hrj | May. 9th, 2013

May. 9th, 2013

It's time once again for the Kalamazoo Sessions Live-Blog!

I got started a little late on this session because I needed to get my wi-fi access set up, so the first one is a bit more incoherent than I like.

Session 1 Valley III 303 -- Women and Authority: Truth and Testimony in Late Medieval English Courts
Organizer: Jennifer McNabb, Western Illinois Univ. Presider: Karl Shoemaker, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison

Witness Testimony and the Ecclesiastical and Municipal Regulation of Midwifery in the Late Middle Ages
Ginger L. Smoak, Univ. of Utah

Exploration of the ways in which authorities imposed regulation on midwives in the context of their correctly performing religious duties, e.g., emergency baptisms, where they are required to prioritize baptism even over life of mother. Similarly religious regulation motivation for prohibition on use of prayers or charms to ease childbirth. Midwives vulnerable to prosecution if they didn't enter into regulatory relationship, but also vulnerable to charges of malpractice if they did, e.g., for baptizing stillborn children. Midwives needed witnesses to prove they'd followed correct procedures, hence the practice of having a 2nd midwife or having a priest present as witness at the birth. Practicing without a license was a hazard because they weren't established as valid religious practioners, not because of medical concerns. Midwives as witnesses often had different goals from the regulating authorities and were thought to be prone to protecting their patients' secrets rather than testifying against them. Although registration was ostensibly secular, it often specified getting a license from the bishop. Could also include being evaluated by a male physician. When midwive-licensing grew more obligatory, there was a simultaneous crackdown on male unlicensed medical practitioners. Licensed midwives were sworn to attend any woman in need and forbidden to leave one birth for another, e.g., for a higher fee. License included an oath to report unlicensed practitioners to the authorities. Set up board of female supervisors who monitored practitioners and made regular reports. This created a pressure toward standardization of care. Certain types of birth problems (e.g., deformity, stillbirth) required verification by a physician.

Changes in regulation of midwives was not necessarily intended to limit or discourage their practice, but to standardize practice and add supervision more in the line of quality control.

“That Right May Take Place”: Female Witnesses and Their Stories in Late Medieval English Church Courts
Jennifer McNabb

Uses of courts by women for dispute resolution. Gendered patterns in how witnesses presented and framed testimony. Testimony was necessarily an artificially constructed narrative, based on formal interrogatories and versions of the witness's responses as recorded by a third party acting as an agent of the court. Combination of what witnesses intended to share and what clerks chose to record.

Types of cases include not only defamation suits, but also apparently objective subjects such as probate (e.g., how valuation of goods is pressnted). Suits regarding non-ecclesiastical matrimonial arrangements are a fertile ground for gendered framing of testimony. Matrimonial-related suits from Chester include 30% female testimony. Memories of exact wording of marital contracts was key as statements of present consent was the relevant requirement. As irregular marital contracts were often performed in female-dominated spaces, women were often key witnesses. Additional testimony covered the behavior of the couple (gestures of affection, use of forms of address indicating spousehood, exchange of gifts, etc.) even though this was not definitive evidence of a contract. Other topics of testimony included the clothing worn, tone of voice during the spoken contract, prior behavior of the couple. Testimony of consummation, particularly regarding child-brides, was typically provided by female servants. But the testimony also shows how women were often drivers of creating the context or evidence that consummation had taken place.

Breach of contract suits include similar types of evidence for the existence of a marital contract. "Spousal behavior" constituted evidence of a marital contract. But similarly testimony around apparent spousal behavior could be used when denying a contract, e.g., explaining how a man came to have in his possession a woman's glove (typically a spousal-type gift) by claiming he had bought it from another person.

Women's knowledge of the law was often deliberately framed based on the desired outcome (e.g., ignorance of the types of behavior that could support a conclusion of marriage might be presented by a woman who wanted the allegation of marriage denied, claiming "we didn't marry in the church so I thought I wasn't married", while a desired judgement supporting the marriage would include very detailed knowledge of how this supporting evidence should be construed.

Female witnesses therefore had a great deal of agency in constructing the desired outcome using nuanced manipulation of the content and framing of the testimony.

Marking the Woman a Sinner: Testimony and Legal Fiction in Renaissance England
Lesley Skousen, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison

Contrast between women's active participation in the courts as shown by legal records, versus the image of women as legally powerless as presented in literature of the time. As noted in the previous paper, women in court could manipulate both images (powerfull or powerless) as it suited their strategic needs.

