1 How to Read a Primary Source

This section helps students recognize different kinds of primary sources—diaries, letters, laws, poems, and so on—and think about how these sources are written for different purposes and audiences. It introduces the idea of reading with a few critical questions in mind: who wrote a piece, what it is, why it was written, who it was written to or for, when it was written, and what it says. Students learn what kinds of information to expect from different kinds of sources and how to read those sources critically.

Every time we write a note, a message, a list, or an essay we have someone in mind that we are writing to. It may be hundreds or thousands of friends on social media, or a couple of teachers or professors for an essay, or an employer for a report, or a single person for a private card or letter. We may even write to ourselves, with a quickly scrawled shopping list, or a note reminding us of things we need to do today, or a diary of what we actually did. Sometimes we write to persuade our reader, sometimes to record our likes or dislikes, and sometimes to express private things we don’t want or expect anyone else to read. Our writing may be “official” or personal; it may be public or private; it may be something we want the world to remember or something we want everyone to forget.

We change the tone of what we write depending on who we are writing to, when we are writing, and what we are writing for. With public writing, we know that readers will get a sense of who we are through what we write, so we think more about the impact of what we write: What do we want to tell our readers? What details have to be included? If some group that we are part of appoints us to write something on behalf of the group—a petition, a set of rules, minutes of a meeting, or a report on an event—then we may be less personal and more formal in what we write. We may think more about reporting fairly and clearly, and may even have to include some views of the group that we don’t personally share. When we write privately, that seldom happens—we are free to write what we think and feel. But do we always do that? What we share with a parent or grandparent will be different from what we share with someone we love—or someone we hate. We may hide some things we don’t want them to know, or exaggerate other things if we want to please or impress them. Whether we write publicly or privately, we know that those who read us will get some sense of who we are.

People living in Europe in the early modern period, roughly 1500–1700, wrote for much the same purposes and in much the same way. They argued, boasted, and bragged. They recorded details carefully or made them up entirely. They wrote what they believed to be true or what they knew to be false. They wrote letters, diaries, rules, proposals, newspaper reports, stories, and poems. Reading what they wrote opens a window into what they thought about—what worried them or excited them or amazed them about each other and about their world. These are the people whose daily lives made up the history we study. A letter from a woman in Peru to her brother in Spain trying to convince him to take the long voyage to join her. A midwife giving advice on how to conceive a boy or girl and how to have a healthy pregnancy. A young student on his way to university who has to think quickly to avoid getting beaten up and robbed. A lawyer giving instructions to judges on how to prosecute a witch. A mother telling her son who he must marry, or a son telling his mother why he married the girl he loved instead. A dying father leaving instructions on how he wants his children to be raised, or a guardian making promises on how he will care for an orphan.

Reading these letters, wills, and diaries narrows the distance between early modern people and ourselves, because we see that sometimes they expressed hopes and fears that we can easily identify with. Sometimes it does the opposite, as when we read medical advice about how to keep our bodies cool by eating chicken or hot by choosing cabbage. We have to read carefully so that we don’t misunderstand things that seem very close to our own experience or misinterpret things that seem very different.
If we read with a few questions in mind, we can get more out of reading documents written a few hundred years ago:

• Who was writing it?
• Who was reading it?
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• What does it say?

As we play with these questions, and go back and forth from one to the other, we will find that each casts a bit of light on the others. What may seem like simple words on a page can take on different meaning if they are written by a woman or a man, if they are written for a child or an adult, if they are written to persuade the reader to do something, or if they are written to report on what others have done. And while today we avoid plagiarism, many early moderns embraced it—some of the authors here borrowed freely from other authors, and sometimes from other languages, often without acknowledgment. This makes critical reading all the more complicated and all the more necessary.

Some sources offer advice, set down rules, or advocate a course of action; since they prescribe actions, we often call these prescriptive. Medical treatises, laws, sermons, and advice literature all count as prescriptive examples. Other sources offer accounts of events that have taken place; since they describe actions, we often call these descriptive. Court records, letters, diaries, and chronicles are examples of descriptive writings. But not all documents fall neatly into these two categories: A mother writing a letter to her son will move back and forth from description to prescription as she gives news about a sibling and advice about a cold. A doctor writing a medical treatise may offer advice about childbirth that combines dictates from the respected Islamic authority Avicenna with eye-witness experiences of a local midwife. And even within these categories, we have to read critically with an eye and ear to who is writing and why. A court reporter’s transcript of an interrogation may not overtly show how an illiterate peasant defendant is awed or cowed by the learned magistrates posing their questions. The voice of the accused was filtered initially through the learned judicial system and is filtered again in our modern translations. When we read that transcript in modern English, we have to work to pick up the subtle differences between questions asked in formal French, German, or Spanish (or Latin) and answers given in the simple vernacular or local dialect of 500 years ago. And on it goes: Pamphlets and chronicles that reported news from the period almost never presented facts objectively, but instead had propagandistic purposes. The more questions we ask about these passages, the closer we come to understanding their different levels of meaning.

The more levels of meaning we recognize, the better we understand how these sources uncover lives that were often quite different from—or surprisingly similar to—our own. What foods we eat and why; how we fall in love and whether we marry; what reactions we may have to those from other cultures, cities, or social classes, and how our views and values will then shape whether we help, punish, embrace, or flee the other—all of these experiences are also found in the sources here. Reading them challenges us to see with the eyes of those who wrote them and to understand their world from the inside: Why did so many people fear witches? How did men understand women, and vice versa? What was fair, or just, or good? Looking at these issues as they looked at them helps us understand the societies they built. Each document fits into a larger picture or view of the world.

That view of the world extended beyond sight and the other four senses. It extended beyond birth and death. Early modern people had a strong sense of the universe as a place powered by forces and spirits. They believed in a God who created and sustained this universe, who knew them, and who held them accountable both for what they did and for what they let their neighbours do. The readings here aim to open windows onto Christian, Jewish, and Muslim experiences, and to show how much of daily life was shaped by a strong sense that all actions by individuals, families, and societies would either please or anger God.

Who, what, when, where, and why. One question informs another, and as you go back and forth between them you may find that a document says the opposite of what you first thought. Don’t be frustrated—take this as a challenge and maybe even a mystery. The more carefully you train your ear with these questions, the more clearly you will hear the voices of those behind these letters, diaries, laws, and treatises, and the better you will understand the world that they made.