medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The sentences highlighted by John Dillon are even a bit on the
tendentious side prima facie--I think we lose sight of the fact that,
although no theology is done in Latin until Tertullian (but his
contribution is crucial), important theology was done in the West in the
late 2nd and 3rd centuries. It was done in Greek so it gets assimilated
to the East but it is the common property of both East and West:
Irenaeus, even the Shepherd of Hermas, on through Hippolytus, then
Tertullian and Cyprian in Latin. The Church at Rome and at Lyons was
Greek-speaking, composed to some degree of immigrants from the Eastern
Mediterranean, yes, but also because Rome was cosmopolitan. If this
Greek-language theology had only been preserved and taken up into later
Greek/Eastern church theology, the point would be well taken. But most
of it was taken up, incorporated into both East and West--certainly
Irenaeus and the Shepherd. Hippolytus perhaps had more influence in the
West than East, but even there I don't think the reception went in only
one direction.
To argue for a discontinuity between early modern and modern Catholicism
and medieval Catholics by anachronistically reading the later divisions
between Latins and Greeks back into the first centuries is a good
example of how modern polemics (the tendency in Western intellectual
circles to look down on the Latin heritage and see greener pastures in
the Greek East) since the Protestant Reformation have affected our
understanding of the past. What was presented in the earlier posting as
simple fact: the modern western Catholic church has no real, serviceable
continuity with the medieval Western Church or the ancient church
(because the latter included the East and now East and West are
separated) is in fact an interpretation, an explanatory model. Those
who find it convincing will, of course, set it forth, but I look at the
same data and see a very different picture. Students deserve to know
that we know we are interpreting data, not presenting history wie es
eigentlich geschehen ist.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 05/08/04 8:02 PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
On the other hand, it might well be relevant to an understanding of why
medieval "Eastern" Christians, especially those who were Greek-speaking,
preferred their interpretations to "Western" ones in disputed matters of
Christian theology and ecclesiology. Of course, if one were to define
"purely medieval" solely in reference to "Western" phenomena (thereby
making "Eastern" ones either non-medieval or if medieval then of no
importance, if not entirely of no account), then Meg's speculation might
have some validity. Best, John Dillon
On Sat, 08 May 2004 11:43:31 -0400 Meg Cormack wrote:
>It doesn't hurt to point out that the intellectual centers
>at which most early theology was developed were at the eastern
>end of the meditteranean and greek speaking (though for a purely
>medieval course this might not be relevant.)
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