As Marx put. it: 'Man is not only a SOCIable anImal, but also an animal which can become a separate individual only in society.'4 Coming back to the Middle Ages, we have to realise that it is pre~isely in this period that the concept of the human personalIty takes definitive shape. In antiquity, the Greek 1TP0

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of the personality on earth is excluded. The freedom of will proclaimed by Christianity is annulled by the commandment. to avoid everything that might hinder the salvation of the soul. And although the theologians held that the human being is a unity of body and soul, the Christian was supposed to devote all his attention and care to the first component of his personality, even at the very clear cost of the second. The soul and the body belonged to different dimensions: the soul was of eternity, while the body was subject to the ravages of time. The specificity, the historical identity of medieval man's 'personality', is, however, not a derivative of Christianity alone. Like Christian symbolism, Christian 'personalism' turned out to correspond in many ways to the stage which had been reached in the evolution of human individuality in medieval Europe. Starting from the stage of 'kindred personality' characteristic of the age of barbarism, the people of the feudal society formed themselves into collectives of a new type, which dominated them not only on the material and political plane but also on the socio-psychological plane. Man in feudal society is corporate man. In greater or lesser degree, he seeks integration in the group to which he belongs, adopting its standards, its ideals and its values, its ways of thought, its patterns of behaviour and the symbolism which imbues it. The categories of the medieval world-view which w.e have examined are among the factors which .came together to produce the form or cast in which human individuality was to be moulded - always of course as a function of its social matrix. All the elements of medieval culture which we have studied - time, space, law, labour, wealth - are of interest for us precisely from this point of view: they are of interest as the parameters of the medieval human personality, the guidelines of its world -view and of its behaviour patterns, as ways in which human beings came to be aware of themselves. But it hardly needs to be pointed out that an analysis of these categories is not enough to identify this specific human personality; at best, it can help us to pose the problem, So, if we are in no position to reach any definitive conclusions about medieval man, a few general remarks may be in order.

The way in which human personality is institutionalised in different social systems differs from one system to another: the integration of the individual into the social matrix or into any of the groups forming it proceeds by way of mechanisms determined by the socio-cultural nature of the society. The cardinal condition for integration into medieval society was the act whereby an individual was received into the Christian fellowship. Exceptional sacramental significance was given to the act of baptism, and a soul which had not participated in this mystery could not enter heaven, even if it was the soul of an innocent infant. Thus we find Dante placing the souls of unbaptised newborn babes in limbo, along with the souls of the great men of pagan antiquity:

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They sinned not; yet their merit lacked its chiefest Fulfilment, lacking baptism which is The gateway to the faith which thou believest. 1o Parents who did not have a newborn child baptised without delay were severely punished, as were priests who failed to perform this part of their duty. The ceremony of baptism had more than purely religious significance; it signified a kind of second birth, a renewal - from the natural state one was transformed by baptism into a member of a society made up of baptised Christians alone. From the early years of Christianity onwards a sharp distinction was made between hom*o carnis or hom*o naturalis (,natural man') and hom*o Christianus a member of the community of believers. Baptism was seen as a metamorphosis profoundly affecting the human being, whose life thereafter would be entirely guided not by his inborn instincts and inclinations but by his adherence to and participation in a social community which was also a religious one; for commitment to the body of the faithful was at the same time commitment to God. In medieval eyes, society did not merely consist of people, society was that which united the people to God. Neither in the Pauline doctrine nor in the teaching of St Augustine is there any place for natural man. The member of society is Christianus. ll Augustine seeks knowledge of the self. But his answer to the question he addresses to himself, 'What do

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you thirst to know?', is 'God and the soul and nothing else' (Soliloquia, 1, 2). So, only that part of the personality which is supra-individual, the part linked through the Christian community to God, is deserving of attention. By entering the Christian fellowship and concentrating on the prospects of spiritual salvation which now opened before him, a man renounced his own individuality. Henceforward, he would be obedient and subject to the law as given him, and he would remain faithful to it. We have already seen how important a part, religious and socio-political alike, fidelity played in the medieval consciousness. Fides, fidelitas meant both belief in God and fealty to one's feudal lord or ruler, the earthly embodiment of God-given law. Man was not aware of himself as an autonomous individuality; he belonged to a whole, in whose framework he had to perform the part duly allotted to him. The social roles in feudal society were strictly laid down and all-embracing; the individual was absorbed in the role without remainder. The social role allotted to a man was seen as his vocation (vocatio); he was summoned by a higher power to pursue this vocation, and to correspond in all things faithfully to this role in life. His personal qualities, his individual talents, are used by him to h h . l' 11 1 • ensure tuat 1 e carnes out nlS auottea SOCIal Guty \hlS vocation) as efficiently and successfully as possible. What is wanted from the individual, what constitutes his social virtue, is not originality, not difference from others, but rather the degree to which he can make himself an efficient unit in the social group, in the corporation, and in ordo - the God-given order of things. The outstanding man is he who, more than others, incorporates the Christian virtues; he whose behaviour corresponds most closely to the established canons and who approximates most nearly to the type of person accepted in society. Individual traits deviating from the sanctified .norm were frowned upon, not only because a conservative society distrusts and despises the eccentric, but mainly because the mental attitudes and the behaviour associated with such traits were regarded as being contradictory to Christian example and dangerous to faith. Hence, in the restriction of individual opinion and the individual will the Middle Ages saw no infringement of the rights

of man, no diminution of his dignity. The public utterance of views contradicting the established belief constitutes heresy. The heretic's crime, as is explained in the most important of the canonical law codes, Gratian's Decretum, is that he displays intellectual arrogance in that he prefers his own opinion to the authority of those who are specifically qualified to pronounce on matters of faith. 12 Like the concepts of baptism, faith, fidelity, vocation, the concept of excommunication had religious and socio-political significance. The expulsion of the heretic from the Christian fellowship was equivalent to his exclusion from human society. He was then outside religion and outside the earthly law. It is essential to bear in mind the social aspects of all of these concepts: religio, 'link', 'tie', 'bond'; communio, 'community', 'eucharist', 'sacrament'; excommunicatio, 'exclusion from bond', the abrogation of all social communIcatIOn. These are some of the mechanisms which feudal society used to act upon the individual and to subordinate him to the ruling system. But there was more to this than simple suppression of the individual by society. We must ask, to h rl t.... • ..J' 'd 1 . r 1 • 1r VI uat \..Legree was tulS InulVl ua conscIOus or nimSelt as an individual ?::- As a rule, medieval man did not see himself as the centre, as the coordinating agent at the core of actions affecting other persons. The inner life of the medieval individual did not 'jell' as an autonomous unity. In this respect, a study of medieval autobiography can be particularly illuminating. Strictly speaking, autobiography did not exist as a separate genre; the small number of works that might be put under this heading - sermons, letters which tell us something about their authors - give at best only fragmentary information on their characters. It would be difficult to give a rounded picture on the basis of the separate traits recorded, but one thing is certain: these traits are never individual but rather typical. The monk, for example, or other man writing about himself, sees himself in terms of this or that type sinner, righteous man, ecclesiastic, etc. - and makes no attempt to isolate the traits that go to make him the man he is; it is as though he were unaware of their existence. 13 As a

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result, medieval man as seen by himself emerges as an aggregate of uncoordinated traits. In his far-ranging and splendidly documented history of autobiography, Georg Misch very aptly speaks of the 'incoherence' (or 'heterogeneity') of the medieval personality and points out that the whole of the medieval period is characterised not by 'organic' but by 'morphological' individualisation, or type-casting: the individual is known only through what is common to a whole category of persons, not through the organisational centre of his own individual inner life. Thus, a man's spiritual odyssey will be described in literary stereotypes, and moral judgments will be not those which the author might have arrived at by himself, but simply borrowings from the morality of the day. Misch compares the different ways used to depict human personality in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance; the great figures of the Renaissance affirm their own personality 'centripetally', drawing the world into themselves, while their predecessors affirmed themselves 'centrifugally', projecting their own ego into the surrounding world so that it absorbed their personality. Abbot Suger, desirous of glory, dissolved his ego in his great abbey. The characteristic method of self-affirmation for the Christian personality of the Middle Ages was selfabasem*nt, self-denial. In a few cases where a particularly strong individu,ality defied attempts to pigeonhole or classify him completely as a ready-made type, he simply remained undefined. The inscription carved by friends of Abelard on his gravestone read: 'He alone knows what he was. '14 We get the same impression from reading the medieval Lives of the Saints: there is no attempt at an analysis of the inner life, the spiritual progress of a man who is supposed to move steadily and consistently from a state of sinfulness to a state of saintliness. As I said above, the transition seems to take place all of a sudden, without any sort of psychological preparation; the sinner suddenly repents and begins to lead the righteous life of a 'model' saint, or saintliness is miraculously discovered in him. In this latter case~ conversion is depicted either as recovery from a severe physical illness or as a battle between the forces of good and of evil in the

inner passive arena of the human soul. The hagiographer may indeed remark on and record certain individual traits of the saint,15 but the task he has set himself - to give an example of saintliness - excludes almost by definition the possibility of too much value being placed on unique features and departures from the norm. The literary conventionality shows the author's lack of interest in what is individual. ::. The medieval chronicles are concerned with people. But even the historians, for all their lively interest in the human race, pay very little attention to individual human beings. For them, individuals are above all bearers of specific characteristics: pride, bravery, nobility or cowardice, baseness and malice. It is not so much concrete individuals as personified moral values that figure in the medieval narratives. In the Middle Ages the concept of persona was no longer linked with the theatrical mask as it was in classical antiquity, and yet the personages of the chronicles appear to be actors, seriously and studiously playing their parts. Their actions, being public, are dictated by the public, not by individual intentions or inclinations; they centre on a norm which is accepted in a given social setting. A knight's behaviour is • 1 ' I' J" d Luy t 1le requlrements ' .c almea at lillS aualence, an d'IS Ulctate 01 the role he is playing; he would prefer to be taken captive but will not appear to hurry when quitting the fi~ld of battle lest he be accused of cowardice. Accordingly, the chronicler like the hagiographer, explains the actions of his heroes not in terms of personal peculiarities or individual talents but in terms of the basic motives by which a noble must be guided if he is to remain faithful to the code of conduct accepted in courtly society. W. Brandt is not wide of the mark when he writes,· 'the personalism of the medieval aristocracy was actually very impersonal' .16 Primarily, what these people were concerned with was their reputation, good name, their status in their society. In this context, individual human qualities could be taken into account only in so far as they harmonised with the social role of their bearers. What was essential was not the individual traits of the knight but the obligatory attributes he embodied. There was no division between the 'actor' and the role he played. He grew, as it

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were, with the part which he was continually called upon to undertake in the social game. Another favourite convention of the chroniclers (especially the ecclesiastical. scribes) when describing actions and people's behaviour is to ascribe these actions not to the protagonists themselves, but to their moral virtues or shortcomings. Such and such an action is due to such and such a quality of the doer. These qualities are not connected with each other, which means that when the hero does something, it is not his personality as a whole that is acting but an aggregate of uncoordinated qualities and forces acting independently. Medieval realism personified vices and virtues, like any other abstractions, and conferred independent status on them. Thus for the ecclesiastical chronicler it is a man's several attributes that take turns to act, not one integrated self. These qualities are easily detachable from the human character. Not for nothing did the Middle Ages love to depict the personified vices and virtues: Goodness and Greed, Pride and Wisdom, Meekness and Justice, like Time, Old Age and so on, are constantly shown in human guise, disporting themselves in coloured miniatures on the pages of poems and romances, or in sculptured form. These allegorical beings appear in the role of man's guides and teachers: they urge him to take this or that action, and get him into the proper emotional mood. Man, in fact, appears as a sort of puppet, to which these personified qualities lend life. At a given moment, a man finds himself in the power of one or other of these moral forces, and it is under its influence that he acts. The initiative comes from these forces, and is not a product of the integral personality as a whole. Various forces struggle for supremacy in man's soul, but they are not activated or called into play by the personality . Hence, these forces or moral qualities are themselves impersonal, and vices and virtues are general concepts. They take on no individual colouring from the individual in whom they are housed; on the contrary, it is their presence in him that determines his mental condition and his conduct. They move into him just as a devil may take posse~sion of a man, and then leave him just as an evil spirit may leave the human integument. The

medieval moralists compared man's soul to a fortress, in which the virtues are besieged by the attacking forces of the vices. The image of man as a vessel filled with a varying content which is exterior to his own being at best reflects the total lack in the Middle Ages of any concept of the individual as a morally unique and sovereign agent. In this context it would be wrong to leave out of consideration the special nature of the literary genres which we have used to reach these conclusions. The literature of the Middle Ages did not set out to reflect living reality as in a mirror; rather, it provided an idealised view of the person and a stereotyped version of his actions, preferring to select only those which suited the author's purposes - the selection of edifying examples from history or from the Lives of the Saints. Hence the literary material at our disposal provides us mainly with a picture of the ideals by which society was guided. The reality was incomparably richer and more varied. But let us once more emphasise that this ideal served an essential social function and reflects for us an authentic tendency in the life of medieval society, orientated as it was on the world beyond. Medieval man could find himself, become aware of himself and of his own possibilities, only within the framework of the collective; through his adherence to a social group he associated himself with the values accepted in that group. His knowledge, skills, experience, convictions, conduct were then his personal characteristics in so far as they were acceptable to his. social group. A man was rarely called upon to act quite individually. The group to which he belonged was constantly uppermost in his mind, for to act contrary to its norms and designs would be reprehensible. Where voting took place it was by no means simply a way of establishing a proportionate relationship between conflicting individual wills. Either unanimity was required or the motion was carried by the vote of 'the larger and better part' of voters - that is to say, not only their number was taken into consideration but also their 'quality', their status and degree of social privilege. Opposition to the group, to SOCIety, counted as the impar-

