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Medieval Crime, Violence and Superstition: Symptomatic Dysfunction

Jerrold Atlas
The Journal of Psychohistory V. 26, N. 1, Summer 1998

In this age of "intimate" history, there is an increasing need to probe the social fabric of an age and a society. We can no longer be content to continue traditional unidirectional historical analyses - political, social, intellectual, economic - since these offer only narrow vistas for the understanding of historical motivation and behavior. This "social fabric" approach asks for the broad dimensions of the woof and warp of historical moments: what were the traditional elements? what were the dynamics of the various social levels involved? what was childhood and family life like? what were the cultural paradigms and mythic/literary archetypes? what pressures upon this society may have influenced behavior? what role(s) did the individual personalities play in historical behavior? what were the role(s) of women? what were the role(s) of religion and the personalities of the religious leaders? To this end, we offer herein an understanding of the symptomatic dysfunction evident in fourteenth-century Europe.

Michael Goodich's research in his book, Violence and Miracles in the Fourteenth Century, exists in a world outside the one pioneered in the pages of The Journal of Psychohistory.1 This is unfortunate because his otherwise marvelous study of the private grief and public salvation as viewed through the windows of fourteenth-century violence and miracles would have been greatly expanded by his incorporation of psychohistorical research and paradigms. Goodich accomplishes the psychohistorian's task by probing the psychic underpinnings of medieval grief and public salvation with the discipline, detail and sources of a skilled historian. Absent the psychological terminology and interpretations, the reader is forced to address these issues independently - perhaps Goodich's main weakness.

I say "perhaps" because Goodich has supplied all of the ingredients necessary to perform this task as well as offering extremely insightful interpretations of historical motivation. For example, describing the concurrence of family conflict and sexual disorder invariably suggesting Satanic intervention, Goodich notes the intervention of saintly Bridget of Sweden for a servant who had been divorced from her too-closely-related husband:

As the bystanders prayed for the distracted maidservant, she visualized a foul-smelling Ethiopian rise up from the cleavage between her breasts. His dank odor and image had recurred to her whenever she thought or heard about her former spouse. Here, the complex imagery suggests that the woman had been possessed by a devilish incubus which brought about her supercharged emotional state. The Devil took the visual form of a black Ethiopian, an identification found in the earliest Christian description of Satan. And his expulsion via her cleavage possesses blatant sexual overtones. Again, as in the case of the young man near Pisa bewitched by a supposed whore, the kind or exorcism undertaken by the saint...led to the expulsion of the demon...This miracle suggests a more complex relationship between the woman and her former husband, but the evidence is too sparse to draw any further conclusions.2

In viewing the above description, psychohistorians would emphasize that hallucinations of separate personalities - alters - represent a psychic need to protect aand preserve the individual from overwhelming threat. Their construction serves a purpose and we must examine it within this context.3

THE ELEMENT OF A CHANGING MEDIEVAL SYSTEM

The rise of a growing middle class challenged the traditional "three orders" view of pre-thirteenth-century Europe - clergy, nobility and peasantry. New economic paradigms and revised distribution of wealth interfered with the traditional royal system based upon religious sanctions then in place. New technologies (such as windmills and gears) expanded the productivity of the farmer and his lifestyle. Commercial recovery and industrial development accelerated the growth of towns and cities.4

Concurrently, this also allowed an expansion of the population - frequently resulting from internal miigration into the cities - that were engaged in commerce or serving commerce through urban crafts and other production. Statistics about peasant land holdings in England clearly indicate a shrinkage in acreage, decline in productivity (possibly the result of cultivating marginal lands) and abandonment of marginal farm land - reasonably comparable continental statistics indicate a broad similar pattern. Demographic trends appear to support a varied pattern of successful expansion or stagnation and decline.

Seventy-three million people crowded Europe at the start of the fourteenth century; 23 million died or moved during the 1348-1352 plagues. France (14 million), England (5 million), Germany (11 million), Italy (10 million) and Scandinavia enjoyed the greatest population increase while Russia, Poland, Hungary and the Mediterranean world declined to year 1000 levels. Food supplies and agricultural differences were the keys to understanding these differences. Beans and peas returned nitrogen to the soil as did other crop rotations and technologies. Wage labor replacing obligatory serf work also altered the productivity of the expanding land under cultivation.

