SCIVIAS, Issue 3

S C I V I A S Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies

Issue 3 | 2021

For the faculty and staff in Late Antiquity and Medieval Studies at Princeton

SCIVIAS: Princeton Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Editors-in-Chief

Ethan Glattfelder’21 Ilia Curto Pelle ‘22

Undergraduate Editors

Lara Katz ‘24 Juan José López Haddad ‘22 Andrew Matos ‘23

Design Editor

Mika Hyman ‘22

Departmental Sponsors

Center for collaborative History Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity Department of Classics Program in Medieval Studies

Front Cover Image

Front cover of the Lorsch Gospels Likely Aachen, ca. 810 CE Elephant Ivory H. 37cm., W. 26.3 cm.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Back Cover Image

Jeweled upper cover of the Lindau Gospels Likely W. Francia, ca. 880 CE Gold, Jewels, silver, enamel H. 32 cm., W. 25.3cm.

The Morgan Library and Museum

Table of Contents

p.6

Editor-in-Chief Ethan Glattfelder letter from the

Preface Helmut Reimitz and Jack Tannous The Scale of Empire: Geography Imagination Juan José López Haddad

p.14

and the

Carolingian Spatial

p.19

The One Rule: Burgundian Slave Law, the Theodosian Code, and Legal Legacies in the Post-Roman World Ben Press

p.49

Viva Latinatas Andre Mendoza

p.63 p.89

The Acquisition of the Donald Collection: Are Byzantine Coins Antiquities?

Alan M. Stahl Deciphering Rhabanus Maurus’ De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis Poem 22 Charlotte Root The Treacherous Moor: Representations of Dark Skin Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los Juegos Danielle Stephenson The Middle Ages Studies Merle Eisenberg

for

Educators

and a

Future

for

in the

Medieval

p.105

p.111

p.137

6

D

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ear friends, You are holding in your hands—or viewing on your screen—the third volume of Scivias, an undergraduate-published journal that since 2016 has striven to present the latest and best undergraduate and graduate scholarship in all areas of late antique and medieval studies at Princeton University. Housed within the Program in Medieval Studies, Scivias: Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies nonetheless extends its disciplinary tendrils all over campus, soliciting outstanding student work from all of Princeton’s departments and programs. Our publication has been distinguished from its first issue by its staunchly interdisciplinary approach to the study of late antiquity and the Middle Ages—which we broadly define as the period between 300 and 1500—and this volume is certainly no exception. Should you find yourself far from Nassau Hall at the moment, as many of us are and have been for some time, let the articles in this issue lead you on a sort of intellectual tour of campus. Our diverse group of authors—contributing pieces on topics as varied as numismatics and medieval law, linguistic pedagogy and the visual arts—will guide you, if only in your mind, past the sunny patio of Scheide Caldwell House, the glass-vaulted chambers of Rare Books and Special Collections, the intimate seminar rooms of Dickinson Hall and East Pyne, the serene galleries of the Art Museum.

Scivias was first published in 2016, and the second volume of Scivias—edited

by Rafail Zoulis ’19, now a PhD student at Yale University—appeared in 2019. The publication of undergraduate scholarship in late antiquity and the Middle Ages has, however, a much longer history, one that stretches much farther back toward the time of Augustine or Aquinas than our own moment: that is, 2006, when Christian Sahner ’06 and Jefferey Wayno ’06 brought forth the first volume of Scivias: Princeton’s Journal of Medieval Studies. For fifteen years now, undergraduates on Princeton’s campus have been deeply invested in learning and writing about the world of late antiquity and the Middle Ages—a fact to which steady enrollment in MED-listed courses and vibrant participation in the undergraduate Medieval Studies certificate program attest. Whether under the name Scivias or Princeton Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages—whether published in 2006 or 2021—we as past and present undergraduates are committed to ensuring that those students with an interest in late antiquity and the medieval period have a place to share their ideas and develop their scholarly talents. We hope that examining this latest batch of ideas and encountering these latest talented scholars will bring you as much pleasure as readers as it did us as editors.

Much has happened since last you held a copy of Scivias, and, in writing this preface in August 2021, I would be remiss in not remarking on the times. The third volume of Scivias had been slated to appear in spring of 2020, under the careful editorial eye of the brilliant Janice Cheon ’20 (now also, happily, a Yale PhD student). In March 2020, however, with edits proceeding at their usual glacial pace, the ground suddenly fell out from beneath our feet: the COVID-19 pandemic inundated our shores, leaving a trail of devastation, death, and economic catastrophe. The sudden arrival of the

7 virus triggered as great an interruption in the conditions of daily life as any of us could imagine: schools and business were shuttered, campuses evacuated, our day-to-day interactions all unceremoniously collapsed into an endless deluge of Zoom meetings (if not outright canceled altogether). At the same time, the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, George Floyd, and others at the hands of law-enforcement officials ignited a renewed outcry for justice, peace, and antiracist mobilization in every domain of public life: certainly in policing and criminal justice— but also in media, technology, politics, health, the economy, and the academy. Recent natural disasters such as massive wildfires in Australia and California, extreme flooding in Europe, catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia—along with apocalyptic reports about the pace of and risk posed by anthropogenic climate change—have intensified fears about a future irreversibly marred by ecological destabilization and all its attendant crises: hunger, violence, political unrest, human suffering, and an everwidening chasm between the rich and the poor.

Rest assured that I do not mention these complex and intertwined global problems solely to excuse the lateness of this current issue, which had been scheduled for over a year ago. (In fact, the indulgent reader might choose to believe that, since our first edition was published in 2016 and our second in 2019, this third installment is in fact somewhat early!) I bring up these current interlocking crises—the pandemic, systemic racism, looming environmental meltdown—because they are impossible to ignore, even if the insular and often lonely process of writing a journal article, especially about a period so long ago, might tempt us to ignore the conditions in which such scholarship is produced. The skeptical reader might still pick up this volume, fan through its pages, consider its contents, and ask: “Who cares?”

This is not an altogether unjustified question. As the above paragraphs indicate, there is simply a lot to worry about now. So much so that new findings on, say, the dating of a certain ecclesiastical manuscript or the production of a certain Flemish textile may not make the cut. (I apologize in advance to those who will be disappointed to find that this issue contains neither and invite them to stick around anyway.) From the beginning of our editorial process, we had to ask ourselves with renewed vigor and persistence that same question: Who cares? In other words, why do medieval texts, medieval works of art, medieval laws, still matter (if they do)? Is it justified to expect them to help us understand our contemporary moment? Is there value in them that eclipses any teleological reason for (re)turning to them?

I cannot pretend that the articles in this issue offer any definitive answers to these issues or that they should have to. But it is my hope—and that of our editorial team as a whole—that this volume’s contributions will provide you not only the enjoyment of appreciating the accomplishments of their authors but also with the opportunity to consider the value of their discoveries for us as scholars and as citizens. The contributions in this volume each answer the question posed by that skeptical reader: Why does studying the premodern world still matter? Though the articles contained here were written over a period of two years in near-total isolation from one another, they each ended up—in their own ways—in resonance with one another, speaking to a common

8 theme. They show that studying the worlds of late antiquity and the Middle Ages can be richly rewarding in its own right but can also encourage us—in the midst of these anni horribiles—to promote wider visions for our intellectual and civic lives, to build wider communities, to expand and challenge identities that are both historically rooted and fluid, and to discover new ways of seeing.

What would such a wider vision look like, and how could late antique and medieval studies help us get there? The first entry in our volume provides the beginnings of an answer. We open the volume with a preface from Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies Jack Tannous and Professor of History Helmut Reimitz—who lead the Committee on the Study of Late Antiquity and the Program in Medieval Studies respectively. For Tannous and Reimitz, the premodern community at Princeton is one marked not only by a distinguished past and present but by its dynamic vision for the future of late antique and medieval studies—a “wider vision,” in their words, that invites and even demands a radical recentering of our approaches to the past. As Tannous and Reimitz note, late antique and medieval studies—both at Princeton and elsewhere— has historically been rooted in and simultaneously limited by an overwhelming focus on Europe and the Latin West, a focus that is both unhelpful and misguided. Using the historical example of the Roman Empire—which persisted for many years after “leaving” Rome—Tannous and Reimitz advocate for a “re-casting of the past,” one that enables historians, literary scholars, art historians, and others to broaden their horizons, considering with renewed attention and perspicacity the terms, assumptions, and points of view that can both facilitate and inhibit valuable intellectual progress.

We are grateful to number these two professors among the many of Princeton’s past and present who have committed themselves to constructing these wider visions of the premodern world—and we hope we have been of some help in this mission.

If scholars like Reimitz and Tannous seek a more inclusive hermeneutics for studying the medieval world, then numismatics specialist Alan M. Stahl in Firestone Library offers us some insight into the complex logistical and intellectual work that goes into making Princeton such a fertile place for groundbreaking premodern scholarship.

Stahl’s contribution to Scivias—his second in two volumes—is entitled “The Acquisition of the Donald Collection: Are Byzantine Coins Antiquities?” and it describes the recent purchase by Princeton University Library of about 5,000 Byzantine coins most recently owned by Peter Donald, a leading British expert in Byzantine coinage. Princeton was first approached with an offer to purchase the collection at a discount in 2015. Given the unusual richness, completeness, and variety of the collection, Stahl and the many Princeton faculty with an interest in Byzantine and eastern Mediterranean history were eager to add Donald’s coins to the library’s collection. Emeritus professor Peter Brown wrote in favor of the acquisition, explaining that by purchasing the Donald Collection, “we [Princeton] would jump into first place in respect of the teaching, study and research of Byzantine and medieval coinages in the Americas.” Faculty and researchers on campus were similarly enthusiastic. And yet the acquisition of so much material is not as simple as writing a check: there are strict rules in place regarding the documentation required for the licit purchase of antiquities, in order to prevent the

9 looting and smuggling of artifacts from their countries of origin. Despite the need to ensure the correct provenance of each of the five thousand coins Princeton hoped to acquire, Stahl writes that the library had practically no guidelines to assist it in validating the purchase of the Donald Collection; and given the nature of Byzantine coinage in general, provenance is impossible to determine with any certainty. In his article, he takes us through the fascinating financial negotiations and legal maneuvers that made possible the purchase of the collection, which required intense collaboration with the library, art museum, and peer institutions. After years of discussion and work, the collection arrived in Princeton in December 2016 and has been a boon to students, faculty, and researchers alike ever since. Stahl’s article offers us a rare glimpse into the complex legal, scholarly, and financial processes that go into nourishing Tannous and Reimitz’s “new vision” for premodern studies. The Donald Collection also provides a fascinating example of how institutional intellectual priorities—the acquisition of promising material for study, in this case—ought to be balanced with ethical concerns for the treatment of artifacts and the sovereignty of their rightful owners.

Several of our contributors also show the value of medieval and late antique scholarship for articulating and helping to create new intellectual communities that are in touch with the opportunities and challenges of the present moment. Merle Eisenberg *18, a recent PhD alumnus in the History department, aims to do just that with his digital project, Middle Ages for Educators, which can be accessed free of charge at www.middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu. In light of MAFE’s tremendous and immediate success among students, teachers, and the general public, Eisenberg—now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Maryland—offers us a glimpse into the conception, genesis, and execution of the website, which offers a host of resources for users, including video lectures from prominent medievalists; pedagogical tools for educators; and translated primary sources on subjects ranging from the Crusades and the Black Death to popular culture and medieval memes. The uncertainties of teaching during the pandemic, Eisenberg writes for Scivias, necessitated a rapid and yet thoughtful shift toward hybrid and online learning. Just as Tannous and Reimitz encourage us to use medieval and late antique scholarship to construct a “wider vision” of the world, so too does Eisenberg imagine MAFE as an “evolving entity,” one that “aims to cover as much ground as possible while adapting to new ideas, interests, and needs moving forward.” MAFE’s contributors, he notes, have consistently imbued their materials for the site with a strong ethical impulse, exposing connections between the study of medieval culture and contemporary issues—including, for instance, the link between medieval blood libel legends and modern-day anti-Asian racism (the subject of a video by Fordham professor Magda Teter). Eisenberg ultimately imagines the site he helped to found as a tool for “remak[ing] the humanities,” inviting its users—whether high school students or established scholars—to explore links between a (sometimes) seemingly distant past and the contemporary moment, while providing students and teachers of the Middle Ages the opportunity to explore new and more inclusive digital formats for learning and collaboration.

If medieval studies can coalesce around new collaborative digital communities

10 like Middle Ages for Educators, then André Mendoza ’20’s contribution to Scivias— entitled Viva Latinitas—reveals that linguistic communities can be just as essential for inspiring collaboration and cultivating a genuine appreciation of the culture of the premodern world. Mendoza, an alumnus of the Classics Department and of the Program in Medieval Studies, offers us a breezy, funny, and yet remarkably perceptive take on the pitfalls of learning Latin and Greek—languages that are, to Mendoza’s dismay, generally taught quite differently from modern languages such as Spanish or Mandarin. Taking to task the “grammar-translation” method of learning Latin and Greek, Mendoza instead enthusiastically advocates for a “direct” approach to these ancient languages as living languages, one that can and ought to be taught and learned through speech as well as through reading. In his article—which is generously peppered with the perspectives of classicists, Latin educators, and linguists—Mendoza describes both his frustrations with the grammar-translation method in classrooms in the United States and his elation upon discovering the Accademia Vivarium Novum, a community nestled in the foothills of Rome where Latin and Greek are the exclusive languages of learning, conversation, and play. It was in speaking and singing Latin as a living tongue that Mendoza had his first unmediated contact with the language, unencumbered by the clumsy apparatuses of accent marks and flashcards. His advice for his reader— whether a long-suffering student of translation or a newcomer to ancient languages—is quite simple: “put down Wheelock, find a friend, and start speaking.” Especially given the Princeton Classics department’s recent decision to relax the linguistic requirements for the Classics major and augment its language and curricular options, Mendoza’s article is a timely reflection on the need to constantly adapt our approaches to studying the premodern world and the need to continuously interrogate the role that languages ancient and modern play in such an education.

As Danielle Stephenson and Ben Press reveal, in addition to helping us articulate new visions and supporting new and old intellectual communities, the study of the premodern world can also shed light on pressing contemporary questions—in this instance, the construction of conceptions of racial difference and of slavery through political and legal institutions. Stephenson, a French and Italian concentrator from the Class of 2020, offers us a reading of two curious thirteenth-century medieval Spanish texts from the reign of King Alfonso X (r.1252-1284) in her article “The Treacherous Moor: Representations of Dark Skin in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los Juegos.” Stephenson’s artful discussion of these two extraordinarily complex texts blends history, visual analysis, and modern theory to present an interpretation of the Moor, or Muslim, in the Cantigas—a book describing miracles performed by the Virgin—and the Libro—a collection of solutions to chess problems. Stephenson places her analysis of the Cantigas and the Libro in the context of the Reconquista, a centuries-long effort on the part of the Christian rulers of Spain to expel Jewish and Muslim residents, the latter of whom had originally captured the Iberian Peninsula in 711. According to Stephenson, during such a period, the representation of such Muslim outsiders acquired an intense political valence. She discusses the extent to which the Cantigas, a religious text, establishes a clear and yet complex link between blackness and sinfulness. In Stephenson’s view, the

11 dark-skinned Moor takes on the identity of a vague “Other,” one that had to be visually and textually subjugated by the court of Alfonso X. The Libro de los juegos, however, seems to resist this uniform “othering.” In her analysis, Stephenson interprets the chess board as a power grid, one in which relationships of domination and subjugation are both established and undercut, where power and authority flow in every direction— blurring any clear distinction between Muslim and Christian, dark and light, dominant and subservient. Her article—though clear-eyed in the limitations of any approach to studying “race” in the premodern world—nonetheless seeks to pull back the curtain on the textual and visual representation of difference in medieval Spain, showing how the associations she reveals between blackness, sinfulness, and submission became part of the foundation of later conceptions of race and racial identity. As Stephenson writes, “representations of dark skin in these texts provide a glimpse”—momentary and yet illuminating—“into the social construction of race that would set the tone for Spanish (and global) history.”

Writing about a much earlier period, Ben Press ’20—an alumnus of the History department and the Medieval Studies certificate program—shows how a different marginalized identity (that of the slave) was defined and controlled by a different institution (early medieval law). In “The One Rule,” Press focuses on the legal history of the kingdom of Burgundy in the early sixth century, mere decades after the fall of the Roman Empire, whose collapse left a massive political and administrative vacuum in its wake. And yet if the Roman Empire (at least in the west) fell at a particular date, Roman traditions and models of governance persisted long after and were massively influential on the “barbarian” polities that vied for control in early medieval Europe, including Burgundy. Press uses the example of slavery to illuminate this long and complicated transition between the Roman and post-Roman worlds. He reveals that, rather than simply adopting Roman law to the letter, Burgundian rulers sought to adapt the concepts of Roman jurisprudence to the new institutional environment of the postRoman world, creating a “uniquely Burgundian legal synthesis.” Press discusses the many contexts in which slavery appears in the two major books of Burgundian law, the Lex Romana Burgundionum and the Liber Constitutionum, both from the sixth century: the Lex and the Liber address a host of issues relating to slavery and freedom: who should be considered free or enslaved? How should enslaved and free people be punished for the same crime? What legal rights do slaves have, if any? How could an enslaved person become free? “The One Rule” ultimately reveals that the kingdom of Burgundy was ultimately, like Rome, a “slave society,” one in which a portion of the population was systematically reduced to property. Though Press’s article is specific in its focus on slavery in an early medieval context, it invites us nonetheless—as Stephenson’s does—to consider the ways in which medieval political and legal institutions generate “social realities,” creating conceptual categories of difference that then produce material consequences for the marginalized. The Burgundian Liber was itself, in Press’s words, intended “as a means of using new procedure to reimagine old legal ideas.” Both Press and Stephenson do the same, applying the techniques of modern theory and scholarship to track the development of conceptions of social and legal difference in the premodern

12 world. Although it would be impossible to articulate a direct correspondence between, say, representations of Moors in medieval Spanish codices and nineteenth-century minstrelsy—or between the experience of a Burgundian slave and a twenty-first century human trafficking victim—these two articles provide us with helpful tools for thinking about difference and marginalization at other points in history.

Our final pair of articles reveal, in similar fashion, how a study of late antiquity and the Middle Ages can invite new ways of seeing. In the case of the article by Charlotte Root ’22, this seeing is literal: her contribution, “Deciphering Rhabanus Maurus’s De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis Poem 22,” analyzes a page from Maurus’s ninth-century codex—each page of which offers a Latin poem in praise of Jesus with an array of Greek letters and symbols arranged on top of the Latin text. The text of the poem— found in the collections of Princeton University and reproduced in Root’s article— resists easy interpretation: as with many medieval manuscripts, there is no separation between words and no punctuation. The difficulty of the text is only augmented by the superimposed Greek letters that swallow up and highlight some of the Latin characters beneath. In her article, Root—an Art and Archaeology concentrator—seeks to understand how such a complicated text would be interpreted by a largely illiterate population. As she reveals, “reading” Rhabanus Maurus’s poem involves a good deal of rearranging, moving the Greek letters around to spell CHI RHO, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek. The poem also requires an understanding of both Latin and Greek, as each portion of the text is rendered more meaningful by the other. In its linguistic duality and its blend of text and image, the poem invites two separate and yet intertwined modes of understanding—visual and aural—each of which offers a rich and yet somehow incomplete interpretation of the text. As Root reflects, “This page reads as a microcosm of the contemporary Catholic worldview: one can find God through the minute details of the work, and also through the holistic image.” Rhabanus Maurus’s poem—and Root’s skillful analysis of it—invites us as readers to take our time, appreciating the multidimensionality of its presentation and its polyphonic reflections on Christ and the cross.

The final entry in our journal is by J.J. López Haddad ’22, titled “The Scale of Empire: Geography and the Carolingian Spatial Imagination. López Haddad,” a History concentrator, examines how Charlemagne’s conquest of Europe and subsequent coronation in 800 led to a radical shift in conceptions of geography and space in the Carolingian Empire. If Root’s article offers a mediation on different ways of seeing and interpretation on the microcosmic level, López Haddad’s subject is the macrocosmic—how the expansion of Charlemagne’s empire “served as a pivotal moment that turned a vague and locally-minded spatial imagination into an expansive vision that was precise, cosmopolitan, and above all, imperial.” After Rome fell and prior to the Carolingian period, as López Haddad writes, geography was limited to the local—fields, villages, and towns. Yet in the construction of an empire, which involved the conquest of physical territories, the Carolingians had to inspire conceptual changes in the way those territories (and others) were perceived. Having a detailed knowledge of the surrounding territory was crucial for planning successful military campaigns and

13 describing itineraries. Lands beyond the empire remained shadowy and ill-understood.

Following his coronation in 800, however, Charlemagne paid renewed attention to all aspects of his empire’s administration, including its geography. Charlemagne sought not only to deeply understand the territories over which he ruled but to project his power beyond them to lands beyond his control. As López Haddad writes, the history of Charlemagne’s rule—recorded contemporaneously in the Annales Regni Francorum— “began to transform into a story about a kingdom, rather than only about its king.” As the Carolingian geographical awareness expanded, the arrangement of the world became more clearly defined—borders sharpened and renewed attention was paid to even the furthest reaches of the empire, which were documented (and then administered) to a previously impossible level of specificity. With an increased awareness of the far extent of the empire came a clearer understanding of the empire’s center: Aachen, which remained the seat of Charlemagne’s power and which became—following the collapse of Rome—the new caput mundi, or center of the world. When the king died in 814, López Haddad writes, he left the world “having expanded his peoples’ conception of the spaces in which they lived”—not only the towns and cities that dotted the Carolingian empire but also the territories that lay beyond its frontiers. As Charlemagne’s power grew, the focus of the world—as reflected in the maps and documents that describe its spaces—shifted from Rome to Aachen, from the Roman Empire to the Carolingian.

“Through the eyes of Charlemagne” a new understanding of the orientation of Europe developed. Using military power, administration, and new approaches to “theoretical geography,” Charlemagne was able to radically transform his subjects’ understanding and perception of the space in which they lived. As López Haddad describes it, Charlemagne inspired nothing less than a new way of seeing the world.

For all my efforts to distill the many fascinating points that this issue’s contributions raise about identity, collaboration, vision, and communication, much is left to be said—but I will leave that to our authors themselves. Please join me in thanking them for their tireless effort and willingness to subject themselves to the onerous peer-review process—a process made more onerous by the clumsiness of editing a collaborative scholarly journal completely online. Please also join me in congratulating our incoming editorial board—with the indomitable Ilia Curto Pelle ’22 at the helm as Scivias’s new Editor-in-Chief—and in extending to it our best wishes for continued success. Having watched this journal come into its own as a site for creative and groundbreaking interdisciplinary student scholarship in late antiquity and medieval studies, I happily exchange my editorial cap for a readerly one, eagerly looking forward to the next volume—and the next.

Until then, valete, ἔρρωσθε, be well!

Ethan Glattfelder ’21 Editor-in-Chief

14

T

PREFACE

his is the third volume of Scivias: Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies, a journal that was founded several years ago by a group of undergraduates at Princeton. Before this, however, there was a deeper history. Scivias, first called Princeton Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, was originally a reboot of a journal with the same name, founded ca. 2006 by two energetic and gifted students at Princeton, Jeffrey Wayno (now a medieval studies librarian at the Burke Theological Library of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University) and Christian Sahner (now a professor of Islamic History at Oxford). Among other things, the first (and only issue) of Scivias included an interview with Peter Brown! What the initiative of 2016 represented was a re-foundation by a new generation of similarly gifted and energetic undergraduates.

We have, from the outset, been consistently and deeply impressed by the enthusiasm and industry of the students who have worked on issues of Scivias. They have found time to collect high-quality essays, edit them, and then shepherd them towards publication—all in the midst of the myriad challenges that accompany one’s senior year at Princeton. It gives us joy to see that this third volume of Scivias shows that the (re-)founders of the journal in 2016 have passed their enthusiasm for premodern history on to the next generation of Princeton students.

Taken together, the three published volumes also show how late antique and medieval studies have changed in the last decades and how scholars have developed a wider and more dynamic perspective. This is altogether fitting, for it has been above all at Princeton University where many pioneers of such an expanded view of the world of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages have found a home. Through countless publications and innumerable seminars, conferences, and workshops scholars such as Peter Brown, Slobodan Ćurčić, Brent Shaw, Michael Cook, William Chester Jordan, John Haldon, and Anthony Grafton disseminated these wider visions of the past and transmitted them to successive generations.

Indeed, it is an intellectually stimulating experience to simply read through the names and research areas of the faculty associated with the the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity and the Program in Medieval Studies and see the enormous range— in terms of subject, geography, and discipline—that ‘our’ members of the faculty study and teach. From Japan to Iceland (even Newfoundland!), from Scandinavia to Central and Southern Africa, our colleagues cover the history of late antique and medieval worlds in various fields, programs and departments: East Asian Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Religion, German, French and Italian, Comparative Literature, Classics, Art History, and History are all present. In an attempt to signal these wider horizons for late antique and medieval studies, we decided to slightly change the title of the traditional Medieval Studies introductory course (MED 227) from “The World of the Middle Ages” into “The Worlds of the Middle Ages,” when we taught it together in the Fall of 2020.

Such wider horizons for the study of the premodern past, however, do not only allow us to discover new histories, make new connections, and tell new stories. A more

15 global approach also responds critically to a view of our modern age that has looked at the past primarily from the vantage point of the history of the West and its progress and expansion into other parts of the world. But subjecting history to such a Eurocentric perspective offers an extremely reductive view of the human past. It is also misleading.

This is particularly true for the study of late antiquity and the Middle ages.

For the sake of an example, we can look for a moment at the traditional and melodramatic framing of the Fall of Rome with the deposition of the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus in the year 476 CE. Despite this event’s deep rootedness in the cultural memory of the Western educational canon through schoolbooks, encyclopedias, television documentaries, and lectures, as the end of Antiquity and beginning of the Middle Ages, such a view is, to put it bluntly, simply wrong. For this “Fall of Rome” only happened in the Western parts of the Roman Empire and it took place at a time when most of the Western provinces were already under the control of other, non-Roman rulers. And, what is more, the deposition of Romulus Augustulus was by no means the end of the Roman Empire. When Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus he did so in the service of a Roman Empire whose emperor ruled from Constantinople, and this Roman Empire—what modern historians have commonly referred to as the ‘Byzantine Empire’—would continue for almost a millennium after Romulus Augustulus was removed from power..

The change of scale in the study of the late ancient world has altered more than just our views on the history of Rome; it has also transformed our understanding of the wider world of which the Roman Empire itself was only one part. This broadening of perspective has also changed how we understand the formation of Europe. We now see European history as having been shaped by interaction with other regions, cultures, and empires—understanding it as embedded in the larger sweep of events in western Eurasia and northern Africa.

There are, to be sure, methodological challenges that present themselves to scholars seeking to move beyond a more traditional, Western-centuric approach and replace it with a geographically balanced linguistically inclusive vision of the past.

In recent years, however, advances in global perspectives on medieval history have provided much of the theoretical groundwork necessary for such a re-casting of the past to take place. Putting such a recalibrated approach into practice, however, often involves a range of technical and linguistic skills that can be intimidating. To give one more example: understanding the history of Western Christianity as the story of one type of Christianity among others, requires studying other late ancient expressions of this religion—Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Georgian, to name only a few. And this is not only true for the history of late ancient Christianity. As anyone who has studied the Crusades knows, the history of Christianity throughout the Middle Ages was shaped by the interaction, interdependence, and competition between the various churches of western Eurasia. Their contradictory and competing desires for both particularity and catholicity as well as their sharp disagreements about leadership deeply dominated church history in the Middle Ages.

Recently, wider and more global approaches to late antique and medieval history

16 have been promoted as such perspectives allow for more inclusivity and diversity. This is certainly true and important. But such approaches are also valuable because of the richer—and, we would argue, truer—view of the human past that they provide.

It is only by providing a proper and full perspective on the past that we are able to understand the historical layers of our own world. We cannot, for example, understand the formation of Islam without knowing the background of the diverse Christian communities in the late antique Middle East. This was an essential part of the milieu that shaped the new religion in the seventh century and throughout the Middle Ages.

At the same time, we can only understand other cultures when we accept that our own culture is the result of developments with influential historical layers reaching far back in time to the ancient and medieval past. The history of the modern nation, for instance, builds in many ways on an “ethnic turn” that took place after the end of the Western Roman empire. Societies in Latin Europe began to view the world as populated by distinct peoples and started to organize it according to ethnically-defined kingdoms and principalities—the kingdom of the English, the Franks, the Germans, the duchy of the Saxons, Thuringians, and so on. Not only are many of these early medieval names still on the map of Europe, its political geography continues to be defined along these lines. Seeing the particularly post-Roman, Latin and Western Christian origins of this practice helps us to remember that this habit of organizing (and constructing) human difference has a specific chronological, geographic, and social point of origin. The practice ordering the world into nation states—with each state representing a particular nation—is a specifically Western phenomenon and export. Attempts at imposing this principle of organization on other societies, with different traditions of ordering human communities, does not work as well as Western politicians have assumed. This can be appreciated by simply looking at the uneven and often tragic fate of attempts at imposing the nation state model in various regions around the world.

As scholars, we attempt to contribute to a deeper understanding of the historical layers of our own world as well as other cultures, regions and societies. We hope that it can help to provide a sense of orientation and rootedness, but also a sense of shared heritage across human communities, in our increasingly globalized moment. We can hardly imagine a better place for such a task than Princeton University. Professors at Princeton continue to define horizons and directions of the study of late antiquity and the Middle ages. What can easily be overlooked in such acts of stock-taking, however, is that in many ways these scholars’ productivity and ideas are nurtured by the continuing interest and probing questions of their students. Indeed, it is the engagement, enthusiasm and inspiration that students provide their professors that is one of the essential ingredients allowing Princeton’s scholars to continue its leading role in these fields. The vibrant conversations and spirited discussions so characteristic of our seminars, precepts, and colloquia make them often feel like laboratories for sounding out ideas and experimenting with various approaches to the past. This is true for both faculty and students alike.

The seven papers in this volume are wonderful examples for the impressive quality, range of skills, curiosity, and energy of Princeton’s historical research laboratories. We

17 would like to here thank the authors and particularly the editors of this journal for taking on the extra work to write, edit and publish them in this third volume of the Princeton Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Taken together, these contributions represent the care and competence and the breadth and depth of our late antique and medieval students. They also remind us, their teachers, what a privilege and joy it is to work with such a remarkable group of students. By their publication these essays also promote the importance of an active and intelligent conversation with the late antique and medieval past, its diversity, its legacies, and its meaning for our own present. Scripta manent and these essays bear eloquent testimony to readers, present and future alike, of the lively community of inquiry, exchange, and discovery that is late antique and medieval studies at Princeton.

Helmut Reimitz and Jack Tannous

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19

THE SCALE OF EMPIRE GEOGRAPHY AND THE CAROLINGIAN SPATIAL IMAGINATION

Juan José López Haddad Introduction: A Renewed Empire

S

eventy years after the death of Charlemagne, Notker Balbulus (c. 840 – 912) wrote in his Gesta Karoli of a king that “had begun to reign alone in the western parts of the world.”1 For Notker, even after the Emperor was long dead and his lands splintered among his heirs, the Carolingian Empire was all that was in his world. “When I say Francia,” Notker writes, “I mean all the provinces north of the Alps.”2 By the end of Charlemagne’s reign, even up to the time of the monk of St. Gall in the early 10th century, the vision of what constituted Frankish space had expanded beyond the original dominions of the Merovingians. It occupied the entirety of the Frankish imagination of Western Europe. This is not the perspective of a well-traveled, cosmopolitan mind, for by his own admission Notker “never got into Francia.”3 Nevertheless, Notker considered himself to be a Frank, despite proudly descending from a noble Alamannian family.4 Indeed, though he never left St. Gall in his life, Notker identified himself as belonging to a space, identity, and even time that could be considered external to him. Despite being fixed at his abbey, the stammering monk still managed to create stories of enormous 1 Notker the Stammerer, “The Deeds of Charlemagne” in Two Lives of Charlemagne., ed. D. Ganz (London, United Kingdom: Penguin Classics, 2008), 55.

2 Ibid., 62.

3 Ibid., 84 4 Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem Before the First Crusade (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2011), 28. The Alamannians were settled in a region now occupied by Switzerland, southern Germany (Baden-Württemberg), and eastern France (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté).

Juan José López Haddad ’22 is a concentrator in the History Department at Princeton University OPPOSITE PAGE THE CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE BY POPE LEO III AT OLD ST PETER’S BASILICA. Miniature from the Chroniques de Saint-Denis (15th century). Held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, BnF MS Fr. 6465.

20 geographic complexity. He wrote about the constant travels of Charlemagne within his realm, his triumphs at home and abroad, his pilgrimages to Rome and other shrines, and his correspondence with leaders of distant lands.5 Even though the biographical accuracy of the monk’s anecdotes is marred by fanciful legends and exaggerations, 6 it is a revealing window into Notker’s conception of the space he inhabits. Notker’s world is a detailed array of towns, shrines, roads, rivers, and mountains, all under the immense shadow of Charlemagne. At its symbolic center is Aachen, and more importantly, the uniting figure of the Emperor. However, this monolithic yet detailed view of space had not always reigned supreme. It was largely a product of Charlemagne’s rise to power and—more specifically—his coronation as Emperor.

By the year 800, Charlemagne had become the ruler of the most expansive empire in Europe since the decline of Western Rome. Despite Notker’s assertion that Charlemagne “had no guess of what was coming”7 moments before Pope Leo III (750 – 816) placed the imperial crown upon his head, the Frankish king was aware of his status as the exceptional ruler of an exceptionally vast empire. However, more than 300 years had passed since Europe had been under imperial rule. As a result, and as Walter Pohl makes clear, “political culture seemed to become distinctively regional.”8 Charlemagne’s Merovingian predecessors had been concerned more with local affairs, failing to develop a governing hierarchy that was effective and far-reaching. Therefore, Charlemagne and his young empire found a need for a model to guide imperial governance and development. They settled on two: Christianity and the Roman Empire. It was no coincidence that the Pope had bestowed upon Charlemagne the title of Karolus Serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.9 Furthermore, Roman texts were highly sought after and copied in the empire’s vast network of monasteries— especially in Notker’s own St. Gall.10 Charlemagne’s massive accumulation of land and power was seen as a renovatio of the Roman Empire, which sparked a fascination with the preceding empire’s practices that permeated political, intellectual, and even religious spheres. Nevertheless, alongside the Carolingian renovatio of Rome also came the correctio.

