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Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages" (Cornell UP, 2022)
01:08:10
An interview with Lucy Donkin
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
Hello and welcome to another episode of New Books in General History, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm one of the hosts on the channel, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I am very interested today to be speaking to Dr. Lucy Donkin about her book titled Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages, published by Cornell University Press in 2022. In the book, Dr. Duncan restores a medieval perspective by demonstrating the importance of engagement with the surface of the ground across a range of contexts. Medieval Christians laid down paving of various kinds, spread the ground with textiles and vegetation, and marked it using ashes in discourse and in practice. Dr. Donkin shows in the book that medieval Christians used the ground as a platform to. To demonstrate piety, impiety and religious affiliation, as well as other forms of status or identity. This book examines the ground in a lot of different senses in the idea of medieval Christianity, primarily, though, engages a bit with other religions and is a really interesting investigation of, quite literally something that we engage with all day, every day practically. And yet I'm sure that I'm not the only one that doesn't often think about the ground. So I'm really excited today to be speaking with Dr. Donkin about her book.
- [01:29]
A
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Melcher. Miranda, thank you very much indeed for the invitation to speak with you today about Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages. I hope it will make people more conscious of the ground they tread on. Writing it certainly, certainly made me more conscious of my everyday interactions with it.
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B
So, to start us off, I was wondering if you could introduce yourself a bit, your academic background and explain how you came to write this book.
- [02:01]
A
Certainly. So I suppose I'm a cultural historian, an art historian of the Middle Ages with a sort of an abiding interest in perceptions of place. So I kicked off with an undergraduate degree in Ancient and Modern History. In fact, there was lots of medieval history in the mix, despite the title of the degree. And then I went on to a master's and a PhD in medieval art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. So both my MA dissertation and the PhD thought in various ways about figurative floor mosaics in the Italian peninsula. So I was initially looking at ones in the southeast in Apulia, and then for the doctoral research on mosaics in the Po Valley. And I got interested in the topic on a family holiday, to be honest, we were visiting Apulia, we visited Otranto Cathedral. And Otranto has this remarkable extensive mosaic floor from the mid 12th century. And the design is arranged around A tree in the center of the nave. So you walk in through the main doors and there it is stretching in front of you, scenes to either side in the branches. So thanks to the family holiday, thanks also to another student on the MA for really starting me off on this research trajectory that ultimately I think kind of led to the book. So he asked what the significance would be of someone walking up the tree, so walking up the pavement, but also in a sense, walking up the tree as well. And so the MA dissertation thought about that. But in many ways, I think I've been trying to answer that question ever since after the PhD. I wanted to think a bit more broadly about the surface of the ground, more generally, not simply a particular type of pavement decoration, the figurative floor mosaics, but actually about the surface of the ground wherever we might meet it, as a point of encounter between people and places and especially sacred places. So that. That was always a key point of interest. The British Academy, so thanks to them too, kindly funded a three year postdoc, which was a really wonderful opportunity to think in depth about this, but also think quite broadly to explore the various fields and topics that met in the phenomenon of holy ground. And although it took a much longer time than three years to write the book, it was set in many ways from that point in terms of its parameters, in terms of the various questions and sort of points of focus. So that's really the potted version of what was quite a long process.
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B
Well, it seems in a lot of senses that the fact this was a long process actually brings a lot to the book because you approach the question through a number of different lenses and layers, and in fact, you explain it in the beginning of your book as a stratigraphic approach. Can you explain to us kind of what this is?
- [05:18]
A
I will do my best. I worried later that it sounded too scientific, and I don't really mean it in a technical way, but essentially the sort of idea of stratigraphy. And the stratigraphic approach was simply a way of acknowledging and investigating the different layers that came together to inform encounters with particular places. So by this point in the sort of genesis of the idea, I wanted to think not simply about, at this point, people walking or lying on decorated paving, but also about different kinds of surfaces, about the earth itself, but also about the temporary floor coverings like textiles and, and vegetation that might be spread on top of the ground or on top of paving, and about the bodies of the dead as well. So all the sorts of things that were lying beneath ground as well. So I suppose for me, each of those elements, their identity, their materiality, their associations in a particular cultural context, and the relationship between all of these layers contributed to the significance of the encounter just as much as the actions and the people involved did. And so I was trying to think about all these layers, the. All these elements as a sort of temporary whole. Now, I said I wasn't using stratigraphic in a technical sense, but I have to admit I did think of this a bit anachronistically. Like geological cross section, like a sort of core sample plunging down through the ground in particular sites of interest. It's not a common medieval way of visualizing the ground, although there are a few examples. But to retreat from science for the moment, I also, I suppose, thought of it a bit like the side of a layer cake or a club sandwich or, you know, something like that. So I was always, I suspect, conceiving of it as a vertical stack of layers which I was seeing from the side.
