medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I agree 100% with Frans here. I offer a small example in illustration.
I have just been looking at the article in vol. 3 (1908) of the old
Catholic Enyclopedia on the Carmelite Order (to which I belong). The CE
editors undoubtedly chose the best available author for the task
(Benedict Zimmerman, OCD). He was an excellent historian, and his
article was, for its time, a tour de force. He approached the legends
which had distorted the historiography of the order since the Middle
Ages with a thoroughly scholarly and well-grounded scepticism. It was a
revolutionary step for a member of the order, which still continued to
propagate a fantastic romanticised version of its origin and early
history against all evidence or lack of evidence to the contrary.
Zimmerman paid a heavy price for his efforts (see, for example, the
nasty and ill-informed attack on him by a confrere in the Irish
Ecclesiastical Record 29 (1911): 29-51), but he did much to open the way
for the proper scientific history which the order had hitherto lacked.
His CE article is itself an important historical document, and it took
another generation before his contribution was really appreciated.
Nevertheless, subsequent research has clearly shown that on the early
history of the order he was not revolutionary enough, and many of his
statements now require substantial revision. Not to put too fine a point
on it, they are wrong.
This is not a problem in itself, nor does it diminish Zimmerman's
achievement. The problem is the apparently widespread misapprehension
that his article remains authoritative and that our knowledge of the
subject has not advanced in the century since he wrote it. The
contemporary influence of this famous entry seems ubiquitous and in many
respects baneful. It is all too often used uncritically and/or as a sole
source, even in published works, and absolutely bedevils attempts to
propagate a more accurate historical account based on all the evidence
now available. I'm sure Zimmerman himself would not be pleased.
I don't wish to attack the old CE, which deserves the high prestige
which it is accorded, or its internet version, which is a tremendous
service. But I suspect we will have to keep saying boringly over and
over that, like any other resource, ones such as these must be used
critically, and that ultra-modern formats should not dull a lively sense
of the age and origin of the content. In my experience it is not always
easy to persuade students of this, which I find a bit mysterious. It is
not that they are unsceptical about information. I suspect rather that
we are faced with internet-oriented research and writing habits learned
in high school which have to be inconveniently unlearned or rethought at
university level.
Also I must say--with all delicacy--that I don't find it reasuring that
the net version was subject to "revisions and a going-over by the people
working on the articles". If this is so, it does not seem to be
well-explained at the New Advent website, which as far as I can see
refers to its source for the encyclopedia simply as the 1913 edition.
Doesn't unacknowledged revision compromise the electronic CE as a
version of this historic encyclopedia, without really offering assurance
that the updating is done at a level of competence similar to the original?
Thomson-Gale, in my opinion, made a hash of its 2nd edition of the New
Catholic Encyclopedia (2002) by creating uncertainty of a similar kind:
some articles are entirely new, some are revised by the author, some by
another, some have additions, some have new bibliographies, some have
the bibliographies of 40 years ago, some now have bibliographies which
are not the basis of the article to which they are appended, and it is
rather difficult to know which are which.
==========
Paul Chandler, O.Carm. | Carmelite Library
214 Richardson Street | Middle Park Vic 3206 | Australia
tel:: (03) 9682 8553 | fax: (03) 9699 1944 | email:
[log in to unmask]
Frans van Liere wrote:
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>Well, I'll post one more reaction to the various threads that seem to
>have come together in this one:
>Obviosuly, I was not arguing that all you find on the web is garbage,
>and all you find in print is reliable. (Some of the websites that are
>recommended on this list are a good illustartion of this point!) I guess
>the old "caveat lector" is true more than ever. I have just spent a
>month teaching students how to apply this "caveat" in a reseach methods
>class, so maybe I'm sensitive to the issue.
>
>The main point, I guess, is: know what you're citing. If you know that
>the Catholic Encyclopeadia is a 1917 work that's still very useful in
>many respects, that's fine. (In fact, I often use the Religion in
>Geschichte und Gegenwart of 1929, which long has lost its caim to be
>representative of the "Gegenwart", or the Theologisches Kirchenlexikon
>of 1957, with great profit. And, of course, neither one is searchable by
>key-word in the blink of an eye!) As long as no one consuses it with the
>the latest scholarship. I am sometimes astonished to see people use the
>Migne database without knowing exactly what or who Migne is.
>
>And speaking of Migne, maybe Tom knows more about this. The booklet
>"God's Plagiarist" I referred to earlier gives a revealing insight into
>Migne's methods. And some of the editions in there are actually very
>good critical editions that were made for his edition in the
>mid-nineteenth century. (Not that any of his "modern" editors ever
>received any credit for this work...). But some are actually very shoddy
>nineteenth-century editions, and some are seventeenth-century editions,
>or even older. Again: know what you're looking at!
>
>And all those who are working in education: make your students aware of
>this problem, and teach them how to deal with it.
>
>
>
>
>Frans van Liere
>Department of History, Calvin College
>1845 Knollcrest Circle SE
>Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>http://www.calvin.edu/academic/history/faculty/vanlieref/
>
>
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