5 Notker, “The Deeds of Charlemagne,” 10.

6 Matthew Innes, “Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society,” Past & Present, no. 158 (1998): 266.

7 Notker, “The Deeds of Charlemagne,” 76.

8 Walter Pohl, “Creating Cultural Resources for Carolingian Rule: Historians of the Christian Empire” in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 15.

9 “Charles the most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire and by the mercy of God king of the Franks and of the Lombards.”

For more details on the Roman elements of Charlemagne’s imperial vision see Laury Sarti, “Frankish Romanness and Charlemagne’s Empire,” Speculum 91, no. 4 (2016).

10 Natalia Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300-1600, ed. Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 67-68.

21 This was the movement that studied and adapted ancient texts for imperial use. While classical models of government and knowledge helped nourish the ideology of the empire,11 they needed to be harmonized with the preeminent ideal of Carolingian rulership: Christianity. Accomplishing the christianization of the empire’s peoples required that Roman systems, ideas, and knowledge themselves be christianized. As a result, the Carolingians sought to primarily imitate the late, Christian Roman Empire.12 Concurrently, many texts were “abbreviated, epitomised or combined, or subtly rewritten to fit the needs of the present,” as Paul the Deacon (c. 720s – 799) did when editing and rewriting much of Roman history so that it featured a marked Christian tone.13 Thus, the adoption and revision of Roman history as well as knowledge provided the necessary mythical foundations for the empire of Charlemagne to stand. Used as a source of legitimacy and enhanced by a Christian influence, empire became a resource of the past that could have a future. 14 While the impact of the Carolingian correctio has been studied at length— especially as it concerns the subjects of Latin grammar, literature, history, among others—its equally important influence on geography has been seriously overlooked.

Given that in modern scholarship the history of geography is often taken to be the history of cartography and maps, the relative lack of surviving Carolingian cartography has plunged the study of this subject into obscurity. Indeed, the magnum opus on this area of knowledge, The History of Cartography, edited by David Woodward and J.B. Harley and featuring the work of numerous scholars, is largely silent on the Carolingian period, as well as much of pre-modern history. Additionally, some of its most significant claims about pre-modern maps have been disproven, as is the case of the purported discovery of a Roman map of Gaul (now France) which was demonstrated to be a hoax.15 The truth is that the Carolingian Empire, as well as its Roman antecedent, were worlds largely without maps. While this reality has prompted scholars to characterize geography in Carolingian times as a dark, primitive, and underdeveloped art, 16 this paper aims to prove the contrary.

By examining the rich, if largely mapless, tradition of Carolingian geography, represented through descriptive, narrative, and administrative texts, this paper will reveal an art that not only revived Roman practices, but also built upon them significantly with new contributions—especially in the realm of practical geographical knowledge. This paper will also show how Charlemagne’s coronation and the expansion of his empire served as a pivotal moment that turned a vague and locally-minded spatial imagination into an expansive vision that was precise, cosmopolitan, and above all, imperial. To 11 Natalia Lozovsky, “Roman Geography and Ethnography in the Carolingian Empire,” Speculum 81, no. 2 (2006): 327.

12 Walter Pohl, “Creating Cultural Resources for Carolingian Rule,” 17.

13 Ibid., 23-26.

14 Ibid., 33.

15 Kai Brodersen, “Cartography,” in Geography in Classical Antiquity, by Daniela Dueck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 102.

16 Natalia Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-1000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 2.

22 achieve this, the paper will provide a brief overview of classical and late antique models of geography and spatial perception, as well as their reception by Carolingian scholars in the form of historical narratives and theoretical tracts. The paper will then analyze the geographical language and rhetoric present in various primary sources, principally the Annales Regni Francorum (Royal Frankish Annals), and will highlight the innovative use of Roman geographical ideas, as well as the marked increase of their presence after Charlemagne is crowned and the Annales are revised. As a conclusion, this study will discuss potential new innovations in the definition of geographical boundaries, alongside suggestive evidence of the creation of maps for state purposes, which arose during the Carolingian Empire. This paper will show the high sophistication of geographical knowledge in Carolingian times—not only on an abstract, theoretical level, but also in practical forms that made the founding and administration of an empire possible.

Similarly, this paper will provide one of the missing links between the geographical practices of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and show how the latter had a lasting impact on the study of geography and its use in the imperial pursuits of later eras.

II. Spatial Imagination and Theoretical Geography The Carolingian world was one where great and elaborate maps were not the principal medium for the transmission and understanding of geographical knowledge.

Approaches to the study of geography were primarily textual in nature, and were chiefly based on a classical model of spatial organization. The Carolingians inherited from the Romans a geographical understanding that divided spatial imagination into three levels: large, intermediate, and small space—each tailored to a particular scale and purpose. The largest of these visions was mostly descriptive and symbolic in nature.

Large regional17 expanses and even views of the known world were conveyed primarily through highly theoretical tracts called orbis descriptio, such as the works of Pomponius (c.

45 AD) and Dionysius Periegetes (c. late 3rd century).18 Literature was also a prominent source of large-scale geographical knowledge, especially in the epic poems of Homer and Vergil, where geography was used as a backdrop for myth and legend—its sheer scale serving as a magnifier for the great deeds and journeys of gods and men.19 Descriptions of global space were also used as allegorical instruments designed to denote might and power. Such is the case for the familiar phrase Roma caput mundi, which was often used

by Roman citizens to denote the greatness of their empire, and the preeminence of the City of the Seven Hills among imperial lands and beyond.20 The powerful geographical symbolism of Rome has been so enduring that many cities throughout history have 17 Kai Brodersen, Terra cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung (Hildesheim, New York: G. Olms, 1995), 71.

18 Ibid., 87-101.

19 Kai Brodersen, “Geography and Ethnography,” In The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Edward Bispham, Thomas Harrison, and Brian A. Sparkes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 391.

20 Kai Brodersen, Terra cognita,110.

23 claimed to be built upon seven hills, from Moscow, Russia, to Richmond, Virginia.21 The intermediate level of spatial perception was born out of the practical necessity of navigating space, and was primarily recorded in the forms of the itinerarium and the periplus.22 These were representations of the space “that could be traversed on sea or land by soldiers, traders, ambassadors or pilgrims [and were] typically represented by lines following such routes.”23 This conception of space has been termed “odological” by some scholars,24 and it is thought to have been the level most frequently used by the Romans for quotidian and state purposes.25 Indeed, many grand geographical representations, such as the periodos of Agrippa (c. 62 – 12 BC)—previously understood to be a map—“could have been a monumental itinerary, an inscription celebrating the empire,” given that “Augustus’ conquest of the Alps was celebrated with a similar artifact.”26 Even when a periodos is described in literature, it never contains more detail than what could be found in a list of places.27 There were graphic, map-like representations of itineraries and peripli, but these were exceedingly rare and no original copy has survived.28 A 13th century copy of a possible Roman original is extant, called the Tabula Peutingeriana (The Peutinger Map), but its shape is so distorted that it cannot be used to reference the relative positions of places, as an actual map is able to do.29 These were useful to represent complex networks of itineraria, in a manner similar to how the London Underground presents its numerous routes, disregarding distances and angles.30 The smallest level of Roman spatial imagination was the most map-like, and it was concerned with the depiction of local areas, such as towns and fields, through drawn plans of their spatial layout.31 These could be as complex as a town map or a land survey, or as simple as a schematic where only relative placement is illustrated. These served a number of practical purposes, from recording the ownership and relative locations of plots of lands to aiding in architectural planning. In the latter case, many individual plans would often be combined to form a larger image such as the Forma Urbis Romae, a plan of the center of Rome that depicted architectural as well as topographical features. 32 After more than three centuries without a systematized body of geographical 21 Grigory Ioffe, Kathleen Berton Murrell, and Richard Antony French, “Moscow,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, February 15, 2021., “Musty Records Of City Reveal Its ‘Seven Hills,’” Richmond Times Dispatch, December, 1937.

22 Kai Brodersen, Terra cognita,165-181.

23 Brodersen, “Cartography,” 103.

24 Pietro Janni, La mappa e il periplo: cartografia antica e spazio odologico (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1984). 72.

25 Brodersen, “Cartography,” 109.

26 Ibid., 108 27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 See figure. 1.

30 Brodersen, “Geography and Ethnography,” 392.

31 Brodersen, Terra cognita, 195.

32 Brodersen, “Cartography,” 102-103.

24

Figure 1: Tabula Peutingeriana (c. 13th century. Section). The city of Rome can be seen at the center as the node connecting several itineraries. From the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna

knowledge, Carolingian scholars would look at this Roman legacy to help define a new imperial ideology. This would be especially evident in their treatment of the large-scale, symbolic space in their various scholarly tracts.

The Carolingian reception of Roman ideas on geography and space is best documented in the work of Natalia Lozovsky. In her book The Earth is our Book, along with related papers and publications, she shows a Carolingian scholarly engine deeply invested in copying geographical works by late Roman authors. This tradition of geographical knowledge “would be recontextualized, partly rejected or changed, but largely preserved and transmitted” by Carolingian scholars.33 The most popular source seems to have been Orosius (c. 375 – c. 420), notably through the geographic descriptions found in his Historiae Adversus Paganos (Histories Against the Pagans), followed by figures such as Julius Solinus (c. mid. 3rd century), Jordannes (c. 526 – c. 575), and Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636). Notker himself was inspired largely by Orosius when developing the geographical setting of his Gesta Karoli, which “shows his intimate familiarity with the contents and ideological uses of classical geographical learning.”34 Indeed, Notker’s Abbey of St. Gall was one of the great centers of monastic learning at that time, possessing a manuscript of Orosius’ Historiae with several glosses in Latin and Old High German written by the scholar-monks.35 However, all of the texts copied and studied by the monks of St. Gall seem to be frozen in the Roman past. “They usually do not 33 Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book, 8.

34 Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” 167168.

35 Ibid., 70.

25 explicitly address the contemporary political situation, and much of their information may seem anachronistic.”36 Nevertheless, Lozovsky argues that this is because these works were primarily intended to be supplemental to the study of scripture. They followed the advice of Augustine, who held that certain areas of secular knowledge, such as geography, were essential to understanding the Bible.37 Just as Homer and Vergil used the large, symbolic level of space as a stage for the journeys and deeds of their epic heroes, so too did the Carolingian monks use that knowledge to contextualize the stories of the Old and New Testament. How could one fully appreciate the Exodus of the Israelites without some knowledge of Egypt and the Holy Land? How could they fully understand the ministry of Jesus without some basic notion of the places within Canaan? Furthermore, Carolingian monks also sought Roman knowledge of geography to aid them in interpreting biblical language that was particularly challenging in its evocation of geography.38 While this fundamentally religious usage of classical knowledge was important for Carolingian imperial ideology, which aimed to be deeply Christian,39 this type of approach seems to concern itself little, if at all, with practical applications of geography. Indeed, “information drawn from classical books could hardly help in practical situations, such as travels or foundations of monasteries.”40 While the vast majority of what Lozovsky presents in her work is of great value, it does not paint the full picture of how the usage of geography was influenced by the Carolingian correctio. Beyond copying and imitating Roman works by editing them in clever ways and enhancing their Christian appeal, Carolingian scholars actively sought to update geographical knowledge, innovating in the way it was acquired and subsequently used. This is most evident in Dicuil’s (fl. 825) De Mensura Orbis Terrae, “On the Measurements of The Earth,” a treatise on theoretical geography. In his introduction, Dicuil declares: “I shall, indeed, devote my attention to correcting, in so far as I can, the reports of the above-mentioned envoys (Theodosius’), as they have been composed with fewer mistakes.”41 In composing his tract, Dicuil does not seek to merely compile quotes and anecdotes from Roman authors. He deviates from the dependence 36 Lozovsky, “Roman Geography and Ethnography in the Carolingian Empire,” 327.

37 Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book, 10-11.

38 Ibid., 36-42. Passages like Matthew 4:8 “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” (NIV) generated a discussion among Carolingian scholars regarding the interpretation of their geographical language. While some took Jesus’ vision of the kingdoms as allegorical, others tried to develop a visual image from the passage. These interpretations ranged from a contemplative vision (where not all of the kingdoms were shown, just a vast portion that represented them), and a more literal picture, which established that Jesus saw all the kingdoms just as one might do with a globe or a map.

39 Walter Pohl, “Creating Cultural Resources for Carolingian Rule,” 32.

40 Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book, 153.

41 Dicuil, Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae, ed. J.J. Tierney (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967), 45-46. “Sermonens quidem praedictorum missorum quia minus vitiose scripti sunt quantum potuere corrigere curabo”

26 on written authority—which was the standard approach shortly before his time—to incorporate contemporary observations made by himself and others. This is a fact that Lozovsky recognizes and singles out as peculiar, but she does not elaborate further upon it.42 This desire to innovate is not only seen in Dicuil. The aforementioned manuscript of Orosius’ Historiae kept in St. Gall was glossed several times to include corrections and updates, particularly regarding the presence of ethnic groups in certain places, so that they may reflect contemporary realities. The most prolific of these glossators seems to have been Ekkehard (c. 980 – c. 1056),43 who, although living more than a century after Dicuil, could be considered a follower of the geographer’s trend towards innovation.

Why would Dicuil and other scholars seek to update this content, if its sole purpose was supposedly exegetical? Why would he break with strong conventions and authoritative written sources by adding new contributions of his own devising? This clearly points to a desire to use geographical knowledge not only for Biblical study, but also to understand the contemporary world that surrounded them, and maybe to aid in imperial pursuits.

While evidence of state-motivated geographical innovation is not clearly discernible in the theoretical texts themselves, one can see how these new practices are put to use in more practical, administrative, and documentative texts of the time. An analysis of the Annales Regni Francorum (Royal Frankish Annals) can be very revealing of how geography was used in the service of empire. This and other texts can serve as a scale to relate the different levels of geographical imagination the Carolingians inherited from the Romans. When viewed in this manner, the Annales and other documents such as the gestas of Notker and Einhard show an empire that not only has adopted Roman geography for theoretical, religious uses, but also for the practical endeavors of navigation, governing, and record-keeping. This invariably arises from the imperial need to preserve its rule over an ethnically pluralistic society, as seen in its legal structure, which sought to conserve the laws of each of the peoples in the empire as long as these legal codes were subordinated to imperial capitularies.44 Ethnography was intimately related to geography at the time,45 so it was only natural that the Carolingians were incentivized to innovate in the ways they saw their empire when transitioning from ruling over one people—the Franks—to ruling most of Europe.

III. Geography in the Service of Empire While there have been remarkable studies on Carolingian notions of theoretical geography—such as those by Natalia Lozovsky—there are to date no works that address practical geography, especially concerning its role in imperial expansion and administration. The history of early medieval geography “largely remains a no-man’sland, rarely visited, inhabited by very few scholars who wish to explore it for its own 42 Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book, 148.

43 Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” 70-74.

44 Peter Hoppenbrouwers, “ Leges Nationum and Ethnic Personality of Law in Charlemagne’s Empire,” In Law and Empire (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 251-252.

45 Brodersen, “Geography and Ethnography,” 391.

27 sake,”46 as Lozovsky remarks in her book. The principal contribution of this paper will be to point out the prevalence of practical geography in Charlemagne’s empire.

Practical geography provided the knowledge necessary to inform travels and campaigns, while theoretical geography was mainly concerned with abstract study. Much like its theoretical counterpart, Carolingian practical geography was adopted from Roman models, most likely as a product of the correctio. As a consequence, the tools of practical geography in Carolingian times closely resemble the intermediate level of Roman space, the odological, recorded in itineraria and peripli. This level was used for travels of all kinds, from the movement of troops to the journeys of foreign ambassadors. These responded to the imperial needs of the Romans, needs that Charlemagne would also have as he modeled his own empire in their image.

But how can one be certain that this idea of practical Roman geography was rediscovered during the correctio, instead of existing continuously from antiquity? The Annales Regni Francorum demonstrate this was the case through the way they were written.

These were not penned contemporaneously until 788, with prior entries being based on older annals, most of them now lost.47 Additionally, the text of the Annales was revised shortly after Charlemagne’s death in 814 and before 817, the year Einhard used the revised edition as a source for his Vita Karoli.48 These revisions overwhelmingly concerned themselves with the entries before 788, though a significantly lesser number of revisions can be found in subsequent years. These changes in writing practices and authorship show considerable differences in the way geographical language and rhetoric is used across the different sections and revisions of the Annales. By comparing the relatively vague and unsophisticated language present before 788 to the much richer and more specific rhetoric of succeeding entries and revisions, one can see that Roman forms are not used until the latter sections of the Annales. This change can thus be attributed to the correctio, which is understood to have begun formally in 789 with the Admonitio Generalis.49 However, far from being mere imitators of Roman itineraries, the Carolingians innovated upon them significantly by enhancing their understanding of practical geography through the inclusion of symbolic and theoretical geographical language alongside their itinerant accounts. These aspects would come to define Carolingian practical geography, as the analysis below will show.

The Royal Itineraries The Annales begin in 741 with the death of Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, in a simple sentence that constitutes the only entry for that year: “Charles, major of the palace, died.”50 While subsequent entries are more elaborate, they nevertheless 46 Lozovsky, The Earth is our Book, 2.

47 Rosamond McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 34-50.

48 Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s History, trans. Bernhard Walter Scott and Barbara Rogers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1970). 6-8.

49 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 307.

50 Annales Regni Francorum et Annales qui Dicuntur Einhardi, ed. F. Kurze (Hanover: Impensis

28 maintain this same initial brevity—lacking detail even when recounting the King’s military campaigns and itineraries. An example of this can be found in 753, during the reign of Charlemagne’s father, King Pepin. The entry corresponding to that year tells of Pepin’s victorious march into Saxony, in which he is said to have gone as far as Rehme. In this account of his battles only the aforementioned two places are written down, along with the castle of Iburg, where a bishop was killed by the Saxons.51 While in this account there are certain geographical elements that receive attention, nothing is noted beyond the name of a couple of very broad regions and one precise location—the castle. The author provides the bare minimum of geographic context necessary for the narrative to make sense, and the reader does not get any information of possible routes taken, the sequence of the places visited, nor their relative locations. This use—or rather lack of use—of geographical language and resources suggests a relative disinterest with record-keeping and affairs beyond the king’s immediate surroundings. This can be explained by the fact that, though King Pepin’s holdings were considerable, he did not have the imperial mandate that his son Charlemagne later received from the Pope, nor his vision of an expansive, multi-ethnic empire, which would entail a more detailed geographic appreciation.

Subsequent years exhibit a similar format, only documenting the movements of the king with very brief mentions of towns, regions, and occasional natural features.

These accounts at times even fail to mention a return to Francia, treating it as understood or as a given. On the rare occasion the author writes about people other than the king— usually his family—he does so succinctly, such as in 770, when Queen Bertrada is said to have “traveled to Italy through Bavaria,”52 and nothing more. While the basic elements for the composition of itineraries, like names of places and a rough notion of succession and movement, are present, they lack the connections and the specificity of locality necessary to actually be useful in tracking the king’s movements with some accuracy.

Documenting where the king is at any given time—whether during war or travel— is important to the annalists. However, they are content with a rough geographical background, mentioning a few locations when these are located within the domain of the Franks. Details scarcely provide more than a destination or a vague course when describing travels beyond the Frankland. The other two levels of space are also notably absent during this period in the Annales. The local events near the court are nowhere to be found. Likewise, Rome is no longer mentioned as the symbolic center of the world.

Instead, it was now replaced by Jerusalem, as shown in the christianized histories and geographies produced by the monks and scholars of the correctio.53 Nevertheless, the city appears nowhere in the Annales. And why would they mention it? King Pepin does not ever visit there and the Annales care only for what he does and where he goes.

Furthermore, this vague fashion of communicating space is not limited to the entries concerning Pepin and his ancestors. Charlemagne’s early reign, too, is Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1895). 2. “Carolus maior domus defunctus est” 51 Ibid., 10.

52 Annales Regni Francorum, 30. “domna Berta regina per Baioariam partibus Italia” 53 Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” 73-74.

29 characterized by a similar style of spatial representation in the Annales. In the entry for 769—the second year of Charlemagne’s reign as king—his campaign against Hunald in Aquitaine is documented, mentioning a route passing through Duasdives, Angoulême, the river Dordogne, the castle of Fronsac, and returning to Francia.54 Vague passages like these constitute the norm in successive entries until 800, but before then a slight increase in the level of detail provided can be appreciated. This is curious, since this heightened attention to detail seems to be the case only and immediately after King Pepin is anointed by Pope Stephen II, after assisting him in defending Rome from the Lombards and the Umayyads.55 Given that these accounts were written in retrospect until 788, the anointing of King Pepin and his sons Charles and Carloman appears to be treated as a turning point by the annalists. They reflect this clearly in the way they write subsequent entries with an elevated level of overall detail, which is more expansive about geographical information. Detailed descriptions of the king’s progress through the realm’s vast geography appear to denote an elevated status of Pepin’s imperium, his legitimacy as a ruler having been enhanced by what is perceived to be divine assent.

While the annalists are interested in telling the story of the Franks, by the time this record is being written around the year 788 Charlemagne’s transformation of his dominions into a renewed Roman Empire was already underway. The annalists, therefore, devote most of their attention to imperial history, not just Frankish history, and they clearly regard the anointing of Pepin by the Pope as foreshadowing the empire of his son, much like medieval lives of the saints often foreshadow moments of conversion or martyrdom.

56 Nevertheless, despite this moderate increase in the precision of itineraries, they are still shorter in length and poorer in detail than the accounts that follow Charlemagne’s coronation as Emperor. The actions of Charlemagne remain contextualized within the limits of local geography, portraying a region that still sees itself as isolated from the rest of Christendom. The global, symbolic representation of space—arguably a mark of empire and greatness—continues its absence as with Pepin, even as Charlemagne’s power increases.

While attending Christmas mass at Rome during the year 800, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III.57 Expected or not, Charlemagne’s attitude toward power and governance certainly changed after this pivotal event. Einhard notes that after becoming Emperor, Charlemagne “noticed many defects in the laws of his people,”58 and began to make many changes in his laws and administration. From 800 onward, Charlemagne started a colossal legal reform, correcting the Lex Francorum 54 Annales Regni Francorum, 28 55 Liber Pontificalis, ed. Raymond Davis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), 52-60.

For further reading on the Liber’s influence in Papal and European memory, see Rosamnd McKitterick, Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis, The James Lydon Lectures in Medieval History and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) 56 Hippolyte Delahaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), 50.

57 Annales Regni Francorum, 112.

58 Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. G. H. Post, G. Waitz (Hanover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1911). 33. “cum adverteret multa legibus populi sui deesse”

30

Figure 2: Charlemagne’s itinerary (768-814) Taken from Rosamond McKitterick’s “Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity” p, 181.

and producing a marked increase in the number of capitularies issued. In particular those directed at the missi dominici, the messengers in charge of making Charlemagne’s will known and enforced across his realm.59 In addition, his staff of scribes more than tripled, and the precise workings of his court are documented in detail in De Ordine Palatii,60 written by Hincmar of Reims (806 – 882) based upon contemporary accounts

by Adalhard of Corbie (c. 751 – 827). 61 This expansion of administrative activities, concerning both court activities and the affairs of the wider realm, is caused by a rising need for direct control over an expanding empire that is not only territorially expansive but also multiethnic. As discussed before, ethnography and geography were disciplines that were often studied jointly in Carolingian times. A desire to rule over more peoples necessitated a better grasp of practical geography, as reflected in the corrections that Ekkehard made of Orosius, and the need to produce an updated geographic treatise expressed by Dicuil. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Annales, too, experience significant changes in the way they were written, elaborating considerably on the king’s itineraries. After the year 800, not only do entries become longer and more detailed, but previous years are expanded through revisions similarly complex in character to 59 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 256-258.

60 Janet Nelson, “Aachen as a Place of Power” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages., ed. Mayke B. de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine Van Rhijn (Leiden, Germany: Brill, 2001), 225-227.

61 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 139.

31 the post-coronation entries. For example, take the aforementioned 769 campaign in Aquitaine: The revisions add a wealth of details concerning how Hunald was almost caught in Angoulême but escaped to Gascony, due to his better knowledge of the region.

Then, further information is provided on how the local Lord, Lupo de Gascon, took him under his wing and then handed him over to Charlemagne. 62 Rosamond McKitterick has studied and mapped Charlemagne’s itineraries extensively in her book Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity. She notes that, unlike the Merovingians, Charlemagne was not an itinerant king in the sense of keeping his court—and his seat of administrative power—constantly on the move. Charlemagne’s itineraries were designed to guide him and a small entourage to accomplish very specific goals. These could range from military campaigns63 —which served to enhance his might as a temporal rule—to devotional visits to numerous shrines guided by what she terms a “sacred itinerary,” which had the purpose of projecting an image of Christian rulership.64 The very precise nature of these travels, as well as the requirement of traveling hundreds of miles in small amounts of time,65 necessitated a strong grasp of practical geography. As reflected in the revised annals, itineraries not only became more complex and specific, but occupied an increasingly central role when carrying out and recording imperial affairs. Clearly, a heightened awareness of geographical detail arises with the expansion of Charlemagne’s administrative and legal apparatus, inspiring more detailed accounts not only in future entries, but in past ones as well.

Furthermore, a new kind of spatial language starts to appear in the revision of the Annales—one that is highly evocative of the mensura orbis terrae present in some theoretical works of geography. At the beginning of the revision, in the entry for the year 769, the fact that Charlemagne and Carloman “divided the kingdom among themselves” 66 is mentioned for the first time, after being neglected in the original entry.

Years later, after the death of Charlemagne, Einhard in his Vita Karoli—which draws upon the Annales heavily—would specify this language even further when he remarked that the brothers divided the kingdom equally among themselves. 67 Einhard does not use the term aequo (“equally”) loosely. Indeed, by observing maps made by modern scholars, one can appreciate that both shares of the realm are roughly equal in area. This type of language is observed further when Einhard talks of Saxony, which he describes as twice as wide and about as long as Frankish Germany.68 This sort of geographic knowledge and rhetoric is not new, but this language of regions and proportions is more typical of the theoretical geographical writings of Dicuil and Orosius, rather than of written narratives of state such as the Annales Regni Francorum.

The willingness to talk of space in such terms—especially in written accounts— 62 Annales Regni Francorum, 30.

63 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 212.

64 Ibid., 322.

65 Ibid., 184.

66 Ibid., 29. “regnum inter se partiti sunt” 67 Einhard “Vita Karoli Magni,” 6. “ex aequo partirentur” 68 Einhard “Vita Karoli Magni,” 18. “et eius quae a Francis incolitur duplum in lato habere putatur, cum ei longitudine porrigitur”

32 is an added layer of complexity that occurs only after the coronation. As this paper has shown, previous entries were content to mention very short lists of towns and modest itineraries. Even when a similar territorial division happened between King Pepin and his brother (also named Carloman) in 741, the Annales do not precisely delineate their shares of the kingdom, nor state that a division happened at all, as they do in 769. This lack of interest can once more be attributed to the fact that this entry occurs prior to Pepin’s papal anointing. At the time he and his brother divide the kingdom they are both officially “majors of the palace,” not kings.

Nevertheless, this new language that appears on Charlemagne’s entries after the revision does not take over from descriptions of itineraries—instead, it does something much more interesting. This new manner of description, concerned with proportions and expansive regions of the kingdom, is integrated into the itinerant descriptions of the king’s movements. In the revision of the account for the year 741, the author situated the narrative within a multi-layered geographical framework. He starts by contemplating the big picture, the division of the realm between Charlemagne and Carloman, before switching to an intermediate level, focusing on the province of Aquitaine and its uprisings.

Furthermore, as he gets into the details of Charlemagne’s campaign in Aquitaine in 769, the author switches back to describing an itinerary, where Charlemagne’s pursuit of the rebel Hunald is recorded from place to place, a progress from Duasdives, to Angoulême, and out of the region into Gascony.69 However, this language of areas and proportions does not become a preferred method of imagining space, as itinerant descriptions are still favored over larger scales, as it was in ancient times.70 Nevertheless, this joint use of two different levels of geographic imagination poses an innovation in geographical descriptions that is distinctively Carolingian, radically expanding the scope of narratives and relating the events of one locality to their significance within a larger imperial vision.

To observe how much more complex itinerary descriptions become in the Annales, we need not look far after 800. Indeed, in the entry for the year 801 Charlemagne’s progress from Rome back to Aachen after the coronation is described in considerable detail: Imperator de Spoletio Ravennam veniens aliquot dies ibi moratus Papiam perrexit.

Ibi nuntiatur ei, legatos Aaron Amir al Mumminin regis Persarum portum Pisas intrasse. Quibus obviam mittens inter Vercellis et Eporeiam eos sibi fecit praesentari; unus enim ex eis erat Persa de Oriente, legatus regis Persarum—nam duo fuerant—alter Sarracenus de Africa, legatus amirati Abraham, qui in confinio Africae in Fossato praesidebat. …

Ipse vero celebrato die natali sancti Iohannis baptistae apud Eporeiam Alpes transgressus in Galliam reversus est. …

69 Annales Regni Francorum, 31.

70 Janni, “La Mappa e il Periplo,” 8-9.

33 Imperator Aquisgrani palatio natalem Domini celebravit.

The Emperor came from Spoleto to Ravenna and after lingering there for a few days proceeded to Pavia. There he heard that the envoys of Harun Emir al Mummenin, King of the Persians (Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid Caliph) had arrived at the port of Pisa. He sent messengers to meet them and had them presented at court between Vercelli and Ivrea. One of them was a Persian from the Orient, a legate of the King of the Persians, the other—for there were two—was a Saracen from Africa, the envoy of Emir Abraham, who reigned within the border of Africa in Fustât. …

After celebrating the day of the birth of Saint John the Baptist, Charles crossed the alps and returned to Gaul. …

The Emperor celebrated the birth of the Lord (Christmas) in his palace at Aachen.71 Not only is this itinerary more specific, but after some of the stops the author of the Annales elaborates on other geographical details unrelated to Charlemagne’s travel plan.

For example, when the ambassadors are presented, they relate accounts of their journey and of events happening in their lands, mentioning places in Africa such as Fustât (now present-day Cairo) and the border with the Persians. After meeting with the envoys, the author notes that Charlemagne sent a notary to Liguria to prepare a fleet which would assist Isaac the Jew in bringing back a gift elephant. Additionally, during Charlemagne’s stay at Spoleto a large earthquake shook the whole of Italy, and the records note that parts of Gaul and Germany along the Rhine were also affected. The global, imperial vision of the Annales even goes as far as Barcelona, where the capture of the city from the Saracens is documented.72 It is evident in these accounts that the movements of the Emperor are now tracked with heightened precision, detailing not only the places he visits, but the time he spends in each, as well as the business carried out. Charlemagne’s post-coronation emphasis on tighter control and effective governance clearly affects the language used to describe space. It now reflects an understanding of rulership that goes beyond dominion of vast yet vaguely described regions. This new language recognizes the importance of accounting for every noteworthy place in the realm.

Additionally, one can see how places outside of his route start to figure prominently in the narrative. Usually, these are found in his kingdom, but there are also mentions of places in Africa and the Near East. In the years before the coronation, these places were rarely mentioned, portrayed as vague, nebulous, and distant. Charlemagne’s power as emperor is not only projected in specific places of his realm by this rhetoric, but it is also expanded in reach and influence. The annalists’ dedication to documenting these places is a testament to a kingdom increasingly aware of what may be anachronistically called “foreign policy.” As documented by McKitterick, Charlemagne frequently received foreign envoys, often to negotiate alliances and help with military campaigns across 71 Annales Regni Francorum, 112-116.

72 Ibid.

34 the known world. While the reception of ambassadors had always been a function of court life, after Charlemagne’s coronation in 800, the number of envoys received increased dramatically, and the empire’s diplomatic horizons widened considerably.

From Byzantium to Denmark, legates were “obliged to find the king wherever he might be, traversing great tracts of his realm in order to do so,” a testament to the Emperor’s power and expansive domain.73 Naturally, this increase in diplomatic activity created a twofold need in terms of geography: First, practical geography needed to be precise enough to allow each envoy to reach the Emperor wherever he may be. Second, the geography of distant lands, as well as their place within the world, had to be understood with increased precision to deal effectively with the legates and their missions. This is why not only itineraries increased in precision and complexity, but they were integrated with large-scale geographical rhetoric. This language typically could only be found in theoretical works, but it was adapted to supplement the itinerary and provide an appropriate view of the projection of Charlemagne’s power beyond his borders.

This newly-expanded spatial understanding did not stop at the borderlands—it extended to the nations and kingdoms that surrounded them. This is especially evident in the Annales’ revised entry for the year 786. The original entry consists of a short description of how Charlemagne marched to Brittany, conquered many Britons, held an assembly at Worms, and then went to Italy to pray and settle ambiguously termed “affairs.”74 In the revised version, an explanation is provided as to why Charlemagne was needed in Brittany. The revisions provide background on the invasion of Britain by the Angles and Saxons, which forced many of the islands’ inhabitants to flee to Brittany, specifically to Vannes and Corseult. They lived there under Frankish rule for a time, but then refused to pay the taxes they were imposed and revolted.75 This heightened awareness of foreign affairs is also reflected in Charlemagne’s growing diplomatic network. The Emperor is mentioned to have regular communications with the Byzantines76 and the Persians (Abbasids),77 as well as some formal communications with the Danes78 and other rulers of North Africa.79 After becoming emperor, Charlemagne realized that to control an empire he had to project power outwardly as well as inwardly. This could only be done if he had a clear vision and understanding of the space surrounding his realm. The details added by this revision reflect the Carolingians’ increasing understanding of the events and politics in lands abroad. Their imagination of space broadens accordingly, not only painting a clearer picture of the location of the revolts, but also how they were originated by events that transpired beyond the dominions of the Franks. The Carolingians’ spatial imagination of events and their causes now expands to include the influence of foreign spaces. Entries predating the revisions and the year 800 concern themselves only with causes they can locate within the kingdom, or they do not mention 73 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 279-281.

