DESERT HARVEST—Spring 2000
Vol. 8, No. 1

From the desk of the Director
Prof. Dr. Heiko A. Oberman

   In one of his devilishly acute comedies, seldom produced in its entirety and nearly forgotten in our day, George Bernard Shaw made one of his typical loaded comments on historical perception: “The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.” ( Man and Superman, 1903)
    This statement applies more to our field than to any other: the ‘measurements’ have to be adjusted to changing shapes since we constantly discover previously unknown sources or publish new critical editions which make these sources accessible for the first time. But we interpreters, historians and their reading public alike, change as well: our own shifting perspectives yield novel interpretations of  long-studied, seemingly ‘exhausted’ issues like the fall of the Roman Empire, the impact of the French Revolution or the rise of Adolf Hitler. Such a shift in perspective applies dramatically to the Division in its programmatic embrace of both the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. One of the characteristic features that distinguish us from other graduate programs is precisely this extended vision. Elsewhere the medievalists are so preoccupied with the so-called ‘High’ Middle Ages that they  run out of gas by the time the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are—or rather should be—on their agenda. Students of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations tend to zero in on the sixteenth century as a new era in the social, cultural and religious history of Europe. In either case, the later Middle Ages, the very apex of rapid change, are clipped or even eclipsed.
    As you may well have noticed, the nomenclature ‘Early Modern history’ more and more often replaces the traditional ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic Reformation.’ Admittedly, this development has the advantage of relativizing the confessional platform. Its major disadvantage, however, is incomparably more dangerous: it suggests that the roots of modernity cannot be traced back to the Middle Ages proper. Quite apart from innovations in technology and political organization, the social history of ideas during the late Middle Ages reveals an astounding ‘leap’ towards modernity in science, theology and philosophy—emerging from major shifts in trade routes and means of communication, and in turn reshaping social institutions as well as public opinion.
    These are the themes of investigation which the Division pursues through individual research and communal graduate seminars. As George Bernard Shaw put it, we ‘measure’ the past anew. The Division, with its broader perspective, has only begun to unveil a whole new world, brimming with surprising discoveries.
    Your support allows us to explore these unknown paths “where angels fear to tread.”

Mr. John P. Frank: "The Trial of Socrates"
Joel Van Amberg

   The many who attended this year’s Town and Gown Lecture on March 7 were treated to a stimulating presentation by renowned legal expert, John P. Frank, entitled “The Trial of Socrates:  The Foundation of Democracy.” Mr. Frank has been a law clerk at the United States Supreme Court, taught at Indiana and Yale universities, was general council to the Arizona Democratic Party, has been Director of the Alliance for Justice and Chairman of the Senior Advisory Board for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has written numerous books and articles on legal history. Altogether, he possesses a distinguished record of service to the legal profession, academia, and the broader community. On this occasion, he brought together his roles of lawyer, teacher, and social advocate. His fame had preceded him: the auditorium was full.
    Introduced by the Division’s Assistant Director, Prof. Dr. Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Mr. Frank provided his audience with useful background on Socrates and set his life in the context of the social and political life of Athens at the turn of the fourth century B.C. Frank presented evidence that the trial highlighted Socrates’ role as an inceptor of many of the democratic values and principles that we today hold dear. Socrates was unfairly convicted of  crimes that in the terminology of the day were labeled as “introducing foreign gods and corrupting the youth.” He was sentenced to death.
    Although he steadfastly maintained his innocence and the injustice of the procedures that led to his conviction, he nevertheless submitted to the law and refused to consider escape or other circumvention of the ruling. In so doing, Socrates pointed the way both to a modern society based on law and to passive resistance as a form of peaceful protest. Furthermore, he criticized his contemporaries for neglecting the considered life and the pursuit of wisdom in favor of the acquisition of wealth, an admonition that is just as appropriate today as it was 2,400 years ago.
    Mr. Frank ended the evening with an impassioned reading of an account of Socrates’ final hours, before he drank the poison hemlock. By the conclusion of the lecture, a picture had emerged of a principled man who was willing to speak the truth to his contemporaries at great personal risk, and to obey his society’s laws even when he was unjustly condemned. Many eyes in the auditorium were damp.

