Lived Religion and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Raisa Maria Toivo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351003360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea

This study is an exploration of lived religion and gender across the Reformation, from the 14th–18th centuries. Combining conceptual development with empirical history, the authors explore these two topics via themes of power, agency, work, family, sainthood and witchcraft.

By advancing the theoretical category of 'experience', Lived Religion and Gender reveals multiple femininities and masculinities in the intersectional context of lived religion. The authors analyse specific case studies from both medieval and early modern sources, such as secular court records, to tell the stories of both individuals and large social groups. By exploring lived religion and gender on a range of social levels including the domestic sphere, public devotion and spirituality, this study explains how late medieval and early modern people performed both religion and gender in ways that were vastly different from what ideologists have prescribed.

Lived Religion and Gender covers a wide geographical area in western Europe including Italy, Scandinavia and Finland, making this study an invaluable resource for scholars and students concerned with the history of religion, the history of gender, the history of the family, as well as medieval and early modern European history.

The Introduction chapter of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1
LIVED RELIGION AND LIVED GENDER IN FAMILY LIFE

Family life, domesticity and the household were essential constituents of the medieval and early modern world. Since the private and the public were not yet distinct and separate spheres, the home was the site for intimate relationships and the provision of daily necessities, but also for political and economic negotiations and daily labour. The household provided the physical structure for daily life, and the family could include members other than the nuclear family or closest kin. Nevertheless, the idea of domesticity, reflecting privacy and comfort, was emerging during this time.¹ For medieval and early modern people, the home was a physical, social and mental space incorporating care and affection, but also conflict and competition. Within the home, children were raised and socialised, gendered expectations were negotiated and fulfilled, and religion was practised. Obviously, the physical frames for this space, the material means and the culture varied greatly according to the geographic area, urban or rural space, age, wealth and social status of its members.

Domestic and familial ideologies form the background for the discussion, but as our intention in this volume is to illuminate the lived experiences of medieval and early modern people, family relations are approached from the perspective of two narrations constructed from court cases. The first casts light on a peasant family near the English-Welsh border at the turn of the 14th century, and the latter describes the occurrences of a peasant family in western Finland at the end of the 17th century. Both cases include young women, their parents and potential spouses as protagonists. Intra-family negotiations, both between parents and children as well as between spouses or siblings, are discussed as we follow the fate of Johanna and Dordi.

Saint Thomas’ virgin in the tavern

The life-changing event for the Schirreve family took place on a Sunday afternoon in April, just before Saint George’s Day (celebrated on 23 April), as the witnesses testifying before papal commissaries reported. They were not, however, unanimous about the year; some witnesses reported the events that had taken place fifteen years earlier while others claimed that twenty years had already passed. The case and its details were recounted to papal commissaries in 1307, when they interrogated people about the sanctity of Thomas Cantilupe and the miracles he had performed. Ten witnesses testified to the Schirreve family miracle.²

It all happened around the year 1290, when Adam Schirreve and his wife Cecilia left their home to visit the tavern in Walterus de la Wyle’s house in the nearby village of Marden. The Sunday in question was not a public holiday, but a time for recreation nonetheless: many locals had gathered in the tavern to enjoy themselves. Adam and Cecilia had prepared for an evening out by leaving their children at home, but when they were nearing the tavern, they noticed Johanna, their five-year-old daughter, had followed them.

Adam and Cecilia decided to let Johanna stay at the tavern because other children were also present. Johanna soon started playing in the de la Wyle garden with her godmother’s son, Johannes, who was only a little younger than her. The tavern’s atmosphere was rowdy and buzzing with conversation; later estimates of the number of people present ranged from sixty to one hundred. Both men and women were present, the conversation was lively, and people started dancing, forming a long line that snaked around the tavern and garden.

Moral writings considered visits to the tavern and dancing in particular as highly condemnable activities. Drink and the revolving movement of dance could confuse even the most sensible men. The physical closeness of dancing made the act lewd, and dancing brought colour to people’s cheeks, making even the most modest-looking women look charming and attractive. Moral ruin was thus inevitable. The movement itself was lewd – it was an insult to God and pleasing to the Devil, as the moralists of the era put it.³

As spaces, taverns were ambiguous. On the one hand, taverns were usually private homes, like in this case – people had gathered in Walterus de la Wyle’s house. On the other hand, taverns were public spaces in the sense that everyone was welcome. Regular visits could, however, gain women in particular a questionable reputation.⁴ The peasants making merry at the de la Wyle tavern did not agree with the notion that tavern visits marred people’s reputation: the witness statements showed no sign of condemnation towards any of the attendees, including the women. When asked by the commissaries, all the witnesses described each other as reputable people and good Christians. The attendance of the women – at least with their spouses – at the local tavern gathering therefore presumably did not tarnish their reputation or violate the unwritten moral rules of the peasant community.