74 Annales Regni Francorum, 72. “causas Italicas” 75 Ibid., 73.

76 Ibid., 137 77 Ibid., 116.

78 Ibid., 138.

79 Ibid., 116.

35 causes at all. Events such as wars, revolts, or other kinds of disruptions are mostly treated as isolated occurrences. This mention of the invasion of Britain as a cause for the revolts in Brittany is one of the first times the Annales reference a causal outlook that goes beyond the Frankland.

Subsequent entries continue with the trend of specificity as well as increased complexity and expansive geographical scope. In 813—toward the end of Charlemagne’s reign—despite the fact that the emperor did not leave Aachen during this year, the events in and around his kingdom are documented with a level of detail rarely seen before. At home in Aachen, the Annales show how Charlemagne recalled his son Louis (778 – 840) from Aquitaine to declare him his successor, and also designated his grandson Bernard (797 – 818) as king of Italy. Along the borders of the empire, many nobles are sent by Charlemagne to broker peace with the Danes, as well as to battle with the Moors in places as far as Majorca.80 There are even accounts about Emperor Michael of Constantinople’s (c. 770 – 844) unsuccessful campaign against the Bulgars,81 a fact completely unrelated to the deeds of Charlemagne and his Franks! By this point, not only have the Annales become more complex in their geography, but the narrative of space they recount fundamentally changes in scope and focus. Charlemagne is still the main character, but the spatial stage is not reserved for him as it was before. The annalists now document with precise attention the most notable events surrounding the empire, whether they involve the direct presence of Charlmagne or not. The single strands of itineraries have by this point been woven into a complex network of regions, towns, and distant lands, each considered an important thread in the great tapestry of the Empire. This directly mimics the Roman vision of itineraries, as can be seen in the complex network portrayed in the famous Tabula Peutingeriana.82 The portrayal of space moved beyond the narrow scope of the king’s proximity, and became more cosmopolitan in outlook and detail. The Annales began to transform into a story about a kingdom, rather than only about its king.

This expanded view of the empire is also reflected in the Carolingians’ understanding of borders and what lies beyond them. As the empire grew, practical geography evolved beyond mere route and itineraries, and was then used to delineate precise borders, especially in unstable peripheral regions. In keeping with increased efforts toward administration and control, the new emperor established special provinces—called “marches”—across the borderlands, especially in the frontiers with the Avars. While these were not explicitly drawn and defined in maps, their limits were clearly understood, and were derived from rivers and other natural features in the area.83 Additionally, there is a detailed understanding of where frontiers meet in Einhard’s Vita Karoli, where he asserts that the empire’s boundaries with the Saxons meet almost 80 Ibid., 138-139.

81 Ibid., 139. “At Michahel imperator Bulgaros bello adpetens haud prosperis successibus utilitur” 82 See figure 1.

83 Helmut Reimitz, “Conversion and Control: The Establishment of Liturgical Frontiers in Carolingian Pannonia” in The Transformation of Frontiers: From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians., ed. Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2001), 190-192.

36 exclusively on open fields, and almost never through forests or mountains.84 It is evident that the Carolingian writers’ imagination of space had broadened beyond the areas readily controlled by the king. Authors became particularly interested in documenting the geographical extent and the events of these marches in detail. This thorough knowledge of even the most extreme regions of the kingdom was vital to establish order in newly conquered lands. Notker also mentions this desire for meticulous control at all cost, remarking that Charlemagne “would never give more than one county to any of his counts unless they happened to live on the borders or marches.”85 This way of ruling—and perceiving the space that is ruled—markedly contrasts the one observed in the earlier entries of the Annales. The Carolingian form of government had progressed from focusing on the domains in the king’s vicinity to a model where even the farthest provinces were carefully assigned, administered, and monitored. Unlike his predecessors, Charlemagne did not hesitate to exercise meticulous control over these borderlands, which is reflected in an increased understanding of their geography.

Aachen, caput mundi As the empire grew larger and its administration became more complex, the seat of royal power became somewhat fixed in the city of Aachen, also known as Aixla-Chapelle. The latter part of Charlemagne’s reign in the Annales shows a complex network of itineraries, and Aachen features prominently as the most important anchor of this array. Roman itineraries also featured such nodes in their networks, with Rome as the most significant and connected.86 “All roads lead to Rome,” the saying goes, but in Roman times it was more of a literal statement rather than a mere metaphor. Rome was the caput mundi, the “capital of the world”; it was where the major expeditions and campaigns departed with might and returned in triumph. However, with the decline of Rome and the eventual rise of the Carolingian Empire, the anchor of the European network of itineraries moved north of the Alps, away from Rome, and settled on Aachen, which overtook the Eternal City as the political center of Europe.87 The significance and centrality of Aachen can be observed in the considerable amount of time that the Emperor spends in the city. Before the time of Charlemagne’s empire, Carolingian as well as Merovingian kings held their courts in an itinerant fashion.

They moved from town to town, as observed in the early Annales, which show the kings spending the holiest feasts of the year in different towns each year.88 However, according to the Annales, from his Coronation in 800 until his death in 814, Charlemagne spent Christmas at Aachen 11 times—a significant increase from previous decades. The fact 84 Einhard “Vita Karoli Magni,” 9. “termini videlicet nostril et illorum poene ubique in plano contigui pauca loca, in quibus vel silvae maiores vel montium.”

85 Notker the Stammerer, “The Deeds of Charlemagne,” 64.

86 See figure 1. This section of the Tabula Peutingeriana prominently displays Rome as the most important node in the network of itineraries.

87 Patrick Gautier Dalché, L’espace géographique au Moyen âge (Firenze: Sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), 5-30.

88 Annales Regni Francorum, y. 800-814.

37 the Emperor stayed in Aachen during Christmas and even through Easter is critical.

As McKitterick observes, Charlemagne’s visit during a holy feast was an honor that only the worthiest towns and localities of his realm were afforded,89 and Christmas and Easter were—and mostly still are—the holiest feasts of the liturgical calendar.

As the place where the most sacred liturgies were almost always celebrated, Aachen’s centrality to the empire is not only presented logistically as the most important node of the imperial itinerary, but it also acquires a spiritual, symbolic geographical significance that rivals even Rome and is only surpassed by Jerusalem. Furthermore, the building of a chapel dedicated to the relics of the Virgin Mary “enhanced Aachen’s position in Charlemagne’s sacred itinerary.”90 Construction efforts like these would foreshadow Charlemagne’s increasingly long stays at Aachen, as he built his most magnificent palace around the sacred chapel.

Indeed, imperial power grew ever more centralized in Aachen, which Einhard calls “the seat of the King’s Court.”91 The city effectively became the Empire’s capital and administrative center, where Charlemagne permanently established his staff of scribes, built a monumental church, expanded his palace, and rebuilt the famed baths the city became known for.92 Here, Charlemagne not only exercised power over his kingdom, but he also received “guests that came to him from all quarters of the world.”93 Indeed, in addition to becoming the anchor of imperial itineraries, Aachen became a major node in “international” politics, assuming a political significance similar to that held by the much-larger city of Constantinople. Concurrently, McKitterick notes that “as Charlemagne became more often based at Aachen, so his horizons expanded. The king established contact with far distant people and rulers.” Surely, as the central administration of the empire became fixed at Aachen, the city monopolized and centralized diplomatic receptions, which could be conducted with much more regularity and an expanded scope. The establishment of Aachen as a center of power is remarkable in an administrative sense—since a capital of such significance would not be seen until Philip Augustus designated Paris in 119494 —but also because of its growing symbolic status as the center of this new empire, this new world. Notker, living hundreds of miles away from Aachen, and having never visited, recognizes it as such.

He tells us a (probably) fictitious anecdote of how Charlemagne built all the mansions of his dignitaries around his own palace, allowing him to see all of their movements and actions from the windows of his chamber.95 While the literal truth of this tale is uncertain, it encapsulates the role of Aachen as the all-seeing center of the empire, an image that endured throughout Charlemagne’s life and persisted more than 70 years after his death.

89 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 322-323 90 Ibid., 322.

91 Einhard “Vita Karoli Magni,” 17. “Aquasgrani ubi regis comitatus erat” 92 Nelson, “Aachen as a Place of Power,” 217-226.

93 Notker, “The Deeds of Charlemagne” 78.

94 William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (London: Penguin Classics, 2002), 226.

95 Notker, “The Deeds of Charlemagne,” 80.

38

Figure 3: Map of the Holy Land drawn by Ekkehard of St. Gall on the margin of Orosius’ Historiae (10th century.) From the Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen: codex 621, p. 37.

In Aachen one can prominently see how the Carolingians linked practical geography with the symbolic quality only found in theoretical geography. What started as the logistical center of the practical network of royal itineraries was soon transformed into a new symbolic center for all of Christendom. Practical geography would no longer be sufficient to understand the new capital’s role in Charlemagne’s empire, and thus Aachen’s geographical significance was highlighted both on the intermediate, itinerant level, as well as in the global, symbolic conception of space. Aachen even surpassed Rome in symbolic significance, a city that had previously served as the eye of the greatest empire in the memory of Europe. 96 Jerusalem and Dominion over Christendom Charlemagne is also portrayed as holding control over Christendom’s symbolic center: Jerusalem. Both Einhard and Notker relate in their biographies how Harun, King of the Persians, ceded control of the city and the Holy Sepulcher to Charlemagne.97 While there has been no conclusive evidence about the Franks directly controlling the 96 Dalché, L’espace géographique au Moyen âge, 29.

97 Einhard, “Vita Karoli Magni,” 16. “sed etiam sacrum illum et salutarem locum, ut illius potestati adscriberetur concessit.” Notker, “The Deeds of Charlemagne,” 96

39 Holy City during that time,98 the symbolic weight of that statement is enormous. The fact that this assertion exists in both biographies augments that fact. The Holy Land, and specifically the city of Jerusalem, was not only of immense spiritual significance, but it inspired great geographic interest as well. Even though practical geography was mapless, theoretical geography featured Jerusalem on the symbolic level as a frequent subject of highly stylized maps. One such example was drawn by Ekkehard of St. Gall (c. 980 – c. 1060) in the margins of Orosius’ Historiae,99 which is said to be the earliest extant medieval map of the Holy Land.100 The beginning of this unprecedented practice shortly after the time of Charlemagne is a clear testimony of revived interest in the study of the region, an interest that could have been inspired by the Emperor’s dominion over western Christendom and his purported authority over Jerusalem. Many other documents corroborate this keen interest and precise geographic knowledge of the Holy Land, the most notable being the numerous relations of pilgrims termed itinera Hierosolymitana (itineraries of Jerusalem). These were an important part of early medieval literature and spread throughout Europe akin to the lives of the saints. They included invaluable geographical resources, such as incredibly detailed descriptions of the holy sites, such as the Holy Sepulchre.101 This renewed interest in both the theoretical and practical geography of Jerusalem was cultivated by the scholars and travelers of Charlemagne’s empire. The keen study of the region by Carolingian monks was aimed at nurturing an Imperial ideology that placed Charlemagne as a guardian of what Isidore of Seville had called “the center of the Earth,” as did all of their geographic works.102 Charlemagne’s custodianship is augmented by his acceptance of the keys of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre.

Furthermore, even though the Holy City remained a distant location never visited by the Emperor, Charlemagne sought to shape the space around him in the image of Jerusalem. This is evidenced by the design of his Palatine Chapel, which was modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and is even purported to incorporate elements from it.103 By building his great chapel in the image of the Holy Sepulchre, Charlemagne assumes the mantle of a “new Constantine.” Not only is he a renewed Roman emperor, but a Christian Roman emperor. Charlemagne is portrayed as having created a new center of imperial power; moreover, by attributing control over Jerusalem to him, his symbolism as the center of the Christian world is solidified. Whether this claim is true or not, Charlemagne’s power is still portrayed by the writers of the age as encompassing not only the center of his empire, but of Christendom as well. Through the perception of Charlemagne as lord over Jerusalem, his empire takes a central position 98 Aryeh Graboïs, “Charlemagne, Rome and Jerusalem,” Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, pp. 792-809 (1981): 794.

99 See figure 3.

100 Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” 75 101 Grabois, “Charlemagne,” 796.

102 Isidore of Seville, “Etymologiae,” In Sancti Isidori hispalensis episcopi, Opera omnia: Patrologia Latina. vol 82 (Migne, 1850) 499.

103 Stephen G. Nichols, “Signs of Royal Beauty Bright: Word and Image in the Legend of Charlemagne,” Olifant 4, no. 1 (1976): 27

40 in the Christian worldview. The establishment of power at Aachen and his purported control over Jerusalem allows Charlemagne to earn himself a spot at the center of the early medieval imagination of symbolic space. While in the past all roads led to Rome, now all of Christendom gazed toward Charlemagne and his empire.

IV. Geographical Space Reinvented 1. From the rising of the sun to the sea-shores where it sets, lamentation beats upon the hearts of men.

Alas for me in my misery!

2. Beyond the ocean-reaches men have been touched by immense sadness and extreme sorrow.

Alas for me in my misery!

3. The Franks, the Romans and all believers are tormented by grief and great distress.

Alas for me in my misery! ...

5. Rivers of tears are now endless, for the world bewails the death of Charlemagne.

Alas for me in my misery! ...

11. Woe upon you Rome and the Roman people, You have lost the great and glorious Charlemagne!

Alas for me in my misery!

12. Woe upon you beautiful Italy without peer, and upon all your fine cities!

Alas for me in my misery!

13. Francia, which has endured dire hardships, has never suffered such grief— alas for me in my misery!

14. as when it buried the august and eloquent Charlemagne in the sods of earth at Aachen.

Alas for me in my misery! ...

20. O Christ, receive into your holy dwelling among your apostles the pious Charlemagne!

Alas for me in my misery!

–Anonymous: Planctus de Obitu Karoli, “Lament on the Death of Charlemagne”

Charlemagne died on January 28th of the year 814 while spending the winter at Aachen.104 According to Einhard, he had given no instructions for his burial, but it was decided that there was no more honorable place for it than the great church he had built at Aachen.105 Once again, the great capital city distinguished itself as the center of Charlemagne’s empire and memory. News of the Emperor’s death quickly reached every corner of his empire and beyond, with many throughout the realm overcome by grief. Toward the south and across the Alps—in Bobbio, Italy—a monk whose name is now lost to history painted through his poetry a picture of a world grieving the passing of a great king—or at least that is what he thought. The planctus, or lament, begins by enveloping the whole world—every place touched by the Sun’s rays, from where it rises to where it sets—in great lamentation caused by the death of the Emperor. The first verse is taken from a hymn typically sung during Christmastide,106 a moment of universal joy. It raises Charlemagne’s death to a level of universality akin to the birth of Christ, though replacing global gladness with world-encompassing grief.

The anonymous monk does not stop his geographic vision there, for he spends most 104 Annales Regni Francorum, 140.

105 Einhard, “Vita Karoli Magni,” 35.

106 Godman, Latin Poetry, 32.

41 of the first five stanzas finding new levels to describe just how earth-shattering the Emperor’s passing was. This great grief was capable of bridging the most enormous gaps that geography puts between men—the oceans—transcending ethnic and political barriers, bringing together all who grieved the death of Charlemagne, be they Franks or Romans (both Italians and Byzantines). Above all, the world mourns the great king not as separate territories nor tribes, but as a people united in Christ. “All believers,” the author writes, “are tormented by grief and great distress.” The combination of these three levels of universality places Charlemagne at the very center of all humanity, as a king who reigned over lands, peoples, and even souls. Gradually, the author focuses into an intermediate level, inviting individual peoples and regions to grieve with him. In a bid to show the extent of the deceased king’s dominions, the author details the sorrow felt by Rome, Italy, and Francia, the land which had the particularly honorable, if despondent task of laying him to rest “in the sods of earth at Aachen.” The imperial city of Aachen serves as the final geographical level detailed by the anonymous author in his poem.

Having started by contemplating the whole world, progressively narrowing his vision until focusing on the Empire’s “capital,” this tiered picture of a world in mourning is a testament of a king who had a complex vision of his own power and the scale of his kingdom. From menial, short-term, and local affairs to matters of global importance, Charlemagne’s vision of rulership had become truly imperial, significantly due to the great revivals and innovations that geography had enjoyed during his reign. Whether the world really did mourn as the anonymous author described does not matter. What matters is the way this monk saw the world—his spatial imagination—which had been profoundly shaped by the deeds of Charlemagne.

However, the Carolingians’ innovations in geography did not stop at theoretical texts, symbolic narratives, and all-encompassing itineraries. The classical geographic knowledge appropriated and corrected by Carolingian scholars also manifested itself in ways that were previously unprecedented and served specific imperial needs, especially in the tumultuous periphery of Charlemagne’s Empire. The concept of defined frontiers comes into being during Charlemagne’s reign, specifically in a religious context, through liturgical frontiers, which arose from the efforts to christianize the peoples at the margins of the Empire, such as the Avars. This new geographical development was crucial for Carolingian expansion, as “the drawing of these liturgical and political frameworks… [were] one of the conditions of Carolingian frontier organization in central Europe.”107 Nevertheless, these frontiers were far different from what we would picture today, such as a very well-defined line or limit on a map. While certain natural features were useful in defining where one diocese ended and another started, more often than not bishoprics were attached to the cities and towns where their cathedrals were based, providing a reference for how their jurisdiction was envisioned.

This method of defining liturgical boundaries would not work in the marches that constituted the very limits of Charlemagne’s territory. These were regions under constant skirmish, as the Carolingians fought to subdue the native peoples. Therefore, there were no settlements significant enough to have the status of town bestowed 107 Helmut Reimitz, “Conversion and Control,” 190.

42 upon them, let alone of bishopric. Despite this apparent impossibility of setting up an ecclesiastical framework, christianization was still seen as the key objective behind the subjugation of peoples like the Avars, as can be seen in Alcuin’s (c. 735 – 804) keen interest in the mission.108 But relying on scholarly descriptions of the regions was not an option. As previously mentioned in this paper, such descriptions were impractical, anachronistic, and unreliable, portraying these lands as dark and mysterious. The Carolingians were forced to come up with a new method of describing borders, which Helmut Reimitz has termed “positive affirmation.” Under this system, limits were defined by listing conquered peoples and using them as a frame of reference to determine which province, or diocese, was in charge or a particular group. As Reimitz notes, “within the framework of this rhetorical scheme of positive affirmation, Francia is given both shape and direction. The bordering gentes are defined and given a social place as being subjected.” 109Not only was this method of setting limits useful in solidifying political, liturgical and territorial boundaries, but it also emphasized the status of border folk like the Avars as a conquered people, which would make their subjugation under Carolingian rule and subsequent integration into the empire much more likely.

While this method of drawing frontiers did not fit squarely into the theoretical or the practical geographies reviewed in this paper, it was certainly based on elements derived from them. The significance of the region and its place in the world were derived from theoretical tracts, and by using a list of conquered peoples’ as boundary definitions, elements of itinerant descriptions were innovatively combined with an ethnographic framework that was previously unused in both theoretical and practical descriptions of the earth. Positive affirmation as a method of shaping territories and jurisdictions was a purely Carolingian invention, made possible by the classical geographic knowledge that was recovered during the correctio.

However, other possible innovations could have also taken place as a product of Charlemagne’s empire, and within an area that this paper has avoided almost entirely: the creation of maps.

Apart from recounting the great grief felt throughout the empire upon the Emperor’s death, Einhard documents how the emperor divided his possessions in the manner of a will. Among several other items, he gave away four beautiful tables constructed of the most precious materials: silver and gold. Besides their great value and costly metals, these tables had something curious in common: they were all adorned with geographical images. One of the silver tables with a depiction of the city of Rome was given to the bishop of Ravenna, while another with a representation of Constantinople was allotted to the Pope of Rome. The most magnificent of these was inscribed with a map of the whole world within three circles, drawn with great mastery and detail. It was partitioned among his heirs and given in alms.110 The precise image on this precious table is now lost to history, but one can certainly assume it resembled the 108 Jinty Nelson, “Alcuin’s letter to Meginfrid,” Dierkens, Alain, et al., Penser la paysannerie médiévale, un défi impossible? (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2017), 111-125.

109 Helmut Reimitz, “Conversion and Control,” 196 110 Einhard, “Vita Karoli Magni,” 40.

43

Figure 4: Complex mappa mundi (776) Approximately at the center, Jerusalem can be seen as a star-shaped fortress.

From the Apostolic Library at the Vatican. Lat. 6018, fol. 64 v.–65 r

mappae mundi that started becoming more common during the age. These were highly detailed yet stylized depictions of the world, with Jerusalem at the center, and the three known continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—surrounding it.111 The presence of such an artifact among Charlemagne’s possessions is not surprising. Nevertheless, it is a testament to how the rise of his empire fundamentally changed the way his people saw the world around them. Indeed, Rosamond McKitterick states that “the symbolism of these table-top images is apparently straightforward. It has been taken to reflect Frankish imperial domination of the known world and relations with both old and new Rome on the part of their owner.” She also denotes that the world map on the third table “serves as a symbol in its turn of how knowledge, learning and religious devotion were intrinsic to Charlemagne’s political interests and ideologies.”112 Certainly, one can be confident in the merits and veracity of this deduction made

by McKitterick. However, having reviewed the different ways geography was revived, used, and innovated under Charlemagne, it is reasonable to suggest that there must have been something more to these maps than a purely symbolic meaning. Particularly, the table depicting the whole world points to a more intentional use. Of course, it is unlikely the images depicted in these tables were suitable for navigation—given their 111 See figure 4.

112 McKitterick, Charlemagne, 372-374.

44 incredibly heavy and impractical medium of composition—rather than merely being symbols of knowledge and power. Nonetheless, these maps could have been useful tools for visualizing these two attributes of Charlemagne and his Empire. While we cannot know how and where exactly these tables were used—as Einhard’s descriptions suggest that he never actually saw them113 —it does not make much sense that a ruler who had either acquired himself or inspired in others a highly sophisticated, multi-tiered, and expansive view of his empire would use these tables as mere decoration. This certainly was not Ekkehard’s case when he glossed Orosius with a map of the Holy Land of his own making, nor was this the intention of the monks of St. Gall who painstakingly crafted a magnificent mappa mundi, now lost. These maps, though inaccurate in many ways, were tools for study, even proving to be very helpful to the modern editors that would then compile the contents and glosses present in St. Gall’s manuscripts.114 Given this, it is possible that during his reign as emperor, maybe in the latter part of it, Charlemagne or his advisors would have gazed at the tastefully crafted table-maps while striving to understand the true extent of the empire, of the lands he had not managed to visit in his itineraries, the ones that he sought to conquer next, and those that were beyond his reach, ruled by powerful potentates such as Harun al-Rashid. Their solemn construction out of precious metals could even have served as a way to accentuate their role as geographic tools in the service of the empire.115 Conclusion Having risen to the throne of a kingdom with a rudimentary vision of its own dominions—and of the nations beyond its borders—Charlemagne departed this world having expanded his peoples’ conception of the spaces in which they lived. Not only did they have a more accurate notion of the cities, towns, and provinces that they inhabited, but they also developed a gaze that was able to see and understand what happened in the lands beyond the empire’s frontiers. Despite the relative lack of surviving maps from the period, Carolingian geography turned out to be the opposite of a dark age, as geographical practices developed in different, diverse ways that were useful enough to ensure the proper administration of an empire. Roman ideas of geography dramatically increased in popularity and influence. Theoretical geography flourished again as monks and scholars copied, edited, and adapted classical texts, with the aim of centering them around a Christian purpose. Practical geography, too, underwent a process of revival and innovation which has been largely unrecognized, until now. Even after adopting classical Roman models in both practical and theoretical methods, the innovative spirit of the Carolingian correctio combined elements from both into new methods and language to describe itineraries, regions, and borders. After three centuries of several small, rather isolated kingdoms and polities, Europe had seen through the eyes of Charlemagne a new scale of empire.

113 Ibid., 375.

114 Lozovsky, “The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St. Gall,” 77.

115 ibid., 70.

45 Bibliography Primary Sources: Annales regni francorum unde ab. a. 741 usque ad a. 829, qui dicuntur Annales laurissenses maiores et Einhardi, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895) Carolingian chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories. trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan press, 1970.

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Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SRG 25 (Hanover, 1911) Godman, Peter. Latin Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

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––––––. “Cartography.” In Geography in Classical Antiquity, by Daniela Dueck, 99–110.

Key Themes in Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

––––––. Terra cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung. Hildesheim, New York: G. Olms, 1995.

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Hoppenbrouwers, Peter. “Leges Nationum and Ethnic Personality of Law in Charlemagne’s Empire.” In Law and Empire: Ideas, Practices, Actors, edited by Jeroen Duindam, Jill Diana Harries, Caroline Humfress, and Hurvitz Nimrod, 251-274. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

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46 Encyclopaedia Britannica, February 15, 2021.

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Speculum 81, no. 2 (2006): 325-64.

––––––. “The Earth is Our Book”: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400–1000.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

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Nichols, Stephen G. “Signs of Royal Beauty Bright: Word and Image in the Legend of Charlemagne.” Olifant 4, no. 1 (1976): 21-47.

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47

49

THE ONE RULE: BURGUNDIAN SLAVE LAW, THE THEODOSIAN CODE, AND LEGAL LEGACIES IN THE POST-ROMAN WORLD

Ben Press

A

round the beginning of the sixth century, in the Burgundian city of Vienne, a fugitive slave came knocking on a church door. The clerics within gave him refuge, but they would likely have had no idea that doing so would embroil them in an interregional legal dispute that King Gundobad (r. 474-516) himself was watching closely: the slave, escaped from Lyon, would have to be returned to his home jurisdiction to be tried.1 Avitus, the bishop of Vienne from 470 to 519, was none too pleased to be involved, lamenting to Gundobad that “the slave who ran away from his master’s command ought not to have sought out the church at Vienne, and stirred up trouble for me. He was at Lyon; he could have stayed inside the church there.”2 Despite this, Avitus willingly complied with the royal request for the slave’s return, “since it is the case both that there is but one rule in force everywhere [i.e. secular law].”3 Strikingly, despite living in a post-Roman world, the “one rule” Avitus mentioned originated not from Burgundy, but from Rome: The Theodosian Code declares that “if the slave of any person…should seek refuge in the church or at the altars… he shall be sent away after not more than one day in such place.”4 The situation poses an important question: 1 Avitus, Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose, trans. Ian Wood and Danuta Shanzer (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), 216.

2 Avitus, 218.

3 Avitus, 217. For clarification on the meaning of the one rule, see footnote 4.

4 The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions, Corpus of Roman Law; v. 1.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). See 9.45.5. The Theodosian Code will hereafter be referred to as CTh. Ben Press ’20 was a concentrator in the History Department at Princeton University. He is currently a Gaither Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace OPPOSITE PAGE THE CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE BY POPE LEO III AT OLD ST PETER’S BASILICA. Miniature from the Chroniques de Saint-Denis (15th century). Held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, BnF MS Fr. 6465.

50 why would a bishop in Burgundy, ruled by descendants of a Germanic tribe, feel obliged to follow legal precedent set by a long-dead ruler of the Roman Empire?

In the tumultuous period in which Avitus lived, clarity as to what that “one rule in force” meant was often challenging to find. With the collapse of the Roman Empire decades earlier, a curious confluence of Roman law and barbarian tradition would transform the legal institutions that affected daily life. To understand this transformation, this essay will explore the ways in which Roman law influenced Burgundian law’s provisions about slaves. The collection of surviving documents from Burgundy relating to its legal environment makes it a better-illustrated example of how a Late Antique government could redefine its role in regulating relations with human property. In turn, this research will provide an example of how legal ideas about property and procedure were transmitted, formed, and implemented—ideas that would each have profound effects for the institutional landscape of Late Antique and early medieval Europe. On the whole, this article will show that the influence of Roman law was strongest in constructing a conceptual foundation for subsequent legal notions of slavery, which, when combined with post-Roman procedural transformations, would create a uniquely Burgundian legal synthesis.

The laws of Burgundy arose from a jurisprudential vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire. With the collapse of Roman administration, residents of the Gallic provinces looked to new authorities to adjudicate disputes, institute laws, and provide relief. Institutional decay led to institutional generation. Stepping in to fill the void, kings like Gundobad consolidated power by branding themselves as lawmakers, promulgating new laws while adapting the old to fit new circumstances.5 The law became heavily influenced by the institutional landscape that centuries of imperial rule had left.

Despite the ostensible upheaval, continuity remained a key prerogative, particularly in modes of government administration. Roman models proved valuable everywhere; as Peter Heather suggests, even models of kingship in post-Roman kingdoms may have been influenced by an imperial archetype.6 Lawmaking, too, was done in the same way as it had been under the Empire: a central political authority, the king, was responsible for issuing law through a variety of written forms, a process which remained variable and sometimes contradictory.7 The result was a corpus of Burgundian law that, like the Theodosian Code, was complex and continues to pose difficulty for historians to analyze definitively.

The laws of Burgundy were compiled into two primary compendia: the Lex Romana Burgundionum and the Liber Constitutionum (early 6th century). The Liber, as the primary secular law code for the Burgundian Kingdom, treated a wide variety of law across 109 separate chapters. Drafted in a similar fashion to the Theodosian Code, 5 Patrick Amory, “The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Terminology in the Burgundian Laws,” Early Medieval Europe 2, no. 1 (1993): 17.

6 Peter Heather, “Law and Society in the Burgundian Kingdom,” in Law, Custom, and Justice in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2008 Byzantine Colloquium, ed. Alice Rio (London: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2011), 122.

7 Heather, 121.

51 the compilation of the Liber highlights the responsive nature of lawmaking done over decades of rule, whereby the king issued written laws that built upon existing precedent and clarified points of dispute.8 Yet with its comparatively short length and focus on particular areas that are treated repetitively—for example, property inheritance—the Liber is best understood as an update to existing law that saw itself as an addendum to Roman tradition. This is testified to by the existence of the Lex. A synthesis of various Roman laws that was likely used as a reference for consulting Roman precedent, the Lex was, according to Patrick Amory, designed to serve alongside the Liber as a referential and “concise paraphrase of the Codex Theodosianus,” adapting it “as far as possible to a new, provincial existence.”9 Roman law directly lived on in the Burgundian judicial system through the Lex, though it was repurposed as a complement to the broader, more comprehensive Liber. The two track each other directly; with their topic headings matching throughout, Peter Heather has suggested that they “must surely have been modeled upon one another.”10 The relationship between the two codes, however, is a topic of significant scholarly debate. A primary crux is that the law seems to reference a distinction between Romans and Burgundians, a separation that would have significant jurisdictional implications.

For example, the first Constitution of the Liber declares in relation to the “crime of venality” that “Romans be judged by the Roman laws just as has been established by our predecessors; let them know that they must follow the form and statements of the written law when they render decisions so that no one may be excused on grounds of ignorance.”11 Yet while the law ostensibly indicates an ethnic distinction, the societal interplay over the century between the Burgundian arrival in the Roman Empire and the promulgation of the Liber in 516 would have made distinct ethnicity nearly impossible to define legally, and therefore, as Patrick Amory has determined, “[ethnic terminology] could have very little stable meaning to the elites of post-Roman Gaul.”12 Instead, “ethnicity was seen to be defined by one’s social role, even if it had originally derived from cultural community.”13 While ethnic terminology pervades the Liber, it should not be taken to suggest a bifurcated society that functioned with distinct institutional arrangements for each of the resident populations. The law had no “personality” that linked individual law codes to specific, legally definable populations. While they may have initially had distinct cultural, legal, and political traditions, decades of cohabitation and intermixing had transformed both societies. Indeed, the Burgundians had been resident within the Empire’s borders since they received a grant as federati in 413, over a century before the 8 Heather, 119.

9 Amory, “The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Terminology in the Burgundian Laws,” 17.

10 Heather, “Law and Society in the Burgundian Kingdom,” 113.

11 The Burgundian Code Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad, Additional Enactments. Chapter I.8. Hereafter, all references to the Burgundian Liber will be abbreviated to LC. 12 Patrick Amory, “Ethnographic Rhetoric, Aristocratic Attitudes and Political Allegiance in Post-Roman Gaul,” Klio; Berlin 76 (January 1, 1994): 452.

13 Amory, “The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Terminology in the Burgundian Laws,” 26.

52 Liber was published in 516. While the first kingdom would collapse within two decades after a Hunnic invasion, the Burgundians were shortly thereafter resettled to southern Gaul in 443.14 Over the course of that century, the Burgundians, like their Visigothic neighbors, chose to adapt the Roman institutions that they had lived under to their local context. As David Boyson shows, this preoccupation with adapting Roman precedents extended from copying Roman coinage to using Roman titles like magister militum per Gallias.15 The acknowledgement of Roman people and legal antecedents within the Burgundian law code thus fits a broader pattern of interconnectedness and blurred boundaries between the two groups, suggesting that what it meant to be “Roman” had changed, as living within the Empire had changed the institutional form of Burgundian government.

Just as the Burgundians inherited the legacies of Roman practice and institutions, so too did they inherit Roman ideas of slavery. While there is no scholarly agreement on how central slavery was to the post-Roman states, its relative prominence in the Liber indicates that not only was slavery integral to the Burgundian agrarian economy, but that it remained an interregional institution that transcended national boundaries.16 The laws on slavery, however, clarify how the Liber infused existing judicial ideas of slavery with new procedures, penalty structures, and infractions that stemmed from nonimperial roots. Discerning the sources of these new practices is largely impossible but also immaterial to the larger argument; regardless of their sources, the use of new procedural techniques in the Liber highlights a conscious effort to create a uniquely Burgundian legal experience. Reading the laws as reflectors of contemporary circumstance will show that much of the Roman intellectual landscape of slavery as laid out in the Theodosian Code still permeated post-Roman law, though changed legal procedure shows a uniquely Burgundian view of how the law could be reinterpreted within the institutional confines of post-Roman Gaul.

The law remained preoccupied with codifying social stratification and hierarchy through its penal structures. Like Roman law, the Liber makes a distinction between the free, freed, and enslaved. The free-unfree boundary, in its simplest form, was legally marked by gradated penalties: free citizens were generally subjected to lesser penalties than slaves. In the law of Thefts and Acts of Violence, for example, “anyone [i.e. any free person] who enters a garden with violence” must “pay three solidi…to him to whom the garden belongs, and let the fine be six solidi,” while “if any slave does this, let him receive a hundred blows [with a stick].”17 Such frameworks are common in the Liber: most criminal laws fixed a monetary penalty for convicted freemen and a physical punishment for slave convicts, enshrining parallel penal categories in virtually every area of criminal law. Indeed, the bulk of the provisions about slaves in the Liber 14 Justin Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde (443-534), Bibliothèque historique vaudoise ; no 113 (Lausanne: Bibliothèque historique vaudoise, 1997), 183.

