Welcome to Pilgrimage

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Today the Roving Medievalist got to visit the Shrine of St.Thomas a Becket. Not quite in Canterbury, delightful as a November trip to England might have been, but at St. John's in the Village Episcopal Church. The event, called "Welcome to Pilgrimage," featured a reproduction of the shrine of St. Thomas (see left) in the sanctuary, with a storyteller/nun leading tours, showing pictures of Canterbury Cathedral, and explaining just who this guy was. Although we were not invited to climb the stairs in front of the shrine on our knees, the reproduction had a cheerful quality that the original might not have; it resembled a large reliquary (but not large enough to hold all of the Saint) with sparkly jewels and silver curlicues all over it.

Visitors were also able to visit a Medieval "Street" fair (it was inside!), with various stalls--the Calligrapher, clothier, metalsmith, needle worker, stained glass maker, and wood worker's stalls. Throughout, there was music supplied by a green-clothed harper. A the calligrapher's stall, we made seals to authorize our own documents; the clothier told about Thomas' medieval vestments and invited participants to make Thomas a Becket paper dolls; the metalsmith offered rubbings; the needleworker was making banners for the procession, onto which we were encouraged to glue decorations of felt and jewels; the stained glass maker was a hit with the lovely medieval ladies featured above, who all made mini-windows to hang in their maxi-windows; the woodworker showed us how to make frames out of popsicle sticks.

Because no fair is complete without food, the Baker's Stall offered meat and vegetable pies (the Roaving Medievalist particularly enjoyed the mushroom variety, and horrified one of the hosts by suggesting that there traditionally were raisins in the beef pies to cover up the taste of rotten meat), cheese gnocci (delicious; thank you!), apples, and cider.

The fair ended with a procession with a bagpiper (the Miller leading us out of town, perhaps?); the decorated banners were carried into the shrine where evensong was celebrated. (A link to the announcement is below.)

The event was not particularly authentic, although it was great fun. After all, it's not April. And none of the crafts, apart from the seals, were particularly medieval in their actual form. But the spirit was an authentic mix of spiritual and secular; while the fair itself was primarily a secular affair, the particular nature of some of the crafts reminded us of what the impetus for the event actually was, and what would have brought pilgrims to Canterbury in the first place; however enticing the collecting of pilgrimage badges might have seemed, the real reason was the visit to the shrine. The flyer said, "We hope that you enjoy your medieval experience today and that what you learn will say something to you about your own pilgrimage and search for what is meaningful and holy in your life."

The Roving Medievalist is reminded about what is meanigful in the search for medieval vestiges in our own culture by this; even if the event is not truly medieval, or truly authentic, it tells us tha there is something inherently valuable in looking back to the Middle Ages for certain elements of popular experience, of the handmade over the mass produced, of the function of the communal experience in our individual lives; of the things that drew people together and how they might still draw us together for the kinds of experience that bring us to the edge of transcendence. We don't need a medieval fair to do this, but it does suggest something about that historical moment that we desire to reclaim and something about the way it speaks to us still.

http://www.stjvny.org/artman/publish/article_201.asp

Going Back in Time!

On Sunday, October 3, the Roving Medievalist (and 40,000 others) attended the Fort Tryon Park Medieval Fair, sponsored by the Washington Heights and Inwood Development Corporation and the New York City Parks Department. Located in the park around the Cloisters, the fair offers a whole range of entertainments--music, falconry, juggling, magic, demonstrations, jousting, food, tchochkes, people watching--worthy of spending an afternoon wandering. Also good for playing the game of "Medieval/Not Medieval." While the Society for Creative Anachronism was creatively anachronisitc, demonstrating medieval combat in a field surrounded by vendors who traded in authenticity, and there was some beautiful music performed by a variety of different groups, the definition of "medieval" was clearly being stretched quite creatively. See, for instance, some medieval (?) pirates who seemed to be wandering the festival.

The food offerings were also far more medievalism than medieval, as you will note from some of the selections listed under the optimistic "Medieval Food" banner!

While the falconry demonstrations were fascinating; I was slightly sorry they didn't allow the falcons to pick off pigeons, squirrels, and small children. The Unicorn and its colt were surprisingly charming; as inventions walking right out of the Cloisters tapestries, they were delightful. The all-while unicorn was ridden by an elegant lady in sky blue, while the brown and white colt was led by a park worker. For all the medievalism going on, more strikingly medieval were the two policewomen on horseback; something about the way they rode through the crowds on their large draft horses--the descendents of medieval destriers--captured a feeling that people must have experienced during medieval fairs--of their passage being disrupted by people riding by on large animals. Hard to describe but interesting to experience!

While not so tempted by the beef empanadas, the Roving Medievalist did have a turkey leg, and was tempted by Ye Olde Fried Dough, but the line was too long. Also enticing were the quite effective-looking weapons, although the thought of carrying a broad-axe on the A train was something of an impediment. The range of available weapons was, indeed, impressive. It's hard to believe there's a strong market for maces, axes, adzes, swords, daggers, and chakrams. I mean, where does one use them? I can see them being decorative at events of this kind, and I know jousting is enjoying a (may I say it?) renaissace, but these hardly seem like practical purchases. Of course, neither did some of the other offerings--quasi-medieval lingerie, dragon statues, fairy dust, and other things vaguely associated with the Middle Ages. But then, there were face painters essentially illuminating people's faces, so that their eyes looked like the capital letters in manuscripts, and a woman making authentic pigments out of ground stones, although the paintings she then made with them seemed less medieval than the face painting. Anyone looking for something truly medieval would probably find the musical offerings the most rewarding; from Melissa the Loud on the Hurdy-Gurdy, to the Salmone Trio, to the Machaut Men: Machaut must go on!, there were many opportunities to hear well-performed, interesting choices from the musical past. But, to be very non-medieval about it, with 40,000 people walking around, the music would have benefitted from some 21st Century amplification! It was often hard to hear, and the small rings of hay-bale seats didn't really bring the audience close enough not to need it. Trying to hear acapella singing while vendors sell fried dough and potions across the road is a challenge--doubtless one experienced by medieval people, but one that didn't add to the experience.

Thinking about the event, it is certainly easy to praise the WHIDC and NYC Parks Department and the organizers for putting together an event that brought so many people to upper Manhattan on a day when the subways were a mess, and for offering an eccentric, but at least minorly authentic sense of a medieval fair. But what "medieval" means in that sentence is certainly up for grabs; the official parts of the fair (i.e., the booths, performances, demonstrations, and theatre) provided definitions of the past that ranged from very accurate (the SCA and Adrian demonstrations) to eccentric (the unicorn, the plays for children) to parodic (the Canterbury Tales plays) to charming (the Roving Medievalist could not resist buying and consuming a gingerbread monk!). And the participants wandering the fair in costume suggested that "medieval" means anything decorative, past, fantastic, or historical; from the pirates, to the fairies, to the franciscans, to the seemingly edwardian ladies and gentlemen, to the strollers who walked right out of video games, the "medievalist" or "neomedieval" stood in for any kind of attempt to be truly like the period we call the "Middle Ages." So what is the fantasy? Of a more friendly, inclusive past? Of a simpler time, when pleasures were tied more to the physical than the technological? An opportunity to dress up and who cares what it means?

After all, while the fantasy clearly doesn't include the darker elements of the period, such as plague, intolerance, torture, violence, danger, and infection, one might say that in having to use the port-o-sans, they got as close as we get in contemporary American life.

This is the challenge the Roving Medievalist faces in studying medievalism. But it's not a challenge without its pleasures.