General merriment was probably why Cecilia and Johanna Wase, little Johanna’s godmother, failed to understand what little Johannes was trying to say. Thomas Schonk, the father of Johannes, however, did understand his son, and he quickly dragged the boy home: while the adults had been celebrating in the tavern, there had been an accident in the garden. A group of dancers later happened on the spot and noticed something terrifying: in the middle of the garden there was a deep pond, and in the pond there was a drowned child. How terrible – and how troublesome. This meant that the finders had to call the coroners and later give testimony in court. That was the end of merriment, but worse still, attending court took time and effort, and the people concerned might even be fined for some offence.⁵

The witness statements are not entirely clear on whether the dancers included any women, but it would seem that only men took part in negotiating and planning the actions after the accident. This was understandable because among English peasants, it was mainly the men’s right and duty to appear in court. Men pleaded women’s cases in court for them, especially in the case of married women, and men were thus more familiar with not only the legal ramifications but also the troubles and dangers of attending court.⁶

Johannes de Pirebok, one of the dancers, was the tavern owner’s relative, and he wanted to tell the owner what had happened. The tavern owner was responsible for running the business and ensuring the patrons’ welfare, and he also answered for them in court. Others, however, came up with what they thought a better plan: they wanted to dump the body in a nearby river at night to make someone else the finder and pass the responsibilities and legal consequences on to that person. Although this plan may seem cold-blooded and ruthless, it does not necessarily indicate social insignificance of children or demonstrate a lack of emotional commitment towards them. The men assumed the victim was a local beggar’s daughter: they thought that the beggar woman had drowned her daughter because of her poverty, misery and hopelessness. So, this was no unforeseen accident, and there was no longer anything they could do about it.

The men did not abandon their idea even after Thomas Shonck learned the victim’s true identity from his son: Johannes had pushed Johanna into the pond in the heat of play. Because the pond was deep, with steep edges where only tender grass grew, Johanna could not get out on her own, and so she drowned. Instead of telling Johanna’s parents about the accident, Thomas quickly took his son home, possibly believing he was protecting the boy by doing so. However, Johannes ran away from his nurse and at sunset returned to the tavern. He told Cecilia and his mother again what had happened. This time the women understood Johannes and went to the pond in the garden.

Johanna Wase could not swim, but she climbed down into the pond and managed to drag the drowned child out of water. Cecilia looked down on the body Johanna had pulled up. The victim had muddy clothes, a contorted face, and a swollen tongue that stuck out from between her teeth. Was this creature supposed to be her daughter? But then Cecilia noticed the girl’s shoes: they had red laces. They were the shoes she had bought her daughter the previous day. Cecilia realised that the victim was indeed her Johanna and burst into tears.

Philippe Ariès, a pioneer in the research of the history of childhood, claimed that in the Middle Ages, childhood was not acknowledged or recognised as a separate period of development in a person’s life. He also argued that parents and children did not share a strong emotional bond. Ariès’ book was originally published in 1960; it is nowadays outdated, and his claims were discredited soon after its publication, but they persist stubbornly, especially in more popular ideas of medieval family life.⁷ His work has had a tremendous affect, and even today scholars feel obliged to dispute and discuss his arguments.

Events at the de la Wyle garden tell another tale of emotional bonds within the family. Cecilia was not the only one crying – everyone mourned – but her grief was so deep that it worried others. Cecilia was with child and near her time, and others worried her distress would cause her to miscarry. When Cecilia refused to let go of her daughter, instead holding the limp, wet, and cold body in her arms, they decided to move Johanna first to the tavern and from there to her own home. When Cecilia still refused to let go of her little daughter, the mother and daughter were tucked up in a bed by a fire.

Expressions of grief and distress are common at the scene of an accident, and parents sometimes displayed extreme emotional reactions. Johannes Piscatoris, for example, was reported to have fallen to the ground unconscious when he found his son Nicholas drowned. One mother, a certain Diomisia, is said to have gone nearly insane after she realised her two-year-old son Rogerus had fallen into a moat in the middle of the night and died. Tears, wailing and the rending of hair are common expressions of emotion at accident scenes.⁸

Obviously, these signs may have been genuine expressions of emotional stress due to the sudden accident remembered vividly and described in detail fifteen years after the accident. At the same time they were, however, part of the proper ritual and narration of a miracle. A desperate situation beyond human help was the prerequisite for a recovery to be considered divine grace. For the commissioners carrying out the official interrogation, these emotions – the desperation, fear and sorrow – were sign and served as a validation of the case as a miracle, as they were the expected responses at this stage of the miracle process, i.e. before divine intervention. From a theological perspective, these ‘movements of the soul’, if we are to follow medieval understanding of what we today call emotions, were essential constituents of religion leading to either salvation or damnation.⁹ At the same time, emotions functioned in the social context producing and manifesting change: tears and wailing were symbolic communication, both towards the surrounding community manifesting parental loss, but also towards the heavenly intercessor, thus manifesting subordination and the need for help. Pleading for a saint’s intercession was a coping strategy in a moment of distress, and it encapsulates the way religion-as-lived intermingled with daily options and responsibilities without leaving spirituality aside.

From a modern perspective, medieval parents often portrayed a confusing mix of strong emotional bonds and trust in their children’s ability to make it on their own. Adam and Cecilia, for example, were apparently not concerned about losing sight of their five-year-old daughter for hours on end in a strange place. Diomisia, the mother who went beside herself, first refused to leave an overnight wake to go look for her child, even though the boy’s father reported that the two-year-old had gone missing from his bed.

In Johanna Schirreve’s case, the actions of the people present were not limited to mourning. When the victim had been recovered from the pond, they tried to restore the girl to life. When the physical attempts were unsuccessful, they decided on Adam’s initiative to plead to a local saint – the former local bishop, Thomas Cantilupe – who they believed could perform miracles. In addition to the parents, many others at the tavern took part in the pleading rituals. They were very persistent in their pleas and called for Thomas’ help both by the pond and at the tavern. Later, the helpers followed the Schirreve family hom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Introduction to medieval and early modern experiences of gender and faith
• 1 Lived religion and lived gender in family life
• 2 Gender in public devotion
• 3 Spirituality, sinfulness and gender
• 4 Conclusions: structures of experiencing gender and religion from the medieval to the early modern period
• Index