15 David Boyson, “Romano-Burgundian Society in the Age of Gundobad: Some Legal, Archaeological and Historical Evidence,” Nottingham Medieval Studies; Nottingham 32 (January 1, 1988): 93–94.

16 Boyson, 100.

17 LC. XXV.1-2.

53 are provisions in laws of general applicability that prescribe disparate punishments for slaves and freemen. While in the most severe crimes even freemen could be executed, corporal punishment was most commonly reserved for slaves, who, lacking property, were flogged instead. The penal structure reflects dual dynamics, both of which were present in Roman law: slaves were systematically deprived of property with which to pay damages or compensation, and corporal punishment was seen as a necessary and valid corrective for slave misconduct.

The Liber also maintained hierarchies by limiting forms of interpersonal conduct between free people and slaves. While penal gradation created parallel legal realities for slaves and free people, Burgundian law also sought to create separate social realities.

Central to this was delineating inappropriate forms of slave interactions with those in society, a notion that borrowed heavily from Roman ideas; Roman law, for example, regulated everything from sexual relationships with slaves to dress.18 Among the forms of slave-freeman interaction prohibited by law were commercial money lending agreements: the law “Of Contracts Entered Into by Slaves” declares that “if anyone… lends money to a serf or slave without consulting his master, let him lose the money.”19 The law penalizes the moneylender, suggesting that it expected him to know better than to lend money to those outside of society and therefore incapable of maintaining a legally binding agreement. Moreover, in a nearly identical fashion to Roman precedent, the law condemned sexual relations between free women and slaves, declaring that if “a native free girl unites voluntarily with a slave, we order both to be killed.”20 Notably, just as in the Theodosian Code, no law prevents male slaveowners from having sexual relations with their female slaves. The use of capital punishment here highlights the severity of the infraction: if the woman yielded to a slave’s advances, she not only facilitated a slave’s transgression against society, but, in colluding with the slave, subverted the social hierarchy, meriting a violent death for both the woman and the slave.

Inheriting this view of slave corporality, Burgundian law continued to provide slaveowners with an almost entirely unfettered right to discipline their slaves as they saw fit. Though the Burgundian law contains far fewer references to slave punishment than the Theodosian Code, which results in a less clear understanding of the underlying norms and practices of slave discipline, no provision in the Liber suggests that underlying notions of slave discipline had fundamentally changed since the Roman period. Limits on discipline only came in extreme cases; namely, when masters murdered their slaves.

Just as under Roman law, the right of slaveowners to inflict violence on their slaves was legally circumscribed: the law entitled “Let the Burgundians and Romans Be Held Under the Same Condition in the Matter of Killing Slaves” declares that “if anyone kills a slave…let him compound sixty solidi; moreover, let the amount of the fine be twelve solidi.”21 The payment of a fine to the authorities underscores the notion that 18 CTh. 9.9.1 and 14.10.2-4.

19 LC. XXI.1.

20 CTh. 9.9.1 and LC. XXXV.2.

21 LC. X. 1. That this refers to the killing of one’s own slaves is evidenced by the phrase which follows in Chapter X.1: “if anyone kills another’s slave, Roman or barbarian…let him

54 slave murder was seen as an offense against the state and the social order it sought to create. The law follows the Roman mold of fostering a quasi-paternalistic model where slaveowners are expected to correct poor behavior and improve slave conduct as a means of achieving a social good. Burgundian law also recognizes limits on the slaveslaveowner relationship as being necessary for the maintenance of social order.

Discrepancies between the treatment of slaves and freemen extended into judicial procedure. Burgundian law marks a beginning of a new trend wherein oaths, public attestation, ordeals, and the consensus of a body of witnesses took on a more significant role in the adjudication of legal disputes. The law codifies two distinct processes for those accused of crimes: whereas presenting oaths and witness testimony in front of a magistrate were the centerpieces of judicial procedure for freemen, slaves were subjected to much more brutal treatment in order to determine culpability.22 Carrying on a time-honored tradition from Roman law, torture remained a hallmark of the investigative process for slaves but rarely, if ever, for freemen. In the event a slave was suspected of a crime, the law of Slaves Who Are Accused of Crimes declares that, after the accuser put up monetary security equal to the accused slave’s value, “let him who has been charged with the crime be handed over to a judge for torture.”23 Torture in itself was a means of determining guilt, with no additional judicial proceeding required: if the torture yielded a confession, the law commanded “then let the slave be killed for the confessed crimes.”24 If, after the destruction of his body, no confession was brought forth, the law commanded “him who made the charge make restitution to his master” in the form of a substitute slave or financial compensation.25 While the use of slave torture here is mandated in criminal procedure, it could only come after the presentation of the monetary value of the slave as security against a false testimony, disincentivizing unfounded or frivolous accusations. Unlike in Roman law, where torture was employed liberally against slaves as both a judicial tool and as a deterrent, Burgundian law’s prerequisites for torture were a substantial procedural barrier that would likely have rendered judicial torture less common than it was under the Roman system. These barriers reflect a more direct legal recognition of the high price of slaves and the negative economic impact of destroying another slaveowner’s property without significant cause.

The prescriptiveness of Burgundian law marks a departure from Roman law.

While the Theodosian Code most often relegated punishments, aside from the statemandated death penalty, to slave masters, the Liber codified punitive innovations to legally sanction and protect hierarchies. The most direct of these was in the precise values placed on people in the form of a wergeld, a monetary value deemed to reflect “the inherent worth and dignity of a particular individual, yet also a value which was

pay thirty solidi.”

22 For procedure for freemen charged with crimes, see LC. VIII. 23 LC. VII. 24 LC. VII. 25 Ibid.

55 modified by his special class and position in society.”26 Most likely a legacy of barbarian judicial practice, wergelds solidify a legal perception of dignity and worth in terms of monetary value.27 Roman law contains no such penalty, aside from specified fines to be paid to magistrates in gold, though these were not generally given in relation to the status of the victim but rather to the nature of the crime. In the event that a person was killed or maimed in Burgundy, however, compensation determined by their class wergeld was to be paid to their kin as compensation for their loss. Slaves came in at the lowest end of the wergeld spectrum: an ordinary slave had a wergeld fixed at 30 solidi and skilled enslaved blacksmiths at 100 solidi.28 However, among freemen, members of the lowest classes had their wergeld fixed at 150 solidi, while members of the nobility had theirs set at 300.29 In pure mathematical terms, then, the average slave’s inherent value was thus judged at one-tenth of a noble master’s and one-fifth of the poorest orders of society.

Though a procedural departure from Roman law, the Liber and its use of the wergeld embody an inherited view of necessary inequality in society that was fundamental to justifying slavery, and, in codifying relative social value, similarly positions the law as a tool for legislating difference between classes and concretizing the limits between free and unfree.

Burgundian slave law retained Roman law’s outward-facing character and involved the community as the key arbiter of identity. The public was involved from the moment of sale as witnesses to the transaction or signatories to bills of sale: one law declares that “if anyone has bought a bondservant [i.e. slave]…we order that if it has not been confirmed in writing or witnessed, he shall lose his payment…provided that the writing has not been subscribed and sealed by seven or five witnesses dwelling in that place.”30 While private transactions were made valid through their public character, the law also highlights how identity and property were tied to locality. Mandating that the witnesses be “dwelling in that place” suggests that the familiarity with the documented property was a common neighborly role, and that the obligation to defend one another’s property became a communal responsibility. When conflicts arose over slave identity, members of the local community were therefore called in to testify as to the true owner of the property. The Liber declares that “whoever identifies his property, whether bondservant or anything else that is his, shall receive a satisfactory guarantor [i.e., oathtaker] from the possessor, and if he does not…let him have the right of taking the thing which he identified.”31 The guarantor, if one came forward from the possessor’s community, would be expected to reaffirm the individual’s right to his property in the public forum, putting the weight of both his own honor and faith and that of the possessor behind the 26 The Burgundian Code Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad, Additional Enactments, 19. See footnote 4.

27 Jon Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 166.

28 Ibid.

29 The Burgundian Code Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad, Additional Enactments, 19. See footnote 4.

30 LC. XCIX. 31 LC. LXXXIII.

56 disputed slave. The force of the oath as a new testimonial tool would, of course, become a key element of legal procedure over the following millennium,32 but this procedural change enshrined a role for a property owner’s neighbors in adjudicating those disputes, just as the Theodosian Code’s provisions on parading slaves through the public square to solicit defenders did.

The only legal way to cross the boundary between freedom and unfreedom was through manumission. Burgundian law appears to have provided slaveowners with an unlimited right to liberate their slaves as they saw fit and, similarly to Roman law, instituted procedural safeguards to ensure the transformation could be recognized by the broader community. However, the Liber also suggests a smaller state role in the slave system, providing no occasion for state emancipation of slaves. Reflecting the finality and transformative nature of emancipation, the law cautions that “since the title of emancipation takes precedence of the law of possession, great care must be exercised in such matters.”33 The Liber continues by admonishing slaveowners that emancipation was irreversible, and that if after some transgression the former slaveowner “thinks the servant ought to be recalled into servitude, let the manumitter know that he is denied this privilege by the present law; nor can the manumitter recall him to his original condition” without a judge convicting the freedman of having “committed…acts to the loss and disgrace of his manumitter.”34 Burgundian law went further than Roman law in codifying the public character of manumission. Only in the awarding of citizenship was external involvement (i.e., that of the church or the state) mandated under Roman law, but in Burgundy all manumissions required external participation. Respected members of the community, serving as witnesses to the transition from slave to freedman, retained their role as recognizers and arbiters of status under the law of emancipation: If anyone wishes to manumit a slave, he may do so by giving him his liberty through a legally competent document; or, if anyone wishes to give freedom to a bondservant without a written document, let the manumission thus be conferred with the witness of not less than five or seven native freemen, because it is not fitting to present a smaller number of witnesses than is required when the manumission is in written form.35 Documentary or oral testimony allude to the same legal need: to bear proof of an important change, in this case of a freedman’s admission into society. Whether written or orally performed, then, the act of manumission required the presence and participation of a number of respected witnesses who could be called upon to give oaths attesting to the freedman’s status. Whereas Roman manumission was a direct pact between the freedman and his former owner, in which the church and state could— but were not required to be—involved in order to confer citizenship, Burgundian 32 Arthur Charles Howland, Ordeals, Compurgation, Excommunication, and Interdict (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1897), 1-3.

33 LC. LXXXVIII. 34 LC. XL. 1.

35 LC. LXXXVIII.

57 manumission reflected a communitarian shift in the tone of the law, envisioning a broader popular role in upholding the slave system. Importantly, Burgundian law does not make a distinction between freedom and citizenship, perhaps reflecting the degree to which the barbarian legacies of emphasizing social ties superseded arcane Roman forms of affording rights.

For those slaves who sought freedom by escaping their masters, the law reduced procedural barriers and explicitly authorized their capture and imprisonment by any who could effect it. Burgundian law took a two-pronged approach: by positively rewarding those who captured fugitive slaves with a financial award and aggressively penalizing those who aided them, the Liber added more effective incentive structures to the simpler Theodosian approach of punishing anyone who failed to report fugitives to the state authorities. Perhaps reflecting a weaker governmental presence in many areas, or embodying the communal responsibility to defend one another’s property, the law delegated much of the responsibility for capturing fugitives to citizens. For example, in the case of escaped royal slaves, the law states that “if anyone seizes a fugitive within the provinces belonging to us [i.e., either an escaped royal slave, or any other person formerly in Burgundian custody], let him receive a solidus for the fugitive” with additional rewards for repossessing horses or other stolen property.36 If, in the process of seizing the fugitive, the slave should resist, “[he] who has followed a fugitive, and by chance kills him while resisting, [shall] be free from all blame.”37 While the law provided incentives and latitude for citizen action, it also actively encouraged deep skepticism of those whose identity could be in question. The law of Receiving Strangers required that anyone who received a “stranger coming to him from any nation present him to the judge for investigation so that he may confess under torture to whom he belongs,” presuming not only that all strangers were fugitive slaves but legally requiring anyone who encountered an unknown person to submit them to torture to ascertain their true identity.38 Skepticism of identity and a prerogative for citizen action thus combined to create a legal synthesis that empowered nonstate actors to take a central role in the prosecution of fugitive slaves, putting aside the Roman emphasis on state involvement in favor of diffusing responsibilities for protecting property across the population.

With this diffused agency came a concern about those who might neglect their communal responsibility and aid slaves in their escape. Such aid could be deliberate or unintentional. Penalties remained commensurate to perceived intentionality: if the slave should flee detention, the captor was to “take oath that the escape was made neither by his own collusion, as stated above, nor by the collusion of his slaves, and that he escaped 36 LC. VI.1. The use of “fugitive” here can be at times confusing, for in the text of this law it refers to fugitive as both native freemen and slaves, suggesting that the term was used throughout the law to refer to both. I have incorporated that approach here, though the text of the law can be unclear as to which group it is referring. I have used my best judgment to suggest when there might have been a differentiation, but this is certainly open to interpretation.

37 LC. VI.2.

38 LC. XXXIX.1.

58 his bonds neither with his nor with their knowledge.”39 If the captor would not take an oath, thereby implying some degree of culpability, he was to pay fifteen solidi; and if it were proved that the fugitive “escaped with his collusion, he who allowed him to escape shall be compelled to pay thirty solidi,” or the amount of a common slave’s wergeld.40 Collusion could take multiple forms, but the law especially focused on those that masked or altered identity. While Burgundian law did not perpetuate the Roman belief in maintaining social norms through legislating dress, it legislated slave appearance insofar as changing it could hide their true identity if they escaped. Just as under Roman law, hair is a focal point of identity in the Liber.41 Hair remained central to self- and external identification, and changing it could confound one’s ability to identify a fugitive: as such, the law declares that “whoever unintentionally provides…a fugitive with false hair, let him forfeit five solidi; if he provides him with such hair intentionally, let him be compelled to pay the wergeld of the fleeing man.”42 Even worse was to come if it could be proved that a captor or his slaves forged documents on their behalf: the law stated that “if any freeman, knowing him to be a fugitive, gives letters to the fugitive to aid his escape, let him be condemned to the loss of a hand; if a slave does this, let him be condemned to the loss of a hand after receiving three hundred blows.”43 A rare example of corporal punishment for freemen, the severity of the penalty reflects an increased reliance on documents, the forgery of which betrayed the communal trust that rendered them valid. Despite this, the penalties remained less severe than under Roman law, which mandated summary execution for forgery and aiding fugitives.44 Overall, though, Burgundian law’s emphasis on intentionality and aiding fugitives reflects a desire to channel popular agency towards perpetuating the slave system: while those who unintentionally gave aid were guilty of neglectful conduct and therefore not directly threatening the institution of slavery, those who intentionally did so actively subverted their communal responsibility to maintain private property.

The Liber was not an exhaustive body of law. While it came about as a means of using new procedure to reimagine old legal ideas, many of the elements of the Theodosian Code’s larger corpus of slave law went untreated in the Burgundian codes.

The Liber does not, for example, deal with slaves’ religion, their accusatory rights, or their impact on broader cultural identity, whereas the Theodosian Code thoroughly legislated them. Whether this is because the Burgundians presumed that all of these norms were settled in existing Roman precedent that did not need to be restated, or rather because the Burgundian authorities felt that they were no longer sufficientlyimportant to be mentioned in their law code, the reason for the Liber’s selectivity will remain an open question. It is clear, though, that in the areas that both the Theodosian Code and the Liber treated, the systematic underpinnings that illuminate broad social understandings 39 LC. VI. 6.

40 LC. VI. 8.

41 LC. V. 5-6., XXXIII. 1., XCII. 1-2.

42 LC. VI. 4 43 LC. VI. 10 44 CTh. 12.1.50; 9.21.2.

59 of slavery remained largely unchanged.

The Burgundian legal landscape, then, reflects an intellectual conception of slavery and its role in society that had changed little since the fall of the Empire.

While the evidence is too scant to definitively say whether the post-Roman Gallic kingdoms were built on slavery in the same way that the Roman Empire was, Burgundy remained a slave society in a crucially important way: it used its primary tool of social organization—the law—to carve out a section of the population who would be defined as nothing more than property. Slaves possessed no legal rights to speak of, could be traded at will by their owners, had no freedom of mobility, and were subjected to a brutal disciplinary regime that dehumanized them in the hopes of ensuring better conduct. These people, and their relationships with those outside of the slave class, posed the same legal questions for the authorities in both societies, including: what limits should be placed on slaveowners harming their slaves? Which, if any, slaves should be allowed to transcend the border from unfreedom to freedom, and what role should the state have in this process? How can hierarchies be codified to keep slaves on the peripheries of society while maintaining class distinctions? That each of these questions was answered in broadly similar ways—or indeed that they asked these same questions in the first place—suggests that the intellectual landscape remained essentially similar.

The discourse on each of these questions, in turn, invariably shaped and was shaped by institutional forms that remained key legacies of the Roman world. Slavery was, in both societies, an omnipresent institution that transcended national and economic borders and fueled the farms, workshops, households, and other enterprises that dominated economic and social life. Yet slavery fits as part of a broader pattern of institutional continuity that marked the Late Antique world. Simply put, economic institutions and social systems generally changed slowly. Ties to the economic systems around which daily life revolved remained strong—take, for example, the enduring attachment to landed estates that formerly Roman elites manifested after the fall of the Empire—suggesting that, though political fragmentation had broken up longstanding Roman power structures, foundational economic and social forms evolved over a longer term.

The law found itself in the middle of competing needs: while institutions would evolve to fit new geopolitical circumstances, including new pressures coming from the loss of an interregional specialized market and the collapse of political and military unity, it also needed to regulate institutions as they existed when the law was promulgated. While political transformation in a distant Roman capital yielded political control closer to home, lawmaking was suddenly able to be a process shaped by local and inherited tradition—Roman, barbarian, or otherwise—tailored to the needs of the residents of new polities. The responsive lawmaking method in the Theodosian Code and the Liber highlight this with its competing proclamations and repetitive decrees: some problems, or perceptions of them, evolved while others persisted. Those holding power acted in line with the institutional realities that they confronted and did their best to navigate them. The Burgundian kings were thus not passive participants in this process of change but rather savvy legislators who recognized that while socioeconomic

60 change on a massive scale may not have been necessary or desirable, procedural changes in the way the law was executed could make law feel more culturally and politically proximate. Holding sole power for the first time, many of these local leaders sought to infuse their law with more familiar local or tribal practices that reflected social bonds and community realities, including the use of oathtaking, payment of wergelds, and presenting witnesses. Legal procedure therefore took on a new level of importance as

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63

VIVA LATINATAS

Andre Mendoza

I. Motivations

T

he first two of my four years of Latin at Princeton inculcated in me a firm conviction that I was too stupid to learn it. Two years of blood, sweat, and tears (Wheelock, Caesar, and Virgil) had pounded my initial enthusiasm into dejection. I freely admit my sloth in my studies, and that a few of my classmates learned quickly–– yet just as many dropped out of the introductory Latin sequence in frustration or boredom greater than my own. As one Latin sequence drop-out told me, “I think it’s important to sit down and memorize forms and grammar. That’s what a classical education is, right? I’m glad I had it, but it’s just not for me.” My former excitement thus gave way to suspicion: “Is that,” I wondered, “what a classical education is?”

Another revelatory moment in my Princeton career came in the summer after my freshman year attending the Basic Ancient Greek program sponsored by the City University of New York (CUNY). The program had begun some forty years prior and had been tweaked and perfected after every succeeding year. To learn all of Greek grammar in four weeks was an absurd accomplishment, made possible only by some of the most seasoned and dedicated Hellenists. After ten weeks, I could read Homer and Plato with satisfaction, if not ease. However, yet again I noticed the same pattern of frustration in myself and among my peers. Some students absorbed -μι verb morphology within the first set of drills; others, in fact close to half of the students, simply dropped the program in the first few weeks.

Common to both my Latin and Greek educational experiences was another feature: most students, even the exceptional ones, could barely pronounce the languages they knew so well. With exceedingly very rare exceptions could my classmates read Greek or Latin prose aloud convincingly, that is, with pauses and inflection indicating Andre Mendoza ’20 was a concentrator in the Classics Department Princeton University. He is currently a Latin Teacher at Northridge Preparatory School.

OPPOSITE PAGE: MASTER AND STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. From the Grandes Chroniques de France (c. 14th century). Held at Castres, bibliothèque municipale, MS. 3.

64 comprehension of the text. It is excusable to be unable to roll r’s or to pronounce with a detectably American accent. However, it is commonplace to hear such gibberish as dissavilanter (not a real word) in place of dissolvuntur, or even εὕρηκα in place of ἑώρακα,1 from the mouths of students and teachers alike.

The pronunciation of poetry is worse–– most classics students simply do not have any sense of meter, and therefore simply cannot appreciate the poetry we translated as poetry. Thus scansion becomes a dreaded, and even demoralizing, exercise which contributes nothing to our love of poetry. Despite the honest efforts of students and professors, appreciation of the rhythm and prosody of classical poetry is now effectively reduced to the drawing of lines and half circles.

In sum, my experience has repeatedly demonstrated the prevailing pedagogy of dead languages, which is ineffective at bringing the average student to competence in both reading comprehension and pronunciation. For several years I had thought that no one shared my dismay, that my interest in phonology was merely idiosyncratic, and that the value which I at first sought in my classics courses was perhaps not worth pursuing.

Eventually, buried in the 1900 edition of The Classical Review, I encountered “Two Letters to a Classical Friend,” penned by one “G. H. S.,” which shared and expressed my observations with greater clarity: All poetry is addressed primarily to the ear. Yet our teachers are content to employ, both in Greek and Latin, a mode of pronunciation demonstrably barbarous; to perpetuate mechanically, in the case of Greek, a system of accents which in speech they ignore; while in Latin, whether spoken or written, accent is neglected altogether, and though a theoretical importance is attached to quantity, it is not thought worthwhile to indicate it in writing, and in spoken utterance it is constantly set at nought. Such a habitual disregard of the essential conditions on which the apprehension of poetic art depends, goes far to justify the suspicion that the classics have neither been taught nor learned from the love of Poetry. If Latin lived on the lips of our teachers, I think the Odes of Horace would have conveyed more to me than they do.2 With a dictionary and an occasional reference to Whitaker’s Words or Wiktionary for parsing, my fellow students could translate any text; but I felt strongly, and feel so now, that translation is not reading, if for no other reason than that I did not begin to study Latin because I wanted to translate the Confessions of Augustine [but rather to read it]. Reading is pleasurable, the kind of thing that, if done with a good book and a few hours to spare, can cause the reader to lose all consciousness of anything except the story on the page.

I concluded several things from my initial experiences with Latin and Greek: 1 These are in fact two different words: the former meaning “I have discovered” and the latter meaning “I have seen.”

2 F. Granger and G. H. S. “Classics in Education: Two Letters to a Classical Friend,” The Classical Review 15, no. 6 (1901): 320-22.

65 first, the failure of pedagogy has nothing to do with the quality or expertise of professors, who are more often than not remarkable teachers. Neither could the failures lie in the pupils, who were no different than students of modern languages, who clearly lacked these problems. No––the problems would have to lie in the resources and expectations which are implicitly or explicitly agreed to in the field of classics; the problems would have to lie in the method.

The method which prevails in high schools and universities is simply not enough.

The debate between those who uphold to the Grammar-Translation Method (G-T) and advocates of spoken Latin largely revolves around language acquisition research.

The question they consider is whether speaking Latin leads students more efficiently to a better knowledge of the language. The unanimous answer from those who have embraced this ‘new’ pedagogical method is a resounding yes–– but that is not the question of this paper. In fact, I think it is the wrong question. Rather, the question of speaking Latin has much more to do with the value of the classics as a humanistic discipline, which I believe the “traditional” method utterly fails to communicate. Again, Mr. “G. H. S.” precisely identified the problem: To me, and to most others on my own level of attainment, [classics] was just mere cram and grind, and could by no possibility be anything more. There was nothing in all this to gratify the love of Letters, the love of Nature, the love of Beauty. No experience could be less Hellenic, or less humane. The classics, I then felt, and I feel still, were hackneyed to death, and nothing short of a miracle could impart to them the least touch of freshness. A classic text to me both was and is, a thing of verbs and adjectives; of the grammar and the lexicon; and the study of it had no more to do with Poetry than it had to do with Chemistry.3 My own criticisms and those of G. H. S. began to find resolution in the Latin immersion class, Latin 110, offered at Princeton. Six weeks into Latin 110, I began to dream in Latin and read with immediate subconscious comprehension. However, I still felt that phonology took second place, and that speaking sometimes came at the cost of speaking badly.

In the summer of 2019 I had the opportunity, thanks to generous endowment of the Princeton Department of Classics, to spend eight weeks at the Accademia Vivarium Novum, a small school in Rome, housed in the Villa Falconieri once visited by Cicero himself, where Latin and Ancient Greek are spoken exclusively. There I discovered these classical languages fully alive. The young men, my age, who were full-time students of the Vivarium possessed and outstanding fluency and mastery of the languages with which I had wrestled so hard for so long. These were men who never cared to draw dashes and half-circles over lines of ancient poetry, but daily sang Catullus, Ovid, and Horace with violins and drums.

3 Ibid.

66 II. History Latin and Ancient Greek are dead–– they died a long time ago. Greek died like the ship of Theseus: successive and imperceptible changes brought it to the modern era in a substantially different, if recognizable, form. The language of Ancient Greece first lost its tonal accentuation and vowel length; the liberal use of prepositions eventually replaced the dative case entirely and the middle-voice and optative were lost to distant memory, as were a number of participle forms; vowel qualities converged such that οι, ει, and η became equivalent to ι –– thus Modern Greek. Considering the distance between us and 5th-Century BC Attica, the degree of similarity between the modern and ancient varieties is at times astonishing. Most native English speakers barely understand the English of only five centuries past, let alone twenty-five! Despite the similarities, however, Modern Greek is not Ancient Greek, and modern Greeks require study before they are able to delve into their massive classical corpus, stretching from Homer through Late Antiquity.

The story of the death of Latin is more interesting: the military successes of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, and even as far north as Britain. Like Greek, Latin began to evolve, but because of the geographic expansion of the language, its evolution was not uniform. For a time, it was unclear whether this or that language was Old French or merely bad, that is, “vulgar,” Latin.

In contrast to its eastern cousin, Latin continued to function as a literary and scholarly language in Late Antiquity, through the Medieval period, and even beyond, in form very close to its Classical progenitor. Unlike Greek, Latin split in two: one branch evolved into the Romance languages, while the other remained largely untouched. This latter form, medieval or scholastic Latin, became the language of liturgy and academia for centuries even after its vernacular use had ceased. Nearly everyone from Dante and Newton to Descartes and Galileo not only read Latin but spoke it fluently and wrote in it extensively. Eventually, the vernacular languages of Europe replaced Latin in churches and universities, and today we students and scholars of classics find ourselves confronted with a long dead language which defined three-fourths of Western literature.

This is where we encounter a problem, in both Latin and Greek: there are no native speakers of either language, yet we want to read them. Thus teaching Latin is very unlike teaching other languages, and both ought to be and cannot but be different. Students of Spanish learn to ask “¿Dónde está el baño?” in their first week of instruction from a native or fluent speaker; the utility for students of Latin of knowing how to ask “Ubi est locus sēcrētus?” is minimal; even if they do learn it, they will learn it from a non-native or non-fluent speaker. The difference between Spanish on the one hand and Latin and Greek on the other is best described not as a difference of age but rather of purpose and resource. Those who learn Spanish will encounter Spanish spoken and written and ought themselves to speak and write it; those who learn Latin will almost exclusively encounter the language in text from an instructor who has only ever encountered Latin through classical texts. Exceptions include university mottos nobody understands or cares about, phrases like quid pro quo and ceteris paribus, ATM machines in the Vatican,

67 and the occasional abdication address from the pope.

Teaching Latin and Greek, and in fact all dead languages from Sanskrit to Aramaic, is a problem that has not been solved. There are different ways to go about it and much argument about these different ways has evidently gone nowhere. The prevailing method is that of Grammar and Translation. It gives special attention to grammatical accuracy which had been too often neglected in post-Roman Latin. It has the advantage of not requiring language fluency from an instructor. The method focuses on reading skills, and fits very well into the rigor of an academic environment.

The twentieth century saw a resurgence in spoken Latin and Greek––W. H. D. Rouse, a co-founder of the famous Loeb Library series, innovated the application of the ‘Direct Method’, a method of teaching language without recourse to one’s native language, to Latin and Greek. The feat is all the more impressive when one realizes that Rouse and other classicists of his school had to reinvent the art of speaking languages they had only ever read. He taught Latin and Greek at the Perse School in Cambridge, England, for 26 years and wrote a number of books with his colleagues, detailing the method and its successes and criticizing the Grammar-Translation method.

After Rouse’s death in 1955, the Danish classicist Hans Ørberg published the introductory Latin textbook Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. The text, written entirely in Latin, marked an incredible departure from what had long since become considered the ‘traditional’ method. In more than 300 pages of skits and fictional stories set in the late Roman Empire, the text teaches vocabulary and grammar from contextual clues and images. Lingua Latina, however, did not attain any level of popularity until Luigi Miraglia, a Neopolitan Latin speaker who would later found the Accademia Vivarium Novum, discovered the text and popularized it with his own teaching. Concurrently with the popularization of Lingua Latina, Father Reginald Foster established his reputation as a prolific and accomplished teacher and speaker of Latin at the Gregorian University in Rome, where he taught for 30 years. The name and personality of Father Foster today merit a lingering presence in the minds of Latin instructors.

The twenty-first century has only seen the growth of spoken Latin and Ancient Greek around the world: institutions like Paideia and the Polis Institute in Jerusalem have expanded speaking as a pedagogical tool to other ancient languages as well, such as Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Sanskrit, Coptic, and Syriac. However, speaking as a pedagogical style for classical languages is largely a grassroots movement which has gained momentum outside of academia and which stands in direct opposition to the Grammar-Translation method. Very little academic literature in the way of conversation or analysis of the disagreement exists, with Latin speakers mostly speaking to themselves about it and scholars generally happy to support it as a means of drawing more students into the discipline but not as a legitimate pedagogy.

In the midst of the debate, nobody, to my knowledge, has attempted to derive a pedagogy from clear principles. Rather, classical instructors by and large have merely passed on the method of instruction which they themselves received. This paper thus begins with principles and ends with a sketch. We do not “solve” the problem of classical language instruction; we demonstrate that the traditional method does not solve it—and

68 suggest an outline for a solution.

III. Theory Evaluation always assumes a standard. We can call a violinist mediocre because we have some shared idea of what makes for good violin playing. Violinists practice and understand their progress in light of the ideal, and teachers teach according to it. If we are going to evaluate different methods of teaching Latin, we first need this standard.

What then does a Latin teacher teach? What does ‘fluency’ in an ancient language mean for scholars and students in the 21st Century? To answer this question is to state clearly the purpose of Latin instruction. Opinions abound in and outside of academia. We will begin with the popular and end with the academic, and ultimately synthesize them into a single clear answer.

Why Latin?

Take a moment to ask the internet why someone should study Latin. You will find without fail at every language-learning blog and educational forum the same few reasons repeated. For example, you will read that since Latin is the mother of the Romance languages, learning it is excellent preparation to study any one of them. As one website says, “To learn Latin is therefore to begin the study of 6 languages at once.”4 Another common reason is vocabulary expansion. Roughly 30% of English vocabulary is derived from Latin, either directly or via the French language. Latinate words furthermore occupy a higher and more educated register than do words of AngloSaxon etymology–– thus the difference between “holy” and “sanctified,” “leave” and “abdicate,” “fix” and “rectify.” Thus, even though Latin words might make up a minority of English vocabulary, these words make up a larger portion of academic vocabulary.

Furthermore, the jargon of certain specialized fields such as law or economics often descends from Latin, such as habeas corpus or ceteris paribus. Many and similar reasons abound across the internet: Latin is “the most efficient way to study English grammar,”5 says another source.

While these are obvious and certain benefits of Latin study, they are not reasons to study Latin. If any student wanted to learn Spanish and French, they would make the quickest progress by studying Spanish and French; the simplest way to learn English vocabulary is to study English vocabulary. If anything, they are reasons not to study Latin and therefore reasons not even to teach it.

While these benefits are impossible to ignore, it is clear from the average classroom and Latin textbook that reading is the primary focus of a Latin course. At this affirmation the reader is likely nodding in agreement. There are, however, those who 4 Christopher Perrin,“10 Reasons to Study Latin First,” Classical Insights, January 15, 2020. https://insights.classicalacademicpress.com/10-reasons-to-study-latin/.

5 Cheryl Lowe, “Top 10 Reasons for Studying Latin,” Memoria Press, January 2, 2020. https:// www.memoriapress.com/articles/top-10-reasons-studying-latin/.

69 argue that reading ought not to be the primary focus. Another common reason frequently encountered alongside those already discussed is the development of cognitive skills. A good Ciceronian sentence is a puzzle like any other which requires discipline, patience, and honed analytical skills to interpret. Such skills are invaluable, not only to students who continue their studies at the undergraduate or graduate level, but to human beings in ordinary life.

Professor Daniel Carpenter picks up this argument where it leaves off in the popular blogs. Carpenter notes that in recent history educational standards have undergone a dramatic transformation. Whereas high schools and universities could count on students taking at least several years of Latin and Greek, nowadays “most college Latin students are now fulfilling a 1-3 semester language requirement in which they will never read any literature or, at best, only isolated, short passages from a few major authors.”6 As proof, contrast these standards with those published by Princeton University, then the College of New Jersey, in 1822: Candidates for admission to the Freshman, or lowest class, are examined in Caesar’s Commentaries (5 books), Sallust, Virgil, (Eclogues and six books of the Aeneid,) Cicero’s Select Orations, contained in the volume in Usum Delphini, Mair’s Introduction to Latin Syntax, the Gospels in the Greek Testament, Dalzel’s Collectanea Graeca Minora, or Jacob’s Greek Reader, or other Authors equivalent in quantity, together with Latin and Greek Grammar, including Latin Prosody.7 Adolescents in 1822 were required to have received a more rigorous classical education than is now expected from a modern day classics major simply to be admitted. The actual college courses were no less comprehensive: First- and second-years were required to read Xenophon and Livy, Horace and Demosthenes, Cicero and Homer. Carpenter has by no means exaggerated this staggering shift in the educational paradigm.

