medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

<<Those of us who make the distinction, as I did, entirely
coincidentally, this very morning in my class, between the spiritual and
temporal powers in the process of Inquisition, do so not to say that the
Church was uninvolved--which would be absurd, but rather to be very
clear about who was involved and how.  We do this in response to
disingenuous Enlightenment and anti-clerical blanket claims about the
Church's involvement that refuses to distinguish between the roles.

Medieval society was multilayered and complex, as all societies are.
Here is not the place to try to thrash out all aspects of the Church's
ownership of property (donated by lay people of means for a wide variety
of motivations but including the purpose of permitting monastic life or
episcopal government to flourish alongside all sorts of other
socio-political purposes) and the obligations that came with being a
landowner.  Carrying out civil and criminal jurisdiction was part of
that.  In most instances the actual execution was done by lay people to
whom it had been delegated (the secular advocate, Vogt, mercenary
soldiers etc.).  Of course it's hard to imagine a prelate being a
secular lord without getting involved in military matters (but military
matters can mean a lot of different things).  The fact is, however, that
temporal and spiritual were interrelated.

It is possible for us to conceive of a strict separation between
spiritual and temporal power, perhaps.  That might seem neat--to have
the Church solely concerned with spiritual matters and only temporal
rulers concerned with jurisdiction and war.  But I can't imagine a
medieval person imagining this.  That we can imagine it tells us more
about our culture than theirs.  We have privatized religion, taken it
out of the public sphere.  That may be an improvement, though it does
not seem to have led to a reduction in bloodshed or dehumanization or
tyrranny, if the 20thc is to be taken seriously.  The point is that
medieval folk, given their believes about an all-powerful God who
created everything, could scarcely have thought that "temporal"
government had nothing to do with belief about God and right and wrong
or that "spiritual government" had nothing to do with civil legislation
and enforcement.

The process by which bishops became involved in what we could call civil
jurisdiction came partly by choice but also by default when Christian
people initially voluntarily turned to bishops to resolve disputes among
them (as St. Paul mandated in the NT) but later found themselves with
little choice in the matter since alternative sources of civil
jurisdiction had atrophied at least in specific regions for specific
periods of time.

This does not justify the abuses that have been cited, instances in
which apparently bloodthirsty clerics led in battles.  But one would
have to try to identify to what degree they were indeed bloodthirsty and
violent (i.e., try to get at the facts as best one can from the sources
that may or may not be exact descriptions) and then try to distinguish
abuse from routine, de facto from de jure.

Dennis Martin>>

Understood. I meant to imply neither that medieval Catholics should be
dismissively faulted for "failing" to distinguish between temporal and
spiritual power in the way that modern society does; nor that the
medieval Catholic Church and its clergy are alone (or even exceptional)
in human history in perpetrating bloodshed and then dodging
responsibility for it. (Arguing that only the secular arm burned
heretics is an important and true distinction for fully understanding
the phenomenon of the Inquisition in its many layers and aspects, yes.
But when it's brought up specifically in the context of an argument over
"who's to blame for the Inquisition" -- an argument of doubtful utility
anyway -- then it's a moral dodge. Not that I've ever seen anyone
arguing about "who's to blame for the Inquisition" on this list; I just
mean it can be and has been used as an excuse elsewhere.)

As you point out, separation of church and state is no guarantee against
atrocity, only against particular forms of atrocity. We've all seen that
purely secular governments are just as capable of perpetrating and then
justifying atrocity as any other sort. I still believe in separation of
church and state, but it's not the cure-all some Enlightenment and 19c
thinkers probably hoped it would be. Christian belief and the Church's
secular power led to a great many institutional improvements to medieval
society (universities and hospitals leap to mind) as well as to
institutional abuses, and that's also important to remember.

(I have seen anti-Catholic bigots use the example of the Inquisition as
an excuse to vilify the entire religion, and have spoken out against
such thinking -- it irks me to see the intolerant lambaste others for
intolerance in any setting; so I do realize how legitimate criticisms of
atrocities and their systemic causes can be misused to great evil.)

Like most people throughout history, I'm sure most medieval clerics --
including those who found themselves in the position of acting as
secular lords or of deciding legal/criminal cases that the modern mind
would consider purely secular -- were decent human beings doing their
best to navigate a system they didn't create. For reasons that seemed
valid at the time, and through a variety of processes over many
centuries, medieval society reached a point where the Catholic Church
was a great secular power as well as a great spiritual one. Once that
was the reality, everybody born under that reality just had to deal with
it somehow, even the pope.

Although there's never any excuse for atrocity, I agree there's limited
benefit in condemning a long-dead medieval bishop who took part in a
war, or an Inquisitor who sentenced heretics to burn, unless we have
some clear idea what we would really have preferred he do instead. The
world is changed for the better (and for the worse) by people who can
conceive of a totally different social order; but realistically, most of
us choose among the paths that are laid out before us, which are
particular to time, place and culture.

Hope there was no misunderstanding. If so, I apologize.

--Sarah Roark
-----------------------------------------------------------
"It comes in pints?"

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