- [07:31]
B
I think it's a helpful sort of metaphor for readers today who may not be so familiar with medieval Christian practices or have been to a particular number of medieval Christian churches. So having these anachronistic visual methods might help us connect with this. I at least found it quite useful.
- [07:54]
A
I'm glad. I mean, I guess the, what I did, what I did ultimately feel was that there was evidence for these layers, even if the way I'd been approaching them visually was a little bit, you know, of, of my time and, and, and space that I think we could see in the material and textual evidence that these, these kind of momentary assemblages of, of layers were there and that people did think about them at the time they were aware of them, but they perhaps might think about them in a more embodied way. So from the perspective of the person above ground, sometimes even from the perspective of the person below ground too. So that would be, I suppose to think that one would be quite self conscious. Perhaps if you were sort of standing on a red, on a red carpet, you would be aware of yourself, of the carpet, perhaps of the ground beneath. So there is an embodied awareness, I think, of these layers, even if the sort of stratigraphy was, was not necessarily being visualized. So, so yeah, I guess each of the chapters then focused on a different dynamic of contact and, and often involves sort of multiple examples of these, of these configurations of layers. So I guess Holy Feet on Bare Ground is, is a really direct one. Some more complex ones, you know, extend to, to people above ground and below ground as well. So that's sort of how it. It fed into the to.
- [09:26]
B
And that provides the perfect introduction to our next set of questions which are going to be exploring some of these dynamics and moments of interaction. So let's start off with an example you just mentioned that is one of, perhaps one of the more straightforward ones, though maybe also, at least to me, one of the ones that was the least similar in thinking to today. But you introduce us in chapter one to Vestigia, which, first off, if you could explain what that is to those of us who are not medieval Christian historians, that would be lovely. But then explain to us this idea of how do holy feet create holy ground?
- [10:07]
A
I will. I will do my best. I think there are some modern parallels, as I see sort of hand, handprints and footprints of the stars in pavements, for example. So Vestigia are indeed footprints. They can be other sorts of bodily imprints as well, and simply kind of traces when the word is used kind of more generally. But for my purposes, I was particularly interested in footprints. There's even a hoof print, I think, at one point in the chapter. And to think about that as a way of focusing on holy feet and holy ground. So I guess in the previous research in. In the. In the doctoral and master's work, when I'd been focusing on pavement decoration, really with a sort of art historical hat on, the dynamic had always been about an existing sacred space, like a church, with which worshippers came into contact. So it was already sacred. And then people might engage with it in various ways. And there was also, I suppose, a possibility that the action of treading or the anticipation of someone treading on the surface restricted the range of subject matter that was suitable for the floor surface. So there was a potential negative connotation to the idea of walking. So I suppose by broadening things out and by taking a more interdisciplinary approach, by sort of honoring my history interests as well as my art history interests, I wanted to include a different type of contact in which the action of treading could itself be sanctifying. Could. Could create a holy place, could create holy ground. As we. As we've said, it was quite a direct and unmediated encounter between foot and earth as well, between body and ground, which also seemed a good. A good place to start. So absolutely. How could. How did holy feet create holy ground as a kind of contact relic? I suppose. So there are types of relic which came into contact with holy individuals during their life, sometimes also holy individuals and relics after their death. And so it's really through physical contact that there's a transmission of sanctity from the holy body to the kind of, to the object, or in this case the place. Because within and beyond the Holy Land sites were venerated not just as the location of particular events, maybe events in salvation history or moments where saints had performed miracles, things like that, but also as places where Christ and the saints had stood or had, or had knelt. So the way in which these places are described is often including the physical presence and the physical kind of, type of physical contact that the holy individuals had with the place, or in this case the holy feet with the ground. So this could be extended to the Holy Land more generally, which is sometimes described as the land trodden by Christ. But because of this interest in sort of standing, I was particularly interested in sites which retained a footprint as a proof of presence. So not all the sites that are venerated in this way have imprints, but a few do. So the site of the Ascension is a particular kind of example that I look at, but also, I think, a point of reference and a precedent for other examples. And so these corporeal traces, these vestigia, were particularly important in cases where there wasn't a body to venerate. So as with Christ who descended into heaven, but also Mary and incorporeal angels like St. Michael. So where you didn't have a tangible body to venerate, the. The imprint was a really suggestive indication of absence, but also an indication of presence. As another aspect of that phenomenon that I suppose interested me was the fact that these places which had been transformed through contact, were holy enough for soil, for rocks to be taken elsewhere and venerated and even used to sanctify other places. So that's part of a wider phenomenon of relics of place. It's not just those places that are marked by footprints. But nonetheless, I found it interesting that there could be a whole chain of sanctity involved and it might lead outside of the Holy Land, for example. And another, I suppose, point of contact between these holy kind of holy places with holy footprints was the way in which the materiality of the imprint kind of corresponded to wider trends of church decoration and floor decoration too. So often they're understood to be imprinted in, in marble, for example, just exactly the same kinds of materials that were, that were being used in pavement decoration in churches that were not shaped by the physical presence of a holy individual. So these one off sites seem to have connections with other holy places.
