One More Time (29 page)

“This is in direct defiance...”

Leslie had had enough, which made her more bold than she had ever been before. “Give me this term. Give me this term and the kids who are already registered in my classes and I guarantee you that they’ll have better marks than they would have had otherwise.”

Dinkelmann leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Leslie, Leslie. This is foolish.”

“I’ll do it. We’ll tally up their G.P.A.’s in history classes thus far and if more than half of them improve upon that, then you have to cede that my strategy has some merit.”

“And if they don’t?”

Leslie took a deep breath. “I’ll quit, because if I can’t succeed at this, then I don’t know anything about teaching at all.”

“Leslie, this is quixotic...”

“I refuse to teach to the lowest common denominator or give grades beyond what has been earned.”

“You’re living in the past, Leslie.”

She smiled. “I’m a medievalist and a social historian to boot. The past is the point for me.”

Dinkelmann stared at the top of his desk for a long moment, his pen tapping as regularly as a metronome all the while. “You should know,” he finally said with care, “that Anthony Dias will be joining us next week. He’s poised for great things, Leslie, and has already begun to make his mark among medievalists for some daring revisionist thinking.”

He raised his gaze. “The fact remains that I respect both you and your work, so I’m giving you an option. You can recant everything you’ve just said right here and right now, and I’ll forget we ever had this discussion. I’ll attribute it to stress.” He wagged a finger at her. “But if you walk out that door without recanting, I’ll hold you to the letter of what you’ve just said. I don’t need to have two medievalists in my department, and I won’t endorse any challenge of a mandate directly from the board of governors by anyone on my staff. Even with tenure, your appointment here can be made very uncomfortable. Are we understood?”

“We are.” Leslie got to her feet, hoping he couldn’t see how her knees were trembling. She held out her hand. “So, do we have a deal on this term?”

Dinkelmann studied her for so long that Leslie thought he’d decline. Then he stood abruptly and took her hand. He shook it once hard, giving her such a steady look that she was half-convinced that he wanted her to succeed.

Then she was flying down the hall, late for her third year lecture. She decided impulsively against the prepared format, swung into the room, dropped her books and seized the lectern.

She had nothing left to lose.

“I want to talk to you today about my own studies,” she said, watching as the students exchanged glances. “I want you to understand the point of all of this, to see what a social historian does once he or she has survived the political history courses and the rigors of grad school. I want you to understand the point of studying the past.”

Leslie took a deep breath, terrified because she had nothing prepared but exhilarated all the same. “I want to talk to you about charivari. Have any of you ever heard this term before?”

They shook their heads and several leaned forward.

“Charivari was one of a number of performances or rituals that enforced socially-acceptable behavior in medieval society. These kinds of rituals became increasingly common through the middle ages, reaching their peak of popularity in the fourteenth century. It’s possible that someone someday will link them more conclusively to the emergence of theater, but today we’ll just talk about what charivari was and how it worked.”

The kids were listening, Leslie saw with pleasure.

“Charivari was also called rough music, or
katzenmusik
in Germany,
cencerrada
in Spain,
scampanate
in Italy. You’ll find it listed as
chalivali
,
calvali
,
canavari
or
coribari
as well. It had many names because it was a phenomenon that occurred all over Europe.

“So, what was it? Charivari was a noisy demonstration which was held at night, and it was a means of policing social transgressions—as opposed to legal ones, which would be policed by the sheriff and court. When a social transgression was perceived to have been made, people of the village came to the door of the offender in the middle of the night, or even to his window. They wore disguises, they often dressed as animals or wild men, and they played pots and pans as if they were instruments. They sang rude songs and made course jokes. They would rouse the transgressors from bed and humiliate them publicly, maybe by making them ride a donkey backwards, maybe by burning them in effigy, maybe by leaving them naked in some public place.”

Leslie paused to face the class. “It must have been terrifying, even though people were not physically hurt. Further, the following morning, those who had enacted the “punishment” would act as if nothing had happened, which must also have contributed to the anxiety of those who were chosen as victims.”

The students were riveted.

“So, what prompted these attacks? Well, we have pretty limited records of charivari, as the churchmen responsible for most of our medieval records didn’t approve of these kinds of spontaneous, perhaps pagan, rituals. But it’s clear that one of the main triggers for charivari were transgression of marital expectations. A man who beat his wife might be humiliated in this way, because the law might not be against him or inclined to take action against him. Similarly, a marriage in which the wife was perceived to be in control would often be the target of charivari. Any guesses as to why?”

Four students raised their hands and Leslie picked one. “Because having the woman rule was perceived to be unnatural?”

“That’s right. It would be seen as a violation of God’s law, and thus an action that could endanger the souls of everyone in the village. They perceived the question of their salvation to be not only determined by their individual behavior, but by the behavior of the community as a whole. This belief empowered them to chide their fellows.”

“Similarly, those who were believed to engage in unorthodox sexual practices might be the victims of charivari. Women who beat their husbands were a favorite target, and that seems to have been much more prevalent than we might have expected.”

Another student raised her hand. “But I thought women had minor roles in medieval society?”

Leslie spread her hands. “The sources would seem to indicate as much, so what do we do with all of these husband-beaters? There are many of them. What does the prevalence of these women mean? Is there something we don’t understand about gender roles and their restrictions in that society? Or do we have false assumptions about the agency—that is, the power of women to act or to make things happen in their own lives—of medieval women? Maybe gender roles in medieval society—or in some places and at some times—were more fluid or more complicated than we’ve seen in other sources.”

They thought about that, a couple of them looking genuinely perplexed, and Leslie felt a conviction that she’d awakened something potent. “Widows and widowers remarrying also were often the targets of charivari, especially if there was a large age disparity between the pair. Any ideas why?”

