Wollenberg: Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics

Wollenberg, Daniel, Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018)

Reviewed by Andrew Elliott (aelliott@lincoln.ac.uk)

For a short volume of only 91 pages, Daniel Wollenberg’s Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics has managed to cover a surprisingly wide, and singularly impressive, range of examples and ideas. The quality and range of the book stands as a testament both to Wollenberg’s clarity of expression as well as to the value and growing confidence of the ARC Humanities Press’s Past Imperfect series. Perhaps even more impressive is that Wollenberg’s study of political medievalism has done so with a range of different audiences in mind, offering at least two levels of reading. On one level, he introduces a complex interdisciplinary issue in an informative and substantive way to a reader unfamiliar with political medievalism, or indeed medievalism as a whole. Such a feat is often underappreciated, but here it is obvious the extent to which such an accessible introductory text is only made possible by a genuine scholarly talent and profound understanding of the topic.

On the second level, the short text uses its three introductory case studies to weave a broader, more nuanced critique of the ways in which the medieval imagery/imaginary links to a broader discursive strategy aimed at fellow scholars in the field. For those who are more versed in the discussions of political medievalism, this second level is also profound, thoughtful and well written, and makes a new contribution to the growing literature on uses of the medieval past outside of the university campus.

Those familiar with Wollenberg’s other works will of course know him as an astute historian of philosophy and historical thought, which is in part what allows him to navigate between these two audiences with ease. Here, too, he follows through three short case studies with perspicacity and tenacity through a range of contexts and uses. The result is a small book filled with big ideas, which engages with complex and slippery notions of white identity, vituperative History wars, and the often contradictory stakes in the medieval past to which the players of today’s political dramas variously lay claim.

The book’s complexity and deftness is well illustrated by the taut and careful structure which governs, and in many ways regulates, the flow of arguments. Consider, for instance, the palindrome of the book’s introduction and postscript: whether intentionally or not, Wollenberg uses a kind of structural chiasmus in order to make a broader rhetorical point. He begins with the account of a self-proclaimed French ‘patriot’ and his sad suicide at the altar of Notre Dame in Paris, in support of a Far-Right anti-immigration platform. Wollenberg’s discussion of that gesture’s futility leads him into the complex nexus of ideological exchanges between politicians and their voter bases in Europe, and the parallels with US politics, up to and including Donald Trump. It then discusses the ways in which Trump’s co-option of the medieval has both built on earlier instances of political medievalism (as illustrated by Bruce Holsinger), as well as taking a scarcely-veiled brand of white nationalism and white supremacism into the mainstream.

The remainder of the book mines the ways in which contemporary politics, particularly US politics, makes use of a very specific set of assumptions about the Middle Ages, and the interactions between these ahistorical uses and other political uses of the past. However, after this discussion, the postscript (which acts as a second conclusion) demonstrates that same transition in reverse, pointing to the ways in which the mainstream of extremism, white nationalism and the so-called alt-right in the USA has impacted on European populism in turn. The subtle point brought out by this structural mirroring is that these are not isolated cases, taking place in hermetically-sealed, ideological vacuums, but a broader trend by and through which fringe groups are able to call on and to each other by, say, the ‘rediscovery’ of the medieval origins of whiteness, as Chapter Two demonstrates. A secondary point to emerge from the bookending is its emphasis on the fundamental fluidity of non-scholarly medievalism, and the extent to which political medievalism leaves behind the traditional territory of neomedievalism. These are not one-to-one correlations with the medieval past. Instead, the political medievalisms studied by Wollenberg are part of an extremely complex discourse in which history becomes what is useful and expedient. As Wollenberg puts it, in this mode, “the past is in the eye of its beholder”; when two accounts come into conflict, “for both camps, the problem is the bad history of their opponents.”[1]

Given such a complex project, Wollenberg does not always manage to strike the perfect pitch. Chapter Two’s discussion of Anders Behring Breivik, for instance, takes a lot of knowledge for granted to connect the dots. Beginning with a brief discussion of Breivik’s murder of unarmed teenagers, the discussion moves rapidly from Breivik into “Generation Identity”, and within ten pages Wollenberg has linked both factors to broader far-right youth movements in the USA, all of whom exploit the medieval past for a range of reasons, albeit with broadly similar rhetoric. Wollenberg knows this perfectly well, as his exceptionally insightful article on Breivik makes clear, but in his goal to cover the breadth and to show how far the rabbit hole of medievalism goes, the specifics become—for me at least—a little hard to follow when some of the threads are not made clear.

