One Year of Marginalia: Here's to the end of Christian patriarchy!
A medieval origin story and a preview of what comes next
I wasn’t sure what to name my substack.
At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted a substack.
I had been writing on the The Anxious Bench (a group blog focused on religious history on Patheos) since 2015. I loved it. I loved being a part of an intellectual community with friends and colleagues like Kristin Du Mez, Chris Gehrz, David Swartz, Andrea Turpin, and Philip Jenkins. I loved having a writing schedule (indeed, I still have reminders pop up on my outlook calendar for Anxious Bench posts). And I loved not having my writing paywalled.
But I also knew it was time to move on.
In many ways, The Anxious Bench launched my public writing career (indeed, I recommend make The Anxious Bench a regular part of your online reading). I wanted to give other scholars, like Lynneth Miller Renberg and Malcolm Foley, the same opportunity—which meant I needed to get out of the way. I was becoming increasingly concerned about the stability and leadership of social media platforms like Twitter, which meant I was looking for a better way to stay connected with readers. Most of all, I wanted to be able to control my own writing—including writing whenever and however much I wanted.
Substack seemed a good solution. I felt uncomfortable paywalling my writing, so I compromised by deciding to paywall only the comment section and offer perks to paid subscribers (I’m still figuring this part out, but so far it has included early sneak peeks at my archival work, the ability to post in comment sections, and a subscriber-only zoom chat. As we move closer to my new book release, I’m sure it will also include some other opportunities too.) I found the substack site easy to use, and I loved the growing community of writers and readers.
I had a problem, though. I had no idea what to title it. Seriously. No idea.
I wanted something that captured my professional identity as a medieval scholar but was broad enough to include my recent focus in modern evangelicalism. I wanted something that captured the spirit of my historical standpoint as a Christian woman in a faith tradition that has centered masculine authority. I wanted something that would be meaningful to me but wouldn’t be too esoteric.
I wanted a lot, and I almost gave up. Finally, I started reading through old Anxious Bench posts trying to find a spark of inspiration. It worked.
In April 2019, Bob Smietana from Religion News Service reached out to Chris Gehrz, the then editor of The Anxious Bench. He wanted to know if any of the AB scholars had something to say about the fire currently burning the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. I can’t remember if Chris reached out specifically to me or asked the group as a whole. I do remember why I stayed up all night writing a response: it was because of a medieval manuscript—or, more accurately, because of a fourteenth-century comment made in the margin of a twelfth-century text.
Let me explain.
Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson D. 1225 is a liturgical book belonging to a Medieval English parish church in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (St. Chad’s). It contains a martyrology (the lives of saints), a list of relics housed at St. Chad’s (I’ll have to do another post on this), a partial breviary, hymns to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and marginal notes written by clergy about funerals, marriages, and events occurring in the local area between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. My medieval scholarship focuses on sermons and religious literature, especially a sermon collection (the Festial) originating from a monastery (Lilleshall Abbey) not far from Shrewsbury and associated with a parish church in Shrewsbury (St. Alkmund’s).
MS. Rawlinson D. 1225 is the only extant liturgical text from a local parish church in Shrewsbury. I ran across a reference to the manuscript while investigating another sermon collection (The Mirror) that originated in the same area about a century before Festial. I had the opportunity to examine the manuscript for the first time in Oxford while on a research trip in July 2018.
My main reason for wanting to see it was because of the relic list. However, my attention quickly moved to the marginal notes. You see, in a text written by clergy for clergy and intended for clerical use, the marginal notes told a different story. A story about the ordinary people who lived in fourteenth century Shrewsbury; a story about the men and women who loved and were married, died and were buried; and at least one story about a local tragedy.
As I wrote in my original post on The Anxious Bench, “Fire was an ever present reality for both the timber frames of medieval towns and the inner frames of buildings like cathedrals. Just this past summer I was studying a manuscript at the Westin Library in Oxford, Bodleian Library Mansucript Rawlinson D. 1225. It is a medieval liturgical book belonging to St. Chad’s, one of the four parish churches in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. A small note written on the bottom of one of the folios describes a fourteenth century tragedy: “a fire burnt the whole parish of St. Alkmund’s starting at daybreak on the eve of Pentecost….anno. 1312.” The comment was written without much fanfare, but as I watched the fiery spire of Notre Dame crumble and collapse into the burning building, my thoughts strayed to the desperate medieval bodies who would have worked tirelessly on that holy night in fourteenth-century Shrewsbury. They would have struggled to bring water from the river Severn, snaking silver around their town, trying to contain a fire quickly consuming the heart of their town and endangering the lives of their families and friends. Just like the fire of Notre Dame, they would only be partially successful. They would save the town at the cost of a parish. “a fire burnt the whole parish of St. Alkmund’s…..
Just like that I had the title for my substack: Marginalia—a word popularized by T.S. Coleridge and denoting the secondary layer of literary contributions made by both readers and authors in the margins of texts. By shifting the perspective of Bodelian Library MS. Rawlinson D. 1225 from the centered text to the marginalia, I found a previously hidden story that highlighted human experience alongside the institutional narrative. A previously hidden story that not only provided new information but reframed the entire text. (BTW, my post on Notre Dame was picked up by Bob Smietana and run on Religion News Service.)
Like so many of the medieval manuscripts I work with, Marginalia does not have a single focus. My future posts, just as my 40 posts from 2023, will be wide ranging: from medieval history to modern evangelicalism, from historical methodology to historical walking tours, from The Making of Biblical Womanhood to Becoming the Pastor’s Wife (forthcoming in 2025).
Yet Marginalia does have consistent goals:
to show history from a different perspective (such as I did in this reprised post about Christmas).
to show why historical ideas matter in our modern world (especially for women, such as I did in this post highlighting the impact of the patriarchal bargain).
to help modern evangelicals through evidence-based scholarship understand the history of patriarchy and its implications (such as I did in this post comparing a chapter from Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood with biblical evidence highlighted by Hebrew scholar Wilda Gafney).
and, more specifically, to continue investigating the historical roots of the SBC sex abuse scandal, which is taking me all the way to Canadian archives next week. See, for example, this post on the 2023 SBC vote on churches with female pastors. I have learned too much to be silent on the ramifications of patriarchy and misogyny within the SBC, not to mention the persistence and perseverance of SBC women in doing the work of God despite the constraints placed on them. My next book is coming, y’all. I’ll be highlighting previews of it in this space, so stay tuned.)
Whether free or paid, I hope you will spread the word about Marginalia and join me in working toward the end of Christian patriarchy. Here’s to 2024!
Your Ask Me Anything Zoom meeting for paid subscribers was a great opportunity to hear more about your exciting work and why you are so passionate about sharing your expertise on these important topics. Thank you for all your hard work!