Horrible? Star Trek? Slide Show?...no, side show.
> At 10:03 06.10.98 -0500, you wrote:
> >What studies could you recommend on medieval
> >views of the natural world?
> >The chair of the philosophy department at my university
> >has written and argues that "people in the Middle Ages did not think
> >nature was beautiful" (see his slide show at
> >www. phil.unt.edu/show/).
> >Any responses?
>
> Dear Claire,
>
> Truely a horrible website! It does not give any name of author or
> editor,
> but if it is true as you say that it was created by, or under the
> responsibility of, the Chair of the UNT Department of Philsophy and
> Religion Studies (Eugene C. Hargrove), I wonder what the standards in
> this
> Department are. The full statement in question reads:
>
> People in the Middle Ages generally did not believe that nature is
> beautiful, or they believed that it was an inferior beauty except
> as an element in the beauty of creation as a whole, or they
> believed
> that nature was beautiful but that it tempted them and thereby
> conflicted with their love of God.
>
> Nevertheless, most people today do believe that nature is beautiful
>
> in a more secular sense. This presentation explains how that change
>
> took place over many centuries. The story involves developments in
> many aspects of Western culture, including the arts, the
> humanities,
> and the sciences
>
> As a general rule, statements beginning with "People in the Middle
> Ages"
> cannot end well, and this one is no exception. The ambitious project
> outlined in these initial sentences is carried out on ca. 40 pages,
> each of
> them producing an image file and accompanying text of usually not more
> than
> two or three sentences. With jewels like:
>
> In the Middle Ages, people thought symbollically [sic, O.L].
>
> When they saw an image of an animal,
> such as a fish, or of food, such as a loaf
> of bread, they thought of the most
> appropriate story in the Bible.
>
> Yet they somehow managed to survive. As a critical remark on Domenico
> Veneziano's _Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata_ we read:
>
> There are also problems with the look of the mountains.
> They lack realistic detail. It is possible that the artist
> had never seen a mountain and was relying on written accounts
> of them.
>
> What this poor unexperienced man from the Italian waterside had seen
> instead must have been some medieval version of Star Treck, as we can
> infer
> from your chairs explanation:
>
> The six-winged seraph is shooting laser-like beams at him [sc.
> Francis, O.L.], cutting his hands, feet, and side so that he
> can learn what Jesus felt when he was nailed on a cross and
> crucified.
>
> So after all the purpose of stigmatization was education. Normally
> your
> chair's historical interests seem to have their focus in detecting
> what
> "the Church" disliked but failed to prevent:
>
> Initially, the Church opposed the creation of gardens.
> However, eventually it decided that they could be regarded
> as symbols of the Garden of Eden, and reluctantly gave
> its approval.
>
> Or somewhere else:
>
> In the beginning, the Church objected to foreign plants, but
> eventually approved of plants named in the Bible because of
> their symbolic value. After Europe was filled with biblically
> related plants, the Church was unable to prevent further
> importation from other temperate areas around the Earth: for
> example, from China, North and South America, Africa, and
> Australia and New Zealand.
>
> If stuff like this counts as tenurable in your Department, I will make
> sure
> to place my next job application there.
>
> Otfried
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
> Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin
> phone & fax: ++49 30 8516675, E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Homepage for Dante Studies:
> http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welcome.html
> Listowner of Italian-Studies:
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> Listowner of Medieval-Religion:
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