Practices of Inclusion and Exclusion in Premodern Culture erokirja.indd 1 12.1.2005, 14:14 erokirja.indd 2 12.1.2005, 14:14 PRACTICES OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION in Premodern Culture k&h Edited by Eva Johanna Holmberg & Tom Linkinen Cultural History — Kulttuurihistoria 5 Turku, Finland erokirja.indd 3 12.1.2005, 14:14 CULTURAL HISTORY — KULTTUURIHISTORIA 5 Published by k&h, kulttuurihistoria, Turun yliopisto, Turku Finland ISBN 951-29-2865-5 ISSN 1458-1949 University of Turku Cultural History 20014 Turku Finland http://www.culturalhistory.net © authors Cover Maija Mäkikalli Layout Henri Terho Printed by Dark Oy, Vantaa Finland, 2005 erokirja.indd 4 12.1.2005, 14:14 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 EVA JOHANNA HOLMBERG Introduction: Constructions of difference / Thinking with difference 9 I INCLUSION MAARIT PÖSÖ Melancholy Nuns and Proud Noblewomen: Separating Oneself from Others in Religious Life According to Saint Teresa 21 ANU KEINÄNEN ‘Elect People of God in Scorn Called Quakers’: The Early Society of Friends as Different 45 PAULIINA PEKKARINEN The Rhetoric of Difference in a Renaissance Preface: Angelo Poliziano and the Problem of Irony 70 TAIKA HELOLA Twixt Two Suns: John Donne’s Poetic Perception Of The Solar System 101 II EXCLUSION ISTO VATANEN The Naked Seaman: Making a Difference with Nudity in Ancient Roman Imagery 137 EVA JOHANNA HOLMBERG Indecent roaring: Reading irreverence and confusion in Jewish worship in Early Modern England 170 erokirja.indd 5 12.1.2005, 14:14 SATU LIDMAN The importance of honour: Differences based on having or losing honour in Early Modern German society and law 201 LEENA ROSSI Keeping the Whores Recognizable: Segregating and Identifying Prostitutes in Late Medieval Europe 229 Contributors 255 6 erokirja.indd 6 12.1.2005, 14:14 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For their efforts and co-operation with the realisation of this project, thanks are due to many individuals. The editors would especially like to mention the ideas, suggestions and criticisms given by Dr Marjo Kaartinen and Dr Anu Korhonen. We believe it was originally Marjo who suggested the compilation of this collection one cold afternoon, when the premodern research group was having one of its gatherings in the wing of the building of political history in Turku. After that the col- lection began to take shape with the tightest of schedules possible, and over the summer the editors spent long hours reading, writing and com- menting on the achievements (fortunately it rained almost all summer, so we were happy sitting inside the Cultural History building and its immediate vicinity…). The last stages of editorial work were conducted in a rather unusual manner and surroundings, by e-mail and sms con- necting the cities of York and London in the UK and Turku in Finland. We hope that these peculiarities have only increased our experience of editing, not resulted in too many errors. Ellen Valle corrected our ”fi nglish” witticisms with precision and enormous effectiveness. Henri Terho is thanked for the layout and Maija Mäkikalli for giving the book its outward appearance. The red colour of the cover conceals an inside joke: The working title of this volume was for many months ”Punainen erokirja” (”Red book of ”sepa- ration” or ”difference”, since the word ”ero” has several meanings in Finnish) after the novel by Pirkko Saisio which won the Finlandia prize for 2003. Saisio donated her prize to SETA (the foundation for promot- ing sexual equality), and we fi nd this gesture more than suitable to be erokirja.indd 7 12.1.2005, 14:14 mentioned as an afterthought to our collection. Since the themes of difference and otherness, and the cultural narratives surrounding these, all form part of our research project on premodern English experiences of otherness, we the editors would like to thank all the writers of this volume for enriching our views and challenging our preconceptions. In addition, the writers would individually like to acknowledge the help given by Anu Korhonen and Hanna Järvinen from the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Marjo Kaartinen, Liisa Lagerstam, Sakari Ollitervo, Ritva Hapuli, Taika Helola, Teemu Immonen and Marika Räsänen from Cultural History, University of Turku, Stefan Breit, the Bayerisches Hauptsstaatsarchiv, München, Jenni Meriläinen from General History, University of Turku, and Jutta Vuorio from Åbo Akademi, Turku. We are also grateful to Professor Kari Immonen, who gave permission to publish the result of our work in the Cultural His- tory series. Eva Johanna and Tom, in London and York, January 2005 8 erokirja.indd 8 12.1.2005, 14:14 INTRODUCTION: CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIFFERENCE/ THINKING WITH DIFFERENCE Eva Johanna Holmberg Good vines grow in that country; there the women drink wine and not men. And women shave their beards, and not men. —The Travels of Sir John Mandeville1 In this passage from Sir John Mandeville’s famous travelogue, the author is playing with our understanding of the proper practices of men and women. He tells of a strange land in India, where the normal customs are the reverse of his own and even human corporealities are strange and divergent from the norm. Mandeville is constructing a dif- ference between his own culture and the culture of the strange land. This he does by telling a story and by suggesting an interpretation of it. While doing so, he makes it possible for the historian to take a brief glimpse at his cultural world, a world that may seem to us as strange and foreign a country as the one Mandeville himself is describing.2 This collection of articles focuses on the constructions and experi- 1 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1983), 124. 