BOOK REVIEW: Landschaften im Mittelalter
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (July 2008)
Karl-Heinz Spieß, ed. _Landschaften im Mittelalter_. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006. viii + 285 pp. Illustrations, maps, indices. EUR 40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-515-08579-3.
Reviewed for H-German by Shami Ghosh, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Divergent Understandings of Medieval Landscapes
The title of this book is somewhat misleading: most of its eleven essays are not concerned with landscapes _per se_, in the mode of the new environmental history, but rather with human use of land, and especially urban and rural settlement history. The geographical focus of eight of the papers falls on Germany, with two others moving to Italy, and one looking at Latin poetry from Italy and France. All the major disciplines of medieval studies are represented, including art history, historical geography, economic and political history, and literature. Most of the contributions devote considerable time to providing historiographical reviews of their topics, which would undoubtedly make these essays useful for German undergraduates, but less so outside German-speaking Europe. Many of the contributions are, in fact, little more than summaries, and add little that is new or especially insightful; this is especially the case with the papers of Lucas Clemens, Reiner Loose, Christian Lübke, Peter Moraw, and Michél Zink. After reading the book, moreover, I am not even sure if _Landschaft_ is an appropriate umbrella to bring together the essays presented here.
Clemens provides an overview of literary reactions to Roman ruins in Germany and northern France. His findings are completely in accord with what is known of reactions to the Roman inheritance during the middle ages. In the earlier medieval period, inhabitants of towns with a long antique history appear to have been aware, if at times only rather vaguely, of this past, and even of the former functions of the Roman ruins in their towns. This awareness of the Roman past had receded by the thirteenth century, as ruins increasingly were used for new buildings, and the collective and literary memories no longer retained any knowledge of the functions or names of ancient buildings. Clemens’s study does little more than simply reinforce well-known material from other contexts by recourse to an examination of treatments of urban topography.
Loose’s essay is in essence a brief political and economic history of the Alpine region that presents us with the predictable conclusion that control of this area, especially of the passes, was an important part of German royal and imperial policy, given the crucial importance of secure routes to the empire’s Italian territories. Little in the way of written evidence before the eleventh century provides much detail on the economy of the region, but after this period it is apparent that the local ecclesiastical and lay nobility increasingly controlled markets, towns, and the rich deposits of salt and minerals. Although Loose does not elaborate this point, it is more than likely that these economic benefits were one of the reasons why positions of local control were coveted even during the time of the Carolingians.
A fairly large portion of Lübke’s brief essay on place-names is given over to a history of research on “Germania Slavica,” and of the concept itself; his own contribution is a brief summary of what is known of the place-names along the Baltic German coast that have Slavic or both German and Slavic elements. Many of these places were named according to a particular economic function; Lübke provides no real discussion of how the names could have related to the actual economic functions of these villages and hamlets, and does not in any way place the results of place-name scholarship in the broader context of what is known of the economic history of that region. Regrettably, he also does not engage with the more recent scholarship on place-names in the rest of Germany and Europe.
Moraw presents an interesting (if somewhat unnecessarily long-winded) history and critique of the notion of “Germany” as a political landscape in the middle ages. He also reminds the reader of the connections between medieval history and modern European politics. This will no doubt be of use in the more old-fashioned German schools of history, though I myself, not a product of a German university, found little in his deconstruction of what are essentially nineteenth-century concepts that was not “selbstverständlich” — and it seems to me that much of the recent historical scholarship even in Germany has already abandoned most of the notions of a coherent cultural or political entity of medieval Germany that Moraw rightly finds insupportable. While his critical summary history of the three large institutional enterprises of German historical scholarship, the _Monumenta Germaniae Historica_, the _Regesta Imperii_ and the _Deutsche Reichtagsakten_ might be useful for German (or German-speaking) undergraduates, little is here to excite or challenge more seasoned scholars. It is always salutary, however, to be reminded–especially in our North American remoteness–that even medieval history and its study do indeed relate to modern politics in Europe, and with a new resonance (it seems to me), with the growth of the EU and the concomitant sources of funding from the European Science Foundation.
Michél Zink’s very brief contribution examines some Latin verses (primarily of Boethius and Bernardus Sylvester) and how they describe nature; nature is used in verse to illuminate details of the landscape that relate to the message (emotional or philosophical) that the poet is trying to convey. This essay seems to fit least well of all with the theme of the volume, and also seems to have the least that is original to contribute.
