Desert Harvest 12.1

• The view through the round window, Professor Helen Nader
• Annual Lecture 2004: Professor James D. Tracy, Joel Van Amberg
• At the feet of visiting scholars
     Professor James D. Tracy, Victoria Christman
     Professor Theodore Evergates, Ben Kulas and Julie Kang
     Professor Maureen Miller, Tom de Mayo and Robert Christman
• Director abroad: Notes from Berlin: The rites of spring, Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn

The view through the round window
by Professor Helen Nader, Acting Director

This year, as Acting Director, I am sitting in Heiko Oberman's office, surrounded by his books, and marveling that he wrote and read so much in his full and energetic life. Each day while Susan Karant-Nunn has been in Germany on her well-deserved Guggenheim Fellowship, a trickle of graduate students comes in to discuess their new insights and the complexities of their studies.
This academic year several of them have been supported by Division fellowships, thanks to your generosity. The results have been very satisfying. One returned last fall from his research year in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship and began turning in a dissertation chapter every six weeks. He and his family are now moving to Knoxville, where he will be teaching at the University of Tennessee and waiting to hear from a publisher about his dissertation/book. We have had long chats about this work, a brilliant narrative and analysis of disputes over the nature of the eucharist in Augsburg. Another student, who has been teaching Susan's courses, flew this morning for a job interview in Ohio. His dissertation on disputes about the nature of original sin in Luther's home town will soon be considered for publication. His bride, also a Division student and a Fulbright fellow, returned from her research in The Netherlands and Belgium in December. She comes in to talk about conceptualizing the vast amount of data she uncovered in the Antwerp archives about inquisition trials. A fourth student returned this semester from France, where he researched the pamphlet wars during the Wars of Religion, supported by a Division fellowship.
Two newer students come with different issues. Both are enrolled in the Division seminar on church finance in the Middle Ages, taught by Professor Alan Bernstein. Fearful at the beginning of the course that they would not find enough resources to research their topic or that their Latin would not be good enough, they are now eager to tell me their discoveries.
Throughout their studies our students alternate between teaching for the History Department and depending of Division fellowships. For them, teaching is income, a joy, and necessary experience for the job market. Dissertation writing is fundamental and required financial support. Your donations are the foundation for our great success in producing brilliant dissertations/books that launch these young people on their careers. They follow in the footsteps of Heiko Oberman because you make their journeys possible. Won't you please continue to provide this money for the future of the Division and the superlative scholarship it inculcates into the next generation?

Annual Lecture 2004
Professor James D. Tracy: "Christendom vs. Islamdom"
by Joel Van Amberg, doctoral student

James D. Tracy, Union Pacific Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota, captivated a capacity audience on March 24 with his talk, "Christendom vs. Islamdom: The Background War of the Early Modern Era, c. 1500-1700," a richly detailed discussion of the military, mercantile, and cultural conflicts that characterized relations between Christian and Muslim states during this period. Professor Tracy was intent on emphasizing the history of conflict between Christians and Muslims precisely because, in the light of recent events, people have sought to emphasize historical patterns of harmony and cooperation. However, he argues that this approach can lead one to the conclusion that peaceful co-existence has been the norm and that achieving it is simply a matter of good will.
Tracy maintained that in order to understand the Muslim world's fear of domination by the West, it is important to grasp western anxiety about the possibility of Muslim domination during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Ottoman Turkish Empire possessed military and economic power vastly superior to that of the Christian states of Europe and exploited this power imbalance by expanding westward, reaching the gates of Vienna for the first time in 1529.
The Ottoman Turks and the Christian states engaged in multiple forms of conflict during this era. More common than full-scale warfare was low-level border raiding which the larger faith communities generally cheered on because such constant harassment tied down armies and hindered them from launching large-scale attacks. The call to holy war continued to play a role in the discourse of Muslim and Christian communities about their infidel opponents. Fiery preachers could inspire the faithful to view political and economic conflicts in stark religious terms. Even during the last siege of Vienna in 1683, Muslims and Christians were encouraged to view it as part of the spiritual battle against unbelievers.
Finally, Christians and Muslims waged a long-running propaganda battle over the right to claim cultural superiority. The Ottoman sultans established a court "liturgy of majesty," which employed vast retinues of attendants and displays of splendor, to convey the position that the sultan was the king of kings and that his court was the center of the civilized world. The Christians, for their part, claimed to represent the Graeco-Roman tradition of universal, objective law and consensual government. They claimed that the Ottoman Turkish civilization, while perhaps wealthier, was based on tyranny and arbitrariness and was destined, therefore, to inevitable decline.
Tracy is careful to point out that for both Muslims and Christians, wars with the "infidels" were of secondary concern when compared to conflicts with enemies of the same faith. The Ottoman Turks' principal concern lay with the Persians. The French were even willing to negotiate alliances with the Turks against their fellow Christians, the Hapsburgs, whose control over vast parts of Europe threatened them more than did Muslim advances.
By the early 1700's the age of Turkish expansion in the west had reached an end. Tracy argues that Turkish decline did not result from any institutional or cultural inferiority vis-à-vis the west. Rather a series of contingent historical events, especially the interruption of Ottoman trade networks by the Dutch, English, and Portuguese led to a slow decrease in power.
Tracy's picture of conflict was not intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather he undertook to sketch more clearly the historical contours of Christian-Muslim relations as a pre-condition for finding a way forward. As the content of the lecture makes clear, Tracy is not pollyannish about solving the current tensions between the West and the Muslim world. He expressed hope, however, that a level of peaceful co-existence might eventually be established based on hard-won mutual respect.

