Seminar: “Welcome to the Jongle: Ioculatores in 12th- and 13th-Century Toulouse”
Katherine Pierpont (Mellon Fellow, PIMS)
In the medieval era, as in the modern era, cityscapes were living, changing entities, both shaping and being shaped by the people living in them. By examining individual stories and tracing larger shifts of group movement over time, this seminar examines the lives and prospects of jongleurs in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Toulouse. Using arcGIS and StoryMaps, we can manipulate the data at hand to pose questions we did not know to ask and to convey that information in an accessible visual medium. The archival footprint of jongleurs, though faint, nevertheless reflects the way larger movements like the rise of guilds and professionalization can be seen in the lived experience of medieval people. But buried within these stories are the narratives the record does not show, the places and people that are omitted. What is left unknown and what is simply unknowable? And most importantly, what can we learn about medieval society if we linger as long on the silences as we do on the noise.
Image: Map of 12th-century Toulouse by John H. Mundy