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donable sin of pride. A man could assert his own individua.,lity only by fitting in with his social group. . Medi,eval man ~ad ~ clear concept of the human personalIty.: thIs per~onalIty IS answerable to God and it possesses an Indestructible metaphysical core - the soul; but it is not an individuality in our sense of the word. The insistence on what is common to all, typical, on the universal, on deco~cretisation, militated against the formulation of any clear Idea of human individuality. , In the eyes of the medieval writer, the spiritual w9rld is lIke the physical one, immobile and discrete. Man does not evolve; he merely passes from one age to another, not in a grad.uated evolll:tionar~ process involving qualitative change, but In a succeSSIon of Internally unrelated states. Children in the ~iddle Ages were looked upon as small adults, and the quest~on of the growth and education of the human personalIty SImply never arose. 17 Ph. Aries, who has made a study of the treatment of children in medieval and early modern Europe, describes medieval civilisation as 'a civilisation of adults', 18 pointing out that in the Middle Ages children were nO,t recognised as a qualitatively separate category of human beIngs, In art; up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, children are depicted as undersized adults with adult physique and dressed in the same clothes as 'their elders. ::Education was not geared to age; adults and juveniles studied together. Games were for knights and nobles before they were for children. The child, the youth, were regarded as natural companions of the adult, Lacking .the initi,ation ceremonies of primitive peoples and the educatIOnal pnnciples of classical antiquity, the Middle Ages for a long time simply ignored childhood and the transition from it to adulthood. As we have seen, the child was m~de a social being by the act of baptism. Throughout the Mlddl~ Ages, the family was the formative production cell of SOCI~ty, but t.he feeling of belonging to a family - unlike the feelIng for kIndred - was weakly if at all developed. The love hy~ned in courtly lyrics is explicitly contrasted with the marnage relationship, Christian moralists on the other hand warned against an excess of passion in relations between spouses, and treated sexual love as something very dangerous

and better subdued if it could not be totally avoided. It is not until the transition to modern times that the family begins to be viewed not simply as a union of spouses but as a cell entrusted with the socially important function of bringing up children. But by then the family is the bourgeois family.::The treatment of childhood in the Middle Ages is a good example of the period's specific attitude to the human personality. It shows that medieval man was not yet in a position to be aware of himself as a unified developing being. His life was a series of successive states, whose sequence was not internally motivated. Does this not link up with what we said earlier about the 'ages' of human history? In essence, history does not evolve; the transitions from 'infancy' to 'childhood', from 'childhood' to 'adolescence' and thence to 'youth', 'maturity' and 'old age', are not prepared in the previous stage, but take place suddenly as leaps from one static stage to another. Let us recall also the 'selective time' or 'spasmodic time' of medieval poetry, which shows a failure to grasp the connection between time and events: time is broken up into mutually unrelated fragments. So, though it is true to say - as I have tried to show above - that medieval man experienced the world as a unity, it must not be forgotten that this unity existed on the metaphysical plane alone; it was not formed by human practice, nor did it arise directly from things themselves; it was rooted in God. Feudal society, torn and broken up by political particularism, found its ideal unity in the Empire and in the 'Civitas Dei' and in the same way medieval concepts of man and his place in the world, fragmentary and unconnected as they were on the empirical plane, became unified and ordered in the . concept of God's preordained harmony. The personal self in the Middle Ages was not seen as an integrated whole whose faculties, properties and attributes are inwardly and indissolubly bound together, nor is it a unique individuality valued precisely because of its individual peculiarities. The personal self was positively valued in so far as it partook of what was typical and recurrent, and those of its qualities were acceptable which rendered it acceptable to society and to collective action with its fellow members of the social group or corporation. Not the part but the whole,

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not individuality but universitas is in the foreground. 'Individuum est ineffabile' - 'what is individual is inexpressible'; thus did the medieval philosophers concede the preference of their age for demonstration of what is typical, general and supra-individual. At a certain stage in the development of medieval society, h?wever, the individual begins to find ways of expressing hImself. The turning-point comes in the thirteenth century. 19 In all walks of life we find evidence that the claims of the personal self to be recognised are becoming more and more pressing. In art we see people individually depicted, the beginnings of portraiture; in literature, more and more is written in the vernacular languages, which show themselves to be more capable than Latin of expressing the various sha~es of human emotion; individual styles in handwriting begIn to appear. There is an upsurge in the natural sciences, which put experimentation in the place of authority. The spread of Aristotelianism is linked with a partial revaluation the content and purpose of philosophy. Where the theologIans of the preceding epoch had devoted all their attention to, the soul housed in man's body, the philosophers of the thIrteenth century turn their attention to the indissoluble unity of body and soul, the unity which constitutes the perso,n,al self. St Thomas Aquinas develops and sharpens a definitIon of the personal self which goes back to Boethius: the personal (persona) self not only behaves rationally and is aware of itself as a person, it also takes responsibility for its behaviour, it is guided by divine providence in such a way tha,t it takes deci~ions and its actions are therefore personal actlons. 20 AccordIng to St Thomas the persona is characterised not only by indivisibility into other essences but also by the fact that it possesses a certain definite dignity - man's rationality, which is the basis of that degree of freedom which man possesses. Complete freedom will be achieved only in the world to come, where man will be made perfect. ,Dealin~ with the problem of th~ individual's relationship WIth socIety, St Thomas proclaIms the primacy of the common good over individual good. At the same time, however, he does not consider society as an independent substance, in contradistinction to the individual; for society

of

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consists of persons who have come together for the purpose of attaining a specific aim. The personal self possesses an immortal soul and is capable of seeing God face to face; society is not capable of this. Society is a means to an end, the personal self is an end in itself, and thus societY: serves ~he person. 21 The shift of interest to a new field of phIlosophIcal enquiry is thus clearly attested in the work of St Thomas. It is still clearer in the system elaborated by Duns Scotus, who asserted that every separate individual was unique, and especially in Dante, who postulated the principle of the inner value of the personal self. While admitting the theological constraint on the medieval doctrine of the personal self and the tendency to extol the typical at the expense of the individual, we must not fo~get that certain contemporary Oriental philosophical and ethIcal systems shared these attitudes. In Oriental thought (if we may generalise where so much is particular) individualism is not generally regarded favourably, being often taken as equivalent to selfishness; correct behaviour requires a man t? give priority to his duties and obligations rather than ~o hIS rights. 22 In the sequel, however, the Western and the
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of those characteristics which are necessary constituents of modern man's personal self? The specific limitation of the personal self in the Middle Ages which emerges in comparison with modern man was at the same time the manifestation of the qualities which medieval man possessed and which were later lost. In this book we ~ave had much to say about the close relationship between medieval man and nature, a relationship so close indeed that often it is impossible to draw a clear dividing line between man and his natural environment (we recall once again the 'grotesque body'). We have tried to identify the exact way in which medieval man apprehended time - not as mere duration or as an abstraction but as an indissoluble attribute of being, as material as life itself. All this bears witness toa feeling for the fullness of being, of being not yet fragmented by ~uman experimentation and introspection into its constItuent parts and not yet rigorously compartmentalised. Man had not yet become subject, the cognisant matrix ensuring veridical perception of all cognoscenda related to it. ~ direct relationship with living processes, organic experiencIng of them - this is what is characteristic of people living in a society which has not yet been eroded by a dominance of things over man. In our analysis of the categories of labour, wealth, property, etc. in the Middle Ages, one thing has become obvious: not one of ~hese categories appears as an end in itself; they are all means to an end, means whereby man supports himself and affirms himself as a fully qualified member of a collective or corporation. Labour must satisfy the current needs of the society, but the concept of the designed growth of means of production is alien to the Middle Ages, because it is not Increased production but reproduction that is both norm and ideal. Wealth is used largely as an index of social standing and as a means of enhancing social intercourse. The social functions of labour, .property and wealth in the feudal period can be properly understood only when we consider them in the light of relations between individual people. These are not relations which can be reduced to the formula 'goods money - goods' but relations between socially determinate individuals. The world-view of medieval man corresponded

to his limited activity in a relatively narrow space, in intercourse with the relatively small number of other members of his society with whom he was in personal, non-anonymous relations as expressed in direct contact. The money and goods that circulated in this society had not yet become a universal means of social intercourse dominating man. In short, the medieval individual lived in a society which knew nothing of 'alienation' in its advanced forms. Thanks to this, his social existence and practice were integrated and amalgamated in a way that was lost in the transition to a more developed and more differentiated bourgeois society. Progress is always and inevitably dialectical. Here it is paid for by the loss of certain values which embodied a more direct relationship with life. The world-view which predominated in the Middle Ages was in many ways illusory. But let us repeat once more: the fact that it was illusory does not mean that it was ineffective; the illusions of a period go to form social practice~and move people to act in certain ways. The shortcomings of a culture are most easily identified either from the standpoint of another culture (for example, in the Middle Ages the Catholic and the Orthodox churches abused each other as schismatics, while both attacked the pagans) or post factum by a successor culture convinced of its own superiority and rejecting the views of its predecessor as superstition. All of this is historically demonstrable. Scientifically, what matters is that every historical nexus should be assessed with the adequate yardstick. The medieval period has not been well treated in this respect; it tends to be compared either with classical antiquity or with the Renaissance, two 'resonating' epochs, whose criteria can hardly be applied to the Middle Ages. From the world-historical point of view, medieval culture is as significant and worthy of attention .as the cultures of classical antiquity and of modern Europe, and it is my conviction that a due assessment of its value can only take shape in the light of the accumulation of objective facts, including its own self-appraisal, the attitudes and ideas of medieval people about themselves and their world.