2 On the past as a foreign country see Catherine Brown’s thought-provoking article “In the middle”. Brown 2000, 548–49. erokirja.indd 9 12.1.2005, 14:14 Eva Johanna Holmberg ences of difference in Premodern cultures by posing such questions as “what was difference” and “how was it constructed”. How can we recognize or trace these differences in the past? What were the motives behind these constructions, and what kind of trajectories did difference take? It is perhaps already clear that we approach culture both as a structure and as a communicative process, in which people took part by sharing and simultaneously creating knowledge of their surrounding reality. Experiences and preconceptions were equally involved in these processes; thus questions as to whether these culturally constructed differences were ‘real’, or what ‘actually’ took place, are less relevant.3 Premodern people construed and conceptualized difference and we want to grasp what these phenomena meant to them. In each article in the volume, questions of difference are situated in a historical setting. This is done in order to interpret the meanings, con- sequences and practices that were involved in the process. As cultural historians, we tend to think that in order to make a past culture under- standable we need to look at meanings, experiences and discourses in their cultural milieu and fi nd keys to an understanding of practices and rhetoric in the specifi c cultural context. We try to make the thoughts of people in the past understandable and fi nd a logic in their thinking, but not to impose our logic on them.4 This means that constructions of difference fi nd their meanings through the empirical study of a given period and its cultural and social practices, in our case the cultures and peoples that lived before modernity. The problem of difference has been posed many times, and the schol- arly discussion surrounding it is as varied as ever. The postcolonial situ- ation and the discussion of gender have made the constructed nature of history visible, and the consequences of cultural imaging and imagin- ing even more so. Difference, its constructions and fi ctions were also part of peoples’ lives before modernity, postmodernity, and – if you will – post-postmodernity. People divided themselves and their others into groups: nationalities, genealogies, religions and professions. They tried to exclude otherness, to make it invisible or even extinct. By defi ning 3 On cultural construction and constructivism see Tuohela & Korhonen 2002, 136–37. 4 See eg. Kaartinen 2002, 1–2. 10 erokirja.indd 10 12.1.2005, 14:14 Introduction: Constructions of difference/ Thinking with difference and outlining difference they tried to delineate their realities into com- prehensible and communicable entities.5 Otherness can be seen as a con- struction that has many sides, and, against which it is easier to defi ne oneself. These practices and phenomena can also be detected in the Premodern cultural world, even if people in the past hardly thought of otherness, difference and sameness in the way they have been described by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak or Simone de Beauvoir.6 In the Middle Ages, for example, the ideal state of society was a peaceful and unifi ed one, a Christian community bound together by hierarchical relationships. In its ideal state, this community formed a perfect symmetry and shape, since its foundation and ideals were created by God. Premodern European cultures may have been more communal than nowadays, where we might characterise our own cul- ture as a mosaic structure that constantly reforms and reinvents itself, creating subcultures, countercultures and complex identity-formations. The divide between the Premoderns and ourselves, however, must not lead us to see that culture as more solid or simpler than our own. Pre- modern people had their own ways of challenging the ideals of their societies, and of being active and even rebellious agents in their lives. They could create their own (sub)groups, challenging the values of the surrounding society that tried to exclude them.7 Women could drink 5 Boundaries between communities, selves and their others can be approached in the manner that was outlined by Mary Douglas in her seminal Purity and Danger.