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B
So as we move then from the idea of holy ground is created by Holy people. Obviously, this is not the only way in which ground is made holy, otherwise we wouldn't have very many churches. So you talk about sort of other ways in which the ground was, in some senses, sort of demarcated for holiness or sanctified, I suppose. And in fact, part of the sort of rituals around this end up on the COVID of your book. For those of you listening. You obviously don't have the benefit of the visuals, but one of the lovely things about this book is that it does actually have beautiful images throughout that show a bunch of these examples. And it's always an interesting question to find out how something ends up on the COVID of a book, but particularly in your book. You have multiple images throughout. So if you could talk us through, obviously, without, sadly, the benefit of being able to show us the visual. What is the image on the COVID of the book? What is it showing? What does that tell us about relations with the ground? And why did you choose it for the COVID.
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A
Yeah, so the COVID image is an illumination from a late medieval manuscript from a missal, pontifical. So the important part of that, that is the pontifical bit. It's a. Containing the ceremonies which would be conducted by a bishop. And these ceremonies included the ritual of church consecration, the way in which most church buildings achieved, I guess, their sacred status. So the image shows the moment when the bishop would inscribe the letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets on the floor of the church in the shape of a diagonal, or St. Andrew's cross. And he'd do this either because the cross itself, the whole cross, was marked out in ashes on the ground, and he simply had to inscribe the letters, or in some cases, there might be a little heap of ashes for each letter. What's actually happening in the illumination is this rather magnificent fictive space has been equipped with a yellow and what looks like a yellow and green checkerboard tiled floor. And so in this case, it's helped helping the bishop write the beginning letters of the Alphabet. And indeed, some kind of representations of the alphabets in pontificals written quite large to allow the bishop to follow them during the ceremony. Useful for Greek, perhaps less needed for the Latin Alphabet. Some of them even have that checkerboard pattern as well. So that's. That's what's going on. And I guess just to sort of explain a bit more about the ceremony, why, you know, why you would. Why you would do this. Liturgical procedures for consecrating a church differed over time. They differed from place to place. But that Alphabet cross was really quite widespread. It was quite long lasting as an element within church consecration in Latin Christianity. So there are a few illustrations, there are many more interpretation, textual interpretations of what it all meant, sometimes understood in terms of spreading sort of Christianity throughout the world, given a geographical connotation, sometimes about inscribing kind of faith in people's hearts and mines. And we actually also find some examples of pavement decoration that seem to allude to the fact that the ground had been treated in this way in the ceremony. And it seemed like an appropriate topic to discuss as a second chapter in the book, along with holy footprints because of this shared act of impression and because of its role in creating sacred space. But to be honest, it wasn't my first choice for a cover image. My first idea was a bit naive. It was far too visually complex. It was confusing. It was an image of the Ascension, but actually with a number of other things going on. And the wise editorial team at Cornell said, I think maybe something a little bit more direct. And so, because this ceremony play such an important part in shaping the sort of holy ground that people engage with in the rest of the book, I went. I went with their suggestion. And I think they were. They were definitely. They were definitely right. In the end, it was a very.
- [21:11]
B
Striking image, and it was not something I'd ever come across as a particular practice. And it was really fascinating to read about and see how intimate in a lot of ways the connection with the ground was in creating these sacred spaces. So I'm really glad you sort of explained that to us and had the image of it as well, because it does seem to really have been. I can understand why it was so lasting. It seems to have been a moment that kind of a lot of people, both the people doing the inscribing and people watching this process, there was a very strong ritualistic element to it. And that continues in a lot of the aspects that you're talking about here. Again, as we spoke at the beginning, we often don't think about the ground. It doesn't maybe seem special to us or ritualistic or invested with meaning. And yet it is. And you have quite a lot of examples. So we've talked about sort of two. One about not a lot of, as you said, an unmediated encounter. So bare skin on bare earth. Now we have inscription for a sacred space by a sort of not quite holy person, but someone invested in religious order. And the next example that you talk about is perhaps a little bit different from those, is violent, is trampling. The idea of trampling Something underfoot. And yet, even if that word immediately evokes an idea of violence and oh, that shouldn't be sacred, that's completely antithetical to this you actually explore in the book, you sort of do compare and contrast looking at ways in which Christianity, Judaism and Islam around this period approached trampling and show that there's really quite a lot of nuance about how this particular kind of encounter between people and the ground was thought about. Can you tell us a little bit about these similarities and differences between the approaches to trampling?