Carpenter concludes that this cultural and educational change calls for a corresponding change in the Latin classroom. Whereas in days past students were expected and able to come to a decent knowledge of the language, this standard is no longer practical or possible. Thus, Carpenter argues, “Undergraduate majors in the humanities often do not have a thorough grounding in basic analytical problem solving… Nevertheless, all students should expect and should be given the opportunity to develop these invaluable skills… [Therefore] it is also a reasonable direction for us to go with Latin pedagogy.”8 Nor does Carpenter stand alone in his opinion. Popular internet Latinist Justin Slocum Bailey relates a yet more extreme position than Carpenter’s: “The chair of classics at a prestigious school recently told me that it would be tragic for a person to 6 Daniel P. Carpenter, “Reassessing the Goal of Latin Pedagogy,” The Classical Journal 95, no. 4 (2000): 392.

7 Ashbel Green, Discourses, Delivered in the College of New Jersey (Philadelphia: E. Littell, 1822).

8 Carpenter, “Latin Pedagogy,” 394.

70 understand Latin [well], because this would deprive the reader of the boons to mind and character of painstakingly piecing together the meaning.”9 In a similar (albeit less extreme) vein, a classical investigation report from 1924 lists the “development of correct mental habits”10 as one of the primary objectives of classical language study. Carpenter in fact finds the latter objective too vague to be helpful, remarking that “Latin teachers would be hard put to reach a consensus about ‘correct mental habits.”11 Nevertheless, it is hard to see how Carpenter’s own proposition differs from it in substance.

Carpenter’s solution to the neglect of classical studies in education is reasonable but not reasonable enough. Analytical thinking skills are every bit as valuable as he claims, and furthermore, the “study of Latin is an excellent means of training our students to think analytically.”12 If Latin is an excellent means, surely Sanskrit or Arabic, languages yet more heavily inflected and precise than Latin, are still more excellent means.

Actually, if analytical skills are the intended benefit of a Latin course, it is possible that proof-based mathematics, rigorous analytical philosophy, or pure grammar itself could do a better job at teaching analysis. The other methods require things like memorizing vocabulary and morphology which simply divert the students’ mental energy away from analysis. Carpenter’s intent is noble and in response to a real problem: that classical studies are increasingly neglected in our educational systems.

There is, however, in every such matter, a healthy division of labor. We will leave it to the Department of Education and to university administrators to decide what to expect from students. Classicists, however, should not compromise on the value of our discipline, nor yet allow that compromise to affect the classroom. The Latin language is primarily worthy of study because it is Latin, and not because it is like Spanish or geometry. It is the present task to decide how to teach this language as it deserves to be taught, whether or not any student or administration recognizes its merit. Thus Carpenter’s thesis gets us no farther than did the popular blogs.

The problem with all these reasons is that they conflate the Aristotelian distinction between essence and a per se accident. The essence of a thing is ‘what it is’–– it is its definition. For example, to exercise is by definition to move the body in strenuous ways, such as running and lifting weights. These activities, moreover, have necessary consequences, such as sore muscles or a lower resting heart rate. The distinction between essences and per se accidents lies in the observation that neither of these consequences, like sore muscles, are the same thing as exercise; they could potentially be achieved by other means. A per se accident is therefore a necessary and unfailing quality or property of a thing, whereas an essence precisely is the thing in question.

We can apply this distinction to the current argument. Clearly the reasons we have so far discussed for studying Latin are rather per se accidents than essences. It 9 Justin S. Bailey, “The Persistent Perks of Speaking Latin,” Eidolon, January 23, 2017. https://eidolon.pub/the-persistent-perks-of-speaking-latin-ba55fd5fe51f.

10 American Classical League, The Classical Investigation Conducted by the Advisory Committee of the American Classical League. Part I: General Report (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1924), 79-80 11 Carpenter, “Latin Pedagogy,” 394.

12 Ibid.

71 is impossible to learn Latin without learning some English and Romance grammar, vocabulary, and acquiring analytical skills–– yet studying Latin is not the same thing as studying grammar, vocabulary, and hard thinking. If we are to develop a coherent and robust pedagogy, we need to define the essence of Latin learning.

Learning is a change which takes place in the mind and soul of a student, and the essence of any change is properly called its final cause; this is distinct not only from per se accidents but also from subjective motivations. A university student may enroll in a Latin 101 course simply for the purpose of earning a language credit (another example of a per se accident), yet his subjective motivation is independent from the motivations of the course itself, which are objective. I never knew Mr. Wheelock, nor pretend to have acquaintance with his opinions, but can say with confidence that though Wheelock’s Latin does not care why a student picks it up, it must and does make assumptions about what it is good for students to know about or know how to do with Latin. To explore the final cause of Latin instruction is to challenge and analyze these assumptions implicit in every Latin course and textbook.

This assumption, stated generally, is that the final cause of Latin learning is the ability to read authentic texts in the Latin language. We may cite many who are in agreement: (1) “Classicists much first insist that the value of the study of Latin is in learning to read Latin.”13 (2) “Reading, then, is the first standard and key to communicating with the ancient world.”14 (3) The central aim of Latin instruction is “to read and understand classical literary texts in the original language.”15 Reading, however, is not the most obvious answer, even if it is the most widely accepted goal in academia. Ask any Latin student what they are learning in class, and they will respond, “Latin”–– and Latin is not the same thing as reading Latin.

For a moment set aside the classical corpus and historical importance of Latin, and consider it merely as one language among others. Is it worth learning? On this point, sentimental inspirational quotes demonstrate a profound wisdom: “A different language is a different vision of life,” says Federico Fellini; “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” says Ludwig Wittgenstein; “To have another language is to possess a second soul,” says Charlemagne, purportedly. Latin, no matter how dead it may be, is, like all languages, a language worth studying for its own sake.

Knowledge of any language is itself valuable, but there are different kinds of knowledge when it comes to language. Linguists distinguish between language learning and language acquisition.16 The latter refers to the kind of learning which we experience as children in our mother tongue. To have acquired a language is to have the language as one’s own; it is to have an intuitive and subconscious understanding of the language, and 13 Richard Hamilton, “Reading Latin,” The Classical Journal 87, no. 2 (1991): 165-74.

14 Richard C. Gascoyne et al., “Standards for Classical Language Learning,” The American Classical League & The American Philological Association, 1997.

15 Robert J. Ball and J. D. Ellsworth, “Teaching Classical Languages,” CW 83.1 (1989), 3 16 Julio Foppoli, “Language Acquisition vs Language Learning,” Eslbase. https://www. eslbase.com/teaching/language-acquisition-vs-language-learning.

72 intuitive and subconscious reactions to it. The phrase “the black long pencil” will sound strange only to those for whom English is an acquired language. To learn a language without a view to acquisition is to explicitly study its grammar and vocabulary and stop there. Rarely can students with only this explicit knowledge pick up on subtleties like English adjective order.

Native speakers have the enviable quality of having acquired a language.

Nevertheless, even native speakers are prone to grammatical errors. To ‘have a feel’ for a language is not necessarily to understand it. Explicit study of grammar is immensely valuable and increases one’s appreciation and understanding of a language (especially as applied to the interpretation of texts). Organized language instruction, especially in the classics, is very good about explicitly teaching grammar, but upholding language acquisition as a goal independent from reading is certainly the more controversial claim.

Still, Latin language acquisition is not only an independent goal, but a proximate goal.

That is, Latin language acquisition is the first step toward reading fluency.

This insight combines two observations. First, Latin is defined by a finite corpus which is precisely the target corpus for reading. Livy and his friends have not only written Latin we wish to read, but have furthermore fixed its boundaries. Second, language acquisition, which involves the ability to produce the language in speech and in writing in addition to passive understanding, is the more profound and difficult to achieve kind of knowledge. That is, it’s harder to speak Latin than it is to read it, because speaking demands a total mastery of the grammar and vocabulary used, whereas reading does not. From these two insights in follows that the acquisition of Latin, i.e., being able to speak, write, read, and interpret speech in Latin immediately and intuitively, is not independent from reading. Rather, Latin acquisition means mastery of the language as encountered in texts.

Therefore, I conclude that the final cause of taking a Latin class is the acquisition of the Roman language in its literary form. The student who has acquired this language will be by definition an excellent reader of Latin and possess a real instinct for the soul of the Roman people.

Reading versus translation Reading turns out to be a psychologically and philosophically complex activity.

Through gross simplification reading is too often reduced to translation. Although the ability to translate Latin is clearly a closely related skill to reading Latin, to take translation as equivalent to reading is to demonstrate an impoverished understanding of reading, as illustrated by the following examples: Word Order–– While tricks like beginning with the main verb of a clause allow a native English speaker to more quickly parse and interpret the meaning of a Latin sentence, it does so by doing violence to the original rhetoric and logic of the Latin.

To understand the subtlety of thought and emotion expressed in a sentence, especially in the case of rhetorically precise texts (like much of Latin literature), it is necessary to follow the sentence word by word. Translation does not require this from the translator,

73 neither does it exercise it in the student.

Active Reading–– Linguists often divide ways in which language is encountered between the active and passive, speaking and writing being active, and likewise reading and listening being passive. The distinction is useful and natural, but it can lead us astray in our definition of reading. For students and scholars alike, reading cannot be a passive exercise; our reading requires active engagement, which for Latin students means an active knowledge of the language.

Suppose a student comes across the phrase ‘opus est’ while translating a text.

To interpret the text, it is enough to translate the phrase as ‘there is need of,’ but this is not sufficient to fully appreciate the text; if the related words ‘convenit,’ ‘necesse est,’ ‘oportet,’ and ‘decet’ do not immediately come to mind, the student will not be able to understand the deliberate choice which appears in the text. Though these words and phrases are essentially or close to synonymous, there are shades of difference between them that enrich the text.

Latinist Luigi Miraglia provides a similar example from the students in his classroom who encountered the phrase, ‘Cum Caesar mortuus esset.’ In a lecture about his pedagogical style, Miraglia relates the following conversation: “And I say [to the student], ‘say it another way!’ And one student responds, ‘Mortuo Caesare!’ ‘Oh, good, ‘mortuo Caesare.’ Now what’s the difference?

Why are they not exactly the same? Why is saying ‘Cum Caesar mortuus esset’ not the same as ‘Mortuo Caesare’?’ And immediately the students think and say, ‘Ah, yes! It’s much faster.’... [And I say] ‘And therefore if you want to describe a battle, a quick battle, a vehement battle, a sudden battle, an urgent battle, do you say ‘Cum Caesar post longam aegrotationem mortuus esset’ or do you say ‘Mortuo Caesare’? And the students say, ‘Mortuo Caesare, of course!’ And in this way the student understands the genre of writing, the eloquence, the style of ancient authors. They can perceive the differences between words.”17 A passive knowledge of the language is enough to accurately translate Latin sentences, but this is not enough. It is precisely these minute implications and subtleties in vocabulary and syntax that are ultimately untranslatable. Thus, an active knowledge of the language is necessary even for the passive activity, linguistically speaking, of reading.

Subconscious Language Processing–– Our own experience between reading in our native language and translating Latin reveals a clear distinction between conscious and subconscious understanding. As Justin Slocum Bailey writes: “When I say “read,” I don’t mean deciphering a text by accessing explicit knowledge about words, forms, syntax, and style. I mean “read” the way people normally use the term: seeing a sequence of words and simultaneously sensing the unfurling plot or point. Deciphering texts by means of conscious knowledge can yield 17 Luigi Miraglia, “De Causis Corruptae Institutionis Latinae,” October 2013, 10:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a61Dc_EFuI4&t=776s.

74 meaning and pleasure, but the difference between this experience and implicit, realtime understanding is something like the difference between getting a joke only after it is explained and getting the joke right when it is told.”18 Bailey’s above characterization of reading does not do away with rigorous grammatical training; on the contrary–– it rather places grammatical training in the context of interpreting, appreciating, and enjoying texts. For Bailey, grammatical instruction is insufficient if it does not instruct our gut reactions and our experience of the world.

To clarify the distinction between conscious and subconscious knowledge, reflect on the experience of hearing someone speaking or of reading in our native language.

Our ability to understand what is being communicated is, phenomenologically speaking, passive. As you, reader, pass your eyes over this sentence, you are not choosing to understand–– you just do. In the same way, we are simply incapable of choosing not to understand our native language (though we can choose to divert our attention from a text or from speech, which is not the same thing). Contrast this experience to that of translating in a new language, in which we are offered a series of rules and some vocabulary. This experience, though interesting and fruitful, is more akin to decoding than reading.

Whenever we may find our finger moving back and forth through a Latin sentence identifying subject, verb, object; whenever we find ourselves repeating stereotyped translations in our head. Whenever an hour has passed with our having parsed only a few sentences, we find that we are not reading but translating. Translation is doubtless a necessary skill for classicists. It is a useful exercise for assessments, and necessary to allow the general public to access classical texts, but it is not the goal of a Latin class.

Further Reading These examples help us approach a more rigorous understanding of reading, but we can do better still. Not only is reading more than translation, but language acquisition research has furthermore identified several kinds of reading. Consider the following outline of the different kinds of reading:19 I. Oral II. Silent 1. Intensive a. Linguistic b. Content I. Extensive a. Skimming b. Scanning c. Global 18 Bailey, “The Persistent Perks.”

19 H. Douglas Brown and Heekyeong Lee, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. 4th ed. (White Plains, NY: Pearson Education, 2015), 408.

75 The distinction between oral and silent reading is obvious. Brown and Lee define intensive reading as an activity in which “students focus on the linguistic or semantic details of a passage. Intensive reading often calls students’ attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface details for the purpose of understanding literal meaning, implications, rhetorical relationships, and the like.”20 Naturally, linguistic-intensive reading focuses on the linguistic details of the passage, whereas content-intensive reading focuses on the semantic details of the passage; in both cases the passage of concern is generally short.

“Extensive reading,” continue Brown and Lee, is carried out to achieve a general understanding of usually somewhat longer text (for example, books, long articles, essays)… Pleasure reading is often extensive. Technical, scientific, and professional reading can, under certain special circumstances, be extensive when one is striving for global or general meaning from longer passages.21 Often global-extensive reading is referred to simply as extensive reading, though skimming and scanning are likewise other varieties. A reader skims when he briefly flips through a text, intending only to ‘get a feel’ for the text, perhaps looking at section headings or reading the first sentences of paragraphs; a reader scans when he searches for a particular word or phrase embedded in a larger text.

This framework confronts us with the necessity to define more specifically what kind of reading we are trying to teach and learn in the Latin language. With the possible exception of skimming and scanning, every type of reading delineated in the outline ought to take place in the classroom. We discuss each in turn.

Oral Reading–– the phonology of any language is interesting and deserving of informed appreciation, and not only for aesthetic value. Sometimes, the sound of a text is inseparable from its content.

Take, for example, Catullus’s funeral ode to his brother beginning with the sorrowful and passionate lines: Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vēctus Adveniō hās miserās, frāter, ad inferiās. (Lines 1-2) One commentator has noted the repetition of “the soft sound of all those labial m’s”22 which occurs throughout the poem, particularly in the following three lines: Ut tē postrēmō dōnārem mūnere mortis Et mūtam nequīquam adloquerer cinerem, Quandoquidem fortūna mihi tētē abstulit ipsum. (Lines 3-4) As scholars of the Latin language, we ought to wonder about the rhetorical effect of Catullus’ m’s. One way to figure it out is to think about it–– and of course we should think about it; but the easier and more natural way, the way the poet himself expected the reader to figure it out, is to read it aloud, with attention and passion. Such a reader will find that the m’s turn what would otherwise be a phlegmatic and merely 20 Ibid., 406.

21 Ibid.

22 Richard Ratzan, “Catullus 101.” http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/17073.

76 academic observation into an emotion evoked by a sound which suggests soft moaning or lamentation.

Intensive reading allows a student to arrive at a level of appreciation and precision of understanding of a text that is simply impossible by reading through translation; in fact, a major impetus for studying a written language must be the fact that reading a text in the original language of its composition allows such precision of interpretation.

Furthermore, nearly every instance of textual analysis includes an interplay between linguistic and content reading. They are almost inseparable activities. For example, a description and commentary on the particular use of the ablative case in a text leads naturally to a description and commentary on the meaning of the word in the context of a passage. Often this occurs while translating (which can be understood as a kind of Linguistic-Intensive reading).

Extensive reading is no less important, for several reasons. First, it is pleasant. It is hard to imagine anyone who would not wish to read Latin effortlessly, even if classical scholarship usually requires intensive over extensive reading. Moreover, extensive reading reinforces our ability to read intensively. Here it is vital to note that while Intensive and Extensive reading are different kinds of reading, they are not distinct categories but rather two ends on a spectrum. To read a novel at a rapid pace is necessarily to analyze morphology and syntax and to derive meaning from that analysis; in this way, extensive reading is just quick, if superficial, intensive reading. Therefore, the distinction between the two kinds of reading is not as sharp as the outline might suggest. It follows that skill in each cannot but reinforce skill in the other.

Skimming and scanning, other variations of extended reading in addition to global reading, are at times useful but not essential skills simply because we don’t use them very frequently, nor do they play a major role in research or require extra practice beyond global extensive reading. Neither is skill in these varieties of extensive reading categorically distinct from global and extensive reading and it is at best a convenience.

If we may, for a moment, think beyond the scope of Latin, other languages like Sanskrit or Hebrew propose the further difficulty of efficiently recognizing letters and words in foreign scripts which may particularly affect the speed of our skimming and scanning.

Thus we propose that a Latin course ought to lead students toward an intuitive and subconscious as well as explicit knowledge of the language, and the ability to read it; by reading, we mean specifically orally and silently, intensively and extensively, actively and fluently.

IV. Definition and Critique Any fair criticism ought to include a fair description of the thing criticized.

To that end, it is useful to consider a brief outline of the history and principles of the Grammar-Translation method.

The method is the offspring of German scholarship of the 19th Century, which developed a grammatical and philological emphasis now characteristic of classical studies. The same Germany which gave us this method also decoded Akkadian

77 and other cuneiform scripts from clay tablets, helped decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone, and introduced Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European into academia. To this day, Classics PhDs require a reading knowledge of German owing to its historical importance to the discipline. If anything can be criticized about the Grammar-Translation method, then commonly called the Ciceronian or Prussian method, it cannot be a lack of rigor.

One scholar outlines the method as follows: The goal of foreign language study is to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign language study. Grammar Translation is a way of studying a language that approaches the language first through detailed analysis of its grammar rules, followed by application of this knowledge to the task of translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language. It hence views language learning as consisting of… memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language…23 The same author also notes that the method makes fewer demands on the instructor. Whereas a modern language instructor is often expected to speak entirely in the target language (and therefore possess some degree of fluency in the language), and perhaps be creative and spontaneous in classroom activities, GT requires nothing of the sort. For this reason it was convenient and quickly developed a level of prestige in the mid-19th century. Instructors of languages like French and German adopted the method as well, until later developments in the last century turned things in another direction.

Using the above description, we can propose the following as founding principles of the Grammar-Translation Method: Principle 1: The purpose of a classical language course is to “learn [the] language in order to read its literature”, and to “benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign language study.”24 Commentary: This first principle outlines two final causes of classical language instruction. At first glance, the first final cause appears identical to our own formulation; there is, however, a key difference. In G-T, language learning is subordinated to reading.

That is, one learns Latin only insofar as it allows one to read it. This principle lies latent when speaking, writing, or listening to Latin is neglected in favor of reading only.

This subordination informs a unique feature of G-T, which is that the reading of primary texts is attempted and exercised as soon as possible. Therefore the division of instruction into two phases. In the first phase, students are presented with the grammar and core vocabulary of the language; in the second phase, students translate primary 23 Jack C. Richards and Theodore Stephen Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 5.

24 Ibid.

78 texts.

The presentation of the grammar generally occurs in the first year of instruction.

More obscure tidbits of grammar, such as dual forms in Greek, are not often included in this phase. The grammar is presented explicitly in units accompanied by a series of exercises consisting of sentences to translate and occasionally prose composition or morphology and syntax drills. Translations are sometimes expected to be literal, following closely the grammar of the target language, and sometimes idiomatic, attempting to express the sense of the sentence in the students’ native language. Often, but not always, students are asked to read sentences aloud before translating. Memorization techniques such as chanting declensions and principle parts, e.g. hic haec hoc, huius huius huius…, and completing verb conjugation or noun declension are a key component of this approach.

After completing the grammar, students are given authentic texts to translate.

From here on, classes consist entirely in continuing to translate gradually more difficult texts. To accomplish this, students are asked to prepare a passage before class. During class, the teacher selects a student to translate a short passage one at a time. Students are often held responsible for memorizing all new vocabulary encountered in the texts.

Principle 2: Language comprehension is approached ‘bottom-up’, that is, it begins with the smallest units of meaning to larger units and moves from the precise to the general.

Commentary: Translation begins with the parsing of forms and grammatical functions of each word in the sentence; then, it relates the forms and functions together; finally, it reveals the whole meaning of the sentence. For example, the student first identifies ‘Marcus’ as nominative, ‘puerum’ as accusative, and ‘videt’ as a third-person singular present active indicative verb. Next, he identifies ‘Marcus’ as the subject of the verb ‘videt’, and ‘puerum’ as its object. Finally, he understands that Marcus sees the boy.

To put it another way, G-T is a deductive method. It begins with explicit explanations and ends with comprehension of larger units of meaning, be it the sentence or paragraph. This is only possible if the language of the classroom is the vernacular of the students.

Three Critiques The most obvious failures of the Grammar-Translation method as just outlined are threefold: it is inefficient, misdirected, and incomplete.

Inefficiency–– Fifteen students are seated around a seminar table. They all spent an hour or more the previous night preparing twenty lines of poetry or a short paragraph of prose, for class; not all of them spent that hour preparing the text to be translated in class. The professor now has to choose one student to translate for the class and is confronted with two options: either call on students at random or go around the class room in order. Suppose the professor chooses the first option: he looks up, looking for a student who looks ready. One student who only prepared the first few lines knows that unless he is the first to translate in class he risks getting called on later in class to translate a section he does not know. He looks up and catches the professor’s eye. “Ah,

79 what a studious and prepared student!” the professor thinks, “He will start us off.” The student, despite having prepared the passage, is still a little nervous. He stumbles through reading the sentence aloud, and then proceeds to stumble through the translation. The stumbling, however, is forgivable–– having learned maybe 700 words from his first year of Latin, every fifth word of Caesar is a brand new vocabulary word. Though he wrote them all down in his notebook last night, he is looking back and forth between his notebook and the text in hand, or else trying to decipher his minuscule handwriting between the lines of Latin. He makes a mistake; the professor corrects him. Meanwhile, a few students, the ones who came fully prepared to class, are paying attention, while the rest–– a rather significant proportion–– are working through the following passage, just in case they get called on next. In order to postpone the inevitable, the student raises their hand and filibusters class with a question of vague philological, historical, or textual interest. After class, students will laugh and joke about the useless questions they asked, often calibrated to ignite the personal interest of the professor.

Finally, the first student finishes, having worked one-on-one in a sort of masterclass with the professor for close to ten minutes with extended side-tracked conversations scattered throughout. Now the professor must choose a second student to translate for the class. The students who successfully translated the next passage look up to catch the eye of the professor; the other students stare intently into their book, pretending to think hard about Latin. The professor decides to keep the students on their toes and chooses one of these other students, and so subjects the rest of the class to fifteen minutes of cringe-inducing translation. Does the professor realize that the students are just sight-translating? The students aren’t sure. They discuss this after class.

Perhaps the professor thinks the students are just bad at Latin (which, to be perfectly frank, they are).

Perhaps the professor decides to choose the second option, and pass the duty of translation go around the table in order. The students are happy with this arrangement–– it means they can count their place around from whoever is reading and figure out precisely what passage they will be translating. The result is generally more well-prepared translation in class and thus the appearance of better students.

Class ends. In less than an hour, rarely more than a few students have translated Latin in class. Often the figure is closer to five. The amount of text covered in class could have been read in English in sixty seconds. Due to the slow pace of reading, the professor eventually decides to excise oral reading from the classroom.

This sketch of a typical translation class is admittedly unfair–– a good teacher can overcome many of the problems demonstrated. They can lighten the mood of the class, provide more help to students, and so on. Nevertheless, such a teacher will always find himself fighting an uphill battle. The method itself creates a dichotomy which cannot be overcome by personality and skill. Even with the most engaged students with legitimate interest in their questions, conversations of textual interpretation will compete with language learning. Every moment spent discussing the text is a moment spent not translating, and so not learning Latin–– not that there is any language learning occurring in the classroom. Not even the most gregarious teacher can remove entirely the stress of

80 translating for the entire class. Of course, this stress depends on the personality of the student. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny the pressure placed on students, which cannot but impede genuine concentration. Moreover, the model of working one on one with students in front of the class too easily loses the attention of the rest of the class. As one teacher has put it, “There is all too little teaching in Latin classes, too much lessonhearing.”

Misdirection–– The final causes of language instruction, as described in the first principle of G-T, are misdirected, first because it woefully neglects the study of language for its own sake and second because mental discipline is an incoherent final cause.25 Any and every language, insofar as it is a human artifact, is worth learning.

Languages expand the mind and soul by offering the learner new vocabulary, new grammatical concepts, new sounds and rhythms–– new ways of expression and thinking. Latin has the added benefits over languages of having recorded western history, and of being quite an interesting language. As Rouse says, “Latin makes finally clear the elements of grammar, and the laws of syntax: its fixed and logical structure makes it a bracing and instructive discipline for the powers of the mind. No loose or blurred expression is possible in Latin… [it trains] orderly and accurate expression of thought.”26 Thus, to pursue language learning only insofar as it allows reading is to lose a great deal. On the subject of the goals of a typical Latin class, Bailey writes: It’s worth mentioning to an audience of classicists that no theory of SLA [second language acquisition] sees Grammar-Translation (GT) as such a means [of teaching Latin], as GT is not, strictly speaking, a language-teaching method.

It is, by design, a method of teaching about language and of training the brain.

This is not an insult; it was precisely for its potential to teach about language and train the brain that GT’s popularity boomed in the late 18th century, because without these benefits it was getting hard to justify the continued study of Latin to philistine administrators.27 This brings us to the second goal of G-T: mental discipline and intellectual development. These goals recall Daniel Carpenter’s thesis from the first chapter, and the words of the chair of a prestigious classics department who said that “it would be tragic for a person to understand Latin [well], because this would deprive the reader of the boons to mind and character of painstakingly piecing together the meaning.”

Therefore, whether or not this was intended in the original formulation of the method, there is at least precedent for the second goal to triumph over the first. This might explain, for example, the emphasis of Greek and Latin in ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ 25 Edward C. Chickering, “The Direct Method in Latin Teaching,” The Classical Weekly 6, no. 5 (1912): 6-7.

26 W. H. D. Rouse, The Practice of Instruction: A Manual of Method General and Special, Edited

by John William Adamson (London: National Society’s Depository, 1907).

27 Justin S. Bailey, “Teaching Latin to Humans,” Medium. EIDOLON, November 13, 2017. https://eidolon.pub/teaching-latin-to-humans-4e6b489b4e17.

81 education, which often emphasized development of the moral virtues in addition to the intellectual virtues. The same document published by the College of New Jersey which outlined its academic curriculum also includes quaint-sounding gems like the following: It is the object to which [the faculty] look, to make their pupils happy and to present them to their parents manly, well taught, and virtuous. But to the attainment of these ends, strict order, prompt obedience, unblemished morals, and constant industry, are considered as indispensable. No youth can long remain in this institution who is grossly deficient in any one of these particulars… Absence from prayers, and rooms in study hours, are accurately noted and reported… Frequent absences, except in the case of sickness, are usually connected with neglect of study and irregular conduct.28 Yet though these standards sound to our ears quaint, they are nevertheless clearly right: unblemished morals and constant industry are great things, too often separated from academic study. Every course of study ought to inculcate them, and this is precisely the problem: every course of study ought to exercise the moral virtues–– mathematics, art, history, and economics, not just Latin. In this way, virtues are much more like the guardrails in a bowling alley than the pins. You cannot acquire a virtue by studying it, but by studying along it–– that is, by studying virtuously.

Even more, idolizing virtues over the true object of study can, in the end, only infect the integrity of the discipline and hinder our progress toward its ends. If the purpose of a course of study becomes the acquisition of virtue, then the object of study loses importance. A student could dedicate themselves to memorizing the digits of Pi and develop the same virtues. When a virtue has replaced the thing itself as the purpose of study, it is a sign that the thing itself has lost its value.

Incompleteness––Reading is a skill, a craft–– a task which requires both theoretical knowledge (grammar and vocabulary) and practical knowledge or experience. Aristotle has much to say about such things. In the Nicomachean Ethics he writes: We learn a craft by producing the same product that we must produce when we have learned it; we become builders, for instance, by building, and we become harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions29.

That is, a skill is learned by its exercise. We take this as a basic and simple principle of psychology.

The most basic claim of the Grammar-Translation method is that the first and primary goal of learning a classical language is learning to read its literature. Now, G-T exercises translation. However, we argued above that translation is not the same thing as reading. Therefore, the Grammar-Translation Method does not teach reading.

Though this conclusion seems incredulous, it is the consequence of a syllogism 28 Green, Discourses, 400.

29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by Terence Irwin. 2nd ed. (Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999). II.1 1103a

82 as unyielding as any. If the conclusion is in fact false, the errors can only be found in its premises. Either we must admit that it is possible to learn shipbuilding by building houses, or translation is equivalent to reading–– but this is clearly false. Translation does not exercise oral reading; it does not exercise an active knowledge of the language; it does not exercise extended reading, nor a subconscious knowledge of the language. The Grammar-Translation Method fails to teach reading.

Although in practice some teachers do require students to read aloud sentences before translating, of itself G-T does not require it. Moreover, this small amount of practice is nothing close to sufficient to teach the skill. Successful oral reading must be intentionally taught and accompanied by listening to the language from the mouths of the instructors, or else from recordings. Students must be corrected when they err.

Moreover, mere pronunciation is not enough. Instructors must pay attention to and guide the prosody of the students. Rhythm, pace, and intonation are every bit as important as vowel quality and quantity. The general failure of the method in this regard is attested by the fact that it is not uncommon for experienced readers of Latin to be utterly unable to read aloud a piece of prose with inflection and without stumbling, let alone poetry in meter. The classicist Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked: The German does not read aloud, he does not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for the time. In antiquity when a man read… he read something to himself, and in a loud voice… that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and variations of key and changes of tempo, in which the ancient public took delight.30 Moreover, the method entirely fails to exercise extended or subconscious reading. It does hardly prepare students for it. For one, subconscious reading requires a solid foundation in vocabulary. As Bailey notes, texts generally become comprehensible enough for extended reading when roughly 95% of the vocabulary is understood. At this level, the meanings new words can be easily learned from context and do not disrupt the flow of reading. To illustrate this observation, Bailey wrote the following nonsense thriller: You can barely breathe. How long have you been running? Seven hours? Eight?

You need to sleep, to eat, to drink, but you don’t loose about these frae. All you want is this: alenk. You need to escape this terrible island.

Even with your slime badly chipped, you run and run and run. Why did the Overqueen send you here? It’s better not to think about the Overqueen. Once, you loved the Overqueen. Now you hate her more than crenn. The Overqueen’s voice still prances in your head: Come, girl. I summon you to my service. I have many bona for you. You alone can punish my nemesis, the blue-haired king. You alone have the needed skills–– the swiftness, the moin, the lethal touch…31 30 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, VIII #247.

31 Richards and Rodgers, Approaches and Methods, 5.

83 This passage at 94.5% comprehension is easily understood by anyone fluent in English. The clarity of the context allows the reader to develop some idea of what the unknown words might mean. Thus, after providing examples of decreasing levels of intelligible vocabulary, the story continues: “I am the blade at rame, the trunee dream, the––“ “You’re a cracked blade and a gliry dream!” He snaps. “Empy can see your foot is slove. But don’t be afraid. I can fale you.”

“I abame a real doctor,” you reply.

“No doctor is renk real,” the man says, hinny a hint of plove. “Here.”

The astrologer jills–– now you see that he frew nane one eye–– and puts his carn remmy on your head. Immediately his eye encrubs–– you can’t tell if it’s narb or not–– and the man, veem until now, suddenly gloy crolee.

“Your seepo,” he says, “it’s made of––”32 This passage, at 80% comprehension which students in early phase 2 are likely to have, approaches Jabberwockian levels of unintelligibility. To be explicit, the experience of a second year Latin student reading Caesar, assuming they have a perfect recall and command of grammar, is precisely the experience of reading the above passage. Every word encountered must be found in a dictionary. This takes perhaps ten seconds. Once encountered, one definition among the five to ten listed must be chosen.

The student of Caesar will try each one in the context of the sentence to see which makes the most sense. This is not so easy as it sounds––the two other new words in the sentence each with five to ten definitions of their own mean that there are hundreds of potential translations of the sentence, and only one correct one—whence comes ‘Translationese’. Thus the daily homework of translating easy Latin for a second year student is a metaphorical Rubik’s cube.

Even supposing 95% vocabulary comprehension, immediate and reflexive understanding of Latin is a skill that requires practice. The proof is the number of students of Latin who after years of study still reflexively begin translating when confronted with new Latin, not offering themselves the few seconds pause it might take to understand the Latin without the intervention of English. For these students, comprehension of a text is identical with having rendered a translation. Indeed, it is hard to see how the translation reflex is compatible with true reading fluency.

To exercise this reading fluency, it is necessary to read simpler texts, and lots of them, of increasing difficulty. That is, extended reading exercises reading fluency. G-T does not exercise extended reading. In fact, of all the kinds of reading, it only exercises intensive reading, and mainly linguistic-intensive reading. When it does exercise contentintensive reading i.e. class discussions on textual interpretation, its exercise comes at the cost of reducing language learning.

There is a single reasonable objection to the conclusion that G-T does not teach 32 Ibid.