English common law created an ambiguous situation for the benefit of clergy until deliberately included in statutary law, esp. after the Beckett affair. This enhancement of benefit of clergy encouraged the claim of clerical status by all manner of improbable defendents, resulting in calls for clarification or limitation of the scope, e.g., in the case of university communities. Some work-arounds evolved like a "two-strikes" approach for those claiming benefit who can't document being in orders, where at getting off for a first offense you might be branded discreetly with an indication of your offense and at the second similar offense this would be taken into account.

Women could not claim benefit of clergy, in theory, although there is evidence of some claims in dispite of this. (Also rare cases where nuns made claim of it successfully.) Rare case of a claim that a priet's entire household should be able to invoke his clerical status for immunity.

Women had other "mercies" under the legal system, e.g., "benefit of belly", that could make it difficult to get convictions. Although technically only a reprieve until the birth, it was used in extended ways similarly to the clerical benefit, as with elderly women who claimed it, or women who claimed it but the conviction was never enforced after the birth.

Another out was the common motif of "some random stranger happend along and killed this person I'm accused of killing" which appears to have been more readily accepted in cases where leniancy was desired (e.g., domestic violence situations).

After "benefit of clergy" was extended by statute to women in context with the "two strikes" addendum this seems to have been in part a means of providing a context for convicting repeat offenders who otherwise might have repeatedly gotten off by "feminine" escape clauses. Once this becomes established, the statistics suggest a "feminization" of benefit of clergy with a corresonding shift for male offenders to sentences of transportation. [Note: the "two strikes" label is my own, not the speaker's terminology.]

This shifting use of the benefit of clergy with the two-strikes branding was a means of offering mercy while still maintaining some level of order.

Session 87 Schneider 2335 - Food and Violence in the Middle Ages I: Representations of Food and Violence in Medieval Art and Literature
Sponsor: Mens et Mensa: Society for the Study of Food in the Middle Ages
Organizer: John A. Bollweg, Western Michigan Univ.
Presider: Alberto Ferreiro, Seattle Pacific Univ.

Death, Dismemberment, and Delight: Illuminating the Medieval Hunt
Rebekah L. Pratt, Arizona State Univ.

Paper discusses Gaston Phoebus' Le livre de chasse. Survey of the subject matter of the manuscript's illustrations, especially the conversion of the living animal into food for consumption. The production of hunting manuals, especially ones like this that are also luxury objects on their own, highlight hunting as an upper class social ritual, not simply a means of food production. It also highlights the high status of these particular types of foods and the ability to obtain and share them. The focus on hunting as "practice for war" also empasizes it as an upper class activity.

She looks specifically at the "unmaking" part of the process (i.e., butchering the prey after the kill) and focuses on it as an act of domination over the animal and the rendering of it into an object rather than a living thing. I'm a bit skeptical about some of the positions presented here which seem to assume that it was necessary to perform this "violent act" in order to enforce the hierarchy of being, by removing the prey's 'animal nature' by turning it into meat lest the hunters absorb the lower status of the creature when consuming it (as contrasted with the desirable absorbing of the creature's admirable qualities via consumption, which is also mentioned as an important symbolism). There's some self-contradiction going on here and perhaps a touch of having a conclusion in search of supporting data.

Overall, a nice introductory paper on the subject but a bit weak on theory, I think.

Got Milk? Lactation, Violence, and the Servant’s Voice in Three Old English Riddles
Robert Stanton, Boston College

(This speaker is literally "phoning it in", on speaker-phone from another location. This is not meant to be a value judgment on the quality of the paper!)

Actually 9 riddles, rather than three, in Latin and Old English. The author has synthesized his own (?) version of the riddles in Haiku format:

When I was a youth,
I drank from four bright fountains,
murmured with delight.

As my years increased,
I lost those drinks to others;
I toiled, was used up.

Living, I broke the earth;
in death, I bind the living.
Say what I am called.

( I'll put the rest of this discussion behind a cut in case you want to try to solve the riddle first )

Overall, a very delightful paper with some interesting connections made between the various examples.

Chivalric Adventure as Subtlety in Chrétien de Troye’s Erec and Enide
Morgan Bozick, Pennsylvania State Univ.