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AU TH OR 'S NO TE

The English edition of this book is published a dozen years after its appearance in Russian. As might be expected, I should now like and to amend the text, and indeed rewrite parts of it. The 1970s in trend that of pment develo e intensiv the early 1980s have seen A . belongs book my which to culture al the study of mediev numbe r of import ant works have appeared in which various aspects of the medieval mentality are investigated. Howev er, since it was not possible for me to change and expand the text of my book, it is here presented in almost the same form in which it appeared in Mosco w in 1972. I have, however, made a few small additions to the text. More substantial additions are indicated in the text by asterisks and are listed below as addenda (see p. 315). In addition I have update d some of the references. My own recent studies have resulted in two. books. One is the second, revised and enlarged, Russian edition of Categories of Medieval Culture (Mosco w, 1984), which appeared when this translation was already in proof, too late to make major changes to the text. The second book is entitled Problems of Medieval Popular Culture (Moscow, 1981). It has now been translated into English and will, I hope, soon be published. The new book is closely connected with its predecessor but differs in the standp oint from which medieval culture is studied. Attenti on in the new book is focused on that layer of the collective consciousness of the Middle Ages which was concealed by the culture of the educated elite, and which is therefore hardly studied by historians. Thus the ideas presented in Categories of Medieval Culture are considerably developed in the new book. The two books comple ment each other. In some ways, this consideration

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Author's note may serve as an excuse for my offering English readers the present translation of Categories without additional material and without drawing upon recent historiography of which I am well aware. It is, however, my hope that even so my book may prove acc.eptable to English readers interested in the history of culture. ThIs. hope rests ~n ,the ass~mption that the world picture of medIeval people IS InsuffiCIently studied. At the same time, I m~st suppose that not every English historian is ready to agree wIth my approach, which considers culture as a system: highly compl~x and inward~y contradictory, but nevertheless a system. There IS a tendency In contemporary humanities to try to r~c??st~uct the mental universum of people of other epochs and cIVIlIsatIons. The method I apply in my book to the investigation ?f culture pro~eeds by an analysis of several of its categories and In the elUCIdation of their meaning as elements of the social and cultural whole. My attention is directed, first and foremost, to the study of mental attitudes and orientations, customs of thought, the 'psychic instruments' of medieval people: in other words, of that str~tum of the intellectual life of the society which was not fully realIsed and reflected on by its members. Peo~le's social behaviour is greatly influenced by their mentalIty; and the peculiarities in the conduct of medieval man can be explained only in the light of his world-view. In this respect, cul~ural and social studies of the life of medieval people are clo~ely Interconnected. The socio-cultural point of view embodIes an attempt to overcome the onesidedness of traditional historic~l s,tudies of the economy, the culture and the religion of past SOCIetleS, and to offer an approach which tries to unite all of them. Of course, it is much easier to formulate such an approach than to fulfil it. Nevertheless, I am convinced that ant~ropologically .orientated history is a developing field of study whIch has every nght to exist. Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to the translator.

Moscow, July 1984

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p. 195, line 28: It could hardly be claimed that the trifunctional scheme of the social whole described its complex structure in all its diversity. But it was an attempt at a theoretical organisation of this whole, and therefore reflects an important aspect of the selfconsciousness of medieval society. (See G. Duby, Les trois ordres ou l'imaginaire du feodalisme, Paris, 1978; J. Le Goff, 'Les trois fonctions indoeuropeennes: L'historien et l'Europe feodale', Annales, E.S.C., 1979, 34, no. 1, pp. 1187-1215.) p. 200, line 12: Only very rarely is the historian given the chance to penetrate into the world of peasant beliefs and attitudes, and in these exceptional cases a most peculiar fusion of the elements of Christian and of folklore culture is revealed to him. (See E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, Paris, 1975, London, 1978; J...;C. Schmitt, Le saint levrier. Guinefort, guerisseur d'enfants depuis Ie Xllle siecie, Paris, 1979.) p. 200, line 34: But it would be an oversimplification to imagine that the belief in miracles and in help from saints was simply imposed on the minds of their parishioners by the clergy. It was the common folk themselves who felt the urge to place their hopes in the supernatural. Very often, the cult of saints was a natural growth; while fear of hell and a craving for salvation drove people to go on pilgrimages, .and to lend a devout ear to tales of devils' tricks and journeys to hell and purgatory.

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Addenda p. 288, line 2:

the 'ego'. (See C. Carozzi, 'De l'enfance ala maturite: etude d'apres les vies de Geraud d' Aurillac et d'Odon de Cluny', Etudes sur la sensibilite, Paris, 1979, pp. 103-16.)

Our study could be continued by introducing certain new themes. Analysis could be differentiated - and this is desirable - by taking into account the peculiarities of certain regions of Europe and particular periods of the Middle Ages. However, my main aim has been to examine whether the notion of the 'world picture' is indeed workable, whether, that is, it affords a possibility of seeing medieval culture in its entirety as a system; and, further, whether it is plausible to search for a connection between culture and socio-economic structures.

p. 306, line 24: . Pupillage was connected with the prolo.n&ed .removal ?f the chIld from his parents, and therefore the SOCIalIsatIOn of chIldren and the transmission to them of values and knowledge were not controlled by the family.

p. 290, line 5 from bottom: The exchange of gifts, characteristic of all pre-capitalist societies, was inherent, as we have seen, in European medieval civilisation also. But this exchange did not necessarily presuppose the mutual transfer of material goods. It could take the form of the exchange of material goods against panegyric, song, prayer, fasting, mass, ritual, since sacral or poetic texts and concomitant acts were apprehended as phenomena of the same order as tangible things, such as weapons,fine clothes, sums of money, food or land tenure.

p. 309, line 24:

p. 301, line 23: The notion of 'medieval man' is, of course, an abstraction. The question arises whether such an abstraction is plausible. Common sense tells us that no two human beings are exactly alike; and as for the Middle Ages, it was a long period during which Europe and the peoples inhabiting it changed radically. Consequently, our 'medieval man' seems to be an abstraction which is void of content. But what we are studying is neither concrete varying types of personality, nor their transformations during the epoch. Weare trying to establish certain basic features of a culture which, through all its change and development, retained the same structural parameters. Is it not possible to define culture as the self-reflection of social man, man in society, as the revelation of his essence? From this viewpoint, study of the idiosyncrasies of medieval culture brings us necessarily to the problem of the personality which conformed with, fitted into such a culture. May I then venture upon some generalisations.

p. 307, line 5:

. ' It was only in the fifteenth and sixteenth ~entunes t.h~t the fan;11y became an object of iconography: the famIly portralt at home in the domestic interior makes its appearance, a symptom of the growing importance of private life. The 'privatisation of space' takes place (Ph. Aries). ' For European culture is the culture of ~ man. 'at the cr?ss-roads', constantly facing the necessity of choosmg hIS way. It IS a cul~ure which does not schedule an existence without change; rather, It is a culture which goes beyond its own bounds, a culture of search and open possibilities. And is it not in this respect that medieval European culture differs radically from all other cultures of the epoch?

p. 303, line 7: Moreover, the author is frightened by the very idea of the individual, as though it were something inadmissible. When writing a vita, Odo of Cluny used the first person singular, and some hundred years later, an editor of his text diligently crossed out

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[317J

NOTES

Chapter II Ideas of space and time in the Middle Ages 1 R. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, London, 1947, vol. I, p. 36; W. Lewis, Time and Western Man, Boston, 1957, pp. x, xii, 211 H.; H. H. Parkhurst, The Cult of Chronology. Essays in Honor of John Dewey, New York, 1929, p. 294; W. Weischedel, 'Das heutige Denken zwischen Raum und Zeit', Universitas 22 Jg, H. 12, 1967, S. 1234 H. 2 G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 55. 3 E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, II. Teil, Berlin, 1925, S. 103 ff.; A. Hallowell, Culture and Experience, Philadelphia, 1955; B. L. Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality, New York, 1956; O. F. Bollnow, Mensch und Raum, Stuttgart, 1963. 4 M. Granet, La pensee chinoise, Paris, 1934, pp. 86, 90, 97, 103. 5 H. Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East, London, 1951, p. 20. 6 J. Needham, Time and Eastern Man, Glasgow, 1965, pp. 44 f. 7 J.-P. Vernant, My the et pensee chez les grecs. Etudes de psychologie historique, Paris, 1965, pp. 22 ss., 57, 71 SS., 99 ss. (English edition, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1983.) 8 A.F. Losev, Istoriya antichnoj estetiki (rannaya klassika), Moscow, 1963, p. 50. 9 Ibid., pp. 38, 55. Cf. A. F. Losev, Istoriya antichnoj estetiki. Sofisty, Sokrat, Platon, Moscow, 1969, pp. 598-600, 612-13, etc.

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Notes to pages 32-47 10 B. A. Van Groningen, In the Grip of the Past. Essays on an Aspect of Greek Thought, Leiden, 1953. 11 W. den Boer, 'Graeco-Roman Historiography in its Relation to Biblical and Modern Thinking', History and Theory, vol. VII, no. 1, 1968, p. 72. Cf. E. Ch. Weiskopf, Gedanken uber den gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt im Altertum. XIII. Internationaler Kongress der historischen Wissenschaften, Moscow, 1970. 12 M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1968. 13 N. I. Konrad, Zapad i Vostok, Moscow, 1966, p. 79. 14 O. Spengler, Decline of the West, vol. I, London, 1929, p. 15. 15 D. S. Likhachev, Poetika drevnerusskoj literatury, Leningrad, 1967. 16 J. Le Goff, La civilisation de l'Occident medieval, Paris, 1965, pp. 126, 440. 17 E. Male, L'art religieux du Xllle siecle en France, Paris, 1925 (6 ed.), pp. 1-5. Chapter HI Macrocosm and microcosm

1 O. A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya, Zapadnye palomnichestva v srednie veka, Petrograd, 1924; pp. 49 ff. Ch. H. Haskins, Studies in Mediaeval Culture, New York, 1929, p. 101; M. N. Boyer, 'A Day's Journey in Mediaeval France', Speculum, vol. XXVI, 1951; Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. III, Cambridge, 1963, p. 128. 2 O. Szemerenyi, 'The Etymology of German Adel', Word, vol. 8, 1952; W. Krogmann, 'Handmahal', Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 71 Bd, 1954. O. Behagel, cOdal', Forschungen und Fortschritte, 11 Jg, N. 29, 1935, ~: 369-70. _ 3 O. v. Dungern, 'Uber die Freiheit des Eigentums im Mittelalter', Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 53 Bd, 1933, S. 291; H. Ebner, Das Freie Eigen, Klagenfurt, 1969, S. 129 ff., 227; F. Mezger, 'Zur Friihgeschichte von Freiheit und Frieden', Fragen und Forschungen im Bereich und Umkreis der germanischen Philologie, 1956, S. 15-16. 4 V. Gronbech, Vor Folkeaet i Oldtiden, Bd II, Copenhagen, 1912, S. 6-9; R. Kummer, Midgards Untergang, Leipzig, 1927.

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Notes to pages 49-60 5 J. de Vries, 'Ginnungagap', Acta Philologica Scandinavica, V,

1929. 6 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, c. 14, utg. av Anne Holtsmark og Jon Helgason, Copenhagen, Oslo and Sto,ckholm, 1965. 7 Grimnismdl, 12. The Prose Edda of Snorn Sturluson, trans. J. 1. Young, Berkeley, 1971, p. 51. " ' 8 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I, BJarm AdalbJarnarsongaf lit, Reykjavik, 1941, bls. 22. 9 Heimskringla, History of the Kings of Norway, trans. Lee M. Hollander, N ew York, 1964. 10 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, ch. 72, trans. G. Voght, ed. P. Foote, London and New York, 1965, p. 189. 11 Njdls saga, trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson, London, 1960, p. 166. 12 Njdls saga, ch. 75, Islandskie sag~, ed. with ~?tes and introductory essay by M. 1. Steblm-KamensklJ, Moscow, 1956, p. 778. , . 13 J. Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Age fantasttque, Pans, 1955. 14 M. M. Bakhtin, op. cit., chs 5, 6. . 15 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Cambndge, 1907, p. 371. . 16 L. Musset 'Observations historiques sur une mesure agralre: Ie bonnier~, Melanges d'histoire du Moyen Age de dies a la memoire de Louis Halphen, Paris, 1951, p. 541. 17 J. Le Goff, La civilisation de l'Occident me~ieval, p. ,405. 18 A. Meyer, Wesen und Geschichte der Theone vom Mzkro- und Makrokosmos, Bern, 1900; G. P. Conger, Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy, New York, 1922; R. Allers, 'Microcosmos', Traditio, 2, 1944. 19 W. Kranz, 'Kosmos', Archiv fur Begnffsgeschichte, Bonn, 1958. 20 Sanctae Hildegardis, Liber Divinorum. Operum Simp!icis Hominis, J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (hereafter cIted as PL), t. 197, Paris, 1855, col. 862. " 21 M.-M. Davy, Essai sur la symbolique romane (Xlle steele), Paris, 1955, p. 103. . 22 Alani ab Insulis, Liber de Planctu Naturae, PL, t. 210, Pans, 1855, col. 443 b. 23 M. -Th. D' Alverny, 'Le cosmos symbolique du XII e siecle', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age, 28 annee, 1954. 24 C.-M. Edsman, 'Arbor inversa. Heiland, Welt und Mensch