84 reading, and that is the experience of those that have achieved reading fluency via G-T. There are two ways to explain how reading fluency has been achieved through G-T. First, although one cannot learn shipbuilding by building houses, the housebuilder will likely have little problem learning to build ships when he decides to learn it. The skills are cognate and transferrable. Translation is not reading–– but it is very much like reading.

Second, those who have achieved reading fluency–– and these are rare–– can only have done so through reading on their own. Latin classes are therefore not places where learning occurs, but only systems which keep students accountable for their progress.

In summary, the Grammar-Translation Method uses class time inefficiently, from the start chooses objectives that are misguided, and ultimately does not even directly exercise the skills which it claims to teach. These failures are more than cosmetic–– they are inherent to the pedagogy. A better method would take the rigor and discipline characteristic of G-T and resolve these issues. Enter the Direct Method.

Introduction to the Direct Method The Direct Method of language instruction, also called the Natural Method, was developed in the nineteenth century in an attempt to “build a methodology around observation of child language learning,” and to “make second language learning more like first language learning.”33 Practically, this means full language immersion from day 1 and inductive grammatical instruction. W.H.D. Rouse, who later adapted the method to teaching Latin and Greek, described the method as “appealing to the instincts, feelings, and desire of the learner, and using them for the purpose of training.” We do not here defend all the practices of the method, but rather its instincts and character, which follow the following principles: Principle 1: The goal of classical language instruction is acquisition of the target language, that is, an active command (and therefore a passive understanding) of the language in writing and in speech. Reading is given special attention.

Commentary: The Direct Method developed as a method of teaching language. Therefore, its application to classical language pedagogy is only justified if we take the acquisition of the target language as a final cause. We have argued that this is a legitimate goal, even in the case of dead languages. Nevertheless, reading is given pride of place.

However, in the case of Latin, the disjunction between speaking and reading is a false one for the simple reason that the Latin language is defined by its literature. Every Latin word that could be used in speech must necessarily appear in text; the same can be said for every grammatical construction and idiom. Therefore, by definition, no effort given to acquiring an active knowledge of Latin can fail to improve one’s skill in reading.

To put it another way, we will become better readers if we can speak and write in Latin, and understand Latin speech, than if we simply read Latin. Moreover, the acquisition of Latin in all its linguistic dimensions–– and this point is absolutely essential–– is not overcompensation; rather, it is mastery over the language precisely as encountered 33 Richards and Rodgers, Approaches and Methods, 5

85 in its literature. Precisely because Latin is defined the way it is, the goals of language acquisition and reading cannot compete.

Principle 2: “The sounds of the foreign tongue are associated directly with a thing, or an act, or a thought, without intervention of an English word… it follows that the method is largely oral.”34 Commentary: Consequently, the language of the classroom is the target language, with occasional exceptions. Therefore, accurate pronunciation is among the first skills to be taught and is always at exercise. When students are advanced enough, the competition between oral skills, language learning, and intensive-content reading disappears–– it is no waste of time to spend an entire class discussing the historical context for a particular passage of Latin. The conversation is in Latin; it uses vocabulary from the passage in question. Every moment spent in discussion is another moment given to language mastery, which makes the reading all the easier.

Principle 3: All linguistic input provided to the students, be it aurally or in writing, is easily comprehensible.

Commentary: This principle is fact more of a practical necessity if the native language of the students is to take second place in the classroom–– all speech and texts must be explainable up to full comprehension in the target language.

There are two consequences: first, at every moment the students are exercising subconscious language processing; in the context of reading, this means extensive reading. Second, it means unrelenting exposure to, and therefore use of, vocabulary and grammar. A student who learns Latin through Wheelock’s Latin will have encountered core Latin grammar in roughly 600 sentences; a student who learns Latin through Lingua Latina, a book popular among practitioners of the Direct Method, will have encountered core Latin grammar in more than 300 pages. By the time that students are capable of reading authentic texts, they are in theory capable of reading it at great speed and with great ease.

Furthermore, even while extensive reading dominates the method, it does not fail to teach intensive reading. Subconscious language processing means that linguisticintensive reading is never necessary to achieve a literal understanding of the text; it is only necessary in the context of content-intensive reading which may still occur.

In summary, the Direct Method resolves the issues latent in the GrammarTranslation Method–– it assumes a coherent and in fact ingenious standard, teaching the language itself, and by extension reading. The most fundamental insight to the Direct Method lies in its first principle–– learning Latin is about learning Latin. Language learning above all must concern itself with language. ​​V. Conclusion The Grammar-Translation Method is an inefficient, misdirected, and incomplete method of language study. Latin classes at the collegiate and secondary level waste a considerable amount of time. Astonishingly few students ever achieve reading 34 Ibid.

86 proficiency through it. Those who do generally only become proficient when obtaining their PhD’s. Fundamentally, Grammar-Translation is not even a method of language learning, but one of grammatical study and training. It encourages its students to treat Roman civilization like a dead bug–– something to be poked with a stick or dissected to make sure it really is dead. The alternative is to bring some sort of life into this “dead language,” which can only be done by spoken instruction. Still, even among the scarce number of Latin speakers, there is a debate about the best way to introduce spoken language into the world of classics— whether it be as a method of teaching or as a language of scholarship. I leave the debate for others to continue. My purpose here is simply to argue that the teaching of Latin through translation can never do justice to the language, for precisely the reason that Latin is a language. The original language of a text is a privileged medium of its authentic experience. Without belittling the art of translation–– and it is an art–– it is nevertheless true that there is nothing like reading the original. Regrettably, an average undergraduate student in a German department can expect to graduate with some fluency, but an undergraduate student in classics cannot expect to be able to read Latin by graduation. The average undergraduate studying Latin will complete their degree having translated a few chapters of Virgil, without ever having heard it recited.

Many students of Latin and of Greek, having wasted years of study by merely translating, have seen their progress towards reading fluency increase after beginning to speak. Therefore, I propose that we take seriously the possibility that those of us who teach Latin and Greek have not succeeded in understanding the needs of our students.

Furthermore, I suggest that any reader dissatisfied with their reading ability put down Wheelock, find a friend, and start speaking.

87 Bibliography American Classical League. The Classical Investigation Conducted by the Advisory Committee of the American Classical League. Part I: General Report. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1924.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. 2nd ed. Indianapolis; Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999.

Bailey, Justin S. “The Persistent Perks of Speaking Latin.” Eidolon, January 23, 2017. https:// eidolon.pub/the-persistent-perks-of-speaking-latin-ba55fd5fe51f.

Bailey, Justin S. “Savvy Autodidact.” Living Latin in New York City Conference. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShGfzO-m0ac&t=1253s.

Bailey, Justin S. “Teaching Latin to Humans.” Medium. Eidolon, November 13, 2017. https:// eidolon.pub/teaching-latin-to-humans-4e6b489b4e17.

Ball, Robert J., and J. D. Ellsworth, “Teaching Classical Languages,” CW 83.1, 1989.

Brown, H. Douglas, and Heekyeong Lee. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. 4th ed. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education, 2015.

Carpenter, Daniel P. “Reassessing the Goal of Latin Pedagogy.” The Classical Journal 95, no.

4 (2000): 391-95.

Catullus, Poem 101.

Chickering, Edward C. “The Direct Method in Latin Teaching.” The Classical Weekly 6, no.

5 (1912): 34-37.

Foppoli, Julio. “Language Acquisition vs Language Learning.” Eslbase. https://www.eslbase. com/teaching/language-acquisition-vs-language-learning.

Gascoyne, Richard C, and Martha Abbott et al. “Standards for Classical Language Learning.”

The American Classical League & The American Philological Association, 1997. https://www.aclclassics.org/Portals/0/SiteDocuments/Publications/ Standards_ Classical_Learning.pdf.

Granger, F., and G. H. S. “Classics in Education: Two Letters to a Classical Friend.” The Classical Review 15, no. 6 (1901): 320-22.

Green, Ashbel. Discourses, Delivered in the College of New Jersey. Philadelphia: E. Littell, 1822.

Hamilton, Richard. “Reading Latin.” The Classical Journal 87, no. 2 (1991): 165-74.

Lowe, Cheryl. “Top 10 Reasons for Studying Latin.” Memoria Press, January 2, 2020. https:// www.memoriapress.com/articles/top-10-reasons-studying-latin/.

Miraglia, Luigi. “De Causis Corruptae Institutionis Latinae.” October 2013. https:// www. youtube.com/watch?v=a61Dc_EFuI4&t=776s.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Ian Johnston, n.d. http:// nietzsche. holtof.com/reader/browse-beyond-good-and-evil-quotes-1-date.html.

Perrin, Christopher. “10 Reasons to Study Latin First.” Classical Insights, January 15, 2020. https://insights.classicalacademicpress.com/10-reasons-to-study-latin/.

Ratzan, Richard. “Catullus 101.” http:// medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/17073.

Richards, Jack C., and Theodore Stephen, Rodgers. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Rouse, W. H. D., and R. B. Appleton. Latin on the Direct Method. London: University of London Press, 1925.

Rouse, W. H. D. The Practice of Instruction: A Manual of Method General and Special. Edited by John William Adamson. London: National Society’s Depository, 1907.

89

THE ACQUISITION OF THE DONALD COLLECTION: ARE BYZANTINE COINS ANTIQUITIES?

Alan M. Stahl

I

n 2013, on the telephone with Julian Baker, I learned of the possible sale of a major collection of Byzantine coins. Dr. Baker, a former Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Hellenic Studies, had been approached by the owner of the collection in his capacity as curator of medieval coins at Oxford University’s numismatic collection. He said that Oxford had been unable to buy the collection but that he had referred the collector to Princeton as a possible purchaser. It was two-and-a-half years later, in September of 2015, that we received an offer from an English dealer to buy the Peter Donald Collection of about 5,000 Byzantine coins. The dealer said that Donald was offering Princeton the collection for £250,000, less than 60% of its commercial value, “to achieve his aim of keeping the collection intact at an institution.”

Peter Donald is a well-known English scholar of Byzantine coinage; he is a Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society and co-author with Simon Bendall of the standard work on late Byzantine coinage, The Later Palaeologan Coinage, 1282-1453 (London, 1979), and many scholarly articles based on his collection. Mr. Donald, who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and worked from 1947 to his retirement in 1980 for the Port of London Authority, began collecting Byzantine coins in 1952, following a chance encounter with a cup-shaped copper coin in the shop of a London antiquary. For 65 years he worked to make his collection as comprehensive as possible, including rare mints and short-lived rulers, and consistently upgraded pieces as those in better condition became available.

For the past two decades, Princeton University has been systematically building its program in Byzantine studies through faculty positions, course offerings, and complementary material in its art museum and library. As part of that effort, the Numismatic Collection had been acquiring Byzantine coins sporadically to supplement the Firestone Library collection that had its origins in the mid-nineteenth century and the coin collections of the Princeton University Art Museum and the Department of Near Eastern Alan M. Stahl is a medieval historian at Princeton University whose specialties include coinage and monetary history and Venice.

OPPOSITE PAGE: JUSTINIAN I, ANTIOCH, 40 NUMMI, WORKSHOP 3, YEAR 16. From the Peter Donald Collection at Princeton University.

90

Figure 1 Studies on deposit with the Firestone coins; together these holdings comprised about 2,000 Byzantine coins. In addition, the Numismatic Collection houses about 25,000 coins from the Princeton-led excavations at Antioch-on-the-Orontes, of which about 3,000 are Byzantine. With the addition of the 5,000 coins from the Donald Collection, we would have the largest and most comprehensive Byzantine coin collection of any teaching institution in the United States (Harvard University’s Whittemore Collection has about 4,000 Byzantine coins, the American Numismatic Society has about 12,000, and the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center about 13,000).

The Donald Collection as offered had a major weakness – in 1995 the owner had sold off all of the gold coins from reigns before 1204 (the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade), leaving only silver and bronze issues from before that time. As a practical matter, had the gold coins been present for the earlier centuries, the collection would have been beyond the means of our acquisition resources, even when offered at a discount. As compensation for the absence of gold from the early and middle periods in the Donald Collection, our existing holdings, especially those from the Platt Collection on loan from the PUAM, have at least a representation of most issues of gold coinage.

Early Byzantine gold coinage is for the most part relatively plentiful in modern survival and can be filled in on a piece-by-piece purchase on an ongoing basis.

The Donald holdings of gold after 1204, the centuries of greatest interest to the collector and of great research potential, are of world-class completeness. A gold hyperpyron from the reign of John V (1341-91) shows the emperor’s late father Andronicus III kneeling before Christ on the obverse with the young John and his mother, the regent Anna of Savoy, standing on the reverse (Figure 1). Of the seven examples of this extremely rare issue in the Donald Collection, one is of special importance for its provenance: it was part of the 1922 sale of the émigré Russian prince Mikhail Cantacuzene from a collection formed in the seventeenth century by his ancestors, themselves descendants of Byzantine emperors.

On the other hand, Byzantine silver coinage, well represented in all periods in

91

Figure 2 the Donald Collection, is generally very rare in modern survival, a phenomenon that merits future scholarly research. An exception to the general scarcity of silver is to be found in eighth century issues of the milliaresion, which appear to have achieved popular acceptance, perhaps because they were modelled on Islamic dirhems, which dominated the coinage of the Near East. A milliaresion of Leo IV (741-775) (Figure 2) in the Donald Collection is clearly overstruck on a dirhem, probably an issue of the Wasit mint from the 120s AH (737-748 CE)(Fig. 3, PrinNum 13228) It is actually the extensive and comprehensive selection of bronze coins that comprises the vast majority of the Donald Collection which holds the greatest potential for research, as well as for classroom use and exhibition. Mr. Donald’s own favorite coin is a two-nummus bronze coin of Heraclius, the Exarch of Alexandria, with his son the future emperor of the same name (Figure 4). The coin is believed to have been minted in 610 during their revolt against the emperor Phocas; the Donald specimen is the discovery piece for this issue and is believed to be unique.

With its carefully selected, comprehensive run of bronze coins in high condition, the Donald Collection provides a significant resource for Princeton’s archaeological program, in which worn and corroded coins from Antioch in Turkey, from Polis Chrysochous in Cyprus, and from Avkat/Euchaita in Turkey have provided challenges in attribution that can best be met by a reference collection of clearly legible comparanda.

Examples of such comparisons can be seen in examples of the follis of Justin I (518-527) from workshop Δ of the Constantinople mint from the Donald Collection (Figure 5) and a coin of the same issue found in Antioch (Figure 6). Another comparison between an anonymous follis of type B (dated to 1030-1042) from the Donald Collection (Figure 7) and one from the Antioch excavations (Figure 8) illustrates not only the importance of the reference coin for attribution but its much greater utility for iconographic study and exhibition.

By the time it was offered to us for purchase, the Donald Collection had acquired a mystique among scholars of Byzantine coinage on the basis of the periodic

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Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

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Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

94 publication by the collector of unique pieces, while the collection as a whole remained virtually unknown except for the Palaeologan pieces that served as the basis for the book he co-authored on the subject. Princeton faculty members were strongly in support of the acquisition of the collection. Peter Brown, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus, called it “a magnificent and very comprehensive collection, which would be of huge interest to scholars, even outside the Byzantine field.”

John Haldon, Shelby Cullom Davis ‘30 Professor of European History, noted that A key point to highlight here is the way in which this collection will enhance our research and teaching potential. We have at the moment the largest group of late antique/Byzantine scholars on one campus in the country, actually anywhere in the Americas, and our reputation in this respect has attracted a good deal of favorable attention from scholars internationally. With the acquisition of this particular collection we would jump into first place in respect of the teaching, study and research of Byzantine and medieval coinages in the Americas.

Jack Tannous, Assistant Professor of History, added that “Princeton is the premier place for the study of Byzantine and eastern Mediterranean history in the Western Hemisphere and it is the perfect place for this sort of collection. It would be available to students and scholars – to people who would appreciate it, study it, and use it. I cannot think of a place with a better combination of undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty to utilize this collection.” With the rationale for the acquisition of the Donald Collection firmly in place, the next issue became the funding of its purchase. The price, even at a fraction of retail value, was well above the ongoing budget of the Numismatic Collection. We turned for help to the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund, which had previously supported the purchase of the large Latin Orient Collection of Medieval Greek Coinage, a major collection of modern Greek medals, and many individual purchases of Byzantine coins. In January of 2016, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies offered to pay half of the price of the collection, with the remainder to come from Library funds and from the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

The notice of the support from the Center’s director Dimitri Gondicas came with a caveat: “My understanding is that the PUL has exercised due diligence with respect to provenance, export license, legal issues, etc. Please confirm.”

It was not clear what would constitute ‘due diligence’ in that there were no existing guidelines to govern our approach to dealing with issues of provenance. The numismatic departments of our peer institutions (Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge being the major comparable teaching collections) are all parts of museums that regularly acquire antiquities and have well-developed acquisition policies. Princeton’s numismatic collection is part of Firestone Library, which seldom deals with antiquities or archaeological artefacts other than coins (such objects as Middle-Eastern cylinder seals have not been added to the collection for many years). We sought advice from curators at the Princeton University Art Museum, but decided not to try to copy their acquisition policies, which rely on a well-articulated system of committees and approval

95 processes that did not seem appropriate in this case and also take into account issues of cultural heritage not related to archaeological objects. Rather, the Library decided to follow the Provenance Guidelines established by the Art Museum in 2015 in framing its own policy on issues of provenance for the Numismatic Collection, in consultation with University Counsel.

The first criterion of the Museum Guidelines was that any such purchase comply with all applicable laws. In the case of Byzantine coins, the main issue is the legally-binding Bilateral Memoranda of Understanding between the United States of America and other nations in pursuance of the UNESCO Accords of 1970. Those with Greece and Italy are concerned only with coins of the Greek and Roman periods, and exclude those of the Byzantine period. That with Bulgaria includes issues of Alexius I of the 1090s from the mint of Philippopolis (Plovdiv), but there were no coins of this issue in the Donald Collection. That with Cyprus is limited to ‘coins of Cypriote type,’ specifically before 235 CE; whatever Byzantine coins may be attributed to Cyprus are not of a distinctive type.

In terms of the UNESCO Convention itself, the basic guideline is that an effort be made to determine that provenance research establishes that the articles considered for acquisition can be shown to have been outside the ‘country of probably modern discovery’ before November 17, 1970. It should be noted that the Museum policies are intended primarily for unique works of art, whose place of discovery can often reasonably be inferred and which would normally be documented in collections, excavation reports, and auction sales with photos that can be compared with specific examples offered for sale. On the other hand, Byzantine coins were manufactured by the millions with only minor differences, from mints spread across the Mediterranean and Black Sea world and circulated without regard to mint in a territory comprising about twenty modern countries. Thus, it is virtually impossible to determine the ‘probable country of modern discovery’. Only a tiny percentage of Byzantine coins in collections, excavations, or sales catalogues have ever been reported photographically, especially in the case of low-denomination bronze coins which comprise the great majority of the pieces in the Donald Collection, so the standard of notorious publication before 1970 is generally inapplicable.

The Museum guidelines, however, allow that “consistent with standard museum best practices and the current guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the Museum recognizes that even after the most extensive research, many works of art will lack a complete documented ownership history. In order to avoid certain unintended consequences of this policy, through which undocumented objects would be forced onto the private market and thus be unlikely to advance the public good, under exceptional circumstances the Museum may acquire such insufficiently documented works.” This allowance is followed by a few provisions including that a decision be made after careful consideration of such factors as the exhibition and publication history of the works, the reputation of the prior owners and any claims made against them, that acquisition poses little financial, reputational, or other harm to the Museum or to Princeton University, and that the acquired objects be promptly

96

Figure 9

97 published in electronic form including an image of the work.

At this point, we surveyed the acquisition policies of comparable American collections. The Harvard Numismatic Collection follows the policies of the Harvard University Art Museum, to which it belongs, which are substantially the same as those of the AAMD; the numismatic curator at Harvard, Dr. Carmen Arnold-Biucchi, whose advice on numismatic antiquities has been incorporated into provisions of the United States Cultural Property Advisory Committee, said in an email that Harvard rigorously follows the 1970 provenance guidelines in the case of the Greek and Roman coins that it actively acquires, basing the determination on images in pre-1970 auction and exhibition catalogues. She added, however, that “for Byzantine coins such as the collection Princeton is planning to acquire, the provenance research is all but impossible: unlike ancient Greek and even Roman coins whose shape is never identical and therefore makes it possible to identify specimens with certainty, Byzantine were struck by the millions, on thin, regular flans, practically identical to each other. Until recently, they rarely were sold and published at public auctions, especially the bronze coins, and trying to identify even a high quality [gold] solidus, is extremely difficult even if a curator of provenance – as some museums now hire – spent years going through auction catalogues.” She concluded: “I do hope Princeton will be able to acquire the Donald collection. It is important that it remains intact if possible and it will be online and available if anyone or any country wants to claim ownership.” The Curator of Ancient Art at the Yale University Art Gallery concurred: “ Based on our past practice, the provenance of the Donald collection would not be an impediment to the purchase of the collection by Yale.”

My own experience at Princeton likewise inclined me towards the acquisition of the Donald Collection. I periodically teach a graduate seminar on numismatic methodology and monetary history (CLA548). In view of the importance of archaeological site preservation, I always devote a session near the end of the course to ethical issues relating to numismatics and specifically the market for ancient and medieval coins. By that time, students are aware that virtually all pre-modern coins currently in collections and on the market were at one time beneath ground, and through their individual reports on hoards and excavation that the supply to the collector market of previously buried coins, either as a result of accidental discovery, of the looting of known archaeological sites, or by metal detectors, and their subsequent clandestine transport and sale by dealers often results in the destruction of valuable archaeological information. They also know that the antiquities laws of some nations encourage the reporting of coin finds to authorities and allow their legal sale to private individuals, while those of other countries are so restrictive and punitive as to have the unintended effect of encouraging the illicit coin trade and the deliberate destruction of information as to the contexts of numismatic finds. The students have each done extensive research on a physical coin in Princeton’s collection and have had the opportunity to examine hundreds of others that accompany the methodological and chronological presentations. I then pose the question of whether it would be appropriate for Princeton to acquire coins of unknown provenance knowing that such a purchase could have the effect, however minor, of supporting the illegal market for coins. After what is always a lively debate, the general consensus has

98 consistently been that the potential uses of such coins for future instruction, research and exhibition generally justify the consideration of such an acquisition.

We asked Mr. Donald what information and documentation he could provide for the coins in his collection. He provided us with scans of 205 receipts of Byzantine coins he had purchased, all from dealers located in England. Of these, 160 receipts from before 1970 enumerate 656 coins in the collection offered to Princeton and 45 receipts dated in the 1970s enumerate 395 coins in the collection offered to Princeton (Figure 9 ).

An unknown number of coins appear on these receipts as ‘lots’ or ‘groups’. The majority of the Donald collection can be seen to have been assembled by the end of the 1970s; since then, additions have been mainly individual pieces to fill in missing varieties or to upgrade examples. This still meant that a significant number of coins were purchased

by Mr. Donald after 1970 and, because of the nature of the receipts and the poor documentation of sales of Byzantine coins in general, could not be demonstrated to have been exported from their ‘country of probable modern discovery’ before that year.

We were then left with a situation in which we could not demonstrate that the coins were exported from their ‘country of probable modern discovery’ (itself an inappropriate category for Byzantine coins) by the date prescribed by the UNESCO accords, but we were supported by Princeton faculty and the curators of our peer institutions in believing that the collection was a valuable resource for education and could be considered to constitute an ‘exceptional circumstance of insufficiently documented works’. However, unlike the numismatic collections of peer institutions or the Princeton University Art Museum, Firestone Library had no mechanism in place to determine whether the coins did, indeed, fall into the category of such an exception.

At this point, we turned our attention to the July 31, 2015, memorandum of the Task Force on Archaeological Material and Ancient Art of the Association of Art Museum Directors, whose standards govern our peer collections. This laid down the criteria for what constituted ‘archaeological material’ and ‘ancient art’ created ‘in antiquity’, which would cover materials acquired by member institutions. Syntheses of criteria established among eight museums with comprehensive collections were made for the objects of nine cultural areas; that of most relevance to the Donald Collection was ‘Greek and Roman’, with ‘Chinese’ and ‘Ancient Near Eastern’ of relevance to other sectors of our numismatic collection. To quote the Task Force report: II. Greek and Roman Art. Most responding museums identified a specific historic event that represented the end of antiquity and beginning of the medieval period. While one of the responding museums suggested that the emblematic event was the Edict of Milan, 313 CE, the majority of the museums responding used a later event, the Sack of Rome in 476 CE, as emblematic of this shift from the ancient to the medieval. Another museum argued that no specific event represented the shift, but rather the fall of the western empire in general. That museum argued for a simple dividing line along the timeline representing the erosion of the Western Empire as a simpler method of classification and used 500 CE.

99 As Byzantine coinage is generally defined as starting with the coin reform of Anastasius I, dated to 498 CE, we decided to go with the broadest definition of antiquity among those cited and chose 500 CE as the cut-off year after which coins in the Greco-Roman tradition would not be considered antiquities in the eyes of the AAMD. We similarly followed their example for considering Year One of the Hijra (622 CE) as the starting point for the post-antique era in the Near East. Twenty-one coins in the Donald Collection were from the fifth century, and we informed Mr. Donald that we would not purchase them; he lowered his asking price for the collection appropriately.

In August of 2016, the Princeton University Library then adopted an official policy on ‘Acquisitions of Antiquities by the Princeton University Library’, published in the Appendix below. In December of that year, the Donald collection arrived in three large boxes secured with lead seals by Brinks and cleared by customs as ‘other antiques > 100 years’ with no duty. The collection more than lived up to expectations and has already been the subject of study by outside researchers as well as Princeton students and faculty; it was featured in the Welcome Additions exhibition which opened the Library’s new Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery in February of 2019. We have begun the process of systematically cataloging the coins in our online database with full digital illustration.

The Numismatic Collection now has a world-class Byzantine coin collection but at the cost of having had to define an acquisitions policy that greatly limits our ability to add to the collection in areas it defines as ‘antiquities’, specifically ancient Greek and Roman coins and such areas of Middle Eastern coinage as Parthian and Sasanian.

While these are areas that we are already strong in, it will be difficult to build on these strengths. We will be obliged to submit each proposed purchase, gift, or bequest of coins minted before 500 CE (or 622 CE in the case of Near Eastern) to a series of criteria, get agreement from the Library and the University Office of the General Counsel that the acquisition ‘poses little financial, reputational, or other harm to the Library or to Princeton University’, and ‘in due course’ publish the newly acquired coins in electronic form. The effect that this policy will have on the continued comprehensive growth of the Princeton University Numismatic Collection remains to be seen.

Appendix Acquisitions of Antiquities by the Princeton University Library Adopted August 2016 The Princeton University Library (the “Library”) is committed to the responsible acquisition of antiquities (“Objects”). The Library believes that the documentary materials of all civilizations should be represented in libraries, which uniquely offer the public the opportunity to encounter such Objects directly, in the context of their own and other cultures, and where these Objects may educate, inspire, and be studied

by Princeton University faculty, students and staff as well as visiting researchers. The

100 public good is served by libraries around the world working to preserve and interpret our shared cultural heritage. The interests of the scholarly community are particularly served by the Library.

The Library deplores the illicit and unscientific excavation of antiquities from archaeological sites, the destruction or defacement of ancient monuments, and the theft of antiquities from individuals, libraries, or other repositories. The Library seeks to avoid all actions that provide a direct or indirect material incentive to present-day looting or illegal excavation, encourage the destruction of historical sites, and/or deprive individuals and cultures of their rightful property. The Library is committed to the exercise of due diligence in the acquisition process and to the full and prompt disclosure of research discovered during that process.

The Library teaches not only through its research and exhibitions but also through its collecting and other professional practices. In each of these endeavors, the Library seeks to operate at the highest level of ethical conduct. Marrying the commitment to teaching with the commitment to advancing the public good can at times create tensions, which this policy seeks to address.

For purposes of this policy, “antiquities” are defined as artifacts or other works of cultural significance, which were hand-crafted and created in antiquity and have been discovered either under ground, under water, or on land as a result of scientific, clandestine or accidental excavation, exploration, or digging activities, or inadvertently as a result of other activities. The cut-off date for determining whether an Object was created in antiquity depends on the cultural context and geographical location of the Object at the time of its creation. For Western materials, the accepted cut-off should be 500 CE; for the Near East the cut-off date should be ca. 622 CE / 1 AH (Anno Hegirae); for Mesoamerica, the cut-off date should be in conformity with the date of contact, which varies by region with general rules of thumb being as follows: the Caribbean area, 1492 CE (Columbus), areas of the Aztec empire, 1521 (date the Empire fell to the Spanish), and areas of the Inca empire, 1530 (date the Empire fell to the Spanish). The chief classes of Objects collected by the Library that fall into the category of “antiquities” include (but are not limited to) the following: ancient coins and medals, Near Eastern stone seals and cylinder seals, clay tablets and other cuneiform objects (such as clay seals, nail cones, stele, etc.), papyri (in all languages) and other writings of the period such as ostraca, wooden tablets, and metal sheets, as well as Pre-Columbian textual objects and Pre-Columbian Sellos (small terra-cotta stamps used for decorating textiles).

Required Practices With respect to the acquisition of any Object through gift, purchase, bequest or exchange, the Library shall: Thoroughly research the ownership history of the Object prior to its acquisition, including making a rigorous effort to obtain written documentation with respect to its history, including import and export documents; Secure from sellers, donors, and their representatives all information of which they have knowledge, and documentation that they possess, related to the Object, as well as appropriate warranties;

101 Comply with all applicable local, state, and federal laws; and Require assurance that the Library will receive good and marketable title to the Object.

The Library shall not normally acquire any Object unless provenance research substantiates that it was outside its country of probable modern discovery before November 17, 1970 (“1970”), the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, or was legally exported from its country of probable modern discovery after 1970.

In these circumstances, the Library shall normally require (1) documentation or substantial evidence that the Object was out of its country of modern discovery before 1970, or (2) documentation or substantial evidence that the Object was legally exported from its country of modern discovery after 1970 and legally imported into the United States.

Further, the Library shall not acquire any Object if the Library knows or has significant reason to believe that the Object has been stolen, removed in contravention of treaties or international conventions to which the United States is a party, illegally exported from any country, or illegally imported into the United States.

Special Circumstances for Insufficiently Documented Works The Library recognizes that even after the most extensive research, Objects may lack a complete documented ownership history. In order to avoid certain unintended consequences of this policy, through which undocumented Objects would be forced onto the private market and thus be unlikely to advance the public good, under exceptional circumstances the Library may acquire such insufficiently documented works if: 1. Based on the results of its research the Library can make an informed judgment that the work was outside its probable country of modern discovery before 1970 or legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970; or 2. The cumulative facts and circumstances known to the Library allow it to make an informed judgment to acquire the Object, after careful consideration of such factors as: a) its exhibition history; b) its publication history; c) the provenance history of other Objects excavated from the same site or area; d) the prior owner(s) of the Object, their reputation, and any claims made against them with respect to antiquities; e) communications regarding the Object between the country of likely modern discovery and the current owner, a prior owner(s), and/or the Library; f) the Object in question was mass produced and widely circulated and of a degree of commonness that its photographic representation in sales or other catalogs before 1970 is unlikely; and

102 3. The Library and the University Office of the General Counsel consider that acquisition of the Object poses little financial, reputational, or other harm to the Library or to Princeton University .

In the event that the Library acquires an Object consistent with items 1-3 above, the Library shall: 1. In due course, publish the acquisition in electronic and, where possible, print form, including an image of the Object and its provenance, thus aiming for a high level of transparency; and 2. Continue to research the history and provenance of the Object, promptly taking all appropriate steps should any information come to light suggesting that another party might have a right of ownership to the Object.

103

105

DECIPHERING RHABANUS MAURUS’ DE LAUDIBUS SANCTAE CRUCIS POEM 22

Charlotte Root

M

any books in the medieval period were intended to be used for reciting or singing in liturgical settings. Rhabanus Maurus’ (780-856 AD) codex, D ​ e Laudibus Sanctae Crucis,​ offers an example of a theological text that was not read like this in Church circles. Rather, it was intended to be used as an object for personal meditation and reflection. The book is organized so that the first section—the verso page of each opening—contains a poem in Latin praising the glory of the cross and Jesus, organized in a grid format. Superimposed on top of each poem is an array of shapes, pictures, or letters which form the shape of a cross. The twenty-second poem, however, uniquely defies this pattern.

This poem is superimposed by the image of a Chi Rho—the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek—rather than a cross. The image consists of many Greek letters, offering an alternative puzzle in addition to the original poem. The poem itself (loosely translated below) requires contemplation since the grid format has no spaces or punctuation, necessitating intentional focus to understand the text. The superimposed Chi Rho is a secondary puzzle because of its difference in language, and the directionality of the words is unclear. This nonlinear directionality means that the letters which comprise the Chi Rho image are not organized in a consistent or easily recognizable manner, but appear rather scrambled at first glance, mandating mental reorganization of the jumbled letters to spell out whole or partial Greek words. The Rho segment of the Chi Rho contains letters which, when reorganized, spell out multiple words: “the Savior” (Ὁ ΣΩΤΗΡ), “Jesus” (ΙΗΣΥΣ), and “truth” (ΑΛΗΘΙΑ). The Greek letters in the Chi segment are jumbled and do not form coherent words in any single direction. The letters can be interpreted as abbreviations for “Jesus Christ,” (ΙΗΣΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ) and “God,” (ΘΕΟΣ) but even this interpretation presents challenges: there are several vowels unaccounted for, letters shared by multiple words, and inconsistent directionalities.1 1 See appendix I for a facsimile of the work in question.

Charlotte Root is a concentrator in the History Department at Princeton University.

OPPOSITE PAGE: POEM OF THE CHI RHO. Folio from De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis by Rhabanus Maurus (c. 9th century). Held at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobonensis 652.

106 The colorful Greek letters highlight certain letters of the original poem to form new words as well. For example, the Η of ΑΛΗΘΙΑ highlights letters of the original poem which, when reorganized, spell “salvari.” The final Ι and Α of ΑΛΗΘΙΑ highlight letters to form the Latin word “Christum.” While it is impossible to know precisely how easily a 9th century reader might interpret this poem, that small details like these would demand careful attention and close reading to appreciate. The dedication of time to the complete understanding of the poem and image reflects the intent of the creator of this work. Rhabanus Maurus set out to create a book to honor the Holy Cross and encourage meditation and reflection upon it.2 This particular image, as an outlier from the other images, and as a puzzle within a puzzle, reflects Rhabanus’ intent because it requires readers to familiarize themselves with the complexity of the image.

