Faith and Learning
Goals for this week
This week we will explore the link between religion and education in the medieval world, in particular exploring the link between literacy and education in Christianity and Islam during the early Middle Ages.
we will return to the question of sources - by looking at a early medieval letter exchanged between an abbess and a Frankish queen. We will take a look at print editions of the letter as well as the manuscript on which the edition is based.
you will learn about the types of editions that medieval historians use and how that affects how we can use primary sources
Online Time
In class on Tuesday, November 17th, the professor will talk about the role of religion in what Rosenwein calls the three Sibiling Cultures, as well as discuss how Wickham sees the link of religion and politics. We will then spend the second half of the class discussing a letter written from Abbess Caesaria to Queen Radegund. To understand what medieval sources look like, we will read the letter, discuss its meaning and also look at what the original Latin manuscript looks like.
Read/Watch/Listen
Chapters 8 & 17 in Chris Wickham's Inheritance of Rome on Perusall.
Joan M. Ferrante, biographical entry on ‘Caesaria, abbess of Arles’, Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters. New York: Columbia University, 2014 (posted on Perusall).
Professor Ferrante’s edition and translation of Caesaria’s letter to Radegund.
Compare her text to the original Latin edition in the Monumenta Germanie Historica from which Joan Ferrante's draws for her translation. This is to give you a sense of what scholarly editions look like.
Look through a B&W version of the letter in a medieval manuscript (posted on Perusall or downloadable below). Try to match the Latin text you can find in the files above, with the text in the handwritten manuscript (below).
Optional Reading (available online through library subscriptions)
You can look at Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250, with beautiful illustrations of Radegund’s life, has been fully digitized and is available online for you to look at.
Erin T. Dailey, ‘Misremembering St. Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Benjamin Pohl et al. (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 117–40.
Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250).” The Art Bulletin 72: 3 (1990), pp. 414–435.
Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poiters’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 25-59.
Optional Viewing
"The Moors at the Height of Empire" an episode from from the documentary series, When the Moors Rule Europe (2007) on Islamic Spain.
Practice
follow along Ferrante's Latin text provided in the manuscript
Catalogue description of manuscript (in French) is here: https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/ark:/06871/004D02A14154
Bibliography and a link to a B&W reproduction of the manuscript is available here. This viewer is somewhat antequated and only works on some browsers (it uses Flash), so I have added a pdf version of the first few pages and the letter to Radegund on Persuall.
Discuss
What questions should students be discussing in their annotations?
Based on the Caesaria of Arles letter, what were the possibilities and limitations of monastic life for early medieval women?
What might this letter tell us about Merovingian women’s literacy?
What is asceticism? How is it depicted in this letter?
Do
Students should be working on revising their Draft document analysis.
Going Further
If students want to do more to ensure success, what materials and resources (e.g. reading, video, audio simulations, games) do you recommend?
look at the documentaries linked above for different takes on our topic from Western Europe, Islamic Iberia (Al-Aldalus) and Africa.
Last updated