Medieval Studies in Troubled Times: The 1930s

Previous articleNext article FreeMedieval Studies in Troubled Times: The 1930sDavid WallaceDavid WallacePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis essay considers medieval studies in troubled times, specifically the decade leading into World War II. It begins with the Great War of 1914–18, which globalized European territorial rivalries, with St. Petersburg, and with France and Germany—then key to developing philological and historical disciplines, now at the committed core of European constitutional identity. Observing the dynamics of the Danube, the Rhine, and the Alps, it passes through some key locales such as Belgium, Réunion, Iceland, Ireland, Italy (with Ethiopia and Somalia), England, and the USA. It finds imaginings of globalism that we might hesitate to embrace, with racializing terminology freely employed and little discussed; it considers possibilities of female academic employment. Pondering the status of Jewish studies, and the study of Islam, it ends at the knife edge (then as now) of Istanbul. It considers both academic medievalism, as Speculum gets into stride through the 1930s, and uses of the medieval which, then as now, could deploy creatively, or foster violence. It evaluates amateurism, good and bad. It is hard to know how this essay might read just a decade from now, as current graduate students come to assume leadership of our profession.I would like to begin with a graduate student. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Albert Demangeon was conducting research on Picardy, that region of France centered on Amiens and bisected by the river Somme. His book of the thesis, published in 1905, includes multicolored pullout maps showing regional rainfall, according to place and season; the blotch of red unhappily hints at the mud of the Somme battlefield in 1916.1 Demangeon was one of the few who carried his professional training, as a regional geographer, directly into war service; he drafted maps and topographical memos for the French army, and also for the politicians who would later divide up territories. The word Picardy, he argued in 1905, has no geographical sense, but rather indicates an area where a language, Picard, is spoken; it is only in the fourteenth century that Picardy emerges in documents as an administrative term. Later, writing in 1920, Demangeon argues that in contemplating the disasters of the Great War, set to hobble Europe and its economy for years to come, one turns back to the most miserable epochs in the history of humanity: for France, the Hundred Years War.2Demangeon goes on to suggest that the intensity and especially the scale of recent destruction are without precedent: terrifying new engines of war have broken millions of human lives, wiped away centuries of labor and economic effort, while destroying "la terre des champs."3 This last phrase unwittingly evokes a French poet of the Hundred Years War, who renamed himself on being "burned out" of the fields of his country estate by marauding English soldiers, "brulé des champs"; thus Eustache Morel became Eustache Deschamps.4 Such raiding as carried out by English soldiery was known as chevauché, a form of economic warfare waged through the destruction of human settlements and lines of supply. The poet Chaucer, who fought in this region in this war, declares the Squire of his Canterbury Tales to be expert in chyvachie, as exercised or inflicted "in Flaundres, in Artois, and Pycardie."5Such synergies between the Great War and the endless medieval war were keenly felt by poets and writers in the trenches, and long after. Albert Demangeon's book of 1920 strongly registers recent destructiveness while also, from a European point of view, foreseeing a diminished future: its title is Le déclin de l'Europe. The species of decline foreseen here is imperial: for the overseas colonial subjects of England and France will notice, he argues, that the European powers could not win the recent war without help from overseas—by which he means, chiefly, the United States. Writing eighty years before Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe, Demangeon speaks of "a displacement of the center of gravity of the world outside Europe," toward "the peoples of America and of Asia."6 Europe has dominated globally for centuries, he says, through "the superiority of its noble and antique civilization"; but will not the massive losses of the war strike a fatal blow for the hegemony of Europe through the world, over the world ("un coup fatal à l'hégémonie de l'Europe sur le monde?").7 Albert Demangeon thus situates himself in a difficult mental space that Paul Saint-Amour brilliantly characterizes as tense future: mindful of horrors from the immediate past, while yet intuiting upsets to come from the immediate future.8 These are the troubled times through which European medieval studies will unfold through the 1930s.The Jerusalem War Cemetery provides a resting place for soldiers from the British West Indies Regiment, from India, from Australia, from Britain, and from many other places. There are 2,515 burials here, along with a memorial to a further 3,300 with no known grave. Memorialization again fuses medieval and modern, with a helmeted Saint George above the entrance gate standing in for