VI.5 - Subversion

Summary

A tension between spiritual joy and earthly pleasures was a hallmark of the period in question, as it was of many other periods of history. On the whole, the ‘official’ culture of the Church regarded levity, eating, drinking and the enjoyment of the body, particularly the unruly and potentially immoral lower body, as profane and ungodly. These austere religious authorities shared an uneasy coexistence with more worldly forces, inside the Church as well as outside, which relished earthly delights, indulged the lower body and celebrated these exploits without shame. Occasionally such profane behaviour was purposefully blasphemous; at other times it was designed as satire, reproof for the abuses and hypocrisies of the Church and the age. Perhaps most often it was merely the product of high spirits, though those high spirits were commonly regarded as an offence to the dignity of the Church.

The period before 1200 recorded less frivolity, profanity and licence than later centuries, but this is indubitably an effect of limited literacy and the sombre bias of the written records. The situation of the modern scholar is much like that of Gerald of Wales, who described a dinner at Canterbury Cathedral Priory in 1180. Enjoined to solemnity, the monks were supposed to be keeping silence, but Gerald observed that in practice they were irrepressibly lively.