Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100–1450 by Ionuţ Epurescu-Pascovici

Abstract

Epurescu-Pascovici makes strong arguments about individual human agency in medieval France and Italy but does not neglect Providence. He deploys five case studies based on different types of sources classified as ego-documents—self-narratives (autobiographies), cartularies (charters), livres de raison (personal cartularies), Tuscan ricordi and ricordanze (memoires, and account books), and vernacular advice manuals. Some well-studied texts also appear, like the ricordanze of the Florentine Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli and the advice book Le Ménagier de Paris, as well as the unpublished charters of an obscure lordship in France. Choosing these sources and not others reflects the author’s effort to expand “agency” beyond the elites and past politics. Other types of sources, like wills (classic ego-documents), or acts, like suicide (self-agency), would have brought women more directly into this account of human agency, but the case studies are admirable in their range—given the practical limitations.Epurescu-Pascovici takes a sophisticated methodological approach to agency and is well versed in the theories that he found most valuable for his work, mainly from sociology and anthropology rather than from political science or economics. The book’s interdisciplinary theoretical stance enables the author to explore his main question: How do ordinary individuals act effectively in this world? He is less interested in how people induce others to act for them. His sharp focus on ego-documents raises philosophical questions (of which the author is well-aware) about the differences between what people expect and what they get, but no irony enters this study. “Action theory,” an established field, requires that there is something outside the text to study, welcome news to most historians.Epurescu-Pascovici commendably avoids rehashing old debates about the medieval “rise of the individual,” striving instead to connect his medieval findings to the broader issues surrounding the rise of European modernity, a development that the Middle Ages probably affected. One of the most interesting findings concerns Providence, which to the author’s great credit he decided not to ignore, even though this title does not promise to include it. In the field of medieval history, some scholars condescend to mock gently or deprecate Providence, even as others pursue sectarian interests in a cloud of vacuous credulity.Surveying personal narratives, Epurescu-Pascovici finds two types of agency, human and providential. He suggests a pattern in which first impressions discerned natural or human causes, and retrospection later found the divine hand in action (34). Beyond this point, the philosophers and theologians take over the debate. “Hindsight,” however, is a subject that historians can study, and Epurescu-Pascovici prudently calls his conclusions tentative, inviting other scholars to confirm or reject his conjectures. They will.Aphrodisiacs, prayers, incantations, and prophetic dreams help to define the boundaries between human and non-human agency (animals do not feature in this book). Events like marriages, gift exchanges, and funerals involve contemporary actions as well as subsequent reflections (143). Morelli’s remarkable self-narrative contains examples of most of these topics; generations of historians have mined it to the point of wondering whether anything new remains to be found in it. Epurescu-Pascovici has carefully studied this text, as edited (twice) by Vittore Branca, to arrive at the sharp question, Was Morelli a person of faith? (183). Most historians (and believers) tend to take Morelli at his word in this matter. Epurescu-Pascovici’s astute analysis on this point is refreshing. He concludes that Morelli saw God in the big things, like war and death in childhood, but that social networks embodying human agency explained most of daily life. Whatever merit this distinction may have, it enables Epurescu-Pascovici to take an old text in new directions.The evidence assembled in this book supports persuasive arguments about the varieties of individual agency and religious experiences. By stressing social networks, Epurescu-Pascovici approaches the frontier of collective agency, but he does not cross it. People acting in groups or in social networks left behind classes of records that we might call “we-documents” (laws?). One of the features of modernity may well be the burgeoning of collective agency, alongside the self-agency so ably charted in this fine book.