At 04:04 PM 9/22/99 +0000, you wrote:
>I suspect that the division between 'higher' and 'lower' opposition
>to clerical privilege might sometimes be more apparent than real:
>surely e.g. Henry II of England knew he could harness a lot of
>popular lay support for his stand against criminous clerks?
>Julia Barrow
there's also the distinction between hostility to higher and lower clergy.
when i was in amiens, a cleric took us around the cathedral, and, looking
at a depiction of some nuns being carted off to the guillotine during the
revolution he lowered his voice and said: much of the lower clergy
supported the revolution... it was the bishops and their associates who
were aristocracy. true or false, it's an interesting way of both
remembering the past and parsing the present.
richard
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