Nevertheless, given the range and ability of this book, Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics represents a lively, authoritative, thorough, persuasive, and insightful study of the ways in which the medieval has come to be exploited in the service of modern political movements. It builds beautifully on other debates by Shichtman and Finke, D’Arcens, Holsinger, Perry and through The Public Medievalist’s series on race and racism, debates to which I myself have also made a contribution. More than this, however, it moves the discussion onwards to show both how horrifyingly natural the co-option of the past has become for contemporary politics, and why as medievalists and medievalismists we should care about it. As Wollenberg concludes in the last line of his book, “anyone who seriously studies the Middle Ages should be vigilant.” (90) This book offers a great illustration why these debates matter.

Andrew B.R. Elliott

University of Lincoln

---

[1] Wollenberg, p. 18.

Falconieri & Facchini, Medievalismi italiani

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri and Riccardo Facchini, eds. Medievalismi italiani (secoli XIX–XXI). Rome: Gangemi, 2018.

Reviewed by Jennifer Rushworth (j.rushworth@ucl.ac.uk)

This is a glossy volume with a number of black-and-white illustrations that brings together nine essays on a variety of topics related to modern Italian medievalism. The focus here is on medievalism in a socio-political sphere. Consequently, rather than essays either on literary topics or on multi-media medievalism (ever popular subjects within the field), the contributors turn their attention—and the reader’s—to what we might term civic medievalism in the relatively recent past. Emblematic in this regard is Davide Iacono’s essay on the construction of Mussolini as a noble and heroic condottiero, with a corresponding investigation of the fascist fascination of and investment in medievalist thinking (pp. 53–66). This volume thus brings to light an often ugly side of medievalism: namely, the uses or misuses of medievalism for dubious political ends.

Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of essays also demonstrates overall the very different uses and very wide appeal of medievalist tropes and imagery across the Italian political spectrum over time. In this regard the proposed plural of the title—medievalismi—is very apt. One of the editors proposes two guiding threads within this plurality to aid the reader: cities and Catholicism (p. 20). These are not only the two poles around which the collected essays gravitate, but they are also argued to be more generally key distinctive sites of Italian medievalism. A further suggested feature, unique to this tradition, is the position of the Middle Ages in Italy as typically overshadowed by both the Classical era and the bright lights of the Renaissance. This perspective perhaps helps to explain the relative neglect of medievalism as a scholarly area of study in Italy, especially compared to other countries such as the USA, the UK, or France. Equally, however, Italian medievalism also often overlooks any strict divide between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with many purportedly medievalist myths (for instance, the aforementioned ideal of the condottiero) drawing on aspects of both periods.

Following these two threads, on the cities side Francesco Pirani treats the development of maritime republics both as a concept and as a progressively fixed four-part canon (namely, Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice), with an emphasis on shifting perceptions from the Risorgimento to fascism and beyond (pp. 131–48). The irony that these republics are perceived as such only once they have lost this distinct status does not go unremarked (cf. p. 144). Meanwhile, Francesca Roversi Monaco studies anniversary celebrations of the University of Bologna masterminded by Giosuè Carducci in 1888 and revived in 1988 (pp. 149–62). In this essay, particular attention is paid to the specific context of each commemoration, the first being played out against a backdrop of a newly unified Italy and the latter, instead, taking place on a more European stage. The question of the ethnic identity of the Longobards (so-called ‘barbari’ [barbarians]), discussed by Stella Losasso, belongs also to this civic thread, relying as it does on archaeological evidence of past settlements and their burial sites (pp. 75–92). Losasso’s conclusion that the Middle Ages are characterized by ‘una cultura “creola”’ [a ‘creole’ culture] is welcome for its embracing of multiculturalism (p. 92), especially since her essay begins with a reminder that ‘il racconto e la percezione del passato dipendano dalla temperie culturale in cui sono prodotti’ [the narration and the perception of the past rely upon the cultural climate in which they are produced] (p. 75).

