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Just in case you wanted to know: if a mouse nibbles on a consecrated host, it ceases to be a consecrated host.

That鈥檚 on the authority of Pope Innocent III, who decreed the doctrine of transubstantiation in 1215. And although you may not have wondered about nibbling mice, church-goers in the 13th century definitely did, says Professor of History Timothy Thibodeau, Ph.D., an expert on the religion and culture of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Thibodeau paints a robust picture of medieval culture in his most recent paper, The Spider in the Chalice: Rethinking the Liturgy in the Age of Scholasticism with William Durand of Mende鈥檚 (c. 1230鈥�1296) Mass Commentary, which he delivered in October at the annual conference of the New York State Association of European Historians. Writers of church doctrine didn鈥檛 address everyday topics like mice unless someone raised the issue in the first place, explains Thibodeau. Clerical teachings handed down by the Church often lived side by side with the earthy or even exotic concerns of ordinary people; 鈥渟ublime theological rumination is merged with the mundane problems of Eucharistic hygiene.鈥� Close examinations of those teachings from the Middle Ages can give historians a clearer picture of the concerns of typical church-goers and open a window into 13th-century culture.

That cultural window is important, says Thibodeau, because it had been closed by scholars of Church history until recently.

Thibodeau鈥檚 paper points out that Durand, Thomas Aquinas, and other contemporaries in liturgical commentary produced 鈥渃almly constructed, lengthy discussions of mice that eat consecrated hosts or spiders that fall into consecrated chalices juxtaposed with Aristotelian explications of the moment of consecration on the altar.鈥� Durand, a French bishop, was one of the most notable men to come out of the Age of Scholasticism, the intellectual movement in the 12th and 13th centuries that celebrated critical thought. Scholasticism was held up by the Catholic Church during the tumult of the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment as a 鈥済olden age鈥� of religious faith and rationalism.

But the way Scholasticism was appropriated by the Church turned clerical doctrine into something no longer rooted in everyday life, contends Thibodeau; the official doctrine lost the cultural context for its intellectual ideas. Thibodeau searches for mice and other evidence of everyday life in medieval documents to help restore that context鈥攈ow the culture of the time, the realities of the world in which people lived, affected their ideas.

鈥淗istorians of religious belief and practice have to move way beyond official doctrines of the Church and examine the broader cultural contexts that led to the formulation of these dogmatic teachings,鈥� explains Thibodeau. 鈥淚n that sense, what we call 鈥榩op culture鈥� does play a role in the formation of institutional religious identity and formal teaching. Even in the erudite literature of the 13th century, everyday life creeps in.鈥�

Why does this matter to 21st-century historians? Thibodeau contends that our everyday interests aren鈥檛 a lot different today, although mice in the communion host may not be our first concern. Even with modernity鈥檚 astounding technology, high levels of education, and supposed cultural sophistication, Americans are still drawn to the strange and bizarre鈥攋ust like people were in medieval Europe.

鈥淚 tell students if they want to get a good grip on American society, they probably shouldn鈥檛 be reading the New England Journal of Medicine,鈥� Thibodeau concludes. 鈥淭hey should read The National Enquirer 颈苍蝉迟别补诲.鈥�

Dr. Timothy Thibodeau is a professor of history at Nazareth and the immediate past president of the New York State Association of European Historians.

Robyn Rime is the editor of Connections.