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor James D. Tracy, University of Minnesota
by Victoria Christman, doctoral student

When scholars come to visit the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, we put them to work. As a longtime friend and supporter of the Division, this came as no surprise to Professor James D. Tracy. With the Town and Gown lecture looming large on his Wednesday evening horizon, he spent Tuesday meeting individually with Division students before joining us in our seminar that evening.
Being well acquainted with the Division seminar system, Professor Tracy was, unbeknownst to us, intent on putting us to work too. In preparation for seminar, he had requested that we read his book, Europe's Reformations, 1450-1650, upon which our discussion would be based. This was something of a surprising choice. As a textbook for teaching Reformation history, this is not a book filled with historiographical argumentation with which we could take issue. Nevertheless, we came prepared with questions and comments on Professor Tracy's work. When he introduced the book, his real intention was revealed. The editors recently asked him to produce a second edition of the work, and he was hoping that the seminar would present him with suggestions for changes and improvements. And so we went to work.
Europe's Reformations is a masterful book, taking as its focus the Protestant Reformation as it affected Europe on three distinct levels: doctrine, politics, and society. Because it is arranged as a textbook for use is the classroom, our discussion quickly brought us to a broader consideration of the field of Reformation history as a whole and how best to convey that information in our own classes. How is one to incorporate theological details into the history of the Reformation without losing sight of the bigger story? How are we to communicate the contours of a five hundred year old culture to the students of today? And how does the story of this enormous change in Reformation Europe add to and compare with our understanding of events in the wider world at that time? Professor Tracy was able to draw upon almost thirty years of classroom experience in response to questions from those of us who are only now beginning.
If these broad questions were not enough, Professor Bernstein, in whose seminar we convene this year, asked Professor Tracy the personal, but expansive question of how he maintains his interest in this field while dealing with the varied demands of teaching, publishing, and researching inherent in this career. In response, Professor Tracy traced for us the odyssey of his academic career. In looking back on his academic journey, he now realizes the importance of contingencies in the forging of his work. He explained his dissertation research, which changed trajectories dramatically midcourse, but which eventually led him to fruitful pastures. He told how, in his second dedicated research year, he set off for Munich, Brussels and Paris, following the call of a philosophically-based study. While pleasure-reading during one of these journeys, another topic sparked his interest and led him in a new direction. On another occasion, he found himself driven by an intense desire to disprove a widely-held theory that he just knew was wrong. At other points in his career, whole books were borne of archival research whose primary focus lay in a completely different area, or of conference papers that simply continued to grow. By remaining consciously flexible in his outlook and willing to shift from one theme to another, Professor Tracy has managed to keep his professional drive and academic interest alive. Professor Tracy's adaptable research agenda has yielded much fruit. From Germany to the Low Countries, to France and now beyond, he has published on topics ranging from the financial revolution of the Low Countries, to the humanism of Erasmus, to the warring policies of Charles V. Today, his lens is trained beyond Christendom of the sixteenth century in an attempt to fit the story he has uncovered so far into a broader geographic and religious context—a theme upon which he elaborated at the annual Town and Gown Lecture the following evening.

