On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Michael F Hynes wrote:
> History is not a speculative discipline.
history is not a speculative discipline? where did you learn that?
> I'd love to know what the
> "commonors (though I find this term hoplessly vague)" thought, but, alas,
> we have precious little evidence on this.
covers alot of ground, but that need not prevent you from thinking about
what someone like Leutard is saying by trampling a crucifix and how he
gains his following, and what the relationship btw his audience and that
of Raamirhardus was. we actually have alot of evidence on this, and only
a rigid hostility to any kind of conjecture in doing history prevents us
from addressing these issues.
> > again, your case
> > may (or may not) be airtight for the canonical distinctions you are
> > making, but i think you end up losing alot of the social religious dynamic
> > in approaching it this way.
>
> You seem to be implying that you know something about 11th cent.
> ecclesiological debates that I (or Gilchrist) don't-- if so, I'd
> like to know what it is we've overlooked. The distinctions I and the 11th
> cent. reformers made simply cannot be dismissed out of hand just to fit a
> desired end.
no, i'm suggesting that the larger reform movement in which these
ecclesiological debates occurred has an important relationship to what is
happening in extra-ecclesial religious culture. the effort, for example,
to distinguish as much as possible btw lay and cleric is not merely an
internally driven phenomenon.
> > Moore and (thanks for the reminder) Grundmann
> > are able to place the reform in a context of popular concerns and
> > enthusiasms that go a long way towards both explaining its origins and
> > dynamics. to get a sense of how close the reformers come to donatism
> > (which is just the orthodox epithet for rigorism), imagine Augustine
> > reading either Humbert or Hildebrand.
>
> The latter smacks of anachronism; but let me indulge you.
thank you. it's just an exercise. it also works well if you imagine
Augustine as a papal advisor when Joachim's exegesis of Revelation shows up.
> I think he wd
> have found their position perfectly acceptable. Simoniac orders were
> valid and so sacraments done by simoniacs were also valid. He may even
> have understood Humbert, even if he disagreed factually w/him: viz.
> Simoniacs are heretics and so (even Augustine wd agree if he accepted
> the position that they were heretics) their orders are invalid and hence
> so too their sacraments.
i don't follow you here. are they valid or not acc to Humbert? to make
your analogy historical: if Augustine wd have accepted that the traditores
were heretics then he wd have agreed their orders and sacraments were
invalid... yes. and then he wd have been a donatist. by the way, there is
plenty of simony in Aug's day -- the episcopate after Constantine becomes
an often-court appointed and very wealthy group. even theological debates
are the subject of huge bribes. none of this seems to have been
considered by Aug or his known opponents as a serious a threat to the moral
and spiritual health of the church, certainly nothing to compare with
buckling under to Roman persecution. so if Aug wd not accept traditores as
heretics/disqualified, a fortiori he wd not buy the argument that problem
simoniacs were.
> But to return to the mainstream reformist view,
> simoniacs violate the laws governing the clergy in the church (and,
> moreover, threaten its unity)
this is a good donatist argument. from the perspective of the simoniacs,
it is these new-fangled and radical reformers who threaten the unity of the
church.
> and so they cannot be allowed to exercise
> their offices until they are restored penitentially into the good graces
> of the church.
the donatist demand.
> BTW, Simoniacs who preform the sacraments within a given
> jurisdiction also violate the disciplinary rules of the church, but G VII,
> et al., never maintained that their sacraments were invalid. The donatist
> analogy simply cannot be made w/o twisting and distorting beyond all
> recognition the positions of the parties in the 11th cent. disputes. As
> for the explanitory pwr of the models noted above that is a subject for
> another debate. But let it be noted that no matter how attractive an
> explanitory model may be, it is useless if it is not based on the
> evidence;
how one interprets the evidence has alot to do with what evidence you base
it on. if you restrict your evidence to the most strictly ecclesiastical
material and refuse to speculate about the (far less ample, but far more
suggestive) evidence concerning the interface btw popular and elite
culture, you have defined as useless anything that does not conform to a
highly formalized public transcript. there is more to medieval religious
culture than that.
> and if it distorts that evidence (as describing G VII, et al. as
> Donastists surely does),
surely. (ps. i said functionally donatist)
> it is worse than useless.
hmmm. you mean bad history?
> I have no prob. w/exploring the social roots/responsess to the reform;
> but be true to the sources!
i try. i just look at a different range of sources in both time and in
social milieu. and i find often that what appears on the public record is
contradicted by what a closer examination indicates is going on (eg Ademar
winning his debate with Bernard of Chiusa; or Charlemagne's coronation in
6000 Annus mundi -- dated AD by all the "sources", but known and
followed by clergy and laity once one examines the ms marginalia
and the patterns of dating).
rlandes
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