Table Of Content
THE SAINT AND THE COUNT
THE SAINT AND THE COUNT
A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian
LEAH SHOpkOw
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2021
Toronto Buffalo London
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The saint and the count / Leah Shopkow.
Names: Shopkow, Leah, author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200411527 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200411683 |
ISBN 9781487525866 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487508432 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781487538231 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487538224 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: France – History – Capetians, 987–1328 – Biography – Sources. |
LCSH: France – History – Capetians, 987–1328 – Historiography. | LCSH: France –
History – Capetians, 987–1328 – Biography. | LCSH: France – History – Capetians,
987–1328. | LCSH: Christian hagiography. | LCSH: Historiography. | LCSH: Vitalis,
of Savigny, Saint, –1122. | LCSH: Etienne, de Fougères, Bishop of Rennes, –1178.
Classification: LCC DC82.A2 S56 2021 | DDC 944/.021092–dc23
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Abbreviations xi
List of Maps and Figures xiii
IntroductIon
“We Should Not Pass Over in Silence”
1
chapter one
“In the province of Bayeux”: St. Vitalis in
the Historical and Hagiographic Record
7
chapter two
“Strive to rise swiftly from the dust”:
The Author Stephen of Fougères
31
chapter three
“Men who built the Holy Church”:
Hagiography and Genre
59
chapter four
“These are not our inventions”:
Miracles and Doubt
77
chapter fIve
“They tried to kill him”:
Hagiography and the Problem of Violence
95
vi CONTENTS
afterword: “So that my words may not bore the reader” 113
appendIx 1: The Life of St. Vitalis 117
appendIx 2: The Life of St. Firmat 149
Glossary of terms and concepts 175
BIBlIoGraphy 185
Index 195
prEfACE
This book is intended to be a “worked example” of how an historian analyzes
a primary source text. In the sciences, teachers and students are familiar with
the concept of the worked example, where a teacher goes through a problem in
front of the students, asking the questions that he or she would ask at each junc-
ture and doing the steps. The worked example is analogous to the “think aloud”
practiced by cognitive psychologists, where a person is given something to work
on, perhaps a text to read, and is asked to say aloud what he or she is thinking
while doing so. Sam Wineburg, to whom those of us interested in teaching and
learning in history owe so much, has used this technique to great effect. The
website whose construction he directed with the late Roy Rosenzweig, “Histori-
cal Thinking Matters” (http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/), offers examples of
professional historians doing just that, and it also offers case studies of topics
from American history.
There is great value in these kinds of shorter exercises, but there is also value,
I believe (or else I wouldn’t be writing this book!), in a longer and more sus-
tained examination of how an historian approaches a text, because it addresses
the fundamental challenges posed to novices by historical work in general and
primary sources in particular. First, to the novice, the surface of primary sources
is often “slippery.” Unless there is something very odd in a text, primary sources
may not offer obvious places to dig in. Students often take them to be illustra-
tions of a past we already know and understand rather than clues to a past that
historians are always constructing, using these sources as constituent elements.
Second, primary sources may use unfamiliar vocabulary, may use familiar words
to mean quite unfamiliar things, or may talk about familiar things in unfamiliar
ways. Primary sources are like new neighbors: It can take us some time to get
beyond the surface pleasantries and disagreements, commonalities and differ-
ences, to explore who those people really are. Finally, we bring ourselves to the
past. As Thomas Aquinas puts it, that which is known is known according to the
capacity of the knower. Our knowing is shaped in the present, so to get a better
understanding of the past, we have to change our capacity as knowers, which is
difficult. We have to become aware of our positionality (our view of the world
viii prEfACE
as it has been shaped by our own historical context, our individual experiences,
and our personalities), and we have to become aware of the positionalities of the
texts we are reading. This is a slow process, but one well worth doing, and it has
many applications beyond history.
This is a different sort of book than perhaps you have encountered before, a
hybrid between a scholarly monograph (a single-subject scholarly book aimed
primarily at other scholars) and a methods book. I learned new things I wanted to
share as I was writing it, and I’ve observed normal scholarly conventions like cita-
tion. But I have also thought about the intellectual moves I was making and have
tried to make them as visible as possible, since I know through my work in teach-
ing and learning in history that intellectual moves are often invisible. I have always
liked the analogy of figure skating to explain the problem. The name of the sport
comes from the patterns that skaters left on the ice, and originally judges based
a large part of their score on these patterns, not on how the skater looked while
making them. The technique that produced clean figures, however, was often not
pretty to look at.1 A scholarly book to a reader not attuned to scholarly methods is
like patterns on the ice: The patterns are obvious, but how they came to be is not.
Of course, scholarly books do contain clues to their genesis. We leave footnotes at
the bottom of the page (or worse, WORSE!, endnotes at the back of a book where
they can be ignored) that show what moves we’ve made. Yet even so, this can be
very hard for novices to grasp, as Laura Westhoff has shown in her illuminating
article on historiographic mapping with students.2 Novice readers of history as-
sume that all historians are doing is reporting factual information, when we are
actually arguing, analyzing, constructing, and, very importantly, drawing on the
work of other scholars. For that reason, I’ve brought the names of many of the
scholars I’ve consulted into the body of the text (as I’ve just done here), as well
as naming them in the notes, to make it clearer where I’m having conversations
with others or drawing on their work. However, there is additional information in
the notes that you’ll miss if you skip over them. Reading a scholarly work can be
like listening on two different levels to a conversation: hearing what is said on the
surface, while scanning for what is below the surface as well.
In addition, I have tried to write in as clear and engaging a manner as someone
trained in academese can manage. I am certain that any idea can be expressed in
jargon-free language. Sometimes terms of art (vocabulary specific to a discipline
1 Ellyn Kestnbaum, Culture on Ice: Figure Skating & Cultural Meaning (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 2003), 60, 81f.
2 Laura M. Westhoff, “Historiographic Mapping: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the Methods
Course,” Journal of American History 98, no. 4 (March 2012): 1114–26.
prEfACE ix
and used in precise ways) are very helpful, but the first time I use them, I offer a
definition (again as I have done here). Because many terms will not be familiar to
novice readers, I have also provided a glossary. Words in the glossary appear in
boldface in the text the first time they appear in a chapter, often with an expla-
nation at first use in the book. Within the glossary definitions, dependent words
are also set in boldface. I hope any academic readers will not be put off, but I am
writing for an audience that will include some novices.
I had a tremendous amount of fun writing this book. I hope you, the reader,
will have at least some fun reading it.
Although the stereotype of historians is that we work alone in dusty archives
(and many of us do, at least some of the time), any book is a community effort. I
would like first to thank Natalie Fingerhut, my editor at the University of Toronto
Press, who had faith in this somewhat unusual approach and whose suggestions
have improved the book. The readers for the press also had invaluable sugges-
tions, even when they didn’t like what they were reading, and that is the very best
kind of friend an author can have. Martin Boyne, who edited the copy, rode herd
on my wicked ways with commas, gently improved the prose without cramping
my style, and generally caught errors and omissions. Any reader who uses the
glossary owes a debt of thanks (as do I) to my younger daughter, Linnea, who read
the manuscript to make sure that even someone mostly interested in plant biology
would find it comprehensible. My wonderful older daughter Maya offered bound-
less encouragement. They, along with Dirk, Sara, and Cerisa, all listened to me
drone on about medieval people and events as though they lived and happened
yesterday, mostly with interest. And finally, to the SoTL gang (you know who you
are and special thanks Lendol!), it’s great to have a place where everybody knows
your name.