the helmeted men of the Great War. Some 1,680,000 Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men and women served in the Great War, along with some 173,000 animals; some 62,060 men died (6,670 in France and Belgium), plus 98 Indian army nurses.9 In the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, it was reasonably hoped that such service might secure greater rights to self-determination; Woodrow Wilson, the American president, heading for the Paris Peace Conference, was known to uphold the principle of national self-determination. Negative consequences foreseen by Albert Demangeon, following American entry into the Great War, might thus be read positively in Egypt and Algeria, in Jamaica and elsewhere in "the British West Indies."Alas, it was not to be. President Wilson did support self-governing nationhood at Paris, but chiefly for those abutting western Europe, such as Poles, Czechs, and Yugoslavs, and those affected by the disintegrated Austro-Hungarian empire. The victorious imperial powers, France and England, opposed self-determination for Flemings because of German collaborationism; and they did not support comparable aspirations in their own colonies, either, even though colonial subjects had contributed mightily to winning the war. The German-trained sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois was, however, present in Paris in 1919 to argue for the creation of a central African state.10 Given that European imperial structures will unravel so rapidly after 1946, following the Royal Indian Navy uprising,11 it is perhaps not surprising that the scholarly surfaces of medieval studies in the 1930s—and not just in Berlin, Munich, and Rome—are so frequently crossed by terminologies of race. This holds true for uses of the medieval, what we now call medievalism, although the boundary between medievalism and medieval studies, then as now, proves blurry.Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University, became the first serving American president to visit Europe when he came to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He brought with him three chief advisers, one being Charles Homer Haskins, who served as "Chairman of the Division of Western Europe."12 Haskins, the most influential of American medieval historians, became a founding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America just a few years later. Much will be written about the Medieval Academy's early years as we approach its centenary, in 2025, but for now we might simply note its ebullience, viewed from the perspective of its chief object of study, namely Europe. When Albert Demangeon's work of 1920, Le déclin de l'Europe, came to be published the following year in the USA, it appeared as America and the Race for World Dominion.13 This in no way betrays Demangeon's vision, since he had detected a tilt in the direction of the world in favor of "the peoples of America and of Asia." Ebullience and rising confidence can be read in the early direction and production of Speculum, including the use of heavy, high-quality paper and a design so compelling that it has changed little in ninety years—and we know, deep down, that the printed Speculum models an archaic gorgeousness of layout and detail that we are not yet quite ready to renounce.The initial impetus for a Medieval Academy was somewhat narrow, reflecting its origin as a breakout movement from the Modern Language Association, led by medieval Latinists. But its remit widens quickly. At the first annual meeting, Francis Peabody Magoun is already urging Speculum to embrace "mediaeval music, law, science, art, and education, together with a recognition of Byzantine culture."14 Magoun himself soon submits an article on a Czech prose translation of the Historia de Preliis, and this neighbors an article in Speculum 3.2 on "Mozarabic melodics"; the next Speculum sees Pio Rajna writing in Italian, Étienne Gilson in French, and a book written in Czech reviewed in English. This confident internationalism counter-balances an infra-nationalism, since the strong centering upon Cambridge, MA, where Haskins taught, is supplemented by representation from universities and small colleges across the Midwest, to the West Coast; the logic of the Committee for Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) makes itself felt early on.15The determination that Speculum should be widely inclusive, a Gesamtkunstwerk of medieval studies, reflects Germanic inspiration seen elsewhere in Medieval Academy structures, such as its peculiar mechanisms of Fellowship. When Medium Aevum was launched at Oxford in 1932, it was determined that "history and antiquities will be treated in its pages only in so far as they illustrate an author or a text."16 The journal Medieval Studies opened its pages in 1939 with a letter from the Archbishop of Toronto, followed by an imprimi potest, a nihil obstat, and an imprimatur; five of the first seven contributors were professional religious. Speculum would eventually settle into an Anglo-French pattern of domination, complementing the Anglo-Italian domination of the Renaissance Society of America, but plenty of space in the early years is dedicated to Spanish and Italian, Slavics and Arabic. The first issue of 1930 features an article by Olga Dobiaš-Roždestvensky, who