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Notes to pages 69-85

Notes to pages 61-68

25 26 27 28 29 30

31

als Himmelspflanzen', Festschrift Walter Baetke, Weimar, 1966. PL t. 210, col. 579a. L. Spitzer, 'Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony', Traditio, vol. II, New York, 1944, pp. 434 ff. E. Gilson, 'Le Moyen Age et Ie naturalisme antique', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age, 7 annee, 1933, pp. 22 ss. L. Kirchenbauer, Raumvorstellungen in der fruhmittelhochdeutschen Epik, Heidelberg, 1931, S. 17. O. Lauffer, Das Landschaftsbild Deutschlands im Zeitalter der Karolinger, Gottingen, 1896. Quoted from R. A. Fridman, 'Lyubovnaya lirika trubadurov i ee istolkovanie', Uchenye zapiski Ryazanskogo gospedinstituta, vol. 34, Trudy kathedry literatury, Moscow, 1965, p. 288. A. Biese, Die Entwicklung des Naturgefuhls im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, Leipzig, 1888. Cf. E. Pons, Le theme

et Ie sentiment de la nature dans la poesie 32 33 34

35

36

anglo-~ax9nne,

Strasbourg and P<:,:ris, 1925. G. Stockmayer, Uber Naturgefuhl in Deutschland im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert, Leipzig and Berlin, 1910. . W. Ganzenmiiller, Das Naturgefuhl im Mittelalter, Leipzig and Berlin, 1914. - K. Wiihrer, Romantik im Mittelalter. Beitrag zur Geschichte des Naturgefiihls, im besonderen des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts, Baden, Vienna, Leipzig and Brunn, 1930. L. Schneider, 'Die Naturdichtung des deutschen Minnesangs', Neue deutsche Forschungen, Abteilung Deutsche Philologie, Bd 6, Berlin, 1938. E. R. Curtius, 'Rhetorische N aturschilderu.ng im Mittelalter', Romanische Forschungen, 56, 1942, S. 221 ff.; M. Gsteiger, Die

Landschaftsschilderungen in den Romanen Chrestiens de Troyes, Bern, 1958. 37 1. Hahn, 'Raum und Landschaft in Gottfrieds Tristan. Ein Beitrag zur W erkdeutung' , Medium Aevum. Philologische Studien, Bd 3, Munich, 1963, S. 7 ff. 38 R. Gruenter, 'Zum Problem der Landschaftsdarstellung im hofischen Versroman', Euphorion, 56 Bd, 3 H., 1962. 39 E. Kobel, Untersuchung zum gelebten Raum in der mittelhochdeutschen Dichtung, Zurich, 1950. 40 Ch.-V. Langlois, La connaissance de la nature et du monde au Moyen Age, Paris, 1911, p. xii.

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41 P. M. Bitsilli, Salimbene, Odessa, 1916, pp. 300-I. 42 W. Homuth, 'Yom Einfluss des Lehnswesens und Rittertums auf den franzosischen Sprachschatz', Romanische Forschungen, XXXIX Bd, 2 Heft, Eriangen, 1925. 43 Sancti Dionysii Areopagitae, De Caelesti Ierarchia, I, 7-9, PL, t. 122, Paris, 1865, col. 1050-8. 44 J. Sauer, Symbolik des Kirchengebaudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Auffassung des Mittelalters, Freiburg, 1924; G. .. Bandmann Mittelalterliche Architektur als Bedeutungstrager, Berlin, 1951; E. Baldwin Smith, Architectural Symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages, ~ew York, 1956. 45 As 'handmaid of theology', the allegorIcal geogral?hy of the Middle Ages combined biblical story and earthly hlstO.ry o~ one and the same plane. 'Maps of the world' show paradIse wIth Adam and Eve, the great figures of the Bible, Troy, the campaigns of Alexander, the Roman provinces, the Holy Places the Christian states and the Last Judgment. See A.D. v. den Brincken, ' "ut discriberetur universus orbis". Zur U niversal-kartographie des Mittelalters', M ethoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, Berlin, 1970. 46 W. Harms, hom*o viator in bivio, Munich, 1970. 47 Y. M. Lotman, '0 ponyatii geographicheskogo prostranstva v russkikh srednevekovykh tekstakh'; Trudy po znakovym sistemam, II, Tartu, 1965, pp. 210-16. 48 P. Alphandery, La Chretiente et l'idee de Croisade, I, Paris, 1954, .p. 7. 49 R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, New Haven, 1953, pp. 241-5. . .. . 50 S. D. Katznel'son, Istoriko-grammatz.cheskte z.ssledovamya, Moscow and Leningrad, 1949, pp. 80-1, 91-4. 51 Bandamanna saga und Qlkofra Pattr, hrsg. von Baetke, Altnordische Textbibliothek, N. F., 4 Bd, Halle (Saale), 1960, S. 52, 54. 52 Beati Rabani Mauri ... , Allegoriae in Universam Sacram Scripturam, PL, t. 112, Paris, 1852, col. 849-50. 53 Dante Alighieri, Epistle to Can Grande della Scala, 7. Cf. Convivio, II, I. 54 For a detailed decoding of the symbolism found in medieval ecclesiastical architecture, see Auber, Histoire et theorie du symbolisme religieux avant et depuis Ie Christianisme, t. 3-4, Paris and Poitiers, 1871. 55 Franco'Sacchetti, Opere, vol. I, Florence, 1857, p. 87.

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Notes to pages 85-91 56 1. Dollinger, Beitrage zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, Bd 2, Munich, 1890, S. 1St. 57 G. Poulet, Les metamorphoses du cercle, Paris, 1961, p. iii. 58 A. Grabar, 'Plotin et les origines de l'esthetique medievale', Cahiers archeologiques, I, 1945, p. 22. 59 E. Trubetskoj, Dva mira v drevnerusskoj ikonopisi, Moscow, 1916, pp. 17, 23. 60 See P. A. Florenskij, 'Obratnaya perspektiva', Trudy po znakovym sistemam, III, Tartu, 1967, p. 397. Cf. L. F. Zhegin, Yazyk zhivopisnogo proizvedeniya, Moscow, 1970. 61 On perspective as variously perceived in the ancient world, in

the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance period, see M. Schild Bunim, Space in Medieval Painting and the Forerunners of Perspective, New York, 1940. On 'spiritual perspective' in medieval art, see W. Messerer, 'Einige Darstellungsprinzipien der Kunst im Mittelalter', Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 36 Jg, H. 2, 1962. 62 E. Panofsky, 'Die Perspektive als symbolische Form', Aufsatze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 1961, S. 110. 63 E. de Bruyne, Etudes d'estherique medievale, t. 3, Bruges, 1946, ch. 1. 64 E. Panofsky, op. cit., S. 111-15; idem, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, New York, 1957, pp. 44 ff., 58. 65 A. Koyre, 'Le vide et l' espace infini au XIVe siecle', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age, 24 annee, 1949, p. 50; E. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, New York, 1963. 66 E. Whittaker, Space and Spirit, London, 1946, pp. 73 ff. 67 Honorii Augustodunensis, De Philosophia Mundi, I, 23, PL, t. 172, Paris, 1854, col. 56. 68 Raumordnung im Aufbau des mittelalterlichen Staates, Bremen, 1961; B. Guenee, (~space et Etat dans la France du Bas Moyen Age', Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 23, no. 4, 1968. 69 A. Dupront, 'Espace et humanisme', Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance, t. VIII, Paris, 1946; J. Delumeau, 'Le cleveloppement de l'esprit d'organisation et de la pensee methodique dans la mentalite occidentale a l'epoque de la Renaissance', XIIIe congres international des sciences historiques, Moscow, 1970.

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Notes to pages 95-101 Chapter IV What is time? 1 K. Weinhold, Uber die deutsche Jahrtheilung, Kie't, 1~62;

2 3

4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

idem, Die deutschen M onatnamen, Halle, 1.86~; J. Gnmm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, I Bd, LeIpzIg, 1868; M. P. Nilsson, Primitive Time-reckoning, ~ und" 1920. G. Bilfinger, Untersuchungen uber dle Zettrechnung der alten Germanen, I, Das altnordische Jahr, Stuttgart, 1899 .. K. Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, bearb. von G. SIefert, Stuttgart, 1938, S. 258. The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, trans. J. 1. Young, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1971. Ibid. Snorri Sturluson, H eimskringla, I, Prologus, bl? :4-~' Sverris saga, kap. 38, udg. ved G. Indre~0, Knstlama, 1920. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, I,y'ngltnga sa~a, kaPh 15. A. V. Strom, 'The King God and HIS Con~ectlOn WIt , Sacrifice in Old Norse Religion', La Regaltta sacra, Lelden, 1959, S. 714-15. Ynglinga saga, kap. 25. Snorri Sturluson, Edda, kap. 26. . M. Eliade, Le mythe de l'erernel r~tour, Pan,s, 1949. Th. Finkenstaedt, 'Das Zeitgefiihl 1m altenghschen BeowuIfEpos'. Antaios, Bd III, Stuttgart, 19.62, S. 226 ff. , ' . M. H~lbwachs, 'La memoire collective et Ie temps, Cahters internationaux de sociologie, vol. 11, 1947, p. 8. , K. A. Eckhard, Irdische Unsterblich~eit. Ge.rmantscker Glaube an die Wiederverkorperung tn der Slppe, WeImar,

1937. '11' . 16 M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, 'Tidsforestl mgene 1 58-9 Islendingasagaene, Edda, Bd LXVIII, 6, 1.9~8, s. 3 ., 17 R. Glasser, 'Verborgene und vordringhche Zelt in de~1r~che Romanische Forschungen, 56 ~d~ 3 H., 1942, ~p. 38 ,.

!'1.

Leisi, 'Die Darstellung der ZeIt m der Sprache , Das Zeitproblem im 20, Jahrhundert, hrsg. von R. ~. Meyer, d Bern and Munich, 1964, pp. 17 ff. In,
[325]

Notes to pages 101-115 Chrono logical Concep tion in Norse Mytho logy' Neophilologus, 47 ] aargang, Afl. 2, 1963, pp. 142-3. 20 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, kap. 15. 21 'Gragas, I, 10, hrsg. von A. Heusle r', Germanenrechte Bd 9 Weimar, 1937. ' , 22 King Alfred's Orosius, ed. H. Sweet, Londo n, 1883, pp. 17-19. 23 W. ~. Vogt, 'Aldartryggd'ir ok aevintryggd'ir. Zur Entwlc klung von germ. ald- und aiw- zu "imme rdar" und "ewig" " Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschim Sprache und Literatur, 58 Bd, 1934. 24 Ari Thorgilsson, The Book of the Icelanders (islendingab6k) , ed. H. Herma nnsson , Ithaca, New York, 1930 (Islandica vol. XX). ' 25 G. Bilfinger, Untersuchungen uber die Zeitrechnung ... , S. 38 f. 26 M. C. van den Toorn, 'Zeit und Tempu s in der Saga', Arkiv for nordisk filologi, LXXV I Bd, 1961, s. 136, 137. 27 Lynn Thornd ike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. II, New York, 1923, p.68. 28 G. Bilfinger, Die mittelalterlichen Horen und die modernen Stunden. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte, Stuttga rt, 1892; W. Rothwell, 'The Hours of the Day in Medieval French '. French Studies, XIII, no. 3, 1959. . ' 29 Quoted from: ]. Le 'Goff, La civilisation de !'Occident medieval, p. 229. 30M. Bloch, La socihef eodale , Paris, 1968, pp. 117-18. 31 Honor ii August odunen sis, De Imagin e Mundi , libri tres, II, 4-10, PL, t. 172, col. 172 ss. 32 ]. C,. Webster, Th~ Labors of the Months in Antiqu e and M edtaeval Art, Pnncet on, 1938; H. Stern, 'Poesies et representations carolingiennes et byzant ines des mois', Revue archeologique, 6 ser., t. XLV, 1955. 33 O. Cullma nn, Christ et Ie temps, Neucha tel and Paris, 1947. 34 St August ine, De civitate Dei, book XII chs 13, 17. 35 St August ine, Confessiones, book XI, ch. 14. 36 Ibid., book XI, ch. 22. 37 Ibid., book XI, ch. 27. 38 Ibid., book XI, chs 20, 28. 39 St August ine, De civitate Dei, book XII, ch. 12; idem, Confessiones, book XI, ch. 13. 40 Honori us August odunen sis, Clauis Physicae, f. 4v-5. Quoted