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A
Indeed. So I. There are six chapters in all and I think I can conceived of them as three pairs. So after the two, that kind of focus, particularly on the creation of sacred space, the next two really started, I suppose return to the idea of standing. I'd started off with in chapter one, but thought about the, I guess, positive and negative connotations of that. So chapter three, indeed thought about trampling and then the. The following one about sort of more positive implications. So trampling is an action, I suppose, that we usually take to denote a negative attitude to the object or in some cases person who's being trodden underfoot. Depending on the figures of the objects involved. This, this action can actually be construed positively or negatively. So just, I suppose to give an example from a Christian context, the idea, or indeed the. The image of Christ trampling on the asp and the basilisk, so kind of negatively construed animals, was seen as a positive thing for, for Christ to be doing. Conversely, someone who's say, accused of trampling on a cross was in almost all cases kind of understood to be doing something bad. So trampling, we do have these negative associations with it, but, but it might reflect well or poorly on the person expressing their attitudes through this action. So that, that was complicated to begin with. I mean, I should say that the physical environment was always my main focus of inquiry. But when it came to thinking about trampling, I did end up looking increasingly at, at a sort of discourse of trampling, at the way in which trampling was discussed and used in texts as well. And there it seemed to be used to talk about religious identity, to talk about religious difference. It was almost as though what you were prepared to walk on defined who you, who you were. And this was certainly evident within Christianity. And so it was used to express distinctions between Greek and Latin Christians, for example, even between different religious orders. But it was also being used to address distinctions between, between faith groups as well. So again, just, just as a kind of illustrative example Some sources written by medieval Christians accuse Muslims of forcing Christians to walk on crosses or icons. And indeed, some textual sources from the Islamic world mention crosses being placed underfoot. So for both of these groups, both the action and the texts appeared to be using trampling as a way of talking about confessional allegiance. And then. And then it sort of becomes even more convoluted as it starts to, you know, people accuse other people of accusing them of trampling. So it, you know, it's multi. It's multi layered in that sense. So that is, I suppose, a point of commonality. Now, I really. I'm aware that none of these faiths were monolithic, that attitudes changed over time. I did get a sense or an impression of a spectrum of sensitivity to potential desecration underfoot. And I got the sense that Latin Christians were on the fairly insensitive end of the scale. They were most likely to be accused of walking on something that they shouldn't have been walking on or should have known. Should have known better. So there is some kind of a spectrum. But also, when I looked primarily for comparison at the Jewish and Islamic context, it was also interesting to see how differing attitudes to imagery more widely were feeding into the significance of walking on things. So I suppose in visual cultures with more reservations about representation, placing an image underfoot or reusing an object with imagery on it could in some way legitimize that presence of the image in a holy place, or could legitimize reusing the object with an image. So in that sense, there was an intersection between wider attitudes to imagery and cultures of reuse and the phenomenon of trampling on things.
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B
So you mentioned that trampling was not always as negative as we thought. And in fact, as you said, this paired concept of chapters, how then, when. Why was standing on something done to connote positive meaning?
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A
Indeed, yeah. I mean, so sort of something positive about both the person doing the standing and the thing and the thing being trodden on it was one of the.
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B
More surprising aspects of the book, if I'm honest. So please explain, because I don't think I'm going to be the only one fascinated by this.
- [28:41]
A
I suppose we don't denigrate a red carpet when we tread on it. We presume there's a nice symbiotic relationship between famous person and sort of swanky flaw. So I suppose it's something a bit like that. But in a Christ context. This seemed to be taking place primarily in ecclesiastical settings, but also, I guess, rituals that extended outside the church space as well. But I mainly looked at it in terms, at least in that chapter, in terms of traditions of floor decoration. Again. So various elements of designs, of paving, both geometric and indeed figurative, could act as liturgical markers. They could tell you where to stand on particular occasions. Even though they were present in the church all the time, they might come into play on these particular kind of ritual moments. Now, I have to admit that I think probably some negatively construed images that were part of pavement designs. There's an example in one church with a basilisk at Otranto, there are also the Gates of Hell as part of a composition, for those sorts of elements might indeed invite the people who are using the church space. They might invite them to trample on those particular elements of the design. They might allow people to imagine that they are, you know, construing their walking as trampling in. In that case. But for the most part, I suspect that liturgical markers had more positive connotations. We find them in. In rites of passage. They're used. So things like ordination, coronation ceremonies, and they're used to place both those people who are undergoing those ceremonies, who. Who are changing in status themselves, and the people who are officiating at those ceremonies. So in both those cases, I think that's another way in which the encounter with the surface of the ground is in some way expressive of identity. So in one case it's about a changing identity, in the other, it's more about an identity to do with. With office holders, I suppose.
- [31:05]
B
Okay. The red carpet idea, I think, makes a lot of sense. The office holders. I'm now obviously thinking of celebrities as office holders in some strange way. And in fact, that leads me to the next question, because you then go on to tell us about the floors. So if we're no longer talking about just literally bare earth, we're now talking about some kind of flooring that was done intentionally. And in fact, you in a lot of ways kind of decode for us this language of the different colours and the different textures. So what was the meaning and significance of the floors having different colors, different textures, particular stones? It's almost a secret language in this decorated pavements in churches. Can you help us understand what meaning we might be missing now?
