Memory and History: Liturgical Time and Historical Time

This article investigates the differential structure and representation of time in memory and history. It examines two moments in Jewish historical thought—in the Middle Ages, and in works written within and after the Holocaust—and demonstrates the fundamentally liturgical nature of Jewish historical memory in selected texts from these two periods. Following the groundbreaking work of Yerushalmi, it seeks to demonstrate that for Jews, historical experience is incorporated into the cyclical reenactment of paradigmatic events in Jewish sacred ritual. Recent or contemporary experiences acquire meaning only insofar as they can be subsumed within Biblical categories of events and their interpretation bequeathed to the community through the medium of Scripture, that is to say, only insofar as they can be transfigured, ritually and liturgically, into repetitions and reenactments of ancient happening. In such liturgical commemoration, the past exists only by means of recitation; the fundamental goal of such recitation is to make it live again in the present, to fuse past and present, chanter and hearer, into a single collective entity. History, in the sense that we understand it to consist of unique events unfolding within irreversible linear time, is absorbed into cyclical, liturgical memory.
This article argues that the question of Jewish history—both medieval and post-Holocaust—poses in a compelling fashion the question of the relationship between memory and history more generally, and serves to contest the current tendency in academic historiography to collapse history into memory. It claims that to the extent that memory "resurrects,""re-cycles," and makes the past "reappear" and live again in the present, it cannot perform historically, since it refuses to keep the past in the past, to draw the line, as it were, that is constitutive of the modern enterprise of historiography.     

A Carved Romanesque Springer with Voussoirs in Church House,Gloucester Cathedral

A Romanesque double-springer and five voussoirs, decorated with foliate carving and pellet, have been reused as a door-head in the ground floor of Church House, Gloucester Cathedral. The carved stones are illustrated, together with a reconstruction of the original double arch, which may have come from an early 12th- century pulpitum screen or the arcade of the first Norman cloister.     

Napoleon's France: History and heritage

In 1992 a group of activists initiated a new project of citizenship aiming to give gay and lesbian couples in France the status and rights they had been denied. This project was a form of social contract also designed for heterosexual couples, whether or not they had a sexual relationship. The final version of this contract, the Pacte civil de solidarité, is now called the PACS. This article argues that the PACS activists were unable to formulate their project outside the principles of universal citizenship inherent in French republicanism. They also came to rely on the Left in power for support. The Senate rejected the PACS bill in March 1999 and again in May 1999. A final decision on the PACS bill is to be made by the National Assembly before the end of 1999.     

In haec signa: Pilgrim-badge trade in southern France

Medieval shrines acquired their wealth from the pilgrims who worshipped in them. Though a large part of this wealth come in the form of outright donations, shrines received a considerable income from the sale of pilgrims' badges and other souvenirs. Originally an ecclesiastical monopoly, the sale of badges became a bone of contention in many pilgrimage centers between the shrine proper and the surrounding town. This phenomenon can be seen in the shrines of St James in Compostela, St Mary Magdalen in Saint-Maximin, and the Virgin Mary in Rocamadour and Le Puy. During the later middle ages the development of a whole souvenir industry for pilgrims reflected the change in the popular attitude towards pilgrimages. The pilgrimage ceased to be a purely religious undertaking of someone who had severed himself from secular society for the duration of the journey. It became a social event which combined piety with tourism.