HST 351 - Fighting Snails: European State Formation from the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts

Course Units: 1.0

A snail fighting a knight, a flying donkey, and a nun plucking penises from a tree: These and many more obscure images populate the margins of the most prized books of medieval Europe (ca. 500-1500 C.E.). Alongside poems, prayers, doodles, sketches, and dance and drinking songs, medieval scribes entered them into the margins of books and documents that modern scholars have used as primary sources to tell the history of European state formation. When Europeans re-discovered Roman Law in the 12th century, a world of violent and arbitrary lordship and religious superstition was left behind, replaced by accountable government and processes of written law, so the
arguments have it. In this class, we will challenge and revise this narrative from the margins of the primary sources that were used to craft it. Through careful study of marginalia in law books and official documents, we will discover how cultural elements belonging to the feudal world such as love poetry and human experiences
deemed irrational such as weakness (symbolized by the fighting-snail), hubris (illustrated by the donkey), and hypocrisy (epitomized by the penis-plucking nun) formed integral parts of European statecraft. Doing so, you will acquire new ways of thinking about the centers ofpolitical and legal power of the past and present. Prerequisite(s): This course is open to all. CC: HUM, HUL, SOCS JLIT, JCHF, JCAD, REL & WAC