- [32:00]
A
I will give it a go. What I should say first of all, though, is I suppose that I don't want to negate the way in which floor decoration and compositions of decorated paving conformed to different sort of traditions of workmanship, different sort of aesthetics, different demands. So it's certainly true that when you're in A church space with a. With a decorated floor. The entire composition is less easy to take in on the ground than when you see it reproduced in a photograph in a book, which is often a view taken from above. That said, they do function as a whole. And so I think a lot of the significance of different colours, for example, in the stones that are used to make up decorated paving is as part of a wider composition that makes sense when you look at the whole floor. What I'm not trying to do is to say this approach has got all the answers to understanding the way in which these compositions work. What I was particularly interested in doing was thinking about this from the perspective of the standing body, or in fact, sometimes also the prostrate body, because there you could see a certain correspondence between the identity of the person and the material properties of the paving. So again, it is back a little bit to. To the red carpet idea, except permanently there in the decoration of the church. So it is relatively high, often kind of relatively high status materials. So marble or hard stones like porphyry, sort of a kind of dark purple stone, which was understood as marble at the time, which were used for liturgical. For liturgical markers. And again, back to the red carpet. Porphyry at the time had imperial connotations, and as such was particularly appropriate for ceremonies of crowning emperors, for example, or the investitures of, you know, higher members of the clergy. I suppose what I'm suggesting is that was an element of likeness between the status of the human and the status of the paving element as well, that might be expressed through colour or through the worth of the material as well. And I confess I sort of thought about person and surface underfoot, mirroring each other in these circumstances, without really thinking about what a mirror does, and then sort of came to realize that actually some of these stones are also valued in this period because of their capacity to take on a polish, to have a sheen. And this actual mirroring or this sort of the polish on the surface almost accentuated this effect of mirroring. So it was really intriguing to come across Dante's description of not a church space per se, but of a space with religious significance. Certainly he describes the different stone steps at the entrance to Purgatory. And so one is white marble. It's explicitly seen as mirroring the poet in his true likeness. And there's another step which is described as being kind of dark and rough and cracked, and that is, by commentators, at least from the time and more modern ones, understood allegorically to symbolize contrition. So we've got this sense of a shiny white marble step mirroring kind of Dante the poet, and another step, rough and cracked, that in some way symbolizes his inner state. So I don't think I've got the sort of secret to understanding floor decoration, but I thought literally it was interesting that literary sources like this were quite fruitful in suggesting ways in which contemporaries might have understood the floor surface of churches that they knew. So we don't tend to have all that many interpretative texts dealing with the colours and textures of paving, but some literary sources provide a few insights.
- [37:04]
B
And in addition to the kind of colors, and especially around coronations and things like that, there was also so some examples about almost using it as markers for processions and things like that, that by interspersing different colours, that almost made it easier if there was some sort of procession for a ceremony, to kind of know when to pause or where to pause more accurately. And it was really interesting thinking about how these decorations were quite interactive with the situations going on around them. And you talk about that as well when you contrast different types of decorated paving elements. So I was wondering if you could tell us about the similarities between figurative and non figurative decorated paving.
- [37:50]
A
Indeed, yeah. And I mean, I like the. I think. I think. I mean, as you say, in terms of the processional use as well, it is guiding people's movement around these. Around these places in really interesting ways. So quite a lot of the scholarship on figurative paving, although by no means all of it had, as I've said, sort of emphasized the constraints that were placed on imagery by the fact it would be trodden on. It was really, I suppose, primarily scholars of geometric paving, that the sort of porphyry roundels that kind of. Of that kind of material, who'd been much more willing to imagine the ways in which it could guide people's steps. But actually sort of harking back to the Otranto tree, that tree going up the nave in the mosaic in Otranto Cathedral, in some cases it really did seem possible to suggest that images were acting as liturgical roots and markers as well. So one example that I'd worked on separately and that I returned to in the book, hopefully in a. In a sort of less heavy and more concise way, was Novara Cathedral and there images of the symbols of the four evangelists. So the writers of the Gospels were used as place markers. They were known to be the locations where four deacons would read passages from the Gospels during a particular pre baptismal ceremony. So in this case, an image being Used where I think we'd be more, more accustomed to think about non, non figurative roundels. These are in fact images in roundels. So here there seemed to be something really quite similar going on. There's a correspondence between the person and the marker, just as we might find with a Porphyry Randall and an emperor. You've got your evangelist symbol, whether that's, you know, Mark, you know, Luke or John, you know, these animals holding books, and then you've got the, the deacons holding books above them. So there is a mirroring going on there too. Now, there aren't that many examples where we can hazard a guess that this is happening, but where it did seem to be taking place, it seemed to be complex in interesting ways. So where images were involved, there also seemed to be a way in which liturgical engagement with these elements of the floor decoration animated the. Animated these images. And almost as if the participants in the liturgy are giving voice to them, are speaking for them, so that the deacons are kind of embodying the evangelists and speaking for them and for their symbols by the use of these elements. I suppose in a further complication that really only seemed to be the case where we were dealing with images underfoot, was the way in which these configurations of images and bodies could suggest or could invoke other images or common iconographies. So I suppose what I have in mind is the way in which the evangelist symbols on the Novara pavement and the deacons standing above them together resembled the representation of the evangelists and their symbols that you might find in gospel books, for example, but also in other forms of medieval as well. Or to give you an example from Otranto, which Christina Ungroup has written about, so interestingly, you might have a priest who is standing on the doors of hell, which then resembles a representation of the harrowing of hell. So this, I suppose, is to move away from the embodied idea of the person who is a participant in this configuration of layers, being aware of themselves in relation to the other components and actually thinking about what it meant to witness these kind of markers in use, to think a bit more about the viewership of this kind of engagement with the floor surface.