We start with a catalog of the various foodstuffs and eating contexts and paraphernalia mentioned in the romance. The paper examines the various episodes in the romance as the symbolic equivalent of "entremets" formally introducing the various sections of a banquet. The description of banquets often focus more on the visual and ceremonial aspects of dishes than the taste and were an important context for communicating symbolic messages and reinforcing desired images relating to the event's host.

(A fair amount of the paper now describes the various sorts of things that might be presented either specifically as "subtleties" or more generally as "illusion foods" such meatball "urchins".) There's a discussion relating the wondrous and astounding effects of subtleties (cf. "live birds in a pie") with the ordinarily miraculous foods such as transubstantiation during the Mass.

Returning specifically to Erec and Enide we look at an episode when the apparently dead Erec is laid out on a table in the hall, as if he were a dish being presented, where the viewers will be similarly surprised at his transformative return to the living. (The lord of the hall gets the surprise, thought, because the revived Erec immediately splits his head open. We, as audience, know this is ok because the dead guy was trying to forcibly marry the bereft Enide.)

Similarly, the "joy of the court" episode in the marvellous and mysterious garden, is contextualized as representing a pair of banquets, with the combat postioned between them then interpreted as an entremet and therefore an organic part of the whole larger event.

Session 128 Schneider 1160
Lions of Flanders: Material Culture and Identity in the Flemish Low Countries
Organizer: Elizabeth M. Hunt, Univ. of Wyoming, and Richard A. Leson, Univ. of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Presider: Richard A. Leson

Female Book Owners in Flanders and the Low Countries: Identity Expressed through Patronage
Joni Hand, Southeast Missouri State Univ.

Mid 15th c. ms "Hours of Catherine of Cleves" with portrait of recipient/patron on frontispiece in adoration of the Virgin surrounded by her personal and ancestral armory. Paper examines similar examples of women's devotional mss that communicate the women's familial and political concerns via the imagry. Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg, early example of the type. May appear in an inventory of books in the possession of one of her several sons. It again includes a portrait of the owner (and her husband) in adoration of Christ on the cross, accompanied by vernacular prayers meditating on Christ's 5 wounds, suggesting these may have been a personal devotional collection (signalled by the vernacular) rather than simply a standard part of the type of text.

Marginalia were also a place for personal expression and connection with the content. BIrds featured in the section presenting the meditation on the Wounds are not directly related to the text but are generally symbolic of species with religious significance due to mythological associations (e.g., the goldfinch, associated with a religious legend explaining its red spot). The use of these images with more attenuated connections to the theme may have assisted in deeper meditations on the intended topic.

Hybrid human-monster figures in the marginalia interact with the religious symbols in the image in a more informal way, e.g., one carrying a ladder in the upper margin, connected via ladder imagery associated with the crucifiction. These figures create a connection between the marginal art and the main image.

Back to the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Catherine's husband (Arnold Duke of Guelders) is rarely present in the images, outside of a single adoration figure and some minor symbolism in marginalia. The main program of the book's illumination focuses on Catherine's heritage and worthiness for the marriage.

Two images depict a specific rosary with a small blue bag attached to it (once in a margin on its own, once shown being carried by Catherine). Due to the particularity of the depiction, this likely represents an actual artifact she owned and may be emphasizing the form of one of her preferred devotions. The marginal rosary surounds an image of the adoration of the Magi, connecting their adoration of both Virgin and Child with Catherine's own devotional practices using the presumed object depicted there.

In both manuscripts, the marginal imagery may indicate intimate, personal aspects of the devotions of their owners in a way that is not accessible from ordinary historical sources.

“Home is Where the Hearth is”: Ceramic Stoves in Late Medieval Flanders as Displays of Identity
Kaatje De Langhe, Univ. Gent

Discussion of a particular artifact that developed for heating, where heated air was circulated from a hearth through air ducts in a stove in a different room, thereby enabling the heating of the other room without the presence of smoke. The shape of tiles initially was relatively functional, being small knob-like structures embedded in the wall, but later they became highly decorative. They came to function as a way of status display and social currancy, with the designs including relifious motifs, heraldry, and portraits. The social function is indicated partly by their presence in semi-public spaces in the house, especially the most prestiegous rooms. In some cases, the designs may reflect patronage connections, as with royal images on those used in abbeys connected with them.