Other aspects of the social fabric for consideration require us not to forget the work of the climatologists, dendrochronologists and manuscript sources revealing a significant climatic alteration at the start of the fourteenth century, colder and wetter (until a further drop in the fifteenth century). What a moment of change for lifestyle, agriculture, accumulation of wealth and hierarchy. Scandinavian cultivated land shrank, North Atlantic sailing was imperiled, Baltic herring disappeared, floods attacked Dutch lowlands and England's wine industry nearly vanished - all serving to minimize productivity, commerce and wealth as well as leaving Europe open to disaster if a really bad year came along (such as in 1313-1317). The horror of such disasters is reflected in chronicle accounts of cannibalism, child and corpse eating and hanged criminals being devoured - it was a starving population trying to survive.

That there were clear differences between those who were successful and those who labored should be obvious. These differences evidenced themselves in clothing, housing and lifestyle. Anger, rage and violence were natural outcomes of these differences and the overcrowdedness of these towns. Indeed, thirteenth-fourteenth century accounts frequently reveal urban poverty and rural vagabondage - these were not the most ideal of times. Florentine chronicler Villani listed a 1330 pauper population of over 17,000. Post-plague bourgeoisie attempted to hold onto their positions by enacting restrictive regulations and laws suppressing the advancement of the apprentices, laborers and women. A large class of laborers emerged who were prevented from having the ability to organize themselves; their bitterness frequently erupted in riots against bourgeois-dominated city governments (e.g., Thessalonica, 1341; Ghent,1381; Rouen,1382; Florence's Ciompi,1378-1381). Wealth was increasingly consolidated and some early capitalists flourished far beyond their contemporaries (e.g., English and Flemish wool merchants; Hanseatic traders; Novgorod, Polish, Polotsk, Venetian and Genoese merchants). International trade was a vital element in the social fabric, assuring the production of wealth and transport of products, guaranteeing royal tax collection and major projects (while assuring the capitalists monopolies of trade and production), placing new focus on the status of the wealthy merchant-capitalists and setting the pattern for future royal-capitalist joint expansion/trade ventures.

Violent social conflicts accompanied the cycle of dislocations and disasters. Famine, plague, war, and royal tax increases made the most miserable part of the population recognize that their lives had become intolerable. A lower birth rate combined with a higher death rate; widespread malnutrition increased as life worsened and the plagues carved a wide swath of death. Endemic plagues (continuing into the eighteenth century) produced a mentality of panic, demoralization, desertion of family and community, incomprehensibility about the source or meaning of the horror, the fantasy of poisoning, a search for and labeling of scapegoats (this Christian hysteria particularly centered on pogroms against Jews), the decimation of monastic communities (severely restricting their positive contributions to society's stability) and eruptions of bizarre religious behavior (such as the extraordinarily ascetic Flagellants). These social conflicts exacerbated underlying pathologies and heightened popular irrationalities so that negative behaviors became dominant and helped tear society apart. Perhaps one ought to view this sundering as an impetus to construct something better, "restoring unity and social order to a fragmented and conflict-ridden society."5

That Christian piety had become central to views about the conditions of the masses can be seen in the language of the peasants and underclass complaints throughout post-plague Europe, for they appear to have been busy creating a "community of the faithful."6 They voiced the view that there was a higher purpose to society - the care of the many. Clearly, natural disasters combined with man-made to proclaim a widespread failure of leadership on the part of the kings, church and nobles. Ironically, the labor shortage resulting from the massive deaths produced better work and life conditions, improved pay and conditions of serf obligations, a shift to a money economy and a decline in essential food prices.

We should also understand that commerce, industry and work were not freely practiced but were subject to a wide range of cooperative restrictions, guild rules and town laws. One may have become individually successful but only within the sphere of one's circle of compatriots could one find security and protection. A money economy and barter coexisted in this transition, encouraging all to become interdependent and, hopefully, more successful. Never predominantly urban, Western society was active with this economic growth, and this enabled the rural majority to enjoy fuller lives.

Interestingly, there was also a significant transition taking place about the role(s) women were seeking to have in society. While most remained in assigned roles assuring them of salvation, inheritance and survival, others began to seek greater and enriched involvement in religion, business, power and sexuality. Mysticism, heightened sexuality, exorcisms and popular preaching opened doors for expanded women's roles. Women frequently became the majority by the mid-thirteenth century, controlled more wealth and sought education. That this did not last into the fifteenth century is the result of other conditions restricting economic and social power in society.

