At 11:22 AM 4/25/98 -0500, Dennis Martin wrote:
>
>
>On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Stephen A. Allen wrote:
>
>> Dennis' point is well taken, but there is, I think, one
>> problem that still needs to be raised. One thing is clear
>> from the sources I've mentioned, and the others which have
>> been discussed in this thread, and that is that the dead
>> are not "merely bodies." Or, to be more specific, it seems
>> to me that the dead retain some sort of spiritual value,
>> positive or negative, after death.
>
>One needes to be careful with terminology. The value of
the body after
>death is related to the eventual resurrection of the body,
to the
>reuniting of body and soul. The body is treated with
respect, proper
>ceremony etc. because it has been a servant to the soul
and will be such
>in the future. If that is what one means by "spiritual"
value, fine. But
>in a strict sense this would not be a "spiritual" value,
rather, a
>specifically bodily value, namely the proper bodily role
of serving the
>soul; the two forming a unity, a team working together but
clearly
>distinct.
>
Dennis is perfectly correct, and I am embarrassed that he
caught me making a terminological mistake that I have
lectured others about in the past. For "spiritual," read
"religious" here. Specifically, what I meant is that dead
bodies can have an effect on the sacral status of their
surroundings. Corpse pollution is a very real concern in
the legal sources I have studied, and it does not always
appear to be tied to the state of the body (and soul) after
the resurrection. Actually, the main argument of the paper
I mentioned all-so-many postings ago was that there was a
change in the twelfth century from a concern about corpse
pollution to a concern about maintaining a sense of
community with the dead. Earlier legal texts generally
argue that no one, or only a very select few, should be
buried inside a church, while later texts are more flexible
as long as the bodies involved are those of believers. To
stretch my neck out even further: my theory is that the
earlier canonists reflected an older view of scared places,
people, and objects, which was very concerned with problems
of pollution and which drew explicitly on Old Testament
ideas of purity, while the later canonists were more
concerned with maintaining the boundaries of the orthodox
Roman Catholic Church in the face of the increasing number
of heretical movements in the twelfth century. But all of
this is just supposition, and I seem to be drifting off the
topic once again . . .
Stephen A. Allen
The Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|