How beliefs about human and divine secrets informed medieval ideas about the mind and shaped the practices of literary interpretations
What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue.
Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past.
Recenzijas
"Saltzman's book is impressive in its range, compelling in its argument, and significant in its contribution. It will undoubtedly remain a touchstone for scholarship on early medieval notions of agency, interiority, and legal identity for a long time to come." (Speculum) "Equal parts conceptual history and literary criticism, Bonds of Secrecy is an ambitious work. Weaving together a dazzling array of sources and scholarship, [ Saltzman] interrogates the ethics of secrecy in a society bound by an omniscient God... In approaching the phenomenon of secrecy in early medieval England as a tabula rasa, Saltzman forces us to confront our own preconceived notions of secrecy and to reevaluate the ways in which we understand its function and its potential, both then and now...Readers have much to gain from reading this book.
" (Comitatus) "[ I]lluminating and arresting...[ Saltzman] combines textual and material evidence to examine how the space and shape of early medieval churches facilitated a desire to pray in secret: oratories, porticoes, and small rooms for private prayer must have been significant features in the landscape...Saltzman is surely right to put the looming promise of the inescapable judgment of God at the center of the early medieval polity. He offers us secrecy as a lens to think through early medieval England" (Journal of British Studies) "Highly original, Bonds of Secrecy reveals something that has been hidden in plain sight throughout a wide variety of texts and makes a significant impact on our understanding of historical and narrative motivations. Benjamin A. Saltzman succeeds in clearing away presentist mental furniture to reveal what secrecy meant to Anglo-Saxons who understood it to be inseparable from divine omniscience." (Leslie Lockett, The Ohio State University)
Papildus informācija
Bonds of Secrecy illuminates the relationship between human experiences of secrecy and early medieval beliefs about divine omniscience. Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this relationship was fundamental to early English legal and monastic culture and profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in the Middle Ages.
A Note on References and Translations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I. LAW
Chapter
1. Political Epistemology and Crimes of Concealment in Anglo-Saxon
Law
Chapter
2. The Secret Seized: Theft, Death, and Testimony
PART II. SPIRITUALITY
Chapter
3. Monastic Life and the Regulation of Secrecy
Chapter
4. Making Space for Spiritual Secrecy
Chapter
5. Seeing in Secret: Saints, Hagiography, and the Ethics of
Concealment and Discovery
PART III. LITERATURE
Chapter
6. Binding Secrets, Solving Riddles
Chapter
7. Worldly Concealment, Divine Knowledge, and the Hermeneutics of
Faith
Chapter
8. Reading Hidden Meaning: Between Interpretive Pride and
Eschatological Humility
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Benjamin A. Saltzman teaches English at the University of Chicago.
