medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
For Jim Bugslag,
There is a voluminous literature on the topic of "popular culture/religion"
that is well worth searching out. But if you specifically want to think
about the issue of Christianization, and the processes through which it came
about, I can recommend an interesting debate on this issue.
John Van Engen's "The Christian Middle Ages as Historiographical Problem,"
American Historical Review, 91/3 (1986): 519-552, is largely an attack on
the scholarship of the Annales school, particularly the work of Jacques Le
Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt. Van Engen argues vehemently against the notion
that medieval culture was only superficially Christianized, a position he
associates with these scholars.
In 1988, J-C Schmitt incorporated a response to Van Engen in the
Introduction to a collection of his essays appearing in Italian. The
original is in the introduction to the book: Religione, folklore, e societa
nell'Occidente medievale. (Rome-Bari: Edizioni Laterza). An abbreviated
English translation appears in Lester Little and Barbara Rosenwein, Debating
the Middle Ages, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998): 376-387.
The two pieces make for a good presentation of forcefully opposed views. I
sometimes teach Schmitt's Holy Greyhound (English trans. from Cambridge,
1983), then Van Engen, then Schmitt's response. There are a lot of good
issues to tease out.
Best,
Nancy Caciola
History
University of California, San Diego
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