Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred by Barbara Newman (review)

Growing out of her 2011 Conway Lectures, Barbara Newman’s Medieval Crossover is concerned with the nature of the relationship between the secular and sacred before the early modern period. The medieval world, Newman argues, held there to be a persistent, dialectical relationship between the two realms of sacred and secular. Through an analysis of the courtly love literature and the mystical theologies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Newman argues that there exist many modes of dialogue that she qualifies as crossover, that is, forms of interaction where the sacred and secular meet or even merge. While acknowledging that the dynamics between sacred and secular realms have changed dramatically since the medieval period, Newman cautions against bracketing off “secular” as a strictly modern concept. The sacred was, for the Middle Ages, just as much a means of processing and framing the secular as it was a mode of thinking in its own right. The two have always been in dialogue, and here Newman purposes to show just how ripe a world they were able to create together.

Newman divides Medieval Crossover into five chapters organized by the overarching theme of Grail and Rose as yin and yang of medieval sacred and secular love. Her first chapter introduces the several hermeneutical and literary principles which were common to both theology and literature, such as felix culpa (the “fortunate fault” exemplified by the Fall out of which God yet brings good) and the both/and dialectic (an exegetical practice of reading textual tensions not with the oppositional either/or but the inclusive consideration of simultaneous true interpretations). Her second chapter deals with the different literary traditions of pagan matiere, Christian sen, and the narrative structure of conjointure, the romance ideal famously articulated by Chrétien de Troyes in his prologue to Érec et Énide. Here she explores the double-coding of secular and sacred which the narrative structure of conjointure holds together to produce a double-judgment in which figures such as Lancelot and the Grail come to be points of contact between the two realms.

Where Medieval Crossover truly begins to shine is in the third chapter, where Newman situates Marguerite Porete not only alongside Le Roman de la Rose but also within the local poetic societies and competitions in Picardy. This chapter is a welcome approach to studies of Porete, which, as Newman notes, have tended to focus on Porete as a mystic more than as a writer. Here Newman exhibits an enviable ability to move between historical inquiry and theological examination, as befits the dialectical nature of her subject matter. Her strong, multidisciplinary background allows her to connect Marguerite to the context of mystique courtoise, which creates a solid platform from which she is able to effectively argue for the interplay between their perspectives of love and the degree to which the boundaries between the two were permeable. When Newman turns to the subject of parody in her examination of The Passion of the Jews in Prague among others in the fourth chapter, her analysis can be similarly praised. It is by first presenting the reader with a detailed account of the social situation of Jews in Prague that her analysis of the layers of the text is able to reach both a theological and literary depth, situating its anti-Judaism at the crossroads of the theological complexities surrounding medieval Christian attitudes towards Jews. The result is a more nuanced view of the nature of medieval parody, helping the reader access the ambiguity of the genre and escape the trap of reading all parody as subversive by default.

In the final chapter, Newman returns to the images of Grail and Rose which she gave the reader to hold at the beginning of her study, reintroducing them in light of the work of René of Anjou and the accompanying illustrations he commissioned. His life becomes a lens to his writing through which Newman examines how the two loves of...