All of these changes accelerated further change within the social fabric: there was a renewed focus on the distinctions of noble birth and rank; on one's place in the social order; on the accumulation of tangible wealth; on the importance of the rich merchants as an economic and political power. Indeed, it was the dynamism of the medieval transition that was best reflected in the new status of the urban hierarchies. Their earlier isolation in an unfree world had been concretized by their economic successes so that they were now more independent within the royal-noble dominated world that needed their support and wealth.

Notice that I did not say that these urban hierarchies were fully independent, for this could not be in a world of dependent relationships. They were as much an integral, controlled element of their own urban society and lifestyles as they were part of the royal-noble world in which they functioned. No one was truly independent, not even within the allegedly independent Catholic church. Peddlers and manufacturers of essential or unusual wares had zealously and shrewdly guarded their peripheral independence. Their descendants and successors did the same with significantly increased wealth, status and power. This was the reflection of their dynamism - they offered an alternate route to advancement and improvement because of their essential supply of desired and needed objects.

THE ELEMENT OF ANGER, RAGE AND DYSFUNCTION

Also absent from Goodich's and others' studies is a needed interweaving of the impact of anger, rage and aggressiveness: "Anger is as much a political matter as a biological one...has powerful consequences, whether anger is directed toward one's spouse or one's government ...anger is the human hiss."7 "Great physiological excitement does not instinctively feel unpleasant. Some people learn to associate it with the positive sensations of risk, fun, vibrancy, and power; for others, that rush of epinephrine signifies fear, danger, and powerlessness."8 These response differences may be easily applied to medieval elements of anger and rage - class functions varied the attitude and experience one felt or applied to physiological excitement: the warrior, brigand, fighting cleric, violent peasant or urban worker, mercenary and soldiery fit into the first response category above.9

The compleat historian (dare I say, the psychohistorian?) should also pay attention to the possible impact of human sugar level: "Hypoglycemia is a chronic condition of low blood sugar that may occur because of a tumor of the pancreas or because the pancreas releases too much insulin after a high carbohydrate meal."10 Of course, there is a growing list of other possibilities for blood sugar variation which may eventually alter our understanding of any historical connection. Applying all of these possibilities to the medieval high fat, high carbohydrate diet may offer one possible other element precipitating anger and rage. Low blood sugar is frequently associated with anger, "irritability, fatigue, rapid heartbeat, and sweaty palms."11 Since this condition may affect 1/3Ð2/3 of today's advanced technology nations' populations, we may only conjecture at the medieval impact.12

Under extreme stress, all groups regress - regression allows the psyche to defend itself.13 When groups regress to preverbal/pre-oedipal fantasies, they display their willingness - even more strongly, their desire - to be punished. They shout out their need to be the sacrifice for the group's perceived guilt. In this medieval world, they have changed too fast, lived in excess, begun to participate in abundance and know that they must pay some price for this success. They - as all regressive groups - look for some way to expiate the sin of success, to punish themselves.

Thwarted desires are also psychologically uncomfortable so that, as we have been discussing, economic disarray/populational pressure/ traumatic disasters/disorder/decaying infrastructure create daily discomforts adding up to a society gone dysfunctional.14 A dysfunctional society is at war with itself. Continuing, expanding dysfunction is psychological suicide - after all, that is what the whole process of sacrifice is all about. It is debilitating (especially because it shows no signs of letting up) and traumatic.

"Urban rages...are all too familiar for most of us in these trying and hostile times."15 Applied to the dysfunctionality of the medieval world, we can better understand the recorded propensity for violence - life stresses poorly contained heighten any feelings of anger, and aggressiveness frequently results from other perceived slights, no matter how minor. Overcrowdedness, insecurity, alcohol, family abuse, famine, natural disasters, exhaustion from hard labor are but a few of the factors behind medieval rage. Consciously or unconsciously, mankind responds (albeit differently) to these circumstances.