The question of religion, in contrast, is most important to the work of Riccardo Facchini and Sonia Merli respectively. Facchini considers the medievalist tendencies of traditionalists in the wake of the Second Vatican Council; for these, the Middle Ages represented an ideal age of Catholic power and omnipresence (pp. 29–51). He also assesses the adoption of the crusades as a lens through which to view contemporary conflicts, noting that prior to the Islamophobia of the early twenty-first century, the model of the crusades was used rather either as an anti-Communist weapon or more broadly as an argument in favour of greater Catholic militancy. Merli instead investigates the myths of templars and templarism up until quite recently, both within the Catholic Church and in relation to tourism and popular medievalism more broadly (pp. 93–114). She thus connects religious ritual to specific urban sites, including the marketing of Caggiano, for instance, as a templar town, ‘“città dei templari”’ (pp. 108–9). It is, however, Geraldine Leardi’s short contribution on the Hagia Sophia that weaves the two guiding threads most closely together, in an essay that adds orientalism to the medievalist mix by considering the representation of this building in the work of specific late nineteenth-century Italian visitors (in particular, the writer Edmondo De Amicis and the painter Cesare Biseo: pp. 67–74).

Chapters two to nine (that is, from Facchini to Roversi Monaco; in fact the chapters are unnumbered, and incidentally do seem to be rather oddly ordered alphabetically by name of contributor) offer meticulously researched case studies of different moments of medieval inspiration in modern Italian history. Collectively, they act as a persuasive reminder of the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of the study of medievalism, drawing on a diverse range of subjects: history, politics, religion, archaeology, and architecture (this list is not exhaustive, but represents the principal areas to be found in this volume). The volume is additionally notable for the space it devotes not only to the work of female academics, but also for its attentiveness to women’s history, thanks in particular to Maria Chiara Pepa’s study of the adoption of the medieval guerriera Marzia Ubaldini as a role model for and by female Risorgimento activists (pp. 115–130). Beyond their status as illustrative examples of broader patterns of medievalism, these chapters will individually be useful to historians of various movements and myths, and each doubtless represents the tip of the iceberg of larger research topics for each contributor. From this perspective, the volume acts as a tantalizing taster of current foci within the burgeoning field of Italian medievalism, although it is inevitably not comprehensive.

More general in appeal and international in scope is the opening essay (chapter one in my numbering) by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri on ‘Medievalismi: il posto dell’Italia’ [Medievalisms: The Place of Italy] (pp. 9–28). In this essay, Carpegna Falconieri is explicitly in dialogue with recent Anglo-American scholarship within the field of medievalism, especially works by Richard Utz and David Matthews. Within this context, some of his claims—for instance, the argument that medievalism and medieval studies must be understood to be porous, interconnected, and dehierarchized—are, accordingly, not necessarily surprising to an Anglophone readership, although they are very passionately and elegantly put. More provocative and unsettling is Carpegna Falconieri’s fair criticism of the field of medievalism as too often monolingually Anglophone, with a concomitant neglect of Italian sources and studies, especially those written in Italian and not available in translation (see p. 15 for an excoriating critique of the current ‘imperialismo culturale anglosassone’ [Anglosaxon cultural imperialism] within academia). This neglect is, of course, not helped by the status of Italian medievalism within Italy as a not yet well-recognized or well-defined field of study.

Nonetheless, this same neglect may in itself be an opportunity, presenting untilled land with rich fruits still be harvested. The conditions are not themselves promising; Carpegna Falconieri rehearses familiar though crucial arguments about the underfunding of universities, the decline of the humanities, and a disconnect between academia and the general public, all problems that may be acute in but are certainly not unique to Italy. Notwithstanding, he does identify some already established sites of medievalism within the Italian academic landscape (in particular, Bari, Turin, and Bologna), and the location of the contributors themselves suggest a few more (especially Urbino). The overall sense is, then, that this volume promises a rich future for the study of medievalism in Italy, whilst also reminding us of the need to encourage greater internationalism in this sphere.

Jennifer Rushworth

University College London

Parker: Dragon Lords

Eleanor Parker, Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018)

Reviewed by Felix Taylor (felix.taylor@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk)

‘Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north shall an evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land’ (Jeremiah 1:14). With this prophetic biblical verse early medieval writers were able to provide an authoritative explanation for the Viking invasions that were carried out from the late eight century onwards; the arrival of these barbarians signalled a form of divine retribution. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle flaming dragons, lightning, and whirlwinds were seen raging across the sky before what was probably the first planned Viking raid, on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in 793. ‘These signs were followed by great famine,’ the Chronicle continues, ‘and a little after those … the ravaging of heathen men destroyed God’s church’. In Dragon Lords Eleanor Parker, Clerk of Oxford and medieval lecturer at Brasenose College, provides a detailed and entertaining overview of how the subsequent invasions of northern and eastern England were received, explained and at times justified by post-Conquest writers. The book is a well-balanced account that considers perspectives from both sides of the North Sea.