They were leaning forward now, anxious to speculate. Leslie indicated one student who was waving her hand. “Because it’s unnatural for a young person to marry an elderly one? They might not be able to have children.”

“There’s that.” Leslie pointed to another student.

“And other young people might not like one of their fellows being ‘taken’.”

“Exactly,” Leslie said. “Remember that Europe had a kind of population explosion from the twelfth century until the plague’s arrival in the mid-fourteenth century. There was greater competition for assets, including property, tillage, and marriage partners.”

“Could there have been people who thought that the younger person consented to the marriage just to get the older person’s money?”

“Absolutely. Charivari was primarily a rural phenomenon, something that happened in villages and not in cities. You may know yourself that there are few secrets in a small town.” They laughed then and Leslie was excited to have them so engaged in the material. “Any other ideas? Does anyone know how remarriages were enacted, or how the ceremonies were different from first marriages?”

“Weren’t they held privately?”

“Yes, exactly. Remarriages were often quiet affairs. The couple might pledge themselves at night, at home, in the company of only a few witnesses. Remember that marriage is the one sacrament that requires only the participants and God as a witness: it did not even require the presence of a priest until the state became concerned with ensuring the legitimacy of offspring. So, why would that bother people?”

“No party?” guessed one student, to laughter from his fellows.

“Exactly! There would be no food, drink and entertainment provided at the expense of the couple and/or their families. In lean years—and there were a lot of them in the early fourteenth century, what with famine and crop failure—that might easily be resented.” Leslie leaned on the podium and decided to push them a bit. “So, you may not realize this, but I’ll tell you that a lot of medieval traditions endure in our society in one form or another. Any ideas what happened to charivari? Is it gone, or is it still lurking in the corners of our expectations and behavior?”

“Some religious groups shun people for perceived transgressions.”

“Like the Amish and the Shakers. Exactly. That’s a formal response, decided in committee by representatives of the group, almost like a court decision. Do we do that informally, though?”

They nodded, and more than a few of them smiled.

Another student put up his hand. “Isn’t that why people don’t tell anyone where they’re staying on their honeymoon, or the night after their wedding?”

“Yes, people will beat pots and pans, and sing loud songs outside wherever the couple has gone to consummate their marriage, if they find out where it is. The idea is that the honeymoon location is supposed to be a secret. Sounds a lot like charivari, doesn’t it?”

“People still say things about couples who get married who are really different in age,” suggested one student.

“Things like?” Leslie prompted.

“Like one’s marrying the other for money, or for sex, or for a trophy.”

“Exactly. We still hold similar ideas about which partners are suitable. What other kinds of marriages do you think were targeted for charivari? Guess.”

“People of different religions getting married?”

“Yes. There’s not an enormous amount of that in medieval Europe, but even the idea of someone eligible marrying a foreigner, someone from outside the local region, could make the couple targets.”

“What about Carnival? You know, it happens in the winter in Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans?” asked one girl.

Leslie nodded. “That’s another kind of costumed revelry, one specifically linked to the beginning of Lent, and it used to happen everywhere in Europe in the middle ages. You all know, of course, that Lent in the Christian tradition is the period of spiritual preparation for the celebration of Easter, and in medieval Europe, Christianity was the religion of the majority. What do you do during Lent?”

“Fast!”

“Give something up!”

Leslie smiled, enjoying herself as she seldom did in lecture. “So, what do you think Carnival is?”

“One last party!”

“More than that. What’s the origin of the word? Where are my Latin students?” The students blinked and looked between each other. “What if I say ‘carne vale’?”

“‘Farewell, Meat’,” called a student from the back row to general laughter.

“That’s exactly it,” Leslie said. “One last chance to eat meat—as well as to drink alcohol—before the fasting of Lent began. And as you might imagine, things got a little wild.”

The students were murmuring to each other, interested as they never had been and Leslie had to raise her voice to continue. “I’m going to change the mid-term essay assignment, because I want to make it more interesting for you. I’d like you to identify some element of medieval social history—it can be weddings or funerals or charivari or Carnival or courtship or table manners:
any
aspect of social history—I’d like you to research what it is, how it worked, and explore any variations in its practice.

“If you choose something more universal, like weddings, or something for which there are a lot of source materials, then you may have to limit your discussion, either by geography or by date. For some subjects, because of a paucity of sources, you’ll have to work with whatever is available and try to make some sense of it.

“Finally, I’d like you to look for traces of that medieval practice in our own times and culture. My own suspicion is that the root of much of western social custom derives from the middle ages, so I’d like you to decide for yourself whether I’m right or not.”

They were chattering and Leslie had to raise her voice again. “You have my office hours. Please come by in the next week or two to discuss your chosen topic and I can help you either broaden it or narrow it, as well as point you in the direction of some sources. Questions? Fine, I’ll see you next week.”

They left the lecture hall, chattering and excited, and Leslie couldn’t help but smile.

It wasn’t the black cami hiding under her blouse that had her walking so tall when she headed back to her office, or even its fabulous cut. It was the prospect of receiving a pile of essays that she actually wanted to read.

If this wasn’t the way to end the week, Leslie didn’t know what was. For the first time in years, she had enjoyed teaching, and had seen the little lights go on all across the hall.

She was right about this and she knew it. Dinkelmann would have to cede, because these kids were going to do a lot better. Best of all, she was following her own instincts instead of swallowing them and doing what was expected of her.

The only dark cloud in her sunny sky was that she had no one to tell about her triumph. Matt would have been proud of her. Matt would have said exactly the right thing. Matt would have suggested a celebration involving the horizontal fandango, Leslie was convinced of it.