"The arousal of crowds may break into anger if the usual rules that govern crowd action are violated."16 Thus, we can more easily understand why medieval crime and violence occurred after dark, on Sundays and between late March and mid-October: idleness, alcohol and population pressure accelerated displays of aggressiveness. "For anger to arise from change, confusion and dissatisfaction, a person must have a coherent explanation: a new way to interpret old grievances."17 Could we not view the altered scholastic theories of the late twelfth-fourteenth centuries as offering new explanations? Add the post-plague labor/peasant outcries condemning class difference and we have a further alternative explanation for understanding long-felt grievances. "Rage...is essential to the first phase of a social movement. It unifies disparate members of the group against a common enemy: the group becomes defined by its anger."18

We well understand that there are areas of the brain associated with rage and violence: The hypothalamus (which controls autonomic processes such as respiration and heartbeat, hormones, and many emotional responses) and the amygdala, both of which are part of the evolutionary old limbic system. In the normal brain, inhibitory mechanisms regulate rage and aggression; in the malfunctioning brain, disease or injury may internally stimulate the "rage circuits" spontaneously and inappropriately.19

Yet, all anger and rage should not be solely located within the limbic system. "The human capacity for cold, premeditated revenge; for violence for profit; for hatred at injustice; for anger at arrogance: these angers originate in the neocortex, the center for symbolic thought, logic and reason."20 Clearly, environment and learning influence anger, rage and aggression. Different reactions as well as a possible parallel duality (cognitive-interpretive and feeling) suggest the psychohistorian's need to continue considering the mind-body interaction.

THE ELEMENT OF SACRED SPACE

It is becoming increasingly apparent that all groups develop sacred space(s) to restage their shared birth fantasies - rebirth space allows people to "cleanse themselves of fantasies of having been polluted by their mothers, usually through sacrifice."21 This may also be viewed in examining the medieval period.

Some have noted that "Christianity satisfied the self-esteem...without in the least transforming the outward appearance of the natural man...[so that] simple, naive, credulous" best described medieval people.22 This idea stressed the negative self-image of medieval people, their rejection of innovation, their scorn and fear of invention and a generally accepted fear of the wrath of God if they should dare to change anything. However, while conservative behavior and thinking is strongly evident throughout the medieval period (perhaps best illustrated by the dominance of St. Bernard of Clairvaux), dramatically forward thinking is equally present (best seen in the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas or Peter Abelard). What this concept correctly emphasizes, however, is that "the sensuous appeal of the new religion...is undeniable: candles, hangings, incense, baptismal water - everything combined to suggest a world of the infinite and mysterious."23 Indeed, these were the magical trappings of the collective sacred space just as the chansons des gestes "reflect a folk memory of the past."24

I do not know if anything sadder can be found than this: "this was, then, a relatively lonely existence" where daily survival turned people into prisoners of their environment.25 Yet, it is also true that there was a security and majesty in the "two primal human emotions, belief in the transcendent and fear of death."26 Certainly war, natural disasters and general dysfunction had broken down the medieval modus operandi, leaving extraordinary confusion in its wake, but this was also the moment for the transitional developments which were to remake the system into what would become a more vibrant renaissance period. While some might say that this is merely the classic "half full, half empty" controversy, I urge readers to immerse themselves in the spirit of the times and understand the contemporary group-fantasies simultaneously ebbing and flowing.

Think of the thirteenth-century Aristotelian-based reduction in the importance of the miracle phenomena (advocated by Aquinas and Albertus Magnus) as having little success with the masses who preferred the religious, superstitious "solace against the disorder and violence of the world."27 Thus, throughout the fourteenth century, miracle collections reinforced the absence of order emanating from weakened central government, by substituting sorcery and the supernatural as social control. Certainly, vexatio [demoniacal difficulty] was abundant in medieval times, incubus/succubus possession was frequently claimed or observed, conflict between God and Satan raged daily among the high and low born, and religious leaders, doctors and the saintly employed all sorts of counter magic to defeat the Devil and his minions.

All of this is by way of understanding that all societies construct their own sacred space, reinforced by a geographic locus (nation, city, church or central square), whose principal purpose is "expressing 'group cohesion' through 'public events'."28 Such was also the function of religions, cults and relics: "to consolidate and integrate commonly held norms and values."29

Similarly, we should understand sacred cloth and bones as the skin and bones of the sacred mother, to which we children cling.30 Essentially, the group becomes a natal community encircling the infused sexuality of the sacred mother's vaginality.31 This is clearly a celebration of our mothers. Ceremonial rituals such as the Catholic Mass played upon the congregation's "psychological uncertainty about the status of the bread and wine" (a ritual dyadic opposition between the material and spiritual realities) to establish a sacred community of the faithful.32 The very elements of the Mass ritual have a hypnotic design allowing the individuality of the congregants to be transformed into a group oneness.

