> From: Dr. Karen Jolly [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> I agree. Insofar as they don't fall into one category another (our
> categories), can we see what categories they used for themselves?
>
I suppose we can try to look at the comments in marginalia and
letters that monks made about other monks, especially those from other
communities. I often wonder, too, if it was this lack of, oh, orthodoxy that
lay behind reform movements like the ninth century Ce/li De/ in Ireland.
I also wonder whether the situation was far more fluid than we tend
to think.
> The prayers you mention--can you give me a reference since I am not as
> familiar with the Irish evidence?
>
I'll look it up. I think it's one of the St. Gall incantations that Whitley
Stokes published in his collection, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus._
> I don't think of folklore that way any more so than "popular,"
> although I use the latter extensively in the way you suggest (popular
> practice, popular religion, etc).
>
It's just that folklore does seem to have a "popular" connotation!
> Exactly. At the recent meeting of ISAS (Anglo-Saxonists), I did a
> paper in a panel on the odd ms CCCC 41 and its marginalia, which many have
> described as unorthodox (Latin and Old English "charms," prayers, etc) and
> clearly a product of a non-mainstream scriptorium (probably true). But I
> and others think that it does in fact represent mainstream Christianity in
> 10-11th century England and that we have set up a false dichotomy between
> an AElfrician normative Christianity and all other deviants.
>
Very interesting. That's the sort of growing suspicion I have about
early Irish Christianity, too, although at this point it's more hunch than
proof.
On the other hand, is it so hard to believe that such practices as
charms were so far from the mainstream? Lester Little's book on liturgical
cursing (_Benedictine Maledictions_) documents that cursing was standard
practice at one time. If we put together all the small studies of specific
practices in specific places, I think we may find that what's at fault is
our concept of what was accepted practice in the medieval mainstream.
Francine Nicholson
>
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