According to Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604 AD), “in ipsa [pictura] ignorantes vident quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt.”3 In other words, images are the literature of the illiterate. However, this assumption does not account for complicated word pictures that are incomprehensible without knowledge of basic letters. Pope Gregory’s words most certainly do not apply to Rhabanus’ twenty-second poem, which requires not only knowledge of Greek letters, but also knowledge of enough Greek to fill in gaps where letters were omitted to decipher the image.4 An alternative approach to understanding the purpose of these images is presented by Mary Carruthers in her “Book of Memory,” which explores the importance and value of memory in medieval written and artistic creations, a contrast to the more modern value of unique creativity. Carruthers argues that images in medieval books were used as a mnemonic strategy through which audience members could further digest what they were reading or listening to. This argument defines memory’s “two gates of access:” ​painture​ and ​parole. 5Painture ​is a visual gateway in the sense that it is not only the physical appearance of an image, but also mental images created in relation to text or based on a preexisting image upon which the reader may extrapolate. The latter example relates to Rhabanus’ twenty-second poem because, in an attempt to understand this particular image, the reader must mentally rearrange the Greek letters from the Chi-Rho into a more sensical and linear arrangement. The act of mentally rearranging these letters and contemplating them elicits the effect Rhabanus intended where the audience must meditate upon Christ and the cross.

The p​ arole​of this image, or an image’s auditory and oral effects, is much more obscure. Mary Carruthers defines parole as a gate to memory which is inherent to written works since they are inherently symbolic of spoken words.6 When reading, people tend 2 Celia M. Chazelle, “The Crucified God in the Gellone Sacramentary and Hrabanus Maurus’ ​In Honorem Sanctae Crucis​,” ​In The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ’s Passion​(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 79.

3 Gregorius Magnus, Registrum Epistularum, Book XI, Letter X, Line 23, 6th century, Library of Latin Texts. (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2021).

4 See appendix II for a transcription and translation of the poem in question.

5 Mary J. Carruthers, “Memory and the Book: ‘Painture’ and ‘Parole,’” The Book of Memory: a Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 277.

6 Ibid.

107 to read silently to themselves, emblematic of the relevance of parole to memory. The main source of p​ arole​in Rhabanus’ work comes from the underlying Latin poem, which emphasizes hymns and canticles of Christ, eliciting an auditory response among audience memories who were likely reminded of singing these hymns and canticles while reading the poem. Another choice of the author to establish the ​parole​of this particular image is the use of the grid pattern on the text of the underlying Latin hymn rather than grouping the letters by their corresponding words. Because the poem is in an evenly spaced grid with no separation of words, it can be read in a very fluid and connected manner akin to how Latin likely would have been spoken, with many elisions and few auditory demarcations of space between words. The question arises, then, if this poem is intended to be read like it would be spoken, how should readers interpret the broader cadence of the poem, given that there is no separation between phrases or sentences either? If read linearly with no breaks, the poem may convey a sense of urgency, similarly to someone speaking very fast in order to get in every word. This could reflect the urgency placed on honoring Christ in the Middle Ages, since religion was a prominent factor in daily life and a main value for many contemporary populations.

However, this interpretation does not fit when considering the deliberate and rigid organization of the page’s overall structure. With each letter separated from the others by an equal amount of space and with some letters almost completely obscured by the Greek letters painted on top of them, it is very challenging to read fluidly out loud. Sometimes, it is difficult to discern whether a letter belongs to the end of one word or the beginning of another. Someone reading it aloud would also have a difficult time describing the superimposed image and the pieces of the original poem it highlights.

Perhaps this is a subliminal message from Rhabanus that this text is not intended to be read aloud at all, but rather contemplated and meditated upon in a much more private setting. Those who could understand the text could effectively interact with it. Taking the time to notice the small details of each page, appreciating the underlying Latin poem and the superimposed images—and the letters they highlight—is inherently meditative upon Jesus and the cross, that being the topic of every page.

Ben Tilghman’s article, “The Shape of the Word: Extralinguistic Meaning in Insular Display Lettering,” presents further potential interpretations focused on the form of letters and particularly the complicated arrangements of letters that act almost as puzzles. In his article, Tilghman places an emphasis on the intended audience.7 This is an important facet for this work in particular, as it clearly could not have been understood by an average member of the laity of the Middle Ages. First, this particular image is in both Latin and Greek. The understanding of these two languages in conjunction reflect an incredibly thorough education that not many people in the Middle Ages would have been able to access. Someone who knew Latin could understand the poem, but they would not be able to understand what the image meant. Perhaps they could recognize the popular Chi Rho christogram without knowing Greek, but they likely would not take the time to try to decipher a language they do not know, therefore 7 Ben C. Tilghman, “The Shape of the Word: Extralinguistic Meaning in Insular Display Lettering.” Word & Image​. vol. 27, no. 3 (2011): 292–308.

108 neglecting the self-referential meditative aspect of untangling the Greek. They could, however, notice which letters of the original poem were highlighted and decipher those.

This page could feasibly therefore only be completely understood by the highly educated, likely monks, clerics, or nobles who had access to an education in both languages. A person who understood both Latin and Greek would likely still miss many of the details of this page.

The book in its entirety is still appreciable in some right to a potentially illiterate reader. The majority of the poems are superimposed by more figurative images, all of them organized in a cross shape. This means that the aesthetic aspect of painture, or visual gateway to memory would be engaged for an illiterate reader, but the mental reorganization aspect of the painture of this image as well as the parole, the aural gateway, are unintelligible. Without recognizing the words to the hymns on the page, an illiterate reader would not think of the song they may have heard in church. They would not unscramble the Greek letters or figure out where the spaces should fall between the words of the Latin poem.

With the potential intended audience established, one must consider how this audience would have interacted with the image. Tilghman delves into how certain ornate words or images “must be mentally disentangled,” for full comprehension.8 This is highly applicable to Maurus’ twenty-second poem because the Chi-Rho figure is unintelligible unless it is mentally reorganized, switching around the order of the letters mentally until coherent words form. Once again, the focus needed to mentally disentangle a word image such as this would actualize Rhabanus Maurus’ goal of enticing the audience to meditate upon the meaning of the images.

Not only could the readers’ deciphering of the text be considered a form of meditation, but also the author’s careful planning and creating of this page is inherently meditative as well. The author, and those who meticulously copied the original, were probably the only people who could understand every detail of the page and the meaning of each artistic choice. That does not however preclude other readers from gleaning some meaning from the image. In fact, the readers’ inability to understand all of the details of the image is likely intentional: it would have been seen as hubristic to claim to understand every detail of God’s workings, therefore contributing to the microcosmic nature of the work.

Finally, to elaborate upon the full meaning of this image, it is helpful to examine Tilghman’s argument of God as the Word.9 This ideology is central to Christianity and thus crucial in interpreting Christian illuminated texts. Rhabanus’ twenty-second poem is a prime example of this idea because Christ’s name in Greek is abbreviated in a word picture made out of more words. The Chi Rho is God’s name, which can be subdivided to form more words to describe God: “Truth,” “Savior,” and “Jesus.” The interplay of these various words for God forms the essence of the holistic image: the Chi Rho. Rhabanus’ work highlights the tension between multiplicity and unity of God. Through the lens of God as the Word, this work implies to readers that God is omnipresent: in 8 Ibid., 299.

9 Ibid., 296.

109 the smaller-scale and in the larger-scale machinations of the world. This page reads as a microcosm of the contemporary Catholic worldview: one can find God through the minute details of the work, and also through the holistic image.

Rhabanus Maurus’ self-actualizing meditative work challenges modern conceptions of medieval book arts—it suggests a highly utilitarian intention for the work while not excluding aesthetics and organization as an important facet. It is not reflective of Pope Gregory’s assessment of the purpose of images as the literature of the illiterate because the image on this page is not figural and thus not decipherable to an illiterate person. It aligns slightly more with Mary Carruthers’ connection of book arts to memory in that the act of deciphering this text demands active engagement on the part of the reader and thus engagement of the memory, but as a book that was likely not intended to be read aloud the effect of parole as a gateway to memory is less relevant. Rhabanus’ intended purpose for this book is evident in the organization of the work, so much so that it is not feasible to read this book how one might normally read a book. Since it was intended to be meditated upon privately rather than to be read aloud, typical observations of the role of text and image do not necessarily apply. Rather, this book acts as a microcosmic representation of the medieval conception of God’s omnipresence, highlighting how every minute detail is necessary to create a meaningful holistic image.

Bibliography Carruthers, Mary J. “Memory and the Book: ‘Painture’ and ‘Parole.’” ​T he Book of Memory: a Study of Memory in Medieval Culture​. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Chazelle, Celia M. “The Crucified God in the Gellone Sacramentary and Hrabanus Maurus’ ​In Honorem Sanctae Crucis​.” ​T he Crucified God in the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ’s Passion​. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Perrin, Michel. Raban Maur: Louanges De La Sainte Croix​. Oxford: Berg International, 1988.

Tilghman, Ben C. “The Shape of the Word: Extralinguistic Meaning in Insular Display Lettering.” ​In Word & Image​. vol. 27, no. 3 (2011): 292–308.

Gregorius Magnus. Registrum Epistularum. Book XI, Letter X, Line 23. 6th century. Library of Latin Texts. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2021.

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THE TREACHEROUS MOOR: REPRESENTATIONS OF DARK SKIN IN THE CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARIA AND THE LIBRO DE LOS JUEGOS

Danielle Stephenson

I

n 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World under the flag of a new nation. As Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” his point of origin, Spain, had undergone a cultural transformation defined by a carefully constructed Christian identity. That same year, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon had captured the kingdom of Granada (the Iberian Peninsula’s last Islamic polity) and expelled the Jewish people living in the kingdom of Castile. From that point forward, the newly unified Spanish kingdom would continue to violently cleanse the Peninsula of its Muslim and Jewish population. This seemingly swift process, however, had already begun centuries before as Christian rulers worked to “reconquer” the Iberian Peninsula and drive out Muslim and Jewish populations that had lived in the territory for over 700 years.1 Critical to this endeavor of ethnic cleansing and establishment of a unified political and religious authority was the construction of an alien “Other” that could be feared and avoided. We are, thus, brought to the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Canticles of Holy Mary) and the Libro de los juegos: acedrex, dados, e tablas (Book of games: chess, dice, and tables), two thirteenth century texts created during the reign of Alfonso X (r. 1252-1284), king of Castile, León, and Galicia.

A testament to the influence of Islam in the region at the time, Alfonso X el Sabio, “the Learned,” knew the Arabic language himself. Beyond political accomplishments, he is best remembered for constructing a corpus of Castilian 1 Jerrilynn D. Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 1.

Danielle Stephenson ’20 was a concentrator in the French and Italian Department at Princeton University.

OPPOSITE PAGE: JAMES I OF ARAGON TALKS TO ANDALUSIAN MUSLIM PETITIONERS. From the Cantigas de Santa María (c. 13th century). Held at the Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

112 texts “in admiration of and in competition with the great Arabic libraries of the Peninsula.”2 The thirteenth-century Cantigas and Libro de los juegos, therefore, offer a great deal of insight toward the cultural processes that ultimately led to a unified, Christian Spanish kingdom. This paper is especially interested in how representations of dark skin in these texts provide a glimpse into the social construct of race that would set the tone for Spanish (and global) history.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria is a book of 420 poems, written in GalicianPortuguese and mainly describing Marian miracles wherein the Virgin Mary interacts with humans on Earth, saving them from peril and sin. The códice rico (rich codex), one of four surviving manuscript codices, is illuminated with narrative vignettes: many of the poems have associated panels of artwork. The Libro de los juegos deals with didactic, not moralistic, matters. It contains the earliest known description of the games of chess, dice, and backgammon. Still, the Libro de los juegos is rich with cultural, social, and religious meaning. Both the Cantigas and Libro de los juegos include depictions of dark-skinned people, offering invaluable insight on the way dark skin was characterized by artists and understood by the texts’ intended audience. The Cantigas were intended to be accessible to everyday people. Depictions of sin and violence are elements of a larger narrative surrounding3 the miracles of the Virgin Mary, with an intent to confront perceived religious threats toward Christianity. The Libro de los juegos, on the other hand, does not include similar vilifying caricatures, because it was produced for the pleasure of King Alfonso X and his courtly companions and therefore had a purpose of entertainment and practical instruction.4 At a time when the word for “race” did not even exist yet and was faintly referred to with the medieval sense of gens, or “people,”5 these two texts provide an understanding of two sides to the origins of the construction of race. I argue that thirteenthcentury perceptions of skin color were determined by artistic practices of visual metaphor, cultural and political threat, concepts of damnation and salvation, and understandings of religion and status. These compounding influences led to the development of dark skin as a symbolic figment, a beginning step toward generalized constructions of inherent “race.”

In the thirteenth century Castilian court of Alfonso X, ethnicity and race were initially subordinated to religion in regard to hierarchy and group 2 Ibid., 5.

3 John Keller and Richard Kinkade, Iconography in Medieval Spanish Literature (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 4-60.

4 Olivia Remie Constable, “Chess and Courtly Culture in Medieval Castile: The Libro De Ajedrez of Alfonso X, El Sabio,” Speculum 82, no. 2 (2007): 301 5 Robert Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 1 (2001): 42–44.

113 identification. The Cantigas and Libro de los juegos, however, demonstrate the role that skin color began to play in this hierarchy. An individual’s race was not yet considered as permanent or unchanging. But, in the Cantigas and Libro de los juegos, the depiction of people with dark skin is essentializing. In these texts, dark skin represents more than just skin color. It is characterized as being intrinsic to a certain type of person. Compounded by a sense of religious, cultural, and political threat, depictions of dark skin established standards of visual and symbolic differentiation. Most importantly, this development is couched in the apparent beginnings of conceptions of “whiteness,” particularly as it ascends to a defining characteristic of Christian identity.6 As art historian Madeline Caviness writes, Christian Europeans began seeing themselves as white sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century, around the time that the Libro de los juegos and Cantigas were commissioned and completed. Until then, flesh tones in medieval art were depicted with all shades of pink, beige, and brown. From the middle of the thirteenth century onwards, whiteness became the self-invented color of Christian European identity. The Cantigas and Libro de los juegos’ role in the transformation of a previously non-existent concept of race affirms the modern theory of race as a social construct, as famously articulated by Barbara Fields in her groundbreaking 1982 essay “Ideology and Race in American History” and currently maintained by scholars and scientists across disciplines.7 Modern race theory understands that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive, biological referent.8 To explore the impact of Spanish thirteenth-century portrayals of dark skin color, I will begin with an overview of the climate of the court of Alfonso X and review of relevant critical race theory. I will then conduct a close comparative analysis of both manuscripts’ illuminations and captions, considering themes conveyed visually and textually. I will weigh these texts’ implicit narratives and cultural impact before, finally, meditating on their current significance.

6 Madeline Caviness, “From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman in the Thirteenth Century to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” Different Visions, 1 (2008).

7 Audrey Smedley, “ ‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity.” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1998): 690-702; Robin O. Andreasen, “Race: Biological Reality or Social Construct?” Philosophy of Science 67 (2000): S653-666; Megan Gannon, “Race is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue,” Scientific American, February 2016.

8 Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 3-27.

114 The Court of Alfonso X Alfonso X ascended to the throne as King of Castile, León, and Galicia after succeeding his father, Ferdinand III. During Alfonso X’s reign, significant cultural contributions to the fields of literature, law, and art were attributed to him. Few of his subjects at the time could read Latin or even their own vernacular.

Alfonso X understood this and nonetheless persisted in his grand encyclopedic projects. A prolific author and commissioner, he encouraged the translation of Latin and Arabic texts into Castilian vernacular and produced a number of works notable for their merit and contribution to history and literature.

These works synthesized and presented knowledge that, Alfonso X reasoned, could be told or read to his illiterate constituents.9 His efforts had a concerted purpose. As seen in the many Islamic polities of the Iberian Peninsula, kingship and sovereignty found their roots in the production of language and literature.

Alfonso’s Castilian court took cues from nearby Muslim and Jewish populations on how to create an identity (and maintain power) through culture.10 From these sources of education and entertainment, I am interested in the spectrum of portrayals of “moors,” typically represented by characters with dark skin. After an analysis of depictions of dark skin in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and Libro de los juegos, it becomes clear that both positive and negative portrayals of dark skin had a calculated impact on cultural conceptions of sovereignty, power, and socio-religious dominance in the Iberian Peninsula.

First, one must recognize the political and cultural tensions of the time.

Moors (defined here as the Muslim inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages) and Christians were in the midst of a seven-centuries-long fight for territory, often referred to as the Reconquista, or the reconquest: a war fought to eject Muslims from territory that was believed to belong by divine right to Christians.11 Therefore, it was in Alfonso X’s interest to depict political enemies of the Spanish crown in a negative light. Visual and verbal constructions of an enemy fueled societal motivations to “fight on.”12 The view of the time was that Moors would never be loyal to a Christian crown because of their allegiance to Islam. Moors represented a tangible threat to Alfonso X’s sovereignty. As Pamela Patton, a scholar of the visual culture of medieval Iberia, writes, symbolism of dark-skinned figures in the thirteenth century “could connote any of the 9 Keller and Kinkade, Iconography, 6.

10 Dodds, Menocal, and Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy, 5.

11 Ibid., 3 12 Ian Pittaway, ““Infidels”, “traitors” and “that ugly bearded crew”: fear and loathing in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Early Music Muse, 2018. https://earlymusicmuse. com/2018/05/

115 multiple external dangers imagined by a fearful Christendom.”13 It is reasonable to expect this perceived political and religious threat to be a factor in perceptions of dark skin tone and the position of “the Other” within the dominant Christian culture of Alfonso X’s court.

Same Court, Same Time Amid this climate, the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los juegos were products of collaboration between King Alfonso X and Christian scribes in his court.14 The Libro de los juegos was commissioned and completed between 1251 and 1282 and the Cantigas were a work-in-progress authored by King Alfonso X himself and other scribes, begun in 1270 and completed in 1290, a few years after Alfonso X’s death.15 Given their synchronal production, there are clear parallels between the two texts, especially regarding depictions of Moors and dark-skinned figures in general.

The manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria includes stories that are set in a wide array of scenarios depicting everyday life. It is this diversity of illustrations that allows the Cantigas to transcend boundaries of art and cross into studies of history and medieval sociology. A panoramic view of the Middle Ages becomes available and “meet[s] the viewer’s eye as he examines these magnificent illuminations.”16 Since the Cantigas offer such a rich view of medieval life, it is significant that Moors appear frequently. Overall, one finds that dark skinned characters are consistently portrayed as irrevocably sinful (while this is not nearly as often the case for white characters), with additional general undertones of treachery and evil in the characters’ descriptions and plot-based outcomes.

The Libro de los juegos, written in Castilian, describes the rules of chess, dice and other board games. Unlike the Cantigas , the Libro de los juegos was meant for a small audience and was never copied or distributed.17 Little information is available about the text’s scribes, but it is hypothesized to have been written by Christian scribes, with illuminations added by two or three Muslim and Christian artists after the text was composed.18 After the text’s introduction, the first section 13 Pamela Patton, “An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent in the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile,” Gesta 55, no. 2 (2016): 213-238 14 Pittaway, “Infidels.”

15 John Esten Keller, “Reviewed Work: Afonso X, o Sábio. Cantigas de Santa Maria by Walter Mettmann, Alfonso X.” Hispanic Review 29, no. 1 (1961): 68; “Muslim women playing chess.” Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index. University of Iowa Libraries, 2014.

16 Keller, Las Cantigas, 7.

17 Muslim women playing chess.

18 Constable, Chess and Courtly Culture, 310.

116 of the book describes 103 chess problems and their solutions. Explanations of moves and playing techniques are provided alongside illustrations of a variety of characters playing chess on boards depicting the problem described. In this way, the Libro de los juegos is unique: it is the earliest chess manuscript to link word and image without relying on story or narrative.19 Other books of the time incorporate board diagrams at crucial turning points in the narrative as a plot device and do not depict an actually playable game.20 The Libro de los juegos emphasizes rules of chess, outlines problems, and explains strategic moves.

Given the diversity of subjects depicted, the book also serves as a snapshot of the culture of King Alfonso X’s court. Olivia Remie Constable gives an in-depth analysis of these characters, describing the artists’ attention to detail and their consistent use of “formulaic details of costume,” including facial characteristics, skin color, hairstyles, and headwear. From each depiction, one can discern social commentaries on aristocracy, nobility, gender, and relations between members of different religious and cultural groups.21 Convivencia and Definitions of Race A thoughtful study of these texts challenges the theory of convivencia— an argument that, from the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Hispania in early eighth century to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, different religious groups lived in relative peace.22 Certain scholars refer to a culture of tolerance, but it is likely that this concept of tolerance had “little or no meaning” at the time.23 This misconception, in large part, comes from a lack of consideration of the actual experience of Jews and Muslims. It requires too far a stretch of the imagination to believe that religious groups could live “in relative peace” during the Reconquista, a time when processes of ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Jews were occurring in order to establish Christian dominance in the Peninsula.

Given the limitations of this ahistorical theory of convivencia, one must consider an alternative. If such an alternative exists, it predicates the existence of distinction between peoples beyond the neutral medieval Latin concept of gens 19 Ibid., 322.

20 Ibid., 302 21 The LDJ shows a variety of chess games that adhere to both Muslim chase-based styles of play and European trap-based strategies. Given the political climate and frequent depictions of games between Muslims and Christians, I thought of considering the way that games are played and evaluating potential connotations, but Constable’s work concludes that there is no link between the religion of players shown and the strategy described in the text.

22 Kenneth Baxter Wolf, “Convivencia in Medieval Spain: A Brief History of an Idea,” Compass 1 (2009): 72-85.

23 Ibid.

117 or natio, a concept of descent groups.24 Still, it is impossible to make a statement that “race” existed during the Middle Ages. Any modern consideration of race had not developed yet and was eclipsed by more defining characteristics of religion, social class, and culture.25 First of all, the word “race,” defined as an ethnic group of people with common ancestry, did not exist for the majority of the Middle Ages and only arose in the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century.26 As Geraldine Heng, a scholar of the invention of race in the European Middle Ages, argues, even if flexible twenty-first-century definitions of race renew key medieval instrumentalizations in the way that personal relations are organized, race theory’s examination of the past “stops at the door of modern time.”27 Our vision is hindered by a blind spot. At this time in history, biological difference did not constitute race or ethnicity. It did, however, serve as part of the material from which the fabric of race and ethnicity were constructed. Physiological differences worked in tandem with language, religion, political allegiance, economic position, and so on. But this is the biggest problem in definitively identifying medieval distinctions between racial groups and religious groups.

In a period like the Middle Ages, religion meant membership of a community more than a canonical set of beliefs. As historian and medievalist Robert Bartlett explains, there was a sense that one was born a Christian or a Muslim just as one was born to a nationality.28 Existing race theory makes it difficult to pinpoint the European Middle Ages as a time when the modern definition of “race” was even a consideration.29 I argue, however, that skin color inevitably engenders perceptions of difference simply by nature of the fact that skin color is immediately visible.

I posit first that whiteness ascended to be the primary defining element of Christian European identity, followed by the ambiguous outlining of a “darker” and non-Christian (i.e. Moor) category of people, consistently placed below Christianity in the cultural hierarchy of King Alfonso X’s reign. Once “purity” was societally characterized by light skin and Christianity, it was easier to define what was “impure.” This understanding brings us to a necessary discussion of pollution theory. Given the political tensions in the thirteenth century, the prevalence of Muslim constituents in Alfonso X’s reign was perceived as a danger to Christian sovereignty. An analysis of the Cantigas , in particular, 24 Bartlett, Medieval and Modern Concepts, 42.

25 Conversation with Therese Martin at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid (2019).

26 Oxford English Dictionary online (2019).

27 Heng, The Invention of Race, 262.

28 Bartlett, Medieval and Modern Concepts, 42.

29 Ibid.

118 reveals that dark skin often conveys ugliness, deception, and unworthiness of salvation. In her book Purity and Danger, anthropologist and cultural theorist Mary Douglas deftly analyzes the meaning of themes like these. To examine what is considered unclean in any culture, she says, is to “take a looking-glass approach to the ordered patterning which that culture strives to establish.”30 Thus, an examination of the connotations of “impure” dark skin magnifies the Christian ideals of purity and salvation in medieval Spanish culture. Otherness in the court of King Alfonso X, particularly, was a result of systematic ordering and the development of hierarchy. Although Muslim nobility could exist in the court, as shown in the Libro de los juegos, the Cantigas outline spiritual and social boundaries for persons depicted with dark skin that were to remain uncrossed.

The concept of pollution of the court that concerned Christian rulers completely relied on relativity: dark-skinned people could inhabit the same spheres of Christian nobility but not the same positions of power. As Mary Douglas notes, “shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the diningtable.”31 Artistic Representations The Cantigas and Libro de los juegos both mark a departure from the prevalent style of the French Gothic. The Cantigas , for example, demonstrate a new “Spanish gravity,” with deeper religious and violent undertones.32 The Libro de los juegos similarly deviates from convention, drawing from both Christian and Muslim styles.

Before the period of encounter with the Islamic world that led medieval Spanish artists to consider skin color, artists worked with black in abstraction and concordance with theological convention. In The Image of the Black in Western Art, Jean Devisse traces Biblical exegesis over the centuries and reflects on the origins of black as the color of sin and evil. Blackness, in medieval art, serves as a sign of death and evil that is separate from conscious vilification of Black people. For example, executioners of saints were often depicted with black skin and “Negroid features.”33 Devisse asks, “How many generations of Christians have been conditioned by looking at a grimacing black man torturing Christ or his saints?” The most powerful connotation of blackness is its association with 30 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London and New York: Routledge, 1966), 36.

31 Ibid., 37.

32 Keller, Las Cantigas, 7.

33 Ed. David Bindman, The Image of the Black In Western Art, volume II: From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 72.

119 sin, anchored for eons in ancient and biblical references.34 As Geraldine Heng states, sin became, in time, “colorized.”35 Black became known as the color of damnation, devils, and demons. With such a long history of the symbolic dark/ light and good/evil binary, it is unsurprising that dark skin ultimately came to be synonymous with sin, diabolism, and the pollution of Christian purity.

Featured instances of dark skin in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los juegos immediately highlight differences in tone and intention. In essence, depictions of dark-skinned Moors in the Cantigas are overwhelmingly negative and accompanied by exaggerated features, while the depictions of dark skin in the Libro de los juegos are free of caricature and morality-based, violent narratives. Textually, Moors in the Cantigas de Santa Maria are described with biting contemptuousness, and in the Libro de los juegos as skillful players of sophisticated games of strategy. This is related to a main difference between the two selected texts, one that influences any interpretation: the images in the Libro de los juegos are notably more centered on courtly life, whereas the Cantigas catalog stories of the Virgin Mary saving people of all walks of life.

It is perhaps the more patrician parameters of the Libro de los juegos that foment neutral and positive representations of blackness. The manuscript’s intended audience was King Alfonso X himself and cultured members of his court.36 Specifically commissioned to please the aging King Alfonso X, each illustration and description was produced to promote leisurely activity and the entertainment of the nobility and aristocracy. Any violent imagery would be firmly counterproductive. Because of this tendency toward cosmopolitan ideals, the tone of the Libro de los juegos is unlike other Alfonsine texts. Brian Catlos, a scholar of ethno-religious identity in the medieval world, emphasizes that except for two “almost generic” references to “God” on the first two folios of the Libro de los juegos, there are no other mentions of Christian elements in the entirety of Alfonso X’s final work.37 It appears that the book is strictly about the pleasures of chess, offering social commentary without moralistic intentions.

Conversely, the hundreds of illuminations in the Cantigas de Santa Maria depict a wide array of farmers, aristocrats, knights, monks, and other kinds of people. The manuscript would not have been available for everyday people to view, but its songs were intended to be sung and thereby understood by even the illiterate subjects of Alfonso X. Moralistic undertones were consequently disseminated to people of all walks of life, with the intent to subvert a potentially 34 KJV, Psalm 51: “wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow,” for example.

35 Heng, The Invention of Race.

36 Constable, Chess and Courtly Culture, 301.

37 Roman gods are only mentioned regarding the names of the planets that are represented in the playing pieces of astrological games.

120 latent threat to Alfonso X’s Christian sovereignty. I previously mentioned the positive effect that negative depictions of non-Christians would have on societal motivations to combat perceived religiopolitical adversaries. With Alfonso X as chief collaborator and author, intentionally reducing dark skin to an abstract concept of sin and evil does powerful work for the crown in constructing a unified enemy. The Libro de los juegos, commissioned at Alfonso X’s behest, does not operate in this way and maintains standards of hierarchy through what leans toward anthropological representation. The opposing intentions of these two concurrently produced texts are fascinating because they exist as timecapsules of courtly and everyday life, demonstrating the positioning of different “gentes” in society.

Catingas de Santa Maria (c. 1270-1290) Moors appear in forty-two songs of the Cantigas, a tenth of the total collection, and in fifteen of the illustrations accompanying the songs.38 This identification of “Moor” in the Cantigas does not conform to the typical definition of North African Muslims. Rather, “Moor” signifies any kind of Muslim, regardless of country of origin.39 I am focusing on representations of dark skin, a physiological feature that is reserved for Muslims in the text but never Christians. The only exceptions are songs where figures with dark skin are Christian at some point in the cantiga. Thus, a narrative of religious conversion is elemental to these stories. Considering the messages conveyed in each depiction, negative artistic and literary depictions of dark skin and “blackness” would have a socio-cultural impact.

Throughout the Cantigas, contributing artists conformed to the artistic convention of signifying demonic qualities in non-human beings with dark pigments: blacks, dark blues, grays, and browns. In Cantiga 74, for example, a painter is shown painting contrasting images: an image of the Virgin Mary with brightly colored robes and light skin and a “very ugly devil,” (demo muy fea, CSM 74). The image of the devil is clearly not human, painted gray-brown with wings, horns, and a tail. When the devil confronts and threatens the painter for his ugly representation, the devil is similarly represented as a dark-blue beast.

Even without an intention of hostility toward dark-skinned humans, depictions like these make it clear that demonic figures and devils were regularly depicted with dark colors, aligned with contemporary depictions of theological beings on a binary of dark and light.

38 Pittaway, “Infidels.”

39 Ibid.

121 Dark skin is often not connected to a notion of “gens” at all but acts as a general symbol of impurity. In Cantiga 123, a friar is depicted as having led a good life after joining the Franciscan order as a child. The friar kneels (in the top left panel), surrounded by other friars with white skin, although the haircolor of their tonsures differ from monk to monk. It is when this friar falls ill as an adult, however, that his skin color changes. On his deathbed (in the top right panel), the friar is surrounded by black, brown, and dark-blue devils. He sees the devils, and the caption states that he “denegreceu por en,” or “turned black because of it.” In the illustration, demons hover over the friar’s head, and his face is dark gray. Notably, his uncovered toes remain white, the same color as his previous form. This distinction makes it apparent to the viewer that only his face has changed color, while his body has stayed the same. Looking closely, it is meaningful that in the next illustration (in the middle left panel), when the friar’s facial color is restored and lightened, his feet are now covered by a blanket that hides their color. This reveals an intention in the previous miniature to emphasize only the darkening of the friar’s face, not his entire body. Later in the cantiga, the friar corroborates this illustration when his spirit comes back from the dead and appears to two of the living brothers, explaining that his face turned black because he saw devils. It is therefore likely that the artist made a choice to uncover the friar’s toes in the first deathbed illustration to show that the friar did not turn totally black like the demons. He was only partially affected by sin, and the condition was reversible: once another friar lights a candle of the Virgin and places it in his hand, the friar’s face turns white again and his soul goes to heaven. In this cantiga, the friar’s soul is “polluted” by visions of demons, but he is able to find salvation after darkness is literally cast out by light. This exemplifies the prevalence of visual metaphor relating to “blackness” of skin color and salvation.

In Cantiga 47, human blackness takes center stage, parallel to beasthood and demonic figures. An intoxicated monk tries to go to church but is apprehended by a devil who appears in the form of a bull with lowered horns, ready to attack (top right panel). According to John Keller and Richard Kinkade’s translation in Iconography in Medieval Spanish Literature, the monk calls out for the Virgin Mary, and she comes to save him, telling the “disgusting” bull to go away.

In the middle left panel, the devil appears to the monk in the form of a “tall, thin man, shaggy and black as pitch,” “longu’ e magr’ e veloso e negro come pez.”

In the panel’s caption, the figure is described as a “very ugly man,” “ome mui feo.”

The Virgin Mary chases the devil away, calling him “evil one, much worse than a thief,” “mao, mui peor que rapaz,” before banishing the third obstacle, a fierce lion. Once saved, the Virgin Mary soothes the drunk and fearful monk and tells

122 him to be careful and not misbehave in the future. While the image of the darkskinned devil in Cantiga 47 is depicted with some of the same attributes of the devils in Cantiga 123, his physical appearance is more reminiscent of some kind of exaggerated African stereotype. First, his appearance is clearly humanoid, but without a bend toward realism. The devil has facial hair: a pointed beard with shaggy, curly hair. He wears some kind of fur covering, possibly the skin of a wild beast,40 that rests just above his knobby knees and skinny legs with defined muscles. Pamela Patton draws attention to the humanoid figure’s spiky hair and unnaturally black skin that evokes a visual topos known in the medieval world as the “Ethiopian.”41 The story of Cantiga 47, with its associated illustration, is important because the image of a black man is syntactically categorized and represented as one of a series of three devils meant to cause harm to a Christian with white skin.42 Specifically, the song states that the Virgin Mary rescues the monk from “the temptation of the devil who despises goodness,” “tentaçôn do demo, a que do ben despraz.” Although the monk was already misbehaving by overindulging in wine, the three beasts are manifestations of the devil’s desire to “lead us into error so that we will lose God,” “nos meter per que façamos érro, porque a Déus perder.” In the miniature, the three beasts are illustrated as standing directly in the way of a drawing of a church. Blackness is depicted as physically standing in the way of religious piety.