- [42:33]
B
And if we talk about engagement, we're already starting to talk now we're moving sort of from just the pavement to how people interact with it. And so how did repetition relate to the significance of this ground?
- [42:50]
A
Well, here I'm on even less certain ground and saying that just makes me realize how pun ridden a topic this is. But yes, I think that the intangible qualities of certain locations and certain parts of the floor surface also contributed or seems likely to have contributed to their aura and to their significance. So it's not just, I guess, form and materiality and potential kind of imagery, but also the associations that might accrue to a certain element, a certain place. And I suspect that use and repeated use was one of those sort of intangible qualities. So where a particular place, where a particular marker had been used over a number of generations, perhaps this added to their efficacy. We do see some evidence of this. So when. When there is an effort to recreate the component parts of the kind of the coronation ceremony from St. Peter's in another location, so not in Rome, but in a church in Bologna, there is also an effort to recreate the floor markers as well. So there is a sense, I think, that these take on a significance and need to be part of the. Need to be part of the ceremony. I think this was particularly key if the ritual in question involved either kind of entry into a community or joining a long succession of office holders or indeed, sort of taking leave of a community as well. I suspect that some of these places weren't signaled by particular decorative elements that we can read today as physicists to a church or as art historians going in. I think they were probably just known to the communities in question by convention. And some places may just have been significant only to individuals who used a spot repeatedly for prayer, for example, although there are suggestions that. That, you know, could be recognized by other members of the congregation, for example, if they were particularly, particularly pious. But there's an example of a lost pavement from the Abbey of Marmoutier in Tours, and that really does make it quite explicit. It shows a dying monk surrounded by his brethren. So there are flanking figures of monks as well, in the very place in an infirmary chapel where a monk might have been lain on his deathbed. And so there I think we've got sort of evidence that communal use and that communal use over a number of generations contributed to the images too. So a monk maybe participating in this ritual, being present when someone was dying, might be able to think about people who had gone before, but also to imagine themselves being in that place in the future as well. I think this idea of repetition goes backwards and forwards, extends into the past, but also into the future as well. So I was interested in these. These occasions where repetition brought people together and in some way illustrated a shared identity. But at the same time, I. I felt that there were. There were occasions where one off contact or really restricted contact with a place serve to identify people as unique or not sharing many properties with others. So I guess most clearly the vestigia, the holy footprints seem to indicate a much more kind of unique identity, most obviously of course with the footprints associated with Christ, where you don't find people using those places. Again in the same way pilgrims don't tend to step in Christ's footprint. So again, part of a sort of spectrum of engagement where repetition spoke of shared identity and one off contact and restricted contact spoke of unique identities that could never quite be sort of shared with, with other people.
- [47:47]
B
And so on. This idea of unique, unique people, unique contexts. You talk as well in your book about temporary floor coverings and particularly how this could function in the context of prostration as a way to make prostration more special, as a way to change what the floor mean to particular places by using, using a temporary floor covering. And again, this kind of goes back to the example we've used a number of times now for red carpet which is not permanent. They're rolled out at particular times or particular places. Can you tell us more about temporary floor coverings and particularly around this idea of prostration?