The two papers by archaeologists are more interesting, and to my mind more original. Felix Biermann’s contribution on West Slavic settlement and landscape in the ninth and tenth centuries provides a thorough overview of the recent, primarily archaeological literature, and is an excellent reference point for the state of the art in archaeological research in this field for this region. He finds that the contradictory reports of literary sources, which depict this region alternatively as a marshy wasteland or as a highly fertile cultivated region, are both to a large extent borne out by archaeological findings. The natural landscape was indeed often marshy in the declivities, and not particularly suited to cultivation, but nevertheless many cultivated areas were located near waterways; these were, however, interspersed–often until as late as the end of the twelfth century–with large tracts of forest and marshland, which also served as natural boundaries between more or less distinct political entities. For the most part, cleared areas were islands of cultivation within a larger landscape of wasteland, marsh, and forest. Naturally, coastal areas were better settled and saw an earlier development of fortified settlements; coastal fortresses were also key places for controlling and facilitating the burgeoning trade across the Baltic. This whole landscape was cut through by large rivers, which functioned both as facilitators of trade and as hindrances to movement and thus as boundaries; often overland travel was possible only when the marshland and rivers were frozen over in winter. A number of long bridges were built over the wetlands during the tenth century, which implies a certain commitment to upgrading the infrastructure of the region; how and why this was done is not as yet understood.
Biermann confirms that especially along the coastal areas, the model of the “Burg-Siedlungskomplex” comprising a (normally round) small fortification with a settlement of huts outside is probably valid, though much less common than previously thought; in inland regions, however, simple open settlements are found with apparently no differentiation between different kinds of farmhouses and no evidence of a manorial organization.
The other archaeological contribution is that of Ralf Bleile; after a summary of the research on the lakes of Mecklenburg and their use (especially in terms of the settlements on their islands between the ninth and thirteenth centuries), he provides a detailed description of the results of archaeological investigations of the island and shores of the Plauer See. This region of Germany has more lakes than any other, and many of these lakes have small islands; the islands were frequently used as places of settlement by the Slavs, offering the advantage of not requiring extensive fortification, as they were connected to the mainland by simple bridges. In some cases–if the Plauer See is anything to go by–they were controlled by some sort of guardhouse to defend the bridge itself. Bleile provides some interesting details regarding the use of these islands, but little that is especially significant in any broader sense; his paper, with its extensive bibliography, is, however, a useful reference point for those wishing to conduct further research on settlement and landscapes in this region.
The two very different essays of Winfried Schich and Christofer Herrmann suggest a missed opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue that could have been very fruitful. Herrmann’s essay on Prussia as an architectural landscape is an attempt to re-examine the question as to whether architectural styles and geographical boundaries coincide, and if they do, why. Herrmann believes–rightly, in my view–that although the nationalistic attitudes that colored earlier approaches to these issues should be abandoned, that should not mean an abandonment of the concept of architectural landscapes altogether, especially as empirical differences in style need to be understood and explained. His examination of the four dioceses of medieval Prussia reveals a considerable difference between the churches here and in other parts of Germany, even in directly neighboring regions; these include the consistent lack of transverse apses and crypts in churches; the forms of the gables; the use of differently colored brickwork patterns; and inscriptions of stone in the shape of letters of the alphabet. Hermann’s work is also methodologically innovative insofar as he has analyzed the distribution and incidence of a number of architectural features with the help of a computerized database, making possible a greater level of detailed analysis than before. Herrmann also presents a brief history of the evolution of the Prussian style, and points out that not all sub-regions were equally consistent in applying all elements of this style. Unfortunately, although he himself brings up the importance of understanding how and why such a regional style comes into being, and how it relates to broader economic, social, political and cultural factors, these questions must be pursued by the reader in Herrmann’s _Habilitationsschrift_.
Schich examines the creation of socioeconomic central places in Brandenburg, and finds that the founding of both (Cistercian) convents and towns were a part of a conscious economic and political policy: where possible, towns were founded as central places to control the rural economy of the region and channel it into a larger intra- and interregional trade network; in many locations that could not support the population of a town, monasteries were founded instead.