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Notes to pages 115-120 from: M.-Th . D' Alvern y, Le Cosmos symbolique ... , p. 39. Cf. Ioannis Scoti, De Divisione Natura e libri quinqu e, I, 1, PL, t. 122, col., 442. 41 J. F. Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancien t Philosophy, Cambr idge, 1948, pp. 152-3, 192-202. 42 De civ., XXII, 24. 43 Quoted from H.-I. Marrou , L'ambivalence du ~emps de l'histoire chez Saint August in, Montre al and Pans, 1950, p. 22. "k 44 A.-D. v. den Brinck en, Studien zur lateinischen Weltehromstt bis in das Zeitalter Ottos von Freising, Dussel dorf, 1957, S. 38. 45 De civ., XVII, 1. 46 P. Rousse t, 'La concep tion de l'histoi re a l' epoque fe.odale', Melanges d'histoire du Moyen Age de dies a la memotre de Louis Halphen, Paris, 1951, pp. 630-3. .' 47 G. Schoebe, 'Was gilt im fruhen !"1ittelalter ~ls geschlchthche Wirklic hkeit? Ein Versuc h zur Klrchengeschlchte des Baeda venerabilis', Festschrift Herma nn Aubin zum 80. Geburtstag, Bd II, Wiesba den, 1965, S. 640-3. . 48 ]. M. Wallac e-Hadr ill, 'Gr.e~ory of.To~rs a~d B~de: thel~ views on the person al qualIties of kmgs , Fruhmtttelalterltche Stt-tdien, Bd 12, 1960, S. 36-7. 49 A. Dempf , Sacrum Imperi um. Geschichts- un.~ Staatsphilosophie des Mittelalters und der polzttschen Renaissance, Munich and Berlin, 1929, S. 251. 50 Thoma e Aquina tis, Summa Theologica, Pars I, quaest. V,· art.

V.

51 Honor ii August odunen sis, De Imagin e Mundi, II, 1-3. 52 Ibid., II, 3. ., ., 53 Quoted from: M.-D. Chenu , La theologie au douzte me steele, Paris, 1957, pp. 67, 87. . 54 E. Jeauneau, 'Nains et geants', Entretiens sur la Renatssance du 12e sieele, Paris and The Hague, 1968. 55 Thoma e Aquina tis, Summa Theologica, pars I, quaest. X, art. I. 56 J. Ratzing er, 'Der Mensc h und die Zeit im ~en~en ~es Heilige n Bonav entura' , L'homm e et son desttn d apres les penseurs du Moyen Age, Louvai n and Paris, 1960, pp. 476, 483. 57 Z. Zawirs ki, L'evolu tion de la notion du temps, Cracow , 1936, pp. 35-42.

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Notes to pages 120-125 58 M.-D. Chenu, 'Situation humaine, corporalite et temporalite', L'homme et son destin d'apres les penseurs du Moyen Age, pp. 39-40, 49. 59 M.-D. Chenu, La theologie au douzieme sieele,p. 93. 60 F. S. Lear, 'The MediaevalAttitude Toward History' The Rice Institute Pamphlet, vol. XX, no. 2, 1933, pp. 160-71. 61 De civ., XI, 6. 62 Honorii Augustodunensis, Elucidarium, PL, t. 172, .col. 1119. 63 Sancti Isidori ~ispalensis episcopi, Etymologiarum libri, XX, PL, t. 82, Pans, 1878, col. 223. 64 De civ., XVIII, 53; XXII, 30. 65 G. I?uby, L'an mil, Paris, 1980; J. Delumeau, La peur en Occtdent (XIVe_XVllle sieeles. Une cite assiegee, Paris, 1978, p. 199. 66 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, XXX, 131-2. 67 J. E. Cross, 'Aspects of Microcosm and Macrocosm in Old English Literature', Studies in Old English Literature in Honor of A. G. Brodeur, Univ. of Oregon, 1963, pp. 2-3. 68 E. R. Curtius, Europiiische Literatur und lateinisches M.ittelalter, Bern, 1948, S. 103. (English edn, European Ltterature and the Latin Middle Ages, Routledge, London 1953.) , 69 Quoted from J. Sperl, Grundformen hochmittelalterlicher Geschichtsanschauung. Studien zum Weltbild der Geschichtsschreiber des 12. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1935, S. 59. 70 Dante Alighieri, Convivio, IV, XXIII-XXIV. 71W. Freund, Modernus und andere Zeitbegriffe des Mittelalters, Cologne and Graz, 1957, S. 108. 72 ~alter Map, De nugis curial. Quoted from E. R. Curtius, op. ctt., S. 259. 73 J. Sperl, Grundformen ... , S. 30. 74 E. Jeauneau, op. cit., p. 26. We have to remember that such

statements cannot always be taken at their face value. Adelard of Ba~h admits t.hat, in view of the widespread prejudice against anythmg smackmg of novelty, he felt it wiser to ascribe his thoughts to others - i. e. to ancient writer-s or to Arab scholars. See J. Le Goff, Les intellectuels au Moyen Age ' Paris , 1960, p. 60 . 75 H. Beumann, 'Der Schriftsteller und seine Kritiker im fruhen Mittelalter', Studium Generale, 12 J g, H. 8, 1959, S. 502, 509. 76 H. Grundmann, 'Die Grundzuge der mittelalterlichen Geschichtsanschauungen', Geschichtsdenken und Geschichtsbild im Mitte/alter, hrsg. von W. Lammers. (Wege der Forschung, XXI), Darmstadt, 1961, S. 424.

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Notes to pages 126-133 77 Quoted from H. Grundmann, 'Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter', Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss, hrsg. von W. Stammler, 35. Lieferung, Berlin, Bielefeld, Munich, 1961, S. 2283. 78 E. Gilson, L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, Paris, 1948,

ch. XIX. 79 Quoted from S. M. Starn, 'Uchenie Ioakhima Kalbrijskogo', Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma, VII, Moscow, 1959, p. 348. 80 Quoted from: E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 377. 81 Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 1, quaest. 106, art. 4; II, 2, quaest. I, art. 7. 82 A. Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel. Geschichte der Meinungen uber Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Volker, Bd II, 1-2, Stuttgart, 1958-9. 83 H. Beumann, 'Topos und Gedankengefuge bei Einhard', Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, 33 Bd, 3 H., 1951, S. 349-50. 84 A. Funkenstein, H eilsplan und naturliche Entwicklung. Formen der Gegenwartsbestimmung im Geschichtsdenken des hohen Mittelalters, Munich, 1965, S. 76. 85 'La morale de l'histoire', Le Moyen Age, t. LXIX, 1963, p. 366. 86 E. Meuthen, 'Der Geschichtssymbolismus Gerhohs von Reichersberg', Geschichtsdenken und Geschichtsbild im Mittelalter, S. 241-6. 87 Ottonis episcopi Frisingensis, Chronica, Pro!' I, hrsg. von W. Lammers, Berlin, 1960, S. 8. 88 Chretien de, Troyes, 'Chevalerie et clergie', Anthologie poetique franfaise. Moyen Age, 1. Choix, introduction, traduction et notes par A. Mary, Paris, 1967, p. 102. 89 Ottonis episcopi Frisingensis, Chronica, S. 11-17. See H. 1\1.

90 91 92

93 94

Klinkenberg, 'Der Sinn der Chronik Ottos von Freising', Aus Mittelalter und N euzeit, Bonn, 1957. B. Widmer, Heilsordnung und Zeitgeschehen in der Mystik Hildegards von Bingen, Basel and Stuttgart, 1955, S. 132 ff. W. J. Brandt, The Shape of Medieval History. Studies in Modes of Perception, New Haven and London, 1966, p. 171. M.· Kemmerich, Die fruhmittelalterliche Portratmalerei in Deutschland bis zur Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1907. G. Poulet, Etudes sur Ie temps humain, I, Paris, 1965, pp. I-VI. P. M. Bitsilli, Salimbene, p.' 132.

[329J

Notes to pages 134-139

Notes to pages 139-147

95 H.-H. Steinhof, Die Darstellung gleichzeitiger Geschehnisse im mittelhochdeutschen Epos, Munich, 1964. 96 U. Ruberg, 'Raum und Zeit im Prosa-Lancelot', Medium Aevum. Philologische Studien, Bd 9, Munich, 1965, S. 16, 164, 182-3. 97 Guillaume de Lorris, 'Le jardin de deduit', Anthologie poetique fran~aise. Moyen /1ge, 1, p. 394. 98 Ph. Menard, 'Le temps et la duree dans les romans de Chretien de Troyes', Le Moyen Age, t. 73, no. 3-4, 1967. 99 E. Koehler, 'Observations historiques et sociologiques sur la poesie des troubadours', Cahiers de civilisation medievale, VIle annee, no. 1, 1964, p. 43. 100 G. Quispel, 'Time and History in Patristic Christianity', Man and Time. Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Bollingen Series XXX, 3, New York, 1957, p. 101. 101 Ph. Menard, op. cit., p. 393 ss. 102 The Elder Edda, trans. Paul B. Taylor and W. H. Auden, New York, 1969, p. 124. 103 D. S. Likhachev, op. cit., p. 254. 104 S. Hinterkausen, 'Die Auffassung von Zeit und Geschichte in Konrads Rolandslied', Inaugural-Diss., Bonn, 1967. 105 R. Glasser, 'Studien zur Geschichte des franzosischen Zeitbegriffs', Munchner Romanistische Arbeiten, 5, Munich, 1936; S, 5; K, von Ettmayer; Analytische Syntax der franzosischen Sprache, II Bd, Halle (Saale); 1936, S. 886; G. Lechner, 'Zur "Zeit" und zur stilistischen und topologischen Funktion der "Tempora" in der friiheren altfranzosischen Heldenepik', Inaugural-Diss., Munich, 1961, S. 251. 106 M. Huby, 'La structure numerique et sa valeur symbolique dans la poesie religieuse allemande du Moyen Age', Etudes germaniques, 22, no. 2, 1967, p. 244. 107 E. Kobel, op. cit., S. 8 ff., 14-15. 108 H. Werner, 'Raum und Zeit in den Urformen der Kiinste', Vierter Kongress fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Berichte, Stuttgart, 1931, S. 69-83. 109 O. Mandelstam, 'Conversation on Dante', in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, trans. Harris and Link, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979, p. 422. 110 V. Shklovskij, Tetiva. 0 neskhodstve skhodnogo, Moscow, 1970, p. 175. 111 Dante Alighieri, Inferno, XV, 85-7. 112 Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, XI, 106-8.

113 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, XXIX, 12-32; XXXIII, 94-5. 114 P. A. Michelis, An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art, London, 1964, p. 118. 115 See Istoriya Vizantii, t. 1, Moscow, 1967, p. 433. 116 S. Stelling-Michaud, 'Quelques aspects du probleme du temps au moyen age', Schweizer Beitrage zur Allgemeinen Geschichte, Bd 17, Bern, 1959, S. 25-6. 117 J. Le Goff, 'Temps de l'Eglise et temps du marchand', Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 15, no. 3, 1960. 118 A. Doren, Fortuna im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, Leipzig, 1924; K. Hampe, 'Zur Auffassung der Fortuna im Mittelalter', Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, 17, 1927; D. M. Robinson, 'The Wheel of Fortune', Classical Philology, vol. XLI, no. 4, 1946; H. R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature, New York, 1967 (2nd edn). 119 P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et I'averroi'sme latin au Xllle siecle, Louvain, 1911, pp. 170-1; P. Duhem, Le systeme du monde, t. II, Paris, 1914, p. 447 sS; t. V, 1917, p. 61; t. VII, 1956, p. 441 ss; H. Ley, Studie zur Geschichte des Matenalismus im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1957, S. 267, 298. 120 Dante Alighieri, Inferno, VII, 77-81, 96. 121 W. von den Steinen, Menschen im Mittelalter, Bern and Munich, 1967, S. 231 ff. 122 W. Gent. Die Philosovhie des Raumes und der Zeit, Berlin, -~-- 1926; id;m, Das Problem der Zeit, Frankfurt a. M., 1934. 123 Heinrich Boll, Irisches Tagebuch, Berlin, 1957. 124 J. Le Goff, La civilisation de l'Occident medieval, p. 223. 125 G. Gurvitch, The Spectrum of Social Time, Dordrecht, 1964. 126 P. Browe, Beitrage zur Sexualethik des Mittelalters, Breslau, 1932; J. T. Noonan, Contraception, a History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Cambridge, Mass., 1966; J.-L. Flandrin, 'Contraception, mariage et, relations amoureuses dans l'Occident chretien', Annales. Economies, societes, civilisations, 24, no. 6, 1969. 127 N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, 1970; T. Manteuffel, Naissance d'une heresie, Paris and The Hague, 1970. 128 M. de Gandillac, Valeur du temps dans la pedagogie spirituelle de Jean Tauler, Montreal and Paris, 1956, p. 42. 129 O. Spengler, Decline of the West, vol. I, London, 1929. 130 J. Le Goff, 'Le temps du travail dans la crise du XVle siecle: du temps medieval au temps moderne', Le Moyen Age, t. LXIX, 1963.