- [48:30]
A
Yes, I mean I suspect that one good reason for a temporary floor covering was to keep people's vestments clean. But apart from that, I think there were also some, some, some other reasons as well. I mean you usually. In researching this topic I have been really struck by correspondences and continuities with, with practices today. And you know, the good old red carpet is, is definitely one of those. But I think in writing chapter five on prostration, I was struck by the differences as well in how temporary floor coverings were used or what, what one might think of as a temporary floor covering. In my flat at least I might expect to leave a carpet down in a particular place for some time. In fact, there are carpets in my parents home that have not moved in decades. But in the medieval context I was looking at temporary floor coverings, usually textiles, but not exclusively so, sometimes vegetation as well. It seems to have pertained much more exclusively to the person using the space for a short period of time. In other words, it does have more in common with the red carpet put down and rolled up for a specific set of people than the carpet that's been down in my front room for a decade. In relating upwards, in relating to the people standing and indeed lying on them rather than permanently demarcating a place, they really seem to have kind of indicated a place that was Apart from the surrounding area that was often for prayer, but not exclusively so, and was appropriate to the person at that moment. I mean, within the Islamic world, which, which I didn't examine kind of more than very cursorily as a point of comparison, prayer carpets, obviously indicating a direction for prayer as well. So I guess most immediately they function vis a vis the surrounding space to demarcate a kind of often individual body sized space for an action to take place. But because of this stratigraphic approach, because of this interest in layers, I was particularly interested by the way in which temporary floor coverings could function as part of a wider set of layers to sort of modulate in some manner the relationship between people and place. So in some cases this seems to have been sort of one element that exaggerated or extended some aspect of the permanent environment. So just thinking about the example potentially of Westminster Abbey, where in the context of a coronation ceremony, it's possible that silk was spread over the cosmati pavement, which was itself already very materially rich. So kind of amplifying the preciousness, amplifying the appropriateness of this place for a royal body prostrate over the top. But in other cases, kind of the layer cake effect seemed to take the edge off what lay beneath, rather than to exaggerate or amplify it. So it might mitigate against a potentially degrading context. There's an instance of a case in which some relics were being taken on a journey. They needed to be placed on the ground to create a certain effect. But in order to perhaps placate the saints involved, a pallium is spread over the bare ground and under the relics. So they are placed on the ground that is signifying something. But the pallium is perhaps mitigating against the sort of over humility of that position. But we can almost see the potentially see the opposite. So in, in one case, in the Abbey of Forfa, potentially in central Italy, there's the possibility that in a context where there was quite a materially rich church setting, maybe with marble paving, in order to humiliate their relics, they may have spread a hair, shirt, in other words, a very sort of prickly and unpleasant cloth over the marble, and then put the relics on top. So quite how one interprets these layers, their associations and their materiality is to a certain extent sense speculation. But they often work in interesting ways with permanent decoration as well as, or at least the permanent context, as well as the body of the person treading on them.
- [53:40]
B
And it's this contextual changing element that I think Makes it so fascinating. And the idea that it can be both used to amplify as well as almost make worse in a way, way. And the idea that it's kind of, that it's both at the same time leads me to the last section of the book, which is about underneath the ground burials. And this is quite obviously an area in which there would be a lot of thought going into it and rules about where you can and cannot walk. But I'm really glad you tackled this because it's certainly quite common to go into especially very old churches and see that people are quite literally buried under the floor. Not in a cemetery or somewhere else or a place that you cannot walk over, but slabs, just as part of the normal area to walk. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who has always sort of wondered, should I be walking on this? Surely I. There's not a good way to go around it. So. But why would someone, maybe they ran out of space. And so I was really glad that you addressed this in the book because this is such a prevalent thing and I'm sure I'm not the only one with the question. So why did people request to be buried in places where their graves would actually be walked on?
- [54:58]
A
Yes, I mean I, I similarly feel that freestorm myself. I notice people too being wary of, of treading on graves and grave markers, but in the context of medieval Christianity at least, and I mean, I mean this is definitely within the Christian context. I think other faiths have other attitudes to this in the Middle Ages, but within the medieval Christian context and certainly within the Latin west, this could be positively embraced. So these kinds of testimonies are coming in, in people's wills where they, they actually ask to be buried, where they might be trodden on sometimes in a vein of humility, I suspect sometimes they don't actually end up where they are to be buried, but also I think with the desire to be kept in mind and to be remembered in people's prayers. So I think if you are finding yourself kind of wondering, should I, should I tread on this? On this grave? Yes, do so, read the inscription, think about the person kind of beneath who probably expected that to happen. So some people said, you know, to be buried where everyone can tread on me. They were interested in that sense of, I guess, treading perhaps communal awareness. But other people were really quite specific in their requests and their requests seemed to have related in some way to the person's identity in life. So some were quite self referential. Some people asked to be buried where they had sat or knelt in life. So that sometimes that's to do with later medieval practices of owning particular places in pews, for example. But in other cases, it does seem to be about a more, you know, a closer relationship with the ground. So that's lay people often. But priests could ask to be buried close to the altar, where they might in fact be positioned under the body of the priest, kind of celebrating the Eucharist. So lots of people would have liked to be buried in that position. But for a priest being buried, there was suggestive, I suppose, of perpetuating the activities done in life, as though the person celebrating in the present was in some way perpetuating their life, their identity, their raison d' etre as a cleric. I think the request of requests of those nature, both from the laity and from the clergy, are also interesting for the indication that people are imagining their location after death in terms of the ground beneath their feet, so that whilst they are sort of walking through the church space, they think of themselves in the future being immediately beneath, beneath the ground in that same space. So it's, I guess, one aspect of the embodied awareness of layering that I was interested in thinking about. But you spoke about the sort of dynamism of the church interior that's illustrated partly by the use of these temporary floor coverings. I think it's fascinating that burial requests also acknowledge that as well. So that people might ask for burial under particular halting spots for processions, so they would know, they would have a sense of how people moved around a church space, and they would ask to be buried under particular halting points where prayers might be said. And conversely, I guess in turn, burial markers will have shaped the way in which kind of movement happened within church spaces as well. So once people had their marker, it might very well be a marker for movement, as well as one signifying the body that lay beneath.
