App:  The  Medieval  Universe  

Sophie  Page,  UCL  

1.  Context  and  Use  

The  app  I  wish  to  design  in  collaboration  with  a  computer  science  student  will  present  a  visual  interactive  model  of  the  medieval  universe  together  with  interpretations  of  its  structure.    It  will  be  designed  as  an  app  for  use  by  students  on  my  undergraduate  course,  the  Medieval  Universe  (see  section  4)  and  to  accompany  an  exhibition  planned  for  Spring/Summer  2018  as  part  of  the  Leverhulme  project,    Inner  lives:  emotions,  identity,  and  the  supernatural,  1300–1900  (see  section  5).  It  will  also  be  available  as  free  academic  software.  On  appstore  I  have  found  only  one  app  suitable  for  medieval  history  students  (see  below,  section  3,  for  discussion  of  this  audience)  and  none  relevant  to  the  history  of  medieval  science  so  it  will  also  fill  an  educational  gap.  

If  a  student  is  interested  in  this  collaboration  we  can  discuss  further  the  details  of  medieval  cosmology  but  the  important  elements  for  me  are:  1.  That  this  is  a  modern  3D  visualisation  of  the  medieval  model    (in  section  2  below  I  discuss  some  examples  of  this  from  the  internet)  2.  That  it  is  interactive  (for  example,  you  touch  one  of  the  spheres  and  it  gives  you  more  information  on  that  sphere,  the  planets  will  also  need  to  be  moving  along  the  spheres).  Desirable  elements  would  be:  3.  We  cut  and  paste  medieval  images,  for  example  of  angels  or  winds  for  transposition  on  the  structure  4.  The  app  presents  different  versions  of  the  model,  eg  the  model  at  a  specific  point  in  time  (the  fall  of  demons)  or  the  model  with  a  human  body  in  the  centre.  Some  different  ways  in  which  medieval  people  imagined  the  cosmos  are  copied  below  in  section  3.  5.  The  user  of  the  app  can  also  see  medieval  images  of  the  cosmos  (here  I  would  need  to  investigate  copyright),  6.  We  link  to  the  text  of  Dante  and  Chaucer  on  the  medieval  universe.  

Due  to  the  importance  of  the  visual  elements  in  this  app  the  collaboration  may  need  to  be  with  a  student  who  is  interested  in  design,  or  we  may  need  to  involve  the  collaboration  of  an  artist/art  student.  

2.  Design  of  the  App  

Here  is  a  typical  image  of  the  medieval  cosmos:  

 

On  the  internet  there  are  lots  of  modern  diagrammatic  representations  of  the  medieval  model.  For  example  see:  

https://thepagenebula.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/the-­‐medieval-­‐universe1.jpg  

http://faculty.knox.edu/fmcandre/cosmology.html  

https://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/ideas/larger-­‐image-­‐pages/pic-­‐greekworldview-­‐evanscover.htm  

The  3D  ones  are  more  interesting:  

http://new-­‐universe.org/zenphoto/Chapter1/Illustrations/Abrams9.jpg.php  

http://www.whale.to/c/ancient_cosmology.html  -­‐  this  one  is  quite  inaccurate,  but  I  think  the  visuals  are  interesting.  

There  is  clearly  an  interest  in  representations  of  the  universe  on  both  history  of  science  and  non-­‐academic  websites  and  blogs.  However,  I  did  not  find  any  that  were  designed  by  a  medieval  historian  resulting  in  rather  general  dry  points  about  the  model’s  nature  and  structure.  Moreover,  a  key  

feature  of  the  medieval  cosmos  is  the  moving  parts  within  it  so  a  static  image  is  never  going  to  convey  it  vividly,  while  an  interactive  model  will  have  more  educational  value  and  visual  appeal.    

3.  Audience  and  market  need  

I  have  looked  at  all  the  apps  that  are  searchable  under  the  categories  ‘medieval  history’  and  ‘education’  in  apple’s  appstore.  Most  fall  into  two  categories.  1)  Apps  focussed  on  medieval  battles,  castles,  cathedrals  or  medieval  art.  These  seem  to  be  mainly  aimed  at  adults  with  specialist  interests.  One  of  the  more  interesting  apps  is  called  ‘Medieval  life’:  it  is  not  aimed  at  a  very  high  level  audience  but  it  is  interactive.  2)  General  history  apps.  Most  of  these  are  very  traditional,  that  is,  they  look  like  a  book  with  long  text  sections,  non-­‐interactive  images  and  quizzes.  A  few  are  more  interactive  but  very  general,  that  is,  they  are  trying  to  convey  facts  rather  than  interpretations  of  history.  Two  more  interesting  exceptions  to  these  two  categories  are  an  app  on  ‘Medieval  handwriting’  which  would  be  helpful  to  an  MA  student  in  Medieval  studies  learning  palaeography.  It  is  quite  traditional  but  at  the  same  time  well-­‐  designed.  It  is  the  only  app  on  apple  app  store  that  seems  to  be  seriously  aimed  at  history  students  with  an  interest  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but  specifically  MA  and  PhD  students,  whereas  I  want  to  aim  for  an  undergraduate  and  postgraduate  audience.  Finally,  an  app  called  ‘Playing  History-­‐Plague’  impressed  me.  It  is  aimed  at  primary  or  secondary  students  and  is  primarily  a  game  but  uses  the  medium  of  an  appealing  interactive  narrative  to  convey  some  interesting  information  about  medieval  history  (eg  medical  theories  of  the  humours)  that  is  not  solely  focussed  on  battles  and  castles.  