Thus, religious objects and relics may be magical fetishes touched whenever one feels "depressed, lonely and unloved."33 Indeed, most sacred spaces appear "to house a fetish object, be it a bull roarer (called a "placenta" by Australian aborigines) or the phallic stones of Stonehenge or Delphi or the Christian cross."34 "In the 'spiritual psychology' of the middle ages, communities of faith grew into sacred communities, later developing into 'civic consciousness'."35

THE ELEMENT OF GOD VS. SATAN

Despair or loss of hope [desperatio] was most pronounced in its effect on one's family, perhaps because victims were "seized by the Devil and [doubt] the possibility of divine mercy and salvation."36 The urban, artisan-centered court records of suicide are voluminous, specific in their detail and reveal patterns of behavior: "the stated cause...was primarily insanity, and secondarily illness, loneliness, a death in the family, poverty, hunger, jealousy, imprisonment, and the ruination engendered by war."37 Hanging or drowning were the preferred methods of suicide. Shame to one's family was an additional burden of suicide so that a non-consecrated burial cast the family into infamy - suicide was deemed to be the equivalent of murder and a mortal sin as well as being anti-society, against the general good. Much repeated (from Aristotle to Aquinas), the phrase "death is the most fearful evil of life" established the concept that suicide eliminated one's ability to perform penance and gain God's grace.38

Again, fear of Satan's actions had become an intrusive element of medieval escapist fantasy. It was counterbalanced by the concept of divine intervention which now injected its control into the most intimate levels of private life. Rather than suffer public prosecution, shame or violence, both victim and family found the many miracle performers or took vows to saints believed to undertake combat with Satan. However, by the mid-fourteenth century, as Goodich says,

The climate of witch-hunting, in the course of which women were accused of sexual congress with the Devil, had not yet gripped Europe. A deviant sex act did not necessarily create a permanent stigma, since the application of penance could restore a person to spiritual health.39

THE ELEMENT OF CHILDHOOD

From the thirteenth century onward, greater focus in the miracle records was placed on the childhood of saints as well as on infancy and childhood for all.

The uncertain conditions prevalent in the fourteenth century appear to have enhanced concern for the safety of children in the face of the dangers lurking in the natural world, the perils of war, the high mortality rate of the plague years (particularly among minors), and the disrepair of Europe's physical substructure...The sharp drop in population further heightened the desire to insure the survival of endangered infants and children.40

The years 1250-1360 witnessed a significant drop in children per family from 3.5 to 1.9,41 as well as a life expectancy decline which combined to maintain a reduced population rate until the sixteenth century:

Anxiety over the vulnerability of children, coupled with a belief in their innocence and purity, led to their prominent placement in religious processions, a growing number of visions of the Infant Jesus and of visions credited to children, and the celebration of the Feast of the Innocents.42

Canonization cases, miracle records and saints' lives are filled with tales of children helped, for, it would seem, "concern for the welfare of children had become public policy."43

Apparently, this growing concern for the survival of infants resulted from: the new mendicant orders' belief that childhood innocence offered the best chance for acceptance of Christian teaching; the growing urban charities' special focus on the care of orphans and poor children; the severity of plague death among the child population making so few children available to each community (this idea would appear to be based on the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder); a decline in lifestyle, health and hygiene which particularly impacted children's survival expectations.

To this we must add the thought that the failure to have one surviving child assuring family and inheritance continuity was met by anger toward wives - a grand gesture of displacement. Fetal mortality was rivaled by infant mortality - postnatal diseases and loss of appetite were listed as the highest causes. Superstition, magic and herbal remedies were popularly combined to assist in the relief of infant problems - while some herbal remedies worked, most herbal and all of the other remedies did not. Saints noted for their child assistance efforts were routinely invoked - again, with a variety of success attributed to the saints that, most probably, belonged to natural causes. Infant and child mortality had a more serious side within the scope of religion, for it denied access to Christ in heaven to the unbaptized child's soul; it also had a more serious practical side for it eliminated support for parents in their old age and seriously complicated inheritance issues.

