The WHY vs WHAT of Medieval Primary Sources

Historian Quanderings: Some incoherent rants and random thoughts I'm chewing on...

Our modern mindset is scientific, taught to look for facts, built on rational thought and reason. After we’ve learned what happened in the past, we begin to ask how did that happen? The medieval mindset was built more on the idea that God was very much an active factor in everything that happened. After they experienced what happened, they would ask why? Why did God do that? Why did God allow that? Why did or didn’t God intervene there? I feel like our modern mindset and the medieval mindset come at history—both events and explanations—from a different place.

I wonder how our interpretation of the past would change if we read the medieval primary sources and studied medieval history asking the questions they asked, instead of looking to answer our own? How much wealth could we draw from the sources that have been dismissed as not legitimate or historically accurate if we approached analyzing them differently? If we interacted with them differently?

I’ve learned that historians are cautioned not to impose their modern presumptions and bias on the past, but to analyze it as its own thing. But then we are also expected to only use sources that are historically accurate…aka scientifically proven to be true and legitimate. But when I consider the different intentions and methodology used in the Middle Ages when people were writing those sources, they weren’t idolizing scientific accuracy. A lot of the chronicles are narrative in form, they tell a story. Some of them are pretty didactic, having a moral lesson woven in. Hagiographical works prop up the miracles of the saints’ lives as just as important as the basic facts of their lives. In a previous post of mine I introduced you to Geoffrey Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, pointing out how modern historians dismiss his work as not being factual, but more fanciful and literary. Perhaps he wasn’t going for accuracy, but trying to press upon his readers the need for solidarity and unity built around a single leader in a time of great division, chaos, and suffering. Even so, it’s a treasure trove of information about the Middle Ages. Those chronicles, hagiographical works, and narratives—such as Monmouth’s—are so rich in exposing us to the Middle Ages and to medievalisms (again, not sure this is a word, but continuing to use it in my posts. Sorry, but not sorry!). Shouldn’t we give them credit where credit is due? 

I don’t know. Does that mean I should take Monmouth’s descriptions of dueling dragons as fact that dragons existed in the Middle Ages? I don’t think I’m going that far, ha! But I just think we are placing a higher value on some sources over others simply because they give us what our modern bias and scientific minds value. Which is doing the very thing that as a historian-in-training I have been cautioned not to do. Oy-vey, my head hurts.

What are your thoughts? Should we take medieval primary sources at face value? Mine them solely for their scientific facts? Or remain open and ask the sources themselves what they were created to achieve or to communicate? Ask the source what its purpose was? WHY was it created? Or compare and contrast multiple sources to gain a more wholistic accurate account of just what the hell happened? Or a synthesis of doing it all to gain a nuanced understanding and appreciation for them? As usual, these are just historian quanderings that keep me up at night. I don’t have an answer to my questions and my positions and opinions aren’t static. I’d love to hear what you think!