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Theodore Evergates, McDaniel College, Maryland

"Marie of Champagne and Henry the Liberal: Constructing a Principality and Princely Court in Twelfth-Century France"
by Ben Kulas, master's student

On November 17, Theodore Evergates, professor of medieval and early modern European history at McDaniel College, Maryland, delivered a public lecture on research he is currently conducting, the focus of which is the rule and contributions of Marie and Henry, Countess and Count of Champagne. Their combined rule of the County of Champagne stretched from 1152 to 1198, when the widow Marie died at the age of 53. The couple did not share rule, but rather governed successively.
Henry's father had been at odds with King Louis VII of France, but had been considered a good, collegial ruler of his four counties, Meaux, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, and Vitry. Henry, on the other hand, was a good friend of the king, and also of the great Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux. Under Henry's reign the four counties of his father were consolidated, as Henry moved the family seat from Meaux to Troyes, and Champagne enjoyed a cultural flowering.
With Henry's shift to Troyes, he began construction there of the gothic palace chapel, St. Etienne. Though merely a chapel, the building was cathedral-sized, and based on the Cathedral of St. Etienne of Sens. The canons of Troyes, that is, the community of priests, worked for Count Henry, and accounted for much of the region's cultural blossoming. Under Henry and Marie, Champagne witnessed the emergence of a culture of the book and a community of Latin learning. Henry sponsored this by commissioning the copying of books, especially on history and the Church Fathers, and by founding our two hundred prebends. Just like today's graduate students, clerics of the Middle Ages required financial support. A prebend functioned much like a teaching or research assistantship—a canon received money and food in return for the fulfillment of a particular duty, such as regularly holding mass at a specific altar. Wealthy men and women of the medieval social and political elite would endow prebends at churches not unlike modern benefactors endowing scholarshipsl
Marie, too, contributed to Champagne's cultural flowering. Whereas Henry had no vernacular literature in his collection, Marie was a fan of popular authors of the day, such as Chretien de Troyes, author of many Arthurian romances. As a ruler Marie insured stability by assuming leadership during Henry's absences, continuing the collegial practices and policies that had proven so successful for him. She ruled after Henry's death for sixteen years.
Under the rule of Henry and then Marie, the cohesive county of Champagne grew out of four independent counties. Professor Evergates demonstrated how the vigorous support of culture contributed so influentially to the success of their rule.

Seminar Visit
by Julie Kang, doctoral student

Professor Evergates immediately broke the ice by stating that whereas his individual meetings with us students were reminiscent of confessionals, a visit to the seminar seemed to be the Inquisition. Professor Alan E. Bernstein, who is leading the seminar this year, began with his version of the question asked of all guest scholars, "What make you tick as an historian?"
Professor Evergates went back to childhood stories of a father who challenged him to be curious and insightful. He recalled a ritual that he and his father enjoyed together at the breakfast table. His father would read aloud about current events and, as a boy, Professor Evergates would comment with analytical zeal. In addition, he credits a scientific background and eventual doctoral experience in history for making him the historian he is today.
In a more dramatic fashion, he said he believed a single document had changed his life. As he readied himself for a dissertation topic at Johns Hopkins University, his advisor recommended starting with an interesting document and proceeding from there. In the university library stacks, he found a Champagne document that led him to delve deeper into the French archives. He has been studying the country ever since.

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Maureen Miller, University of California, Berkeley

"Why the Bishop Needed a Bride: Wealth, Weakness, and Ritual in Medieval Florence"
by Tom de Mayo, doctoral student, History Department

In her guest lecture, Maureen Miller, associate professor of medieval history at the University of California, Berkeley, discussed a curious medieval Florentine ritual. On his first entry into his city, the newly invested Bishop of Florence would stop at the convent of San Piero Maggiore. There he would partake of a meal before ritually "marrying" its abbess and staying overnight. (Chastely, one would assume, as this was only a faux marriage.) An exchange of gifts would follow, including a presentation to the bishop of the bed in which he had slept at the convent.
Professor Miller examined the social significance of this uniquely Floentine ritual. Because the convent housed the daughters of the richest and most powerful Florentine families, she speculated that the marriage symbolically assimilated the (often foreign) bishop into the ruling elite of the city. The bishops participated in these ceremonies only reluctantly, perhaps because of their unusual sexual associations, but also perhaps because they were a cover for negotiations on issues of greater substance. Performance indicated the customary status of everyone involved, not only the families represented by the convent, but also the bishop, and the families who traditionally served him.