(One characteristic shape of tiles has a rectancular face but with a concavity forming a sort of niche going back from the "face" of the tile. I wonder if this was partly intended as a safety measure against accidental burns?)

In order to try to trace the social connections and physical origins of the tiles, they performed an X-ray fluorescence analysis of the tiles which provides a quick, non-destructive means of "fingerprinting" the chemical composition of the glazes and clay of the tiles. (Lots of juicy technical details of X-ray fluorescence technique that are no doubt very exotic to historians. She keeps catching herself going too far into the techie stuff.) The clay, slip, and glaze can be analyzed separately by this method, enabling the identification of possible imported materials in combination with local ones. This enables us to identify both different physical groupings of tiles from the same site, but similarities in tile composition found in different locations.

The Tiled Floor in the Castle of Pierre Bladelin: Mirror of Social Identity between Burgundian Flanders and the Kingdom of Aragon (ca. 1450)
Wim De Clercq, Univ. Gent

Floor tiles studied during a rescue excavation illustrate connections between Burgundian Flanders and the Kingdom of Aragon. Brief history of the personal, financial, and political career of Pieter Bladelin. Personal wealth brought him into positions of financial responsibility that enabled him to increase that wealth and power and this is reflected in her personal residence in Bruges as well as a string of properties and his founding of the town of Middelburg, dominated by the caslte where the floor was located. The castle was destroyed long ago and was recently the subject of a rescue excavation when the location became the site of a planned housing project. This excavation was helped by the existence of detailed plans of the castle that survived from the time of its use. The tiled pavement was in an area rebuilt ca. 1600 and included in fill debris.

Three kinds of tile designs were discovered:

* the letters "p b" joined together by a sheaf of foliage (this same emblem occurs in decorations in his house in Bruges) - square in shape
* a wreathed pair of stripes with the "p b" motif repeating with other designs - rectangular in shape
* a fire-steel surrounded by flames in a circular design, then surrounded by partial initials, probably also constructing the "p b" motif when the tiles were set together - square in shape

The nature and fabric of the tiles have connections with the Valencian tile industry. A chemical analysis of the tiles was compared to Valencian exampes and provide strong evidence of identical origin. Both the materials and colors, and the shapes and the nature of the motifs (e.g., the wreathed bands with text) have strong parallels with the Valencian examples. Althought the fire-steel motif is unique to PB, the same framing design is found with different heraldic motifs in the Valencian examples, as with one associated with Blanche of Navarre with a central fleur-de-lys motif.

The fire-steel was adopted as an emblem of the Order of the Golden Fleece, an order to which Bladelin had personal connections via Phillip, Duke of Burgundy.

This leaves the question of whether Bladelin's connection with Valencia was purely commercial (quite plausible given his business activities and normal commercial routes of the time -- Valencian ceramics appear to have been one of the few finished goods imported to Bruges from that source at the time) or a more personal/diplomatic relationship, perhaps connected with his activities in negotiations with Alphonso V, King of Aragon, relating to a special tax on wool and other goods being imported from Spain to Bruges, among other connections. In this context, the tiles may have been a gift from Alphonso and the fire-steel motif connected with Alphonso's admission to the Golden Fleece, rather than connected more directly to Pieter's patron, the Duke of Burgundy.

Cf. the depiction of Valencian style floor tiles in the paintings of Jan van Eyck.

Session 171 Schneider 1220
Technical Communication in the Middle Ages
Organizer: M. Wendy Hennequin, Tennessee State Univ. Presider: M. Wendy Hennequin

Cookeries as Technical Literature in Late Medieval England and France
Sarah Peters Kernan, Ohio State Univ.

Latin and vernacular works on a variety of technical subjects arose in the medieval period, but cookbooks were rare before the 15th century. Scholars such as Scully questioned whether cookeries were truly intended as practical technical manuals as opposed to for other educational and managerial purposes rather than being used by those engaged in direct food production. But these opinions in the context of cookeries don't jibe with the purposes and uses of other technical literature during the same era. This paper proposes that roll-type mss such as the Viandier of Taillevent and the Forme of Cury were intended, at least in part, as practical technical manuals for cooking. Physical evidence of the strucure of the texts support this.

The structure as a roll rather than a codex seems an odd format for a usable practical text, hoewver it was a form commonly used for practical texts such as accounts, armorial texts, and wills.

