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Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church

2019; Penn State University Press; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/preternature.8.1.0151

2161-2196

Daniel Harms,

Until recently, many scholars dismissed fairies as fantasies best suited for children's tales, or as the benighted beliefs of rural agrarians as opposed to those of cosmopolitan elites. Now a large number of studies, such as Diane Purkiss's Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories (2000), Alaric Hall's Elves in Anglo-Saxon England (2007), and Annabel Gregory's Rye Spirits: Faith, Faction and Fairies in a Seventeenth Century English Town (2013), have turned to these ambiguous, mysterious figures to reveal the beliefs and practices of the people who spoke, wrote, and even claimed to encounter them. Still, the bulk of this work concentrates on the evidence from the early modern period and later, with evidence for the medieval period focusing on specific genres, such as charms or romances. Richard Firth Green's Elf Queens and Holy Friars is particularly welcome, as its five chapters provide an in-depth examination of the penitential literature, chroniclers' accounts, romances, and other material that touches on fairies.How should we define fairies, if that is possible? Green does not pursue an emic definition based on how medieval people defined “fairies” and “elves.” Instead, he sees them as a “class of numinous, social, humanoid creatures who were widely believed to live at the fringes of the human lifeworld and interact intermittently with human beings” (4). He quickly excludes giants—which seems an appropriate distinction—but he also dismisses domestic spirits, or entities that helped or hindered the household. This is despite the fact that several of the authors Green mentions, including Gervase of Tilbury, William of Auvergne, and Raoul de Presles, discuss such beings in association with Green's “fairies.” Thus, a notable omission throughout Green's work is Gerald of Wales's account of the spirit Simon from the Itinerary (1.12), a being said to have served as steward of the household of Elidore de Stackpole for over forty days. This does not invalidate Green's categorization or its usefulness, but his definition requires more explanation than what he provides.In chapter 1, “Believing in Fairies,” Green explores medieval fairy belief, beginning with its expression in the religious literature of the time. He details how scholastic attitudes shifted from outright skepticism in the tenth century to portrayal of fairies as demons or demonic illusions in the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, many European intellectuals held the position that any belief in nondemonic fairies was heretical. Not all of the clerical literature was condemnatory, however. Pastoral literature, driven by the need to connect with the populace, at times implied that fairies could be “neutral angels” or demons less guilty than the majority of Satan's host, categorizations decried by the church. Green concludes this chapter with discussions illustrating the extent of popular belief in fairies, including the linkage of Melusine to the Lusignan family, accounts connected with the Forest of Brocéliande, and popular romances geared to audiences with more sympathetic views of fairies—and which, Green argues, we should see as more than simple entertainment.Chapter 2, “Policing Vernacular Belief,” uses “vernacular” to describe the attitudes and literature of both the aristocracy and the commoners, with the former receiving greater emphasis because of the existence and prevalence of their writings. With clerical attitudes toward fairies increasingly emphasizing their demonic aspects, vernacular authors who included fairies in their works developed strategies to distinguish the two, such as depicting fairies as beautiful instead of ugly, inserting expressions of orthodox piety into fairy dialogue, and quietly excising passages that could be misconstrued. In particular, romance authors assigned fairies four noninfernal characteristics: sexuality, fertility, mortality, and the ability to prophesy—though this last characteristic may have been less effective, given theological statements that demons could imitate foresight with access to information unavailable to humans. Green's analysis on the other points is compelling, however, and he concludes this chapter by cautioning us to set aside today's ideas of genre when approaching the material, noting how the frisson between the different societal perspectives on fairies was largely responsible for their popularity, and observing how even elite narratives should be examined for elements that might display potential resistance to supposedly hegemonic ideologies of the period.As they do today, people in medieval times had nocturnal experiences ranging from sleep paralysis to erotic dreams. One prominent explanation of these phenomena ascribed them to “incubi”—spirits that seem to have been closer to modern notions of fairies than to demons, as Green explains in chapter 3, “Incubi Fairies.” Indeed, Gerald of Wales describes the supernatural steward Simon as the offspring of an incubus. Theologians were particularly troubled when these beings, in keeping with their characteristic of fertility, fathered children. The chapter ends with a brief digression into early modern fairy magic, through the windows of Reginald Scot and Folger Ms. X.d.234. Despite the late dates on many manuscripts detailing rites of fairy magic, I would disagree with Green's assertion that these rituals are merely “ventriloquizing” the language from other, older liturgical or magical sources (109). Such language not only reflects rhetoric from past scholarship that dismisses magic as inauthentic, but also does not adequately describe the nature of magical operations. Such rituals