In Cantiga 82, a human-presenting devil is overtly “black” to the point of caricature. This caricaturized depiction is not unique, as seen from Patton’s analysis of the Ethiopian topos in Cantiga 47.43 The black figure in Cantiga 82, with its large eyes and broad smile, is suggestive of modern conceptions of minstrelsy, even. The song tells the story of a monk who is bothered during his sleep by devils in the form of pigs. A black man, described in the caption as a “large black devil, “un diablo grande negra,” comes through the door holding a hooked staff and orders the pigs to seize the fair-skinned monk, even though they are unable to harm him because of his saintliness.44 The monk prays to the Virgin Mary, who saves him by banishing the devils back to Hell. The “large black devil’s” features are human-like and exaggerated, with dark brown skin, 40 Keller, Las Cantigas.

41 Patton, An Ethiopian Headed Servant, 226.

42 As a caveat, the numerological implications of the number of devils that confront the monk are worth discussing. Three devils appear and are banished by the Virgin Mary, but theologically, the number three is associated with perfection and the Holy Trinity. Conversely, the “rule of three” writing principle holds that a trio of events is best in storytelling, leading to more effective and humorous outcomes. I err toward the latter, given the explicit condemnation of the devils as a source of temptation 43 Patton, An Ethiopian Headed Servant, 226.

44 CSM 82, “The Demon Swine,” The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database.

123 curly hair, bulging white eyes, and full lips, as seen in the second panel of the miniature. In the third panel, the devil’s short spiky curls are more visible, along with a full mouth of oversized and gleaming white teeth. In accordance with the story and artistic conventions of darkness, the devil appears to be considerably more treacherous than the pigs: he is darker in color and wielding a large weapon.

The fourth panel of the miniature in this facsimile, however, reveals a depiction of the “black devil” that is quite different from miniatures two and three. This representation is lighter in color, significantly less opaque, less human and much less moor-like, more akin to the devils depicted in Cantiga 123. Moreover, the pigmentation of the “black devil” more closely matches the color of the other pig-devils. The difference in representation here most probably reflects that the work is unfinished and that, at some point in the production of the Cantigas, the illustration of the devil was adapted. It is probable that the differences between the two images are the result of later revising.45 This difference between the panels points to specific decision-making in the portrayal of a black man devil.

Other surviving manuscripts make no reference to the devil’s blackness,46 so it is clear that the illustration reflects a degree of intentionality and chronological progression. An act of revision attests to a variability of understandings of skin color and the possible influence of artistic or authorial choice in deciding representations of blackness in the Cantigas. Perhaps the continuation of the tensions of the Reconquista throughout the Peninsula (and subsequent increased contact between Islamic polities and the Castilian court) increased a sense of religious threat, resulting in more heavy-handed depictions of blackness and temptation?

This concept of religious threat goes hand-in-hand with theories of pollution. The perceived danger of miscegenation, or “mixing” of people with different skin colors, is most famously emphasized in Cantiga 186. First, a woman’s mother-in-law orders a dark-skinned servant to lie down with her son’s wife. The mother-in-law then summons her son and shows him his fair-skinned wife lying next to the “Moor.” When the son reports the affair, the judge and other witnesses see the woman and Moor servant sleeping together, seize them both, and bring them to the town square to be burned. Both are cast into the flames, but the woman prays to the Virgin Mary for protection and is saved, feeling nothing, while the Moor is reduced to ashes and nothingness, “que nïún 45 As previously mentioned, the “códice rico,” also known as the [T] codex, is the subject of this paper’s analysis. It is not the complete manuscript, only containing 195 of the cantigas.

This said, it is unclear which codex is the oldest or youngest, with a great deal of debate scholars. It is likely that the darker image of the devil was painted after the lighter rendering - it is easier to paint a dark image over a light one than lighten a dark image.

46 Patton, An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent, 227.

124 sinal sól del non pareceu.” The imagery here is particularly violent, describing the total obliteration of a human being, not just a demonic figure. At a certain level, it is easy to oversimplify this cantiga: black is damned and white is saved, regardless of innocence. This interpretation makes sense, especially considering the artistic convention of the time to use darker pigments to portray devils and demons. Furthermore, it is clear that salvation is founded in religious standing. The cantiga describes the prayer that the woman says before being burned but does not mention similar prayer from the non-Christian servant.

When the woman is illustrated as being untouched by flames, the Virgin’s hands are on her shoulders. However, a close reading of the miniatures and original Galician-Portuguese text reveals intentionality in the storytelling that transcends a portrayal of religious status. King Alfonso X’s description of the Moor carries more prejudice than an interpretation based solely in blanketed damnation of non-Christians.

Initially, it seems clear that the mother-in-law is the antagonist of the story. Her actions catalyze the plot. But if the mother-in-law was the actor in orchestrating the woman’s death, why, then, is the Moor described as a “falsso traedor,” or “false betrayer”? Firstly, in looking at the cantiga’s original lyrics, the Galician epigraph “Esta é como Santa María guardou ũa mollér do fógo, a que querían queimar,”47 (literally, “This is how Saint Mary saved a woman from fire, whom they wanted to burn”) places blame on a plural third-person party, using the conjugation “querían” (“they wanted”) when describing who wanted her burned. This is a logical title, considering the number of witnesses to the woman’s “adultery” and her attempted burning. Still, with the exception of the first miniature, where the Moor servant seems to raise his hands upwards in surprise, the illustrations do not make any efforts to absolve the Moor or clarify his innocence in the situation. Turning attention to the text, the cantiga describes how the mother-in-law directed the Moor servant to “deitar-se” with the woman, a word that could mean just sleeping, or “lying down.” However, in Cantiga 151, the verb “deitar” is used to describe intercourse, telling the story of a priest who gives into lustful tendencies and is shamed by the Virgin Mary for his licentiousness.48 The Moor is also hinted at as having “had his way” with the woman, “pois se deitou,” using the reflexive conjugation. An interpretation of the Moor raping the woman in her sleep, then, becomes the most probable one, particularly considering previous emphasis on the woman’s unparalleled love for her husband, “que amava mui mas d’al.” This highlights issues of miscegenation and sexual “pollution,” depicting a disgusting act of treachery on the part of 47Andrew Casson, “CSM 186: Quen na Virgen santa muito fiará” (2019) 48 Anita Benaim Lasry, “Cantiga 186: Alfonso’s Adaptation of the Accused Queen Tale,” Romance Quarterly 33, no. 3 (2010): 317.

125 the Moor servant. Even though the Moor initially appears to try to refuse the mother-in-law, sleeping next to someone and consciously having intercourse with an unconscious woman carry exponentially different moral gravities.

Recognizing similar variations of the story makes it clear that the Moor is very intentionally depicted as an adulterer and rapist. Anita Lasry points out that King Alfonso X modeled Cantiga 186 after the twelfth-century French romance Doon de la Roche. Compared to the original story, where Doon’s wife is mistakenly accused of being unfaithful,49 King Alfonso X chose to make the accused lover a Moor. The primary motive behind this was most likely to clarify and amplify the severity of the adultery. In Doon de la Roche, however, the youth sent to lie beside the noblewoman does not even dare touch her.50 So, not only did King Alfonso X choose to “other” the servant by depicting him as a Moor, he chose to condemn him by writing his character as having consciously violated a completely innocent woman.51 While the character of the dark-skinned Moor is intentionally debased, the cantiga steadfastly maintains the innocence of the white woman.

Although dark skin appears to be consistently utilized as a symbolic construct to personify sin, there are exceptions. In the case of conversion, negative associations with dark skin cannot be carelessly interpreted in every cantiga. In fact, many medieval writers argue that “race characteristics” were susceptible to change over time.52 Cantiga 192 tells the story of a captive Moor who discredited the Virgin and was placed in a cave by his Christian owner.

The Moor was tormented by the devil for two nights until the Virgin saved him and told him to abandon Mohammed, a “false, vain, mad, villainous dog.”53 When the Moor converts to Christianity, notably, his skin color stays the same.

However, while it’s apparent that dark skin is not invariably a marker of sin, in an instance where a person with dark skin is depicted as a Christian, the Moor is first and foremost portrayed as a blasphemer/heretic. His religious status is the result of a process of conversion that is the main subject of the cantiga.

Furthermore, the Moor is persuaded to convert more or less against his own will, with rhetoric that disparages Islam. Finally, as will be discussed regarding 49 Anonymous, Doon de la Roche. Chanson de geste, pub. Paul Meyer, Gédéon Huet, and Édouard Champion (1921), 1-172.

50 Lasry, “Cantiga 186,” 316.

51 In Doon de la Roche, the noblewoman is intoxicated when the youth climbs into bed with her. In the Cantigas, wine is omitted from the story, potentially to stress the innocence of the woman and distance her from any potentially sinful activity.

52 Bartlett, Medieval and Modern Concepts. This change could happen by relocation to another geographic area (skin color and other racial attributes were thought to be influenced by climate and location), for example.

53 CSM 192, “The Muslim Servant,” The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database.

126 the Libro de los juegos, the Moor’s status as a captive servant remains the same, despite any depiction of salvation.

Themes of darkness and light were deep-rooted in the consciousness of the late thirteenth century and led to the use of dark colors to portray sin and evil. Although concepts of iconography and symbolism were broadly accepted, archivist and historian Jesus Dominguez Bordona clarifies that Spanish artists were obliged to individually interpret and “render ideas in a personal way.”54 This extends to King Alfonso X’s commission of the Cantigas de Santa Maria.

Depictions of human “blackness” and their incorporation into central themes regarding the influence of the devil, narratives of conversion, treachery, and temptation are influenced by artistic convention. When dark skin exists as a contrast, fair skin is broadly used in depictions of Christianity and purity.

Conversely, blackness broadly depicts non-Christian figures and themes of sin and treachery. People with dark skin in the cantigas are dehumanized, even when they are Christian. Reduced to symbolic figments, they personify evil and are reduced to their skin tone in a way that light-skinned characters generally are not.

An additional analysis of the Libro de los juegos gives us a more wellrounded understanding of depictions of dark-skinned people during the reign of Alfonso X. In this book, which is focused on the rules of chess and other board games, people with dark skin are portrayed with more realism and less demonic overtones. This final work of King Alfonso X demonstrates more simply the position of dark-skinned people in his court during the time that the Cantigas de Santa Maria were being produced. By delving into the portrayals of human “blackness” in the Libro de los juegos and considering their cultural influences, one can better contextualize the Cantigas and comprehend thirteenthcentury Spanish notions of social stratification, religious difference, and division between groups of people.

In game 25 of the Libro de los juegos, two dark-skinned characters are playing a game of chess. They sit comfortably on pillows and are dressed in flowing robes. On the right, their game is accompanied by harp-playing and on the left, a woman stands ready with a vase and dish. This portrait of nobility is wildly different from the portrayals of Moor servants and devils in the cantigas, given its more whimsical and courtly setting. The Moorish identity of the players is denoted by their skin color, headwear, dress, and lastly by the fragment of Arabic lettering on one of the pillows. Yet, while the portrayal of dark-skinned characters here is free from violent imagery or caricature, there are clear sexual undertones and an allusion to gambling, which was condemned by King Alfonso 54 Keller, Las Cantigas, 8.

127 X and understood to be separate from more refined games of strategy.55 Olivia Remie Constable suggests that game 25’s allusion to gambling comes from its depiction of the story of the “Dilaram sacrifice,” a chess move that appears four other times in the Libro de los juegos.56 According to the legend, a man bets his wife on the outcome of a game of chess. As the game is going badly and it seems like he is going to lose the game, Dilaram, his beloved, calls out to him and urges him to sacrifice his rooks instead of her so he can win the game.

The man on the right, dressed in white garments, will win the game, Constable explains, but the illustration shows that he is not looking at the board.

Instead, his gaze lies just beyond his opponent, at the servant woman on the left side of the picture. She seems to be engaged in conversation with another woman, but the trajectory of her eyesight goes toward the diagram as she focuses on the chessboard, not offering the drink or food in her hands to either player.57 If the legend of Dilaram is the basis for the illustration, then there is an implied narrative of ownership of and bartering for women. This narrative is furthered by the phallic jug that the young woman holds in her right hand. The shape of this vase, regardless of the story behind the illustration, is suggestively sexual. An implication of female subordination runs parallel to the role that Dilaram plays in determining her own fate. When the man in the legend is about to lose, Dilaram independently spots a critical move and intervenes.

This related illustration is not the only instance of women, specifically Muslim women, demonstrating talent in games of chess.58 Nonetheless, in this depiction of a dark-skinned woman outsmarting two men, her triumph is framed by visual and contextual reminders of subordination and sexual utility. The woman’s eyes focus on strategic game play, but her fist is wrapped around the stem of a phallic jug of water, meant to serve others. On one level, the woman’s grasp of the phallic vase shows her position as being subservient to men, a sexual object in the background. Her strategic prowess seems to be qualified by gender dynamics and her position of servitude. However, one could also interpret her holding of the vase as a representation of her skill and influence. The viewer becomes aware of the woman’s control over the situation as she holds the jug in her hands and peers over the shoulders of the chess players. Despite being a servant in a room of men, she ultimately determines the outcome of the game. The phallic jug, a dual symbol of power and subordination, is literally clasped in her fist.

55 “Muslim women playing chess.”

56 Patton, An Ethiopian Headed Serpent, 331.

57 This image where food and/or drink are not offered to either player is unique to the Libro de los juegos. In other illustrations of games where food or drink is present, the recipient can be identified as the eventual winner.

58 See: Game 86 and 59.

128 The appearance of dark-skinned Moors playing chess is significant because it highlights their role in courtly society, especially when these darkskinned characters are illustrated as occupying positions of nobility. Games of chess were passionately encouraged by King Alfonso X. An ability to play chess reflected an elevated degree of culture and education within both medieval European and Islamic society. Along with a capacity to appreciate various forms of art, members of noble families were expected to be skilled chess players. In Alfonso X’s court, chess was privileged because games of strategy were viewed as more suitable for nobility. Games of chance, like dice, were not suitable because of their association with gambling. In Alfonso’s law code, for example, clerics were prohibited from partaking in dice and board games.59 Additionally, dice games in the Cantigas de Santa Maria are always depicted in plebeian settings associated with drunkenness, prostitution, and “bad outcomes.”60 Notably, game 25 is a match between “even” players: players with the same position in court hierarchy. Chess is, first and foremost, a game of war, with metaphors for battle and contest found in both Muslim and Christian sources. This is a crucial point to keep in mind. This book of strategy was produced in a diverse, relatively cosmopolitan court but also in a cultural climate where “Moors” represented a threat to Spanish dominance. “Uneven” games played between members of different gentes paint a landscape of diversity but simultaneously exist as manifestations of social hierarchy. Nearly a quarter of the games in the Libro de los juegos are played by Muslims, usually with each other but occasionally with Christian players. In most cases, when illustrations show games played between people of different backgrounds, the game is won by the socially dominant player (a man or a fair-skinned Christian nobleman, for instance).61 In the two images portraying King Alfonso X and another Christian king, for example, the king is the winner in each.62 There are exceptions to these patterns of social dominance determining the winner of chess games, however. In games 86, 88 and 103, three of the diagrams where a Muslim player plays against a Christian, the Muslim player wins. Notably, in game 88, a player with dark skin wins against a white Christian male opponent. In the illustration, both players hold their hands up in expressions of surprise. Game outcomes like this reiterate the lack of any morality-based narrative in the Libro de los juegos. Chess is presented as a game of skill and suggested as “more evenly balanced than the playing fields of actual 59 “Muslim women playing chess.”

60 Ibid.

61 Constable, Chess and Courtly Culture, 341.

62 Ibid.

129 Castilian society or the military battlefields.”63 Game winners are not invariable socially dominant because King Alfonso X’s scribes, at his behest, intentionally emphasize the role of skill and strategy in game outcomes.

Still, there are limitations to these wins that contrast the more prevalent instances of socially dominant players predictably winning games of chess. In the three instances where a Muslim player wins against a Christian opponent, there is some arguably negative qualifier, such as the sexual overtones in game 25. The Libro de los juegos recognizes the talent of Muslim chess players, but there is an intentional aversion to any suggestion that skill can subvert existing social hierarchies. In game 86, where a fair-skinned Muslim woman defeats a Christian woman, one could argue that their gender minimizes the potential of threat or usurping of power. The fact that they are women in the Castilian court mitigates any potential hierarchical subversion because they have less political power than men. The defeat of a Christian man by a Muslim man, for instance, would have farther reaching cultural and religious symbolism. In game 88, the dark-skinned Moor wins against his Christian opponent but remains in his place as a slave. Additionally, both parties are depicted with expressions of surprise at the outcome of the game. This reinforces the message that a character with dark skin winning against a white Christian opponent is a rarity. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a free Muslim wins an “uneven” match in game 103, but the Christian opponent is a captive. In all three of these games, status conferred by religious identity alone is never challenged or threatened.

Muslim influence on chess is highlighted in the illustrations of darkskinned chess players in game 25 and game 88. The dark-skinned characters are represented with positive connotations, depicted as knowledgeable and skilled chess players. These positive associations are just as important in understandings of race where the “other” is reduced to a symbol of sin. But while the Libro de los juegos serves as entertainment, free from violent imagery, the text remains comfortably harmonious with existing cultural stratification. On one level, the diversity of players catalogs the appearance and styles of dress of different groups of people. On another, the text outlines social class in King Alfonso X’s court. While Muslims and people with dark skin can be skilled at games of chess, the Libro de los juegos clarifies that these wins do not signify any kind of political or cultural superiority and even subtly challenges the noble characteristics of the Muslim players in game 25.

As a result, the Libro de los juegos makes clear that victories in games of skill are not synonymous with power. This distinction achieves a few goals. In instances where Muslim characters are generally skilled at chess, the text reaffirms 63 Ibid.

130 hierarchy and soothes the anxieties of Christian rulers who might worry that an inherent disposition toward games of strategy could be a source of worry. On the other hand, when dark skin represents evil in theological and morality-based texts, the Libro de los juegos conveys that this portrayal is not absolute. Dark skin can be portrayed in contexts of skill, nobility, and refinement—within certain parameters. Ultimately, a comparative analysis of the Libro de los juegos elucidates the nuance in medieval perception of artistic renderings of dark skin.

Conclusion Long before the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los juegos existed, visual metaphors for dark and light were prevalent in theology, music, literature, and visual art. These representations were internalized and externalized and eventually mobilized to support artistic renderings of blackness as a symbol of sin. During a time of political tensions between Muslim and Christian rules, texts from the court of Alfonso X show a tendency to reduce figures with dark skin to symbolic figments of sin and subordinate cultural status. In the Cantigas de Santa Maria, dark skin is negatively presented with explicit and figurative language, while the light skin tone of other characters is, through omission, implied to be the standard of physical appearance. In the Libro de los juegos, dark skin has positive associations with nobility and skill in games of chess. Still, there is an emphasis on social hierarchy with captivity, subordination, and crookedness undermining depictions of skill and refinement.

These emphases exist in relation to cultural tensions of the time, serving the purpose and audience of the texts. The Cantigas are intended for, and feature, everyday people. Consequently, they are intensely moralistic and rely on religious allegory, turning representations of dark-skinned Moors into monolithic symbols of evil and treachery. On the other hand, the Libro de los juegos is intended for King Alfonso X and his courtly companions. In the interest of pleasurable entertainment, themes of cosmopolitan convivencia are uplifted by the depiction of diverse groups of people with careful delineations of dominance.

While these thirteenth-century texts show the beginnings of generalizations attached to physiology, the fact that race is not yet biological cannot be stressed enough. At this point in Spanish history, religion and status are more important markers of societal position. However, skin color is mentioned often and is a visible marker of difference, regardless of the time

131 period. Depictions of dark skin color reflect choices made by the artists of the time and their commissioners—in this case, King Alfonso X. These choices can be compared with today’s constructions of race and ethnicity. In both medieval Iberia and modern Spain, understandings of race are reductive but also flexible.64 A twenty-first century understanding of race inhabits a radically different side of history, influenced by transatlantic and biological notions of race and the growing diversity of groups represented in Spanish society. Hence, the liberal flexibility of racial distinction—one can move between social groups, feel a sense of belonging to one or more ethnicity, and self-identify on official documents. With such an ambiguous definition of “gens,” medieval Iberia mirrors today’s flexibility in some regards. As scholars and scientists continue to accept race as a cultural invention, one begins to reject the notion of race as static and prescriptive. Instead, we make agented decisions that allow us to transcend cultural barriers, cultivating identity-based solidarity based on emotion and social bonds. I would argue that personal conceptions of race in the twenty-first century are often representative of social mimicry.

We reflect the cultural influences we have received throughout our lifetime, identify with what feels true to us, and work to reject the rest if we can. Like medieval Iberia, our conceptions of race and ethnicity are only just beginning to be pieced together. The biggest difference is that flexible distinctions today can more frequently be personally decided, and less often improvised and prescribed to the masses by those in power. Therefore, a discussion of race in the 13th century Iberian Peninsula is still shockingly relevant because of the similar fluidity in distinctions and consequences of perpetuations of negative association. Lessons learned from the Libro de los juegos and the Cantigas de Santa Maria can help us understand messages conveyed consciously and unconsciously by artistic renderings and subsequently manifested in social interaction. The messages conveyed by representations of dark skin inevitably mold real-life perceptions.

Skin color, then and now, provokes a range of immediate judgments about religion, origin, and social role. From these two texts, across different audiences and intended messages, pictorial depictions of dark skin reflect and contribute to symbolic and generalized understandings of skin color. Over time, mutable considerations of “gens” were influenced by artistic and social convention, giving birth to perceptions of skin color that foreshadowed a modern concept of “race.” With both positive and negative portrayals, immediately recognizable physiological characteristics began to develop symbolic associations. Dark 64 Conversation with Prof. Mercedes Garcia Arenal at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Madrid (2019)

132 skin ultimately connotes subjugation, the pollution of Christianity, necessary conversion, and feelings of cultural threat. The Cantigas and Libro de los juegos make the intentionality behind these connotations very apparent.

The big question, then, is why? If medieval texts like these can show the very origins of the construction of “race,” I am curious as to why the concept of race was even constructed at all. One could speculate that these constructions are brought about by an inherent, human desire for separation. When divisions are created, tensions naturally follow. Or perhaps, those in power fear change more generally, and view it as a threat to their authority. Maybe all of us, even, fear the feeling of something that was certain becoming tenuous over time.

Established separation between groups can eventually give birth to fears of any kind of cultural transformation: pollution and undesired exchange, restructuring of hierarchies, even outright elimination of existing groups. As seen throughout the Reconquista, Christian rulers like Alfonso X worked to establish authority and used tools available to them, recognizing the power of art and literature as a way to construct a treacherous, alien “Other” and influence their constituents’ conceptions of sovereignty. Later, rulers like Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II built upon these foundations to unify their constituents under one religious identity. I wonder: if race is not innate, do people just have an innate tendency to divide and categorize each other? It would seem that, across the fabric of human history, division occurs first, and the mechanics of distinction are decided later.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los juegos, published in the same court with a myriad of differences in intention and audience, together reflect the complexity and ambiguity of understandings of race in medieval Spain.

Conclusively, these two thirteenth-century texts forecast the nascent importance of skin color and what would eventually be understood as race. Hundreds of years later, the impact of symbolic associations with dark skin remains relevant.

Beginning to understand the influences and implications of the portrayals of dark skin in these texts, then, is a magical moment. The study of racial theory is a many-branched tree and this moment in medieval art history is one of the first sprouts: soft, green, and extremely susceptible to change. In realms of modern humanistic study, where race is accepted as a social construct by contemporary scholars and scientists, the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Libro de los juegos give us a shimmering glimpse into the possible beginnings of race’s original construction.

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137

THE MIDDLE AGES FOR EDUCATORS AND A FUTURE FOR MEDIEVAL STUDIES

Merle Eisenberg

Introduction

T

he Covid-19 pandemic is one of the great catastrophes of the young 21st century.

The biological impact of the virus leading to mass mortality has been experienced on every continent, while governmental action—and most importantly, inaction—has shaped its impact significantly. Its myriad non-biological effects across all other sections of life have likewise been profound. In the higher-educational sector, the immediate effect in countries that have experienced high mortality rates has been essentially uniform: universities transitioned to online education in March 2020 and have remained in some form of online learning through the entirety of the 2020-2021 academic year. While some universities brought back students for in-person teaching, allowed students to reside on campus with most classes online (such as Princeton in the spring of 2021), or promoted some form of hybrid courses, universities, teachers, and students were all forced to spend significant time learning in an online environment. For most people, this was a completely new situation.

It is not surprising then that the early days of online education in March 2020 were a mess. Few university educators had significant training in online learning. Yet even experienced educators came face-to-face with the reality of the virus, as they might have had to contend with new personal circumstances for themselves and their students, such as sick family members, unemployment, lack of childcare, and many other extraordinarily difficult situations. What was apparent even in the early days of online learning was that the traditional teaching format simply could not, or at least should not, in most cases, be reproduced in an online setting.

It was in this chaos that the Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE) was created. MAFE is designed for teachers, students, and the public who want to learn about Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (c. 300-1500 CE) across Eurasia and beyond. It contains resources for teaching, introductions to digital medieval projects, workshops to introduce digital Merle Eisenberg is currently a Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Associate in the Department of History at Princeton University.

OPPOSITE PAGE: BNF Fonds français 14964, f. 79r.

138 tools, and curated information about other websites of interest on the Middle Ages.

These resources include everything from original content—such as mini-lesson plans for undergraduate courses—to curated websites for graduate students who want to learn how to research medieval topics in more efficient ways and everyone else in between.

There is no single audience in mind, nor a single way to use the website; rather, it is an evolving entity that aims to cover as much ground as possible, while adapting to new ideas, interests, and needs moving forward.

The Middle Ages for Educators is thus the first centralized website built to house digitally-rich pedagogical content for medieval studies. From Massive Open Online Courses to digital teaching tools, online pedagogy, and resources are the next frontier.

While only some of these computer-based teaching tools have become central to existing humanities courses, the pandemic and the ensuing move to online university education has rendered moot the question of whether teaching should be done online. It has instead raised the question of how best to use digital resources now and in the future.

The website, and the community-oriented MAFE project that supports its production, aims to rethink undergraduate and graduate curriculum to shift to a hybrid of online and face-to-face techniques. Whatever happens next with this pandemic, building digital pedagogical tools and practices will now offer medieval studies a path-breaking way forward to reconfigure its core teaching principles and address how students learn today.

Foundation and Re-Design of MAFE MAFE was founded by three of us, largely by chance, in March 2020. Unknown to us at the time, the skill-set of its three founders – Merle Eisenberg, Sara McDougall, and Laura Morreale – were complementary. Laura is a leader in digital humanities throughout medieval studies. She has created numerous digital projects, alongside her leadership role at the key North American medieval organization, the Medieval Academy of America, which has offered her insights into the needs of the broader medieval community. Sara came up with the idea of the website and has deep connections to the high medieval academy, whose videos form the core of the website. Moreover, Sara’s vision of what educators need in the classroom today has been central to our content creation. My own connections to Princeton, through its Director of Medieval Studies, Helmut Reimitz, and its Director of the Center of the Study of Late Antiquity, Jack Tannous, allowed the website to transition from its original WordPress home to its longterm institutional setting at Princeton.

After two week of data collection and content creation, the original MAFE was launched on April 2, 2020 and within three weeks had 6,000 site visits and 2,000 unique users – numbers which have only continued to rise. Contributions and interest have poured in from medievalists throughout the US and Europe who have offered to add material to the site and who have continued without stopping over the last year. What became clear by the summer of 2020, however, was that the three original founders could not continue the site on our own indefinitely. Princeton’s long history as a leader in medieval studies meant that it was positioned to ensure the future of the site and

139 we have transitioned the site to its servers. Princeton has helped us to develop further the website itself, making use of the expertise, experience, knowledge and projects at Princeton by faculty and graduate students (not only in medieval studies) and providing a platform for collaboration with a network of experts. While the original website was launched through a WordPress design of Morreale’s own time, energy, and dedication, the new MAFE was launched with the help of Princeton’s Web Development Services, particularly project manager Robert Ivan. Over the course of the fall semester of 2020, the website was entirely redesigned, retooled, and massively improved into its present form.

Resources and Tools for Educators The current version of the website has a clean appearance and a user-friendly design that allows interested students, learners, and researchers to find what they need by category, resource type, or a simple search function. Resources are subdivided by era—late antiquity to the late middle ages—or by geography—northern Europe to the Islamic World—with various combinations in between. Moreover, the Princeton video hosting system allows for greater accessibility, including automatic closed-captioning as just one example. The long-term viability of the site and its continual improvement have also been secured through the hiring of a content manager, Jonathan Henry, and a video developer, Skyler Anderson (both recent PhD graduates of Princeton). What began life as a quick, ad hoc response to the Covid pandemic, has become a key resource and tool of medieval studies for the future.

The resources the Middle Ages for Educators offers are wide-ranging and extensive. At the heart of MAFE’s resources are teaching videos that are accompanied by lesson plans, including primary sources, further suggested readings, and discussion questions. These videos are ready-made lessons for educators to use in their entirety or to supplement their own teaching. As just one example, Daniel Smail offers a video contextualizing the life of Alayseta Paula, who lived in Marseille in 1348 during the height of the Black Death. Smail discusses Alayseta’s life, offers images from the inventory of her life’s possessions, and describes how her life was affected by the outbreak of the plague in her native city. Suffice it to say, she endured a tough situation and lost numerous family members to the ravages of the plague. Smail also offers a transcribed and translated text of the inventory itself, which students can then scrutinize and think about in far more detail on their own. Finally, his video page offers further readings if the educator or the student want to know more about the Black Death, the scientific background to the plague or the broader historical context. Educators can, and have, then used larger or smaller parts of Smail’s lesson in their classrooms.

While Smail’s video is certainly timely given the increased interest in plagues and pandemics in history during Covid, the website has expanded to add new videos that offer medieval views on modern topics as well. Gina Brandolino and Moira Fitzgibbons have generated a series of videos that create classroom dialogue about medieval and modern texts (“Medieval Meets Modern”) to encourage students to think about

140 medieval works as part of artistic conversations with the present. These include discussions about similarities between Beowulf and the 1979 movie Alien (and its 1986 sequel Aliens). In this video and lesson plan, Brandolino discusses how to use the classic text of Beowulf as a way to think about modern horror movies, whose themes enrich one another when discussed together. Likewise, the series hosts a video on “Medieval Blood Libel and Contemporary American Anti-Asian Racism” by Magda Teter. As Teter explains, both types of racist behavior are linked through ideas about the “perpetual foreigner,” showing that no matter how integrated someone might be in their homeland, racism persists. Teter’s video also links to an earlier resource MAFE compiled on combating anti-Asian Racism (compiled by Michelle Wang), since there is far more work to be done to push back against such ideas in the U.S. and around the world.

In addition to video resources, the site also offers annotated information along with links to external sites for other projects on the Middle Ages that are often hard to find. This includes all sorts of projects and websites that researchers and students at all levels could benefit from. Let’s say you are a graduate student who can no longer travel to archives in Europe to find Greek manuscripts that you need to complete your dissertation work. MAFE provides a link and context for the French website Pinakes, which lists every single Greek manuscript, its digital location, and its contents. We also plan to add a video explaining how to use key sites like Pinakes and tricks and tips for finding what you want on the site. Likewise, let’s say you want to know about early Christian churches and monasteries in the Holy Land: MAFE offers the details, link, and a brief discussion of the new digital corpus site on it that just launched. There you will find modeled reconstructions of these early churches, which can be used by researchers or for educators in their classrooms.

As a third type of resource, MAFE features “Digital Tools” where skilled users of various online resources explain their use as a way to build digital pedagogy for educators. Take for example Dot Porter’s discussion of Digital Mappa, which includes a video introduction, links to further resources, and examples of projects that have used the software. Digital Mappa, Porter explains, is a way to display, annotate, and publish images of manuscripts that already exist online as a way for scholars and students to work with manuscripts they might not be able to hold physically in person. In short, it democratizes access to manuscripts through online pedagogy. Students can now work with manuscripts, even if their own college or university library might not have any manuscripts.

These are just some of the types of exciting resources that MAFE offers educators and students in an effort to bring medieval studies to a broader audience. These resources, even as you read this, have continued to expand as more resources are located or created from scratch for MAFE. Those interested in participating or reaching out to contributors to MAFE can also do so through our “Experts” tab, which lists willing helpers from every field of medieval studies who are interested in giving back to the broader community as well.

141 A Future for Medieval Studies Humanities face an uncertain future in the academy, as the number of majors is nowhere near what it was before the 2008 recession, nor is it clear what will happen after the pandemic has largely receded. MAFE recognizes that we are at a pivotal moment in medieval studies in terms of access, interest, and the foundations of the field itself.

At a moment in which humanities departments, especially those in pre-modern history, are experiencing significant cuts and long-term atrophy, MAFE can be a way to change how the broader public thinks about the study of the Middle Ages. There are new ways of innovating to expand the presence of online resources to make the humanities more visible, exciting, and attractive for new generations of students. MAFE is leading the way in these endeavors, as it offers new tools, resources, and possibilities for undergraduate and graduate students along with the interested public.

But Middle Ages for Educators is only the first step to offer new possibilities for the future. Many undergraduates encounter the Middle Ages only when they step foot on a college campus and know so little about the field that they may not even consider taking a course in the time period. MAFE has begun to expand to high-school education as well, as a way to expand our outreach further. At the moment, there are few resources for high-school teachers that offer resources on the Middle Ages, which tend to be passed over quickly in the U.S curriculum. Yet, New Jersey’s social studies curriculum (and other states) mandate that teachers are supposed to cover some of the key ideas about the Middle Ages. To help fill this massive gap, MAFE is now working to expand our content not only to cover these key ideas but also to offer content that is aimed at the high-school level, since most of our content is focused on universities. This new expansion is in keeping with one of President Christopher Eisgruber’s new missions for the university: extending Princeton’s educational possibilities to underserved populations around it.

MAFE is thus poised to play a key role in the continuing transformation of the American educational sector and, with Princeton’s support, can become a leader in this effort to remake the humanities. This will not be an easy task, but one that Princeton’s long-term medieval and late antique fields have the expertise to do, especially when coupled with MAFE’s digital, pedagogical skills. I look forward to expanding both the content MAFE already offers and reaching new audiences in the years to come.