FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS TO THE NINTH CENTURY

it is unnecessary to examine here the social schema of Antiquity, except for Plato's famous division into gold, silver, and brass and iron, which stood respectively for the commanders, auxiliaries, and husbandmen and craftsmen. Each group should adhere to its own function, Plato said, adding that ‘The species will generally be preserved in the children.’ This passage was cited by Clement of Alexandria, and by Eusebius of Caesaria from Clement, who said that gold stood for Christians, silver for the Jews, and brass and iron for the Greeks. According to Origen, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represented the moral, natural, and contemplative (or ethical, physical, and theoretical) lives, and Noah, Daniel, and Job stood for the three ages before, during, and after the captivity of the Jews. A multitude of similar things was not many things but one. ‘For as many bodies are one body, and many sheep which perish are one sheep [Matthew 18.12; Luke 15.4], by this covenant all Noahs, Daniels, and Jobs are gathered in one Noah, Daniel, and Job.’ For Cyril of Alexandria, Noah, Daniel, and Job stood respectively for those who merited well of God through their faith, for wise men and contemplatives, and for those who will receive good things on account of their patience, and for Eucherius of Lyons they represented ‘three types (genera) of men’: the governors of the church, the saints and continent, and the married and lovers of justice.

the concept of imitation or mimesis, in its religious sense, is found in several texts in the New Testament broadly grouped around the theme of following God and Christ. The meanings of the terms varied, as did the contexts in which they were used, and scholars have long debated over the exact meaning of ‘to follow’ and ‘to imitate’ in the Bible. For medieval Latin Christianity the most important texts were the seven times Paul used the term imitator, four in reference to himself and, through himself, to God and Christ, and one each in reference to God, the faithful, and the churches of God. Imitator is usually translated ‘follower’ in English versions of the Bible, as in ‘Be ye followers of me’ (1 Corinthians 4.16 and 11.1 and Philippians 3.17) and ‘become followers of us and the Lord’ (1 Thessalonians 1.6). This tends to equate the concepts of imitating and following, and to associate the imitation of Christ with the precepts to ‘Take up His cross and follow me’, ‘Take up My yoke upon you and learn of Me’, and walk ‘even as He walked’, and Peter's statement that Christ left ‘an example that you should follow His steps’. This view was supported by Augustine's question in On holy virginity: ‘For what is to follow except to imitate (Quid est enim sequi nisi imitari)?’

the variety of interpretations of Mary and Martha and their relation to the changing views of the nature of contemplation and of the place of monasticism in Christian society can be found in the works of many writers of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. A conspectus of these differences, and an introduction to the differing views of Mary and Martha in the late Middle Ages, are presented by Joachim of Fiore, Adam of Dryburgh, and Lothar dei Segni (Innocent III), of whom the first was a Cistercian monk before he founded his own religious order, the second was a regular canon and later a Carthusian, and the third was a secular cleric, lawyer, and administrator. Each of them was formed in the twelfth century and lived into the thirteenth – only just in the case of Joachim, who died in 1202 – and each had a somewhat different view of the meaning and relation of the two sisters.

Joachim stood for the monastic tradition, which went back to the earliest monks and was greatly strengthened in the twelfth century, of separating the two lives and asserting the difference between Mary, whom he identified with the soul and spiritual men, from Martha, who stood for the body and fleshly men.

in many of the medieval tripartite divisions of society, some people were seen as between others who were either below or above them or, occasionally, on the right or left. They were referred to as mediocres or, more rarely, as mediani or medii, and were contrasted with people described on one side as great, powerful, rich, noble, or best and on the other as little, weak, poor, humble, and low. It is the purpose of this appendix to look at these mediocres and the categories to which they belonged and, more particularly, to see whether they constituted a middle class or prepared the way for the later idea of a middle class.

The term mediocris was used in various types of works in late Antiquity. In the Theodosian Code it appeared in edicts and decrees dealing with taxes and had a primarily economic meaning. The mediocres were contrasted with the potiores in 324, with the ditiores and infimi in 328, and with the opulentes in 400 and 405. In 417 tax relief on abandoned lands was granted only on lands ‘of which the lords do not exist or are mediocres in poverty and are shown to have only those lands’. People of middling fortune were distinguished from the more noble in the Code of Justinian, and a free man of middling place (mediocris loci ingenuus) from the lord of an estate. These texts show that for lawyers and administrators in the fourth and fifth centuries mediocris was a recognized term for a person who was relatively far down, but well above the bottom, of the social and economic scale.

three main lines of interpretation of Mary and Martha can be distinguished in the twelfth century and the later Middle Ages. They all had roots in the past and sometimes overlapped, even in the works of the same author, but they became increasingly distinct and reflected some of the major spiritual trends of the period. First was the traditional stress on the combination and interaction of contemplation and action in this life; second was the tendency to separate the two types of life and to identify each with different groups of people and social functions on earth; third was the emerging view, of which the beginnings have already been seen in the eleventh century, which exalted Martha's role of action in the world and deprecated Mary's part of withdrawal and contemplation and at the same time endowed each sister with distinctive qualities. Martha stood for service to others, works of mercy, and good housekeeping, while Mary was associated not only with contemplation and the life of prayer and withdrawal from the world but also, as Mary Magdalen, with repentance and reform and, later, with ministering to Christ. According to a French sermon preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript, she was ‘the glorious sinner’, whose hair showed her abundance or excess, and the preachers Ralph Ardens and Peter Comestor, respectively, called her ‘the penitent sinner’ and said that her tears, foot-kissing, and anointing of feet and head were marks of her conversion from an evil heart, mouth, and deed. The traditional symbiosis between the two sisters thus broke down, and each acquired her own characteristics, legend, and liturgical cult.