Essay: How can historians use letters to write about medieval emotions? A literature review.

Medieval love and the historian

 One might expect that emotions change little over time. What does change however is how emotions are named and the view upon emotions over time. The words used to describe emotions and the function of emotions in society can provide historians with new and important information about societies in the past. Neither church and city records, nor archeological finds can show us much about emotions and associated social structures in high and late medieval times. Art (in the broadest sense) can tell us what was considered beauty and one could argue that “beauty” somehow is related to emotions in both the creator and the spectator or listener. Letters however, personal as these might be, could be invaluable objects for researching emotions, and the role emotions had in the high and late Middle Ages.

        In the article ‘The Letter-writing Norm’ the French historian Alain Boureau emphasizes the importance of letters in medieval times.^[1] Not only were books written on letter-writing, but at places like the Monte Cassino convent and the University of Bologna letter-writing was seriously studied and educated. Books by the hand of the Benedictine monk Alberic (c. 1030-1105), Bernard of Bologna (1145) and Boncompagno (c. 1170-1240) appear to have been normative and have many similarities with modern instruction books on how to write letters.^[2]  These epistolary manuals did not only cover the structure of letters, but also provided formulae and directions related to the social standing of the writer as well as the reader and the way in which these structures needed to be reflected in  the letter, especially in the title (and exordium) and conclusion. Above all, Boureau attests letters were an important part of the period and provides a sociocultural perspective.^[3] Letters were (and are) considered the impersonation of the writer without the constrains of time and distance. The value of letters is illustrated by the fact that letters usually were considered valid proof in court and that there was a close tie between the study of letter-writing and the study of law.^[4]

        Using letters as a primary source for research means the historian must ask some   additional questions besides the usual questions of source criticism. As storage space, especially space that allowed the letters to survive for many centuries, has never been cheap, the historian should wonder why the body of letters was kept.  For letters without legal value, this obviously is even more important as legal letters at least provide a large part of the “why” question. In the section ‘Send More Socks’, Mary Garrison also stipulates the importance of the question by whom the letters were archived or saved. The information the letter can give might differ in value and trustworthiness depending on who decided to keep the letter, and one might wonder why a sender would go through the trouble of copying the letter before sending it – especially if the letter has no legal implications.^[5] Therefore Garrison suggests the most valuable letters for historians might be in the garbage. Letters that are not saved or archived but are disposed of might contain more interesting information for research on emotions in medieval societies than letters archived with some unclear or unknown purpose.

        Emotions as a concept are obviously a lot harder to grasp from letters than, let’s say, the market value of corn crops. The American historian Barbara Rosenwein suggests a sort of quantitative method. ^[6] In her article ‘Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions’ she proposes to start by examining the emotions expressed in the letters, grouping them according to their meaning or intention.  Careful consideration should be taken as the meaning of words, and the words itself, can be very different. ^[7] In this way she creates an Emotional Palette of the words in the letters associated with emotions, that can be used for the quantitative approach to gather more information about emotions for the research. It appears the research done by Jessica Goldberg on the Genize merchant, though not directly related to the emotional life of the merchants, also uses a similar method as described by Rosenwein.^[8]

        The meaning of language and the words it comprises changes over time. Historians should not only be interested in these changes but also in the way in which the emotions and the language of emotions defines society. The Trexler chapter on the long-lasting friendship between the rich merchant Francesco di Marco Datini and the notary Lapo Mazzei illustrates this with just the concept of friendship, which is based on emotions. When only reading a snippet of a letter from Mazzei to Datini, where he states he sleeps with the letters of the latter next to his pillow, one might even suspect a love relationship between the two.^[9] When considering the large body of letters from both sides, with many references such as “my dear friend” and “my brother” one must conclude the two became close and dear friends over the period of two decades .  But considering the great difference in wealth and social position, the suspicion of clientelism is never far away. While pondering on this, one must conclude that letters can indeed learn historians a lot about love and other emotions.

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