medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>>> You know, it is probably a good idea not to get to caught up in
>>> the phenomena one is supposed to be studying. I shall now be
>>> unable to sleep for trying to retrieve a half-forgotten quotation
>>> about scholars getting infected by the madness they were describing.
>>
>> Could you possibly be referring here to "bongo-bongoism" -
>> ("the tendency to overvalue the objects of one's own inquiries")? :)
>
> No, it's worse than that. The quotation I am trying to remember is
> something along the lines of: "a tendency like those who study the
> Spanish [regency, succession? something 19th century] ... or ...
> to become infected by the kind of madness they are seeking to
> describe".
>
> Studying millennial obsessions must have seemed a safe career
> choice in the 1990s, but there was always a danger of people losing
> interest by 2001 - unless someone did something apocalyptic, of
> course...
you mean like suicide terrorism and global jihad? the danger is
those with ADD who lose their attention span the minute the (what
they think is the) big date (eg Y2K) passes.
i remember getting an email from a colleague who sent me bede's
closing to his chronica maiora (all about antichrist and augustine's
three opinions on the end of the world, with the note, "not being a
millenarian, i don't understand these things... maybe you will."
the problem with that attitude is that if the people whom you study
are prone to apocalypticism (or anything, numerology, etc.) and
you're not interested, you may not notice things that are very impt
to them.
as historians i think we're all something like odysseus tied to the
mast of our impartiality and commitment to getting it right.
r
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