appear in many magical miscellanies, published and manuscript, alongside other operations dealing with demons, angels, unspecified “spirits,” and other entities. If records of these early modern rituals are considered to be “ventriloquizing” other sources, the copyists show no sign of treating them differently than the bulk of their material. Green's reliance on Folger MS. Xd.234, the only known manuscript to consist exclusively of fairy magic rituals, might have led him to see these rituals as being separate from other magical procedures. Such rituals also include elements—such as the sexual activities Green notes—not present in the surrounding rites, thus seeming to assimilate clerical and vernacular traditions instead of simply letting one overshadow the other.Changelings, fairy children left behind in place of human infants, had previously been thought absent from medieval stories. Via the incubus-fairy connection noted above, however, Green's chapter 4, “Christ the Changeling,” relates such accounts as early as William of Auvergne, with the most notable being the tale of sick infants left at the tomb of the sainted dog Guinefort. Other hints of this may be found in the usage of the Francien terms chanjon or changon, and the more common Middle English conjeoun, in contexts that suggest bastardry and opprobrium. In one instance—namely, John of Powderham's claim to be Edward II—Green's suggestion that the matter of dispute was a changeling accusation seems stretched, but, for the most part, his argument about the Middle English term's hidden significance is compelling. Particularly noteworthy is the section of this chapter dealing with the use of such terms in the English mystery plays, the authors of which placed them in the mouths of antagonists to defame holy individuals—even Jesus. Such associations between Jesus and changelings may have resonated with the audience, largely to make the antagonists of these pieces who spoke such allegations more unsympathetic, but also raising the possibility of subversive interpretations of these plays that undercut the dominant ecclesiastical narrative.The final chapter, “Living in Fairyland,” begins with the hotly debated question as to whether King Arthur was dead or had withdrawn to a hidden land from which he would one day return. Other figures, some supernatural, others natural, were also said to live in this distant yet accessible realm, which also served as home to fairy-stolen individuals returned to their families and to the supernatural nocturnal riders known as “the Wild Hunt.” As clerical influence over the tradition grew, however, this hidden place was more often labeled as the abode of the dead, from which there could be no true return. Indeed, as Green observes, early accounts of purgatory draw several aspects from the descriptions of this preternatural land.Green's postscript, which deals specifically with the early modern period, is undoubtedly the most problematic section of his book. He notes the conflation of fairies and witches in some contemporary sources, using this conflation to suggest that educated individuals did not necessarily distinguish between the two. Nonetheless, many of the sources Green cites are foreign language dictionaries from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, raising the question of whether the authors are expressing their own definitions or their conceptions of the definitions of native speakers. Based on a small sample, Green argues that one reason witch trials never become as prominent in England as on the Continent was that elites equated witches with fairies, which, in turn, they considered in light of Chaucer's statements that fairies had departed after priests had filled the land. We do have records of witch trials indicating that some of the accused claimed their magical knowledge came from fairies, but this seems a specific characteristic of confessions of “cunning folk,” or service magicians, which count as only a fraction of witch trials across the British Isles. The test of Green's assertion would need to come from contemporary documentation displaying that the fairy-witch association affected the judgments of elites in the proceedings. He provides no such examples, save for Reginald Scot, who is something of an outlier when it comes to sixteenth-century attitudes about witches.More problematically, Green asserts that today's witchcraft scholarship has privileged the views of the judges and authorities, while ignoring those of the accused and the broader populace. He cites only one book—Clark's Thinking with Demons (1997)—that does not deal with the “European periphery” (196), which he exempts from this judgment. Many scholars would likely disagree with that assessment, and it would be interesting to know what other literature Green might be alluding to.Green omits one important set of sources from his analysis: the charms to protect against elves, or heal someone under the malign influence of them. Green mentions a thirteenth-century example in his introduction, but these charms apparently make little impact on his analysis. Although Alaric Hall, in his 2007 work on elves in Anglo-Saxon England, cautions us not to read such evidence from clerical sources as necessarily representing popular beliefs, the existence of a thriving charm tradition does provide another perspective on these beings. A key inquiry might be directed toward how “intermittent” we can truly call fairies' interactions with humans, given their presence in houses and stables and the existence of a centuries-long tradition of apotropaic and medicinal magic.Although Green occasionally tries to cover complex or controversial matters quickly, Elf Queens and Holy Friars overall has much to recommend it. Most of Green's work herein is meticulous and insightful, worthy of the attention of medievalists, as well as scholars of fairies and other “intermediate beings.”