5 Looking for Burn Victims or Survivors in Medieval Europe

Abstract

There can be nothing more traumatic than being burnt. The pain of the initial injury might give way to shock, blistering, further pain and possible infection. The extent of the injury-the depth of burning through layers of skin, the pro portion of the body surface caught in the flames (scalds share some of the same effects, but not all)-can determine whether a patient is likely to survive or succumb to death. Secondary effects, such as inhaling smoke, can severely damage internal organs or cause the person to lose consciousness, delaying or preventing their escape from the fire. Above all, burns are disfiguring-even modern surgical technologies utilizing skin grafts and prosthetics cannot restore the 'before' appearance of a person. As burns survivor James Partridge, founder and CEO of the UK charity Changing Faces has commented, 'Success fully changing faces amounts to completely facing up to your new face ... and effectively persuading all those whom you meet that behind your mask is a perfectly normal person....'1 The trauma caused by burns, then, can be cata strophic in both physical, psychological and social terms, yet the historiography of burning and being burned in the medieval period seems mainly to focus on the use of fire as a tool to destroy heretical bodies or books,2 or as a means to dispose of corpses,3 or, most devastating of all, as a tool of warfare, discussed below. Whether consigning both to the flames was intended to evoke images of burning in hell has recently been open to question: certainly fire did not totally 1 James Partridge, Changing Faces: the Challenge of Facial Disfigurement (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 4. Although his comment is about a severely burnt face, the change he refers to could apply-though possibly less dramatically-to any visible part of the body that is burned. 2 An early example of fire as a tool of execution is discussed by Michael D. Barbezat, 'The fires of hell and the burning of heretics in the accounts of the executions at Orleans in 1022' ,

Book Review: Studying Gender in Medieval Europe

“…A key argument in Skinner's intersectional model for medieval gender is her discussion of how social class has affected the accounts of women from the medieval period. She asks the reader to examine how our idolisation of female writers in this period as the creators of modern feminist writing has possibly enabled us to ignore some of the wider contexts around these figures' success (Skinner, 2018). Skinner points out that many of these texts may not have existed were it not for their authors' social and class status.…”

“…The ability to pay for a scribe or fund a gentry education in Latin is key to their conception. Skinner asks how much ownership these female authors had over their own texts when they were scribed by other people, who were also often men (Skinner, 2018). Christine de Pizan, for example, is mentioned as the daughter of a wealthy cartographer allowing her access to an education in Latin and Literature due to wealth.…”

“…Skinner introduces this text by setting the reader’s expectations. She states that for some, this book may come as a disappointment and that ‘although it will explore the impact of theory on gender history, it does not form the starting point in this survey, and [she] does not analyse literary texts at all’ (Skinner, 2018: 2). This is not untrue; the focus of this text is the discussion of theory itself and where it has arisen from in the past.…”

“…Skinner devotes a large portion of this book to contemplating how an intersectional approach to gender is always key to medieval gender theory. She writes in her conclusion that ‘the gendered practice of medieval history is not enough if, in focusing on binary gender relations, it ignores other dynamics at work such as class, racial prejudices’, able-bodiedness and heteronormativity (Skinner, 2018: 161). This is an integral part of Skinner’s investigation throughout Studying Gender in Medieval Europe as she questions the access women had to language, how religion and law impacted them, and how men were socialised to construct gender and masculinity at this time too.…”

“…Skinner prefaces this argument by demonstrating how gender categories were constructed through social and cultural behaviours at this time (particularly through religion and law), and how we have come to consider them since. In her first chapter, Skinner reminds us that gender is a ‘relational category’ and that gender readings of the medieval period must be ‘highly conscious of not only what is presented on the page, but how it came to be presented in that way’ (Skinner, 2018: 9). This outlook can become a helpful tool to readers who are looking to study this field themselves.…”