had received a doctorate in 1918 and then worked as a professor at Petrograd University, and among manuscripts in the illustrious Public Library (founded in 1795). In 1929 she published at Leningrad a descriptive catalogue of the Latin manuscripts in her workplace library (Fig. 1).17 She confines herself to manuscripts from the fifth to seventh centuries, and she writes in French. Her appearance in Speculum allows her to dwell at length on just one of these manuscripts, with much better illustrations.18 Working conditions for Leningrad librarians deteriorated through the Stalinist 1930s, with many of them murdered or disappeared. When the siege began in 1941, many library staffers signed up to fight. One hundred thirty-eight of them died during the winter of 1941, yet the library never ceased functioning as a library. Dobiaš-Roždestvensky died in 1939, and it was not discovered until 1965 that she had carried right on working on her early Latin manuscripts, covering the eighth and early ninth centuries. Her work was translated from Russian and published by CNRS in 1991, following the editorial principles she had laid down in the 1920s and 1930s, with her "admirable érudition."19 The first issue of Speculum in 1930, then, shows active commitment to internationalist scholarship as Europe heads steadily back into troubled times.20Fig. 1. Cover detail from Olga Dobiaš-Roždestvensky, Les anciens manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque Publique de Léningrad (photograph by David Wallace).View Large ImageDownload PowerPointAt the heart of Europe's troubles, American scholars might observe, lay intense rivalries between France and Germany, sharpened by the disciplinary exercise of philology and history. Which nation "owns" the Oaths of Strasbourg, and whose edition of the Song of Roland—newly edited, on each side, with each new outbreak of war—can be held definitive?21 Medieval texts were put to populist ends, as we shall see, although the Francophone and Germanic scholars who drew them from manuscript could not help but recognize—if only to themselves—shared methodological terrain. And in better times, such rivalry, playing out at border locales such as Strasbourg, might be seen as a dialectic keeping each side sharp, obviating the lazy amateurism that might pass for scholarship in England. When M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr22 wished to become a philologist she headed for Leipzig and then Zürich; when Haskins wanted to study deeper he headed for the École Nationale des Chartes.Karl Lachmann, who died in 1851, synthesized Hellenist methods to produce a newly "scientific" way of editing texts, one favoring recensio over emendatio, the comparative study of several manuscripts, and the forming of stemmata, over any subjective séance between opinionated scholar and individual exemplar.23 Gaston Paris, "the patriarch of French Romance studies,"24 mainstreamed this German-authored method into French editing tradition while yet refusing (as Lars Boje Mortensen observes) suggestions of subordination: "the Niebelungenlied," Gaston Paris says, referring to Lachmann's magisterial edition of 1841, and speaking amid the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, "is a human poem, while the Chanson de Roland is a national poem."25 It is not until the beginning of our period, in 1928, that Joseph Bédier decisively asserts the "best manuscript" tradition that has broadly replaced Lachmannian genealogism (except in Italy). Bédier, Frencher than the French, was a lifelong Germanophobe;26 one first major fruit of this new method is Edmond Faral's edition of a French crusading text, from 1938.27In turning from philology to history, we find a comparable pattern of long methodology domination by a German Meister followed, as the 1930s begin, by French rebellion. The Meister here is Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), whose scientific study of primary textual sources had finally supplanted older traditions of narrating the nation as if she were a maturing person, a method owing much to Sir Walter Scott.28 Popular appetite for old-style national history never died, and professional medieval historians were isolating themselves through their very professionalism. Rebellion against élite scientific textual method was staged in bookshops, where élite historians failed to sell, but also finally at an élite place in French society: the Collège de France. It was here, on 13 December 1933, that Lucien Febvre gave his inaugural lecture, a wonderfully colloquial and dialogic performance that models a new kind of popular appeal.29 "History is made with texts," he intones early on, a mantra long uniting élite philologists and historians. The dreary life of young men (only men) aspiring to become élite historians is comically evoked, with every life stage confined to the reading of texts, the study of texts, the interpretation of texts, and examination by knowledge of texts. The French of the final sentence is too good to miss, evoking an ABD life of sitting in a small space, with windows closed and blinds drawn:… les jeunes hommes, façonnés intellectuellement par une culture à base unique de textes, d'études de textes, d'explications de textes, passaient, sans rupture d'habitudes, des lycées où leurs aptitudes