"What makes you tick as an historian?"
Prof. Dr. Bernard Roussel, Sorbonne
James Blakeley

   In early November, the Division hosted Prof. Dr. Bernard Roussel. Professor Roussel is Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne in Paris. He has written a number of works concerning the Reformation in French-speaking Europe. Specifically, he has focused his research on the establishment of Reformed churches in France during the latter half of the sixteenth century and on the individual reformers who were active there: John Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, Johannes Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, and Pierre Viret.
    Professor Roussel was the guest speaker at Prof. Heiko A. Oberman’s Thursday-night seminar on November 4. In response to Oberman’s question to his eminent guests, What makes you tick? (designed to give students insight into the private development of famous historians), Roussel recounted his career. He spent a number of years as a pastor, including in francophone North Africa, before wending his way into the professoriate and ultimately to the famous Sorbonne. He gave us a unique “insider’s” look at the French university system, which contrasts greatly with its counterparts in the United States. Professor Roussel recounted his career as a historian, summarized his current research interests, and answered questions from students about the corpus of his work.
    With characteristic generosity, Roussel met individually with most of the students in the Division. He had already provided invaluable aid to Jonathan Reid and Michael Bruening, whose dissertations are on French topics; but he provided all those who spoke with him a fresh perspective on their research projects and offered his ongoing assistance.

"What makes you tick as an historian?"
Prof. Dr. Andrew Pettegree, St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute
Brandon Hartley

   Prof. Dr. Heiko A. Oberman's Thursday night seminar provides graduate students with at least two rare opportunities. The first is the chance to dive headlong into Latin, French, or German primary documents and defend your interpretation in front of eight to ten other budding scholars. The second is regularly to meet visiting scholars from around the world. These guests are not just any scholars, either. The seminar hosts such giants as Thomas Brady, Bernard Roussel, and Andrew Pettegree. If the subject matter the scholar investigates in his research is relevant to your own, his or her visit can provide an indispensable contact for later advice, topic ideas, or, potentially most valuable of all, direction toward a fresh archive waiting for an ambitious graduate student to mine its treasured documents.
    When Professor Pettegree, Director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute in Scotland, visited our soirée last fall, I knew that I wanted to work in sixteenth-century France looking at Calvinist or Catholic propagandists (or controversialists if one prefers). Aside from this rather broad focus, though, I was still largely undecided about exactly whom or where I planned to study. However, there was no doubt in my mind that Professor Pettegree could provide invaluable insight—he is currently working on a project with no less ambitious a goal than to catalog every printed religious  source in the French Reformation period.
    As I entered the living room where we hold our seminars, Pettegree sat comfortably in a narrow framed chair talking quietly with Oberman. Pettegree is a thinly built man with boyish good looks, and thick dark hair—miraculously lacking the gray highlights that seem to mark every returning historical archivist. As the seminar began, I could not help but notice that he appeared a bit nervous, glancing over his wide-rimmed glasses at the floor and around the room. This might be attributed to English reserve, or perhaps he had advance warning of the rather daunting introduction Professor Oberman gives each of these scholars: “Well, Professor Pettegree, we are glad you could join us so that we might find out what makes you tick, as they say. We sit at your feet . . . . ”
    Pettegree quickly charmed us with his answer, though. Holding up a small, worn blue book with an exciting battle scene from the English Revolution, he said, “The simplest answer is that when I was young I read the classics of English history in the [British] Ladybird book series instead of comics or other children’s stories.” We nodded appreciatively; many of us had cut our teeth on similar works. I asked him a question concerning a point that I had found him hinting at in his writings: did the Calvinists function better as underdogs? Did their unshakeable theological certainty, which served them well in uniting against a common enemy, fracture their position when they achieved some political power, making them incapable of compromise for the sake of peace? “I think so,” he said chuckling. “They were not easy friends to have.” The rest of the evening centered on other questions we had prepared on the basis of Pettegree’s publications, many of which focus on Calvinism and sixteenth-century England.
    The next day I had the chance to meet with Pettegree at his bed-and-breakfast. We talked about my interests for a few minutes and he, with excitement, brought out his laptop computer to showcase his complex but useful database of French source material. Towards the end, he gave me a half dozen secondary sources to review, a few doctors of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris whom he thought had been inadequately treated. He  suggested focusing on the Catholic popular reaction against Protestantism rather than the more competitive field of Huguenot history. To top it off, he practically insisted that I stop by St. Andrews on my way to France and pick up more information that I could use in my research. Professor Oberman’s seminar requires a tremendous amount of time and effort, but the fringe benefits are opportunities like these. I’ll remember this occasion the next time I spend hours looking for that perfect translation.

