medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
“The potentially important role they *could* play, if the right circumstances demanded it.”
This is precisely the case! And to my mind it’s what makes studying the eleventh and twelfth centuries so fascinating. Regionalism and localism are the norm, as I’ve argued about artistic traditions and artisan education in a recent article. So I’m most definitely not arguing that Beauvais is a template for any other city, region, or “country.”
In this period, the terminology/titles attached to church offices are not standardized in the way they would come to be later. What someone called an office in Beauvais or Chartres probably differed from what one called it in Rome. [And with my “friends” in Beauvais, I’d be willing to believe that that difference was stubbornly maintained...]
Peeling away assumptions from later periods about what an office is or how it functions too often leaves one with a muddy mess. And the terminology shifts within the same city, even in documents drawn up in the same year! So it often comes down to trying to peak through the lattice of what a scribe has written to get a glimpse at the circumstances: the role someone takes relative to the people around him at that moment and for that occasion.
I'm not the first to make this point, of course.
This raises another thorny issue, though: the role of the scribe in attaching Latin titles to roles. I had long assumed that a title for a church office that one city/diocese/region shared with others was an index of the success of papalism. But does this necessarily have to be the case?
In a world where the roles and duties of office are often ad hoc, am I right in assuming that the scribe would have a limited number of Latin words to describe people acting in public roles?
Elaine
Elaine M. Beretz, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Center for Visual Culture
Bryn Mawr College
101 Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899
--- On Fri, 1/27/12, Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [M-R] training of a priest
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Friday, January 27, 2012, 9:14 AM
> medieval-religion: Scholarly
> discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
>
> >>>(a) Ad subdiaconum pertinet calicem et patenam
> ad altare Christi deferre,
> et levitis tradere eisque ministrare; urceolum quoque cum
> aqua, manile et
> manutergium tenere, episcopoque presbytero, et levitis pro
> lavandis ante
> altare manibus aquam praebere.
>
> >>>b)Archidiaconus enim imperat subdiaconis et
> levitis, ad quem pertinent ista
> ministeria, ordinatio...[etc.]
>
> [me]
> >>>am i to understand that "levitis" here means
> "archdeacon" (as per y'day's
> discussion)?
>
> [Kurt]
> >I would bank on "Levite" referring to altar
> servers/acolytes, given the close
> association of the term with the subdeacons, especially the
> way the term is
> used in excerpt b). The way the term appears to be used in
> a) looks a little
> more generic, i.e., anyone who serves in an official
> capacity in the altar.
>
> [John]
> To me it seems rather that _levita_ here means 'deacon' (as
> per yesterday's
> discussion and as per ecclesiastical Latin generally).
> Both snippets use
> _subdiaconus_ and _levita_ in an ordinary way to denote
> generally members of
> their respective clerical orders (subdeacons and deacons).
>
> From: Elaine Beretz <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > My reading is the same as John's. Especially since
> "archilevita" [generally]
> means archdeacon.
>
>
> yes, that seems clear.
>
> and, just as the "archilevita" [=archdeacon] terminology
> found at Beauvais is
> definitely not found in (i suspect) many other places, i
> think that what we
> are looking at, with this "archpresbyter" designation, is
> one of those
> instances in which there was considerable variation in
> diocesan organization,
> not just from country to country (either within the Main
> Stream of
> Civilization or between the Main Stream and the Western
> Fring), but also from
> diocese to diocese withing relatively homogeneous regions
> like northern
> France.
>
> in some dioceses there might not be any archpriests at all,
> in others they
> might be very important "assistant archdeacons" who could,
> under certain
> circumstances, stand in for their immediate bosses or even
> for their bishop.
>
> Bishop Stephen (of Senlis) of Paris' c. 1129 letter re the
> excommunication of
> the murderers of the prior of St. Victor's addressed to the
> archpriests of his
> diocese is, perhaps, a kind of high water mark of the
> potentially important
> role they *could* play, if the right circumstances demanded
> it.
>
> otOh, the very, very few mentions of them in the 11th-12th
> c. documents from
> the diocese of Chartres suggests that, while they did indeed
> exist, they never
> played more than a workaday role in the administration of
> the diocese.
>
> c
>
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