Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 2009
Miracles are the basic currency of the supernatural. Anyone able to conjure up a miracle has alwa... more Miracles are the basic currency of the supernatural. Anyone able to conjure up a miracle has always been considered either a saint or a servant of the devil (Ashley and Sheingorn 1999; Cameron 2005). Ever since the papacy had established clear norms of canonization in the late twelfth century, the performance of miracles was indispensable to official canonization. In this legislation, Pope Alexander III did no more than follow standard beliefs going back to ancient Christianity: saints were first and foremost miracle-makers (Herrmann-Mascard 1975). What sort of phenomenon was called "miraculous"? The earliest narratives, dating back to late antiquity, portray miracles as sudden occurrences that drastically affect nature or the human body, mostly the latter. Such occurrences are sometimes punitive, due to arrogance, doubt, or any other sin. Other miracles have the opposite effect: the wages of faith are equally dramatic. In both cases, miracles do not trigger a sudden understanding, or any affective motion. They are almost invariably somatic and physical. The sinner is stricken dumb or motionless; the believer's leprosy vanishes. As a rule, the narrative is objective, telling the facts without any empathy for the sufferer. At most, one finds outrage at the sinner's deeds preceding heavenly punishment. One of perhaps the most famous examples of these narratives-and a bona fide eyewitness narrative at that-is found in the last book of Augustine's City of God. It is also one of the very few cases in which the narrator empathizes with the sufferer. To help legitimize Christianity, Augustine records twenty-one cases of thaumaturgic miracles. 1 The first is the lengthiest and most detailed, and also the most dramatic-precisely because of the disparity between the observer/narrator's grandiloquence and what is actually said to happen. The story concerns the anal fistulae that afflicted Innocentius, a Carthaginian notable. 2 Innocentius, it
Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 2013
While the ancient world was rife with various forms of execution, very few of them were capital i... more While the ancient world was rife with various forms of execution, very few of them were capital in the sense that they killed people by separating head from body. The ancient Germans, said Tacitus, either hanged their criminals for publicity, or buried them in swamps under hurdles, for shame and silence. In the Greco-Roman tradition, we hear of fires, crucifixions, wild beasts, starving to death, garroting, burning, throwing off rocks – but very little about hanging or beheading, which were the most common forms of execution throughout the high medieval and post-medieval periods. By the fifth century, only two of the classical capital penalties for the non-citizen and the slaves remain in the Theodosian code – the fire and the sack, for parricides. The arguments for the preeminence of the head and the brain in the twelfth century come simultaneously from several different sources. Keywords:ancient Germans; Greco-Roman tradition; high medieval periods; Theodosian code; twelfth century
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 2009
Miracles are the basic currency of the supernatural. Anyone able to conjure up a miracle has alwa... more Miracles are the basic currency of the supernatural. Anyone able to conjure up a miracle has always been considered either a saint or a servant of the devil (Ashley and Sheingorn 1999; Cameron 2005). Ever since the papacy had established clear norms of canonization in the late twelfth century, the performance of miracles was indispensable to official canonization. In this legislation, Pope Alexander III did no more than follow standard beliefs going back to ancient Christianity: saints were first and foremost miracle-makers (Herrmann-Mascard 1975). What sort of phenomenon was called "miraculous"? The earliest narratives, dating back to late antiquity, portray miracles as sudden occurrences that drastically affect nature or the human body, mostly the latter. Such occurrences are sometimes punitive, due to arrogance, doubt, or any other sin. Other miracles have the opposite effect: the wages of faith are equally dramatic. In both cases, miracles do not trigger a sudden understanding, or any affective motion. They are almost invariably somatic and physical. The sinner is stricken dumb or motionless; the believer's leprosy vanishes. As a rule, the narrative is objective, telling the facts without any empathy for the sufferer. At most, one finds outrage at the sinner's deeds preceding heavenly punishment. One of perhaps the most famous examples of these narratives-and a bona fide eyewitness narrative at that-is found in the last book of Augustine's City of God. It is also one of the very few cases in which the narrator empathizes with the sufferer. To help legitimize Christianity, Augustine records twenty-one cases of thaumaturgic miracles. 1 The first is the lengthiest and most detailed, and also the most dramatic-precisely because of the disparity between the observer/narrator's grandiloquence and what is actually said to happen. The story concerns the anal fistulae that afflicted Innocentius, a Carthaginian notable. 2 Innocentius, it
Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 2013
While the ancient world was rife with various forms of execution, very few of them were capital i... more While the ancient world was rife with various forms of execution, very few of them were capital in the sense that they killed people by separating head from body. The ancient Germans, said Tacitus, either hanged their criminals for publicity, or buried them in swamps under hurdles, for shame and silence. In the Greco-Roman tradition, we hear of fires, crucifixions, wild beasts, starving to death, garroting, burning, throwing off rocks – but very little about hanging or beheading, which were the most common forms of execution throughout the high medieval and post-medieval periods. By the fifth century, only two of the classical capital penalties for the non-citizen and the slaves remain in the Theodosian code – the fire and the sack, for parricides. The arguments for the preeminence of the head and the brain in the twelfth century come simultaneously from several different sources. Keywords:ancient Germans; Greco-Roman tradition; high medieval periods; Theodosian code; twelfth century
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in lat... more An analysis of the cultural and social functions of law, legal processes and legal rituals in late medieval northern France. It interprets the various influences upon the shaping of law as a cultural manifestation and its application as an actual system of justice.
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner's book has been praised as the dramatic unveiling of a long-hidden shamefu... more Ephraim Shoham-Steiner's book has been praised as the dramatic unveiling of a long-hidden shameful secret: that Jews in the past were not only victims, but also sometimes criminals. 'For too long, apologists have ignored or denied a police blotter of cases-thievery, fencing, assault, and murder, perpetrated by and on Jewish men and women in pre-modern Europe' (Ivan Marcus, cover page endorsement). But, during the past sixty years, this apologetic history of European Jews has been systematically eroded. The studies of Jewish pirates, Jewish-gypsy gang collaboration, Jewish white slavery, and professional gang activity in twentieth-century New York have been quite explicit and convincing. All the same, the readers' endorsements of Shoham-Steiner's book-all of them specialists in Jewish history, not history of crime-consider it a major breakthrough in a hitherto uncharted field. In terms of purely medieval history, they are right. The author has done a heroic job in unearthing Jewish sources that deal with crime among Jews in Ashkenaz (Germany and France). Whether his findings are revolutionary depends on the readers' point of view. From the point of view of Jewish history, it is a revolutionary, innovative, erudite and very important study. From the point of view of the history of crime, the evaluation must consider wider criteria. It is hard to overstate the depth of erudition necessary for the writing of this book. Beginning with the Talmudic corpus and continuing through the unbroken tradition of Jewish legal opinions and law from ninth-century North Africa and Mesopotamia to the opinions of the rabbis of the nascent western communities, this is an enormous corpus, and Shoham-Steiner exhibits both mastery and depth in reading it. He is aware of his corpus's shortcomingresponsa, or legal opinions of rabbis (of no political authority) voicing the purely masculine point of view, and often copied, edited and re-edited by subsequent generations. It is completely unlike any other materials used for the history of crime in Europe. The book falls into four main parts. The first deals with historical criminology in general, while the following chapters deal with three main areas: theft, murder, and women in crime. The first part-presumably, written for the benefit of Jewish historians unfamiliar with the history of crime-is the weakest part. It is full of naïve assertions, such as 'the Jews … were subject to the judicial system of the state' (p. 11). Given that the historical context is the cities of the Rhineland and France, what sort of state judicial system was there in the eleventh and twelfth centuries? Similarly, relying upon the Carolingian law codifications, with their convoluted editorial histories, as proof of legal practice of 'German' (whatever that means) law centuries later is simply not good history. From the point of view of the historiography of medieval crime, the author also evinces some lacunae in his survey. The author asserts that 'The current fashion in studies about crimes and criminals in medieval Western Europe is
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