[330]

[331]

Notes to pages 165-178

Notes to pages 149-165 131 C. M. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture, 1300-1700, London, 1967, pp. 80-7. 132 L. B. Alberti, 'Della famiglia', Opere volgari, vol. I,Bari, 1960, pp. 168-70. We find the new attitude to time

powerfully expressed at the close of the Renaissance in the poems of John Donne and in Shakespeare. 'The time is out of joint,' cries Hamlet. 'Oh cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.' 133 G. ~aris, La Litterature franfaise au Moyen Age. 2e ed., Pans, 1890, p. 30; L. Febvre, Le probleme de l'incroyance au XVIe siecle. La religion de Rabelais, Paris, 1942, pp. 426-34; M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 118.

Chapter V 'The country is built on law ... ' R. David, Les grands systemes de droit contemporains, Paris, 1971.

2 F. J ouon des Longrais, L'Est et l'Ouest. Institutions du Japon et de I'Occident comparees, TokYb and Paris, 1958, p. 256. 3 R. David, op. cit. 4 M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, 'Proiskhozhdenie poezii skal'dov', Skandinavskij Sbornik, III, Tallinn, 1958, p. 188. 5 See Einar Ol'geirsson, 1z proshlogo islandskogo naroda. Rodovoj stroj i gosudarstvo v Islandii, Moscow, 1957. 6 G. Ch. von Unruh, 'Wargus. Friedlosigkeit und magischkultische Vorstellungen bei den Germanen', Zeitschrift der Savigny Sti[tung fur Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 74 Bd, 1957. 7 E. Leisi, 'Aufschlussreiche altenglische Wortinhalte', Sprache-Schlussel zur Welt, Dusseldorf, 1959. 8 W. Ullmann, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, Baltimore, Maryland, 1966, p. 38. 9 A. Dempf, Sacrum Imperium, S. 8 ff., 147 H. 10 E. H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae. A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946; P. E. Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, Stuttgart, Bd I-III, 1954-6. 11 G. Post, 'Sovereignty and its Limitations in the Middle Ages (1150-1350)" XIII International Congress of Historical Sciences, Moscow, 1970. 12 G. Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, Oxford, 1940, p. 22.

[332]

~

1

I

13 W. Ullmann, 'Law and the Medieval Historian', XIe Congres International des Sciences Historiques, Stockholm, 21-28 aout 1960. Rapports. III. Moyen Age, Goteborg, Stockholm and Uppsala, 1960, p. 36. 14 Quoted from B. Jarrett, Social Theories of the Middle Ages, 1200-1500, New York, 1966, p. 17. 15 F. Kern, 'Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter', Historische Zeitschrift, 120 Bd, 1919, S. 3 ff. 16 'Das Riistringer Recht, hrsg. von W. J. Burna und W. Ebel', Altfriesische Rechtsquellen, Bd I, Gottingen, Berlin and Frankfurt, 1963, S. 24-32. 17 F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Bd I, Halle a. S., 1898, S. 26 ff., 46. 18 Die Gesetze der Langobarden, hrsg. von F. Beyerle, Weimar, 1947~ S. 2. 19 Quoted from F. Kern, Gottesgnadentum und Widerstandsrecht im fruheren Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1914, S. 167. Anhang XVII, S. 372-6. 20 Etymolog., IX, 3, § 4, PL, t. 82, col. 342. 21 S. B. Chrimes, English Constitutional History, London, 1967, p.69. 22 F. Kern, Gottesgnadentum . .. , S. 177-8, 389-92. 23 See F. J. Dolger, Antike und Christentum. Kultur- und Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, Bd I, 1, Munster, 1929, S. 79

f. 24 P. Meinhold, Geschichte der kirchlichen Historiographie, Bd I, Munich, 1967, S. 155-6. 25· J. Sporl, 'Das Alte und das Neue im Mittelalter. Studien zum

26 27

28 29 30 31

Problem des mittelalterlichen FortschrittsbewuBtseins', Historisches Jahrbuch, 50 Bd, 3 H., 1930. E. Goldmann, 'Cartam levare', Mitteilungen des Instituts fur Osterreichischen Geschichtsforschung, 35 Bd, 1 H., 1914. M. Kos, 'Carta sine litteris', Mitteilungen des Instituts fur Osterreichischen Geschichtsforschung, 62 Bd, 1954, S. 98-100. J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthumer, Bd I, Berlin, 1956, S. 550. H. Fuhrmann, Einfluss und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Falschungen, I-III, Stuttgart, 1972-4. M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 142. T. F. Tout, 'Mediaeval Forgers and Forgeries', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, vol. 5, 1919.

[333]

Notes to pages 178-203

Notes to pages 203-222

32 O. L. Vainshtein, Zapadnoevropejskaya srednevekovaya istoriographiya, pp. 87 f. 33 K. BosI, 'Zu einer Soziologie der mittelalterlichen Falschung', Fruhformen der Gesellschaft im m'ittelalterlichen Europa, Munich and Vienna, 1964, S. 414 ff. 34 P. Rousset, 'La croyance en la justice immanente a l'epoque feodale', Le Moyen Age, t. LIV, no. 3-4, 1948, p. 227 ss. 35 P. Rousset, 'Le sens du merveilleux al'epoque feodale', Le Moyen Age, t. LXII, no. 1-2, 1956, pp. 32-3. 36 M. A. Zaborov, Vvedenie v istoriographiyu krestovykh pokhodov, Moscow, 1966, pp. 70 f., 89. 37 L. Genicot, 'Valeur de la personne ou sens du concreto A la base de la societe du haut moyen age', Miscellanea Mediaevalia in memoriam Jan Frederic Niermeyer, Groningen, 1967. 38 A. P. Kazhdan, Vizantijskaya kul'tura (X-XII vv.), Moscow, 1968, pp. 49 f. 39 A. P. Kazhdan, '0 sotsial'noj prirode vizantijskogo samoderzhaviya', Narody Azii i Afriki, 1966, no. 6, pp. 52-64. 40 Anne Comnena, The Alexiad of Anne Comnena, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1969. 41 K. BosI, Fruhformen der Gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Europa, pp. 39, 58, 185. ...... T\ t rr TT'JI • ..,..., I '" r 1 1 '1"":::' 1'. V mograaoII, vtuemage m cngtana, vxrora, HS '1,l , cn. 11; E. A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century, Oxford, 1956; M. A~ Barg, Issledovaniya po istorii anglijskogo feodalizma v XI-XIII vv, Moscow, 1962, pp. 254 f. 43 Quoted in R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, London, 1953, p. 104. 44 Adalberonis, Carmen ad Rotbertum regem Francorum, PL, t. 141, Paris, 1853, col. 781-2. 45 G. Gusdorf, Signification humaine de la liberte, Paris, 1962, pp. 81 ss. 46 F. Graus, 'Litterature et mentalite medievales: Ie roi et Ie peuple', Historica, XVI, Prague, 1969, pp. 58 ss. 47 E. Fromm, Escape from Freedom, New York and Toronto, 1941, pp.41-3. 48 F. Graus, Yolk, H errscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger, Prague, 1965, S. 300 f. 49 J. Huizinga, Le Deciin du Moyen Age, Paris, 1948, p. 51. 50 P. A. Fridman, ' "Kodeks" i "zakony" kurtuaznogo sIuzheniya dame v lyubovnoj lirike trubadurov', Uchenye

zapiski Ryazanskogo gospedinstituta, t. 34, vyp. II, Moscow, 1966, pp. 64 f. 51 E. de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthetique medievale, t. 2, Bruges, 1946, pp. 177-80. 52 E. Koehler, 'Observations historiques et sociologiques sur la poesie des troubadours', p. 34. 53 M. B. Meilach, Jazyk trubadurov, Moscow, 1975. 54 A. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, New York, 1967, pp. 207-10. 55 V. Shishmarev, Lirika i liriki pozdnego srednevekov'ya. Ocherki po istorii poezii Frantsii i Provansa, Paris, 1911, pp. 296-7; E. Wechsler, Das Kulturproblem des Minnesangs, Bd 1, Halle a. S., 1909, p. 105 ff.; E. Koehler, op. cit., p. 45. 56 M.-D. Chenu, 'L'homme et la nature. Perspectives sur la Renaissance du XIIe siecle', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age, 27 annee, 1953, p. 62. 57 Das Stadtbuch von Augsburg, hrsg. von Chr. Meyer, Augsburg, 1872, S. 240-4. 58 Documents relatifs l'histoire de l'industrie et du commerce en France, publies par G. fa*gniez, I, Paris, 1898, no. 130. 59 Snorri Sturluson, H eimskringla, II, Olafs saga Tryggvasonar, kap. 88. 60 F. T onnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1926, S.

,\T~

4,.,"'....

[334]

TT

a

?? -~c;-~ --, -.

Chapter VI Medieval attitudes to wealth and labour 1 S. Bolin, Ur penningens historia, Stockholm, 1962. 2 Edda, hrsg. von G. N eckel und H. Kuhn, Heidelberg, 1962, S. 131. 3 Gulathings-Lov, 223, 270. Norges gamle Love indtil1387. Bd 1, Christiania, 1846. 4 F. T. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents of the 9th and 10th Centuries, Manchester, 1914, n. 2. 5 K. H. Ganahl, 'Hufe und W ergeld', Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 53 Bd, 1933. 6 Havamal. Elder Edda, trans P. B. Taylor and W. H. Auden, New York, 1969, p. 57. 7 A. Val de Lievre, Launegild und Wadia, Innsbruck, 1877; K. v. Amira, Nordgermanisches Obligationenre£ht, I Bd, Leipzig, 1882, S. 506 ff. ;M. Pappenheim, 'Uber die Rechtsnatur der altgermanischen Schenkung', Zeitschrift der

[335]

Notes to pages 222-232 Savigny Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte.Germanistische Abteilung, 53 Bd, 1933. 8 E. Benveniste, 'Don et echange dans Ie vocabulaire indoeuropeen', Problemes de linguistique generale, Paris, 1966, pp. 317 ss. 9 R. Thurnwald, Economies in Primitive Communities, Oxford, 1932; M. J. Herskovits, Economic Anthropology, New York, 1952; J. H. Michel, La gratuite dans Ie droit romain, Brussels, 1962; J. Bardach, 'La donation reciproque en Lituanie aux XVe et XVIe siecles', Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, vol. I, 1969; A. J a. Gurevic, Le origini del feudalismo, Rome and Beri, 1982. 10 V. Gronbech, The Culture of the Teutons, vol. II, pp. 6 f., 16 f., 54. 11 12 13 14 15

16

17

18

19 20 21

Havamal. Elder Edda, op. cit., p. 37. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 44. Edda, hrsg. von G. Neckel und H. Kuhn, S. 39. V. Machek, 'Sl. gospod', lat. hostes et lit. vieS pats , , Slavica, VIII, Debrecen, 1968. M. Mauss, 'Essai sur Ie don. Forme et raison de l'echange dans les societes archaiques', Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris, 1950. J. Blumenstengel, Wesen und Funktion des Banketts im Beowulf, Marburg, 1964. Ritual feasts were also held in the Middle Ages. See K. Hauck, 'Rituelle Speisegemeinschaft im 10 und 11 Jahrhundert', Studium generale, 3 Jg, H. 11, 1950. H. C. Peyer, 'Das Reisekonigtum des Mittelalters', Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 51 Bd, 1 H., 1964; C. Bruhl, Fodrum, Gistum, Servitium Regis, I-II, Cologne and Graz, 1968. A kenning for 'bracelets'. A kenning for 'hand'. Egils saga, ch. 55, trans. Gwyn Jones, New York, 1960. pp.