- [59:07]
B
This is a whole new area of thinking, I think, but at least I do now know what I meant to do in a church when I encounter such slabs on the floor. So, in addition, obviously, to this podcast helpfully introducing people to your book, you've given us some practical advice as well, which is very helpful, and hopefully this also gives listeners a taste of the number of areas in which readers who are not experts on medieval Christian churches will likely learn a lot from your book. And so if you've enjoyed this podcast so far, you might want to go read the whole thing, because we've not been able to cover all of the Bits, bits. But we have, I hope, covered the main points to now move towards the sort of behind the scenes bit. Now that you've sort of introduced us to the main aspects, talked through them, you've obviously engaged with this topic for quite a long time in a lot of detail. Was there anything in particular that surprised you in the course of writing this? Something big or small, maybe even something that didn't make it into the final book.
- [60:13]
A
It's something very small and it's something quite practical, you saying about knowing what to do when you're next in a church. I mean, I think it's probably become evident from our conversation and it's perhaps most evident in the book itself in terms of the introduction and the conclusion. But I have really been fascinated by ways in which we can see parallels between what was going on in the Middle Ages and what the environment that we walk our way around today. So there have been lots of parallels that I didn't find particularly surprising, I suppose, but really just sort of nice evidence of continuities of particular practices. When I walk across a pelican crossing, I think about this research topic, for example. What I didn't expect was to have a whole new set of floor marking conventions come in as a result of the pandemic. I didn't expect to be told how to navigate my local co op, my local supermarket with a series of temporary roundels. They were even round. I couldn't believe it. I felt as though the sort of cosmity pavements of medieval Rome were in some way brought into the sphere of a sort of a small supermarket in Bristol. And I had my liturgical procession around, you know, the, the three aisles that we had at our disposal. So it did keep me smiling in, in lockdown to find my, my, you know, and as I queued up for my, you know, for my jab, I was also being guided through these, these ephemeral spaces often enough with what turned out to often be ephemeral markers as well. So it was a surprise to have a whole new set of, of floor markers to bring into the equation.
- [62:14]
B
I think that's a really lovely surprise to have us talk about because it does come up at the end of your book that you essentially ask readers to, if you take nothing else, spend more time thinking about the ground and thinking about the markers on it and the social practices around it and what or whom is underneath where you're standing or above where you're standing. So that's a really lovely way to finish the interview as well as finishing the book. And so then for my last question, you did just publish this book, so the answer could be, I'm taking a break, but what are you working on now or next?
- [62:58]
A
So there are a couple of. Because I did take so long to write it, there are a couple of. Of sort of ongoing investigations that have developed out of the project. So one avenue of inquiry was inspired by that tension, I suppose I mentioned quite early on between this interest in the layering of elements and the cross section format that I'd obviously had in my mind when I started to think about them. And that being a more modern, or at least a more perhaps early modern phenomenon, even though there are some medieval examples. So I have done some work on views through the ground, especially actually in mining, in mining contexts. So that's been a sort of unexpected, tangential, relatively circumscribed kind of investigation. The bigger project takes the environmental relics that I mention in, in the first chapter as its, as its starting point. And I'm interested in thinking about the portability of. Of place. So where in the book, I was very much thinking about static places that people engaged with in dynamic ways. Now I'd like to think much more about how places move. So the symbolic movement of soil in a variety of contexts. So religious certainly, but also other contexts as well, legal and political, medical, even. So the ways in which, I guess, the portability of place was affected through the movement of earth. So it's still about the ground, but it's not necessarily holy and it's not staying where it was put.
- [64:41]
B
Well, that sounds like a wonderful book. So hopefully it will get written up as a book and you can maybe come back and tell us about it when it's ready. But in the meantime, listeners can read your current book, which is again titled Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages, published by Cornell University Press in 2022. Dr. Lucy Donkin, thank you so much for being with us today.
- [65:04]
A
Thank you very much indeed for the invitation. I hope I haven't gone on too long. It's a long book, we learned a.
- [65:12]
B
Lot, so thank you.