Taylor and Francis Group is part of the Academic Publishing Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 3099067.

Informa

How to Interpret Primary Sources

Primary sources may be written texts or images, even architecture or music. You will find examples of all of these in this reader. The main criteria for a primary source is that it was created during the time period of the subject being studied. Primary sources are the raw material of historical interpretation—there is no history without them. But primary sources do not create history on their own. Historians must interpret them.

There are many ways or methods for interpreting primary sources. If you are reading The Medieval Church as part of a course, your professor will no doubt teach you her or his own method for interpreting primary sources. The suggestions that follow might be useful to you if you are working alone, or in addition to whatever methods your professor uses.

Each primary source in this reader comes with ‘questions to consider’ specific to that source. But this is only a beginning. To begin to interpret primary sources more fully, follow this three step process: 1) describe, 2) analyze, and 3) interpret.

  1. Describe the source. What is the general topic or idea the source presents? Who created the source? What do you know about the creator? When and where was it created? Does the source tell you, explicitly, why it was created? Beware, sources sometimes give an explicit reason for their creation, but hide (intentionally or not) other reasons. Who was the source created for, i.e., who was the ‘audience’? What do you know about that audience?
  2. Analyze the source. In simplest terms, this means to ask questions of the source. What are the key words or elements of the source, and what do they mean? What larger point is the source’s creator trying to make? What assumptions do the source’s creator bring into the work? What elements does the source share with other sources from the same time period? What was the impact of the source?  For example, was it a widely circulated text, or a frequently visited site? What is the context of the source?
  3. Interpret the source. What does the source mean in the context in which it was created? Historical interpretations can be informed by certain schools of historical inquiry. For example, Marxist historians might ask of every source what it says (or does not say) about the situation of the workforce, while feminist historians might question every source with a concern for what it says (or does not say) about women. These approaches all have their strengths and weaknesses. While, nineteenth-century historans believed that they could understand historical sources with cool, scientific detachment, post-modernist historians warn that we cannot approach sources without bringing our own lens to the endeavor, which keeps us from seeing sources as contemporaries would have seen them. All of this may seem daunting to the beginning student of history. Do nott worry about this. Above all else, history is a practice, and as such it takes practice to get better at it. Try the method of reading sources suggested here, or try the method suggested by your professor, or try some other method about which you have read. But try. And do not be satisfied with the interpretations you find in textbooks—even the textbook for which this on-line reader was created—until you have tested those intepretations for yourself.

Some basics about reading Medieval images

Images in the Middle Ages were drawn in parchment manuscripts, carved into the stonework of church buildings, and sewn into the fabric of tapestries. These images used icons—symbols that quickly identified people or ideas to readers who knew the icons’ meanings. We are very familiar with icons today because they dominate our work with computers. When we look at the small icon on our laptop that looks like a tiny machine with paper coming out the top, we know that this is the icon for the command ‘Print.’ Once we have learned the icon, we stopped thinking about it—we do not need to think about it anymore, we just know it. This is what it must have been like for medieval people. Once they had learned the icons of their day, they just knew them, and could easily understand the message, the iconography, of the images before them.

Of course, there were many icons in the Middle Ages. Here are just a few to help you get started:

  • Angel (or Man): the evangelist Matthew
  • Dove: the Holy Ghost
  • Eagle: the evangelist John
  • Hand coming out of the sky: God intervening on Earth
  • Lamb: signifies Christ (the sacificial lamb of God)
  • Lion: the evangelist Mark
  • Man holding a book, often with a bald head and beard: the Apostle Paul (caution: lots of other saints hold books)
  • Man holding keys, often with a white hair and beard: Saint Peter
  • Ox: the evangelist Luke
  • Red hat and costume: signifies a cardinal
  • Sword and orb (globe): signifies a king (sometimes Christ the King)
  • Tonsure (the crown-shaped hair cut): signifies a monk
  • Triple tiara (crown): signifies a pope
  • Woman with a baby on her lap: most often the Virgin and Child, i.e., Mary and Jesus
  • Wounds in the hands, feet, and side: signifies the stigmata of Christ

Other things to note in medieval images:

  • There are often larger and smaller figures that are drawn in seeming defiance of our modern understanding of perspective. Usually, the larger figures are more important than the smaller figures: a king is depicted larger than a peasant, but Christ is depicted larger than the king.
  • There are sometimes multiple frames, called registers, in an image. These are used to depict the passage of time. For example, one register might show David loading up his sling with a stone; the next register shows David standing over the slain Goliath. This is similar to how modern comic books function. Sometimes a source may depict an entire story without the use of registers. For example, you see two versions of David in the same image: one preparing to fight, the other victorious. (Such images can be tricky to figure out!)

Pay attention to depictions of architecture. Although it may look out of proportion and seemingly without perspective, it can say a lot about the setting.

Otherwise, medieval images often just depict stories that people already knew, either from history or the Bible. Hence, the best way for us to decipher what is happening in the images is to be well-versed in the stories of the day. For example, if you were not already familiar with the story of David and Goliath, mentioned above, it would be very difficult for you to recognize it in the image, even though you might identify a boy with a sling facing off against a giant warrior.

Some basics about Listening to Medieval Music

There are also links to several musical selections in this collection. The same methodology, above, can be applied to music, but since many of us are not accustomed to asking such questions about music, here are a few extra tips.

  1. Describe: Is the piece vocal or are there also instruments? Is there a simple progression of notes up and down the scale? Or are the intervals between notes larger, more dramatic? Is there a simple melody, or multiple harmonies? Is there rhythm, or does the piece flow freely? Are the voices men or women, or both? Is the setting of the text syllabic (one note per syllable), or mellismatic (many notes per syllable)?
  2. Analyze: How do any of the apects described above combine to create an artiitic effect? What is the context of the music: in a public church? in a monstery? on a pilgrimage route? Is the music liturgical or popular? What was the piece’s intended purpose: instructional? inspirational?
  3. Interpret: What feeling does the music evoke?

This last step is difficult because we cannot know if the feeling we get from listening to a piece of medieval music is the same as it would have been for a medieval listener. In fact, since there were no devices for recording sound in the Middle Ages, the pieces we listen to may have sounded quite different than what we hear today, since they have all been reconstructed—based on the best educated guesses of musicologists–from medieval manuscripts. Still, we hope that your listening to the music, like encountering other primary sources (texts and images), will give you some expreience of the medieval church, however imperfect.

Download Primary Sources