Notes to pages 232-249 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42

43 44 45

46

Hlothhere and Eadric, 12-14; Ine, 6, § 5; ibid., pp. 20, 38. VI Aethelstan, 8 § 1. Ibid., p. 162. Gragas, 115. Grimnismal. Elder Edda, op. cit., p. 61. Havamal. Ibid., p. 38. . St Piekarczyk, Barbarzyncy i chrzeScijanstwo. Konfrontacte spotecznych postaw i wzorc6w u German6w, Warsaw, 1968, s. 98 ss. Havamal. Elder Edda, op. cit., p. 45. Ibid., p. 42. Edda, hrsg. von G. Neckel und H. Kuhn, S. 281. Ibid., S. 283. Gulathings-Lov, 145. Frostathings-Lov, XV, 8. Landnamab6k Islands. Einar Arnorsson bj6 til prentunar, Reykjavik, 1948, bis. 13, 14,24, 207, 211, 221. The meaning is unclear; perhaps 'rich', 'fat', or it may be a proper name. Havamal. Elder Edda, op. cit., p. 47. Ibid., pp. 47, 48. Ibid., p. 47. St. Piekarczyk, 'Zur Frage der intern en und externen Funktionen des fruhmittelalterlichen Staates und der Ideoiogie verschiedener GeseHschaftsschichten im Lichte cler skandinavischen Quellen', L'Europe aux IXe_XIe siecies, Warsaw, 1968, s. 441, n. 33; idem, Barbarzyncy i chrzescijanstwo~ s. 141-2, 240-1. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 2, quaest. 186, art.

3. 47 H. v. Eicken, Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, S. 500. 48 Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 2, quaest. 66, art.

22 Heimskringla, History of the Kings of Norway, trans. Lee M. Hollander, New York, 1964, p. 71. 23 Gulathings-Lov, 270. 24 A. Y. Gurevich, Svobodnoe krest'yanstvo feodal'noj Norvegii, Moscow, 1967, pp. 139-49, 249-50. 25 Gulathings-Lov, 126, 141. 26 Gulathings-Lov, 6, 7. 27 Aethelbert, 3. The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. F. L. Attenborough, New York, 1963, p. 4.

2. 49 Ibid., quaest. 118, art. 1, 2. 50 R. Le J an-Hennebicque, ' "Pauperes" et "paupertas" dans l'Occident carolingien aux IX et X siecles', Revue du Nord, t. L, no. 197, 1968, p. 186. 51 M. Mollat, Les pauvres au Moyen Age, Paris, 1978. . . 52 S. Painter, French Chivalry. Chivalric Ideas and Practtces tn Mediaeval France, Ithaca, New York, 1957. 53 M. Bloch, La societe leo dale , pp. 432-3. 54 J. Frappier, 'Vues sur Ies conceptions courtoises dans les . litteratures d'oc et d'oil au XIIe siecle', Cahiers de civilisatton

[336]

[337]

132-3.

Notes to pages 250-267 medievale, II, no. 2, 1959, p. 141. 55 E. Kohler, Trobadorlyrik und hofischer Roman. Aufsatze zur franzosischen und provenzalischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Berlin, 1962, S. 48, 73. 56 R. A. Fridman, Lyubovnaya lirika ... , str. 178. 57 G. Duby, Hommes et structures du Moyen Age, Paris and The Hague, 1~73, pp. 213-25. 58 R. A. Fridman, Lyubovnaya Iirika ... , str. 180, 323, 327. 59 R. A. Fridman, 'Kodeks'i 'zakony' kurtuaznogo sluzheniya dame . .. , str. 74 f., 83. 60 L. J. Paetow, Morale Scolarium of John of Garland, Berkeley, 1927, pp. 195-6; Petri Cantoris, Verbum Abbreviatum, PL, t. 205, Paris, 1855, col. 78-82. 61 Quoted from M. Bloch, Seigneurie franfaise et manoir anglais, Paris, 1960, p. 555. 62 K. Marx, Early Writings, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1975, p. 318. 63 Ibid., p. 317. 64 H. v. Eicken, op. cit., S. 490. Bernard of Clairvaux, 'De modo bene vivendi', Sermo 53. 65 H. v. Eicken, op. cit. 66 Die Klosterregel des Heiligen Benedikt, Beuron, 1947, Kap. 57. 67 K. Thomas, 'Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial SocietY', Past and Present, 1964, no. 29, p. 56. 68 The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. III, Cambridge, 1963, p. 574. 69 Aelfric's Colloquy, ed. G. N. Garmonsway, London, 1939, 219-37. 70 J. Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages, London, 1969, p. 78. 71 J. A. Yunck, 'Economic Conservatism, Papal Finance, and the Medieval Satires on Rome', Change in Medieval Society, ed. S. Thrupp, London, 1965. 72 E. Male, L'art religieux du XllIe siecie en France, pp. 28, 64 ss., 131. 73 J. Le Goff, 'Metier et profession d'apres les manuels de confesseurs au moyen age', Beitrage tum Berufsbewusstsein des mittelalterlichen M enschen, Berlin, 1964, S. 49-60. 74 G. Post, K. Giocarinis and R. Kay, 'The Medieval Heritage of a Humanistic Ideal: "scientia, donum dei est, unde vendi non potest" " Traditio, vol. XI, no. 4, 1955, pp. 232 ff. 75 See E. R. Curtius, op. cit., S. 465. ' 76 O. Jodogne, 'La personnalite de l'ecrivain d'oil du XIIe au

[338]

Notes to pages 267-279

77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87

XIVe siecle', L'h umanisme medieval dans les litteratu,res romanes du Xlle au XIVe siecie, Paris, 1964; F. Tschlrch, 'Das Selbstverstandnis des mittelalterlichen deutschen Dichters', Beitrage zum Berufsbewusstsein des mittelalterlichen Menschen, Berlin, 1964. K. Marx, Early Writings, p. 337. W. Sombart, Der Bourgeois, Munich and Leipzig, 1913, S. 19. Reformation Kaiser Siegmunds, hrsg. von H. Keller, Stuttgart, 1964, S. 270. K. Thomas, op. cit., p. 55. John Milton, Paradise Lost. William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, VII, 6-7. Adalberonis, Carmen . . ., PL, t. 141, col. 78-1-2. Histoire generale du travail, II, p. 9. H. Grundmann, 'Adelsbekehrungen im Hochmittelalter', Adel und Kirche. Festschrift fur Gerd Tellenbach, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna, 1968. Riches et pauvres dans l'eglise ancienne, Paris, 1962. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 2, quaest. 50, art.

3. 88 Ibid., II, 2, quaest. 77, art. 4. 89 J. Le Goff, La civilisation de I'Occident medieval, p. 326. ___ ........1 A·· 1 • TT ';;JU Ihomae 1\.qumatls, ;)umma lfJeowgtca, 11, .i., quaesl:. "t/, an. 10; quaest. 152, art. 4. 91 J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, London, . 1955, p. 85 ff. 92 J. W. Baldwin, The Medieval Theories of the Just Pnce, Philadelphia, 1959, p. 60. 93 Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 2, quaest. 58, art. 11. 94 J. Ibanes, La doctrine de l'eglise et les realiteseconomiques au Xllle siecie, Paris, 1967, pp. 33, 39, 57, 100, 102. 95 Quoted in W. J. Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History, 1888-93. 96 Ibid. 97 See J. T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, pp. 38-9. 98 J. W. Baldwin, op. cit., p. 27-9. 99 Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, II, 2, qua~st. 78. 100 Robert de Curzon, William of Auxerre (early thlrteenth century). Quoted from J. T. Noonan, op. cit., pp. 39, 41, 43. The Roman lawyers already give this etymology. rot

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Notes to pages '279-299 101 Ibid., pp. 43-4 f.

102 Dante Alighieri, Inferno XI, 49-50, 95-96, 109-10. 103 J. T. Noonan, op. cit., p. 79. 104 R. De Roover, San Bernardino of Siena and Sant' Antonino of Florence: the Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages, Boston, 1967. 105 R. De Roover, 'The Decline of the Medici Bank', Journal of Economic History, vol. VII, N 1,1947, p. 73 ff.; idem, The Rise and Deelineof the Medici Bank 1397-1494, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, pp. 13 ff., 112, 121. 106 H. Lapeyre, Une Famille de Marchands les Ruiz, Paris, 1955. 107 A. Sapori, Le marchand italien au Moyen Age, Paris, 1952, p. XVIII. 108 H. Pirenne, Histoire economique et sociale du Moyen Age, Paris, 1963, pp. 99-100, 115. 109 E. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Grupp en , Tiibingen, 1919, S. 244 ff., 295 ff., 329.

Chapter VII Conclusion: In search of human personality 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8

9 10 11

M.-D. Chenu, La theologie au douzieme sieele, p. 162. P. Bitsilli, Elementy srednevekovoj kul'tury, pp. 4-5. W. J. Brandt,op. cit., pp. 33 ff. .. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Rohentwurf), 1857-1858, Moscow, 1939, S. 6. Paulys Realencyelopadie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 37 Halbb., Stuttgart, 1937, col. 1040-1. M. Mauss, 'Une categorie de l'esprit humain: la notion de personne, celle de moi', Sociologie et anthropologie, p. 335-62. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa Theologica, I, quaest. 29, art. 3. See Personlichkeitsforschung und Personlichkeitstheorie, hrsg. von Ph. Lersch und H. Thomae, Gottingen, 1960, S. 8-9; H. Rheinfelder, Das Wort persona. Geschichte seiner Bedeutungen mit besonderer Berucksichtigung des franzosischen und italienischen Mittelalters, Halle (Saale), 1928. M.-D. Chenu, La theologie au douzieme sieele, p. 52 S8. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, IV, 34-6, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. W. Ullmann, 'Some Observations on the Medieval Evaluation of the hom*o Naturalis and the Christianus', L'homme et son destin d'apres les penseurs du moyen age, p. 145 ss.

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Notes to pages 301-309 12 W. Ullmann, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, p. 37. 13 P. Lehmann, 'Autobiographies of the Middle Ages', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 3, London, 1953, p. 47. 14 G. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, III Bd, 1 H., Frankfurt am Main, 1959, S. 529. 15 L. Zoepf, Das Heiligen-Leben im 10. Jahrhundert, Leipzig and Berlin, 1908; R. Teuffel, Individuelle Personlichkeitsschilderung in den deutschen Geschichtswerken des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1914. 16 W. J. Brandt, op. cit., p. 109. 17 H. Winkel, Aspekte mittelalterlicher Erziehung, Munich, 1968, S. 67, 74 H. 18 Ph. Aries, L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1960. 19 See: L. Genicot, Le Xllle sieele europeen, Paris, 1968, p. 212 ss. 20 Thomae Aquinatis, Contra gentil., III, 113. See also E. Gilson, L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, pp. 174-5. . 21 A. Krempel, 'Hierarchie des fins d'une societe d'apres Samt Thomas', L'homme et son destin . .. , pp. 611-18. 22 The Status of the Individual in East and West, ed. Ch. A. Moore, Honolulu; 1968; p. 563.

