Cannonballs, Crucifixes, and Medieval Women

15 Oes of St. Bridget, 15th Century, Netherlands.

I saw some BOULETS ANGLAIS (English cannonballs) in a heap underneath a church this week and I thought, of course, "lovely balls". Something about them displayed sort of chaotically alongside architectural bits and pieces spoke to me - did these particular balls kill people? Did they knock down any parts of this building? There's something very modern-feeling about this display. I like it.

The balls.

Also, in the back (this is Boulogne-sur-mer's crypt, under its Notre Dame), there is this powerful, desolate display of the three crosses of Golgotha. It really evokes an empty battlefield, and has quite a resonant appearance because it comes at the end point of an ornately decorated and structured crypt, emptying out into buried rubble. The emotional reality of three simple crosses on the little hill of rubble is beautifully staged, The emptiness evokes the severity of the torture of those three crucified men.

While Christianity necessarily has made an icon of Christ on the cross, it's really arresting to look at crucifixion at large, to think about crucifixion as it was more broadly, a common punishment employed by the Romans. Including the two men crucified either side of Jesus here takes that iconography, the crucified Jesus, and sort of brings it back into the realm of the simple reality of extreme cruelty. Those other men can never merge with their crosses the way Jesus does. He is a symbol, they are men.

Today I started reading the Penguin Little Black Classic How to be a Medieval Woman by Margery Kempe - this is a sequence of extracts from the larger book of her life - The Book of Margery Kempe - an early example of an autobiography (perhaps the first in English), although it was transcribed by a clergyman because Margery herself couldn't write. Her religious world is very interesting, especially concerning her view of her existence as a wife and mother (she appears to, possibly, experience post-partum psychosis, and begs her husband to stop having sex with her - providing this request with a godly motivation, although it obviously comes from both the deep anguish of constant pregnancy AND a lack of desire for her husband). It's very interesting reading about the religious justifications she has for her own wishes and desires. Jesus Christ becomes a sort of figure of leverage for her, her only real recourse, only her vibrant religiosity also really irritates everyone around her and causes a lot of problems for her (they get upset with her for loudly crying, which she does constantly).

It's pretty amazing (and very sad, but also at times quite funny) to read this memoir of a fourteenth century woman, and I might have to break out the full text. She's an icon.

No dogs may worship in this church.

It's interesting, but also curiously impenetrable, to learn about history prior to a certain point. The inextricable presence of religion in shaping people's lives in the medieval period is pretty alien from a modern perspective. It's hard to imagine being around in the fourteenth century. It's hard to grasp what people are talking about when they refer to all the devils they've been seeing. Their ways of seeing the world are often pretty challenging to parse. And yet, when Margery Kempe tells her husband that she'd rather "have eaten and drunk the ooze and muck in the gutter than consent to intercourse", she's as vibrant and present as any person from any time ever could be.

Love her.