 

 

3.  Images  of  the  Medieval  Universe  

 

 

 

 

 

   

4.  Description  of  my  undergraduate  course  

The Medieval Universe

Historiated initial 'O' depicting a man with the devil, from a Latin bible (13th century)

In the late Middle Ages the universe was thought to be limited and intelligible, but vast. Within its

structure of perfect spheres was an ordered variety, in which all created things were joined in harmonious cosmological schema. Tensions in this system remained, such as between the competing forces of celestial influence (good and bad spirits) and between the free will of man and the omnipotence of God, but variations on this model satisfied European scholars for 450 years. In this course we will investigate how this cosmology gave meaning to human experience by looking at how medieval men and women imagined and engaged with invisible and sacred forces and how their lives were guided by them. We will also look at orthodox and unorthodox ritual techniques for asserting control over sacred beings and explore medieval concepts of time, imagination and geography.

Term 2 focuses on the physical rather than the celestial world. We will discuss medieval

conceptions of the body and nature, the body’s place in the cosmos, and medieval attitudes to sickness, asceticism, sexuality, death, dreams and visions. This focus will give some insights to illuminate the relationship between belief and practice, for example the way Christian concepts of spiritual perfection led to the mortification of the flesh. Finally, we will explore the relationship of medieval men and women to their physical environment: physical, legal, religious and emotional concepts of landscape, the juxtaposition between “natural” and “supernatural”, and the changing ways wilderness was experienced and imagined. Cosmology 1. Cosmology 2. God and Man 3. Angels, demons, ghosts 4. Space 5. Time Religion, Magic and Science 6. Cosmic order and daily life 7. Magic and religion 8. Astrology 9. Manuscript trip to the Wellcome Library 10. Natural philosophy

The Body 11 Microcosmic man 12 Sacred and profane bodies 13 In sickness and in health 14 Death and judgment 15 Imagining the after-life Nature 16 Nature: image and organisation 17 Animals and Society 18. Marvels and Monsters 19. Landscape and imagination 20. General Discusssion  

5.  Description  of  my  Leverhulme  project  

Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300-1900 (RA post for the period 1300-1500) Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300-1900 is a three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and starting on 1 October 2015. The project will explore personal and collective identities in western Europe and America, focusing on patterns of continuity and discontinuity over six centuries. The PI Malcom Gaskill (UEA) will work on the period 1500-1700, with CIs Sophie Page (UCL) focusing on 1300-1500 and Owen Davies (University of Hertfordshire) on 1700-1900. Historians have come to see belief in the supernatural as essential to past lives. No longer is it condescended to as merely a set of beliefs ancillary to temporal existence. Scholars now take seriously pre-modern experiences and perceptions – the subjectivity of reality – and observe a dynamic reflexivity between humans and the cosmos. Drawing on other disciplines, but primarily on history in different periods, the three investigators on this project and their RAs will explore emotional engagement with supernatural worlds. Witchcraft, demonism, astrology and magic reveal pre-modern ‘subjectivities’ by making explicit otherwise implicit connections between selfhood and its domestic, communal and cosmic environments. The ‘inner lives’ model will establish definitions, contexts, and permeable boundaries by which to understand interior existence and its outward manifestations between 1300 and 1900. A primary objective of this project is to suggest new ways of studying the supernatural and emotions. For the period 1300-1500 the CI and her Research Assistant will focus on how medieval people imagined invisible and sacred forces, and specifically how they actively engaged with these forces. The project’s conceptual linkage between emotion, identity and the supernatural is especially relevant to late medieval occult sources given that invocation and conjuration were so often invested with intense feelings of rapture and fear, desperation and longing, and were privately performed. Sophie Page’s research will explore the oppressiveness of cosmological forces on inner lives, and how this led to attempts to manipulate such forces using magic rituals and other orthodox and unorthodox techniques. Human desires lay at the heart of the process: magic was provoked by, and attempted to induce, strong feelings of wanting something to happen. Late medieval perceptions of supernatural danger and endeavours to engage with spirits produced communal responses that contributed to the origins of witch-hunting.  

A second objective of the medieval strand of the project is to understand better how cosmological models gave meaning to temporal experience. A particular focus of Sophie Page’s monograph linked to the project - Cosmology, Magic and Inner Lives in the Late Middle Ages - is the relationship between models of the cosmos and the inner lives of medieval men and women. The learned contours of medieval cosmology are well known, but its impact on inner lives and lived experience remains underexplored in spite of the range of texts through which cosmological images and ideas were disseminated. Page’s interdisciplinary investigation will encompass a variety of such texts, e.g. the Bible moraliseé, Latin encyclopaedias, and popular scientific works like the ‘Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy’. Relevant sources will also include occult vision narratives (such as John of Morigny’s Liber visionum, the Liber de essentia spirituum and the Visio Edwardi), medical regimen literature (to examine the theme of self-control) and learned magic texts (to investigate attempts to control the free will and the feelings of others). Outputs for the project will include an exhibition that will comprise three rooms – Cosmos, Community and Interiority – curated by the investigators individually, but each using materials drawn from across the three periods. An international conference entitled Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300-1900 will be held in 2018.