Medievalists of the East
Han Song

   Chinese historians divide world history into four parts—ancient world history, medieval world history, modern world history, and contemporary world history. The Middle Ages extends from 476 to 1640, including much of what Western historiography calls the Early Modern period.
     Chinese and Western medievalists have not been in full communication with each other for a long time. Many Western specialists are thus in doubt about how the Chinese study the Middle Ages. Nowadays, more and more Chinese teachers and students are sent to Europe and North America to study the medieval period. In addition, some European and American scholars have been invited to China to lecture to Chinese college teachers and students. A new era of understanding and communication between Chinese and Western medievalists has begun.
    China is a country with a long history and an ancient civilization. Contacts between China and the West are not of recent origin. Sima Qian reports in his History, written around 100 B.C., that Chinese envoys had been sent to Rome and that some Europeans had been to China. There was considerable trade between China and Europe during the Middle Ages. The Silk Road—crossing China, Central Asia, Astrakhan, Tana, and Europe—linked the Orient and the West under the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368). The Yuan rulers sent envoys to the pope in 1280 and 1336; and the pope, seeking an alliance with China against the Moslems, sent missionaries to China during the thirteenth century. As a result, a number of Catholic churches were established in China between 1270 and 1330. European merchants like members of the Venetian Polo family also arrived in China. Marco Polo came in 1275, became a friend of the emperor, and stayed in China as a high official until 1292. Marco’s account of his marvelous travels was widely read in the later Middle Ages and helped inspire Columbus to search for India, China and Japan.
    Such relatively sparse relations of the past, however, are not the only reason for Chinese to study medieval Europe. A more important purpose is to learn about another civilization and its philosophy, political system, culture, and religion. As China modernizes, more and more of its citizens want to learn about the West. Chinese scholars of world history, literature, and the social sciences are increasingly informing their countrymen through lectures and books.
    The medieval history course is called Medieval World History and usually involves seventy hours of instruction per semester. It is designed for undergraduate history majors and takes up Europe, Asia, and Africa. The emphasis falls on medieval Europe. When I took the course at Peking University in 1996, it included ten major topics: 1) the origins of feudalism in Western Europe, 2) the development of western European society, 3) Eastern Europe, 4) Asia, 5) Africa, 6) America, 7) the age of discovery, 8) the Renaissance, 9) the Reformation, and 10) Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
    Chinese methods of instruction are different from those in America. The instructors say a lot, the students little. Chinese students are not encouraged to ask questions. Western scholars lecturing in China are often disturbed by the lack of questions after their lectures and wonder if the students were dissatisfied. In fact, the silence is traditional. But gradually things are changing: teachers try to be more inspiring, and students more active.
    Chinese interest in the Middle Ages has broadened in recent years. Until several years ago, study focused on political history and theory. Now scholars include comparative studies, feudalism, economics, art, Byzantium, medieval philosophy, Christianity, law, the Renaissance, the Reformation, contacts between China and the West, and medieval historiography. Moreover, some departments of history have scholastic organizations that encourage the development of both undergraduate and graduate students. For example, a conference of young medievalists in Beijing and Tianjin has been held four times and will continue to meet annually. These organizations foster an atmosphere characterized by higher levels of activity and liveliness, and they promote history students’ intellectual proficiency.
    Because of the lack of materials and the language barrier, studying the Middle Ages in China is not as advanced as it is in Europe and the United States. I believe, however, that as academic contacts increase between Chinese and Western medievalists, the immense task of expanding research into medieval history becomes a great and glorious duty, not only of established Chinese medievalists but also of the new generation of students who have expressed a strong desire to devote their professional lives to studying the Middle Ages.

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