Virtual Refectory: Seeing is not aways Believing

Let's try and make sense of all this...

How did the medieval churchgoer sense the world? What did they see, hear, smell, taste and touch? Did they do all of that, in fact? Or did they do it all at once—or not at all? That’s all for this week’s virtual refectory…

Urban II at the Council of ClermontJean Colombe (Public Domain)

In 1154, shortly after returning to his home city of York from pleading with the Pope for the reinstatement of his archiepiscopal position, the twice-elected Archbishop, William FitzHerbert (fl. 1141-1147, 1153-1154), died allegedly having been poisoned by the chalice he used to celebrate Mass. A tomb to the archbishop sprang up in the centre of York Minster’s nave to house his sacred body. Pilgrims and visitors soon began reporting on a sweet-smelling oil radiating from the monument, which had begun oozing from the archbishop’s relics. The sweet smell this produced confirmed William’s virtue and, more importantly, his authenticity as a miracle-working saint. In 1227 he was officially canonised. Spigots were added to the sarcophagus to help dispense the liquid into small vessels such as ampullae: flasks for sanctified liquids. This oil had reputed healing powers, and so the containers were mass-produced as souvenirs for worshipful pilgrims who journeyed to encounter William’s numinous body. In the mid twentieth century, chemical analysis conducted on one of the flasks revealed that it still contained ‘a pleasant-smelling liquid’, likely a mixture of aromatic, and presumably medicinal, herbs and spices, stirred into water. The question arises: Were these smells counterfeit or real-life sensory encounters?

Cripples collect healing oil at the shrine of St William of York. York Minster, North Choir Transept (YM-nVII-16a (new position 15b)).© Dean & Chapter York

Regardless, they are indicative of a way of thinking about sensory perception that is quite unlike ours today. On the face of it, studying the senses of the medieval past should be a straightforward matter. Our bodies are ostensibly the same – so medieval men and women must therefore have ‘sensed’ the world just like us. But did they?

In The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919), Johan Huizinga remarks that ‘we, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine were formerly enjoyed’. A precursor to L. P. Hartley’s immortal first line to The Go-Between (1953) perhaps – ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’ – indeed, the physical sensations of medieval people were different, but the impossible chasm Huizinga alleged between their perception and our own is wildly exaggerated.

While the schism may not have been great, the medieval world certainly differed from us in many ways. Today, we objectively reason, understand and believe what occurs in the world through our interactions with the bodily senses – what we taste, touch, smell, see and hear. The medieval European would be hard-pressed to buy into this concept. Although the principle of the five human senses can be traced back to Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) De Anima (On the Soul) (written c.350BC), the separation of the five senses recorded in modern Western classifications was much less significant for medieval society (and even some cultures to this day). Why? The act of perception. Our understanding of how the senses work is determined by society and culture. Societies of the past not only approached perception differently, but their ‘ways of sensing’ also varied.