medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

>>> [log in to unmask] 09/16/02 06:10PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture


<<Then in your view (their own self-construction on this point is another
matter) these segments of the Church of England are not Protestant?  If I
understand you correctly, that's the answer to my query.  And bears
directly on the issue of whether certain persons now venerated by some in
the C of E are actually "Protestant saints" (rather than
Catholic-though-not-Roman ones).  Thank you.>>


My apologies for not answering John Dillon's question directly enough.  In part I was replying to the entire thread as it had developed to that point, where some of the distinctions you made were not being made.  Not all of what I am going to write here is directed directly in reply to Dr. Dillon's post.  It seeks to address the issues raised by the entire thread.

First, the short answer is that I do believe (I am open to being corrected) that the point of being Anglo-Catholic is to differentiate oneself thereby from being Protestant.  The Thirty-Nine Articles did have a number of fairly strong Reformed statements; the Anglo-Catholic movement wished to overcome that phase of the English Reformation and read those articles in a Catholic way while at the same time continuing to reject the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome within England.  I realize this is an oversimplification and if it misrepresents Anglo-Catholicism I hope Anglo-Catholics on the list will correct me.

Secondly, this thread is relevant to medieval studies because I do think that during the Middle Ages saints were honored primarily as intercessors and miracle-workers (which does not preclude them also being exemplars to be imitated).  The key point here is that they were very much present and alive to the people who venerated and invoked them.  What I don't think would be characteristic of medieval attitudes toward saints would be to view them as modern Americans view George Washington (or used to, before that sort of patriotism became politically incorrect) or Martin Luther King (list members from other nations please substitute your own national equivalents--I do not mean to exclude).  Such heroes are not present and alive to modern people in the same sense that I think saints were to medieval people, in general.  I do not mean to denigrate the degree to which historical heroes may inspire modern people. but they do so as historical figures.  And I do think this more flattened historical/commemorative attitude toward heroes of the past, whether "secular" or "religious" owes something to the developments of the 16th and subsequent centuries and their attitudes toward the dead.  I think one ought not underestimate the degree to which Reformed uneasiness with the sort of easy commerce with the dead as found in the cult of saints changed people's attitudes toward the dead.  One could exaggerate this, so I wish to be cautious, but I do think it is significant because unless we try to assess how much things changed as a result of Protestant and then Enlightenment attitudes, we will have difficulty understanding medieval sources.

Did everything change, overnight?  No.  That was the burden of Robert Kolb's book and other studies that have been mentioned.  Did things change everywhere to the same degree?  Not at all.  Lutherans and Anglicans differed from Calvinists and Anabaptists. But the earliest postings in this thread seemed to move in the direction of minimizing most if not all differences between Protestants and Catholics on this issue.  I thought that was something of an overcorrection.  In the Evangelical circles I grew up in, nothing could be more alien and unfathomable than Catholic veneration of saints, to say nothing of invoking their intercession.  But then Anglo-Catholics or high Lutherans would have also been very alien to that very Protestant world .  Hence my longish response.

In conclusion, I think the fundamental misunderstanding involved here is the common equation (for the western European realm) of "Protestant" with "non-Catholic Christian."  To some degree it would work for the Continent, but the peculiarities of English religious history render it a source of confusion.  Even on the Continent, certain circles within Lutheranism would call themselves "Evangelical Catholics" (again, to some degree as the result of re-catholicizing trends in recent centuries) and would resist the label "Protestant."  It is the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition that has most proudly worn that label over the centuries, and even there there were exceptions (Philip Schaff and the Mercersburg Theology).

Dennis Martin

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