medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Marjorie Greene <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>"Epaule," I believe, is derived from "scapula," not "speculum."
quite right, i'm sure.
Villette's point --and i wish i could remember his erudite reasoning (he was
retired from the faculty of the Ecole Catholique in Paris)-- was that, by some
circuitous and perverse linguistic transmogrifications well beyond my ken, the
_de specula_ folks were named after their craft, which was associated with the
tower, which may have, itself, had that name (in some form). that much seems
pretty straight forward and reasonable.
when the tower was ruined (in the Wars of Religion, i believe), and assumed
its very curious present shape (that old print doesn't quite show the
existence of a sort of "lump" near the top of it), there was another
transformation which envolved something like "specula" (or it's moyen french
equivilent) becomming "espaule," because of the evident shape of the thing,
all memory of the 12th c. speculum having been obluiervated without a
trace....
a good bit of my acceptance of the argument was due to my respect for V.'s
quite extraordinary skill as a topynomical scholar (i've had occasion to
mention on this list before his interesting article on the mythological "St.
Cheron" of Chartres.)
the first part (the cognomen "_de specula_" == "the guy who does his thing
with the signal mirror on the tower") i accepted as a reasonable
interpretation of the charter evidence (the _de specula_ boys do indeed seem
to have been in the crew of the Lords of Gallardon and may have been charged
with "castle" duty).
as for the the second, well, not having an overabundance of Good Works stashed
in my box, i figured it was as good a time as any try to go with Faith Alone
as a means to get off this wheel.
i've got my extended notes on the Villette's (unpublished) article on my
broken, un-backedup hardrive, somewhere.
best from the linguistically challenged,
christopher
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