Marginalia -- The Journal of the Medieval Reading Group at Cambridge

Inquiry into medieval perceptions of the marvellous and exploration of the nature of religious culture in the Middle Ages are fields that have expanded considerably, though largely separately, in recent years. Carl Watkins' ambitious first book, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England, brings both of these discourses together in a manner that is both stimulating and innovative. Watkins centres his discussion on a long twelfth century between c.1050 and c. 1215, a period marked by an upsurge in interest in the natural and supernatural, and applies a previously unthought-of rigour to the analysis of such concepts.

Although Watkins' subject matter aligns the work with such recent publications as Caroline Walker Bynum's Metamorphosis and Identity (2001) and Robert Bartlett's The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (2008), his emphasis on the continuities between clerical and popular culture recalls the approach to late medieval and early modern religious culture pioneered by Eamon Duffy. However, the scope of this volume is somewhat narrower than that of The Stripping of the Altars -- limiting itself, for example, to textual evidence rather than taking in material and manuscript culture. Since the publication of Duffy's work it has been generally thought impractical to produce a comparable study of earlier periods with their relatively meagre yield of resources. Watkins' novel solution to this documentary dead-end is to turn to less conventional sources for his work. In the absence of the sort of evidence typically used by historians of religion, Watkins enlists the witness of chronicle accounts and quarries them for their reports of the supernatural - testimonies which turn out to be both rich and numerous. Such records of the phenomena that eluded the categories available to medieval thought also appear to have fallen between the cracks of modern scholarship. This book demonstrates the potential of texts which have often been neglected by the historian as too fanciful and ignored by literary scholars as too prosaic, to provide a mine of evidence for the study of medieval culture.

As the book's title suggests, the emphasis is on England, but Watkins' key writers are drawn from a more broadly 'British' context. The ceaselessly-inquiring mind of Gerald of Wales is given due prominence, sharing the limelight with such writers as Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, Walter Map, William of Newburgh, Gervase of Tilbury, John of Salisbury and Ralph of Coggeshall. Contemporary authors in a more 'literary' tradition such as Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France and Geoffrey of Monmouth are also treated. Although many of the accounts discussed have escaped previous analysis, those stories that are familiar - the green children discovered in Essex, Elidyr's journey to the fairy kingdom, the wild hunt - are approached from a fresh perspective. Where earlier treatments of these tales focussed on their folkloric roots and literary analogues, Watkins centres his analysis on how these stories were processed by the men who recorded them and, in doing so, draws out their potential to provoke the sort of intensive engagement with the boundaries of knowledge which is largely absent elsewhere.

The book is particularly concerned with the ambiguous supernatural: those phenomena that seem to fall between the cracks of established categories of belief. Categories are a recurring theme in History and the Supernatural. Watkins' 'Introduction', which argues against the helpfulness of such straightforwardly binary divisions as high and low culture, clerical and lay, Christian and pagan, to historians of the Middle Ages, is a cogent and welcome contribution to the gradual re-examination and readjustment of conventional approaches to the period.

The book's six chapters apply the philosophy set out in the 'Introduction' to some of the thorniest of scholarly problems. The chapter entitled 'Inventing Pagans' argues for a more flexible definition of what the term 'pagan' could mean in varying discourses, places and times. It is a clear-headed and valuable examination of a category that has long proved susceptible to glib or anachronistic use. Watkins concludes that 'the strongest evidence for residues of rival pagan belief and practice in the central middle ages does not survive close scrutiny. Yet, even when authorial agendas are scraped away, these instances do endure as evidence for religious difference within medieval Christianity itself'. (p. 103). The discussion of Purgatory in chapter 5, 'Imagining the Dead', revisits ground which has been well-trodden since the publication of Jacques Le Goff's seminal work on the subject. Nonetheless Watkins' makes several new contributions to the discussion, particularly in relation to how folkloric belief and literary production impelled, informed and furthered the 'rise of purgatory' as a doctrine in the 12th century. The final chapter 'Thinking with the Supernatural' is an insightful and stimulating consideration of chronicle writers' willingness to tackle ambiguous phenomena head-on. Rather than dismissing as false that which did not fit within established categories, many medieval thinkers actively strove to rationalise and analyse intractable events. The unwillingness of these writers to ignore the evidence of their eyes or eyewitness reports and the rigour and the exhaustiveness of the methods they applied to these accounts may constitute what Watkins describes as an 'empiricist impulse' within medieval culture.

In History and the Supernatural Watkins proves himself more than capable of balancing the claims of the microcosm and the macrocosm. Rather than merely mapping broad similarities in attitudes across space and time, he is attentive to nuances which flow from history, geography and, indeed, the idiosyncrasies of individual writers. Alive to the perils of anachronism, Watkins' meticulous approach highlights the diversity of medieval thought that has proved so appealing to recent scholars while never loosing sight of the certainties and fixed belief against which such thought developed.

Although the methodology and insights of this book have considerable value for medievalists whose interests fall outside the 12th century, it would have been helpful had the chronological focus been signalled directly in the title. The seeming brevity of such a densely-packed work is offset by the very full range of references Watkins supplies in his footnotes and in a further 27 pages of bibliography. Considering the sheer volume of texts under discussion here, the index is very thorough. Its usefulness is, however, somewhat limited by its failure to take into account the variety of names commonly used to refer to some of the texts treated in the volume. A case in point is the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii, discussed at pp. 191-2 and listed in the index under 'Owein, vision of', and not under its alternative and more widely-used title.

Minor quibbles aside, this book represents a truly impressive achievement. Although historians of medieval religion are this work's primary audience, it also has much to offer the folklorist, the theologian and the literary scholar. History and the Supernatural convincingly argues for a reassessment of many of the assumptions of current medieval scholarship, and gestures towards new directions for research. In an area as fraught with temptations to overstatement, speculation and generalisation as the supernatural, Watkins' monograph is a model of balance and restraint. His prose style is lively and his prodigious learning is lightly-worn. This is a fascinating, timely and important work, of great interest to medievalists across numerous disciplines. It should prove highly influential.

Aisling Byrne, University of Cambridge