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INDEX

Abelard, Peter, 85, 302 Adalberon, Bishop, 195, 269 Adam of Bremen, 73 Adhemar of Chabannes, 68 Aelfric, Bishop, 262 'age', in barbarian society, 95-7 age, average, in Middle Ages, 123-4 Aidan, Saint, 85 Alan of Lille, 59, 61 Alberti, Leone Battista, 50 Alcuin, 243 Alfred, King of England, 166 alms, 242-3 anachronism, 129-30 ancestors, cult of, 99-101 Anselm of Canterbury, 143, 195 Anselm of Havelberg, 124 Antoninus, Archbishop, 281 Apocalypse, 122-3 Ari porgilsson, 103 Aries, P., 306 Aristotle, 89, 120, 213, 398 art: anonymity in, 37-8; barbarian, 78-9; illustrating law codes, 256-7; landscape in, 62, 66-7; microcosm/ macrocosm depicted in, 59-60; theology of, 38 f.; time and space in, 35-7, 86-90 Arthurian romances, 75, 76-7, 134, 253 asceticism, 244-6 Asgaror, 47, 49-50 atomisation, 107 Augustine, Saint: on dualism, 58; on freedom, 196; on possessions, 241;

on time, 113-17, 121-2, 127, 131, 136; on the self, 299-300 autobiography, 301-2 Averroism, 142 Bakhtin, M. M., 33, 53 banking, 281-4 baptism, 162, 299 barbarian society: age, concept of, 95-7; art, 35-7, 78-80, 86-90; calendars, 94-5; feasts and gifts, 221-39; labour and property, 235-9; law, 156-62; relationship with nature, 45-53; spatial symbolism, 78-80; time, concept of, 94-104, 147-50; wealth, 215-39; see also Scandinavia Basil, Saint, 73 Bede, 71, 73, 109, 118, 122 Benedictines, 241 Benzo of Alba, Bishop, 126 Bernard of Chartres, 119 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 61-2, 143, 240, 260, 261 Bertran de Born, 63 bestiaries, 68 Biese, A., 62, 63 Bitsilli, P. M., 68-9, 293 Bloch, Marc, 177, 248 Boethius, 296, 308 Boll, Heinrich, 143 Bonaventura, Saint, 120, 127, 279 Boniface VIII, Pope, 171 Bosch, H., 53 Brandt, W., 303

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Index Bridget, Saint, 85 Brueghel, P., 53 Byzantine Empire, 190-2 calendars, 94-5, 104-5, 108 Carmina Burana, 123 Cassiodorus, 73 cathedrals, 71, 88-9, 265, 289, 291 change and development, medieval attitude to, 124, 129 f., 170, 293-4 Chanson de Roland; 62, 76, 196 Chartres, 265 childhood, 306-7 China, 155-6 chivalry, 131,201-5; see also courtly love Chretien de Troyes, 131, 134-6 Christian and infidel world, 75-7 Christian concept of space, 70-8 Christian view of cosmos, 58 f. Christianity: and pagan myths, 50-1; western and eastern churches contrasted, 140 chroniclers, 303-4; see also history Clement of Alexandria, 272, 275 clocks, 105-6, 147-50 co*ckaigne, land of, 270 corporate body, 187.,..90 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 73 courtly love and poetry, 76-7, 134-6, 196, 202-5, 249-53 craftsmanship, 207-9, 267-8 cupidity, 242 f. Dante Alighieri, 72, 74, 84, 86, 122, 138-9, 280, 291, 299, 309 day, division of, 105-6 Dempf, A., 118 De Roover, R., 281 distance, 85, 102-3 dualism, 58, 72, 112, 116 Duns Scotus, 309 earth, shape of, 73 Egils saga, 228-9 Elder Edda, 48, 101, 136, 219 Eligius, Saint, 262 encyclopaedias, 289 epic, the, 62, 76-7, 134, 202 eternity, 103, 110-11, 114-16, 118-19 etymologies, 105-6, 291-2 Eusebius, 115 extravagance, 247-50; see also feasts

family, concept of, 306-7 Fate, 142-3 feasts: in barbarian society, 226-34; in feudal society, 247-9 fidelity, 169-70, 178, 196, 300 fiefs, 255-7 forgery, 177 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 64, 245 freedom, 193-8 future, 101, 122-5 Ganzenmiiller, W., 64-5 Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 208-9 genealogies, 99-100, 108-9 generosity, 247-50 Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II), 147 gifts, exchange of, 221-39 Glaber, R., 68 Gothic style, 88-9 Gragas (Icelandic law code), 102 Greek view of time, 31-3 Grimnismal, 48, 50 'grotesque body', 53-4, 310 guilds, 205-7, 232, 267-8 Hadrian IV, Pope, 290 Hdvamal, 222-5, 227, 233, 237 Heimskringla, 51, 96, 207 Henry II, King of England, 171 heresy, 301 Hermann of Reichenau, 132 Herrad of Landsberg, Abbess, 59 hierarchy, heavenly and earthly, 70-1 Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess, 59, 132 historiography, Christian, 117 f. history and historians: barbarian, 100, 103-4; medieval, 68-9, 109 f., 303-4 hoarding, 217-19 holy places, 74, 76 Honorius Augustodunensis, 59, 71, 106-7, 114, 119, 121, 292 hospitality, see feasts hour, division of, 106-7 Hrabanus Maurus, 83, 243 Hugh of St Victor, 274, 292 'ideal type' in medieval society, 244-5 individual, in medieval society, 185-207, 273, 295-311 infidel, 75-7 Isidore of Seville, 73, 106-7, 109, 132, 292 islendingab6k, 103-4

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Index Lorris, G. de, 135 Losev, A. L., 31

Jerome, Saint, 130, 276 Jerusalem, 73, 75 Joachim of Floris, 126-8 John, King of England, 171 John Chrysostom, Saint, 276 John of Garland, 105 John of Salisbury, 61,119,124 John Scoms Eriugena, 70, 114 justice, 273-5; see also law 'just price', 274, 277-8 Katznelson, S. D., 81 knightly ideal, 245 knights, as individuals, 200-5, 303 Knights Templar, 263 Konrad, N. 1., 33 labour: in ancient world, 212-14; barbarian attitude to, 234-7; Christian view of, 214 f.; and church, 259-63; and feudal lords, 259; intellectual, 266; and peasants, 264-70; and property, 235-7; as punishment, 260, 265 lag (law), definition of, 157-8 Lambert of St-Omer, 73 land: measurement of, 55-6; ownership of, 45-8, 254-8 landscape, 42-5; in art, 66-7; in poetry,

66-7 Langland, W., 269 language, 37, 80-2, 128-9 Laon, 265 Last Judgment, 116, 143, 145, 179 Latin, 128 Lauffer, 0., 62 law: antiquity of, 165-70; in barbarian society, 156-62; and Christianity, 162 f.; and custom, 183-5; and monarch, 163-4, 167-70; and morality, 160-2; and religion, 154-5; as source of conflict, 171; of the strong, 182; and world order, 165 Le Goff, J., 35, 37, 143 legal categories, 171-3 legal ritual, 173-4 legal texts, 176 f. Leges barbararum, 176, 206, 220-1 Likhachev, D. S., 36 literature and the concept of time, 38; see also poetry Lives of the Saints, 63, 133, 200, 302-3 Lollards, '269

Machek, V., 226 'magic dependence', 222-3 Magna Carta, 169, 171, 180, 191 Maitland, F. W., 55 Mile, E., 38 Mandelstam, 0., 138 Mann, T., 30 Map, Walter, 124 Marx, Karl, 185, 257-8, 259, 296 measurement, 54-6 Menard, P., 135-6 merchant class, rise of, 272-3 microcosm and macrocosm, concept of, 57 f. Midgardr, 47-52 Milton, John, 269 miracles, 179 Misch, G., 302 monarchs, 163-4, 167-9, 180 monastic orders, 241, 261-3 music, 61 Muslim society, 155 myth, Christian, 112; and time, 98-9 nature: barbarian man's relationship with, 45-53; rnedieval man's relationship with, 44-5, 53 f., 310; theological view of, 64 f. Needham, J., 30-1 Neo-Platonism, Christian, 82-5, 87, 115, 120, 142, 294 night, 107-8 Njdls saga, 52 number, 56, 61, 290-1 oaths, 175 adal, 45-6, 48 Old and New Testaments, correlation between, 129-30 Old Norse, partitive attributes in, 80-2 Ordericus Vitalis, 119, 123 Oriental cultures: and individuality, 309; and time, 30-1 Origen, 113, 115, 261 Orosius, 116 Otto of Bamberg, Bishop, 63 Otto of Freising, 117, 131, 132 outlawing, 159 ownership, feudal, 254-8

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Index

Index Panofsky, E., 88, 89 Paul, Saint, 82 peasants: compared with serfs, 194; compared with slaves, 187, 194; and individuality, 199-200; and labour, 264-70 persona, 296-7 personality, 295-311; see also individual perspective, and inverse perspective, 86-8 pessimism, historical, 122-5 Peter Damian, 143 Peter Lombard, 120 Peter of Blois, 119 Philip IV, King of France, 171, 263 pilgrimage, 74 Pirenne, H., 283 plagiarism, 128-9 Plato, 32, 115, 213 Plotinus, 115 plunder, 216-19, 253 poetry, medieval, 38; of chivalry, 202-5; nature portrayed in, 62-3, 66-7; time in, 134-40 poets, 266-7 population mobility, 44-5 portraiture, 133 potlatch, 248 poverty, as a virtue, 240-6; see also wealth pretenders, 178 profit, 276-85 progress, lack of concept of, 132-3; see also change property, 45-7,239-44 Pseudo-Dionysius, 58, 70 Pseudo-Isidore, 177 real, and imaginary, in literature, 38 reciprocity, 186-7 rectitude, rule of, 273-4 Regino von Prom, 132 Renaissance man, 34, 85-6 Roman civilisation, 296 Roman de la Rose, 135 Rothari, King of the Lombards, 167 Ruiz, Simon, 283 Sacchetti, F., 85 sagas, 48-52, 95-7, 99-100, 104, 207, 217, 227 saints, 63, 133, 200, 244-6, 302-3

Salic Law, 180 scale, in art, 78-9 Scandinavia: art, 78-80; history, 100, 103-4; mythology, 47-52, 97-9; poetry, 49-52, 79-81, 95-101, 137, 227-9; topography, 47-52 Scriptures, interpretation of, 82-4 self-evaluation, of medieval man, 85-6 Semur, 265 service, concept of, 186-7, 193, 196 Sigebert of Gembloux, 132 Siger of Brabant, 142 Snorri Sturluson, 45-52, 96-7 social categories and legal categories, 171-3 social relationships, 185 f. Song of the Sybil, 95-6, 101 space: abstract notion of, 89; and archaic culture, 28-9; artistic representation of, 35-7, 66-7; Christian concept of, 70-8; measurement of, 54-6, 290; modern concept of, 28; in poetry, 76-7; symbolic perception of, 77 f.; urbanisation and concept of, 90-1 speed, 28 Spengler, 0., 34, 147 spheres, of universe, 71-2 state, organic view of, 61 status, legal, 171-2 Stockmayer, G., 63, 64 Sverris saga, 97

of, 101, 137-8, 290; urbanisation and, 146-51 Tonnies, F., 208 topography: Christian, 73-8; Scandinavian, 47-52 town charters, 170 town dwellers, 205-9 towns, see urbanisation trade, theological view of, 276-85 Translatio imperii (transmission of power), 131 Translatio studii (transmission of knowledge), 131 travel, 43-4, 74-5, 85, 102-3 troubadours, 62-3, 202-5, 249-53 universe, 71-3 'up' and 'down', 72 uprisings, 269-70 urbanisation, 35, 90-1, 146-51 usury, 141, 279-84, 290 vices and virtues, personification of, 304

Vincent of Lerins, 170 violence, 182, 269-70 Walcher, 105 Walther von der Vogelweide, 266 wealth: in ancient world, 212-14; barbarian attitude to, 215-39; Christian attitude to, 214-15; in medieval society, 246 f.; right use of, 271 f. wergild, 220-1 Wheel of Fortune, 141-2 Whitrow, G. J., 28 William of Conches, 73, 125 Wolff, P., 271 words, 291-2 'world tree', 60 Ynglinga saga, 50 Younger Edda, 49

Zodiac, 108

T ertullian, 115 theology of work, 265 Thietmar of Merseburg, 108 Thomas Aquinas, Saint: on cosmos, 86; on law, 165; on poverty and wealth, 240, 241, 242, 272; on the self, 297, 308-9; on time and eternity, 119, 120, 127; on trade, 275, 276, 278 Thomas a Becket, 171 time: and archaic culture, 28-9, 98-9; artistic, 35-7, 133-9; in barbarian society, 94-104, 147-50; biblical, 121-2; Christianity and concept of, 104 f; cyclical view of, 29-33, 110-12, 141-2, 143; historical, 110 f.; linear view of, 29-30, 32, 113 f.; mechanical reckoning of, 105-6; modern concept of, 27-8; mythological, 98-9; sacral, 109-10; social, 144-5; spatial understanding

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