Medieval Nostalgia

From the perspective of the history of emotions, this chapter discusses nostalgia as a culturally constructed, yet transhistorical, emotion. The point of departure is a range of texts produced within various historical cultures of Early and Medieval Christianity. They will demonstrate how religious cultures have actively shaped the experience of emotions like nostalgic retrospection. In the period between 200 and 1300, texts relating to asceticism and monasticism reveal vast changes in mentalities towards reminiscence. Whereas retrospection was initially deemed highly undesirable as part of a harmful thought or passion known as acedia, feelings of dislocation and longing for the past were ultimately exploited as a reparative, and comforting, emotion to redirect one’s past longings towards God as an attachment figure. A common thread in religious texts is the interwoven nature between the home and the family, focusing especially on the latter. This leads to the conclusion that premodern Christianity made little distinction between grief, homesickness, and nostalgia. These cultural-psychological and history of emotions perspectives to nostalgia highlight the significance of taking stock of nostalgia’s social and cultural contexts while also addressing the persistence of these contexts through time. For the pervasive legacy of Christianity in Western cultures allows us to identify with these historical manifestations of nostalgia, contributing to the emotion’s transhistoricity.