Much of the first half of Dragon Lords is concerned appropriately with the raids on the coast of East Anglia. Parker tackles the various representations of St. Edmund, once king of that south-easterly region until his most gruesome death in 869 at the hands of the men most of the texts refer to as Danes. Her job is made all the more difficult by the fact that almost no records survive of his life or reign, but what she does manage to capture is the general flavour of the subsequent narratives which later rose up around Edmund related by Abbo of Fleury and other writers of the early medieval period. According to one such tale the Danes shoot Edmund full of arrows and hide his severed head in a wood. The head is guarded by a wolf until Edmund’s men eventually find and re-attach it to their fallen king’s body. In later works it is said that the spirit of Edmund appeared to Svein Forkbeard and killed him; the Danish king had apparently raised taxes for unjust reasons and Edmund rightly defended his people. Geoffrey of Wells later venerates Edmund as a maker of miracles in his largely-fictional hagiography De Infantia S. Eadmundi in the twelfth century.

Possibly the most famous Viking still known today – and not simply because of his star turn in the History channel’s recent television series Vikings – is Ragnar ‘shaggy breeches’ Lothbrok. Parker dedicates an entire chapter to Ragnar’s reputation in England, as well as the characters and violent deaths of two of his (eight) sons Ivar and Ubbe. The name Ragnar never even appears in English sources, just ‘Lothbrok’, with the exception of an enigmatic St Ragner whose relics were discovered in Northampton, and occasionally his name is mistranslated as ‘loathsome brook’ (odiosus rivus). De Infantia depicts Ragnar and his ‘hateful progeny’ as inversions of Edmund, but in a bizarre account by Roger of Wendover Ragnar is an inquisitive, yet harmless Dane who desires to learn hunting and hawking at Edmund’s court. He is killed out of envy by a huntsman, thus providing a reason for Ivar and Ubbe to plot revenge.

Parker then turns her focus to Siward, the Danish warrior and politician who ruled Northumbria in the time of Cnut, and neatly ties off what is known about him as a historical figure before moving to the more spurious and fantastical accounts of his life. Like Cnut, Siward and his son Waltheof – later made a saint post-Conquest – sought to retain their Danish identity through poetry and the Norse byname ‘digri’ (the strong). Parker heads swiftly into dragon-slaying territory with Gesta antecessorum, Gesta Herwardi and the Anglo-Norman romance Roman de Waldef in which Siward boasts ursine ancestry and is given assistance by an Odinic old man on a Northumbrian mound.

What is most fascinating about Dragon Lords are the tales of almost-willing integration in various periods between the English and their heathen adversaries. According to the monk Byrhtferth, St Oswald, Archbishop of York and Bishop of Worcester, and his uncle Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, were descended from the very same band of Danes who had hidden Edmund’s head in the woods. A young Oda ‘despite his father’s fierce opposition’ was accepted into the Christian church and later baptised, and it has even been suggested by Antonia Gransden that he may have encouraged St Edmund’s cult in atonement for his father’s actions. Cnut, however, at one time king over all England, Denmark, Norway, and some of Sweden, established himself as both Viking warlord and devout Christian ruler, providing patronage to both English monasteries and Old Norse poetry alike (see, for instance, Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Knútsdrapa). In an extraordinary episode recounted in the late tenth- or eleventh-century Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, after the Viking conquest of York St. Cuthbert materialises and marks out a young Danish slave-boy Guthred (presumably Guthfrith) as the newly-anointed king of the city. The location of the crowning ceremony is a burial mound, evoking Norse king-making customs, and serves to further complicate the event.

These instances and more provide a highly nuanced and de-polarising account of the Vikings in England. Through a combination of rigorous scholarship and a wise tendency to bring out the more entertaining and often supernatural aspects of the sources, Dragon Lords presents a much more complex and engaging view of Anglo-Danish relations and helps to dispel the popular invaders/invaded dualism that most would automatically assume. Religious and cultural integration ere surprisingly quick, and both the English and the Norse went on to provide their own accounts and justifications for the invasions, which in later centuries contributed to saint cults and the foundations myths of a Danish right to rule. Parker presents excerpts from primary texts in the original languages and provides her own translations: a blessing for the layman, and, like the book as a whole, suitably scholarly for the well-versed medievalist.

Felix Taylor

St Hugh's College, Oxford