Miraculous child revivals or rescue strengthened the unity of the medieval communities. Their huge number also reveals the significant life threat to children (especially rural) from drowning and falls. The majority of miracle record child accidents deal with near-drowning (boys twice more prone to this than girls) in "wells, ponds, lakes, ditches, marshes, streams, pits, cesspools, dams, springs, vats of wine, beer and water, threshing pits, canals, sewers, baths and floods" - in short, in any body of water.44 Burning occurred in "ovens, boiling oil or porridge, hearths, fires and lightning storms."45 Children frequently fell from "overturned boats, towers, benches, steps, ladders, bridges and open windows" and (as if this wasn't enough) children were injured by "falling trees, knives, falling bricks, collapsing walls, spindles, runaway carriages and mill machinery;" there were also "poisonous roots, dog bites, marauding wolves, snakes, spiders and horses."46

Children were frequently injured, killed, sexually abused and taken for ransom in the increasingly fourteenth-century war habit of victimizing civilians. Of course, this stands in paradoxical contravention of the above noted heightened care and concern for the welfare of children - it would be better understood as the defense processes of splitting or ambivalence. "Angry, abusive parents may produce angry, abusive children not just by the example they set but by the injuries they inflict;"47 therefore our paradoxical contravention may more accurately reflect the reality of medieval childrearing. Assumptions that children were more dear because there were so few of them are not supported by reliable evidence. Pretending that concern for children had risen to the level of public policy contradicts statistical realities and the evidence noted above. Children, then as now, remain the convenient target for abuse.

Suffocation in bed led the list of home injuries and was particularly connected to prevalent parental drunkenness (and the unconscious turning over onto the small child lying next to the drunken parent). Of further hazard to the child's life was working at an early age as well as neglect and abandonment as the frequent outlook for children, especially of the lower classes. Higher class children didn't have it much better, however, and had the problems of strangulation or drowning while in the care of their nurse, inadequate or nonexistent rescue efforts (because of fear of legal penalties for touching their bodies before the coroner's arrival), misjudged physical ability (being expected to do more than they were really capable of doing) and simple parental neglect. Most accidents occurred while children were able to move about unsupervised (11/2 to 7 years), from late March to early October (because of the frequency of child labor and outdoor activities), and after 3 o'clock.

THE ELEMENT OF DISASTER AND DOOM

We should also emphasize that the apparent violence of nature may reflect medieval Europe's declining infrastructure. What twelfth-fourteenth century scholastics had conceptualized as a rational universe created for people's benefit "led to the consequent desacralization of nature and permitted its exploitation in order to serve human needs."48 Fourteenth-century natural catastrophes redirected this view into punishment for people's excessive pride. The 1303 and 1306/7 freezing of the Baltic combined with tornadoes, droughts and floods to heighten awareness of the power of natural destruction long before the plagues arrived. Brutal life returned (as the historical records endlessly confirm) as people suffered recurrent famine and minimal governmental efforts to assist those suffering.49 Mythic fear of nature transformed all of nature's places into danger zones filled with horrid creatures and Satan's minions, into battlegrounds between those animals symbolizing good and evil. Yet, "despite the despair and hopelessness with which many were gripped, faith in the restorative power of God remained."50

Depopulation accelerated a decline in food production, created food shortages in the cities, increased mortality, decreased care of the roads and bridges necessary for what transport remained and profoundly altered psychic outlook. "Macabre themes in art, the obsession with Death, and the sense of solitude, 'orphanization', abandonment and melancholy...suggest a traumatic change in consciousness."51 Indeed, saintly miracles increasingly display the domination of saints over the perils of nature and inanimate objects.52

There was also the flood of preachers throughout Europe frightening everyone with images of the evil awaiting them at nature's gates - this added to the popular belief that only salvation could shield them from danger. Anxieties (fundamental unconscious fears) flooded what little rational thinking there was and stirred a renewed popular piety:

The human spirit cannot sustain such imaginative torments without any relief, and beside the accumulated horror of the great dooms there flourished two modes of escape. First of all, the inexorable judge was also the Jesus of mercy, and numerous human aids to remission existed or were devised.53

