Visions of Disaster in the Central Middle Ages

Abstract

Whereas modern Western scientific thought has tended to draw a sharp distinction between nature and society, for the early middle ages they were united as part of God's creation (cf. Davidson 1989). For a medieval cleric, a disaster was not a 'natural' event calling forth a 'social' response. Rather, the medieval imagination both defined disaster and gave it meaning, by placing it in a wider intellectual, moral and symbolic context. In a sense this is true of all societies. A disaster may start as a natural event, but in becoming a disaster it becomes a social experience, that is an experience defined and interpreted according to social beliefs. Not even natural disasters can remain purely 'natural'. A close examination will reveal their social dimension-who they affect and why. At first glance some events appear unequivocally disastrous. Earthquakes and plagues seem to afflict indiscriminately everyone who has the misfortune to be in their vicinity. Yet some people are more vulnerable to their assaults than others -the poor more than the rich, or urban dwellers more than those who live in the country. And while few people would dispute that such events are disastrous, people nevertheless differ on what such disasters may mean. Religious fundamentalists were swift to see the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the Aids epidemic as divine punishments for a godless and unnatural lifestyle. This approach is a commonplace of religious disaster interpretation. Medieval writers were equally willing to see unpleasant events as divine retribution for sins. We are never as good as we should be, or as the moralists would like us to be.