de textuaires les avaient seules classés, à l'École Normale, à la Sorbonne, aux Facultés où le même travail d'étude de textes d'explication de textes leur était proposé. Travail sédentaire, de bureau et de papier; travail de et de from this by first the is made with then it to a This in French, as the from to des par les textes on les is made with but can we on the Febvre had at the consequences of history so to what then of the of would to without texts, the in human history, human and should this young historians from Febvre speaks of "the on a by the labor of des sur la terre par le des and we might here to the graduate we began the Albert seen reading the of Picardy, in an (Fig. Albert Demangeon, Large ImageDownload is by now a and in Febvre was working with him on a on the as Febvre in his lecture, is to or a with national a which from the of his Febvre so now we have the of what became known as a movement that began on the Rhine, at Strasbourg, before its to by to Febvre the of in back from in he French and history in from to from to he worked at the of Febvre soon as de la to the of young men he had about himself in One help but here that for its to the life and work of has that Febvre was the French of the but together both of them (Fig. in Paris at about the Febvre was his inaugural lecture, and three later Febvre writes to about a she is his his female She had up as as a she changed her to She had a then for a at the of her on the in She to Paris to to with and to research on Writing and for she also contributed a long on its for the issue of in It was in however, that Febvre the of between and and And it was later that year that Lucien Febvre his new de la now worked as a and and later as and of and she died in after a a as the of an She was years Large ImageDownload did research on the and in and elsewhere when she Her most work on as traditions and began with as Demangeon Picardy, and then worked on the with so the Alps, later in the logic of as a and to the of for not a into her and French academic and history, and and of view, academic and of This one in of Jewish of this period, and of the Austro-Hungarian culture he so much of in was from the the of from and Italy came and and in greater into the of the in his characterizes the river through as he its further when it with the other major since the Song of the the and the have and each The is of Germanic and the of the of the of the Germanic The is the of the which at the of the Song of the Germanic the quite in our period, it not of the and the but of a of And the of Demangeon and Febvre would and the by at in 1920 was the 1930s began his while as the first to up "the Western of the this now an is of especially and he was to of a of movement of Germanic from to beginning in the and to In 1929 he up a at the war, his in served War to the and a long and now we are strongly upon medieval studies in the 1930s, so directly some uses of the medieval in this Germany, then France. In the Alps, the has every new decade since the the next to it this in The year however, would the three of its first so an was began in 1932, with conditions and with to published on the very in the of and in the the of affected by the changed conditions of The performance is from the in quite in the Times: have Jewish never have the and who the than this American at was down some eighty in but made up than of published by the of and in English in the the it says, "a should no of no of is not It of that English even might never have "the that the is to and at times should not be are not out of is out by the by the of and printed in an English edition of of begins right the with an for "the of the of and This is from a of by the poet its is a who to be a and a of he ends up being a a and then being by to the in the we find further for and its and for the of von can even when the is But the is to of an intense begin with a of the the space, and then to an of The of the now in Library out who and her (Fig. The book for such and for the kind of we might now with of as with her from of by the Library with Large ImageDownload this was by the and of in to the he with a to a and among his as "a of for This was a for and a hundred or so of his had murdered just from had died just and a few later would in a that would both president and with had and he was that this in tradition would the with writing at the of the finds the broadly with the of their years of to and of of interpretation are to other in this period, such as the and of the at This beginning in place for every seven of from for the showing in and from the in the showing place in a paper published at this of makes the that the was staged as a against the every across France had medieval brought to by She how his at the by other than textual to the by Lucien through and out texts such as and the of de la the of the or de after which his was came from across the Francophone world, and in the 1930s Paul and Roland place of and to de is one of the French de In before a newly from the of World War the of an from the such were treated as and the traditions of the the in was the "a Jewish medieval to the of the French at the very when they had failed When German Paris, to medieval by and away by than When

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