Significantly, these foundations, even of monasteries, appear to have been part of a conscious effort on the part of the nobility to maintain and increase economic and social control over the local rural population by tying its economic life to that of a town or religious foundation that was in turn subordinate to and dependent on the lordship. Schich does not, unfortunately, examine the extent to which towns, especially, were able to make themselves increasingly independent of feudal overlords; even more regrettable is that this contribution is not in any way related to the wide field of literature on the growth of towns in western Europe and the eventual implications of this development for the organization of the feudal economy.
Reading these two essays, I could not help wishing that there had been an effort to bring together the questions they both raised: did the predominance of Cistercian houses have anything to do with the architectural style? Did the socioeconomic situation of the Church in Prussia and the Baltic lands influence architecture, and if so, how?
To what extent did the need or desire for representation of religious and political power have a role in determining architecture, and, conversely, to what extent did the erection of particular types of buildings influence the way the Church and secular powers were perceived and were able to defend themselves and propagate their religious, cultural, and socioeconomic policies?
With the last two papers we move to Italy, and to the visual arts: Matthias Möller studies the depiction of landscapes in the context of allegories of rulership, and Tanja Michalsky considers the image of land and landscape in Petrarch, Italian maps, and Italian paintings of the later middle ages. Müller’s excellent essay takes a new look at late medieval landscape paintings, providing a detailed study of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, the panels of the seasons in the Torre Aquila in Trento, the seasons in the famous Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry, and the frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli and the altar of Filippo Lippi in the Capella dei Magi in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. Medieval artists, mindful of Augustine’s admonition in his _Confessions_ that people lost in the contemplation of landscapes pay little heed to their own character, eschewed the depiction of landscapes, and Lorenzetti’s fresco of the fourth decade of the trecento is famous as one of the first detailed landscape paintings in western art. Yet Müller is able to show convincingly that this image is not, in fact, intended as a realistic depiction of the landscape around Siena but it, rather, an allegory of the consequences–for the land and the people who live on it–of good rulership. The imagery of landscape is used to further the political and theological message that good rulership, inspired and guided by God, will make the land and its people thrive; this painting, therefore, is equally guided, if less obviously so, by Augustine’s admonition. Müller’s careful analyses of the other paintings are no less convincing, and present an interesting and (to my lay mind) important and original contribution to the history of pre-modern landscape painting, effectively tying in developments in art to theological and political principles of the time.
Michalsky’s paper is the only one in this collection to attempt a detailed consideration of what exactly a landscape is: approaching it from her own discipline, that of art history, she states that a landscape is generally an image of “nature,” viewed in strict contradiction to a city, and in the discourse of art history, the depiction, even the perception of a natural landscape depends on the sense of loss of nature–and was, therefore, not really possible during the middle ages. Michalsky argues against this view, finding that natural landscapes in the middles ages did not have the modern baggage associated with them, and simply saw nature as another aspect of God’s creation, one that was, moreover, very often controlled by human agency.
Thus depictions of landscapes contained within them political and theological concepts relating to the order of society and the control and division of land: they were not simply innocent attempts at portraying nature as it was. In this regard, she comes to rather the same conclusion as Müller, although she argues from a more abstract perspective. Like Müller, however, she uses Lorenzetti’s fresco and (in more detail than Müller), Petrarch’s letter describing his ascent of Mont Ventoux to support her theses.
I was somewhat concerned, on reading this book, by the lack of any kind of epistemological rigor with regard to what exactly a landscape is: the authors make little effort to define the term and its relationship to the study of humanity. Nor is any coherent attempt made to place the studies presented here within any broader context, whether of the general narratives of medieval history, or, more especially, the more recent, still nascent narratives of environmental history. It is inevitable with collections of this sort that the quality and originality of the contributions is inconsistent; this is even more the case with a volume such as this one, arising out of a lecture series at the University of Greifswald, without any editorial effort at drawing threads together (the “Vorwort” is two pages long, and there is no general summary; nor do any of the authors refer to anything presented in any of the other papers). Although a few of the papers are excellent and very useful for a broad scholarly audience, for the most part, this work seems best suited to be no more than a first orientation on a variety of topics (some, though not all[,] of which are not so easily accessible through standard handbooks and lexica) for German-speaking undergraduates.
