On Tue, 30 Jul 1996, Michael F Hynes wrote:
> Ok, I'll just say one or two things about Urban II.
glad you have. thanks for the material.
> reform. Politically adroit, Urban tackled the thorny problem of what to do
> about schismatic (N.B. that contumacious schism was regarded as
> a heresy) ordinations and (because of the schism) multiple claimants
> to the same office, with pragmatism and diplomacy.
in answer to Thomas Izbicki's question about where is the donatism...
this is a good example of trying to clean up the mess after an episode of
"donatism." if we redefine the donatist side as the rigorist one, then i
think the continuities are as clear as the distinctions.
> His politically
> adroitness (like the Am. pres. Bill Clinton
and William V (the "Great") of Aquitaine (as seen, eg, in the Conventum
inter hugonem chiliarchum et guillelmus comes).
), however, often left his
> actual positions open to misunderstanding. He has, for example, been
> viewed as a moderate on issues of investiture and clerical hommage. I am
> arguing in my diss. that this was merely a tactic-- Urban was as opposed
> to these practices as G VII.
> Urban also completed the reformation of the
> south-western French church that had been initiated by G VII at the
> Council of Poitiers (1078). It was no accident that he chose Clermont in
> Eastern Aquitaine as the opening site for a series of French councils
> which basically took the papacy on a tour of Aquitaine and culminated with
> the Council of Poitiers (under Urban's sucessor) in 1100. From the pt. of
> view of French social history (I include this out of personal interest and
> for Richard),
:-)
> Urban suceeded in taming the peace and truce of God (prob.
> repressed in this region by G VII),
what evidence for this repression (which wd make sense). what elements
of the peace movt wd the papal reformers find most problematic?
> and (this is especially for you
> Richard) he took action against the cult of Saint Martial.
i thought he took action against the bishop of Limoges, not the monastery.
> As far as my
> evaluation of Urban goes, he was a corpus mixtum. But I think that given a
> choice between an inflexable purist like G VII and a wiley pragmatist
> like Urban, I'd choose the latter. For his legislative achievements alone,
> I suppose he earned his sainthood.
that's about a warm an endorsement as Ralph Glaber gave to William of
Volpiano in his *Vita Guillelmi*.
what, in your opinion, is the best treatment of Urban, the peace, and the
crusade?
richard
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