Seminar Visit
by Robert Christman, doctoral student

On March 9, Professor Miller of the University of California, Berkeley, met with the students of the Division's seminar, led this year by Professor Alan E. Bernstein. The proper adjective to describe Professor Miller is vivacious, an attribute that cannot be assigned to every medievalist or, for that matter, professor of history regardless of field. In a lively fashion and with a great sense of humor she described her research.
Professor Bernstein began by asking how she had maintained the interest and drive that initially inspired her to attend graduate school. "Do what you want regardless of what is fashionable," was her advice. Her own curiosity, she admitted, led her to examine topics as wildly divergent as papal rhetoric and period clothing. She approached these subjects in order to answer only those questions that appealed to her and then moved on to something new. There are two kinds of historians, she suggested: those who ask new questions to start new conversations and those who seek to have the last word. She placed herself firmly in the former category.
Professor Miller described specifically her reasons for examining the history of Christianity. In her experience, when most historians wrote about groups and movements within Christianity they described them in monolithic and rigid terms. Her own religious experiences, subsequently confirmed by her research, suggested that there existed a great deal of variability, creativity, and much more diversity. She has made it a goal to capture this multiplicity.
Persistence was another theme of the evening, especially with regard to research trips to Europe. Professor Miller recounted some of her trials while attempting to study various bishops' palaces in Italy. Local Italian priests could not comprehend why an American woman needed access to a bishop's residence. The very request raised all sorts of red flags. But dogged determination along with a good knowledge of the local language eventually paid off; in one instance, not only did she gain access to a particular palace, but the local priest brought out original floor plans and architectural drawings for her to examine.
During the course of the evening we learned much about medieval bishops' palaces and the rationale of their layout and ornamentation. But perhaps even more importantly we were treated to the paradigm of an intrepid, curious, persistent and deeply engaged scholar.

Notes from Berlin: The rites of spring
by Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Berlin, March 2004

Ah, forsythia! In my five years in the Sonoran Desert, I had almost forgotten about forsythia! On my train trip from Berlin to Frankfurt to return to Tucson for the 2004 Town and Gown Lecture, I saw those sprays signaling the return of the sun. Yet, how good a winter coats feels!
I imagine myself a medieval scholar, wandering from university to university. No matter that I am a woman or that the University of Munich, Humboldt University, and the Free University of Berlin did not exist in the Middle Ages. Still, I have that peripatetic sensation, moving from one great library to another. Sitting in reading rooms with their ancient and newer books, I am reminded of the riches of the Heiko A. Oberman Collection back home in Tucson.
I am ending my Guggenheim year with a five-month stay in Berlin. We rent a tiny apartment near Friedrichstrasse, my point of entry into the German Democratic Republic between 1969 and 1988. The low building through which transients in both directions had to pass is still called "the palace of tears"; but the grim-faced border guards and their straining Alsatian police dogs have disappeared. The Friedrichstrasse station itself is transformed into a small shopping center, clogged on weekends with people who need groceries.
Even after reunification, this city has a mixed aura of satisfied opulence and ethnically varied poverty. There is more of the former in the western half and more of the latter in the east. Even though the Wessis (West Germans) swarmed eastward beginning with the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and obliterated the humiliating reminders of division, to this day the predominant browns and grays, the persistent decrepitude of the eastern city remind the traveler that she has crossed a boundary. The grit is somehow attractive, feeding the myth dear to nostalgic citizens: that life in the Communist half of the city was more cooperative, more cohesive than it was or perhaps ever could be in the Capitalist West. An eastern office worker tells me that she only travels into western Berlin if she has a specific reason. She lives in the east, works in the east, shops in the east. By law her salary remains considerably lower than those of her western Berlin counterparts.
Potsdamer Platz is intended to bring people together. The Wall used to run straight through it, and a memorial track has been drawn in the concrete. The subway station has opened again. Just a few years ago, dozens of cranes strained their long necks lifting loads of steel beams and other building materials. Now what might have been a welcoming environment is a maze of skyscrapers, underpinned, at least, with shops like Starbucks. The youth who pack the American coffee house will not know the history of this quarter—its earlier vibrant centrality, its destruction in war, its mined and guarded barrenness, its enthusiastic revival. It is a hopeful sign indeed that these young people can afford the lattes, the mochas. Berlin, the new national capital, awakens, attracts, expands.
And I . . . I read and read and read. I spend my weekdays in the reading rooms of the Prussian State Library or in the office kindly allocated to me as a visiting professor at the Free University. Under pressure of administrative tasks, I had begun to think of research as an indulgence. Now I am reminded of the life of the mind and why I was drawn to my profession in the first place. Those of you who I am privileged to meet face-to-face will detect in the fall that I have spent a most fulfilling year among books and ideas.
I trust that you will also sense my thankfulness toward those of you who have continued to give to our common enterprise, the endowment of the Oberman Chair, so that the Oberman Research Collection may be acquired in its entirety by the UA Libraries. Research has by no means distracted me from this commitment!

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