Indulgences and remissions reveal the need of the tormented for some escape from the horror lying before them - even the church architecture and art conspired to bring them daily reminders of the Last Judgment. Even the purgatory invention of the eleventh-twelfth centuries offered everyone the possibility of penance after death rather than a direct ride to hell. Somehow, purgatory implied God's understanding of human imperfection so that it became a place to absolve those ultimately deemed able to enter heaven - a sacred redemption space whose transitory nature allowed popular religion the opportunity to latch on to the chance it offered them to relieve their relatives' guilt as well as their own guilt.54

CONCLUSION

The fourteenth century began with a widely accepted belief in Jesus' second coming. This fantasy smoothed the way for the declaration of a Jubilee Year (1300). It was an incredible, popularly desired idea (based on the 12th century apocalyptic predictions of Joachim of Fiore) seized upon by Boniface VIII as a means to rebuild papal wealth - remission, forgiveness, pardon and indulgences were extensively promoted by a public relations campaign the likes of which had been unseen since Urban II's second call for a crusade in 1095.55

The Jubilee was so successful that crowd control and traffic congestion relief were needed in many cities, Dante formulated his Inferno traffic jam idea based on what he observed in 1300 and materialism was catapulted into human lifestyle consciousness - "scenes of mass enthusiasm were common."56 As such, the Jubilee and its long remembered individual effects conditioned much of the popular response to the events of the fourteenth century. It is another central element in the social fabric we have been examining.

Clearly, these (change, dysfunction, sacred space, Satanic struggle, childhood, doom and Jubilee) are all part of the elements against which we should view medieval anger, rage and aggressiveness. The symptomatic dysfunction is obvious as a shaping force. That dysfunction marked a transition from what had been the medieval lifestyle paradigms into a different system more in touch with new childhood, societal, economic and emotional influences. Thus, applying the social fabric approach to understanding historical motivation and behavior provides us with a deeper understanding of why this history happened.

Jerrold Atlas is a Professor of History at Long Island University, past president of the International Psychohistorical Association, Contributing Editor of The Journal of Psychohistory, Director of the Center for Psychohistorical Studies, author of Was in Deutschland Passieren Wird...das Unbewusste der Deutschen [What Will Happen in Germany...the Unconscious of the Germans] (1992: ECON Verlag, Dusseldorf), Editorial Board, VESTNIK [Humanitarian-Economic Review], Editor of TAPESTRY: The Journal of Historical Motivations and the Social Fabric and a hypnotherapist in private practice.

