HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

382 MICHAEL GOODICHexample, the 1196 vision of the afterlife provided by the novice monkEdmund of Eynsham, who had remained unconscious for two days,refers to persons known to the visionary along with a detailed Christianaccount of the geography and the genres of sinners likely to suffer inthe next world. 81 At the same time, both natural scientists and theologiansdealt with the etiology and meaning of dreams, and this literaturemay assist us to understand how medieval persons interpretedthe figures and symbols that appear in dreams and revelations. 82Investigations of heresy undertaken by the Inquisition have providedsome of the most fruitful sources for personal recollections,albeit produced under coercive conditions. The widely researchedinvestigation undertaken in 1320/23 by Jacques Fournier, bishop ofPamiers (later elected Pope Benedict XII), although focusing onheresy and its dissemination has provided rather detailed accountsof the lives of such colorful figures as Bernard Delicieux, Beatricede Planissoles, Baruch of Languedoc, and Arnaud of Verniolle, amongothers. 83 If traditional literary autobiography was religious and apologetic,such trial records indirectly provide evidence concerning theeating habits, sex life, and superstitions of a wider circle of the population.In the same way, canonization trials, in which a broad rangeof witnesses—men and women, clergy and laity, urban and rural—testified under oath in support of a candidate for sainthood, providethe social historian with indirect information about the lives of commonfolk. Although the testimony dealt with the saint’s life or miracles,such narratives have been employed by social historians interestedin the daily life, medical problems and practical concerns of thelaity. 84 In the same way, the remissions issued by the royal court ofthe Châtelet contain colorful reports of the Parisian demi-monde inthe late fourteenth century and may provide a portrait of outcastsof medieval society. These detailed accounts may well assist us inthe composition of the kind of micro-history which has long eludedhistorians, who have been more concerned with the use of such trialsfor institutional history or the history of religious ideas. The testimonyof several witnesses to the same miracle in a canonization trial81‘Visio monachi de Eynsham’, ed. H. Thurston, Analecta Bollandiana 22 (1903),225–319.82Goodich (1991).83For translations of some of these sources, see Goodich (1998), 39–52, 117–43,201–15.84Finucane (1997).