The physical manuscript of Supesaxo 108 (Taillevent) shows manipulations such as folds, creases, and worn spots indicating regular handling for the purpose of better displaying specific portions of the text. There are also stains found on both sides of the membrane suggestive of foodstains. Marginalia are another type of evidence for the interactional use of the text rather than it being a static object. It is suggested that the roll format was specifically retained for use due to their portability and ease of storage. (Here the paper moves on to modern uses of roll-style documents to provide analogies for the practical aspects of the format. I'm a bit less convinced on this argument.)

“A Comyn Rule in Cure”: Medieval Cookbooks as Technical Writing
Mary Frances Zambreno, Elmhurst College

Focuses on the Liber Cure Cocorum, a 15th c. English cookbook in verse ("epicly bad verse"). Some opinions propose that the use of verse was intended as an aid to memory, however a review of medieval thoeries of memory don't seem to support the idea that rhyme was deliberately used for this purpose.

Conflict between the idea that a cookbook as a technical manual would belong in the kitchen, but that the view of a valuable object such as a book should not be exposed to this level of hazard. And different cookery collections are clearly aimed at different purposes and may have been handled differently in this regard.

Three recipes in the Liber Cure Cocorum are relevant to the question of purpose, being "joke" recipes or illusion/subtlety texts that would seem most relevant to an "insider" in the cooking process.

Like the previous paper, she cites medieval theories of memory, where books are not a replacement for memory but a art of the memory process, e.g., using the physical layout of a text as an imaginative guide to the memorized contents. Thus the physical format of a text can itself be a part of the process of memorizing/recalling its process.

The LCC has no decoration or ornamentation, although it does have a table of contents. The presented suggests that the verse format is not intended as an artistic statement, but as a way of visually organizing the text for better learning and recall of its contents.

The presenter now considers the question of the literacy of medieval cooks and raises the question of what purpose literacy would provide to a cook. (But she notes that there is little evidence addressing the general question of literacy levels in the profession, although individual cooks clearly were literate.)

Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion and the Rhetoric of Instruction
Trey Gorden, Purdue Univ.

New title: Flattery and Contempt: Condescension Topos inthe Enchiridion and other Medieval Scientific Texts

Compares the technical writings of Aelfric of Eynsham and Byrhtferth on the subject of the computus. Byrhtferth is far more verbose in style while covering the same content. One feature of his style is the use of condescension, specifically addressing the reader as an ignorant child, in order to explain the contents in the desired detail. The specific passage used for this analysis is an explanation of the nature of "falling stars" and how they don't contradict the theory of the immutability of the heavens. Another feature of the two texts is Aelfric's contrast of the rarer and more narrowly construed word "steorra" as opposed to "tunglum" witha a more general meaning of heavenly body", whie Byrhtferth uses only "steorra" despite the greater detail and length of the text.

Byrhtferch not only lapses into snarky commentary on his putative audience, but uses a more elevated and scholarly tone while doing so, e.g., making the side comments in Latin as oopposed to the English of the main text. The author proposes that this is meant to contrast his putative audience of priests with his "real" audience of monastic students who are being flattered into considering themselves an "in-group", better than the off-stage priests, in order to encourage them to learn the material more thoroughly.

Repurposing the (E)MEMT Corpus and Presenter Tool: Identifying Trends and Transitions in Page Design and Genre in Late Medieval through Early Modern Medical Texts
Susan Rauch, Texas Tech Univ.

She presents a synopsis of a much more detailed work on a corpus-based study of manuscript page design in medieval texts. (This is going to be very hard to take notes on because she's speaking very rapidly and using a lot of area-specific jargon.) Her specific topic of study is Timothy Bright's medical publications, whch shifted from a learned audience in the earliest editions to a "common man" audience in the later editions, in combination with a great increase in the use of page layout and textual structure (index words, tables of contents, use of white space) to assist in following the contents for practical use.

(Two referenced sources that might be of interest to my readers are the collections Middle English Medical Texts (2005) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (2011) , which include culinary contents in many of the texts. These appear to be electronic formats with extensive tools for doing comparative studies and searches. It looks like the publisher is John Benjamins.)

She briefly covers some linguistic differences between the two texts, especially in how the audience is addressed. Thre was more, but I couldn't keep up.