Medieval Interpretations: Audience

It is at this point that conceptual boundaries begin to blur. Are we to read sto­ries of possession and incubi. literally or metaphorically, medically or morally? Should we understand phantoms as real or illusory? Were hagiographers aware of the medical connotations beneath their classical borrowings? In short, how do we negotiate the multiplicity of potential interpretations in stories of mad­ness and demons in twelfth-century miracula?

The fact that these texts offer us a myriad of different possible meanings should not, however, come as a surprise.

One way to make sense of the interweaving of the medical-demonic dis­course in miracle collections is by thinking about their intended audience. Medievalists often debate whether miracle narratives were intended solely for the consumption of their immediate monastic communities, or whether they were disseminated to the wider population through sermons, oral expositions and other means.^[701] An answer to this question might lie in the fact that demons in the stories can be read on both an ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ level.

On the other hand, however, tales of incubi and Eumenides may have had resonance with the wider population through analogous local beliefs, and it is not unlikely that Latinate metonyms for demons were replaced with vernacu­lar alternatives when the accounts were orally transmitted to the public^[702] The point, of course, is that it was not necessary to understand elitist medical or classical allusions in order to appreciate stories about demons, and the fact that demonic episodes can be interpreted both literally and metaphorically gives rise to the possibility that demons were understood differently by differ­ent audiences. While the entertaining and colourful depictions of demons and phantoms must have struck a note of terror and wonderment into the unedu­cated laity—an audience which was doubtless the target of the many religious and moral messages in the miracula—the underlying medical discourse also hints at a more sophisticated, educated audience.

This ‘elite’ audience, however, should not be imagined solely as the writer’s monastic peers. Many twelfth-century miracula were produced in conjunction with the formal episcopal recognition of a saint, and by the end of the cen­tury some collections were even making their way to Rome as part of the legal evidence required for papal canonization. In an increasingly legalistic and sceptical world, hagiographers were doubtless mindful that relying on popular sentiment was no longer enough to secure the successful future of a saint.^[703] Sainthood in the twelfth century was also grounded on verifiable evidence.

Hagiographers compiling miracle collections in twelfth-century England, then, potentially had a wide variety of people for whom they expected, or hoped, to cater. From pilgrim to pope, this diverse audience seems to be addressed in miracle collections through different variants of similar stories, or through alternative readings of the same account. However, with the exception of the Sempringham collection, none of the miracula in the survey completely turn away from the idea of demonic causes for mental illness. Like William of Norwich, most hagiographers freely mix, match and merge demonic and non- demonic discourses, giving madness the widest possible spectrum of meaning.