References below

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References

1. Goodich, Michael (1995). Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century (U. Of Chicago, Chicago).
2. Ibid, 76-77.
3. Frenken, Ralph (1997). "The History of German Childhood Through Autobiographies," The Journal of Psychohistory, 24/4 (Spring), 390-402 shows great emotional distancing between parents and children in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries and notes that children's failure to integrate traumatic childhood experiences frequently produced persecutory alters; Gardner, Russell, Sharon Wills & Jean M. Goodwin (1995). "The Io Myth: Origins and Use of a Narrative of Sexual Abuse," The Journal of Psychohistory, 23/1 (Summer), 30-40 notes that sexually traumatized individuals respond to the intrinsic heroism of the Io myth because they are involved in "a developmental path that includes awakening to the hypocrisies of the older generation, surviving ordeals, acquiring helpful allies, and transforming overwhelming events into meaningful experience"; van der Hart, Onno, Ruth Lierens & Jean Goodwin (1996). "Jeanne Fery: A Sixteenth-Century Case of Dissociative Identity Disorder," The Journal of Psychohistory, 24/1 (Summer) notes medieval familiarity with violence against women and the idea that "women could take control of their lives and function in areas usually restricted to men" while also emphasizing Fery's history of violence and persecutory alters.
4. Traditional text sources for the information in this section include: Craig, Albert M. et al. (1994). The Heritage of World Civilizations (Macmillan, NY); Roberts, J.M. (1993). History of the World (Oxford U. Press, NY); Winks, Robin W. (1996). A History of Civilization (Prentice-Hall, NJ).
5. Goodich, op. cit., 22.
6. Ibid, 150.
7. Tavris, Carol (1989). Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, 3rd ed. (Touchstone, NY), 47.
8. Ibid, 91.
9. Atlas, Jerrold & Porzio, Laura (1994). "Anger and Rage as Symptoms of a Dysfunctional Society," Journal of Psychohistory (Summer).
10. Tavris, op. cit., 77.
11. Ibid.
12. Kolata, Gina B. (1979). "The Truth About Hypoglycemia," Ms. (November). 26-30.
13. Atlas & Porzio, op. cit.
14. DeMause, Lloyd (1991). "The Gulf War as Mental Disorder," The Nation (March 11), 302- 304 and a fuller version in The Journal of Psychohistory (Summer 1991) notes the standard symptoms for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as emotional instability with extreme fluctuations of mood, frequent panic attacks and exaggerated fears for the future, frantic spending and borrowing, drug abuse, a constriction of affect and empathy toward others, hypervigilance toward imagined enemies and feelings of unreality, detachment and estrangementÑthese aspects are clearly evident in the medieval period.
15. Tavris, op. cit., 162.
16. Ibid, 172.
17. Ibid, 268.
18. Ibid, 272.
19. Ibid, 76-77.
20. Ibid, 78.
21. Jay, Nancy (1992). Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity (U. Of Chicago, Chicago), xiii, 26-27 and 114-115; deMause, personal correspondence.
22. Wood, Charles T. (1971). The Quest for Eternity: Medieval Manners and Morals (Anchor, Garden City), 15.
23. Ibid, 5.
24. Ibid, 6.
25. Ibid, 46.
26. Goodich, op. cit., ix.
27. Ibid, 1.
28. Ibid, 150.
29. Ibid, 23.
30. Weiner, Annette B. (1992). Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (U. of California, Berkeley), 59.
31. Ibid.
32. Murphy, G. Ronald (1979). "A Ceremonial Ritual: The Mass" in Eugene G. D'Aquili et al., The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (Columbia U., NY), 319.
33. Socarides, Charles W. (1988). The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual Perversions (International Universities, Madison CT), 296.
34. DeMause, Lloyd (1997). Private correspondence.
35. Goodich, op. cit., 151-154.
36. Ibid, 79.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid, 80.
39. Ibid, 78.
40. Ibid, 86; see also Goodich (1988). "Miracles and Disbelief in the Late Middle Ages," Mediaevistik, 23-38; ÑÑ- (1982). Vita perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 25 (Stuttgart); ÑÑ- (1989). From Birth to Old Age: The Life Cycle in Medieval European Thought, 1250-1350 (Latham, MD).
41. Ibid citing A. Higounet-Nadal, "Les Facteurs de Croissance de la Ville Perigueux," Annales de Demographie Historique, (1982) 19; T. H. Hollingsworth (1969). Historical Demography (London), 375-388; John Hatchet (1977). Plague, Population, and the Economy: 1348-1530 (London), 26-29.
42. Ibid citing Goodich (1992). "Il Fanciulo come Fulcro di Miracoli e Potere Spirituale (XIII e XIV secolo)," in A Paravicini-Bagliani & A. Vauchez (Eds.), Potere Carismatici e Informali (Palermo), 38-57; Christian, William (1981). Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaisssance Spain (Princeton), 216-219 on children as visionaries.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid, 92.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Tavris, op. cit., 75.
48. Goodich, op. cit., 103 and citing Passmore, John (1974). Man's Responsibility for Nature (London); Barbour, Ian G. (1980). Technology, Environment, and Human Values (NY); Thomas, Keith (1983). Man and the Natural World (Hammondsworth), 22ff; Le Goff, Jacques (1988), tr. Arthur Goldhammer. The Medieval Imagination (Chicago), 47-59 on wilderness.
49. Ibid citing Delumeau, Jean (1978). La Peur en Occident (XIVe-XVIIIe siecles): Une Cite Assiegee (Paris) on fear of natural catastrophe in the later middle ages.
50. Ibid, x.
51. Ibid, 106 citing Meiss, Millard (1951). Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton).
52. Ibid citing Conrad of Jungingen (minister-general of the Teutonic Knights) account noting that Dorothy of Montau had rescued him many times in his battles with the Lithuanians near Vilna (ancient Polotsk) in 1394.
53. Brooke, Rosalind & Christopher (1996). Popular Religion in the Middle Ages, 1000-1300 (Barnes & Noble, NY), 153.
54. Ibid, 147.
55. Atlas, Jerrold (1990). "A Psychohistorical View of Crusade Origins," Journal of Psychohistory (Spring).
56. Goodich, op. cit., 21.

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