medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
With reference to recent posts on the "political" and "spiritual" motives
for canonization, I wonder if the distinction between the two is one that
would make very little sense to most medieval persons involved in
processes of canonization.
Any attempt to define what constitutes holiness carries with it a set of
assumptions about what "the church" should be and how it should relate to
the broader society. In that sense, the "spiritual" matter of canonization
always has what we would see as a "political" dimension. Similarly, any
measure which actually or potentially strengthens "the" church or "a"
church is a measure with "spiritual" significance. My guess is that the
categories "political" and "spiritual" are much more distinct, and much
more likely to be in conflict, in our minds than in those of the medieval
people we study -- and that in trying to define and assign motivations
according to those categories we to some extent misread the past.
Sue Ridyard
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